Amaya Laucirica – Sugar Lights
You don’t always need a TV show to unearth Australian talent. It just took a move from rural SA to the big smoke of Melbourne for Amaya Laucirica’s talents to be discovered and realised. Laucirica sings with a languid, unhurried breathiness and a stark honesty, with the songs providing a glimpse into quite a transient and troubled heart. While some of the lyrical matter may be rustic, the musical accompaniment is anything but, with Mick Harvey assisting the spirited and haunting arrangements. Sugar Lights is an ultra-assured debut combining an illuminating and delectable display of influence and insight.
Rolo Tomassi – Hysterics
Sheffield-based, sibling-led sensations Rolo Tomassi have unleashed an album that is destined to be played at objectionable volume in teenage bedrooms the world over. This is a band that would just go completely ape-shit live and they’ve managed to capture that unrestrained, throbbing manic energy onto tape. Its all-jarring tempo changes, searing riffs and the throat-grating curdling wail of scorching singer Eva Spence. Throw in a bit of misdirected angst to spice up the lyrics, add the unrelenting urgency of effusive youth let loose on all manner of instruments and you’re left with a pretty damned exciting debut.
Jack Ladder – Love is Gone
The lady’s left, the heart is broken, love is gone – what’s a poor feller to do? Grab his hat and guitar and head to New York. The Big Apple has given formerly folksy lad Jack Ladder some pomp, sass and soul. He’s always had the compelling, deep rich voice and the ear for the classic songwriters; this newfound worldliness has seen him take great steps to becoming one. Love is Gone is a whopping great swaggering leap forward from Ladder’s 2005 debut, showing a new level of assuredness with his music and song writing and lyrical truths that are just that much more universal.
Girl Talk - Feed the Animals"
Hearing Feed the Animals is like listening to ten albums at once. Girl Talk - or Gregg Gillis to his mum - creates excitable party music by the seamless and meticulous melding of numerous samples into eminently danceable pop-tastic blasts. Feed The Animals contains more than 300 samples ranging from hilarious hair-metal, hands in the air party anthems, riff-filled classic hits to bad-ass rap, yet Gillis comfortably sees disparate genres snuggle warmly side by side for the common good of getting' down and has pretty much made the 'shuffle' button obsolete.
Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - Cardinology
Someone once enquired about my penchant for Ryan Adams. When I admitted to having an ambivalent stance, his explanation (excuse?) for my foible was that it (a love for Adam’s music) must be ‘a guitarist thing’. Well, the jury is still out on the ‘guitarist thing’ but it’s in on Cardinology. Despite its unimaginative name and oft times Bryan Adams sound, it’s very listenable - if at time a little too Adams-esque lovesick.
The Cure - Feed the Animals"
The Cure - 4:13 Dream
Can you ever really recapture Robert Smith majesty circa 1989? Some may be able to relive it, I cannot. 4:13 Dream is stunning, in all the ways that Disintegration and Wish were before it, but it explores no new territory. The old analogy ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ is certainly apt but sometimes the fantasy is in the fixing, in the music that results from a band treading new ground. None trodden here, what a shame.
