album review: laura jean, a fool who’ll

Melburnian singer-songwriter Laura Jean Englert sings with reckless abandon and sincerity in her third LP, tongue-twistingly titled A Fool Who’ll. With lyrics entwined with beautiful imagery and shameless honesty (“I wasn’t kissed until I was eighteen”) she delivers unique vocals that are taught with emotion. This is an album to listen to in one sitting, and an album that will beg many hits of the repeat button.

The album takes listeners on a journey of experiences, from being wildly in love in ‘So happy’ to wondering if her whole life will be what she’s just described in ‘Missing you’. In a bizarre twist, Laura is able to make feelings of angst and woe feel, somehow, right. Covering themes including relationships and identity, the lyrics are angrier than in her previous record, 2008’s Eden Land, but they retain all of the poignant fragility and feel, if anything, more precious and personal than ever.

For the first time the album is predominantly backed by an electric guitar – bright yellow and featured, as it should be, on the album’s front cover. Instruments such as the strings, piano accordions, winding saxophones and the clarinet accompany her lilting melodies and lift the vocals to their highest highs and lowest lows.

It’s not all ups and downs however, although song ‘Australia’ was written in what she describes (in a recent gig at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne) as a “sooky, why-is-my-life-so-hard mood”. The song steers away from the love she focuses on in the rest of her tracks and instead delves into the world of politics. Describing Australia as an “artless wedge” she reveals her fear of singing in her own accent, in her own country. Soaring vocals drive her thoughts home and it is a song not only charged with fierce gusto but one that will remain in your thoughts for days.

For an album to play on a rainy day, a sooky day, a break-up day or even a day when you’re falling haphazardly in love, this is one you simply cannot go past. Lost in the world of memories and dreams, “A fool who’ll” encapsulates so many of those all too familiar moments and presents them in a beautiful collection that yearns to be heard.

A Fool Who’ll is out now through Chapter Music. You can purchase it here!