The Bamboos album review: live feel finally captured on Hard Up

It’s taken 10 albums but nine-piece Melbourne soul/funk outfit The Bamboos has finally made one that nails the natural exuberance of its live shows.

Melbourne funk/soul band The Bamboos, whose 10th album 'Hard Up' was released in 2021. Picture: Ian Laidlaw

Album reviews for week of June 12, 2021:

 

SOUL/FUNK

Hard Up

The Bamboos

Pacific Theatre/BMG

★★★★

It’s taken 10 albums but nine-piece Melbourne outfit the Bamboos has finally made one that nails the natural exuberance of its live shows. Hard Up, recorded in splendid pre-pandemic isolation at a country house in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges, rarely falters across 11 tracks, all steeped in deeply righteous grooves. Vocalist Kylie Auldist stars on nine of them; she is supplemented by Sydney soul man Ev Jones (on While You Sleep) and US singers Joey Dosik (resurrecting Sam Cooke on the Philly pop jewel It’s All Gonna Be OK) and Durand Jones (stoking Earth, Wind & Fire on If Not Now, Then When?). Meanwhile bandleader/producer and guitarist Lance Ferguson peels off just one blazing solo, on the opening title track, an otherwise organ and baritone sax-based slow groove. He vamps away with the ensemble on the rest, while the brass and rhythm sections lead the New Orleans-flavoured instrumental Upwey Funk, which tips its hat to Crescent City stalwarts the Meters and livewire festival fixtures Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue.

But the real surprise packet is a bass-driven take on Black Box’s 1989 Italo-house hit Ride On Time. It’s bound to become a linchpin of the Bamboos’ live set, not least for its sheer novelty value, though the song has a convoluted backstory. The original version used a vocal sample from the 1980 single Love Sensation by American disco artist Loleatta Holloway, which had not been cleared. After the copyright owners sued, Ride On Time was reissued with rerecorded vocals by Heather Small (later of M People). Black Box then hired French fashion model Katrin Quinol to mime the vocal for TV appearances. So, in effect, Bamboos singer Auldist is covering all three women yet still puts her own stamp on the song, bound to become a club staple all over again. But she goes one better on I Just Heard You Leaving, a smouldering soul ballad built on filigree keys, brass and guitar in which she channels three great divas of the form: Etta, Dusty and Renée. The other standout is Nothing I Wanna Know About, a slinky tribute to seminal ‘70s US funk band Rufus, whose singer Chaka Khan would also surely claim Auldist as a soul sister.

Phil Stafford

 

HIP-HOP

Fried

REMI

House of Beige

★★★½

This third album from Melbourne’s REMI arrives 12 months late due to the pandemic, and on the back of the unexpected news it will be the last as a duo for rapper Remi Kolawole and producer Justin “Sensible J” Smith. So, from the get-go Fried feels like a slightly muted coda to what has been a trailblazing, Australian Music Prize-winning nine years together. It also feels thoughtful and fussed over. There’s nothing here that pounds like classic REMI cuts such as Tyson (from 2014’s Raw X Infinity) or Substance Therapy (from 2016’s Divas and Demons). Instead, Fried unspools organically across 13 songs stacked with live instrumentation and guest spots. There’s the busy guitar and Silent Jay-driven vocals on opener Reptile, the woozy shuffle of lead single 5 A.M. with its powder keg, Whosane-powered bridge; and the funky crunch of Finesse It. Lyrically, Kolawole is in the nimblest form of his career, wryly tackling a wide range of subjects from love and politics through to artistic satisfaction. It adds up to a fine send-off.

Matt Shea

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JAZZ

Duality

Michael Pigneguy

Independent

★★★★

This double album from Perth drummer and composer Michael Pigneguy is a blast from the past. He formed the Awakenings Ensemble while working in the Middle East between 2006 and 2018. For the follow-up album to 2012 release Speak, 23 musicians playing in various combinations were assembled, mostly from Australia and Malaysia, with others from countries such as the US, France, Tunisia and Russia. Across an hour, two suites are presented: high-energy instrumentals called Introspections, and vocals called Collaborations. All compositions are by Pigneguy other than two of his arrangements: Wayne Shorter’s Footprints and the standard My Funny Valentine. The instrumentals, featuring electric bass, synthesiser solos and rock time-feels, are in the 1970s-style fusion idiom, with nods to contemporary music, including Middle Eastern sounds. The vocals, featuring five female singers, are in the soul-funk idiom. Still, this is unmistakably a drummer’s album, its chief asset being Pigneguy’s brilliance at the drum kit.

Eric Myers

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INDIE POP

Turn My Dial – M Squared Recordings and more, 1981-84

Tangled Shoelaces

Chapter Music

★★★★

Brisbane’s DIY family band Tangled Shoelaces formed in 1980, with members ranging in age from 10 to 14, and dissolved just four years later. During that time the quartet supported US punk icons Dead Kennedys and recorded a stack of little-heard songs that flit between sparkling guitar-pop and rickety post-punk. Armed with woodwinds and synthesiser on top of more expected instruments, siblings Stephen, Lucy and Martin Mackerras and drummer Leigh Nelson took influence from the likes of Split Enz and the B-52’s but sounded purely like themselves. While it’s only natural to foreground the band’s unique story, the music is just as special, blessed with quirky psychedelic flourishes (see the title track) and eerily strong songwriting (Oceans Away). The lyrics are surprisingly nuanced too, citing human rights (Political Jokes) and existential woes (World). This lovingly curated anthology showcases how creativity can thrive on the fringes – or simply in the lounge room.

Doug Wallen

 

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ROCK

Typhoons

Royal Blood

Warner

★★★★

Before the current pandemic, there was another widespread music industry killer by the name of second album syndrome. Brighton duo Royal Blood fell victim on 2017’s How Did We Get So Dark?: although the album reached similar commercial heights to the band’s self-titled debut, it plateaued creatively and left little to no impact. This time around, Mike Kerr (bass, vocals) and Ben Thatcher (drums) have gone the proverbial nuclear option on the comeback trail. Their unique musical make-up has been turning heads since 2014, but here a heavy emphasis on groove, rhythm and hooks has added a considerable spring to the duo’s step and completely revitalised its creative approach. Touchstones range from mid-period Supergrass (the title track) to early Daft Punk (especially apparent on Million and One), but this mosaic approach allows the band to present something confidently as its own. Typhoons is not only Kerr and Thatcher’s best album yet, it’s also the best Royal Blood release since its debut EP seven years ago.

David James Young

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Album reviews for week of June 5, 2021:

 

ROCK/POP

Dreamers Are Waiting

Crowded House

EMI Music Australia

★★★½

Over the decade of dormancy since Crowded House’s 2010 album Intriguer, frontman Neil Finn has devoted himself to solo work, a co-headline tour with Paul Kelly and cosy collaborations with his wife Sharon and their son Liam. Yet he arguably netted the most attention for his year-long stint touring in Fleetwood Mac by filling Lindsay Buckingham’s vacated spot. Finn dived back into Crowded House directly after finishing that run in late 2019, adding two familiar faces to a line-up that already included co-founding bassist Nick Seymour and Liam Finn on guitar. Those “new” members are the band’s longtime producer Mitchell Froom on keyboards – basically levelling up from moonlighting collaborator to permanent fixture – and Finn’s other son Elroy on drums. Such a family affair, of course, evokes Finn’s fruitful sharing of Split Enz and Crowded House with his brother Tim across certain eras of those bands.

Despite the refreshed roster, this seventh studio album nails Crowded House’s signature bevy of intricate melodies, ambitious arrangements and dreamy flourishes. But there are also new-found possibilities for harmonising, as heard on the folk-style vocal layering of Start of Something and knowing Beach Boys overtures of To the Island. Other tracks veer off into similarly colourful patches, whether it’s the tropical-tinged embellishment of Too Good for This World or the swelling horn fanfares of Playing With Fire. Such playful shifts underscore the feeling of a band that’s free to chase whims at a moment’s notice. Observe the Split Enz-worthy New Wave flashback Whatever You Want, which still manages to strike off into spontaneous harmonising and other offbeat creative flexes. Love Isn’t Hard At All even briefly riffs on the theme song for the 1980s video game Tetris, which was itself an update of an old Russian folk song. For all the ornate hooks and tidy lyrical phrases on display here, it’s that effortless dynamism that keeps these songs so fascinating. As soon as we’ve latched onto some scene-stealing detail, there are a handful of new ones to compete for our attention. Now as much as ever before, Finn and co. focus their surplus of ideas into an accessible package that’s equally quirky and classic.

Doug Wallen

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JAZZ

Since Subito

Meatshell

Earshift Music

★★★★

This is an album where I clutch at straws trying to understand the music. It’s apparently inspired by the 100-year-old cubist art movement which juxtaposed different perspectives. Certainly singer/contrabassist Helen Svoboda and saxophonist Andrew Saragossi juggle conventional modes of expression in new ways. Some of the seven original compositions are confronting, but it’s impossible not to empathise with such talented musicians. As a bassist, Svoboda adopts a metallic, percussive sound to lay down the duo’s rhythm. She is a highly innovative vocalist, and her sometimes wordless lines can run to upward glissandos, which morph into excruciating screams, to sounds which suggest she is gasping for air or, dare I say it, simulating orgasm. An old question arises: is this noise masquerading as music? The two musicians can establish a groove, and Saragossi is a superior jazz saxophonist. Still, this music is not the familiar avant-garde; it is in my view New Music. You may never have heard anything quite like this before.

Eric Myers

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CLASSICAL

The Elena Kats-Chernin Collection

Elena Kats-Chernin

ABC Classics

★★★★½

To celebrate the 60th birthday of Elena Kats-Chernin, ABC Classics has issued a 10-disc box set of her music. Hardly a concert or broadcast goes by without an EKC piece in the program. She is clearly the most popular composer in the country these days — and prolific! This monumental and perhaps unprecedented release contains 76 compositions, from solo instruments to concertos, totalling a dozen hours of music. Still, there is scope for more, such as her theatre pieces, notably the opera Whiteley and the Monteverdi re-workings for Barrie Kosky. As a very public figure, Kats-Chernin is an engaging and endearing personality, and these same qualities percolate into her music: quirky, sometimes kinky, bubbly, bittersweet, Prokofiev meets Telemann. This release should contain a health warning: as appealing and charming as so much of this music is, there is danger of sugar-overload. Still, her many fans will no doubt devour this release greedily to ride the delicious sugar high.

Vincent Plush

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ALTERNATIVE ROCK

Endless Arcade

Teenage Fanclub

PeMA

★★★

Teenage Fanclub started in 1989, when the quintet formed in Glasgow. For this 11th album, three original members remain: vocalist Norman Blake, guitarist Raymond McGinley and drummer Francis MacDonald. On Warm Embrace, the Brit-pop mood calls to mind jaunty struts around Hackney in oversized sunglasses, while The Sun Won’t Shine On Me jangles in a sundazed sixties dreamscape. Tom Petty-esque folk-rock makes a cameo on In Our Dreams, before melancholic track The Future ruminates on past regrets (”It’s hard to walk into the future when your shoes are made of lead”). Silent Song reflects Blake’s formative adolescence influenced by both The Monkees and Neil Young. The band has opted for simplicity over the fuzzy bath of feedback on earlier albums. The arrangements and musicianship heard here are neither purely nostalgic nor a rehash of 1991’s beloved Bandwagonesque; instead, it’s somewhere in between. As far as evolution of sounds go, Endless Arcade is more of a shuffle rather than a leap forward.

Cat Woods

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PUNK

Turn Up That Dial

The Dropkick Murphys

Born & Bred

★★★½

“I’m sick and tired of people saying that we’ve put out 11 albums that sound exactly the same,” AC/DC guitarist and songwriter Angus Young was once quoted as saying. “In fact, we’ve put out 12 albums that sound exactly the same.” Boston band The Dropkick Murphys has taken a similar pride in its approach across what is now 10 studio albums since forming in 1996: the wheel has never been reinvented by the Celtic punks, but it’s never stopped turning, either. There’s something admirable in that sort of consistency. Turn Up That Dial includes highlights such as the lighthearted rib of Mick Jones Nicked My Pudding, the folksy storytelling of Queen of Suffolk County and the curmudgeonly Gen X grumpiness of H.B.D.M.F. The only properly solemn moment comes in closer I Wish You Were Here, where vocalist Al Barr addresses the loss of his father and those lost from the pandemic amid an accordion-led waltz. As with all that came before it, the song shows that once again, the Dropkick Murphys tackle the usual tropes with evergreen aplomb.

David James Young