Willie Nelson, Harvey Sutherland + more, our favourite records of the week

Words by Mixdown Staff

Willie Nelson turns 89, Melody’s Echo Chamber shares her learnings, and Harvey Sutherland debuts strongly

This week, Willie Nelson celebrates his birthday in style, Melody’s Echo Chamber drops her third album, and Harvey Sutherland comes out the gates with a fiery neurotic funkiness.

This week’s top picks:

Willie Nelson – A Beautiful Time
Melody’s Echo Chamber – Emotional Eternal
Harvey Sutherland – Boy

Read all the latest music news here.

Willie Nelson – A Beautiful Time

Willie is back with his 72nd solo studio album. A full-fledged album of new studio material produced with long-time collaborator Buddy Cannon, it will come on Willie’s 89th birthday and shows off just how prolific he continues to be as the album includes some of his finest songwriting and performances in years.

The 14 tracks include five new Willie Nelson/Buddy Cannon compositions, new songs from Chris Stapleton & Rodney Crowell (the first single ‘I’ll Love You Till The End Of Time’) and a cadre of top Nashville songwriters, plus a couple of plum covers by Leonard Cohen (‘Tower Of Song’), and The Beatles (‘With A Little Help From My Friends’) given expert interpretation by Willie.

Melody’s Echo Chamber – Emotional Eternal

Emotional Eternal is a glorious consolidation of the lessons learned along the way, seen through the eyes of someone who has taken a step back, and who can see clearly as a result. A deeply human collection of songs full of prolonged moments of sonic transcendency, it’s a record rooted in adulthood, but one that still regards the world with a childlike wonder.

It includes ‘Alma_The Voyage’, a beautiful paean to motherhood concluding with resounding violins and ebow; the sonically uplifting yet lyrically introspective ‘Looking Backward’, and the ornate and catchy, ‘Where The Water Clears the Illusion.’

Harvey Sutherland – Boy

Recorded between London, Los Angeles and Harvey’s own Swimming Pool Studio with a string of special guests including genre godfather, DāM-FunK, sos and number of hotshot Melbourne session musicians, Harvey’s debut album Boy is a one-way teleportation to a hypermodern vision of funk.

Harvey says on Boy: “I made most of this record in a circular loop between by studio and my psychotherapist – one informing the other, a slow grind toward some kind of Eureka moment, some realisation of self.

“It’s skeletal, angular, finished only when our time runs out. It is beyond the platonic ideal of funk, as it is devoid of the necessary looseness due to the neurotic overanalysis involved, however I feel comfortable in defining it as neurotic funk.”