Jo Meares - Jo Meares' Silver Bullets (2025)

Songwriter Jo Meares has corralled together the dark and evocative Melbourne-based rock quintet Jo Meares' Silver Bullets – allowing him to explore an edgier and at times noisier sound on their debut self-titled vinyl album.

After playing a number of live shows, the band decided to record some demos. They were initially intended as a document of their sound but on hearing the recordings it quickly became clear the group had recorded something quite special.

Much in the same way that Bob Dylan is constantly re-shaping and reinterpreting his own songs, with different musicians, so to does Meares, always finding new angles and sometimes new meaning in the new versions.

Meares was also lucky enough to have legendary songwriter Jimmy Webb's son Christian Webb play piano on the song ’Neil Young Saved My Life’, a song about failure and the redemptive power of song. On 'Birdsong Bells' Meares tells the tale of a settler whose wife gets bitten by a snake and dies. He gradually goes insane with the sound of the bellbirds and his grief and sees her riding her pony through the ghost gums every evening.

'Terrified Of Love' is Meares' version of a pop song, while 'I Loved You More That Day' details "moving out to Broken Hill for a year with my then girlfriend and how as soon as we hit the city it all seemed to fall apart."

Jo Meares' Silver Bullets stands as a compelling reframing of Meares' songs. Shaded in gothic and alt-country twang, jangly and shadowy folk rock, it conjures up the poetic sway and swagger of a rock 'n' roll corner bar on the streets of Melbourne.