Pumice — Table
The horizon of experimental musics which dabble in pop and folk have no bones to pick with New Zealand. As the Aotearoa island imagined what pop sounded like from other regions, along with the late pressings they received of bands from Europe and the Americas, the retelling that occurred in the artistic beds of Dunedin, Wellington, and beyond became a touchstone. New Zealand became a place musicians from across Europe and America turned to for renewed inspiration.
Stefan Neville and Jade Farley are no different, becoming a part of this cultural fabric. With Table, Pumice exist as a means of understanding the elongated landscape of modern New Zealand and not just its storied history. One can pick up a book such as Bruce Russell’s Erewhon Calling and feel the textual sensation of a place and time. Pumice has often made music that is timeless, separate from the influential rabble of its ancestors and yet totally indebted to its originality and repetition.
More than anything, Table is conversational. This is a communal experience of people gathering around the titular item. Much of our lived-in experiences happen around tables. It’s where we eat, play games, conduct work, chart activities, make lists … by being a utilitarian piece of furniture, it folds neatly into our existences. Tables are versatile, being able to be forged out of any surface area able to accommodate our instinctual need for a reliable place to conduct these activities.
So it’s no coincidence that Pumice’s Table serves these purposes neatly. It’s a place where the variable New Zealand sounds of old and new are laid bare in a bath of folkish melodies and pastoral drones: Farley’s forlorn violin pining deeply in “Marie”; the happy dirge of guitar and organ sang round the pint room throughout “Hankerchief”; the dark underbelly of our own souls splayed across the table through the murky harmonization of “Our Schedule to Explore the Large Area, the Heart.”
Table, much like the land of its birth, houses both influences and the influenced. Its versatility to be both a place to gather and a place to depart cannot go unnoticed. Sometimes we come together to celebrate a life or to remind ourselves what we’re thankful for, sometimes we come to this flattened obelisk to argue or say goodbye to our familiars. It’s the spirit of Table as both an artistic statement put into music, as well as the physical form where we put so much of ourselves in front of others to be seen and heard.
