STACK #143 Sept 2016

REVIEWS MUSIC

Jamie T Trick Jamie T is back, in a healthier mental space, and sporting a

DJ Khaled Major Key I’m still not entirely sure what it is that DJ Khaled actually does; he doesn’t rap and rarely produces the entirety of any of his tracks. Maybe he is a brand ambassador, maybe he is a pseudo middleman or maybe he is a hip hop entrepreneur. Maybe he is all of those things and more. The key to this album's success is the who’s who that features on it. Jay-Z sounds fresher than he has in years in the club banger I Got The Keys , and Big Sean nearly steals the track Holy Key before Kendrick Lamar drops one of his fiercest verses I’ve heard: a lyrical onslaught. The stand-outs though are the Drake-featured For Free and J. Cole’s straight fire verse in Jermaine’s Interlude . The record also features the likes of Nas, Bryson Tiller, Kodak Black, and Travis Scott. (Sony)Tim Lambert

Backsliders Heathen Songbook Backsliders, an integral component of the Australian blues scene since their inception in 1986, have recently released what may be their greatest album. Currently a duo, slide guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and singer DomTurner and drummer/co-songwriter Rob Hirst are joined on Heathen Songbook by harmonica players Ian Collard, Broderick Smith and Joe Glover. Socially aware themes such as the plight of asylum seekers, expansion of fast food outlets in third world countries and uncontrolled overdevelopment in Sydney sit comfortably with blues covers and John Fogerty's Run Through The Jungle (about the proliferation of guns in the United States). Blues for the twenty-first century. (Rocket) Billy Pinnell

Kishi Bashi Sonderlust Presumably named for sonder,

the obscure sorrow meaning “the realisation each passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own,” 'sonderlust' implies a kind of hunger for empathy. These songs blend the immediacy of pop on the surface with deceptively elaborate machinery, the guts of each track churning with Kaoru Ishibashi’s subtle orchestration. It’s his most accessible record to date: where earlier work was deliciously busy, that business is quieter here while overt funk and synthpop takes over on tracks like Say Yeah and Can’t Let Go, Juno . But for all that extroversion, Sonderlust is immensely sad. Ishibashi’s real-life turmoil spills through, the result being a record yearning to take pleasure in life again, and fearing that

creative freedom previously unseen from the Londoner. For a few years it seemed Jamie Treays' cheeky persona was overtaken by crippling social anxiety; not even Jamie T wanted to be Jamie T. But Trick is a bratty, raucous welcome home party. The album kicks off like a left right combo; lead single Tinfoil Boy flutters somewhere between pop and rock, buoyed by juddering synths and obscure vocal samples. Alternatively, Power Over Men is like listening to a one-man Arctic Monkeys – a powerful hook, erratic riffs and the kind of reflective vocal that Treays is known for. Robin Hood and Tescoland pick up the pace up while Drones flexes T's rap credentials. (EMI)Tim Lambert

such a thing is impossible. (Pod/Inertia) Jake Cleland

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