Wellington band The Phoenix Foundation in 2010 - the year Buffalo was released Photo: Supplied: Will Moore
Picking one album from The Phoenix Foundation's catalogue is difficult in one way, easy in another.
I could have made a case for any of their records as an essential New Zealand album. But 2010's Buffalo represents a particular milestone.
Buffalo was their fourth album - and how many New Zealand bands have stuck together long enough to even make four albums?
Buffalo was the album that really lifted Phoenix Foundation's profile both here and internationally, and saw the band touring Europe and performing live on BBC's television's Later with Jools Holland.
It saw their collective approach reach new heights - in the sophistication of the songwriting, the intricate detailing of the arrangements and production, and the manipulation of mad ideas into a singularly imaginative piece of work.
The Phoenix Foundation is a band in the truest sense. Formed when its core members were still at school, they have now been together for close on three decades and have created a body of work that is testimony to the strength of their collective enterprise.
At the time of Buffalo, their rhythm section consisted of drummer Richie Singleton and bass player Warner Emery, both of whom have since left, and percussionist Will Ricketts, who has remained with the group since their first album.
But it's the triumvirate of Samuel Scott, Luke Buda and Conrad Wedde who have been there since the very beginning and whose creative symbiosis has produced the songs that are the heart of this group's identity. Songs that can veer from sincerity to absurdity and back; that can both break your heart and make you laugh out loud.
Buffalo's title track has become the song with which The Phoenix Foundation are perhaps most identified: a fanfare, almost classical in structure, with a stampeding rhythm and a lyric that is part romantic ode, part surrealist tract.
But the album also features upbeat pop songs, celestial synth excursions and atmospheric ballads, all somehow woven into a cohesive and totally absorbing musical journey. Just what an essential album should be.
Phoenix Foundation - Buffalo (10th Anniversary Edition) Photo: Album Cover
