Album Review: Nickels & Dimes

This month California-based New Zealander Justin Devereux released his debut album Nickels & Dimes – a self-professed piece of genre-fluidness, with Americana, blues and guitar rock at the heart of it and a few other influences peppered throughout. From its first moments this record shimmers with quality musicianship, beautiful production and one-after-another accessible, hooky rock and roll songs.

Devereux recorded Nickels & Dimes at Roundhead with a crack team of musicians behind him. Their CVs are intimidating; Chip Matthews on bass (The Krates, Anika Moa, Ladi6, Sola Rosa), Neil Watson on pedal steel (Neil and Tim Finn, Mel Parsons, Rodger Fox, Auckland Philharmonic) and Alex Freer on Drums (Tiny Ruins, Laurence Arabia, Carnivorous Plant Society). The high quality of their musicianship is obvious from the first moments of the album, as is De Stevens’ production (like in the first few seconds of the record you hear the whole of Freer’s drum kit including the buzzing wires of the snare drum – a sure sign of a producer wanting to present the true sound of a band playing, not some sanitised and over-polished version of one).

Despite their virtuosity, what the band does best here (and rightly so) is stay out of the way, so Devereux’s outstanding voice can be given its due prominence. The opener Let It Rain is at once powerful and spacious, putting Devereux’s singing at the front immediately. It sounds like the back-blocks of a High Sierra cattle ranch. Within You is like INXS’s Mystify (almost too close to comfort) as if modified by an Americana machine, and by the third track Dirty Water Devereux is stomping his boots on wooden floors in a California small town bar. He sounds like one of those unknown artists discovered and recorded by Dan Auerbach, where all the passion and miles and grit are right there in the vocals and the authenticity of it.

The sing-along Go Going Gone leads into the latest single Starring In My Dreams, a country-inspired ballad that showcases Watson’s pedal steel as much as Devereux’s voice. Up With The Sun sounds like something off Crowded House’s Together Alone, had that been recorded in a desert somewhere. Nature Isn’t Kind has an element of Celtic inspiration, while the apple-pie folksy Yada Yada Yada is a love song of sorts (the chorus: “I love you, yada yada yada”) that shuffles us into the closing tracks.

It’s all done very competently and, it seems, in line with Devereux’s vision as storyteller rather than merely a songwriter. The music and his vocals deliver on that vision, making this a noteworthy and accomplished debut for the Justin Devereux and a well-deserved notch in the doorframes of his colleagues playing and producing. If Americana, folk, blues, dusty floors, felt hats, or just some decent tunes are of interest to you, I suggest you check it out.