Phew - New Decade (LP) - Clear Vinyl

Phew has been carving out her own stubborn path since the late 70s, from fronting Osaka post‑punk outfit Aunt Sally on Vanity Records to that legendary 1981 solo debut cut at Conny Plank’s studio with Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit of Can. New Decade, released in October 2021 through Mute, sits right in that lineage of fearless minimalism. It’s a record that pares things back to breath, pulse and electricity, and somehow feels both intimate and immense. You can hear the room, the air, the careful decisions. Nothing is showy, yet everything lands.

The album arrived in the long shadow of lockdowns, and you can sense that closeness. Phew’s voice is the core instrument, treated and layered, sometimes a whisper, sometimes a serrated chant. Synths don’t so much accompany as coil around her, creating a kind of living grid. The first time I played it I kept leaning closer, waiting for a rhythm section to kick in. It never does. Instead, tiny shifts in tone and pressure become the drama. She’s been good at that sleight of hand for decades, but here it feels especially focused, like she’s trimming any hint of fat to chase a very specific sensation.

Into the Stream was the advance cut and it captures the album’s logic. A wary, slow‑moving pulse, then threads of voice circling, crossing, pressing against each other. No melody to hum on the tram home, yet you carry its shape with you. It’s the kind of piece that changes the room you’re in. Put it on late, lights low, and the walls seem to tilt a few degrees. There’s no nostalgia in it either. For an artist with such a deep catalogue, Phew isn’t interested in revisiting old tricks. New Decade feels present tense, the title as much a shrug as a statement: here we are, this is what it sounds like to keep going.

What I love is how physical it all is. You can tell the sounds are wrangled by hand, not just plotted on a screen. Oscillations buckle, voices rub, a tone will snag and stutter before settling into place. It’s that human interference that makes the record breathe. She’s always treated the voice like an unruly machine, and the machines like they’re capable of speech. The exchange is constant. It calls back to the cold‑room intensity of Our Likeness from 1992, also tied to Mute, but with the armour stripped away. Nothing to hide behind, so the details have to carry the weight.

If you’re coming to Phew through noise, industrial or the more austere corners of synth music, this album lands squarely in that sweet spot. But it’s not harsh for the sake of it. There’s a melancholy thread running through, a kind of weathered patience. Small tonal shifts feel like plot twists. A rising harmonic becomes a hand on your shoulder. It’s a record about attention, and it rewards repeat plays. I kept finding myself replaying sections just to hear how one vowel smears into the next, how a single tone seems to bloom after a long hold. That might sound fussy, yet in practice it’s gripping.

Context matters with Phew. Knowing she cut her first solo album with Plank, Czukay and Liebezeit, and later worked with Alexander Hacke on Our Likeness, is part of why New Decade hits so hard. Few artists who were already active in 1979 can still sound this current without chasing trends. She doesn’t imitate anyone, least of all herself. She pares back and listens, then builds from there. That sense of purpose is what binds her discography, and it’s what makes this album worth living with.

If you’re hunting for Phew vinyl, New Decade is the one I’d point to as a modern entry point. It translates beautifully to the format, the air and headroom intact, the low end steady rather than heavy. If you like to buy Phew records online, you’ll see this title pop up alongside her classic early work, and it sits comfortably in the cart next to other Phew albums on vinyl. Spin it alongside that 1981 debut and you can trace a crooked, compelling line between them. For anyone crate‑digging through vinyl records Australia wide, or wandering into a Melbourne record store on a rainy afternoon, New Decade vinyl is the sort of quietly magnetic pick that ends up stealing your week. It’s not flashy. It just keeps revealing itself, one charged breath at a time.