Strawpeople: Count Backwards From 10

Reviewed by RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * *)

The fashion for employing multiple singers to warble atop a set of electronic groovescapes might have passed. But Strawpeople mainman Paul Casserly still likes being a team player, and the vibrancy and scope of his sixth album shows there's still creative life in the concept.

It's also the first album that regular collaborator Fiona McDonald has appeared on since her foray into Idol-land. While it's tempting to say something withering like "you really made that song your own" about her three co-written tracks, they don't particularly stand out among the 11 here, sounding as if they could have existed on any previous Strawpeople album.

But Count Backwards still clicks into place neatly as an album that has much electropop spark, at best on the vivacious No One Like You (co-written by Boh Runga and sung by sister Pearl) and the lush cover of the Psychedelic Furs' Love My Way, featuring Leza Corban on vocals laced with gently unsettling excursions.

Those include the dub-noir of Wire (with its captivating vocal by co-writer Jordan Reyne) and Winter (which neatly liberates Mahinarangi Tocker's voice from its usual folk confines).

Of the instrumentals, neon-lit opener Driving Around, with its slap-bass, suggests a time when many a band name ended with the word "Set". The Andy Warhol Effect neatly marries a P-Funk groove with a spot of Marshall McLuhan, and Casserly sounds like a friendly dentist.

No, not something you hear every day. But it's proof, as is most of this album, that Strawpeople are yet to run out of smart ideas and Casserly and team remain one of New Zealand pop's smartest think-tanks.


Label: CRS/Sony