The debut album by Christchurch band There’s A Tuesday is wildly impressive

Tony Stamp reviews the latest album releases every week on The Sampler.

There's a modern strain of indie-pop which straddles the line between manicured sounds designed for mass appeal and something rougher around the edges.

There’s A Tuesday, who emerged from Ōtautahi Christchurch around 2020, certainly fits this category, but happily don't shy away from that second part.

The band is led by dual singers Nat Hutton and Minnie Robberds, whose voices are preternaturally well-suited. They sometimes alternate, sometimes harmonise, and sometimes sing in unison, saving their most heavenly choral arrangement for the final track ‘Bad Things’.

Blush is full of fantastic songwriting: the bifurcated chorus in ‘Brighton’; an unpredictable central earworm in ‘Margo’; the way Robberds negotiates the line “I'm a nervous mum, no kids, no dog, no front yard” in ‘Water Baby’.

There’s A Tuesday don’t shy away from messy emotions, (making Blush an appropriate name), and their arrangements echo that with music that’s poppy, but not too precise (despite sporting a rock solid rhythm section in Angus Murray and Joel Becker).

The commitment to sounding like a band rather than a studio creation will serve them well in the years ahead.

A collection of remixes gathered to celebrate Pitch Black’s 2007 album Rude Mechanicals, the quality control on Freqs in Flux is high, courtesy of a killer roster.

UK dub legend Adrian Sherwood features twice, roping in bass titan Doug Wimbish to provide extra bottom end on his mix of ‘1000 Mile Dub’.

There’s also International Observer, the project of Tom Bailey (former vocalist for The Thompson Twins, best remembered for their hit ‘Hold Me Know’). Bailey spends part of each year in Aotearoa and created ‘1000 Mile Dub (International Observer's Stink Mix)’ specifically for local DJ Stinky Jim.

There’s also a horde of local talent behind the boards on Freqs in Flux, including Tom Cosm, Subset, and Module, who tackles ‘Fragile Ladders’.

Module is the project of Jeramiah Ross, who works in ambient and classical modes as well as downtempo, and has composed for video games. He foregrounds the original’s piano melody, submerging it in a warm sound bath.

Electronic dub is made in plenty of locations around the world, but when it comes from Aotearoa, it hits differently. Hearing Pitch Black’s music through the ears of the international artists here - including Sydney-based outfit The Versionaries, who take on ‘South of the Line’ - you sense traces of that local magic.

In a press release for his latest album, Zach Condon, who has made music under the name Beirut since 2006, complains of being "pigeonholed for years as a whimsical circus waif, full of sepia-toned images of penny farthings and perhaps lion tamers with handlebar moustaches”.

His latest album - commissioned by Swedish circus troupe Kompani Giraff - does nothing to combat that.

For the Kompani Giraff show An Inventory of Losses (based on the book by German author Judith Schalansky), Condon has written 18 tracks, seven of them instrumental.

Frequent melodic highlights include the heart-piercing acoustic guitar in ‘Forest Encyclopedia’, ‘Ghost Train’s warbling synth, the Mariachi horns in ‘Tuanaki Atoll’, and, of course, Condon’s delicate croon throughout.