Farewell To The Fainthearted by Halfway

Four members of the eight-piece band were long-standing members of Brisbane band St Jude, before the collective grew into today's Halfway family. Halfway was completed with the addition of Ben Johnson, and brothers Liam and Noel Fitzpatrick.

Over the past 12 months Halfway have supported bands such as Gersey, Knievel, Screemfeeder, The Anyones, You am I and J Mascis. The boys have been tinkering with the songs, and crafting their exciting and powerful debut long player, with help of producer Wayne Connolly (You Am I, Gersey, Dallas Crane).

PRESS:

"In case you were thinking you have all the country-rock records you need -- after all, you can cover plenty of territory with those Dylan, Band and Neil Young albums, right? -- here's something to change your mind. Farewell to the Fainthearted is a record of shimmering beauty and honest emotions, 12 songs about loving, leaving, longing. Unlike so much Australian rock music, which tends towards the city, Halfway, above, have the wind in their hair and the promise of the long, lonely road ahead. What's more, these are roads that plenty of us know, since Halfway are a Brisbane band whose debut album was recorded in locations such as a Fortitude Valley studio and a Queenslander in Windsor.

Four of the band, including singer-songwriters John Busby and Chris Dale, were members of rock band St Jude, who hailed from Rockhampton, put out a couple of tasty EPs and disappeared. Meanwhile, Busby started thinking about the country music he heard growing up in towns like Barcaldine and Blackwater, and dipping back into those trusty Neil Young and Dylan albums. Dale was of a like mind, since he first met Busby when he turned up at one of the latter's Rocky house party/gigs with his band, The Lads, and played a killer set of -- you guessed it -- Neil Young and Dylan tunes.

The Halfway line-up expanded with the addition of players such as Dublin-born brothers Liam (banjo) and Noel Fitzpatrick (pedal steel, dobro, mandolin), discovered playing in a trad Irish band at Dooleys in Brisbane. With Dale's mouth harp and the E-bow guitar of Chris Hess, that gives Halfway a set of tonal colour that sets them apart from the rest of the inner-city crew. Not that those colours would mean much if they didn't have songs to match. When you've heard these 12 (plus a secret track, and I won't ruin the surprise) you want to play them again just to check they are as good as they sounded first time through.

Because country-rock albums recorded under our noses by a band most people outside of the Valley have never heard of aren't supposed to be this great, are they? Repeated plays confirm the quality, and that Fainthearted is just as strong as anything you've heard from the new generation of roots-rockers like Ryan Adams or Wilco. Central Queensland is never far away, in songs like Compromise for a Country Girl, Six Hours from Brisbane and C.Q. Skyline, which namechecks Rockhampton localities such as Depot Hill and Yeppen Lagoon, while tracks like Sure Uncertain and Drunk Again are perfectly constructed slices of pop-rock.

It's common for independently recorded albums not to go the distance, short of budget or time or a producer's objective advice to say when the material or energy starts to flag. But Halfway just kept working, playing, driving, thinking, recording, writing. The result is one of the best albums of the year, an album like, say, The Triffids' Born Sandy Devotional, which captures the flavour of this country without resort to cliche or over-sentimentality.

Farewell to the Fainthearted won't sell in Eagles-type quantities. But the deeper you get inside it, the more you think how many people would love it if they just get the chance to hear it." **** - Courier Mail (Queensland)

Average Customer Review: