With Love, K M T P

‘With Love, K M T P’ is an album which feels distilled from long times and great distances. “Two days is a long time”, Paterson sings – packing a few bars of music with a thousand agonising moments. Earlier in the album, “2021 Was Fun” invests that recent time with such poignant nostalgia, it turns years into decades.

It’s a grandeur and depth of feeling that K M T P’s Keria Paterson has grown into. Born of a world-weariness and self-assurance that was only hinted at on their 2020 EP ‘P.S C U SOON’, this is the kind of debut that feels like it’s making good on the promise of that earlier worker – the same vision, only cleaner, deeper, more refined.

Key to that vision is an unmistakably Aotearoa take on emo: campfire acoustic strums leading into churning walls of distortion, voices hoarse from last night’s roadtrip sing-along, trumpets trading solos with third-hand synthesisers. It’s a studio project for sure, but Paterson and producer Peter Ruddell (Wax Chattels, Sulfate) have built every impossible layer of guitar into a whole that’s deeply organic – every unexpected new sonic texture becoming the welcome entrance of an old friend.