Grids

Jess Cornelius ramps up the vocals and strips back the guitars on her third album as Teeth & Tongue, but it’s frustratingly underdeveloped, writes LACHLAN KANONIUK.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] The way Jess Cornelius effortlessly dips into the line “I have come/Because I want to” – found on Grids’ earliest single, ‘The Party is You’ – grips with a canny, knee-buckling force. The disarming play on inflection signifies Cornelius’s ability to command emotion like a marionette. When she wants to.

Teeth & Tongue, Cornelius’s solo project in essence, diverges from the guitar-heavy previous album Tambourine, accommodating for stylistic growth at the cost of the resounding cohesion. The trade-off works for the most part, especially seeing as the sparse guitar balladry of ‘Going South’, ‘Boredom’ and ‘More Than This’ dissipates the searing Crazy Horse tones that dominated the majority of Tambourine.

‘More Than This’ – not a cover, though there is Roxy Music invocation elsewhere on Grids – presents the strongest chorus on the record. Surrounded by jangly, Liz Phair-informed rock ‘n’ roll introspection, its profundity is hindered by a tendency to rely on simplistic monosyllabic couplets. Once we’re eased into an instrumental clearing, a fadeout calls a premature last drinks instead, as it does several times throughout Grids.

On ‘Newborn’, Cornelius engages in a dreary, vaudevillian sparring session with fellow Melbourne-based singer-songwriter Laura Jean, exchanging tedious lines about taking a tram “All the way down Lygon Street.” The broadened instrumental palette is refreshing on the surface level, but it isn’t taken all the way – as shown in the laughable pairing of what sounds like expressionless GarageBand tracking drums and huge walls of church organ.

The opening three seconds of ‘Good Man’ present the only sans-vocal respite in the entirety of the song, a decided experiment that’s intuitive to Cornelius’s fantastic talent as singer but instead congeals into an asphyxiating monolith, pulsating loops threatening an anxious release without allowing the listener a moment to board. It’s still a grandiose, powerful statement – a truly good song that could become a truly great song with the benefit of an extra minute or two running time.

“What’s needed is a collaborative combatant to fully jettison Cornelius from her comfort zone.”

The experimentation of choral loops shown on ‘Good Man’ is shaped into something resembling Philip Glass repetition on ‘I Feel Good’, deftly providing enough sonic breathing space between forefront lyrics and the backing choir. It’s the most dynamic song on the album, and as such it’s the best – sticking the landing with the brilliant, yearning refrain of “When will my mind match my body?”

Originally released as a single in 2012, ‘The Party is You’ finds its way onto Grids untouched, with the incredible opening verse and bridge still fizzing into a soggy chorus. Grids’ biggest disappointment, by no means a devastating one, is not so much its inability to achieve a holistic vision – both in terms of song and album – but its unwillingness to do so. Cornelius’s brilliance sporadically bursts forth with vivid beauty, only to be mitigated by hastily refined composition and at times undercooked production, as if demoed foundation tracks have a way of surfacing in the final mix.

Guitarist Marc Regueiro-McKelvie (Popolice) provides a serviceable aural complement, used sparingly this time around, but what’s needed at this stage is a collaborative combatant to fully jettison Cornelius from her musical comfort zone. Hell, there’s no saying it can’t be Cornelius herself. Some of the best moments from the Bowie/Eno Berlin trilogy were the instrumentals, whereas Grids dips its toe in similar sonic territory while remaining fearful of the slightest hint of a solo. It wouldn’t be so bad were it not for Cornelius’s apparent lack of stamina as a lyricist.

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‘Grids’ is out now on vinyl, digital and CD through Dot Dash/Remote Control. Read our recent interview with Cornelius. Launch tour dates below.

Thurs, June 12 – Bridge Hotel, Castlemaine, VIC
Thurs, June 19 – GoodGod Small Club, Sydney, NSW
Sat, June 21 – Beetle Bar, Brisbane, QLD
Fri, June 27 – Rhino Room, Adelaide, SA
Sat, June 28 – Howler, Melbourne, VIC
Fri, July 11 – Club 54, Launceston, TAS
Sat, July 12 – The Homestead, Hobart, TAS