Lorkin is an Auckland-based singer/songwriter with a residency at Ponsonby Rd cafe One2One, and is also a key ingredient of the Jews Brothers.

For some reason – possibly because she doesn’t quite fit into cliched definitions of “hip” and easy to categorise – Lorkin doesn’t have the profile she deserves.

Her style is pure Broadway, which means it’s not my cup of tea. Despite that, I find myself admiring her tenacity, skill and imagination. Lorkin writes songs that are woven into the fabric of Kiwi culture. Or perhaps more accurately, her songs have come out of her experiences both as a lass growing up in regional NZ and living overseas, but always filtered through her Kiwi psyche.

Her songs have an easy, natural way about them, and her lyrics are finely wrought quality but a disarming simplicity at the same time.

This CD reissue of a vinyl release from the 1980s finds her in full bloom on a sequence of 12 fine songs accompanied by crack NZ musicians like Billy Kristian, Martin Winch, Frank Gibson Jr and Brian Smith, along with English arranger Alan Slater and the NZSO.

Yes, it’s syrupy and MOR by rock’n'roll standards, but the honesty and guileless quality of the songs pulls it through. There’s a huge seam of nostalgia for life growing up in an NZ that’s now just a memory (‘Family At The Beach’) which richly captures the quality of life back in the 50s/60s, and in a way few other songwriters have managed.

In The Land Of Music has been mastered straight from vinyl and that’s quite apparent – you can quite clearly hear the odd crackle or pop. It’s a real shame the original master tapes couldn’t be accessed (what the heck happened to them?) but for all that, the sound is clean and clear.

There should be a special place for Linn Lorkin in our cultural landscape. It’s weird and dispiriting that a few Kiwi icons get so much of the glory while others remain best kept secrets. I don’t imagine this bothers Lorkin, who, with this reissue, has just added to the material evidence that she belongs in that pantheon of Kiwi greats. GARY STEEL

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