How does the land where we are from shape each of us? How do we reconcile the beauty and the failings of where we are from with the people we become?

 

Melbourne (Australia) based songwriter Clive Casey draws on the experience of living in various countries including rural and outback Australia where he spent part of his formative years. Pinche País (pronounced: Pinch-eh Pay-is) is an album in which the influence of the parched earth of the Australian continent features as both a backdrop and an undeniable authority on the lives of the characters throughout the album.

 

Its Spanish title is “Chilango” slang of Mexico City where Clive lived for several years. “¡Qué triste mi pinche país!", “How sad, my fucking country!” Casey would hear, in response to another disappearance, murder or rumour of corruption. 

 

"¿Qué vamos a hacer con este pinche país?", “What are we going to do with this fucking country?”. Across nine songs Casey expresses how we all have ambivalent relationships with our fucking country, wherever it is. The lands Casey visits, both literal and literary, tell stories of the same frustrations and laments but also love for the places that help form us. 

 

He tells of the culture shock, returning to an indigenous community in the Tanami Desert for the first time since childhood in Away; of an Irish convict blown by banishing winds to a foreign land in Southern Sky; of murdered female mayor in Michoacan in Unending Sky; of the crisis of near-future farmers in The Big Dry. 

 

Clive Casey’s music is expansive like the landscapes it draws inspiration from. Artists such as Bright Eyes, Big Thief, the Dirty Three and the Church are clear reference points. Casey draws inspiration from both formative experiences and formative literature: John Steinbeck, Milan Kundera, Robert Hughes, Cormac Mccarthy and Haruki Murakami. 

 

The song Oh Mercy is similar to Luluc’s Small Windows in both imagery and understated lightness. Casey says: “I wrote the song whilst housesitting a farm in Victoria. One afternoon I was laying in a creek bed as planes flew overhead and I tried to imagine the character from the opening on Murakami’s Norwegian Wood reflecting: 

 

Planes fly over, over me/ He’s flying back to Tokyo over the Timor Sea/ Planes fly over, over me/ He sees her waiting at the window/ Blossoms in the breeze

 

Other songs, such as The Big Dry, strive for grander narratives.  Set in 2027 in a reimagining of Grapes of Wrath the narrator sings of being burdened with custodianship of Oklahoma farmlands that have been ravaged by his family’s own choices and the unstoppable effects of climate change that have pushed the family to ruin:

 

I always knew my home/ Was here, this earth, this country/ On a tether and a tightrope/ I’ve only known, the land where I was born/ But now those hungry creditors/ They’re summoning, shape shifting/ Like the plagues of mice/ Used to dance among the wheat and the corn

 

Casey also explores the emotional space that comes between lovers on the closing track Who Am I to Say:

 

You’ll go to tango tonight/ I’ll go to the bar every other night/ And we can dance, dance, dance each other away/ Like two strangers just counting down the days

 

Pinche País’ nine songs which were recorded at Headgap Studios in Melbourne and produced by Rohan Sforcina.

The songs draw on a mix of guitar and piano backed by Damian Hooper on guitar, Giles Warren on bass and Jordie Gilmore on drums. A three-piece string section (viola, cello and violin) enhance a number of tracks, most notably in the haunting Away.

 

Pinche País is a mature and fully realised debut album from an emerging artist with a passion for storytelling and a strong sense of place.