Jimmy Barnes turns festive, The Smith Street Band reflects defiantly, and Yawdoesitall comes in hot
This week, Jimmy Barnes drops Blue Christmas, Smith Street Band drops Life After Football, and Yawdoesitall drops Life I Chose.
This week’s top picks:
- Jimmy Barnes – Blue Christmas
- The Smith Street Band – Life After Football
- Yawdoesitall – Life I Chose
Read all the latest music news here.
Jimmy Barnes – Blue Christmas
Jimmy Barnes has released his first festive album Blue Christmas today, the album you didn’t know you needed!
Speaking on his motivations to release a Christmas album, Barnes said: “One of the greatest surprises I ever got from our children was when they all snuck away into the garage and secretly recorded themselves singing carols for me.
“On Christmas morning, when I awoke, they proudly gave me the recording and sat eagerly waiting for me to listen to it. That year I received lots of great gifts from various family members, but that recording had me weeping like a baby. It was the most beautiful gift I ever got.
“This album is my gift back to the kids, the grandkids, and everyone out there who just wants to sit and sing with their family on Christmas. These songs take me back and they remind me why I’m here right now. I hope they do the same for you.”
The Smith Street Band – Life After Football
Today marks the release of The Smith Street Band’s sixth album, Life After Football. The follow up to their ARIA #1 album Don’t Waste Your Anger which was also recorded by bass player “Fitzy” at the band’s solar-powered studio in regional Victoria.
“It’s been a long time coming, trying to record around lockdowns and shut downs and everything else was tough. This album is more defiant than depressed, more upbeat than down trodden and is inspired by a search for meaning and what’s next. We’ve all lived through a once in a lifetime event, some of us have lived through multiple once in a lifetime events, and it can be hard to come to terms with what we’ve been through and what comes next. But hopefully this summer feels like summers past and this album helps with that feeling a little,” said the band’s lead singer, Wil Wagner, of the new album.
Featuring the singles ‘I Don’t Wanna Do Nothing Forever’, ‘Everyone Is Lying To You For Money’, ‘Life After Football’ and ‘A Conversation With Billy Bragg About The Purpose Of Art’, the album embodies The Smith Street Band’s trademark prolific songwriting while offering some of the shortest and fastest songs the band have released to date. Life After Football was mixed by Anton Hagop (Silverchair, Powderfinger) and mastered by George Georgiadis.
Yawdoesitall – Life I Chose
Encompassing themes of self-empowerment, overcoming, and reflection, Ghanaian-Australian hip-hop artist and producer Yawdoesitall delivers his long awaited debut EP, Life I Chose.
A series of observations and thoughts collated and delivered on a record that thrives with a variety of sounds, the Life I Chose EP perfectly represents a creative who has been at the fore of some remarkable and original hip-hop compositions in recent years.
Since 2020, Yawdoesitall has been refining and finessing his sound out of studio spaces in Sydney, against a backdrop of social upheaval and unpredictability, as many artists were forced to do. And during this time, he was able to pose different questions to himself – questions that he found ways to navigate ways toward answering, through the music. Life I Chose reflects these processes, while ultimately dishing up Yawdoesitall’s personality with precision: an engaging and charismatic performer who wears boldness with pride.
Clashing guitars meet gospel vocals; soulful R&B licks thread with cocky rap production – reflective of the exciting way hip-hop and its adjacent lanes are currently moving, Life I Chose establishes Yawdoesitall as a striking artist to keep an eye on.
