Keith Urban gets High on his euphoric love of music
This album’s roadtrip aesthetic follows a timeworn formula: it demands to be played loud while you sing the choruses with the windows down as you travel to new places.
Album reviews for week of September 27 2024:
COUNTRY/ROCK
High
Keith Urban
EMI Music Australia
Now 56, Keith Urban is one of those artists who always seems to have been there, seamlessly melding into multiple scenes, all the while producing music that continues, 34 years after the release of his eponymous Australian debut, to strike chords all around the world. Urban’s latest release, then, exists as a celebration of his love for making music, a process he describes as “timeless, it’s weightless, and I feel euphoric – I feel high” … hence the album’s title. Beginning with a rather inexplicable and unnecessary 12-second intro, High kicks off proper with Straight Line, a rumination on leaving monotony behind, driven by surging guitar and backing harmonies which is indicative of a good deal of the record. These songs mainly display that upbeat, big-country motif that plays so well in stadiums across the US and Canada, and arenas here in Australia; Wildside, all banjos and electric guitars, and the semi-anthemic Heart Like a Hometown are both prime examples. The centrepiece of the record, however, is undoubtedly Go Home W U, featuring vocals from 32-year-old country superstar-in-the-making Lainey Wilson, whose voice is indeed “the real deal” — so much so, as she delivers her lines over what is a cleverly crafted piece of pop/country, that one wishes she were present on more than just the single track.
The following song is tasked with carrying on the momentum, which it just manages to do, as upbeat percussion adorns a song about young love, “hangin’ in there just like Chuck Taylors on a power line”. If there’s a downside to Urban’s 11th solo studio record, it’s that it lacks any real edge, both sonically and lyrically. On the other hand, the lack of anything remotely controversial is a huge part of the appeal of Urban’s music to his fans – while he indeed writes from the heart here, while looking for a bit of grit, the underlying messaging of High is that of hope and positivity; that perhaps there’s a way through your troubles and if you follow that path, you’ll come out the other side a decent person doing decent things. The record’s production is complicit in this too, in that it’s big and lush and has no sharp corners and so fits nicely into the roadtrip aesthetic it seeks: this is an album to be played loud while you sing the choruses with the windows down and the wind in your hair as you travel to new places. In this sense, High indeed follows a timeworn formula. The album comes to a close via the party track Laughin’ All The Way to the Drank, which crams in too much and so seems more a mess than a song, before the album then rights itself at the death with the nostalgic Break The Chain, book-ending an album of what Keith Urban does best: being Keith Urban.
Samuel J. Fell
POP
Burnt Tapes
Eves Karydas
Zeitgeist Records
Eves Karydas has never been afraid of shedding her skin. The Queensland songwriter born Hannah Karydas has changed gears several times throughout her decade-long career, including leaving behind the Eves The Behavior moniker she performed under in the early years. Karydas’s 2018 debut Summerskin announced her talent with vivid tracks like Further Than the Planes Fly, and 2020’s bouncy hit Complicated further solidified her following. But the single brought about a reckoning for Karydas, who soon split with her management and label, opting to leave behind some of the music industry machinery in favour of full independence. Second album Burnt Tapes is a big shift: in interviews, she outlined her desire for less gloss and more grit, and the album achieves that with aplomb. Free-wheeling and exploratory, it slides and slips its way through scratchy R&B and modern alt-pop. Tracks like the quietly defiant Girlboss and slick Take 2 are standouts, as is Save Me For A Saturday, wherein Karydas delivers a beautiful vocal performance as she delights in the simple pleasures of a situationship. Consistently absorbing, Burnt Tapes is an assured return for Karydas.
Jules LeFevre
SOUL
Bilambiyal (The Learning)
Radical Son
Wantok Music
Radical Son, the creative moniker of Kamilaroi/Tongan musician David Leha, follows up his impactful 2014 debut with Bilambiyal – an album that explores themes of growth, continued learning and introspection. Partly created to inspire a new generation of leaders, as is heard in Elder, it is a record that displays rejuvenated connection to one’s culture, self and legacy, Bilambiyal re-establishes Radical Son as one of the country’s most influential First Nations voices, and it is impossible not to be swept up by Leha’s deep, rich vocal tone. It’s as instantly recognisable and captivating (Until You Call My Name, Cultural Contract) as it is unafraid to lean into tenderness and vulnerability (The Fall). The album fuses melancholic spoken word with moody soul notes; it adds vibrancy through reggae (Only One Life), and urgency through lyrical narrative (How Long Must I Wait). One of Australia’s most poignant storytellers returns with a career-defining project that soars with pride in one’s heritage, artistry and potential still to be harnessed.
Sosefina Fuamoli
METALCORE
Incarnation
In Hearts Wake
UNFD
Metalcore bands are often faced with a thankless task: their chosen genre features a very narrow dynamic range to play with, and a fanbase wedded to the formula of fast start/melodic chorus/breakdown. It’s hard to avoid a sense of sameness, and that’s the case here on album No. 6: it takes time for the goodies of Incarnation to reveal themselves. Some songs are admittedly far more instantaneous than the band’s earlier output; although the likes of Spitting Nails and Shellshock aren’t reinventing the wheel, they manage to impressively fulfil the brief of workout-ready riffs and poppy, anthemic hooks. A surprising amount of collaboration also keeps things somewhat interesting, with cameos from metalcore up-and-comers Paledusk and For The Fallen Dreams, as well as a vicious appearance from Parkway Drive frontman and fellow Byron resident Winston McCall. However, chasing the golden stag of the heaviest breakdown, or the most aggressive mosh call, grows tiresome after a while, especially on the comically over-the-top Orphan, which sounds more like a Slipknot parody. For new fans of Alpha Wolf and Polaris, this is a fine complement — but if you’ve heard any metalcore in the past decade, you already know what this sounds like.
Alasdair Belling
COUNTRY/FOLK
We Still Can’t Say Goodbye
Various Artists
Morningstar Music
Released in what would have been Chet Atkins’ 100th birthday year, this belated celebration of one of the world’s most influential guitar pickers has attracted a suitably stellar assembly. Leading the 15-track line-up is arguably the late American’s most passionate and prodigious protege, the Australian-born top gun Tommy Emmanuel, whose dazzling opening duet with fiddle ace Michael Cleveland, on his self-composed Mr Guitar, sets the bar inordinately high. Only the lesser-known ‘Welsh Tornado’ Gareth Pearson and the similarly energetic Guthrie Trapp – among several Nashville cats to appear in the cast – come within cooee, via respective covers of the standards Mr Sandman and Caravan. Of the vocal tracks, James Taylor and Alison Krause’s inspired harmony version of Atkins’s How’s The World Treating You, is a standout, although singer-guitarists Sierra Hull and Vince Gill make a decent fist, respectively, of All I Ever Need Is You and the title track. The compilation ends with an apposite finale featuring all the set’s guitarists showcasing their various styles (under the moniker Chester Bees) during a hair-raising five-minute ride on board folk evergreen Freight Train.
Tony Hillier
Album reviews for week of September 20 2024:
ELECTRONIC
Ten Days
Fred Again
Warner Music Australia
The son of a barrister and descendant of British gentry, Fred Gibson grew up counting Brian Eno as a neighbour, joining the Roxy Music legend’s singing group as a teen before contributing to two collaborative albums by him and Underworld’s Karl Hyde. This bothers some people, perhaps miffed at the perceived easy ride the now world-beating 31-year-old DJ, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has received. They’re likely the same people who don’t know that before Gibson broke out as Fred Again in 2021 with the first of his three Actual Life albums, he had already claimed a stack of co-writing credits for hits by George Ezra, Rita Ora, Stormzy and Ed Sheeran. Whatever one might say about Fred Again, his adventurous, vulnerable, sample-heavy brand of electronica has connected in a unique way, at a unique time. His 2021 hit Marea (We’ve Lost Dancing) reflected a deep sense of pandemic loss, resonating with a generation of anxious club kids yearning for connection on the dancefloor. Upon his surprise arrival in Australia earlier this year, meanwhile, a series of hastily announced pop-up shows attracted a feverish response, seeing Gibson pack out the Sydney Opera House, headline a loose rave in northern NSW and play several sweaty club shows, including at Melbourne’s notorious Revolver. His musical vulnerability and sense of ‘emotional purging’ has been reinforced via his seemingly DIY – but likely much more carefully curated – social media presence; it’s an endearing, open-book approach to life that aligns with his own honest productions, in which the everyday sounds of car singalongs, voicemail messages and studio mutterings feature.
And so following his maiden Grammy wins earlier this year, this fourth album arrives with a lot of hype; for the most part, it delivers. Scoped around ‘10 songs in 10 days’, this is again Gibson’s personal music diary, and glides between shiny pop-house, a few monster club cuts, and warm, melodic and introspective electronica – much of it elevated by a packed collaborator roster. Half of the 20 tracks serve as short, sample-heavy interludes, an approach that feels unnecessary, but there’s some excellent fare amongst the messiness. Adore You featuring Nigerian singer Obongjayar is unbridled joy briefly interrupted by a jolting hip-hop sample, and deserves its place among Gibson’s better work. Just Stand There, similarly, is a standout, mostly for its goosebump-inducing synth line and stuttered vocal that melds with Irish artist Soak’s spoken-word ode to love. Peace U Need, meanwhile, with its key loop, shuddering bass and lush vocal from Joy Anonymous, mines dancefloor solace to form a personal, if formulaic, mid-tempo house tune; in contrast, I Saw You pursues a more delicate course atop Gibson’s impressive vocal. Body-moving tunes like Places To Be – the tough, atmospheric groove with Anderson .Paak and Chika – and Glow are where he seems most comfortable. In the latter’s case, contributions by Duskus, Four Tet and Skrillex combine to create an epic drop and a thumping club tune. Ten Days has been shaped by quiet intimate moments, but they appear few and far between for this now festival-headlining artist. How Ten Days sounds in 10 years will be telling, but this is a heartfelt, hook-heavy, emotive album for the times.
Tim McNamara
COUNTRY
Songwriter
Johnny Cash
UMG Nashville
“When I’m gone, please don’t release any posthumous albums or songs with my name attached. Those were just demos, and never intended to be heard by the public.” These words, committed to R&B star Anderson .Paak’s arm in a 2021 tattoo, feel particularly pertinent when discussing Songwriter, the fifth album to bear Johnny Cash’s name since his 2003 passing. Granted, completing the American albums – the famed Rick Rubin series that set the benchmark for twilight-years releases – at least made sense for closure’s sake. There feels like less of a definitive reason, however, to rehash these 1993 sessions that were ultimately abandoned once the American project took flight. Not even the most diehard Cash completionist needed to hear The Man In Black sing about picking a woman up at the laundromat (Well Alright), or someone he never actually met (The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach) noodling blues guitar licks over middle-of-the-road rocker Spotlight. Save for tender ballad She Sang Sweet Baby James, this tacked-together half-hour feels thoroughly inconsequential and irrelevant to Cash’s canon.
David James Young
JAZZ
Bliss
Turiya
Independent
This harp trio shares its name with a concept in Hindu philosophy that signifies the true self, so I was expecting Turiya’s music to be somewhat ethereal. It is, however, hard-core modern jazz, played by three full-on Perth musicians: Michelle Smith (harp), Kate Pass (bass) and Talya Valenti (drums). They’re inspired by the music of late American harpist Alice Coltrane, herself a Hindu spiritual leader who adopted the name Turiya. Ten originals are composed by the group members, and there’s much to praise about this album. Its time-feels are of the type that have long been imported into jazz from funk music, and they work well under the solos played, which are invariably excellent and pleasingly melodic. Bliss has great sound overall, but the tasteful work of Valenti in particular provides a very hip drum sound, beautifully recorded. One track didn’t work for me: Solace, featuring a rap artist named POW! Negro, whose words flew by so quickly that I wished they’d been printed on the album sleeve so they could be read and understood.
Eric Myers
ROCK
Ninety Nine
The Angels
Bloodlines
You have to hand it to The Angels. After multiple breakups, deaths, conflicting line-ups, and membership changes, the iconic Australian rock act has once again defied the odds and added to its lengthy catalogue with a perfectly permissible, and at times thrilling, addition. Now a family affair made up of four Brewsters — plus former drummer Nick Norton taking over mic duties following the departure of Dave Gleeson last year — Ninety Nine is, as the press materials insist, an invigorated-sounding record. The title track, Into The Void and Under the Stone sound as hungry and propulsive as ever, while both founding Brewster brothers — Rick and John on lead and rhythm guitar, respectively — give impressive performances. However, this is the first album this band has produced in a decade, and as such their songwriting chops have suffered somewhat, most notably on the confusingly meandering Heart to Heart (no Angels song should ever run to seven minutes), while the grating harmonica of Hue and Cry ruins what would otherwise have been a great closer. Still, while Ninety Nine might not add to its collection of pub-rock staples, there’s more than enough here to excite any veterans of the 1979 Sydney Opera House riots.
Alasdair Belling
SOUL/R&B
South of Here
Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats
Stax Records
Like a bluesman with a life wish, self-diagnosed depressive Nathaniel Rateliff seems able to funnel his existential misery into wildly uplifting music. South of Here, the fourth album for the Missouri native and his magnificent eight-piece band the Night Sweats (three horns, two guitars, keys, bass and drums), puts neither a foot nor a note wrong across 11 tracks with both classic and contemporary influences. From the slow-rolling, Randy Newman-flavoured I Would Like To Heal through the Kings of Leon-fuelled Cars In the Desert to the one-two punch of Remember When I Was a Dancer and Get Used To the Night, both tipping hats to vintage Van Morrison, South of Here is a feast for Rateliff fans and first-timers alike. The title track, whose tumbling drums and torchlit piano point the way of The Band, posits the line: “Maybe south of here they’d let us be / And I’d just have to move on”, an indelible clue to Rateliff’s restless spirit. But the starkest, most telling image comes in the closer, Time Makes Fools of Us All, in which the singer describes just how closely he empathised with his bass player Joseph Pope, a longtime close friend, as he underwent chemo treatment for cancer: “When disease came to steal you / I shaved my head and mourned.”
Phil Stafford
Album reviews for week of September 13 2024:
INDIE POP
Oyster Cuts
Quivers
Merge
Quivers’ 2021 album Golden Doubt lifted the Melbourne quartet to new heights, applying buoyant strings as the band processed personal experiences with grief in real time. Singer/guitarist Sam Nicholson and drummer Holly Thomas each lost a brother not long before they met, and Quivers’ songs continue to reckon with the lingering absence of loved ones. This follow-up record arrives alongside some happy milestones, such as Nicholson getting married and the band signing to veteran US indie label Merge. Yet rather than growing more expansive, the songwriting feels especially up close and confiding. Years after Nicholson sang about going riding on hearses as a dark play on Daryl Braithwaite’s The Horses, he sees repetitive motion as something more promising on Pink Smoke: “We’ll go driving round and round / Showing each other our hometowns”. The first half of that couplet is later repeated with all four members singing it in turn, underscoring the band’s familial closeness. Similarly, low-key 1980s touches on the title track and opener Never Be Lonely heighten a wistful sense of looking into the past, while tape loops and other subtle experimental touches sound distinctly homespun.
The closing Reckless leans into those circular, meandering tones, slowly unspooling as a dreamy statement of dislocation and diffusion. By contrast, Fake Flowers is classic crunchy indie rock, with Nicholson repeating “You’re worth your weight in fake flowers” before admitting that he aspires to be more helpful and hopeful alike. And while loss still lingers in the lyrics to Grief Has Feathers and Screensaver, the feeling of moving forward is unmistakeable. Simply look to lead single Apparition, a casual knockout that echoes the singsong refrain “oh my god” from Pavement’s 1997 single Shady Lane and then adds some chewy power-pop hooks before bassist Bella Quinlan cuts in with her own pain-tinged vocals. Quinlan has been singing lead more and more often for the band, stealing the show on a 2022 cover of a yearning Lucinda Williams country tune. Thomas and guitarist Michael Panton increasingly chime in here too, always honouring the finely tuned sensitivity in these songs. Quivers has been compared to The Go-Betweens, and not just because both are Australian bands plying affable guitar jangle with multiple vocalists. In each case, there’s a nagging degree of subtlety and nuance at work. The songs may be effortlessly catchy, but one can detect new emotional and narrative details in them all the time. Oyster Cuts sees Quivers’ songwriting ring true again and again, even as the arrangements and influences evolve with each album.
Doug Wallen
INDIE POP
9 Sad Symphonies
Kate Nash
Kill Rock Stars
Older fans of British singer-songwriter Kate Nash might be surprised to see she’s back. Newer fans, meanwhile, might be surprised to find out that one of the stars of Netflix’s wrestling-centred TV series Glow is a musician – and one who was pretty popular for a period there, too. That means that listeners are coming to Nash’s first studio album in six years, and fifth overall, either as a curious return customer or as an even more curious first-timer. What a shame, then, that 9 Sad Symphonies promptly underwhelms both parties. In an attempt to differ from her previous efforts, which ranged from bratty piano-pop to raging riot-grrrl, Nash has returned with a set of AM-radio baroque-pop numbers that all pass by inconsequentially. Wasteman sees Nash appropriating Black English Vernacular in a manner that would have been cringe-worthy even in her MySpace days, while Space Odyssey 2001 plods along like a shelved number from a Tim Minchin musical. There’s more than just cracks in the foundations of 9 Sad Symphonies – a single huff could blow this house down.
David James Young
JAZZ/WORLD
Empty Voices
Hamed Sadeghi
Independent
Empty Voices is not a jazz album, even though six brilliant Sydney jazz musicians are present. The album has a Middle Eastern flavour, and it’s that ambience – simple, laid-back, subtle, intimate – which is the album’s most endearing quality. In eight compositions composed and arranged by himself, Hamed Sadeghi is playing the Persian tar, an instrument from the lute family mostly played in Iran and surrounding countries. The backing musicians primarily supply a lovely bed of sound underneath Sadeghi’s virtuosic playing. Still, the flavour of Western jazz also appears in Sadeghi’s soundscape, courtesy of beautiful solos by Sandy Evans (saxophones), Lloyd Swanton (bass), Paul Cutlan (bass clarinet), Michael Avgenicos (alto saxophone), Tom Avgenicos (trumpet) and Adem Yilmaz (percussion). This album is a compelling journey and needs to be absorbed in its entirety. This is not an album where you listen to the first track to decide whether you like the music or not. As in all serious music, you need to come to it in order to fully experience its exquisite beauty.
Eric Myers
POP
Good Together
Lake Street Dive
Signature Sounds
From humble beginnings 20 years ago as a Boston-based bunch of music-student buskers who named themselves after one of their early drinking haunts, Lake Street Dive has now released its eighth album. Produced by Grammy winner Mike Elizondo (Fiona Apple, Sheryl Crow), Good Together is unashamedly mainstream pop, though not without its clever quirks – the slinky 7/8 tempo of the title track, the Oingo Boingo-meets-Devo jauntiness of Far Gone, and working a mouthful of a word like “prognostication” into the lyric of Better Not Tell You. Befitting Lake Street Dive’s origins as a busking outfit, the bottom line is 11 tracks of wildly eclectic, retro-styled funk, Latin and soul-influenced pop featuring Sydney-born lead singer Rachael Price, whose chameleonic voice is equally at home with the jazz phrasing and blue notes of Amy Winehouse (Seats at the Bar) through to the octave-swooping cadences of Joni Mitchell (Walking Uphill). All members of the band write, too, with double bassist Bridget Kearney, guitarist James Cornelison and drummer Mike Calabrese chiming in on backing vocals. It’s a long way from belting out covers of Hall & Oates and Jacksons songs on YouTube back in the noughties.
Phil Stafford
ELECTRONIC
Tekno Train: the Album
Paul Mac
Stereogamous Sounds
Australian dance music stalwart Paul Mac is many things – producer, remixer, singer/songwriter, academic and serial collaborator – but train buff is a new one to most. One of the surprise packages of this year’s Vivid Sydney festival, Tekno Train saw Mac perform original techno soundtracks on trains snaking across disused city train lines. In custom-lit carriages that responded to the train’s speed and outside landscape, the multiple ARIA Award-winner curated an immersive “sensory rollercoaster” that proved a hit. Even without those immersive accompaniments, Mac’s two short mixes comfortably stand on their own, marked by mechanical blips, industrial synths and distorted vocal stabs that, together, create a sense of rhythmic forward motion. Route 1 – the Scenic Route – darts between the key-led and steadily building Saint James Lake Lustre, and closer A View from the Bridge to the Opera, whose delicate string intro masks its pounding underbelly. Route 2 – The Tek Express – features the brooding City Circle Circuitry with its expansive bass and shiny sonics, while An Audience with the Saint and Sophie is a standout with its bumpy bassline and chugging flow. Aided by trusted collaborators, Mac has here delivered a uniquely Australian work. All aboard.
Tim McNamara
