While Melbourne band Amarillo is billed as a four-piece, at
its core are songwriters Jac Tonks and Nick O’Mara, who mostly split
songwriting duties on their new album, Eyes
Still Fixed, with only one shared song, opening track and single ‘All I Can
See’. And each of the songs sounds like a glorious pas de deux between Tonks’s
vocals and O’Mara’s guitars, each bringing out the best in the other as they
dance.
Some of the songs on Eyes
Still Fixed were written in the Northern Territory and the top end of
Western Australia; some were written in Europe. Distance is a theme and a
characteristic of all the songs: in the lyrics, distance from home and other
people; in the music, each element is given space so that it can be properly
heard and appreciated.
Amarillo’s style draws from Americana, with the occasional
echo of laid-back Australian rock. This is not an album that’s made to play in
the background of a pub, though – it demands to be listened to, and it makes
for very lovely listening. The songs evoke a range of emotions; the overall
impression left by Eyes Still Fixed
is bittersweetness, a fairly exquisite tension. I also had the sense of
familiarity, in a good way, particularly with Tonks’s voice – but after trying and
failing to work out where I’d heard her before, I realised I hadn’t: it was the
songs themselves invoking some kind of nostalgia, perhaps for the Australian
outback, perhaps for lazy summer days. If art is meant to stir emotions and
memories – to make us feel and think – Eyes
Still Fixed is a piece of art, and deserving of that label.
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