The Adelaide-based Jen Lush started to release her solo music in 2017, since appearing at events across Australia. Her 2021 album ‘Let Loose The Beating Birds’ saw various acclaim from reaching 11 on Three D’s top 100+1 and won the ARBA Roots Album of the Year. The artist is becoming increasingly more notable as she continues to expand on her intimate but innovative signature sound.
Jen Lush’s latest project is ‘Hum of the mettle’ an album commissioned for the Denmark Festival of Voice (WA) and showcasing contemporary Australian poetry. Jen is the perfect artist to bring this concept to life, showcasing each bit of writing with thought and understanding, bringing a wistfulness, strength and depth to the lyrics whilst providing audiences with shimmering vocal performances and dreamy instrumentation. A folk-rooted span of instruments with hazy electric guitars, glowing acoustic lines and gentle but steadfast drums all feeding into the beauty of each track. Melodies are angelic, audiences watching them rise and fall gracefully and keep you at full engagement from start to finish.
Jen explains, “This record came out of a commissioned project to create new songs around contemporary Australian poetry. It features the words of five of Australia’s leading published poets and crosses through the urban and desert terrain of South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia with poems that speak of love and desolation, loss and memory, the resilience of the country and the stories held within it.
I want to share the poetry that roared, bled, whispered and sang into my skin and caused me to sing it back. As a collection they form a dynamic range from epic 70’s rock soundscapes, sudden storms of explosive pop, driving indie folk-rock and whispering, sparse ballads that build to cathartic crescendos. The band blends vocals stark and spacious over sonorous acoustic and electric guitars, keys, bass, drums and percussion, with storytelling always at the centre.”
