Ned Collette: Future Suture (Inertia/The Label)

 |   |  <1 min read

Ned Collette: Winter Holiday
Ned Collette: Future Suture (Inertia/The Label)

With a flattened and laconic delivery, chiming acoustic folk-styled guitars and some melodic minimalism, this downbeat but widescreen album by Australian singer-songwriter Collette seems to hark back to earlier periods, sometimes sounding like a gentle collision between Nick Drake and Velvet Underground, at others slipping out of a very early Eno vocal album but embellished by horns.

But when the sounds swell through flutes and the like, and the mood turns darker, Collette also evokes that period when British psychedelia emerged out of art colleges and clever clogs like Robert Wyatt were pulling in a little jazz alongside the rock context.

Collette is more than the sum of his influences however and a sense of very Australian isolation hangs heavily over many of these songs, the Lucky Country and its partners in crime being seen for what they are by one very uncomfortable with it all.

Leavening this tone are the spare songs of love and longing -- and all up this makes for a very special wee album that hurdles no great barriers but carves out a special place for itself.

It peters out a little in the closing overs, but check this guy out.

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Sean Rowe: The Salesman and the Shark (Anti)

Sean Rowe: The Salesman and the Shark (Anti)

New York singer-songwriter Rowe's indie release Magic of 2009 (re-released by his new label Anti 18 months ago) inevitably drew comparisons with Tom Waits for its sobering and poetic reflections... > Read more

IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases

IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases

With so many CDs commanding and demanding attention Elsewhere will run this occasional column which scoops up releases by international artists, in much the same way as our SHORT CUTS column picks... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

Chris Macro: Macro-Dubplates Vol III; Brooklyn vs Kingston (chrismacro.com)

Chris Macro: Macro-Dubplates Vol III; Brooklyn vs Kingston (chrismacro.com)

Those who like a good mash-up won't want to go past this collection by New Zealand producer Chris Macro, formerly of the excellent but short-lived Dubious Brothers (just one album, the excellent... > Read more

A POST-CULTURAL DETERMINIST APPROACH TO AbbEyrOad (2021): The image under the macroscope

A POST-CULTURAL DETERMINIST APPROACH TO AbbEyrOad (2021): The image under the macroscope

Rather than write about this image for the Art by Elsewhere pages, it was suggested by Dr. Celia Haughty-Smart, senior curator of the Work And New Knowledge gallery in Lower Hutt that she... > Read more