Image by: Molly Matalon

Welcome to the new music review where we connect you with some of the best new music spinning on Breakfast, The Daily and Drive programs.

ALBUMS:

Cable Ties – Far Enough (FEATURE ALBUM)
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Cayn Borthwick – Big City Whispers
Disq – Collector
Monophonics – It’s Only Us
Onipa – We No Be Machine
Snowy Band – Audio Commentary
Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud

SINGLES:

Becky and the Birds – Wondering
Bright Eyes – Persona Non Grata
Clea – Soft Blow to the Head
Don Bryant – Your Love is to Blame
Gum – Out in the World
Jesse Madigan – Spring

After the grungy breakdown of 2017’s break-up album ‘Out in the Storm’, singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield strips away her early riot grrrl influences for a transformative Americana record about returning home and falling in love. With her Lucinda Williams devotion firmly on her sleeve, ‘Saint Cloud’ sands away whatever artifice remained upon the already-confessional singer for a deeply vulnerable and open batch of songs. Gone are the distorted guitars and rattling drums, but the passion long remains as Crutchfield sings of love as a blooming force that threatens to consume everything in its wake: ‘I’ll show you, I’ll fill up the room / I’ll devastate you, it’s true’. Quietly devastating and brimming with a new-found confidence, ‘Saint Cloud’ is Crutchfield’s masterpiece.

Cayn Borthwick doesn’t just play the saxophone – he squelches and squeezes it, he huffs and snorts it. The Melbourne composer  has broken away from his group NO ZU for his debut solo album ‘Big City Whispers’ – a dayglo mutant-funk record that sounds like someone dropped a ’80s soundtrack into a vat of nuclear waste. Saxophone solos that staddle the line between cheesy and avant-garde drift over reverbed electronic drums; soft synth melodies that sound ripped from Windows 98 are accompanied by Borthwick’s off-kilter singing. The result is a exhilarating experience: a seductive dance record that keeps you on your toes.