Ju ne, 2017 RollingStoneAus.com | Rolling Stone | 79
Underground Lovers
Staring At You Staring At
Me Rubber Records ★★★
Melbourne electro dreamers
murmur like it’s 1999
“I lose myself in colour, I lose
myself in sound,” Philippa Ni-
hill sings in the padded em-
brace of “St Kilda Regret”. Fans
of Underground Lovers know
that feeling like a sense memory
and whoa, here it comes again.
Thickly clanging guitars and
shagpile bass roll like the “lov-
ers lost in time” on “You Let Sun-
shine Pass You By”, then crash
and soar in the steroid rush of
“Conde Nast Trap”. The slow
spiral of “Seen It All” and the
two-chord hypnosis of “It’s The
Way It’s Marketed” peak in an
epic face-plant into the vortex
c a lled “Gla mnesia”. From shim-
mer to shudder to dive-bombing
smash, the Undies’ thousand-
yard stare is all it ever was. M.D.
Sheryl Crow
Be Myself Wa r ner ★★★½
Veteran all-rounder returns to
her easy, breezy roots on LP nineDespite a roundly positive re-
sponse to her debut country
album, Feels Like Home (2013),
Sheryl Crow has done an about
face, something to do with her
distaste for country radio poli-
tics. It’s our gain – such a versa-
tile artist is wasted boxed into
the one genre, and on Be My-
self she f lits breezily between
pop, rock, blues, and a lit-
tle country in a hark back to
the fun and looseness of Tues-
day Night Music Club. “Roll-
er Skate” sneers at dating apps- “old-school contact, would it
be asking too much?” – “Grow
Up” is a sugar-spun pop jam,
while “Heartbeat Away” show-
cases her still-intact rock chops.
There’s no killer punch, but it’s
an eff ortless listen. ANNABEL ROSS
The Singing Skies
Head In the Trees, Heart On
the Ground
Preservation ★★★★
Meditative folk songs that relish
wide-open spaceSydney’s Kell Derrig-Hall
makes slow, spectral folk music
as the Singing Skies. The follow-
up to his 2011 debut feels open
and timeless. The drowsy Amer-
icana of “Taken By the Wind”
could be decades old, while “Fu-
ture Comes” edges closer to re-
verbed rock without losing the
delicate touch. Vibrantly em-
bellished by Melodie Nelson’s
Lia Tsamoglou and members of
the Holy Soul and Cameras, the
LP thrives on hushed moments.
Derrig-Hall wrote the album in
par t as a response to his father’s
death, but these songs are de-
cidedly universal – right down
to the incredibly fragile closer
“You and I”. DOUG WALLENAirling
Hard to Sleep, Easy to
Dream Pieater ★★★★
New life breathed into romantic
longing on singer’s debut LPAirling’s debut album opens
with a sample from a self-help
hypnosis tape, informing the lis-
tener that “the sound of the voice
relaxes you and entrances you,
into going deeper and deeper
into your own sense of connec-
tion”. The tongue-in-cheek me-
ta-commentary is unnecessary,
but accurate: the Brisbane art-
ist born Hannah Shepherd uses
her emotive vocals to lure us into
her sensuous world of morphing
synths and crisp, airy beats, ably
abetted by strong production
from Big Scary’s Tom Iansek and
Graham Ritchie. There’s echoes
of the xx and FK A twigs, and as
an opening salvo it entices all on
its own, regardless of hypnotic
suggestion. JAMES JENNINGSFor a record that started out as
a performance piece about an
elderly actor facing his twilight
years, An Actor Repairs sure tells
us a hell of a lot about Tim Rog-
ers. “I’ve written bullshit songs expressing my
grief that will surely bring comfort to surly
teenagers in need,” he sings in “Forgiveness”,
beating himself up ever so gently. Later in the
song he decides he should just do what he does
best in order to gain some measure of redemp-
tion: “Tonight I’ll be the guy in You Am I and I’ll
work it until my soul is rinsed dry.”
So it goes on Rogers’ seventh solo album, as
he writes about trying to age gracefully while
too often aging disgracefully. Lust, alcohol,
regrets and hard-won lessons all have major
roles. Playwright Edward Albee and actor Ol-
iver Reed are name-checked in “Age (A Cou-ple Of Swells)”; Bruce Springsteen and Hand-
some Dick Manitoba grace the lyrics of “Cars
and Girls”.
Rogers stretches himself musically. “Round
the Bend” is reminiscent of his work with the
Bamboos and “The Possibilities” has a Kinks-
meets-XTC feel familiar to anyone who consid-
ers Hourly, Daily a holy work. But piano, acous-
tic guitar, woodwinds, brass and double bass
thread their way through most songs, giving
them a late-night jazz club feel, with the skin-
ny, wordy bard at the microphone soundtrack-
ing every heartbreak in the joint. BARRY DIVOLABleeding Knees Club
Chew the GumInertia★★★½
Garage-party-punk reprobates
grow up on welcome return
Returningasafour-piece(and
sans founding member Jordan
Malane), the Bleeding Knees
Club of Chew the Gum are a sub-
stantially diff erent band than
on 2013 single “Feel”. The new
line-up means new – welcome
- depth, with the trashy bubble-
gum punk title-track showing
off not just a more well-rounded
musical edge, but a captivating
self-refl exivity from lead-man
Alex Wall on burning out one’s
partying pleasure centres. “Sick
Feeling” and “Cyber Doom” also
deal with BNC moving beyond
their grimy punk kid persona,
and it makes the Go-Betweens-
aping jangle of “Sun House” all
the more striking.
JAYMZ CLEMENTS
Tim Rogers An Actor Repairs Four Four/ABC
★★★½Tim Rogers
Blurs the Lines
The You Am I frontman ends up
writing about himself while trying
to write about an old actor