Show me someone who doesn’t believe in destiny and I’ll show you someone who has never been to the Northcote Social Club.

Any punter who has chosen a night at a live music venue over a night in front of the telly knows what I’m talking about: the payoff.

I’m talking about dragging your arse in from the suburbs and letting someone stamp a star on the back of your hand and buying a gassy beer and standing together-alone with your fellow musical trainspotters.

And then it happens.

The heavens open and God (as imagined by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel) reaches down and pulls the plugs from your ears and you experience a perfect gig. (Or should I make that, Gigs of Destiny? Too much?)

The gig I have in mind was at the Northcote Social Club.

It was 2011. I was at the Social Club because Ron Peno and the Superstitions were launching an album. One of my musical regrets of the 1980s was that I hadn’t seen Died Pretty live—and, besides, my brother Tim is one of the Superstitions—so I wasn’t about to miss the gig.

There were two other bands on the line up—the Ocean Party and Harry Howard and the Near Death Experience. Together, those three bands delivered a perfect gig.

Seriously. They were that good.

I will write about the albums that each of those bands connected me to that night. But, for now, I want to talk about the second band on the line up: Harry Howard and the NDE.

How to describe such a band? What could possibly do them justice?

Nothing.

Words are not enough.

What I can say is that as soon as the fab four—Howard on vocals and guitar, Edwina Preston on keys and vocals, Clare Moore on drums and Dave Graney on bass—started playing I found myself drifting from the back of the room towards the front.

Now, in case you’re wondering, I’m a wallflower at gigs. I generally don’t talk much, especially to the musos (this rule was self-imposed after, as an 18-year-old, I attempted to express my appreciation of Died Pretty to former member Frank Brunetti and wildly overshot the mark).

That night I sipped my beer and tried to maintain a semblance of cool.

I may not have succeeded.

It was stunning music.

They were so ferocious. They were so smart. They were so funny.

The four of them together in that space sounded incredible: like the world’s hippest supergroup.

The highlight was when Howard and Preston (she’s a novelist, by the way) sang a duet.

I was floored. That duet, ‘We Can’t Decide,’ made Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads seem tame; not because it was more gruesome, but because it was much more believable.

Dear Reader, I bought the album.

The Near Death Experience have put out two more albums since their self-titled debut.

Each album is stellar (my favourite is the second, Pretty). And I listen to them frequently. And I return often to ‘We Can’t Decide’ (Pretty’s Howard/Preston duet is even better, by the way) because it reminds me of that night at the Northcote Town Hall.

As for that gig, I’m still in recovery.

Here’s the video for ‘We Can’t Decide.’

A confession. I’m sick of seeing people post pictures—just the cover art—of ten albums that are them on an audio plate without any explanation.

That shits me.

It shits me because great music enters our lives at different times and, therefore, means different things to different people, and I want to know the stories.

With that in mind, I’m going to write a few short, sharp blog posts whenever I can be bothered explaining when some of the great music I love entered my life.

I’ve set a few ground rules, though.

I’m a Melbournian. Make that a North-of-the-Yarra Melbournian. Not only that I’m a North-of-the-Yarra Melbournian who has a sister (Camille Deane) with a recorded and unreleased album. (It’s gorgeous music, but Camille recorded it in Berlin a decade ago and shelved it. Don’t get me started.) More to the point I’m a North-of-the-Yarra Melbournian with a brother (Tim Deane) who is in so many bands I’ve lost count. More to the tip of the point I’m a North-of-the-Yarra Melbournian with one kid who plays a mean guitar and bass and another who is learning to play drums and cello.

In other words, I’m a hopeless music snob and will, therefore, on this occasion, speak only of Melbourne music. And by Melbourne music I mean music either made by Melbournians or recorded in Melbourne by cultural refugees from godforsaken places like, say, Sydney.

Still with me? Good.

Let me set the scene. If life was a golf course, I’d currently be playing the back nine and struggling to both stay on the fairway and reach the green. (I hate golf, by the way. Fucking hate it.) The point I’m trying to make is this: when I reached my forties and started hacking my way around the back nine of life, I noticed that it was a time when things started to break for people that I knew.

I saw marriages break. I saw families break. I saw careers break.

And then I broke.

I woke up one morning, walked out the front door and fell over. Couldn’t get up.

It was a stroke.

A great many things happened after the stroke. Boring stuff I won’t go into. And weird shit. For instance, for a while all I wanted to eat was tinned fruit. And, having grown up in the Goulburn Valley, I hate tinned fruit.

Another thing that happened was this: I wanted to listen to music, but couldn’t stand singing.

Easy, I thought. Having had a major fling with jazz in my twenties I went back to Miles Davis. Beautiful. Miles is a genius. But he ain’t from North or South of the Yarra, so enough about Miles.

Then, I strayed from Miles and started listening to Cam Butler’s Save My Soul.

And I couldn’t stop listening.

I didn’t know Cam. Still don’t. I’ve seen him play in various bands, including Ron Peno and the Superstitions (disclosure: my brother plays in the Superstitions, too), but there was something about this album that cracked me open and sewed me back together again.

It was instrumental and cinematic, folk and electric, classical and contemporary. And it was emotional. Deeply emotional. And it was a salve to my heart.

I don’t know if the album saved my soul, but it saved something.

Not only that, the record’s tracks, which are loping, elegiac affairs, are illustrated by a suite of five stunning music videos that I’d highly recommend you watch. They’re below. Start with ‘Save My Soul’.

That’s all I have to say for now.