Album Review: Ngaiire - Lamentations

Sydney's own Ngaiire has pulled off one of the Australian albums of the year with apparent ease. Lamentations is soulful and electronic, delicate and powerful, lyrical and hypnotic – she has every base covered and spreads her passionate, trembling vocals across an expansive range on nine compact tracks.

The first two singles, Around and Dirty Hercules (ft Nai Palm), were well selected – the two most intricate creations on the cut. Nostalgic and coupled with soul-era harmonies and backing vocals layered beneath her own husky voice, (half Amy Winehouse, half Lianne La Havas), Dirty Hercules really comes to life towards the end, dissolving in an ad-libbed swirl of passion. Around stands out with its delicious two-part structure and stark lyrics like “when the government calls you to war – will you/Walk away and give me up to the enemy?”

The song production by Tim Curnick is perfect on swelling tracks like Count To Ten, where the crackling tap of a typewriter becomes the beat and organ progressions haunt the backdrop. Skip one song forward and you'll be hit with the pulsing drums and ethereal hum of Fireflies.

The yearning and raw vocals on ABCD pushes it to the forefront as the album highlight. It begins with a Beethoven-esque piano refrain and twinkling post-production effects before the melody twists its way up, exploding with power as Ngaiire sings a dissonant ode to her mother – “Turn away the rescue ships/Anchor me from my hips”. 

Lamentations is a full album where each track is just as essential as the next; each track is filled with the same recipe of devotion. It's an album you can't place or date; it's universal, floating through space a cut above the rest.