STACK #188 June 2020

MUSIC REVIEWS

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Thao & the Get Down Stay Down Temple Thao &The Get Down Stay Down’s fifth record Temple is more than just an addition to the band’s discography. On past releases, chief songwriter Thao Nguyen has hidden her sexuality by way of metaphor, cautiously revealing herself in scant detail. Nguyen is no longer creating in fear, but rather emboldening herself to make music that reflects who she is: a proud queer Vietnamese woman. This liberation can be heard across the album’s spirited production, the band making bold forays into pop territory while also shifting towards greater experimentation. An album of revealing your truth and finding power within your art, Temple marks a new era for a band now 20 years into their career. (Ribbon Music/Domino) Holly Pereira

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit Reunions Since leaving the Drive-By Truckers in 2007 and going solo, Jason Isbell has become recognised as one of the best American songwriters. His stories are of real America: honest, and quite often very personal. These are tracks Isbell wishes he could have written 15 years ago, but are possible now through time and experience: Reunions , he says, is “a reunion with the me I was back then." Over eight years of sobriety, lost friends, and starting a family, Isbell looks back on his ghosts in reflection. Once again produced by Dave Cobb and supported by his band The 400 Unit, this is another outstanding step up for a unique artist. (Spunk) Denise Hylands

Phoebe Bridgers Punisher Since the release of her debut record, Phoebe Bridgers has become one of the most recognisable names in indie rock. Coming off the back of three years of relentless touring, Punisher documents the experiences that have shaped Bridgers in this dizzying time, painting a striking portrait that is simultaneously

coming-of-age and world weary. Each song possesses a myriad of detail, a quality also found across Bridgers’ body of work in supergroups boygenius and Better Oblivion Community Centre. It’s this detail that transforms us to the car in Graceland Too , the 7/11 in Kyoto , and Bridgers’ own room in I KnowThe End , the album’s rapturous closing track. (Dead Oceans/Inertia) Holly Pereira

Protomartyr Ultimate Success Today Bearing a title that inscribes the neo-manifest destiny of contemporary American individualism, Protomartyr’s fifth album sees little to hope for. Joe Casey’s forlorn croak is the medium for misfortune both abstract and direct, tumbling and swaying over the industrial clang of Greg Ahee’s guitar lines to make pessimistic poetry. And a fine sense of rhythm they have to it, too: just when a song has circled the poisoned well so long with hypnotic repetition that you think it might sink in, it surges back with frothing violence. Cathartic with all the vitriol and bile at the world one may have felt but been unable to articulate, Ultimate Success Today shouts it loud. (Domino) Jake Cleland

Neil Young Homegrown

Homegrown is the 'lost album' by Neil Young. Recorded between ’74 and ’75 following the break-up of a romantic relationship, Young was unable to unloose this personal heartache – so he kept it to himself, and the album remained unreleased until now. It was to be the bridge between Harvest and Comes A Time , and now its time has come. Painstakingly restored from analogue tape, Homegrown brings us 12 new songs, some of which have never been heard even in a live setting. Guests include Emmylou Harris, Levon Helm, Robbie Roberston and others. A beautiful album revealing the sad side of a love affair which Young needed to share. (Warner) Denise Hylands

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever Sideways To New Italy If Rolling Blackouts exist in a certain lineage of Australian jangle pop, their distinction is bringing out the post-punk edge always present within it by ratcheting up the tempo. For a band so unconcerned with media, social or otherwise, but workmanlike songwriters

instead, their records sure sound like a life without days off: constantly moving, bursting with impetus, and worried they might disappear before they get to all their ideas. “I’m burnin’ all my candles down” is a sweet hook, but if they’re showing any signs of flaming out, it isn’t here: Sideways to New Italy is a churning, sensitive, scorching level up. (Dead Oceans/Inertia) Jake Cleland

82 JUNE 2020

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