Arthur Ahbez & The Flaming Ahbez
by Arthur Ahbez
Arthur Ahbez is apparently this local artist’s real name, not a homage to the fascinating proto-hippie Eden Ahbez who wrote, among other things, the jazz standard Nature Boy in the 1940s.
If Eden was proto-, Arthur is post-, because this third album roams freely through psychedelic pop, country, folk-rock and more, stylistic conflations common in the late 1960s (Moby Grape, Country Joe and the Fish, the Incredible String Band), but less so today.
That Ahbez and band shift from boogie with organ (A Song for Jim) to slow, spaced-out blues-rock (Late Night Empty Pocket Blues), then into pop-rock with 50s roots and surf guitar (Take It Easy) is enjoyably capricious.
The psychedelic folk-rock of Reckless is typically bewildering: “Bull on the wood, misunderstood. She’ll take a trip to a Hollywood. Some fat cow sings in the farmers yard, milk turns sour and the cream turns hard. Ride the wave …”
Cool Water at the end invokes spoken pieces by Johnny Cash, Lee Hazlewood and others who could carry lyrics like these: “Over the dunes and towards the ridge he walked, his boots both split open at the heel and the hour was approaching noon. It was three days since he last touched a lick of water …”
From the opener, Sister (think a countrified Doors without Jim Morrison’s gloomy baritone), to that cowboy lament, it’s quite a trip, and although the destination is unclear, the unpredictability is a considerable part of its appeal.
Arthur Ahbez is available digitally and on vinyl; High Horse digitally, CD and vinyl.
High Horse
by Adam Hattaway and the Haunters
No one could accuse Ōtautahi Christchurch’s Adam Hattaway of coasting. Since his 2018 debut album All Dat Love with the Haunters, they’ve released five albums of Hattaway originals and co-writes, 2021′s Rooster a double.
They’ve ranged from swaggering Stones-like rock’n’roll and dancefloor disco-rock to power-pop and alt-country. The compilation Anthology 2018-2023 offers a snapshot catch-up if you’ve missed these accomplished genre-jumpers.
On High Horse, produced by Marlon Williams, Hattaway and co-writer Elmore Jones are in a more despondent, reflective mood (notably Conical Hill’s refrain “crying all the way”) on an album Hattaway unjustifiably describes as “frustratingly quiet”.
The menacing opener, Good Times, includes memorable similes – “a face like a cheap motel … a heart shaped like a homicide” – and comes off akin to depressive Lennon in the White Album period.
Hattaway’s love for 1960s pop comes through on the lightlydelic Beatlesque anthem Screaming Machine; Room to Breathe with soulful falsetto boasts a refined, spare melody and open-heart sentiments in the manner of classic alt-country ballads; on the invitingly tropical standout If You Got Nowhere Else to Go, Hattaway slips between singing and a conversational delivery like recent Mike (Waterboys) Scott.
The beautifully dispirited mood of Mercy for the Weak, with lachrymose pedal steel, offers “you’re a liar and a cheat, you have no mercy for the weak … you’re just a heart attack on wings”.
High Horse doesn’t consistently deliver (the weaker Paranoid Kid), but the best here is as good as disappointment-pop gets.
