Graham Reid | | 2 min read
Piano Ringing On
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes with an all-important lyric sheet. Very limited edition (70 copies only) and comes with unlimited streaming and MP3 download.
Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . .
As Mali Mali, singer-songwriter Ben Tolich has created his own path in literate, sometimes imagistic songs which stretch and flow like the place where the ocean meets the shoreline, be it ragged rocks or calming white sand. Lyrics reach past what we might consider bar lines and take the listener on journeys to distant, sometimes dark places . . . and into the light of restfulness and nature.
His previous albums have been very well received, especially at Elsewhere.
We have mentioned Leonard Cohen, Sun Kil Moon, Don McGlashan and the Incredible String Band as favourable (but far from exact) reference points. But there's also something of stripped-back Americana and emotional autobiographic truth-telling at work also.
Which means any new album from this sole-trader, home-recording artist is always going to be of interest.
And Spirit Tide – telling title, appropriate cover image – doesn't disappoint.
We pause for a moment just to look at some of the song titles and what they suggest: Everything's a River, What Are the Rocks For, Duvet Views (In The Bed Blues), Butterfly, Summer Evenings, Paradise Ducks on a Muddy Soccer Field.
The spirit which moves him here would appear to be the natural world and the domestic, but not in any self-satisfied or celebratory way as it turns out. These places can carry the weight of death as much as life, the fearful unknowable as much as the pleasurable.
Tolich has a winning simplicity, here evident on the lovely Summer Evenings where a repeated piano figure underpins reflection on the small events and emotions of the moment before it rises into a holy atmosphere.
On acoustic guitar or piano, multi-tracking his vocals in places and with his wife Alice on harp/backing vocals and drummer Alex Freer, Tolich allows his musical settings to drift behind sometimes unsettling lyrics.
There's “I've been thinking about death, what it's like taking that last breath” and a body mauled by shark in the folk of Everything's A River; on the mysterious, ambitious and six minute The Sentence a loner has sawn off the barrel and then it seems someone at 90 is having to process whatever news is coming with the rain and a then farewell; there's the hospital bed, another goodbye, the curtains closing like waves in a storm and a tapestry of tragedy on Piano Ringing On . . .
There is also a two minute piece of disembodied and indecipherable spoken word over stentorian piano chords and surface noise on Atua Peruperu, the place from where spirits depart at the tip of New Zealand's North Island; the metaphorical Highway 32 – the road less travelled in the central North Island – is a lovely 90 second miniature where time stretches and it seems a religious redemption fails.
What is here goes way past those previously cited references and into Tolich's private baggage of thoughts, imagery and doubts. And by the end you will read that cover image very differently.
This is existential anxiety moulded into unique and idiosyncratic songs which conform to no particular genre beyond downbeat, thoughtful and experimental indie.folk.
Spirit Tide may not be immediate and certainly isn't for everyone – least of all those expecting easy entry – but as Mali Mali, Ben Tolich has developed into one of our unique voices and this album is a lure into his distinctive and singular world.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here where the complete digital discography of Mali Mali is also available in a ridiculously cheap deal.
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