Graham Reid | | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes with an insert sleeve and a download code.
Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . .
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Vera Ellen emerged from the folk and indie.pop scene in Pōneke Wellington, recorded and toured with her high school band Maple Syrup and has established herself in the Los Angeles' feminist collective Girl Friday.
Her 2021 album It's Your Birthday appropriated and adapted snatches of Velvet Underground reductivism, Bangles-like pop, lo-fi Flying Nun, acoustic folk and Iggy Pop (for the shouty chorus of I Want 2 B Boy), astutely winding them into an intelligent, personal song cycle.
It saw her pick up Best Alternative Artist at last year's Aotearoa Music Awards and a Taite Music Prize nomination.
High expectation then for Ideal Home Noise – an ambiguous title depending on the emphasis – which addresses her health problems and depression (the unsparingly honest suicide meditation of Broadway/Junction).
She opens with self-doubt (Imposter), picks at emotional wounds (Smell of an Oily Rag), admits uncertainty (A Person I Like) and adopts a character on Lenny: “I'm 23 and I'm a bloody loser, a blood sucking dim-witted drug abuser ”.
Yet there's edgy beauty (Carpenter, the airy A Grip) and uplifting melodies as she channels her shifting sensibilities into an approachable, sharper version of her indie.rock with drummer/singer/producer Ben Lemi (Trinity Roots, French For Rabbits, The Adults), bassist/pianist Albert River and guests (including her mother on backing vocals).
The album closes with the acoustic optimism of Stick Around 2 See (“another day”) then the voice of a cheerful child, one of her nephews and nieces who pop up elsewhere.
That joyous snippet seals a diverse, confident step upward and – ironically for inward-looking songs – outward.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here.
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