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Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Julia Stone - The Memory Machine

Sydney’s favourite siblings are certainly a prolific pair. Despite being insanely busy touring the world in support of best selling records, they still somehow find time to pen solo albums. Following her brother’s long-player last year, Julia Stone now offers The Memory Machine.

Unsurprisingly, considering that Angus and Julia have always composed their songs largely independently of one another, this isn’t a massive departure from the acoustic, atmospheric output of her day-job. But there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that when it’s done to such a high standard as this. Stone has always been excellent at finding chinks of light within darkness and melancholy and The Memory Machine sees her at her most emotionally weighty. Drenched in strings, My Baby shows her vocal to be rich and yearning all at once, while Winter on the Weekend is sinister and dark. “Daddy, why don't you protect me?/Someone’s gonna hurt me/And there’s nothing I can do,” she cries. The odd jaunty romp, like the horns and perky melody of Catastrophe, offer occasional levity, but the tone is mostly heavy and brooding, even in the album’s many impossibly delicate moments. Lyrically, we find Stone in a typically downbeat place. “What’s wrong with me?” she questions. “I lost my heart and I lost my faith.” Her heart seems so full and yet so fragile that it could either burst or shatter at any moment.

Anyone who assumes The Memory Machine to be a collection of songs that were thrown away when they were cutting the last Angus & Julia Stone record is a million miles from the truth. Rather, this lovingly-crafted, poetic and absolutely beautiful record represents Julia Stone’s best work to date.

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