Come, Come Karma!! the latest album by Tom Woodward
By Alan Shipston for Country Music News International Magazine
Tom Woodward presents his collective prayer for all of the forgotten souls, the scoundrels and the alienated in his new album, Come, Come Karma!! Each song drawn together by the celebratory rock ‘n’ roll theme of complete disintegration with bits of country and medieval mania thrown in for good measure. Woodward has been writing and releasing his unique brand of baroque folk-rock, cosmic country psychedelia and fuzzed-out lo-fi gems on numerous albums and EPs for the last two decades. Tom honed his craft in the thriving arts & music scene of Canberra and Melbourne in the mid-2000s before taking his original songs to audiences around Australia, Japan, and the USA.
Tom describes an interesting perspective on how his latest release became a product of his own existence, “As I got older and kept writing songs, I kept falling way behind where I was meant to be as a citizen and a proper respectable person. Come, Come, Karma!!! is a celebration of that exhilaratingly horrific nosedive.” Woodward’s songs are never complacent to just survive on their own; there is always an element that forces the musical journey to the opposite side in a modern-day Zappa like attempt to surprise the listener with bombastic sheets of shock. From acoustic guitar to fully realized recordings, musician and producer Adam Casey was integral in bringing a wider musical context to the songs, with a nuanced combination of his encyclopedic knowledge of musical history and the creative adventure of throwing sonic paint at the songs.
The first release from the album was the lively rhythmic bounce and Dylanesque, Termination Day, a raised middle finger to the forces of tech feudalism and economic totalitarianism as they attempt to imprison our souls. He followed it up with the hypnotic folk meets indie rock sound of If You Wanna Stay Alive, a song about survival introduced by an arpeggiated banjo type roll played on guitar. Recently released, Sails In Your Heart, is a song about the price you have to pay to live an uncompromising life. Tom’s most recent single, Phoney Messiah, is yet another song that arrives on the back of some beautifully picked acoustic guitar before the band enters the fray – tumbling along over guitar fuzz and indie rock rhythms. It’s a shapeshifting song, in dynamics and tempo. A song in perpetual motion as Tom sings of our dizzying world of false gods and gullible devotees. Elsewhere on the album, there’s the problematic romance of messed-up Jack and Jill with her savior complex and the wistful sway of Hurricane You as it details the lingering, residual damage of the pandemic.
Over the cascading notes of Fly Back To You, Tom keeps gloom at bay as he extols “flying back to you like a bird in the sky”, while the upbeat Dancing On A Carousel is one for “all the alcoholics and people who live between the bars and scrounge their way from one hangover to the next, avoiding all responsibility and finding some honor in the effort.” In the character study of Canberra and its past inhabitants, on Strong Strong, Tom has written an ode to the nihilistic heroin culture of Garema Place in the 1990s, explaining that “there was an extremely unique shadowy euphoria between the lights of the middle-class houses. The detritus drifted around like drunken dust mites, causing all sorts of allergies.”
Woodward’s album, Come, Come, Karma!! is a brave statement in a vanilla, pop-tart world of cookie cutter forgettable hits. If Tom has a formula to his music, it’s anarchy meets chaos and decides to leave us with questions that probably shouldn’t be answered. His songs are like art that can’t be explained, only admired.
Words and music by Tom Woodward
Back up vocals by Katie Walsh
All other instrumental duties shared between Tom Woodward and Adam Casey