28 Mar 2024
UsernamePassword

Remember Me? | Join | Recover
Click here to sign in via social networking

Aaron Carpenter and The Revelators - EP Review: Aaron Carpenter and The Revelators

04 Nov 2015 // A review by camy3rs

Blues music can be a hard sell in todays market; rendering itself as more of a lifestyle than a genre, the blues requires a bit more from its listeners. You need to subscribe to the legends of artists selling their souls to the devil in exchange for guitar mastery.

Waiheke’s own blues masters Aaron Carpenter and The Revelators may not have sold their souls yet, but they have just released their self–titled EP and it’s a bit of a doozy.

Never Hungry Long opens with crunchy guitar and a wailing solo. The drums don’t sound quite as ‘full’ as I would have expected, but carry the song well enough. Perhaps the greatest part of the piece though, is actually the backing vocals on the chorus – they lift the feel of the whole song. Stranger opens slower in tempo, a lamenting piece that eventually takes on an almost gospel blues feel. The transition into the next song The Hardest Thing feels a little abrupt, and the song itself is more a step in the country/blues direction than anything else on the record, but harbours the most resonant lyric “forgiving yourself is the hardest thing”. The closing piece Pony is the shortest song on the release (clocking in at under two minutes) and the most upbeat, but feels underdeveloped.

Lyrically, none of the themes are especially new - Women who done you wrong, strangers, forgiving yourself, but overall the EP is a solid first release and I look forward to future work from these guys.

 

About Aaron Carpenter and The Revelators

Aaron Carpenter has a gift for articulating the plight of the downtrodden and misunderstood. A knack for stepping inside his fellow man’s boots and feeling the wear on the sole, the caked dirt between the treads, and the permanent awkwardness of the fit. This insight keeps listeners riveted throughout as The Revelators report back on the lot of small-town lifers, neglected love veterans, and the invisible homeless with both sympathy and a burning curiosity. By his own admission, the songwriter turns more inward and that means the blues, music he credits as “the commonest of human experience, perhaps the only thing that we all truly share.” If Carpernter is correct, the blues aren’t merely a condition but rather the human condition.




Visit the muzic.net.nz Profile for Aaron Carpenter and The Revelators

Releases

Pretty Lies
Year: 2017
Type: Album

Other Reviews By camy3rs

Myele Manzanza - Album Review: OnePointOne (Live At The Blue Whale)
20 Nov 2016 // by camy3rs
There are very few percussionists I can think of that would be able to pull off a live recorded album that falls even into the same league as OnePointOne (Live At The Blue Whale). From the opening bars of A Love Eclectic and onward throughout, the whole collection draws on many contrasting genres, cultures and aural motifs that somehow harmoniously flow out of and into each other.
Read More...
Openside - EP Review: Push Back
21 Oct 2016 // by camy3rs
Admittedly, home grown pop-rock has never been a particularly easy sell in New Zealand, but when Openside started turning heads with last year’s single Worth It the group began a rather rapid ascent, opening for various international acts including Twenty One Pilots and Melanie Martinez, selling out their own secret headline show and culminating in the recent release of their debut EP Push Back. The collection opens up with the hook-laden All I Really Want – catchy as all hell, the song initially comes off as the kind of upbeat, self-help anthem you might put on a mix-tape for your best friend who was recently dumped.
Read More...
Gig Review: Broods @ Vector Arena 15/07/2016
02 Aug 2016 // by camy3rs
It’s a wee bit of a sad state how seldom a full line-up of Kiwi acts take the stage at Vector Arena, but hopefully after the success of Broods’ Conscious tour, we can see the wheels begin to turn a little more in favour of New Zealand bands. The night opened up with Blenheim-based newcomers, October.
Read More...
Broods - Album Review: Conscious
12 Jul 2016 // by camy3rs
With the follow up to their 2014 debut album Evergreen, Broods are back again with another collection of the moody, atmospheric, dance-pop that gained them their notoriety. Conscious is a straight up beast of an album.
Read More...
Kaushun - Album Review: Tonight
25 Jun 2016 // by camy3rs
Aside from having one of those names that makes fans wary of mispronounciation, Kaushun (pronounced as ‘Caution’), is a electronic music producer based in Auckland, but originally from Leeds in the United Kingdom. Tonight is the producers second album and a decent mix of run-of-the-mill dance/club beats, interesting electronica soundscapes and some high tempo pieces that wouldn’t go amiss on the soundtrack to a futuristic David Fincher film.
Read More...
Gig Review: Avalanche City @ The Powerstation 03/06/16
21 Jun 2016 // by camy3rs
Dave Baxter and ilk have become a rather large part of the quilt of Kiwi music – encompassing all of the personality traits that Kiwis seem to love in their icons, modest about his skill, understated in the news, seemingly soft spoken and dedicated to his practice. Avalanche City itself is a bit of a pop wonder - the roots in folk and country that set the band a part from other pop acts should (at least, to Kiwi audiences) be the proverbial bullet in the heart, and yet at every point they defy the odds.
Read More...
Ladyhawke - Album Review: Wild Things
05 Jun 2016 // by camy3rs
Pip Brown is the kind of musical artist I forever wish that the world had more of, - intuitive, intentional and innovative. Everytime a new Ladyhawke album is released, the incremental advances towards an even more polished, cohesive and  genre defying sound are obvious.
Read More...
Gig Review: Drax Project @ Neck Of The Woods, Auckland - 13/05/16
04 Jun 2016 // by camy3rs
Roughly three years ago, I remember walking down Courtenay Place in Wellington and stumbling across a three-piece jazz ensemble playing top 40 pop and RnB covers outside of the Reading Cinema. I’ll tell you now, you have not heard Katy Perry until you’ve heard these guys play Hot ‘n Cold with a saxophone covering the entire lyrical line.
Read More...
View All Articles By camy3rs

NZ Top 10 Singles

  • WE CAN'T BE FRIENDS (WAIT FOR YOUR LOVE)
    Ariana Grande
  • BEAUTIFUL THINGS
    Benson Boone
  • END OF BEGINNING
    Djo
  • LOSE CONTROL
    Teddy Swims
  • TEXAS HOLD 'EM
    Beyonce
  • STICK SEASON
    Noah Kahan
  • PRAISE JAH IN THE MOONLIGHT
    YG Marley
  • CARNIVAL
    Kanye West And Ty Dolla $ign
  • SATURN
    SZA
  • LOVIN ON ME
    Jack Harlow
View the Full NZ Top 40...
muzic.net.nz Logo
100% New Zealand Music
All content on this website is copyright to muzic.net.nz and other respective rights holders. Redistribution of any material presented here without permission is prohibited.
Report a ProblemReport A Problem