Despite my coming into your home or office each day and ranting
\nabout such and such group or album, there’s still a lot about music
\nthat I don’t think I will ever understand. I’ll never understand
\nhow a label can botch the promotion of an artist’s best album ever
\nto the point where the disc is considered a failure. I’ll never
\nunderstand why certain types of music take off in popularity, then
\ndie.<\/p>\n
And, in the case of Australian singer\/songwriter Margot Smith,
\nI’ll never understand how someone can totally eschew the
\ncommercialistic trappings of music and release an album that is not
\nonly from the heart, but is fun to listen to as well. Such is the
\ncase with her most recent album
\nTaste<\/i>.<\/p>\n
With the help of Steve Kilbey – best known for his work with The
\nChurch – Smith streaks through 14 songs in what seems like a few
\nminutes. For Smith, the art of songwriting is simple: Say what you
\nhave to, then move on to the next piece. It’s an interesting
\nconcept that would never last more than a second in the offices of
\nthe major labels, where if the song isn’t four minutes long, it’s
\nnot worth thinking about. But it’s a concept that works well for
\nSmith in the context of
\nTaste<\/i>.<\/p>\n
It’s not that Smith is incapable of writing songs that would fit
\non the radio. Tracks like “Fight It Out In Heaven” and “Bleedmore”
\nhave that special twinkle to them that are poppy enough to fall
\nunder radio’s umbrella.<\/p>\n
But what sets Smith apart is the raw, melancholic honesty that
\npours from her songs. Tracks like “Hope” (“I hope you choke \/ Your
\ndreams go up in smoke \/ You regret the words you spoke \/ Like I
\ndo”), “Creature” and “Everything” (“All my dreams are made up of
\nthousands of \/ dreams torn from somebody else’s life”) carry a
\npowerful punch that is sure to move the listener.<\/p>\n
Sure, we’ve had our share of raw emotion female singers of late,
\nlike Liz Phair. (Part of me wanted to compare Smith to Ani
\nDiFranco, but the musical styles are not similar.) But Smith
\ndoesn’t seem to be concerned about whether her single will hit the
\ntop of the charts; it’s almost like the music is therapy to her,
\nand each song a particular demon being exorcised.<\/p>\n
It’s a quick listen, but not always an easy one. Still,
\nTaste<\/i> is worth searching out (it has yet to be released in
\nAmerica), and suggests that these shores will be hearing more from
\nSmith in the very near future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7385],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-38946","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-margot-smith","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38946"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}