Jonnine
– Southside Girl

The album takes you through many familiar sonic spaces: a living room, chirps of birds, neighbour’s dog, cicadas, grandfather clock, metallic cutlery, popping candy, grinding pepper, crackling fire, shower running across the hall, abrasion of a knife against toast and a rehearsal of Mozart’s Turkish March. The constant wash of white noise places us in the hollow of a seashell. I’m left wondering which track had what sound. Or perhaps none of these noises are in the record at all and are merely an echo of my own memories, or the result of degrading noise cancellation.

The album features collaborations with Melbourne percussionist Maria Moles across a number of tracks. “Roccoco” is a highlight on this front, a play of timbre that feels tactile. It sounds as if it’s right at the tips of my fingers in clatters and rattles that feel all too familiar around the house. Wind chimes act not only as angelic drones but also signifiers of seaside wind. On interlude “Wrong Instinct,”  a shrill and haunting recorder initially sounds much like the abrupt chord of a train horn – a beautifully dissonant, unnerving and uncomfortable break in a record that otherwise settles peacefully like dust on a bookshelf.

The vocal tracks on the album never disturb the peace. Even on the most upbeat song, “Ornament” – ‘upbeat’ being a generous and maybe cruel exaggeration – the song plays as a gentle murmur that feels more like a living room recital. Sitting in the sweet stability of repeated bass line and muted drums, Jonnine is bare and tender. In tracks where vocals are more obviously manipulated – “The Bell Chimes” – Jonnine embodies something more enchanting, bewitching even.

Being about seaside suburbia, Southside Girl is a thoughtful painting of setting and memory that doesn’t fall into the cliches of gulls and gushing waves. Jonnine’s take is far more romantic and tangible, the scrapes of everyday and reverb of expanse.

Words by Rhea Thomas