SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: HEMI HEMINGWAY – WINGS OF DESIRE

HEMI HEMINGWAY
WINGS OF DESIRE
PNKSLM

New Zealand artists often tend to make musical combinations that on paper might seem quite incongruous, but when you listen to them, sound like they always belong together. In this specific case, we are talking about New Zealand’s Hemi Hemingway, real name Shaun Blackwell and his latest album Wings of Desire.

It seems that Blackwell wanted to combine his love of late 50s and 60s pop/rock with all things 80s, from “Born in The USA” by Springsteen (title track) to prime 80s electro (“This City’s Tryna Break My Heart”) and elsewhere.
Now, no matter how incompatible such combinations might initially sound, Blackwell somehow makes them sound like milk and honey and as something that you can just do at your (his) whim. Yet it all obviously requires a heavy dose of musical and other knowledge, after all, Blackwell quotes a great 1987 Wim Wenders movie in the album title, and another hefty dose of inventiveness, and Blackwell, or Hemingway, if you will (a more obvious quote), obviously has quite a bit of both.

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