Messenger

Transplant Terry Callier or Curtis Mayfield down under and you just might get a Jimmy Little. He’s got a voice that’s more Stax soul than outback. Pair that with a lyric sheet that’s in equal parts pleasure and politics and you’ve got quite a cocktail.

Title aside, this is an album that’s quietly confident, with not a trace of a need to prove itself. Which is just what’s required in an era of artistic ego-tripping and lowest common denominatorism.

Little’s church is broad but quintessentially Australian. The Go-Betweens, The Church, Paul Kelly, Nick Cave and Crowded House play a role in his set list. ‘Randwick Bells’ is barely recognisable as the paean to the joys of weekend sex that Paul Kelly recorded nearly two decades ago.

Arrangements are distinctly cool, louche even. Little is evidently a man not in a hurry anywhere, as befits his Aboriginal appreciation for time and place.

‘Into Temptation’ on the other hand, is a far more sensual beast in his hands than it ever was in Neil Finn’s, while ‘Are You The One I’ve Been Waiting For’ still has the foreboding piano but little of the gravity of Nick Cave’s peerless original.

Messenger is a pensive collection gathered by an artist who knows his vocal strengths but somehow aims for the obvious in his choice of material. As an interpreter his breadth and range is matchless, but still stymied by the familiarity of the terrain he chooses to inhabit.

There’s little doubt but that Jimmy Little has a voice that should be heard well beyond the confines of the Parramatta. As a taster of his potential, Messenger ably but solidly delivers. But you can’t help suspect that there’s more to this silver-tongued devil than a greatest hits of Australiana.