Decorated time is the solo project of Wellington multi-instrumentalist Adam McDonald. His latest single, Where The Hills Meet The Sea, features Sam Minot on lead guitar break and lead fade out. Produced at Adam‘s home studio, we have some interesting indie pop/rock with generous allowance for instrumental pairings and fiddling around. It absolutely smacks of a musician finding new ways to gel his sound, which is exciting and bodes well for the courage of indie artists trying to keep organic music alive and flourishing.

The lyric video, available on the You Tubes, displays some great painted visuals of the subject material, done by Adam’s own father and run through Adam’s video editor: the geography and location of the city of Wellington itself. This succeeds in keeping the imagery warm and striking, dropping the vibe of the coolest little capital in the world exactly as we experience it on the good days when you can’t beat it.

It’s got a reasonably up-tempo prog-rock/indie base, with some well delivered rhythm guitar chord work over a complex drum that gives us a slightly staccato beat. To my ear the bass could have been a little more prevalent in the mastering, but that’s just my own taste. The vocal is delivered well with a twin lead, harmonising well with each other. The vocal melody isn’t challenging to get into, allowing you to appreciate the layered lead guitars that really do justice to themselves throughout.

The guitar solo from Sam is a bit of a shred combined with some good melodic note-picking. Very proficient work. The lead really comes into its own for the song’s culmination, with some highly imaginative notework. Very well considered direction taken for this part of the track. Kudos.

In my view we’d get a lot of traction from this song via some highly marketed mechanical licensing pushes. Jan Hellreigel’s Songbroker service would be invaluable here, for instance. Soundtracks, ads, presentations, corporate events, as well as at the BBQ with a beer, on the road in the car with the windows open and the volume up. Lots of opportunity to air this one.

Great release. Check it out on our Spotty Fly playlist as well as their own. As mentioned, the lyric video is on the You Tubes. Get amongst it you experimental prog rock/indie fans.