Herald rating: * * * *
(Marital Music)
Review: Russell Baillie
Funny isn't it how some notes, sung in some ways, on some songs, can just get you right there?
This album - the first baby from Second Child frontman, now solo singer-songwriter and Aucklander Binder - has at least one such note for these ears.
It's on track 10, Big Sleep, a resonant low-ish one which Binder draws out at the beginnings of the ballad's chorus lines. It's just exquisite.
And so too is the rest of this 13-track album, which shows Binder as quite the master of melancholy tunes - think a more heart-on-the-sleeve, intuitive, guitar-fired Greg Johnson and you'll be sort of close - which he and producer Bon Shepheard have framed in no-nonsense arrangements, though sometimes its unshowy approach can leave some of Binder's choruses lacking the widescreen touch some would seem to be screaming out for.
Oh well, plaintive pop pleasantness still abounds whether Binder is sailing close to the territories of Neil Finn (Good as Gone, the minor-to-major Long Run), Elvis Costello (complete with London's Calling strum on Doubtless), the sadcore likes of American Music Club or the Red House Painters (Slow Dive) or the jagged folk rock janglers like opener Stray Banter.
It's a steady grower of an album, the sort of album on which a bit of time and care will reveal those special notes.
We've long had a senior squad of Kiwi singer-songwriters as favourite musical sons.
Welcome the new boy with an album that deserves the same sort of respect.
* Damien Binder plays at the Kings Arms on Friday, Dec 2
<i>Damien Binder:</i> Self titled
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