From Highgate Hill to Fallen Stars
A new solo album of ‘pop music for adults’ has dropped as a CD, a trend that suggests streaming is not always the way to go.
When a box full of CDs arrived on my doorstep a couple of weeks ago, it felt good. Fallen Stars Over Handlebars – my fourth solo album – was finally finished.
The reason I opted for a CD in the age of streaming is because I wanted the album to feel complete. To be a tangible thing. Not just a series of songs to be heard on shuffle.
It’s been a decade since my last solo record (This Beautiful Game) and in between I’ve been lucky enough to work with some incredible people — Rob Hirst from Midnight Oil on Born Electric; Kate Ceberano and Steve Kilbey on The Dangerous Age; and Tim Finn on an EP of songs called Long Live Music.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, I made I Left My Heart in Highgate Hill, a love letter to my hometown, sung by some of Brisbane’s finest female voices.
Fallen Stars Over Handlebars might be a “solo” album, but to me making music is all about collaboration. It’s about heading down to Record Works Studios in Coorparoo with Jason Millhouse to record vocals, driving out to Rosewood to have Magoo mix a track or two or trading files with musicians interstate because they have a certain “feel” in their playing that no one else I know quite has.
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The title came last. Fallen Stars Over Handlebars sounded like something you might see at midnight, riding home from a gig — a flash of beauty, a bit of danger, a reminder of how fleeting it all is.
The songs themselves arrived weeks, months and, in one case, decades earlier. What are they about? Well, it’s pop music for adults. A bit upbeat, a bit meditative — and because I no longer have a record deal, they’re a bit oblique. I’m looking to please no one but myself. At this time of my life, I’m happy to accept my place under the commercial radar and remain in total service to the songs themselves.
So they’re about memory, love and the strange poetry of everyday life — the people who stay, the ones who drift away and the echoes that keep you company in between.
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The record opens with Follow the Water, a Talking Heads-inspired track that sets the tone while being an outlier at the same time. Same As Me, a co-write with Ross Wilson, is another outlier — my attempt at neo-new-wave pop. Then there’s Brilliant Blue Bicycles, which I wrote with David Bridie. That one’s a daydream. A mate said: “It’s hypnotic and cinematic — the sound of remembering something you can’t quite get back.” I’ll take that.
When you make a record like this, you realise your musical DNA is impossible to escape. I hear Brisbane and Melbourne in there too. Those two cities helped shape the work. The record was made between both places, apart from the Bridie sessions, which yielded three tracks on the album. Melbourne’s Jack Howard from Hunters & Collectors contributed brass and turned chord changes into moments of Bacharach-style flourishes.
So, back to the artefact. I wanted this album to exist as a physical object. In an era where songs vanish into a stream, I wanted something you could hold — liner notes, artwork, plastic and cardboard. I still remember buying CDs that felt like keepsakes, and I wanted Fallen Stars Over Handlebars to feel that way. A disc you can play in the car, lend to a friend or rediscover years from now when the algorithms have moved on. Making it tangible somehow made the songs feel more permanent, more real.
It’s about sonic textures and it’s about the elixir of pop music, which on even the gluiest days has never let me down
Lyrically, I found myself writing mainly about relationships. There’s also a song called Jane Asher Said because I thought one of the greatest muses of the 1960s could do with one more song written about her.
Some songs took a long time. Others came at lightning speed. I Don’t Buy It, penned with Kate Cooper (An Horse), was written on the hop at a songwriters’ retreat. Kate and I literally met, wrote a song, recorded it and had Magoo mixing it by late afternoon.
In a world that moves fast, I’m interested in experiences that slow you down. Fallen Stars Over Handlebars is a soundtrack of songs I’ve recorded with old friends and new. It’s about sonic textures and it’s about the elixir of pop music, which on even the glumest days has never let me down.
Sean Sennett’s Fallen Stars Over Handlebars can be purchased as CD or digitally here: seansennett.bandcamp.com/album/fallen-stars-over-handlebars