Steve Abel & The Chrysalids ‘FLAX HAPPY’ review summary
“Wonderful. Actually, beyond wonderful.”
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.
- Andrew Tidball, www.cheeseontoast.co.nz
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“A rarity”
Second moody wonder of an album from local outsider…captivating, brooding melodies [with] emotional punch. 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”.
[Flax Happy] 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.
- Russell Baillie, New Zealand Herald
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“Fierce and tender – beautifully compelling”
Steve Abel’s Flax Happy, with the help of some impressive contributing musicians, mines a haunting spareness with lyrics [that 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.
- www.lumiere.net.nz
“No guile, just hard truth and clear eyes”
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.
- Graham Reid, www.elsewhere.co.nz
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“Sparse, spellbinding and special”
The combination of [Abel and Jolie Holland] is sparse, spellbinding and special. To his credit, Abel doesn’t let Holland’s presence overshadow the whole album. The result is a fine collection of dark, otherworldly tunes performed with obvious love, care and emotion.
- Marty Duda, Real Groove Magazine
* * * * ½
“Sublime”
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. 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.
- Dominion Post, May 2008
“In a community of poet troubadours”
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.
[Haven 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.
A track like [Sally] 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 [Crushed Ants].
Solitary as Steve Abel’s songs might seem, they place him in a community of poet troubadours. For the bilingual lyric of Pin of Love he’s joined by Anika Moa.
Flax happy finds Abel not just in the company of a kind of kiwi super group but also sharing the mic for a couple of songs with North American avant-folkie Jolie Holland. 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.
- Nick Bollinger, Radio NZ National
“Flax Happy – it’s a great album, and I highly recommend it”
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.
- Susan Strongman, www.thewire.co.nz
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