Imogen All the People
When I was staying with a friend in London a few years ago (a slightly pretentious beginning I know, but hang in there), I was subjected to an impromptu lounge room “performance” by his goth housemate’s “band.” Before the “show”, I asked the bass-player-makeup artist-singer-songwriter (we’ll call him Dagger-Blood) how he would describe his music.
“We don’t even try to describe ourselves,” Dagger-Blood said, “we fuck with genre, and just let intuition take over.”
Preened and poised, the lads broke into what sounded like a Nine Inch Nails cover of Blink 182’s “Dammit” as heard from a battered AM radio covered by a wet sponge.
The desire to elude genre-boundaries is, of course, a common impulse for budding songwriters. Ironically, the only lyrics I have retained from the above mentioned “song” are, “everybody’s trying to do something the different/they all end up the same [I guess this is growing up].” True, but it seems the songwriters who consciously parade their intentions to “fuck with genre” are the ones most likely to slide into such mediocrity.
Imogen’s cross-genre approach is successful simply because they don’t have such an explicit stylistic agenda – they can’t help but “fuck with genre.” “I Know” starts out with a casual post-rocky drop-in: inhibited brush-rolls on the snare drum, scratchy fumbling down around the bottom end of the fretboard and occasional encounters with the ride symbol. When the vocals arrive, everything becomes a little more formal and somewhat reminiscent of Hope Sandoval at one of her more compelling moments. The vocal melodies and harmonies are intricate, thoughtful, and though not always particularly subtle, dependably unpredictable (check that paradox).
- Imogen
- I Know
- from Live on 3CR
- No longer available
“I Know” is a challenge and a pleasure. It’s a sparse, dimly lit Fitzroy bar on an experimental music night. It’s a Saturday afternoon picnic with cous-cous, eggplant and orange salad. It’s a sing-a-long behind the wheel of a ‘56 EJ Holden, cruising though Geelong on the way to the Port Fairy Folk Festival. Ok, I’ll stop.
Imogen don’t want to “fuck with genre” – they want to “hold hands with genre” (oh dear). Dagger-Blood has a lot to learn.