Our latest reviews
Love at the Bottom of the Sea by The Magnetic Fields
This happily feels like an album full of short stories, each of which has been scored to match the tale itself rather than create a fifteen-track recording that begins to sound the same. The excellent Magnetic Fields – one of…
I Will Set You Free by Barry Adamson
Adamson is renowned for his work (primarily as bassist) for post-punk group Magazine, The Birthday Party and Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds. Since leaving the Seeds in 1987, he has worked as a prolific composer, producer and solo artist with the…
Stage Whisper by Charlotte Gainsbourg
Stage Whisper is a strange and fantastic beast. Having struck gold in her collaboration with Beck on 2010’s cracking Irm. Stage Whisper sees Gainsbourg combine eight studio tracks left over from those sessions with eleven live recordings with various guest…
Near Death Experience by Harry Howard and the NDE
I have witnessed several performances by this supergroup and have never failed to be thrilled by their acerbic, catchy and viciously hilarious pop songs. Harry Howard was a member of Crime and the City Solution and These Immortal Souls, both…
Sounds of Our City by Emma Russack
Attention, we have a new talent worth checking out. Emma Russack is a Melbourne-based, NSW south coast raised singer-songwriter whose debut album is a thing of dark beauty. Reminiscent of Mia Dyson & The Cowboy Junkies, her songs have an…
The Continents by Chick Corea
God bless Chick. Just when you think he couldn’t get any nuttier he gives us an hour-long six-movement concerto for orchestra and jazz quintet based on (gasp!) the continents. And yes, thanks to condensing the Americas into one continent he…
The Well by Tord Gustavsen Quartet
I’ll be frank and call this a return to form after the, err, courageous (minister?) vocal minimalism of Restored, Returned. That singer/poet lady has been banished to whence she came (ECM’s rising tenor star Tore Brunborg stays, all breathy and…
All the Way Home by Cathy Jordan
This beautiful solo album from Cathy Jordan, lead singer of Irish traditional band Dervish, has been 20 years in the making. For this album, Jordan has gone back to the songs she heard sung in her house by parents and…
Woodbine and Ivy Band
This collection of English, Irish and Scottish trad songs was originally sans backing by a changing roster of folk singers, with folk-rock arrangements grafted on later as well as a 12-piece choral back up. Athough none of these versions compare…
Sweet Old World by Deborah Robertson
There are novels that win you over in an instant and novels that creep up on you. Surely and insistently, Deborah Robertson’s Sweet Old World is the latter.
Writer and expat David Quinn has come to live near his sister…
Browse our reviews by category
