(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Australia's sentimental angst-ridden slo-core quartet Art Of Fighting,
formed in 1997 in Melbourne by
vocalists Ollie Browne and Peggy Frew, and guitarist Miles Browne,
revolutionized the local school of low-fi pop both in terms of arrangement
(by adopting a "spare but modernist" approach previously attempted only by
Go-Betweens)
and in terms of pathos (by harking back to slo-core bands such as
Mazzy Star).
Following two EPs, The Very Strange Year (Half a Cow) and
Empty Nights (Half a Cow),
the first full-length album, Wires (2001 - 3 Beads of Sweat, 2002),
delivered folk-pop a` la REM
tinged with the spleen of the
Red House Painters
and
American Music Club.
More than a parade of dejected moments, it stood as a cascade of delicate
emotions, alternating between calm acceptance and humble desperation:
Skeletons,
Akula,
Moonlight,
I Don't Keep a Record,
Something New.
The dramatic overtones and the
sudden neurosis of the six-minute Just Say I'm Right
capped a quiet excursion into psychic turbulence.
A more graceful and sublime atmosphere permeated the songs on
Second Storey (Trifekta, 2004 - Bella Union, 2005).
A couple, such as Along The Run and Your Easy Part, were
blatantly melodic without sacrificing the band's psychological depth,
while
Break for Me,
Busted Broken Forgotten,
Where Trouble Lived,
Come Round And Show Me
laid the same spidery tapestry of the debut album,
eventually leading to the intense
closing of the mournful and quietly apocalyptic Heart Translation.