Mess Esque 'Jay Marie, Comfort Me' LP

A bold third missive from the Australian duo - Helen Franzmann (McKisko) and Mick Turner (Dirty Three, Tren Brothers) - who sound like they literally dreamed themselves into being, and perhaps might even still be in the dream.

Propelling their uniquely twisted aural circus to heights of exaltation and effect, Mess Esque build out their handmade, openhearted soul into new dimensions, pushing them into more vivid states of being. 

‘Jay Marie, Comfort Me’ is Mess Esque’s third album in less than five years, and the new music feels a hemisphere away from their first efforts: a whole new atmospheric level above, with greater depths to descend into as well. All hail the dreamers - they travel in abstract shapes that the rest of us don’t even know how to imagine.

Mess Esque first launched as a correspondence course. The two swapped tracks between Melbourne and Brisbane, experimentally pairing Mick’s guitar, keys and loops with Helen’s ruminative vocals, in search of a dancefloor hit. It was in vain; they didn’t chart there. But the relationship of their sounds immediately clicked, and they wrote songs and songs - all without ever meeting face to face! - leaving the equivalent of a ghostly fingerprint on the production lens, with warm beams of music glowing through.

‘Jay Marie, Comfort Me’ is co-produced by Helen and Mick themselves, along with Nick Huggins, who recorded the Dirty Three’s acclaimed ‘Love Changes Everything’, Mick’s ‘Don’t Tell the Driver’, and McKisko’s ‘Southerly’ album. Along with Keeley Young and Kishore Ryan from the live band, the album features cellist Stephanie Arnold and a couple of Australia’s living legends of percussion: Bree van Reyk (whose 2022 album ‘Superclusters’ is a beautiful monster) and Mick’s Dirty Three partner in crime, Jim White.

‘Jay Marie, Comfort Me’ reaches exciting new heights in the Mess Esque journey, propelling their uniquely twisted aural circus to a new level of dance-ability, exaltation and effect. Fitting the immediacy at their core with new dimensions, Mess Esque push themselves - and therefore, us - into more vivid states of being.