Graeme Jefferies - Messages For The Cakekitchen

!KEY FOUNDATIONAL TEXT! Recorded in various domestic settings across New Zealand in 1987 and originally released by Flying Nun in '88, Graeme Jefferies first record after leaving This Kind of Punishment remains a high watermark of DIY energy and creative enquiry that to these ears sounds as gripping as ever. GJ's songwriting is characterised by a distinct mix of dark curiosities, sideways melodies and cavernous melancholy, a particular skill shared only by his brother Peter (and it's still remarkable just how similar their voices are). Graeme seems to take less of the spotlight, but Messages for the Cakekitchen is every bit as vital. This Kind of Punishment, members of whom are inevitably all over this record, were always a touch more outre than the majority of their Flying Nun peers, and the Cakekitchen project, which runs to this day, is a perfect symbiosis of the folk pop foundations that shaped much of the NZ music of the time and a hard-to-suppress avant instinct. It means these songs rarely go where you expect, but they carry you there through an undeniable knotty melodicism that demands repeated plays. Accessible AND transgressive - the artist's dream!