Chris Cornell On Johnny Cash Tribute LP: Respectful? Ghoulish? You Decide

For a business so often built on the idea of youthful rebellion, the popular music – including sub-groups billing themselves as ‘dangerous’ such as rap and metal – can often just play to the orthodox, even conservative. See, while there’s nothing really wrong with content or context of 360’s perfectly legitimate cautionary tale of Drugs (EMI) the visuals seem bordering on cliché – or is that just part of the marketing plan to push this genuinely quality artist into the mainstream consciousness? The song is actually pretty good, but more problematic is an almost biblical archetype of evil woman taking a good man down – although it’s with a rolled up banknote and a couple of racks rather than an apple, with the message is about as subtle as the Old Testament. Although Eve never disposed of Adam by doing a “Billy Joe McAllister off the Tallahassee Bridge…” style toss-and-drop.

For their first new music in three years-or-so, Parkway Drive also stick pretty much to the conventions of the sometimes angsty world of the ‘harder’ end of the rock. Wishing Wells (Epitaph) is all existential fist-shaking at the universe, still looking for someone to blame. Starting off slow and (relatively) soft, it eventually gets around to crashing in as you’d expect, with Winston getting the full growl and howl happening - complete with the bulging neck veins to further suggest the effort being put in and the passionate grief for the world and himself being expressed. Same as it ever was, same as it ever will be. Probably.

The cynic in me considers that the only thing better than being able to get some promotional value having one dead artist involved in a project is having two. Thus, finding a bunch of poetry that genuinely legendary figure Johnny Cash left behind is an almost guaranteed money-spinner. That in a cast of names paying respects to the man by reciting said words – Costello, Mellencamp, as well as contemporaries like Willie and Kristofferson – there’s also one of the last things recorded by Chris Cornell, whose big deep gravitas in reciting the blunt self-appraisal of You Never Knew My Mind (Legacy/Sony) is just the thing to get people to notice this is happening. Ghoulish, respectful, nostalgic, celebratory? That’s probably up to the audience to decide.

The twenty-or-so year cycle of being fondly remembered to the point of getting the band back together has already worked its way through The Pixies and The Breeders, so having the estimable Tanya Donelly resurrect the Belly name is completely reasonable. With the added modern wrinkle of having the band’s members in different cities so relying on technology as part of the creative process perhaps makes for a slightly less raw feeling than of that last album from 23 years ago. Donelly’s voice still sparkles on Shiny One (Pledge Music), maybe with a little more rasp to it, as the guitars occasionally crash in, but maybe could a little more. Still provokes the necessary curiosity about the upcoming revival album.

Jack River’s music is of the now, although Ballroom (I OH YOU) comes from a moody disco, maybe somewhere in an alternative reality - shiny but a little scuffed. Her voice comes at you through a warm neon mist, with a certainly in its insistent heartbeat, a determination that you best fall in - or just get out of the damn way. Hers is a voice that doesn’t have to screech at you to make its point, and with an increasing assurance in the music she constructs around it, this is the stuff you should hear. “All these people in the room/I just want to be alone.” Terrific.

From the almost country tinges and twangs in her debut album, Natalie Prass’ voice is also an extraordinary thing. Short Court Style (ATO/[PIAS]) surprises in a couple of ways. It’s almost ‘90s soul/R&B tone and lightness seemingly at odds with the story of its creation where Ms Prass apparently scrapped a whole album and recast it in darker, angrier, and more fearful tones when she realised her country had gone completely mental and elected Trump. That makes the uncomfortable near-sweetness of this perhaps even more clenched.

There’s something very Australian in the title twist of (Just Because You’re Not Being Followed Doesn’t Mean You’re Not) Paranoid (Off The Hip/Oak Island). Adelaide’s The Dunes have some psychedelic tones in their racket, with outbreaks something harder and fuzzier – that may have even been some Magic Dirt in there, from the time before they discovered melody and hooks. As the squelchy organ kicks in the philosophy here seems to be they’re in the business of knowing about the big brothers of social media - but pointing out the feeling of dread might just be self-inflicted, and you still have the responsibility of thinking for yourself. Go with that.