A prolific year is in store for Anton Newcombe, it would seem. From a tour with The Brian Jonestown Massacre to new material with Dot Allison, the frontman just can’t stop. What a welcome surprise, a sudden wave of fresh sounds with collaboration at its core. That’s Amazing Grace, the latest single between Newcombe and Allison, precedes their album, Parallel, and tees up a fascinating experience. Under their All Seeing Dolls partnership, the pair makes for a lush musical soundscape on their lead single. Collaboration is key to Allison’s latest works, and a piece like That’s Amazing Grace highlights why that choice has been so successful as of late. Such a warmth comes through That’s Amazing Grace, and that much is almost expected. But the partnership between Newcombe and Allison throws a few curveballs nonetheless, and it only adds to their new sound.
That’s Amazing Grace has one sharp tool and continues using it. That partnership between acoustic bliss and an exceptionally strong voice, from Allison, is magnificent. Dream-like moments with plenty of momentum behind them. Slightly tender acoustic work is the steady foundation That’s Amazing Grace and the later Parallels project needs. The word “ethereal” is banded about all too much, but there is no other way to describe the powerful results found in this Newcombe and Allison song. Brilliant highs the whole way through, articulated well by what becomes a steady yet simple acoustic instrumental. That drive is more than enough to encapsulate the warmth, the safety found in the whispered vocal performance. But there is nothing safe in their instrumental choices, there is plenty to love about their softer rock tones.
This is a collaboration which is wild on paper yet in practice becomes one of the best underground music offerings of the last few years. Newcombe and the boisterous Brian Jonestown Massacre sound is, as their previous album, The Future is Your Past, found, working with a softer noise. That does not indicate a softening of the lyrical powers, though, not at all. That’s Amazing Grace relies on an incredible voice from Allison and some sharp playing from Newcombe, always the creator demanding something from instruments which sound all but spent in other walks of pop and rock. His ties to the fundamentals are what makes That’s Amazing Grace all the better. There is a heart-shaped hole just waiting to be filled by a listener, there is an abstract at play which benefits Allison and Newcombe, who sound like they want to keep a layer of ambiguity to their intent with Parallels.
Welcome it. All Seeing Dolls is a bold project and the progression heard on That’s Amazing Grace and Siren’s Echo Iron Lung is unexplainable in that broad but hopeful sense. An instrumental assurance, a confidence in the tone taken but a shifting fatigue, a fear, heard in its delivery. To marry those ideas is a tricky moment for any artist but Newcombe and Allison do a magnificent job of making these deep ideas sound just that, deep. Slick instrumental work, frankly cool material comes through on Siren’s Echo Iron Lung. Take the best bits of The Great Gig in the Sky and amplify it. An instrumental range with real power behind it and a vocal performance standing firm. Only good can come from this collaboration, and it certainly sounds like it is ready for a full release. Parallels is not far off.
