Altar

Description

The new album by Australian singer-songwriter Jo Schornikow, Altar, is the perfect counterpoint to her 2019 album Secret Weapon. While that album was stripped-down, disjointed chamber folk, this new album is a joyful declaration of synthesized indie-pop. Jo, originally from Melbourne, first worked as a church organist at age 17, a job she has now taken up again in Nashville, where she lives with her husband Matthew Houck of Phosphorescent and their two children. She has played keyboards in Phosphorescent for over 8 years, touring extensively around the world with the band. Altar is a collection of all these strange and varied pieces, forming a coherent thread that connects and celebrates all of Jo's lives. This third album was written between Nashville and Melbourne over a year, then recorded by Selwyn Cozens, who also plays drums on the album, in Melbourne during an extremely hot summer week at Hard Rubbish Recorders on an old Harrison TV3 console discarded by a local television station. It was recorded. There are still those moments of quiet beauty, but here they are transcended by joy. There are moments of anthemic pop on "Visions" and "Lose Yr Love." Jo Schornikow is a singer-songwriter who offers songs with a particular charm that are at once honest, open, intimate, and funny.