One of our favourites around these parts, Maxine Funke, continues her run of incredible records with the 2023 record, River Said. An album of two distinct parts, the first side featuring the direct and finely honed acoustic guitar-based folk song craft that we’ve come to know and love from Maxine, and the second the second side closer to the long form pieces she was performing on her Oz tour earlier this year (or akin to the more abstract instrumental moments on Silk or the Pieces of Driftwood comp) with loops of cello and ambient atmospherics underpinning the tracks. While this marks a sonic shift in the work, both sides are centred on the distilled crystallinity of Maxine’s song craft; the kind where every syllable holds its place to create a vivid and at times surreal space within the song that is warm and inviting enough to stop me in my tracks with every listen (and has me wishing for a lyric sheet at times).
