When not gigging with Duckburg legends the Gadflys, or putting on a theatrical turn as The Great Muldavio with festival favourites Mikelangelo & the Black Sea Gentlemen, Philip Moriarty can be found in Candelo, jamming and writing new songs with his South Coast compadres Wrack & Ruin. The fruits of this satisfying sabbatical are on display in a new album, titled The Beat Takes Over.
Driven by the rhythm section of erstwhile Praguian Bachelor Russell Cook on drums and Novella fella Myoung Jae Yi on bass. Finessed with blowtorch subtlety by Andy Zarins on multifarious keyboard thingummyjigs. Caressed by the lugubrious saxophone legato of Tabitha Bilaniwskyj-Zarins. And with Phil Moriarty bashing away on guitar and squeezing out some suavely savage vocals, songs of fear & loathing, bitterness & bile, with the occasional chirpy piece of warped optimism and thwarted desire thrown in for good measure. The upbeat rhythms of a sophisticated dance party, featuring the groovy, Latinesque stylings of Xavier Cugat and Harry Belafonte. Clarinet? Yes! Harmonies? Yes! Cowbell? Lord yes!!
Billing themselves as ‘Australia’s favourite one-pub band’, Wrack & Ruin hope to take their original music to a wider audience. The new CD is the band’s first recorded output and brings together their love of tambourines and pop modulation with their trademark girl-group harmonies and riffing rhythms. All this on the back of Phil Moriarty’s idiosyncratic lyrical approach and preference for showboating melodic thrills.
After the successful launch their first album, what could be the next stop for Wrack & Ruin on their journey and inexorable rise to well-deserved fame and general adoration? Perhaps a new recording of the original rhumbas, cha-chas and bossa novas that have so delighted audiences at their spiritual home, the delightful Tathra Hotel. Or will it be in the culinary sphere that they next excel, with a delicious musical recipe for pumpkin risotto? With delights such as these, as well as a tango celebrating the lachrymose talents of Johnny Ray and the late, great Clyde McPhatter and a timely warning about the hidden hubris of the crystal-clutching self-improvement crowd, one is reminded of the adage, ‘There will always be a Small Time.’