Josh Pyke in spectacular form on sixth album Rome
Rome is a spectacular record from one of Australia’s most loved artists. It is honest, lush, and prompts self-reflection and appreciation for all that we have in life right now.
Album reviews for week of September 19, 2020:
Indie pop/folk
Rome
Josh Pyke
Wonderlick/Sony
Listening to a Josh Pyke album is like sitting in a room with a good mate, sharing stories and reflections, and realising that you have more in common than you knew. His intricate storytelling has drawn us in since he emerged in 2005 with simple yet thoughtful guitar arrangements set atop understated lush sonic backdrops. The five-year wait since his previous album has been worth it. Rome is some of the Sydney singer-songwriter’s best work yet, touching on the tough realities of life while managing to maintain a sense of optimism. Still We Carry On encapsulates the balance of harsh reality and hope that winds its way through the album. Crafting commentary on the human condition is something Pyke has always excelled at, and the themes of ageing, love, loss and doubt on Rome touch a nerve more than his previous releases. Perhaps it is that we are all getting more reflective as we age, and Pyke’s honest and authentic songwriting has tapped into that. Musically, the album sticks to Pyke’s roots and folk guitar rhythms dancing over ambient strings, with his voice and storytelling the sonic champion. This is a spectacular record from one of Australia’s most loved artists. It is honest, lush, and prompts self-reflection and appreciation for all that we have in life right now. In a time when we could all do with some hope and inspiration, Pyke is telling us that yes, times are tough, but as his lyrics in Doubting Thomas forecast: “Something good will come around again.”
Sarah Howells
Psychedelic soul
Mordechai
Khruangbin
Dead Oceans
Genre (or geographical) boundaries have never troubled Khruangbin, a Texas trio formed in 2009 that has an aptitude for gliding from funk and soul to psychedelia and surf with silky grace and tranquil intuition. On its third album, the band bolsters its already prodigious tool kit by making vocals a feature for the first time, in contrast with previous releases that have been largely instrumental in nature. This stylistic decision allows bassist Laura Lee to perfect a lilting disco delivery on Time (You and I), while on Pelota she sings in confident Spanish against Mark Speer’s smoothly unfurling, Santana-esque guitar. Connaissais de Face’s sensual spoken-word exchange evokes the classic duet Je T’Aime … Moi Non Plus, while the spiritual meditation If There is No Question draws on Speer and drummer DJ Johnson’s stint in a church band during their youth. The vocals can sit fairly far back in the spacious, farmhouse-recorded mix — especially on dub-influenced opener First Class — but that simply confirms that this welcome new ingredient is no more important than the rest.
Doug Wallen
Indie folk
Antarctica
Tom West
AntiFragile Music
South Australian singer-songwriter Tom West didn’t name his fifth studio album after the continent, per se. The title track records his last trip to the beach in 2017 with his dying father; at the tip of SA’s Fleurieu Peninsula, it was so far south that the next land mass from there was Antarctica. This song is steeped in grief and regret, but it’s an outlier, as West rarely wallows in such negative emotions. Rather, his keening, androgynous voice — in an upper register that recalls Brian Aubert, frontman of Los Angeles indie rockers Silversun Pickups — is a joyously tuneful instrument, meshing with his finger-picked guitars, sprinklings of piano, bass and Ringo-like drums. West’s material, though betraying a Harvest-era Neil Young influence — as heard on the oddball A Folk Singer From Outer Space and confessional Nowhere to Go — is consistently strong, with memorably melodic choruses. Much of the album was written while on the road in the US, where West has been based since 2017, and overall this collection of songs reflects a concomitant sense of place.
Phil Stafford
Album reviews for week of September 12, 2020:
FOLK/COUNTRY
A Dark Murmuration of Words
Emily Barker
Thirty Tigers/Cooking Vinyl
If, to cite an apposite aphorism, Americana-oriented female Aussie singer-songwriter albums are a dime a dozen, Emily Barker’s sixth long-player is worth its weight in gold. Granted the requisite exposure, A Dark Murmuration Of Words should lift the WA born and raised artist’s local stocks to something approaching what they are in Britain, where she bagged artist of the year at the 2018 Americana Awards and wrote the theme song for the hit BBC crime series Wallander. Barker might have been based in Britain for the best part of 20 years but she still calls Australia home. That much is clear from the opening tracks of her latest and greatest waxing, in which the bar is set high, with the irresistibly catchy The Woman Who Planted Trees evocative of Emmylou Harris’s watershed mid-1990s album Wrecking Ball. Environmental awareness and a yearning for family and the Australian bush are embraced in the strings-drenched Geography (“Eucalypts after rain / Remind me who I am again”) and equally haunting Return Me (“I’ve been gone so long”).
Climate change and plague hovers over Where Have The Sparrows Gone, in which Barker’s unsettling sketch of an avian-less post-apocalyptic London is echoed in a manic keyboard coda. By contrast, When Stars Cannot Be Found, which could be construed as a companion piece, is built on a simple banjo figure. The spectre of global warming surfaces again in Strange Weather, albeit pegged on impending motherhood and a pristine solo acoustic guitar arrangement. Plaintive piano lends the related Sonogram a different feel, while racial tension triggers the bluesy, drum-driven and electronically enhanced Machine. Barker’s chordal twists and her sweet and sensitive singing are captivating throughout. With relatively sparse but imaginative backing and arrangements provided by a simpatico band and producer, Barker’s deftly-crafted, shapeshifting songs gently seduce the listener as she draws connections between the familial, the local, and the global while straddling the boundary between folk, country and chamber pop. An album replete with nooks and crannies, light and shade, A Dark Murmuration Of Words will richly reward multiple plays.
Tony Hillier
INDIE ROCK
Women In Music Pt. III
Haim
Universal
After three albums, multiple awards and numerous global tours since 2013, the three strong sisters of Haim are still bringing the goods. My suggestion is to lean in a little closer to this latest album as the upbeat energy belies the darker narrative behind it, as it tells the story of a woman coming to terms with her partner’s journey with cancer. Guitarist and drummer Danielle began writing the album when her partner was diagnosed with testicular cancer, taking pen to paper to first create Summer Girl in response to how she was feeling at the time. The heavy lyricism across the album is buoyed and balanced by the energetic riffs, and pop-rock grooves that the trio is well known for. A bridge between modern sounds and the rock music that it was built on, the album covers a lot of musical bases. Opening with the upbeat Los Angeles, we later delve into some serious R&B vibes on 3am, and you could be forgiven for thinking that you’d switched albums with the downright stripped-back folk guitar and harmonies on Hallelujah. This album is balanced, beautiful and well worth a listen.
Sarah Howells
JAZZ
Ella 100: Live at the Apollo
Various Artists
Concord Jazz
This marvellous album celebrates the 100th birthday of the great Ella Fitzgerald, who died in 1996. In 1934, aged 17, she won a talent quest at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre and never looked back. That seminal event is re-enacted in this concert, which was recorded live at the Apollo on October 22, 2016, and runs to 74 minutes. On that night in Harlem, a cavalcade of brilliant singers — most of them African American — presented their versions of songs still associated with Fitzgerald. Singer Patti Austin and actor David Alan Grier hosted an event that shows how beautifully the Americans celebrate a historical jazz figure, while presenting the old repertoire in fresh ways. The Count Basie Orchestra, now led by trumpeter Scotty Barnhart, sounds as good as ever. Cassandra Wilson appears briefly, but the real strength of the album is the inclusion of superb younger singers — such as Andra Day, Lizz Wright and Ledisi — who each shine individually and cement their roles within Fitzgerald’s distinguished pantheon.
Eric Myers
Album reviews for week of September 5, 2020:
FOLK/ROCK
Homegrown
Neil Young
Reprise
★★★
One of Neil Young’s many abandoned archival projects, Homegrown comes to us from somewhere between On the Beach and Tonight’s the Night. The story goes the latter was subbed out in lieu of Homegrown at the last minute. Having now heard both, it ultimately feels as if they made the right call. This is a scattershot effort, one that can never seem to assemble a proper creative focus. Mexico, for instance, offers only the beginning of a tender piano ballad before petering out after less than two minutes, while the spoken-word experiment Florida is straight-up unlistenable and a contender for the worst song in Young’s catalogue. Still, Young has never fired a complete round of blanks: Separate Ways and We Don’t Smoke It No More capture a jam-band essence, while guests Emmylou Harris and Levon Helm accentuate the record from a mere vanity project. For the diehards only.
David James Young
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INDIE POP
Batflowers
Washington
Island/Universal
★★★★
“Saw it on a wall,” Kim Deal drawled in No Aloha, a 1993 indie anthem by the Breeders: “Motherhood means mental freeze.” It’s a classic fear for all artists, especially those with wombs, that having a child means sacrificing the ability to dig deep into the pain and dirt and ugliness most people would very reasonably try to ignore. How can anyone justify the level of introspection art requires when there’s another life necessarily taking priority — especially an artist such as Megan Washington, who has spread the details of her life across a decade of songs? Well, Kim, Washington now has a husband, an infant son and the album of her career (so far). Batflowers doesn’t shy away from those harder, murkier moments either: Washington downright celebrates them in the single Dark Parts, while the agenda-setting title track name-checks Leonard Cohen’s ode to the monastic craft of songwriting, Tower of Song, before acknowledging that there’s plenty to write about outside of its walls. If 2010’s I Believe You Liar was a dazzling show reel for an artist bursting with talent, the 2011 Insomnia mini-album a brutal reality check of what artistic life entails and 2014’s There, There an overstuffed example of second-album second-guessing, then Batflowers is the sound of an artist exhibiting a Captain Marvel-level grasp of her abilities, including when to go all out and when to pull everything right back. Case in point: the everything-at-one production of piano and 80s workstation synths and 90s drum samples of Achilles Heart, contrasted with the simplicity of Catherine Wheel, an elegantly beautiful piano ballad recorded live into her phone. And if this all sounds a little too po-faced, she cheekily throws in sonic jokes, such as what sounds like a degrading cassette tape warping at the end of the harmony-drenched electro pulse of 80s teen movie end-credits shoulda-been The Give. As always, there are perhaps too many ideas competing for attention for an entirely cohesive album but Batflowers proves Deal comprehensively wrong: if anything, Washington shows motherhood means creative fearlessness.
Andrew P. Street
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AMERICANA
The Ridge
Julian Taylor
Howling Turtle
★★★½
Until The Ridge, chameleonic Canadian artist Julian Taylor had released five albums under his own name and an equal number with his former band Staggered Crossing, all of them rootsy funk rock. Now he flicks the switch to Americana with an album that sounds like he has been ploughing this groove all his life. Of West Indian and Mohawk heritage, Taylor has been on the road since his teens and takes changes of scene in his stride. The Ridge’s opening title track pines for his grandparents’ farm in British Columbia where he spent time as a child. It’s conventional country, with piano, steel guitar and brushes evoking a rural idyll. Three tracks in, It’s Not Enough brings Taylor’s voice into sharp focus and the rest of the songs are as changeable as he is. He channels Roy Orbison on Love Enough and namesake James Taylor on Be With You while violin, keys and his own guitars gently jostle for space in the mix.
Phil Stafford
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ELECTRONIC
Laps
Cassian
Sony
★★★
Producer Cassian has made his name remixing the likes of Rufus du Sol and sound engineering Hayden James, both success stories from the Sydney electronic scene. On Laps, Cassian finds a house music groove midway between the raucous clang of Basement Jaxx and tropical house from the likes of Pnau. The steady four-to-the-floor pulse of a synth beat is elevated by the timely layering of samples, which gradually build texture and atmosphere, providing a storyline that anchors elements of neon-bright disco, funk and pop. Lafayette reminisces on the instrumental, synth-on-bass purity of 90s Chicago house, sprinkled with glitchy video game samples. On The Rise and the closing title track Cassian embraces synthesised, reverberating vocals reminiscent of Tame Impala’s cosmic, unearthly vibe. It’s all textbook-perfect clean production, but it can feel too cool to connect with.
Cat Woods
–
JAZZ
Life is Brut(if)al
Andrea Keller & Five Below
Independent
★★★★½
Melbourne’s Andrea Keller is the quintessential disciple of Brian Brown, who proclaimed an essential verity: find your own voice. As pianist on Five Below’s second album, she is joined by two bassists (Mick Meagher on electric, and Sam Anning on double), guitarist Stephen Magnusson, drummer James McLean, plus two saxophonists Scott McConnachie and Julien Wilson. Some older compositions are reworked, as in Meditations on Light, while two iconic artists provide inspiration: Estonian composer Arvo Part (four tracks were composed while Keller researched his music) and Bohemian-Austrian writer Rainer Maria Rilke, who epitomised art as adventure. The album’s closing track, Love in Solitude (Disassembled), includes Rilke’s thoughts, read by Keller’s son Jim. Keller continues her fascinating trips into the musical unknown, taking listeners with her.
Eric Myers
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Playlist: Felicity Urquhart, singer and songwriter
Five songs on high rotation
01. Back to You Jedd Hughes
This song is just beautiful. I love everything about it.
02. Into the Light Teisco West
My late husband Glen Hannah started this project, and after losing him to suicide his bandmates decided — after much heartache — to finish the album and dedicate it to their friend.
03. Take Me to Town The Waifs
I remember watching them live at Port Fairy Folk Festival a few years ago, and Vikki Thorn blew me away when she sang this.
04. Sailed In Kelly Cork
This track features the magic of Kelly’s lovely storytelling along with Glen Hannah on guitar and BVs.
05. The Unknown Brad Butcher
My kids love Brad’s album Travelling Salesman — it has been played in my car more than any other release!
Andrew McMillen’s Middle Eight music column for September 5, 2020:
Singing sisters Vika and Linda Bull generally have been seen as a package deal since they burst on to the national music scene in the late 1980s, but while researching today’s cover story I discovered one towering solo performance to which I wanted to draw special attention. On the music trivia show RocKwiz in 2016, You Am I frontman Tim Rogers gave a fantastic reading of the Rolling Stones classic Gimme Shelter, but the song’s female vocal part was wholly embodied by Vika, who simply stole the show. Without exaggeration, it’s one of the greatest covers I’ve heard.
Linda played the guiro and kept her mouth shut for that particular performance, and she recalled, “It was a hot day; we were really tired, and we had to learn a million songs. But when it was her time to come out, I said ‘Go Vik!’ I knew that she was going to give it everything. But the power! She was going an extra mile with that one, because it was coming out my wedge [stage monitor]. I could feel that she was thinking, ‘I’m not going to sing this again; I’m going to stand here and pay my respect to the song, and the original version.’ She didn’t want to stuff that up; I could see it on her face. But then Tim came over and grabbed her, and that was so beautiful of him to do that — to share the centre stage with her in that way — when we really were just up the back, doing backing vocals. I was so proud of her, and I was so chuffed for his generosity. That was a really classy thing to do.”
Rogers told me of how he approached the Gimme Shelter cover, too. “It’s a hell of a song, and I was drinking afterwards and people said, ‘Wow, man, she really wiped the floor with you.’ Well, Merry Clayton — who sang on the original — wiped the floor with Mick [Jagger], so my job was to be a supporting character to that climax of Vika. She and I kept a really close eye on each other, and we didn’t say it, but Merry Clayton didn’t really get treated so well on those [recording] sessions. It’s a lead vocal, and the performer who sings that part needs to be up the front. It’s a team effort, and it just reminds me of every single time I’ve sung with the girls: they want you to be part of the team. No matter where your talent lies, they bring you up to their level.”
I’ll leave the final word on those extraordinary four minutes to Linda, whose pure joy is evident in the footage on YouTube. “I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face,” she said. “I felt so proud of both of them. People often think, ‘Are you worried about that, standing there playing that [and not singing]?’ But no; that’s why Vika and I love each other so much, and work together so well — because we want each other to do well. We don’t want each other to do badly.”
mcmillena@theaustralian.com.au