By their seventh album, Adelaide trio Hilltop Hoods already comfortably stood at the apex of Australian hip-hop. Maybe for that reason, or because rappers Suffa and Pressure were just a few years away from 40, Walking Under Stars tempers their confident flow with deeper notes of introspection and melancholy. Conceived as a companion piece to 2012’s Drinking from the Sun, this record continues the maturity announced on more somber Sun tracks like “Now You’re Gone.” Here, Suffa describes pain hanging in the air like cigarette smoke on “Live and Let Go,” before his catharsis gets hammered home via a breakout soul hook from Irish singer/rapper Maverick Sabre and a moody verse from US underground rapper Brother Ali. Even more striking is “Through the Dark,” a Pressure solo outing that speaks directly to his eight-year-old son, Liam, about Pressure’s split with Liam’s mother and Liam’s battle with leukaemia. Other guests follow emotional suit—check out Dan Sultan’s frayed vocals on “Rumble, Young Man, Rumble”—while the production favors stripped-down vintage sounds that culminate in the skeletal “The Art of the Handshake.” Hilltop Hoods would later mingle parts of this album and Drinking from the Sun for a combined Restrung version enlisting the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, adding new scope to soul-searching standouts like the retirement-mulling piano ballad “I’m a Ghost.”