Oooof, here it is - the first Peter Jefferies album in 25 years. There’s been the odd 7” here and there along the way, and some archival work from Grapefruit & Superior Viaduct in recent times, but how it’s been quite so long for an artist of such colossal standing in underground music - in New Zealand and beyond - is hard to fathom. Life gets in the way I suppose, but time has certainly not dimmed the flame. For one thing, that distinctive voice is still fully intact, as if dragged backwards out of the void with its hair a little ruffled and spirit disheveled, heavy with The Weight, and communicative of various psychodramas and poetic indiscretions. So far so very Peter Jefferies. The guy continues to do heavy and despondent very well, all skeletal arrangements of keys, spidery guitar and minimal percussion (machines or otherwise) that retain the haunted, cryptic mystery of his much earlier work in This Kind of Punishment and pushes it through the prism of older age and evolved perspectives. Still, the signature existential crises of the likes of The Last Great Challenge in a Dull World remain, making The Day They Let You Out… feel as if it really could have been plucked from any point in the Jefferies catalogue, which is pretty remarkable all things considered. With a quarter of a decade to draw upon, it’s not surprising the consistency in quality is reasonably sustained, though in terms of highlights it’s not unfair for the ear to be drawn to the 10+ run time of closer, ‘Speed Only’, an epic of sorts that cycles through a mordant piano led first third, into a propulsive middle section with swirling psych overtones, before closing on a Neu-esque motorik coda that’s about as urgent as Jefferies has sounded. It’s a hell of a full stop for an album that already hits a pretty high watermark. As that old adage goes, it seems class really is permanent.
FFO: This Kind of Punishment, Peter Gutteridge, Bilders, Flaming Tunes
