A Book Like This – Angus and Julia Stone

Josh Maule | 8 September 2008

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A Book Like This
Angus and Julia Stone
EMI
2007

With spring on its way to Sydney, Angus and Julia Stone’s debut album - A Book Like This - will be quite suitable to have in rotation.

Its mellow acoustic vibe makes it perfect for sipping coconuts to.

It has an ambiguous, sometimes vague and frequently relaxed mood suited to those taking life easy. Fitting for the messy-haired, bare-footed, sun-and-surf-people of this world. The brother and sister duo have a sound not a million miles from Xavier Rudd, Jack Johnson, or Ben Harper.

But there is a uniqueness about their music which sets it apart. The Stone siblings were raised on the northern beaches of Sydney and grew up in a musical family. According to their website they spent their teenage years on a musical “discovery” tour where their thoughts and ideas were expressed in melodic form. They progressed from their teens to release three EPs and have now become a household name in Australia (to Triple J listeners at least).

Their recently released debut album resonates in a hypnotic way with soaring vocals and sweeping harmonies. It feels kind of like a celebration of the simple pleasures in life. A relishing of the beauty found in the menial grind of day to day life. It is packed full of observations, poetry, and seeming innocence. At times it is also an imaginative escape, or a stream of conscious ramble.

One song rich in its everyday life observation is ‘Here We Go Again’.

“You can live in the corner of
My room and I will live
Somewhere between
The ceiling and the wall…
All of this dragging around is not as fun as it used to be…
Oh here we go again…”

I couldn’t tell you for certain what this means because Angus and Julia are kind of like Bob Dylan – the words are fascinating but often leave you scratching your head. I suspect though that the song speaks of the sometimes predictable nature of life. The “nothing new under the sun” idea. That feeling of being boxed in by four walls.

Of course there are observations to do with love too. Like:

“There goes the gal
In the pretty skirt with the
Golden smile that made you feel new.”

But the coarse side of life is not absent from A Book Like This. A sad song titled ‘Hollywood’ opens with the words:

“I blame you Hollywood
For showing me things
You never should show
A young girl in this cruel world
Cos life’s not a happy ending.”

The track seeks to set straight the Hollywood tales of ‘happily ever after’ by suggesting “life’s not a happy ending”. Sung by Julia Stone, the song tracks the painful journey of a girl growing up and realising real life is different to what Hollywood makes it out to be.

For Christians the song reminds us of the rock solid hope found, not on the silver screen, but in the gospel of Christ. More than that though, the song rouses us to consider the emptiness people feel when they realise is painful.

When their aspirations and dreams come tumbling down with: the wrecked relationships, the massive mortgage, the redundancy package, or the personal tragedy. When they are let down by a world which seemed to offer so much more. Songs like ‘Hollywood’ ought to spur us on to tell people of the happy ending on offer. The ending earned painstakingly on our behalf with the words: “It is finished”.