Listen to Oscar Dowling's New Album 'In a Kingswood on St. Benedict's Street'

Oscar Dowling's new studio album In a Kingswood on St. Benedict's Street marks a welcome return from the musical wilderness for the Tāmaki Makaurau artist, unveiled on Friday via rising imprint T & M nearly a decade following 2017's debut Free and Easy. Dowling's new record ventures substantially further into the darkened zones and tangled textures mapped out on that well received first collection, opening with the meditative, Fahey-adjacent folk strum of 'St. Benedict's', before exploding into the gnarled noise-punk of 'Raised For Slaughter'.

This careful balance of immediacy and gothic poeticism is felt throughout In a Kingswood on St. Benedict's Street, operating at the perimeter of what could be called alt-country, while skewering any localised notions of prettified sentimentality. Finding his own spaces to dwell, somewhere in relation to post-punk and avant-folk-doom, Dowling's 'Work Song' crunches monomaniacally with Skeptics-like intensity, his voice in stunning form on torch ballad 'She Makes Me Feel Like a Man', sounding wildly preacher-like on 'For The Birds'.

Perhaps more artists could take a tip from Dowling in spending nine years honing their craft, as In a Kingswood on St. Benedict's Street is a powerful and distinctly uncompromising work, recorded at Roundhead Studios with De Stevens and bandmates Liam Pram, Paul Brown, and Mason Fairey. Listen up and join Dowling with band and friends as their release tour continues, this week at Pearl Diver in Ōtepoti and Loons in Ōhinehou...

Oscar Dowling
'In a Kingswood on St. Benedict's Street' Album Release Tour

Friday 17th July - Pearl Diver, Dunedin w/ Little Old Man
Saturday 18th July - Loons, Lyttelton w/ Wurld Series, Hannah Everingham
Thursday 23rd July - Last Place, Hamilton w/ Nicholas Joseph, Dave Weir
Friday 24th July - Porridge Watson, Whanganui, support to be announced
Saturday 25th July - Welsh Dragon Bar, Wellington w/ Silicon Tongue

Tickets on sale HERE via UTR

'In a Kingswood on St. Benedict's Street' is not out now on Spotify via T&M, read their position HERE.