Powderhorn Lake – Rae Howell
Take a moment from your day to stop and listen to this track. Notice the bright runs of piano keys. The slight reverb that lifts through the air like smoke. And then the barely audible pressing of notes that follows the gentle low chords. Australian musician, composer and pianist Rae Howell walks the line dividing contemporary classic and jazz-style improvisations. Based in London, but with her new release Invisible Wilderness: Volume I and Volume II recorded over ten days in the US in the twin cities of St Paul and Minneapolis, Howell describes the album as a collection of solo piano compositions born from improvisations, theatre production commissions, rediscovered recordings, rhythmic technical exercises and ideas picked up from her music residencies and travels over the past 15 years. “The piano is where I feel most at home and most vulnerable. It’s where all my music began,” she says. Catch Howell play upcoming dates in Melbourne, Sydney, Port Macquarie and Brisbane.
Walk The Wire – Boy & Bear
Sydney five-piece Boy & Bear are one of those lucky Triple J Unearthed success stories, who managed to ride their happy indie folk tunes all the way to the top of the charts. Or maybe luck had little to do with it – with romantic songs like Walk The Wire, that take a pinch of 80s new wave and 90s guitar-driven indie rock, the northern beaches band prove they know a thing or two about writing simple but hooky choruses and matching them with light and playful harmonies. The band’s followup to the platinum-selling Harlequin Dream will see the light of day on 9 October. Limit of Love was cut the old fashioned away – live to tapewith virtually no overdubs or editing – with producer Ethan Johns (Ryan Adams, Kings of Leon, Kaiser Chiefs). Even Johns’s mix was done without automation, literally putting his hands on the faders. Thankfully the band, having played a gruelling 170 shows around the world throughout 2014, were nothing if not practised at live performance.
Quicksand – Katie Noonan
The heartwrenching single Quicksand is Brisbane singer-songwriter Katie Noonan at her most naked, most honest self. The song is dramatic, emotive and wouldn’t be out of place in the songbook of a stage musical. Noonan’s voice find a new power in this song, without ever losing its inimitable crystal glass-like fragility, beauty and clarity. Noonan says the song “is essentially about a breakdown of trust. It came about at a time when my trust was broken, so it was a very sad time but I also tried to make it a time of empowerment, whereby I would grow and strengthen from the experience.” Lifted from her latest album Transmutant, the video for Quicksand is almost as wonderful as the song itself, featuring Charmene Yap, a principal dancerat Sydney Dance Company, and choreographed by Cass Mortimer Eipper. Noonan is touring nationally throughout October and November.
Twenty One – The Apartments
On 11 October, Peter Walsh of The Apartments will be launching the brilliant No Song No Spell No Madrigal at the Junk bar in Brisbane, albeit a couple of months after it came out. The Apartments are far more popular in France than in their hometown, or anywhere else for that matter, with their long-standing love affair with the country beginning after their 1985 debut album The Evening Visits ... And Stays For Years became a cult hit there. The band’s most affecting song, in a career full of affecting songs, is Twenty One, which is about how Walsh’s son Riley will never reach that age having died 16 years ago when he was just three, of a rare auto-immune disorder. As Walsh sings he’s been “stuck in the same quicksand since 1999”. In an interview with Guardian Australia, Walsh said “Songs are like windows – sometimes they’re trapdoors – and memories come cartwheeling out. You just have to deal with them.”
Skip Hop feat LTC – Hau
Remi and Sensible J are rising stars of the Australian hip-hop universe, winning the Australian Music Prize last year and taking indie radio stations by storm with their fierce but deliberated rhymes and jazzy production. They released their debut album Raw X Infinity under their own independent label House of Beige and in the fine tradition of Jay-Z, Dr Dre and countless other hip-hop bigwigs are expanding their roster, with none other than Australian hip-hop (or skip hop, if you will) luminaire Hau, aka Hau Latukefu, aka formerly one half of Koolism. Having parted ways with New Zealand label Frequency, Hau says he’s excited to find “a home with some of the most talented people in Australia, who share a common goal of creating the music we want and the attitude of staying true to one’s art”. Hau’s album No End Theory will be released on 25 September.
