This month NZ psych-pop pioneers The Puddle release the first album of new recordings in over 15 years.

The Puddle, a revolving line-up of musicians assembled around the unstable core of George D. Henderson, have been around, in one form or another, since 1984. Three albums and a 7” single on Flying Nun between 1986 and 1993 attracted critical appreciation and notoriety in equal measures for “pop as shambling and sweet as you could possibly imagine”. In 1993 The Puddle toughened up and recorded the definitive brainy outsider rock album, “Songs for Emily Valentine”, but, apart from a 1995 single on a French label, the SFEV recordings were not released until 2005. In late in 2005 The Puddle recorded 25 tracks at Inca studio in Wellington, the best dozen or so of which are planned for release in 2008 as an album called Playboys in the Bush.

But George continued to write even more new songs. Recording these at his brother’s home studio in Dunedin in 2007, George turned the arrangements he imagined in his head into reality by overdubbing the remaining instruments and discovering himself to be the most sensitive and self-effacing of session musicians for his own work in the process. It has little in common with the full band Puddle album recorded in Wellington; if that’s a turbocharged Ferrari, this is a three speed bike with a basket and a bell that rings, of mainly sentimental value. That said, No Love – No Hate is the perfect prequel to their next great album and adds a further unexpected twist in the long, strange and frequently derailed odyssey of this unique NZ musical institution.

“One of those who trample the line between talent to waste and wasted talent.” Bill Meyer, Popwatch, (USA)

“The Puddle est bien l'un des groupes les plus bizarres de Nouvelle-Zélande.” Hyacinth (France)
Contact: fishrider.records@yahoo.co.nz Distributed in NZ by Global Routes