Albums of the Year # 34 Tiny Ruins - Olympic Girls

From February.

On Friday morning I woke to find there was a layer of thin but quite defiant looking icy snow on the pavement, trees and cars outside my flat. It wasn't a particularly welcome sight, presaging a cold, dark trudge to work, even if the weekend beckoned beyond that. 

I'd been awaiting the arrival of Olympic Girls, the third album from Tiny Ruins for a while, so listened through to it in full while I steadied myself for the day ahead. It was altogether a haunting, and memorable experience. There's something wonderful about listening through to a really, really good record from start to finish and this is certainly one of those.

Tiny Ruins are led by New Zealand singer songwriter Holly Fullbrook. Olympic Girls is a  beautiful, finely cast pastoral product, one song after another revelling in life's small moments of contemplative quietness. A record that asks you to stand still and look around you for a moment, something that's always a worthwhile thing to do but we never somehow manage to do as much as we should.

Fullbrook has a fine band to support her and together they put together a record of excellent songs that essentially work from the same simple skilfully wrought template of tumbling guitar, thoughtful accompaniment and almost whispered vocals. The album hums with resonant warmth like an open fire. Echoes of Nick Drake, Sandy Denny and Suzanne Vega are there, but the record is really all Tiny Ruins own. 'A Perfect Circle. Acquaintances and friends...' as someone once sang.

These are ruminations on mortality. 'I saw the grim reaper...' Fullbrook sings at one point but they're really the ruminations of youth. You get the sense here that there's plenty of time left yet. Plenty left in the glass. It's a really lovely record from start to finish, all eleven songs as I've said starting from a similar starting point, and finding their way to similar conclusions but Fullbrook is such a thoughtful writer that same-ness never settles on proceedings. Her lyrics are particularly winning and surprising, sometimes touching on the stuff of poetry.

Along with Sharon Van Etten's Remind Me Tomorrow, this is the best album I've heard in 2019, a year that's already yielded plenty of small gems. I hope Tiny Ruins find a growing, appreciative audience for this because Olympic Girls is an altogether abundant record that certainly deserves to find one.

As it draws to a close with one, fine, reflective song succeeding another I became more and more lost in admiration for what's going on here, most of all for its essential, glowing but always thoughtful positivity. It's a tonic for difficult times, the way all the best music is. Hear the record if you can. It's a keeper.