The Big Lawn - Album Review: Silverspoon
Dunedin band The Big Lawn have just released their first album, Silverspoon. The album following on from the success of their debut EP Help Myself.
The bulk of the album was recorded at Steve Harrop’s (Strawpeople) Sublime Studio in Kurow. It was engineered and co-produced by Dave Craig, who’s worked with Kings, Six60 and Kylie Price.
Silverspoon is a great full length debut recording. The production is lush with many textures and layers of instruments blending into a well-crafted album.
Track 1 Radiowaves begins with appropriate speech samples, before launching into a great to-tempo pop song with its roots firmly in rock, but remaining cliche free.
I love how the album ends with Frequency, a noise piece, featuring off-station radio static, bird song, and so much more. It is the perfect cadence to The Big Lawn’s debut full length album.
The Big Lawn are all older hands at music, all having featured in Dunedin bands in years gone by, some players with more years gone by than others, but I won’t mention names. Here’s the run-down of who does what: Jimmy Higgs (vocals, rhythm guitar, drums and keyboards), Richard Strang (bass and vocals), Blair Scoullar (synths, keyboards and vocals), Dave Picard (lead guitar), Tom Maxwell (keyboards and guitar), with Jessica and Jo Little (backing vocals on Higher Ground).
Gotta Give reminds me of The D4, raucous, punky and gritty, with pop sensibilities.
All I Say is another stunning track, especially the way it builds up and the singer’s voices intertwine as they sing a round each other.
River Dry brings the tempo down and is a beautiful ballad, reminds me a bit of 1980's Dunedin band Sneaky Feelings, it shows another style for the band, and has a wonderful and huge chorus.
Don’t let this be the album you discover in 5 years’ time, do yourself a favour and discover it now. Individual songs are $1 each on Bandcamp, but I’d recommend buying the whole LP.
About The Big Lawn
The bulk of the album was recorded at Steve Harrop’s (StrawPeople) Sublime Studio in Kurow. It was engineered and co-produced by Dave Craig (Kings / Six60 / Kylie Price).
Silverspoon is a well balance mix of full throttle punk-tinged rock and more medium paced harmonic lawn clippings. Scoullar’s synths and clever samples add a colour that both elevates and darkens the myriad of syncopations and hooks scattered heavily throughout the tracks. It is a thoughtful, challenging, poetic and varied, album with multifarious layers, and certainly warrants more than just one throw away listen.
Visit the muzic.net.nz Profile for The Big Lawn
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