EP review: Hell's Half Acre by Gretta Ziller

Since releasing her EP, Hell's Half Acre, Victorian Gretta Ziller has become a finalist in the 2015 Toyota Star Maker competition, which reaches its conclusion each year during the Tamworth Country Music Festival. If the EP is anything to go by - and, of course, it is - Ziller belongs there. Her songs are developed, even if the emotions they express are raw; her voice is the right balance of polished, commanding and explosive, and her songs are modern while evoking hard-worn trails over cold southern mountains and nights spent wishing for a warm bed and a warmer embrace.

The opening track, 'Hunt for Love', is the siren song of a woman who knows her mind and is determined to get what she wants, on her terms. She might describe herself as a 'little lady' but this usage seems ironic. The title track, 'Hell's Half Acre', sounds like a battle song born of ennui and the desire for a better life. The other three songs on the EP are just as interesting - and mostly in minor keys - and mark Ziller as an artist to watch. She describes herself as 'alt country' but she fits right within the musical and storytelling traditions of country music. Increasingly, that 'alt' seems to be standing for 'Australian' - there are so many outstanding Australian artists who are taking those country traditions from their own and other lands, and using them to craft songs that aren't like anything emerging from any other country music scene. Ziller is a great example of what makes alt/Australian country so interesting and vibrant; whether or not she wins Star Maker will not change that.

Hell's Half Acre is out now. Gretta Ziller is playing several shows at Tamworth 2015. For details on the shows and to buy the EP, visit grettaziller.com. 

Album review: Bittersweet by Kasey Chambers

It's tempting to write a review of Kasey Chambers's new album, Bittersweet, that is loaded with superlatives and not much else. Not because it's a perfect album - if there even is such a thing - but because it's her best album in a career full of truly exceptional albums. It may not be my favourite of her albums - yet - but anyone who knows her work could recognise that this album is a progression from the last (Little Bird) just as that album was a progression from the one before that and so on, back to the start: The Captain. Each album shows progression not just in the stories told - in a life unfolding through song, amongst other things - but in the way the songs are delivered and in how authoritative Kasey sounds when singing them.

Kasey has always produced albums that break your heart and then mend it, maybe because we can hear her breaking and mending her own heart over and over again. On this album, in the song, 'I Would Do', she makes the breaking explicit: 'I'll do it till a heart breaks/If that what it takes/Until my heart breaks/If that what it takes/Until my heart breaks/If that's what it takes'. It takes until the title track, 'Bittersweet' - sung with Bernard Fanning - for the mending to become clear, and further still in 'I'm Alive', when she sings about being given another chance and having enough stories to fill a mansion. 

As an album, this collection of songs is possibly Kasey's most cohesive since The Captain. Previous albums have contained extraordinary songs and some that weren't ordinary, exactly, but just not extraordinary. Kasey's bar is always set high and not all of her songs can make it, but they're all worth listening to. That is true of Bittersweet, too, except that this album is not just cohesive but solid. There is a sense of Kasey delivering a message, and perhaps the key is in that final song.'I'm Alive' - after a difficult time in her personal life (which fans will know about but which is only relevant to a review because it has shaped some of her lyrics), she is here, and not just alive but vibrant, defiant, creative and strong.  

This is the first of Kasey's albums that have not been produced by her brother, Nash Chambers, and this is another progression. Not because Nash hasn't been a great producer for her, but because the more steps Kasey takes towards believing that her monumental talent stands alone - that she does not need any family members to bolster it or coax it out of her - the better. She doesn't need anyone else to bring her songs fully to life - she just needs to believe in herself more. Bittersweet sounds like a step - a leap, a bound - in that direction. For that reason, as well as because of the songs she gives us, it may become my favourite Kasey Chambers album yet. There is, of course, the remarkable, wonderful prospect that there will be new candidates for that title one day.

Bittersweet is out now through Warner Music Australia.

www.kaseychambers.com

EP review: Emma Swift

My first experience of Emma Swift's musical ability came when I saw her sing one song with Mustered Courage. I'd heard of her, and knew she was recording some songs, but had never seen her perform. Anyone who has seen a lot of gigs - even heard a lot of albums - knows how rare those moments are when an artist has one's full attention. When everything else seems to disappear except that person, their voice and the notes they're singing. So it was with Swift. She captivated the audience, and she did it as soon as that first note sounded.

It turns out that wasn't a unique occasion, because from her first note on this six-song EP it's impossible to not be transfixed. Swift's languid, slightly husky, often melancholic voice calls to the listener - and it's not a request, really, although it's hard to imagine anyone minding. 

Swift has been spending time in Nashville and sounds of the American South are laced through these songs of yearning - and of courting, that term that isn't used very often but should be - in which Swift's lyrics suggest she might be at the mercy of someone else's actions and emotions, except her delivery of those lyrics tell us that she is never anything but in charge. The slow pace of these songs suggests confidence - she knows we won't run away if she doesn't everything immediately - and confidence is always seductive for an audience: we can relax, we don't have to do anything but listen. Swift is worth listening to, both in live and recorded form, and many times over.

Emma Swift is out now through Laughing Outlaw Records.

emmaswift.com.au 

EP review: Some Greener Yard by Leslie diNicola

American singer-songwriter Leslie diNicola has been described as 'combining the grittiness of Janis Joplin with the vulnerability of Alison Krauss'. The only thing I'd take issue with there is that Joplin had plenty of vulnerability - it's what made her so compelling and so unforgettable. If all she had been was a big voice, she would not have resonated with so many people.

DiNicola has that same quality - of the strong, sometimes strident voice that has vulnerability in the curves between notes, suggesting that the singer has something to hide and more to tell us, but she's not going to just yet. Intrigue is hard to come by in a lot of recorded music - the studio environment, with a producer on hand and all the best technology, can eliminate spontaneity and happy accidents. Yet the songs on diNicola's EP Some Greener Yard give us the sense of a girl standing alone at a microphone, singing hopefully, from her heart, and it's both the voice and her lyrics that suggest that. It doesn't sound like she's about to slip up by way of singing a bum note - more that she might confess something that she didn't mean to tell us but which we really want to know. 

While diNicola's style is predominantly rock/blues with the odd country strain - and it suits her (although she could also venture easily into anthemic country rock/pop and not skip a beat) - it's in the more restrained track 'It's Alright' that her skill as a singer is consolidated. Here she is delicate and assured, which is an interesting balance.

Releasing a handful of songs in EP format is a great way to discover new talent. DiNicola is not completely new - she's released an EP before - but she's still 'emerging'. It can't be long, surely, before she has completely emerged. 

Some Greener Yard by Leslie diNicola is out now.
lesliedinicola.com

CD Review: Live at Lizotte's by Beccy Cole

Beccy Cole is one of Australian music’s great entertainers and, as such, highly underrated – I always wonder why she isn’t better known, because she has a wonderful voice and an extraordinary stage presence (yes, the superlatives are flying thick and fast – she deserves them).

Perhaps Live at Lizotte’s will enable more people to understand this live-performance powerhouse, because (unlike some live CDs) it is representative of what a Beccy Cole gig is really like: a range of musical moods and a great deal of genuinely funny on-stage banter - even after several spins round my CD player, I was still holding my sides laughing at some of her lines. It’s also a chance for fans like me to get their hands on some new songs, including ‘Lifeboat’ and ‘Opposite Prayers’, plus some covers – Carole King’s ‘Natural Woman’, Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Say You Love Me’ and 4 Non Blondes’ ‘What’s Up’. There’s also tested Beccy favourites such as ‘Blackwood Hill’, ‘Men Don’t Dance’, the always-funny ‘Sorry I Asked’ and what I think is one the cleverest songs ever written (and she wrote it): ‘Lazy Bones’. Those who have seen Beccy live will know what she does in the coda of this song – recorded on this CD for repeat-play entertainment.

Beccy is joined by Kasey Chambers for a truly lovely rendering of ‘Those Memories of You’ , and by Gina Jefferies and Sara Storer for a cover of John Williamson’s ‘Galleries of Pink Galahs’. The latter is probably the only song that I didn’t out-and-out love but this album really is a worthwhile purchase for Beccy’s existing fans – in true country-music fan-friendly style, she has included enough old and new material to keep them happy. Live at Lizotte’s is also the best possible introduction to the Central Coast songstress for those who have heard the odd song – probably ‘Poster Girl’ – and are wondering whether the rest of her work is any good. It is. She is fabulous, and one of the best assets to the Australian music industry (not just country music). Now – where is her ARIA?

Beccy Cole: Live at Lizotte's (ABC/Warner Music)
www.beccycole.com

CD Review: The McClymonts

The McClymonts have been called 'Australia's answer to the Dixie Chicks' and that's a compliment - to the Dixie Chicks. The two groups have much in common, quite apart from the fact that they both feature sisters (all the McClymonts are, unsurprisingly, siblings while the Dixie Chicks have sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire) and an ability to harmonise beautifully. Both groups are rarities in country music, where it's difficult to find a band that has more than one woman - three is noteworthy. Both groups have the knack of producing albums that can capture a pop audience and which are an entertainment, which is in no way a pejorative label. But they differ here: the McClymonts' Chaos and Bright Lights is a much more polished album than anything the Dixie Chicks produced before Home.

The McClymonts are three sisters from Grafton, NSW: Samantha, Mollie and Brooke. They're already Golden Guitar veterans, having taken home 2007 awards for Best New Talent and Best Group or Duo, and Samantha won for Best New Talent in 2006 (after taking out the Starmaker title in 2005). Their 2006 EP, The McClymonts (Universal), was a very nice collection of songs, especially the opening song, 'Something That My Heart Does'. On first hearing Chaos and Bright Lights (Universal) I was a bit concerned that they hadn't matched the quality of that EP but - silly me! - I shouldn't have put it on in the background. Because, after about three close listens, I was hooked.

Chaos and Bright Lights is a delight. It has a well-balanced collection of tunes in major and minor key (although tending towards major, which is perhaps why listening to it makes me happy) and while the lyrics contain nothing wildly new, they're clever and heartfelt and sharp in the right places. This is country done as pop and it's so, so satisfying. After seeing the band perform at the Country Jamm 4 Genes earlier this year and getting shivers up my spine because their voices sounded so amazing together, the harmony-laden tracks on the album did not disappoint me - these gals have clearly been singing together for years, so effortlessly do they complement and match each other.

Am I gushing? Well, they deserve it. From the ripper opening track and single, 'My Life Again', through the bittersweetness of 'Don't Tie My Hands', the defiance of 'Good Cry' and 'Finally Over Blue', and the honkytonkness of 'You Were Right' and 'Ghost Town', there is plenty of scope for the McClymonts to showcase their talents. 'Favourite Boyfriend of the Year' recalls Beccy Cole at her cheekiest, while 'Till You Love Me' and 'Shotgun' are just lovely songs.

Chaos and Bright Lights has obviously benefited from the production by Adam Anders, who has a songwriting credit on several tracks. But it's the McClymonts themselves who have the bulk of the credits, and personally I like to know that artists I love are also getting publishing royalties ...

In conclusion: don't be fooled into thinking this album is all harmonies and light. There's a lot on it to love for country music fans of all flavours, and I'll certainly be listening to it over and over and over again, singing along and smiling all along the New England Highway heading for Tamworth 2008. I just wish the band would play in Sydney more often ...

themcclymonts.com.au