Hail, Meteor! — Nearer (13th Floor Album Review)
Hail, Meteor!’s Nearer begins with a low vibration that feels like the unsettled atmosphere before a storm. The sound grows slowly until it becomes a living landscape of rhythm and resonance.
This is an album about proximity in all its forms: to loss and renewal, to land and ancestry, to the pulse of life itself. It moves through creation, disturbance and reflection toward a calm sense of arrival. From the first hum it draws you into a terrain of movement, emotion and stillness.
The band formed in Te Whanganui-a-Tara in 2021 and includes Isobel Te Aho-White on bass and vocals, David Coventry on guitar, vocals, synth and production, Sarah Roberts on organ, synth and vocals, Simon Waterfield on drums and electronics, and John Kingston on guitar. They describe their sound as bilingual post-punk death-pop, yet that only hints at its reach.
Nearer brings together the shimmer of dream-pop and the weight of post-rock. Guitars intertwine and surge in layered waves, while Waterfield’s rhythmic choices that give each piece its heartbeat. Te Aho-White’s voice is calm, often half-hidden within the sound, and shapes the textures of songs. Rather than sitting above the mix, her voice folds into it, creating warmth and distance at once.
Coventry’s grittier vocal tone leads on songs such as Even Song and Nouns, grounding their intensity. Recorded and mixed at Meteor HQ by Coventry, and mastered by Mike Gibson at Munki, Nearer follows 2023’s 4th Horse with sharper focus and greater emotional presence.
Mountains opens in near silence, a hum that turns into slow-rolling drums and echoing guitars. When Te Aho-White sings “Te kahurangi ō Aoraki” it feels like invocation as well as melody, the music lifting like cloud from the summit. Even Song follows with chiming guitars and deep harmonies that merge voice and instrument, the lyrics half-submerged, the emotion entirely clear. Most at Ease breaks that calm with restless energy. Its circling guitars and unsettled rhythm and the lyric “Felt like a day and a thousand years”, capture the pressure of time folding in on itself.
Tea moves with slow grace. Voices rise like a choir over dark guitars, the tension held for seven minutes and released only in a fading whisper. It feels like a meditation on control and surrender. The reflective mood breaks as Nouns arrives in a burst of urgency, two minutes of racing guitars and drums. The tempo is reset with Reckoning; dub-like rhythm and echoing voice sounding like someone confronting their own history. The lyric “should coulda woulda been other shameful lines of reckoning” breathes through the mix as half confession, half mantra.
The political and the mythic meet in Harbour Shade and Marakihau. The first floats on electronic haze and quotes lines from Emily Dickinson’s “Wild Nights – Wild Nights!” before shifting into “They voted for criminals in their criminal pain.” The borrowed verse speaks of desire and a refuge, and as it meets with political despair, the song finds its power, a vision of passion and rest clashing with modern fatigue. The second draws on Māori legend, the Marakihau as sea guardian, to remind us of what endures. Whispers and chanting move like tides while drums hold the centre. The phrase “E ngā hau kia pūrea au” cleanses the air and restores balance.
Sweet provides another jolt of pure energy. The lyric “Don’t take this heaven away, I displace the pain” captures the temptation of escape, and the band play it as both release and warning, the rhythm relentless and the feedback glowing. The final piece, The Ages, opens with chiming guitars and builds patiently toward strength. Te Aho-White’s voice returns, gentle yet unwavering, singing “Leaves with you and stays with me,” a line that closes the album with acceptance.
The cover shows a lone bird against black. It could be a gull over the coast or a soul in flight, and it carries motion and intent. The title Nearer recalls Joy Division’s Closer, yet the direction is different. Where that album turned inward and to personal despair, this one reaches outward towards others and to shared resilience. The vinyl edition condenses the journey into seven tracks for a tighter arc, while the full digital release allows more space for the moods to unfold across all ten tracks.
Nearer invites full attention. The vocals blend into the instruments like breath into wind, creating songs that seem to float and anchor at the same time. It rewards immersion, where melody, rhythm and place feel inseparable. The music builds slowly, breathes deeply and leaves a resonance that lingers long after it ends. It is powerful and evocative, a record that shows how sound can carry both memory and renewal, anchoring the listener in its currents and setting them steady for the journeys ahead.
John Bradbury
Nearer is out now.
