The bleak and the beautiful

Local songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Vera Ellen’s latest album Ideal Home Noise is out on the 31^st of March. Her second release with Flying Nun Records, Ideal Home Noise comes after the critical success of 2021’s It’s Your Birthday, which earned her the Best Alternative Artist award at the 2022 Aotearoa Music Awards as well as a 2022 Taite Music Prize nomination.

“If It’s Your Birthday was about relationships and love and strife between myself and others; then Ideal Home Noise is about love and strife between myself and myself”, Ellen says.

Unearthed from much introspection and an attempt to find flickers of light in an otherwise dark period, the 13-track record features two ‘voices’ battling throughout. Light instrumentation juxtaposes the heavy, with synths tinkling amongst balladlike piano and raw vocal prowess.

Of her musical journey so far, Ellen summarises, “My songs have been my friends, my lovers, my enemies. I have been their biggest critic and fan and they have been mine. And as for this album, you will hear my pain up close, but you can take comfort knowing I wouldn’t trade it for the world. So here we go, to another album. One of many more (I hope).”

A Wellington artist to watch, Undertheradar.co.nz writes, “Vera Ellen continues to leave my jaw dropped with her delicate balance between the bleak and the beautiful”. Catch her and her band live on the 15^th of April at San Fran.