After two weeks of incessant rain, I had the pleasure of riding my bike on the first cold and mercifully clear day of winter whilst listening to The Modern Shoe Is Ruining The Foot in full for the first time.
The album felt like it was arriving with the weather, harnessing the sharpness of the air and the warmth from the sun. It mirrored that sense of revelling in the light after spending so much time indoors.
Written and recorded on the land of the Kaurna people, The Modern Shoe Is Ruining The Foot exudes such an infectious sense of camaraderie. When Any Young Mechanic last played Sydney, it felt like half of the audience wanted to find a partner, link arms and skip around in circles. It was as if someone tickled the recesses of our brains to activate the state-sanctioned line dancing unit from high school PDHPE. It’s incredible how the quintet has managed to capture that energy on this record. There is as much intensity in swaying to ‘Write You Wrong’ as there is bouncing on your heels during ‘My House Divides’. It’s folk music that moves back and forth between rollicking and wistful all the while conjuring stories so vivid it feels like I’m actually watching scenes play out in my head.
Part of what makes these songs so affecting is lyricist Sam Wilson’s ability to suggest more than he explains. He has spoken about resisting fixed meanings, wary of the way declaring what a song is “about” can close it off entirely. The result is an album that feels deeply personal while still leaving room for listeners to recognise parts of their own lives reflected back at them. On the opener ‘There’s A New Place On The Market’, Wilson manages to capture every sharehouse I’ve ever lived in: painted over windows, portraits left on walls, footsteps from the railroad tracks. Elsewhere, a line from ‘Atlas, Here You Are’ evokes such tenderness, articulating the desire to feel cradled: “oh to be held like a mug”.
That openness extends beyond lyrics and runs throughout the album’s instrumentation. There is an intimacy in the way each of the instruments intertwine with each other. The banjo has an inherently bright, rustic quality that complements the warm roundedness of the nylon guitar, while the violin weaves sweet counter-melodies to the vocals beneath which plays the cello stirs. The double bass traces its own path, plodding along at times and then jumping more erratically at others. The drums are soft and delicate, standing out less for force than for their lightness. Given that the album was recorded live, such restraint feels deliberate rather than incidental.
One of my favourite moments on the album comes in the final minute of ‘Every Time You Put Me Up, I Get Down a New Way’, where viola, two banjos, double bass and drums swell and shift as they overlap. It has a tide-like motion, as if it is constantly drawing back and pushing forward. Rather than building toward a straightforward crescendo, the moment feels like something continuously gathering and releasing.
The Modern Shoe Is Ruining The Foot is the ideal winter record. Its warmth isn’t forced or rushed and it stands in stark contrast to the endless summer I spent trying to cool down, sticky with sweat rash.
Words by Hannah Rose