STACK #140 Jun 2016

MUSIC REVIEWS

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Emma Russack In A New State

Ladyhawke Wild Things

So this is what it sounds like in Emma Russack's head. Thrilling possibilities. Crippling doubts. Fresh starts. Lingering regrets. Fears of abandonment, real and imagined. It's an intimate panorama the Melbourne singer-songwriter chooses to share, daydreaming on her back in Cottesloe and spiralling into fraught memories in Narooma and Best Love . Aloneness is a recurring theme between My Own Friend and Not The Friend , but it's not always as bleak as it sounds as inner strength wells from self-knowledge. At least she has Beaches producer John Lee to wrap his deep, warm reverb around her simple guitar lines, slow drums and vague burbles of electro interference. (Spunk) Michael Dwyer

Ladyhawke’s third album has Kiwi Pip Brown honing the schematics she laid bare to the world with her breakthrough in 2008. Newly married and sober, Wild Things finds Brown with less urgency, pausing more often to find wonder in everyday spectacle. Singles Sweet Fascination and A Love Song are summer jams full of innocence, while album tracks like Golden Girl – a Charli XCXish sneer – and Money To Burn prove Brown has lost none of her edge. It’s all tied together with Ladyhawke’s typical hallmarks: rubbery bass lines, snappy drums, and cool synth melodies. It’s another win for New Zealand’s other popstar. (EMI) Jake Cleland

Swans The Glowing Man

If Francis Bacon needed inspiration to enter even darker territory when putting oil to canvas, he’d have Swans at ear-bleeding levels. This isn’t an album, it’s a séance, as you’ll no doubt experience in all 25 minutes of Cloud of Unknowing . The wolves of doom are breathing

at your hind and you're engulfed in an erotically moreish, cinematic and intoxicating tunnel of desire. Then there’s the broken cabaret that is The World Looks Red/The World Looks Black , a leaning tower of blackened glass descending upon the cranium. Folks, let’s be honest: every now and then you desire a definitive soundtrack to the end of days, focusing on your own. Look no further. It’ll challenge your projected sanity and envelop your soul, as all good music should. It’s not for squares, nor the faint of heart – it’s instead genetically designed for warriors atop skeletal steeds on a mission to bizarrely divulge secrets and fears. F-cking incredible. Run, don’t walk, to the nearest store and purchase immediately as a matter of urgency most vital. (Mute/Create/Control) Chris Murray

MUSIC

The Screaming Jets Chrome

Mick Harvey Delirium Tremens

Neko Case, k.d. lang, Laura Veirs case/lang/veirs Case/lang/veirs is the coming together of three extraordinary talents. The iconic k.d. lang approached independently-driven artists Neko Case and Laura Veirs with an emailed suggestion: “I think we should make a record together.” Without hesitation, this collaboration was born. Barely knowing each other, they have over the past few years created this super trio, writing all the songs together. They then bunkered down in Portland, Oregon with producer Tucker Martine to record between lang’s loft and Veir’s dining room and backyard studio. As you would expect, this is an extra-special offering of dazzling harmonies and mesmerising rhythms. (ANTI/Warner) Denise Hylands

Mary Chapin Carpenter The Things That We Are Made Of Mary Chapin Carpenter is a multi- Grammy Award-winning country artist who has sold over 14 million albums in her near three decade career. On her 14th studio album she has employed the highly in- demand Grammy Award-winning producer Dave Cobb (Jason Isbell) to work his magic. Cobb has stripped back these arrangements to reveal and highlight Carpenter’s songwriting and singing abilities. There have been many roads travelled in these songs, reflecting on the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. Comforting, confronting, sad and assuring, she continues to be an outstanding talent. (ThirtyTigers/Cooking Vinyl) Denise Hylands

They don’t make ’em like this anymore – The Screaming Jets are one of the last great pub rock bands. “We got the scars,” Dave Gleeson sings on the band’s seventh studio album and first in eight years, “but they don’t always show.” Reunited with producer Steve James – who helmed the band’s first two records at the start of the ’90s – the Jets sound refreshed and renewed, showcasing bass player Paul Woseen’s sharp songwriting, the twin guitar attack of Jimi Hocking and Scott Kingman, and Gleeson’s eternally youthful Aussie larrikin vocals (check out Smack In The Mouth ). Some say that rock is no longer relevant. But you know and I know better. (Dinner ForWolves) Jeff Jenkins

In his seemingly never-ending crusade to interpret all of Serge Gainsbourg’s canon into the Queen’s English, the multi-talented former Bad Seed adequately suffices. Nice album title, amazing orchestration and production values aside; this third installment (the amazing Intoxicated Man and a slightly lesser Pink Elephants , the prior two) is more a novelty than a stand-alone album to savour and enjoy. Perhaps it’s the polish and ‘straight’ angle at interpretation, or it may just be that the ‘best’ of our departed Lothario’s catalogue is exhausted. No matter, it’s still better than anything Mumford & Sons have on offer. (Mute/Create/Control) Chris Murray

MAY 2016

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