Holly Throsby: A Loud Call

The title is presumably an in joke. There's nothing remotely loud about the Australian singer-songwriter Holly Throsby, whose third album this is. Throsby sings very quietly. And her music is very quiet, too. But if you know her first two albums, then A Loud Call may startle you by its relative loudness.

Perhaps reflecting a new-found confidence in her voice, Throsby has started to sing not quite as quietly as before, and this incremental shift has taken her music to a whole new level, a level at which she can duet with his alt-country eminence Bonnie "Prince" Billy, on Would You? - and not be outclassed. Other guest appearances on the record come from members of Lambchop and Silver Jews, called up via the contacts book of the producer Mark Nevers, who does his usual minimal but melodic job, fashioning the ideal backdrop for Throsby's newly expanded from-a-whisper-to-just-above-a-whisper vocal range. Throsby's lyrics are concise and matter-of-fact - "I know this and that about love" - and, on the whole, more positive than her earlier albums, although she can still nail sadness and despair pretty well, too ("A heart divides like the wings of a bird in flight"). That duet with the Bonnie Prince is perhaps the album's best moment, an elegantly structured tale that takes us from rejection through to acceptance with delightful (lyrical and musical) understatement.