Album Review: Martin Frawley - Undone At 31

The debut solo album from Melbourne singer-songwriter Martin Frawley reads like a series of diary entries chronicling the end of a long and important relationship, dripping with honesty as it mines the depths of despair that inevitably follows the loss of a long-term love. Heart-on-sleeve opener You Want Me? sets the scene perfectly, while the foreboding End Of The Bar captures the start of the predictable downward spiral, the subsequent fallout and torment from the split laid out from here in graphic detail.

That the break-up also signalled the death knell for Frawley’s previous outfit Twerps (due to his former partner also being that band’s co-founder) allows Frawley to recast himself musically, the melodic indie-rock jangle of his prior work scrapped for a more wide-ranging and experimental palette. Helped by a rhythm section comprising Gus Lord (bass) and Matt Harkin (drums) of The Stevens alongside US multi-instrumentalist Stewart Bronaugh, Frawley fashions a stream of different musical moods and vistas augmented at times by strings, keyboards, programmed rhythms and lap steel guitar, the predominantly upbeat tone providing welcome contrast against the often downcast narratives. Wobbly closer Where The Heart Is ends proceedings on a hint of quiet optimism, Frawley’s affable everyman charisma shining throughout this no doubt cathartic opening foray into a new creative chapter.