Sometimes when working at a record label it is important to stop, breathe and reflect. Life can be pretty frenzied. Production deadlines angrily shake their fist at you as they fly on by; passionate people find passionately loud ways of getting their message across and chaos generally flaps its wings like a bat on heat.

 

Sometimes you feel like your brain is about to explode.

 

But then you remember the music.

 

I’m one of the lucky few who has a chance to ‘live’ with Kimbra’s album “Vows” for a while now. For the past few months it has lived on my iPod, accompanying me on dreary winter trainrides at peak hour and walking with me amongst the concrete giants of Sydney’s streets.

 

In short: I love this album.

 

I love what it does for pop music, taking catchy melodies and dragging them by the hand into new, unexpectedly territory. I love what it does for Australian (and New Zealand) music. I love the risks it takes musically and lyrically. And I love that it is an album that, for all its finesse, is built around a giant, beating heart.

 

To describe exactly the sounds and tones of Vows could cause the fall of many an empire of words. Kimbra – and her voice – leap (at times deliciously frantically) across genres and ideas. She is a jazz singer at her core, that much is obvious (just listen to her cover of Nina Simone’s ‘Plain Gold Ring) – but her voice is an incredible, flexible instrument, used with pizazz and restraint in equal measure. Cameron Adams used a great summation today: “Sade, Jeff Buckley and Tom Waits in a three-way”, he wrote. Indeed, sir. Indeed.

 

Thematically (a word I’m not sure I’ve used since Year 12 English) this is an album about the most universal of concepts: love. And relationships. The ups. The down, down, downs. The crazies and the craziness. The sly glances and the cheeky looks. And the occasional moments of hyperbolic phrasing that permeate the most innocent of blog posts. Vows shows love from all sides: the idealistic fantasy of ‘Settle Down’; the effervescent sense of discovery of ‘Two Way Street’ (“I think I’m ready to let you under my skin…”) through to ‘Withdraw’s struggle to let go and ultimate demise (“I can’t withdraw your heart from mine”…). It’s a well-trodden theme, this ole love business – but Kimbra never takes you down the path most travelled.

 

Vows, ultimately, is a journey. As a listener, it is a journey through sounds and feelings. A journey through the vivid images it paints, and the stories it tells.

 

For a sleepy, slightly hungover record label kid, it’s a journey that reminds you why you do what you do.

-Blake

Kimbra’s Vows is out now on iTunes and in all good record stores.