KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * * * *
Label: Siren/Capitol
Verdict: Auckland band muscle up for third effort
This band's 2005 album Out of the Moon hasn't endured as well as their great 2002 debut Riverhead did - while the upbeat songs might have added some pace to their live set, it lacked much to remember it by. Reporter, on the other hand, sounds like one which will hold the interest.
Perhaps because the band's various balancing acts - between its three songwriters; between the willowy voice of Kirsten Morelle and the guitar band; between their Brit-influenced indie-pop default setting and their loftier musical ambitions - have worked out for the best.
It's certainly the biggest-sounding Goldenhorse set yet, as shown by the opening grand guitar haze of The Last Train and then Calico Reporter with a pneumatic electronic throb beneath its shimmering melody. Likewise, the pounding Stone Wall with its hard-driving guitars shows a band capable of much more than jangling with quiet restraint behind a whimsical Morelle through another toe-tapping tune ... though they still do that too, at best on the acoustic-driven Lucky, and obvious single Jump Into the Sun. But add intriguing musical gearshifts from frenetic numbers like Saying My Name or the twitchy New Wave pop of Streetlights to the gloomy ballad finale of Change Of Heart, and Reporter manages a song-to-song dynamic sweep that makes it an absorbing album.
