Rave review for Same City album in NZ Listener - Nov 2021

 Same City album reviewed Nov 2021 in Waiheke Weekender

Rave review from US magazine No Depression

"Fleming is still a vital performer in New Zealand and could easily stand beside any major recording artist currently performing anywhere in the world. His alt-country songs continue to be written and played with good instincts and avoid the clichés of the genre"

Full review here

Working Poor Country considered one of 2017's top albums at Elsewhere

"Politics should have been on the agenda for songwriters in this country more than it was in 2017, it wasn't like there was a shortage of topics. Fleming has been on a roll lately with albums which, prism-like, look at the harder lives people here have to endure and this exceptional album brought hip-hop elements into play alongside his scouring folk, rock, alt.country and all the rest. Character studies, broken hearts and lives . . . And yet he makes what might seem depressing come off as cathartic and injected with uncompromisingly honest observations and emotions."

https://www.elsewhere.co.nz/music/8227/the-best-of-elsewhere-2017-the-editors-picks/

Reviews for Working Poor Country - released Oct 2017

This just in - leading NZ music site Elsewhere raves about the new record here. 

Live review of the record release, Nov 2017 here

4 star review from NZ's Sunday Star Times here

Rave reviews for To Hell With These Streets

One of New Zealand's top critics Elsewhere's Graham Reid  has posted a rave review on the Elswhere site

"Very rarely is the personal so poetic, the poetic so personal  . . . 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."

full review here

And an A grade review from Really Real Review

"In a country of fake folkies, Fleming is a consummate songwriter (‘Edge of the City’ was one of my favourite albums of 2012), a no-nonsense poet of Auckland’s urban sprawl... Like the great country songwriters (Townes, H. Williams I, George Jones) Fleming uses the everyday as fertile material — it doesn’t need a whole lot else." 

"...noir songs about late nights, tragic figures and chance encounters... Occasionally they're acoustic – take Liquor Store, a downcast tale on a tragic store hold up – but more often they roll along with tough backing from Fleming's truly fantastic backing band, The Working Poor. Evocative songs that are wonderfully played and beautifully produced."

Jack Barlow Sunday Star Times

"...a rough-edged collection of rock tales of broken people... Fleming's streets are stained, cracked and all too familiar" 3 1/2 out of 4 stars, James Belfield, NZ Listener, Nov 21 2016

Stranger In My Own Hometown reviews

 NZ Musician - Oct 2015

"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

Sept - 2015 - NZ Listener - James Belfield

Forget the Past album reviews

4 star review in New Zealand Herald

Graham Reid Elsewhere

Nick Bollinger - The Sampler

"Fleming has always been a fine singer and a finer songwriter who is at his best on Forget the Past."

4 star review

Mike Alexander Sunday Star Times 13-4-2014