For singer-songwriter Anthonie "Tono" Tonnon, the process of creating and inhabiting characters is central to his art.
First rising to prominence as a Dunedin-based musician with a songbook populated with detailed narratives and narrators, Tonnon has just released his debut full-length album, Up Here For Dancing.
Continuing the direction of his previous EPs, Love and Economics and Fragile Thing, Tonnon is still crafting dry, humorous depictions of modernity. But developed over a transitional period, Up Here For Dancing may just be his first masterpiece.
A sharp thinker and astute observer, Tonnon's expertly rendered and multifaceted characters have changed. They are no longer wrapped in economics metaphors, so while he's still concerned with the mundane tropes of ordinary life, he has also finally accepted the pleasures of a straightforward love song. He's imparting wisdom on more universal matters.
On Multiple Lives, the album's opening number, built around a shimmering guitar and classy backing vocals, Tonnon acknowledges this continual growth, chronicling the constant reinvention we all experience throughout life.
Singing in his now deep, authoritative tone, at times reminiscent of Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker, Tonnon croons: "I can't tell if I'm the same person/Or somebody else".
A verdict is delivered on quasi title track Up Here For Thinking, Down There For Dancing, when Tonnon satirically scolds a protagonist for his boastful and alienating cleverness: a characteristic Tonnon's music has thankfully put behind it.
However, it's not only Tonnon's protagonists who have shifted, but also the man himself.
Relocating to the isthmus of Auckland in January 2010, Up Here For Dancing is arguably an album of diaspora, Tonnon now "moonlighting with middle class" in trading liminal Dunedin life for Auckland: a city he describes as a place of action before thought. No longer is he driving the Kilmog, now he's being gentrified from his Grey Lynn flat (Marion Bates Realty), drinking at pseudo-intellectual gallery openings, and even claiming the adopted city as his own (Tim).
Of course, Tonnon's exquisite lyrics tell only half the tale. His Finance Company - now a fusion of his Dunedin and Auckland contributors - provides a fine backdrop for the stories, or rather the characters, to unfold and take shape.
Whether serving up melancholic synths on the '80s-influenced Timing, or fitting room-bending waves of feedback to the postmodern tale of Skinny Jeans, the assembled musicians manage to match the emotions of Tonnon's characters perfectly.
This meeting of Dunedin and Auckland influences, as Tonnon recently told Foundrymagazine.co.nz, is one of the album's biggest strengths.
"I think one of the great things about the record for me is that it's a very unlikely meeting between the way that Dunedin musicians are likely to think of ideas and the way that Auckland musicians are.
"That mixture of that Dunedin isolationism where you can do whatever you want and nothing matters 'cos nobody listens to us anyway, man and then that Auckland sensibility where you're versed in the great weird Dunedin music but then you're also very conscious of what's going on overseas and you're trying to at least make something that isn't aesthetically a complete loner."
One of the landmark New Zealand releases of the year, Up Here For Dancing sees Tonnon establishing himself as the ambitious social commentator for a "first world problems" generation.
Poignant, wise, and endearing, his music constantly rings true.
Catch them
Tono and the Finance Company play an album release gig tonight, with T54, Brown and Baby Brother, at the National, 1 Queen's Gardens, Dunedin, $12 on the door, or $10 with a 91 Club Card. Up Here For Dancing is available via tonoandthefinancecompany.com/
- Written by Sam Valentine.
