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ppearances can be deceptive. A clever artist knows that and makes use of it. In HAUNTED LOVE SPIRIT REVIVAL (Round Trip Mars) the Dunedin-based duo of Geva Downey and Rainey McMaster have just made one of the most cunningly deceptive albums in a long while. The initial impression is of a slightly twee synth-pop; a pair of almost too-perfect voices, singing the kind of sugared harmony that radiates innocence to a nifty synthetic accompaniment.
In fact, there is little that is innocent – or synthetic – about it. A worldly wit runs through the songwriting, while musically the whole thing is storied and subtle. Of note is the cover art by photographic artist Yvonne Todd, known for the way she subverts commercial photographic techniques to produce a result that is slightly off-key and creepy. There is something particularly spooky about her images of Downey and McMaster that makes a perfect complement to the music, which is similarly poppy and commercial on the surface, strange and unsettling underneath.
Multi-instrumentalists David Donaldson and Stephen Roche have made four albums as Thrashing Marlin, in between scoring feature films, wildlife documentaries, and festival shows themed around the works of Len Lye and the music of Kurt Weill. The latest, DONKEY DEEP (Braille), could broadly be called a concept album about bad stuff that happens. Roche sings the stories of assorted hapless protagonists while real events like the Tangiwai disaster and Mr Asia drug wars flash by in the background. In places he reminds me of the Warratahs’ Barry Saunders; vernacular and laconic. Sonically it is a carnival. Who else makes records like this, where gamelan drums do battle with banjos and biscuit-tins? No one in this country, but these tracks bring to mind an Antipodean Tom Waits.