Look Up (LP)

Look Up is the second album from 24-year-old Melbourne-based First Nations singer, writer and producer Sasha McLeod, aka Sycco. Following her critically acclaimed debut Zorb - winner of the J Award for Album of the Year, an ARIA nominee, and a two-time Hottest 100 placer with 70+ million career streams - Look Up is a more intimate, emotionally direct record.

Where Zorb was made with collaborators including Flume, Chrome Sparks, Mallrat and Stylez Fuego, Look Up was largely recorded on a farm on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula with co-producer Oscar Sharah, with input from Chrome Sparks. The sonic palette traverses pop, soul, R&B and electronica - drums built from scratch on a synth, layers of pitched vocals set against McLeod's crystalline lead. It retains the psychedelic flair of Zorb but strips it back: raw, transparent, uncluttered.

Thematically, the album centres on the tension between deep feeling and the inability to express it - love, distance, home, self-protection, and the loops we run when we're self-aware enough to see our patterns but can't break them. It's yearning, restless and emotionally sophisticated, but optimistic too. Tracks range from the epic, rousing title track to the intimate wistfulness of I've Loved and I've Lost and the hook-driven Wait Up.