- Since 2016 we’ve witnessed Melbourne duo N.Y.C.K offer songs that were patient and gentle in their approach to narrative. It is here in 2019 with the release of their debut album Wild Streak, that a full appreciation for process and production, for the integration of lived experience into storytelling illuminates that 3 years of releases is a public expression of a greater cultivation.
Mature may not be the sexiest of adjectives but through the many mid-tempo songs, both Nicholas Acquroff and Dominique Garrard have developed a calm melancholy balanced with positive resignation, a deep acceptance that certain energies are finite and how the motions wear the spirit, shifting into a wisened shape by smoothing the young and rough resistance. Title track Wild Streak and most recent single Alive are fine examples of this alternative to pop, where breathing deeply in the presence of the sentiment grounds you, in opposition to pop’s practice of elevation or escape.
You get the sense that the constant expression of resignation to change may become overbearing but there’s an unself-conscious and joyous approach to writing the song as the muse blooms and it’s an attractive dynamic. As a duo, there is no clean take on who has lived which narrative but it’s an insight into the enmeshment of influence, support, advice and compassion over time. It’s for this reason that the upbeat songs such as Threes has a greater contextual resonance, akin to Van Morrison composing Brown Eyed Girl, a simple and powerful sentiment accumulated from experience and procured through practice.
The overall vibe sounds like an earlier but blanched Dirty Projectors, softened from David Longstreth and Amber Coffman’s stringent experimentation. There are some more obvious comparisons like the later track Sydney, a song of curious appreciation and an extended perspective, which uses afro rhythms juxtaposed against a harpsichord, which sounds weird. But, where the studio finesse brings the core keys and dual voices above the obfuscated samples, minimising the technical and textural, the song retains a tensile intimacy.
Wild Streak as an album, filled with its residual pain, regret, ongoing love and renewed hope, pans out like a retrospective on the psychological equivalent to the astrological return of saturn. An evolution in perspective and sentiment, an arc of refinement in sound and structure, the wild streak wanes and mature becomes quite attractive.
- Nicholas J. Rodwell.