Reb Fountain has four albums to her name, and it seems like a definite failure on someone's part that she's not a household name in the UK already. Or at least a solid fixture on the 6 Music playlist. However, there does seem to be movement towards her finally achieving the success she very clearly deserves.
Her 2020 album 'Reb Fountain' does seem to mark a turning point in her career. Her first release through legendary New Zealand record label Flying Nun, the record saw her songwriting take a somewhat darker turn. The obvious comparison would be Nick Cave - particularly on the song 'Don't You Know Who I Am?' - and while that's maybe a reference thrown around too often, in this case there is a valid reason for bringing it up.
In 2017, Fountain performed a 90 minute tribute show to mark Cave's 60th birthday - which she reprised last month, thanks to New Zealand's lack of any sort of lockdown - and this does seem to have had some influence in the development of her songwriting style. Still, she has not simply become a Cave copyist, firmly stamping her own trademarks above any influence of his.
Now comes new single 'Heart', which maintains her high level of quality control, coming on like a pop song slowed down and transported to the back of a smoky club.
"I wanted to share a tune for all the unrequited love and longing; the great exodus of connection and the echoes of yearning left behind, reverberating through space, time and our hearts, as we fell together and apart", she says of the new single. "They say as long as Orpheus sings he breathes life into death; that, in the most challenging of times, we too have the opportunity for rebirth. Orpheus would play his u-shaped lyre; it's two arms reaching away from one another to hold the tension of strings vibrating across the bridge between".
"'Heart' is a love song", she continues. "Not a happily ever after kind of love, more the type of love that makes beautiful music precisely because it is forever connected and apart. Held by heart strings it is the kind of love that begged Orpheus to turn and share it with Eurydice only to lose her forever - the sort of love that’s human; where great suffering and great joy exist as one".
Watch the video for 'Heart' here: