Bill Wells vs Maher Shalal Hash Baz

Recently, I filled in a questionnaire for Plan B. One of the questions was "which adjective never gets used about you that should". I answered "fragile".

I'm soothed and awed by the new collaborative album between Bill Wells and Maher Shalal Hash Baz. Beauty is often intimidating. Uplifting can lapse into boorish. It's easy to overplay your hand when you're dealing with emotions.

The films I like to watch have unconnected detail playing in the background. The music I enjoy listening to isn't polished. When I think of shows I miss in Brighton, I sometimes lament I'm no longer able to pop out down the Westhill and watch Hamilton Yarns or the trickling cadenzas of Crayola Lectern. I miss that gentle sense of community.

I have this, and of course I'm grateful. I just wish I had a few more.

This slow-burning album from Bill Wells and MHSB is everything I loved about Tenniscoats' show in Brisbane a few months back, of which I wrote... Guitar solos are plucked out, deconstructed but not snidely. The innards of the piano double as percussion. One song is played out on the rims of wine glasses. There is much bowing, and laughter. The set is nothing if not too brief – but it lingers for weeks afterwards. The set is brief but is more than generous: psych-folk lapping in the slipstream, Orson Welles' The Third Man lit by Queensland sunlight, Glasgow among the dreaming spires... but with gorgeous, fragile brass parping and plaintively calling out among the ripples of percussion, the wonderful off-key melodies.

The cover art alone should be enough to convince you.