This fifth studio LP as Austra by the Canadian classically trained vocalist and composer Katie Stelmanis brings beautiful electronica-pop and dance music, and has a bittersweet ironic title – a caustically witty reference to societal pressure to keep smiling despite a devastating breakup. Filled with her richly layered vocals and droll, melancholy lyrics, the sound is influenced by the uplifting, ecstatic feel of Madonna’s Ray of Light made in 1998 with William Orbit, that work with sound she and co-producer Kieran Adams love. “Ray of Light was produced almost entirely on a Juno-106 and a Korg MS-20 which we’d been using, so the reference point was aligned,” says Stelmanis. “The album sounds like a mix of hypnotic dance floor anthems and elegant melodies to soothe your broken heart.” Meanwhile on Austra’s latest album, alongside the catchy tunes, there are many killer lines. On Math Equation, for example: “You said I needed my own friends / So I found them / Then you fucked them.” Or on Think Twice: “Please, Adonis / Seeing you at the office / Has me, so anxious/ ‘Cause nobody knows what happened / Did you not think twice? / Or even ask for advice / Before you dropped a metaphorical hand grenade / Did you not think twice? (Oh, whoops! Haha. Whopsies!)”. Or indeed the quirky, deeply sarcastic twitterings and banging beats of the title track. Or the more downbeat but rather beautifully sung opener Amnesia: “I’m an aperture /Of deleterious radicals / I know I tried / To reverse the damage.”
As ever, heartbroken emotions with upbeat sounds makes for a potent combination if done right, and . The effervescent sounds on the slower Siren Song, expecially when combined with a fabulous video, also show her sharp sense of humour: “If I sing a siren song / Would you still pull towards the lyre?” Despite all the heartbreak on other numbers, from the bouncy Fallen Cloud, the slow Blindsided in which she goes round and round what went wrong, to the six-minute gradually unfolding ambient beauty of The Hopefulness of the Dawn, she manages a perky as well as gorgeously floaty, cathartic, if still bittersweet final track – Good Riddance: “Holding on to the fantasy I had invented / A dream that I rented …. But here, among the angels / I finally feel at peace / Protected by my family / Good Riddance.” A fabulously dark yet fun, and creatively clever way to deal with the devastation. Painfully uplifting, he songs were worth it after all. Out on Domino Records.
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