Team

Holly Throsby’s fourth album Team is an aching dissertation on loss and rejection, explored both through the singer's hurt musings and the music they sit upon. On 'What I Thought of You', the album begins with the uncertain first steps of a damaged heart, played out in awkward, off- tune piano chords that gradually gain a place as the song builds around them. It's as though the instrument itself has to swallow back sobs before it can speak clearly. The song shows Throsby re-evaluating her feelings on her former partner, as we all do when the sense of security and safety in one we loved is ripped away. “Belief, oh blind belief/Can't believe, what I thought of you.” It's not bitter, as none of the songs here are, but it's pointed and there's real pain there, from the absence of what once was and the foolishness now felt. Sharp auxiliary vocals cut through the main melody and elevate the sense of grief. It’s a technique used throughout the album.

On 'It's Only Need', Throsby uses the story of finding dead geese strewn along a road to mourn her own loss, the letters “R! I! P!” discordantly crying through the verse and into the bridge. The lyrics tell of the desperation felt by an unwanted partner: “I said, 'I need only you and me'/You said, 'You're too needy for me',” later evolves into, “You said, you need only be set free/I said, 'You're too needy for me'”, before culminating in the insistent, syllabic repetition of the title: “But it's only need! It's only need!”.

[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Holly Throsby: Here Is My Co-Pilot by -gaga

For all the fragility revealed in the lyrics, the music and production on Team gives it the strength to stand. Bree van Reyk's steady percussion keeps the pace where it's needed, and adds its own flourishes and syncopation without being excessive, while other instruments – at times bass, cello, double bass, violin, stroh violin, mandolin, steel stringed guitar, piano or a pump organ –meld in and around the constant of Throsby's acoustic guitar and voice, building upon the sound while never overloading it. There's a surprisingly warm feel to the record, given the topic and emotions it deals with, and it has a real sense of space. Team was recorded in a rented church in rural NSW, an opportunity not wasted as Tony Dupe's recording techniques and production places the listener alone in a centre pew as the band plays, scattered around the nave.

[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Holly Throsby - What I Thought of You by SpunkRecords

Even Throsby's soft voice, with it famous breathiness that too often sees her work dismissed, is given extra strength on Team, as her vocals are constantly looped and layered back over each other. The choral round effect it has at the end of 'What I Thought of You' imbues a sense of optimism to the melancholy, while the repeated second melody lament of, “If I could only”, simmering under 'We Are Glowing' underscores the feeling of helplessness. Her voice is made an instrument in itself on 'Here Is My Co-Pilot', by far the most upbeat-sounding song on the album, with a series of looped vowel sounds propelling the song, and throughout the record she is her own backing singer. It works to greatest effect on 'To See You Out', a song about going out alone only to end up in the same place as your ex. You can almost see Throsby taking a deep breath before carefully fixing her hair one last time and opening the door. Upon sighting, the careful first verse morphs into a lengthy chorus of brief, looped sentences, among them, “I see you, you see me/You see out, you see me/I freak out, freak out”, until it's a swirl of overlapping, repeated thoughts; an anxiety attack set to music.

What makes Throsby's work so appealing, getting past its aesthetic and constant quality, is that – much like her friend and peer Darren Hanlon – she writes songs that are at once individual and universal, and so easily identified with. Team is obviously about the end of Throsby's relationship, but it could also be about the end of anyone's relationship. An absolutely, painfully beautiful piece of work.

by A.H. Cayley