Homegrown hits: The best Australian music to hear this month

MAY-A, Goodbye (If You Call That Gone)

If you’ve come to MAY-A’s debut album expecting an extension of the introspective bedroom pop of her best known tracks like LOLA and Time I Love to Waste, you’ll be in for a surprise. The Sydney artist, born Maya Cumming, has undergone a significant shift since her last major release, 2023’s Analysis Paralysis. A growing anger and disillusionment with the music industry, global politics, Los Angeles, and her former record label drove much of the writing for her debut album Goodbye (If You Call That Gone).

In Cumming’s own words, this was an album largely “driven by spite”, and that certainly comes through on the singed emo-pop-punk tracks like the standout Confessions and Catching Up 2 U. Much of the record was written alongside her partner, engineer and guitarist Chloe Dadd, and Cumming also assembled a team of rock whisperers in the studio, including Paramore producer Carlos de la Garza. They give the album the requisite muscle, while Cumming’s pop sensibilities still ensure plenty of sharp hooks among the 11 tracks. But some of the best moments are the most understated, like the drifting and dreamy Tide. Jules LeFevre

2charm, Star Scum City

In 2005, I was 19 and had rented a small, fifth floor, 19th-century apartment in Cannes using my bartending savings. The two short-lived romances I had over my 10-day stay doubled the total romances I’d ever had. One morning, mid-embrace, an old mechanical alarm clock went off and without leaving the bed or looking, I grabbed the thing, launched it clean behind us across the room and over the wrought-iron balcony, smashing in the street below. Its bell rang down the rows of apartments, echoing like the pitch-bent melody of ATB’s Euro-trance anthem 9PM (Till I Come) all the way to La Croisette.

The central characters of 2charm’s debut album (kind of, just play along) are two NRL-loving studs whose love sends them fleeing smalltown Australia’s heterosexual-claustrophobia for Barcelona. The album’s gun collaborative producers – Ninajirachi, 1tbsp and Simon Lam – reference Y2K Eurodance (think Alice Deejay’s Better Off Alone or Chicane and Bryan Adams’ Don’t Give Up) by way of Rustie and Skrillex’s 2011 EDM. But to me, Star Scum City sounds like a memory, of a time when skin tasted of Côte d’Azur salt, and lust, love, sunset and sunrise were entirely indistinguishable. Nick Buckley

Olivia Escuyos, Yours Truly

If, like most of us, you’ve spent the whole summer listening to Kehlani’s Folded on repeat, a chilled wine in hand as you gently sway in the humid late-night breeze of your balcony, Olivia Escuyos’ Yours Truly is calling your name like a whisper from a lover in a soft-flowing linen button-up. The independent Melbourne singer crafts spacious R&B that’s so sensual you’ll need a cigarette by the time she hits her first melismatic vocal run.

The Filipina-Australian artist first built an online following at 14 singing covers on YouTube, before heading to the US to further develop her craft. Her upcoming album promises a luscious mood, if the early string of singles she’s drip-fed since early January is evidence to go by. On Top, with its rolling junkie beat and airy synths, is the kind of song romantic people will do dirty things to, while highlight Wasted should be catnip for anyone who spent their teenage years yearning on the bus to a soundtrack of ’90s slow jams or phrases like “Room 112, where the players dwell”. Pour a glass, lose some clothes, and vibe out. Robert Moran

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