Album review: Rufus Du Sol’s expansive, emotional electronica on Surrender
Pulsating with restless energy, vulnerability and longing, the fourth album from this Sydney trio offers electronic music in its most connective and rewarding form.
Album reviews for week of October 23, 2021:
ELECTRONIC
Surrender
Rufus Du Sol
Rose Avenue / Reprise
Three headline shows in Los Angeles next month will confirm Rufus Du Sol as a bona fide stadium act, but the fuse for such an explosion was lit long before the Sydney trio scored two Grammy nominations for 2018’s Solace. Tyrone Lindqvist, Jon George and James Hunt have been steadily building since releasing debut LP Atlas in 2013, fashioning an expansive electronic sound anchored in emotion, refreshingly without pretence, and mind-blowing to experience live. From the strength of songwriting to the assured approach to production, this fourth album is their most accomplished yet. “Warm” isn’t a word to describe Surrender, even if much of it is destined to raise a sweat on the dance floor. Pulsating with restless energy, vulnerability and longing, this is electronic music in its most connective and rewarding form. George’s keys and synth work and Hunt’s booming percussion never threaten to overrun Lindqvist’s emotive vocals. A delicate balance is maintained throughout, reflecting the cohesion of a group comfortable in its own skin, even if that skin is often uncomfortable.
Take first single Alive: while singing that “There’s a pain in my chest that I can’t describe / It takes me down and leaves me there”, the hook wins through (“At least I’m alive”). The playoff between hope and hopelessness — darkness and light — runs heavy throughout, as the extremes of human emotion and experience are covered. On Wildfire, Lindqvist admits he’s “trying to keep it together” amid scattered guitar, distorted synths, and haunting keys. Similarly, On My Knees has a sense of brooding anguish to it, a contrast to the romantic sensibilities and soft keys of opener Next To Me. Make It Happen sees children chant the simplest of messages – “Love can change your life” – as Lindqvist yearns for lost love amid a charging beat. The title track, meanwhile, is a standout. Commencing with high-pitched vocals and swirling synths, US soul singer Curtis Harding – the album’s only guest – pleads to “Let the rain come down / Open up the sky / Shower me in love”. This euphoric, spiritual affair is destined for main stage anthem status; all the better if the heavens above open mid-song.
Tim McNamara
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AMERICANA
Hope
Jim Lauderdale
Yep Roc Records
His songs have been recorded by Elvis Costello, John Mayall and Vince Gill, so any solo project by the widely respected veteran American roots artist Jim Lauderdale is bound to deliver. Yet Hope – which, incredibly, is his 34th album – includes four co-writes, one of which finds Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter eerily penning his own eulogy: “I’m glad to live another day / Your memory helps pave the way / Softens the pain of losing you / As much as anything could do”. A mid-album song inspired by Lauderdale’s devotion to tai chi and qigong, Breathe Real Slow, was written in reaction to the pandemic as it ravaged the US last year, while fourth track Mushrooms are Growing After the Rain could be its rejoinder. Near the end of the set, Here’s to Hoping and the closer Joyful Noise underline the optimism that threads this record across 13 tracks and 45 minutes. The music fully complies, with bassist/co-producer Jay Weaver and guitarist Chris Scruggs (grandson of bluegrass legend Earl) brought to the fore.
Phil Stafford
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EXPERIMENTAL/ELECTRONIC
The Apple Drop
Liars
Mute
Angus Andrew has regularly recontextualised Liars, moving the Brooklyn band to Berlin and then Los Angeles before finally operating alone in the Australian bush. This 10th album is collaborative once more, drawing on live interplay with drummer Laurence Pike (PVT, Sarah Blasko) and multi-instrumentalist Cameron Deyell (Sia, Lior) before Andrew shaped that raw material via computer. Anyone who has followed Liars through the above permutations will find plenty to engage with, especially the intense contrasts and zigzagging shifts. Andrew remains a commanding frontman, whether repeating cagey mantras in a groggy drawl, ripping into a hostile yelp or employing gang-like backing vocals. Also in the renewed spirit of collaboration, he co-wrote the lyrics here with his wife, Mary Pearson Andrew, and returned to some ideas and characters from previous Liars albums for a sort of ongoing conversation with himself. After two decades of the project, Andrew is still comfortably – and fruitfully – in flux.
Doug Wallen
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JAZZ
The Glider
Nick Garbett & Mike Majkowski
Banksia Records
This innovative album, recorded in Berlin, features music rarely heard in this country, but is nonetheless an example of the original textural jazz now increasingly being favoured by some leading Australian musicians. Seven compositions by Garbett (trumpet) and Majkowski (bass and synthesiser) are featured over strongly percussive rock-oriented time-feels, using generous beds of synthesiser sounds. Three drummers are listed including the Necks’ Tony Buck. Garbett and saxophonist Johannes Schleiermacher provide atmospheric instrumental solos that are embedded in the sound mix after being subjected to electronic manipulation. The music has the accessible melodic appeal one finds in some pop music, which should enable it to find an audience outside the jazz community. Being reviewed under a jazz heading may subvert its marketing strategy but, given their history, I feel this unusual music could have been created only by musicians with an authentic jazz sensibility.
Eric Myers
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INDIE POP
Screen Violence
CHVRCHES
Liberator
Scottish trio Chvrches formed a decade ago, but their glossy, pop-polished sound is vague enough to render their origins irrelevant. On this fourth album, there’s a lack of depth to Lauren Mayberry’s vocal delivery and lyrics; it sounds like the band members have stolen their older siblings’ vinyl records and decided to make their own versions of the Cure’s greatest hits. In fact, Robert Smith – one of the most iconic goth-pop singers of all time – recorded vocals for second single How Not to Drown and emailed them over. There’s a shivery thrill at hearing his signature, sorrowful vocals but their novelty factor is dialled-in and perfunctory. Album opener Asking For a Friend is punctuated with a steely synth beat, and Nightmares could be the theme song to a 1980s dance movie. Paying homage isn’t a crime, but unless there’s a radical hook or compelling lyrics, such an approach fails to connect authentically with listeners. Album No.4 is danceable and briefly satiating, but too derivative of synth-pop and goth bands of the ‘80s that are still around, mostly.
Cat Woods
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Album reviews for week of October 16, 2021:
HIP-HOP/POP
Gela
Baker Boy
Island
Decked out in an iridescent blue Gucci tracksuit, Baker Boy cut an impressive figure performing before last month’s AFL Grand Final. In under three minutes, he rapped, danced and even played the yidaki (the Yolngu instrument known more widely as a didgeridoo). It was a concentrated display of just how much 24-year-old Arnhem Land rapper – and trained dancer – Danzal Baker can do. His debut album has a similar energy, playing like a bustling highlight reel of Baker Boy’s many talents. Named after his “skin name”, which indicates his blood line, Gela is jam-packed with mood and mode changes. Yet it never wavers in momentum, thanks to canny sequencing that echoes the arc of a party. Rapping in English and Yolngu Matha, Baker Boy calls out key influences in his life, from his love of dance (Cool As Hell) and his Galpu clan (traditional opener Announcing the Journey) all the way to acclaimed US rapper Kendrick Lamar (Meditjin) and more old-school hip-hop influences (MYWD).
Through it all, he balances poppy accessibility with battle-ready fierceness and deeper messages. My Mind, and Move, add sweet romance, while Stupid Dumb wrestles with new-found fame and Funk with Us waxes nostalgic about classic boom-bap hip-hop. The animated, versatile rapper also carves out time on this largely celebratory debut to address some heftier challenges. Actor/musician Uncle Jack Charles delivers a powerful spoken-word section on Survive, a resounding declaration of First Peoples’ hard-won resilience. Brandishing Jurassic Park-inspired visions of pterodactyls and helicopters, Baker Boy contrasts living off the land for thousands of years with modern billionaires’ outsized comfort. Featuring Yolngu vocalist Yirrmal, whose father played in the like-minded Yothu Yindi, Somewhere Deep opens as a call for peace and unity against a summery reggae groove before repurposing the “Can you heard the thunder?” line from Men at Work’s Down Under to evoke the menace of fracking, drilling and climate change. Tackling such highs and lows with a burning passion and positivity, Baker Boy radiates star power on every level. And this is just his first album.
Doug Wallen
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JAZZ
Essence
Ryan Daunt Trio
Independent
A drummer who is musically literate enough to write and perform his own compositions is no longer an oddity in jazz. Accordingly, Perth drummer Ryan Daunt, 27, in his second album as leader, has produced 11 interesting compositions. They are very well played by pianist Tristan Wills and bassist Nick Abbey, essentially in subordinate roles in what is palpably a drummer’s album. Daunt’s style epitomises the fusion genre. Most of his tunes explore the rhythmic possibilities in 8-feel or rock-oriented music, as opposed to the swing feel, which is largely absent. The inner rhythmic structures of his tunes call for lots of drums fills, and the three musicians effortlessly negotiate rhythmic minefields. While there’s an element of overkill in Daunt’s approach, there’s also considerable lightness and subtlety in his playing, and the moods throughout the album are well balanced. In other words Daunt has cleverly modified the excesses of the fusion genre, and created a satisfying listening experience.
Eric Myers
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ROCK
For Free
David Crosby
Three Blind Mice/BMG
The late-career renaissance of David Crosby continues with the latest of five albums released by the veteran Californian singer-songwriter since 2014. Produced by his son, James Raymond, For Free’s 10 songs rank with anything Crosby has recorded across his
60-year career. Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen contributes lyrics to Rodriguez For a Night, which wouldn’t sound out of place on an SD record, while another mutual admirer, Michael McDonald, brings his distinctive back-up vocals to River Rise. The title track of this eighth solo album is a Joni Mitchell song Crosby has covered before, this time as a downbeat duet with Texan Americana artist Sarah Jarosz. Also featuring guitarist Dean Parks and steel maestro Greg Leisz, and with cover art by old flame Joan Baez, For Free is akin to a gathering of Crosby’s ghosts. The man himself – now aged 80 – has said he has two more albums planned after this one. Hopefully its poignant closing track, I Won’t Stay For Long, allows him enough time.
Phil Stafford
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CLASSICAL
Exiles
Max Richter
Deutsche Grammophon
Having collected a mountain of interest with his albums Recomposed (2012) and Sleep (2015), German-born British composer Max Richter has moved on to social themes in his recent work. After last year’s Voices, which was conceived as a moving tribute to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, comes Exiles. It’s a long panegyric for orchestra in which he seeks to bring attention to the plight of displaced people worldwide. Originally written as a ballet score for the Nederlands Dans Theater, it is an intensely cerebral piece whose hypnotic melody steadily ingrains itself in one’s mind. While not dance-like in any obvious sense, the slow, repeated rhythms heard in Exiles do suggest refugees treading their way towards an unknown future. However, a pervasive glassy, synthetic smoothness tends to deny it a direct human quality. Richter’s orchestrations of several earlier compositions, including the masterly On the Nature of Daylight, appear here, and their waves of sadness and nostalgia encapsulate the mood of our strife-torn times.
Graham Strahle
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ROCK
Pressure Machine
The Killers
Universal
Bruce Springsteen has always been a major influence for The Killers frontman Brandon Flowers, but never more so than on the band’s seventh album. The 11 tracks fully encapsulate The Boss’s style of narrative storytelling about working class American life. Most of these songs open with snippets of interviews with residents from Flowers’ hometown of Nephi, Utah – evoking strong nostalgic overtones for small-town life – and touch on topics including romance, family, faith, murder and opioid addiction. Opener West Hills is an eerie and stirring ballad, complete with piano, strings, banjo and harmonica. Indie rock star Phoebe Bridgers offers sweet harmonies on the subdued Runaway Horses. Quiet Town blends sprightly ‘80s synths and harmonica breaks as Flowers sings about a community in despair, while the title track highlights his hauntingly beautiful falsetto. Pressure Machine is the band’s furthest departure from the intense pop-rock of its earlier years towards folkier stylings. While clunky at times, it’s an enjoyable listen.
Emily Ritchie
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