All The Pretty Horses is angular and taut, while It’s Desire sounds like R.E.M. circa Document. The opening salvo is completed with the epic Dead Roses that establishes the vocal credentials of Rose beyond all doubt. The album doesn’t lose any momentum with the next song either. The Lights Are Fading Behind Me starts as a spooky kind of acoustic lament, but builds into a relentless spiraling rock anthem. Having met in the haze of a never ending Balmain summer, Charlie Horses core of Crystal Rose and Paul McDonald started to write songs drawing from their upbringing in small town Australia listening to their parents records of Johnny Cash and Neil Young melded with the frenetic pace of the beautiful people on darling street in Balmain and the characters found in every pub. Growing up the only hint as to what was going on outside was names of bands in the city newspapers appearing at mysterious venues and what was shown on ABC TV…Countdown, Rage, Rock Arena, Beat Box. With a desire to return to the creative isolation of their youth the band built a studio in a remote valley in the Blue Mountains near Sydney and completed their debut Charlie Horse album I Hope I Am Not A Monster. After spending most of the year searching for some clues to the perfectly distilled desperation of Jolene and the searing beauty of Cortez the Killer, the cinematic tales of Nick Cave and Cormac McCarthy, the expanse of Jaramusch and David Lynch, Charlie Horse took the songs out to road test them and to shake off some cabin fever.