AGNES KAIN – ACROSS THE OCEAN GREY
Girl-boy singer-songwriter duo Agnes Kain (Sydney) sound like Angus and Julia Stone. Or, at least they do on Across the Ocean Grey, their second long-player. And that is fine, if you like M.O.R. acoustic-guitar and whispery, earnest songs about love, love lost, boats: this album has got all those bases covered, and covered well. But Agnes Kain didn’t always sound like this: their debut (Keep Walking or I’ll Kill You) was a bubbling, indie-pop thing. It had something resembling a full band banging along behind Afford: a drum kit, keyboards, pianos playing funky rhythms. Here, they’ve opted for something a lot more restrained and somber (strings, brush drums) and it’s hard not to be a little disappointed with the results. In part, it’s service to the material, which was written by the duo as they traveled together across Europe (the album was recorded in London, incidentally), and the song-writing evokes something of the ambivalence and joyous moments of that journey; no big hair, just two people with backpacks, a guitar and a tambourine writing folk songs. But it lacks any sense of atmosphere, in a sonic sense, and even the most upbeat and enjoyable parts of this album still seem very flat. Nice and pleasant, sure, but not so interesting.
**1/2
