Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Kate Ceberano, Steve Kilbey and Sean Sennett, Universal Music Australia 2020.
I raved recently about the work of Rob Hirst and Sean Sennett on their recent EP, Driver Reviver, and now I’m doing the same for this fantastic album. It seems that Sean Sennett may be the secret ingredient that makes these collaborations so enticing.
Kate Ceberano and Sean Sennett have been friends for a long time and they’ve often talked about doing an album together. As the pair finally began work on that album, Sean met Steve Kilbey at a writers’ festival and they struck up a friendship. Over the months they discussed songs and songwriting at length and decided it would be a good idea to see what would come from collaboration.
It was Sean who invited Steve Kilbey to contribute to a song he was penning for Kate Ceberano called All Tied Up, however he didn’t tell Steve who it was for.
Not only did Sean not tell Steve who was the recipient of the lyrics, he didn’t tell Kate of Kilbey’s involvement in the writing process because he didn’t want her musical decisions to be clouded by the knowledge of who contributed the lyrics. Sean and Kate were three or four songs into the project before Sean finally told Kate that Steve was writing for her.
And so the pattern was set in place. Kate would receive the lyrics from her interstate collaborators, and she would set about putting them to music.
The Dangerous Age is full of wonderful songs and sonic surprises, not only for the listeners but also for Sean and Steve.
Apart from, My Restless Heart, which Sean and Kate wrote in a room together, the rest of the 12 songs were developed from lyrics mailed to Kate that later reappeared as fully-formed songs that arrived in Steve and Sean’s inboxes.
And they were amazed at the outcome. Steve sums up the finished songs perfectly: “Everything Kate did with the lyrics surprised me no end. She made them her own in a wonderfully unfathomable way.”
Kate recorded the album with her co-producer, Rod Bustos in Melbourne and Steve and Sean added their parts in Sydney and Brisbane before final mixing in Brisbane by Jason Millhouse.
The Dangerous Age is a wonderful album and testament to the extraordinary skills of three master musicians
This album is on high rotation in my household. It’s head and shoulders above anything else I’ve heard recently.
