Delgirl and Sunley - Skirting the Fringes...
Delgirl and The Sunley Band announce South Island tour dates
Friday Sept 18 - The Wunderbar - Lyttleton
Saturday Sept 19 - The Penguin Club - Oamaru
Two of Dunedins more intriguing acts, Delgirl and the Sunley Band, are joining forces to deliver a littlesouthern gothic
to their friends in Christchurch and Oamaru.
While both bands have spent most of this year on recording projects they have managed to set aside a very special
weekend in September to air some of their fine tunes as spring approaches and we come out of the darkness of the
Southern winter.
Delgirl:
Three singers. Three songwriters. One voice . . .
Ask Lynn Vare, Deirdre Newall and Erin Morton to describe the Delgirl sound and they’ll scratch around for the right
words. Jazz-tinged acoustic country-blues? Harmony-rich folk-reggae fusion? It is what it is, they say. Ask them to
play, and their songs do the talking, revealing musical roots nourished by the warm waters of the Tropics, the cool
mountain streams of North America and the fertile soils of their New Zealand homeland.
These multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriters from Dunedin play roots music, bedded in tradition but speaking of
today’s laughs, loves and losses in one clear voice. As performers they slip quietly into the living-room of the soul,
warming it with their unaffected charm. Fluid, luminous voices meld with guitar, ukulele, banjo and stand-up bass in
songs that swing with sweet-tempered ease.
In January 2009, Delgirl landed the Recording Industry Association (RIANZ) Folk Album of the Year 2008 Award for their
debut long player Two, Maybe Three, Days Ride.
Delgirl aren’t out to change the world, but they don’t mind leaving a few smiles in their wake.
“The more you listen, the more little details become apparent; the kind of deliberate sonic punctuation marks that make
the difference between a kitchen sing-along and a recording of the type you want to listen to over and over again –
which is exactly what this is.” – Nick Bollinger, Radio NZ National The Sampler, 13/11/07
Sunley:
There’s something mournful about Sunley’s music.
Even when it jumps up on a table and kicks your drink over, you’re mesmerised by the odd gravity of it. Curdling beneath
the harmonies of Sunley’s debut album Apologies is a sadness that won’t take itself too seriously, a passive aggressive
humour that makes its deceptively simple folk-country rhythms hard to classify. Sure, they’re love songs, but there’s
nothing trite there. Listening to a number like ‘Song of Envelopes’ is like watching a bar fight between newlyweds – the
song slips between confession and hootenanny with barely a breath. Upswelling are offers of ass-kickings and hearts
slapped by ice cubes, as if the only thing that could ever really protect pleasure is an equal quantity of pain.
They’re weird, compelling, contradictory songs penned by Evan Sunley James, a musician long-schooled in the Dunedin
tradition of dark, gently forceful music, and performed in concert by some of the city's finest players.
“... sounds like David Byrne fronting a country band, which is naturally a very good thing...” – Grant Smithies, Sunday
Star Times
Contact info:
Delgirl
Web: www.delgirl.co.nz
Email: delgirls@gmail.com
Tel: +64 21 44 01 60
Sunley
Web: www.sunleyband.co.nz
Email: sunley@derivative.co.nz
Tel: +64 21 44 24 46
ENDS