Indie rock heroes Voom triumphantly return with their first album in almost 20 years

Tony Stamp reviews the latest album releases every week on The Sampler.

Something Good is Happening by Voom

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Not many bands could stop releasing LPs for almost 20 years and still cultivate feverish anticipation for their next. But Voom are no ordinary band. Their third album is called Something Good is Happening, which feels self-aware about the excitement surrounding its release. If it’s a boast, it’s well earned, as Buzz Moller is one of this country’s finest songwriters.

‘Trouble’ wrangles typical major and minor chords into harmonic sorcery, ‘Everyone’ distils cosmic concepts into something you can immediately sing along to, and ‘Magic’ features Fazerdaze contributing to an absurdly catchy chorus (Voom are the rare band that can include three and leave me wanting more).

The first seven tracks are honed to a fine point, each two to three minutes of melodic salvo. Things get looser in the second half, and it wouldn’t be a Voom album without these welcomely woolly moments, but throughout the songcraft is impeccable.

It’s worth noting the band surrounding Moller have serious indie-pop credibility, including Murray Fisher, formerly of Goodshirt, and Nick Buckton, better known as Sidekick Nick. Press notes highlight that the album was culled and refined from hundreds of demos, and that having every member of the lineup be a producer helped achieve this.

Something Good is Happening may be a rallying cry in a troubled era, but for fans it’s self-evident.

River Dark by Greta O’Leary

This album’s title track is a sparse slice of NZ gothic with the line “darkness surrounds me. I don’t mind”. It’s indicative of the whole collection, serene with a sting in the tail. O’Leary funnels folk and country signifiers through an unorthodox lens, her personality revealed as eccentric, slightly spooky, and wryly funny.

‘Sleep Alone’ has the line “I won’t be yours and you won’t be mine”, as she sings about being a light sleeper, saying “these ears don’t turn off”. On ‘The Greatest Peace I’ve Known’, the upbeat chorus lyric may be ironic, but maybe not.

With three tracks to go, O’Leary unleashes ‘Baptised at the Desktop Computer’, musically much different to what’s come before (especially the turbo-charged rhythm section), but impressively of a piece with the more sombre tracks. “Don’t resist the light”, she sings, “you’ve been baptised in your living room, it’s 1999”.

She’s surrounded by an impressive array of talent, including Cass Basil from Tiny Ruins, Alistair Deverick (Boycrush), Anita Clarke (Motte), Callum Passells from Hans Puckett, and Jol Mullholland, whose credits are too numerous to mention.

That they’re appearing on the debut of an emerging singer speaks to the quality of her songs, and, as you’d expect from musicians of this calibre, they know when to get out of her way.

Black Sand by Clear Path Ensemble

It’s clear that Cory Champion, the musician at the centre of Clear Path Ensemble, knows his stuff. The group’s third album is steeped in decades of musical history, but feels committed to vibes above all; these aren’t musicians trying to bombard or impress, they want to simmer, leading listeners by the hand rather than throwing them in the deep end.

Champion also makes house and techno under the name Borrowed CS, but this project mostly hews to more traditional modes, Rhodes piano, clavinet and vibraphone mingling with clarinet and flute.

Prior albums stressed Clear Path Ensemble were drawing on the Wellington jazz scene specifically. Here Champion is joined by Johnny Lawrence, Daniel Hayles, James Illingworth, Louisa Williamson and Mike Isaacs, each of whom has a catalogue worth digging into.

In a 2020 interview with festival.nz, Champion nods to jazz greats like the Stan Tracey Quartet, Wayne Shorter, Duke Ellington, and Alice Coltrane. Even if those names are unfamiliar, there’s plenty to enjoy here. He’s someone who’s learned from the masters, but Black Sand never feels like homework.