Album Review: Laura Imbruglia - Scared Of You

Five years ago, genre-diverse songwriter Laura Imbruglia took a hiatus from recording in order to create Amateur Hour, a variety show that payed homage to retired Australian slap-dash television like Recovery and Countdown. Now, Melbourne’s favourite endearingly silly weirdo has returned with her fourth record, Scared Of You.

The first third of the album starts with a heavier sonic palette, reaching a dip with the dreamy, softening Diptych. Inspired by the Scottish gothic-rock of Cocteau Twins and written while at her Bundanon residency, Imbruglia noticed a diptych (an interlocking three-dimensional artwork) hanging on the wall. It reminded her of the way two people in a relationship can fill out each other’s missing parts, an idea Plato was similarly fond of a few thousands years ago.

The spiralling track The Creeps comes with a music video that sees Imbruglia being an inconvenient jerk to people in public spaces. “Take back your gift of omnipresence,” she yells into the face of a confused man sitting on a park bench – the track divulges how limerence can stick around like a bad smell years after a break-up.

The record showcases Imbruglia’s ability to unpack common anxieties with her trademark oddball humour. Here, she takes uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, and transforms them into facetious melodrama, taking away their power and allowing for a sense of catharsis for the listener.