Tobias Cummings

In 2006, Tobias and his then band The Long Way Home recorded and released Join The Dots, a lauded debut album which marked Tobias as an artist of depth and significance. Earning a nomination for the Australian Music Prize and 4 stars in Rolling Stone, it was described by Mess and Noise Magazine as ‘one of the best albums of this year’.

...an organic, sublime recording, overflowing with melody and underscored by subtle rhythms...

Inpress

Now, four years later, A Trophy strikes off in the direction indicated by these first recordings, but moves much further into the intriguing half-light of that terrain.

Recorded by Tim Whitten (The Go-Betweens), Scott Horscroft (Sleepy Jackson) and mixed by Wez Prictor (Mick Harvey), the opening tracks, ‘Goldmine’ and ‘Exegesis’, find Cummings effortlessly blending electronica with acoustic instruments to create polar moods: the first, dark and weighed down by a dream-like slow motion feel; the second, light and full of wild abandon.

That both of these tracks lead to the glorious, blue-eyed soul of ‘The Sweetest Poetry’, is testament to Cummings’ seamless blending of style and genre into a sound entirely his own. The remaining tracks oscillate from epic and wide (‘Busy Bees’, ‘Wasteland’), to intimate and enclosed (‘You’ve Always Had That Insight’), to sparse and simple (‘The Judge’ and ‘A Golden Dream’).

What prevents this album from becoming a mere exercise in genre-blending though are Cummings’ voice and lyrics. Rather than a torrent of words to convey his message, he communicates ideas and emotion with masterful restraint. Delivering us the result in a voice which moves effortlessly from gentle to harsh, always rich with emotion, but without the histrionics so often associated with singer- songwriterdom.

A Trophy is an album primarily concerned with the journey, and not with the destination. Close your eyes as it sweeps you into its gentle but inescapable embrace. Where a new dawn blinks faintly on the horizon, and hope is our only cargo.

A Trophy will be released on digital, CD and vinyl formats through new Melbourne label, Departed Sounds (distribution through Other Tongues) on 1st September 2010. Tobias Cummings and band will tour nationally throughout September and October.