- I first came across Melbourne’s Hue Blanes as the pianist and singer in  Wondercore Island’s  Jazz Party, a rag-tag bunch of mostly Briz jazz musos who would roll into a venue with an upright piano and set up shop for a month of weekly performances. Always on a Monday night, always eschewing the stage in favour of playing on the floor next to the punters and with a mission to drag audiences back to what jazz used to be: a party; one where singing along, getting loose and dancing was the priority, instead of chin-stroking nerds frothing over a solo’s scalar structure or a feverish harmonic analysis of the rhythm sections’ chord choices. It was there where I first heard Hue Blanes, crooning calypso to tunes like Frank Sinatra [ soon to be re-popularised by The Avalanches, but these guys got there first! ] and singing sassy duets about drinking and womanising with Tracey Miller, a legend of the Oz soul and blues scene.

So when I heard his new album HOLIDAY, I was in for a an unexpected twist. It's a suite of thoughtful, skilfully crafted songs for solo piano and voice with a philosophical bent that puts him more in a league with Fiona Apple or Rufus Wainright. Right from the outset with instrumental opener Intro, we’re drawn into a fragile, direct sound. The creaking of the wood of the piano, the clacking of the keys, the undisguised sounds of the city in the background: these prefigure an album of unvarnished honesty where Blanes puts his soul on display.

Existential uncertainty, the search for meaning in a world of fragmented attention, the struggle with the self as he strives to place value on his art, difficult human relationships, friends growing up and having kids; Blanes’ delicate baritone sweeps and breaks over at times complex and angular arpeggiated piano arrangements. There’s an intimacy and immediacy to the album, as if you and Hue are the last people left in the bar at 3am and he’s no longer taking requests, instead just singing his life, which is also somehow your life. The songs are short and dense, evoking their self-contained worlds of mood or story then just disappearing over the horizon.

It’s a masterful display of musical craft.. I’m imaging this album being excavated as a lost Australian classic in a decade, with a new generation of musicians discovering how ripe this material is for experiments in fuller arrangements, being re-imaginined in a soul or rock idiom, or as lush orchestral works.

So I recommend getting into Hue Blanes now, so that when Katie Noonan or Sia are doing these songs on a tribute album you can say, “I was onto HOLIDAY right from the start”.  

- Kieran Ruffles.