- I’ve always thought there’s a lot to be said for a solid grounding in all the fundamentals of music if you want to go ahead and try to rock. Olga Solar clearly got that message, better than most. Her training at the Sydney Con and subsequent experience in penning musicals -amongst, apparently, many other things- her most recent being The Detective’s Handbook,  has allowed her to crouch and spring, fully-formed and with incredible confidence out of the orchestra pit and on to the proscenium, guitar in hand.

Forget the guitar (that’s actually played by Ben Secrett on the EP, I believe) it was an unfulfilled desire to sing that really propelled Olga to take the leap. It’s a little difficult to believe that -amongst that array of projects- she hadn’t tried it out before and equally, it has been very obvious from the first advance single of her debut EP, that her voice is a must hear.

It’s quite a mannered sound with instantly recognisable, quivering vibrato and hooded, elongated vowels. It would be a quality which towered above the rest of her craft, if the rest of her craft weren’t pretty polished as well. The rocking of the five songs that make up the Antilullaby EP is of the classic kind. It has a very similar feel to my early encounters with Ainslie Wills, another deeply skilled rocker appearing, seemingly, out of nowhere. The only reservation I have with any of it, is that you can occasionally hear the music theatre roots at the base of Olga Solar’s craft. Some very theatrical gestures, like the da, da-da-da singalong at the end of Tulips, break my immersion in what is, otherwise, classic, heartland rock.

Solar has described all of the songs on the EP as a soundtrack to the year that’s been, channelling the emotion swept up in trying to get out there and make this music. You can feel a swirling mixture of tension and elation, everything here exists in a state of energised anticipation. From the impatient character-study of Geraldine, to the breakup song that is Tulips, the sleepless yearning of the title-track, on through the pure, fibrillating electricity of Tingle Fingers and the assertive empowerment that builds through closer Petty Statistic: there’s a forward momentum in everything. I was quite surprised how different some of these numbers seem when you consider their lyrics in isolation, away from all that musical drive.

As it is, listening to Antilullaby, all that breathless movement, it feels completely justified. Olga Solar has been right on the cusp of something that’s come together impressively. With her craft and her voice and all that personal momentum, as auspicious as this debut is, I’m expecting a lot more and soon.

- Chris Cobcroft.