SZA’s addictive album is the summer soundtrack you’ve been waiting for

SZA,SOS
★★★★

Revenge is the bedrock of SZA’s second album – she’s out for blood,and ex-boyfriends are the target. It’s a formula that’s been done over and over again,but in the hands of the chameleonic 33-year-old musician,the results are intoxicating and addictive.

Take,for instance,the woozyKill Bill,which starts as a series of intrusive thoughts that come true as the singer details,then executes,a revenge murder fantasy on her ex and his new lover. She then applauds herself for her self-knowledge (“I’m so mature,I got me a therapist”) – now that’s millennial praxis. Another example:the classic R&B kiss-offI Hate U,a snippet of which found popularity prior to the album’s release as a TikTok sound (“if you wonder if I hate you,I do”). No need for any deeper analysis on some of these lyrics – SZA is mad and she wants you to know it.

The 33-year-old R&B icon-in-the-making,real name Solána Imani Rowe,leans into revenge on the album.

The 33-year-old R&B icon-in-the-making,real name Solána Imani Rowe,leans into revenge on the album.Supplied

SOS is one of the year’s most anticipated albums,arriving half a decade after the musician,real name Solána Imani Rowe,released her acclaimed debut,Ctrl. Where that album homed in on an R&B and soul aesthetic with a uniquely raw edge,SOS is more of a sprawl,flirting harder with a range of genres over 23 tracks and an hour-plus run time. It’s exciting stuff that doesn’t let up for a moment,but its hugely ambitious scope does mean that it sometimes feels a little overstuffed.

Still,there’s a whole lot to admire here – SZA is a killer songwriter with plenty of novel ideas and tricks up her sleeve. OnSmoking on My Ex Pack,produced by Jay Versace,she takes to rapping for the first time and she sounds like a natural,with impeccable flow and a healthy dose of venom.

SZA’s SOS is the follow-up to her raw 2017 debut,Ctrl.

SZA’s SOS is the follow-up to her raw 2017 debut,Ctrl.Supplied

Then,on the other side of the spectrum,she whips out some surprises. The unexpectedF2F is one for the Y2K girlies,channelling the bratty spirit of Avril Lavigne – the song’s fist-pumping pop-punk chorus sees SZA admit to hooking up with a rebound to get over her ex (Avril was never this sexually explicit). The following track,Nobody Gets Me,is herI’m With You moment if we’re still rolling with the Avril comparison:acoustic guitars,lighters out,SZA’s sweet vocals shining.

The collaborations and features are as varied as the record itself. Indie it girl Phoebe Bridgers co-wrote and features onGhost in the Machine,her unmistakable haunting whisper providing a beautiful foil to SZA’s more steady and solid delivery against a drifting electronic backdrop. Other guests include rapper Travis Scott,returning from his feature onCtrl to add autotuned vocals toOpen Arms,and Icelandic legend Björk and the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard,both sampled on closerForgiveless.

The flipside of the righteous anger that drives much ofSOS is tenderness and vulnerability – see the revealing,Radiohead-esqueSpecial,where she touches on body image and self-esteem,or the robust beat ofConceited,which comes from the Lizzo school of self-love (“I’m bettin’ on me,” SZA repeats like a mantra). These girl-power sentiments can come off as cloying in lesser hands,but here they sound like freedom.

Dropping a stacked album like this in the final weeks of the year is a bold move (and a reminder to critics,this one included,that it’s wise to wait until December’s mostly through to compile those pesky year-end lists). If the summer ever actually comes for us,this record will surely be its soundtrack – though even La Niña herself could get down to these irresistible hooks.

- GISELLE AU-NHIEN NGUYEN

Chris Cody,The Outsider
★★★★

Like traffic,music can be free-flowing,bustling,impatient or static. Pianist/composer Chris Cody begins his tribute to the great French writer Albert Camus with the freneticProcession,inspired by an African funeral parade that Cody witnessed. The rhythm initially churns beneath the stabbing melody before skittering through a second section. The soloists – Michael Avgenicos’ storming tenor saxophone,followed by Cody’s sprightly piano – then traverse these two grooves.

It’s a high-revving way to start the album,while also lulling us into a sense of security that’s immediately dashed by John Robinson’s solo oud introduction to the aptly namedAnticipation. Now we grasp the scope of Cody’s ambition for his suite,and learn we’re going to be led into darker corners of the human psyche as well as more carefree ones. The ensemble section is so taut that you fear something might snap,and when Robinson’s oud returns,yes,it eases that tension,but with a melancholy verging on being grief-stricken. Cody’s answer is lighter,a different form of release.

Chris Cody:the Sydney pianist/composer,with his all-star eight-piece band,has crafted his finest album yet.

Chris Cody:the Sydney pianist/composer,with his all-star eight-piece band,has crafted his finest album yet.Supplied

The title track,named for Camus’ most famous novel,lets us catch our collective breaths,while being hugely evocative. As I said when reviewing its premiere performance 18 months ago,it suggests disappointment dressed up in fedoras and overcoats. You can almost see cigarette smoke curling into the damp night sky,as a stranger to inclusivity observes what passes for the rest of humanity. The ensemble work is elegantly layered,with Avgenicos’ saxophone solo catching the mood of one walking deserted city streets in the wee hours. Cody’s piano picks up on this resignation,making it both prettier and sadder:an elusive beauty.

Chris Cody’s The Outsider,a tribute to the French philosopher Albert Camus.

Chris Cody’s The Outsider,a tribute to the French philosopher Albert Camus.Supplied

Contemplation of the absurdity of life is swiftly shrugged aside by Simon Ferenci’s trumpet slicing its way through the opening ofLa Goutte D’Or,which is an Algerian neighbourhood in Paris. The wild ride continues with Adem Yilmaz’s frenzied percussion against Lloyd Swanton’s bass and James Waples’ drums.Catching the Bug has a brief free improvisation,before the band races into straight-ahead jazz mode,the rhythm section wonderfully lithe and sinewy as Avgenicos skates across the top,before beckoning Alex Silver for a jauntier trombone foray,which,in turn,is capped by Ferenci’s scything,boppish lines.

Cody has cleverly structured his suite to blend logical transitions with jolting surprises.The Truth is certainly among the latter:a 12/8 piece of gospel,with the tenor testifying as though Avegenicos’ immortal soul depended on it. We leave the church to enter the charms ofAlone,which mixes French impressionism with a jazz waltz – perhaps an inkling of what may have happened had Erik Satie and Bill Evans been able to collaborate. Here Cody hands the foreground to Swanton,who fills it with elegiac musings and leaves the rampant lyricism to the pianist,while Cody’s opulent ensemble harmonies suggest a much bigger band than it is.

The solo piano ofReflection functions as a prelude to the mix of longing and nostalgia that hauntsWaiting For You. This builds in intensity as each solo unfolds,until,nine minutes later,you’re confronted by a strong hunch that the person never arrived. It encapsulates much about Cody’s compositional sophistication on this,his finest album,as does the spartan way in which he often uses the ensemble colours available to him. Expert improvisers they may be,but this is not a blowing band so much as one assembled to fulfil a vision.

- JOHN SHAND

White Lung,Premonition
★★★★

For more than a decade now,Mish Barber-Way,frontwoman of Vancouver’s incendiary White Lung,has been one of punk rock’s most arresting voices:raw,idiosyncratic,explicitly feminine,and all set to a catchy sonic squall,no less. If you don’t thinkFace Down (from 2014’sDeep Fantasy) orBelow (from 2016’sParadise) are among the greatest songs of this millennium,I can’t be with you.

White Lung:Anne-Marie Vassiliou (drums),Mish Barber-Way (vocals),Kenneth William (guitars).

White Lung:Anne-Marie Vassiliou (drums),Mish Barber-Way (vocals),Kenneth William (guitars).Lindsey Byrnes/Domino

In September,the trio - including Kenneth William (guitars) and Anne-Marie Vassiliou (drums) - announcedPremonition,their fifth full-length,would be their last. Since their last album,2016’sParadise,Barber-Way’s had two kids:her first,a boy,in 2017,as the band were entering the studio to begin what would’ve beenPremonition,and her second,a girl,after the pandemic put the band’s music plans to bed. And so,an ending’s understandable:who can rock so fiercely amid the daily demands of parenthood? Well,Barber-Way,obviously.

The final album from the Canadian punks is maternal instinct at its fiercest.

The final album from the Canadian punks is maternal instinct at its fiercest.Domino

Not to be reductive,but this is mum-punk,driven by White Lung’s signature ferocity and emotional intensity. Barber-Way’s incisive writerly gaze tackles motherhood in all its complexity:she looks at normcore domesticity with both yearning (Mountain Top) and disgust (Hysteric);there’s an ambivalence towards her sudden identity shift (Under Glass) and yet that motherly devotion to do anything for her child (Tomorrow). Barber-Way is punk as f--- though,so there’s also a heavy song about postpartum depression (If You’re Gone),but whose “hold on” refrain lends a life-affirming push.

Although ever-rooted in Barber-Way’s Courtney Love-esque drawl and the band’s sharp melodic hooks,the band have extended beyond their grimy DIY roots through each subsequent album,the sound always a bit cleaner and Barber-Way’s tightly coiled poetry expanding from vicious protests to moody imagery. It’s all showcased on the album’s great lead single,Date Night. “I’m on a date with God and he’s drunk,” she sets the scene.

It’s the apocalyptic Old Testament God,of course. The pair drive around a burning Los Angeles,as Barber-Way sets fire to her old wanton life. “It’s okay here,if you’re an actor,” she spits,both funny and a nod towards some post-art stability. It lends the album a romantic streak,the idea of leaving it all behind for love and family,added extra resonance by the band’s finality,that she’s done just that. It’s enough to make your eyes well up.

Bird,another blistering anthem around the expectancy of birth,is beautiful. “Come out and show me your jealous temper/ Just like your father,you’ll calm right down,” Barber-Way sings,a sensitive song from mother to child but also,perhaps,a paean to her younger self. “I won’t unlove you,I’ll stay the same/ You are the wild one,you won’t be blamed,” she adds. (Knowing Barber-Way’s feminist focus and that the song was written to her yet unborn son,there’s perhaps even a biting double note in that “you won’t be blamed”.)

AndOne Day,which opens with the line,“I have not slept in two months and a day,and I have not lost myself along the way”,is a celebratory song for any new parent,surely?

Like all White Lung albums,it’s a tightly-focused thing,20-odd minutes of blistering hooks and frenetic urgency. But,for a band that soared on righteous fury,it’s hopeful and it’s warm - well,except when it’s not. Either way,set this one to ear-bleeding country and ride off into the sunset with,as the album’s press notes accurately state,“one of the best bands to ever do it”.

- ROBERT MORAN

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Robert Moran is Spectrum Deputy Editor at The Sydney Morning Herald.

John Shand has written about music and theatre since 1981 in more than 30 publications,including for Fairfax Media since 1993. He is also a playwright,author,poet,librettist,drummer and winner of the 2017 Walkley Arts Journalism Award

Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen is a writer.

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