- Murray, Darling plays like the soundtrack to a lingering tropical low. Which is quite apt given it was recorded in North Queensland’s Atherton Tablelands, just west of Cairns. Under the moniker Soda Eaves this brooding dream-like folk is the latest release from Melbourne based singer/songwriter/poet/Hot Palms guitarist Jake Core, and it dives straight back into familiar waters.

There is some distance from his 2013 offering Like Drapes Either Side; unlike Drapes this album is devoid of any of the more Alex G-esque guitar-pop numbers. Instead, Core seems to have retreated deeper into the damp isolation dripping from that release: a boozy antipodean Elliott Smith. Percussion on the record is muted and atmospheric when it appears at all, and if this is guitar driven music they were given the passenger seat. Low ripples of plucked acoustic and crackling electric float the hushed introspection of Core’s lyrics on an almost indiscernible path through the album’s lo-fi landscape. The nine tracks meander quietly like the record’s namesake, and feel just as at risk of collapse.

Songs about the bleakness of suburban existence, songs about writing songs. Sighing strings and a feminine touch raise tracks like Benny and the Jets and Victoria to the surface. Shadows Edge gives us a hint of relative brightness. Darling and Murray exist as hazy ambient punctuation marks. Though sparse, the release holds an almost apocalyptic weight. “All the joy / to realise / the sea is only / melting ice.” Dark yet comforting. Like coming to terms with a looming fate.

Lemonade closes out the record by way of a bluesy elegy. Thunder cracks in the distance, wind chimes rattle in the calm before the coming storm. “It looks like we’re in for a flood,” Core breathes, and I almost wish for one. To be stranded indoors with nothing but this to deliberate on and wonder if the rising waters won't carry everything away. “From the Murray Darling basin, out to the coast / the end is here, almost.”  

- Matt Dennien.