Description
Snez – Cardboard Wings
CD review by Tony Smith
TN2611-41 – $20
TN180 Sep 26
This 2026 album by SNEZ features 14 original songs.
She shared the writing credits with Stewart Peters.
SNEZ is from a proudly working class background.
She grew up in Port Kembla and her parents migrated from Macedonia in the 1970s.
You have to love an album mastered by Michael Worthington at Soundworthy, where Charlie the Dog is responsible for studio security and the artwork is by Dodgy Art, but there are many more reasons to admire Cardboard Wings.
The title track has sweet choruses and harmonies, possibly achieved through multi-tracking.
The theme is breaking free and flying.
Coming from a background where her parents had to watch every penny, music made SNEZ like Amelia Earhart.
The choruses pick up very attractively.
‘Last of the Lucky Free’ was inspired by SNEZ’s father and is a tribute to all hard working migrants and families who struggle.
This one finds himself ‘a long way from the hills shepherding sheep/ driving cabs from day to dawn/ counting coins/ counting the kernel on the coin’.
In ‘Port of Steel’ the chorus says it all: ‘the view ain’t Sydney Harbour/ Not a postcard destination/ It’s mums playing cards in front yards/ blue collar dads working at the big cigar/ It’s Port babe, the port of steel’.
Some fine dobro makes the music even better.
‘Lionhearted’ features some very nice guitar and tells of a childhood when fishing, the best catch ‘sparkled on the water and looked a lot like me’.
‘Rosetta and the Wolf’ describes the tension felt by a shepherdess who might have to kill the wolf.
‘Black Dog’, as the name suggests, concerns anxiety and depression.
SNEZ says that ‘one breath in and one breath out’ is the best policy.
‘Gold is in the Shadows’ where ‘I’ll write my best song yet and romanticise the pain’.
The answer is right beneath your nose.
‘It starts with being able to forgive’.
Time flows like sand ‘Through Our Hands’.
We all yearn for different things.
Nature can heal.
‘Woman of the Year’ has humility, but enjoys the osprey and kites and especially the miracle of the chicks hatching.
This song is simply beautiful.
In ‘Back of the Shed’ women make sure the shearing gets done.
It is always good to see a new addition to the large genre of shearing song.
It is especially good when the song acknowledges the often neglected role of women – the ‘ducks on the pond’, according to the traditional male warning about appropriate language.
‘The women are the heroes at the back of this shed/ Often forgotten but first outta bed/ The women are the heroes at the back of this shed/ They ain’t waiting for the prince or the golden thread…
Blood on his sleeve the shearer stands/ in a circle of women who came on the seeds of change/ and they will not be tamed’.
The playful ‘Ebony’ reminds us that a donkey might at times seem like a poor substitute for a horse or pony, but the difference is in the mind of the beholder.
‘Al-Maisan’ (The Shining One) is a beautiful song about a baby born during wartime and named after a star.
This is an important song about an increasingly common phenomenon.
Many people will experience war as a constant background to their lives.
Put this one alongside Leonard Cohen’s ‘The Partisan’.
‘The food supply’s in flames/ while the starving wait in vain/ how do you tell a hungry child/ that humankind’s asleep, they’ve turned away?’
‘Venice Beach’ is about the ephemeral, deceptive solace to be found in alcohol.
To the addicted, the spiritual boost seems valid – ‘the dollar you spare goes straight to the healing of the past’.
This a wrenching blues number.
‘Until We Meet’ is dedicated to a former band member, Lindsay Tebbutt.
It is among the best songs of parting you will hear and the piano accompaniment is perfect for the purpose.
SNEZ and Stewart Peters produced the album.
SNEZ provides the vocals and plays guitar.
Peters adds vocals, guitars, bass guitar, piano, drums and percussion.
Laura Targett plays violin and Paul Jarman saxophone and whistles.
There is no doubting SNEZ’s songwriting abilities, having won an Alistair Hulett Songs for Social Justice Award.
SNEZ’s voice is very easy listening.
Many of the songs have a conversational style and the arrangements ensure that they have a gentle musicality.
SNEZ’s slightly husky voice is complemented well by the background instruments.
SNEZ composed these songs while living a largely nomadic lifestyle.
Earlier albums include ‘Gypsy Soul’ and ‘House on Four Wheels’.
She is an authentic troubadour, pulling in to small towns and entertaining the locals in an informal setting.
Indeed, on her website, she as a song about busking, which is something dear to my heart.
‘Busking on the Road’ is from the album ‘Fisher on the Sea’.
SNEZ is a philosopher and a poet.
The lyrics on this album are incisive and insightful and they are expressed beautifully by SNEZ’s relaxed style.
These are superb stories set to music perfectly arranged.
Ed. Cardboard Wings is available from the Trad&Now website and may be heard on Trad&Now Live! from time to time.
Australian folk artist SNEZ announces the release of her sixth studio album, Cardboard Wings, arriving in June 2026.
A powerful and deeply personal collection of 14 songs, the album is rooted in rich storytelling, exploring themes of refuge and displacement, love and resilience, and the enduring pull of Macedonian heritage.
Born to a Macedonian working-class family who migrated to Australia in the 1970s and raised in the shadow of the Port Kembla steelworks, SNEZ has built a reputation for crafting songs that are intimate, political, and deeply human.
Her work draws from lived experience, where small personal moments expand into wider social and political landscapes, delivered with warmth, honesty, and quiet power.
Cardboard Wings marks a significant new chapter in SNEZ’s songwriting.
The album brings together a rich sonic palette which will take SNEZ out on the road again for her Australian tour and her debut UK tour in 2026.
Over the past 15 years, SNEZ has carved a unique touring path across regional and remote Australia, building a loyal following through authentic, story driven performances.
Her previous album, Fisher on the Sea, released during the pandemic, received strong support across ABC and community radio, reaching the Top 10 of the AMRAP charts.
In 2024, SNEZ was awarded the Songs for Justice Award by the Alistair Hulett Memorial Fund for her song No Points for Me, which she performed at the National Folk Festival.
With Cardboard Wings, SNEZ continues to affirm her place as one of Australia’s most compelling contemporary folk voices, an artist whose work resonates across cultures, generations, and borders.
