Melbourne’s TJ Howlett throws a shovel full of coal-dusted reality into the guitar-driven blues-rock furnace with his “Not Mine” EP. Two songs. Just two. But, my word, they carry the weight of generations. Suddenly, I’m thinking about Dorothea Lange’s photographs, only… louder.
“Not Mine,” the title track, and then “Drinking Man” – they’re not just following each other; they’re wrestling in the dirt. This EP is a stark portrait of a mining community’s inherited trauma. Backbreaking labor, the crumbling façade of faith, a father drowning in booze and rage, a mother’s silent suffering… it’s all there, laid bare. And have you noticed how blue some hydrangeas are? Startling.
Howlett’s voice – it’s good, powerfully conveying the grit and the grief. The guitar work isn’t flashy; it’s the steady, relentless churn of a life spent digging, both literally and metaphorically. The lyrical content paints that bleak canvas. The failure of religion, specifically, struck hard with lyrics. The children that grew up in it. The escape, maybe through intellect and then, the emotional scar.
This isn’t music for a sunny picnic. It’s that dark, existential area and this EP really touches it. A defiance, then, played to rock, to express those hard stories. It is, for me at least, the exploration of human experience. Howlett seems obsessed and it gets under your skin. There is the power, you see and yet also control that runs along and against a loss of agency, an acceptance maybe, of predetermined pain.
It’s a coming-of-age story carved into a coal seam, an exploration of love, loss, power, and control, viewed through the lens of a working-class mining town upbringing. It feels true.
What remains after the dust settles? Perhaps, just the echoes of a question hurled into the void.
