EP Review: Weather Dependent

Toby Sussex’s debut EP Weather Dependent is a compact and ultimately satisfying set of singer-songwriter style reflections on life, death and relationships. It has catchy melodies and is well performed and produced, signalling at the outset that Sussex has what it takes to produce a full album in the singer songwriter genre. 

The opener Bucket of Lemons is an inventive start. There are odd time signatures of 5/4 in the verses, and a mix of brushed snare drums and electro percussion which resolve back to straight timing and with smooth backing vocals for the chorus. It has tempo and playfulness that are uplifting, until you realise the darkness in the lyrics. In this first song this is done quite subtly as the narrator sets out three characters: a girl wandering on her own in the bush with a journal, a travelling lover of hers (who I imagine is reading Don Quixote), and the narrator him/herself — whose jealousy and insecurity are exposed in just two lines: “No I can’t speak my mind like he does all for time / and every time I see them it’s a sight for sore eyes”.  “Them” — the song for is directed at us, not to the person he longs for. Once you realise it’s a scene of loss and retreat that’s being presented, the sense of defeat and insufficiency seems at odds with the purity of Sussex’s voice and prettiness of the composition. 

The follower Life Slips is a straight up acoustic guitar and pedal steel pop song with multi layered vocals which lift us back up, despite the subject matter: time and death. A riffy bass opening (like something straight out of L.A.B.), launches the song into a hop, with pedal steel guitar and shimmering chorus. “We’ve all got places we’d rather be and people we’d rather meet, cos we don’t have eternity, no.”  Its hook is catchy and memorable. It’s almost a shame as it’s the record’s only excursion into pop, as Sussex has an obvious taste in capability for this. 

From here is a return to longing and sadness, but not quite a journey into darkness, as the light touch of the instrumentation keeps us away from that. Feel Better has an opening that feels like early Damien Rice. The narrator here wants someone else to feel better, is someone trying to be the best they can for someone else, and probably overthinking it. Again, as they’re taunted by defeat they retreat from the situation. The sense here is that these characters are trying to figure out how life works through the songs themselves, rather than trying to shower us with insights on how to live a fulfilling life. But that’s what this sort of music is for, right? The songs let us spend time reflecting on our own issues rather than giving us the advice of some oracle of human relationships. If that’s what we’re after then there aren’t too many real options — perhaps Lenard Cohen, Taylor Swift, Nick Cave would be our best bets. 

The closer It’s a Goodbye starts extremely delicately but builds into a multi layered ballad with the welcome addition of some delightful strings. Its melody borrows a little too much from Ed Sheeran (Castle on the Hill), but as Sheeran himself found, there are only so many chord progressions and melodies available to us. 

It’s a great start, but where to from here on the well-trodden path of acoustic singer-songwriters? Damien Rice augmented his most confronting stuff, to great success, with the likes of Lisa Hannigan’s haunting backing vocals, cellos and other acoustic instruments, so he sounded like he was right there in your living room. He controlled the dynamics of a song like the Blowers Daughter in a way so affecting it’s almost hard to listen to. David Gray’s partially electronic sound, say on White Ladder, is perhaps more akin to Sussex’s approach here. But Gray’s voice did a lot of the emotional heavy lifting where the instruments didn’t, again with the effect of bringing him closer to us. Might these be ways for Sussex to be more affecting? There seems no doubt his skills in composition and musicianship are there. I’m not sure, but perhaps he needs just a bit more heartbreak, or to dig down just a little deeper to expose what’s really inside. This first outing into pop and the singer songwriter space gives us a sense that there’s plenty of good stuff to come and to look forward to from Toby Sussex.