Cassette
Timeless Town is a perfectly Maxine Funke kind of thing. Nine songs, enough to reasonably constitute a full 'album', released only to tape (and Bandcamp) in typically low numbers and with minimal distribution, and announced with litte-to-no-fanfare. Understated doesn't cover the half of it, but would we want it any other way? It's certainly fitting of the nature of the music, which remains typically intimate and gently melodic in a manner we might now consider signature. Still, there's a dissonance at play here. Funke's songwriting is better than ever, a sign of a developing voice hitting its true stride, and approaching something like classic in fact, moving between guitar and keys, and incorporating found sounds alongside her wonderfully morose voice in ways that represent a subtle evolution of her approach. Unquestionably, this is the kind of writing and singing and communicating that justifaibly deserves a much wider audience. That she's still somewhat of a secret has, I would argue, very little to do with the songs and a probably a lot more to do with geography and, well, I'd imagine, creative priorities. Maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe it's better this way. While we wait for the world to either catch up or get caught out, an album like Timeless Town develops its own internal mythologies and charms. It's those kind of albums, I've found, that end up sticking with you the longest.
FFO: Linda Smith, Cindy, Tara-Jane O'Neill, Joanne Robertson
