Jen Cloher - Jen Cloher

The Guardian 80

(Milk!)

You’re a wry, thoughtful Australian singer-songwriter and label owner, feted on your national scene. Suddenly, your other half – another wry, thoughtful Australian singer-songwriter – gets famous beyond either of your wildest DIY dreams. The cocktail of love and paranoia can only come out in song: Forgot Myself, the raw-nerve lead track on Jen Cloher’s fourth album, or the more serene Sensory Memory; significantly, that’s Courtney Barnett on guitar. Cloher’s work is characterised by searing honesty on this, and other granular subjects. Great Australian Bite analyses the lot of Australian artists with mighty, acidic, reverberating Crazy Horse guitars. Cloher and her band can do Sleater-Kinney-ish post-punk (Strong Woman) and the Velvet Underground via Bill Callahan (Analysis Paralysis), but are particularly enjoyable on songs like the dreamlike Regional Echo, when Cloher sounds least like Barnett.