OdESSA - Oak Park Avenue
I like to imagine that there was a time, not long before I was born, when people understood that there were different kinds of music, but they didn't get too excited about it. You could listen to a recording and not know what to call it, but know that you liked it. Nowadays genre is a big deal - if you go to a particular gig and you don't have your horizontal strip polo shirt or your trucker cap is insufficiently ironic or whatever, you're totally gonna get kneed in the face and thrown out in the street for the smokers to kick around.
OdESSA aren't about that. At their shows, you see punks, hip-hop kids, rockers, hippies, beret-wearers, people's mums, et cetera. Basically you would see dudes with bones in their noses romping around in lederhosen too, if Wellington were a slightly larger city. This is because Odessa are for people who like music, and they are the sort of band that make people who like music, love music.
Their songs combine strong, repetitive hooks and a knack for timely changes, technical musicianship and soulful delivery, together with a unmatched sense of momentum. They're lean, straightforward songs that tap right into the roots, the fundamental stuff of exciting pop music.
Oak Park Avenue is an unpolished, independently financed album, but it's very, very good.
- MKD
