The Dunedin, New Zealand-based singer-guitarist Kane Strang traffics in off-the-cuff, off-kilter indie-rock songs that somehow sound like the products of great struggle and effort. Listening to Blue Cheese, his first North American release, feels like that hungover moment on a Sunday morning when you have to summon all your strength to hurl yourself out of bed and over to the bathroom. In the same way you might want to award yourself a medal for making it there without puking in the hallway, Blue Cheese's tousled charm has a way of making modest acts seem heroic.
Blue Cheese was recorded by Strang while house-sitting his parents’ house, but it’s hardly a reservoir of sensitive, singer-songwriterly introspection. Rather, it’s the sound of a young, restless soul taking full advantage of the empty environs by making an inspired racket and broadcasting his innermost musings to no one in particular. Kane Strang isn't just this guy's name, it's also a handily onomatopoetic descriptin of the odd jangle of his guitar. Strang actually plays all the instruments here, a fact betrayed by the sludgy, rumbling bass lines, the lumbering, drum machines, and the one-finger synths that feel like placeholders for the brass and string sections he can’t yet afford.
And though Blue Cheese is being billed as a proper debut in the wake of 2013’s demos collection, A Pebble and a Paper Crane, a certain slapdash aesthetic remains: songs have a tendency cut out before they even reach a chorus, and the uniformity of their sound, arrangements, and temperament suggests it was all cranked out sequentially in a single session, with the console settings untouched from one song to the next. Over its brief 28-minute run time, there are moments when you’ll be itching for a change of scenery, but Strang has a gift for pulling diamonds from the rough, and he’s careful not to let his winsome voice and finely cut melodies get overwhelmed by their surroundings.
In his most inspired moments, Strang comes off like Panda Bear doing a one-man garage-band remount of Pixies slow jams. He shares both acts' penchant for twisting innocent sing-alongs into bizarro meditations: On the surface, "The Web" is an optimistic, wide-eyed ode to blossoming romance, but it soon becomes clear Strang’s paramour is an online connection he’s never met IRL. He never quite works up a sweat—even the album’s lone rave-up "Never Kissed a Blonde" is more of a wallow than a romp. As per its DIY design, this album is about doing what you can with what you've got. But like the unattainable women Strang is fond of serenading, the album’s pop potential leaves you imagining all that could be under different circumstances.
