Harvey Sutherland - Debt

Debt is a new album by Harvey Sutherland about the cost of doing business in the meme economy. In his first LP since the 2022 debut, Boy, the Australian artist reduces his fusiony disco repertoire to ten microhoused funk essentials. A few years after the "neurotic funk" of Harvey's psychotherapeutic "Boy", "Debt" is his to-the-point response to pressures that manifest outside the self. But in its own way it remains a reflection of Harvey Sutherland's musical landscapes, which stretch across the grit and glitter of private-press disco and the sensual grids of Metro Area. The album's title nods to the financial contortions necessary to strive/survive/thrive as an independent artist. But Debt is better understood as the ledger of what we owe, and to whom, in the course of a creative life. What's the ROI on being an artist, a son, a friend, a partner, a father? Have we been worth our loved ones' own investments? If that sounds transactional, this is merely the lingua franca of our overwhelmingly digital culture, a grifter's bazaar in which Bob Dylan tunes up over Salt Bae, and Wordsworth's pitch is opposite the Rizzler.

As with Boy, Harvey Sutherland opens Debt to a tight crew of collaborators—the Tampa rap duo (and Jan Jelinek heads) They Hate Change, California native Vicky Farewell, who appears on the smoky Lovers' Rock of "Remember," and one of Australia's great songwriters, Julian Hamilton of The Presets. The album's globally dispersed cast is a natural extension of a charmed musical life that has taken Harvey Sutherland to the DJ booth at Panorama Bar, a stage on Glastonbury as a bandleader, an opener for Khruangbin and Hot Chip, and a remixer for Disclosure, Cut Copy, Chromeo and loads more. One of Debt's concerns—anxieties!?—is that these experiences are precariously held and easily lost in the infinite scroll of AI slop, which has already become a kind of musical impresario, responsible for music that has been streamed a billion times and made by musicians that don't exist. But Debt has no time, or space, for complaint. It's the same game it's always been—artistry or bust.