After-hours of dark and mellow music

Recliner's pop songs are soothing but moody

With seven band members, all with careers outside music, Recliner are understandably pleased to have their first album on the shelves.

The band was founded in 2004 by Guy Wishart, who moved into a house near singer Belinda Bradley and started a musical collaboration with her that ended up involving five others. With a film-maker, lawyer and horticulturist in the mix, getting together to record was a case of setting aside evenings and weekends for the cause, and several months were spent in a makeshift studio.

All are musicians in their own right and the album is a soothing mix of guitars, bass, drums and electronica, with some pure vocal input from Bradley and Darlene Te Young. The music is Portishead-style pop with a slightly dark and moody feel, but easy to listen to and likely to have wide appeal.

The album's artwork and title works in with an overall laid-back image projected by the band, and Bradley says it's an integral part of the whole Recliner outfit.

The lyrics are on the dark and emotional side but Bradley suggests one need not read into it too much.

"It's just more fun to play. It just seems more fun to be miserable than happy. I think even deep emotional music can be quite uplifting.

"Happy music is much harder to write without it sounding really banal," she says.

The band has been playing reasonably frequently over the past year, keeping the gigs fairly low-key and making sure they get it right.

Bradley says the layers of sound in the songs translates well in a live setting, and getting the album to replicate that was a big challenge to overcome.

"Now that I'm at the end of it I don't think I could have hoped for it to be any better from an artistic point of view," she says. "I think we're all really happy. "It's really satisfying to work for a long time towards the goal of getting the music right and then getting it recorded with the right sound."

While not being aligned to a record label adds to the challenge for any band, Recliner have used combined skills to create their own business entity in Crimpolene Music.

Bradley says having other incomes has helped with the purchase of equipment and other expenses, but the budget is still tight and keeping the band's momentum up requires organisation and wise decisions.

"It makes it more challenging, because every time you do something it's money," she says.

"You've got to get smart and often as musicians we're not smart - we just want to get out and play."

"It is great being able to self-fund, but it also starts to run out pretty quickly, too."

She says an enthusiasm for music helps to make any hard work worthwhile.

"We've always had music in our lives, and although we've got careers in other areas, music has always been a driving passion.

"I think if you want to do something enough you work around anything. Everyone has their careers, but the music, the band and the album, has become really important and a real priority."

Recliner have made one music video to date for the single This Was For You, and have also had chart success on b-Net radio as opposed to mainstream radio, which Bradley says she has mixed feelings about.

While the benefits of exposure to a larger audience are obvious, a lot of the songs created locally are less likely to have mainstream appeal than others, and the dominant stations set tight parameters.

"It would be great if mainstream radio stations could be a bit more adventurous, because I think audiences would think it was great, but it's hard to know," she says.

Bradley says the immediate goal for Recliner is to try and grow their fan base in the wake of the album release, but Wishart already has some new songs that could form the basis of a second album.

But in the Recliner style, that will happen if and when the band thinks the time is right.

Who: Recliner
Where and when: Grand Circle, St James, tonight
Album: Rest Room, out now

- NZPA