After redefining her musical career and impressing all who heard her debut EP VeVe, Kerri Simpson did the logical thing and started work on what is effectively her debut full-length album. The perils of financing your own recording meant that the gap between the EP and the album has been a little longer than might otherwise have been the case, but the wait has been well worthwhile.

The Arousing is a unique Australian album, and an essential one. Freed from the expectations and creative input usually imposed upon artists by a record company, artists often make one or more of a plethora of mistakes when recording their own album - self-indulgence, overproduction, or simply an inability to be objective about the material they are recording for public consumption. No such problem here, though - high production values meet with memorable songs and flawless performances, and the result is a record that could be one of the best albums of the year.

Kerri’s strong interest in American Indian culture manifests itself on this album through the regular appearance of a ritualistic chant that, while actually a part of the final track, gives the experience of listening to the entire record an unexpected continuity - the songs themselves become self-contained insights into states of mind. This is an album best heard as a whole, and one that is not easily taken in on the first listen.

Opener Ah Jolé does give the first-time listener an easy way in, though - a bass-groove powered wall of emotion and noise hiding cleverly behind the conventions of dance music, it’s probably the most instantly accessible track on the album, and it’s only once you get to know it on a casual basis that you start to discover the intricacies that are lurking in there.

51 Years is stunning, opening like a scene from a Spanish movie before journeying to a darker place, the lyrical despair made solid by a vocal that renders anything else that may be happening around you at the time completely non-existent. All Night Forever brings things musically back into the light, thanks to a delicious 12-string guitar bed and a vocal that travels octaves in the one line.

I Wonder manages to be truly positive lyrically while somehow maintaining a decided air of menace during its verses. Red Badge Of Courage takes the most minimal approach of the songs on the album, a single unaccompanied vocal that conveys the dynamics of a complete song effortlessly; attempting something like this would be an unnecessary indulgence for many singers, but this song doesn’t need any additional instrumentation - the emotion and conviction in Kerri’s vocal renders the song complete.

Think About It (preceded by an amusingly titled and rather filmic accordion instrumental) is probably the most straight-ahead pop song here, and one which, in a perfect world, would be heard on a regular basis on a thousand drivetime car radios. Number 49 reverts to the bass-and-guitar arrangement of 51 Years but with a completely different attitude, the lyrics here revisiting the imagery used earlier in the album - the suspicion that many of the same characters inhabit these songs is hard to ignore. Billy is something akin to Cajun blues being hijacked for a Tarantino film, complete with twang guitar and raucous backing vocals.

Free At Last is the album’s most openly optimistic moment captured in simple acoustic mode. Painting Blue Soldiers (with Shane O’Mara guesting on guitars) brings things to an emotional climax with an impossibly intense vocal and some delicious chord progressions. Finally, the title track (the healing chants here and throughout the album provided by Dorothy Fraser), which stunned audiences at Kerri’s acoustic gigs over the last year, appears in a more concise but decidedly more sensual form.

Music that can find a home deep within the soul rather than just the head is one of the hardest things to come by, but that’s exactly what’s to be found here. The Arousing is an album that, after being heard a few times, is not easily forgotten.

Anthony Horan
Beat Magazine Melbourne, June 28th 1995.