Emily Barker & Lukas Drinkwater - Sleep Australia Sleep (Paul Kelly cover)

 

EMILY BARKER - Sleep Australia Sleep

The most extraordinary Paul Kelly song covered here by the peerless Emily Barker. If this is not the anthem for today then I really don't know what is!?

 It doesn't always quite work as well as it might in the sense a reference to Australia limits it's appeal somehow and it might have become more universal had it not referenced so parochial a country reference but that is splitting hairs and Emily's quite frankly staggering quality she brings to it more than makes up for the homely reference . . . . . the 'green' message more than depressingly clear

She and her wonderful fellow musician husband Lukas flew to Emily's homeland and had to spend a fortnight in isolated hotel quarantine so what would they do? Why record an album of covers of course!

Beautiful stuff and a great idea but she has hardly sat still at him here in Gloucestershire either and released a towering new album 'A Dark Murmuration of Words' and variations thereon (a jump off for an album of poetry and rethought music! no less she is a force of nature and cannot be uncreative for a second it would seem)

She say of this track

Like most Australians, I’m a fan of Paul Kelly. I think of him as the Bob Dylan of Australia: a brilliant storyteller who never shies away from tackling the pertinent and sensitive issues of our times. He’s consistently uplifted burgeoning Australian songwriters such as a young Archie Roach back in the 80s and, more recently, Jess Hitchcock. In ‘Sleep, Australia, Sleep’ – released as a standalone single in 2020 – Kelly attacks the complacency held by corporations, government, and people in positions of power, with their stuck and endangering attitudes towards the climate crisis. The song is also an elegy to our precious native animals and plants: Australia has one of the highest rates of extinction in the entire world. When it came to recording our version, I began by playing and singing it on acoustic guitar. In this stripped-back style, we realised just how devastatingly sad the lyrics are – something which is perhaps a little hidden in Kelly’s sardonic delivery and the waltzy, more uptempo production of the original. We initially intended to add double bass and lots of harmonies but realised this stark, unadorned version delivered the message with clarity.

=======================================

Emily Barker's new album "A Dark Murmuration of Words" is out now -

https://smarturl.it/eb-words "an album of spare, striking beauty" Mojo ★★★★ "irresistibly catchy...an album replete with nooks and crannies, light and shade" The Australian ★★★★★

=======================================

Stay in touch: Sign up to my newsletter: https://smarturl.it/eb-Newsletter https://emilybarker.com https://facebook.com/emilybarkerhalo https://twitter.com/emilybarkerhalo https://instagram.com/emilybarkerhalo