Album Review: Dustin Tebbutt - Home

Reclusive singer-songwriter Dustin Tebbutt is the latest fragile gentlemen to lay his soul bare for the masses, weaving his feelings into delicate melodies on this debut mini-album. While he didn't hole up in a woodland cabin to make this record, it's no surprise he's previously spent time writing in Scandinavia given the sheer breathtaking scope Home encompasses. The NSW singer simultaneously sounds intimate while maintaining an expansive and expanding sonic landscape, threading an aural tapestry of spectacular detail.

The composition of this album explores the synchronicity between notes, as every acoustic instrument imaginable is employed to create a rich and floating effect. Tebbutt's voice itself becomes a part of the music at its best moments, soaring alongside high-strung guitar notes and gliding strings on Life In The Middle. The writing across these seven songs of devotion reflects this interconnectedness, focusing on intertwined personalities and converging lives. "We're becoming home," he sings on the title track in an expression of commitment that's reminiscent in its sincerity to Van Morrison's early pastoral spirituality. Far from retreading the same brokenhearted sentiments other songwriters might fall back on, Tebbutt devotes this album to dedication. "When you say those words it's only to me," he sings on Plans as he traces his lover's palms in the breaking dawn. While the breached heart he sang about with his first single may never be fully mended, he seems in the meantime to have found a way to fill it with some beauty.