Kirin J. Callinan’s Coarse

It was around 9 o’clock on a Wednesday and I was just too drunk enough to be strutting around midweek and telling my liver it was a Friday. We were on our way to catch the final night of Kirin J. Callinan’s album recording at the Coachman.

If you’ve never been to the Coachman, you probably aren’t aware of the atrocities committed by the Ottoman empire in the way of design. It’s a tawdry cacophony of tacky furniture and marble flooring. With red velvet seating and golden accents everywhere the eye can see. However, it should also be noted that the food is good, the vodka is superb and you can wrap your mits around a pint of Russian beer for seven bucks. Which makes it a brilliant venue in my opinion.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Kirin, though as he was the guitarist for Mercy Arms, I was expecting something similar. But as we tripped through the front doors of the venue and into the glaring eyes of an already edgy crowd, I realized that my assumptions had once again lead me astray.

Kirin’s music is best described as epic, aggressive, emotional noise. Now, I don’t mean ‘noise’ in disdainful sense, his music is incredible – but for the best of my vocabulary, I’m unable to pigeon hole it under any known category.

His guitar has the raw, stripped down echo of Buckley’s Grace sessions and his voice sounds like David Byrne’s early vocals making out with David Bowie’s later vocals. Kirin himself is a frenetic, skeletal performer. With a quirky, epileptic way of moving and home made tattoos dappled over his avian body.

Now, as mentioned prior, this was an album recording. More specifically, the third night of an album recording and Kirin was not holding back for the sake of a cleaner recording. The music always felt free and improvised, though I couldn’t tell you which of the songs were old.

Like any album worth it’s listen, it took me a few tracks to get into, but by the time Kirin got to ‘Love/Delay’ (a flagship track, judging by the sea of nodding heads) I was hypnotized and slightly obsessed.

At the crescendo of the recording, Kirin pulled Josh Bush (the drummer from Bridezilla) out of the audience to play drums for the final track. Josh did shockingly well for a young lad full of booze (who hadn’t played the song before) but eventually, the cymbals were knocked over, along with the microphone and all seemed lost.

Kirin just played through, kicking the fallen symbols and shouting to make up for the fallen microphone, and I hope the ensuing jazzy, chaos makes it through to the album.

It was freewheeling, spoken word, broken-hearted wonder and muddled with the booze in my belly and the alumni of beautiful scenesters, I became a teenage goupie by the end of the set.

Kirin is getting to the studio to start editing the Coachman recordings this Monday and will attempt to produce the album in between gigs.

He’s in Sydney for a few more months before he scoots off back to the U.S, and I definitely suggest catching one of his live shows while you can.

He’s also playing guitars for Jack Ladder, who will be supporting The Scare this Friday at the Annandale.

http://www.myspace.com/kirinjcallinan