Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
$12AUD or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Deluxe Limited Edition Gatefold Vinyl with Lyric Sheet Insert. Personally Signed Copy w/bonus 11 track CD-R of cover versions recorded during lockdowns entitled "Nambucca Covers!"
Includes unlimited streaming of Nambucca Fables
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 3 days
$40AUDor more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Comes In Gatefold CD Wallet. Personally Signed Copy w/bonus 11 track CD-R of cover versions recorded during lockdowns entitled "Nambucca Covers!" Free Shipping in Australia.
Includes unlimited streaming of Nambucca Fables
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 3 days
$18AUDor more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Nambucca Fables : Deluxe Limited Edition Gatefold Vinyl with Lyric Sheet Insert
plus
Mark's 2019 release Fever Dreams on 180g vinyl with Insert and Download Card. Full size artwork by French Canadian artist Lenny Piroth-Robert.
plus
Bonus 11 track CD-R of cover versions recorded during lockdowns entitled "Nambucca Covers!"
3 for 1 shipping!
“Fever Dreams, an absolutely superb record... a superlative album”
- Stuart Coupe (Rhythms)
“Hypnotic, rollicking and restless. Fans of Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Dylan should immediately investigate”
- Jeff Jenkins (The Music)
“Pure Mark Linkous folk and experimentation filtered through Wilco’s fantastical soundscapes and the gentler side of Tom Waits…. There are sepia-tinged universal themes at work...that conjure up feelings of nostalgia, loss, love and optimism and Moldre has captured the mood of the human soul with great artistic clarity.” Faster Louder
“Surreal, wacky, thrilling and edgy. Moldre displays his capacity to mix country rockers, electric blues, jazzy folk and dreamy ballads and yet still end up with an album that hangs together coherently, from start to finish… Josephine and Fever Dreams II recall his fellow countryman Nick Cave…Moldre’s latest offering is both challenging, futuristic and rewarding. It offers the listener a body of work that creeps up, unravels and permeates with each subsequent listen" - Lonesome Highway (Ireland)
“Hot band, great songs, top-shelf performances and some classic microphones too no doubt. But if it was as simple as that there would be more records as powerful as Fever Dreams.” - Noel Mengel, The Music Trust
"Anyone who is a fan of Tom Waits should investigate this guy" "Brooding melancholia, a fine sound"
- David Astle (ABC Melbourne)
Includes unlimited streaming of Nambucca Fables
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
...more
ships out within 3 days
$65AUDor more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Limited Edition. A Test Pressing Of Nambucca Fables - with bonus gatefold cover art (courtesy of Suitcase Records we have a few to spare)
Signed and personally handwritten track details by Mark.
w/bonus 11 track CD-R of cover versions recorded during lockdowns entitled "Nambucca Covers!"
Plus Fever Dreams on 180g vinyl
Includes unlimited streaming of Nambucca Fables
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Nambucca Fables is an album steeped in beauty and sorrow, deep heartache and sweet remembrance.
A lot has happened in the intervening years since Mark released his last album Fever Dreams. Floods, fires and a pandemic descended, and just prior to that, on a devastating personal note, the sad and tragic loss of Mark's mother.
A highly personal labour of love, the dozen songs on the album find the songwriter exploring and processing grief and loss, memory and nostalgia, dreams and hallucinations.
There are flashbacks to childhood memories of towns and homes (Homecoming), an instrumental snapshot of his mother immersed in nature (The Absent Gardener), feeling like a ghost at her funeral (New Suit), the horror of Chernobyl and its parallels to the insidious advance of cancer (This Little Town), the incredible story of the return of a lost 1940s Tex Morton guitar (Ghost Guitar) and much more.
"Nambucca Heads was where my Mum was born and raised. Up until my mid teens my family would travel there at least once a year," says Mark.
"As time has passed, and it’s been decades since I’ve returned, the place has taken on a mythical quality in my mind. Smells from the kitchen, fresh bread on the rustic timber dining table – that had been big enough to sit a family of 10. My grandfather's ashtray on a stand that would spin when you pushed a button and the ash would disappear. His model train set and the room full of treasures and trinkets. The sounds and smells of chooks and the fowl mouthed cockatoo screeching in the backyard."
In keeping with Mark's holistic approach to his creativity – from the artwork to the videos, the songwriting and the music – the sound of the album is the perfect sonic canvas for his songs.
The first single 'Every Waking Hour' saw Mark's lifetime of exploring the possibilities of the guitar in indie rock, jazz, power pop and beyond come to the fore on the song. Heroes like Nels Cline, Neil Young and Bill Frisell are omnipresent as Mark and his band create an exquisite blend of melodic Americana and indie pop-rock that descends into a frazzled, clattering heap as the song concludes.
"After grief, there is some kind of new balance… a new you," Mark says of the song. "Damaged but somehow improved. A deeper understanding, more empathetic. Love finds new depths. Somehow you find you way out of that mist and into a new morning."
On second single 'New Suit' the intricate interplay between the guitars of Moldre and Jamie Hutchings (Bluebottle Kiss, Infinity Broke) provides the sonic mesh that holds the song together, the nuances providing fascinating musical details that exist at the intersection between intelligent pop songs, and hallucinogenic folk and country music. The song gradually swells and transforms from doubt and weariness to a kind of emphatic mantra with the cyclical and repeating line "Your love will live for evermore". Even the darkest clouds have silver linings, eventually.
Right across Nambucca Fables, guitars jangle and rattle, soothe and disrupt as required, the rhythm section is constantly inventive in both traditional and more experimental styles and the use of violin, female backing vocals, banjo, melodica, Wurlitzer and Hammond organ, harmonica and more add beautiful organic textures.
credits
released April 14, 2023
All songs written by Mark Moldre except Homecoming (Moldre/J Hutchings)
Produced by Mark Moldre w/assistance and advice from Tim Kevin and the band Engineered and mixed by Tim Kevin
I Saw You Last Night and This Little Town engineered by Mark Moldre, Jamie Hutchings and Reuben Wills and mixed by Jamie Hutchings
The Absent Gardener, Kidnapping On A Train, A Tale Of Two Pities engineered and mixed by Mark Moldre
Mastered by Chris Hanzsek
Mark Moldre : Vocals, Acoustic and Electric Guitars, Percussion, Banjo, Melodica, Xylophone, Harmonica
Jamie Hutchings : Electric and Acoustic Guitar, Percussion, Backing Vocals Scott Hutchings : Drums
Reuben Wills : Bass
Adam Lang : Slide Guitar and Banjo
Jeanne Poisson and Leanne Clarey : Backing vocals
Tim Kevin : Piano, Melodica
Jadey O’Regan : Wurlitzer
Tim Byron: Hammond Organ
Michael Bridges : Violin
Album Art by Mark Moldre and Brett Curzon
"If Tom Waits, Elvis Costello and Jeff Tweedy were pushed out to sea in a rickety old boat they’d come up with something
like this. ..a boisterous yet soulful musical journey worth the fare. You’ll be stomping and crying and laughing, and if you’re lucky to catch Moldre live, you’ll be doing all three with a whiskey in hand.” Timber & Steel...more
supported by 6 fans who also own “Nambucca Fables”
Gonzo. Passion. The Ming Vase. Haunting and beautiful. Every listen brings a new favorite.
Do something like this again, Miss Emma. Please let the answer be yes. Please let the answer be yes! alien9
A vibrant vision of "Central Americana" from the Costa Rica-based artist, blending heartland devotionals with playful Tropicália grooves. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 27, 2022
