Suffering Jukebox

This morning's episode features a live-to-air phone interview with Tahlia Palmer, a multidisciplinary artist who creates music under the Amby Downs pseudonym. One of her earliest Amby Downs releases, Kinjarling Studies Soundtracks has just been re-released by local label Room40 as Kinjarling Studies Soundtracks: Five Years On. Find out more about Tahlia Palmer/Amby Downs -and purchase their music- via https://ambydowns.bandcamp.com/ and  https://room40.bandcamp.com/album/kinjarling-studies-soundtracks-five-years-on

Nick's Pick of the Week is Horsegirl's Phonetics On And On. You can hear the whole album on all the usual streaming platforms, or purchase it here https://thisishorsegirl.bandcamp.com/album/phonetics-on-and-on and my review can be read below.

Horsegirl: Phonetics On And On (Matador)

Released 14th February 2025

Horsegirl’s delightfully scuzzy debut, Versions Of Modern Performance, was a blistering debut of booming drums and fuzzed-out guitars. An aural love note to the post-grunge, indie-rock era, its catchy hooks and earnest lyrics resulted in rave reviews and a spot on that year’s Lollapalooza tour. The trio’s follow up album, Phonetics On And On, opts for a stripped-back and more naive style that may be even more endearing than that of its predecessor.

Pre-release interviews indicate that this sonic shift was a deliberate choice, with the trio of Nora Cheng, Penelope Lowenstein and Gigi Reece seeking a more minimalist approach to songwriting. Stylistically, the album bears a striking similarity to the lo-fi, twee-pop of Beat Happening and the unschooled charm of The Shaggs.

Album opener Where’d You Go is a short —but sweet— burst of simple, strummed guitar chords and a repetitive call and response that is broken at the end by a cacophonous guitar solo that would make even the most rudimentary of guitarists blush. It quickly gives way to the blissful harmonics of Rock City, a much more straight-forward, but still quirky, song, before deviating again to the stark mournfulness of In Twos.

Phonetics On And On’s release was preceded by a run of singles that included 2468, Julie and Frontrunner. It says much for the album’s quality that these singles, perhaps with the exception of Julie, don’t even register amongst the album’s highlights. Many of these are nestled away at the end of the album, such as the alluring discordance of Information Content and the bluntness of the record’s final track, I Can’t Stand To See You.

With Phonetics On And On, Horsegirl prove that less can indeed be more, trading the ruckus of their debut for a sense of space that allows the group’s eccentric sensibilities to take centre stage. By removing the noisier elements of their sound the trio have illuminated the more vulnerable elements of their personalities, resulting in an album that is equally bold and sensitive; a remarkable feat for a trio of songwriters barely out of their teens.

Nick Stepha