Pacific Curls: Te Kore (Ode)

The previous album, Pacifi Celta, by this increasingly interesting trio of singer, guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Kim Halliday, singer/percussionist Ora Barlow and fiddle player Sarah Beattie lifted them right out of that special corner of te reo-cum-folk/women's music where they could have languished away from more mainstream attention.

Pacifi Celtic merged Pasifika music with Celtic folk and a lightly avant-garde sensibiity and made for fascinating listening.

This new album extends the contract a little further and on songs like the light reggae influence on Pacific People, You Funk Me, the delicate Bruce's Song and the exotic Kalimba Trance you realise these people are out on their own: somewhere between a Pacific version of Penguin Cafe Orchestra and te reo chamber-folk.

The marriage of Beattie's fiddle into this context -- as previously -- can still sound forced (the jiggery of Big River/Te Pupu) but at other times (the title track, the entrancing Ashokan Farewell) it adds a lachrymose Northern Hemisphere melancholy which is utterly suited to the acoustic folk.

 The sprightly Rapids of Reason (among others) also let's Halliday's fingers prove their gift in playing which is delicate in the picking and robust in the strumming.

The previous album might still be the best starting point if Pacific Curls are new to you, but if you enjoyed that then you'll need no further convincing to tune in again for this one.