Canary in a Coalmine is Graeme Jefferies’ second official solo album and was written during the first New Zealand Covid19 lockdown but has only just surfaced due to pressing plant delays. Unlike a lot of his previous releases (which were written and compiled over long periods of time), the songs on this album were more or less written at around the same time.

Albums written during lockdown tend to be special and this one is no exception. It opens with I Wish We Could Turn Back the Clock Like Its 1978, a chilling piano/vocal-only minor key ballad. This track pretty much sets the mood for the other nine songs on the album.

Its not all bleak and woe is me type stuff though.The next song, I Want To Know What the West Wind Knows, was inspired by a discarded out-of-print biography on Emily Bronte purchased for a couple of dollars at the Wellington City Li