Country album by INXS’s Andrew Farriss, a decade in the making
Originally slated for release a year ago until COVID intervened, the album features a revolving door of Nashville session musicians.
Album reviews for week of April 17, 2021:
COUNTRY/ROOTS
Andrew Farriss
Andrew Farriss
BMG/BBR
★★½
What do INXS and Sherbet have in common? Apart from being two of the biggest Australian bands of their respective decades, both had keyboard players who remade themselves in the image of country music. For Sherbet, to 1970s pop what INXS was to the 80s, it was Garth Porter, who became a noted producer/writer in local country circles. Now Andrew Farriss, who co-wrote global hits for INXS, has gone one step further than Porter and recast himself as an international cowboy. Granted, Farriss has owned a working farm near Tamworth in rural NSW for almost 30 years, can ride a horse and sports a beard that befits a wanted poster. His eponymous debut solo album is no sudden whim, either – a decade in the making, one of its 12 songs dates back 30 years. Originally slated for release a year ago until COVID intervened, the album features a revolving door of Nashville session musicians: various guitarists, drummers and bassists, dobro, pedal steel, mandolin, fiddle and banjo players and, curiously, three keyboardists. When Farriss himself plays keys, it’s pure ambience – à la the synthesised strings on album opener Bounty Hunter-Hummingbird, a cinematic piece also replete with bird noises, flutes, distant harmonica and thundering hoofs. The time-lagged release means there are already three singles out there: Come Midnight, which dates back to Kick-era INXS, the sub-Springsteen Run Baby Run and the funky Good Momma Bad. There are the obligatory outlaw songs – With The Kelly Gang, co-written with Nashville-based expat Jay O’Shea, and Son of a Gun, as cliche-ridden as its title. But for every cartoonish country-song-by-numbers (My Cajun Girl, Starlight) there’s the odd circuit-breaker such as the immersive Apache Pass, a historical travelogue of the old southwest, or Drifting, a restless-cowboy-gotta-keep-movin’ tune on which Farriss’s vocal sounds uncannily like Richard Clapton. As for the middle eight of the Stonesy closer You Are My Rock, its chord sequence bears a resemblance to the chorus of Steve Stills’ Love The One You’re With.
Phil Stafford
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JAZZ
Origins
Richard Pavlidis
Earshift Music
★★★★
This album from formidable Melbourne saxophonist Richard Pavlidis is a mixed blessing. Its success depends primarily on Pavlidis himself, his virtuosity and clever compositions being the main assets here. While his outstanding 2019 album Without Within presented an acoustic quartet showing a high degree of interactive empathy, Origins goes in a different direction. Given the pandemic, Pavlidis staggered his recording schedule, using eight musicians in different combinations, and chose to overdub layers of synthesiser sounds, which tend to dominate the album. Brilliant solos are provided by talented keyboardist Mike Pensini, and rock-influenced time-feels push the music into fusion territory. One cannot ignore certain qualities in Pavlidis’s playing: the earnestness of John Coltrane, and the unstoppability of Sonny Rollins. A saxophone colossus in the making, Pavlidis is unerringly on track.
Eric Myers
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POST-PUNK
New Long Leg
Dry Cleaning
4AD
★★★★
One of the most striking vocalists in recent memory, Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw exudes bored desperation across the London quartet’s debut album. Her spoken delivery revels in deadpan observations from daily life, whether she’s lamenting format changes to TV’s Antiques Road Show or citing specific food in nearly every song. Meanwhile, the guitar, bass, and drums maintain an acute sense of control, prowling and slicing with unhurried precision to create a hypnotic pull. Once that seizing effect has been established, even slight shifts in the dynamic (like psychedelic effects on Unsmart Lady and mellowing keyboard on More Big Birds) stand out that much more. The same goes for Shaw’s more scathing turns, like the casual warning “I’ve come to smash what you’ve made” or calling herself “just an emo dead-stuff collector”. Her bone-dry mantras wield surprising power, resembling scrambled snatches of advice columns and grocery lists that inspire regular flashes of recognition.
Doug Wallen
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SOUL/POP
Evolution
The Soul Movers
ABC Music/Universal
★★★½
Challenging Melbourne’s surfeit of female-fronted soul bands is Sydney’s Soul Movers, whose fourth album exceeds the promise of 2019’s Bona Fide. Evolution, produced and co-written by Garth Porter, a former member of Sherbet, also radiates the pop sheen of that successful 70s Australian band. Reinforcing the connection is Tony Mitchell, Sherbet’s bass player and co-writer (with Porter) of their sole international hit, Howzat! Mitchell plays on all 11 tracks of Evolution, lending old-school cohesion to the Soul Movers’ rhythm section. Porter’s slick yet compact production reins in the entire band to the point where there’s only one guitar solo (Murray Cook doing his best Steve Cropper impression on I Don’t Mind). Porter also contributes extra keys, notably clavinet on the funkified Rolled A Rock, a dynamic duet on which Dan Sultan joins lead singer/lyricist Lizzie “Mack” McKenzie. The latter is in fine voice throughout, variously channelling Dusty, Cilla, Nancy Sinatra, even the legendary Jackie DeShannon on the post-hippie title track.
Phil Stafford
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WORLD
Djourou
Ballake Sissoko
No Format
★★★½
With Djourou, Ballake Sissoko, one of the finest exponents of the 21-stringed kora, exhibits the extraordinary range and versatility of the West African harp while demonstrating his own dexterity in a couple of contrasting solo works and penchant for experimentation in a series of duo settings. The Malian’s plucked polyrhythmic patterns peak in an exquisite call & response duet with the seductive singing and kora playing of Gambian Sona Jobarteh, in tandem with the peerless vocals of super-star compatriot Salif Keita and in a suitably stately dialogue with French classical clarinetist and cellist Patrick Messina and Vincent Segal. Less enchanting is a syrupy number eulogising the kora, delivered en francais by Parisienne pop chanteuse Camille. The set deteriorates further via an overbearing rap from African Oxmo Puccino and reaches its nadir in an elongated and top-heavy closing jam with Parisian rock band Feu! Chatterton.
Tony Hillier
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Album reviews for week of April 10, 2021:
FOLK/POP
Chemtrails Over The Country Club
Lana Del Rey
Universal Music
★★★½
Lana Del Rey’s voice slinks, floats, soars and ebbs; it is dramatic and dreamy in the best kind of way. The American singer-songwriter’s 60s pin-up-living-in-a-trailer-park persona has been a target for accusations of pure nostalgia, falsity and – perhaps worst of all – releasing music that never evolves. Her seventh album is a lovely, chimeric creature, though; it deserves to be listened to without assumption or prejudice. There’s a maturity to Del Rey and an unapologetic attitude that has been amplified by producer Jack Antonoff, whose prior collaborations with Taylor Swift and St Vincent prompted both of them to fearlessly integrate folk, country, pop, cabaret, avant-garde art pop and psychedelia. Perhaps at 35 Del Rey has faced enough criticism and accusations by now to focus on pursuing her own creative vision without care for pleasing anyone. On Dance Till We Die, female folk-rock royalty Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks and Joan Baez are all name-checked in the first 10 seconds. A dreamy, hooky melodic ballad that weaves deep into the synapses, it delivers a catchy, subtle groove that is entirely Del Rey’s own a cappella pagan pop.
Piano-based Dark But Just a Game is a plaintive unmasking of illusory Hollywood glamour and the debaucherous decay hidden behind the smoke and mirrors of fame that are Del Rey’s long-time fixations. She excels when she gets personal and pares back the instrumentals to spotlight her glorious, jazzy, ultra-feminine voice. Breaking Up Slowly layers a tragic love-gone-wrong story over a steely guitar and harmonised choruses, making a case for a full country album in future. Let Me Love You Like a Woman is a divine serenade that recalls the beautiful, fuzzy-edged bittersweet of her 2011 breakthrough single, Video Games. Reflective and nostalgic, this ought to be listened to in the dark while nursing a broken heart. More acoustic folk and less dreaminess would have been welcome, though.
Cat Woods
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JAZZ
My Trio Album
James Bowers
Earshift Music
★★★★★
This music had me on the edge of my seat from start to finish. A debut work normally does not contain such brilliance, ticking so many boxes. Recorded in Tokyo with Australian bassist Marty Holoubek and Japanese drummer Shun Ishiwaka, it establishes Melbourne-based pianist James Bowers as a major talent. In eight original compositions, and a surreal version of Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, Bowers, with virtuosic aplomb, blazes his way through every aspect of contemporary modern jazz piano. In a Monk-like composition entitled Why Not? for example, he disposes of the immortal swing-feel with swaggering nonchalance. Listen for bursts of atonalism, complex compositions with odd time signatures, ballads with gentle melodic beauty, and sections which push into the avant-garde. This amazing album has just about everything.
Eric Myers
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RETRO ROCK
Music Is Love: 1966-70
Richard Clapton
Bloodlines
★★★½
Revered Australian singer-songwriter Richard Clapton provides a snapshot of his formative years with this telling clutch of covers. These 15 songs are a soundtrack of his late teens and early 20s, when as a budding musician Clapton locked onto the sounds exploding out of California’s Laurel Canyon. More than half of these tracks relate directly to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The Byrds get two nods, Buffalo Springfield one, while solo cuts from Steve Stills, David Crosby and Neil Young are also lovingly revisited. Contrasting the album’s hippieish title (from Crosby’s song of the same name), the best material on Music Is Love is of a darker hue: CSNY’s Southern Man and Almost Cut My Hair, The Doors’ Riders On The Storm and Dylan’s prison lament I Shall Be Released. Clapton’s band is on fire throughout, with Clayton Doley (keys) and guitarist Dan Spencer front and centre.
Phil Stafford
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Album reviews for week of April 3, 2021:
COUNTRY ROCK
The World Today
Troy Cassar-Daley
Sony Music
★★★½
To paraphrase a Paul Kelly song title, from bad things good things come. For Troy Cassar-Daley, Australia’s most decorated country singer-songwriter, the deaths of two people close to him and the near-disintegration of his 25-year marriage led to this, his 11th album, his strongest collection of songs and stories to date. If a measure of the man is the company he keeps, then the guest list on The World Today alone tells a story: the aforementioned Kelly figures in the co-writing credits, alongside Shane Howard and Cold Chisel’s Don Walker and Ian Moss, while Midnight Oil’s Jim Moginie contributes instrumentally. Moss also duets with Cassar-Daley on their song South, one of the album’s standouts, and Howard plays bodhran, whistle and violin on another co-composition, the Celtic-soaked closer, I Hear My River. Kevin Bennett, from country-rock band the Flood, shares writing credits on opener Back On Country (the first single) and Broken Hearts Can Fly, one of two songs openly addressing Cassar-Daley’s marriage to singer Laurel Edwards. Little more than a year ago, they almost called it quits. Cassar-Daley had lost his father and a musician friend to suicide in quick succession, and by his own admission was hard to live with.
With Edwards’s encouragement he wrote himself out of his misery, putting last year’s lockdown to good use by demoing The World Today’s 14 tracks in his home studio. There’s a concomitant continuity to the finished album, a sense of celebration and renewal. But there are equal parts nostalgia, folklore and stark realism – songs about muscle cars “running at the speed of sound” around Cassar-Daley’s hometown, Grafton (Too Big For This Town); and Rain Maker, co-written with Don Walker (another ex-Grafton boy), recounting the ancestral tale of an Indigenous woman from the same area of northern NSW who could “cleave a storm in two” with an axe and “flood this land with healing rain”; nothing if not topical, intentional or not. Augmenting family stories of incarceration (Parole, Doin’ Time, I Still Believe) is the album’s reflective title track, partly inspired by Cassar-Daley’s watching – along with the rest of the world – George Floyd’s 2020 death in real-time video: “I watched a man die on the news tonight”.
Phil Stafford
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JAZZ
The Beautiful Things
Stu Hunter
Independent
★★★★
Stu Hunter, known for orchestral suites dealing with large themes, has chosen solo piano to ventilate a new theme: love and family. His music generally doesn’t reflect post-Bill Evans modern jazz piano. Instead Hunter locates his music on another level entirely, revealing a unique individual personality, oriented not so much to the art of pianism, but more to the articulation of strong compositional ideas. On solid ground here, he often uses repetitive figures in the left hand, while his right hand delivers accomplished flights of the imagination. His rhythmic ideas suggest rock influences, while his liking for Monk-like dissonance is tempered throughout by lyricism and melodic beauty. I sense a steely determination here which has enabled Hunter to produce an intriguing album.
Eric Myers
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DANCE/PUNK
Is 4 Lovers
Death From Above 1979
Universal
★★★½
From the first ear-splitting, goosebump-raising distorted riff, Death From Above 1979 trades on discomfort on its fourth album. The abrasive post-punk guitars, industrial synth noise, and fuzzy vocals of Modern Guy define the machine-meets-rock profile of Canadian duo Jesse F. Keeler and Sebastien Grainger. Imagine Kraftwerk hanging out in a basement studio with Gang of Four. Every track pulses with a noisy, high-energy, rebellious lust for life. Glass Homes is electronic dance wizardry softened by melancholic lyrics about maintaining hope; Love Letters offers a piano-based serenade, but the furious, frenzied drumming on Mean Streets destroys the momentary calm. Brutish assertiveness is what Grainer and Keeler deal in, and Is 4 Lovers is abundant in defiance and drama.
Cat Woods
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EXPERIMENTAL POP
Sketchy
Tune-Yards
4AD
★★★★
Even after five studio albums, Tune-Yards’s jubilant musical collages still feel remarkably fresh. Derived from home-studio jams featuring frontwoman Merrill Garbus on drums and partner Nate Brenner on bass, the songs on Sketchy showcase Garbus’s animated arrangements and passionate, free-ranging voice while maintaining a keen eye for self-examination. Hold Yourself encourages an open dialogue about how each generation short-changes the next, yet it’s more empowering than disheartening; its extreme busyness almost edges into downright cacophony, only to pull back for the snappy vocal hooks and upswelling choruses that Garbus does so well. Within a complex latticework of melodies, harmonies and rhythms, the singer-songwriter seizes upon some of her most acute lyrics to date.
Doug Wallen
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ROCK
The Bitter Truth
Evanescence
Sony
★★★½
News of a fresh studio album from US band Evanescence may come as a surprise. It may be even more surprising to learn said album is its most consistent since its multi-platinum 2003 debut Fallen. A few factors are at play here: absence making the heart grow fonder, as it’s the first proper album in a decade, and the addition of guitarist/vocalist Jen Majura has strengthened the core line-up. Most striking, however, is that it has come to fully embrace what made it stand out to begin with: heightened melodrama, churning guitars and soaring vocals. Songs like the defiant Use My Voice and the boisterous shuffle of Yeah Right won’t reach the same pinnacle as prior hits like Bring Me to Life. At this stage they don’t need to; there’s comfort enough in knowing the band is once again an engaging prospect.
David James Young
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FOLK
The Fray
John Smith
Cooking Vinyl Australia
★★★★½
He has toured extensively over the past dozen years or so and notched up more than 40 million streams on Spotify, yet British singer-songwriter John Smith still flies under the radar. This sixth album might arrest the anomaly. A personal annus horribilis and the pandemic have paradoxically combined to elicit the artist’s most commercial release. Duets with US bluegrass queen Sarah Jarosz and Irish singer Lisa Hannigan enhance heartfelt songs that address relationship fragility. The Milk Carton Kids bolster the title track with their harmonies, while on the sparser arrangements, Smith’s folk-informed guitar playing is accompanied by judicious piano and trumpet. There might be some blood on the tracks, but Smith soothes the savage beast with disarming honesty, dulcet singing and poetic verses.
Tony Hillier
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Album reviews for week of March 27, 2021:
COUNTRY
Still Woman Enough
Loretta Lynn
Legacy/Sony
★★★★
“I’ve seen a lot of changes, but I ain’t never changed,” sings Kentucky-born country music veteran Loretta Lynn on the title track. Her 46th solo album is a barn-stomping, honky tonk affair that champions – as she has done since the 1960s – the spirit of her fellow women through song. Lynn’s resonant, resilient voice is centre stage, still defiant and sassy at 88 years old. One of the first female country artists to boast a No 1 single in the US (in 1967) and to have songs on birth control and bad sex banned from radio, she’s no stranger to breaking ground. Lynn’s fresh new take on her first single, I’m A Honky Tonk Girl, is as full of regret and heartbreak as it was in 1960. In the spirit of paying homage to the women who forged a place for other women in Americana, country and blues, Lynn has paid respect to Mother Maybelle Carter and the Carter Family on the upbeat, gospel-inspired Keep On The Sunny Side, while duetting with the current generation of country chart-toppers, Carrie Underwood and Reba McEntire (in Still Woman Enough) and Tanya Tucker (You Ain’t Woman Enough).
Lynn recites Coal Miner’s Daughter, which is just as compelling as the original 1970 release, sharing the title of Lynn’s memoir and the 1980 film dramatisation of her life. Lynn married at 15, later writing and performing in local fairs when she was 18. When she repeats with increasing urgency “I wanna be free” on the track of the same name, one might imagine exactly how desperate she may have felt being a full-time performer, later the “Queen of Country”, while stuck at home with four children by the age of 18. Her version of Hank Williams’s I Saw The Light is a reminder of the deep-rooted faith that infuses much of American country music still (“I saw the light / No more darkness, no more night / Now I’m so happy no sorrow in sight / Praise the Lord I saw the light”). Recorded in Tennessee, the album was produced by John Carter Cash (son of Johnny and June Carter Cash) and her daughter, Patsy Lynn Russell. The production excels in spotlighting Lynn’s voice, while enhancing the combination of strings and percussion that provide the full country sound in glorious harmony. Lynn’s delivery of original honky tonk, gospel country songs and re-recorded classics are love songs to women, and American country music.
Cat Woods
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JAZZ
Our Man In Moss Vale
Andrew Robertson
Independent
★★★★
This album consists of straight-ahead bop-oriented mainstream modern jazz, beautifully played by a quintet of skilled Australian professionals. Robertson (saxophones & flute) and Simon Ferenci (trumpet) are fluent players without pushing boundaries, although Robertson’s work has enough hints of decadence to create much interest. They are bolstered by one of the country’s great rhythm sections, giving the album rare distinction: pianist John Harkins, bassist Brendan Clarke and drummer Andrew Dickeson. Seven tracks are standards, imaginatively arranged, plus two originals by Robertson. Two tracks are enhanced by string quartet backing. Two bonus tracks not mentioned on the album sleeve are In Your Own Sweet Way and the evergreen After You’ve Gone. Listen for Harkins; his every solo is a gem.
Eric Myers
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ELECTRONIC
Times
SG Lewis
PMR/Universal
★★★★
Channelling youth, experience, desire and heartbreak, Samuel George Lewis’s debut album lives for the dancefloor. The British producer’s work with Dua Lipa has reinforced his pop chops, and while Times straddles these glittery highs, it remains a house and disco affair. Opener Time, with its spoken-word intro paying tribute to music and good times, is a fitting launch pad for Rhye’s vocal and an album dripping in “emotion and euphoria”. One More is the standout party track, melding Nile Rodgers’s sublime guitar skills with Lewis’s vocal charting the ups and downs of a night out. It’s a theme built upon on following track Heartbreak On the Dancefloor, while Impact is a high-energy duet between Channel Tres and Robyn, with the latter’s hands-in-the-air hook destined for greatness on unrestricted dancefloors.
Tim McNamara
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INDIE FOLK
Roses
The Paper Kites
Wonderlick/Sony
★★½
In 2015, Melbourne quintet The Paper Kites released the excellent Twelvefour, a neon-tinged, atmospheric indie-pop album that reinvented its nu-folk leanings. Inexplicably, however, it has spent the ensuing years trying to get the proverbial toothpaste back into the tube by relying on washed-out, ambient retreads of their coffee-shop days. Roses posits a fresh twist, being framed as a duets album, but ultimately sleeps on both songwriting and execution. The potential was certainly there: Julia Stone, Nadia Reid and Ainslie Wills are all here, but these vocalists take the back seat to lead singer Sam Bentley’s ASMR-friendly whisper-singing. Their harmonies are nice, but the guests are made to feel ultimately inessential – which, by proxy, is also how the record itself feels.
David James Young
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PROGRESSIVE METAL
Tonic Immobility
Tomahawk
Ipecac/Liberator
★★★½
Eight years between albums hasn’t diminished Tomahawk’s bracing assault. Flanked by guitarist Duane Denison (The Jesus Lizard), bassist Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle) and drummer John Stanier (Helmet), Faith No More singer Mike Patton throws himself right into lurid lyrics and a rogue’s gallery’s worth of wild vocal approaches. There may be familiar scaffolding in the prodigious post-metal riffing and muscled rhythm section, but that only allows Patton to roam more freely within the zigzagging supergroup he formed more than 20 years ago. He cites COVID in passing on Doomsday Fatigue, but Denison has rightly dubbed the album a form of pandemic-era escapism. Its high-precision jumpiness won’t be to all tastes, but the band remains an itchy showcase for these four talents.
Doug Wallen
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SOUL
Irene
Izy
Hopestreet
★★★★
An irresistibly soulful and stylish debut album, Irene showcases the swashbuckling spirit, silky skills and palpable rapport shared by this Melbourne-based trio of Cairns-raised Gen Z musicians. Ultra-modern but paradoxically old school, it marries classic and neo soul influences; Curtis Mayfield meets D’Angelo, if you will. Here, slick yet fresh sounding jazz-informed guitar licks and funky bass rhythms are punctuated by judicious drumbeats and underpinned by smoothly delivered lead vocals and crooned three-part harmonies. Inspired by the boys’ grandmothers, contrasting indigenous heritage and “a tangled culmination of interpersonal relationships”, Izy’s songs are immediately seductive and ultimately addictive. All up, Irene is an auspicious first album from an ambitious young band.
Tony Hillier