Mick Turner Don't Tell The Driver

Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork.

Finally! After 15 years, Mick Turner has turned in the big rock record we always knew he had in him! Don’t Tell the Driver is a different kind of record from all the Mick Turner records—not just his own, but the ones he’s done with Dirty Three, Bonny Billy, Cat Power, Fungus Brains and Venom P. Stinger put together. Don’t Tell The Driver is a consolidation and development of everything he’s done up until now, streamlined and presented under the sophisticated umbrella known as the rock opera/concept album. Don’t Tell the Driver is inarguably the first post-rock rock opera of our times—by an artist running out of time. It wouldn’t be a rock opera without a vague/indecipherable theme of wonder and disenchantment, and indeed, Don’t Tell the Driver delivers in spades on that account. Like all the best masterpieces, Don’t Tell the Driver came together slowly, spurred by life experiences and aided by the meditation that only time brings. Over the last four years, Mick put together the pieces at Big Moth Studios in Melbourne, working his magic with aquatic guitar-and-drums chemistry, augmenting the tracks with melodica, piano and Fender Rhodes, and then bringing in the vocalists and other additional players when the tracks were ready for them. Replete with classic epics and timely reprises, Don’t Tell the Driver is an inspired and focused collection of Mick Turner music that reaches for new borders without sacrificing the dizzy wandering and painterly stillness that has typified Mick’s best work of the past. Features contributions from vocalists Caroline Kennedy-mccraken and Oliver Mann, and musicians Ian Wadley, Jeff Wegener, Kishore Ryan, and Peggy Frew.