Having won three ARIAs and survived 21 years in the business, it has been a long time between albums for MFTCC. The signature sound features Helen Montfort’s cello and Hope Csutoros’s violin, as well as drums with brushes and double bass. “A Quiet Place” is a slow and beautiful song and it is the ballads that really shine in this collection. ‘Great Expectations” with it’s dancing wooden dolls percussion and lyrics like ‘I will never bowl like Curtly Ambrose’ is quiet whimsical but perhaps like the great fast bowler, better appreciated in the 1990’s. Perhaps in trying to be all things to everyone MYTCC have re-visited every aspect of their past, rather than attempted to deliver a coherent and satisfying album.
Ballads like “Black Ice”, “Take This As Read” or instrumental “Sister Bernice” work best, slower more melodic sad songs is what this group do best. “25 Stations” where with its storyline about a guy traveling on a train and the observations he makes about the journey while the backing singers make the sounds of train whistles, as the song builds no train clique is left unsaid or unexplored is a real highlight. One dictionary definition defines Fiasco as something between the sacred and the ordinary and at the end of the day that is a pretty accurate description of this album with its mish mash of genres and diverse themes.
