After a period of regeneration, the fifth vinyl release from Melbourne’s Super Falling Star, continues in the theme of loss, longing and love with Dead Letters/The Fading Light/A Good Map

In 1976, Australian folk singer Doug Ashdown produced a glorious ballad, Winter in America (Leave Love Enough Alone), his only hit single to date. The mournful longing of the song touches anyone who hears it. In Dead Letters, Super Falling Star who happen also to be Australian may have produced something of an answer song to Ashdown's. The lyrics are a defeated, grieving expression of emotional depression. However, in contrast, the music speaks of a burning, purposeful drive to succeed. Like a migratory bird powering towards a destination it has never seen, or the distant, pulsing gleam from a lighthouse through heavy rain, the music of Dead Letters has direction, fire and a heady drama. It is surely the peak, to date, of this remarkable band's achievement.

By contrast, in The Fading Light, music and lyric go hand in hand, responding to each other with a secret delight in their own mystery. One can imagine this song as the aural equivalent of old family super 8 films; a spirit (if not a sprite!) of a song with an aura deeper than colour. Sex, secrets and intimacy rub shoulders in this dark, compelling mix.

A Good Map is a light-hearted paean to geography. Imagine if Patrick White's Voss had been a comedy Voss played by, say, Graeme Blundell or Richard O'Sullivan rather than the epic tragedy of the twentieth century. Light-hearted, throwaway, it is nevertheless classic pop artifice in all its glory.

Three songs, then, that deal with three different perspectives on love and loss. Dead Letters and A Good Map are both serenades to absence; One mournful, the other joyous; one taking no comfort in the loss of a loved one, the other celebrating the collection of new experience to be shared at a later date. The Fading Light is a different kind of travel; a journey into the mind, memory and scrapbooks of faded romance.

Super Falling Star have done it again.

The fifth vinyl release of this Melbourne outfit continues on in with themes of loss, longing and love. Three songs which range from having fire and a heady drama to light hearted pop gems. For fans of all things space.

Dead Letters There are 3 songs on this 7" and they are great if you are the type who loves pretty guitars with nice vocals. They love dreamy reverbed-out pop music and it shows on this 7". Great release!