Selenelion
By Clementine Valentine from the album The Coin That Broke The Fountain Floor
Formerly the dreamy, esoteric and folk-adelic Purple Pilgrims, the enormously talented sisters Clementine and Valentine Nixon step out under their own names for their new, New York-produced album The Coin That Broke The Fountain Floor. This, the fourth advance single, confirms their quiet, ethereal Anglo-folk approach steeped in myth and fables and afloat in a mood of warm and beautiful yearning. The song title will have you heading for the dictionary, so it’s educational too. – Graham Reid
(See the next issue of The Listener for a profile of the sibling duo)
Make It Better
by NO CIGAR
It’s chill, surfy pop with some Jack Johnson style lyricism. And with the help of some clean, well-executed production and husky but assured vocals, NO CIGAR’s new single Make It Better cements the Kiwi band as one to watch. They’ve owned the NZ music festival circuit including the iconic Rhythm and Vines – unsurprising with songs seemingly made for the medium. But their new track’s music video notes the deeper tones beneath the songs vibey exterior, depicting a relationship gone wrong. – Alana Rae
First Light
by Hozier from Unreal Unearth
Hozier has certainly departed from his stripped back days and opts for more layered, sometimes poppier takes in his new album Unreal Unearth, of course not without the occasional nod to Irish folk. The last track First Light does everything a finale should – cinematic production with crashing drums and his unwavering vocal power put up on the pedestal it deserves. – Alana Rae
From the Start
By Laufey from the album Bewitched
If you only hear one Latin shuffle song by a Los Angeles-based Chinese-Icelandic jazz singer this week then ... Laufey’s a classically trained cellist who studied at Berklee in Boston, recorded with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra (check the lushness on her single Bewitched which sounds beamed in from a romantic Disney feature) and is as sassy and accomplished as she is photogenic. – Graham Reid
Skipping Like a Stone
By the Chemical Brothers featuring Beck from forthcoming album Born in the Echoes
The Chemical Brothers chuck fellow 1990s wunderkind and perpetual collaborator Beck into the beaker for a breezy ode to bouncing geology across pond surfaces and being there for you. Beck gets more room to move and to sound like Beck that he did on his recent double-act with tour-mates Phoenix. But he’s moonlighted in electro territory better before, like back when he became a one-man Beach Boys choir for Flume. Still, it’s quite the Generation X supergroup all the same. – Russell Baillie
Balcony Man
By Nick Cave & Warren Ellis from Australian Carnage, Live at the Sydney Opera House
As he’s done before, Nick Cave kicks off an album/tour/film/book period with a live recording. This one is from late 2022 (18 tracks on CD and digital, but only eight on vinyl) might be rattling the tiles off the roof of Sydney’s greatest building but it’s not quite his greatest concert album, possibly because the studio album Carnage that fuels it didn’t quite connect as strongly as its high-emotion predecessors. And because, as impressive as a one-man band Warren Ellis is, he’s no Bad Seeds. Still, it’s probably Cave’s best comedy album. “This is a joyful song so make the fucking most of it … because it’s downhill from here,” he quips before the breezy Beathless, and the audience interaction just before Balcony Man is another amusing high-point before the song takes Cave down a very Leonard Cohen-esque lover’s lane. – Russell Baillie
Orfeo ed Euridice ‘Overture’
by Christoph Willibald Gluck. Performed by Freiburger Barockorchester, Rene Jacobs conductor.
The last time I saw Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, it was dripping with 18th century decorum and Orfeo was being sung by a mezzo-soprano. NZ Opera’s exciting new production – renamed m(ORPHEUS) – features bass-baritone Samson Setu in the role, a reorchestration courtesy of Gareth Farr, and dance elements choreographed by Black Grace boss Neil Ieremia. – Richard Betts
