By Robert Moran, John Shand and Annabel Ross
Dolly Parton has made her first “rock album”.
Rockstar, Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton needn’t have worried too much about her rock credentials when being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last year. Past inductees have included plenty of non-rock acts such as ABBA, Miles Davis and Earth, Wind & Fire. But, compelled to prove she was worthy of the honour, Parton sent love letters to the biggest hitters in rock and pop inviting them to contribute to her first rock album. Dolly being Dolly, nearly all of them – including Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Sting, Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood – said yes.
It’s testament to both her extraordinary, prolific reign at the top of a cutthroat industry, and her enormous appeal as a defiantly glamorous, relentlessly charming maverick. Her wisecracking, always-sunny persona and incredible charity efforts – including donating over 221 million books to children through her Imagination Library, for starters – have made Parton almost universally beloved.
Her apoliticism has helped her avoid enemies, too, at the same time it has earned her some criticism. Parton has said she’d lose half her audience if she weighed in on divisive political issues, but people-pleasing seems to drive her more than her bottom line. On one occasion, after being heckled when singing a sad song in a Las Vegas cabaret joint, she vowed to never do it again. “He was drunk, and he was feeling bad. I thought, ‘Nah, this is not the kind of song to sing in a nightclub,’” she said in an interview.
Rockstar’s 30-track bloat might be explained in the same way; perhaps Dolly decided to include all songs recorded rather than hurt anyone’s feelings. But even the most fervent fan might struggle to endure the uneven, nearly two-and-a-half hours long record in one sitting.
Parton’s twang is ever-present throughout the album, but sounds especially ill-fitting on Every Breath You Take, with Sting, where her buoyant tone jars with the more sinister original. We Are The Champions/We Will Rock You isn’t especially bad but, like many tracks here, its faithfulness to the source material makes it feel redundant.
Dolly Parton, 77 and still rocking.
I desperately wanted Parton and Debbie Harry duetting on Heart of Glass to work but it sounds like a watered-down version of the original, with their vocals not as full and peppy as the song demands and the neutered arrangement resembling a karaoke backing track.
Other collabs fare better. Don’t Let The Sun Go Down on Me is hard to mess up with its simple piano foundation and Elton John’s voice as potent as ever. Parton and Nicks sound fabulously raspy together on Nicks’ unreleased ’80s track What Has Rock and Roll Ever Done For You, and Parton teaming up with her goddaughter Miley Cyrus on Wrecking Ball is a treat, as is the gorgeous finale Free Bird with Lynyrd Skynyrd.
While Parton’s husband of 57 years, Carl Dean, a big rock fan, objected so strongly to the first demo of Stairway to Heaven he dubbed it “Stairway to Hell”, the final version is tender and affecting, recorded with Lizzo’s flute-playing alias, Sasha Flute. Parton’s voice is perfect for the wounded, folksy vocal, and she even nails the screamed verse (as she does elsewhere on the album), proving that, at 77, she can rock out with the best of them.
The handful of original tracks are solid, too – a stronger record might have been made with more of them alongside the best covers here. But while not all of Rockstar works, as Parton says, “nobody can say I didn’t give it all I had,” and her best efforts here are hard to resist. Annabel Ross
Zashto?, Mara! Big Band
Australians have long had a complicated attitude to migrants. While we enjoy the cornucopia of foods, racism is a rash festering just below the skin, waiting to be inflamed by the dog-whistlers. Zashto? – “why?” in Bulgarian – is a song cycle that asks why the migrant experience has often been so difficult and traumatising. It’s also a celebration of cultural diversity, performed by a dramatically expanded version of Mara!, a mainstay band of our world music scene for 30 years, which swells from five to 13 of the finest players and singers in the land.
The cycle’s first protagonist is Catherine Delaney (an ancestor of saxophonist/composer Sandy Evans), whose fondness for releasing political prisoners from her father’s Irish jail resulted in her being transported here in 1803. The Snare (composed by Andrew Robson with words by Mara Kiek) is Delaney’s imagined riposte to the sentencing judge, in which she says she’d do the same again rather than see her fellow creatures rot in chains. Sung in Gaelic by Kiek, it joins Henry Lawson’s Past Carin’ as being among the most moving songs in the Mara! canon.
Zashto? by Mara! Big Band, a mainstay of Australia’s world music scene.
Then we’re given the perspective of a Bulgarian migrant, who arrives with a heart full hopes and ends with “uncrowned dreams” in her soul. Called Nekoronovanite Printsove (Uncrowned Princes), this was composed by Evans with words by Marcia Malinova-Anthony. Hauntingly sung in Bulgarian by Silvia Entcheva, it has an Evans soprano saxophone solo and an a cappella finale that are equally hair-raising. Its sequel, More (Sea), sustains the drama, the tone embittered and ultimately resigned, with Kiek now the lead vocalist and the introduction including a brooding feature for bassist Lloyd Swanton, while Gary Daley’s accordion solo hints at a blither future.
The third protagonist is an Iranian refugee, who tells us of her years in limbo on Nauru in Yek Zemzemeh (A Whisper), written by Llew Kiek and Maryam Faghihi Rad, and sung in Farsi by Jarnie Birmingham. Here the central character wills herself to be tempered rather than crushed by the experience, and hopes that living out her dreams will quell the painful memories. Finally, on the title track, Mara Kiek’s lyric presents a robust dialogue between a migrant and a xenophobe.
Mara Kiek (vocals, percussion) of Mara! Big Band.Credit: Grant Leslie Photography
Woven around these stories are instrumentals including Tony Gorman’s What a Life!, an autobiographical piece encapsulating this Scottish migrant’s wildly varied experiences via consecutive time signatures of 13/4, 12/18 and 11/8, with James Greening’s crying pocket trumpet a highlight. The album’s stellar cast is completed by Paul Cutlan (reeds), Sam Golding (flute, trumpet, tuba), Llew Kiek (assorted stringed instruments), Jess Ciampa (drums, percussion) and Jenny Dornan (vocals).
A long cherished-dream of Mara and Llew Kiek, the project is wildly ambitious, but meets its own challenges with flair and conviction. Its release is a gentle reminder that racism has no place in debates about immigration. John Shand
The Sydney star’s official debut is a solid showcase of his wild ambition.
The First Time, The Kid Laroi
It’s been three years now since Sydney’s own The Kid Laroi released his breakthrough mixtape F— Love and accomplished what once seemed inconceivable: an Australian hiphop artist becoming a chart-topping superstar in the genre’s home, the USA? The achievement still boggles the mind. After a brief spell away from the limelight – which also, ironically, included a Grammy nod for best new artist and a slot at Coachella – he’s back, now 20, with what’s his first official album, the hugely anticipated The First Time.
It feels like an eye-opening reintroduction, more than a return. Anyone expecting another mega-playlist of emo-rap ballads will be instantly surprised by opener Sorry, which kicks in with a warm soul sample care of local beatmasters FnZ and Laroi lamenting his new life with a superstar’s paranoia. “I mean, the pressure’s immense, 19 and tryna navigate money and stress, weird industry friends and my family life is intense, and my girl is always upset ’cause I’m always f—in’ working,” he offers as the beat switches back and forth with rich texture.
It’s an evocative opening the album matches occasionally, although the goal here seems to be a try-anything expression of Laroi’s versatility as much as anything else. Gone is his Bieber-esque floppy fringe and unhinged energy; now he’s rocking a Sid Vicious cut and ripped flannel and alternating between Post Malone-ish arena rock (What Just Happened), laconic Brit-pop balladry (Bleed), pop star poses (lead single Too Much, featuring global stars Central Cee and Jungkook), and even sunny gospel (Call Me Instead, led by the piano of Robert Glasper), alongside the emotive hiphop he first broke through with.
Supposedly aesthetically inspired by Larry Clark and Harmony Korine’s 1995 film Kids (the singles’ music videos, directed by Ramez Silyan, are littered with grimy 1979-esque teen shenanigans), the album follows a loose theme about “first times” – love, death, parenthood, um, travel. It’s at times overworked and awkward (among a bunch of voice memo interludes, there’s one where Justin Bieber recalls the first time he met his wife Hailey, that ends with him calling her his “squishy little peanut” – what Laroi thinks this offers, who knows?), but at this point what Laroi’s exploring feels less significant than how, and the how is increasingly accomplished.
One of the perks of becoming a household name with an all-time smash (Stay) is that he has his pick of collaborators and the songs sound remarkably rich as a result. Production on the album is largely split between Australian producers FnZ, tapping into the same dense, skittering soulscapes they’ve previously crafted for the likes of Drake, and Omer Fedi, the pop-rock maestro who previously collaborated with Laroi on Stay and Without You.
The album’s highlight, however, might be What Went Wrong???, a left-turn built on a huge swirling synth beat from BNYX of the forward-thinking Working On Dying collective, best known for his work with Yeat (he also contributes production on the album’s brooding I Thought I Needed You). Laroi sounds great on the beat – rushed, paranoid, yearning, jumping from pained coos to wiry falsetto over a manic soundscape, as he dives into the mental confusion his new life’s afforded.
It’s a strong performance, only partly undone by the head-turn that comes straight after: The Line, a grim fingerpicked acoustic number where Laroi moves like he’s trap Elliott Smith or something. Still, like the rest of The First Time, you’ve gotta respect the bold, vulnerable, off-kilter intent. It’s the sound of a young artist, arguably our biggest international star, moving ever further into his own. Robert Moran
One More Time..., Blink-182
For years the best thing iconic skate-punkers Blink-182 have been involved with, if inadvertently, is US standup Whitmer Thomas’ viral bit about their 2004 hit I Miss You. While they first exploded with bratty, fast, catchy classics like Dammit and Josie, Thomas’ bit expertly captures the discomfort of the band’s late-period existence: they had ambitions to get serious, deep even, but it fit them like a chicken suit, imitations of Tom DeLonge’s “hear your voice of treason!” never failing to earn a chuckle – mockery and affection, at once – in karaoke rooms the world over.
Mark, Tom and Travis: Blink-182’s peak trio return for their first album in 12 years.
That the band splintered soon after was inevitable; I Miss You is what the phrase “creative differences” sounds like. Now, after multiple (forgettable) releases with Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba, new album One More Time... marks the official reunion of the band’s imperial lineup, featuring DeLonge, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker, and their first album together since their last reunion, 2011’s Neighborhoods. Tellingly, the album’s title track is a sequel to I Miss You – the same melody pegged to maudlin lyrics about Barker’s near-death plane crash and Hoppus’ recent cancer diagnosis. Spiritually, it’s touching; aurally, just give me M+Ms.
Considering the rush that greeted the announcement of Blink’s reunion tour, due to hit Australia in February, it seems many people were rooting for their comeback. It comes at a particularly opportune time – stars such as Olivia Rodrigo, Willow Smith and Machine Gun Kelly returned ’90s pop-punk to mainstream ubiquity, while Barker has become a generation’s go-to punk deity, gaining credits on releases by everyone in recent years – literally, everyone – from Doja Cat to Young Thug to Amy Shark and beyond.
Perhaps fitting of his victory lap, Barker’s presence on One More Time... is wild. If you don’t think over-drumming’s a thing, just listen to More Than You Know or Bad News, which contain more fills than a dentist’s office. Should a drummer have this much power? No, especially if they already have the best Kardashian.
For the rest of the band, little’s changed – identity crisis is Blink’s permanent identity now. In a rather democratic way, the album splits the difference between their silly and serious. Dance with Me opens with a spoken-word riff on masturbation that’s sure to evoke plaintive sighs from 40-somethings recalling the band’s peak, while Turn This Off! and F--- Face are returns to their thrashy, joke songs of yore, snotty and over in 27 seconds. If such cheek feels unseemly for men pushing 50 and beyond, it’s still their peak mode so I’ll take it.
The alternative is tedious stuff that goes for emotional grandeur, like More Than You Know, which opens with brooding piano for chrissakes, and When We Were Young, You Don’t Know What You’ve Got and Childhood, all sad songs steeped in old-man regret. “2023, who the f— are we?... where did our childhood go, I wanna know,” sings DeLonge on the latter, and you wish he’d just say something cool about aliens already.
If the album’s hardly worth a repeat, it does produce one track destined for Blink’s next greatest hits, which might be achievement enough: Other Side, a bouncy number fuelled by Hoppus’ yearning romanticism, that finds the perfect balance between the band’s off-the-cuff silliness and something more earnest, with Barker bat-bat-batting away while Hoppus sings that “we’ll always have that coffee life”. Songs about coffee: they’re great and there’s just not enough of them. Well, I guess this is growing up. Robert Moran
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