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In the late '70s a teen-aged David traded in his surfboard for a guitar. Inspired in equal measures by the punk rock explosion and their Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Velvet Underground, and Beach Boys records, he and his older brother Hamish started The Clean. After a couple years of unstable line-ups and sketchy gigs the brothers hooked up with bassist Robert Scott (later with The Bats) and got terrifyingly good. Tally Ho, their first single, sold thousands in their native New Zealand without the benefit of extensive commercial airplay, but after a couple years that yielded some brilliant homemade EPs and concerts that people still talk about, David got sick of the pressure of being a guitar hero and quit to be an artist, or something. He's carried on in an episodic way ever since, fronting some bands (Stephen, Pop Art Toasters) and backing up his friends in others (Snapper, Yo La Tengo), starting and stopping The Clean to persue a solo career.
The Far Now is his second album for Arch Hill Recordings, and his third album for Merge Records. It takes some cues from its predecessors, the shimmering, trippy A Feather In The Engine, which was mostly recorded in a wooden shed behind David'’s house, and the lush, soul-tinged Frozen Orange, which was mostly recorded in Nashville with members of Lambchop, without sounding quite like either of them. It's certainly not the record that Kilgour set out to make. The first sounds you hear are a spinning lattice of nimbly picked acoustic guitars including a new Gibson acoustic which really left its mark. Next up is BBC World, the first song to feature Davids band The Heavy Eights. Acoustic slide licks, pillow-soft synths, and Tane Tokona’s crisp drumming usher in a graceful melody and a lyric that veers uncertainly between exuberance and dread |
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