Friday June 16, 1995

by ?

There's a deep quiver to Tremble, the second album from Jan Hellriegel. That depth can make it intially perplexing, especially against its acomplished, easy-access predecessor, It's My Sin.

Though with that one there was more time to adjust, with Hellriegel's presence on the local live scene. This one rather comes out of nowhere, since Hellriegel has been in Melbourne for the past year and kept her head down locally before that. So arriving in a blaze of cover stories and one loud and wiry single, Manic (Is a State of Mind), this takes you by surprise. Especially as Manic isn't the only place where the sound has toughened up considerably and there's more than first meets the ear happening song-wise, especially melodically and lyrically.

There's evidence of that right from the opening Sneer with its slow descending snarl of guitars and harmonica, as well as on the dramatic ballads of Touch Greenstone and the closing It's Not Me; the giddy pop rush of Pure Pleasure and Moon's On Fire later, as well as the Straitjacket Fits-stye guitar meltdown at the end of Ice.

The mood turns wistful on Only One Option (complete with general orchestral OTT-ness), the gentle jangle of Merry Mary and the disarming Thinking, a lovely bare-bones ballad driven by Hellriegel's woozy voice. Probably only on the title track late in the piece does this overreach itself, both on the string-assisted arrangement and its Fiddler on the Roof knees-up of an ending. But its a rare wobble. And given a little time, Tremble turns out to be a shudderingly good album. (4.5)

5- wow 4- wonderful 3- worthwhile 2- worrying 1- woeful