A very Abel songsmith's second outing,

Steve Abel & The Chrysalids
FLAX HAPPY
Verdict: Second moody wonder of an album from local outsider
Rating: * * * * (4 stars)

Of the albums to have swamped us in the recent avalanche of local stuff set off by New Zealand Music Month, this one feels like a rarity – one that will still be revealing itself for many months to come. It's also one that doesn't fit any format. Unless, that is, there's a category for ``brooding folk-rock singer-songwriters backed by Kiwi supergroup and Texan alt country star''.

This is Aucklander Abel's second album after 2006's quiet wonder of a debut Little Death. Like that one, this features a band of notable backers – his Chrysalids are two fifths of Pluto, a Goldenhorseman and a former Goodshirter in there too, all showing a sympathetic ear for Abel's acoustic-framed, heavy-hearted but understated songs.

Flax Happy feels a more expansive affair than its predecessor. And while Little Death suggested Abel was our answer to that ever-mournful American gothic guy Will Oldham, much of this feels closer to Beck's pensive album SeaChange, especially on the lovely lilting likes of Sad Girls.

Still, it does its own line in rustic melancholy, most markedly on the sparse Cinders of the Sun and the grim Heart of Misery, both the fruits of Abel's recording with Texas warbler Jolie Holland when she toured here. Both of those bittersweet duets are neatly offset by a scraping of dustbowl fiddle.

But if this is sometimes heading towards tumbleweed country, it's also pulling for home on tracks like the haunting and bilingual duet with Anika Moa, Ka Pinea Koe.
While one or two songs feel like outlines left underdeveloped, the bulk of the 13 are captivating, for Abel's brooding melodies and emotional punch, especially when the slow-fused songs like the closing Frail finally find the powderkeg.

http://blogs.nzherald.co.nz/blog/music-reviews/2008/7/5/steve-abel-and-c...

http://lumiere.net.nz/reader/arts.php/item/1737

Steve Abel’s Flax Happy, with the help of some impressive contributing musicians, mines a “haunting spareness” with lyrics “fiercely elemental and moody”. He talks to BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM about making his sophomore album.
* * * * (4 stars)

STEVE ABEL has managed to assemble a rather impressive collection of musicians to play along on his second album, Flax Happy with musicians such as Jolie Holland, Geoff Maddock (Bressa Creeting Cake, Goldenhorse), Mike Hall (The Brunettes, Dimmer, Pluto), Milan Borich (Pluto) and Gareth Thomas (accordion) involved. But that kind of intro tends to overshadow the actual music. Abel’s work mines the same haunting spareness of the likes of Will Oldham, and his lyrics are fiercely elemental and moody. He’s an artist who understands not to do too much, and yet say so much at the same time. Flax Happy may slip under the radar a little, but it’s a beautiful wee album from a talented and intelligent singer-songwriter.

Abel has taken a while to get to get around to this second album. “They represent the kind of occurrences of a given period which is really the two, two and a half years since we released our last album. All of those songs have been written since then, except for two of them.” They’ve arisen out of a lot things in Abel’s life including “relationships stuff that was happening, international stuff – Guantanomo Bay, Iraq, George W. Bush – but they’re not necessarily explicit blatant themes at all, they’re just the zeitgeist that can’t help but manifest itself in a work that occurs during that time.” Abel admits that “it’s an interesting thing how a collection of songs come together.”

However Abel suggests that the songs that he writes usually “come out as love songs, but they’re usually multilayered in their meaning.” His music does contain a lyrical depth that’s often lacking in a lot of contemporary New Zealand music, and it’s no surprise that Abel carefully considers his use of words. His words carry a strong elemental quality to them, integrally tied to the land and people, and there’s a tingling simplicity to the sound. “I think that’s true, I think elemental is a wonderful term for it. Elemental in reference to the stuff of nature but also the increasingly used very simple chord structures. I really like a simplified line. My earlier songs used to have more complex chords and bigger words. I’m more and more drawn to a more elemental use of language and musically. I frequently return to the same kind of G C Am chords and shamelessly play the songs in the same key. Unless it needs anything more why add anything more? That’s the kick I’m on at the moment.”

Sunday June 15 2008
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=66505987...

I meet Steve Abel at his very rural-looking Kingsland home, an old railway cottage I imagine, where a bird eats black berries from a privet tree at the window. There's junk or old household gear all over the porch - Abel's leaving town for Geneva, Switzerland in a couple of weeks. Up the road there's an old car jacked up on bricks on the lawn. It hardly feels like central Auckland...

He's lived here for nine years. Must be cheap. The barefoot (size 11) bearded musician makes tea and we begin by lamenting the loss of the art of handwriting, me because of shorthand and typing while Abel leaps up to grab an old book that illustrates our modern shame. It's by his Invercargill grandfather, a physiotherapist who worked with New Zealanders who lost limbs, and is full of photos.

"This woman's a ballet teacher and a horse rider, she's only 16 or something," says Abel, pointing out a young woman with no legs. "This guy's a cop, he's got a paddle there, he can still swim… Just all these different people, and this is this guy's handwriting – he's got no arms! He's got a hook…" And his handwriting's exquisite. I can hardly read mine and am missing no limbs. Abel, surveying a picture of the behooked man penning a letter, shakes his head. "That's him writing, they just published a letter that he wrote… that's out of it eh? We've lost that ability to write."

We discuss learning to type on typewriters.

"We used to have all these bibs, we had a bib to cover the keyboard. That's how you learned to type… the old (typewriters) are better because the keys are firm enough that you could actually sit your fingers on them, you had to punch them to make them go whereas modern keys you can't rest your hand because you'll activate the key, so you sit off, slightly hovering the whole time."

So, Whakapapa? Where are your folks from? Abel says he's Scottish on "Dad's side", Grandad studied at Otago, while his mother's side hails from Tauranga with Spanish heritage: "My mum in particular has incredibly olive skin". They're also southern French "but it's fascinating coz when I was in England a lot of people asked me if I was Jewish" due to his surname: lots of Jews fled to Edinburgh to escape persecution during the Enlightenment so a possible link there, he's going to find out more.

Thursday, 05 June 2008
Steve Abel and the Chrysalids - Flax Happy (Kin'sland)

Steve Abel was one of Greenpeace NZ's main men before he forsook activism to pursue his musical dreams. He specialises in what might be called Kiwi Gothic folk-rock, unleashed two years ago on his debut album, Little Death.

Abel has the look of a grizzled troubadour from colonial times, and sounds like one, while his band comprises some heavyweight talent in Geoff Maddock (Goldenhorse), Gareth Thomas (Goodshirt) and Pluto's Milan Borich and Mike Hall.

Flax Happy picks up where Little Death left off. Abel invokes blood, fire and sin, but also softer stuff like native flora and fauna on the "nature boy" tale Haven. Sad Girls actually celebrates the said ladies, while Gone is an excellent use of a familiar song title.

Abel duets with Anika Moa in te reo on Pin of Love (Ka Pinea Koe) but makes a better match with Jolie Holland on Cinders of the Sun and Heart of Misery. Deborah is a short, sweet, swinging love song.

Whether you'll like this depends on your tolerance for downbeat stuff about chewing on love's tough side. But the musicianship and lyrics are solid throughout, and Holland and Moa add extra texture to songs that are dark but full of vulnerability.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelsonmail/4573338a24698.html

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.

Among the many unaddressed issues about the effectiveness of New Zealand Music Month is that of so many albums being released: they cancel each other out and some just won't get the attention they deserve. I sincerely hope that out of the mountain released -- around 50 albums in, or in time for, NZMM, which is just self-defeating -- that this languid, melancholy and low-key outing doesn't slide to the bottom.

Singer-songwriter Abel recorded these 13 fully-formed songs in just two days with a band which includes members of Goldenhorse (Geoff Maddock, Ben King), Pluto (Milan Borich, Mike Hall) and Goodshirt (Gareth Thomas), plus guest appearances by American singer-songwriter Jolie Holland (on two songs) and Anika Moa on the te reo/English Pin of Love/Ka Pinea Koe.

Abel is a refined writer whose lyrics have a bone-bare quality (Deborah consists of a couple of dozen words, but they say it all) and the alt.country/backwoods balladry quality of acoustic guitars, violin and double bass -- not to mention musical saw -- lends itself to the elemental words which don't shy away from disconcerting themes (Cinders of the Sun, Heart of Misery and Frail among them). Yet this doesn't feel like a dark journey, more the sound of someone writing and singing from a place where there is no guile, just hard truth and clear eyes.

Put aside a few dozen recently released local albums for a while and check this one out. It is quite special.

http://www.elsewhere.co.nz/music/index.cfm

STEVE ABEL’s debut, Little Death, was one of the surprise hits of 2006. With its campfire feel and warmth, it almost beat Bonnie Prince Billy at his own game. Two years later, Flax Happy is a fuller-sounding album, while still retaining its gentle Americana feel. At its heart is Abel’s tender acoustic strum and part-mumbled, brooding baritone, off which the Chrysalids – Goldenhorse’s Geoff Maddock (guitar) and Goodshirt’s Gareth Thomas (accordion and keys), especially add lofty textures that make this a journey worth taking. As in the rising anger of Crushed Ants, where emotions run high as love’s course is truly spent – “I hope you die a little sooner”, Abel sings as Maddock’s sustained notes cut through the air. Abel also has a friend in Texan Jolie Holland, who duets with him on the sublime Heart of Misery (The Bough) and Cinders of the Sun, both bitter-sweet folk numbers played out against a haunting violin and acoustic picking. Once again, Abel’s taken a step back to reflect, and this dreamy album of pensive ballads is worth taking time to discover.
* * * * ½ (4.5 stars)

Cinders of the Sun 14.05.08
Steve Abel & the Chrysalids feat Jolie Holland - Cinders of the Sun Initially, I was more than impressed when I heard that our very own Mr Steve Abel had managed to get Jolie Holland to guest on a couple of tracks from his forthcoming new album. Those feelings were eclipsed 100 fold when I heard this song. Steve and Jolie's vocals duet so beautifully I actually ache when I listen to this. Wonderful. Actually, beyond wonderful.

FLAX HAPPY 26.05.08
Steve Abel & the Chrysalids return after their much heralded 2006 debut with a stunningly superb sophomore. Flax Happy is deeply organic and has a glorious live feeling about it. Steve's vocals are warm, melodic and yet, eerily dissonant. Anika Moa joins Steve on a duet and Texan chanteuse Jolie Holland joins him on two tracks - the interplay between their voices actually makes me ache it's so good.

http://www.cheeseontoast.co.nz/

"Abel’s voice is somewhere in a cauldron containing Tom Waits, Joe Strummer, and Nick Cave, though without sounding like any of them."

"...I put on Flax Happy, sit back, and feel my heart rate slow down."

"...this album provides the ears of the listener with a vast antipasti platter of folksy guitar strums."

"I am a real sucker for male/female duets, and ‘Cinders of the Sun’ [featuring Jolie Holland] is just such a goodie. It’s a ten out of ten American Folk song, and it’s from New Zealand!"

"[FLAX HAPPY] - It’s a great album, and I highly recommend it."

Sunday 25 May, 2008
FULL REVIEW...
http://www.thewire.co.nz/news.php?id=506

…Saturday afternoon [2 Feb] was pretty much an Alt-Country Party. Wellington’s The Family Cactus did lovely things with three guitars, two organs, lots of voices and swathes of check cotton and gingham. It was super splendid to see Cassette again, now with the addition of Andrew Bain on bass and a giant furry growth on Dave Fraser’s chin, and the astounding Steve Abel and the Chrysalids. They had accordion and double bass and the most amazing songs. Even more delicious than the dinner party that Jenni and I had that evening. And our dinner was pretty damn good…
Petra Jane.