New Lisa Mitchell Track Shows She's Focused...And Maybe Even Pissed Off

It’s always good to see an artist develop, and be able to come at their art from a slightly different direction. Lisa Mitchell was always the wonderful oddment off the TV talent show production line, and while to her credit she escaped from that particular straitjacket fairly swiftly, there was still something not quite fully formed in her work. As much as the deceptively sweet sing-song of something like her early Coin Laundry had its charms, after its saturation on certain radio stations, you eventually wanted to throw her in the dryer for the spin-cycle just to make it stop. But Mitchell has changed and grown further. Warhol (Warner) still has some of that human vulnerability in that voice, but seemed somehow more focussed – and maybe just a little pissed off. It’s maybe not quite as distracted, a depth of feeling to put her more alongside the Blaskos and Washingtons – where she probably should have been all the time. 

Sometimes the innocence of the nursery rhyme approach can be a little subverted. Although Amanda Palmer drops the regular ‘Fucking’ from the middle of her own billing, perhaps in deference to her dad Jack – who sings with her on Wynken, Blynken, & Nod (Patreon/8ft Records) - or maybe to her offspring, the surprisingly orthodoxly named Anthony, who gets a starring role in the perfectly ramshackle but hugely clever single-shot video below. It’s not often you see the disclaimer that ‘No babies were given any sedatives’ for the making of a clip, but the junior Gaiman-Palmer remains hugely calm as forest and oceans – and their occasional dangers – form and unform around him. It’s a beautiful sincere thing made with love. So’s the song.

And then you can really wander off to unexpected places. Kurt Wagner’s Lambchop – essentially him, and an ever-changing army of collaborators – has largely kept some semblance of his/their lush-if-slightly-cockeyed countryish atmospheres and moods, until now. NIV (City Slang/Inertia) followed the completely idiosyncratic idea that was the Kraftwerkian mechanically-rambling 18-minute single, The Hustle. While you thought that might be Kurt just having a bit of a Dadaist gag at his audience’s expense, this is a kind of ‘pop song’, but all rolling synths and vocoder/autotune vocals akin to that automated voice you hear when ordering a taxi. Hey, remember taxis? But somehow through all that, Wagner’s askance wit is still in there somewhere – he’s still wearing the truckers cap or ten-gallon hat while trying to hide out in a hip-hop neighbourhood, and somehow respecting both genres, and probably a few others. 

And while they’re respecting their source material, and while they’re got their slicked-back quiffs and sunglasses worn inside with the kind of careless nonchalance that takes a lot of work, you’d reckon even Alex Turner and Miles Kane in their The Last Shadow Puppets guise would know they’ll never be as cool as Leonard Cohen. An upcoming tour-celebrating EP, Dream Synopsis, has them covering some heroes (The Fall! Glaxo Babies!), and includes this run at Lenny’s Is This What You Wanted (Domino/EMI). They sound suitable jaded and sardonic about the whole affair, with the guitar bubbling away under and through it, and all’s well and good as far as it goes. It may even push some of their customers to cast an eye and ear over the world’s most self-conscious Buddhist’s work.

In between their tours with names that will look good on the resume in Hayes Carll and Kasey Chambers, Eagle & the Wolf’s take on country takes a bit of a turn as well. Kristen’s and Sarah’s style has always honoured the likes of the melancholy heartbreak end of the Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris legacy – not that there’s anything wrong with that. But Hips (Independent) is more from the honky tonk end of the bar – self-describing it as ‘saucy’. Who are we to argue? This is a little more rollicking – it’s winks at the B&S Ball over the 44-gallon drum of Bundy-and-Coke, before slipping out for cuddle in the back of the ute. Although maybe a little darker than that. The dance moves are likely somewhat different than illustrated.

And while Rag N Bone’s name and look can seem a little folkie and beardy, the four WAMI nominations in the rock categories are may be a better hint. The band’s strong female presences has Last Kind Words (Habit/MGM) having elements of the blues – that’s the blues that PJ Harvey often used to inhabit, and a more modern finger-ground-into-your-breastbone attitude akin to modern magnificences as Savages, although our kids probably don’t have the budget for the leather and moody eye makeup yet. This rattles through, straining at the leash – that restraint making it that bit more desperate.  

Seeming to know exactly what it is doing, and how it wants to be placed, Mansionair are a model of the now. Easier (Liberation) glides and lilts at first, the slightly fragile soulful vocals that’s currently the fashion well in evidence, before it’s taken somewhere else by synth lines that cut across and through, reinforcing the hurt being expressed. This is the modern alternative pop for enthusiasts of the artist formerly known as Chet Faker, and that ilk of mannish boys sorting out their feelings as they go. 

That unafraid of emotions approach has probably become more solidly a genre in the three years Brisbane’s MTNS have been absent constructing what comes next after the Over It and Salvage EPs, which seemed to give them a foothold in the mainstream of the alternative back then. Insight (Title Track) is the first result of an LA change of scenery and recording experience. It’s inexorable electronica that washes over you like a tide, possibly with a little more insistence than previously. This should probably reignite your interest to see further results of their excursion.