Review: Georgia Fair ‘All Through Winter’

Georgia Fair’s debut album ‘All Through Winter’ shows that, even without picture frames, milk drinks, and guest singers, the New South Wales band’s beautiful brand of introspective folk music really does speak for itself.

‘All Through Winter’ takes everything that we already love about Georgia Fair’s music and puts it into full-length album form. It is a record full of impeccably constructed indie pop songs, as pure as they are unassuming. If there’s one way to describe the album it is pleasant and inoffensive: it would take a huge effort to dislike ‘All Through Winter’.

But the true skill of Georgia Fair is in making music that is both pleasant and powerful. It’s all very well to construct a nice folk record, but to construct an album as powerful as ‘All Through Winter’ whilst not losing any accessibility is a true achievement. Some songs spark nostalgia, others a sense of loss, others joy. The record takes you through a wide range of emotions, but the one constant is the gorgeous acoustic music and two-part harmonising vocals that hold you by the hand and guide you gently the whole way through.

There has been a ton of diverse and enjoyable Australian music coming out lately, but there’s still something refreshing about an album structured mostly around two guys, their voices, and acoustic instruments. Bill Reynolds has done an amazing job of preserving this purity in production, making the album sound raw and genuine at the same time as it does polished and clean.

Times Fly, taken from Georgia Fair’s previous EP of the same name, is the perfect opening track, easing you into the record with a sense of familiarity and setting up what is to come. There are other previously released tracks on the record as well such as Float Away, and old favourite Simple Man gets a rework with the addition of drums and a new arrangement that turns it into a fully fledged song and one of the real highlights of the album.

There may be no Marianne, Little While, or Something Easy, but those who have seen Georgia Fair live before will still recognise plenty of songs here.Where You Been?, the first official single from the album, has been tested extensively live, and translates to studio form perfectly as a quintessential sophisticated folk offering.

Early in their career, Georgia Fair risked being pigeon-holed as a band to soundtrack roadtrips. Thankfully they’ve thrown off this categorisation with their debut album- sure there are plenty of upbeat summery tracks full of nostalgia and wanderlust, none moreso than Morning Light, but overall the album, fittingly, definitely has more of a winter vibe going on. 

‘All Through Winter’ is a whimsical, evocative, introspective, nostalgic, and subtly powerful record. Sure it’s laidback and cruisy, but to classify it as just that would be doing a discredit to the depth of songwriting on display here. It’s a record that can be whatever you want it to be, whether that be a summer soundtrack or an album to listen to in front of a warm fire during winter. It’s one of my favourite Australian albums of the year.

‘All Through Winter’ is out on Sony October 21st.