songoftheweek

Gotye - Save Me
Making Mirrors, 2011

What a balancing act Wally De Backer pulls off. His detractors accuse him of Sting-like adult-contemporary banality, while passing fans of his more popular singles might find his work’s fleeting, omnidirectional sounds too arty. But, now on the third album of his blockbuster Gotye foray outside of drumming for The Basics, the multi-instrumental dynamo thrives in the overlap of those extremes. De Backer decided long ago that frenzied experimentation and soft-rock songwriting aren’t mutually exclusive. (Just look at Peter Gabriel.) And so we have here an Australian-made, ARIA-topping album that’s wilfully strange yet shockingly accessible.

And it’s very much an album, as opposed to just a collection of songs. From opening line (“Dreamt of a doorway that opened to everything”) to closing (“You will stay with us”), Making Mirrors not only feels like a proper journey but counts life-altering growth and change – along with one’s shifting, unreliable grasp of reality – among its prevailing themes. Starting with the minute-long, introductory title track, De Backer uses many of these ostensible love songs to explore the idea of mirrors as a method of clear-eyed self-examination, as well as a tool for deception and distortion. Pretty heady stuff for a number one record, eh? That, coupled with De Backer’s dense sonics, is what elevates Gotye well beyond mere dad-rock dribble.

Not that he doesn’t test the limits of his soft-hued earnestness, sounding like Seal on ‘Save Me’ and applying cheesy stadium echoes (and a dumb chorus) to last year’s anxious hit single ‘Eyes Wide Open’. The daggy folk-funk celebration ‘In Your Light’ begins like an unabashed Paul Simon homage, before recalling both Peter Gabriel’s ‘In Your Eyes’ and George Michaels’ ‘Faith’. And ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ is almost like an aging lounge singer’s take on Michael Jackson, constantly shuffling layers while breaking out the horns, vocal echoes and the refrain “Mother, are you watching?”

But, need I say, none other than Bon Iver wielded soft-rock fluffiness for majestic purposes on that loudly trumpeted second album, and the bulk of chillwave acts have tinkered with and reappropriated everything once thought cheesy of our recent musical past. And make no mistake: De Backer is touching on these familiar vibes; not out of irony but out of real fondness. He keenly understands the language of music, from the fringes to the charts, and he positions emotional cues like a master. His songs are post-genre triumphs where literally everything is fair game.