Ned Collette & Wirewalker: "All the Signs"

Ned Collette is, without a doubt, a troubled man, one harboring a thinly veiled skepticism of relationships, love, courage, and generally the world at large. Yet his songs are often as disarming as they are dour—fragile, exasperated sighs, sometimes barely audible, and always (at least until now) set to poignantly skeletal guitar pickings and more grandiose horn and synth flourishes. In a recent feature in Australian alt-music webzine Mess + Noise, Collette referred to his songs as “lyrically despotic”—which I found accurate but which also seemed to downplay how inviting those dark corners of his imagination may seem, furnished with his just fucking perfect melodies and some occasional drama. I mean, his music makes me want to curl up in his sadness.

“All the Signs,” the quaking centerpiece of Ned Collette’s third album, Over the Stones, Under the Stars, is where the music turns despotic as well. Well beyond the one-man-banding and layered guitar loops of albums past, Ned leans more heavily on the chops of his band mates (now dubbed “Wirewalker,” a marked improvement from the fratty “Ned Collette Band”) to produce this rolling tumbleweed of an anthem, veritably authoritative in its simplicity and directness. Collette sounds like he could howl forever over this track, his lyrical endurance akin to Dylan’s here. The marked similarity between verse and chorus even seems willful, as if he’s somehow asserting his dominance over the listener. “If this is some golden age, why do you feel alone?” he asks, wearily, as his band mates snuff out the last bit of sunlight trickling into the track. This is the same Ned Collette, yes, just sharper, meatier, and more foreboding than before. Despotic indeed.