Matt Shea holds it down, with or without the four pound
You haven’t heard of Milly Moodie (that counts for the Australians who read this site). And good luck finding out any more about her because she’s swinging one of those really great but really annoying monikers that’s almost impossible to Google search. Jesus I have the internet attention span of my four-year-old nephew. Throw me a bone here, people.
Anyway anyway, after some serious creeping on the internet I’ve found out two things. 1.) Moodie was on Australian Idol in 2005. Dang. 2.) Moodie ’s been travelling Melbourne’s live scene for at least five years, dabbling in roots, reggae and soul — most prominently, it seems, with a band called The Vanillas. And it’s the kind of thing you encounter frequently in the Victorian capital: on any given night you can easily run into any number of terrific live performers — so much so that you imagine it being hard for someone to stick out from the crowd and make a successful leap to record.
But Moodie is making a play for it. And in the process she’s dropped the Milly, taken a break from the band and done some serious growing up. There’s a lower pitch, deeper timbre and more nuanced delivery on “Show Me” — the sound of someone who has made peace with the knocks of adulthood and started to catalogue the hurt.
And behind the boards is one half of one of Australia’s best rap duos, Diafrix. When I heard MoMo was dabbling in more production work I only paid half a mind. It seemed it would be a sideline affair given the more recent Diafrix records have featured Australian hit-maker, Styalz Fuego. But Mo has a serious gift: “Show Me”’s verses bubble with hesitant percussion, suppressed organ and half scratches, until the chorus arrives, breaking into a rumbling, back alley bass that’s ready to swallow Moodie’s cracking vocals.
It might just be the sweetest thing you’ll hear all week. At the very least, It’ll make you want to take the rest of the day off and listen to Massive Attack’s Blue Lines over and over and over…
