‘Meant For The Sky’ Album Launch

Zac Gunthorpe and friends want you to join them in celebrating the release of Zac’s latest LP ‘Meant For The Sky’.

The record is sultry. Deep and brooding. It slows you down and demands you listen, and it’s in this listening – the first time, the second, the third – that you find more, then more again and again. For there’s a lot going on within the ten-song confines of Meant For The Sky, the third long-player from Queensland artist Zac Gunthorpe, crafted as it is with the love and attention to the songs themselves, that has become the raison d’etre of this burgeoning musical talent”.

Meant For The Sky sees Gunthorpe’s love of songcraft evolve further, while still retaining the foundations he’s always built from as a songwriter. “I’ve really tried to stay true to that very first feeling, when I’m writing,” he concurs. “I’ve been tuning into that more and more, [And then in the studio], trying to capture that first feeling again, I liken it to the first time you catch a wave, [or like the first time you take a step],” he adds. “It may not be a feeling you remember, because you do it so many times after that (and most of the time in a way we consider better), but in that first moment, there’s something really special, something magical that happens, that wont be felt again”.

Meant For The Sky is a special album. Produced and recorded straight to tape by sonic magician Jamie Trevaskis at Wild Mountain Studio with Brisbane outfit Mexico City as his backing band, Gunthorpe has fashioned a collection of songs that draw you in, each and every one of them having something to say and a unique way of saying it. And these songs seem in no hurry; no matter the pace of the track, Gunthorpe gives the songs space, letting them take their time in speaking and unfurling.

Layering these small pieces of Australiana – with their tales of what it is to be alive in times of turmoil, finding peace among it all – is the sort of sound one would associate with Neil Young hanging out in Laurel Canyon in the 1960s, but with added layers that bring to mind the bands Gunthorpe has been watching so closely these years past.

Joe Cryle’s pedal steel plays a starring role throughout Meant For The Sky, ably bookended with subtle guitar work courtesy of Gunthorpe, Adam Toole and Simon Radich, Ben Carsten’s drums and percussion and Conrad Taylor’s bass playing cutting a trench through which all else flows. It’s a strong and assured record, underpinned of course with Gunthorpe’s remarkable ability to craft a song, to give it the attention it needs to then thrive. 

Sultry. Deep and brooding. You need to listen.

Samuel J. Fell – 

With Special Guests 

Mexico City

Brisbane alt-country rock troupers Mexico City are back with their latest release, Closer To Home. 

Produced by Jamie Trevaskis at his Wild Mountain Sound studio in Brisbane’s hinterland, the new album combines the crackle and spark of the five-piece’s garage rock roots with a side serving of tough but tender country soul, thanks in large part to the band’s newest members, Conrad Taylor on bass guitar and Joe Cryle on pedal and lap steel guitar.

Put down live to tape, the album reflects the pastoral environment in which it was recorded, with bird calls and other ambient noises heard in the record’s quieter moments, plus a couple of epic guitar workouts mirroring the expansive night skies they were performed under. 

Australia’s roots music bible, Rhythms, said Closer to Home distills “elements of alt-country, blues and soul into a rough-hewn country rock gem, ragged in its glory and yet evoking that uniquely Australian feeling of the wide-open spaces…Mexico City charter the parched terrain where The Dingoes once roamed, uncompromisingly evocative artisans of Oz rock, [and] there’s no higher praise than that.

Hannah Jane

Sultry singer-songwriter Hannah Jane, founding member of SWEET FORMIDABLES will strip back to an acoustic solo performance to warm the stage and evoke the spirits.
Combining old violin & haunting harmony, her songs are from the heart & have been written throughout the years spanning over 2 decades.