Music can Ignite Your Life
A deep-dive into COMFORT WILL KILL YOU, the debut album from Jack Dylan and the Villains
Images supplied.
Following a triplet of teasers released in the second half of 2024, Jack Dylan and the Villains (JDATV) have unleashed their debut album COMFORT WILL KILL YOU upon the hungry listeners of the world on November 18th. Recorded independently among the paperbark trees of Mt. Coolum, COMFORT WILL KILL YOU marks the first full-length outing from Queensland-based musician Jack Dylan McCullagh, formerly of Victoria’s experimental post-rockers Dr. Sure’s Unusual Practice.
Back in August, I broached the following reverie to demonstrate the images I envisioned while listening to Beyond the Banks, the second single from the Queensland five-piece:
You’re cruising along one of Australia’s coastal highways, racing past rugged rock formations and golden beaches. Perhaps you’re in a convertible, and with roof lowered the wind blows wildly through your hair and carries the salt of the sea to your nose. Let loose upon the road, you’re free to traverse the Australian wilderness towards an unspecified destination. The outback rushes by beyond the windows - a blur of red desert, yellow sand, dense forest and swamp. But in the car, time stands still, and your mind is flooded by feelings of remorse and nostalgia.
Now, as I lend an ear to an entire album worth of Jack Dylan songs, this picture becomes a greater challenge to paint, one that would certainly pervade more margins on a page than five sentences. On initial listen, this ten-track ocean of melancholic Australiana/desert rock may sound rather dark and brooding. But upon deeper inspection, on a second or third listen, one can catch glimpses of the glimmers of hope that Jack sprinkled in amidst the dusky shadows, a shining morning sun showering the sea in golden shimmers as it ascends to light the gloom of night. It’s a charming image, I know, but it also offers a symbolic gesture to convey what this record means to Jack Dylan, the mind behind the music.
The album is introduced by the three singles JDATV released earlier in 2024, kicking off with the reflective atmosphere of Beyond the Banks, which wonderfully channels the group’s blend of sea-shanty and desert rock. When Beyond the Banks was unveiled in August, I originally considered the rippling, ambient intro to be a tad prolonged. Now, in context as the album’s opening number, I find myself retracting that notion and appreciating its length. As a shower of fingerpicked guitars swirling in reverb envelop Jack’s growling vocals, his story of lament and nostalgia, rich with colourful imagery of the Australian countryside, offers a perfect accompaniment to the brooding lyrics and fibrous instrumentals heard throughout the record.
Track two, entitled Swim, was the inaugural Jack Dylan and the Villains outing released in June, offering a scathing insight into the sound of Jack’s promising new project. Accompanied by a haunting video clip that contrasted natural Australian environments with an ominously masked character, the song features groovy basslines, lyrical themes of escapism and isolation, and intricately gritty guitar scales that climb swiftly up the neck like a redback spider.
As a memoir to life, loss, and longing, the project often delves into Jack’s shifting emotional states and the lives of his clients in the mental health industry, with significant segments of the album’s lyrical substance being inspired by his own mental instability or tales he’s heard in the workplace.
Swim transitions smoothly into possibly my favourite song on the record, Midnight Under Hydrangea, reminiscent of a Tropical Fuck Storm or Dr. Sure’s Unusual Practice endeavour with its digital drum textures and staccato lead guitar scintillations. Gravelly layered vocals are encircled by droning synths and a rumbling bass pattern that recedes during Jack’s forbidding spoken word interlude, during which the line, “I am the rat”, the title of another song further down the track list, is uttered among a streamline of throaty snarls. The final minute of Midnight Under Hydrangea descends into a festering mountain of instrumental commotion, teeming with lead guitar flutters that pan from ear-to-ear as the rhythm section thumps and thunders to a screeching conclusion.
Jack says that the creation of COMFORT WILL KILL YOU has come almost out of necessity. He’s been in bands his entire life – at least seven, by the current count – but didn’t lead as the central writer in any of his previous ventures: “none of them were purely my vision or voice”. Throughout those journeys, he’d been relentlessly writing his own material, with the goal of recording them continually occupying a place in the back of his mind.
Following the persistent saunter of Midnight Under Hydrangea, it’s successor Hard to Heal picks up the pace and dials the electronic kick drum all the way to ten. There’s a wonderful resonance and presence to Jack’s vocals on this track. His harmonised shouts soak up all the space between your ears and resound effectively above a furious clamour of jittery synths and screeching guitars. The momentum of Hard to Heal trickles down into the record’s mid-point, Brisbane Street Directory, a song that perhaps most directly confronts Jack’s feelings of uncertainty after moving back to Queensland.
“Out of desperation”, Jack and his wife returned to his home-state to start anew following the lifting of COVID-19 lockdowns in Melbourne. Whilst putting down his roots at home, Jack’s artistic endeavours were relegated to the back burner, and “after a few months and a bit of a mental breakdown”, he came to the realisation that in order to feel like himself again, he had to create something: “I needed to write. I needed to make this record!”
Alas, at this time he hadn’t the opportunity to forge many connections in Queensland. He’d left behind an entire life in Melbourne, including a band that was beginning to take off, and says that throughout those early months up north he experienced more isolation than he’d felt during lockdown. Nevertheless, he began working on his album independently, recording the entire project at home, which became the spark that ignited his life in Queensland, unearthing a treasury of creatives, some of whom would eventually become his bandmates.
“To be quite frank, the whole process saved my brain. Being spewed out of my twenties and reevaluating who I was, in an unfamiliar place, truly was the spark that ignited this record. The inspiration for songs was always around - I just had to tune in. I was bluntly reminded, by myself or the universe, that I am a musician. That is my life.”
Side B kicks off with the sanguine, ultra-Australiana sounding The Golden Dawn, before shifting into the comfortable, blues-driven groove of I am the Rat, which sonically maintains an air of optimism while simultaneously considering harrowing topics through the lyrical medium, a duality that is continually meditated over across the album.
Over email, I asked Jack which song best represented the essence of the album. His answer: track 7, entitled Mareeba.
“That was the easiest song to write on this record. It literally just fell out. I was very happy with the lyrics and the story it tells, and to your point I think that it might very well capture the essence of the album.”
I find myself agreeing. Despite being drowned in the sinister boiling waters bubbling throughout COMFORT WILL KILL YOU, optimism swims to the surface of Mareeba through the subtext. Modest lead scales, atmospheric vocal harmonies, and a sonorous acoustic guitar progression drive this four-minute rumination towards its close, consummated by the hazy crackles of vintage rugby commentary that asks the listener, “Can Queensland survive?”
As an artist that has “always adored” Australian music, Jack set out to create a body of work that sounded Australian, regardless of genre. He says, “There are places, smells and feelings I reference that I believe can take you somewhere”, and tracks like Beyond the Banks, The Golden Dawn, and Breathe Easy in the New World effectively capture the sweeping, sometimes haunting feel of the Australian outback in their lyrics and soundscapes.
The album concludes on a distinctly ominous note with I Won’t Deliver, as Jack combines his grizzly brooding vocals with a loose, unpredictable, and wild-west evoking guitar pattern. Enveloped by the rippling strums of Jack’s distorted guitar, the song reaches an emotional climax in the third minute when his vocals transform from a hoarse growl to an anguished wail. He repeatedly sings the closing line “I won’t deliver” before the album is delivered to its ultimate finale with another stream of gritty, spaghetti western guitar progressions.
For Jack, self-doubt presented the greatest challenge in the making of COMFORT WILL KILL YOU. As mentioned earlier, he’s always played in bands, but this was his first attempt at grasping the reigns himself, a prospect that proved daunting, at first. But once he started, his natural musicianship arose from within like a plant growing towards the sunlight. From then on, the process became second nature.
Now boasting a reservoir of ten captivating tracks produced by Steve Summers, Jack is excited to perform his songs live, and says he “couldn’t be happier” with the group he’s founded in his home state. In a live setting, Jack is accompanied by a virtuoso ensemble of musicians aptly dubbed ‘The Villains’; bassist JD Evers, drummer James Quinn, keyboardist Harrison Biden, and violinist Sam Markovic.
“Even in the short time we’ve been playing live, I’m seeing growth with every performance - the songs have taken on a whole new life, and people are digging it. I'm excited to showcase this new product, JACK DYLAN AND THE VILLAINS.”
I’m a true fan of the work Jack is creating up in Brisbane. Its production value shines and demonstrates some of the most exciting and refreshing Australiana-rock music I’ve heard in recent times. It’s a rebirth, a revival, a raw and unflinching album of post-COVID music, brimming with lyrics that introspect and respond to the conditions of lockdown and the challenging situations it forced us all to face.
Beyond the themes of life, loss, and longing, there is a pervasive sense of adventure that permeates the entire record, filling the listener with hope and optimism. I think this alternating synthesis of feelings is best conveyed by the video clip for Beyond the Banks, which transitions from double-exposed black-and-white footage during the wistful opening minutes to vibrant, colourful imagery of the outback and anachronistic country towns.
The visual illustration of Beyond the Banks I depicted earlier is not merely a graphic representation of what I see when I’m listening to Jack’s music: it describes what I want to be doing while I listen to these songs. I want to be cruising along Australia’s coastal highways, racing past rugged rock formations and golden beaches, traversing the Australian wilderness with the wind in my hair. The outback will rush by beyond the windows in a blur of red desert, yellow sand, dense forest and swamp, but time will stand still within the confines of my car.
As part of their release cycle, Jack Dylan and the Villains have completed a run of shows in Noosa, the Sunshine Coast, and Melbourne. Joined by Joe Terror, Favoured State, and Hara-Kitty (Sam Markovic), they launched COMFORT WILL KILL YOU on November 30th at the Grace Darling Hotel in Collingwood, a much-loved destination of mine when I’m visiting Naarm/Melbourne.
It was my earnest pleasure to observe Jack and his band’s journey in 2024 and review their music. I look forward to a time when they come down south to play in Adelaide.
This interview and article was written, recorded, and edited on the traditional lands of the Kaurna People. The Infinite Rise observes that Country is central to the social, cultural and spiritual lives of Aboriginal people. Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land.