COUNTRY TREE
Otis Mace
(Self-released)

A man who once released a cassette-only anti-advertising album called Wipe Your Bum with a Kitten sounds immediately perplexing and enthrallingly Kiwi.

The Auckland wandering minstrel formerly known as Richard Lello has been creating three-minute story-songs of oddity and amusement for what seems like decades and Country Tree is no different, with tales about ''mixing our smalls and playing whist'', wrestlers and the slightly unnerving revelation that ''you're never alone with Kinder surprise''.

Don McGlashan had a hand in the recording of this small and perfectly formed piece of steady-plucked whimsy - and there's a whole heap of darkly dissonant humour relevant to a (possibly single) Kiwi-man-of-a-certain-age running through the album, the sort of thing that would fit in wonderfully in a smoky old pub ... but a little like smoky old pubs,  the gently comic acoustic album has been consigned to the ashtray of history and Country Tree seems slightly out of place.

- © Fairfax NZ News