Album review: Vika and Linda stun with long-awaited collection ‘The Wait’
Probably the last thing anyone expected from Vika and Linda Bull after their surprise gospel hit of 2020 was a rock record, but that’s largely what The Wait delivers.
Album reviews for week of September 18, 2021:
ROCK
The Wait
Vika & Linda
Bloodlines
Probably the last thing anyone expected from Vika and Linda Bull after their surprise 2020 lockdown hit, Sunday (The Gospel According To Iso), was a rock record. But that’s largely what The Wait – the duo’s first album of original songs in 19 years – delivers, from the banshee blues wail of Since You’re Gone, which could almost be a long-lost Led Zeppelin out-take, to the breathless come-on of Lover Don’t Keep Me Waiting. The songwriting contributors alone are a rollcall of Australian rock: Paul Kelly, Don Walker, Chris Cheney, Bernard Fanning, Ben Salter and Glenn Richards among them, with two songs by Kasey Chambers (co-written with Brandon Dodd) and one by Mick Thomas (with Jemma Rowlands). Perhaps the most eccentric inclusion is Teeth, a song by Eva Seymour, daughter of Hunters & Collectors leader Mark. So named for its opening line – “Teeth, you never quite sank into me” – the song’s clever phrasing, beguiling waltz-time rhythm and excoriating lyric (“Despite your smile you got nothing I want / I return what you told me was your heart”) exude world-weary wisdom, all the more so when you discover Seymour wrote it in her teens.
Glenn Richards’s Pigface and Calendula is similarly offbeat, a gardening song of sorts with gutbucket bass and drums, sparkling piano from co-producer Cameron Bruce and a street-tough rock attack that recalls vintage Suzi Quatro. The Wait is suffused with spontaneity, Bruce’s tasteful string arrangements and layered keys offset by Ash Naylor’s casually elegant guitars. Linda Bull sings lead on only four tracks, but two of those are standout performances: the delicately acoustic Not The Same Girl, and the darkly comic Hand Grenade (“I think it’s time to lob a hand grenade / Into the middle of this grand charade”). The sibling harmonies, as usual, seem effortless, while Vika wrings every last drop of emotion from Ben Salter’s pensive My Heart is in the Wrong Place. Rabbit Hole, on the other hand, is a full-tilt piano boogie with both sisters bringing the tune to a raucous crescendo. Hopefully audiences won’t have to wait too long to hear this and the album’s 11 other songs in a live setting.
Phil Stafford
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JAZZ
Land Of If
Ball Hanlon Schulz
Earshift Music
This album reveals Melbourne’s Eugene Ball to be a genuine pioneer in what one might call the post-Scott Tinkler trumpet era. It has 10 originals either by Ball or Anthony Schulz which place Ball’s thought-provoking trumpet style against the sounds of Schulz’s piano accordion. Schulz’s playing subdues elements which some consider essential to jazz, such as the blues and the swing feel, and the immaculately correct playing of double bassist Ben Hanlon underlines this approach. The result is the flavour of classical chamber music, rather than the usual rollicking ambience of jazz. However, Ball is in no way inhibited. His playing is a tour de force, freely exploring the trumpet’s sound possibilities, and transcending what appears to be on the surface a rather stringent context. Ultimately, this is an album of somewhat playful music, filled with subtle nuances, which are revealed more and more through repeated listenings. I would expect the receptive listener, coming to the music with open ears and generosity of spirit, to love this album.
Eric Myers
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FOLK/EXPERIMENTAL
Trust
Armlock
Solitaire/Spunk
From its origin as a series of swapped voice memos to its textured production in a home studio, everything about this debut record exudes intimacy. A new outlet for Simon Lam and Hamish Mitchell, who have played together in the electronic-minded acts I’lls and Couture, Armlock applies the duo’s nuanced tinkering to more folk-leaning songs. As Lam’s confiding murmur and Mitchell’s acoustic guitar weave through opener April, fluctuating noises and an eventual kick of drums roughen that delicate latticework for gorgeous results. Disorienting effects and instrumentation ghost across the album, as do guest Juice Webster’s couched vocal harmonies. That layered yet low-key approach recalls the sparser side of intricate emo bands like American football as well as The Notwist’s sensitive, flickering folktronica. You can even hear fingers moving across guitar strings on the devastating centrepiece Turf War. At only 20 minutes long, Trust is over too soon, but those subtle, lived-in touches continue to resonate.
Doug Wallen
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INDIE POP
Love Signs
The Jungle Giants
Amplifire/Together We Can Work Together
If you want to see the semantics separating indie-rock and indie-pop, follow the trajectory of The Jungle Giants. The Brisbane quartet emerged with jangly guitars and freewheeling urgency in the early 2010s, but spent the last five or so years reinventing with focus on groove-oriented, keyboard-heavy bangers. It’s been a thoroughly successful transition, as ARIA nominations and Hottest 100 placements will testify. Where Love Signs largely falters, then, is its rollout. The electric Heavy Hearted and dancefloor-filler Send Me Ur Loving are indeed among the Giants’ best ever, but they’re also two years and 18 months old, respectively. With literally half the album having already been released, listening in full feels like watching a movie where the trailer gave away the best parts. Fresh arrivals feel either disjointed (Heartless) or generally undercooked (Monstertruck), leaving Love Signs with an overall lessened impact. A shame, given both the band’s potential and its clear knack for standout singles.
David James Young
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DANCE
Loving In Stereo
Jungle
Caiola Records/AWAL
If you’re in search of luscious, atmospheric electronica that sends spirits soaring and dares you not to dance, then Jungle’s third album fits that bill. Keep Moving is house-infused, vintage disco-dazzle, leading smoothly into the rolling, Jackson Five vibe of All of the Time. Combining elements of Daft Punk and Giorgio Moroder-style synths with the big, bouncing beats of Basement Jaxx and the summery, club-friendly sound of Groove Armada, there’s no missteps on the British duo’s tightly curated, composed dancefloor soundtrack. Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland grew up in London, nourished by cassette tapes of reggae music, shops blasting Bhangra, orchestral music at school, and their siblings in rock bands. The eclectic music scene that tells the multicultural story of London is represented across 14 celebratory tracks. Talk About It and Goodbye My Love (featuring Tamil-Swiss vocalist Priya Ragu) contain particularly infectious grooves that are worthy of playing at maximum volume, either in the club or your loungeroom.
Cat Woods
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Album reviews for week of September 11, 2021:
ROOTS/ROCK
Saint Georges Road
The Black Sorrows
Ambition/Sony
Maltese-Australian bandleader Joe Camilleri is a one-man industry, his many outfits having employed upwards of 100 musicians over the years – 40 of those in revolving-door line-ups of the Black Sorrows. That this is his 50th album, no less, is easier to get your head around once you realise he’s been playing music in one form or another since the mid-’60s. Almost half of those 50 albums are by the Sorrows, which began as a loose cafe combo Camilleri formed after the demise of Jo Jo Zep & the Falcons, his first successful band, in 1981. The singer, songwriter and saxophonist, now 73, has also fronted rootsy offshoots the Revelators and Bakelite Radio, New Orleans-inspired big brass band the Voodoo Sheiks and even a Van Morrison tribute act; as a singer Camilleri has long been likened to the Irish curmudgeon. But the Black Sorrows is still his main event, and Saint Georges Road is its most accessible album yet. The trademark roots ’n’ retro jukebox elements remain (the rockabilly-gospel Revolutionary Blues and sweet zydeco romp Chiquita), but there’s also brassy soul-pop in the opening one-two punch of What Stephanie Knows and the jazz-kissed What’s Taken Your Smile Away.
Livin’ Like Kings is a busy story-song with a bitter twist about an ageing criminal gang “with one last job to pull” and Holy Man calls out the avarice of evangelism. The title track is a poignant rumination on mortality, while mysterious closer King Without A Throne has you wondering about its subject. Could it be about departed radio/TV king Graham Kennedy (“no stranger to vulgar taste”)? Wall-of-Sound Svengali and convicted murderer Phil Spector (“somehow his talent to coerce / was a fatal curse”)? Listen and wonder. Meanwhile guitarist Shannon Bourne channels Carlos Santana on My Heart Don’t Feel A Thing (“it won’t ache / no, it can’t break”), a Latin-tinged hymn of denial. Another Blue Day is old-school bluesy soul, on which Wilbur Wilde reunites with Camilleri to reprise the Falcons’ horn section (also on board is that band’s erstwhile producer Peter Solley, who plays keys on several tracks). Blues shouter Only Got Yourself To Blame could even have fit into the Falcons’ live set, with longtime Sorrows lyricist Nick Smith waxing existential: “We’re all God’s creatures in this human zoo / He leaves the cage doors open just to see what we’ll do”. Long may those doors continue to revolve.
Phil Stafford
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COUNTRY/BLUES
Exit Wounds
The Wallflowers
New West Records
On his first album under the Wallflowers moniker since 2012, it’s impossible not to hear the influence of Bob Dylan on his son, Jakob. Dylan Senior’s 1961 folk-blues masterpiece I Was Young When I Left Home is the ghost contained within Exit Wounds, Jakob’s seventh album since 1992 with what has become his solo project. On the third track I Hear The Ocean, there’s a spaciousness which invokes hot desert winds through open car windows. There’s revelrous honky-tonk piano and guitars both twangy or swelling with steely volume, all richly evoking both the ‘50s Nashville sound and Laurel Canyon’s pioneering ‘60s folk-rock. Memories of jukeboxes and sticky carpet infuse The Dive Bar In My Heart, while Darlin’ Hold On is a gorgeous ballad partnering Dylan with the Southern-charmed, Americana vocals of Shelby Lynne. Here, he sounds less like Bob and more like Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman. Blessed with the spirit of the great American blues-country-folk vocalists of the sixties, Dylan here offers a fresh, modern take on a classic sound.
Cat Woods
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FOLK
To Enjoy is the Only Thing
Maple Glider
Pieater/Partisan
Not many songwriters would dare to sit as exposed as Tori Zietsch does across her debut album as Maple Glider. With only the sparsest accompaniment – spidery acoustic guitar, muted piano or light drumming – Zietsch turns her tremulous, often layered voice to intense personal reflection. Informed by her return to Melbourne after lengthy travels abroad and a break-up along the way, the album also revisits her strict religious upbringing. During the closing Mama It’s Christmas, it even feels like we’re eavesdropping on intimate scenes from her family. That song won a 2017 competition that enabled Zietsch to record with producer Tom Iansek (Big Scary, #1 Dads), whose measured approach encourages close listening. Even when Zietsch sings with resounding emotion on Good Thing, just as impactful are the subtle creaks and rustles heard during the extended fadeout. And when she confesses “I’m not good at faking” on another song, that’s a decided understatement considering the honesty she displays here.
Doug Wallen
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