Tina Harrod’s City of Longing is Eastside Radio’s Album of the Week.

Songwriter and vocalist, Tina Harrod, releases a breathtaking new album CITY OF LONGING, with an incredible launch concert recently at The Clovelly Bowling Club, Clovelly, on Wednesday 11 April.

City of Longing was co-written and produced by brilliant composer/pianist STU HUNTER who has worked with Passenger, silverchair, Portishead, Alex Lloyd, Delta Goodrem, Russell Crowe, Katie Noonan and many others.

Tina’s fifth album takes her songwriting and mind-blowing vocal skills to another plane. City of Longing is an emotionally charged, soul-wrenching set with real musical depth, performed by creative and adventurous musicians.

“My goal is to achieve cohesion, marrying different styles and ideas together to create their own sound. I don’t want to make a new soul record or a new funky jazz album; I want to create something that is unknown to me. Stu (Hunter) recorded and mixed the whole album. He went above and beyond with this project – meticulously researching and boldly experimenting with sounds – which is time consuming and it is really thanks to him that that I have an album I am really proud of.”

Photograph by Suz Forrester

★★★★½

This is the album Tina Harrod had in her all along. Here there’s no attempt to be something, whether an R&B singer, a jazz singer or anything else. Here she just is. Harrod always had the ability to sing with such conviction as to make listening convulsive, but the good songs were muddied by ordinary ones. Now she has achieved the exceptional, almost song by song and bar by bar. Alongside her spearing lyrics a huge slice of the credit goes to her chief collaborator, Stu Hunter, one of Australia’s most imaginative and ambitious composers. Their jointly-penned songs defy categorisation and continually jolt the listener with improbable musical leaps – not to be arty for the sake of it, but simply to maximise each song’s potential. Further realising that potential is brilliant musicianship and production. Hunter, who plays keyboards as well as producing, is joined by guitarist Cameron Deyell, bassist Dave Symes and drummer Evan Mannell, with backing singers, horns, guests, a string quartet and even a choir. Burning through the dazzling arrangements comes Harrod’s voice, a blowtorch of intensity that can subside to moments of affecting tenderness. It’s launched at the Clovelly Bowling Club, April 11 – JOHN SHAND