Ned Collette, September 20

Friday September 20, 8 p.m.

Rozz-Tox, 2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL

Touring in support of his 2024 album Our Other History, a recording that fellow singer/songwriter Will Oldham called "as rewarding a listening experience as I’ve come across in recent times," genre-hopping indie artist Ned Collette performs a September 20 headlining engagement at Rock Island's Rozz-Tox venue, the artist inspiring Raven Sings the Blues to rave that "Collette captures our imagination, building worlds of sound around the listener in the longform."

An Australian singer, instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer now based in Berlin, Collette was born in the inner Melbourne suburb of Carlton, the only child of parents Susan Hancock, an author and English teacher at La Trobe University, and Adrian Collette, a former operatic baritone and later chief executive of Opera Australia. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in improvised music from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2000, and completed his honours in modern composition at Monash University in 2002.

Collette formed City City City, an improvisational and mostly instrumental band, and recorded two albums with them before signing to Australian label Dot Dash Recordings and releasing his debut solo album, Jokes & Trials, in July of 2006. During this time he performed solo, using loops to augment his electric guitar playing. Collette then joined Bill Callahan and The National for a series of gigs in Australia and also toured Europe and Britain with harpist Joanna Newsom and indie pop band Camera Obscura.

In September of 2007, he released his second album Future Suture, which featured more complex synth arrangements and orchestration. Teaming with former City City City bandmates Ben Bourke (bass) and Joe Talia (drums) he toured the album in Australia under the name Ned Collette Band, striving to represent the album live. The album was 3RRR's Album of the Week and elicited comparisons with Damon Albarn, Bert Jansch and Leonard Cohen. In October of 2008, the band undertook a 22-date tour of the UK, France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Poland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, followed by a 10-date European solo tour in January of 2009.

Currently on tour as promotion for this year's Our Other History, Collette's latest inspired esteemed music critic Byron Coley to state that the album "is a wonderful new LP by this wandering Berlin-based Melbourne expat. Ned’s last album Afternoon-Dusk was an avant instrumental trio outing with James Rushford and Joe Talia, but Our Other History is a return to delicate, sophisticated song craft of his 2018 masterpiece Old Chestnut. Ned’s approach to lyrics, vocals and music shares a melancholic beauty that is both haunted and haunting. His words are often more impressionistic than overt in their storytelling, but his vocals carry hints that recall those of the legendary Roy Harper. But where Harper’s attack was often Dionysian, Collette’s approach is Apollonian, and the tracks often have a compositional feel with a distinct taste of Canterbury.

"Collette’s music," Coley continued, "is hard to classify. It exists inside a dynamic flux made up of equal parts post-rock, folk, jazz and avant prog, but it manages to remain plain-spoken and uncluttered regardless of how complex its structure can be when you start parsing it. But why bother? With a record as thoroughly lovely as Our Other History, the best idea is to just relax and let the music flow. Beautifully."

Ned Collette performs his headlining engagement in Rock Island on September 20 alongside country and folk singer/songwriter Liv Carrow, admission to the 8 p.m. concert is $10-15, and more information and tickets are available by calling (309)200-0978 and visiting RozzTox.com.