Australia's Tarmac Adam returns with In Place, an album hewn from road-worn meditation, a beautiful album of openhearted, stoic affirmation. Once again featuring Crowded House bassist Nick Seymour. After the inward-gaze of 2013's The History Effect, songwriters Matt O’Donnell and Steve Paix, Seymour and drummer Josh Barber, have shifted their focus: In Place reaches out, like the ever expanding circles on the album cover, and attempts the unthinkable - a universal message in these increasingly segmented, fragmented times. The first track available from In Place is "Walk Tall”,a song that wrestles with regret and thoughts of what could have been, exhorting us to 'rise above it all', leaving behind comparisons to others and being true to ourselves. In 2013 the band took their last album to the US, traversing the length and breadth of the country, on TV and radio, in venues and tiny rooms, winning rave reviews along the way. There was something about the shimmering, melancholic pop music that seemed to connect with audiences. Wherever they went, the songs of Tarmac Adam felt 'in place'. It wasn't lost on them when writing the new album. Now In Place, while full of their trademark self-questioning and an almost hushed aura of regretful longing, fuses this with optimism, kicking straight off with a plea for compassion and humility in "A Town Called Mercy", as the first pieces of the album's jigsaw begin to fall 'in place'. What keeps coming back, through all the songs, is the sense that we should look up from our device-led divisiveness, this 'kind of' life we are living, and choose, in the words of "Blindside", a 'kinder life'. It's there in the strength-from-adversity of "Begin To Mend". It's there weaving its way through the understated beauty of these songs, this need to connect with others: 'It's the loneliest journey a man can take. Carry the burden for others' sake.' And it reaches its apogee in perhaps the album's center-point, the unheroically named "Afterthought", which celebrates 'finding an essence in something more than what about me' and revolves around two words that are so sadly missing from today's dialogue: 'Difference. Matters.' And for the many lovers of Tarmac Adam's last album, In Place offers another superbly crafted, rich and soulful musical journey. In a musical landscape of florid spruikers, In Place engages you like an old friend. Reach out. Connect. Bear the burden. Make a difference. Rise above. This is the mantra of In Place. It's a bold move, a message so simple, yet so conspicuously absent from today's narrative. It's what makes Tarmac Adam's latest album, the product of thousands of miles and lifetimes of experience, so timeless, and wherever it may be played, so quintessentially - 'in place'.