As we find ourselves in the midst of a chilly, wet Auckland winter we feel grateful that there is an abundance of great music being released at the moment to keep us buoyant while we wait for warm days ahead.
Here are some songs that are on high-rotate in the All Things Musical office right now-

'Flirt' - Boycrush featuring Yumi Zouma/Madeira

Alistair Deverick aka Auckland producer/singer Boycrush released this gorgeous piece of dance-pop confection a few months ago to international and local acclaim. Featuring vocalist Kim Pflaum - best known for her work in Yum Zouma and now known as Madeira - Flirt is warm and breezy but also thoughtfully constructed under its effortless sheen. Flirt is from Boycrush's 2nd EP 'Girls on Top', available through Bandcamp. Find more on Boycrush here.

'Slow' - Jessie Cassin

Slow is the first offering from Auckland's Jessie Cassin and what a debut release it is! Seductive, sensual and sensitive, Jessie's achingly beautiful voice is paired with woozy beats, swaying strings and thoughtful lyrics. We are looking forward to hearing more from this exciting new talent! Find more on Jessie Cassin here.

'Low Brow' - Chelsea Jade

Written by Anna C

Dream pop savant Chelsea Jade (Watercolours, Teacups) has released a brand new single. With her usual blend of poetic lyricism and ethereal production, the track marks her first release under the new name of Chelsea Jade after performing as Watercolours in recent years. Listen/buy it via the Bandcamp widget below, and if you get a hankering to hear some of her back catalogue you can borrow the Teacups album Forest Fiction or the Watercolours EP Portals via Auckland Libraries.

Here's a few more of our favourites to listen to in the month of May. Here are some thoughts:

1. this acoustic version of Swim and Sleep (Like a Shark) shows just how good of a guitarist Ruban Nielsen is. He's very, very good, right?

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Boycrush is the project of Alistair Deverick. Alistair is a very good drummer and a nice dude, which can put you in pretty high demand. Accordingly he's been in such bands as The Sami Sisters, The Hot Grits, Bannerman, Lisa Crawley, The Shades, Watercolours, Panther and The Zoo, Lawrence Arabia, Haunted Love, Lucid 3, and The Ruby Suns. Whewsh, that's quite a list. Blessed with this minimal, dreamy pulse, Secrets shows his own work is up there with the best of his musical collaborations.

Getting a bunch of musicians to hand in tracks for a compilation on time already seems like a bit of a nightmare. Asking them to write brand new songs for a compilation seems far, far worse. Then again, perhaps if the recording and the mixing is free and being done by the same person putting together the compilation, the chances for musician procrastination are limited. Perhaps that's what made the daunting premise of A Very Little Christmas possible.

Dave Parker runs a pretty stunningly good recording studio out of his bedroom in Oratia. It's called Little Monster, and he's recorded artists like Ruby Frost, Artisan Guns, Great North, Watercolours and a whole lot more.

As he will explain, A Very Little Christmas covers the quieter side of that spectrum without specifically making a theme of it. Probably every one of the artists has played a set at Auckland's low key bar the Wine Cellar, but it's more just a loosely affiliated group of bands befriended by Parker and former Border Music rep, now Bones and Woods/all around good guy Marty Jones. And with one guy recording 18 bands in his bedroom using largely the same microphones, preamps, room and producer's instincts, it's only natural that the album would have a pretty cohesive sound.



It's also interesting to note that some of the artists would go on to recycle their Christmas tracks for later releases. The Gladeyes re-recorded their stunning Carols and Parties for Shadows Explode.

Dear Times Waste did likewise with her track The Drink, re-recording it and putting it on her sublime record Some Kind of Eden. 

Rather than the re-recordings being a slight on the original recordings, I tend to think of it as a desire to reframe a song in the same sonic context as a new album, and it's a reflection on the quality of the writing generated by the project that artists would come to see their Christmas songs as more than mere novelties. The constraint of writing a song to a specific topic and to a deadline can be a powerful tool for focusing a piece. There's any number of quotes about art and limitations, and these words from G. K. Chesterton serve as good as any. "Art is limitation. The essence of every picture is the frame." Here's David Parker talking about the compilation after the jump.

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