Jo Schornikow
Altar
(Keeled Scales)
★★★★

ALTAR is the second album from Jo Schornikow, who has ended up in Nashville, having grown up in Melbourne and spent time in New York City. It was in the latter she met her partner, US singer-songwriter Matthew Houck, doing lots of touring as part of his band Phosphorescent.

As these waymarkers might point to, over the course of this terrific set Schornikow fashions a kind of Australian Americana, her brilliant songwriting wrapped in warm production by Selwyn Cozens.

With its sense of longing and nostalgia, the gorgeous Visions sounds like late period Allo Darlin’, while the memorable Comeback pulsates beautifully. Elsewhere Wrong About You rolls around on some Garth Hudson-style organ, it’s wayward, almost humorous instrumentation echoing Houck’s music.

With many of the songs catchy as hell, it all sounds so natural and so easy.

Heady stuff.

Wilco
Cruel Country
(dBpm Records)
★★★★

“WILCO goes Country!” is lead singer Jeff Tweedy’s press release intro to Wilco’s 12th studio album. “Country music... has always been the ideal place to comment on what most troubles my mind,” he says about his homeland, the United States of America.

However, besides the toe-tapping Falling Apart (Right Now) and a couple of other tracks the set doesn’t actually sound hugely country. And other than the title track (“I love my country stupid and cruel”) listeners will find it difficult to discern any clear political comment – Tweedy’s lyrics have always been cryptic and impressionistic.

What you do get is a double album of superior Wilco cuts, full of the kind of downbeat, shuffling folky rock songs that the Chicago outfit excel at.

Made up largely of live takes, Cruel Country is a wonderful addition to the Wilco canon.

Craig Finn
A Legacy Of Rentals
(Positive Jams/Thirty Tigers)
★★★★

NOW on his fifth solo record, US singer-songwriter Craig Finn has built one of the most consistent bodies of work I can think of.

Best known as the frontman from Brooklyn rock ‘n’ roll band The Hold Steady, like his previous solo albums the tracks on Finn’s A Legacy Of Rentals are enticing short stories about people living through hard times, frequenting bars, druggy scenes and straining to make a connection.

On opener Messing With The Setting and A Break From The Barrage he weaves brilliant spoken word narratives, echoing the astonishing God In Chicago off 2017’s We All Want The Same Things record.

“After the destruction of the past few years, I believe that there is joy in each and every living action, however mundane,” Finn says about this new collection of songs.

Top-notch literary Americana.