Canberra trio Chillin’ have built a quiet but devoted following with songs that come straight from real life, and their new full-length release, “The Family Album”, takes that approach to its most personal extreme yet. Across nine tracks and a tidy twenty-five minutes, Shaz, Kaz, and Sox hand each song to someone they love, turning the record into something closer to a scrapbook than a typical album. The trio formed when sisters Kaz and Shaz, who spent the nineties and early two-thousands playing in various local bands, decided in 2018 to start writing together. Their longtime friend Sox rounded out the group soon after, and the three have spent the years since carving out a warm, acoustic-driven sound built on guitar, keys, percussion, and tightly woven harmonies. That chemistry carries every song here.
Opener “Into Your Hands” sets a gentle tone, easing listeners into the record’s softer textures before “Your Sweet Face (Briar’s Song)” arrives with the kind of tenderness that’s hard to fake. “The Light” and “Fearless” keep the momentum steady, while “Lullaby for Hazel” slows everything down into something genuinely soothing. “Finn’s Birthday Song” brings a playful warmth, and the closing run of “Amy,” “Jac,” and “Ashton” each feel like another page turned in the same photo album, distinct in mood but tied together by honest, plainspoken songwriting, the kind that’s already earned Chillin’ shortlisted spots in the Australian Songwriting Association contest two years running, along with a top-eight nod for the Rudy Brandsma award. What I love most about this record is how unguarded it feels. Every song carries the weight of an actual relationship rather than a borrowed sentiment, and that honesty is what makes the whole thing land so well.
The harmonies between the three voices do a lot of quiet work throughout, never competing for attention but always adding warmth underneath the melody. The acoustic arrangements stay simple by design, giving the voices and the words room to breathe rather than burying them under unnecessary layers. It’s a record built for close listening, the kind you put on with headphones rather than as background noise. “The Family Album” feels like the natural next step for a band that has always written from the heart, and it might be their most fully realized work yet.
If you haven’t come across Chillin’ before, now’s the time to fix that. Give “The Family Album” a full listen front to back, follow the trio on Spotify and Instagram to catch their next single or local show, and drop a few of these tracks into your regular playlist rotation. Songs this personal deserve to be heard more than once, and a band putting this much heart into their music deserves the support of new ears finding them.
