Album Review: Lucky

The name Caroline Easther has been in the lexicon of New Zealand’s music industry since the heady Flying Nun days when she drummed with The Chills and the Verlaines.

Now after a career behind a drum kit she’s staking a place centre stage as a songwriter with her debut album Lucky.

The song Anything For You has single written all over it; with a moderate to quick tempo and pop 101 structure.

Down slows the tempo and has a wonderful lap steel guitar frequently on the verge of feeding back. But tastefully restrained.

Your Footsteps Falling reminds me of Alex Chilton, especially the verse. But it’s the huge chorus and monster middle eight which really won me over. This is a monster song, which packs so much in to its short time. It you’re an album skimmer when deciding to buy an LP, don’t skim past this track.

Jaguar Boy has a slight country twang and almost a waltz feel, harking back to Caroline’s days playing with The Warratahs. The pedal or lap steel is back adding texture.

Apart from vocalisations, like ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’, Goodbye Little Boy is completely instrumental and simply wonderful.

No Ordinary Day sounds like another definite single from the album right from the get go. There’s a wonderful brittle tremolo guitar strumming the chords on the first beat of the bar for the most part. It’s just one of the clearly defined textures in the song.

Rich textures are a feature of Lucky, along with a true sense of space. It’s not over produced, just very well produced.

Lucky comes to a close with a cover. It you’re to cover any song which might define how people think of the album, it’s good to choose one which you know will resonate with your potential audience, and Easther nails it, closing her debut solo record with a duet of Hank Williams’ I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, sung with Warratahs’ frontman Barry Saunders.

Caroline Easther backed by her band The Cinnamon Girls (Alan Galloway, Hamish Graham and Murray Costello) are hitting the road to promote the album – don’t miss out on what is sure to be an exceptional live show.