The Loving Arms: Dreaming Over You (Ghost Records/bandcamp)

In a recent Facebook post an enthusiastic fan described this Auckland band as “the National meets Neil Young meets the Magic Numbers”.

For those who only got two of those three references, the Magic Numbers were an excellent, melodic British band who enjoyed considerable popularity and acclaim in the early-to-mid 2000s and, although still out there, have seen diminishing sales returns on their albums.

But add the confidence of the National to the alt.folk-rock of Neil Young and Magic Numbers' melodic and country sensibilities and you probably are approaching the Loving Arms whose members have some impressive pedigree.

The band are keyboard players, guitarists and singers Dominic Blaazer and Mark Beesley, bassist Steve Shaw, drummer (and video maker) Bryan Shaw and singer Catherine Townsend.

Among the guests on this debut album are multi-instrumentalist Dave Khan (strings), Jed Town (eBow) and guitarist John Segovia.

So Loving Arms are a distillation of musicians from Ghost Town, Dean Savage, Smoothy, the Hit List and – way back – Bitumen Waltz.

Wrapped in a cover with a lovely Pacific reference by Reuben Paterson (it's an album you need on vinyl for better effect), Loving Arms offer deliberately modest, lowkey charms which – aside from the country-kissed Little Feat-influenced Sun Going Down with Kahn's fiddle and which closes the vinyl's first side – err towards the slow, stately and heartbreaking (the opening title track, Still Need Your Love, Angel in Disguise, the Young-adjacent If This Is How It Ends with Segovia's weeping slide).

The standouts are the aching Do You, the delightful if melancholy ballad Another Day in Love and the sophisticated closer Long Time Gone.

The Loving Arms make music for adults but broadcast on a very similar emotional wavelength and tempo across the country-soul of Dreaming Over You – all songs written by Beesley who is an insightful lyricist about faded love – and the album would have benefitted from more variation.

And by letting Townsend step forward for more than just the entrancing Still Need Your Love.

But if your taste runs to Neil Young meets Russell (Amazing Rhythm Aces) Smith meets Pasifika-Americana . . .

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here. It is also available on limited basic black vinyl with a lyric sheet.