Lack The Low’s God-Carrier, a record brazenly pushing the boundaries of avant-pop.
Returning with a swathe of rich, textured melodies, Kat Hunter’s experimental pop project Lack The Low reaches new heights on God-Carrier. Listeners have drawn comparisons between her and Anna Meredith, These New Puritans, Joanna Newsom, Son Lux and Olga Bell -and considering Hunter’s impressive vocal ability and her flourishing compositions, it’s easy to understand why. Every lyric simmers with feeling, every track heaves with urgency – it’s a record as commanding as a riptide, with enough strength to draw you under in each fleeting moment.
“There are a lot of fun and really challenging vocal parts in this record as well, but I think the biggest changes over the last few years have been in my approach to production.” says Hunter. “I took a lot of time developing my recording, producing and mixing skills for this record. It also uses a lot more synths and guitars and has a more refined feel overall I think.”
Both the second single from God Carrier and the first track off the record, Rushlight is a bold beginning to a record of depth and countless complexities – and stands as one of Hunter’s most ambitious compositions yet. Pairing up with Adam Betts (Three Trapped Tigers) on drums, Hunter puts her voice to the test, at times simmering and others bringing it to unfathomable heights. Several different threads of synth work thatch across each other, rising, falling and weaving into a boisterous gestalt of sound. The end of the track is heralded by a magnificent key change, ringing in deconstruction in the form of a roar of distortion and drumming.
“Rushlight is the most aggressive song on the album,” begins Hunter, “and it’s really an enquiry into orthodoxies and how they are used to subjugate people in hierarchical systems. At the time I was writing it, I was thinking a lot about hierarchical systems generally, but especially regarding my own experiences within the music industry and music education. I was thinking about how industry-wide ideas about ‘the right way to do things’ and what makes ‘valuable’ work, and ‘valuable’ artists, had become totally poisonous, and created an environment in which people would be made to feel unwelcome, and unworthy and eventually pushed into giving up their own convictions, and their own sense of deserving basic human decency and respect.”
“The name Rushlight comes from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, in which a man gaslights and psychologically torments his wife into submission. In one scene, forcing her to agree with him, he states that the sun is actually the moon and eventually she gives in, saying ‘And be it moon, or sun, or whatever you please. And if you please to call it a rush-candle, Henceforth, I vow, it shall be so for me.’”
Following the release of her debut One Eye Closed, Hunter has developed a reputation from critics for her stunning voice and an approach to song-writing that leaves listeners pondering the nature of form and existentialism – and which has secured her a slot at ArcTanGent 2022.
God-Carrier is a continuation of the depth that listeners have come to expect from her, something that surpasses standards of composition and in lyricism. The record truly pushes the envelope for Australian pop sensibilities, and is a must-hear for lovers of electronica and powerful vocals.
Lack The Low’s God-Carrier is out 11 March on Art As Catharsis.
