"Praise the Lord, from the quagmire of mediocre wannabes also glows the invincible musicianship of one Jen Cloher...to all the cynics who have lost faith in local folk, stop saying nay and just bloody go and see Jen Cloher." Inpress.
Reading through the lyrics to Jen Cloher’s second album Hidden Hands is like being handed a confidential diary. That may come as a surprise to those who fell in love with the dark narratives of her 2006 ARIA nominated debut Dead Wood Falls, but accept Cloher’s invitation to get musically intimate and you’re in for a treat.
You’ll learn that the reason Cloher disappeared just when things were taking off, was so that she could be with her Alzheimer’s inflicted mother in New Zealand. Cloher and her band The Endless Sea had spenr two years on the road supporting the likes of Jose Gonzales, Laura Veirs, Missy Higgins, Ben Lee, Josh Pyke and Mia Dyson as well as completing several national headline tours of their own. They were invited to join some impressive festival line-ups including Homebake, The Falls and Queenscliff and were selected alongside Lior and Blue King Brown in welcoming His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Australia as part of the One Earth concert.
The album’s opening track, ‘Mother’s Desk’ vividly sets the scene for the genesis of Hidden Hands where we find Cloher holed up in Auckland, grappling her mother’s illness, and facing writer’s block. But fate cannot be fought. As she sings in the title song, “We can only go where we’re meant to go. Hidden hands will help us along.”
Those hands soon guided Cloher back to Melbourne towards the end of 2008, with a new swag of songs, and an expanded group of friends to help bring them to life. The services of ARIA winning producer Paul McKercher (Augie March, Sarah Blasko) and creative genius Laura Jean were enlisted to join Cloher in recording and producing the album. Time was booked at Woodstock studios and at the end of seven days – that’s a luxuriant two days more than it took to record Dead Wood Falls – Cloher and her band emerged with Hidden Hands.
With new Endless Sea members Biddy Connor (viola and musical saw) and Tom Healy (guitar) helping to swell the span of The Endless Sea, along with a cast of special guests like Grant Cummerford (Jeff Lang) and Liz Stringer joining in, Hidden Hands was always going to explore a more expansive palette. If Dead Wood Falls was acclaimed as some new folk hybrid, Hidden Hands better represents the country-rock grit and grace of The Endless Sea’s live performances.
The strange thing is, though the soundscape is unquestionably broader and more ambitious, Hidden Hands is the more intimate album. Cloher has invested more of herself in it and the musicians have made space for that self to shine. The songs are all personal and often explicit, peppered with details that attest to their integrity – like recalling Neko Case’s Fox Confessor Brings The Flood as the soundtrack to falling in love, or listening to a Townes Van Zandt song in a fogged up car (both excellent musical comparisons if you’re in need of such). Sure it requires talent to contrive believable fiction, but the greatest songs are all compelling through their candour. In Hidden Hands, Cloher has not only written an entire album of such compelling candour, she’s developed a singing voice of equal integrity with which to deliver them.
