Kate Ceberano
Sweet Inspiration
Sony Music Australia
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I’ve never been one for cover albums. More often than not, they seem to get lost in that void where “karaoke meets ‘I had nothing better to do’” and sadly feel like those filler albums that nobody really asked for. But when you have a singer with the emotive valor, vocal richness and power that Kate Ceberano possesses, failure is never going to be an option—cover album or not.
Ceberano returns with her eighteenth studio album Sweet Inspiration, a collection of ten covers and two new tracks both cowritten by the singer: the album’s lead single “Hold On” and the album’s namesake “Sweet Inspiration.” Given that this album coincides with the 35th anniversary of Ceberano’s original hustle, the group I’m Talking’s debut album Bear Witness, it is safe to say that her journey from pop princess to bona fide national treasure and everything else in between has well and truly arrived.
This is not the first time Ceberano has ventured away from singer-songwriter and into cover queen, with her most notable offering in this field being 2019’s glorious Tryst, that saw her team up with pianist and composer Paul Grabowsky in celebration of love songs from the last 50 years. Tryst was a joyous journey through love and loss, but Sweet Inspiration feels different and for good reason.
This album could be summarized as an ode to breakups, no matter what form they come in and as Ceberano said in a recent interview with Noise11, “I think we’ve been breaking up from the world right now. We’ve been breaking up from people, breaking up from fixed ideas of how we thought we’d be. I had to examine a type of loss in leaving a certain type of career and becoming a different type of career. I am in the middle of mourning a loss of my home while projecting towards a new kind of home be it permanent, temporary, I don’t even know yet. We are breaking up with the world and starting again.” Sentiments that so many of us have all felt over this last year.
With a recent move from her hometown of Melbourne to the hustle and bustle of Sydney, songs like Carole King’s “So Far Away” and The Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road” put Ceberano’s heart and soul front and center, allowing for everything else on the album to fall into place and make sense. The latter being one of the most divine interpretations I have ever come across. Breakups, whether they be with a city or a person, are never easy and Ceberano articulates this perfectly.
Other standout tracks on Sweet Inspiration are Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” Jimmy Webb’s “If These Walls Could Speak” and the painfully beautiful “You Needed Me” famously performed by Anne Murray. Massive shoes for most artists to fill, but for someone as experienced and unaffected as Ceberano is, tackling and then reworking these interpretations into songs that not only pay homage to their original voices, but also give space for their new home to shine through, is something only a true artist can do.
This album is pure audible ecstasy on every level, yet it is gentle when needed and embedded in that gentleness is a warmth and strength that relates to loss, not always in sadness, but most definitely something we have all felt at one time or another. Yet another milestone for Ceberano in what can only be described as one hell of an illustrious, varied and incredibly accomplished career.
Notable Tracks: “Hold On” | “If These Walls Could Speak” | “So Far Away” | “You Needed Me”
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