Review: Steve Abel's Double Salto

Monday, 22 August 2016, 11:23 am
Article: Howard Davis

Steve Abel's first musical venture was a bleak song called 'Hospice for Destitute Lovers,' which he contributed to Florian Habicht's art-noir feature film 'Woodenhead' in 2003, while his debut album had the equally inauspicious title 'Little Death.' Recorded by Nick Abbott at Montage Studios in Grey Lynn, it featured such notable Kiwi musicians as Geoff Maddock, Mike Hall, Milan Borich, and Gareth Thomas, with guest vocals by Kirsten Morell. It garnered highly favourable reviews and won the Alternatui for 2006 Album of the Year.

Abel's second album, 'Flax Happy,' featured the same band under the name of The Chrysalids, after John Wyndham's 1955 novel. Recorded mainly at Roundhead Studios by Dale Cotton in 2007, two songs featuring Texan chanteuse Jolie Holland were recorded by Lee Prebble at The Surgery in Wellington. 'Flax Happy' was released in 2008 (NZ) and 2009 (UK) to critical acclaim in both countries.

After moving to Geneva in 2008, Abel entered and won 'The Saddest Song in the World Competition' in Berlin in 2009. He played at the CMJ music festival in New York later that year and in November began recording his third album, 'Luck/Hope,' at Manhattan's Rivington 66 Studio. After a lengthy gestation period, it was finally released in August of this year.

Last week, during an intimate, invitation-only appearance at Simon Burt's Ahiaruhe House, Abel played a number of songs from the album, including 'Not Going Anywhere' and 'Best Thing,' the first single off 'Luck/Hope.' Released back in in 2012, the recorded version features Jolie Holland on vocals and violin, Shahzad Ismaily on bass, drums and backing vocal, and Grey Gersten on guitar, with backing vocals by Geoff Maddock. Engineered by Shahzad Ismaily and Milan Borich, it was mixed and mastered by Simon Gooding at The Lab in Auckland. Another highlight of the night was 'Sidewalk Doves,' a rollicking paean to New York which picked up the pace a bit. Released as a single last year, it was recorded at Rick Bryant’s studio in Newton by Geoff Maddock, who also played electric guitar, bass, and sang backing vocals, along with Ed McWilliams, and Cole Goodly on drums.

Abel's songs generally alternate between sepulchral elegies and lyrical ballads, while his rather ragged delivery ranges from a gravelly growl to wistfully whispered high notes. His preferred tempos are mostly slow and meditative, without ever quite lapsing into lachrymose lethargy or dirge-like inertia. Exuding the seductive charm and sartorial elegance of an ante-bellum river-boat gambler, he was supported live by a trio of consummate backing musicians, including dulcet-voiced chanteuse Reb Fountain, guitarist to the stars Jon Pearce, and Liz Stokes, whose deliciously understated trumpet added a poignantly mournful tone to the proceedings.

Abel seems to be a somewhat peripatetic musician, a sort of wandering troubadour figure with an uncanny knack for attracting highly accomplished collaborators who supply some instrumental polish to his often sparse arrangements and vocals. Just when entropic forces threaten to slow things down to a crawl, a pitch-perfect guitar, violin, or trumpet solo elevates and focusses his otherwise melancholy and somewhat meandering musings.

Mention must also be made of the fact that, in addition to his prolific songwriting and performance skills, Abel is also a highly successful activist, publicly advocating peaceful civil disobedience to resist the oil industry and address climate change. He supported the campaign by Native Forest Action to stop native logging on the South Island's West Coast and campaigned against genetically engineered crops for Greenpeace from 2002 to 2006. In 2005, Abel was one of the coordinators of the re-recording of the Don McGlashan's 'Anchor Me' to mark the twentieth anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. He also fought the proposed coal-fired Marsden B power plant in Northland with a nine-day occupation and the operation of pirate radio station Heatwave FM, which broadcast from Ruakaka in November 2006. The Marsden B proposal was later abandoned. On May 1st 2010, he helped coordinate the historic Auckland March Against Mining, which was described as the "biggest protest in a generation" and contributed to a government back-down on proposed mining of high-value conservation estates. The following year, he campaigned with Te Whanau-a-Apanui against Brazilian oil company Petrobras' plans for deep sea oil drilling in the Raukumara Basin, which included a flotilla of ships that spent 42 days at sea. Petrobras eventually relinquished their drilling permits in 2012.

Not only is Abel an entirely original and heartfelt singer/songwriter with a deep sense of political commitment, he's also a gifted and brooding lyricist. Graham Reid has described him as "a refined writer whose lyrics have a bone-bare quality - the sound of someone writing and singing from a place where there is no guile, just hard truth, and clear eyes." Sadly solemn words like 'destitute,' 'despondence,' and 'despair' crop up regularly in his repertoire, but anyone with the audacity to rhyme 'blueness' and 'cruelness' is clearly not averse to risking a double salto or leap of faith, lavishly laced with lashings of luck and hope.

© Scoop Media

Howard Davis

Scoop Arts Editor

Educated at Cambridge and UCLA; worked on several major Hollywood feature films and as a Kundalini Yoga instructor in Los Angeles; currently enjoying life in Wellington.

Contact Howard Davis

• Email - howard@scoop.co.nz