12 Dec 2024
UsernamePassword

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

Al Park - Album Review: Pony

26 May 2022 // A review by roger.bowie

Last year it was a Rooster. This year it’s a Pony. Christchurch never ceases to amaze with its depth of talent and animal imagery. This time it’s Al Park, who is older than me, and today releases an album of his own songs written over many years. It’s actually his third album. And there’s a tribute album out since 2018. A tribute album? Is he dead? Who exactly is Al Park?

Ask the opening song, Friend of Mine. And of mine. And there are thousands of me. And I didn’t even know. I was just an occasional visitor to Echo records back in the day. I’m not even one of me who knows Al as an early punk rocker and an even earlier long-haired soccer player when only George Best could do that. Or a bar owner. Or just the old man mentoring the young ones, created by and emerging from the Lyttelton scene. Al Park is a Christchurch icon from Wellington and has never been anything else.

Except now. Now he’s an Americana rock star. And the opening track, Friend of Mine is a delightfully warm and gentle rocker with delicate chord shifts and forward an aft progressions and twinkling banjo and fuzzy guitar which breaks free.

You might have guessed that Adam and Elmore from Hattaway and the Haunters would be there behind him playing and producing along with a host of Christchurch’s finest, and there’s a Shadow on the Water, the signs of the devil’s daughter and haunted harmonica supports the Al Park voice, a little frail, a little reedy, a little worn, more Young and Costello than Van Zandt, but when there are references like these then perfection is indeed the enemy of good enough. Seasoned. Travelled. It’s the song after all, it’s the song.

Ride My Pony jumps us into Chicago 60’s blues jive and indeed Elvis and Townes become Mick. Unashamedly. Three tracks in and we have all this??

We know Honor Lee. Al wrote it but Adam Hattaway borrowed it for Rooster in order to try out his yodel. Al, thankfully, doesn’t.

And now it’s back to 1979, the longest gestation of a song from writing to recording to releasing ever, as Al revisits his early experiences on the West Coast. California is a starkly simple but forceful paean to West Coast rock, all fuzzy and jingle-jangly and just a touch of punk attitude. I’m trying to tell you something…but it’s actually nothing. Eagles meets X. Seminal. Go f..k yourself….

As soon as this is over, the rocker in him settling down, along comes pure, croony country, poor Al Running Away From A Broken Heart. Check out the video. Stranger to me Now Is a rockabilly, hootenanny song with acoustic flourish but once again the difference here is the voice, with a Neil Young attitude and a pinch of punk. “Sad but true” probably inspired Delaney and Marlon’s early releases.

Just One of Those Things. Here comes Banjo George again with a fiddle in support along with a big twangy country guitar. If this isn’t Americana, then it can only be Kiwicana. Back to the blues with Thing for You, R & B, early Stones style with an Ian Stewart piano roll.

And as the album comes to track 10, a warm Farewell (co-written with Delaney) to an impressive retro journey through the influences of Al Park’s life. And all his friends of mine.

Pony by Al Park. This is a hoot of a record. Play it loud, play it drunk, play it again and often and go to the album launch at Loons in Lyttelton on album release day. Which is today. 

Rating: ( 4 / 5 )
 

About Al Park

In Christchurch, if you’ve been around music, as a fan, as a player, or as a business then you know Al Park.

If you spend 10 minutes in public with him, you’ll have ten different hellos coming his way, from head nods to hour-long debates, everyone knows him to say hi to.
Those close to him know his influence as well.

Visit the muzic.net.nz Profile for Al Park

Releases

Monkey
Year: 2024
Type: Album
Pony
Year: 2022
Type: Album

Other Reviews By roger.bowie

Album Review: Subset BC
16 Dec 2023 // by roger.bowie
Here’s an interesting little thing from Gisborne. A funky little band with three bass players.
Read More...
Gig Review: The Best of Come Together @ The Civic Theatre, Auckland - 9/12/2023
12 Dec 2023 // by roger.bowie
Get your heads around this line-up:  The singers: Jon Toogood, (lead and backing vocals), Julia Deans (lead and backing vocals), Dianne Swann (lead and backing vocals and occasional guitar), Samuel Flynn Scott (vocals and guitar), James Milne (lead and backing vocals), Milan Borich (Mick vocals) The players: Jol Mulholland (guitars and vocals), Brett Adams (lead guitar and vocals), Mike Hall (bass), Matthias Jordan (keyboards), Alastair Deverick (drums), Finn Scholes (trumpet, clarinet and percussion), Nick Atkinson (sax and percussion).  Stopped spinning?
Read More...
A Crude Mechanical - Album Review: Discourse
08 Dec 2023 // by roger.bowie
Shane Warbrooke doesn’t believe in lyrics, because of the risk of lyrics being hi-jacked and meanings bent to suit ideologies which he doesn’t like. Well, such ideologies which most of us don’t like, truth be known, but then again, Beethoven didn’t write lyrics, so the freedom of speech counter argument only goes so far.
Read More...
Gig Review: The Phoenix Foundation @ Hollywood Avondale, Auckland - 24/11/2023
26 Nov 2023 // by roger.bowie
This is a first of many things. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen The Phoenix Foundation play live.
Read More...
Velvet Arrow - Album Review: Songs of Solitude
17 Nov 2023 // by roger.bowie
A Song Of Hope & Fear would normally be a contradiction in terms unless darkness prevails and light shines through, which is an appropriate metaphor for the debut album from Whangarei’s Velvet Arrow and the opening song, with Dan Stenhouse’s husky voice helping us through the night against a ghostly horror wail from Hannah Jane. After all it’s just a song to help you through the night, just the words that speak, it’s not real.
Read More...
Gig Review: Atomic: Women of Rock @ The Civic, Auckland - 11/11/2023
13 Nov 2023 // by roger.bowie
What a feast of nostalgia we’ve had from Liberty Stage (Simone Williams) these past few years, as New Zealand’s finest have Come Together to cover the classic albums which made the soundtracks of our youth. In addition to this, there have also been special tributes like Tami Neilson’s rock ‘n roll party with Dinah Lee, just last month.
Read More...
Dimmer - Album Review: Live At The Hollywood
09 Nov 2023 // by roger.bowie
Wow, not very often that we see alive album these days, an unusual beast, but that’s we have, a 14-track monster from Dimmer, recorded from last year’s sold-out trilogy at the Hollywood Avondale. Which, if you didn’t get to go last year, you can still see on December 2nd at the Powerstation, unless, like me, you are going instead to The War on Drugs.
Read More...
Killergrams - EP Review: Lonely Nights In A Little Town
27 Oct 2023 // by roger.bowie
Someone walked out, and Tom Maxwell has lost his mind, in a gentle, acoustic way. Then his mind explodes in a cacophony of chaos, which might just be what it feels like, losing something that important.
Read More...
View All Articles By roger.bowie

NZ Top 10 Singles

  • APT.
    ROSÉ And Bruno Mars
  • DIE WITH A SMILE
    Lady Gaga And Bruno Mars
  • BIRDS OF A FEATHER
    Billie Eilish
  • TASTE
    Sabrina Carpenter
  • I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY
    Gracie Abrams
  • ESPRESSO
    Sabrina Carpenter
  • SAILOR SONG
    Gigi Perez
  • LOSE CONTROL
    Teddy Swims
  • A BAR SONG (TIPSY)
    Shaboozey
  • GOOD LUCK, BABE!
    Chappell Roan
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