Aqua Profonda!

I came, I saw, I swam.

Hello! Have just returned home from my first ever week of actual annual leave, which made me feel very adult - I spent some time in Naarm and Eora Country with the band I manage, them doing a mixture of recording and touring (how exciting) and me doing a mixture of coordinating that and losing hotel keys (less exciting). Helen Garner’s ‘Monkey Grip’ was a big part of my lockdown reading, and so I visited Fitzroy Pool like it was a West Village Brownstone and I was on a Sex and the City Walking Tour. 

Since we last spoke, here’s some of the things I’ve been consuming:

Reading - long

Sunbathing - Isobel Beech

My friend Issy recommended this one and I polished it off a couple of weeks ago in two sittings - the second lasted close to five hours, with a bottle of wine as the sun went down on my back deck. Isobel’s debut as a novelist, ‘Sunbathing’ follows a young woman who has lost her dad to suicide in the recentish-past, and subsequently takes a six-week trip to Italy to stay with an old friend, Giulia, who is preparing to get married. Similarly to ‘Call Me By Your Name’, there’s a sense that being transplanted somewhere physically outside of your life (the life where you play a concrete role in the lives of everyone you usually interact with) can be a catalyst for transformation.

Isobel's voice reminds me of Jessie Tu and Diana Reid - the way she arranges her thoughts is elegantly simple and easy to follow. There isn’t a lot of dramatic action in Sunbathing; rather, Isobel sketches out the contours of her protagonist’s daily life overseas, spliced in with memories from home which inform her navigation of grief. During the final chapters (cry count: 2), I thought about the way it’s often difficult to label the seasons of your inner life until you’re on the other side of them, and I like the way Isobel has recreated that experience for us.

Little Plum - Laura McPhee Browne

I read Laura’s debut, ‘Cherry Beach’, in the wake of my first ever big break-up; the tender story of growing apart from someone who feels physically tethered to you felt immensely pointed at the time, and also very healing. Fiona Wright’s corresponding essay in the Sydney Review of Books does a beautiful job of capturing why it was so special to an audience of young, queer women, especially, and it will always be a favourite.

I have been eagerly anticipating the release of ‘Little Plum’ for months and gobbled it down post-haste on the weekend. The story is about 29-year-old journalist Coral, who falls pregnant following a two-night-stand with a TV cameraman she meets at the site of a patricide. Coral experiences significant OCD symptoms, and I held so much love for her as she grappled with her relationship to her baby. The narrative is just as immediate and bruising as Cherry, with Laura’s signature description throughout - I love how the boundaries between her protagonists’ bodies and their environments feel blurred, like their feelings manifest in their physical worlds and vice versa.

Reading - short

Note: Just realised all of these are kind of queer-centric? HAPPY PRIDE, EVERYBODY.

What Became of the Oscar Streaker? - Michael Schulman

Just in time for awards season, Michael Schulman investigates the life of Oscars Streaker and self-described ‘unemployed propagandist’ Robert Opel, who was murdered in 1979. Schulman performs a master bait-and-switch: the initial set-up, laden with too-ludicrous-to-be-made up detail, gives way to a nuanced, laboured profile which traverses 70s-era moral panic, Hollywood’s relationship with counterculture and what it means to undress. I giggled almost all the way through and came out of it with some new queer history credentials. Read it here.

Two Become One - Brodie Lancaster

Brodie Lancaster is so fabulous at extracting casual, glimmering details about the creative and professional lives of the artists she profiles, and it is a delight to see her work the same magic with a more personal lens in this piece with Chrishell Stause and G-Flip. Read it here.

Eva Phillips on Seamus Platt’s “Portal to Yourself”

In Meanjin, Seamus Platt is a local treasure, known for their photography of suburban suspense and queer joy. Their latest exhibit - still on display at pps /FORA, on Vulture St in West End - features four frames set in a “topography of papier-mâché that bubbles and swells his prints and frames them with roiling whitewash”. Eva gently prods at the images, interrogating the pre- and the post- of each still moment, and manages to pinpoint exactly what I love about Platt’s work. Read it here.

Listening

Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want To Turn Into You (Sony / The Orchard / Perpetual Novice)

IT’S HERE!! I reviewed Caroline Polachek’s second LP - the follow-up to 2019’s angelic ‘Pang’ for 4ZZZ’s New Releases Show, here. Rather than repeating my own (numerous, overflowing, frenzied) thoughts about this record, I’d love to direct you to Rachel Handler’s excellent Vulture profile on Caroline, where she is almost-but-not-quite upstaged by a clone horse named Kurt.

The Love Inn - Back Of My Mind (Independent)

Siblings or dating? Ruby McGregor (Slowrip, Babaganouj, Go Violets), and Chris Langenberg (Sweater Curse, Supernew) unite for the first taste of a collection of songs they’ve worked on as a couple. If I could have a dual-vocal noise-rock IV drip hooked up to my arm permanently, I would, so this was an easy winner for me. This song is the perfect soundtrack for all your favourite late-summer activities: heading to the rezzie, drinking a beer within view of the Story Bridge, walking home from work with your shirt sweat-stuck to your back, etc. 

Deuce - Breathe (Dinosaur City Records)

Another power-couple fastball, aimed straight for you: Kayleigh Heydon and Curtis Wakeling (The Ocean Party) share a new Deuce track off their forthcoming sophomore album, ‘Wild Type’. I adored their playful, meandering self-titled debut, and can’t wait to hear more. ‘Breathe’ is cradled by warm guitars and a triumphant saxophone solo from Liam Halliwell (Snowy Band, et al). The track feels like the sensation of adrenaline dissipating, like letting all of the tension fall out of your muscles - I believe it when Kayleigh sings “I breathe easier now”.

Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass - This Guy’s in Love With You

Yesterday, I was in the back-middle seat of a gold Honda Odyssey (Mikki described it as a hot soccer mum car, and she’s correct), listening to Triple R on the way to Gaytimes Festival in Gembrook, Victoria. Holly Alexander was covering Annaleise on Neon Sunset, and opened the show with a tribute to the late Burt Bacharach, the songwriter responsible for the likes of Dionne Warwick’s ‘Walk on By’, Carpenters’ ‘Close To You’ and Aretha Franklin’s ‘Say A Little Prayer’ (more here - wtf). Holly included this gem in the mix, and I felt so damn happy, listening and watching little yellow butterflies out of the car window. 

Watching

Hot Ones - Cate Blanchett

I got ‘Tar’-pilled about a week ago (still processing, more to come). The only thing that’s been more exciting than the movie finally being available in Australia is watching Cate Blanchett promoting it on the press circuit. She burps! She claims to be baffled by only two things (leaf blowers, and golf). She talks about the time she performed to an audience of three people in a university musical production about climate change, two who left at intermission. It’s great. 

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Hope you found something nice to chew on in this dispatch. Would love to hear what you’ve been loving. Talk soon x