Can’t turn the calendar page without being hit by new Peter Kris. This time, Marshall South, finds Kris becoming Roy Montgomery. And considering the pace of Montgomery’s releases (a trickle) compared to Kris’ (a deluge), it’s a well needed evolution in his sound. Whether Marshall South is truly a document of a retrograded New Zealand “sound” is up to you. For the time being, let’s suppose South isn’t a direction by rather an emotion. In that case, Marshall South hits the mood and mode of its intentions; a spacey, wandering document of heavy guitar that distorts current feelings. A low pressure of brightly saturated guitars which slowly collide with a high pressure system, to create a warming rain on a sunny day. South isn’t about going down in the depth of despair, but rather a choice to embrace the suck of the mundane and find the beauty within it. It seems to be an emerging Kris narrative, of finding what’s of circumstance in a pile of mounting oppression and depression. Heading south is truly directional; find what’s at the bottom of the emotional heap that is worth pulling out before it suffocates. But as it turns out, it may be a hemisphere away in its effervescent wellspring.
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