James Duncan’s new album Vanishing is out locally this Friday, and as we mentioned previously it features guests Tom Watson (Cassette, Lawrence Arabia), Don McGlashan, Sean Donnelly (SJD), Chris O’Connor (SJD), Dino Karlis (HDU), Anton Newcombe (Brian Jonestown Massacre) and Chelsea Jade (Teacups, Watercolours). Alongside an interview with Duncan, Under The Radar are also offering up a full stream of the album ahead of its release – head over there now to hear it.

You can also read our Great Sounds Great; Bad Sounds Bad review of Duncan’s latest single ‘Mickey’ right here.

James Duncan has announced that his new album Vanishing will actually be out this month. The album was written and recorded throughout Auckland, Berlin and Greece and guests include Tom Watson (Cassette, Lawrence Arabia), Don McGlashan, Sean Donnelly (SJD), Chris O’Connor (SJD), Dino Karlis (HDU), Anton Newcombe (Brian Jonestown Massacre) and Chelsea Jade (Teacups, Watercolours).

The record, due in a fortnight on May 25, will include 10 new songs including ‘Mickey’, which we recently reviewed for Great Sounds Great; Bad Sounds Bad.

Vanishing Tracklisting

The Start
Mickey
Ghosts Don’t Care
Anti Radiation Fezz
You Better Wait
Shut Like Cans Of Eyeballs
Standard Oblivion
Wha
Galactic Screen Saviour
Something Better

Punches (James Duncan and Kelly Sherrod, both formerly of Dimmer) have announced that they will release their debut album Etheria on August 8 through Arch Hill Records. The album is a follow-up to their 2006 self-titled EP and you can still download their latest single ‘Hold Your Head’ for free by heading here.

Every week, a panel of writers for The Corner will focus on a bunch of recently released local singles and grade them. We call it Great Sounds Great; Bad Sounds Bad. We might have borrowed this idea from thesinglesjukebox.com but we love that site and we hope that you like this.

[Bandcamp / Vimeo]

[Grade: 6.4]

Luke Warm: I can cope with this okay. I’d never play this at home but it’s quite beautiful. Angelic and sincere vocals. Great production, not too wet not too dry. I like the restraint and the minimalism, and the bass tone is to die for. Kinda the polar opposite of my buzz, but I have to say I’m hearing some soul in this. Nice lyrics too. [6]

Fraser Austin: First impression reminded me to listen to Demarnia Lloyd’s excellent solo stuff again – reverb+drifting vocal harmonies, sparse percussion. But then I did and I was like “woah” soz, Demarnia, your stuff is still AWESOME… this track is way not. So, Watercolours, it turned into something different after the first 20 seconds, Goldenhorse with a now-sound? [4]

Michael McClelland: An interesting texture here with some neat subtleties, like the tumbling bassline, shimmering tambourine backdrop and especially those swirling glockenspiel chimes which are barely audible enough to notice. Excuse the silly adjectives. It’s a very cool, soothing song and I see very little against it for that. Very sensual stuff, which I’m never averse to in a song. The lyrics, too, are pretty evocative. I was thinking that maybe it could do with a little bit of chordal contrast to help it stay fresh – but nope, damn, it does the back-and-forth swoon thing pretty well. The introduction of the bassline at 1:10 is like, “wow, holy shit” – and the rest of the song rides on these kinds of developments. You know, where the song will kind of back off for a minute to let you think, and then resume back into its groove. I’m looking hard for reasons not to give it a perfect score – but as it so happens, there are few to get in the way. Unfortunately it’s a bit of a grower, and maybe I had to think a bit too hard to see all its good qualities. Does it move too slowly? Is it too calculated? Well hey, as long as it’s taken me this long to consider these questions, it deserves some credit. [9]

Maryann Savage: This is a little too polished for me to totally buy into (like Portishead). I can go for ethereal swelling romantic music with backwards piano, but not the ‘tasteful beats’. But sometimes the music makes me think of Young Marble Giants and My Bloody Valentine and not at all of Ellie Goulding. It’s clever. [6]

Phyllis Gabor: This has a very “of the moment” sound, I’ve noticed a lot of new music has a wishy washy dream sheen to it (kinda like The Naked and Famous?). Watercolours couldn’t be a more apt name to produce this kind of music under, which has a flushed out Feist-esque feel. I like the rhythmic churning of this song, almost enough to be willing to forget about Teacups. [6]

Kim Gruschow: This is a palimpsest of frailty for trendy wet blankets, an unremarkable world-view (but I can’t relate!) delivered in a mild, tolerable voice with ethereal image as intent. It’s Frankie mag mix CD fodder (That font! Those triangles! The wash!) wobbly texture, messy ebbs over melody. I feel entirely seasick but it’s better than the song on the Telecom ad. [4]

Dan Trevarthen: I dig the recording, the electronic beats are warmed up and Chelsea fades in and out of the haze nicely. It starts to lift off when the more up-tempo/delayed beat shows up, though the consistent vocal sample used throughout the track starts to drag for me at that point. I like Chelsea’s stuff a lot, but this feels more like an album track to me. [6]

Stevie Kaye: Generic is a word that’s come to be value-negative rather than value-neutral (see also: pretentious), which is a shame – if I call this generic dream-pop, I mean in the sense of a well-executed genre exercise, with everything you’d expect to find, and nothing you wouldn’t. There’s a lot of dreampop/shoegaze in my listening history, and there’s no mis-steps here – it’s a lot closer to both Demarnia Lloyd/Cloudboy and Alistair Galbraith (all those reversed instruments!) than I’d expect from Teacups alumni, and the tumbling rhythm nearing the two-minute mark hints at early Piano Magic’s twee industrial” experiments. [6]

Dan Taipua: Is this what slowcore is? I don’t even. I like the lurching loop in the background, and it’s nice to hear someone use stereo with those strings peeking out the left channel. I wasn’t annoyed by the breathy vocals, but I think a tiny bit of Brooke Fraser’s reverse-lisp slipped in there. This probably sounds like damning with soft praise, but I can imagine this being a lot worse. I can’t figure out why I like it, but I do. [6]

Hussein Moses: A genuine surprise from the leading Teacup, especially considering how much thoughtless fantasy went into that group’s record. This one’s just as dreamlike, but thankfully in a different context – instead of Harry Potter tales, we’ve got an actual focus (experience! hindsight!) but all in all the music is super subdued and layered just enough to keep you going back to it. A very promising start. [8]

Julie Petsounds: FUCK. This track is so lush and sounds unique in a genre overloaded with reverb and musical trickery. Some musicians choke their songs with too many ideas, not leaving enough space for ideas to blossom into coherent and delicious tracks. This song is definitely a breath of fresh air. But I want to listen to it over and over, because it seems like one of those songs that uses it’s elements strategically so I won’t get bored of it anytime soon! It could so have been a reverby twee nightmare but I am so thankful that it’s not. [9]

This was the fifth year for the Camp/Campus A Low Hum festival and if you’ve been before then you know the drill: it’s like someone took the regular Friday night occupants of Whammy Bar and Mighty Mighty and poured them out onto a field in the middle of nowhere and told them to fend for themselves. At least the nearby town of Bulls was prepared this time – the previous year the town was entirely cleaned out of alcohol and bottled water.

The festival opened on Thursday night, so that serious campers could set up their tents before things got properly underway the next day. The soundtrack for the first night was provided by Street Chant, Leno Lovecraft, and a few other bands, giving an early taste of the onslaught. The full schedule is no longer a secret and now here’s the highlights…

DAY ONE

The music started at 10.30am each day, though those with hangovers were fried in their tents if they tried to sleep-in. Wet Wings provided a mellow wake-up call and the pace of the day was slowly amped up by The Sisters of St Rupertsberg (fun to see half-a-dozen girls in a band, not so sure what I think about them wearing mumus).

This festival always brings in a lot of Australian bands, which is about the only cross-contamination we get in this direction. The pick of them was probably The Parking Lot Experiments. They’ve got a terrible name, admittedly, but their pop energy and sense of humour managed to get the audience to uncross their arms for a few minutes at least.

No surprise to wander across the grass and find that Liam Finn was playing. As far as I can tell, he seems to play CALH every year. This time, he did one set with his brother, Elroy, on drums and then a side show with his backing band of loop pedals.

Or if you wanted to hear something younger, noisier, and angrier then Kitsunegari were just starting up in the barn. It seems like every new band in Auckland at the moment wants to sound like this, but few of them can pull it off with such ferocity.

The most fun stage at CALH is surely the empty swimming pool. The acoustics aren’t always great from the side, but it looks amazing, especially when the lights come on at night. Even in the daylight, the blueness of the interior was a nice accompaniment to sets by James Duncan & Chelsea Jade and Pikachunes:

Pikachunes seems to expect a stage invasion at every show these days and simply pulled his laptop a little closer across the table to him to keep it out of harm’s way. The same couldn’t be said for US group, High Places, who looked rigid and horrified when their laidback beats stirred up the crowd enough to join them onstage.

The evening was rounded out by the dreamwave of Toro Y Moi (from the US), some gritty Americana from Delaney Davidson, and then a punky dose of hip hop from Tommy Ill and Crackhouse 5. Oh yeah and some crazy karaoke out the back of the Fleet FM van, which nearly came to an abrupt end when an overenthusiastic female singer collapsed on the computer monitor and tumbled with it, out of the van onto the grass. Fun times!