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Bek-Jean at The Vanguard

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Bek-Jean Stewart entered the Australian Music scene in the early 90’s as vocalist and songwriter for indie-pop band Eva Trout.  The band was signed by US label Trauma Records and toured both Australia and the States.  The song Beautiful South received significant radio play and the band appeared on GNW, VH1 and US TV programs.  Stewart’s other musical involvements include working with Perry Keyes & Give My Love To Rose, performing drums and vocals on his recordings and live shows. She also played drums and sang on Grant Shanahan's album - The Leisure Suit, " Into the Antipodes Sun ". Stewart’s solo career was launched with “Junior Years” in 2007.  Released in Australia and Europe through Laughing Outlaw, the album was lauded by the critics.  Junior Years  tells the story of the struggle between love and hate. “A superb female rejoinder to Ryan Adam’s Heartbreaker.”  David Cowling, Americana UK, June 2007.     Winter Summer Suburban Exile is Stewart’s second solo, releasing through Laughing Outlaw in August 2010.
     
Bek-Jean Stewart uses rich and beautiful melodies to tell stories of loss, love and redemption.  The spirited, at times joyous, style of her music often starkly contradicts the depth of content contained in the emotional landscape portrayed by her words.  Stewart uses music as a vehicle to communicate her realities and intimate connections with the world around her.  Inspired by storytellers of a personal nature she drew early influence from the likes of Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and Aimee Mann.

Winter, Summer Suburban Exile is a collection of songs that prelude the idea of an album as a whole organism.  The evolution of Stewart’s songwriting progresses throughout the album as she arrives, at its conclusion, to her strongest authentic voice as a storyteller.  Winter, Summer Suburban Exile is a journey exploring freedom versus restraint, raw and unapologetic in its coverage of such complex terrain.  With an emphasis on vocal clarity, the music is allowed to serve as a fertile background for the narrative.  The album spans from anthemic songs, with St Marys’ Bells and Henson Park Skies, through darker times with No Sunrise, No Sunset and Diving Bell, to the lightly romantic Money Never Spent on Romance and Only One of You.

Recorded at Leisure Suit studios, near Mangrove Mountain, NSW, with long-term collaborators, Grant Shanahan, Matt Galvin and Michael Carpenter, who jammed together laying down tracks in a couple of takes, with an emphasis on understatement ensuring nothing was sonically overworked.  Creative direction was driven by Stewart, herself, with engineering and co-production support from Shanahan. The result is an album that is strong and instinctive in its melody, and at moments -- such as the rise in St Marys’ Bells – humbling

drawing by Bek-Jean Stewart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       
 
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