Alternative rock and acoustic gems, beautifully rendered, wistful and sometimes dark from this Australian based singer songwriter.

11 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Acoustic, ROCK: Modern Rock



Details:
Mark McCue is a singer-songwriter based in Sydney, Australia.

McCue has just released his first solo album, One Little Burst of Madness, having played previously in Sydney indie bands The Trilobites, Native Tongue and thiRst. The solo album comes after a period away from the music industry doing âother thingsâ.

âOther thingsâ involved the birth of his two children. âI wanted to be more certain about where I was going to be at any one time and so I moved music down the scale of importance for a while.â

McCue remained connected to the world of songwriting through some periodic co-writing sessions with his sister Anne McCue, the US based Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist extraordinaire who has been making serious waves in the US and Britain. Grammy award winning legend Lucinda Williams has called Anne her âfavourite songwriterâ and BBC radioâs revered presenter, Bob Harris, called her 2004 release âRollâ, the album of the year.

Thatâs pretty good company to be writing songs with and to be related to for that matter. âYes, while for the most part we have pursued our musical paths independently, we have written some songs together and it has worked really wellâ.

Really well indeed. The McCueâs co-writes have found their way onto some well known serialised television dramas in the US such as Dawsonâs Creek and UC: Undercover and the long standing reality TV show which started the whole reality show thing, MTVâs Road Rules.

One Little Burst of Madness is all McCueâs own work and features a collection of beautifully rendered and emotion tugging songs occupying a space that connects to a diverse array of artists such as Neil Finn, REM, Nick Cave, Coldplay and George Harrison.

McCue wrote the majority of songs in a short but productive flurry of writing over a period of three months. âI found myself with some spare time after having not had any for quite a while and suddenly and unexpectedly a whole bunch of new songs began to take form. I guess it was a release of pent up energy.â

The influence of parenthood on the writing is strongly evident on some of the songs. The voices of McCueâs own children can be heard speaking and singing on âA Star is Love.â âI was able to involve my children in the recording process and my little boy was also involved in writing this song. Itâs been very exciting to be able to link the two strands of my life in such a way.â

The album was recorded in Sydney at Beamo Music and Standing Wave Studios. âI was very fortunate to get some fantastic musicians involved, Brendan St Ledger on keyboards, Greg Royal on bass and Mick Skelton on drums and with the very talented Lachlan Mitchell behind the desk it came together nicely. It was very satisfying to get back into the recording studio.â