Album review: Richard Thompson retains folk-rock chops on Ship to Shore
A testimonial from the LA Times proclaimed Richard Thompson the finest rock songwriter after Bob Dylan and the best electric guitarist since Jimi Hendrix — and at 75, he’s still going strong.
Album reviews for week of June 7 2024:
FOLK-ROCK
Ship to Shore
Richard Thompson
New West Records
Entering the twilight of a long and distinguished career in which he played a pivotal role in the pioneering 1960s folk-rock days of Fairport Convention, made incendiary duo albums with erstwhile partner Linda Thompson in the ‘70s, and released a score of stunning solo albums from the ‘80s to the present day, Richard Thompson has somehow contrived to sidestep the bright lights of commercial success. This, despite the fact he’s one of England’s most influential all-round musicians, with a hard core of devoted fans and chart-topping admirers such as R.E.M., Dire Straits and Los Lobos and a testimonial from the Los Angeles Times that proclaimed him the finest rock songwriter after Bob Dylan and the best electric guitarist since Jimi Hendrix. The answer to this apparent paradox seems to rest in the reality that Thompson, 75, continues to plough an eclectic, enigmatic and incontrovertibly non-commercial furrow. Decades of living in the US have failed to blunt his individualistic and swashbuckling approach to storytelling or his sardonic British sense of humour.
Solo album No.20 is his first LP for six years — and it’s his first release as a septuagenarian. True to form, his songs surface characteristically dark lyrics and dry thespian-like singing, along with sharp, ever-inventive guitar licks, from the get-go. His lead character in the punchy opener Freeze is a man so discombobulated with life that he totters on the brink. In The Fear That Never Leaves You, which follows, the realities of war and post-traumatic stress disorder are encapsulated in terse opening lines: “Roll the dice and who decides / One man lives and another man dies”. The 12-track set ends with a song titled We Roll, which drolly details the deja vu element of regular touring: “Hate to leave but we’ll be back again / This year, next year …”. Between the bookends, again backed by his dynamic rhythm section (composed of drummer Michael Jerome and bassist Taras Prodaniuk) is a diverse range of hard-hitting narratives that allude to the vicissitudes of everyday life — such as the deadly standout penultimate track What’s Left to Lose. Contrary to the title and front cover, this is no maritime album; the closest it comes to anything resembling a sea shanty is in the quirky bouncing chorus of The Old Pack Mule. As always, this unique artist colours his songs from a wide palette of styles and genres. In other words, Ship to Shore is a quintessential Thompson album — one that, like most of its predecessors, will richly reward repeat visits, and comes highly recommended.
Tony Hillier
JAZZ
The Wild Wild East
Zodiac
Independent
This beautiful debut album is to the credit of ABC Jazz, as this is another of its valuable Jazz Commissions. Zodiac, jazz artists in residence at radio station 2MBS Fine Music in 2023, is a quartet including four young Asian-Australians who met as students at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music: pianist Jordan Chung and drummer Manson Luk (both with three compositions here); tenor saxophonist Hinano Fujisaki (two compositions) and double bassist Sabine Tapia. Finding themselves between two cultures, they felt detached from the Asian cultures they left behind and their music grapples with the realities of Australian multicultural life. Chung’s composition Seedling is about “starting anew, navigating the uncharted territories of identity and belonging, and embracing the courage needed to push up through the soil and blossom in a new home”. These highly talented musicians have found in jazz a means to express the emotions involved in their journey, and the result is an intensely melodic and ruminative album. I found the moments of repose in their music very moving.
Eric Myers
CHILDREN’S POP
The Green Album
Teeny Tiny Stevies
ABC Kids
Billing themselves as the only kids’ music outfit that won’t “rob adults of their will to live” is a strong claim, but Teeny Tiny Stevies — a preschool-themed, sister-helmed spin-off of folk band The Little Stevies — are certainly heading in the right direction. Fifth LP The Green Album is unrelated to the Weezer record of the same name, but it doubles down on this mission by also trying to make environmentalism fun. Some of this is direct (the delightful mid-noughties indie ditty Compost) and others, like the bonkers Babyccino, hide the sustainability message in songs about things kids already love. Most notably, the Stephen sisters don’t dumb down their melodies or writing, resulting in some of the catchiest and approachable kid-friendly tunes since The Wiggles first stopped playing pubs. Water, which gorgeously makes the case for conservation, could easily be a Lisa Mitchell single. Half the time it just feels like listening to a well-produced folk record that just happens to deploy the word “Mum” a lot. Parents, consider your will to live restored.
Jonathan Seidler
ALTERNATIVE ROCK / PUNK
Tarantula Heart
Melvins
Ipecac
Twenty-seven albums in, and Buzz Osbourne and his band of riffy men remain as allergic to convention as ever. No doubt such a proclamation will be thrilling news to Melvins’ faithful, but even by this band’s standards — this is, after all, a group that didn’t give Atlantic Records a commercial inch during the ‘90s grunge boom — Tarantula Heart is pretty “out there”. At only five tracks, its opener Pain Equals Funny runs to 19 minutes: a four-part avant-garde attempt at an epic. Its opening two movements are well worth the time – a rip-roaring Zeppelin-style anthem breaks down to QOTSA at its most drug-addled – but the final 10 minutes of psychedelic instrumental jamming will test the patience of even the most rusted-on fan. Elsewhere, Working the Ditch serves as a cousin to the band’s classic History of Bad Men, while Allergic to Food careens away on a psychedelic punk rock roller coaster. However, these moments of excitement only emerge after extensive instrumental noodles that sound more like demo jams than complete songs. This is a strange record, but Melvins is a strange band. This time around, that strangeness is somewhat to its detriment.
Alasdair Belling
ELECTRONIC
Memory Morning
Tourist
Monday Records
William Phillips strikes a disorienting pose on his fifth album, and it’s all by design. The British artist has moved on from the cathartic, pandemic-inspired beats of 2022’s Inside Out by leaning into, ironically, more solitary territory and an immersive sonic palette spanning melodic house and psychedelia to lower-tempo, escapist electronica. From the celestial keys of opener Lifted Out, whose soaring background vocal reminds of Moby’s early work, Memory Morning is emotive, contemplative and transporting. Siren, for example, evokes Ibiza sunsets with its shuffling beats and snarling, distorted synths. Valentine, meanwhile, is a more energetic, club-focused standout, its vocal hook protesting “can I ever get enough of your love?” A Little Bit Further builds atop filtered vocal stabs and a strumming guitar riff, its threatened drop more subtle and restrained, yet just as impactful, when it arrives atop a flurry of hazy synths. Phillips has previously compared his albums to book chapters, admitting that “some are more interesting than others”. Memory Morning isn’t initially a page turner, but its slow-burn intensity warrants another read.
Tim McNamara
Album reviews for week of May 31 2024:
POP
Hit Me Hard and Soft
Billie Eilish
Darkroom/Interscope
It’s alarming to remember that Billie Eilish is just 22 years old. The Californian singer and songwriter has a list of accolades many miles long, with armfuls of Grammys and a couple of Oscars already stashed away in the cupboard. She’s been such a prominent fixture of the pop landscape for so many years now that we perhaps forget that Eilish is still a young woman, trying to grow up and protect herself in the relentless and punishing glare of the spotlight, including festival headline spots and her own sold-out arena tours. But Eilish has always seemed to have an old head on young shoulders. In 2017, I sat down with the then 15-year-old in her label offices in Sydney to discuss her breakout EP Don’t Smile At Me. Amid the media storm, with publicists and minders buzzing around her, Eilish seemed preternaturally calm. Her debut album, 2019’s When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go?, was a twisted, bass-heavy affair punctuated by the quiet, almost fearful, murmurings of tracks like When The Party’s Over. Its 2021 follow-up, titled Happier Than Ever, saw Eilish grappling with existential dread as she contemplated a life impacted by outrageous fame. Like her first two albums, Hit Me Hard and Soft (HMHAS) was created alongside her older brother and longtime creative partner and producer Finneas. It arrives in the wake of Eilish’s second Oscar win for the Barbie track What Was I Made For?, a tender, devastating ballad that crystallised the singer’s lingering identity crisis.
Album opener Skinny picks up where that song left off, with Eilish asking “Am I acting my age now? / Am I already on the way out? / When I step off the stage I’m a bird in a cage”. Eilish’s voice is sublime across the whole record, whether it’s deployed in a goosebump-inducing whisper or flying through an armada of synths like in the spectacular L’Amour De Ma Vie. She and Finneas swerve through a few lanes here – from icy R&B and dub (Chihiro, The Diner) to sugary ‘80s pop (as heard on standout track Birds of a Feather) – but the album feels intact. For the first time, Eilish and Finneas have brought in some recruits: her live drummer Andrew Marshall appears throughout, and the Attacca Quartet, who underline several tracks with quivering strings. Lead single Lunch is another knockout, as Eilish – who recently opened up about her bisexuality – revels in her desperation to “eat that girl for lunch”. The album pinballs between highs and the lows in a way that recalls another great coming-of-age pop record, Lorde’s Melodrama. HMHAS is not quite equal to that masterpiece, but it is certainly another excellent outing from one of pop music’s most arresting artists.
Jules LeFevre
NOISE / EXPERIMENTAL
All Things Must Persist
Scattered Order
Rather be Vinyl / Bandcamp
A month ago Michael Coffey sent me a message. He told me Scattered Order had “released what we think is our best LP in 44 years”. As part of the original cohort associated with the experimental M Squared label, Scattered Order came in at the weighty end of the musical spectrum. I once described the Sydney act as “Samuel Beckett’s favourite heavy metal band”. Singer Mitch Jones sounded like a coach berating his team with cut-ups by Burroughs; hard to fathom, but intense. Coffey, meanwhile, had a “tinkily-bonk” synth-pop band called Ya Ya Choral. Shane Fahey led The Makers of the Dead Travel Fast, whose otherworldly The Vessels is still a landmark Australian album. Together, these artists combined to produce beauty, noise, humour and strangeness, all of which are instrumental qualities here; three ghosts at play in an abandoned factory. Pianos, synths, guitars, loops, smudged and submerged vocals are performed live, deconstructed and edited back together. Scattered Order just snuck on to a new level of eerie grace. RIP Michael Coffey, who died earlier this month.
Mark Mordue
JAZZ
No Postcode
Mace Francis Orchestra
Independent
While I’m not familiar with all of this orchestra’s nine previous albums, I believe that No Postcode represents a significant evolution for Perth composer/arranger Mace Francis. His well-known mastery of conventional big band orchestration is revealed here in six compositions, but each one is spiced up with fascinating flights of the imagination. Every track on the album is strong. It’s not surprising to hear that these works, which reek of substance, have been germinating over the last six years. Francis’s virtuosic knowledge of how to get the richest colours out of the various sections of the big band is illustrated throughout. Many unusual boxes are ticked: for example, the somewhat startling title track borrows from rock music in featuring the sound of so-called “noise guitar”, but in Francis’s hands the work sounds compellingly fresh, rather than a mere reworking of jazz/rock fusion conventions. Francis’s own testimony is revealing: “It’s so nice to be able to write music that is me, rather than having to bend the music into a style.”
Eric Myers
COUNTRY / SOUL
Til My Song Is Done
Emma Donovan
Cooking Vinyl Australia
Emma Donovan may be best known for her stormy funk and soul work with The Putbacks, but the powerful First Nations singer/songwriter got her start singing country songs as a child with her family’s band, The Donovans. Now she returns to that mode while tapping the deep well of feeling that has made her one of Australia’s best vocalists. These aren’t straightforward country songs, but heartfelt forays into Americana that pack rewarding surprises. A duet with Liz Stringer, the opening Change Is Coming, is an anxious ballad crisped at the edges with rustic banjo, rumbling reverb and hothouse keys. Blak Nation similarly casts an eye toward an uncertain future, this time with a bluesy swagger. By contrast, the Paul Kelly team-up Sing You Over is a gentle song of transition for newly deceased members of a tight-knit community. Likewise, Yibaanga Gangaa is a refreshed version of the comforting hymn Sweet By & By sung in the Gumbaynggirr language. Immersing herself in the bonds between childhood and adulthood, Donovan holds nothing back here.
Doug Wallen
METALCORE
Cure
Erra
UNFD
Crushing riffs and breaks meet expertly crafted melodies on Cure, the sixth album from Alabama metalcore outfit Erra. Formed in 2009, the band has built a strong following as its sound has consistently strengthened, leaning into a broader sonic palette – progressive and cerebral arrangements, bolstered by vicious execution, manifesting wonderfully on albums like 2016’s Drift, 2018’s Neon and its last effort, 2021’s self-titled. Cure builds on this already impressive body of work and ultimately forms a record that demonstrates a keen attempt by the quintet to be chasing sounds that lean into darker textures without sacrificing fun. Moments of unbridled energy and fury (Cure) ride waves of the musically unpredictable (Crawl Backwards Out Of Heaven). Yet Erra isn’t afraid of vulnerability or full-blown groove moments; Blue Reverie and End to Excess remain album standouts on repeat listens. A perfect, frenetic storm of ethereal, fiery and devastatingly dark moments (such as Wave and Past Life Persona), Cure balances creative rejuvenation with hunger for new musical horizons. It’s another step forward for Erra and its exciting legacy.
Sosefina Fuamoli