I've never had an interest in poetry, nor do I profess to have any real skill in interpreting it. Despite this, I can identify and appreciate good poetry in popular culture. Who didn't, for example, go out and buy a book of William Blake's poems after watching Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man? Or trawl through Robert Browning's 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came' for a fix during the six year drought between Stephen King's 'The Waste Lands' and 'Wizards and Glass'? In my youth, the majority of my experiences with poetry were more prosaic. Back in 1991, I recall being tasked with analysing a poem for my Year 11 English class, and instead wrote an essay on Paul Hewson's 'Running to Stand Still' (otherwise known as Track 5 from U2's The Joshua Tree). When it comes to true poetry masquerading as song lyrics, however, nothing compares to the writing of Glenn Richards - lead singer of the Australian indie rock band Augie March.
Augie March's back catalogue is full of incredible music and Richards' indelible poetry. In their early days, their best songs focused on the life and musings of a twenty-something university student - 'Future Seal' (Thanks for the Memes, 1998) and 'Rich Girl' (Waltz, 1999), for instance. By the year 2000, Richards' lyrics had progressed onto more erudite topics. To pick their best songs from twenty plus years of recordings seems like an impossible (and pointless) task. Nevertheless, here are the Most Poetic Songs of Glenn Richards and Augie March.
Christian imagery permeates the lyrics of this song from Augie March's debut album, Sunset Studies - from its subtitle, to references to the Rapture, to being cast out and born(e) again.
Drowned and amoral, I pollinate the coral
And reek of the deep where I tended the water weed
The opening line of the Torah has been translated to read, 'In the beginning, the god of the sea created himself.' On the first day, the Old Testament tells us that there was nothing but blackness and water. Richards' lyrics call to mind both these images, and paints a picture of a lone, amoral (indifferent) god who tends to his creation.
I saw twilight car waxers, corpulent dog walkers,
Clean canny couples on the sunset strip
From a tower forty miles to the east of Augusta,
Saw a plague on the Indian a'coming on a windship
God's omniscience allows him to see events occurring outside of linear time, from modern middle class suburbia, to the Indian Ocean at the turn of the century. He also watches as people are born, live a long life, then die.
O see them grow tall, see them in their rot,
See them go to seed in the cemetery plot
There's a fantastic alternative analysis of this song on Everything 2, a website that looks like an internet chat room from the mid nineties. User Jonkavelli suggest that 'The Good Gardener' is perhaps autobiographical, or at the very least, a fictional narrative that describes an affair that ends in abortion. In that context, the line 'reek of the deep where I tended the water weeds' takes on a very different meaning.
Alliteration abounds in this track from 2002's Strange Bird.
I was born in the bottom of a boat,
Of glass between the sea and me
Upward from the floor they'd float,
Bodies from the drowning dream
The great thing about this passage is the surprising alliterative connections that are made. Rather than only repeating sounds at the beginning of words, as you'd expect with alliteration, Richards links the long /e/ sound in between, sea and me. And in the last line, he repeats the /d/ sound at the beginning of drowning and dream with the 'd' in bodies.
In the middle of the field at the height of the eclipse,
When all that we could see were the fiery whips
Of that hot-headed god, hot-headed god and wild,
Perpetually running from his wife and child
Like all good poetry, 'The Drowning Dream' is cryptic enough to be mysterious, while its imagery seems somewhat familiar. The 'hot-headed god' who runs from his wife and child is likely a reference to Greek mythology, but what that has to do with 'fifty-four people in the back of a truck' or 'sixty-eight bullets for my wife and I' is anyone's guess. Is he singing about actual events, or is he literally describing random, disconnected images from a dream?
'This Train Will Be Taking No Passengers'
Again on Everything 2, we find another interesting analysis; this time penned by user bizza. According to the author, the eponymous train represents both hell on Earth and the decadence of men hurtling them towards eternal damnation.
Onward and on to the ends of reason
where malice is the means of the earth.
Onward and on, this strange-wrought bird,
onwards and over the black coffee earth,
Onward and on, this laughing train
to the ends of its low, low mirth...
The song concludes with the following:
But a shadow falls between this circling intent
and its realisation for its government
is rotten and therefore its civilisation
which is certainly taking no passengers...
Likening civilisation to a train and a train to a 'strange-wrought bird' is lyrical genius, and possibly an indictment of Australia's policy on asylum seekers arriving by sea.
O we will adjust to this new condition of living
like a sailor with his hands tied behind his back
imprisoned after sailing into foreign waters, unawares
accustoms himself to a new condition of living.
Its references to the talkback wars and radio personalities tie it to a very specific time in Australian history.
Where the media make it with the media whores,
Lady Time minces man-meat with her contract claws
for a barbecue with the veterans of the talkback wars
in the outback palace ... of one John Laws.
In 1999, John Laws and Alan Jones were accused of taking money in exchange for promoting several banks and corporations in the guise of news. If Richards' train is anything like Bong Joon-Ho's Snowpiercer (adapted from the 1982 French graphic novel, Le Transperceneige), Laws and his buddies are laughing it up in the front carriages.
'Owen's Lament' is written from the perspective of an Australian soldier during the Great War, who has left behind a fiance with the promise of killing a dynasty of Turks. With a nod to the traditional Irish ballad, 'The Lament for Owen Roe', lyrically it is one of Richards' simpler songs, yet all the more powerful for it.
And if you have to go please go lightly.
Keep it to a foxtrot whether he's a fox or not.
Keep it cold - keep all your heat for me -
I'll be needing it for when I'm cold you see?
Here the soldier basically tells his girlfriend that he's cool with her hooking up with someone else, even if the new guy is hot - as long as the relationship is without passion.
Let your children remind you of me
Whether by another or by the ghost of me in you
And if she gets pregnant, to imagine it was his ghost that impregnated her, rather than her husband. The song ends with the death of the narrator:
She bound me up and hugged me
'O how the mother loves thee'
She covered my body
In a ragged flag and bloody
More than two decades ago, at the Big Day Out festival in Melbourne, I walked into a tent to see and hear Augie March for the first time. They were halfway through this particular song, which also happened to be the last in their set. Maybe I have a predilection for romantic tragedies set during the first World War, but upon hearing less than three minutes of music, I was hooked.
There is a distinct through line that can trace the themes in this song, beginning all the way back in 'Future Seal', via 'The Glenorchy Bunyip' in 2008 and culminating in the gut-punch of 'Definitive History' in 2014.
O I know justice, it's a birthright if you're born right,
and I know how handsome is that trick of the light,
So don't be mistaken in thinking I'll do right
given the chance to do wrong again and again.
In 'AWOL', Richards admits the privileges he's been afforded as a white Australian man. There's a lot to unpack here, including references to love, nostalgia, the relentless march of time, The Goodies and Doctor Who.
O don't you know time, with its petty vial of sands,
inscrutable face and merciless hands?
And don't you know love?
It's a whirlwind of feathers,
tickles you to your nethers and leaves a terrain of despair...
Whether intentional or not, this track evokes images of a father warning his daughter of men's ulterior motives. Considering the narrator is approximately 36 years old (‘three dozen cycles, give or take a sum’), he could be speaking to a partner rather than a child:
O please don't go with those horrible guys, they only want one thing,
Again and again.
Like 'The Glenorchy Bunyip', Richards understands that every monster is just a child who 'never had to grow into a man'. Having been complicit himself in 'doing wrong', he knows all too well what awaits women outside the safety of their home. The narrator, at least, expresses some remorse for his past actions and in doing so, proves that men are not entirely hopeless.
'Middle of the Road Class War Terra Nullius Blu-Hoos'
This is one of Richards' lesser known tracks, available only on his first solo EP (Closed Off, Cold & Bitter - Life as a Can of Beer, 2005). It's worth noting that Richards not only wrote and performed it, he played all of the instruments and produced it himself in his home studio.
Like many Augie March songs, the title of this track is as obscure as his lyrics, revealing just enough to give a sense of its meaning. Terra Nullius, of course, refers to the designation given to Australia by colonial invaders in the 18th century and means 'nobody's land'. The term 'Blu-Hoos' could be interpreted as either self deprecating or condescending, depending on the identity of the song's protagonist. Is he a sympathetic character, or are we meant to think he's a bit of a crybaby?
I never thought I would amount to much,
But I thought it might be much more than this
Writing jingles for the factory,
Selling memories and sinking piss
The question remains - are the lyrics fictional or autobiographical? Is Richards lamenting his own lot (strip mining his darkest secrets to create pop music for the masses and drinking to numb the pain), or commenting on the commodification of art in general?
Now I'm trading nightmares on the stark exchange,
Where hearts are fat and hair is thin
I just know I can make a killing,
If I can tally up enough sin
'Middle of the Road' is full of memorable lines, my favourites including:
Well did he graduate from a lower class?
Or did he tumble from a great height?
And:
But to the past there is no returning,
From the past there is no reprieve
The song describes a life, from 'a tiny swimmer in a million' to a middle-aged man dreaming of the things he might do when his 'ship [comes] in'. The chorus tells us that this is someone who is lacking confidence in their abilities, a sentiment to which we can all relate. And he does it with a catchy beat that you can also sing along to:
Who was the thief
Who was the thief
Who was the thief
Who stole my self belief?
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