Reviews for 'Under the Town'

"Homespun fireside conversations built around tenderly brushed guitar and piano. Throsby's writing delights in the quotidian - her yielding, half-spoken vocals investing poetic distillations with an elusive profundity. **** 4 stars"    - Mojo

"Despite her hushed, almost conversational voice with its pronounced, precise phrasing; despite the gentleness of the sounds; despite the almost caressing charm, this is an album of visceral blows from an active participant in, and perceptive observer of, what happens when two people collide. That's what is in the blood and guts; the very marrow of Holly Throsby's songs.

 It all adds up to the kind of album you want to keep to yourself. Not because you don't think others would feel the same way, but because after you've lived with it for a while Under the Town feels as if it were made just for you."       - The Sydney Morning Herald

“Throsby's carefully observed ideas and startling voice make the old feel new enough to make neck hairs stand on end, rapt.” – The New York Sun

"Superior pastoral noodling, delicate acoustic twinkles and breathy fireside musings. Each tune is as absorbing and intimate as a watercolour miniature" - Uncut

"Under the Town represents the protest of romance against life's ordinariness: small town, small life vignettes which have assumed greatness, incidents magnified through the looking glass of individual legend. Throsby reminds us that, if we would but look, we would see the fantastic all about us.****½  4½ stars"   - Alternative Ulster (UK)

"Elegant, restrained, majestic. Violins and clarinets float in like a warm breath of spring. But gentle? Well, only if you're not listening carefully. Love lost, found, or impending...these are dangerous waters. But sail them we must"  - The Courier Mail

"Like I-Spy-With-My-Little-Eye set to music, or painting pictures with notes and quavers, Under The Town is a breath of fresh air. I guarantee – whatever your mood – that for half an hour at least you'll go to places you only dreamt of and wish you could stay there forever and a day. 8/10"

                                                                                                     - Drowned in Sound (UK)

"Throsby made a quietly roiling debut with On Night, but Under the Town is sharper and yet more contemplative. Pretty and precious, durable and telling, it just might put a spell on you. 8/10"                                                                                                                      - The Sun Herald

"Startling noir-like imagery, plaintive beauty, masterful gravitas, lasting truth"  - Mess & Noise

"Throsby has constructed a set of tunes that pull you in closer and closer with each listen. While it may be delicate, sparse and ethereal in many places, it is never fragile. Under The Town is undoubtedly one of the most enthralling listens of the year."  - X Press Magazine

"Candor, intimacy and breathless delivery. A warm album for the depths of winter"  - The Age

"Hypnotizes right from the opening line. Engaged with memory, immersed in vivid intimacies...an album full of quiet victories. **** 4 stars"  - The Brag

"Touching on death, childhood and memory, with sparse instrumentation, delicately played piano and string arrangements worthy of Dirty Three maestro Warren Ellis. Melancholy romanticism tempered by youthful optimism"   - The West Australian

"Buoyant string arrangements, chopstick percussion, and chiming acoustic guitar arpeggios, Throsby's voice is uniquely intoxicating. Drawn from the same dark well as Joanna Newsom and Jolie Holland, this is a step up from the midnight acoustica of her debut. A winter album made to curl up with"   - The Drum Media 

"Throsby's is one songwriter who captures what the Portuguese call saudade, a feeling of longing that is too elusive to control and too fatalistic to fathom. Under the Town is a record of the year contender"  - Sydney Observer

Reviews for 'On Night'

"Brimful of candid, poetic disclosures delivered with a spare, Raymond Carver-like intimacy...an irrefutably original voice"   - Mojo (UK)

"Songs which feel like they have been constructed in the smallest and most solitary space. This is a sound of its own. 4 stars ****"  - Rolling Stone

"Lyrics resonating like the economic precision of a poem. Beautiful, fragile...a real pleasure."

                                                                                                               - The Australian

"A thing of quiet, luminescent beauty that gently works its way into the bloodstream. 4 stars ****"                                                                                                                - The Courier Mail

"Riddled with poignant lyrical twists, a pinch of dry humour [and] subtle instrumental flourishes"       

                                                                                                                             - Uncut (UK)

 

"Throsby sings with a knowing intimacy, like all her songs are enclosed in a secret, special place. She sings and songs shimmer gently in the morning half-light. This is something quite special"

                                                                                               - Everett True in Plan B (UK)

"A rich vein of intimate, close to the ear and even closer to the skin music, laced with a clear but never overstated sadness. Don't be scared by the rawness, though; it's done with restraint. And, like everything else on this album, it's done with grace, intimacy and an awareness that, while sometimes you just want to be soothed, caressed or laid down gently, it doesn't mean you don't want to feel"                                                                                      - The Sydney Morning Herald

"Picked guitar, wistful brass, strings and lilting piano. The album is a gem"  - Herald Sun

"Simultaneously girlish and world weary. Pretty wistfulness and confessional songwriting with the spare ghostliness of Will Oldham lurking at the edges. A - " - Barry Divola in Who Weekly

"Fragile, dark, yet oddly life-affirming"  - Brisbane Time Off

"8/10" - The Sun Herald

"Songs set under the bright full moon, delivered over the barren backdrop of broken guitars and dusty piano.  8/10"   - Drowned in Sound (UK)

"A delicious frisson of intimacy...this album feels bizarrely redemptive. We are left divested of our illusions, liberated. It is some kind of victory" - Alternative Ulster (UK)

"A songstress with literary depth of a novelist who looks into the eye of love and its social circles. Beautiful, restrained, right on target, so direct." - Neumu.net (US)

"A voice that carries these simple compositions and their delicate arrangements beyond their earthy roots and into the stratosphere. A series of perfectly structured tunes that combine achingly introspective lyrics with subtle melodic changes. Throsby is really pushing the barrow of world-class female singer/songwriters in this country. Fittingly, this album is one that just grows more special with each listen. 4 stars ****"  - The Brag

"A voice to sooth savage beasts" - The Advertiser