一聽音樂網

Brand new EP from the hard-to-pin-down Brisbane songstress

Her striking debut LP Spilt Milk only a few months old, the prolific Tara Simmons keeps pushing the envelope with a fresh CD release. Written in five weeks and pretty much instantaneously recorded in her home studio, the five-song All You Can EP stoically defies the indie-folk-pop tag like its full-length predecessor while revealing a whole batch of new charms. From the banjo-led opener The Fundamentalist to the trumpet-augmented elegy of The Worst Of U, there isn’t one dud number here; the title track utilises Tara’s trademark multi-tracked vocals and a big chorus and the ‘60s-tinged I Cannot Be Saved builds up from a simple two-chord opening verse to a full, Beach Boys-like symphony of sound. A “friends” affair like Spilt Milk was, cellist Briony Luttrell leads the strings trio on the record while fellow Brisbane luminary Dan Parsons supplies cruisy fingerpicked guitar on the folky Rosemary. The ‘dollhouse’ cover art seals the package better (and in an infinitely more stylish way) than giftpaper – just don’t get scared by a slightly creepy back cover. In all, short and sweet.