The
Trouble With Templeton is the title of an episode of a famous American series
Twilight Zone, during which a nostalgic character revisits its past. No, you
didn’t make a mistake, I’m really going to talk about music... The Trouble With
Templeton, it is the name that the australian Thomas Calder choose in 2011, to carry
his solo project. At that time, he released an album - Bleeders - the clips of
Someday Soon of which you can appreciate, I Wrote has novel, and the eponym
title Bleeders.
He
decides then to surround itself with a whole group, to give a new dimension to
T.T.W.T. From a singer-songwriter, he becomes leader of this Brisban band
within which we count the guitarist Hugh Middleton, the keyboardist player
Betty Yeowart, the bass player Sam Pankhurst And the drummer Richie Daniell.
Together they deliver to us, an alternative rock with several reflections,
which go from baroque pop to the folk.
With Rookie,
their first album as a band, they experiment the genres with a well felt
boldness, without ever installing us in a dullness.
Whimpering Child, who is reminiscent of Radiohead, begins the album by
introducing us into a rather dark, almost dreamlike atmosphere. The voice of
Thomas Calder reaches gradually higher summits, adding to the distress which
tells the track.
You are new send us back to the benches of the school, with bittersweets
lyrics. The innocence of the vocal harmonies combined in air ropes, wraps us
with a comfortable heat.
One
of the recurring themes of this album is the loving quest and we find it in Heavy
Lifting, who approaches the compromises which we make with oneself when we
are attracted by somebody, the drives which we have to control, against whom we
fight where those to whom we give in.
We
change dynamics with Like a Kid who can echo the mythical I
love Rock’n Roll and where we find catchy rhythms and communicating
energy which already make us sing " Oh Oh " from the first listening.
The
track maybe most standing the out with the album is Six Months In A
Cast, of an intensity which soars at a brisk pace. He tells the illusions
and the paranoia of which we are capable when we are obsessed by a person. A
fantasized relation which pushes us in the worst cuttings off. The clip,
incredibly effective, gives to the lyrics an even more tortured dimension.
Climate is the UFO of this album. A pretty short track, rather repetitive,
and which gives the impression of an alarm, we feels some kind of urgency, a
decline.
I Recorded You dips us back into a spleenic melancholy, a subtly
orchestrated blackness, with the voice of Thomas which just fires at random
where it is needed.
And
it is in the hospital bed that we feel thrown through Flowers In Bloom's
lyrics, from the first sentence. This alarming, ethereal universe, where the
time is suspended, where flowers always seem new.
Secret Pastures offers us an intimist acoustic stroll, on the surface of
feelings.
The
complex arrangements and highly varied of Soldiers could
destabilize you a little, in balance on the thread, between shouts and rustles
which overlap.
Glue brings
back a little sun, a lightness in tones, although the words always have an
underlying signification.
We
end the album with Lint, who resounds as a S.O.S, there is a
madness which seizes the track and whom we do not suspect at the
beginning.
The
Trouble With Templeton is sublime gold mine, Rookie is an album which doesn’t
stop being a surprise, due to the musical areas which it crosses with an ease
which forces the admiration.
Amandine B.
