Roger Knox’s “Buluunarbi & The Old North Star” has settled in, and it’s like unearthing a geode – outwardly unassuming country bedrock, but crack it open and the crystals of story shimmer with a fierce, knowing light. The ‘Koori King of Country’, as he’s known, doesn’t just sing; he offers up pieces of a map drawn in river water and resilience, guiding you through the heart of his Gomeroi songman spirit.
This isn’t music you merely hear; it’s a current you step into. It pulls you along through ancestral lands, vibrant yet scarred by the relentless marks of injustice – those unhealed wounds of massacres, stolen children, the quiet violence of segregation. Yet, what rises above the sorrow, insistent as a heartbeat, is an extraordinary fortitude.
‘Evil’ Graham Lee’s pedal steel is less a mournful sigh here, more a steady exhalation across vast plains, while Laura Case’s violin and Kayla Flaxman’s cello weave through like sinew, connecting past to present. For a fleeting moment, listening to them, I thought of how my grandmother used to mend old lace, thread by delicate thread, making something whole again. An odd thought, perhaps, but the feeling’s similar.
The track “McMaster’s Ward,” penned with Toby Martin whose acoustic guitar lays down a path to walk, feels like a hushed conversation around a slow-burning fire. It’s an invitation into a space of profound loss but also profound connection, a testament to the enduring strength found in remembering, in reclaiming community brick by painful brick. Knox’s voice itself is a landscape, weathered and true.
The album doesn’t flinch from the darkness, yet it leaves you not in despair, but with a sense of gravity, a recognition of the deep roots that hold firm even when the world tries to uproot them. In a world of fleeting tunes, how often does music ask you to simply bear witness, and in doing so, offer a peculiar kind of strength?
