Music Reviews

Three beloved artists often synonymous with sadness and insularity have crafted new albums that look outward, shaking loose misconceptions about their work.

On her last album, Reward, Welsh art-pop marvel Cate Le Bon sounded mournful and solitudinous, singing of ‘Sad Nudes’, tatty magazines and lost romance. While her music has always been playful and peculiar, her latest, Pompeii, sounds wonderfully unsteady, dialing up the surrealism and channelling 70s synth-pop and saxophone-heavy post-punk. It’s a remarkable, finely pasted collage of fear, fun and divine strangeness.

American rock band Big Thief have yet to put out a bad record, and Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is as confounding, ambitious and expansive as its name suggests. The 20-song record is full of fiddles, trip-hop, country rock and, of course, those wrenching, warbling folk songs that Adrianne Lenker does better than most. Lenker’s subject matter here is both microscopic and sweeping: snakes, spuds, moons, apples, ashtrays and the Book of Genesis. It’s a brilliant and ridiculous album that rewards repeat listens.

Mitski’s previous records were fuelled by eternal longing and filled with dense, novelistic details, but new album Laurel Hell reaches for something more immediate. The proclamations are more plainspoken, and the sound is synthheavy and indebted to 80s pop. With some of the most accessible songs of her career, Mitski faces unhappiness head-on, without a fantasy to turn to for temporary relief. IT

XXX THE NAME’S BON, XXX CATE LE BON



Multiplicity, refraction and fracture is the name of the game on Chakra Efendi’s dense, rewarding debut album I of the Err. The cover art provides a clue: the angelic-looking artist cradling a second, luminous version of themselves displayed on an old-school CRT TV. Lo-fi, bedroom pop, IDM, drone, shoegaze and garage rock co-exist across the album, sometimes within the same song. Efendi’s voice, in particular, is made elastic through this process, appearing in mediated forms, both hi-fi and lo-fi. The album’s convoluted recording process was key to this multiplicitous sound – most songs began as voice memos recorded across four different phones before being arranged for a full band, then altered during a lengthy post-production period. Lead single ‘SUV’ opens with gurgling field recordings and an aquatic guitar riff, before accumulating a bevy of live band elements and swirling effects that grow in power. However, at its core, the album remains a highly confessional work – Efendi’s sincerity emanating like radiant lights against fog. MARCUS WHALE



Regularly hailed as one of the most consistent and reliable indie rock bands of the past 20 years, Spoon return with what is their 10th record, Lucifer on the Sofa, a self-proclaimed “return to rock’n’roll”. After 2017’s moody, synth-heavy (and not entirely successful) Hot Thoughts, Lucifer on the Sofahas been pitched as something of a return to the band’s more grounded, pub rock roots. On that front Lucifer is mildly successful – the arch, crisp guitar work here immediately recognisable, with Britt Daniel’s soulful yelp once again being utilised for large, anthemic choruses. But clarity does not equal quality. In many of Spoon’s best records there’s a distinct tension in the way they toe the line between the conventional pleasures of straightforward power-pop and the idiosyncratic asides that threaten to tear each song apart at its seams. This tension is non-existent on Lucifer, and for the first time it seems that Spoon have made the safe, radio-friendly indie-rock record they had previously flirted with but always transcended. LUKE MCCARTHY



Noongar MC Dallas Woods is already established in the Australian hip-hop scene. Since 2018, he has released a succession of buzzy solo singles – with his lyricism praised by Archie Roach. On his debut “mini-LP”, Julie’s Boy (its title a tribute to his mother, an important community presence in East Kimberley), Woods’ magnetism is undeniable. He flexes that unfaltering wordplay, and experiments sonically, traversing G-funk, reggae and EDM. Woods has consistently rapped about the ongoing racism impacting First Nations people. On defiant ‘Colorblind’ – boom-bap with deep turntable cuts – he delivers more truth-telling. Woods calls out the denial and hypocrisy surrounding Australia’s colonial legacy, while extolling his Blakness: “I will not apologise for being the descendant of cultures you tried to wipe out.” It also contains the braggadocios Triple J hit ‘Grime’, where Woods has fun. He tears up the genre with clever punchline after punchline, accurately declaring himself “27 years with the flow of a veteran”. CYCLONE WEHNER