Brisbane brother duo Wattmore have been carving out their own crooked lane in Australian country, and on “It’s Called Love … It’s Called The Blues,” they team up with their longtime co-writer and mentor Allan Caswell to drive straight down the fault line between love song and gut punch. It’s classic Aussie storytelling with a wry twist, as a song that knows romance is beautiful, sure, but also a little bit rigged from the start.
The track eases in on a hypnotic, low-slung groove, with steady thumping drums, gritty guitars revving underneath, and a glinting high-strung part circling over the top like a stubborn thought you can’t shake. The mood is moody and slightly haunted, but the playing is tight and controlled, with no flashy clutter, just a locked-in band leaving air for the words to land.
Caswell steps up first, almost speaking more than singing, his voice heavy with mileage. Over that simmering backdrop, he lays it out plain: you hand your heart over, and you’re not getting it back, it’s sweet manipulation that shakes you to the core, a no-win game you never really saw coming. He just sounds like someone who’s seen this movie a few too many times and knows exactly how it ends. “It’s called love,” he concludes, and you can hear both affection and warning in the line.
Then one of the Wattmore brothers answers, slipping into a more melodic vocal that arcs above the groove. The hook flips the coin: “It’s called the blues… you can’t fight it, you can’t fix it, there’s nothing you can do, it’s called love.” The duet becomes a call-and-response between experience and emotion, the spoken voice and the sung one tagging in and out, both circling the same hard truth.
By the time Caswell returns to underline, “it’s called the blues,” the song has done something special. It has taken an earworm riff, a smoky country-blues pocket, and three simple words, and turned them into a lived-in little anthem for everyone who’s ever realised that love and hurt are just two sides of the same battered coin.
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Review by: Naomi Joan