Review - Private Wives – Three of Swords (Farmer & the Owl) english version

 

With Three of Swords, Private Wives deliver one of the most intense and sincere debuts on the new Australian punk scene, surprising listeners with its sonic consistency, compositional maturity and emotional precision. An album that combines the urgency of contemporary punk with the refined sound of Australian garage rock.

The Wollongong trio – Phoebe Price (guitar/vocals), Lucy Spencer (bass/vocals) and Zoe Lewis (drums/vocals) – arrive at their first album with a surprising clarity of purpose: to recount pain without filters, to transform vulnerability into language, and to do so with a sound that gives no respite.

Recorded at Pet Food Factory and mastered by Mikey Young, the album has the typical roughness of Australian garage, but the writing looks elsewhere: more diary-like, more emotional, closer to the confessional tradition of bands like Camp Cope or Big Thief than to slogan-driven punk. Private Wives don't shout slogans: they shout personal truths.

Three of Swords is an emotional rather than narrative concept, whose title refers to the tarot card of the pierced heart. And the album delivers on its promise: ten tracks that traverse breakups, silences, internalised guilt and moments of sudden lucidity.

There is a moment, listening to Three of Swords, when you realise that you are no longer listening to an album, but reading a novel written with your voice. Private Wives don't just compose songs: they construct a character, an emotional world, a bodily lexicon that pulsates, bleeds, retreats and then returns. Their debut is an unauthorised memoir, a diary that is not afraid to show itself with torn pages.

There is no linear narrative, but a clear emotional arc: from the request to listen in Can You Hear Me to the wounded awareness of The Fool.

The sound is direct, physical, without embellishment. The production is dry, almost documentary-like. The guitars are sharp, the bass pulses like an accelerated heartbeat, the drums are a body reacting. The vocals — often shared between the three — are the most surprising element: they do not seek perfection, they seek truth. It is an album that sounds alive, urgent, recorded as if each take were the last.

Can You Hear Me opens the volume like a prologue whispered from the next room. The protagonist speaks, but her voice bounces off walls that are too thick. It is an invocation, an attempt to exist in the other's field of vision. The question is not rhetorical: it is an emotional SOS.

Tough Man is the manifesto track: a frontal attack on emotionally inaccessible masculinity, told with physical images and a chorus that hits like a punch to the stomach. The antagonist is not a man, but his hardness: armour that does not protect, but repels. The protagonist tries to scratch it, and every attempt is a blow that comes back. The language is physical, almost pugilistic: love as a ring, disappointment as an uppercut.

Blood in the Water introduces narrative tension. Blood in the water is an ancient symbol: exposed vulnerability, imminent danger. The protagonist senses that something is about to happen, the moment when the story ceases to be intimate and becomes threatening. With Evan, the album offers its most romantic lyrics: details, memories, contradictions. There is no hatred, no idealisation. There is the complexity of a character who cannot live up to the role he is asked to play.

Scream is the breaking point. Here, the writing becomes primordial: no metaphors, no filters. Screaming is the only form of communication possible when language fails.

Heartlines is the heart of the album: a suspended, melancholic piece that speaks of bonds that endure even when they should break. The union between the two characters does not break, but rather stretches, thins and becomes more painful precisely because it resists. It is a suspended chapter, written with the melancholy of someone who knows that love is not enough, but cannot let it go.

In Haymaker, the protagonist reverses the dynamic: no longer suffering, but striking back. It is not revenge, it is survival. The struggle is no longer metaphorical: it is a matter of breath. In Sloe, the rhythm slows down, the writing becomes liquid, alcoholic, dizzy. It is a moment of suspension, as if the protagonist were looking in the mirror without fully recognising herself.

Driving Me Crazy marks a return to the starting point. The relationship is a loop, a vortex that drags and confuses. There is a claustrophobic feeling: the protagonist knows she is trapped, but cannot find the way out.

The Fool closes with surprising maturity: recognising one's naivety not as a failure, but as a new starting point. The protagonist recognises herself as naive, impulsive, vulnerable. But it is not a tragic ending: it is an open ending, a new beginning.

Three of Swords is an album that is read more than listened to. It is like a sentimental coming-of-age novel, a journey through pain, lucidity, anger and rebirth. Private Wives write with their bodies, their throats, their stomachs. Each song is a chapter, each chapter a wound, each wound a step towards awareness.

Why does it work? Because it's an album that doesn't pretend. It doesn't seek poses, it doesn't seek slogans, it doesn't seek to please. It tells an emotional story with a sincerity that is increasingly rare in contemporary punk. And it does so with writing that knows how to be personal without becoming self-referential.

Wollongong has been a hotbed of bands combining DIY, live energy and personal writing for years. The Private Wives fit into this tradition, but bring something different: an emotional intensity rarely heard on a punk debut.

Three of Swords is a debut that strikes with its honesty, cohesion and emotional force. It is an album that does not merely recount a wound, but traverses it, analyses it and exposes it.

It is a debut that places Private Wives among the most promising bands of the new wave of Australian punk.