Nights Like This
by Kaylee Bell
At 18, Waimate’s Kaylee Bell won the Golden Guitar award. She moved to Australia at 21, and through hard work and tenacity, picked up more awards and increasing mainstream attention on both sides of the Tasman, notably appearing on The Voice Australia. She toured here last year, opened for Ed Sheeran and is touring again now.
Bell has relocated permanently to Nashville, the nexus of successful and aspiring country artists and songwriters. It’s her natural home and where she needs to be as a proven, collaborative songwriter.
This new album recorded with top-flight session players and producers is quintessential Nashville country. Song titles include Take It To the Highway, When Summer Rolls Around and Boots’n All. Bell covers key bases: country myth and nostalgia (Small Town Friday Nights), highway drivin’ (Good Things) and a potential standard in fine ballad Where Were You.
There’s a smart slice of genre-breaking electro-country (Life is Tough But So Am I with gifted Kiwi songwriter and tour support act Navvy that has pop crossover potential) and a well-chosen Alanis Morissette cover (You Learn). A stripped-down version of her 2019 single Keith – an open letter to country megastar Keith Urban that more recently made the US Independent Music Network chart – closes a mature, empowered, American country crossover album that hits every target.
The Winter Light
by Amiria Grenell
If Kaylee Bell looks outward and in a hurry to get there, Amiria Grenell from Lyttelton paces herself and looks inward with The Winter Light.
Although nominally a folk artist – her Three Feathers album won a 2012 Tūī in the folk category and its follow-up, Autumn, was nominated for the same award – Grenell again deftly incorporates elements from other genres.
Romeo is in the mould of leisurely doo-wop and classic 1950s pop (“Take me by the hand, tell me you’re my man”) and the album opener Oamaru by Night effortlessly drifts from intimate, crystalline folk (“I’m tired of not knowing where you are”) to a subtle, soul shuffle on the repeated “I just want to listen to you”.
There are smart embellishments from slide guitar, cello, banjo, backing vocalists and electric guitar elevating and toughing her light delivery, which often has conversational cadences in its pacing and shifts of emphasis (the title track, Suzy Blue).
Dedicated to her late father, country singer John Grenell, there’s much here that is personal: “I grew up strong just like my three brothers … I don’t regret this path I took” (the autobiographical life lessons on When They Roam) and on the self-explanatory Mother Daughter.
However, the finger-picking folk of Lanterns sounds like timeless Americana: “You come from the past … whisky words and mountain air”.
Again, peppering her lyrics with natural imagery, The Winter Light finds Grenell thoughtfully taking stock of the journey so far and what’s still in doubt.
Kaylee Bell tour dates:
- Trafalgar, Nelson, March 28
- Regent, Waimate, March 30, 31, April 1
- Clutha District War Memorial, Balclutha, April 2
- Civic, Invercargill, April 4
- Dunedin Town Hall, April 5
- Christchurch Town Hall, April 6
- Forum North, Whangārei, April 11
- Auckland Town Hall, April 13
- Great Lake Centre Taupo, April 19
Amiria Grenell tour dates:
- Lake Hāwea, House Concert, April 24
- Sherwood, Queenstown, April 26
- Maggies, Dunedin, April 27
- Poquito, Wellington, May 3 & 4
- Freida Margolis, Auckland, May 5
- Space Academy, Christchurch, May 10
