ABOUT SHANNON

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, the old saying goes, and as we all know there’s nothing about Shannon Noll’s gutsy voice that warrants first aid. Just give him a song to sing and he will take it to where only he can. We’ve heard it ring out from the top of the charts so many times over the past 15 years and now we’re about to hear him in the finest voice of his career on his new album, Unbroken.

Seven years since the release of his previous album A Million Sons, Unbroken, his Warner Music debut, is Nollsie declaring he’s still got the passion, the dedication and the voice that has made him one of the most successful male performers in Australian music history.

“It’s been a testing time for me in the past few years, just trying to adapt and survive,” he says, “so it’s just to say I’m still going and that it would take more than that to stop me.”

There’s a sense of coming full circle for Noll on Unbroken, which features last year’s classic single Southern Sky – a national anthem in waiting. It’s an album of reflection and conviction, the former farm boy from Condobolin in rural NSW taking a close look at his roots, his fame, his love of Australia and his family and at the trials of getting older. There’s also the seductive bluesy romp My Body Loves to Party, just in case anybody thought he was going soft.

Back in 2003, when Australian Idol thrust Noll into the spotlight and he recorded his debut album That’s What I’m Talking About, it was in the same Kings Cross studio in Sydney where he recorded most of the songs for Unbroken. To close the circle Craig Porteils, the same producer who crafted Noll’s first No.1 hits What About Me? And Drive was again in the control room.

With all of that good energy bound together all that was required was the songs – and what a batch Noll has come up with, co-writing with a handful of new and familiar collaborators, such as Evermore’s Jon Hume, Busby Marou’s Tom Busby and Sydney songwriter Lindsay Rimes, who contributed six of the songs on Noll’s previous record.

There’s contrast, too, in the music, ranging from the strident pop of Land of Mine and Southern Sky to the exquisite balladry of Breath of Life and You’re All That I Need, the latter, written with Busby, a deeply emotional love song that also manages – in what must be a first in the history of songwriting – to name-check Tom Petty, Ricky Gervais, Willie Nelson and Robert De Niro.

On the mid-paced Cross the Bridge the singer acknowledges’ his hell-raising past (“I thought that sleeping is for when you’re dead”) while advocating an older, wiser perspective. “Sometimes all it takes is forgiveness to cross a bridge.” The monumental album closer Mountain to Climb features Noll’s most soulful, heart-wrenching delivery on a power pop anthem on how relationships require hard work as well as love to keep them strong.

The most assertive and overtly poppy track is Who I Am. This is Noll telling it like it is in a lyric that pins itself to an instantly memorable melody. “There’s a wind upon my back that won’t say die,” he sings, before the song opens up into an irresistible soaring chorus.

It may have been a while since that last album, during which Noll changed record companies, management, became a household meme and got himself on the news a few times, but he certainly hasn’t been idle musically during that period, touring the country periodically with his band. Anyone who has seen him perform can attest to Noll’s rock ‘n’ roll chops and there’s dazzling evidence of that here on the cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Fortunate Son, Noll displaying just what an influence CCR’s John Fogerty has been on him over the years, while bringing his own style and grit to a rock ‘n’ roll classic.

There’s a swagger also to Take It Back, with Noll reminiscing about an early love affair over a killer guitar riff played by a newcomer to the Noll camp, the Divinyls’ Mark McEntee. “He’s a great guy and you can really tell it’s him playing,” says Noll.

If Noll bursts with testosterone on the rockers, there’s a more vulnerable singer on display on one of the album stand-outs, Invincible, a slow-burning anthem on which Noll looks back on his footy-playing youth and comes to terms with the fact that he is no longer that guy. A dodgy knee from a motorbike accident and a back injury sustained on Dancing with the Stars a few years back have brought that home.

“Growing up playing footy and being really sports orientated, getting older is a bit hard to take,” he says. “I remember my grandfather struggling with getting old. He was still sheering sheep when he was 75. He used to get the shits because he got too old to hold them.

“Invincible isn’t about being invincible,” Noll says. “It’s about looking back at those days when you fell on the ground and bounced straight back up. Now I tend to lay there for a little while. It’s about the realisation of your mortality.”

That realisation for Shannon Noll is clearly a reflection of how he has taken stock between his last record and this one. An artist who started out in a siblings covers band, who found fame as a close second to Guy Sebastian on the first Idol and whose string of awards, platinum and gold singles and albums and a run of 10 consecutive top 10 hits (What About Me, Shine, Drive, That’s What I’m Talking About to name a few) that remains an Australian record, all of this is the mark of a man who has burned brightly on the Australian music landscape for the past 15 years.

Now he’s taking all of that on board and moving on to the next chapter, with a batch of songs on Unbroken of which he can be proud and that will undoubtedly take his glittering career on another exciting path.

“I’m champing at the bit to go play them live,” he says. “There were a couple of years where I didn’t play as much, but that has revitalised me. I’m a bit more in the moment again and enjoying what’s happening, rather than worrying about what’s around the corner. I’m singing better than I ever have and the band is cooking. It’s back to being lots of fun.”

Unbroken was released through Warner Music on February 2.

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