For Thelma Plum, fury and care are two sides of the same coin. With her 2019 debut album Better in Blak, the Gamilaraay singer-songwriter announced herself and her views in ways both defiant and tender. In 2022, she released the EP Meanjin, a warmly nostalgic love letter to her hometown of Brisbane.
Plum’s second full-length album – released on the cusp of her 30th birthday – leans into the rage while retaining her signature sensitivity. Its instrumentation is lush and expansive, bringing in strings (I Don’t Play That Song Anymore) and layered vocal arrangements that become almost instrumental themselves (Wiseman, Freckles). There are flirtations with other genres, too – Nobody’s Baby is an up-tempo disco track, replete with whistles.
Plum’s velvety voice, one of her greatest assets, glides throughout: it soars to a high on the lovelorn, piano-led Golden Touch, which takes a page out of Adele’s songbook. On album closer I Don’t Play That Song Anymore, Plum sounds steady and sweet, backed by simple acoustic guitar and strings which chug to a climax.
One of Better in Blak’s standouts was Woke Blokes, which put performative men in the firing line; another track on that album, Nick Cave, slyly called out the prolific songwriter’s penchant for writing about violence against women, though Plum cleverly wrapped it into a narrative about changing herself for an ex. That energy continues on this record with lead single We Don’t Talk About It, where Plum blasts open the silence around abusive relationships with so-called “nice guys” and champions female solidarity. She’s been open outside of her music, too, about sexism, misogyny and racism, from signing an open letter calling out sexual harassment in the Australian music industry to directly addressing instances of such behaviour – it’s been a running concern throughout her career.
The songs on this album reject other people’s expectations and call out the ugliness and hypocrisy of the world, with lyrics that echo across the track list. “I’m not your baby any more,” she sings on opener Wiseman, before declaring later on the record she is, in fact, nobody’s baby. These sentiments risk triteness when repeated in such simplistic language, but Plum sings them with conviction and control.
There’s humour and levity in this record, too. The boppy Guwop at first sounds like a heartbroken missive, but the chorus reveals the real subject of Plum’s yearning: an ex’s dog. It’s a readymade anthem for all the girls who miss their ex’s pet more than they miss the guy (I personally still think about a cat from 2009). Guwop is a great pop song – the album could use more like it.
Despite its strengths, I’m Sorry, Now Say It Back lands with less impact than Plum’s debut. These are well-written songs with passion and purpose, and her sonic landscape is expanding, but nothing on here moved me as much as, for instance, Better in Blak’s Thulumaay Gii (Plum’s middle name, which translates to thunder and heart), or that album’s woozy self-affirmation Homecoming Queen, a song about defying Eurocentric beauty standards.
But her cornerstones – people and place – are still here. The former is mostly Plum, as she heals and asserts her own desires and autonomy (“If you don’t come through when I need you to, I’m going to let you go,” she sings on The Love I Want). The latter is everywhere she has been, the country and its inhabitants evident through songs such as Koala or the earthy Cowboy in the Rain. Plum sees the world both as it is and what it could be, on no one’s terms but her own.
I’m Sorry, Now Say It Back is out now through Warner.
