(2022) Maxine Funke - Pieces of Driftwood    


Review:
In the first of his Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Italo Calvino reframed the idea of lightness as a positive quality. He emphasised that lightness in literature is a thoughtful but not ponderous characteristic, that it is precise rather than haphazard. He attempted to remove what he called the excess weight from his writing and, in doing so, created stories that seemed to float free of structure and yet remained direct and immediate. If any artform beyond literature can benefit from this approach, it is surely music, and if any musician is capable of following in Calvino’s footsteps, it is Maxine Funke. Over a decade and four extraordinary albums, Funke has established herself as New Zealand’s premier purveyor of lightness, of songs whosebeauty and mystery are only sharpened by their apparent ephemeral qualities. Hers is a magic akin to that of Sibylle Baier and Vashti Bunyan (recently interviewed here) – mundane objects and routines are effortlessly elevated to the realm of ritual and icon; dreams and seemingly random trains of thought are imbued with a potency that is barely graspable. Pieces of Driftwood is not exactly an album; rather, as its title implies, a collection of rootless songs from the last ten years – singles, collaborations, experiments. But it is no less essential for that. In fact, it all hangs together wonderfully. Funke’s zephyr-like singing and understated but suggestive guitar playing guide the listener through a series of dreamlike scenarios. The songs are often backed by a haze of background noise; the sweet melody of First In Spring, for example, feels as if it is breaking through a kind of mist, achieving brightness despite itself. The (ironically short) Eternity is full of the lilting poeticism that you find in Sibylle Baier, while Nicest Thing celebrates those small, hard-to-define pleasures: being inside during a storm, the surprise of a courgette cake. It’s tempting to describe Funke’s songs as outsider folk, and while there is an apparent naivety in these melodies, there is also a very evident refinement, a clear purpose to her artistry. Her guitar playing is unconventional, sometimes exploratory, emerging from the fog of the DIY recordings with practised clarity. Sometimes a single lyric – ‘the ghost in the camera obscura’ from South Dunedin, for instance, will shine out, and it might stick with you for days afterwards, pulling at some nostalgic part of your brain you never knew existed. This doesn’t happen by accident – Funke clearly understands the relationship between lightness and precision, and the value of mystery. The collection is punctuated by instrumental pieces, the first of which, Rearview, acts as a kind of introduction and was recorded in collaboration with Funke’s partner, the experimental musician Alastair Galbraith (who has worked extensively with the likes of Alasdair Roberts and Alex Neilson). It shows Funke’s willingness to untether herself from structure, to proceed further into weightlessness with the help of glitch, programmed drums, noisy guitar and ambience. On the four pieces recorded with fellow New Zealander P. Wits, she explores even dreamier territory, employing birdsong, ponderous keys and the merging of boundaries between voice, electronics, acoustic instrumentation and noise. Pieces of Driftwood, despite or perhaps because of the varied origins of its songs, is a perfect introduction to Funke’s very special work. These are small glimpses into dreamworlds, always invisibly tethered to a uniquely described reality. In that essay on lightness, Calvino quotes the poet Paul Valery: ‘One must be light like the bird, not like the feather.’ It is an appeal to liveliness – or rather to sheer, immediate aliveness with all its questioning potential – and it is something that Funke is innately attuned to. — folkradio.co.uk


   


Track List:
01 - Rearview
02 - First in Spring
03 - Eternity
04 - Sandhopper
05 - Nicest Thing
06 - Make That Dream
07 - Blyton Rock
08 - Old Lady Blues
09 - South Dunedin
10 - Room in the City
11 - Forest Photographer
12 - Every Kind Word
13 - Flourish
14 - Angel
15 - Oranges in the Oaks

Media Report:
Genre: indie-folk, lo-fi
Country: New Zealand
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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