just calling to tell you i’m okay

Æ “Sometimes I feel anxiety/ Feel something’s creepin’ up on me…” – it’s so incredibly important for young listeners to hear lyrics that normalise feelings they’re experiencing, but might be too scared to discuss and we salute Eliott for bravely sharing her story.

Throughout her debut album, Eliott charts her mental health journey chronologically: at the top, we meet a “broken person” before she navigates the twists and turns of heartbreak and recovery until hope finally prevails with a repeated affirmation (“You’ll be just fine”) during the reassuring closer. Track three, Tell Me, was written in 2019 when Eliott began to seek help: “So tell me mother, when will I know what to do?/ If I can’t keep up, and I don’t wanna get up this time.” During this stunning lead single’s anthemic choruses, Eliott’s impassioned portrayal is cradled by a backup choir.

Elsewhere: standout moment Happy On My Own (featuring Vancouver Sleep Clinic’s moving vocals) represents a turning point, Control explores unrequited love (“Am I going crazy?/ ‘Cause you don’t miss me”) and the tender For Oli (“I’ll leave the light on for you”) is a tribute to a lost friend who lives on forever in her heart.

Eliott learned how to harmonise while singing along to The Sound Of White by Missy Higgins in the car with her mum, during long drives from her hometown of Cobram to Melbourne, and her powerful pipes are the true star here.

FANNY LUMSDEN

Hey Dawn

Æ Fanny Lumsden has recalled waking up in an Airbnb in Tassie as the sun was rising over the ocean: “I literally just said, ‘Oh, hey dawn!’” She’d been feeling a bit “stuck” in the wake of her previous career-defining, Top 10-charting, Golden Guitar and ARIA-winning Fallow set (2020), but this spectacle of nature’s beauty shifted her perspective. Then another serendipitous encounter – visiting a market held in a hall and happening upon an old man playing piano – brought Fanny’s vision for this record to life, and she returned to her accommodation and composed Hey Dawn’s opening title track that evening.

Hey Dawn opens a cappella until a lyrical epiphany (“Our hearts they will be lighter/ Yes I believe it will be warmer from now on”) initiates an influx of instrumentation, brass and all. “‘Cause in came the smoke/ And all that good luck choked…” –Great Divide references the mega-fire that almost claimed Fanny’s property in The Tooma Valley. Commemorating the passing of her grandma, Ugly Flowers incorporates wonderful lyrical detail (“an in-ground pool”, “Pantene Pro-V”, “pressed trousers”).

When I Die, which features Ash Naylor on guitar, was written while Fanny sat solo around a campfire on the Nullarbor Plain. This rollicking track was inspired by Brett – a burly, bearded bushy (he stars in the accompanying film clip) – and his meticulously planned wake, which includes Fanny serenading him out of this world while his ashes are “shot out of shotguns (BYO) during golden hour”.

Fanny and Tom Lumsden’s sibling harmonies are an absolute swoonfest throughout this album’s entirety. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: who doesn’t love Fanny?

Various Artists

Rooms For The Memory 2023

Æ While driving home from a recent gig at Northcote Theatre, with PBS’ Sunglasses After Dark show pumping outta the car stezza, Rooms For The Memory – from the OST for Richard Lowenstein’s cult film Dogs In Space (1986), for which Ollie Olsen was enlisted as Musical Director– stopped us in our tracks. Michael Hutchence’s vocal performance is so gritty and drenched in raw emotion. That closing plea: “RE-E-MEMbe-er” – he sounds utterly undone.

Rooms For The Memory was recently reworked by Adalita, Mick Harvey and Andrew Duffield to help raise funds for the ongoing care of Olsen – a prominent figure in Melbourne’s avant-garde electronic music scene (Whirlywirld, NO, Orchestra Of Skin And Bone, Max Q) and this song’s composer – who was diagnosed with Multiple System Atrophy (a form of Parkinson’s) in 2020. Lowenstein also created an accompanying film clip for Rooms For The Memory revisited, interspersing footage from the Sing Sing Studios session that went down earlier this year with vintage gold featuring Hutchence and Olsen recording the OG song/just broing-out in general.

The extended format of Rooms For The Memory includes four versions of the hauntingly beautiful titular track as well as two renditions of Whirlywirld’s Win-Lose: the Dogs In Space version plus a reimagining featuring Eskimo Joe’s Kav Temperley on vocals. Vast, imposing and bleak – with chugging synths and sparkling riffs – Win/ Lose crackles with menacing intensity and sounds as vital as ever.