The debut album from the well hyped August River Band is an invitation into an acoustic folk serenade that benchmarks pain as its driving influence. Yes, the foundation of the album is built on hardship. As singer-songwriter ‘Eev Ferreira’ believs, ‘Peace is not good for art’. He’s grateful for its teachings, not yearning for its onset. For all the hardship pain forces you to endure, its outcome compels you to think and act differently. It’s only in the face of adversity, does change manifest. The songs on the album span across a decades worth of work, moving from what Ferreira describes as a religious dogma to a secular one. That constant inner turmoil and fight over what the individual is, and what you are particularly, is central to the album’s ethos on pain.
Sonically, the record is a by the numbers piece of folk rock. There’s a whole lot of acoustic, but the string work doesn’t end there. To complement the sombre song writing, Lil Burrows’ brilliant violin work adds a new layer of emotional depth to the record. The rock element comes crashing in the form of Gerrard Kerr’s stupendous work on the drums.
My favourite parts of the album come towards the end, namely the jingly ‘Cupid’s 45’. The Western sounding cinematic piece has the band delve into some of the most vivid storytelling with a cinematic arrangement around it. All in all, ‘Thank You Pain’ is a masterfully composed folk rock record that picks a unique theme and builds out an entire story through and around it. Listen to it so that you introspect on your own hardship, maybe there’s a way to source your own anxiety into something to learn from.