Jordan Reyne: Crone EP (Powertool records)
REYNE IS ONE of those artists you tend to come across by accident, making the rewards of such discoveries extra rewarding. She has been beavering away for years, with a sound that her own website describes as akin to goth-folk. Don’t be alarmed, this is kinda what Lorde is doing herself.
A New Zealander, Reyne has been based in Britain for about a decade, but this release is being put out by Powertool in Aoteoroa. While Reyne’s sound is universal there is a distinct Kiwi touch to the opening track, Dear John, the John being Prime Minister Key, who is invited to a dinner party by an elderly lady, the Crone. “We feel each bite, we feel each tear while you feed, sew the seeds, your pound of flesh, your fiscal flesh.”
As politically-tinged songs go, it’s a subtle diatribe on National Party divide-and-rule policies with typical centre-right focus on those who have rather than those who don’t. Perhaps it’s too subtle as it hasn’t been banned by the election Nazis who found Darren Watson’s satirical Planet Key “an election broadcast.” Jesus, is this Fiji?
In The Shadow Line, we see Reyne initially holding back, insisting “I won’t see red”, but the tale becomes darker and it is when “the children followed one by one with empty eyes drawn to the tune of endless gold, undying fame and the cycle turns on blood and rain”, that Reyne then resolutely hollers “And I see red” with chilling effect.
Dishonour Among Thieves, the most haunting track on the EP, sees Reyne denounce the men “whose game is knives in the back, shots in the dark, sleight of the hand, cheap tricks, suck dick,”.
Political comment AND words that pilots and children should never be heard uttering, this is what pop music just isn’t about, is it John?
This is part of the Maiden, Mother, Crone series of EPs, to be released during the rest of the year.
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