Capsule Review: Augie March's Moo, You Bloody Choir

Augie March Moo, You Bloody Choir (Sony BMG)

Over a year after the release of their third full-length in their Australian homeland, the literate, intimate rock of the Moo finally makes its way stateside. From the very beginning, it’s easily discernible why they chose to name themselves after the picaresque novel by Saul Bellow The Adventures of Augie March. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Glenn Richards is prone to extremely descriptive, poetic lyrics. Within the liner notes, examples of this are abundant. You can simply close your eyes, flip through the pages and randomly plop your finger down on lines like “When summer comes the valley hums/ with medicine trucks on the sidewalks/ laid out those hands could be holy...” in “Stranger Strange.”

Moo features mostly guitar and piano-driven, sweetly melancholic tunes with the occasional wave of horns or string arrangements, but a few tracks really stand out. “There is No Such Place” is a dreamy lament that sticks out with its intense longing in Richards’ voice and swelling strings. Richards sings, “A river winding blue among the dunes and a marble bed and a sun that doesn’t set but settles.” There he goes again with the imagery. It’s amazing that an album with tracks produced and mixed by several different people and every other song recorded at a different location sounds this fluent.

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