Tiny Ruins' debut album Some Were Meant For Sea was one of the best of 2011. She was nominated for the Taite Prize, and accolades were bestowed from all over the globe. So yes, there is a certain weight of expectation that comes with the release of second record Brightly Painted One.
In the intervening years Tiny Ruins has gone from being the solo project of Hollie Fullbrook to being a band with two more permanent members - Cass Basil on upright and electric bass, and Alex Freer on drums, but the songs are still very much the work of Fullbrook, and they're just as charming, and evocative, and delicate as anything on her debut, but with a new layer of self-confidence and a sense of wisdom.
They're also more personal than her earlier tracks, less about other characters, and more about her own perspective and stories, gathered, one imagines both from her life in Auckland and her many months wandering the world from one tour to the next.
She manages to convey the notion of a visitor who knows the secrets of every city she passes through - more a traveller than a tourist, and both weary and hopeful, and her voice has found an even more perfect balance between pure and smoky.
There's so many gems, both musical and lyrical across the album, it's hard to pick favourites. She manages to say a lot with lines like "Nobody feels old at the museum" in opener Me at the Museum, You In The Wintergardens, and "That old free will might be a myth, but I'm gonna try and get me some" in She'll Be Coming Round, which takes flight in an elegant and compelling groove in the last third.
