Don't judge an album by its cover. The Phoenix Foundation's sixth studio effort is a defiant statement of intent from New Zealand's enduring sonic voyagers, writes Shane Gilchrist.
Luke Buda has just downed two strong coffees in quick succession.
And though he concedes (via the phone from Wellington) that such consumption might prompt him to ''digress a wee bit'' on the issue of exactly why he and his Phoenix Foundation band-mates named their latest record Give Up Your Dreams, he manages to stick to the topic rather ably.
There's never been so much angst in the band about naming something,'' Buda discloses.
People were scared, saying `what if others think it's the end of the band?'.
We had a few names floating about and, of course, we had the song Give Up Your Dreams and we were joking about it. Then there was just a moment when I thought, `f*** we've just got to call the album this'.
Buda likens the band's internal debate to a form of self-help.
The result has been a clarity of sorts or, as he puts it, a fresh perspective at least.
He is referring to musical dreams not so much shattered as, perhaps, shelved.
''The honest truth is [2010 album] Buffalo did really well for us in the United Kingdom and I'd be lying if I didn't say we thought we'd set ourselves up for the next level.
''By that, I don't mean Wembley; just playing some slightly bigger shows and festivals and, instead of paying money to get to the UK, perhaps coming back with some money.
''But Fandango came out and didn't do anything over there. It was the first time in our career that the latest thing we'd done was less successful than the previous.
''Up until that point, things had been building,'' Buda says in reference to a hectic few years followingBuffalo, which earned the Phoenix Foundation a Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (Tui) award for best group in 2010.
On Buffalo's release, the group signed to UK label Memphis Industries and toured Britain and Europe regularly, including appearing at the 2011 Glastonbury Festival, and performing in influential television show Later With Jools Holland the same year.
Fandango, the Wellington-based outfit's 2013 release, might have contained more than a few echoes of the mixture of prog-rock, psychedelia, melancholic folk and ethereal pop found on 2003 full-length debut Horsepower, 2005's Pegasus, 2007 effort Happy Ending and 2010's Buffalo, yet it was a double album stretching almost 80 minutes, including an 18-minute-long closing song (about six times longer than the pop standard).
And pushing the boundaries of song length is unlikely to prompt interest from radio programmers, particularly in the UK.
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