Darren Hayes, Lisa Mitchell and Hatchie: Australia’s best new music for February

The Black Cardinals – Broken Man

For fans of: The Black Crowes, Audioslave, Myles Kennedy

If you are the type of music fan who keeps the dial locked to Triple M and has the Four Symbols tattooed on your skin, you may be a little bemused at recent reports of guitar music receding from the culture, of pop stars and hip-hop producers crowding charts.

If this is you, the Black Cardinals are your new favourite band – a riff-roaring, stage-stalking rock’n’roll beast, possessing all the swagger of Jagger and none of the Maroon 5 references. Built upon a distorted Eastern guitar riff that sits somewhere between Cochise by Audioslave, Israel’s Son by Silverchair and the Party of Five theme, vocalist Craig Cassar roars like the third Robinson brother, alongside a band that deals out a steady, bluesy backbeat. You better believe all this is leading to a thrilling wah-wah-assisted shredding solo. Lighters out, please.

For more: Catch the Black Cardinals with Wolfmother and Shihad this March and April at the Uncaged festival in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

Hatchie – Quicksand

For fans of: Charli XCX, Solange, Madonna

After years of jangle pop tunes and sugary shoegaze, Harriet Pilbeam has spun on to the dancefloor, with Quicksand sounding suspiciously like the pop music of 2022. This is quite a stylistic shift from an artist whose music previously sat somewhere between the twee songs of Sarah Records and pedal-crushers like Ride and Slowdive, but it works a treat. Quicksand contains the same glittering joy of Madonna’s William Orbit tunes, with underwater reverb swimming towards a euphoric chorus that just might cross over into So Fresh territory. Despite her claims in the chorus of sinking into quicksand, Hatchie soars well above the terrain on this skybound gem.

For more: Album Giving The World Away is out in April. Until then, check out her 2019 debut album Keepsake.

Darren Hayes – Let’s Try Being in Love

For fans of: Human League, Tears For Fears, Savage Garden

It’s been 10 long years since Darren Hayes last released music, and given that Bruno Mars, the Weeknd and a host of other artists have since laid claim to his brand of eyeliner-smearing, 1985 AM disco – scoring billions of streams in the process – it’s high time the Brisbane boy returned to show the recent challengers just what a warm drum machine and his fantastic falsetto can really achieve.

As is befitting of the man who could write a Savage Garden radio hit in his sleep, it takes all of five seconds for the song’s hook to present itself and worm into your brain, after which he pounds it over and over, as if triggering a soul sample. While Hayes’s version of EDM doesn’t involve a preprogrammed beat soullessly revving to a preordained drop, he achieves a similar effect in the bridge with a congo beat that sprints with wide-eyed, childlike excitement towards the hook.

For more: Hayes is headlining the 2022 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade on 5 March.

Methyl Ethel and Stella Donnelly – Proof

For fans of: MGMT, the Avalanches, Empire of the Sun

A hypnotic call-and-response track that sees vocalist Jake Webb and guest Stella Donnelly almost stuck in a state of echolalia, the trance-like repetition of words and phrases creating a perfect rhythmic device. After the pair spend a few gleeful moments bouncing syllables at each other over a stabbing backing track, the track swells into a dreamy interlude that sounds like Luke Steele was tasked with soundtracking a NeverEnding Story remake. This is an extremely odd pop song, but it’s so damn hooky that its quirks will remain unexplored by many. Give it 20 listens and you’ll still be noticing cool little production flourishes buried in plain sight.

For more: New album Are You Haunted? is out 22 February.

A Place in the Sky – The Cradle

For fans of: Teenage Fanclub, Big Star, the Springfields

With an inbuilt swagger that sits at a slightly lagging tempo (akin to wandering through a pool with jeans on), The Cradle kicks the door down and saunters in confidently with the jangle and joy of a Teenage Fanclub song and a laconic antipodean drawl to boot. Sydney-based one-man-band A Place in the Sky is the product of Gavin Angus-Leppan’s lockdown malaise, with the fog of the shoegaze-style production at glorious odds with the bright vocal harmonies, major/minor melodic jumps, and the jingle jangle of a sunny morning peering through the curtains. It’s deceptively layered, with pitch-perfect vocal harmonies allowed to slightly drag, draped lazily across the main melody as if they were recorded in one take by a ragtag psychedelic collective.

For more: EP Isolation is out now.

Grace Cummins – Always New Days Always

For fans of: Augie March, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Anohni

Related: Pam & Tommy, Murderville and Reacher: what’s new to streaming in Australia in February

Always New Day Always beams in like a sepia-stained standard, the type of full-bodied record that would crackle out of old gramophones as couples slow-dance while the heartbroken fight back tears in the corner. Cummins’ voice is a truly arresting instrument – warm, deep, vulnerable and imbued with a timeless quality – which is good, considering it takes centre stage on this starkly rendered ballad, with a carefully strummed acoustic the only thing competing for space. A flourish of backing vocals swoop in towards the end and carries this criminally short song into the heavens as a calm washes over the world.

For more: The entire Storm Queen album is similarly wonderful.

Tasman Keith – 5FT FREESTYLE

For fans of: Baker Boy, Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak

First Nations artist Tasman Keith starts 2022 off the back of a Midnight Oil collaboration, an impressive team-up with rapper Kwame and a new contract with Sony. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Keith is ready to celebrate his recent wins; his laid-back flow certainly suggests he is having a relaxed time of it. But listen closely to the lyrics of 5FT FREESTYLE and you will see piles of bodies lying in his wake, as he slays time after time, rhyme after rhyme, with some of the deftest putdowns since Eminem decided to foster a grudge against Moby. “[I] swim good, to be Frank,” he starts, namechecking new labelmate Frank Ocean, in the only complementary shoutout on this track. I won’t go through all the one-liners, it’s more fun to go in blind, but rest assured, these are just the warning shots.

For more: Keith is touring the east coast in March.

Lisa Mitchell – I Believe in Kindness

For fans of: Holly Throsby, Big Scary, Judy Collins

With all the stress of a dying planet, uncertain financial markets, a burgeoning civil war, the never-ending pandemic and leaders scoring brownie points on social media platforms owned by evil corporations – and the sale of Wordle – isn’t it time we all took a breath and turned towards something a little more gentle? I Believe in Kindness is a wispy tune, operating much as Savage Garden’s Affirmation did: a wishlist for a broken world. Mitchell believes in kindness, education, silence, conversation and love being an intrinsic part of human nature. It’s a good start. “Can you feel it?” she asks, and I almost can.

For more: Lisa Mitchell will tour nationally from May to July. Her fourth album A Place to Fall Apart will be released in 2022.

Confidence Man – Feels Like a Different Thing

For fans of: Technotronic, Snap!, C&C Music Factory

Back in the early 90s when Sydney dance label Central Station were pumping out faceless, interchangeable Eurotrash dance singles, hoping for one to land in the charts and make them a fortune, they would have jumped at the opportunity to release Feels Like a Different Thing. An anthemic dancefloor filler anchored by a bright, plastic piano sound and a drum machine breakbeat too obnoxious to argue with, Confidence Man seemingly wrench lyrics straight from an Aerobics Oz Style VHS and drench the chorus in life-affirming gospel vocals. Like they say, it feels like a different thing.

For more: Confidence Man’s album Tilt is out 1 April.

Camp Cope – Running with the Hurricane

For fans of: Jen Buxton, Tim Rogers, Lincoln Le Fevre

Camp Cope slide ever so masterfully into alt-country territory with Running With the Hurricane, the second taste of their third album following recent single Blue. Starting, like all good depressions do, in a hole she cannot climb out of, songwriter and vocalist Georgia Maq details her ceaseless, brutal self-examination. Luckily, the Melbourne trio deal in hope, too, with hard-won sentiments like “the only way out is up”, “breaking these chains”, and “I push through the pain” hollered hopefully towards the end of this hooky, heartfelt ode. It turns out that movement is the key – “moving with the bodies that move to a different sound” helping to push through the anguish. Luckily, with such a killer bassline, movement is irresistible.

For more: Listen to recent single Blue. Album Running With the Hurricane is out 25 March.