NZ Listener’s Songs of the Week: New tracks by Kirsten Morrell, Jonathan Bree with Princess Chelsea, Dudley Benson, and more

Kirsten Morrel, formerly of Goldenhorse now on her way to her second solo album. Supplied

For the full Spotify playlist go here

Hoping & Wishin’ (Robin’s Song)

by Kirsten Morrell, Barkin Sertkaya, Grand Rapids

Former Goldenhorse voice Kirsten Morrell inches closer to the release of a second solo album
with this, possibly one of most accomplished and ambitious numbers of her post-band career. Yes, that title that brings to mind Wishin’ and Hopin‘, the Bacharach-David classic made famous by Dusty Springfield, and this hearty pop song has a sophisticated, skipping arrangement all its own – a mix of churning synth bass, along with contributions by classical guitarist Sertkaya, and electric guitar and possibly other bits by Grand Rapids (her former bandmate Ben King). The “Robin” of the title dedication is apparently English conductor-arranger Robin White who Morrell had as a tutor while pursuing the classical side of her career in London. – Russell Baillie

Live to Dance

by Jonathan Bree, Princess Chelsea

Back in 2011, the hot tub video for the Princess Chelsea-Jonathan Bree’s Cigarette Duet started its climb to 124 million YouTube views and even more Spotify Streams. Those are numbers the pair haven’t been able to repeat individually or together, but they’ve tapped the same arch chemistry for this droll number – a song that starts off sounding like early Human League with a touch of Twin Peaks theme guitar twang. It’s also a song with “dance” in the title that might defy punters to do just that – but there is a video with some suggestions. Though is has some titillating distractions, given much of it feels Roxy Music’s infamous Country Life album shot in black and white and brought to life.

Pūrerehua

by Dudley Benson

It’s been a while since we heard from Melbourne-based Dudley Benson who sometimes – as here – sits at the interface of pop, art music and songs in te reo Māori. Here he returns to songs by the late Hirini Melbourne, whose work he interpreted on his album Forest in 2010 when he initially recorded this but didn’t release it. This is a lyric about the waiata of the butterfly which, after a tinkering with the original version, he gives an appropriately light vocal over a tricky electrobeat underpinning. Sprightly and catchy though it is, it might struggle for attention at music radio although RNZ National should happily embrace it. All proceeds from the sale of Pūrerehua are donated to The Manaaki Collective, a grass-roots organisation which supports human rights and Te Tiriti activists. – Graham Reid

Red Sunset

by Bic Runga

Hard on the heels of Paris in the Rain and the earlier track It’s Like Summertime, another meteorological-leaning single from the writer of Listening for the Weather, and one which is the title track to a new album due in the New Year. Like Paris, it’s a nifty bit of minimalist retro-electropop that suggests her late-summer tour and appearance with the NZSO is going to need a mirrorball,dry ice and backing band doing the one-finger keyboard thing. – Russell Baillie

Zero Zero

by Harry Charles

Following his fine album Movement earlier in the year and the recent festival-ready single The Luck, local electronica artist Charles returns with something a little more down-tempo and restrained on Zero Zero. However – as we did with The Luck – we link here to the extended version, six and half minutes on Spotify, and extra minute in the more strident version at Apple Music (our preferred one). Either way you get an instrumental with a steady pulse, a weaving melody, a gentle increase in layers of electronics and a wordless vocal part which is going to sound just find when lying in the grass at a festival. – Graham Reid

Don’t Let It Get You Down

by Joshua Idehen

Where jazzercise meets house with a positivity vibe from the London poet who was inspired to make music after hearing Scroobius Pip, which is not a claim many would make. It’s all over in three hyperactive minutes but if it – and the similarly affirmative previous single It Always Was – leaves you wanting more be patient. His debut album I Know You’re Hurting, Everyone Is Hurting, Everyone Is Trying, You Have Got To Try isn’t out until March 6. – Graham Reid

No Comment

by Kneecap featuring Sub Focus

More fast’n’furious rhymes and white-knuckle sounds from Belfast’s most feared trio, here with DJ Sub Focus bringing sonic punch to an angry swipe at being harassed by the media and “the British state” over their political stances on Gaza and the terrorism charge against band member Mo Chara for waving a Hezbollah flag (a designated terrorist organisation in Britain) at a concert. “I’m misbehaving in badness, Mo Chara’s wanted. The air bubble bandit” and “Have you ever been plastered on the news when you’ve got the heebie-jeebies? Far from ideal, got death threats on my screen”. Two minutes from very annoyed, funny (heebie-jeebies?) and no-surrender Irishmen. – Graham Reid

Sugar Clouds

by Ásgeir

This third single by Icelandic singer-songwriter in the run-up to a new album Julia (out February 13) sounds ideally pitched at southern hemisphere audiences with its smooth folksy flow and opening lines which say “sitting in the car by the beach . . .” That sounds very like us as he reflects on past mistakes and looks forward hopefully and remembering “basking in the sun with our eyes closed”. Lovely, languid and even if the time signature is a little difficult it could translate well with the Māori strum around a fire on the beach at sunset. And that is very us. Check the video for a stripped down performance. – Graham Reid

Rose City

by The Silversound

Not so much a single but a 10 minute psychedelic trip on the back of shimmering and jangly guitars, echoed vocals and a rolling krautrock groove that carries the whole thing for this Melbourne band. As paisley-wearing spotters would note from the title, this is also a tribute to the excellent Rose City Band out of Portland (lead by Ripley Johnson of Wooden Shjips and the Moon Duo) whose warm and 2020 Summerlong album we recommend. The Silversound – a semi-supergroup of seasoned players who have worked with Paul Kelly, Dave Graney and others – have gathered the threads of Byrdsian psychedelic rock with this title track of their forthcoming second album which we now very much look forward to. One for highway driving. – Graham Reid

This Guy?

by Hater

Not the doom metal band their name might suggest, Hater are a refined Swedish alt-pop four-piece whose 2018 album Siesta is quite something, although arguably offered too much of their good thing over 14 songs. Their 2022 follow-up Sincere is a more economic encounter. Here they are again after three years of downtime with a typically interesting first single in advance of a new album Mosquito (March 6) which is part shoegaze, part drone-pop and something close to polished alt-rock in its sky-scaling guitar which closes proceedings just short of the four minute mark. An interesting band if you don’t know them and this single is the easy-entry into their 90s pop. – Graham Reid

Fools Gold

by Stone Roses

Thanks to Gary ‘Mani’ Mountfield, who has died at the age of 63, the Stone Roses had so many good basslines. The fluid, swinging rhythm section of him and drummer Alan “Reni” Wren was what made the Manchester band which took the UK by storm in 1989 a stand-out at the time, compatible with the Acid House dance era, and quite possibly timeless. Mountfield went on to do deeper, dubby things in Primal Scream after the Roses foundered, and when the band briefly reunited for a world tour which brought them to Auckland, he and Wren found themselves propping up the increasingly Led Zeppelin guitar excursions of guitarist John Squire. Fools Gold is as good a place as any to be reminded the drive Mountfield brought to the band.

Purcell, ‘When I Am Laid in Earth’, from Dido and Aeneas

by Joyce DiDonato mezzo-soprano, Il Pomo D’oro, Maxim Emelyanychev conductor

Joyce DiDonato, who performs in Wellington (28 Nov) and Auckland (29 Nov) is one of the great singers of our time, which is why we’ve gone big with a four-page interview in the Listener magazine and online. In her latest recording she sings Dido in Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas. This performance of When I Am Laid in Earth’ (aka Dido’s Lament), the most famous aria in English opera, is fascinating for the way DiDonato allows herself to massage the rhythm, melody and harmony. When we asked her about it, she said, “In the moment I am simply Dido, and this is the only way she knows how to express her extremity of emotion.” You can read the rest of the interview online, any day now. – Richard Betts

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