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Artist
Roscoe James Irwin
12+ albums
about
"From his involvement with seminal Australian bands The Cat Empire and The Bamboos, to his highly ambitious compositions and arrangements that have been performed by countless big bands and orchestras, and considering his iconic status as a bandleader and large-scale composer, Irwin’s debut solo record, The Hunting Road, might then come as something of a shock. There is no stabbing brass, there are no sweeping strings, no jungle percussion breaks. It seems that Irwin, whose musical palette is colourful and wide ranging, has surprised us all with a record that is simple, thoughtful, and beautiful. Having suffered a clean break of heart in 2009, Roscoe retreated to the Canadian mountains, rented a house on the lake and made friends with the creature and a cheap nylon string guitar. After three weeks of late autumn cold, another Yankees world series and many sing-alongs with the local folk and country misfits, Roscoe returned with a pocket full of songs, and soon after recorded The Hunting Road with producer John Castle (The Bamboos, Washington) at The Shed studio in Melbourne. What is unique about this record is the way that Irwin has been able to focus his extremely colourful musical imagination into a bunch of deceptively simple folksy pop songs. The music appears at first familiar to us, warm and well-worn sounds – the tapping of feet on wooden floorboards, tasteful country fingerpicking and lo-fi drums – but it soon becomes clear that this music has a deeper layer to it,
