Tkay Maidza
TKAY (Dew Process/Universal)
Tkay Maizda's self-titled debut album has both energy and control.
★★★½
It's no surprise Tkay Maidza's debut album arrives fully sprung: performing live, the Adelaide-based rapper/singer is a ball of energy with a rapid flow to match the tempo. This record shows her energised enough to not include the singles that have already made an impact, letting the pressure fall on new tracks that are unafraid of variety and show great promise. But the biggest surprise and reward is elsewhere. Maidza's energy is channelled and modified so tempos are varied without losing drive. R&B feels like her home turf instead of a token effort, and there's a natural link between songs incorporating the perspective of a young woman facing the world straight on. Her vocals are more adaptable than expected: clarity is allowed more of a show at times so her strong lyrical core comes through; and her singing – not her strength but clearly a long-term plan – reveals welcome imperfection rather than weakness. The sound is richer and deeper than her live performance, with a genuine pop feel to tracks such as You Want and Simulation, without dulling the cut of Always Been or the retro bump of Monochrome.
BERNARD ZUEL
Jamie Lidell
BUILDING A BEGINNING (Jajulin/Kobalt)
★★★★
British soul-shredder Jamie Lidell once had a reputation for recklessly teetering live shows, making him one of the more exciting producers working in the broader soul/R'n'B idiom. Some of that punky, electronically charged chaos was captured in studios, including the sessions for album five, 2013's self-titled precursor to Building A Beginning. If previously a tad unhinged – more musically than mentally – there was also an air of anxiety and indolence about the talented singer-producer. It made one wonder if self-sabotage was the reason his popularity was lower than it should be. Now in his mid-forties, the wonderfully raspy tone and the sinner-singing-gospel quality remain, but the dishevelled appearance is gone, replaced by love and happiness for a sunnier set of tunes. Early upbeat single Julian – the name of his recent first born ("now my life's worth living") – is a standout, alongside the blissfully woozy title track. Yet it's the Jamaican lover's rock strains of How Did I Live Before that places first. Then again, when he channels Stevie Wonder, croons beautifully burnished ballads or allows soft-psych to creep into the soul-pop, it's hard to pick just one winner.
PARIS POMPOR
Raime
Tooth (Blackest Ever Black)
★★★★
The second album from London's Raime (Joe Andres and Tom Halstead) refines the techniques of their brilliant 2012 debut (Quarter Turns Over A Living Line) and brings an oily polish to the pooling blackness of their musical vision. Electronically adjusted acoustic music that is tense and sinister – like a nighttime walk along dimly lit city streets where humans or aliens threaten to jump out – is one way to describe Raime's sound. Another is to imagine a middle ground between the futuristic atmospheres of Detroit techno genius Jeff Mills, and the slow-moving horror jazz of Cologne's Borhen Der Club of Gore. With an inspired balance of minimal dub and caustic noise, Raime's layers of looped samples create compact narratives that slowly lick the back of the neck and leave goosebumps. Heavy rhythms glide in from unexpected directions while chanting voices call out from the void to lure the listener along a completely different path. Being pulled to-and-fro is part of the thrill of this music. As is Raime's shrewd restraint in not making their music too minimal or extravagant. Tooth may leave you confused, vulnerable and a little panicked, but it also makes you feel alert and alive.
SEAN RABIN
Mel Parsons
DRYLANDS (MGM)
★★★
While she is not really a husky singer, there's something about Mel Parsons' voice that suggests lived in but not yet crinkled; a more traditionally leaning, less troubled, country-rock version of Mary Gauthier. Maybe it's the way she always sounds as though she's telling you a story behind her hand. Maybe it's that mostly she keeps everything in a narrow emotional range somewhere between curiosity and acceptance, much as the song tempos mostly work in a range between light head nodding and gentle foot tapping. Even when she opens up a bit, firstly in the duet with Ron Sexsmith, Don't Wait, and immediately after in the slip-the-car-into-third gear Far North Coast, Parsons – who plays at Camelot Lounge in Marrickville on the 27th – keeps everything under control. It is that control that holds Drylands back though. If the emotional landscape was bleaker there might be justification for the subdued journey but these stories are attractive rather than compellingly dark. The album calls out for a few more shifts in direction than the welcome trumpet in Friend.
BERNARD ZUEL
Illy
Two Degrees (OneTwo/Warner)
★★★½
At the point that a new generation of Australian hip-hop artists have announced themselves – see Tkay Maidza, Mallrat and Sampa the Great – Melbourne rapper Illy smoothly pivots towards a genre-leaping assuredness on his fifth album. On the back of Papercuts, a single that recently reached No. 2 on the charts with a mix of refracted club synths and steadily insistent bass drum, Two Degrees finds Illy (aka Al Murray) covering the emotional and physical distance of life on the cusp of 30-something decisions. On You Say When, a track that twists R&B into alternative-pop shapes, pleasure is comforting as opposed to celebratory, and the crux of the album is the exchanges created in songs where Illy is matched to guest vocalists whose hooks modulate his natural confidence. Jenna McDougall brings an exuberance to the upbeat Better Days, while on Catch 22 the music hall piano and Anne-Marie's earworm chorus gives a catchy veneer to a song that is an acceptance of how lives, including your own, can reach unexpected ends. Like Drake, Illy has leveraged his experience into a freewheeling showcase of his talents.
CRAIG MATHIESON