Otautahi alt rock band Tealskie debut with their fresh track Flown Away, a sweeping ballad which highlights a clear cohesion and tight musical interplay within the group.
Sharp, rushing guitar grooves open the track, met with clashing percussion and subtle yet effective bass. It’s a psychedelic journey of a song constantly introducing fresh new melodies. Lead singer Rebekah Pemberton holds it together with simple, controlled vocals, broken up by these harrowing instrumentals. Lyrically, she covers moving on from a painful life experience and accepting the healing journey. Each line is direct and plain. But paired with the focused, complex instrumentation, it’s given a new sense of emotion.
However, at times the mix makes the words tough to make out, which is disappointing given the song’s clear intent to focus on feeling. The dynamic build in its latter half is its shining moment, exploding into a wall of warbling electric guitars and thrashing drums.
Flown Away is a promising track for Tealskie. If this song is anything to go by, their future work will be a welcome path of invention in the Kiwi rock scene.
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About the author Danica Bryant
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Sharply bitter and sickeningly sweet all at once, Danica Bryant is not your ordinary songwriter. Born to the fruitful music scene in Napier, New Zealand, her songs cover intense topics such as adolescence, mental health, sexuality, and young love. Danica Bryant is “all hard guitar and pain-filled howl” (The Hook NZ) – this woman bites back. Bryant played her first gig at age twelve. Her career ripened when Smokefree Rockquest awarded her the National APRA Lyric Award in 2018, for ‘Dizzy’. The following year, her track ‘Sugarbones’ featured on Play It Strange’s annual songwriting compilation album, and she won their national ‘Who Loves Who’ contest covering Aldous Harding’s ‘Horizon’. Bryant was also selected for mentorship by Bic Runga at her Christchurch Art Centre workshops. After opening for Kiwi legends like Jason Kerrison and Paul Ubana Jones, Bryant was cherry picked to support Elton John on his ‘Farewell Yellow Brick Road’
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