Graham Reid | | 1 min read
Wayside
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes with an insert explanatory message from Lines and credits.
Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . .
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These should be good times for Georgia Lines: two years ago she picked up most promising artist at the annual music and recently was awarded Te Manu Taki Arotini o te Tau/Best Pop Artist.
A week later she launched this debut album – which debuted on the main charts at number three and the chart for local artists at number one – with her small band at a swanky rooftop bar in central Auckland, a fitting venue for a sophisticated pop'n'soul collection she referred to as “a body of work”.
Lines stands apart from those who release “a banger” or “summer anthem” – favoured descriptions in current music PR – because she's comfortable having a lush piano ballad like Grow Old Without You with the Black String Quartet and the equally downbeat but heroically yearning The Letter (“I'm screaming but my head's underwater”) be the album's first singles, and to open The Rose of Jericho.
Like Billie Eilish, Adele, Julia Jacklin and others with a mature perspective, Lines has the confidence to programme this debut with deferred expectation.
The pure pop arrives later with the throbbing Say You Still which morphs into something close to classic Fleetwood Mac. Wayside also finds her completely commanding attention and not stepping back for instrumental solo space.
This is a courageous feature of Lines' intense writing and only those who craft smart melodies (like Distance and the drifting End of the World) and have vocal dexterity and range can pull it off.
From belting R'n'B soul to a fragile duet with Teeks on Not By Your Side and the final ballad Grand Illusion which takes us full circle, Lines addresses adult uncertainties: “To be twentysomething to try to figure who I am and where should I be now” on Start of the Middle.
The album title refers to a plant which after months of dehydration is revived by rain, a metaphor – echoed by Frances Carter's impressive cover photo capturing a moment of movement – relating to recent hard times she's reluctant to air.
But they're here.
The Rose of Jericho is an outstanding body of work which, when delivered live, punches even harder.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here. The vinyl edition is readily available in good record shops.
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