Max Sharam - A Million Year Girl

YOURZ

Doing this review is the first time I've heard anything by Max Sharam.  In fact, up until I started doing a little research for this review, I had no idea she was Australian.  But then, hers isn't exactly the kind of music I'm likely to seek out.

Listening to A Million Year Girl, and despite its apparent success when it was released in 1995, the only tracks I recognised, apart from the cover of Melanie's Lay Down, was the single Coma and even then, my recognition was vague at best, kind of like I'd heard it in the background a number of times but was never moved enough to find out who it was.

While not offensive, this is still how I feel about this album - nice and innocuous in the background but containing nothing at all that excites me.

VERDICT: TURN IT DOWN

MINE

Two songs into Million Year Girl and I was about to call it a Forgotten Gem.  But it didn't sparkle as much as I'd thought.

Max has an amazing voice, capable of the hugest swoops and slides, and she doesn't do any of that nauseating twiddling that it seems every R&B diva has to do these days.  Have I said that before?  Probably.  Sorry if I'm getting repetitive.

Anyway, I love the first half of the album, with Be Firm and Coma leading it out strongly.  Purple Flowers always reminds me of Sydney in springtime, when the jacaranda blossoms in every second backyard.  Her rendering of Lay Down (Candles in the Rain) is another lovely sing-along, and I was amazed at her version of Is it Okay if I Call You Mine? when this album came out, because I thought I was the only person who even knew about that gorgeous song from Fame.  Jezu's Jewellery and Hunting Ground are OK, but the rest of the album's a bit of a loss.

I have seen her perform live, well before this album was released, doing her semi-regular gig at Kinselas, an inner-Sydney bar I frequented in the early 90s.  She did a version of Minnie Riperton's Loving You that silenced the room, because when she got to that high falsetto bit (it's about 0:56 on that video) she didn't even try to sing it, she just SCREAMED.  Priceless.

VERDICT: TURN IT UP then down...

For more information: http://www.maxsharam.com/

New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too

YOURZ

Talk about being late to the party.  This American band (well, one main guy and a swag of studio musicians) come across like a British soul act from ten years earlier.  The only reason I know the single, You Get What You Give, is because is was used in a Mitsubishi car ad run here in Australia.  But even then, this song doesn't save the album from being a bit too bleached for my liking.

Apparently this same song was everywhere at one point in the late 90s but I don't remember hearing it back then.  Truth be known, I probably heard it and ignored it.  Like I'm pretty much doing now.

VERDICT: THROW IT OUT

MINE

OK, I have to admit to buying this album, simply because I liked You Get What You Give which was huge all over the place.  And I absolutely adored the not-so-well-known second single, Someday We'll Know.  Best. Break-up Song. Ever. "I'm speeding by the place that I met you/ For the 97th time ... tonight"

In fact I have to apologise to my neighbours in - 2000 was it?  When this song was on repeat, on my stereo, for hours on end.  Sorry about that.  Despite the fact the guy behind the band, Gregg Alexander, went on to write hit after hit for various other artists, this album has a very definite use-by date.

VERDICT: THROW IT OUT

For more information: http://www.last.fm/music/New+Radicals

Paul Kelly - Stolen Apples

YOURZ

I'm really fucking annoyed.  Let me tell you why.

Late last night, I spent a good deal of time reading and researching about Paul Kelly and had started writing this review.  I was really pleased with what I had down and went to bed with the songs from this wonderful album in my head and a satisfied smile on my face, intending to finish it off today.

It was just too good to be true.  When I came back to it this morning, everything I had written was gone.  I can't be arsed going back and trying to rehash it.  You're just gonna have to believe me when I say it was a stunning tribute to one of Australia's most loved troubadours.  He's responsible for writing or co-writing some true Australian classics such as Yothu Yindi's Treaty, and his own To Her Door, Dumb Things and From Little Thing Big Things Grow.

Stolen Apples is his eighteenth studio album and is every bit as relevant a part of his extensive recording career as anything he's previously released.  If there is a voice of contemporary Australian music, then Paul Kelly's is the one.  His muse roams wide as this wide brown land although as I write this, it's been raining heavily all day.  But this is also evocative of Paul Kelly and his many moods.

He knows no bounds either musically or lyrically, whether it's personal country odes to the love of his life (You're 39, You're Beautiful And You're Mine), modern folk songs about Australian legends (The Ballad Of Queenie And Rover) or fictional studies of despicable characters (God Told Me To), Kelly proves once more why he's one of the greatest.

VERDICT: TURN IT UP

MINE

Paul Kelly has the honour of being the first artist I ever bought unheard, purely at the recommendation of a music magazine, the now-defunct and curiously named weekly tabloid RAM.  And my experience of Post in 1985 was so overwhelming, he's been a firm favourite ever since.  On that album he chronicled his moves - from his place of birth in Adelaide and then from Melbourne to Sydney in From St Kilda to Kings Cross, together with his experiences with heroin when he got to the Big Smoke - Incident on South Dowling.

Because Kelly tells his life like it is - and he tells other people's lives, and he makes up stories.  I love him because he does best when he's telling you a story.  Even non-Australians may have experienced his craft, with his version of a Raymond Carver story - So Much Water So Close To Home - becoming part of the soundtrack to the award-winning Australian movie Jindabyne, based on the same story.

Any movie set in the sunburnt country would be the better for featuring his iconic, laconic Aussie drawl.  He's as Australian as a kookaburra, and just as delightful.   In his many incarnations, with the Dots and the Messengers and the Coloured Girls, Kelly's songs paint a picture of the Australian experience I would encourage anyone planning to visit to experience before getting on a plane.  They'd be just as good as a travel guide, and far more enjoyable.

*sigh* This also means we gotta buy Post and Gossip at least on CD, huh YourZ?  They're languishing on vinyl right now, and I miss them! (YourZ sez: I'll add 'em to the list, honey buns...)

VERDICT: TURN IT UP

For more information: http://www.paulkelly.com.au/
Or for a listen to some of Australia's finest artists playing the great man's songs in a tribute concert: http://abcsport.net.au/triplej/media/s2769261.htm

In our collection, we also have Songs From The South, and So Much Water So Close To Home