Mia Dyson has The Moment of Her Life

We all have “the moment”…the moment we ask what they hell we are doing with our lives and how the heck we got here. We invite our least reliable friend (but most dependable drinking buddy) around for a glass or three and chat the shit out of our problems. Mia Dyson has had a number of her own testing “moments” in recent years. In 2009 Dyson left Melbourne for the States in pursuit of the big time. Instead, she went broke, lost her band, and her management attempted to change her name and sell her to reality TV. So, Dyson popped open her own bottle in the form of swirling organs and fuzzy guitars to get “the moment” out, and boy are we glad her whisky-throated vocals graced our record player this week, because her latest album The Moment (released August 17^th) is a bloody nice drop.

 Dyson’s lyrics are intimate poetic stories, at times emotionally raw but always memorable and engaging. She shares her experiences of watching a friend slide into alcoholism and sings a heartbreaking story about having a child removed by the state in the track ‘Jesse’. She shares her own insecurities in ‘The Outskirts of Town’ with lyrics like “Can we do what we love? / Oh the hard work, it is never enough”.

But the hard work has paid off. In The Moment, Dyson takes the best elements of straight-up rock ‘n’ roll, blues, country and Americana, rolls them all together with her husky vocals, stuffs it with some vintage organs and smokes life’s problems away. This is not at all an album of defeat or woe. Anything but. The underlying theme of Dyson’s The Moment is one of strength and carrying on despite life’s setbacks. Each track is an anthem. Each track is raw and real. Each track is exquisitely orchestrated with wonderful instrumental colours and thoughtful textures.

She went to the US in pursuit of the big time, and you know what? She found it. Not in a big glossy fireworks moment, but in the many small moments. These moments have given us this album. An album we will all understand, relate to and love, especially over a glass or three. The Moment is Mia Dyson at her absolute best.

Mia Dyson tours Australia nationally in September – www.miadyson.com

Tagged Australia, drinking, Melbourne, MIa Dyson, new album, reality tv, states, the moment, Tour