Album reviews: Shania Twain messy, inconsistent on Queen of Me
In 1997, Shania Twain was simultaneously the most revered and reviled name in country music. On her messy sixth album, Twain has ridden back into town wearing the emperor’s new clothes.
Album reviews for week of February 10, 2023:
COUNTRY POP
Queen of Me
Shania Twain
Republic/UMG
A quarter-century ago, Shania Twain was simultaneously the most revered and reviled name in country music. The dominance of 1997’s Come On Over resulted in endless platinum certifications and sales records that remain unmatched to this day. Conversely, however, she was viewed as the embodiment of “selling out”, her talents dismissed on account of sex appeal and her use of co-writers – arguments that have both become archaic. These days, she’s been adapted by millennials as a gay icon and finally given her flowers — an opportune time to continue her renaissance period and share a new album with the masses, naturally. However, there’s just one problem: Twain has ridden back into town wearing the emperor’s new clothes. Queen of Me is a messy, frustrating and inconsistent album that loses sight of Twain’s playful cadence in an artificial uncanny valley. Take the opening number and recent single Giddy Up!, which has Twain – who underwent vocal reconstruction surgery – sounding audibly uncomfortable and heavily pitch-corrected through what is supposed to be a country-pop mechanical bull-ride. By the time the 57-year-old is singing about getting “liddy in the cup”, it’s played out like Dr. Evil claiming he’s “with it” and “hip” before doing the Macarena in Austin Powers 2.
Bizarrely, it’s one of the only moments on the entire record where Twain’s background in country is touched upon; elsewhere, she’s working strictly within the confines of pop, which largely doesn’t suit her. The up-tempo Waking Up Dreaming has a certain energy, where Twain’s recalibrated vocals fit far better than most offerings here. It’s offset only a couple of tracks later by the childish, irritating Pretty Liar, with its faux-sassiness and nondescript beat-pad production. Who is any of this for, exactly? Are we meant to believe that those that fell for That Don’t Impress Me Much, You’re Still The One and Man! I Feel Like A Woman in their heyday – or even via TikTok – are meant to find the same hooks, heart and creativity in this mostly skippable wet blanket of an album? No one can dispute the rocky road of Twain’s comeback, but the buck stops here.
David James Young
JAZZ
TMT
Tamara Murphy Trio
Independent
This impressive album, with immaculate sound, is from a relatively new trio consisting of musicians who know each other well, led by Melbourne double bassist/composer Tamara Murphy. Her two colleagues are well-chosen: guitarist Stephen Magnusson and drummer James McLean, both of whom are award-winning players. With musicians at this level of excellence, expectations are high, and they deliver in spades. This is primarily a showcase for the unique artistry of Magnusson, a guitarist with a completely individual voice, who at will can flick the switch from lyrical beauty, where Bill Frisell has shown the way, to abstraction. Of the nine compositions here, Murphy has five, including a new version of her lovely tune Kindness Not Courtesy, with others including a nod to Australian repertoire in Bernie McGann’s Brownsville, and John Lennon’s Come Together. Murphy’s solos, built on taste and musicality, achieve a marvellous bass sound that is full-bodied without ever becoming strident.
Eric Myers
FOLK ROCK
Palomino
First Aid Kit
Columbia Records
Collaboration is the name of the game on album No.5 for the two Swedes whose uncanny harmonies and Americana ballads emerged 15 years ago. As their first LP to be penned with considerable outside help, Palomino takes cues from the songbooks of Kate Bush, Fleetwood Mac and Tom Petty (according to the band themselves), resulting in a far fuller, more cinematic effort. Folk purists never fear: Ready to Run still sways with the smoky looseness of an old saloon, while Wild Horses II – which tells the tale of an amicable break-up on a road trip – is ready-made for campfire storytelling. However, it's the 80s soft-rock of lead single Angel, the rhythmic urgency of Fallen Snow and the ride-into-the-sunset soundtrack of the title track that show these songwriters have truly grown up, as promised by co-frontwoman Klara Soderberg. Sadly, Nobody Knows and 29 Palms Highway fall well below the standard of their stablemates, but Palomino is broadly a triumph for the duo’s considerable musical growth.
Alasdair Belling
INDIE ROCK
Life After Football
The Smith Street Band
Pool House Records
Listening to The Smith Street Band’s sixth album feels like sitting down in a dark pub with some close mates for 40 minutes and hearing about what is going on in their lives. Across these 11 tracks, a few things remain constant for the Melbourne indie rock act: heavily slapped snare drums, quiet verses and energetic choruses, and ever-changing song trajectories. Set above it all is Wil Wagner’s distinctive ocker twang screeching about the issues affecting young suburban blokes. It’s all very familiar to fans, with few surprises. From the shifting cadence of When I Change My Name to the melodic, slow build-up on Dilute, to the quiet, gentle Black T-shirt, the album offers a nice balance of different tempos and themes. One thing missing, though, is a clear standout song. The eponymous Life After Football is the album’s catchiest track, but it doesn’t reach the play-it-on-repeat heights of I Still Dream About You that drove the previous album, Don’t Waste Your Anger, to No.1 on the ARIA chart.
Charlie Peel
INDIE POP
People You Love
Andy Bull
Independent
Sydney singer-songwriter Andy Bull has returned after eight years, and fans of his 2014 breakthrough Sea of Approval will be pleased to know his ability to craft addictive pop remains intact. Where People You Love shears some of the more avant-garde tendencies from his work, it shows he has not lost his edge. Every track of the self-produced album explodes with life, but confronts the world’s battles with a furrowed brow. It’s a juxtaposition that reflects the years that shaped it: the birth of Bull’s children, the death of his father and near-death of his wife. His lyrics show a man with a passion for life, but also a well-earned wariness. It offers great tenderness and humour; it’s both catchy and comforting. The production is immaculate, seamlessly offering neo-disco perfection alongside jazz and subtle string arrangements. From the jabs of synth on World Eater, to the pattering snare on Bold Love, and the saxophone explosion on In The Garden, this album is captivating and endlessly rewarding.
Sam King
Album reviews for week of February 3, 2023:
POP/ROCK
The Candle and the Flame
Robert Forster
EMI Music
Hanging by a thread, we discover how much we want to live, and how much we are loved — two lessons that can come too late, but here they are, as straight, pure and tasty as sunshine after rain. The story behind Robert Forster’s eighth solo album is already assuming classic proportions: with many of its songs drafted, recording plans for the former Go-Betweens co-founder, 65, were knocked sideways when his wife Karin Baumler was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Urgent chemotherapy followed; outside, a pandemic raged. Under such terminal clouds you’d expect a brittle or melancholy work, all vulnerability and shadow philosophy. First single She’s A Fighter signalled something very different: an aggressively melodic song that sounded like an art-rock Celtic war-cry, laced with Baumler’s tense xylophone strokes, threatening electric lead, bass and smashed shopping trolley percussion from son Louis Forster (ex-The Goon Sax) with his sister Loretta contributing rhythm guitar and dad Robert on equally hard-driving acoustic guitar chanting out a minimalist two-line lyric: “She’s a fighter / Fighting for good.”
Sly as a fox, Foster follows with the slinky, loving Tender Years, built around a witty storybook metaphor where “her beauty has not withered / from her entrance in chapter one” and spiced by typically arch asides to the listener that “love scenes are at night”. In I Don’t Do Drugs, I Do Time, Forster can “make it stop and rewind / to correct mistakes of mine”, a comical concept with flashes of deeper nostalgia. There’s also a playful rebellion here and elsewhere that echoes The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan; a shrugging off of weight on the line between romantic adventure and folky spareness. It’s Only Poison sounds as if written during Baumler’s ultimately successful treatment, but it’s an earlier work, a singalong dispensation encouraging someone to escape their toxic fate. Final track When I Was A Young Man says its brotherly thanks to David Bowie, Lou Reed, David Byrne and Tom Verlaine, making only gentle reference to their first names, its biographical sparks of debt and love mirrored in a recording that is live-in-a-room with a musical family and a few close friends in fine and shining form.
Mark Mordue
JAZZ
Sense
Merinda Dias-Jayasinha
Independent
This is Brisbane singer-songwriter Merinda Dias-Jayasinha’s first solo album. Highly ambitious, it makes some other music genres sound rather trivial. Excellent musicians here include Niran Dasika (trumpet), Matt Hoyne (guitar), and Helen Svoboda (double bass), while Dias-Jayasinha is clearly multi-talented. The intimate lyrics in her five compositions (three of eight are written by others) suggest the sensibility of Joni Mitchell. Her lovely voice, without vibrato, is compelling; she’s a brilliant exponent of the wordless vocal, and the characteristic soundscape she’s created, which dominates the album, is truly innovative. Yet that soundscape is also problematic, and sometimes too busy. Those who enjoy group improvisation may warm to it, but others who prefer judicious accompaniment, allowing the soloist to breathe, may find some of the music veering into excess. Dias-Jayasinha’s artistry works beautifully when the backing is sparse but when accompanying musicians freely weigh in at volume the music suffers.
Eric Myers
POP
Hiraeth
Georgia Fields
Independent/MGM
The sense of yearning that permeates Melbourne artist Georgia Fields’s new work extends beyond the album title. Hiraeth is a Welsh term that describes this feeling of longing, and in this context, it feels tied to many life-changing experiences. In her songwriting, the listener is taken in and out of modes of nostalgia, grief, healing and evolution. Tracks like Holding My Hands Out and Persuasion haunt and entice; Fields’s vocals float hypnotically, while melodies and meticulously constructed alt-pop arrangements ruminate beneath. Fields presents each vignette of Hiraeth with vivid emotion, and a certain electricity runs across each line: I Saw It Coming, with its perfectly executed balladry; Write It On the Sky, with its abundant strokes of bliss celebrating self-love and empowerment. Hiraeth feels like a moment of arrival for Fields: here, her music paints a portrait of an empowered and reinvigorated individual who is ready to take on her next chapter with confidence and vibrancy.
Sosefina Fuamoli
FOLK/ROCK
World Record
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Warner Music Australia
In 2021, an album titled Barn proved that Neil Young and Crazy Horse could still hit all of their collective sweet spots after more than a half-century of off-and-on collaboration. World Record unfortunately doesn’t repeat that trick, despite having Rick Rubin in the producer’s chair. There’s a half-baked, out-take quality to most of this record, and not just because it favours shambling ballads over tempestuous guitar jams. Album opener Love Earth and the accordion-kissed The Long Day Before are actually quite sweet, but hearing Young devote his lyrics so directly to our endangered planet isn’t always entirely rewarding. Narrated from Earth’s perspective, The Wonder Won’t Wait laments the side effects of banking, while Walkin’ On the Road (To the Future) feels trite in its familiar make-love-not-war sentiment. Even when Crazy Horse truly rears its head on the 15-minute Chevrolet, it’s for an extended valentine to old cars that acknowledges the perils of fossil fuel. The most committed of Neil Young fans may find themselves struggling with this one.
Doug Wallen
ROCK
TNSW
These New South Whales
Damaged
You know when someone sarcastically sings along to a song to cover up the fact they’ve actually got pipes? In a way, that’s how These New South Whales began. The punk band was primarily centred on goofs with its thrashy debut album You Work For Us, clocking in at under half-an-hour and sporting track titles like Cholesterol Heart. Its self-referential Comedy Central series blurred the lines between band and parody even further. On its quasi-eponymous third album, however, the band largely isn’t serving up punchlines – just heavy-hitters. The opening one-two of the rumbling Bending At the Knee and the sour snarl of Rotten Sun are among the best tracks the Whales have ever penned. The urgent, fist-pumping Changes and the robust Signal Is Strong maintain the momentum later in the piece, adding angular guitar energy to some of the band’s strongest hooks to date. If its in-joke lore previously made you feel at arms’ length from what it was doing musically, allow TNSW to be your lowered drawbridge.
David James Young
Album reviews for week of January 27, 2023:
ALTERNATIVE/POP
A Reckoning
Kimbra
Inertia/PIAS
It’s been almost 12 years since the artist born Kimbra Lee Johnson crashed into the public consciousness with debut album Vows, a glittering and cascading pop record that seemed to introduce her as an heir apparent to artists such as Regina Spektor. Tracks such as Two Way Street and Settle Down, along with the success of a relatively unknown Gotye collaboration called Somebody That I Used To Know, tossed the New Zealand-born performer into fame at 21. Determined to eschew the trappings of mainstream pop, follow-up album The Golden Echo piled on clattering, dislocating production and sewed it together with towering melodies. Critics were divided, even more so when the claustrophobic Primal Heart arrived in 2018, which saw Kimbra smother herself in overblown instrumentation. For all her formidable talent, it felt like Kimbra couldn’t get out of her own way. A Reckoning comes as the first independent release of her career, and started life early in the pandemic when she settled in upstate New York. She worked closely with producer and composer Ryan Lott – whom she toured with in 2018 with his band Son Lux.
In interviews, Kimbra has asserted the album is rooted in anger: at the world, at herself, at patriarchal systems. There is anger humming throughout the record, but it’s the vulnerability and intimacy of A Reckoning that is much more affecting. Lead single Save Me opens the album with the line: “I’m the accident waiting to happen / It’s just a matter of time.” On the darkly screwball Replay!, Kimbra self-flagellates because she can’t let go of a relationship, poring over photographs and memories, while album highlight The Way We Were sees her looking back with a resigned sadness. Closing track I Don’t Want To Fight, which swells and ebbs with strings, ponders the question, “Is this what love is? Waging war?” This release is positively restrained when compared with Primal Heart and The Golden Echo, and the production – which ranges from discordant pop to gorgeous Janelle Monae-adjacent neo-soul and R&B – serves Kimbra’s expressive and illuminating vocals, not the other way around. There are some missteps — the sludgy blues and hubris of Gun isn’t as convincing a power anthem as it was probably intended to be — but they are few and far between. For the most part, A Reckoning is an arresting return to form.
Jules LeFevre
POST-HARDCORE
Past Lives
L.S. Dunes
Fantasy Records/Concord
For those who told Mum in the 2000s that emo wasn’t a phase, supergroup L.S. Dunes felt like a MySpace daydream: the frontman of Circa Survive, the rhythm section from Thursday and guitarists from both My Chemical Romance and Coheed & Cambria. A weekend-warrior pandemic side project, the band’s brimming potential was bolstered by powder-keg lead single Permanent Rebellion. With full-force vocals from Anthony Green pouring petrol on the fiery guitar work, it created one of the best tracks any member has been involved with in recent years. As its debut album unfurls, however, it becomes increasingly clear that by putting its best foot forward, the album largely stumbles. Nothing comes close to the earlier single; the rest falls into a passable but ultimately forgettable wash of post-hardcore. Yes, Past Lives was created with no pressure, meaning it would have unquestionably been fun for those involved. But pressure creates diamonds, and there’s only one here, when these men are usually digging up entire mines.
David James Young
ELECTRONIC
Let Loose
The Shapeshifters
Glitterbox Recordings
Few can join the dots between classic disco and contemporary house music like Simon Marlin, and this long-awaited album is a triumph of expression and empowerment amid disco’s latest, long-lived resurgence. Featuring a string of bumping vocal singles that have soundtracked clubs over the past few years, Let Loose’s irresistible dancefloor pull is borne through a collaborative writing and production process that has drawn in some of the scene’s best. Multi-award-winner Billy Porter features on standout anthem Finally Ready, while Chic’s Kimberley Davis delivers an apt call for the times on the house-led Life is a Dancefloor. A moody rework of Talking Heads’ Slippery People, meanwhile, soars on the back of new string and horn arrangements. Elsewhere, earlier release Try My Love (On For Size) is evergreen, with Teni Tinks’s vocal rising above a horn-infused drop, while Joss Stone is simply stunning on the string-heavy, life-affirming upper Bring on The Rain. Melodic, soulful and sunny, this album is destined to age well.
Tim McNamara
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