The Antipodean November is characterised by a pervasive flux, which I suspect can’t be found anywhere else. It’s a time when commitments are winding down and holidays beckon. The cool of winter and spring are starting to make way for the scorch of summer. Sleep may be rudely interrupted by daybreak, but twilight is still hours away once the 9-to-5 day is over. Thoughts are turning to the endless summer existence of the beach, the sun and the cricket. However, that existence is still a pipedream. There’s a winding down process—they may call it closure in other lands—where reflection on the year past is in order. Spirits are high, but the body is weary.
In four minutes of her typically dreamy pop, Australian chanteuse Sarah Blasko evokes this languid dynamic in “Sweet November.” No song captures better what it’s like to be an Australian in the year’s penultimate month. Most obviously, it’s in the lyrical allusions to the impending arrival of summer and the welcome end of the winter’s iciness. The song’s reflection on the struggles of a relative, friend, lover are poignant, if not clichéd. What distinguishes Blasko’s lyric is the juxtaposition of the land with this social reflection. Only in Australia and its summer can the sea be met by fire. It may be merely sunburn at the beach or it could be devastating bushfires along our coastline. Our relationships play out to this dynamic backdrop.
The true flux is found in the tension of the musical arrangement. On the surface is a languid aesthetic, replete with moody atmosphere and gentle tempo. Blasko’s husky croon is further salve for the November heat. Throughout, the song maintains this steady pace, lifting the energy only during the urgent introduction (after which the song’s arrangement noticeably steps back) and the crescendo of the coda. The texture thickens in an apparent struggle against the rest of the arrangement’s sluggishness, with fuzzed guitar—unheard since the song’s opening fifteen seconds—making a return to the mix. The strings—the primary element to the song’s warm verses—and the once polite drums now become more assertive. Blasko herself ends with a wail that could be as cathartic as it is calming. This ambiguity is the essence of an Australian November—sweet or otherwise.
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