Canberra’s Cracked Actor take their name from a David Bowie track featured on 1974’s Aladdin Sane. This was also the title used for a documentary by Alan Yentob that followed a wasted, worn-out Bowie on a US tour, revealing him as theatrical and focused on stage, but coked-up and paranoid off the stage. It’s an apt match for the music on Cracked Actor’s Iconoclast, a collection of electronica-meets-guitar pop that lulls you with its beauty and then unbalances everything with its more uncompromising elements. The success of the music hangs on the clever push-pull of those moments throughout this well-produced debut album.
On the introductory Pause In Everything, angelic vocals waft atop a washed-out ambience, while a percussive underbelly hints something more sinister. The gradual ascent built on following track Third contrasts with the vigorous Funerals and its jagged licks of guitar are in the style of Jonny Greenwood. Next, we’re thrust into the foggy soundscape of MYV/Light Year, its distant war-drum paving the way for delicate ballad Blue. The album’s second half fixes you to the spot with some revitalising singles; album highlight Lemon On Your Lover and Hollywood, with the hypnotic Upstructures sandwiched in the middle. The tempo drops right down for the album’s finish, a gentle wind-down that ends the album all too soon and directs you back to the beginning for another round of peeling back the music’s many layers.
BY CHRIS GIRDLER
