Vika & Linda Bull’s anthology ’Akilotoa spans 12 years of sublime sister harmonies
The Bulls’ reputation as scintillating live performers is well known, but it’s when they work together in close harmony that you realise how the purity of sound can transcend mere words.
POP/ROOTS
’AKILOTOA: ANTHOLOGY 1994-2006
Vika & Linda
Bloodlines
★★★★½
Ahead of a new studio album due next year — their first in 15 years — Vika and Linda Bull have released a comprehensive 28-track primer of their career to date.
Eight cuts come from the Melbourne sibling singers’ 1994 self-titled debut, six from their 1999 album Two Wings, and four from Princess Tabu, the 1996 set that explored the sisters’ musical roots in Tonga, the Pacific Island birthplace of their mother and extended family. The remaining tracks are drawn from their most recent studio albums, Love is Mighty Close (2002) and Between Two Shores (2006), plus four outstanding live performances and a re-recorded version of Down on the Jetty, from the 2014 Paul Kelly album Merri Soul Sessions. (Their long-time collaborator and band leader Kelly has a hand in eight songs on ’Akilotoa, including the supremely funky I Know Where to Go to Feel Good.)
What strikes you on hearing the entire 12-year-spanning set back to back is Vika and Linda’s stylistic breadth. Equally at home with mainstream pop, reggae, gospel, soul, funk, country blues, Cajun and traditional Tongan music, the Bulls don’t just revel in their inherent sibling harmonies. Each is a lead singer in her own right, with Vika nailing the soul and gospel material and Linda to the fore on the sweeter, more countrified cuts.
As well as Kelly and the sisters, several other high-profile Australian songwriters are represented, including Joe Camilleri, Vika and Linda’s bandleader in the Black Sorrows, where they began their career in 1988 as backing singers, as well as Mark Seymour, Stephen Cummings, Renee Geyer, Chris Abrahams and Archie Roach.
Gospel standards? No problem. Anthony Newley’s Feeling Good gets the simulated big-band treatment, while versions of Sam Cooke’s soul opus Slow Train and traditional gospel showstoppers Who Rolled the Stone Away and Tell The Angels, also led by Vika, remind you just how scintillating the sisters are as live performers.
But it’s when they work together in close harmony — as on Two Wings, a Staple Singers gospel cover from 2000’s Live & Acoustic album, and on the title track of this essential anthology, sung entirely in the Bulls’ ancestral tongue — that you realise how the purity of sound can transcend mere words.
Phil Stafford
CLASSICAL
THE FILM MUSIC OF MARK ISAACS VOLUME 1
Mark Isaacs
One M One
★★★★
Mark Isaacs is highly regarded as a pianist-composer of jazz and classical concert music. Several decades ago, he could have become a film composer, too, and this double album portends a bright future in the genre. From 1984-88, the Sydney-based recent graduate composed symphonic scores for 10 animated telemovies for Burbank Films of Sydney. Four of these – A Tale of Two Cities, Robin Hood, Ivanhoe and Rob Roy – figure in this handsome set. As a novice conductor, Isaacs directs an unspecified orchestra recorded in the Opera House, and he proves he can romance, swashbuckle and parade regal with the best of them. The music is attractive and professionally done: here are ready-made dance scores, a perfect fit for any ballet company in the country.
Vincent Plush
FOLK/WORLD
FRIXX
Frigg
Frigg
★★★★½
There’s no finer sound in the wide world of folk fiddling than feel-good Finnish instrumental band Frigg in full flow. The septet’s 10th album delivers fast and furious original tunes counterbalanced by a handful of more stately pieces, Frigg combining characteristic virtuosity with verve and versatility as it sashays from more sombre minor-key moods to foot-stomping major-key hoedowns. If the numbers bearing its trademark “nordgrass” sound — an exciting fusion of traditional Nordic folk music and American bluegrass — send the pulse racing, the slower numbers, like the courtly march and gentle waltz that bookend Frixx, are a breath of fresh air. In between contrasts abound: a sizzling reel follows a serene air and a Finnish harvest perennial leads to cinematic polska and a souped-up schottische.
Tony Hillier
ROCK
BLVDS OF SPLENDOR
Cherie Currie
Blackheart Records
★★★
Like the silly album title, there’s a lot of dated sounds here that tread a fine line between nostalgia for the 1970s Runaways of Cherie Currie’s early days and the appeal to the grandchildren of her original fans. That she has a deep, resonant rock ‘n’ roll voice is not in doubt – it kicks out of the speakers from Black Magic and takes no prisoners until the end. Ozzy Osbourne’s recent album proved old dogs don’t need to learn new tricks to be appreciated as long as there’s enough to make their work relevant, sometimes in the shape of skilled and well-aligned contributors, which here include Billy Corgan and Juliette Lewis. The loveliness of pared-back, acoustic Shades is the highlight of the album and an indication of where Currie’s throaty, raw, country-tinged vocals could have been stretched in a much more interesting direction.
Cat Woods
ALTERNATIVE FOLK
Banana Skin Shoes
Badly Drawn Boy
AWAL
★★★½
Since then Damon Gough’s last non -soundtrack album came out in 2010, he has left a long-term relationship, had serious health issues, welcomed a new child and turned 50 – oh, and the world has fallen apart in the meantime. Thus it’s weird how upbeat Banana Skin Shoes is on first listen: the opening title track is full Odelay-era Beck, with weird samples and hip-hop beats under muttered spoken verses. Tony Wilson Said is an 80s synth-pop love letter to Manchester, and the uplifting, melancholy I Just Wanna Wish You Happiness is one of the classiest sign-offs to a former partner ever written. It could do with a streamline, but on album No 9 Gough has slipped into middle age sounding happy, at peace with himself and more musically adventurous than ever before: in other words, it’s been worth the wait.
Andrew P. Street
METAL
Rise Radiant
Caligula’s Horse
Inside Out Music
★★★★
Heavy Australian music with a more melodic, progressive tinge has always found avenues to thrive and one such act within this spectrum is Caligula’s Horse, a Brisbane quintet who formed at the start of the 2010s and spent the decade honing their craft. Rise Radiant, the outfit’s fifth album, is its most fully realised to date. Those seeking harsher, heavier tones are rewarded by churning guitars and dizzying time signatures, while Jim Grey simultaneously leads the charge on stunning vocal runs throughout, with the suite of Autumn and The Ascent perhaps his finest dynamic showcase. Although more Dream Theater than Dead Letter Circus, the band still holds an accessibility beyond its immediate niche. Rise Radiant proves that neither sensibility needs to be sacrificed in order for Caligula’s Horse to succeed.
David James Young
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