The Tea Party has had quite the journey since The Edges of Twilight dropped 20 years ago. Most importantly in recent years, Jeff Burrows, Stuart Chatwood and Jeff Martin have returned to each other after a painful band breakup. Since then the band have managed produce and tour 2014’s The Ocean at the End, despite Martin living oceans away. In honour of the 20th anniversary of The Edges of Twilight The Tea Party have prepared a deluxe re-issue of the album and embarked on an extensive Canadian tour, with the Australian leg of the tour due to hit Australia in November.
Stuart Chatwood, bassist, keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist for the band called on the band’s day off between the Montreal and Winnipeg shows. He recalls a warm welcome when The Tea Party toured Australia in 1995 on the back of The Edges of Twilight.
‘We played Alternative Nation. We were on the second stage playing after Ween. There were about 800 people at the second stage and as soon as we started, the crowd at the main stage came flooding over. We had eight or nine thousand people at the end of our set, watching us. I think the record stayed in the charts for 18 weeks in the Top 20 in Australia so it was just incredible for us to have that chance to connect with Australians,’
‘We’ve played this thing live now on tour and I just can’t believe it all came from the same record. It doesn’t sound dated. Something we wanted to do when we started the band was to make timeless music. It’s a journey. All the sonic landscapes, the intros and outros, it takes you on a trip,’
‘Fire in the Head’ is a compelling invitation to join such a journey. It is an enticement that is expressed in Burrows’ strident drums and a powerful chorus shared between Chatwood and Martin. There is a seductive energy to ‘Fire in the Head’ that makes it hard to leave. And accepting the invitation really only leads to the walls of ‘The Bazaar’.
‘The Bazaar’ is a song with a mythical feel. A heroine embarks on an odyssey inside the walls of a hostile city while her lover looks on. The journey is shadowed by a bass line that drives each twist and turn. Eastern percussion laces heavy rock drums that along with the electric guitar almost steal the show.
The members of The Tea Party never expected to be adept at playing the world instruments they adopted into their sound.
‘There was a saying at the time, out of the pan and into the fire… or out of the fire and into the pan (laughs). We took it as a challenge and we had to rationalise it and make peace with the fact that we weren’t going to be master musicians at these instruments and that wasn’t the goal. The goal was to have different sonic colours and at the same time, learn something about other cultures and expose people to other cultures. I think maybe some other musicians, all of a sudden they’re in the position of ‘oh I have to learn my regular instrument and learn all these other instruments to compete with The Tea Party (laughs),’
‘Correspondences’ is so saturated with grief and longing that it feels like Martin’s still beating heart was ripped out of his chest to achieve it. The song is a canvas painted with Chatwood’s melancholy piano and Burrows’ drums that work as harbingers and also shimmer with sadness. A weeping guitar compliments the real magnificence of this song, which is Martin’s vocal exploration of the lyrics. Early in the song the words are soft and measured, almost spoken rather than sung. But as the stakes rise, Martin’s voice floods out into its full range of depth, volume and pathos with the question ‘Does it tear you apart, my love?’. ‘Correspondences’ is deeply moving and evokes a sense of stepping inside something so profoundly painful and personal that it feels slightly transgressive to be there.
‘At the time that Edges come out, I’d just started learning to play piano, so a lot of the songs are a lot easier to play now that I know how to play piano (laughs),’ says Chatwood ‘A lot of bands and musicians play it safe. Some people don’t know how to play guitar and they’re playing guitar (laughs) but we’re still learning our instruments and at the same time we are just having to branch out and pick up other instruments (laughs),’
As always, all lyrical content for The Tea Party is written by Martin. The words reflect his life experiences, his thoughts and emotions. Yet without Burrows and Chatwood, these ideas could not realise their full expression.
‘The lyrics are, put simply, for Jeff (Martin). I think we’re all playing a role, perhaps a supporting role. Even Jeff’s guitar playing is playing a supporting role to whatever content. I guess in some ways, maybe Jeff has a more complete satisfaction (laughs),’
Although the journey is always key on The Edges of Twilight, there are quieter moments to sit and reflect. ‘The Badger’ is the only instrumental piece on the album. Reportedly inspired by a badger whose ornery nature reminded Martin of musician Roy Harper, it is slightly whimsical and has a strong voice despite the absence of lyrics.
Between the calm of ‘The Badger’ and the sweeping ‘Sister Awake’ lies ‘Silence’. Reverting between expressive percussion and overt, clashing drums, ‘Silence’ is not retiring, but rather opinionated and insistent. It is also punctuated by moments of comparative calm that are tinged with contemplative sweetness and longing.
‘Sister Awake’ is so brilliant, so enigmatic that it defies being described in mere words. It is a song that lives in the dual consciousness of being at once familiar and at once foreign. It lives in the movements of comforting guitar and poetic verse and gusts of pulse-pounding percussion. It is the action of at once pursuing the siren and at once being that siren. And the only real way to uncover the deepest meaning of the song is to rejoice in that heady feeling of leaping off that cliff and into the sun. Take the leap, it’ll be worth it.
Time to ‘Turn the Lamp Down Low’. Certainly, no other band would ask ‘Do you embrace the dancing clayman/As he tears your flesh?’, but there is a sense of uneasy familiarity to this track. Sinister and serpentine, it begins mellow by The Tea Party standards but soon ramps up to a visceral refrain of ‘Please don’t go’. A riot of noise and anguish reigns until the pressure drops off into ‘Shadows on the Mountainside’.
Written while the band travelled through the Rocky Mountains and listened to a lot of Crosby, Stills & Nash, ‘Shadows on the Mountainside’ is a meditative song with a folk sensibility. The rhythm provided by the harmonious contributions of Martin’s famous antique harp guitar, Chatwood’s mandolin and Burrows’ gentle percussion give every impression that you are on a locomotive. ‘Shadows on the Mountainside’ demonstrates the remarkable versatility of The Tea Party and the band’s proud will to follow their own muse.
It’s a characteristic of The Tea Party that has only strengthened over the years. One of the key differences between The Tea Party of 20 years ago and The Tea Party of today is ‘… confidence and just doing music for ourselves without caring what other people think about our performance. If people don’t like it, it doesn’t bother us too much any more,’
‘Drawing Down the Moon’ is so fantastic that it’s surprising it has not figured more prominently in The Tea Party’s live line-up since the original The Edges of Twilight tour. ‘Drawing Down the Moon, we did actually play that for about two years of touring. It’s a great song and a great avenue for Jeff to showcase his guitar prowess’. ‘Drawing Down the Moon’ is a dark crescendo brought to life by heart-rending guitars and a yearning soul embodied by Jeff Martin’s rock baritone voice at it’s very best. It’s so full of Tea Party goodness that it’s actually possible to miss this song while you’re listening to it.
After the intensity of ‘Drawing Down the Moon’, ‘Inanna’ rolls in with a mix of brooding rumblings and jangly percussion. But there is a sweetness that masks what may very well be a primrose path. It offers a moment of contrast before things ramp up again with the roaring ‘Coming Home’.
‘Coming Home’ is steadfast and passionate. Martin’s voice is lush and clear, accompanied by an acoustic guitar equally intent on getting its point across. At its heart, ‘Coming Home’ is a densely layered hard rock song, bursting with bombastic drums and made all the richer by robust bass lines.
‘Walk With Me’ is the coda to The Edges of Twilight. It also includes a hidden track narrated by Roy Harper. Keep listening beyond that and there is yet another bonus treat. ‘Walk With Me’ is the resolution of the raw desire and tireless journeying of The Edges of Twilight. It is characterised by a rising tension that culminates in some of the best lyrics and hardest rock The Tea Party has ever seen. Burrows’ drums chase down the chorus while Martin’s voice ranges from calm and low-key to what seems to be the upper limits of a voice filled with impassioned fury. ‘Walk With Me’ is also a reminder that the seeds of Transmission, the band’s 1997 industrial follow-up to The Edges of Twilight, were already alive and kicking years earlier.
If you haven’t yet taken the journey into The Edges of Twilight, now is the time.
The Tea Party Australian Tour Dates
Monday, 9th November 2015
Astor Theatre, Perth
Thursday, 12th November 2015
The Gov, Adelaide
Friday, 13th November 2015
Palais Theatre, Melbourne
Saturday, 14th November 2015
Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Monday, 16th November 2015
The Tivoli, Brisbane
