:: Kate Ceberano - So Much Beauty

Kate Ceberano

Maybe it’s just a private school thing, but I assume that most people remember, as I do, the school assemblies at which the student body would be subjected to performances by the singing teacher’s prodigy/prodigies. Inevitably it would be Bette Midler, Matchbox 20, or something similarly painful that they would force upon their captive audience, and while many were embarrassed at the attention they were attracting – the performances were invariably the teacher’s idea, not the students’ – there were always a few who seemed to genuinely believe that their rendition of Wind Beneath My Wings constituted a transcendental musical experience for their peers. I wondered, as I listened to Kate Ceberano’s new release, what could possibly have motivated her to release So Much Beauty? Essentially a covers album – featuring Maroon 5’s She Will Be Loved and Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars, as well as songs by artists actually worth covering such as Roxy Music and Simon & Garfunkel – listening to it brought forth images of those assembly performances with painful clarity. But if Ceberano is comparable to a self-indulgent prodigy, how has she gathered the inertia and popularity to support such an insipid collection of covers? The reality is that there must be a market out there for this sort of thing – the album debuted at number fourteen in Australia. It’s hard to imagine where such enthusiasm came from. The album’s twelve tracks are perfectly delivered and perfectly pointless. Smooth, soulless covers are actively sought out and paid for by living human beings. Perhaps I was the odd one out in failing to enjoy the assemblies?