Pumice has returned, and with him comes another set of stirring and shambolic downer hymns. With songs nestled halfway between Xpressway’s searing static and Flying Nun’s dark jangle, Stefan Neville has quietly created a unique brand of fractured pop since 1991. Despite (or because of) his activity in New Zealand’s cassette underground for the past 15 years, Neville has only recently begun to crawl into the consciousness of outsider music fans. Yeahnahvienna is both the second widely available Pumice release, and the proper follow-up to 2003’s acclaimed Raft CD on Last Visible Dog.

Yeahnahvienna was conceived and recorded during an artist residency at Museumsquartier in Vienna, Austria in late 2004. The resulting recordings are indebted to Austrian beer, unspeakable horror and wild dogs (in that order). Neville’s precariously arranged arsenal of cassettes, chord organ, vocals, drums and guitar has yielded a fragile and fractured masterwork. Yeahnahvienna is a stark and melancholic affair, a composite of sounds recalling Alastair Galbraith, Fennesz, Skip James and The Supreme Dicks. Through Neville’s layers of hiss and murk lie harrowing and beautiful songs.

Auckland’s Pumice is part of a New Zealand musical lineage that includes The Dead C, Tall Dwarfs, The Pin Group, This Kind of Punishment, and contemporary acts like Armpit, Birchville Cat Motel, Witcyst, Antony Milton and Lovely Midget. His ballads and experiments encompass the aural oeuvre of the aforementioned acts delivered with a truly distinct vision.