Review: Cardigan pop looms large in these new Kiwi albums

Auckland-based Tom Lark has as many personae as names: he releases cruisy dance-floor pop as ­Shannon Matthew Vanya, but he’s also Shannon Fowler when producing and collaborating with Merk, Randa, Georgia Lines, Christchurch psychedelic drifters Fuzzy Robes and others.

But for this long overdue debut album as Tom Lark – previous alt-pop-rock Lark releases were years ago – he steps confidently into melodic, slightly delic dream pop with nuanced guitar and inviting vocals. This is most notably on the singles Radio Blaster, the country-flavoured Live Wires, and Brave Star, about the mayfly lifespan of former celebrities who’ve had “the peek round behind the curtain … maybe you are a star but not the one you thought you were”.

This could sound cruel or glib, but Lark’s delivery suggests some empathy.

Move On looks back on being the kid running away from home but going back, and in adulthood being the same, one who “never seems to move out, just move on”.

The airy five minute-plus centrepiece, Washout, has a balmy Pacific atmosphere couching mature reflection; Softserve is breezy 70s yacht rock recalling pleasant Californian MOR pop; Visiting Bunbury a melancholy piano interlude; and Wild Fire a philosophical, late-period Lennon ballad with Harrison-like guitar.

“Tom Lark” sounds like the most enriching and invigorating of his musical personae because Brave Star is an intelligent album adrift on a sea of memory bliss offering summer sounds and autumnal sensibilities.

Laundromat, by Pickle Darling

The music lexicon has a new sub-­category: “cardigan pop”. That’s how the quirky music of Pickle Darling (Christ­church multi-instrumentalist Lukas Mayo, they/them) has been described. Check their 2016 glockenspiel version of the Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows.

Although they say Pickle Darling means nothing, you’d hope for some vinegar astringency. But the 12 songs on this third album in six years – call them miniatures or un­developed – are slight, sweet and musically simple lo-fi ­bedroom pop, usually about the commonplace.