Melbourne musician Lachlan Denton has unveiled his much-anticipated third studio album Furnishings out via Osborne Again / Spunk Records.
As a songwriter, Lachlan Denton is mid-20 and going on 70.
Poised with wisdom beyond his years, the Naarm-based musician’s newest offering explores a wealth of home truths; retrospectively reflecting on loving relationships taken for granted and prudently documenting the shift of Denton’s life and focus from music to furniture making.
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Opener ‘Zac’ explores the linear nature of loss, with Denton powerfully singing to his deceased brother Zac, assuring him that although gone too soon, his legacy and “light still burns bright”.
“My last solo record was all for and about my little brother Zac. After I wrote that record, I decided I wanted to write songs for all the members of my immediate family, to say the things that could easily go unsaid before our time is up. I wanted to pick up where I left off with a song for Zac to open the record. Zac is omnipresent in my life. I think about him every day and I find I’m always re-visiting the moments we spent together. I was thinking about the idea of time not being linear. What if all those moments we spent together were all happening all at once, just as the present,” Denton says of the single.
“As if in this moment we were on the stage again together or on my grandparents farm in the school holidays of our youth. I guess this song is about saying, no one moment has any more meaning than another, and that although Zac isn’t here now, in a tactile sense, those moments from another time, we spent together, can still have the same weight as the present, if we wish to see if that way.”
The commemorative ‘Braeside’ explores Denton’s longing for simple yet unattainable enjoyments such as enjoying “a hot cup of nan’s Milo one last time”, whilst ‘Dad’ talks about maturing as a man, presenting realisations of accountability through a series of conflicts faced with his father growing up.
They are lamentations laid bare, again delineating Denton as a lyricist unafraid to leave himself unguarded. But whilst the lyrics may be vulnerable in nature, Furnishings’ is presented through a mirage of vibrant pop-rock melodies and the upbeat, jangle-pop sensibility of Echo & the Bunnymen.
This gives Furnishings an overall tonal quality that feels too experimental to act as Denton’s musical retirement. And considering the level of depth its lyrical content conveys, it doesn’t seem like he has finished saying everything he has to say yet.
This leaves me with the impression that although Denton may be moving onto furniture making for now, he’s not done with music yet.
Check out the album here.
