Again it comes down to balancing the familiar with the different. So yes, of course you recognise Matt Berninger’s lugubrious tones as the debut release of EL VY begins to wash over you. But rather than The National’s neon buzz falling in around it, the slightly nervy insistence of Menomena’s Brent Knopf’s machines that go ‘ping’ are there to push the voice along. The song’s lengthy and bracketed song title – Return To The Moon (Political Song For Didi Bloome To Sing, With Crescendo) (4AD), and some almost Michael Stipe cryptic puzzling in the lyrics may worry some that it’s dangerously close to wanting to be art, but there is an oddly comfortable feeling to the collaboration that won’t scare away too many of the curious brought in by the names involved.
And in these days where music can be a somewhat visual medium as well, the changes may well be made on that side of the equation. It appears The Snowdroppers have decided the 1920s singlets-and-braces shtick might have run its course to some degree, although Love Letters (Four|Four) retains a fair bit of the gruff, shouty, blues-with-a-bit-of-a-tune style that probably endeared them to an audience in the first place, regardless of how it was dressed.
Then you do need something to differentiate yourself from something else you might sound a bit like, whether by accident or design. Lucy Neville happily lists the likes of Lana Del Rey among the reference points, and the breathily quiet opening of On My Own (Ditto) will reinforce that, but then it settles into a slightly more energetic synthetic cruise that carries you along. The shimmer may be a little reflective, but this is setting something of its own direction. More electro-pop than plastic torch singing, probably.
Sometimes the visual is entirely irrelevant. Guy Garvey of Elbow does look like that substitute Geography teacher who was happy to just let you read for the couple of periods he was stuck with you, but had he been more of a heart-throb the band might have been Snow Patrol - rather than the somewhat more thoughtful and worthy thing that it has turned out to be. Lost Worker Bee (Snug Platters) has that feeling of philosophical wanders across the moors to it, here with a brass band overheard from a room down the hall, and maybe a touch of secular gospel faith-questioning in there as well. He’ll work it out. Maybe.
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Conversely, although it’s titled Gospel Radio (Don Giovanni), the first release from the ‘critically noted’ – that’s means they probably didn't sell as many as some thought they should – Roadside Graves in around five years is more observational of the feeling of listening, rather than illustrating the style. John Gleason may say ‘Hallelujah’, but it’s probably more a question than an exclamation. Although he does seem to get a bit happier with his lot as it goes. It’s New Jersey country, owing more to The Felice Brothers or the even more drily sardonic Silver Jews than old - or even new - Nashville.
Also looking upward, possibly less ironically, James Teague’s Heaven (Independent) has the Perth via Melbourne singer refining his art. It falls into an overlapping Venn diagram that would include Glenn Richards’ poetry with music, with an ethereal feeling to his voice somewhere around Cordrazine's Hamish Coward or even Antony Hegarty territory. The visuals are suitably ‘arty’, as forest glades witness a metamorphosis into interpretive dance. His is an individual talent which you hope can find some traction among the occasionally blokey rockist nature of the nation.
And the wide brown land of #Straya can sometimes also have a short attention span. Perhaps taking that into account, Palms belt out Beat Down (Ivy League) in just over a minute-and-a-half. The good trick is while they thrash it out in that 92 seconds, they don’t forget there has to be a tune and a structure to make an approachable tune out of it. This they do, pretty damn well. Punkish energy, pop sense. In a just world you should need little more.
The art of doing so much with apparently so little has long been Low’s stock in trade. The voices and spaces among so-often minimal and subtle beds of sound make them such a rare and nuanced thing of beauty. What Part Of Me (Sub Pop) may actually be slightly lighter and airier than want many would be used to, but the words are still infused with their usual melancholy puzzling on love and various human conditions. This second preview of a new album that’s coming comparatively soon after 2013’s The Invisible Way, suggests they’re in a purplish patch of creativity. I'm prepared to revel in that.
