Nick Carver's 'Railroad' works because the Victoria-based artist takes one of blues music’s most familiar images and deliberately empties it of mythology. He's not writing about railroads because he grew up around them. He's not interested in borrowing swamps, roosters or other inherited symbols simply because the genre expects them. Instead, he turns the blues back towards himself.
Built around distorted lap steel, stomp box and raw vocals, the track strips away the comfort of a full-band arrangement and replaces it with something leaner, rougher and more physical. There's blues tradition in the foundation, but he drags it through swampy garage-rock and Australian rock ’n’ roll grit until it feels much less predictable.
Throughout, his approach seems deliberately instinctive, valuing feel over polish and experimentation over genre correctness. The lap steel is especially important, pushing the track away from tasteful roots revivalism and towards something dirtier and more confrontational.
‘Railroad’ is partly a response to what he sees as sameness within the Australian blues and roots scene. His argument is that if the blues is supposed to be a vehicle for lived experience, then reproducing somebody else’s mythology misses the point.
Following ‘Stones You Throw’, ‘Railroad’ makes his new solo direction feel increasingly clear. This is blues stripped of borrowed authenticity and rebuilt from whatever is actually there.
Watch the new video for 'Railroad' in the player below.