4/5
The Midnight Sky.
Sydney Opera House, Australia, 2014, between 'The Brink' (touring that very beautiful album) and the synth of the last, legacy making album 'Synthia'. My favourite band not named INXS (my favourite BAND, not my favourite "Aussie band"), The Jezabels are rocking. The full, almost two hour set is on the legendary landmark's official YouTube channel for your necessary watching consideration. You know how it goes. The incomparable Hayley Mary holding the stage like no other but Michael Hutchence before her. The whole city and country behind her booming like Sam Lockwood's great guitar and the skin of Nik Kaloper's drums. But before all that as we looked upstairs to the heavens, keyboardist Heather Shannon took us to church. Playing around on the house organ like they were about to pass around the collection plate. Praise be and glory to I would have emptied my pockets for this classically trained sound. Tooling around and toying with us. My crush on her back then just got heavier as I thought she was about to bring the pedal down like the hammer for the opening, almost Hans Zimmer epic "BWAH" like sound of 'Prisoner'. The organ opening track off the album of the same name that last month just celebrated its ten year anniversary (thank you Music Feeds from Down Under for the band introduction and writing opportunity). Now that would have been really something...like this. As we eagerly await a Jezabels reunion and lead singer Hayley Mary follows last year's EP 'The Piss, The Perfume' with an even better extended play in 'The Drip' and its soaring single 'The Chain'. Heather Shannon heads off to Iceland to craft her own classic collection of ivory inspired musical pieces of artwork.
Piano and I like Alicia, it's just Heather and the keys as she brings us a snow white shining 'Midnight Sun' from a European retreat, with above her only sky. A sharp Shannon honed her sound during a different type of quarantine. Locked down and socially isolated. Back in 2016 just before the successful release of The Jezabels best album yet 'Synthia' that dealt with some dark themes (the death of Mary's mother and an infectious lead single called 'My Love Is My Disease' that featured a Japanese salary man bruised, bloodied and battered being stalked in the night neon streets of Tokyo by shirtless men that ran like dogs), tragedy struck. Heather's ovarian cancer that was originally diagnosed in 2013 whilst the band recorded 'The Brink' returned and fans like her family and herself felt like as she told the British newspaper The Guardian this week, "someone had pumped cement in (my) veins." The 'Synthia' tour was cancelled for what Shannon describes as collectively the "worst day of our (the band's) lives", but more importantly everyone feared the worst as Heather underwent chemotherapy. In the face of all this and the resulting cabin fever at a distant at home, the pianist reconnected with the roots of her instrument and soujourned to the Icelandic fjords to make this inspired instrumental album of classical compositions in all its nine track wonders. One that taking us from the mainstream to the 'Mother Love' like Vernon Spring's of modern cult classics in turn reminds us of Prince's raw 'Piano and a Microphone' posthumous release and the influences of jazz legend Thelonious Monk on this genre bender that shifts like snow beneath your feet. All for an album whose artwork and art inspirations are straight out the songwriting playbook and career craft of Justin Vernon's Bon Iver. Word to 'Perth'.
Achingly beautiful and recorded during a residency in Ísafjörður in 2017. Shannon's stirring, compelling collection is sublime and about time, comes when we really need it in our self imposed isolation for the good health of everybody. It opens with the 'Fragments' that will break your heart like her bad news and ends with the yellow house of 'Engi' where she found solace in to toil away at her craft as she fought cancer in recovery. It's a far cry from Sydney with just the Harbour House's sails as sharp as ice only remotely representing the mountainous regions that surrounded her sound for the perfect acoustics. Shannon says the "strangeness" of her surroundings "seeped into the music" that at a turn sounds like "resolution and uncertainty". As surely anyone who has been through what she has can only understand as she evokes this tone in her raw and reflective music that is never dark, but is always trying to shine a light even in the caverns and caves of a mind dealing with matters like these on this canvas. Tracks like the back and forth of the rough, but still ready 'Ricochet' and the landmark 'Fossavatn', not to mention 'Midnight Sun's' title track shine a light on the brutal beauty of this recording process. One that was made on computers and of course synthesisers like my favourite album of the last half of the 10's, before being sheet music transcribed and recorded on a Fazioli grand piano in the Sydney Conservatory of Music's Verbrugghen Hall (handy as Heather is studying a masters in composition here (geniuses grow)). From remote locations to an operatic studio sound this back to basics approach is the kind of Jack and Meg White Stripes influence that made everything rocking out of the modern mainstream sound so authentic. It really takes you there like 'A Place To Go' as we can feel the stimulating cold of Iceland even rerecorded in Australia like the cold breath of winter in front of your face that people on the Gold Coast never see. This 'Hidden' gem of twenty-twenty one holds you like the beautiful hands on the composition 'Cradle'. In an year were all the big stars are going Gaga back to the studio over and over with Swift percussion, this independent release is for 'The Others' like a classic Jezabel track. It may have been a long time since that band brought it back, but another solo project from the group just connects us to more parts of this collective that we are interested in. Pushing the envelope of creativity and the boundaries of her abilities both as a musician and the humanity of what she had to endure, Heather comes out stronger and this Icelandic retreat is a destination inside we can all take solace in too. By midnight of one of the hardest years of our lives, with the reflection of hers, Shannon shows us the sun. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Playlist Picks: 'Fragments', 'Ricochet', 'Engi'.
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