Goldenhorse: Riverhead; The Brunettes: Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

These two Auckland bands probably wonder why this unfeeling newspaper keeps lumping them in together. Well, just because they're unashamed pop outfits, got gal singers and debut albums within weeks of each other is enough for us.

But here's another reason: they're just so bloody clever. And that's not clever in a give-me-a-grant-so-I-can-express-my-heightened-sense-of-pop-irony kind of way - though the Brunettes come close on occasions.

No it's clever as in skilled, attention to detail, crafty of tune and smarter than your average bunch of young persons carrying instruments.

No wonder they both took a long time to get their albums released in these back-to-basics times.

On their debut, Goldenhorse have a bloodline - guitarist Geoff Maddock and drummer Joel Wilton were both in Breast Secreting Cake, who delivered a strangely wondrous art-pop album a few years back. And teamed with singer Kristen Morelle, guitarist Andrew Clark and bassist singer Ben King, they've become something rather rare - a guitar pop band where you only occasionally notice the guitars.

Everything is framed around Morelle's keening voice on songs that take in pastoral pop (Northern Lights), romantic torch numbers (Golden Dawn), a hint of soul-funk (Wake Up Brother), a blast of sun-kissed ska (Baby's Been Bad), and duets of gothic-strength brooding (Riverhead and the closing Dark Forest). So, yes, talk about your mood swings.

They can sometimes recall the likes of the Sugarcubes, the Sundays (especially on the jangle-pop Maybe Tomorrow) or Catatonia, but they sound like a band who have worked way past their influences.

The result is one, yes, clever debut album but one that's a summer pop classic in the making.

Working through their influences - while maintaining a self-deprecating sense of humour about it - is the Brunettes reason for being.

Fortunately, their dedication to a sort of 60s pop-kitsch of organs, twanging guitars, and the duet singing of Heather Mansfield and Jonathan Bree ("It's no secret that when I sing I like to sound American," he offers on the first song) also delivers songs that rise above being exercises in op-shop pop.

Take opener The Moon in June Stuff - a mini-pop opera in several movements. Or there's Cupid, which suggests a duet between Jonathon Richman and Nancy Sinatra (and slips in a wry U2 joke) or the lovely title track and Talk to Jesus, which come on like successful attempts at DIY Phil Spector production numbers.

However, by the time the intro of track eight Jukebox is making you start humming Sandie Shaw's Puppet On A String, it sounds as if some of this had a former life in sketch comedy which doesn't bear up to repeat listens too well.

But the late-arriving lilting ballads End of the Runway and Tell Her remind that the Brunettes' debut is as time-warped clever as it is charming.

Goldenhorse: * * * * *

(Siren/Capitol)


The Brunettes: * * * *

(Lil Chief/ Capitol)