Julia Stone/The memory machine

Sometimes, time spent surfing around in the Wikipedia is worth it. (Sometimes not!) You get information and cross-links between topics you haven’t thought about before. I do this occasionally for musicians to see if they’ve done something new, where their background lies and where they’re from.

This was the case with Julia Stone. Usually she’s playing with her brother Angus as Angus & Julia Stone, but somehow she made a solo album as well (So did her brother, but I couldn’t get a hand on that, yet).

If you’ve have already listened to Angus & Julia Stone you might learn that this album doesn’t go that far. It comes pretty close, which in my eyes shows how great the music they produce actually is, but without her brother something seems to be missing for me. Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not saying that when she’s making it up to 80 percent of their previous albums her brother just is worth the last 20 percent. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just the same with his solo album. But the final bit in the music seems to missing. It’s lacking the variations their duets are colored with. The warm and playful expression of the music stepped a bit behind, behind a more sad themed songwriting.

From the perspective of a solo album “The memory Machine” is great. If you never got warm with Angus voice you might actually find what you were looking for in the previous albums.