Words by Justin Turford
As a still brisk spring fights off the remnants of winter to finally appear here in the UK, the reverse is happening on the other side of the planet. The enigmatic New Zealander singer/songwriter Maxine Funke has delivered a quietly majestic album that manages to encapsulate both the rebirth of spring and of the melancholy of her coming autumn in this tale of two halves.
The first half is composed of sublimely realised whispers of songs. Achingly intimate, Maxine’s breathy mellifluous voice shares poetic secrets accompanied only by minimal guitar and organ, resembling at points the sparsest of Vashti Bunyan’s sweet 60’s hippie folk or the kitchen sink grace of the German singer and actress Sibylle Baier’s ‘Colour Green’ LP - the close-to-the-microphone recordings laying bare the rustle of clothing and the movement of her fingers on the guitar strings. The second half is made up of two immersive long-form pieces of confidential yet elusive ambience. With cello, field recordings, keys and washes of delay, and her voice startling close to Arthur Russell’s tone, side two is a thoughtful dreamy experience. Despite their different musical approaches, the two sides clearly share a deep connection with nature.
Raised on a small island north of the mainland of New Zealand, Maxine returned to rurality after a few years trying out an uncomfortable band (and city) life, patiently carving out her own musical identity with a number of home-made EPs, singles and albums that showcased an unstarry but mesmerising talent for creating lo-fi folk-inspired music coupled with an exploratory experimental edge. This new album ‘River Said’ is her fifth and in my opinion, strongest to date in both focus and confidence, there is a sparkling clarity about the curation of the songs, the uncomplicated delivery of the first five songs masking her sophisticated compositional artistry.
The record opens appropriately with ‘Willow White’, a stunning composition about the beginning of spring that moves at the watery pace of a chalk stream. With just a fingerpicked guitar and Maxine’s hushed voice as friendly company, the chords changes move through dark and light like the water’s surface. ‘Cherry Blossom Hill’ skips along with a jaunty strummed guitar and a playful, teasing vocal about domestic ‘bliss’. The title track ‘River Said’, reminds me a little of the less pained side of the wonderful Karen Dalton, and has a friendly circular shape to the song that is truly lovely.
The equally lovely ‘Call On You’ has a slightly more contemporary feeling than the earlier tracks with subtly layered production and a faraway choral refrain. ‘Afterwards’ closes the first side with a sweetly sung reminiscence - “Oh friend, do you remember?” - honest and questioning, she offers no judgement, just acutely observed observations about life and its could-have-beens.
The sound of the sea, songbirds and the wind open ‘Long Beach’, a meditative piece with suspended colourful chord pads that owe much more to Eno than to the post-hippie folk movement. Flickering click sounds give way to a slowly arching cello drenched in delay, an impressionist postcard of a day by the seaside. The final piece of music on the album is a long one. A track of near ten minutes titled ‘Oblivion’ might suggest a painful musical journey but it really isn’t. Beginning as though walking into the orchestra pit as it tunes up, the piece travels through several stages of incubation. Field recordings of birds straddle the multi-tracked cellos, delays echoing moments of discordant notes before Maxine approaches with warm ambient chords and her half-spoken, half-sung voice spiralling into a haze of drowsiness.
A genuine talent that deserves to be exposed to a much wider audience. 9.5/10.
Released on DISCIPLES on April 28 2023
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