The intimate songs of Maxine Funke are worth getting lost in

An under-sung local gem, Maxine Funke has been releasing delicate folk songs since 2008. She still operates out of Dunedin, where she’s been performing since her teens, but left behind the noisier output of former acts The Snares and Hundred Dollar Band in favour of highly personal, home-recorded solo work.

Listening to a Funke album can feel strangely intimate. Each track begins with the sound of whichever room she’s in, layers of ambient noise that add their own charm to the recording. This is less from a lack of interest in fidelity, and more about accurate representation; one less barrier between performance and listener.

For Timeless Town Funke switched from acoustic guitar to keyboards, due to an RSI injury in her shoulder. It marks an important shift in her artistic method, but when I spoke with her about it in 2023 she was unfazed, emphasising the importance of music over any particular instrument.

Her description of keys as “just another world to explore” is borne out here, moving from classic piano structures on the title track to pillowy synths on ‘Crocus’, and ambient drones on ‘Shooting Stars’.

That song is wordless, as is the excellently-titled ‘Snow Would Be Lotto’, which is made up of field recordings in Dunedin, drum machine, and bursts of melodica. In our chat, referring to the ambient pieces on her prior album River Said, she described the process as comparable to the finished product, saying “It's great to be in another space. Lost in another world.”

The remaining seven tracks are as pretty and nostalgic as usual, Funke’s assemblage of chords decorated with lovely observations like “He’s a neat man, a sweet-smelling man” on ‘Crocus’, and “Eating roadside blackberries… it is out of this world” on ‘Out of This World’.

Much of the album deals in this type of everyday sweetness, although opening track ‘Let’s Go! Another Year’ sports a witheringly sarcastic title, and contains the line “Doctor, how much longer will I feel this way?”

On her Instagram she thanks a job involving “a heap of 12 hour shifts and restraining mentally unwell people” for helping fund her art. She’s the kind of musician with complete apathy toward traditional markers of success, but whose need to create is a crucial part of life.

That purity of intent and the beautifully-unvarnished songs it leads to have got her plenty of attention, from acclaimed American band Big Thief, who handpicked her to support their Auckland show, and international outlets like NPR and Pitchfork.

The change of instrument proves to be a minor alteration on Timeless Town, the artistic spirit that reached people around the globe still very much intact. The sounds are a little less tactile and a bit more cosmic this time, but these nine small worlds are lovely to get lost in.

Like Maxine Funke, there’s a lack of polish to the music of Marcus Brown, AKA Nourished By Time. And likewise it’s an asset here, Brown’s imperfect delivery and rough edges adding to the air of urgency he’s chasing, and particularly standing out in his chosen genre, which is essentially indie RnB. It often evokes Prince in spirit, if not delivery, and the highs, like the moody, defiant anthem ‘When the War is Over’, are very high.

A band with a great name (think how bad Hot Chips would have been with the addition of just one ‘s’), the British quintet have released a greatest hits collection with an equally clever title. Anyone who’s a fan of dance music will know how pleasurable it can be to hear the same thing over and over (and ‘Over and Over’ is literally one of Hot Chip’s biggest singles), but crucially they’re expert pop writers first and foremost. Those repetitive beats may be the foundation, but the best moments in ‘Boy From School’, ‘Hungry Child’, or ‘Ready For the Floor’ are when the repetition stops in favour of an epic chorus.