Melbourne’s Craig Dermody knows the power of great storytelling. It’s a testament to this skill that ‘Any Port In A Storm’ – effectively a concept album in which nothing remarkable actually happens – works so well. The basic gist is this: songwriting troubadour has a couple of tough years back home, moves on a whim to big bad New York City, realises he knows nobody there, struggles to eke out a living, misses home, writes tunes about it. That’s it. It’s great because it shows the realistic side of the Big Apple for what it really is – a huge, swarming motherfucker of a city that’s equal parts mindblowing and terrifying. “I’d do anything for a coin, I got the wolves knocking on my door”, Dermody sings on ‘Fakin’ NYC’. He sounds small, beaten and subdued beneath the Lemonheads-meets-Diiv slack drawl of the music. The key thing here? Unlike so many of his contemporaries, he also sounds totally believable.
Matt Wilkinson