Julia Stone, Middle Kids, Tash Sultana: Australia’s best new music for February

Julia Stone that includes Matt Berninger – We All Have

For followers of: Damian Rice, the National, Taylor Swift gone folks

Julia Stone’s first solo album in eight years has been recorded piecemeal since 2015 with varied collaborators, together with St Vincent. As a consequence, the 4 singles we’ve heard thus far all sound wildly totally different, with an ethereal manufacturing wash being the one binding factor. We All Have is essentially the most stunning up to now, a sparse ballad with minimal piano and finger-picked guitar accompanying Stone’s chirping baby-bird harmonies. Matt Berninger from the National takes verse two, his solemn baritone the proper counter, earlier than the pair mix for the refrain. It’s throughout and achieved in two and a half minutes but it surely leaves a long-lasting, calming impression – a stunning ode to the impermanence of every part.

For extra: Julia Stone’s album Sixty Summers can be out on 16 April. For now, take heed to earlier singles Break, Unreal and Dance

Cantrips – Goodbye Yesterday

For followers of: Donovan, Tame Impala, the Charlatans

Melbourne multi-instrumentalist Patrick Ryan clearly took his time creating Goodbye Yesterday, the third in a trilogy of intricately layered songs recorded throughout prolonged time locked down in his Thornbury storage. A whole temper piece wrapped in a three-minute pop track, this 60s-leaning tune represents one more leap ahead for his Cantrips challenge. Vocally, Ryan sounds uncannily like a younger Liam Gallagher however musically this can be a extra basic grab-bag of psychedelic touchstones: the saggy drumbeat of Manchester discovering dance music on half an E; the jangle of early folks explorers following Dylan into the nice electrical unknown; the japanese modulations the Beatles introduced again wholesale from Rishikesh. Ryan himself cites early Pink Floyd and Curtis Mayfield; each are additionally current right here, albeit in smaller doses. Much just like the music of Tame Impala and the Brian Jonestown Massacre, that is greater than mere homage to a bygone period, with Ryan including his personal stitches to the persevering with patchwork of psychedelia.

For extra: Listen to earlier singles Off with His Head and Don’t Open That Bag

Scott Darlow – Forgotten Australia

For followers of: Colin Hay, Diesel, Midnight Oil

This sort of jingoistic anthemic rock is dangerous enterprise – hit barely too onerous and you would land squarely in Nollsy territory, auditioning for an imaginary job writing jingles for Visit Australia campaigns from the 80s. Thankfully Darlow performs a extra delicate hand, regardless of the massive guitars and a hovering refrain that bemoans a “forgotten Australia”. This is a track of reconciliation however with a extra fashionable focus; Darlow bemoans the rise of misinformation that has led to a very harmful and ill-informed pressure of nationalism, as two sides of the identical coin go to warfare. Musically, this track, manufacturing and all, might neatly slide onto the monitor itemizing of John Farnham’s 1990 Chain Reaction album. As it stands, like Darlow’s earlier singles You Can’t See Black within the Dark and Bind the Hands of Time, Triple M could have no issues neatly sliding Forgotten Australia on to its personal playlists.

For extra: Listen to the aforementioned singles or try Darlow’s 2016 album, Sorry, which includes a rousing cowl of Goanna’s Solid Rock

Jess Locke – Dead and Gone

For followers of: Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Beck, Holly Throsby

Proceeding on the tempo of a funeral march and sounding simply as sombre, Dead and Gone is a deceiving tune, beginning with a weary drawl earlier than optimism takes maintain. Recorded behind a Melbourne guitar store, and all the higher for the locale, producer Rob Muinos (Julia Jacklin, Didirri) captures Locke’s unadorned efficiency with none pointless bells and whistles. Then, just like the vegetation bending towards the sunshine on this track’s timelapse video clip, Dead and Gone out of the blue sprouts life, with twinkling synths, distorted guitars and drums all crashing in cathartically, sending the track skywards. It’s a second of hope and progress – a shedding of pores and skin.

For extra: Locke’s album Don’t Ask Yourself Why is out on 26 March. She’s touring all through Victoria in February

Odette – Amends

For followers of: Van Dyke Parks, Yoko Ono, Jon Brion

During the New Year’s Eve celebrations on the Sydney Opera House, muted as they had been by the shortage of a harbourside viewers, Odette carried out as if to an viewers of thousands and thousands, which, contemplating the televised facet, isn’t as inaccurate because the empty foreshore advised. This showcased one in all Australia’s best stay performers doing what she does best. Amends is a very totally different beast. While Odette’s highly effective vocal and songwriting expertise effortlessly shine by way of, it’s the warped and fantastic preparations by Kelly Pratt, who has carried out related alchemy for Arcade Fire and David Byrne, that makes Amends greater than only a robust pop tune. Squelchy, muddy beats, avant garde strings that stalk and soar in equal measures, and Disneyfied woodwind elements make this a phenomenal sonic tapestry.

For extra: Odette’s debut album Herald is out now

Middle Kids – Questions

For followers of: Coldplay, Washington, Bloc Party

Their debut album discovered them followers in Ryan Adams and the New York Times, invites to carry out on Conan and Jimmy Kimmel, and a legion of native followers besides. But that was 2018, and gifted songwriter Hannah Joy was swimming in safer waters again then. Questions is a daring reinvention – a slow-burning track that explodes right into a road parade, with a military of horns blasting in, Magical Mystery Tour-style, marching the track in the direction of a very totally different conclusion. As at all times, Middle Kids impress with mature and shocking association concepts; with every track Joy stretches out extra and finds area between the straight verse-chorus-verse, and Radiohead-style experiments in kind. This is just the second single from their second document and it’s changing into nigh on unimaginable to foretell what’s going to come subsequent from Middle Kids.

For extra: The band’s second album, Today We’re the Greatest, is out on 19 March. Middle Kids play May dates at Queensland Performing Arts Centre in Brisbane, Melbourne Recital Centre and City Recital Hall, Sydney

Teenage Joans – Something About Being Sixteen

For followers of: Get Up Kids, Jimmy Eat World, NO-FX

Adelaide two-piece Teenage Joans could have been born a decade after this sort of energetic pop punk reached its industrial peak however such is the cyclical nature of music that this track sounds simply as at house being blasted at their school-age followers as it might have when their mother and father had been hiding Blink-182 and Green Day CDs from their very own of us. Teenage Joans have achieved loads during the last 12 months: successful Unearthed High, scoring a #87 place in final month’s Hottest 100, and promoting out venues they’re too younger to purchase a drink at. Musically, this has all the correct parts: an arpeggio riff, guitars to soften your face, skip beats made for synchronised slam dancing, a lighter-waving ending for a era who now wave telephones, and heartbreak of the rawest kind, the kind best served up by and to the teenaged. Judging by this wonderful punk tune and Teenage Joans’ speedy rise to nationwide success, the youngsters are (nonetheless) all proper.

For extra: Listen to Three Leaf Clover

Chasing Ghosts – Summer

For followers of: Frenzal Rhomb, Bodyjar, Blink-182

In 1856 English settlers massacred an unknown variety of Aboriginal folks at Towel Creek. More than 150 years later Chasing Ghosts’ vocalist Jimmy Kyle realized of a familial hyperlink to “Baaba” (Babaang) Jack Scott, the lone survivor of this tragedy. Through the eyes of a grieving Aboriginal elder, Kyle tells this sorry story, weaving English along with his native tongue, and delivering a robust punk track with sugary hooks and an exciting momentum that belie the horrors of such a bloodbath. Kyle co-produced Summer with Hobart legend Lincoln Le Fevre, whose 2008 album 30-Watt Heart impressed a whole cottage business of DIY punks out of the blue showcasing their strine (see: the Smith Street Band, Camp Cope and Courtney Barnett). Le Fevre’s affect is extra delicate right here, pulling sounds that sit nearer to the sunny SoCal pop punk of Yellowcard and Blink-182 than any of the aforementioned acts. Jimmy Kyle provides up an emotive, pressing vocal which lays the previous naked whereas pointing in the direction of reconciliation.

For extra: New EP Homelands can be out in May. For now, try the band’s 2016 album, I Am Jimmy Kyle

Sarah Mary Chadwick – Full Mood

For followers of: Bright Eyes, Cat Power, James Taylor

The entrance cowl of Carole King’s Tapestry is the visible embodiment of a sure sound: King in woolly jumper, blue denims and naked toes, sitting in a window seat, lace curtain billowing, a disinterested tabby lounging on a throw cushion. Sarah Mary Chadwick could deal in additional grownup themes than Tapestry tackles – for one, this tune entails a proposed threesome – however that is positively a kind of homespun data to adore and maintain shut. Chadwick’s efficiency is intimate, unhurried and a bit of sloppy, very like the night she is chronicling. Lyrically, she paints in vivid brushstrokes; sonically it’s simply Chadwick’s close-mic’d voice and a piano – and the listener, after all, sitting in the midst of a carpeted room, purple wine in hand, mesmerised. “You light me a cigarette, and I’ve always liked that move,” she sings early within the track, and a flirtation unfolds, the glitter of the early morning streetlights and drunken romance intermingle, if solely briefly.

For extra: Chadwick’s album Me and Ennui Are Friends, Baby is out now. She will launch the album with a residency at Avalon Bar in Fitzroy, each Friday night time in February, and on 5 March

Tash Sultana – Sweet & Dandy

For followers of: Sade, Prince, Erykah Badu

The gimmick, if such a crude time period can be utilized, that shot Tash Sultana to viral fame was her single-handed potential to recreate a multi-tracked studio recording with only a loop pedal, layering rhythm and lead guitar tracks, peeling spectacular solos over fingerpicked strains and singing soulfully over the symphonic outcomes. Let free in an precise multi-track studio it’s no marvel that her data have gotten extra lush with every launch. Her newest hypnotic dreamscape options shimmering guitars, heavenly chimes, chook sounds, and, as if to floor this aural Garden of Eden within the secular, a slinky guitar. There are touches of Marvin Gaye in Motown balladeering mode, and Outkast’s Andre 3000 at his most intergalactic. This is really attractive music – God solely is aware of how she is going to pull all of it off stay.

For extra: New album Terra Firma is out 19 February. Sultana performs at WOMADelaide on 7 March