Artist: Kate Miller-Heidke
Label: Sony Music Entertainment Australia
Released: April 13, 2012
Peak chart position/sales: (AUS) #2
RATING: 4.5/5 stars
I'm going to be honest: listening to Kate Miller-Heidke was another of my slightly reluctant listening experiences, in which I expected to be indifferent to the music/artist before I had so much as pressed play...and was happily, albeit sheepishly, proved decidedly wrong. Miller-Heidke is one of those marvellously rebellious classical musicians who break ranks to bring their masterful musicianship to a genre so rarely graced with such refinement. Blessed with songwriting talent and backed up by their technical proficiency, such musicians then have the cred to do what they damn well want, as well as the ability to do it annoyingly well. Regina Spektor's quirky piano work comes to mind, but so too must Kate Miller-Heidke's latest release Nightflight - the matured fruit of her previous efforts and an impressively accomplished collection of songs.
Opening track "Ride This Feeling", while pleasing enough, will always lie in the shadow cast by the epic that is "Sarah". Telling the chilling story of a friend who goes missing in the drunken haze of a music festival, the icy piano and whispered backing vocals give way to bass, booming drums and a breathtakingly desperate chorus. Impossibly high harmonies and childishly helpless lyrics complete the picture of fear, confusion and misdirected anger so perfectly that it would be unwise to suggest that any track on the album tops this one. Many come close, however. The sweet guitar tones and lilting rhythm of "The Tiger Inside Will Eat The Child" contrasts its folk influence with the peppy pop of "I'll Change Your Mind", while the spacey "Humiliation" gives us a teaser of Miller-Heidke's operatic abilities for the first time. The brilliant Celtic-inspired "The Devil Wears A Suit" would have made a satisfying album-closer at the 10-track mark...were it not for tracks 11 and 12. Gently spinning a story of two hearts around golden acoustic accents, "Fire and Iron" leads the listener on with its remarkably touching character-building. And those operatic abilities? Kate finally lets loose in humorous drinking/life song "Your Friends Will Tell You Who You Are" to close the album with a laugh and some stunning talent.
Miller-Heidke's musical palette is a simple one - after all, she is a true vocal artist and can afford to spotlight her singing - with few encounters with electronica or vast instrumentation. With haunting, Celtic atmosphere ala Enya, the singer's ability to hold her listener captive by her sensitive story-telling gives the album more than one leg to stand on, while piano chords, guitar picking, bass, earthy percussion and the occasional string chorus are more than enough to support the charismatic melodies and quirkily cryptic lyrics. Yet the gently free meter and intriguing mesh of vocal lines, rhythms and ad lib musicality defies the listener to accuse it of creative density.
With more pop influences than her folk/indie contemporaries, Miller-Heidke's work is admittedly more palatable in the 'mainstream' sense, but it is this same intelligent combination of crowd-pleasing and personal art that provides a delightfully inspired listening experience. Pretty, eerie, unexpected, heavy, and genuinely lovely in an awful lot of ways...an instance in which the ARIA charts include a real gem.
With more pop influences than her folk/indie contemporaries, Miller-Heidke's work is admittedly more palatable in the 'mainstream' sense, but it is this same intelligent combination of crowd-pleasing and personal art that provides a delightfully inspired listening experience. Pretty, eerie, unexpected, heavy, and genuinely lovely in an awful lot of ways...an instance in which the ARIA charts include a real gem.
Is it worth my $$$? - Of course it is. I love it.
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