Album Review: Colette Rivers – Memory Lake  

Colette Rivers debut album Memory Lake is a multi-layered opus of sound and textures which on the surface have a shimmering, radiant Indie Folk quality. Like Lake Taupo which is the inspiration for the title, still waters reveal a more complexity in the depths.

Originally from Washington State, her family moved to New Zealand when she was eleven. This music has been recorded in her home studio in Wairarapa. She sang and played all the instruments…except for live drumming on some tracks.

Between arriving in this country and now, she has also spent time in Britain and back in homeland America.

This would explain in part the expansiveness of her music. At its heart, Americana where it encompasses Roots Country and Folk. It can be rooted in the soil. It can also drift and float across the skies over hills and valleys.

So, that makes opening track Fickle Soul a nice bit of mis-direction. A light Jazz to Soul voice. Horn effects and sparkles from a keyboard. When it lands the wheels touch down on the firmer soil of Americana.

Out of the Cage has two aspects of a personality. Country in spirit, she starts with a slightly smokey world-weary-at-twenty voice like the current Miley Cyrus. The higher register is innocent and vulnerable. A lament. Combined in one person that would be Stevie Nicks.

And this is probably where the album is best located. From the Pacific seaboard of America and of the singer-songwriter alumni from there.

That is Hurricane. Some muscle in the drums so it is closer to the Mac. Folk with a rhythmic drive.

Bury Me. Rivers is an impressive and compelling singer and when she goes to her higher register, she can invoke the mournful power of a Joan Baez.

Washington Sun has some of the word-play of mid-sixties Dylan. A childhood reverie and the imaginative scenarios of growing up in the countryside. It seems to be a Paradise Lost and it wasn’t really so long ago. Changes in tempo and styles. The past is the past and there is no turning back.

Pick-Up Truck is here in two versions. The first has synth and keyboard effects. An intro which starts similar to Don‘t Think Twice it’s Alright. This is the most overtly Nashville Country song on the album, most particularly with the singing. As the sun is raah-zen. The acoustic version is even more so and is a road song of the Woody Guthrie type. That of a young female troubadour.  Got no possessions/ No more career/ Sky’s the limit if you have no fear.

Sunday Morning is also a highlight. There are more acoustic instruments here. A string instrument that’s picked. Probably banjo, could be a dulcimer. Americana Country and a story about the intangible gravity of home soil and place. The high lonesome melancholy singing reminds me of Molly Tuttle. But also, further back to another singer-songwriter who was essentially Country, Jackie DeShannon. On this song Rivers appears to be a nice blend of the two.

In the End changes pace again. Incantatory vocals. Military drum rolls. Regret and sadness.

Even when she is being scathing and sarcastic, the singing is pretty. Dipshit. Holding on too close to each other/ wanting me only as a friend/ you’re a dipshit who lives in the moment.

Memory Lake. The proper closing track of this album and quite a different tone. A Joy Division skeletal presence and rhythm surrounds this song. A dream evocation. Country gothic and haunted.

Beautiful melodies wrapped around melancholy emotions. A strong and worthy debut album.

Rev Orange Peel