Virginia Avenue Album Review

Revisiting Virginia Avenue, the new album from Kiwi Singer-Songwriter Matt Langley, is the perfect activity on a cold autumn afternoon in this nowhere town I call home. This Kiwi Country Rock suits my mood as I try to surgically disassemble my amp with a rusty screwdriver, as it would suit the ambience of a backwater pub in the South Island, or a road trip across the central plateau. 

Far from a one hit wonder, Virginia Avenue is a multilayered emotional rollercoaster. It’s not just country and it’s not all upbeat Bluesy Rock. Langley’s latest jaunt takes you from foot stomper to tearjerker. Nostalgia to melancholy. There are moments that accommodate both Granddad waltzing with his daughter’s child on his toes, and the morose farmer at the bar with the beer. 

I wish I could comment on the merits of each song individually, but fifteen songs with no filler is a lot to digest. And I read that Langley chose these fifteen from forty. Culling forty songs down to fifteen would have been no easy feat, and nor would finding a song to remove from the fifteen recorded for Virginia Avenue. Each song here tells a story, some speak of heartbreak, some of hope, and those stories all come together to form the narrative of Matt Langley. I hope to hear the other twenty five released somewhere someday just so we, the audience, can truly know what it means to be in Langley’s world.