Sophie Koh All Shook Up by: Steve Scully Mon:04-Aug-08 Label: In-Fidelity Year: 2008 WB rating 71 out of 100

Forever the bulwark of Australian music talent, radio station Triple J has had continued success with one of their more celebrated gimmicks: Triple J Unearthed. For some recent discoveries, we can be grateful (Wireless Bollinger’s love of the likes of Oh Mercy and Institut Polaire is well-known), but we can also attribute to Richard Kingsmill and his loyal cohort some considerable blame for many objects of abhorrence: see Grinspoon, Missy Higgins and The Bumblebeez, 1995, 2001 and 2002 winners respectively. Always apparently the advocate for everything underdog, everything ‘indie’, JJJ have taken a step backwards of late, preferring to adopt a more traditional stance: one firmly in line with the vogue, and one either appealing to the lowest common denominator, or working in favour of to a far-too-select few (see the recent treatment of ‘Aussie Hip-Hop’, and the airwaves’ dominance by barely a handful of artists).

Another artist to have benefited from Triple J’s archaeological exploits has been Northern Territorian Sophie Koh, who was named as one of the winners of the 2003 competition. Over the years, her fame has been modest in comparison with some of her predecessors (the aforementioned Higgins for one), but overwhelming in contrast to the majority (who the fuck knows where bands such as Fizard and Shifter have disappeared to?). Any success or praise that Ms Koh has garnered, however, has been in light of her forays into the dark realms of the ‘cover version’ rather than for any work of her own: on the fantastic Finn Brothers tribute album, She Will Have Her Way, Koh covered one of Tim Finn’s (or, as I prefer to call him, the lesser Finn) better tracks, ‘Charlie’, and her cover of the perennial crowd-favourite, if not band-favourite, Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ snuck onto Triple J’s playlist for a while too. With All Shook Up, Koh not only reminds us that she actually can write her own songs, but produces an assured, if unspectacular follow-up to her rather lovely debut, All the Pretty Boys.

From opener and title-track ‘All Shook Up’, Koh’s intentions are clear. There is no real groundbreaking activity going on here, just some basic, pretty songwriting. The lyrics are bland and mundane, without the pejorative overtones of these adjectives: “I’m better now, I can be so careless/I feel the cold and sometimes get jealous/So jealous, and I get…” Koh sings, in an understated, mid-range, tuneful twitter. There’s not much that sets this track apart from the modern female folky, singer-songwriter paradigm, but what does stand out is that the extraordinary bits and pieces, the little tweaks here and there, are so brilliantly restrained so as never to take the attention away from Koh’s fragile individuality: the fantastic rhythm section, gorgeous backing vocals, and producer-credited electro clicks and whirls.

All throughout All Shook Up, the basic elements of the songs seem relatively insubstantial and unimpressive. Koh’s voice never really soars, the lyrics never really captivate, but all the ancillary elements and clever decision-making really set Koh apart from the norm. In the dark ‘Milk Song’, it comes in the guise of some superb drumming from Phil Collings, in ‘Superstar’ the captivating a capella opening, and for a great deal of the album there is some ingenious instrumentation. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing over-the-top on show here, rather, a graceful grandeur: it’s hardly Arcade Fire bluster, but some of Koh’s sporadic moments of multi-vocal, multi-instrumental whimsy truly impress. Much of this can be credited to producer J Walker: the use of chinese erhu, multi-layered vocals and a subtle electro pulse on ‘Objects in this Mirror’ make it more of a Bjork-lite piece than another easy listening Clare Bowditch-style number, and Koh should be proud of this.

Not every artist is out there to make ground-breaking music, and not every artist is capable of doing so. Sophie Koh takes a leaf from the New Buffalo book, and All Shook Up is not entirely dissimilar from Sally Seltmann’s Somewhere, Anywhere: it’s a quiet, subtle achievement by a songwriter who starts with the basics and builds from there. The songs are simple; the production – when Koh and co. tinker with the basic, acoustic skeleton of each song – is where All Shook Up succeeds beyond all expectations.