Album review: Alex the Astronaut showcases her brightest gifts on album No.2

Following a breakthrough 2017 track and her 2020 debut album, this ARIA-nominated Sydney artist continues to sharpen her unique songwriting voice.

Indie pop singer-songwriter Alex the Astronaut, aka Alexandra Lynn, at Clovelly beach in Sydney; her newly released second album showcases her brightest gifts. Picture: John Feder

Album reviews for week of July 22, 2022:

 

INDIE POP

How to Grow a Sunflower Underwater

Alex the Astronaut

Warner Music Australia

★★★★

Imparting personal disclosures with breezy spontaneity, Alexandra Lynn ping-pongs between revelatory turns on her second album as Alex the Astronaut. Following her breakthrough 2017 track Not Worth Hiding, which championed acceptance in the face of Australia’s same-sex marriage plebiscite, and her 2020 debut album The Theory of Absolutely Nothing, Lynn continues to sharpen a unique songwriting voice. In fact, it often sounds as if she’s dispensing words just fast enough to keep up with her rapid-fire thought process, lending these folky pop songs a somewhat frantic air that is echoed in their loping arrangements. For that reason, it’s possible to miss the full impact of the Sydneysider’s lyrics on first listen. Take the frisky single Octopus, which opens with playful water effects and initially seems like a surface-level ode to the titular creature. But listen more closely and you’ll note Lynn’s musings on how that animal can blend in with its surroundings and how she previously has felt the need to do the same. Yet since a recent autism diagnosis, she’s ready to celebrate diverse perspectives while also describing the sensory overload of something as mundane as grocery shopping.

Rendering the deeply personal as conversational is one of Lynn’s brightest gifts, and there’s a celebratory air to her work that keeps her lyrics from feeling like over-sharing, even when she’s describing trauma and darker times. In the midst of so many fresh-faced anthems — primarily co-produced with members of Brisbane’s like-minded Ball Park Music — Lynn captures the competing frequencies of everyday life. Common objects such as cars and jumpers take on totemic significance during the act of retelling on album opener Growing Up, one of many tracks benefiting from darting string arrangements by Daniel Chae. Airport rides a similar stream-of-consciousness momentum, while Haircut — inspired by Lynn shearing her locks for charity — is an empowering snapshot of self-discovery: “I’m feeling like who I’m supposed to be.” It’s incredibly rousing, both musically and lyrically. Lynn writes feel-good indie pop without sanding down the ragged edges of moment-to-moment emotion. It’s as if she’s thinking out loud, in the best way.

Doug Wallen

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INDIE POP

Dance Fever

Florence + The Machine

Polydor/Universal

★★★

On May 13 the world was listening to Florence Welch, although perhaps not the way she’d intended. The same day British band Florence + the Machine put out its fifth album, US rapper Kendrick Lamar did the same – which also happened to feature a sample of Florence’s song June on a key track. Unfair timing? Maybe, but this born-under-a-bad-sign stigma is perhaps more reflective of Dance Fever than you may think. Though Welch’s famed voice has remained as celestial and ethereal as ever over the years, the landscape around the band has shifted dramatically since its 2009 debut album. Evolution is present on cuts such as emotional, electric Free and the disco-ready My Love, replete with dynamic switch-ups and irresistible choruses. Elsewhere, though, this momentum simply isn’t kept up; the result is acoustic detours, puzzling inconsistencies and even a near-unlistenable interlude in Restraint. For a band that felt oceanic at the height of its powers, on Dance Fever Welch and co apprehensively dip their toes in far too often.

David James Young

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ROCK/EXPERIMENTAL

A Light for Attracting Attention

The Smile

XL Recordings

★★★★

It has been six years since Radiohead has released an album, though we’ve seen impressive reissue packages. It may not be canonical Radiohead, but The Smile reunites singer Thom Yorke and guitarist Jonny Greenwood alongside drummer Tom Skinner (Sons of Kemet, Floating Points) and Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. That core pair sound distinctive enough together that longtime fans should be appeased by this debut album, which ranges naturally through assorted moods and arrangements. The Same opens the record with eroded, sonar-like synths and Yorke’s singing from a flighty remove, and soon the band is progressing through abrasive rock (You Will Never Work in Television Again), pillowy piano and strings (Pana-vision), jazz-like intricacy (Thin Thing) and hard-charging rhythmic imperatives. There’s a smeary surrealism that keeps us from getting too close to exactly what Yorke is singing about, but followers of his regular band will be well used to that by now.

Doug Wallen

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ALTERNATIVE

Raw Data Feel

Everything Everything

Infinity Industries/AWAL

★★★★

From a British band so fixated on technology’s horrors, an album written with the help of AI is the last thing you’d expect. Even more surprising, the end product is Everything Everything’s most human album to date. Spluttering to life with Teletype’s jagged synths, frontman Jonathan Higgs’s falsetto floats, powerful and vulnerable all at once. Pulsating dance beats and meticulously layered guitars across Bad Friday and Cut Up! refine the band’s contagious energy into artfully constructed pop songs. It’s in the quieter moments, though, where Raw Data Feel reveals its true beauty. The echo of Leviathan’s piercing refrain, the cathartic simplicity of the airy Jennifer, and Higgs’s impressive vocals on the shimmering Kevin’s Car unearth a poignant narrative. The intimate lyrics centre on recovering from trauma, and hit deeper with every listen. Through the AI he nicknamed Kevin, Higgs tries to move beyond the grief that colours every memory, reprogramming that other unreliable computer: the brain.

Sam King

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AMERICANA

Jerry Jeff

Steve Earle

New West Records

★★★★

With Jerry Jeff, Steve Earle completes a triptych of tribute albums inspired by “first-hand teachers”, following his 2009 and 2019 genuflections to departed fellow Texan titans Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark. Jerry Jeff Walker, an adopted son of Texas who died in 2020, is best known as the composer of Mr Bojangles, a song covered by everyone from Bob Dylan to Nina Simone and memorably rendered here by Earle at his most soulful, accompanied by exquisite mandolin, fiddle and pedal steel. More pertinently, though, the album fulfils its primary function: to showcase some lesser-known but no less excellent songs written by the cosmic cowboy. The task is achieved with characteristic aplomb by Earle & the Dukes — most notably in a freewheeling personalised version of Walker’s tongue-in-cheek country-folk romp Gettin’ By and in a Tex-Mex accordion-infused take of his own Gypsy Songman. Earle’s acoustic fingerpicked readings of Little Bird and My Old Man highlight the quality of his hero’s meditative balladry.

Tony Hillier

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Album reviews for week of July 15, 2022:

 

COUNTRY/SOUL/AMERICANA

Kingmaker

Tami Neilson

Outside Music

★★★★

Like Australia’s Kasey Chambers, Tami Neilson learned her trade in a travelling family band. The Canadian-born, NZ-based singer-songwriter lays claim to opening for Johnny Cash at age 18 “in my pyjamas”, and also shared formative stages with Tanya Tucker and Kitty Wells. The latter is name-checked in King of Country Music, a track from Neilson’s fifth album, Kingmaker, in which she sings: “Sometimes that country pedigree is earned / You watch and learn … could the King of Country Music be the daughter, not the son?” If you hadn’t guessed, there’s a strong streak of female empowerment running through this record; nothing unusual for Neilson, whose previous album title Chickaboom! dropped a none-too-subtle hint. On this one, recorded at Neil Finn’s Roundhead Studios in Auckland, it starts from the top with the wide-screen cinematic sweep of the title track. After a noodling reverb guitar intro and over a swelling nine-piece string section with a Greek chorus, Neilson’s exquisite mezzo swoops from operatic heights through deep soul to country, recalling the vocal versatility of compatriot kd lang. It’s followed by Careless Woman, sparse by contrast with just bass drum and handclaps, clarinet and defiant voice: “I wanna care less, I wanna be her when I grow up”.

Ennio Morricone guitars, pedal steel, more strings and even a whistling cowboy dress up the enigmatic Baby, You’re a Gun, while the unashamedly commercial single, Beyond the Stars, finds Neilson duetting with Willie Nelson in country waltz time with whispering acoustic guitars and subliminal mariachi horns. It’s after this quasi-interlude that the album gets down to business. The cautionary, country-funk Green Peaches addresses the exploitation of young women, with Neilson’s vocal swagger fusing Bobbie Gentry and Shania Twain. Mama’s Talkin’ is ersatz rock ’n’ roll, mining Elvis Costello’s Pump It Up, and the lush strings and heartfelt lyrics of I Can Forget — a torch song co-written with Neilson’s late father — pay tribute to her first musical mentor. Next, closing the album on a raucous note with busy drums, squawking sax and dirty wah-wah guitar, Neilson declaims her crowning manifesto: whatever you (men) would have me do, it Ain’t My Job. Then she cackles with laughter over a car-crash false ending.

Phil Stafford

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JAZZ

Into Light

Claire Cross

Hope Street Recordings

★★★★

Unless you’re Jaco Pastorious, an electric bassist normally hides in the background in a supportive role. As leader however, how does a bassist express her musical vision? Melbourne’s Claire Cross has answered the call in what is arguably a pastoral work. Her core ensemble is unusual, rarely heard in jazz: two horns (saxophone & trombone), two strings (viola & cello), guitar, piano and electric bass. Virtually no drums, although they, along with percussion and other instruments, appear sparingly on some tracks. Six works, composed and arranged by Cross, sound exceedingly warm and mellow, so that adjectives in the publicity blurb are spot on: dark-hued, immersive, subtle, sensitive, delicate. Cross’s arrangements are enhanced by lyrical jazz solos throughout, in particular those of alto saxophonist Flora Carbo who solos on three tracks, trombonist Jordan Murray (two tracks) and Cross herself (two tracks). Cross aptly describes her relaxing and contemplative album as “an exploration of simplicity”. I believe many will find it compulsive.

Eric Myers

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CALYPSO

Carnival of the Ghosts

Kobo Town

Stonetree Records

★★★★½

The band named after a neighbourhood in the Trinidadian capital of Port of Spain that spawned calypso continues to single-handedly regenerate and reinvigorate this once globally popular Afro-Caribbean genre. Under the inspired direction of Canada-based singer, songwriter and guitarist Drew Gonsalves, who was raised in Kobo Town, calypso has 21st century currency. While retaining the genre’s traditional aspects of rhyming verse vernacular, good-natured vehemence, storytelling and sociopolitical commentary, Kobo Town injects jazzy blasts of blazing brass and fuzzed-up electric guitars, underpinned with ska and other roots reggae riddim, making its energetic music eminently danceable. Eschewing the Caribbean history prevalent in the band’s previously released songs, Gonsalves casts his net wider here. By drawing on the vices and virtues of current humanity, Kobo Town’s fourth album in 15 years encompasses philosophical reflections on mortality; cancel culture mentality, and the misuse of power pervasive in today’s world.

Tony Hillier

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BLUES ROCK

Dropout Boogie

The Black Keys

Nonesuch Records

★★★

Dropout Boogie is an example of The Black Keys knowing exactly what works best in their repertoire. Having rewired global perceptions of — and connection to — modern rock music since 2011’s mega-hit El Camino, the US duo has used the ensuing years to explore a range of different modes and tones. Yet it’s in this dive-bar ready, good-time inducing album No.11 that Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach feel most at home, and the listener will likely feel the same way. Opener Wild Child buzzes with its rich blues-rock notes: the type of song that leaves you wondering if anything else on the album could top it. Tracks like For the Love of Money and Burn the Damn Thing Down come close; both tracks demonstrate Auerbach and Carney’s dynamism and ease of bouncing off one another. The album is a love letter to The Black Keys’ clear and undying affinity for the genre, and it’s a fun ride to join them on. Dropout Boogie is the perfect gateway album for new fans and for long-timers, and it’s a reminder that the duo remains masters of their craft.

Sosefina Fuamoli

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FOLK/POP

Listen to the Water

Luke Steele

EMI

★★★

Luke Steele’s debut solo album doesn’t just find him shedding Empire of the Sun’s elaborate soft-rock theatrics, but penning songs on his new-found family farm in Northern California. Two decades after his band The Sleepy Jackson started amassing buzz, Steele is finally letting his idiosyncratic voice shine in an intimate setting. These 14 songs are mostly built around minimalistic guitar and synth, with some pedal steel and percussion from guests Dan Dugmore and Brian Kilgore, respectively. That stripped-back approach combines with Steele’s day-dreamy singing and soul-searching lyrics to create something like New Age folk, with the title track questioning the plasticine sound of modern radio. Only the floaty hook and pronounced chorus of lead single Common Man truly evokes EOTS, while Here Is Help sees his singing break out more than anywhere else here, with mind-bending cosmic touches from Dugmore. The album could have used more flourishes like that, adding wonky colour to Steele’s peaceable yet often beige musings.

Doug Wallen