Deborah Conway and Willy Zygier
EVERYBODY'S BEGGING (deborahconway.com/MGM)
Deborah Conway and Willy Zygier mix religion and music.
★★★★
The story told in Through Your Blood Shall You Live should not be separated from its classic folk structure: minimal melody; momentum built from the repetition in the rhythm of the tale unfolding; a chorus more chant than singalong. This family history of fear and boldness, of survival and resistance, of love and truth passed down the line is a great folk song story, one that could have been sung around a bush fire 500 years ago, on a back porch 100 years ago or in a kibbutz common room 50 years ago. The same can be said for pretty much all the stories here, whether asking "Blessed? Were you blessed?" in a misjudged love, accepting that "life's a curse" without seeing it as having no purpose, or remembering how the divine can appear in song, to us or Leonard Cohen. Deborah Conway and Willy Zygier have made an album of vibrant, powerful and engagingly arranged folk songs that, yes, draw from religious thought, but are asking the same questions any thinking woman or man asks – just with better tunes. BERNARD ZUEL
Murray McNab
THE WAY IN IS THE WAY OUT (Sarang Bang)
★★★★
Murray McNabb was one of the few who stayed. While great swathes of New Zealand's finest musicians flew the coop to enrich Australia's scene immeasurably, McNabb kept the home fires burning – and that's not just a figure of speech. Among many other moods, the music of the late pianist/composer could be truly incendiary, as this exquisitely produced double-LP compilation shows, covering his endeavours between 1976 and 2012. These range from big bands to solo piano, and from straight-ahead jazz to funk and electronic soundscapes. Even a piece such as Magenta, which could easily have been bland, has a vibrancy in performance that largely emanates from McNabb's keyboards. The enchanting Song for the Dreamweaver was recorded in New York with the stellar rhythm section of Ron McClure and Adam Nussbaum, but the rest – at least those that aren't solo piano or keyboards – show off many more of New Zealand's finest players, including blazing saxophonist Brian Smith, trumpeter Kim Paterson and drummer Frank Gibson jnr. If you want to hear how amazing one of the ones who didn't come to Oz was, this is the album. JOHN SHAND
Taasha Coates
TAASHA COATES AND HER MELANCHOLY SWEETHEARTS (ABC/Universal)
★★★
Away from the Audreys, Taasha Coates is a little more country, a lot more personal and even more relaxed. Don't be fooled by the album title suggesting either a band of sad-eyed lowlanders at her disposal or a bunch of songs dedicated to a quiet cry in the corner, Coates is no more melancholic than she is unpleasant company. And with a voice like butterscotch, Coates is anything but unpleasant company. Even with something like the slow, almost mournful Nothing Left to Lose, with producer Shane Nicholson once again finding a way to make a close atmosphere feel like it's wrapping rather than overwhelming you, Coates conveys tenderness rather than despair. And Eye On You, with its resonating, intruding guitars, gets more gutsy than expected. The fly in the ointment is that as attractive as these songs are, there isn't anything to pull you in completely, to take you over and redefine either Coates or, for those three or four minutes of listening, you. Sweet sweet music works, definitely, and I've enjoyed this record on each spin. However, there's nothing here that has had me look at the album at other times and think, yeah, need to hear that song again. BERNARD ZUEL
Elvis Presley
WAY DOWN IN THE JUNGLE ROOM (RCA)
★★★
I can only imagine that somewhere within RCA America there lurks an archivist, miner's hat permanently attached, who lives deep in the bowels of the label's HQ searching for elusive and as-yet-untapped sources of Elvis gold. Somehow, almost 40 years after the King mumbled his last "Thank ya very mooch", they've managed to unearth his final recordings, all two-and-a-bit hours long, cut at two separate sessions in Graceland's fabled jungle room with his killer Vegas-era band, featuring drummer Ronnie Tutt and guitar-slinger James Burton. There's some real magic here: the soulful Moody Blue, the funky Way Down, plus a hunka burning melodrama named Bitter They Are, Harder They Fall, which pretty much summed up the man's deeply blue state at the time. Only the truest of true believers will find the need to add to their Presley collection ephemera such as take nine of Danny Boy or take 10, no less, of the gospel-ly She Thinks I Still Care. There's a pretty great single album lurking in here: funnily enough it was titled From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee, released back in 1976. JEFF APTER
SCHMILCO (Anti/Warner)
★★★★
Wilco's 10th album is not exactly a response to its ninth, Star Wars; more like the afternoon after the night before. Calmer, quieter, homelier than the record which was written and recorded at much the same time, it doesn't heat up to a boiling point but rather simmers gently, filing the space with detail, character and warmth. It's the country album you make when you're not trying to make one. Take Cry All Day, a kind of driving song that is back roads instead of highways, with a forward-facing rhythm paired with a laid-back delivery, or the even more homespun Quarters, which feels more upright than electric bass, proffers a pastoral atmosphere and finally drifts away rather than actually ends. Even Locator, which has a White Album dream-meets-drugs tone – the guitar sharper to the touch, the sounds spiralling up in the way the tempo does, the harmonies nearer the edge – sidles up to you and winks. Tellingly, only one of the songs goes past four minutes, and eight don't make it past three minutes. No one is trying too hard here; they're trying just right. BERNARD ZUEL