The Breakdown
There is a dreamy heartbreakingly beautiful shimmer to the new album from Aotearoa/New Zealand artist Nik Brinkman that glows like the stars over the expansive southern hemisphere skies.
Brinkman last blew us away here at Backseat Mafia back in 2021 with his debut album ‘Secret Stairs’ (see my review here) and in the intervening time has been utilising his skills with other artists as well as moving to a new town and reinvigorating his music writing and recording process. Brinkman says of the new material:
I wanted to escape the world of modern music tools for this album and make a record with no MIDI and also an album I could easily translate to a live setting. I like the immediacy of physical instruments and not having to draw sounds in with a mouse which I always find myself doing these days.
From the opening yearning ‘North Star’ to the finale, ‘Bursting Into Tears’. Brinkman offers ten tracks of pure gold that put on display rhyming, chiming guitars and Brinkman’s velvet, yearning vocals.
Single ‘Where Are You Now’ has languid laid back vocals channeling Jim Reid from The Jesus and Mary Chain, the instrumentation is bedded firmly in a delicious 12-string jingle jangle heaven that chimes like ringing bells in the ether.
The song reflects on the struggle of being caught in memories of the past, unable to move on. Brinkman says:
I wanted to capture that feeling of emotional yearning and isolation—like being stuck on a fast-spinning merry-go-round and feeling like the only escape is to close your eyes.
The track comes with a psychedelic self-directed video with Brinkman performing the track in the saturated light of domestic bliss with a fine array of guitars like an intimate karaoke perfomance:
‘Modern Living’ adds sweeping slide guitars and an airy, spacious sound in a sparkling ballad whereas ‘Heavy World has a jaunty jingle jangle pace with exquisite delicate melodies dripping with a delicious melancholy a dappling guitars which ends in a transfixing piano outro.
The album recalls to some extent the great and highly underappreciated JAMC album ‘Stoned and Dethroned – detectable in the acoustic-based sounds of ‘Aerial View’ with its indelible melodies. ‘Long Way To Go’, the first single off the album has a dreamy hazy languid psychedelic feel with its jangling guitars and Brinkman’s yearning melancholic vocals, creating a lazy sunny afternoon feeling when the mind wanders in a kaleidoscopic fugue.
The sweeping strings in ‘Take Your Time’ illustrate the instrumental richness in this album: yearning and majestic, ‘Romanticism’ is a brief dreamy interlude that passes ethereally through the ether and ‘Handle Me’ again echoes a Jim Reid timbre. Final track ‘Bursting into Tears’ is a hypnotic finale with distant samples echoing in the air and a circular guitar riff that echoes a Pink Floyd psychedelic.
‘World Within’ glows with an incandescent brilliance: sparkling shimmering music that is translucent, transcendent and immensely beautiful. Nik Brinkman is a formidable, prodigious talent.
Out through the brilliant Declared Goods label, ‘World Within’ is out now and available to download and stream here.
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