Adam Green churns out shallow but charming ditties while local musician Tono conjures a range of moods in just five tracks.
3 stars (out of 5)
For his fifth solo album, ex-Moldy Peach Adam Green has jammed 20 pint-sized ditties into 48 minutes of foot-tapping eccentricity.
While much of it is as shallow as a paddling pool, there's no denying the offbeat charm of this modern-day Jonathan Richman.
Like Richman, Green sings with a nasal drawl, the chief difference being an added warmth and richness to Green's baritone.
The effect is to create a hooded-eyed ambience, welcoming and non-threatening.
As he cruises through each vignette, his matter-of-factness lends him the demeanour of a friendly tour guide.
Stylistically, the album is a true road trip, passing through shimmying soul, Latin groove, gospel, pedal steel country corn and acoustic pop.
It all points to the hotchpotch nature of things in Green's world, where lyrics don't necessarily carry too much weight and where a sketch is more precious than an oil painting.
The consequence of all this frippery is a tendency to overdo it.
Few will reach album's end without a sense of having taken one too many treats from this bulging bag of allsorts.
However, several tunes are easily digested: Festival Song sports the muscular frame of a Mink Deville track; Tropical Island is genuinely catchy, funny and melodious; Be My Man morphs into a Sweet Jane riff, playing on Green's Lou Reed-like vocal delivery; and Twee Twee Dee is palatable disco.
Take an antacid, just in case, and settle in for the tour. - Jeff Harford
> Tono. Love & Economics (EP). She'll Be Right Records.
4 stars (out of 5)
Dunedin musician Tono, aka Anthonie Tonnon, is obviously a good listener.
On the evidence of his EP, Love & Economics, he has somehow conducted a musical séance involving some rather clever songwriters (including some not even dead) and thus inspired has distilled the inspiration into his own quirky take on pop.
Recorded in December at the University of Otago's Albany St studio, mixed by the Tweeks' Stu Harwood and mastered by Dale Cotton and featuring Tono's band, the Finance Company (Matt Bodman, Chris Miller and Andy Straight), Love & Economics is an exercise in attention to detail where clever songcraft benefits from the ensemble's dynamic but nicely restrained delivery.
Opener Daffodils & A Cashbook, with its glistening stabs of guitar, provides a breezy platform for an impressive vocal performance from Tono (complete with stacks of backing harmonies); follow-up Busy Feet cheekily leaves the listener wanting more after just a minute and a-half of joyous, jaunty rambling; and No 7 Blonde combines dry lyrical humour with inventive, yet almost gentle, playing.
Over the space of five relatively short tracks, Tono manages to conjure a range of moods: there's a little bit of the late Warren Zevon in his lyrical phrasing, and a dash of George Harrison in his clustering of close harmonic intervals; elsewhere, there are hints of Ray Davies (the Kinks) and, closer to home, the Sneaky Feelings' Matthew Bannister and David Pine.
Not bad company, really. - Shane Gilchrist
Love & Economics is released on June 2.
Tono & the Finance Company play at Refuel, Dunedin, tonight.
