Jen Cloher
★★★
I Am The River, The River Is Me
MILK!/MARATHON ARTISTS. CD/DL/LP
Heartfelt reckoning with home and identity from Aussie singer-songwriter.
There’s a track on Jen Cloher’s fifth solo LP called Protest Song, a deliberately mellow meditation on the uses and limits of music that begins with the story of a distraught woman coming backstage and pleading “we need to do something”. I Am The River, The River Is Me is Cloher’s decisive something – a fierce engagement with the singer’s Māori heritage that opens conversations about land, culture, justice and sexuality. While there’s blazing anger at colonialism’s “genocidal legacy” on Being Human – Cloher backed by the haka chants of group Te Hononga o ngā Iwi – these songs also convey a jubilant selfrealisation, especially on the Sleater-Kinney crispness of Aroha Mai, Aroha Atu, or the soulful Mana Takatāpui, titled after a Māori term for “a person who is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.” Cloher’s light touch makes it easy to follow their instructions: “Staying human is listening, listening, listening.”