Freak Out City
By Bret McKenzie
Bret McKenzie, once of “New Zealand’s fourth-most popular guitar-based digi-bongo a capella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo”, here sidelines Flight of the Conchords’ award-winning parodies and – as on his enjoyable 2022 solo album Songs Without Jokes – plays a (mostly) straight bat to his original tunes.
Not that there aren’t droll or humorous observations: the opener Bethnal Green Blues considers people who died in sad, stupid accidents as the singer thinks “all I want to do is make a difference, not fade away into insignificance … but every day’s a little more difficult”.
At times, McKenzie couples his pop-craft with observational wit like Randy Newman (the jaunty title track about conspiracy believers, “if this could happen to you it could happen to me”) but there’s also thoughtful poignancy in the lovely Highs and Lows and especially All the Time, with “child you’re beautiful … when you’re as old as me who knows what this world will be”.
Here, too, is the wry spirit of Harry Nilsson, Jimmy Buffett, Little Feat and the shoulder-shrug lyrics of John Prine’s back-porch folksy That’s The Way That The World Goes ’Round, which slips in seamlessly via a New Orleans arrangement.
McKenzie commands country (the guileless declaration of love on All I Need), end-of-tether country-soul (Too Young) and the easy roll of Gerry Rafferty-like folk pop (Eyes on the Sun).
Given his mastery of genres in the Conchords, it’s no surprise McKenzie taps diverse sources for a thoroughly engaging, not-many-jokes album.
Pikipiki
By Geneva AM
Geneva AM is Geneva Alexander-Marsters (Ngāti Ruapani, Ngāti Kahungunu) who – after a welcome – opens this bilingual collection of soulful electrobeat pop with Toitū Te Tiriti/Uphold the Treaty, urging young Māori to remember their Māoritanga.
Then, on Urban Planning, she looks at what development has done to traditional land and the turning of the great waka Te Toki-a-Tapiri into a museum exhibit, before delivering a pulsing modernisation of Pōkarekare Ana, billed as an “emo cover”.
She immediately establishes credentials in Māori culture and imported electronica before picking up those in the buzzing original pop of Meet Again and her treatment of Wiremu Te Tau Huata’s Tutira Mai Ngā Iwi (sung unaccompanied before the propulsive dancebeat pulls into a nightclub).
Later, there’s an electropop overhaul of the equally well known and moving Purea Nei, written by Hirini Melbourne after the death of a student and inviting their wairua to be set free to soar.
It takes exceptional self-confidence to undertake a project like this that may face criticism for reworking Māori standards.
But – with Mara TK, Lani Purkis (Elemeno P), Ruby Walsh (Lips) and others – the result is a somewhat uneven album with its heart and soul in the past but its thoughts and delivery in contemporary pop, drum ’n’ bass and electronica.
Past and present together, as she sings on Urban Planning: “I feel at home in the city, I’ve got my tipuna with me.”
These albums are available digitally and on vinyl. Freak Out City also on CD.
