Local Roots

24 Jul 2018

Album Review – Amy Shark’s Love Monster

Reviewer – Tristan Winter

Amy Shark’s highly anticipated debut album Love Monster is finally here! Her debut EP Night Thinker won the ARIA Award for Best Pop Release and Love Monster is sure to do the same!

Love Monster is definitely an apt title for the debut album. The Gold Coast singer delivers a raw, gutsy album displaying the incredible highs and the devastating lows of relationships and love. This album is slow burning and easy on the earholes, but once it gets to going it will most likely burn your god damn house down.

Shark shares specific details about love stories. Love Monster is an incredibly refreshing take on relationships. Rather than playing games Shark dives straight in and shows a striking vulnerability and doesn’t hold back as she sings about subjects that we all feel, but can’t talk about because it might not be considered the right thing to do.

She has teamed up with some impressive producers and artists on Love Monster. Dann Hume (who has worked with Troye Sivan, Lisa Mitchell and Matt Corby), Bleachers lead singer Jack Antonoff and Grammy Award winning producer Joel Little (who has worked with Lorde and Broods).

Love Monster only has one vocal feature which is the eighth track Psycho and it is from Mark Hoppus from Blink 182, one of her childhood heroes. This track is brutally honest, as all the lyrics are presented like poetry.

And I ask you cause I wanna know. Not because I’m psycho. Just because I care a lot. And I touch you the way I do cause I’m falling in love with you and I don’t do this every day.

With the layered vocals and acoustic guitars this song will send chills down your spine as this song displays the confusion of falling in love. Where as, songs like Leave Us Alone and The Slow Song capture the heartbreak of a failing relationship and Middle of the Night capture the angst and despair, but the album manages to capture the best and worst of a relationship.

The whole album has this lingering nostalgia and something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. As I was listening to it I was reminded of the 90’s and sometimes her style was reminiscent of a young Alanis Morrisette and her voice like Sinead O’Connor.

With this album Amy Shark has cemented her place in the music industry and this will be the first LP of many. Throughout listening to this I found myself actually having to pause the album to pull myself together before I started crying especially with songs like “I’m a Liar, The Idiot, Middle of the Night, Never Coming Back and Psycho”. After listening to it 3 times on repeat I am emotionally drained and I need a drink. Great debut album. It is poetry!

Amy Shark will be embarking on a national tour in August and September.

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