White Marble Heyday
Benedict's sixth album, White Marble Heyday, was released in October 2011.
The album features Benedict's four-piece band and long-term collaborators Jonathan Brain and Daniel Marano.
Preview / Buy CD / Download album from Bandcamp
|
Benedict Moleta - acoustic guitar, nylon string guitar and singing Jonathan Brain - electric, acoustic and nylon string guitars Harry Kneen - bass Daniel Marano - electric guitar Sam Scherr - electric guitar and backing vocal Lily Sumich - drums Lorraine Sumich - keyboards and backing vocal Recorded, engineered and mastered by Alan Smith. |
"Perth's quiet achiever has once again lived up to his prolific tag with a second 13-track effort in as many years, after 2010's Timesheet.
White Marble Heyday plays out in two halves, the first dominated by the minimalism of Moleta and Jonathan Brain on some textural lead parts and a second half punctuated by more of the full band sound that has characterised his recordings and live shows of recent years. Both generate plenty of highlights, and Moleta's wonderful turn of phrase is as observant and incisive as ever.
HQ-HZ wonders "Are you trying to ape the confidence you had as a child,"
before swelling into the record's most rousing moment. Thickening generously addresses
"one of those people that they say is ageing gracefully". And when Moleta "jumped ship' and "ended up
in a condemned flat under the Sheraton" on Salmon Brick, there's something so uniquely
local about it that you'll want to drive past and take a look."
- The West Australian
"If the average human being had even the most rudimentary ability to play guitar and write whimsical poetry like Benedict Moleta, photo albums would probably be of little use. Thankfully, we are vain as a human species and can't play much good music off the bat. This makes Moleta a very unique kind of guy, a photographer of Perth suburbia, and ultimately an important contributor to the Western Australian music scene as he continues to involve other musicians with his work. He even runs his own homebaked songwriters' club.
Sure, his style doesn't vary much - his softly spoken nuances are just like Belle & Sebastian's
Stuart Murdoch's (minus the whole Scottish thing), and his thought-stream prose could
easily by a by-product of the same cloud of joint smoke that birthed Joanna Newsom's
Sawdust And Diamonds. I guess what I'm really trying to say is, will somebody nominate
this guy Australian of the Year already?"
- Rave Magazine
"White Marble Heyday is another chapter in the Benedict Moleta canon and, yet again,
speaks to the human experience with remarkable insight and intimacy."
- The Drum Media
Photograph by Darren Clayton