Maxine Funke: River Said (Disciples/digital outlets)

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes with a lyric sheet and a digital download. Makes sense to get it on vinyl given it is, as you may read, an album of two distinct sides.

Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . .

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Esoteric, sepia-toned and skeletal folk goes back to before the recently rediscovered Vashti Bunyan and Nick Drake in the late 60s and up to contemporaries Le Ren, the idiosyncratic Joanna Newsom and eccentric Josephine Foster.

Funke from Ōtepoti Dunedin arrived at this engrossing, acoustic place after some serious noise (briefly with Snapper and the Snares) and experimental music with former Flying Nun/Xpressway sonic adventurer Alistair Galbraith.

This album explores sound textures in the second half with the cinematic ambience of the haunting instrumental Long Beach and the 10 minute Oblivion where cello, field recordings of birds, scrapes, soft organ and her dreamy vocal combine to create an aural image of disturbing desolation and “the shadow of this land”.

This is music as texture (and vice-versa) and almost physical substance more than simply an aural experience. 

The first half however is spare, captivating, finger-picking folk opening with Willow White and Cherry Blossom Gin, full of suggested moods coupled with photographic detail (“trifle early is the spring . . . power lines blowing overhead”) and the undisguised scrape of fingers on guitar strings.

There are refined and resonant images here: "You hug the corners like a cherub, up in the rain wet coast, you take the washing in with your cherry blossom grin, I'm just a speed witch, windswept and worn".

These gentle but penetrating songs with their natural imagery (explicit in the videos for Call on You and alluded to in Afterwards) lead easily into that second half of soundscapes. 

An album of different, equally intriguing halves.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here. It is also available through Border Music in New Zealand