New albums, fresh out of the kitchen, reviewed for your eyes.

VANCE JOY Nation of Two

(Liberation)

4 stars

IT could have been so different.

Vance Joy’s ukulele-fuelled Riptide was one of those songs that was so colossal it could easily have defined him as a modern (not so tiny) Tiny Tim.

Luckily the Melbourne musician had more great songs on the go and, crucially, none of them lazily surfed on the global current Riptide stirred up.

His debut, 2014; s Dream Your Life Away, has now sold two million copies worldwide.

For this second album, the motto is refine not reinvent.

And again, the song is key.

There’s also a few key co-writers — Dan Wilson (Adele, Dixie Chicks) helps casually shoehorn an enormous chorus into We’re Going Home. Wilson’s platinum fingerprints are also on Like Gold, yet it still sounds like a Vance Joy song.

Like on Lay It On Me, the volley of strings and brass on One of These Days recalls vintage Hunters & Collectors.

Saturday Sun‘s gaily ukulele intro leads you into a love-on-the-road-in-America romp, with a ear-seducing chorus ready to be sung back with vigour by festival crowds from Palm Springs to Peru.

It’s Joy’s instant intimacy that makes his songs connect.

His serially-romantic, highly-visual scene-setting lyrics have incredible attention to detail — they’re personal yet universal. That’s a neat trick.

From conversations behind shower glass in Call If You Need Me to the lady leaving “her books in my bed and her song in my head” on Saturday Sun, he’s also the dude who knows to fire off a compliment first thing in the morning and even under harsh fluorescent lighting.

And he’s the thoroughly modern man opening up with the killer lyric “here I am saying things to you I never thought I would say outside my head” in Alone With Me. Sensitive sells. / CAMERON ADAMS

VERDICT Sensitive, new-age Van-ce
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKE ... Paul Kelly Smoke, Bruce Springsteen Tunnel of Love, Gerry Rafferty City to City

TOTALLY MILD Her

(Chapter Music)

4 stars

WE need more singers like Elizabeth Mitchell. The breathy, bold and brittle Melbourne frontwoman lets us snoop inside her diary entries on the second album from this daring, ’80s AM pop band. Trembling tremolos return on Pearl, taking the great jaunty anguish of their debut Down Time and blurring the boundaries between friendship and relationship. Themes of alienation, missed chances and fleeting, nocturnal fun swim through the pleasant and faux-perky tracks. / MIKEY CAHILL

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKE ... The Motels, Joni Mitchell

BLACK PANTHER: THE ALBUM: MUSIC FROM AND INSPIRED BY

Soundtrack

(Universal)

4 stars

The Marvel megamovie Black Panther is already one of 2018’s most significant pop culture events. And this accompanying album is as enthralling. Curator Kendrick Lamar (channelling T’Challa, King of Wakanda, himself on the title-cut) has secured an epic cast of R & B and hip-hop A-listers — including The Weeknd, Khalid and Anderson. Paak. Sonically, Black Panther traverses Afro-futurism, post-trap and electro ‘n’ B. The album has its bangers — cue: K-Dot’s duet All The Stars with SZA — and experiments (James Blake sings eerily on the poetic Bloody Waters). Best of all, Black Panther exposes exciting African stars — Johannesburg’s Yugen Blakrok out-rapping Lamar and Vince Staples on Opps. A soundtrack for now./ CYCLONE WEHNER

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKE ... Kendrick Lamar, K-Dot

BALL PARL MUSIC

Good Mood

(Stop Start)

3.5 stars

Brisbane’s Ball Park Music moved their fifth album’s release forward a week — good news for impatient fans and also for the band who now don’t have to compete with Vance Joy for a potential No. 1 (they’ve peaked at No. 2 and No. 3 before).

Last year’s Triple J hit Exactly How You Are (complete with C bomb) was a smart welcome mat for Good Mood — same same but different.

The experimentation and attention to sonic detail here (it’s a headphones album) makes this their Pet Sounds.

The End Times has a trippy undercurrent with whizzing ’60s keyboards and a ragged Go-Betweens-style indie gem.

I Am a Dog sees Sam Cromack fire up the falsetto over a tune both glorious and claustrophobic, with a pounding rock chorus, with just a hint of Powderfinger.

Frank starts with Cromack channelling Kanye’s vocoder era, with the dizzying tune sounding like the band playing inside one of those carnival rides that keeps getting faster.

So Nice sees Cromack sounding eerily like Thom Yorke and the tune’s woozy waltz isn’t unlike Radiohead in Pyramid Song mode.

Most unexpected is perhaps Hands Off My Body, not just for Cromack detailing which bodily features he disliked and promptly severed (things get intimate) but for the thrashy punk romp that marries Nick Cave and the B-52s with a dash of The Saints as it unravels before your ears. Brilliant.

There’s a Modern Lovers-esque double whammy to see you out, If It Kills You is about three nifty songs shoehorned into one. And I Am So In Love With You, is full to the gills of unconditional romance, bellowed honesty and a drunken last dance at the wedding vibe. Enjoy./ CAMERON ADAMS

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKE ... The Go-Betweens, Radiohead

MARLON WILLIAMS

Make Way For Love

(Caroline)

4 stars

Kiwi crooner Marlon Williams had a stifling case of writer’s block. Nothing like good ol’ fashion heartbreak to get the creative juices flowing. “People tell me boy, you dodged a bullet,” he laments on Love’s a Terrible Thing. In an almost tragicomic touch, his ex Aldous Harding duets with him on Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore. These 11 songs are exquisite, volatile, classic-sounding torch songs about a sunken relationship. He asks: what’s love but a second-hand emotion? / MIKEY CAHILL

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKE ... Bob Dylan, The National

MGMT

Little Dark Age

(Sony)

3.5 stars

It’s 10 years since MGMT crashed the mainstream with Kids, Time to Pretend and Electric Feel. After deliberately avoiding anything close to a hit for their fourth
album they’re finally ready to appeal beyond their fanbase again. The tool: acid psychedelia out; bonkers, new-wave, ’80s, synth pop in. It’s nice to hear them using hooks and melody again. Me & Michael is Kylie’s Hand On Your Heart on downers, When You Die is a folky Devo, while She Works Out Too Much is full of the spirit of Electric Boogaloo. /CA

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKE ... Propaganda, Talk Talk