Wednesday January 26, 2022
The title of Michelle Gardiner’s new release gives one a clue to the song’s regulating force, a state of mind that plays out most acutely via the lyric, and in a more supportive sense, via the musical backdrop.
This is a here and now track with a lyric that attempts to capture a moment, an observation, a common revelation that is perhaps more noteworthy than one realises. Recognising the present, eschewing the less tangible for the more palpable, and discovering that it is in the minutiae where we can locate ourselves, this is the joy Things That I Don’t Have, points to.
The new track is the first release from Michelle Gardiner since June 2020, when her break-out single Show Me climbed to #2 on the iTunes country chart. Things That I Don’t Have is a balanced blend of pop and contemporary country with Michelle’s self-assured vocal performance the natural focus. Ever the songwriter with her ear for universal narratives, Michelle found inspiration close to home—from her daughter.
Serving as a reminder to the listener (and perhaps also to the writer herself), this seed of inspiration blossomed into a meditation on appreciation and deference to the elements in life one might easily take for granted. It’s easy to understand Michelle’s take on her inspiration, ‘Music and family are the things that I have strived the hardest to balance in my life. I find inspiration from wanting to make the world a better place for my girls. I want them to know that they are strong, worthy, and capable.’
An admirable aim if there ever was one. Enhancing Michelle’s self-reflection is the instrumentation, a corroborative use of guitars, vocal layers and rhythmic elements that never deviate from this support yet also contains a few surprises, including the drop and accent right at the chorus’s doorstop, which seems to mirror the critical line of lyric. As Michelle says about the recording process, ‘I do enjoy it, but I think I owe a lot of that to how my producer Michael Zammit (Airwaves Studio) works.
He really gets to know who you are and how you want to sound. So after a cup of coffee and a big chat, that’s when the music is made, and since you’re both on the same page by then, it seems to come together really quickly.’ That unaffected and natural workflow is something listeners will undoubtedly respond to, reaffirming Michelle Gardiner’s estimable approach to songwriting.
