Album Review: Ten Years

Although Andy Smith is best known as a long-time figure in the Auckland music scene as a jazz guitarist and frontman / band leader (Andy Smith Trio) and as a side man (e.g. with Alan Brown), this year he joins the fray of singer/songwriters in New Zealand writing and recording their own music at home in their spare time. Smith’s solo debut Ten Years was released earlier this year (Carpola Inc.) – an album written, recorded and produced on his own. As in, he played and sang the lot. Like we have seen with Ringlets (and other examples), jazz school folks seem to be able to turn their musical skills to just about anything, and Smith is no exception… 

Ten Years, in fact, spent six years on the production line, beginning during Covid when there was a regrettably low demand for live jazz but, on the flip side, time for those with the skills and the means to write and record at home. Songs that began to be pieced together during this period see the light of day here on Ten Years. 

Smith’s promotional materials describe the music as “baked in sunshine, 70’s psychedelia and alternative rock influences …”. Indeed, this is pop music for grown-ups with a whole mix of genres including rootsy country, pop that has a certain soulful depth to it, and the lot delivered with a certain shimmery, almost impossibly bouncy dreaminess to it. Some tracks (Twisted) sound somehow like the other famous Antipodean soloist Kevin Parker (whose band Tame Impala is also ostensibly a solo project, using hired guns for live performances). On I’m Turning To You Smith sounds like Josh Rouse on his breakthrough work 1972 and Nashville. On the single You’re Never Coming Home Smith ups the tempo and the energy with the obvious foot tapping almost-crescendo of the work. The last track Control is in the blues standard mode, beginning as if it’s a ragtime sing-along but building to a mid-tempo blues rocker. Rooted in the past in its sound perhaps, but it closes the record off wonderfully with a message – is it? – a message for the times: “Don’t you ever think about any thing about anything other than money, clothes and cars? / Maybe you got no opinions of your own / Control, you’ve got no control over anything / Won’t you let go, let go of everything …. Let go, let go, of everything with me.”

The work is complex and expertly performed, with Smith showing off his chops as a multi-instrumentalist – guitars-a-plenty, slide guitars, bass, drums, keys, harmonica and more.

Considering how much work it is to write, perform, record and produce your own album solo, it’s always amazed me how many examples there are of musicians doing this on their own (or the bulk on their own) to great effect, and often in difficult circumstances: there’s Nick Drake, who famously recorded Pink Moon over just two nights in 1971 (ok, it’s just him and a guitar but he didn’t even start until 11 pm either night); Dave Grohl who recorded the first Foo Fighters album entirely on his own (playing and singing everything) over six days in 1994; and Justin Vernon, who locked himself in a hunting cabin for the freezing Wisconsin winter to record For Emma, For Ever Ago (whilst suffering from glandular fever, grieving the end of a relationship and hunting for food)…

These are considerable achievements in difficult circumstances, but imagine writing, playing, recording and producing an album of solo whilst also doing the colossal amount of work it is just to live a normal life: getting your trousers on, showing up for work, showing up for your partner and any kids in your life. This is what Andy Smith did, for six years!, to make Ten Years. A love letter, I understand, to his wife that took more than 2,000 days. That’s quite something too. And it’s worth your consideration and listening time as well, only with 40 minutes of effort required for the first time through! – but well, well worth your time.