ALBUM – Keith Urban

[Published in the Review section of The Weekend Australian, Sep 28 2024]

Keith Urban is one of those artists who always seems to have been there, seamlessly melding into multiple scenes, all the while producing music that continues, thirty-four years after the release of his eponymous Australian debut, to strike chords all around the world. Urban’s latest release then, exists as a celebration of his love for making music, a process he describes as, “timeless, it’s weightless, and I feel euphoric – I feel high,” hence the album’s title. Beginning with a rather inexplicable twelve-second intro, High kicks off proper with Straight Line, a rumination on leaving monotony behind, driven by surging guitar and backing harmonies which is indicative of a good deal of the record, the songs mainly displaying that upbeat, big-country motif that plays so well in arenas the globe over; Wildside, all banjos and electric guitars, and the semi-anthemic Heart Like A Hometown being prime examples. 

The centrepiece of the record however, is undoubtedly Go Home W U, featuring vocals from country superstar Lainie Wilson, whose voice is indeed “the real deal.” So much so, as she delivers her lines over what is a cleverly crafted piece of pop/country, that one wishes she were present on more than just the single track. As a result, following song Chuck Taylors, needs to carry on the momentum, which it just manages to do, upbeat percussion adorning a song about young love, “hangin’ in there just like Chuck Taylors on a power line.”

If there’s a downside to Urban’s eleventh solo studio record, it’s that it lacks any real edge, both sonically and lyrically. But then, if one thinks about it, the lack of anything remotely controversial is a huge part of the appeal of Urban’s music to his fans – while he indeed writes from the heart here, looking for a bit of grit, the underlying messaging of High is that of hope and positivity, that perhaps there’s a way through it all and if you follow that path, you’ll come out the other side a decent person doing decent things. The record’s production is complicit in this too, in that it’s big and lush and has no sharp corners and so fits nicely into the ‘roadtrip aesthetic’ whereby you play it loud and sing the choruses with the windows down and the wind in your hair as you travel to new places, leaving the old behind; High indeed follows a time-worn formula.

The album comes to a close via the party track Laughin’ All The Way To The Drank, which crams in too much and so seems more a mess than a song, the album then righting itself at the death with the nostalgic Break The Chain, bookending an album of what Keith Urban does best, which is being Keith Urban.

Samuel J. Fell