Brave Star, by Tom Lark
Auckland-based Tom Lark has as many personae as names: he releases cruisy dance-floor pop as Shannon Matthew Vanya, but he’s also Shannon Fowler when producing and collaborating with Merk, Randa, Georgia Lines, Christchurch psychedelic drifters Fuzzy Robes and others.
But for this long overdue debut album as Tom Lark – previous alt-pop-rock Lark releases were years ago – he steps confidently into melodic, slightly delic dream pop with nuanced guitar and inviting vocals. This is most notably on the singles Radio Blaster, the country-flavoured Live Wires, and Brave Star, about the mayfly lifespan of former celebrities who’ve had “the peek round behind the curtain … maybe you are a star but not the one you thought you were”.
This could sound cruel or glib, but Lark’s delivery suggests some empathy.
Move On looks back on being the kid running away from home but going back, and in adulthood being the same, one who “never seems to move out, just move on”.
The airy five minute-plus centrepiece, Washout, has a balmy Pacific atmosphere couching mature reflection; Softserve is breezy 70s yacht rock recalling pleasant Californian MOR pop; Visiting Bunbury a melancholy piano interlude; and Wild Fire a philosophical, late-period Lennon ballad with Harrison-like guitar.
“Tom Lark” sounds like the most enriching and invigorating of his musical personae because Brave Star is an intelligent album adrift on a sea of memory bliss offering summer sounds and autumnal sensibilities.
Laundromat, by Pickle Darling
The music lexicon has a new sub-category: “cardigan pop”. That’s how the quirky music of Pickle Darling (Christchurch multi-instrumentalist Lukas Mayo, they/them) has been described. Check their 2016 glockenspiel version of the Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows.
Although they say Pickle Darling means nothing, you’d hope for some vinegar astringency. But the 12 songs on this third album in six years – call them miniatures or undeveloped – are slight, sweet and musically simple lo-fi bedroom pop, usually about the commonplace.
“I don’t say a single profound thing. Sorry,” they say on the 90-second Kinds of Love.
That’s their appeal, however. One fan said of Mayo’s hand-drawn video for the album’s title track that it had “this awesome school project/crafts vibe”.
“Cute” can be a compliment (nice, pleasant, sweet, child-like) but also a condemnation (vacuous, twee, saccharine, infantile). Laundromat is cute.
Golden Sun, by Vincent HL
Following his absorbingly ragged gloom-rock 2018 debut Weird Days, Vincent HL, from Kumeū, Auckland, can no more avoid comparisons with Neil Young than Liam Gallagher can with Oasis. The difference being Gallagher was in Oasis.
HL’s problem on this album is compounded by his style – Neil of the early 70s – being not only up against old Neil but current Neil because, inconveniently, Young – unlike Oasis – is still active.
HL’s PR says he writes “tales of stoned isolation, outsider observations of rank outsiders, days hanging out or driving around with nowhere to be and nothing to do, sun-kissed reflections of new love and night-time laments of love’s lost longings”. Familiar?
Enjoyable and recognisable. But unless you’ve worn out your third copy of Harvest …
Tom Lark and Pickle Darling are available digitally, on CD, vinyl and cassette; Vincent HL digitally and on vinyl.
