Simon Okely (Slow Dancer) wants you to listen to his album in a vintage station wagon with a cute friend on the way to the drive in, or alone whilst jogging, or in a bath with bubbles. Or while making love (maybe with the cute friend from before) or skydiving, or doing something that connects you to the finite nature of life, like painting your nails or eating a kebab.

Slow Dancer

The album itself, In A Mood, is so finite it surprises you – after 37 minutes you look up and wonder where the music has gone. Okely’s message: enjoy it while it lasts.

Thankfully, you can always replay the album, and it’ll stand up to the scrutiny. The songs have a confident simplicity, heard in Okely’s summer-evening guitar hooks and in the choruses where he croon-whispers the same lyrics for a third time.

“I wanted to narrate less and capture more on this record.”

The measure of his success is the way the music lifts you away from the burden of interpretation. He wrote the music without ambition, he says, but just “to please myself.”

In A Mood is out now. Slow Dancer performs at the Oxford Art Factory on July 14. Tickets: $12.