Amy Shark | Regional Tour

With tickets already selling fast - extra shows having been added to both Wodonga and Hobart - Amy Shark's upcoming regional Australia tour is proving yet again why she's lauded as one of the country's most impressive exports.

Bringing her emotive pop to all corners of the country, Shark is ready to impress with her repertoire of infectious tracks. Now in high radio rotation with latest tune, I Said Hi, Shark is showing no signs of slowing down. Instead, she continues her takeover of the Aussie pop scene.

Having recently been featured on the "Love, Simon" film soundtrack, performed on the Late Late Show with James Cordon, and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Shark still proves she has all the time for her fans.

'So many parts of regional Australia have backed me since my first Night Thinker EP. I'm really looking forward to travelling around this beautiful country and repaying everyone who's supported me from the start,' she says.

Tickets are on sale now.

Fluir on removing stress and happy coincidences

Fluir's latest track Higher Ground is the culmination of learning to relax about lyric content and a whole bunch of emails.

After reaching out to multiple producers, it was renowned producer Sam Littlemore (whose work you may recognise from Aussie group Pnau) who took the bait. Working on three tracks together, Fluir credits Sam for helping her "nut out the direction I wanted the songs to go". 

Logistically her then-Melbourne home meant the process was mostly done via email, with Fluir flying to Sydney to spend time in the studio. Having since relocated full time to Sydney, thanks to her partner's new job, Fluir says she's less likely to have to create her next project over an email account. "I guess that is the benefit of electronic music though!"

Having a folk background, Fluir has always spent time on lyrics. "I came from a background where I always thought I had to write to tell a story," she says. "Sometimes when you're writing you have the melody and you try and capitalise on this. I didn't want to get tied down on what I was saying more than the melody."

Having learnt her audience, she explains she's learning to give them what she wants, too. "And you'll notice if you're out, you know people clubbing and that, they'll only really sing the hook line." For someone who wants to focus on melody over lyrics, the club is perhaps the most obvious place to aim for. 

"I kind of wanted people to just hear the music."

Higher Ground is available now.

Stream | Instagram | Facebook

Allegra in Three Parts by Suzanne Daniel | Review

 

Title: Allegra in Three Parts
Author: Suzanne Daniel

Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia

Source: Review copy from the publisher

I can split myself in two...

Something I have to do because of Joy and Matilde. They are my grandmothers and I love them both and they totally love me but they can't stand each other.

Eleven-year-old Allegra shuttles between her grandmothers who live next door to one another but couldn't be more different. Matilde works all hours and instils discipline, duty and restraint. She insists that Allegra focus on her studies to become a doctor.

Meanwhile free-spirited Joy is full of colour, possibility and emotion, storing all her tears in little glass bottles. She is riding the second wave of the women's movement in the company of her penny tortoise, Simone de Beauvoir, encouraging Ally to explore broad horizons and live her 'true essence'.

And then there's Rick who lives in a flat out the back and finds distraction in gambling and solace in surfing. He's trying to be a good father to Al Pal, while grieving the woman who links them all but whose absence tears them apart.

Allegra is left to orbit these three adult worlds wishing they loved her a little less and liked each other a lot more. Until one day the unspoken tragedy which has created this division explodes within the person they all cherish most.

I expected this to be a simple, coming-of-age in the 70s style novel. 11- and then 12-year-old Allegra is a seriously smart kid whose navigation of an absolutely adult world is both impressive and worth the admiration I feel for her. But this isn't really her story so much as it belongs to those around her. Sure, she's a fantastic protagonist and I wouldn't have wanted to read this story through anyone else's eyes, but the emotions of this novel really belong to Joy, Matilde, and Rick.

I really felt for Ally, she had clearly accepted her mother's death but it was never spoken about and you never got a sense she could truly understand what had happened or why it was so secretive. Of course, an adult reader will pick up the nuances of what is going on, but for the child that Ally is it appears to go straight over her head.

The writing here is beautiful, it's a debut but so self assured you know immediately Daniel is one to watch out for in future. To weave so much into a novel - family, fractured relationships, domestic violence, death, female empowerment, and the compulsory school milk program (which made me very thankful to have missed out on) - can often be a fine line between telling the story and overwhelming the reader. Daniel manages it with ease, and allowing Allegra to observe as a child would, rather than give her too much of an adult take was refreshing.

Allegra in Three Parts is available now.