Artist: Blue Wine Title: Harp On Label: Devastation File Under: Leonard Cohen fronting The Dirty Three RIYL: Willard Grant Conspiracy, Salt Licks, Tindersticks, RHP   Don't believe the lies. Tropical Queensland is no more awash in the sea of heat-baked tranquility than Bob Dylan is responsible for Boyzone. The fact the sun is shining 300 days a year never negates the tough yellow stains of perspiration that appear in early spring and stink into bitter rocks throughout a summer that threatens to lift the concrete in a fetid haze. Amongst all this, for a while, there lived a band called Blue Wine, and it seems as if they too grasped the lies of white men in safari suits, of fake beaches in the middle of the cultural precinct, releasing an EP The Drunken Boat in 2000. Then they entered the studio, recorded some songs and two of the three departed for Berlin, leaving Harp On as possibly their last will. With titles like "Slaughter Falls", "Posthumorous" and "Glass Eye at the Keyhole", Blue Wine obviously don't intend to follow in the footsteps of fellow Brisbanites Savage Garden. Instead what we get over nineteen tracks are articulate, painful and bitter recollections, vocalist Kahl Monticone half-slurring, half-growling, "Swinging on a shoestring" like some curse while strings of cello and violin pasts piss their lifeline away in the background. It's the place where piercing high-note guitar feedback bumps casually against a softly-plucked melody line, shivered clean with muted drum rolls, and this voice, this disembowelled voice that lingers like an aching ghost. Brackenridge and Madden weld their instruments to the swirling cacophony yet there are enough spaces here to breathe, to whisper and just enough room to suffocate when all three come together again. It's quite catchy, in a "Berlin" meets the GoBetweens meets the sound of Ian Curtis hanging himself kind of way, and it's enough to keep you company at 4 am on a Thursday morning when the candles have burnt low, and a shirt tossed in the corner of the room is the only thing remaining to remind you of the lover who has gone. Sometimes in life you need this music to let you know that someone else has hurt this much. These songs are the upside.