Matt Joe Gow and Kerryn Fields: I Remember You (digital outlets)

Melbourne-based expat country singer-songwriter Matt Joe Gow saw his name suddenly appear in media coverage here recently: he was nominated for best country album at the AMAs in a shortlist alongside Kaylee Bell and the Mitchell Twins.

That fine company to be in.

Gow is no stranger to acclaim, he has released five solo albums with two of them winning Music Victoria Awards and has a songwriting award in his homeland.

He has opened for an impressive roll-call of touring artists, among them the Jayhawks, Kasey Chambers, Grant Lee Philips, Justin Townes Earle and Marlon Williams.

This new album with New Zealand singer-guitarist Kerryn Fields was conceived and written while on Australasian tours and hits a sweet spot between suggestions of story-lines and a kind of antipodean Americana.

A brooding ballad like No Trace evokes a night in the cold country wrapped in a menacing mystery . . . and its opposite Prairie Song with banjo is joyful hoe-down in the barn.

That's quite a songwriting span but Gow (and Fields) are accomplished across the spectrum, from the emotional lyrical depths of Dead Flowers And Stale Wine to his extraordinary quavering vocal on the ballad Here I'll Be.

Here too is a moving, more monochrome treatment of Dave Dobbyn's It Dawned On Me, the dark night of the soul at the heart of Whirlwind, the strident and catchy handclap country-folk of the downbeat Love Ya Like Can . . .

And the summershine of Your Heart of Gold sounds like one of those bare-feet-on-the-dashboard songs for a long lazy highway.

The album takes its title and theme of memory from the spare Black Sand: “I remember like it was yesterday, I was just a child . . . I remember this land, I remember it shaping me”.

Another impressive album bearing Matt Joe Gow's name.

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You can hear this album at Spotify here