The Rose of Jericho
By Georgia Lines
The week after picking up Te Manu Taki Arotini o te Tau/Best Pop Artist at the Aotearoa Music Awards, Georgia Lines launched this debut album with her small band at a swanky rooftop bar in central Auckland, a fitting venue for a sophisticated pop’n’soul collection she referred to as “a body of work”.
Lines stands apart from those who release “a banger” or “summer anthem” – favoured descriptions in current music PR. She’s comfortable having a lush piano ballad like Grow Old Without You with the Black String Quartet and the equally downbeat but heroically yearning The Letter (“I’m screaming but my head’s underwater”) to open The Rose of Jericho and as the album’s first singles.
Like Billie Eilish, Adele, Julia Jacklin and others with a mature perspective, she has the confidence to programme this debut with deferred expectation. The pure pop arrives later with the throbbing Say You Still, which morphs into something close to classic Fleetwood Mac. On Wayside, she completely commands attention and does not step back for instrumental solo space.
This is a courageous feature of Lines’ intense writing, and only those who craft smart melodies (like Distance and the drifting End of the World) and have vocal dexterity and range can pull it off. From belting R’n’B soul to a fragile duet with Teeks on Not By Your Side, and the final ballad, Grand Illusion, that takes us full circle, Lines addresses adult uncertainties: “To be twenty-something to try to figure who I am and where should I be now” on Start of the Middle.
The album title refers to a plant that after months of dehydration is revived by rain, a metaphor – echoed by Frances Carter’s impressive cover photo – relating to recent hard times she is reluctant to air. But they’re here.
The Rose of Jericho is an outstanding body of work which, when delivered live, punches even harder.
The Novel
By Park Rd
No 4 on the local charts first week in, The Novel is testament to this Auckland band’s pop-rock crafted with singalong components designed for wide appeal.
Singer Tom Chamberlain has a pleading voice nudging into soulful hurt, but it’s deployed so often it loses impact. Call Me Up is a winning single, the bristling guitars of Save the Planet elevate and energise it, Did It Anyway takes a left turn from the template and Ride has an ambitious construction and shifting dynamics.
The Novel may not be a gripping story of interesting characters and plot development, but it’s an assured debut that should encourage Park Rd to push further and take risks.
Please Go Wild
By Polite Company
London-based singer-writer and former Mutton Bird Alan Gregg blends a wry, observational attitude with a melodically light touch, like a more cheerful but barbed Gilbert O’Sullivan.
Barefoot Billionaire pokes at eccentric Silicon Valley wunderkinds; Buzz Me In paints a picture of painful loneliness; New Yacht is about the avaricious nouveau riche; and there’s a sympathetic, upbeat portrait of Auckland busker Otis Mace. Gregg may seem polite company, but in warm songs he often has something icy embedded. Clever, loaded pop about these times.
These albums are available digitally, on CD and vinyl.
