Sidekicknick - Miscellaneous Adventures

Rating:

* * *

Full of obscure noises and strange vocal arrangements, SideKickNick - or former Voom bassist Nick Buckton - has successfully produced New Zealand's most unusual musical offering of the year.

As the record opens with

Something in Your Eyes,

clanking bells (or a random assortment of scrap metal?) can be heard alongside cartoon-like, wobbling spring sound effects.

At it's best - like the meandering

Got A

, complete with alarm clock opening - the album has a certain Blur

Parklife

feel to it. Likewise, the dreamy

Cupcake

and stonking

Phone Song

standout for their Albarn-esque qualities.

But too often Buckton seems to sabotage his work by taking things to the extreme. Throughout the record, tracks sail along nicely, until Buckton ends them with a clangingly off-key and off-kilter finale.

Amputee Acrobat

and

Eat & Sleep

are key offenders.

At the same time, tracks like Disturb the Piece  manage to become staid and boring, despite concerted efforts to be oh-so-whacky. Perhaps the most painful offering, however, is the screaming trill and gun-fire drum roll of

Hello My Friend

.

Buckton's efforts to mix things up and try something new are commendable and the result is a handful of genuinely fun and fresh sounds. But too much of the album misses the mark.

Ultimately, what starts off as interesting and unusual becomes decidedly irksome on repeated listens.

Joanna Hunkin