Rave review for "essential" new album

First major review is in for the new record and it's a good one.

This from Elsewhere's always incisive Graham Reid - full review here

"Fleming's lyrics of Liquor Store should appear in any new collection of contemporary New Zealand poetry... Because within 3.32 he tells us more about the pathetic and stupid “kids from around here” doing a dumb robbery with a “Made in China” plastic gun than any uni-poetry post-grad could ever do.

A not-even-news story delivered acoustically from within a character: “Closing time they break in the door . . . third time, six months . . . this ain't no ATM, you want money then try working on the weekend . . . I do what they say, name-tag on my shirt, they start calling me Sanjay, till's open . . . I live up on the second floor, my mother, my brother, my wife and three kids . . . TV came out to the store . .”

The final song Our Little Gang For Sophia is another miniature: this about a friend who committed suicide. In this instance it is a famous friend (“You know her name”) but he underplays the connection to give it universal meaning: “Our little gang . . . will never be the same . . .”)

And it just, tellingly, falters to a halt because the silence beyond is incomprehensibly sad.

Very rarely is the personal so poetic, the poetic so personal  . . . and the personal so political.

These are postcards from a place you don't want to be.

But they are from where you and I live.

And Fleming/Working Poor bring them home . . . uncomfortably.

Essential."

The record is available now on Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes and all streaming services...

Rave review for Stranger In My Own Hometown

By Michael Hollywood

Fleming’s second outing with The Working Poor, and alongside the evident irony, the road-worn Auckland songsmith has perfected the art of what might be called working man’s blues rock. An edgy country-tinged blues rock, with a gruff lived-in vocal to both die for and rally behind. The sort of voice you might get if you crossed Dylan with Knopfler, or Petty, or Waits, or any combination thereof. Produced by the band’s drummer Wayne Bell, Fleming’s vocals sit atop beautifully crafted compositions and songs about things that matter. Songs about important things like bad politics, cruel cities, and matters of the heart – not necessarily in that order. Songs like Corporate Hill, Night Country Blues, the lovely piano ballad Autumn Auckland, and the intimate Heart’s a Wreck. But more than that, more than the voice, more than those lyrics, what really makes ‘Stranger in My Own Hometown’ work is the sense that each member of the six-piece band knows exactly what their job is, and as a unit they execute it to perfection. And you can’t really ask for much more than that.

NZ Musician