The Apartments - That's What The Music Is For [CD]

Format: CD
Catalogue No.: TAL136CD
Barcode: 3770011636877
Release Date: 17 Oct 2025
Genre: Independent

Working closely with producer Tim Kevin, That's What the Music Is For is The Apartments'
eighth album. Peter Milton Walsh began recording it in 2023 like a master pointillist, one
touch at a time, one song at a time. In between shows that took him from Mexico City,
Sydney or San Francisco to Lisbon and Marseilles, Walsh had access to studio time
without real constraints.
 
Talking about That's What the Music is For, he says: "Since I didn't go into the studio with
an album ready set of songs, but instead took pieces in to record as soon as they were
written and worked on the music in the studio whenever it was available, it wasn't clear
that I'd get to that rainbow's end-a world of songs that feel like they belong together: an
album. Yet, over the course of recording and as the songs gathered with one another,
they began to reveal a story about time-of how past and present so often trade places
and that in music and in memory, the people who have gone keep moving in and out of
our lives-where can they live now, except in song? We will be saying goodbye to them in
bits and pieces for the rest of our lives.
 
A world of smoke, gin, and regrets; one of melancholy, brass, and strings. A world of
refinement and integrity. Life as it comes to us, with its share of joy and sorrow. Peter
Milton Walsh's compositions are true songs in that they tell stories, stories that stay with
us, stories we can each finish in our own way. That may well be the essence of great art.
 
The Apartments (named after Billy Wilder's film The Apartment, a gentle melodrama and
brilliant satire of American society) emerged in Brisbane, Australia, in spring 1978. Peter
Milton Walsh also worked with The Go-Betweens when they signed to Beserkley Records,
before leaving Australia for New York and later London. He joined the British label Rough
Trade and released his debut studio album in 1985, The Evening  Visits....and Stays For
Years - a treasure trove of luminous melancholy. drift (1992), the second album originally
released on Torn & Frayed/New Rose (reissued by Talitres), is a collection of unclass-
ifiable gems, a timeless masterpiece. A Life Full of Farewells (1995), Fête Foraine (1996),
and apart (1997) followed, cementing Peter Milton Walsh's place among the finest song-
writers. After a long hiatus, a period of mourning and farewells, The Apartments returned
in 2012 with Seven Songs (a radio session recorded for France Musique) and an unexp-
ected new album, No Song, No Spell, No Madrigal (2015). Then came the live album Live
at L'Ubu in 2019, followed by In & Out of The Light in 2021, an album of infinite delicacy
painted in light and shadow.
 
That's What the Music Is For was recorded by Peter Milton Walsh (vocals, guitar, organ,
piano, bass) with the collaboration of Tim Kevin (guitar, percussion, piano, melodica,
backing vocals), Nick Kennedy (drums, maracas), Adrian Workman (bass), Natasha
Penot (vocals), Jeff Crawley (trumpet), Neysa May Barnett (vocals), Pauline Drand
(guitar), and Xavier Guéant-Mata (guitar).
 
The Apartments will tour Europe in spring 2026.
 
Tracklisting>>
1.It's a Casino Life
2.Afternoons
3.A Handful of Tomorrow
4.Another Sun Gone Down
5.That's What the Music Is For (When the Fair's Over)
6. Death Would Be My Best Career Move
7. The American Resistance
8. You Know We're Not Supposed to Feel This Way