Kohl-eyed comedian Tim Minchin always meant to be a musician. Unfortunately, he accidentally became a hugely successful comedian and musical writer – but don’t worry, he’s back on track with Apart Together, a serious album made for the love, not the money.
This creation of art without financial consideration is a worthy endeavour, though it strikes rather a different tone when proclaimed by a millionaire – is this, in fact, an hour-long vanity project?
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There are glimmers of great humanity and honesty, small moments of beauty. Minchin excels when he tries less hard, though you can’t deny the man knows his way around an anthemic chorus (Summer Romance feels like it could give Coldplay a run for their money).
But when you have to endure six minutes of Minchin heroically not cheating on his wife dealt with in huge orchestral swells and pained sighing (I’ll Take Lonely Tonight) it’s hard to cut the rest some slack.
Elsewhere, he sings about the pain of four years’ wasted work – Minchin moved to LA to work on an animated feature film that was canned when Dreamworks was acquired by Universal – and moving back to Australia. It would be easier to be empathetic about this if he showed any such feeling for the people he sings about in Airport Piano, tiresomely critiquing women for dieting, Botox and so on.
The music ranges from melancholic James Blunt-isms to something suspiciously close to musical theatre, Minchin’s reedy voice weaving the whole thing together, occasionally dropping into a Celtic lilt. The album title, though it sounds like a very “pandemic album”, is in fact taken from a song about an elderly couple freezing to death in their home; Minchin obviously has things to say about the world but he hasn’t really found the right way to say them.
By the end of the intentionally clichéd If This Plane Goes Down, you kind of hope that it will.
