Graham Reid | | 1 min read
On her 2011 debut album Some Were Meant For Sea, Hollie Fullbrook – as Tiny Ruins – opened with an intimately whispered conflation of Chaucer and Shakespeare: “Lean in friend and I'll tell you a tale . . . as I tread the stage awhile”.
Fullbrook had much to tell: in Bristol she'd learned cello and assimilated British folk and James Taylor; the family moved to Auckland and after college she spent time in upstate New York; traveled the country by Greyhound and read Beat poets on the road; returned to study English Literature, theatre and law in Wellington; began writing songs; recorded in Australia; went to Spain . . .
By the time of that folk debut Fullbrook had lived experiences and refined emotions to draw on.
Fullbrook would adopt the Tiny Ruins name for her band (bassist Cass Basil, drummer Alex Freer, guitarist/producer Tom Healy), they picked up the Best Alternative Album award for 2014's Brightly Painted One and filmmaker David Lynch produced their spectral 2016 single Dream Wave in Los Angeles.
They received Taite Music Prize and Silver Scroll nominations for 2019's Olympic Girls and Fullbrook was praised by Britain's Uncut for her “novelist's eye for detail”.
With their fourth album Ceremony those accumulated details, Fullbrook's light melodic touch, close attention to the natural world (wind, ravines, seabirds, cicadas), deft arrangements (the subtle country flavours on Daylight Savings) and the influence of Nick Drake (Earthly Things) coalesce in refined folk-rock songs born from the uncertainties and vulnerabilities of recent times and personal loss.
Ideas and emotions distill into memorable images and metaphors: “Panic set in like the kitten in the car”; “the tide is a radar, breathing on, like it or not” and “now let's go give this day a chance” after turning over a crab found upside down.
Small things observed, big conclusions drawn, celebrations of life (the oblique spiritualism of In Light of Everything) alongside the personal (Seafoam Green).
Lean in. Again.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here
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