Inferno
by Robert Forster
(Tapete Records)
★★★★

The elder statesman of Australian indie music is back with his seventh solo record, and at 61 years old Robert Forster is still one of the coolest musicians working today.

As one half of the songwriting duo behind the legendary band The Go-Betweens, he always played the cryptic, hipster foil to Grant McLennan’s more accessible and romantic persona.

Inferno brilliantly showcases Forster’s concise, Dylanesque lyrical abilities, from the suburban boredom of No Fame (“My mother hangs the washing and my father has jobs to ignore/The weekend that has come is the same as the weekend before”) to the poppy stomp of the title track, a tribute to his hometown of Brisbane.

With Forster’s sublime phrasing and deadpan couplets coursing through the album, Inferno is the work of a real pro still working at the top of their game.

Psychogeology
by Gemma Ray
(Pronzerat)
★★★

According to Essex-born, Berlin-based artist Gemma Ray her eighth album is — deep breath — “an ode to the majesty of landscape, the enormity of nature and time, and the inevitability of every human life eventually forming a minuscule part of further landscape.”

Musically, it’s a classic-sounding singer-songwriter record, albeit with judicious use of synths and sound effects. Ray wears her influences comfortably, from the ’70s soul-inspired keys and flute on Flood Plains to the echoes of Fleetwood Mac on opener Blossom Crawls, a mellow-sounding rock song about having a panic attack in the back of a cab.

“Driver could you speak for a while/About anything just to keep me from falling,” she sings. At times her bluesy guitar playing on tracks like Land Of Make Believe sounds a lot like the surfer guitar of Dick Dale.

An assured, cohesive set.

On The Line
by Jenny Lewis
(Warner Bros. Records)
★★★★

US singer-songwriter Jenny Lewis, the frontwoman of indie band Rilo Kiley and her very cool 2016 side project Nice As Fuck, returns with her fourth solo album. Backed by a star-studded cast including Beck, Ryan Adams, Ringo Starr, keyboardist Benmont Tench, Jim Keltner and Don Was, it’s a bold and bright record full of radio-friendly songs.

The driving rock of frisky single Red Bull & Hennessy evokes Fleetwood Mac during their imperial phase, while Heads Gonna Roll is a brilliant piano-based opener reminiscent of ’70s Elton John. “Took a little trip up north/In a borrowed convertible red Porsche/With a narcoleptic poet from Duluth/And we disagreed about everything/From Elliott Smith to grenadine,” she sings.

With the songwriting never less than brilliant, look out for On The Line in the best albums of the year lists come December.