Album reviews: Halfway; Joseph Tawadros; Florian Hoefner Group

Is it possible to create the perfect rock ’n’ roll album? The answer is apparently yes.

Is it possible to create the perfect rock ’n’ roll album? The answer is apparently yes.

ROCK

The Golden Halfway Record

Halfway

ABC/UMA

5 stars

It makes sense that artists get better with age, for with age comes experience and thus a greater palette of colours with which to paint becomes available. Yet in popular music — in rock ’n’ roll especially — the common narrative arc is for young bands to burn brightly with their early releases before eventually losing some of the energy, hunger and joy that brought them together to make music in the first place.

There are exceptions to this trend, of course, and Brisbane band Halfway is one of them. The Golden Halfway Record is the fifth album that this eight-piece band has released, and it is the third album in six years on which the band has exceeded its own high standards. Any Old Love earned 4½ stars on this page in 2014; it was a near-perfect collection of songs that prompted me to describe Halfway as one of Australia’s best rock bands.

And after careful consideration I can only conclude that this album is perfect, and that there can be no doubt that Halfway is among a handful of the most talented and consistent acts in operation.

It’s a major statement to make about a band that most Queenslanders haven’t heard of, yet alone those who live in the country’s south and west, but all of the evidence can be heard in this sensational 11-song set.

Book-ended by a dramatic intro and outro, The Golden Halfway Record offers yet another significant stylistic leap for the performers and particularly for the primary songwriters, guitarists John Busby and Chris Dale. The progression from 2010’s An Outpost of Promise to Any Old Love was pleasing and commendable, but this is something else. Heard here is a band at the peak of its powers, to use a critics’ cliche, yet the most scarily impressive aspect of this ascent is that the octet may have only just passed base camp.

One can only imagine the summit Halfway yet could reach.

The trouble with writing, recording and releasing a perfect album, of course, is that the task becomes even harder next time. But that’s for the band to worry about, not us. We listeners get the pleasure of living inside such exquisitely crafted rock songs.

The album as a whole is so well plotted and paced that to pick single moments feels barely adequate, but to name just one, fifth track Welcome Enemy is a new high-water mark.

It pulses with an effortless wisdom and depth that belies how hard it is to write music so affecting with the same old ingredients available to every rock band in the world. From front to back, The Golden Halfway Record is exactly what its title describes.

It arrives with the highest possible recommendation, and an insistence that if you’ve ever enjoyed the combination of guitars, bass, drums, keys and vocals, you simply must hear this.

Andrew McMillen

WORLD

World Music

Joseph Tawadros

MGM

4 stars

Australia will lose one of its more prodigious and prolific musicians when Joseph Tawadros, multi-award winning maestro of the oud (Arabic lute), moves to Britain in May with a five-year work visa. The Egyptian-born Sydneysider will leave a timely reminder of his talent in a tour de force of an album that reaffirms composing and arranging flair and reveals his capacity to play a staggering array of instruments. World Music underlines the ambiguity that characterises the young maestro’s music, blurring boundaries as it crisscrosses predominantly Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and Indian terrain. Playing no fewer than 50 instruments across 29 tracks that vary in duration between 70 seconds and eight minutes, Joseph T evokes imagery as vivid as that produced in Peter Gabriel’s late-1980s’ landmark album Passion, while kid brother James’s verve on a variety of percussion instruments propels as expertly as the great Hossam Ramzy in said world music classic. Tawadros senior shows special affinity with traditional Arabic instruments other than oud, specifically the bowed kamanjah and rababah, qanun (zither) and nay (flute). He also uses different lutes and guitars, as well as double bass, violin, viola, bouzouki, banjo, mandolin, ukulele and more. His cameos on wind and brass, including clarinet, cornet, trombone, alto sax and whistles, and on accordion, piano and harmonica, along with some wordless singing, add colour to a musical tapestry that fluctuates between short stripped-back ambient pieces and more expansive offerings.

Tony Hillier

JAZZ

Luminosity

Florian Hoefner Group

Origin

4 stars

Although German pianist — now Canada-based — Florian Hoefner has played at festivals throughout Europe, appeared on 10 previous recordings and toured extensively in the US and Canada, he’s not as well known in Australia. This new album by his quartet, recorded in New York, features Australian bassist Sam Anning, with drummer Peter Kronreif and saxophonist Seamus Blake. These eight tracks display Hoefner’s composing ability and his stunning performance in a unified work of thought-provoking components and altered rhythmic content. Newfound Jig, based on an Irish jig but given post-bop attitude, brings impetus to Blake’s tenor solo, powerfully driven by hyperactive drums and dynamic bass ahead of Hoefner’s tension-building piano. The title track has a serene 5/4 feel explored by the leader’s extravagantly pensive excursion to introduce Blake’s gradually stoking solo on soprano sax, while The Bottom Line opens with a bop-infused bass and tenor sax unison passage before Blake’s solo launches into take-off. In a slow tempo, The Narrows demonstrates Hoefner’s melodic capabilities in the balladic composition and his organic interpretation; Blake and Anning also deliver expressive solos. Drums and piano interact well throughout In Circles during Hoefner’s solo and forming a substructure for Blake’s tenor sax. A fine collection of compositions interpreted with deep expression and highly skilled group integration.

John McBeath