Kook Joey – “Forget Me Not”

I have a feeling Kook Joey would get along splendidly with the talking flowers from Alice Through the Looking-Glass. You know the ones. The garden where roses have opinions, the daisies won't stop talking, and Alice finds herself surrounded by a botanical community that has plenty to say about everything, including her. “Forget Me Not” sounds like the song playing somewhere beyond that garden gate, where the afternoon lasts as long as it pleases and even the flowers have someone they're afraid of losing. I would very much like to visit.

I've been keeping an eye on this Australian artist since “Miracle,” a song that made me nostalgic for a decade I never lived through. Kook Joey has a remarkable ability to make music that feels as though it belongs to a half-remembered childhood, even when you've never heard it before. Her songs have the peculiar familiarity of a television program you haven't thought about in thirty years, or a holiday destination you can picture perfectly despite never having been there. “Forget Me Not” continues that fascination with the past, although there's a sadness tucked into its flower beds. She sings of a love that time has carried away, the sweetness of being young together, and the hope that somebody still remembers.

The arrangement moves at the pace of an afternoon with nowhere to be. Piano and Wurlitzer, clarinet, violin, drums, and percussion are among the instruments credited on the recording, with Tobias Priddle handling production alongside mixing, mastering, and co-writing. Together, they give Kook Joey's folk-exotica world a wonderfully eccentric collection of textures. There's a dreamy, almost slow-motion quality to the song, with melodies that seem to curl around one another like vines finding their way up a garden wall. Her voice belongs right in the middle of it, carrying the melody with a sweetness that makes the melancholy easier to approach. You can practically see the flowers leaning closer to listen.

“Forget Me Not” is also a lovely reminder of why discovering an artist before the rest of the world catches up can feel so personal. With a run of Australian shows ahead and her six-track Miracle EP arriving December 4, there's an entire musical universe taking shape here, full of peculiar little details and old-fashioned pleasures, and I'm increasingly convinced she's building it according to a map only she possesses. As for the flowers, forget-me-nots are small enough to overlook if you aren't paying attention. They grow in clusters, usually blue, with little yellow centers, and have spent centuries carrying the same modest request. Remember me. Kook Joey has made that considerably easier.