- Transitioning from his debut album Embracisim, coming out via Terrible records, to his latest release Bravado being released via mega label EMI might seem strange. Sure, being part of a roster that stretches from Metallica to Lil Yatchy and then back through The Avalanches on the way that ends at Elton John might seem slightly out of place on paper but truthfully, Kirin J. Callinan couldn’t have found a better home. Bravado is the key that allows him to walk comfortably through the front door of this bizarre share house, and his adoration for making a Frankenstien’s monster of gentle, breezy pop and euphoric EDM makes him that ingenious housemate who baffles you and you can’t help but want to befriend him.

As the man himself said of My Moment, the album’s opening opus, it's less of a song, in the classical sense, and more of device to foreshadow what is to come in the forty minute run time. The blistering, firebrand guitars that were a definitive factor on Embracism have subsided and in their place parades shameless electronica. There’s Kirin’s low croon that feels like a whisper directly into your ear, which then whiplashes into vocal acrobatics and begins -with real aggression- building into full blown howls. You can couple that with the lurking, insular instrumentals that suddenly burst at the seams when the euphoric EDM barnstorms the sound stage. Throughout all the musical turmoil, there’s no denying that Kirin and his extensive retinue of collaborators know their way around a pop song and a damn fine one at that. Telling Me This and the title track are brilliant slow burning pop ballads, or the closest thing this records allows to ballads; while S.A.D and Big Enough are grand and bombastic in all the right kind of ways: over-the-top, exultant charisma and undeniable catchiness.

The record is wonderfully self-aware throughout and has a deceptively quiet but nonetheless T.I.S.M-esque approach to lyric writing on some of the deeper tracks like Down To Hang . That track's initially off-putting transition between jangly funk and strummed guitar is carried by force majeure into an all out, cacophonous instrumental section, obliterating all your concerns in the violent celebration. The rock-pop songwriting really is masterful. Even on a song like Big Enough, which features no-one less than Jimmy Barnes, Kirin is still the king of his domain: he deploys all his arsenal at will and has created one of the most memorable pop records in recent memory.
You might be left wondering how seriously to take things here, like, for instance, that Jimmy Barnes feature. Truth be told, it can go either way: whether you take this record deathly seriously and scrupulously interrogate just how ironic Kirin is being, or if you just embrace these flawless pop bangers with no reservations at all. Well, you’re going to enjoy it either way.

- Matt Lynch.