Shout it from the Hilltop

Hilltop Hoods are back with their first album in five years, which is not only excellent, it could make them vital again.

HIP-HOP

The Great Expanse

Hilltop Hoods

HTH/Universal

4 stars

Detail from the cover of Hilltop Hoods’ The Great Expanser.

Five years between studio albums feels like an eternity for an Adelaide Hills hip-hop trio that once had a happy habit of releasing a platinum-selling LP every two years or so. In that time Australian rap music has completed a remarkable transformation. Where Hilltop Hoods were once the colossus in a genre fretting over its monocultural middle-class whiteness, now the artists generating the most buzz are frequently African-Australian (Remi, B Wise, Jeida Woods) or indigenous (Baker Boy, A.B. Original). There’s never been more diversity in Australian rap music. Hilltop Hoods know this; through their old label Golden Era they helped propagate some of this new talent. The new question, as far as the Hoods are concerned, is where do they fit in local hip-hop’s brave new world?

If you judged them solely by early hits such as Clown Prince and Testimonial Year, they’d be dinosaurs. But as Australian rap music has changed, thankfully so have they. Pound-for-pound, The Great Expanse is the best thing the group has released. After the relative darkness of 2014’s Walking Under Stars, the Hoods seemed wrung out, exhausted and ready for a break. Today, MCs Suffa and Pressure and DJ Debris sound rejuvenated, their songs bubbling over with a sophisticated inventiveness. The group led the release with the usual dance floor-friendly single, Leave Me Lonely, but this time it’s accompanied by a roster of fabulous supporting songs.

There’s the hard-boiled, horn-laced Be Yourself; the square-shouldered Sell It All, Run Away; and the heady Exit Sign, which might be the most straight-up cathartic thing the Hoods have recorded. Even the album’s statement-of-intent opener Into the Abyss is given a gutsy propulsion the group once would have struggled to capture without slipping into bombast. While the trio may no longer be the anointed leaders of a nascent Australian rap genre, they’ve elevated themselves into some of its best songwriters. Pressure used to swing a hatchet at his lyrics, hacking at the consonants; these days he slices and dices with an exhilarating precision, and breaks up his raps with a genuinely affecting baritone.

The album’s production from One Above, Trials, Cam Bluff, Plutonic Lab and Sixfour is rich but rarely overstuffed. The guest list too eschews any flashy features, instead leaning into exceptional local talent such as Ecca Vandal, Timberwolf, Illy and many more. Adrian Eagle’s undulating vocal hauls along the easygoing strum of single Clark Griswold, while teenage singer-songwriter Ruel is drafted in for one of the album’s carefully dispensed quieter moments, adding a poignant feature to Fire & Grace.

Hilltop Hoods in 2019. Vital? Perhaps, perhaps not. Excellent? Absolutely, yes.

MATT SHEA

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Ripples, by Ian Brown.

ALTERNATIVE ROCK

Ripples

Ian Brown

Polydor

3 stars

It has been a decade since Ian Brown’s last solo album, though 2016 saw the release of two singles by the band he fronted, Brit-rock pioneers the Stone Roses, which broke up in 1996. Post-Roses reunion, Brown has brought family on board for Ripples, his seventh solo work. Not satisfied to write and produce most of it, Brown recorded most of the instrumental parts himself, with co-writing and instrumental credits given to his sons.

First single First World Problems laments those who “open their mouths when there’s nothing coming out”, though in truth, Brown hasn’t flexed any great lyrical dexterity on this album. Black Roses, a Barrington Levy cover, is the echoey, twangy sister to classic Roses track Love Spreads, and fans will shuffle and shoegaze along like it’s still the 1990s. Since that band broke up, Brown’s endeavours have covered a sojourn in Morocco and contributing vocals to electro-dance albums, most notably with UNKLE. Like the intrepid Robert Plant, however, Brown hasn’t shied from experimenting with world music elements and unexpected collaborators. Sinead O’Connor, former Smiths bassist Andy Rourke and Happy Mondays’ Paul Ryder all featured on his fifth solo album The World is Yours. No such recognisable names pop up on Ripples, which results in it feeling like a much more intimate affair. From Chaos to Harmony is justifiably the track Brown released as third single.

Could this fuzzy guitar-based jangle — or any other track here, really — have made the Top 10 on Manchester alt-rock radio in 1989? Definitely. Is there a cult of floppy-haired, brogue-wearing Stone Roses fans in Australia who are going to appreciate that? Undoubtedly.

CAT WOODS

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Detail from Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete Revisited, by Mercury Rev.

COUNTRY POP

Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete Revisited

Mercury Rev

Bella Union

3.5 stars

Bobbie Gentry casts an enigmatic shadow over country music. Known for writing vivid lyrical stories set in her Mississippi homeland, for high glamour, and for securing a role in the production of her music at a time when it wasn’t thought proper for a lady to do so, Gentry came to prominence with the 1967 hit Ode to Billie Joe, but had faded from public life by the early 1980s. Her disappearance spurred a mythology as intriguing as those of the characters she describes in her songs. The Delta Sweete, Gentry’s second album, was commercially unsuccessful, but has boasted devoted fans since its release, including Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue, who initiated Revisited. Beginning as a private project, it expanded after a raft of high-profile female vocalists were recruited for the task. It’s a tempting conceit, but as with any reimagining, a tough thing to pull off. The original Delta Sweete begins with a thick, reverberating guitar line and Gentry’s sly, earthy rasp. Revisited opens with a more svelte rendition of Okolona River Bottom Band from Norah Jones. In the hands of Mercury Rev, arrangements have become lavish and occasionally over-swollen; elegant but missing some of the originals’ charm.

Vocal performances are consistently strong and add up to a cohesive whole, despite the 13 singers. Lucinda Williams lends a deep warble to Ode to Billie Joe — which is included despite not having appeared on The Delta Sweete — but the song is more suited to Gentry, whose frank delivery contrasts the dark subject matter with twisted mirth. Elsewhere, Susanne Sundfor and Margo Price give standout performances among a collection that provides an adequate tribute to a distinct musical figure.

KIMBERLEY THOMSON

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Transition, by Zela Margossian Quintet.

JAZZ

Transition

Zela Margossian Quintet

Art As Catharsis Records

3.5 stars

Zela Margossian is a talent to watch. The young woman, born in Beirut and now living in Australia, has already distinguished herself as a pianist with Sydney’s formidable Sirens Big Band. Transition includes nine of her compositions, plus her version of a work by American-Armenian composer Alan Hovhaness. She is accompanied by Stuart Vandegraaff (soprano saxophone, clarinet), Adem Yilmaz (percussion), Elsen Price (double bass, bass guitar), and Alexander Inman-Hislop (drums). Metin Yilmaz plays plul/kaval on two tracks. Margossian’s piano playing, particularly when unaccompanied, has an appealing lushness, and her improvisations, which suggest a training in classical music, are beautifully fluent. Her attractive compositions become more in-depth on repeated hearings. There is an interesting Middle Eastern flavour to the music, but the overall ambience is that of jazz/rock fusion. The time-feels in the rhythm section, coming from either Latin or rock music, flood the album with a rock sensibility which is somewhat incompatible with the jazz idiom, particularly when Price plays electric bass. In the marketing of the album, the music is declared to be “ethno-jazz” or “world music”, which suggests that it should be regarded as something other than jazz. Margossian’s piano playing is a delight to hear, particularly in the quieter moments — but in line with the album’s title, I for one will be looking forward to what she comes up with on her next album.

ERIC MYERS