Zed: This Little Empire and Fur Patrol: Collider

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

For many a New Zealand pop band, the second-album stage is the toughest. If the debut was a runaway success, the sophomore can struggle to win the same attention.

The feelers, Stellar, Tadpole, Supergroove and others know this to their cost.

It's possibly to do with overexposure and the novelty wearing off for local fans. And it can be because groups lose that naive charm - a quality which often gives those early singles a vitality.

Here, we have two bands at that difficult-album stage. They released their debut albums in 2000.

Both skipped the country after that early success and faced hurdles on the way to these follow-up albums. For Fur Patrol it's meant slogging it out in Melbourne and reshuffling their record deal.

For Zed it's meant getting signed to American major Interscope, to be seemingly locked in the "under development" department, with early sessions rejected only to be heard on future B-sides.

On the second-time-lucky This Little Empire, there are hints of a heavy influence by the company's A&R gurus, who need to make these boys next door with the funny accents sell to the good folk of Boise, Idaho. Among the hints are covers of the Beach Boys' Don't Worry Baby and Starlight written by Weezer's Rivers Cuomo, and a couple of co-write credits from outside the quartet.

But even if it feels calculated, it's hard not to be impressed by Zed's toughened-up sound (helped by adept guitarist Andy Lynch, a late arrival to previous album Silencer), and the maturity in their own songwriting. That fuzzed-up Beach Boys track is a pointer, but there's an exuberance to this that sounds like four Kiwi blokes embracing their influences and recording circumstances, and delivering a set of shiny pop-rock of a definite Californian bent.

True, there are some bits which veer towards what used to be known as "FM rock", especially Bleeding on the Radio, and one or two songs like Firefly which sound generic enough to fit alongside the Third Eye Blinds of the world.

But there's plenty that impresses. Like the Cheap Trick-ish rave-up of opener Downtown, the goofy smile of teen-anthem and single Hard to Find Her, the Weezer-ish likes of Baby's Got Me Up and She Glows, the Foofighter-strength Think It Over, and frontman Nathan King's solo acoustic coda Holding Out.

It's an energetic wee bunch of songs that might not win any prizes for quirks of personality. But This Little Empire shows a tougher, smarter Zed whose love of straight-ahead guitar pop proves contagious.

Also suggesting their pre-album travails have toughened them up some, Fur Patrol's second album is the sound of a band attempting to reconcile the natural pop instincts which they displayed on early hits like Lydia last time through, with their new-found rock muscle.

Sometimes they do both in the course of slow-fused songs such as Enemy (which goes from Julia Deans' heart-aching vocal at the start to the band's ear-aching end), Softer Landing (which sounds a mite PJ Harvey) and the epic finale Little Heart which starts as a gentle jangle but ends in a sonic meltdown of feedback and massed voices which sound strangely Abba-like.

It can get a little overwrought, especially on the doomy torch tune Someone You Really Want, while the meaty Art of Conversation probably sounds better in a St Kilda pub.

But whether she's playing the vixen on quickstep single Precious or the hip-swingin' Get Along, or daydreaming lover on the woozy All These Things, Deans sings it like she means it - though at times she's lost in the mix. Still, Fur Patrol's second mission proves more gripping than the first.

Zed: This Little Empire

Label: Interscope

(Herald rating: * * *)

Fur Patrol: Collider

Label: Wea

(Herald rating: * * * *)