Tony Stamp directs his ears to a lovely and lacerating collection from Emily Fairlight and The Shifting Sands, atmospheric electronics courtesy of Kirikiriroa's Moppy, and a sixties-indebted collaboration between Panda Bear and Sonic Boom.
Sun Casts a Shadow by Emily Fairlight & Shifting Sands
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In 2018 a local songwriter assembled a band to tour her second record, which she’d recorded in America. She recruited a member of a psych-folk outfit who a few years earlier had enjoyed a certain amount of success stateside.
Four years later, it’s fitting that the first collaboration between Emily Fairlight and Mike McLeod of The Shifting Sands was recorded in Los Angeles. You could comfortably call their music Americana, albeit with unmistakable traces of NZ Gothic, and this album presents both musicians at their most pared back, easily filling the space left by instrumentation with heart-tugging melodies and impassioned delivery.
Fairlight scored a fair amount of critical acclaim for her last album Mother of Gloom, which was recorded in Austin, Texas, and mixed by Ben Edwards in Lyttelton. She has a way with incisive, occasionally lacerating lyrics, and a voice that’s rich in character, at times feeling like ragged emotion could spill out when even she doesn’t expect it.
In the liner notes to Sun Casts a Shadow, she says the "stripped back" nature of the recording is daunting for both her and McLeod - they’re the only two musicians present - but I must admit I was so taken with the depth of these songs, I hadn’t noticed they’re just made up of voice and guitar.
Opener ‘Head Above’ has several moments that caught me off guard: the vulnerability in Fairlight’s voice when she asks “will I ruin it all?”, and her consequent reassurance to “keep your chin up”.
Mike McLeod’s vocal input is more amiable, and in the liner notes he’s remarkably candid, relaying the story of an American tour with The Shifting Sands arranged by none other than Sharon Van Etten, and an ill-fated industry show in Manhattan that seems to have derailed the band’s momentum - their last album was in 2016.
He takes lead on 'Get Through This', a track that articulates this collection’s ethos when he sings “we will get through this”.
Sun Casts a Shadow is such a well-suited name for this album. Fairlight and McLeod are old enough to know that some of what passes for pessimism is actually wisdom, and even sunshine can have its downside.
Fairlight’s most quietly aching lyrics come on ‘Every Doomed Wife’, as she subverts its cheery progression with lines like “I love you still/ but you’re the pill/ I’ve swallowed all of my life”, and even more devastating “If I was a lawyer/ and I died before you/ would you be proud of me then”.
The pair have said they didn’t initially intend for this to be an album, but it's obvious their creative chemistry is fruitful. Along with the mechanics of chord changes and melody, all of which are very hummable, they hit on moments of raw honesty that are hard not to connect to.
The songs may be stripped back, but they’re complete.
Everything Sort of Swung Round by Moppy
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A local electronic album snuck in under the radar this April, and it’s one that merits talking about. It’s the second effort from Moppy, whose first album came out in 2010, but its creator hasn’t been resting on his laurels.
If you know the band SoccerPractise, he’s the person responsible for their nimble rhythms and electronic textures, and there’s common ground here in this album's programmed pulse.
But if you know Thomas Burton from his other bands Wilberforces and Guardian Singles, you might expect some sort of guitar clatter where there is none. The six-string does make an appearance, but he’s more concerned with hypnotic pattern-making.
On ‘Against Ambience’ your attention is drawn to its brittle hi-hats, but eventually, the warm guitar chords and melodies come to the fore, creating a tension between hyperactive and relaxed.
‘Ray Fitz’ loops around what sounds like a dusty flute sample, while the rhythmic thrust points toward the dancefloor.
That track resists the urge to drop into a 4/4 kick beat, but Burton succumbs to it on ‘Guides’. It’s a minor detail though - he’s more interested in ladelling on buckets of atmosphere, like the disembodied vocal loop that keeps re-emerging.
The way things fade in and out of the mix and accumulate momentum is hypnotic, and Burton doesn’t prioritise any one element, letting it all congeal; catnip for lovers of aural texture.
‘Ghost of Hotel Zen’ is more abrupt, drawing from hip hop in its staccato squawks and slaps.
Burton’s output as Moppy is worlds away from the post-punk squall of Wilberforces or Guardian Singles, but despite the more placid surface of these tunes, his personality shines through.
It heads down a similar path as his work with SoccerPractise, but finds its own balance of tranquillity and rhythmic anxiety.
Reset by Panda Bear & Sonic Boom
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Musicians have been mining the past in an effort to look forward for a long time now, something which gets easier with each technological breakthrough. It’s on display in a new album by two long-time collaborators, Panda Bear and Sonic Boom, who have cherry-picked fragments from songs of the past and used them as building blocks for cheerful pop numbers - undoubtedly nostalgic, but forward-thinking at the same time.
Over half the tracks on this album Reset sample fifties and sixties tunes - more specifically, their opening few bars - and layer over Panda Bear's voice, and sometimes Sonic Booms, to create new compositions.
It’s familiar territory for both artists, but this is the purest distillation of their respective visions.
Bear’s real name is Noah Lennox, best known as a member of freak folk outfit Animal Collective, whose solo albums, particularly 2007’s Person Pitch, evoked vintage pop. It was that album that prompted Sonic Boom to contact him and produce his next few albums.
Boom’s real name is Peter Kember, and he’s best known as a former member of Spacemen 3 alongside Jason Pierce, who went on to form Spiritualised.
Kember and Lennox’s fondness for synth squelches and general oddness are present here, but like Person Pitch, the main draw is the honeyed melodies generated by Panda Bear, which unmistakably hark back to Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys.
The album started with Kember sending Lennox loops for him to sing over - always the opening bar or 2, and always untouched by pitch adjustment or other manipulation.
The start of The Troggs ‘Give it to Me’ informs ‘Go On’, while ‘Edge of the Edge’ hinges on a sample of Randy & The Rainbows‘ Denise’.
It began as a thought experiment and became an album when Lennox’s singing sent the tracks off in their own directions. He also encouraged Kember to write lyrics and sing too, and their voices mesh surprisingly well.
This mode of writing means that most of the songs stay on one base chord for their duration, which aligns them with Animal Collective’s mix of drone and campfire stomp, and highlights how good Panda Bear’s melodies are that they retain your interest throughout.
This minimalist approach might be why the first song on the album is called ‘Gettin’ to the Point’ (it's built on the opening of Eddie Cochran’s ‘Three Steps to Heaven’).
Panda Bear has resided in Portugal for some time now, and recently Sonic Boom relocated there too. Their creative kinship seems to be strong.
And a certain southern European flavour creeps into the music, partly in its rhythms, and Lennox’s fondness for percussive instruments like the güiro.
It’s certainly there in ‘Livin’ in the After’, which breaks format slightly by sampling not just the start of The Drifters ‘Save the Last Dance For Me’, but its zesty string section too.
Five of the nine songs on Reset base themselves on these vintage pop sections, and the completist in me wishes it was all of them, but I imagine the rights payments were sky high as it is.
The remaining four keep the sixties vibe - hard not to when you have a voice like Panda Bear’s - and bring the electronic elements to the fore.
The most euphoric is the final track ‘Everything’s Been Leading to This’. In the duo’s negotiation between past and future, this one points forward.
