Pickle Darling
24th July 2021
Spaceship, Hastings, New Zealand.
Review by Rob Harbers, photography by Richmond Palleson.
Touring their most recent album “Cosmonaut”, Otautahi’s Pickle Darling brought the magic to the appropriately named Spaceship in Hastings, charming a select audience with their sweetly innocent lo-fi sound, and garnering some new fans along the way.
This review also marks the debut of the Spaceship venue in this forum, so it’s appropriate to introduce it to you. Operating under the umbrella of The Common Room, a venue itself widely credited with sparking a renaissance in the arts scene in Hastings and surrounds, Spaceship is an art/music collective with its own distinctive touch. It has a freer format than its larger sibling, allowing for a more experimental, left-field approach. As can occur with sibling relationships, while the older sibling takes on more adult responsibility, the rebellious little one comes up from under to keep fucking shit up (in the best possible way).
Tonight’s entry in this ongoing catalogue was kicked off by the effervescent Mousey, providing, in a notably relaxed style, a set of acoustic material. These songs featured insightful and thoughtful lyrics, delivered in an emotive and heartfelt manner, and were accompanied by a charming degree of audience interaction. I’ll be honest and say I’d not heard of her before this encounter, but I’ll definitely be following from now!
In a shining example of touring economy, minimising the size of the retinue, Mousey is also a member of the Pickle Darling live band, so at the close of her set she immediately took up her position on keyboard, alongside Cameron Finlay, who in another life plays drums, but in this context plays almost everything but drums. These two are almost immediately joined by the eponymous Pickle Darling, making their triumphal entry to a backing of Eric Spear’s most well-known tune (go on, look it up), but leading in to anything but a night on a cobblestoned street!
Opening number “Greta” was a strong lead-off, tracking nicely in to current single “Achieve Lift”, allowing this Spaceship to achieve the mission stated in its name, before orbiting a set notable for its economy of style and delivery – not a note wasted here! This is a genre sometimes referred to as “bedroom pop”, reflecting its home-made nature, and what could be more emblematic of these times as we rediscover the small and artisanal providers of products vastly superior to the mass-produced schlock that’s a dime-a-dozen on any street? To a charmingly minimalist backing, in which a xylophone featured prominently, alongside embryonic-sounding keyboard (think 80’s Casiotone, calling to mind early video game soundtracks), Pickle sings touching odes to life, love and loneliness. As a writer I’m well-familiar with the need for economy of expression, and these songs with their brevity and often abrupt endings are models of this approach – just long enough to make their presence felt, never outstaying themselves, not being a second longer than they need to be. I wish (and probably my editor does too!) for such a level of succinct directness and self-editing…
While I’m not yet ready to forgo the quest for the Big Music, and will always have a space for the loud and overblown, my heart also has room for the likes of Pickle Darling to work their musical charms and inveigle a way in. In the same way that one can get overstuffed with rich foods and need the palate-cleansing balance provided by more simple fare, so goes it for music too.
This tour has two more dates before touchdown, and they’d be well worth catching if you’re able – let the Pickle crew invade your musical heart!
Were you there at Spaceship for this beautiful bedroom pop gig? Or have you seen Pickle Darling perform live somewhere else before? Tell us about it in the comments below!
Note: Pickle Darling provided passes to Ambient Light to review and photograph this concert. As always, this has not influenced the review in any way and the opinions expressed are those of Ambient Light’s only.
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