- The Grand Magoozi’s debut EP appears so fully-formed it’s difficult to credit her -Susie Scurry- as a newish talent. The Melbourne singer-songwriter makes laidback country-folk with jazz and crooner pop highlights and, with her easygoing, alto drawl, sounds like she’s been knocking out the AM pop hits since 1956.

Her presser keeps turning up around the net, comparing her to a ‘David Lynch chanteuse’, which is a little left-field but you get the idea: this is music to take you back to another time, a time which never was. I’d say a happier time, but there’s a bluesy twist and wry but occasionally painful honesty that shoots bitter all through the sweetness.

The Grand Magoozi isn’t exactly Melissa George in Mulholland Drive but she is an interesting blend of other things. She has something of the same breezy retro qualities as Kitty, Daisy & Lewis but cut with the sparse sadness and scooping vocal style of Alela Diane, another time-traveller in Americana. To my mind she brings the strengths of both -the poppy, technical mastery of the one and the realness of the other- and they play off very nicely against each other.

Tracing back beyond the skilled imitators of today, at least a couple of decades of American music are smoothly recombined. Most songs here ease into a Nashville lilt and twang you used to get from Patsy Cline or Tammy Wynette. Some mosey a little further into the future, like The Birds, which actually hides a whole lot of things in its deceptive folk quiet: sparse soul and Hammond driven psych that smoulders into life as the track progresses. The acoustic but forceful pop of Invisible Chord also sounds like a child of the ‘60s: Dusty Springfield maybe?

Lyrically, the record occasionally indulges in the nostalgia of the period its music evokes. Take, opener The Last Cowboy or Paul Newman which sutures Appalachian folk to an appetite for the spaghetti sauce mogul, which, altogether, seems a little anachronistic but is nonetheless quite endearing. Others are more slice-of-life and find a timeless connection between the music and just trying to live; the slow and lonesome I Don’t Wanna Grow Up is a perfect example, its self-pity could be drawled out by anyone from Cat Power to Loretta Lynn. Scurrie’s seamless blending of eras gives the record a really relatable quality.

Some of the credit must go to one of Australia’s great contemporary producers, Nick Huggins, who you might remember from all his work with the artists of Two Bright Lakes. Recording in a suburban living room somewhere (if you listen carefully you’ll hear ambient interruptions: a bird call or passing car), he’s brought a dusty ol’ single mic sound, the warmth of which is the perfect counterbalance to Magoozi’s sometimes cold, almost gothic country sparseness. The EP is also getting a release on Huggins’ own Little Lake label.

Instantly appealing, The Grand Magoozi’s quiet charm doesn’t wear off either. Nor is there a single bad song on her debut record. We’re not short on quality, retro singer-songwriters down here: the likes of Tiny Ruins, Brous, Aldous Harding or The Orbweavers are a fine lot. With her debut The Grand Magoozi quietly, gently, elbows her way to the front of the crowd.

- Chris Cobcroft.