Leanne Tennant – Red Wine, Late Nights

Close on the heels of her critically successful debut album, Pull Up Your Britches, comes a second helping of southern gothic/blues/Americana/undefined from Australian songwriter Leanne Tennant.

Red Wine, Late Nights provides the languor and mystique suggested by the title. The sparse instrumentation and spatial production gives the album overall a loose, ethereal feel. Tennant’s voice is rightly given plenty of space, uncluttered by effects. It is rich and dreamy yet also ominous.

Her lyrics are rustic and folklorish, honest and sinister.

‘Monsoon’, with it’s skipping syncopated melody over a front-loaded beat, feels like a colonial work song.

The reverbed vocal over a semiquaver baseline on ‘Gentle Annie’ infuses it with a haunting, blues-noir feel.

‘The Pages Are Still White’ is a melancholy duet with Luke Daniel Bird whose raspy dry voice adds contrast to Tennant’s mellow sound.

This is a reflective album with a textured landscape that needs to be listened to with a glass of red wine, late at night. (RB)

★★★1/2

BY RITA BRATOVICH