- Best known as half of dub pop band HTRK, Jonnine Standish has always had strong ties to a community of like-minded musicians and artists in Australia. Immortalised to many as the eponymous femme fatale in Rowland S. Howard’s I Know A Girl Called Johnnie, Standish has a cool and distant demeanour that no doubt precedes her. Somewhat surprisingly, Super Natural marks Jonnine’s first solo outing. The uncharacteristic move to recording under on an individual basis attributed to a suggestion by her therapist.
Keeping with the occult implications of the title, references to astrology and vampires are pointedly directed at the dynamics of personal relationships, with the usual dose of drama implied. The preoccupation with astrology extends on the themes explored on HTRK’s recent album Venus In Leo. While Super Natural offers a sparser and generally more instinctive picture of the archetypes that Jonnine had explored with HTRK bandmate Nigel Yang.
Reprising his role on guitar, Yang plucks comfortably along to the dark synth pulses of You Can Leave The Vampires. An appeal to a formerly close friend to leave their toxic relationships behind. Forefronting her voice, Scorpio Rises Again waltzes dreamily over a drifting bass line and gloomy burst of synth brass. Fingers start clicking as an airy synth line drifts over. Jonnine oscillating between the phantasmagorically sinister and threateningly cautionary.
You’re Wanting It To Go This Way features stark and ghostly metallic drones, reverberating hi-hats and deep percussive hits ringing out over a minimal 808-driven dub techno beat. Musically, it’s an immediate contrast to HTRK’s lush guitar melodies and tighter rhythms, letting Jonnie slip effortlessly into a more brooding and introspective side of her personality. Echoes of clave punctuate Jonnine’s diatribe, which asserts a vehement individualism. Meditating on the bare-bones instinctive direction of a fatalistically defined will she sings: “No inner-city, no inner gardens / Only instinct on MSG / No director directing me / and my internal symphony.”
Exploring a state of seeming quiet depersonalisation, Jonnine enquires deeply into the glances of those around her on I Don’t Seem Myself Tonight. Stabs of guitar and pulsating percussion float on melodic kick drums. Her partner Conrad Standish, recently known as one-half of CS + Kreme, harmonises along supportively reinforcing Jonnine’s sudden introspection and distance, playing the grounding presence to her out of this realm cool demeanor, extending a hand back.
Even amongst the contributions from some very familiar company, Jonnine carves out a defined place for her individual identity across Super Natural. Personal identity comes to be the main preoccupation amongst the brooding sounds and those occult hooks. It’s a strong, short and sweet debut that is defined amongst, but naturally not against, Jonnine’s other creative manifestations. In particular, it points to how the self can be defined and recognised in flux and amongst the seemingly static figures that the individual necessarily reflects off, whether they be friends, partners or constellations of stars in the sky.
- Jaden Gallagher.