There's always something uniquely personal about an album that has been recorded completely without the financial assistance of a record company, be they large or small. The Arousing is one such album, but don't be fooled into thinking that just because it's self-financed it's going to require tolerance on the part of the listener. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Arousing is a stunning album, its twelve songs embracing musical styles from the searing emotional catharsis of the compelling opener Ah Jole to the single-voice reflectiveness of Red Badge Of Courage and the dark atmospherics of 51 Years. Always at the forefront is a voice that bleeds emotion; anger, desperation, reflection and loss, the lyrics carrying imagery that Nick Cave would die for a chance to have written.

Kerri recorded the album with the current incarnation of her band VeVe; the ever-busy Bill MacDonald on bass, Michael Sheridan on guitar and Justin Stanford on drums. As a band they click perfectly with the material, be it the relentless hypnotic drive of Ah Jole or the shimmer of All Night Forever. Many of these songs would be familar to those who've seen Kerri's solo performances over the last year or so. The greater depth they carry on the album is at times astonishing.

"I had the concept worked out with the band," explains Kerri, "and with the recordings, I was trying to follow through with the best elements of my voice, which are the diversity and the dynamics, and to get that through onto the recording. In that sense I think it's worked." Kerri's vocals are, more than usual even for the most personal solo album, the focal point of the songs on The Arousing. A song like Painting Blue Soldiers, for example, could have been a fairly straightforward slow guitar song, but the escalating emotion in the vocal becomes searing energy by the end, as if it were the last song before the apocalypse. Which, of course, is the way it should be. "Basically, I've tried to take all the elements from the vocal style and reflect that in the music and in the production. Michael Sheridan was instrumental in developing the overall sound - and it's an interesting mix of backgrounds, me and Michael."

Getting the music heard is another challenge altogether, of course. The six-song EP that Kerri recorded with VeVe a couple of years back found itself in that unenviable position of being critically acclaimed, yet virtually untouched by radio. While taking your songs to as wide an audience as possible is a common desire of almost every songwriter and musician, Kerri is philosophical about the vagaries of the marketplace."I'm approaching all the VeVe stuff," she says, "from an artistic point of view, if you like, rather than looking at it from a commercial point of view. Because if you look at it from the commercial angle, that tends to make it a business rather than an art. It's frustrating, certainly, but the more important thing is basically being able to do it, to perform it and have it there. A great deal of industry people were very supportive of the last EP, though. A lot of people have lent their support, in whatever manner, and that makes it a lot easier."

The song from Kerri's acoustic gigs that has become the most talked-about is, as it turns out, the title track of the album - a dark, brooding and insular song backed by American Indian healing chants and drums. In its recorded form it's almost identical to the version that left live audiences almost speechless. The chants are provided by Dorothy Fraser."The relationship with Dorothy and myself goes back a long time. She was invited to go and study on a reservation in North America, and learnt a lot of healing techniques from there. I've always been interested in North American Indians, and she's always been interested in music. And because she's not one of these airy-fairy new age people that are driving everybody nuts, we've always had a fairly good relationship; so that's where the idea came from for that song. I've written another song for the next album which also uses Dorothy's singing; we've started doing that live already."

Kerri produced the album herself, with assistance from co-producer Simon Polinski and engineer Lawrence Maddy; for Kerri, there was never any temptation to hand over the recording process completely."I think it's crucial that if you're doing original music, your music, you should have control over every stage of the development of it - from the songwriting, to the production, to the arrangement," Kerri says without hesitation. "Otherwise, it can't truly be your music."

Anthony Horan
Beat Magazine Melbourne, May 10th 1995.