The Orbweavers - Deep Leads (2017)

Let me begin this review of alt-country duo The Orbweavers with a mea culpa: When I requested the review I hadn’t read the email properly and I was expecting the latest album from on-trend Geelong psych-rockers ORB.

What I got when I dove into Deep Leads it was the opposite fuzzed out guitars rumbling rhythms I expecting. Instead, The Orbweavers create tender if not slightly downcast music that reminds of a period in my early twenties when I was listening exclusively to Cowboy Junkies, Cat Power, and Low.

This is brooding music where the interplay between Marita Dyson’s vocals and the other, instrumental, half David Flannigan hits the listener dually with each aspect symbiotic to the other. The song 'Cyclamen' wends a sultry path before swelling off distortion and a beautiful sprawling harmony as Dyson’s voice cannons on the chorus of: “Scarlet, purple, crimson and white / give me a vision to take through night.”

The Orbweavers formed in 2006 which was during a golden era for the reinterpretation of the alternative country and folk of the '50s and '60s and, to be honest, despite the ostensible ‘timelessness’ of this sound Deep Leads didn’t awaken anything new in my soul, maybe it just woke up a part of me that had been snoozing for a while.