I’m not in a wordsy mood so let’s keep this honest and let’s keep this brief. There’s five tracks on this album. I like all five of them. The two most wordworthy are Crystal & Moonbeam. Crystal because the articulation is completely riveting, staggering like beatpoetry (but not in an awful way) and hitting syllables on and off beat, languid and free. Sometimes the rhyme falls where I expect it, sometimes it doesn’t, it doesn’t really matter, I plod through the track unthinkingly content with the lyrical movement of it all. I’m not really saying a lot of good things here, it’s been a long week and it’s Friday afternoon so the best has long passed through my system.

I’m pretty sure Moonbeams features an R.L. jones chorus on and it makes sense as the lead single because it’s easily the most listenable track. I mean I *thought* it was Rohin doing the chorus but there’s no mention of it in the notes so maybe I’m cloth eared. The track soars into synth driven euphoria around the minute thirty mark when the chorus drops back in and voila, you’ve got yourself a bonafide winner. I’m seriously enamored with that chorus. It has to be Rohin, it sounds so much like this one back here. **UPDATE** IT IS NOT, I REPEAT IT IS NOT ROHIN. It does however, remain wonderful, so there’s that.

The five track package is reasonably interesting and equally diverse as it should be, the product of three years recording. There’s even a beat heavy track with an MC called Lyndon De La Cruz on it who articulates like one of the dudes from Foreign Beggars. Spin it through, listen closely, pay good attention and appreciate.

A few months ago, ‘The Key of Sea Vol. 2′ compilation was released, featuring contributions from ‘once asylum seekers’ teaming up with Australian alt-music cool kids such as Chet Faker and Sounddoc favourites Jinja Safari. This album was intended to raise awareness and money for the important work done by various Australian Refugee organisations. Great cause, people.

This might be the only thing Chet Faker has done in the last year that hasn’t completely exploded all over the internet, and I think I know at least 2 reasons why: yes people, today we’re talking about the 2 biggest dirty words in Australian pop culture right now: jazz and refugees. Jazz, once the ultimate musical expression of rebellion and life has now been relegated to the status of ‘novelty genre’, technical but not ‘hip’ (unless sampled). Forget the fact that all the most important western music in the last 50 years has its roots in jazz, music culture’s inner teenager has become ashamed of its embarrassing dad and that is just where we are. Oh well. And refugees, those people living off your hard earned taxes (oh wait you’re a uni student paying next to nothing in tax) but with nothing really to contribute to society (unlike you, allegedly). Well guess what people! Chet Faker disagrees, and when a bearded man believes something, you can never rule out the possibility that one day that belief could become a Holy Book, and even further down the track, a Channel 9 TV show.

A double bass line opens the piece, brooding and minor. Cymbals are introduced, not the bright shiny kind but the dark, jazz kind. The keys join the rhythm section in this moody Bflat jam, laying the foundation for Chet Faker’s vocals. The instruments are played by musicians from ‘The Royal Swazi Spa’, a South African ensemble. The vibe is kind of reminiscent of Wayne Shorter’s ‘Footprints’ (circa 1966) so I could definitely see why someone might feel it doesn’t sound ‘current’, however I think that if you put a fat 808 drum track over the top of this and added some sidechain-compressed synth, there is a 90% chance that hipsters in bars could be ambiguously moving their upper bodies to this tune in no time.

Now, to Chet’s vocals: the guy is the real deal. One thing about Chet Faker is that he doesn’t really show off range-wise, he just sings the damn song and sings it well. Chet Faker’s voice is like when you have a beautiful Vintage Telecaster plugged into a Blues Junior amplifier: you can turn off all the damn effects pedals now and just listen to the damn instrument. Got it?

Ok, have a listen, and try not to let the nylon string guitar solo after the first chorus put you off, maybe we’ll all learn something. Enjoy!

You might have seen this one crop up on Me And All My Friends, Who The Hell, Mess + Noise maybe, Indieshuffle, which is to say almost ever blog ever. Time now to have it covered by the uglier little brother though, the blog with a set of braces and a bad case of pigeon toes. It’s me guys! I’m here now! Are we all going to hang out? It’s no real surprise that it’s been covered so comprehensively because, to borrow the words of the Cottees marketing team, ‘we can tell a good Jam’. This particular blend comes equipped with a boxercise video for good measure too, so if you woke up this morning devastated that you’d missed your Thursday morning PT session then I’ve got you doubly covered. Structurally it presents a delightful progression that neither races ahead of itself or stagnates but slowly unfolds layer on layer of vocal padding before eventually extricating the main vocal melody from all around it in a strong final showing. Also, I think [at least in Australia] we’re a little gung ho with our R&B references. I know there’s a huge onslaught of future R&B and nu-soul coming to the fore but not everything is necessarily R&B. There’s hints of it at the beat end but all in all it’s a stretch, not to take anything away from the quality of the song. Beautiful vocals in the realm of Feist or Austra (or even Bree Tranter for that matter) but what I like about it over most else in its weight class is that it doesn’t give itself over to that light and easy whispiness that seems to be the curse of the female feature vocalist and now sees many lady-artists dropping their vocals low in the mix on THEIR OWN TRACKS. I’ve been lucky enough to hear another slice of Banoffee recently and it needs to be said that there’s a high place held in reserve for her next coming. Fingers crossed we don’t have to wait to long/