Review of FLAX HAPPY 27 May 08

Haven plays…

They say a good song can striped down to just a voice and guitar and if you’ve seen Auckland singer songwriter Steve Abel play solo you know he’s got plenty of good songs. But when it comes to making a record of these songs Abel enlists some help and it pays off…

Haven continues

A song like that one is typical Steve Abel, a simple strong melody fashioned from traditional materials and a well wrought lyric with a leaning towards Leonard Cohen like most of Abel’s songs it’s tough enough to stand on its own but a few extra instruments in the right hands have made it into something bigger. And the same goes for this one…

Sad Girls plays

These tracks come from Flax Happy: Steve Abel’s second album. Surrounded by sombre and occasionally off center vocals and he’s even given them a name, The Chrysalids, and on this song they take flight.

Sally plays

A track like that grows from a folk song to a guitar freak-out of almost Neil Young proportions with guitarist Geoff Maddock stretching out spectacularly towards the end. In other places the playing is more restrained yet still it’s the placement of those extra instruments that takes these songs to another dimension like the gorgeously sparse piano figure on this tune…

Crushed Ants plays

Solitary as Steve Abel’s songs might seem they place him in a community of poet troubadours. For the bilingual lyric of this one he’s joined by Anika Moa.

Pin of Love (Ka Pinea Koe) plays

And flax happy finds Abel not just in the company of a kind of kiwi super group but also sharing the mike for a couple of songs with North American avant-folkie Jolie Holland.

Cinders of the Sun plays

Recorded spontaneously during Jolie Holland’s brief visit last year you can hear Holland’s distinctive Texan tones rubbing around Abel’s lugubrious vocal and it typifies the trusting looseness that runs through the whole of Steve Abel’s Flax Happy. The bulk of the songs were recorded in just two sessions at Auckland’s Roundhead studios, the band mostly playing live, and they feel like performances rather than constructions with atmosphere amply compensating for any shaky notes.

Cinders of the Sun plays to end
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