The Belair Lip Bombs
Again
(Third Man)
★★★★

FORMED in the Melbourne suburbs in 2017, The Belair Lip Bombs were signed by Jack White’s Third Man Records after they played South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, last year.

With its rush of indie guitars, poppy songwriting and leadsinger Maisie Everett’s pliable vocals, Again will massively raise the four-piece’s profile, no doubt ending up on the best-of-the year lists and leading to British festival slots next summer.

It’s the maintenance of the highest quality from start to finish that is especially impressive, with highlights including the hooky Back Of My Hand and the vulnerable piano ballad Burning Up.

The group humorously describe their sound as “yearn-core,” and while there are echoes of many great bands — Joe White from fellow Australian outfit Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever co-produces — there’s something fresh and exciting about the set.  

Lisa O’Neill
The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right
(Rough Trade)
★★★★

LIKE lots of other people, I was blown away by Lisa O’Neill’s 2023 album All of This Is Chance.

Her new EP, The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right, is an intensely political set from the Irish singer-songwriter. She describes the title song as “a reaction to the unsettled times we live in.” 

Mother Jones is a powerful tribute to the Irish-born union organiser Mary Harris Jones, who was once considered “the most dangerous woman in America,” while the angry Homeless In The Thousands (Dublin In The Digital Age) is self-explanatory. The latter incorporates a rambling spoken word interlude from Pete Doherty putting on a bizarrely indeterminate accent.

Including a cover of Bob Dylan’s All The Tired Horses (heard in Peaky Blinders), the six tracks are further evidence O’Neill is one of the most important folk musicians working today.

Sessa
Pequena Vertigem de Amor
(Mexican Summer)
★★★

FOLLOWING his 2019 sex-focused debut, which includes a duet about an orgy, and his sublime follow up Estrela Acesa, that was apparently his hangover record, it’s something of a surprise to find out Sessa, AKA Sergio Sayeg, has recently become a father.

This huge personal change seems to have shifted the Brazilian singer-songwriter’s perspective — he talks of “experiencing something so big that you realise your insignificant size in space and time.”

A conscious effort to make more joyful art, the new album, with its organic mix of classic-sounding, sensual soul and jazzy psychedelia, has a similar sound and ambience to his first longplayer. There’s some poppy hooks on tracks like Nome De Deus, while closer Revolucaco Interior is a modestly grand finale, with swirling strings and a female choir carrying Sessa’s strummed guitar and trademark laid back vocals.