Olivia J. Bennett 

is a writer, editor & critic.


She works across narrative development, editorial strategy and cultural insight for creative, design-led projects.

Her writing spans screen, sound, software and the systems that shape them.

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HYMNAL
Lyra Pramuk
The Big Issue Australia
Issue #7404 July 2025
By Olivia J. Bennett

Lyra Pramuk’s Hymnal is a breathless, searching work: part rite, part rupture. Across 14 tracks, the Berlin-based artist extends her vocal world-building into something more exalted, even alien. Like her 2020 single, ‘Tendril’, this album coils around the body: electroacoustic seance meets post-minimalist fugue. It’s hard to know where one track ends and the next begins, but that blur feels deliberate. These aren’t songs, exactly. They’re states. ‘Unchosen’ surges with feverish strings and breathy, layered vocals, evoking something both ecclesiastical and disorientating, like being bathed in light that might also burn. ‘Babel’ drones from a sacred elsewhere, all buzz and bellow, gesturing towards a language just out of reach. Pramuk’s technical precision is extraordinary. Her breath control feels like an invocation. But Hymnal can be difficult to hold onto. It resists catharsis in favour of transcendence, evasion over climax. If a hymn is meant to lift us closer to the divine, Hymnal does, but it doesn’t wait for us to follow. It ascends, vanishes and leaves a shimmer in its wake.


SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL Miley Cyrus
The Big Issue Australia
Issue #73920 June 2025
By Olivia J. Bennett

Miley Cyrus drops us into a sci-fi dreamworld with her latest album. It opens on ‘Prelude', all orchestral swell and sleazy sax, as she delivers a breathy monologue—something between a perfume ad and a space opera: “Like walking alone through a lucid dream.” Interludes like this reappear throughout, acting like little warp jumps between genres and energies—gauzy ballads, loungey electronica, soft-rock shimmer. The strongest tracks are stacked up front, with the title track the standout, veering between R&B-tinged restraint and hard rock theatrics. The shift is extreme, almost derailing, but it gives the song a kind of unhinged passion. That alien unpredictability is what keeps the album engaging. It certainly has its bloat—some tracks blur, some gestures don’t stick—but Something Beautiful finds a steady mood: sincere without heaviness, self-aware without the wink. Not a reinvention, more a glittery relic from another dimension, beaming out pop-rock dispatches as it hurtles into the sun.


JONATAN
Yung Lean
The Big Issue Australia
Issue #73723 May 2025
By Olivia J. Bennett

Cloud rap’s Swedish sadboi laureate Yung Lean returns with Jonatan, an album convinced of its own depth, even as it drifts from what once made him compelling. It opens with ‘Might Not B’, a Frankensteinian splice of lyrics—Bill Withers, ABBA, and a Gil Scott-Heron nod: “Might not be such a bad idea if I never…” By the end, you might wish he’d taken his own advice. On ‘Horses’—a flogged nod to The Rolling Stones—shoegaze guitars and syrupy strings reach for transcendence but land in vapour. “Wild horses / Keep pulling me away from you”, he mumbles. Throughout, his vocals are under-enunciated and affectless—conversational to the point of disinterest. There’s this pompous genius-at-work energy: a Charli XCX co-sign and a shared visual world that once felt sharp and surreal. But where BRAT burned with clarity and control, Jonatan drifts—listless, self-impressed, and hollow. The mood feels like a half-baked Casanova suffocating you with second-hand epiphanies. Ultimately, this record drags the culturally cringe, indie twee sensitivities of his jonatan leandoer96 projects into the Yung Lean mythos—killing off the persona that once made him vital. 


CRISIS KID
Corbin
The Big Issue Australia
Issue #7369 May 2025
By Olivia J. Bennett

Over a decade and 13 million views since his genre-defying breakout ‘Without You’, Corbin (formerly Spooky Black) still lingers in the murky middle ground of alt-R&B heartbreak. Crisis Kid picks up where his shy ballads left off, tracing an alliterative spiral of nihilism—’Cry Out in Pain’, ‘Curse of Creation’, ‘Clown on a Stage’. ‘Carbon Monoxide’ is the standout, driven by a bouncier bassline and a nimble drumbeat courtesy of long-time collaborator Psymun. Corbin’s voice cuts through the haze: “You can see all the walls I put up caving in / Slowly creep in my lungs, you're my carcinogen.” It’s a rare moment of urgency on a record otherwise steeped in slow, grey collapse. Elsewhere, “Comedy Divine” turns the gaze outward, teasing clarity from a contradiction: “Why do we pay for the sins of evil men? / Nobody wins when we self-destruct.” A faint, flickering guitar line keeps it just shy of despair. Corbin’s world is dimly lit and emotionally maxed out. But maybe that’s the point—it’s music for when the feelings are there, but the energy to explain them isn’t. 


MAYHEM
Lady Gaga
The Big Issue Australia
Issue #73524 April 2025
By Olivia J. Bennett

Her first solo album in 5 years, Little Monster leader Lady Gaga returns with Mayhem, a record crafted to revive the worn linoleum of an RSL dancefloor or to soundtrack the leathery, glitter-streaked fixtures of Mediterranean party islands. All 14 tracks blend into one giant blob, a bouncy, synthetic mix for fabulousness that could pass as either a product or prototype of AI-generated pop. Don’t get me wrong, Gaga’s clear pop themes and ultra-slick production smooth the grooves in your mind—effective, if only because it’s easy to digest. On ‘Disease’, falsetto “Ah aaahs” lure a club bad boy with ham-fisted I can fix him lyrics: “Poison on the inside / I could be your antidote tonight”. 'Garden of Eden' plays on the Genesis myth—and, shock horror, it’s not an apple but a boy who’s the temptation: “I could be your girlfriend for the weekend / You could be my boyfriend for the night / My excuse to make a bad decision… Poisoned apple, take a bite (oh)!” More algo-pop than artpop, Mayhem trades chaos for calculation—but if all you want is a basic beat to bang your head to in a Zara changing room, you’re in luck.


EUSEXUA
FKA twigs
The Big Issue Australia
Issue #73014 February 2025
By Olivia J. Bennett

FKA twigs makes her long anticipated return with her third studio album, EUSEXUA, an ecstatic, otherworldly plunge into avant-dance-pop. Her fluid, meditative vocals weave through percussive highs and lows, vibrating with a soft yet full-bodied confidence—somewhere between Björk’s elastic range and Madonna at her most ethereal. The album breathes—rising, falling, pulsing—drawing from techno and acid house’s hypnotic beats, ambient and baroque pop’s grandeur, trip-hop and experimental R&B’s murky sensuality and the sharp, kinetic rhythms of ballroom and vogue. ‘Girl Feels Good’ is hypnotic in its simplicity: “When a girl feels good / It makes the world go ‘round”. ‘Death Drums’ pounds with SOPHIE’s hyperpop aggression and Death Grips’ digital hardcore before dissolving into a whisper-soft plea: “Drop your skirt to the floor / Tear your clothes, body torn”. On ‘24hr Dog’, warbling, polyphonic vocals coil around fuzzy guitar, surrendering completely: “Please don’t call my name / When I submit to you this way / I’m a dog for you”. An all consuming vision of femininity, EUSEXUA feels everything, everywhere, all at once–desire and destruction, surrender and power, ecstasy without limits.


PERVERT
Ethel Cain
The Big Issue Australia
Issue #72931 January 2025
By Olivia J. Bennett

Ethel Cain’s long-anticipated sophomore album Pervert is a pivot so strong, so well visioned, reminding die-hard fans that world-building comes at the expense of easy listening. Alongside the more palatable poetess of Lana Del Rey, Cain pushes in her stake to claim a new gothic romanticisation of the American South. Pervert’s languid composition layers deeply downtrodden ambient sounds with her characters’ subdued cries and siren calls. Red rusting strings, the fervent fuzz of thirsting electrical towers and the learned comfort of slack-handed chord progression. “I love you. I love you. I love you…” monotonously meditates ‘Houseofpsychoticwown’ into soft, sludge-filled oblivion. ‘Vacillator’ turns an outro drum tempo into a long drawn edge that only Cain can satisfy, but chooses to deny: “If you love me, then keep it to yourself.”  It’s an album that washes into you, rather than over you. Uninvited but unconsciously welcome, Pervert inspires a feeling of deep peace that can only come from skulking a rock bottom untoward faith—a place where very few dare to dance.


SIREN SONGS
Sacred Hearts
The Big Issue Australia
Issue #7269 December 2024
By Olivia J. Bennett

This debut EP delivers devilish post-punk with a nod to the waterways and wayward ways of a not-so Sunshine State. Opener ‘Is It Cold?’ cuts through mist and mud, with heavy power chords and a wall of wails slicing through chilling synths and a relentless drumbeat. In ‘Concrete Bikini’, Ophelia is invoked as the protagonist sinks into the Enoggera Reservoir: “Seduced by the murky brown water/So I let it sink into me, I knew my fate.” Drawing from The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Joy Division, yet remaining distinctly their own, the tracks revel in a timeless tug-of-war between so-called good and evil. ‘Virgin/Whore’ twists the complexities of feminine experience into a swampy death roll. Meanwhile, ‘Crocodile Tears’ picks up the pace, closing the EP with an industrial Prodigy-like rage: “Take the silver spoon from your mouth/Replace it with tetanus and rust.” The EP’s pulsing, tachycardic heart thrums with raw cathartic energy—like an electric shock for those ready to ignite their rebellion.  


VULTURES 2
Kanye West & Ty Dolla $ign
The Big Issue Australia
Issue #71930 August 2024
By Olivia J. Bennett

Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign’s Vultures 2 stumbles under the weight of its predecessor's hype, perfectly failing a reverse Bechdel test. The album’s delayed release—a now typical move for the duo—only adds to the disservice. What was once a world of sonic innovation feels rushed and uninspired, with tracks like "PROMOTION" and "HUSBAND" not only objectify women but cross into a more sinister, coercive narrative. Lyrics like “I just put your b**** on another b**** and hit ‘em both” or “All you really need is a husband/The only thought you ever need is ‘I trust him’” highlight this disturbing shift. Despite technically polished production, the album lacks careful consideration. "SKY HIGH" offers a fleeting moment of sincerity through its interpolation of The Five Stairsteps' "O-o-h Child" with the line, "Ooh, child, things are going to get easier." Ultimately, Vultures 2 is blinded by self-indulgence, leaving listeners with little more than a hollow echo of what once was.


SEASHELL ANGEL LUCKY CHARM
Armlock
The Big Issue Australia
Issue #71702 August 2024
By Olivia J. Bennett

Melbourne duo Armlock have returned with new LP Seashell Angel Lucky Charm. The album expands on the intricate world built on their last record Trust (2021), with chord-forward melodies, steady beats, angelic harmonies, and intricate noise elements infused with whimsical vocal snippets. Like Trust,  Seashell Angel Lucky Charm radiates a bittersweet charm, but perhaps a bit more bitter this time, with Simon Lam’s lead vocals front and centre—muted, reserved, yet masterful. His tone is soothing, like scratching a soft, satisfying itch. The introspective, indie-rock sensibility of Something For Kate’s Echolalia is present in the lyrics that navigate the battle for space in one’s mind, a tug-of-war between fears and desires. Whether it's the feeling of being stuck in an open door in ‘Guardian,’  turning a step into a pirouette to ‘Godsend’s’ synthy piano, locking elbows in ‘Fear, or the imagery of being ankle-deep in ‘Ice Cold’, this album delicately dances between idolatry and iconoclasm. It’s an album about loving purposefully yet unrequitedly, and an exercise in seeing devotion as a pattern of release and capture.