Album review: Sam Fender flicks switch to epic on People Watching
All the government ad campaigns and slogans will never do for young men – and young women – what a few great songs from the likes of Sam Fender can achieve, as the British singer-songwriter shows once again here.
Album reviews for week of February 28 2025:
ROCK
People Watching
Sam Fender
Universal Music Australia
Everything here sounds so epic that it’s possible to bounce off the entire album without appreciating what you have heard, at least at first. On the heels of the two singles, People Watching and Arm’s Length, the initial let-down is unsurprising. The new songs feel overlong; the shiny production a cover for Fender at the end of a creative road. His first two albums, Hypersonic Missiles and Seventeen Going Under, were stunning pop-rock documents of northern British life, tightly depicting working-class struggles as a young male in North Shields. Themes like teenage suicide (his debut Dead Boys EP) and drug use wrecking friends’ lives (Spice) were traced by Fender’s vocal cannonades, big-chested belting calls towards no-surrender and street romance. Against easy talk of toxic masculinity, his was a welcome voice: wildly male, poetic yet journalistic, plenty dark but resistant to the nihilism of remote middle-class ideologies. All the government ad campaigns and slogans will never do for young men – and young women – what a few great songs from the likes of Fender can achieve: offer hope and meaning without getting Disney about it. Acclaimed as the “Geordie Bruce Springsteen”, both his previous albums hit No.1 in Britain. Third records are always regarded as a defining step. But after a four-year wait, this one feels like Fender 2.5 rather than Fender 3.0. Covid lockdowns and mental health issues slowed him down; he is one of many artists recovering from a pandemic stall in what would have been a more natural career momentum.
Something else also changed. At 30, Fender is famous. In Crumbling Empire, set to a rotating 1980s synth-pop pulse, he sings, “I’m not preaching, I’m just talking / I don’t wear the shoes I used to walk in”. Passing through a beat-up urban America, the British star is driven inward to his busted family history and community memories. Pretty yet grieving, this sounds like survivor’s guilt. This search for healing is actually an asset to Fender: as a teenager he learnt to sing and play guitar to Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, as well as Jeff Buckley’s Grace. Those references still define him. A football team of engineers are involved here, with Fender producing along with Adam Granduciel of The War of Drugs and Markus Dravs (Coldplay) giving it a final gloss. More polish, richer textures — but nothing especially new. The exception is the closing Remember My Name, sung from the perspective of his grandfather visiting Fender’s grandmother in a home where she resides with senile dementia. All of Fender’s operatic heart is on display as he sings to a melancholy brass soaring from the Easington Colliery Band. It’s the kind of thing that makes people weep at the end of a war movie; a modern classic. I played this album again. I heard more in the words, the playing, in that ecstatic voice of Fender’s. It conjured up visions of British pub singalongs and derivative yet transcendent albums from the likes of early Oasis: a people’s music overflowing with a pained love of life. As I play it yet again, it keeps getting better.
Mark Mordue
ROCK/FUNK
Style and or Substance
The Ferguson Rogers Process
Impressed Recordings
Tim Rogers has kept busy in between You Am I albums, first taking over lead vocals for punk veterans Hard-Ons and now reteaming with The Bamboos’ Lance Ferguson for a newly minted project. Apart from Bamboos drummer Graeme Pogson, producer Ferguson plays every instrument while Rogers holds forth with even more relish than usual. His raspy vocal smoulder grows into proper swagger against the vintage funk licks of the opening title track, before Live Together both plays up and pokes fun at his loverman potential and Thumbs edges into sultry yacht rock. There’s definitely a winking element at play here, between the food-inspired lyrics on Choice and the satire of vanity-based fitness on The Endless Cycle of Maintenance. It’s all as catchy as can be, with some dubby effects and subtle psychedelic drag smuggled in among the disco sleaze. As Rogers promises while swapping between spoken word and falsetto on Dirty-Clean — which also samples the pair’s debut collaboration on 2012’s I Got Burned — things are gonna get dirty before they get clean.
Doug Wallen
POP/R&B
This is How I Remember It
Beckah Amani
The Orchard
The central thread of Beckah Amani’s debut album unspools as a conversation between two lovers, who trace the journey of their relationship from heady beginnings to its fractured and confusing end. It’s a clever device, one that allows the Burundian-Australian songwriter to freely explore everything that defines us and, consequently, our relationships — the personal, the political, the past, the future. A keenly anticipated debut, Amani has been steadily pricking ears since early singles Lebeka Leka and Stranger, and she assembled a bevy of in-demand producers and songwriters for the album, including M-Phazes, Alice Ivy, Jakwob and Tevn. There are many compelling moments, including High On Loving You (Talk) — where form follows feeling and Amani’s voice drifts into the ether — and Waiting On You, with a scratchily plucked guitar underscoring Amani’s frustrated questioning. When you arrive at closing track We Ain’t Here, you feel like you’ve gone the full journey with her, hand-in-hand. Full-hearted and open, This is How I Remember It is a strong first outing.
Jules LeFevre
AFRO POP
Dankoroba
Djely Tapa
Disques Nuits d’Afrique
With her second album, dynamic young West African songstress Djely Tapa confidently follows the footprints of a legendary mother and nods to other illustrious women of her native Mali while blazing a fresh music trail in French Canada. The passion, grace and fire of singers such as her mater Kandia Kouyate, compatriot Oumou Sangare, Benin’s Angelique Kidjo and Cote d’Ivoire’s Dobet Gnahore is evident in Tapa’s polished new release, along with her calls for gender equality in Africa. Every track’s a winner on Dankoroba — an impressive follow-up to a 2020 debut album, which netted a Juno Award (the Canadian equivalent of an Australian ARIA or American Grammy). Recorded between Bamako and Montreal with stops in Abidjan and Paris, the set ranges from Mandingo influenced songs like Laban and Esclave that feature traditional stringed instruments such as the kora harp and Tapa singing in bottom register, to ultra-modern Afro-futurism electronica-boosted Afro-pop romps like Magossara and Sewa, in which the high-pitched singing of this one-time student of aeronautics hits incandescent new heights.
Tony Hillier
INDIE ROCK
Fainter
Moaning Lisa
Farmer & the Owl
Melbourne quartet Moaning Lisa pursues several different directions on its second album. There’s emotionally direct alt-rock that feels ripped from the ‘90s in the best way, as well as more fragile balladry and an exploratory side that makes the most of dreamy effects. Those three sides gradually make more sense together, thanks to sharp, sincere songwriting and an uncrowded depth of production. The opening title track explores grief in multiple forms while unspooling like an atmospheric demo, before other tracks pair guitarist Charlie Versegi and bassist Hayley Manwaring’s cathartic vocals and lyrics with melodies alternately pointed and shaggy. Though it’s admirable how spacious and painterly tracks such as Flutey and Comfortable 2 (Alone) can be, there are more immediate points of entry in the animated vocal overlap of De Facto and the syrupy slosh of Wayside. The aforementioned ballads are nothing to dismiss either, with Flower memorably describing plucking the titular object simply to watch it wilt. By turns vulnerable and empowering, these songs forecast a promising future for Moaning Lisa.
Doug Wallen
Album reviews for week of February 21 2025:
ALTERNATIVE/POP
Light Hit My Face Like a Straight Right
Mallrat
Dew Process
4 stars
Grace Shaw’s work has always felt both confessional and chameleonic, sounding strikingly personal even as the exact contours shift fluidly along with her stylistic cues. Her songs seem to lift equally from pop, hip-hop, dance and other genres. The Brisbane-born artist’s sheer variability has become an artistic signature as she has continued to level up as a singer, songwriter and producer alike. Now we have her second album as Mallrat, unfolding like a shimmering dream world saturated with samples, collaborators, inside references and lyrical ambiguity. On the surface it’s a fairly light and easy listen, yet there are labyrinthine layers available to the more curious among us. Shaw says she enjoys hiding secrets in her songs, both musically and lyrically, and several tracks feature callbacks to others, whether sharing samples or other fleeting motifs. For example, two different songs lift parts from Born 2 Lose by Memphis rap producer DJ Zirk. The first, Pavement, also borrows from fellow Brisbane act Cub Sport to add another dreamy emotional layer to its suite-like earworm. The second, Hocus Pocus, returns to the same well and comes back with something less swaggering and more romantically fixated on penetrating another person’s atmosphere and orbit. And after repurposing the lullaby-esque vocals of a Finnish a cappella group on the pitch-shifted Virtue, lead single Ray of Light takes direct influence from the melodic complexity of a Gaelic choir Shaw discovered on YouTube.
Her collaborators this time include Chrome Sparks and Japanese Wallpaper, and more than once she started working on a track with one creative partner before finishing it off with producer Styalz Fuego (Troye Sivan, Charli XCX). She also embraces the artificial and transformative qualities of technology, injecting sharp spikes of digital distortion or reshaping her voice via disorienting effects. The Worst Thing I Would Ever Do is very much in conversation with modern shoegaze acts like Alvvays, while the real-time shapeshifting of other tracks evokes the mercurial hyperpop of the late British artist Sophie. But whether she is dabbling in clubby dream pop (My Darling, My Angel), singer/songwriter intimacy (Something for Somebody), future R&B (Defibrillator) or stuttered synths and breakbeats (Hideaway), Shaw imbues her work with more than enough emotional heft for them to transcend nifty genre exercises, and repeated listens make the lyrics hit just as hard as the hooks. That’s especially true of the closing Horses, a ballad about Shaw feeling out of place upon returning to Brisbane for a visit. It would already have been a moving meditation on memory, change and perception, but the death of Shaw’s sister, Lily, a month after the album’s completion lends it devastating new subtext. Stripping away the electronics and overhauled vocals that lace so much of the album, it’s a simple plea for connection that reaffirms her firm grasp on songwriting, all the way from demo-like seedlings to full sonic flowering.
Doug Wallen
INDIE POP
Nobody Loves You More
Kim Deal
4AD
Given the crucial role Kim Deal played in alt-rock forerunners Pixies and The Breeders, we should know what to expect from her debut solo album. Think sweetly scruffy vocals poised for deadpan understatement. But as orchestral fanfare worthy of a vintage Bond theme swells around her on the opening title track, it’s clear that the US indie icon still has the capacity to surprise. Deal scratches plenty of creative itches here, riding a distorted disco beat on lead single Crystal Breath, before pivoting into slow-burn country a la Patsy Cline on Are You Mine?, inspired by her mother’s dementia. That track and the nearly whispered Wish I Was were both written more than a decade ago, but they have lasting value as meditations on middle-age. Collaborators include her twin sister, Kelley, the late sound engineer Steve Albini and members of The Breeders, Teenage Fanclub and Savages. There are some sleepier moments to be found, but spiky turns like Big Ben Beat remind us how much personality Deal has to spare.
Doug Wallen
CLASSICAL
Dvorak: Symphonies 5 & 6
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Jaime Martin
MSO
There was much rejoicing last year when the MSO launched its international collaboration with the London Symphony. Its first joint release boasted ear-stunning performances of orchestral songs by Debussy and Richard Strauss. How could that possibly be topped? The answer lies herein: its second release presents the fifth and sixth symphonies by Antonin Dvorak. The MSO’s Spanish maestro Jaime Martin — chief conductor since 2022 — promises a Dvorak cycle of all nine symphonies, including the much-loved New World. On the strength of these two symphonies, there will be even more rejoicing: from the very first chord of the Fifth Symphony, we are back in the territory of Beethoven’s Pastoral, with chirruping woodwinds and hearty conversations between strings and well-controlled brass. Too many Dvorak performances convey peasants dancing with mud on their shoes. Here, the MSO performances embody sunshine and lightness. Maestro Martin brings a kind of Mediterranean freshness and cheer to the music, recorded in Hamer Hall last year. And how they fit 83 minutes onto a single compact disc is indeed a marvel.
Vincent Plush
FOLK/POP
Crooked Little Heart
VKB
Jaro
While VKB’s (Vicki Kristina Barcelona’s) third album in four years prolongs the New York trio’s preoccupation with the songs of Tom Waits, there’s no doubt that, like its predecessors (2020’s Pawn Shop Radio and 2023’s Yesterday Is Here), Crooked Little Heart puts a fresh feminine perspective on the rugged ballads of the old growler’s back catalogue. In the artful and simpatico hands of Rachelle Garniez, Amanda Homi and Mamie Minch — all talented singer-songwriters in their own right — Waits and partner Kathleen Brennan’s co-compositions are transplanted into fertile, folky fields. Featuring tight vocal harmony reminiscent of the McGarrigle Sisters in their prime, Bottom of the World is an outstanding exemplar. Aside from the versatility and quality of the women’s voices and their arrangements, VKB’s unusual instrumentation — which includes an impressive array of global percussion and squeezeboxes and a variety of acoustic guitars — does full credit to nine of Waits’ songs. Old favourites such as Telephone Call From Istanbul, Chocolate Jesus, Fannin Street and others are respectfully rendered without compromising any of Waits’ wacky scenarios.
Tony Hillier
WORLD
Cut Out the Day
Golonka
De La Catessen
Golonka is a five-piece group based in Adelaide that for many years has been playing arrangements of Eastern European gypsy music and new material of its own. With juicy instrumental combinations of violin, clarinet, guitar, accordion and bass, its sound very much resembles that of a klezmer band, but these eclectic musos frequently journey into cabaret, country, classical and even pop. Cut Out the Day is Golonka’s finest and most exploratory work to date. Arrangements of Balkan and Ukrainian folk tunes show its usual creative flair; the Serbian folk song Adje Jano comes out tops thanks to gorgeous improvisations from clarinetist Quincy Grant. Guitarist Dylan Woolcock, meanwhile, shifts to vocals in the band’s comical cover of Wacko & Blotto’s theatre song, Bon Fromage, and a surrealist version of Tom Waits’ Belly of a Whale. Shostakovich’s Waltz No.2 finds an unexpected but logical place amid these mock-humoured tracks. Elsewhere, Golonka’s own songs – Farewell, Summer, Bovril, and especially Fairground – are wonderful. Catchy melodies and backing vocal harmonies land them right in the realm of fun, toe-tapping 1960s-era pop.
Graham Strahle
Album reviews for week of February 15 2025:
R&B/HIP-HOP/POP
Hurry Up Tomorrow
The Weeknd
Republic Records / Universal Music
With his sixth studio album, The Weeknd teases a mighty swan song: this is potentially Abel Tesfaye’s final release under this particular moniker, which has grown across the past decade. The Weeknd is now one of the most reliably popular artists in the world, and regularly fills stadiums — including in Australia last October — and tops music charts. Dripping with cinematic drama and pulsating late-night energy, Hurry Up Tomorrow arrives with a sense of finality to it, but ultimately could have benefited from a final edit in order to fully cement this entry as a final one in The Weeknd’s now sprawling journey of sound. Teased by singles Sao Paulo, Timeless and Cry For Me, this album feels as close to a signature sound for the Canadian artist as 2022’s concept record Dawn FM. Its weaving of alternative R&B with synth-pop and delicious electronic beats provides a sense of elevation to The Weeknd’s already established palette of hedonistic, darkly alluring soundscapes. Take it back even further to his debut mixtape, 2011’s House of Balloons, and there are moments on Hurry Up Tomorrow that feel closely aligned with that masterful introduction of a record (such as the title track and Red Terror). Still, at 22 songs and a runtime that nears an hour-and-a-half, Hurry Up Tomorrow can feel exhausting; this is definitely an album that deserves one’s full attention and a decent stretch of time to immerse yourself in it.
Guest appearances from artists including Lana Del Rey (The Abyss), Playboi Carti (Timeless), Justice (Wake Me Up), Future (Enjoy The Show) and Giorgio Moroder (Big Sleep) beef up the album’s expansive nature. Yet the strongest points come in Weeknd-only moments such as the emotional Baptized In Fear, the electronic-funk of Open Hearts and the dreamy Take Me Back To LA. The Weeknd is at his best when diving into painfully raw lyricism. We’ve heard this right throughout his career, from the toxic late-night calls that formed the foundation of House of Balloons, to the cocaine-driven nights alluded to on 2015’s Beauty Behind the Madness. Now 34, what has made Tesfaye such a powerful artist in his guise of The Weeknd is his ability to show off human complexity through his songwriting, and his headfirst exploration of the indulgent, heady and destructive. Hurry Up Tomorrow spends time exploring the above themes, while the central character — his alter-ego — navigates a chaotic relationship to fame and self-fulfilment. If this is in fact The Weeknd’s final outing under this name, it stands as one of his boldest efforts to date. While it remains emotionally resonant throughout, the record has all the pieces in play to find a place within this culture-shaping artist’s wider catalogue which could make it as impactful as Dawn FM or House of Balloons. One last trim of some not-as-cohesive moments could have made for a near-perfect listening experience, but in all, Hurry Up Tomorrow is deserving of a deep dive, as it’s undeniably an album rich in influences and ideas.
Sosefina Fuamoli
INDIE POP
Dial-Up
Peggy Frew
Sad Frog
Peggy Frew has written four novels, but instead of embarking on a new book she began writing a solo album instead. The results sit comfortably between her fiction and her longtime work in Melbourne indie rock band Art of Fighting, whose Marty Brown produces and plays various instruments across Dial-Up. Foreshadowed by that album title, several songs reflect on Frew’s younger self in the 1990s. The opening Country House is about becoming someone else in a new relationship, while the darkly adrift Newtown locates its backdrop as August ‘97 before meditating on the sliding-doors outcome of losing a crucial phone number. Lighter in tone, Off Season Blues muses on a summer job at age 22 as Frew airily poses a series of lingering questions. Her murmured vocals and low-key piano balladry add a layer of dreamy dislocation to these songs, as does the question of what is imagined and what is autobiography. But such ambiguity heightens the album’s writerly themes just as much as the woozy arrangements do, and Frew’s travelogue through the past is well worth eavesdropping on.
Doug Wallen
WORLD/DUB
ONO
Moana & The Tribe
Black Pearl Ltd
It may only be 32 minutes in duration and six tracks long but ONO is all quality. You’d expect nothing less from one of NZ’s most decorated artists. Via her sixth album with The Tribe, singer-songwriter Moana Maniapoto shows she’s a champion not only of Maori customs and language but also of indigenous culture elsewhere. With her regular sidekicks, co-producer Paddy Free and Scotty (Te Manahau) Morrison, Moana has fashioned an absorbing concept release in which her voice and traditional Maori language (te reo) sits snugly beside other female tongues, above subtly contrasting beds of electronica-dub. In a haunting opener, Sami/Norwegian Mari Boine’s ethereal singing shines with Moana’s over a vocal drone. The set finishes on a similarly atmospheric note with Gaelic/Scottish singer Megan Henderson overlapping with a compelling incantation (karakia) from Morrison. In between, the turbocharged Metis/Canadian chanting of Native North American Jani Lauzon is truly stunning – not that tracks with Shellie Morris (Gadigal/Australia) and Inka Mbing (Atayal/Taiwan) lack punch.
Tony Hillier
SOUL/FUNK
Hard Truths
Fulton Street
Stoic Records
Melbourne is Australia’s soul-funk mecca, with bands such as The Bamboos and Cookin’ On 3 Burners plus solo artists Shannon Busch (aka Wilsn) and Emma Donovan leading the charge. Add to that list Fulton Street, whose second album comes six years after its arresting debut, Problems & Pain. Fronted by big-voiced Sri Lankan-Australian singer Shannen Wick, this set is forged from a similar mould to New York’s Dap-Kings and its late singer Sharon Jones. Wick shares with Jones a similar command of the live stage, though vocally she has more in common with Chaka Khan and Betty Davis. Hard Truths is harder and edgier than the debut, with the Wick-penned Disappointment, Another Girl’s Man and Doubts spelling out she is not a woman to be trifled with. Weight of the World knowingly examines the immigrant experience, while the tender closer Mama’s Eyes finds Wick defiantly owning her ethnicity. Interspersed throughout are three short, sharp instrumentals, lending a showband quality to the album that spotlights its deftly orchestrated horns, strings and busy rhythm section, which includes choppy guitar and organ. But even the titles of these interludes – A Woman Scorned, Sister Strut and Heartbreaker – signal who’s really in charge here.
Phil Stafford
INDIE FOLK / CHAMBER POP
Mahashmashana
Father John Misty
Sub Pop
When Father John Misty (aka Josh Tillman) first arrived, tongue firmly planted in cheek and songs pouring out of his guitar in 2012, the US singer-songwriter seemed like a necessary palate cleanser to the overwrought, earnest folk that dominated the indie scene at the time. On his sixth album, not only has Tillman outpaced many of his peers, he’s outgrown them in scope. Recorded with his live band for the first time and encompassing many of the themes – blatant use of psychedelics, disaffection with modern society, ego death – of his excellent previous records, Mahashmashana offers a sumptuous suite that feels like it was exhumed from behind the locked storeroom of an expensive 1970s pop studio. It’s equal parts George Harrison and Lana Del Rey, boasting formidable songwriting and arrangements that are wasted on regular headphones. Tillman — whose vocal range and loquaciousness is matched only by his proclivity for penning eight-minute songs — shines as much on golden FM pop numbers (such as third track Josh Tilman and the Accidental Dose) as he does across blues stompers like She Cleans Up. Darkly funny as ever, there’s as much to decode here as there is to dive into musically.
Jonathan Seidler
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