John Butler Trio - April Uprising

John Butler Trio have released their long-awaited followup to 2007's Grand National, April Rising, out now through Jarrah/MGM Distribution. Artists need to grow. From One Way Road, the first single from "April Rising", it was pretty clear that things were going to be different, largely owing to a very public choice to replace the the non-Butler two-thirds of the Trio.

The first thing that hits me with the opening track Revolution is that it's different. But not necessarily new. The spacious arrangement and distorted guitar feels like circa-2000 nu metal. 28 Days sort of stuff, which is a recurring feeling throughout the album. Lyrically, though, it's clear that John Butler is sticking with familiar territory; the message is nothing out of the ordinary. Either reassuringly familiar or rehashed thoughts, this will depend on where you stand on the firmly defined line that seems to separate JBT fans from the non-fans.

One Way Road is the catchiest beast on the album. I didn't realise just how many phrases were packed into the song until I picked up the lyric book that came with the album to try and decipher the song. A pocket-sized lyric book with a red cover and an obscure logo on the cover, that looks disturbingly like the pocket-sized Gideon Bible they kept us in at lunchtime on pizza day to give us in grade eight. Though I'm rarely one to review or even care about the packaging, couldn't they have gone with something less Biblical? It was pizza day!

Fifteen tracks and sitting on 60 minutes run-time, the album has too much filler. Yeah, with a questionable climate in both the industry and greater economy, value-adding is important. After a solid opening two tracks, there's water treading for three songs, starting with C'Mon Now, the less musically interesting brother to One Way Road.

Some might remember my review of The Herd's 'The King Is Dead' single from 2008. I criticized it because the typically politically astute group failed to capture any real political sentiment given it was released a year after the election when pretty much everyone had moved on. So then, in 2010 we have John Butler Trio unleashing Johnny's Gone. The glossy appearance and excitement of a new prime minister is well and truly gone, and the major issues under the previous leadership remain either unchanged or replaced with new issues... business as usual in Canberra.

At first I hoped it wouldn't be a political song, but what we have in Johnny's Gone, like with 'The King Is Dead', is a song that by its very nature serves to do nothing but gloat. Butler might shy away from being labeled an activist musician, but there's no questioning he's certainly a prominent voice in public debate, and Johnny's Gone is neither apolitical nor thought-provoking, so I struggle to determine its exact purpose as a song. The most disappointing thing about Johnny's Gone is that it's probably the best sounding track on the album to my ears.

The final three tracks pick up after another lull in the second half. Interesting guitar work has been fleeting for the first 50 minutes of the album, but Mystery Man lives up and features the most stripped back sound of the album, with new bassist Byron Luiters getting some time to shine. Gonna Be A Long Time puts Nicky Bomba, undeniably one of Australia's best reggae drummers, to good use and also enlists his brother Michael Caruana to make what is probably the most musically full track on the album.

Too much filler, too much directional change. The genre hopping simply feels too conscious and production is slick, which doesn't fit well for a musician like Butler who is by all measures an talented albeit unconventional musician, on whom ragged edges work well. I appreciate the see-what-sticks mentality with trying new genres and styles, but in this case there's a little too much duct tape holding together what should have been left to fall.

By losing three or four tracks off the album 'April Uprising' would probably be par for John Butler Trio, but instead it feels bloated and simply lacking any cohesiveness.