Album review: Adele’s 30 sees big feelings and raw emotion abound

Written and recorded in the wake of her recent divorce, 30 sees the superstar reach new levels of vulnerability — a feat that seemed near-impossible given her penchant for raw emotion.

Album reviews for week of November 27, 2021:

 

POP

30

Adele

Sony

★★★½

“Mummy’s been having a lot of big feelings recently,” Adele Adkins admits to her young son in a recorded conversation that features on her fourth album, titled 30. “Big feelings” would be an apt two-word description of the British singer-songwriter’s entire catalogue, but particularly this latest LP – which she says is her most personal work. Written and recorded in the wake of her recent divorce, 30 sees the superstar reach new levels of vulnerability — a feat that seemed near-impossible given the raw, emotive outpourings of her previous releases. With an opening line fit for The Smiths (“I’ll be taking flowers to the cemetery of my heart”), it’s clear from the outset this album will not, and does not, hold back. That first track, Strangers by Nature, is a stunning work adorned with Disney-esque strings that exudes an old Hollywood flair reminiscent of Judy Garland. The album is in fact bookended by cinematic orchestral sweeps, with swooning ballad Love is a Game closing out the 12-track release with a hint of Motown funk. All Night Parking, featuring music from the late Erroll Garner, fizzes with static so it sounds like it’s turning on a record player.

The old adage “less is more” always rings true for Adele: her best and most affecting work comes when that powerhouse voice is accompanied by just a piano. This was true of her previous releases and is no different on 30. Listeners will reach for the tissues on tunes such as Easy On Me and hymnal ballad Hold On, but Adele’s incredible lyricism is muddied on songs where vocoder (Cry Your Heart Out) and club beats (Oh My God) cloud the content. The album’s standout tune is third track My Little Love, a six-minute song that features the beautifully candid conversations with her son Angelo. It opens with ghostly backing vocals before launching into a soulful groove and also includes a solo voice memo in which the singer admits, through tears, to the grief and loneliness she’s feeling: “Today is the first day since I left him that I feel lonely”. The timing of the 33-year-old’s divorce album at the end of 2021 also perfectly reflects a wider sense of societal grief to which we can all relate after an incredibly tough two years. “Been having a lot of big feelings recently ” – yes, Adele, haven’t we all?

Emily Ritchie

-

 

JAZZ

Back To The Garden

Nick Haywood Trio & Petra Haden

Independent

★★★★

Double bassist Nick Haywood’s trio, with Colin Hopkins (piano) and Niko Schauble (drums), recorded this album in Melbourne in 2019 with vocalist Petra Haden, daughter of great American bassist Charlie Haden. A beautiful singer with a voice of unusual purity, Haden does two tunes that epitomise Americana: the traditional Shenandoah, which dates back to the early 19th century; and the famous Walt Disney theme When You Wish Upon a Star. Other highlights include Jimmy Webb’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and a wordless vocal version of Bill Frisell’s Throughout. The album’s ruminative mood is underlined by the trio’s rather abstract instrumentals, A Whiter Shade of Pale and Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock. A notable aspect of the album is Schauble’s distinctive style. His playing is a model of how the modern jazz drummer can busily contribute to spontaneous conversations in the music while remaining unobtrusive in the sound mix.

Eric Myers

-

 

ART PUNK

Deep States

Tropical F..k Storm

TFS Records

★★★★

Even before the pandemic hit, Tropical F..k Storm had spent two albums luridly depicting our present dystopia of fake news and climate change. So imagine the avalanche of new inspiration for the Victorian quartet’s third outing, which opens with a resurrected Jesus spouting world-weary pessimism before it veers into Covid isolation (Bummer Sanga) and the storming of the US Capitol in January this year (Blue Beam Baby). Led by Drones frontman Gareth Liddiard alongside singer-guitarist Erica Dunn, Drones bassist Fiona Kitschin and drummer Lauren Hammel, TFS stokes an absurdist acid swamp where fragmented electronics, careening guitar and lopsided harmonies spur on Liddiard’s reference-dense lyrics and smeared, snide vocal delivery. The band is especially timely on G.A.F.F., an acronym for today’s pervading sense of “give a f..k fatigue”. Tackling apathy and terrorism alike, the song’s lurching rap cadence and clipped Street Fighter sample play like Wu-Tang Clan distorted through a funhouse mirror.

Doug Wallen

-

 

PUNK

Comfort to Me

Amyl and the Sniffers

B2B Records

★★★★

“I’ve got plenty of energy,” Amy Taylor boasts within the first minute of Amyl and the Sniffers’s second studio album. Moot point? Maybe, but it’s worth considering there’s more to these Melbourne punks than meets the eye. Sure, there’s rousing pub-rockers about drunken romance (Security) and cheeky kiss-offs (Don’t Need A C..t Like You To Love Me). In the depths of Comfort to Me, however, there’s also anxiety around street harassment (Knifey) and the government’s inaction on the climate crisis (Capital) – a far cry from the band’s usual tongue-in-cheek nature. If the album is indicative of anything, it’s the quartet’s multitudes. It’s not interested in being a one-trick pony, musically or conceptually – Choices offers a snarling Black Flag homage, while third single Hertz gets in the groove with a singalong guitar riff. At 35 minutes across 13 tracks, it’s all over in a flash, like most great punk records. From the local IGA to national television, Amyl and the Sniffers remain true to their school.

David James Young

-

 

INDIE POP/ROCK

Back In Love City

The Vaccines

Super Easy/AWAL

★★★★

You’d think this would be the worst time imaginable to be a band called the Vaccines. Pity their poor social media team trying to manage their Google ranking. And yet Back in Love City is one of the most joyfully exuberant albums of recent times. The British quintet recorded this in El Paso, Texas, and it shows: Tex-Mex chord flourishes and spaghetti western guitar riffs are all over the record amid their trademark Arctic Monkeys indie anthems. The new setting was clearly inspirational, producing bright, shiny pop of processed rhythms and big guitars welded to songs for packed venues – especially songs such as the thundering Wanderlust and Jump Off the Top. And it’s impossible not to grin at lines so simultaneously silly and heartfelt as “I want to live inside your headphones, baby!”. This is escapist pop for a near future where bands and fans can once again barrel towards open vistas along endless highways. Across 13 tracks, the journey can get exhausting, but Love City still sounds like a pretty great place to go.

Andrew P. Street

-

-

Album reviews for week of November 20, 2021:

 

INDIE ROCK

Things Take Time, Take Time

Courtney Barnett

Milk! Records

★★★★

“Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you,” cautioned Courtney Barnett over spirited guitar thrashing on her self-deprecating 2015 single Pedestrian at Best. Six years later, her third album steers clear of that treacherous perch to aim squarely at a comfy armchair with a cup of tea at hand. A mellow, homespun affair that eschews the Melbourne songwriter’s usual three-piece rock configuration along with the crowded, wisecracking lyrics of her earlier material, this record initially feels somewhat minor and muted by comparison. Working only with co-producer and multi-instrumentalist Stella Mozgawa – best known as the drummer for Warpaint – Barnett adopts a more subtle observational approach that (cue the album title) indeed takes time to sink in. But Barnett’s distinctive personality shines through soon enough. The woman who once sang about enduring an asthma attack while gardening is still a devoted chronicler of quiet moments around the house, though with fewer self-conscious punchlines. Here she sings about maybe cutting out caffeine and possibly changing the sheets, drifting through the overlapping days of recent isolation while acoustic guitars and drum machine rustle underneath.

Written for the friends she catches up with weekly via Zoom, on the jaunty lockdown vignette Take It Day By Day she sings, “Are you good? Are you eating? I’ll call you back next week.” Such world-weary check-ins abound here, as on wry slice-of-life opener Rae Street, which plays like an extension of Barnett’s 2017 Kurt Vile collaboration Lotta Sea Lice (also featuring Mozgawa). If I Don’t Hear From You Tonight shows flashes of her anthemic past, but with songs as lovely as the vulnerable piano ballad Oh the Night, listeners shouldn’t lament the absence of rocking out. There are new experiments to chew on too, like the anxious post-punk pulse of Turning Green and the puttering bedroom pop of Sunfair Sundown. A surprise highlight, the latter nests Barnett’s folksy wisdom inside a glistening latticework of melodies and effects, nearly edging into bubbly synth-pop. “Getting lost, you say, is a fine art,” she reminds us in her low-stakes, whimsical way, and it’s hard to imagine a more fitting soundtrack for such loose ends.

Doug Wallen

 

COUNTRY

The Cast

Michael Waugh

Compass Bros.

★★★

Gippsland-raised singer-songwriter Michael Waugh carries a working-class, everyman persona – specifically, the kind who plays his local pub’s open-mic before his mates who are expecting a laugh, and instead find a few teardrops falling into their schooners. On his fourth album, Waugh’s finest moments are finding the shards of beauty amid otherwise-mundane simplicity – as soundtracked by warm, distinctive blends of antipodean country-rock. Lead single Dirty River concocts vivid imagery of Melbourne, feeling at points like a less-bombastic take on Paul Kelly’s Leaps and Bounds. Elsewhere, He Taught Me is a truly moving ode to his late father, while the title track paints a tender portrait of childhood innocence amid plaintive, striking acoustic picking. Waugh’s unfiltered approach, though sporadically touching, does push to a fault – the album’s B-side, in particular, feels like it sags considerably in the shadow of earlier highlights. Purely for its brief window-openings of excellence, however, The Cast is worth signing.

David James Young

 

ELECTRONIC/DREAM POP

I’ve Been Trying To Tell You

Saint Etienne

PIAS

★★★½

British trio Saint Etienne were once a reliable source of Britpop club bangers with cool-as-hell 90s singles such as Like A Motorway, Join Our Club and Nothing Can Stop Us. Dance floors are very much a thing of the “before times” for most of us, of course, and that seems true for the band too. The beats are still all over 10th album I’ve Been Trying To Tell You, but they’re ghostly and insubstantial now; the memory of nights out rather than the thing itself. It actually sounds like lockdown: songs start, trip along and stop with no clear sense of progress. Thankfully the group has never been able to subdue their impulse for hooks, such as Natalie Imbruglia’s wafty vocal loop on first single Pond House. Elsewhere, Fonteyn splits the difference between Portishead and an interstellar radio signal. The guitars on I Remember It Well echo Explosions In The Sky, and Music Again is a scratchy acoustic guitar loop with Sarah Cracknell sounding gorgeously world-weary. If you’ve felt like this year only lacked a soundtrack of anxious stasis, here it is.

Andrew P. Street

 

ALTERNATIVE/R&B

Dawn

Yebba

RCA/Sony

★★★★½

American singer-songwriter Abigail Smith, known professionally as Yebba, has one of the most impressive voices out there. Her capacity for thrillingly fast vocal runs and her control across a wide vocal range are utterly astounding. Her 2019 collaboration with PJ Morton won a Grammy, and she has featured with artists including Drake, Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran. But on her debut album Dawn, named after her mother who tragically committed suicide in 2016, it’s her own story that finally – vulnerably and beautifully – gets room to shine. On energising tracks like Boomerang and Stand, the raw power of her voice comes through, as she shifts effortlessly from gravelly belting to angelic falsetto. Guest appearances by A$AP Rocky (on Far Away) and Smino (Louie Bag) add affecting points of difference, while standout tunes Distance and October Sky ooze with sophisticated groove and swell with orchestral accompaniment. Dawn’s 12 tracks are a courageous outpouring of emotion and grief, produced expertly by Mark Ronson.

Emily Ritchie

 

JAZZ

Gastronomy Astrology

The EJT

Rippa Recordings

★★★★½

During the 2020 lockdown Sydney double bassist Elsen Price wrote seven compositions with gastronomic titles: Gorgonzola Brie, Vegan Surprise, Pineapple on a Pizza, and so on. Although using time-feels that originated in rock music, this is not the vacuous fusion so prevalent in earlier eras. It’s very hip music, the outcome of a modern jazz sensibility. A formidable bassist, Price anchors an outstanding rhythm section, including drummer Ed Rodrigues whose sensitive and nuanced playing gives the music its primary character. Pianist Casey Golden, guitarist Felix Lalanne, and saxophonists James Ryan (tenor) and Stu Vandegraaff (alto) complete this sextet, all of them performing with virtuosic authority. Price provides written passages articulated in unison by the rhythm section players, sometimes introducing the pieces, at other times used as connecting links inside the compositions. Solos by all players are a delight throughout, showcasing the brilliant improvisational talent in this generation of musicians.

Eric Myers