Maxine Funke
Seance

It's a baby, it's a wine dark sea

It's a mystery, it's silly
It's an ancient recipe

A pinch of cirrus, some fenugreek
Haruspication
Hair of a sloth hanging from an oak tree

Stars pierce the beachy sky peaceably
The smell of an angel at the back of a cave
Warm and friendly

It's a sign
It's congealed
It's concealed
It's conceived
It's asleep

It's a baby

(Fair baby)

Maxine Funke, a New Zealand folk singer who has reached her fourth album of which little is known, at least in this part of the hemisphere, is the artist who, with her Seance, I place among the most beautiful records of this 2021.

7 songs, guitar and voice, that take you into her world, like an anthropologist in the field, made of detailed observations à la Georges Perec, who is not an anthropologist, of objects and places dear to her. Snapshots of intense and poetic memories, so I deduce from the few lyrics found online, where it's hard to find one song that shines more than others.

Each single track drags you into the beloved melancholy, in the same way and with the same force, this does not mean that the record is monotonous, quite the contrary, it is layered, varied, even if, being a folk singer, it is her acoustic guitar that dominates.
It feels like being with her, on the never-forgotten beaches of Jane Campion's "the Piano," among distant lightning and the last sparkles of a just-consumed bonfire, with the kiwi island sea, "dark as wine" taking us to dusk or dawn, depending on where you choose to be, to close stories or open new horizons.

When I read a review, I like to find the musical references of the artist in question, a compass not to get lost in the infinite library of daily listening. Since it is a folk singer, it is not difficult to find points of contact with all the folk singers (or pseudo such) who have followed from the 60s to today, from Joni Mitchell to Beth Gibbons, just to mention two names at random, they are all there and perhaps none, I only add Grouper with Liz Harris's whispered voice to get completely lost among the waves of "Seance".

Dream on