Album Review: Scott & Charlene's Wedding - Mid Thirties Single Scene

"Have you ever had to laugh through tears?" wails Craig Dermody on the pathos-ridden Hardest Years. "I take my hat off to that."

The Scott & Charlene's Wedding frontman is a plain-speaking, blue-collar troubadour who, on the Melbourne band's third album, continues to wrench fistfuls of humour and emotional truth from the mundane and everyday, amid sometimes-sprightly, sometimes-plaintive squalls of guitar. Whether he's cooking breakfast and lamenting "My life was so different when I knew you" [Scrambled Eggs] or going bush for some serious self-reflection [Bush] he tells it as he sees it, and it's hard not to listen.