Album Review: Angie McMahon – Salt (Dualtone)

0

It’s not just the voice, but the overall intimacy of the songs and the recording that causes Angie McMahon’s debut album, Salt, to grab the listener’s attention.

McMahon is from Melbourne and has been making music on and off since 2013 when she scored an unlikely opening slot for a Bon Jovi show. Her solo career began in earnest a few years later when she released her debut single, Slow Mover, in 2017.

That single, along with four others, help comprise Salt, 11 songs that feel like you are looking straight into the soul of this 25 year old artist.

The album begins with an electric guitar being strummed and sounding like it is coming from a room somewhere distant from the microphone positioned to pick up its sound. Then McMahon’s voice comes in…”Water on the feelings that I do not like, about the situation, I can feel my teeth trying to break the ice.”

But you’d be excused for not understanding exactly what the young lady is singing.

Angie has a clear, strong, emotive voice, but she tends to fade her words in and out, causing the listener to lean in and become even more immersed in her world.

Be advised this is music to listen to alone.

The first song, Play The Game, presents a singer who sounds both fragile and strong.  She and her guitar are eventually joined by a small band…drums and bass…but it’s a rickety, lo-fi sound that adds to the intimacy.

“I’m helpless, helpless when it comes to you”, she confesses, referring to the Neil Young tune she covered last year.

Indeed, most of the songs that make up Salt are built around love, obsession, betrayal and anxiety…the usual suspects for the 20-something songwriter.

But it’s the way McMahan delivers those songs that makes her something special.

Her lyrics are personal and razor sharp.

“I’m tired of being your sweetheart” she declares on Missing You, while on Push, a breakup song instigated by a cheating partner, she takes the bull by the horns, “I’ll say our goodbye…I’ll save us some time.”

Perhaps her best lines come during Pasta, a song that opens with, “My bedroom is a disaster, my dog has got kidney failure”, before getting to, “Now I am simultaneously on top of someone’s pedestal and also underneath someone’s shoe”.

Melbourne has been producing some strong female voices recently…think Courtney Barnett and Julia Jacklin…and it sounds like Angie McMahon is about to join the ranks.

Marty Duda

Marty Duda
Latest posts by Marty Duda (see all)