James Reyne stands strong on album No 12, Toon Town Lullaby

The 10 songs on Toon Town Lullaby are as solid as anything James Reyne has written, though the subject matter is as opaque as ever.

James Reyne worked through writer’s block to deliver Toon Town Lullaby. Picture: Julian Kingma

ROCK

Toon Town Lullaby

James Reyne

Bloodlines

★★★★

 

In 1989, Melbourne’s D-Gen comedy team parodied James Reyne by subtitling a music video to “translate” his garbled lyrics. More than 30 years later his diction is no longer an issue, yet his songs are as opaque as ever. Toon Town Lullaby, the title track of Reyne’s 12th solo album, refers to Nashville, the US music mecca. Reyne went there on a writing trip but evidently didn’t pack his muses. “St Cecilia’s let me down,” he laments, chiding the patron saint of music for deserting him. The song also name-checks Carey January, a petty crim who shot and killed Texan songwriter Blaze Foley in 1989. The more upbeat A Little Ol’ Town South of Bakersfield mentions two more songwriters: David Allan Coe and Jimmy Buffett. Both are still with us, though again there are allusions to bad business in another US music town. Extended metaphors for Reyne’s stateside writer’s block? Who knows. The point is he got over it, and the 10 songs on Toon Town Lullaby are as solid as anything he has written. Produced by Dorian West, of Mark Seymour’s band the Undertow, and recorded at West’s Melbourne studio, the album includes Reyne’s first stab at a love song. One of three co-writes with West, Trying to Write a Love Song is vintage Reyne, with the singer holed up in a motel room as he wrestles with his task: “So I’m trying to write a love song / Everybody said I don’t know how / Whaddaya think I’m doing now?” By contrast, the acerbic Low Hanging Fruit (with its nod to Warren Zevon) could be a sequel to Reyne’s 1981 Australian Crawl song Unpublished Critics. Speaking of his former band, The Tallest Man I Ever Knew is a touching tribute to Crawl alumnus and close friend Brad Robinson, who died of cancer in 1996. Elsewhere Reyne is either sending himself up (Calamity Jane, Last Great Love Affair) or waxing cryptic (Burning Books, This Time, Wrong Guy). Throughout he is superbly backed by a virtual two-man band, with West overlaying guitars, bass, keys, lap steel and trumpet on the supple rhythms of Reyne’s long-time drummer John Watson, while West’s daughter Asha adds angelic backing vocals.

Phil Stafford

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POP

Chromatica

Lady Gaga

Interscope Records

★★★★

It has taken nine years for Lady Gaga to return to the seminal dance-pop that first catapulted her career, and her timing could not be better. While the world isolates amid the coronavirus, Gaga’s latest release transports listeners to a place where sweaty dancefloors are still alive and well. Chromatica is theatrical and ambitious, contrasting heavy themes such as depression, loneliness and post-traumatic stress disorder against bright electro-pop and up-tempo beats. The album starts with sweeping, cinematic strings in one of two instrumental interludes before breaking into Alice, a conceptual banger about the search for wonderland. Guest vocalists include Ariana Grande on catchy first single Rain on Me, K-pop group Blackpink on gritty bop Sour Candy and Elton John on Sine From Above. Its 16 house-inspired tracks are guaranteed to have nightclubs pumping just as soon as they reopen.

Emily Ritchie

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ELECTRONIC

Planet’s Mad

Baauer

LuckyMe / Inertia

★★★

Baauer’s second album evokes dystopian chaos and alien futures. It’s an intense, dark and sometimes muddled soundtrack to the many current woes of the world, and light years away from his breakout hit Harlem Shake.

Shattering drums and pulsating bass are par for the course here; the US producer’s meteoric rise was anchored in the heady EDM days, after all. The title track’s snarling, distorted guitars, rattling drums and thundering bass combine for 2020’s instrumental protest anthem. While Baauer’s forays into trap, grime, dubstep, hip-hop and even tropical house have garnered a global fan base, there’s an outerworldly undercurrent running through Planet’s Mad that makes it less accessible than 2016’s debut Aa. Maybe that’s because the serial collaborator has gone it alone here, eschewing guests bar for Britain’s Tropical Sunshine, who shines on accessible pop number Home.

Tim McNamara

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INDIE POP

How Much Works

Sweet Whirl

Chapter Music

★★★★

Melbourne’s Esther Edquist writes slow-burn emotional studies that hinge on quietly knockout lyrics. “The patterns of nature got nothin’ on me,” she sings early into her debut album as Sweet Whirl, later likening a particular feeling to “all the kicks out of a conga line”. Often set against sparse rhythms and spacey, considered keyboards, these songs are delicate with subtle detail. Lead single Sweetness revisits the smouldering torch songs of 1990s radio (think Sophie B. Hawkins and Everything But the Girl), while Closing Time is an isolation-appropriate portrait of a woozy, boozy night’s end at home. Settling into solo work after playing in cult acts Superstar and Scott & Charlene’s Wedding, Edquist puts Sweet Whirl firmly on the map with this casually mature record. She may lament “I’m just a harmless melody, soon forgotten” on the closing track, but in fact the opposite is true.

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R&B

To Let A Good Thing Die

Bruno Major

AWAL

★★★

The specks of dust on vinyl records that elicit crackles of static pepper the tracks on British singer-guitarist Bruno Major’s second album. It could fool you into believing it isn’t streaming through your headphones but spinning on an old player in your living room. Alas, chances are the old-fashioned flourishes are limited to Major’s latest offering rather than how you’re discovering it. The rub of fingers on guitar strings seeking frets, an exhale, the tap of a boot on a pedal: all these elements are given resonance in the sincerity of Figment of My Mind, which is anchored by a string section. It’s a little bit Simon & Garfunkel if they were experimenting with lo-fi hip-hop. This album is gorgeous in its sparse instrumentation — steel guitar, percussion, strings — which puts Major and his angelic choruses to the fore. Still, it feels as if it’s stuck in one gear: complete chill.

Cat Woods

Playlist: Darren Hart aka Harts, singer-songwriter and guitarist

Five songs on high rotation

01. Power to Love Jimi Hendrix

The attitude of the whole Band of Gypsys record is stunning. It’s funky, heavy, and all captured live.

02. Stylo Gorillaz

I love the production on this song, and the hypnotic groove.

03. Sign O’ the Times Prince

It’s no secret I love Prince, and this is my favourite song of his.

04. Bad Moon Rising Creedence Clearwater Revival

An interesting, dark, strange song put to very uplifting music.

05. What the World Needs Now Dionne Warwick

Such a timeless classic, and a great message.