Album review: Candy – Everything in Motion
When you’re down and out your mind puts everything under the microscope; your relationships, your actions, your words, why you’re doing what you’re doing… everything. Candy (Calum Newton, formerly of Amyl and the Sniffers) gathers and bottles this and many other emotions and pours it out in dreamy, jangly waves across his beautiful new album, Everything in Motion.
(Intro) kicks the album off and the snippets of voicemail recordings remind you of those long periods going without talking to family members, playing phone tag and feeling like everyone’s forgotten you. The bright and poppy Familiar then puts Everything in Motion and you’re on a journey. Calum recently stated “I think a good deal came from a place of honesty though but I won’t lie a couple are just little old stories haha.” so these songs are open for interpretation. Familiar, then, could be a self-reflection of losing sight of yourself; it could be about someone in middle age wondering where it all went wrong; or it could be made up. One thing I can say with certainty, though, is that it is a brilliant piece of song writing that instantly draws you in.
Feeling lonely when you know you’re loved and have heaps of people around you is one of the most debilitating side-effects of anxiety and depression. Calum captures this many times across Everything in Motion but perhaps most poignantly with the upfront and honest third track, Feel. “I wanna be left alone/but I want you thinking of me/how self-centred can I be?” on the surface is a pretty selfish lyric, but it’s one of the album’s most relatable and memorable lines. Throughout the middle part of the album, feelings of whether you should give it up and thoughts of what legacy you’ll leave or if you’ll be forgotten are woven together by light and tight guitar lines and steady, repetitive drums.
Having recently left my family and most of my friends in the Sunshine State for something of a sabbatical in Sydney for four years and returned home, my personal highlight is the exceptional Sorry, Sydney. “There’s no geographical solution to an emotional problem” is a thought I associate with my time in the harbour city and this tune is the musical equivalent of that. The crackly voicemail which introduces this stunning album returns in the stand-out second-last track, Just Another, with Pa’s belated birthday message to Calum, and reminds you that no matter what shit you go through and the swirling thoughts of isolation and constant insecurities, you’re always loved and thought of by those that matter.
The breezy final track (thornbury) finds Calum back in his little pocket in the north of Melbourne and he’s content. After all: home is where the heart is. There might be holes in the walls and he’s surrounded by mould, but he wouldn’t change a thing.
Review by Matt Lengren.
Get the album here.
