The Apartments
The Evening Visits... And Stays for Years

There are albums produced by well-mannered artists. It happens rarely, but it does happen. Perhaps it’s due to a fundamental shyness, who knows, but before entering the listeners' space and perhaps temporarily occupying it, they knock at their door almost apologizing for the disturbance, reluctant and frightened by themselves. They do not have the brash demeanor of Folletto sales managers with slicked-back hair or the aggressive real estate agents with ties knotted as large as a slice of pizza, categories capable of insulting anyone who doesn’t grant them an audience. Rather, they behave like those workers who, finished with their shifts, go for free to promote the party newspaper to earn a few euros that won't even cover the printing expenses, but oh well, they will thank you even just for answering.

From the 1980s Australia, typically, very raw and bold rock bands emerged, children of that virtuous chain letter of Saint Anthony - or rather, of Saint James, protector of Iguanas - led by the punk-unwittingly Missing Links, with Radio Birdman and Saints in the middle and ending with Birthday Party and New Christs. But from that distant continent, in those years, we were fortunately also reached by music less exuberant in form and substance, indeed very complex in writing and accompanied by tortured lyricism. That was the case for Triffids, Moodists, and above all, the Go-Betweens. And also the smallest and most unknown of them all, The Apartments.

In the rough and conservative Brisbane, it is harder to play as the god of rock demands. Instead of the frontal assault of punk'n'roll (exception: the early Saints), a shadowy conceptuality was preferred. Peter Milton Walsh, leader of our small Apartments, cut his teeth briefly playing with the Go-Betweens themselves before they emigrated to Old Europe chez Rough Trade in search of a record deal (yes) and fortune (no). Later, he briefly socialized with the restless Ed Kuepper, accompanying his ventures into the quirky Laughing Clowns. Eventually, he debuted in the mid-'80s with his true and final creation, an album that, true to its chosen raison d'être, offers a rock with a soft approach and a subdued, intimate atmosphere. Not a loft (oops...another name historical..., editor’s note) for late-bourgeois yuppies, nor a dreadful timeshare spot for noisy vacations, but a small and secluded studio with a dormer window to watch with disillusionment all the chaos of the world and, even if just for a moment, shut it out.

"The most difficult words are spoken softly", Mr. Walsh sings at a certain point in "Mr. Somewhere", verses that could have been written in Australia by David McComb and Grant McLennan. Logical then that the music of "The Evening Visits..." moves in the direction traced by those two guiding stars. It is perhaps the flaw that, in those days, probably condemned this album, combined with a deliberately very Spartan production and a voice that wants to be Dylanesque but at times turns out to be nasally over the top. However, for the rest, we are faced with a number of small gems of guitar-driven pop-rock that have their undisguised references in the early Go-Betweens of "Before Hollywood", whether they are the spirited and light ones of "What's the Morning For?" and "Great Fool" or those masters of drawling idleness as they appear in the wonderful "Speechless With Tuesday" or the gloomy and acidic guitar work of "Cannot Tell The Days Apart", which Ian MacCulloch’s bunnies would have loved (put in a misty voice like Mac's and they could have shot straight up the charts).

On the other hand, there is also space for an intense and poignant folk-rock that does not disdain explorations into borderlands, with in addition a quid of peculiar and evocative instrumentation: here a touch of piano and a little sha-la-la du-du-du-du (the initial microcosmic hit "Sunset Hotel", stuff perfect for Morrisey and Marr deported to the New Continent), or there "Mr. Somewhere", a folk elegy with cello counterpoints. And then again, the strings and flugelhorn inserts that make "All the Birthdays" an intersection of Triffids, John Cale, and Incredible String Band, ending with the two songs that seem to bring together the two major groups in a single, well-calibrated two-headed hybrid: "Lazarus, Lazarus", more in the direction of Perth's psycho-blues and "The Black Road Shines", somewhere between Brisbane and Scotland’s Postcard Records.

So then, twenty-five years later, I ask myself: why not put this album on the shelf next to those other ones? There’s space, there’s space, there must be. Even in a small studio.

Dedicated to David McComb and Grant McLennan, Australian poets with hearts too big. We miss you. A lot.