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Grounded Bird

Angie Hart
Grounded Bird

12 Track, LP (2007, ABC Music)
Related: Angie Hart.


Angie Hart hadn’t yet entered her twenties when Frente flared up and became Aussie chart oddities, the twee indie things who could. It’s likely she wouldn’t have today’s solo outlet without such early success – yet the distance between this and that couldn’t be greater. Hart’s all grown up and comes with a complicated interim period to work through: transplanting to America; a failed marriage; failed bands etc. There’s always an ache in Hart’s voice here – there even when, like Sarah Blasko, she’s doing her best to sound upbeat.

Grounded Bird maintains an almost uniformly languid mood, despite being the work of a variety of writers and producers. On the Craig Ross-produced “Don’t Be Shy,” it’s as if Kate Bush comes rushing to the antipodes with an Aussie drawl. “Kiwi” makes the connection between My Bloody Valentine, stadiums and singer-songwriter pensiveness; its opening starkness yielding to three minutes of guitar buzzing bigness. The wry “Cold Heart Killer,” penned by Dan Luscombe, is a dreamy, star-spangled ode to defiance in domestic hell.

Less fruitfully, Hart works here with Ben Lee, who gifts to her his rhyming meter and some of his newagedayz lyrics (“life is a mandala/made of sand”; “I kissed a frog / looking for God” etc). Booby prize! Hart’s work rises and falls with the quality of her collaborators. No doubt the overall vision is hers, but the up-and-down quality of Grounded Bird suggests her own artistry can become transparent – a plaything frustratingly at the service of others’ ideas.

by Ben Gook

Tracklisting
  1. Asleep
  2. Care
  3. Cold Heart Killer
  4. Don’t Be Shy
  5. Feel What You Don’t
  6. Kiwi
  7. First Time
  8. Sand
  9. My Thief
  10. My Year of Drinking
  11. Stop Buying Things
  12. Start My Day
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