Album review: Riffs, stars and gems abound on the Rolling Stones’ Hackney Diamonds
Even at the age of 80, seemingly unstoppable showman Mick Jagger maintains a rich vein of vocal form on the Rolling Stones’ 24th album.
Album reviews for week of October 27 2023:
ROCK
Hackney Diamonds
The Rolling Stones
Polydor/Universal
In 2016, the Rolling Stones broke an 11-year recording drought by releasing Blue & Lonesome. What stood out in an otherwise workmanlike set of blues covers was Mick Jagger’s revitalised vocals. The now 80-year-old seemingly unstoppable showman maintains that rich vein of form on the Stones’ 24th album, Hackney Diamonds, the band’s first collection of original material since 2005’s A Bigger Bang. Last year Jagger co-wrote and sang Strange Game, the sardonic theme song to Slow Horses, a taut spy thriller TV series featuring another seasoned veteran, Gary Oldman, in the leading role. And while his own “range” of characters on Hackney Diamonds is largely restricted to variations on his patented ageing roue, there’s no doubting Jagger’s staying power. “Tell me you’d rather die than live without me,” he crows with typical braggadocio on Get Close, before extracting the piss from his own legend on the very next track, Depending On You: “I’m too young for dying and too old to lose.” As for the other Stones, six-string bookends Ron Wood and Keith Richards effortlessly alternate lead, rhythm, steel and slide guitars throughout, with late drummer Charlie Watts appearing on two songs. His able (and personally recommended) replacement, Steve Jordan, effectively ghosts Watts’s sound and attack, while former Stones bassist Bill Wyman pops up on Live By The Sword, sharing a studio with his old band for the first time in 30 years.
However, his perfunctory performance is dazzlingly outshone by one Paul McCartney, whose searing fuzz bass on the punkish Bite My Head Off reprises the last time the former Beatle employed that effect on Think For Yourself, from 1965’s Rubber Soul album. There are other big-name guests on Hackney Diamonds, so named for the glass fragments left behind after a smash ’n’ grab; blink and you’d miss Elton John and Stevie Wonder’s piano cameos, though it’s impossible to ignore Lady Gaga’s insistent falsetto on the penultimate gospel-blues showstopper, Sweet Sounds of Heaven. It’s followed by a sparsely acoustic reading of Muddy Waters’ Rolling Stone Blues, a sign-off that ostensibly brings its namesake band full circle 61 years after its formation. However, Jagger has already flagged in recent interviews that there was enough material left over from these sessions for a follow-up. Chances are it won’t take another seven years to release.
Phil Stafford
DANCE/ ELECTRONIC
Under Utopia
Skeleten
Astral People Recordings
If Russell Fitzgibbon has a spirit animal, I am guessing it is a cat. Working under the misspelled moniker of Skeleten, the Sydney producer, multi-instrumentalist and singer’s Under Utopia debut is both understated and perpetually moving; dreamy yet full of crystalline rising grooves. The charm is in his singing, gliding between the near-spoken and a falsetto croon that rides and pushes minimalist dance music atmospheres with room for your mind as much as your feet. It helps he is an excellent lyricist with a faintly urgent, almost spiritual need to communicate: “I want to taste blood when I chew memories” (No Drones In the Afterlife); “Yeah, I got caught in a list of nights” (Sharing the Fire); songs like Mirrored reflecting on an identity thrown back at him from images loose in the world … a cut knee, a parking lot, a body he desires. Now and then a pulse charges a tune with a rhythmic burst of light. It’s all so simple, yet effective, as Skeleten’s sweetness and uncertainty slinks towards you then floats away.
Mark Mordue
HEAVY METAL
Rivers of Heresy
Empire State Bastard
Roadrunner Records
Empire State Bastard is the new side project of Simon Neil — frontman of arena-filling Scottish rock trio Biffy Clyro — and former Oceansize guitarist Mike Vennart, with Slayer’s Dave Lombardo joining the duo on drums and Bitch Falcon’s Naomi Macleod on bass. The first thing any fan of the aforementioned bands will note is that the new act is entirely its own beast. Violent, high-pitched growls; gravelly, hefty guitar riffs; rapid-fire drumbeats and ever-shifting tempos: these are the defining features of the debut 10-track album Rivers of Heresy. It’s 35 minutes of heavy, heavy metal, with little heed paid to traditional song structure. The first two tracks epitomise the impenetrable screamathon. It’s not until the third song that Neil’s Scottish brogue appears in his regular singing voice. Tired, Aye? takes the experiment to another level, with only drums to back Neil’s furious growls. It’s a joy ride for keen heavy metal fans chasing something original, and it’s worth a spin — but not necessarily one to be played on repeat.
Charlie Peel
FOLK NOIR
Dreamer Awake
Rachel Sermanni
Navigator/Planet
With Dreamer Awake, a deeply personal album, Rachel Sermanni boldly dives into a pool of sonic subconscious to reflect on existential concerns. On Jacob — the first single release from her fifth long-player in 11 years — the Scottish singer-songwriter muses on motherhood in the wake of a long-term relationship break-up and the need to regain self-love. With her soft, seductive voice engendering a degree of mysticism over minimalistic accompaniment of contrasting musical textures, Sermanni’s poetic folk noir attains a dreamlike state while retaining a raw emotional connection. Dark thoughts surface during sleepless nights in a couple of her new songs. The first verse of Liminal, for example, opens with the evocative lines, “Pulled from the dream by my own lone cry / Rain on the window, shadow in my eye / I lie in wait for sense to come and shake me”. And in the concluding stanza of the title track: “Bare the teeth, roll the tongue / White of eyes, sing the unsung”.
Tony Hillier
JAZZ
New Beginning
Nic Vardanega
Independent
The Australian-born guitarist Nic Vardanega has lived in New York since 2016, where he completed a Masters of Music in Jazz Studies at New York University. This is his third album, which he dedicates to the “new beginning” of the post-pandemic world, and to the birth of his first child. He’s accompanied here by two excellent American musicians, Ben Allison (double bass) and Allan Mednard (drums) who, as usual, play with typical NYC expertise and flair. Considered on its own terms, Vardanega’s music sounds faultless, even perfect. He has a lovely sound on the guitar in all registers, and his eight compositions presented here are beautifully written, exploring a variety of well-known time-feels. The more you listen to this music, the more you are drawn into a rather exquisite world, where his symmetrical improvisations and the subtle nuances in his music are a source of great delight. This is not music where there’s excitement on the surface, but it affords the listener a rather deep, quiet and contemplative experience.
Eric Myers
Album reviews for week of October 20 2023:
COUNTRY/FOLK
Birdsong
Felicity Urquhart and Josh Cunningham
ABC Music
There’s a new musical mafia operating on Australia’s east coast, but its intentions are entirely honourable. Its ranks include Brisbane-based vocal/guitar duo Minor Gold, singer-songwriter-guitarist Jeremy Edwards (whose new solo album Ghosts is reviewed on this page), and Felicity Urquhart and Josh Cunningham, whose second album Birdsong follows 2021’s auspicious debut, The Song Club. With a nod to honorary mafia don Shane Nicholson, also from regional NSW, what all these artists have in common is a literate approach to lyrics with a musical emphasis on melody, harmony and vocal clarity. Call it folk, call it country, what counts most is songcraft. Although award-winning country singer Urquhart and Cunningham (a founding member of WA country-folk band the Waifs) explored a then blossoming personal relationship on the couple’s debut, Birdsong concerns itself with weightier themes, often – which comes as sweet relief – from an observer’s viewpoint.
The gospel-flavoured co-write Fly By Night, for example, addresses a woman’s desperate escape from abuse; by contrast, Cunningham’s Size Up candidly charts a childhood spent in hand-me-downs. The wider metaphor is adapting to adversity and rising beyond it, and Cunningham also waxes philosophical on the waltz-time Softer Side: “Life is a chronic condition / The prognosis is terminal,” he sings. Just to reassure us he’s joking, Cunningham expands on his theme later in the song: “We’re all living on death row / Searching in vain for the way out / But the location is classified / If they told you, then they’d have to kill you.”
Between them, the couple handles damn near every small stringed instrument known to man or woman: acoustic, electric, baritone, high-strung and slide guitars, mandotar (a mandolin/guitar hybrid), banjos and ukuleles. Vocally, they trade either lines or verses before sweetly harmonising on the choruses, and the blend is alchemical. On Cunningham’s wryly titled closer We’ll Never Get Out of Love Alive, keys (mellotron and Hammond organ) make a cameo appearance courtesy of producer Matt Fell. This song, along with the two-step country rocker Guessing Game, recalls the best of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, while several others share traits with more recent musical couplings, such as Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, or Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. These comparisons do nothing to dilute Urquhart and Cunningham’s identity as Australia’s first couple of folk-country.
Phil Stafford
LATIN JAZZ
Timba a la Americana
Harold Lopez-Nussa
Blue Note
The international reputation of Harold Lopez-Nussa — the latest in a veritable conga line of Cuban piano prodigies — has increased significantly with each of his albums. Recorded in France, this fabulous first release for American jazz’s premier label Blue Note continues the upward trajectory, as he propels Latin jazz into the 2020s and beyond. He’s joined here by the all-round expertise of American innovator and Snarky Puppy top dog Michael League as co-composer, instrumentalist and producer, the virtuosic French harmonica player Gregoire Maret, and the propulsion of a red-hot rhythm section at his back. All of these factors have pushed Lopez-Nussa to stunning new heights of creativity. In between the fast and furious Funky – a perfectly named opener – and the similarly paced closer Hope, the pianist resets the clave rhythms that are the heartbeat of Cuban music with dazzling danzon and mesmerising mambo chops on acoustic and electric piano. This maestro of the ivories is equally impressive in the slower paces of a stately son and a temperate tumba.
Tony Hillier
INSTRUMENTAL/SOUNDTRACK
End of the Day
Courtney Barnett
Milk! Records
For a songwriter so acclaimed for her lyrics, it’s an unexpected move for Courtney Barnett to release an album of improvised instrumentals. These compositions make more sense as the soundtrack for Danny Cohen’s documentary Anonymous Club, which follows the Melbourne musician through the highs and lows of touring life across three years. Yet even on its own, End of the Day succeeds well beyond its peaceable ambient vibes. It’s fascinating to hear Barnett stretch the possibilities of her guitar playing, evoking Dirty Three’s Mick Turner more than once. Tracks bleed quietly into the next, with in-demand drummer Stella Mozgawa (Warpaint, Kurt Vile) similarly stepping out of her comfort zone to explore spontaneous synth motifs. Besides representing the final release on Milk! Records, the indie label Barnett founded with songwriter Jen Cloher, this low-key soundtrack feels like a creative reset for one of Australia’s most distinctive voices. Only time will tell how this wider path of expression informs what she does next.
Doug Wallen
FOLK/ROOTS
Ghosts
Jeremy Edwards
Checked Label Services
As a line from the title track of this stunning record puts it, “feels like home”. Jeremy Edwards, guitarist/songwriter with NSW roots band Kevin Bennett & the Flood and Queensland-based blues/funk outfit Jen Mize & the Rough n Tumble, has found his metier with Ghosts, his second solo album. More accurately a two-man band, Edwards and producer/multi-instrumentalist Josh Schuberth (drums, bass, keys, lap steel, guitar) join a formidable list of collaborators that includes Bennett, Mize, Shane Nicholson, Felicity Urquhart and Josh Cunningham, all of whom sing backups. Bennett also co-writes three songs, all clean winners: Gomeroi, voicing the female protagonist in a vexed small-town interracial relationship (”Black and white, it’s all right / Until it comes to hate”); Nothin’ But the Blues, originally improvised live in front of an audience during a songwriters’ workshop; and 18, a coming-of-age rumination that sonically recalls the best of The Band. Most of Ghosts is acoustic-based, apart from biting blues-rocker Edge of the World and the sardonic Good Morning America, a steel guitar-laced Trump take-down like no other: “Death rides a pale horse with a big red hat”.
Phil Stafford
ELECTRONIC/DANCE
For That Beautiful Feeling
The Chemical Brothers
Universal Music
Whether during the 90s’ rave culture explosion, or the more recent meteoric rise — and welcome plateau — of the EDM juggernaut, the Chemical Brothers’ big beats have remained a beacon of adventurous consistency in an ever-changing scene. On their 10th album and follow up to 2019’s No Geography, Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands demonstrate their arena-sized sound remains in blistering form, and is itself evolving. From the chugging beats of Fountains and the considered toughness of hip-hop-tinged Magic Wand, to the cinematic title track closer and Beck’s appearance on the dreamy Skipping Like A Stone, there’s a balance between the British duo’s heavier, earlier output and more recent psychedelic forays. Live Again is a case in point: Halo Maud’s chopped up vocal and filtered effects build to a ferocious drop that is both vintage Chems, and all shiny and new. Similarly, No Reason’s acid-infused bassline and euphoric synths look towards the future, while Goodbye is among the duo’s best work, inviting escapism and release via piercing synths, rolling drums and soaring, emotive vocals. After nearly 30 years, the block rockin’ beats continue.
Tim McNamara
Album reviews for week of October 13 2023:
POP
Something To Give Each Other
Troye Sivan
EMI Music
It’s been a very good year for sweaty, sexy singles by Australian artists. First came Kylie Minogue’s futuristic club thumper Padam Padam, which gleefully stomped up the charts to become one of the pop queen’s most successful singles of the 21st century, both here and abroad. Then in July, at the height of the northern-hemisphere summer, Troye Sivan followed with the delectable and aptly named Rush – an ode to hedonistic pleasure, inspired by queer, masculine sexuality and endless nights spent partying. It was the perfect lead-in to Sivan’s third album, Something To Give Each Other, which follows his much more muted and understated 2018 record Bloom. That release pushed the singer out of the tender and boyish music of his early years and into adulthood, but the sexuality was still couched within (sometimes) clunky metaphors and innuendo. There’s no innuendo whatsoever on Something To Give Each Other, which — in the words of the artist — is “a loving homage to community, sex, partying and liberation”. Its 10 tracks are full of the head rushes and moments of lustful yearning that define those nights on the dance floor – and what happens after.
The album came together with a dream team of A-list producers, including Oscar Gorres (Taylor Swift, Katy Perry), Ian Kirkpatrick (Dua Lipa), Leland (Selena Gomez) and Styalz Fuego (Khalid). As a result, the album gleams from start to finish, from the bounding lead single Rush – which appropriately serves as the opener to the album – to the slippery, more R&B- focused cuts such as In My Room. It’s not frenetic disco-house from start to finish, and the album is lifted by the moments of softness supplied by the bittersweet Can’t Go Back Baby and Still Got It. But there’s no question the best moments are the times when Sivan cuts completely loose, running at full speed. Got Me Started, the album’s second single — which features a rarely gifted sample from Bag Raiders’ classic 2008 dance-pop hit Shooting Stars — is one of these standouts; another is What’s The Time Where You Are, as the 28-year-old singer-songwriter reaches across time zones and purrs “God I wish it was you”. Silly, meanwhile, descends into the club basement with skittish percussion and vocals that are scraped paper-thin, and How To Stay With You – the closer, and unfortunately, one of the weaker tracks – glides off into the night with a flinty saxophone solo. An album expertly crafted to soundtrack the sweaty nights and flushed faces — followed by the embrace of warm beds — Something To Give Each Other is Sivan’s best work yet.
Jules LeFevre
JAZZ
Dark Days
Waveteller
Independent
Sydney is well endowed with brilliant and distinctive piano trios. The Pocket Trio, John Harkins Trio and Hekka are examples, each epitomising a unique musical vision. Waveteller — composed of Casey Golden (piano), Michael Mear (double bass) and Ed Rodrigues (drums) — is in a similar bag, their music being like no other trio, as far as I’m aware. Mear’s six compositions on Dark Days are said to explore rhythmic concepts and the elasticity of time, which is a good way of describing the trio’s modus operandi. Their music is intensely conversational, underlining the evolving tendency in modern jazz to give the voices of all musicians equal prominence in the sound mix. The result is a well-integrated group sound, with Golden’s highly developed lyricism intact, Rodrigues’ drumming style busy without dominating, and Mear’s bass lines coming strongly though the middle. The sophisticated interplay between the three musicians here is something to savour, exemplifying the trio’s name, which arises out of the idea of communicating through the sound waves of music.
Eric Myers
DREAM-POP/SHOEGAZE
Everything Is Alive
Slowdive
Dead Oceans
A radiant highlight of the early 1990s, Slowdive’s melody-rich dream-pop was masterfully rekindled on its 2017 self-titled album. Fresh off a recent Australian tour comes the British band’s immersive fifth album. Its genesis lay in singer/guitarist Neil Halstead tinkering with modular synthesisers: observe the pronounced synth melody waxing and waning through opener Shanty while fellow singer/guitarist Rachel Goswell follows suit vocally amid soothing rinses of distortion. Halstead’s production puts a premium on open space, creating a clear runway for minimalist electronic ripples, majestic guitar flights, and other affecting layers. Halstead’s romantic lyrics are more audible than usual on Andalucia Plays, which unfolds like a synth-pop ballad in slow motion, while the artfully obscured Chained to a Cloud feels more like a live remix. The contrast between the score-like instrumental Prayer Remembered and pop single Kisses shows just how much room Slowdive makes to explore in between.
Doug Wallen
ROCK
Relentless
Pretenders
Rhino/Warners
The Pretenders are now a band in name only, with singer and sole founding member Chrissie Hynde and her longtime lead guitarist and co-songwriter, James Walbourne, of late sadly reduced to opening for Guns N’ Roses. Original drummer Martin Chambers has left for the second time, replaced by a rank plodder, with the so-called “Pretenders collective” rounded out by two more ho-hum hired hands on bass and keys. Apart from the efforts of Hynde and Walbourne, there’s precious little to recommend this 12th iteration of the brand. “I’m a divorcee but I feel like a widow,” the now 72-year-old Hynde sings on Merry Widow, proving her acerbic sense of humour at least remains intact. Second single A Love has the melodic drift of classic Pretenders, though much of the remainder of Relentless could more accurately be termed featureless. Exceptions are the waltz-time folky swing of Look Away, Walbourne’s Shadows-inspired surf guitar on The Copa, and heartfelt closer I Think About You Daily, a promising piano ballad that’s ultimately swamped by grandiose strings, arranged by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.
Phil Stafford
COUNTRY
Zach Bryan
Zach Bryan
Belting Bronco/Warner
Well before Oliver Anthony ranted out in the backwood forest, Zach Bryan was America’s most unlikely mainstream musician. To say there was more where breakthrough ballad Something In the Orange came from is a massive understatement: It stemmed from Bryan’s triple-LP American Heartbreak; an EP, live album and several singles quickly followed. His eponymous fourth album arrives 15 months later, and yet fatigue hasn’t set in for the restless, prolific Oklahoma native. The results are mostly positive, too. Though the trumpeting Overtime and the folksy Summertime’s Close end abruptly, other tracks (such as the stirring Jake’s Piano) are given more breathing room. Bryan’s invited guests, additionally, largely pull their weight — with the exception of Colorado alt-folk act The Lumineers, which adds nothing to the forgettable Spotless. The close harmony of The War and Treaty and Sierra Ferrell on Hey Driver and Holy Roller, respectively, are perfect foil for Bryan. If anything, consider this self-titled release a proving ground for the 27-year-old troubadour: Just because he’s filling arenas now doesn’t mean he’s lost his street smarts.
David James Young