Recently playing among the all-star line-up of Atomic 2.0, a women-in-rock tribute touring show alongside Flying Nun labelmate Vera Ellen, Jazmine Mary is a couple of weeks away from releasing a third album entitled I Want to Rock and Roll. It comes with a cover photo which requires us to interrupt this review to remind readers that riding a motorcycle in gumboots isn’t safe, and neither is smoking near a bike’spetrol tank. The music that comes in this dangerous packaging? Judging by previous single Memphis and this new one it’s quite nice, if as disconcerting as the singer-songwriter’s past efforts. My Brilliance is tempo-shifting, art-folk that shifts from dreamy to sprightly and back and remains hypnotic and lyrically disarming throughout. That rock and roll urge can wait. – Russell Baillie
Borrow My Boots
by Tami Neilson feat. Ashley McBryde, Grace Bowers, and Shelly Fairchild
Although her Chickaboom! album was intended to break Tami Neilson in the States (“Just call 2020 the year of Tami,” said the influential No Depression magazine), Covid-19 came along and pushed her career sideways. Her recent recording and touring with Willie Nelson now looks like the watershed moment for her forthcoming Neon Cowgirl album (July 11, title track co-written with Neil Finn). This boisterous banjo-coloured slice of country with a shot of Southern soul woven through bottles up Neilson’s enthusiasm, tosses in a short rock guitar solo and brings home her sisterhood message that sometimes the only way through is to kick it in: “You can borrow my boots.” – Graham Reid
Little Less Lonely
by Jenny Mitchell
A one-time teenage runner-up on NZ’s Got Talent and a product of hometown Gore and its country music traditions, Mitchell is now on to her fourth album, Forest House, which is named for the homestead in which it was recorded in the Wairarapa. The opening track is this pretty, understated ballad which packs an Eleanor Rigby-sized cast into four minutes of storytelling. It makes an elegant album bookend to the closing Heart Like a House, which was a co-write with one Tami Neilson, while sounding like it would sit nicely on a Nadia Reid album. – Russell Baillie
Young
by Little Simz
Her earlier epic single Flood left quite an impression with its imposing mood but Little Simz’s Young suggests her forthcoming album will be having some big mood swings. It’s a speak-sing character monologue over a bouncy Britpop bassline and lyric that name-checks Amy Winehouse as it references her Fuck Me Pumps. The song is amusing enough, the video that comes with it is positively loopy. – Russell Baillie
Eerily swirling, shapeshifting, slo-mo mix-up of low funk with flickers of jazz and much else, this six-minute-plus meltdown comes from New York’s “post-genre” project. They don’t appear to have a new album on the horizon (their last was in 2017) but are just back to mess with your mind. And they successfully do exactly that. Weirdly enjoyable and hypnotic. –Graham Reid
Cathode Ray
by Folk Bitch Trio
Australian trio of Gracie Sinclair, Jeanie Pilkington and Heide Peverelle deny the expectation of their assertive band name with this engaging single of close harmonies with a sensual and sympathetic delivery of their folk-pop which is beautifully unhurried. This and the earlier The Actor announce a very promising debut album Now Would Be a Good Time (July 25) and a short New Zealand tour in September. Check them out. – Graham Reid
Clouds
by Lucy Gooch
With some of the ethereal sound of Enya and ambient folk, Britain’s Gooch drops this five-minute-plus soundscape where she is adrift on pillows of synths, disappears at the midpoint and re-emerges as a distant voice weaving around the cornet of jazz player Harry Furniss. Another single which isn’t really a single, just a further reminder of her debut album Desert Window due June 6. This and two previous songs suggest an album for deep immersion and late-night listening. – Graham Reid
Leonie Holmes: Dance of the Wintersmith
by Andrew Beer violin, Sarah Watkins piano.
Dance of the Wintersmith is, to my knowledge, the only classical composition written in this country to have drawn its inspiration from one of Terry Pratchett’s fantastical, funny Discworld novels. Includes humming and whistling. #NZMM – Richard Betts
