Please Daddy

Album review

Melbourne's Sarah Mary Chadwick is the queen of pain; her music, a musical sibling to Tracey Emin's hyper-confessional visual art. On her sixth album, Chadwick wastes no time peeling back her skin to expose the bloody mess beneath: "I'm falling apart/I suspect I'm blowing it," she sings on stunning opener "When Will Death Come" while horns and drums swell to a majestic roil. There's a broken beauty here that evokes Patti Smith and PJ Harvey, both in Chadwick's voice and vivid lyrics like "Wish the colors were separate, not one muddy swirl" ("Nothing Sticks") and "Play their game of charades/before the mirror it breaks" (the ethereal "The Heart and Its Double"). Throughout, instrumentation creates a landscape—horns as an ebb-and-flow tide ("If I Squint"), thundercloud drums (oh, how they roll on "I'm Not Allowed in Heaven"), the occasional ray-of-sunshine flute. By the closing song Chadwick swears, "I've let go of all my pain" and "I'm at peace with family/Their cruelty does not bother me," but take note of the title: "All Lies." © Shelly Ridenour / Qobuz