Millennial ennui flourishes in Jessy Lanza’s new album – Sydney Morning Herald


Jessie Lanza refuses to run from her existential dread.

Jessie Lanza refuses to run from her existential dread.Credit:Jenia Filatova.

POP/R&B
Jessy Lanza
ALL THE TIME (Hyperdub)
★★★★

Upon the release of Jessy Lanza’s acclaimed second record, Oh No, she admitted to waking up every day in search of ways to escape her existential dread. Three years later, Lanza still struggles with the same worries, but this time refuses to run. Co-produced by long-time collaborator Jeremy Greenspan from Junior Boys, this album is the fruit of long-distance labour and favours from the likes of producer Morgan Geist. Nods to music legends include an understated homage (Alexander) to Alexander O’Neal’s 1985 hit A Broken Heart Can Mend and the footwork flourishes on Face that recall her collaborations with Teklife. Brevity is a gift that empowers Lanza to tell stories as complicated as the boredom of sobriety (Lick in Heaven) or as plain as the joy of a new life (Baby Love). In between ’90s house and frothy ’80s funk, Lanza coos about everyday anxieties and running away, whether from relationships, cities or herself. Millennial ennui hangs off her words like condensation, though once wiped away there is catharsis (Ice Creamy). Over and Over shows that Lanza has stopped running long enough to appreciate where she is right now. KISH LAL

INDIE FOLK
Husky
STARDUST BLUES (Ditto Music)
★★★★

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The timeless, sure-fire formula of soft folk rock, sweet harmonies and sensitive lyrics delivered with understated vocal honesty worked so well for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, James Taylor, Nick Drake, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, et al, and it works superbly for Husky on this, their fourth album. Stardust Blues is even a kind retro concept album, the 12 songs being linked. Lead singer-songwriter Husky Gawenda notes: “The album takes place over 24 hours in Melbourne, during which we and our friends explore the city, which becomes a kind of map of the heart.” The result is a coherent collection of songs: intimate, warm, with wonderful washes of sound, all performed with precision, emotional honesty and so many attractive hooks that it invites comparisons with the Beatles at their most inventive and gentle. Listen to Quicksand and marvel at how, in its balance between delicate lyrics and rising instrumentation, it has been touched by Paul McCartney and the ghost of John Lennon, while Kinetic seems to be filtered through the psychedelia of the later Beatles. The result is an intensely beautiful meditation on the cycle of a day, every song infused with a rare and fragile beauty. BRUCE ELDER

FLAMENCO
Paco Lara
THE ANDALUSIAN GUITAR (pacolaraflamenco.com)
★★★★

The clap of a pair of hands is all it takes for a flamenco guitar to switch from fieriness to supreme elegance. Paco Lara, a distinguished Spanish guitarist who has recently moved to Australia and who plays with impressive articulation, tends to favour the music’s elegance over its furnace. On this album (recorded in Sydney and Cadiz), he also favours flamenco fusion over staying strictly within the idiom’s tradition. Sereneta, with violinist Yuhki Mayne and accompaniment from bassist Steve Hunter and percussionist Evan Yako, exemplifies Lara’s soft-focus approach to the fusion side, so the music, beyond being exceptionally well played, is always pretty and eminently approachable – a quality compounded by the choice of repertoire. So Stanley Myers’ Cavatina (best known as the theme from The Deer Hunter) is used as the basis for a flamenco excursion, as is Sting’s Fragile, and while they are rendered stylishly and quite imaginatively, I prefer something through which the blood flows a little more thickly, such as Bulerias, with singer Marcelino Fernandez, or Lara’s fascinating arrangement of Rodrigo’s Aranjuez, with the melody torn open by Bernardo Parrilla’s violin. JOHN SHAND

ROCK
Hockey Dad
BRAIN CANDY (Farmer & the Owl)
★★★★

Rock music used to be pop music’s apex predator. But in our increasingly online world of Zoom meetings and streaming services, rock sometimes feels like an endangered species. In this world, Hockey Dad are a throwback: their schtick is that they’re two childhood friends from the Wollongong area who seem more interested in surfing than selfies. For such surfer kids, rock’s rush can often fit their lives better than the usual chilled electronic beats. On Brain Candy, Hockey Dad often distinctly echo Australian alternative rock of the 1990s (listeners of a certain age may compare their sound to Silverchair’s Daniel Johns singing with Jebediah as the backing band). However, Hockey Dad’s young fan-base probably don’t know or care about Jebediah. Instead, they’re responding to Zach Stephenson’s soaring vocals (best showcased on Itch), the evident pop song-craft (the catchy single In This State, for example) and the band’s youthful energy (Tell Me What You Want); something in those sounds reflects young lives, just as they did in the 1990s. Perhaps rock music is no longer the apex predator, but Hockey Dad show that it can still fill an evolutionary niche quite nicely. TIM BYRON

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