Mystery Waitress: Bright Black Night (digital outlets)

In a recent conversation with a fellow music writer, the conversation turned to the problem of giving early acclaim to local artists on the basis of very little: maybe just a single or two.

My friend said it could give the artist an artificially inflated idea of self-worth and raised unreasonable expectations.

It's a fair point, but then I mentioned a band which kick-started it's career with a very unpromising single but a much better follow-up.

They were acclaimed on the basis of those two things, and it didn't seem to hurt the Beatles.

And maybe even having an inflated sense of self-worth and high expectations actually worked to their advantage.

Better exaggerated praise than damning condemnation?

Sometimes you can spot writing talent immediately.

On this Wellington band's 2020 debut Nest, singer-writer and guitarist Tessa Dillon distilled the startlingly personal within a larger picture on the insightful internal/external narrative of Khandallah.

For this equally fine-focus, intelligent second album Dillon – with drummer Olivia Campion, bassist Xanthe Rook and James Morgan (synths, guitars) – effortlessly shifts her ground from gloomy, understated rock (the title track) and poetic folk (Console) to strident guitar-driven pop behind engrossing lyrics (the air-punching of Nightbug and expansive Surfer).

Mystery Waitress know the value of space and sonic understatement as much as overt emotions and cathartic volume.

There's a visceral sense of place here, notably on the cinematic Mountain “where the air itself sings, up the mountain, the Tararuas”, the lyric pivoting between the real – a friend dying of cold up there – and the metaphorical.

And here too is self-analysis: “All I need is one good dream to reveal. You conceal the very thing you need to breathe with boys, toys, lies. Wish you could always be a child,” on Nightbug.

Dillon hooks you in: the opening lines of the downbeat, medicated mood of Pt 1. Hospital: “Come to see me, hair hidden under your beanie and I’m waking up in this room again . . . “

And this, on the white-knuckle rock of Pt 2. Tiger which has a similar soul-baring directness as Patti Smith dealing with dreams deferred: “I’m going to the zoo, I’m gonna volunteer there like when I was 19 and bored”.

Then it moves the lens: “My baby’s in the next room painting a tiger on the tapestry. We’re painting it for my mother 64 today, 64 years late for her parallel existence where she's a singer in a witch choir . . .”

Bright Black Night – the title encapsulating the dichotomies in Dillon's astute, refined lyrics – is a rare one. It rocks as much as it penetrates.

And whatever praise is heaped upon them -- last time out and for this album -- is well earned and much deserved.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here.