Single Review: Last of The Wine by Kav Temperley

By Vince Leigh (Drummer – ex Pseudo Echo, John Farnham, Tina Arena)

Last of the Wine, the new solo single for Eskimo Joe frontman Kav Temperley, merges an indie pop aesthetic with classic power-pop traits, creating a highly accessible hybrid; a direct lyric fused to an assemblage of hooks and a fail-safe chorus.

Taken from Kav’s forthcoming record, Machines of Love and Grace (out on 19th of October), Last of the Wine’s most potent quality is its evenly spread melodic inventions and the well-apportioned amounts of expectation and surprise revealed in every demarcated section. This is most evident in the chorus, with its ascending structure of four sub-sections, which initially appear too disparate but eventually unveil their baiting qualities. The track has a few other surprises, such as its stripped-back moments in the first verse and the modified chorus following the bridge. These divisions add more than just an instrumental deviation but offer a variation in mood, colouring it as they do with a luring intimacy.

Kav’s vocal is as self-assured and on-point as one would expect, with just the right appreciable blend of restraint and outpouring. The production adopts a primary organic approach, showcasing the previously mentioned melodic parts, utilising a mix of accordant rhythmic dynamics, a considered application of guitars, and a series of background sounds to heighten or maintain focus on the vocal performance.

Last of the Wine covers a lot of bases, stylistically speaking, moving as it does from lo-fi to rock-pop, yet the constant is the quality of the writing and its ability to sneak up on you, not only throughout the course of listening to the song but sometime after also. One of the sweeter moments of the chorus, if not the sweetest, is used sparingly here, the choice of notes harnessed only once during the ‘normal’ choruses but repeated after the bridge to elevate the bare chorus and ready us for the outro—the restrictive use of such a highlight works to secure our interest in the song, as well as to add to its armoury of earworms.

A less informed or experienced writer would surrender to its use more readily, which, in essence, is reflective of the kind of track this is: dependable and salient and executed with authoritative expertise.