Begin Again opens with a tender, meditative repeated note on piano.
Then Didirri’s lilting vocal melodies hover, weightless as a majestic dragonfly surfing a slipstream: “I feel the breeze/ Feel it on my neck/ Feel it on my neck, it’s grand…” – we’ve been hanging out to hear Didirri’s debut album ever since this first taste dropped over two years ago and can confirm that Caught In The Act surpasses our sky-high expectations.
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Opening track Obsolete Machine (“You’re a slave to the obsolete machine”) explores “technology’s effect on the human condition”. From a drum machine beat and gentle guitar strumming, instrumentation gradually expands and builds until brass eventually enters the arrangement during this song’s final minute, like an unexpected rainbow sighting ushering in optimistic vibes. Heaving Chest, a piano-led lullaby, was written at 3am while bushfires raged close to where Didirri was staying in WA (“There’s ash on the breeze/ I fall to my knees”). This one’s string arrangement quivers and swells, offering solace and a brief reprieve from anxiety.
“You can’t cure me with conversation/ But stay here for a while/ I hear the ticking of the ever growing shadow/ And I don’t wanna know the time” – You Know What’s Good For You – which is about trusting your gut, even when it’s telling you something you don’t necessarily wanna hear – sees Didirri backed by a full band. Heartfelt, poetic lyricism abounds during this song and chord progressions during the bridge bring Rufus Wainwright to mind.
Didirri has said that producer Rob Muinos (Julia Jacklin, Little May, Nat Vazer) made a habit of checking in to make sure he “was 100% on every line”, which definitely paid dividends; the lyric sheets alone read like evocative poems, with Love Can Bleed You By The Hand a particular fave: “I live in a town called fear/ Everything’s curated here/ Nothing is created here in fear…”
According to this album’s presser, a pair of songs on here – the confessional, acoustic guitar-driven I Wanted It Easier Than This and the stately, piano-led closer Numb (“‘Cause I’m singin’ of love and of heaven above/ While I’m thinkin’ of you in the ground”) – “represent times in Didirri’s life that aren’t easy to revisit”. But his willingness to process life’s gritty bits through song, while reckoning with the past, has undoubtedly contributed to Didirri’s massive growth as an artist.
Transportive, introspective, vulnerable, intimate, enchanting and deceptively unassuming, Caught In The Act captures this exceptional Warrnambool-raised singer-songwriter on the cusp of a breakthrough. And not to minimise the understated elegance of this record, but it also has the makings of a top-notch makeout soundtrack.
LABEL: LIBERATION RECORDS
RELEASE DATE: 04 AUG
