- Somehow, considering I have a deep love for both Australiana and songwriters who blur the line between pop song and short story, I had never heard of Adam Gibson until this week I came across The Songs Of Adam Gibson, a compilation that collates sixteen tracks from a musical output spanning three bands and sixteen years.

Gibson's spoken word narratives have been backed over the years by bands Modern Giant, The Aerial Maps and The Ark Ark Birds. This compilation is not in chronological order, and with no notes to signify which songs came from which bands, I was struck by the fact that the style seems to have not changed dramatically, regardless of who else was in the band.

Gibson's story-telling songs have been compared to Paul Kelly and Mick Thomas, which is understandable, but to be honest the spoken prose make them more like a Tim Winton or Peter Goldsworthy story. He was a writer before ever fronting a rock band and it is with stories rather than music that a listener is likely to connect.

Gibson's delivery, and the sometimes epic backing tracks, makes each number seem weighted with gravitas. However the strength of them lies in his eye for the mundane detail and also the wealth of humour he squeezes from it. Gibson himself plays with the implied seriousness - London Still Exists tries to capture the essence of the great city in Billy Bragg lyrics and football hooligans, while Blanchey (You Were Beautiful) is a loving character study of an aging woman that tells her history partly through the triumphs and failures of her favourite rugby league team.

Gibson is undoubtedly a sentimentalist, and at times his recollections risk slipping into the dead end nostalgia of middle-age. The album cover is hazy picture of young boys with a surfboardv and a song like Be Home Before The Streetlights Go On a wistful slice of pre-video game and smartphone childhood. Gibson doesn't revel in this though - in fact his lyrics fight the rose-coloured backwards glance. "They weren't better days, just younger days" he says in Not Dead Yet, while The Band's Broken Up begins namechecking classic old bands but later notes "The line holding that past had broke with the sudden ache of age and the realisation there was no hope of going back."

The beauty in his songs about Australian locations and people come from a couple of different aspects. One is his eye for detail, that sees the significance in our everyday lives and surroundings. The other is his seeking for new experiences and stories, for a future of our own making rather than one we stumble blindly into. In On The Punt, he compares his father's endless gambling to his own quests on endless highways - somewhere between chasing that elusive big win or just enjoying the thrill of unknown possibility. Ultimately, Gibson's stories are compelling not just because they describe familiar surroundings, but because they evoke the unspoken feelings we all share. As the lyric quoted on the album's cover says, "There's a name for this feeling, they just haven't named it yet".

- Andy Paine.