Space Academy Presents: Jo Meares and Mark McCartney + Emily Fairlight and Shaun Malloch

Australian singer/songwriter Jo Meares and guitarist from his band the Silver Bullets Mark McCartney present a one off New Zealand show at The Space Academy. They will be joined by the extraordinary Christchurch artist Emily Fairlight and her glorious pedal steel player Shaun Malloch.

Jo Meares released his 5th solo album ‘Dream Hotel’ in 2022.

All Jo’s albums have been critically acclaimed and his 2009 release ‘A Handful of Smoke’ was awarded Australian album of the year on 2SER’s Outpost show.

Emily Fairlight has a proper folk singer’s background, having been, among other things, a teenage runaway adventurer in Australia and India, a circus school student, a barista and a runner turned jack-of-all-trades at a digital visual effects company. Although its New Zealand rural Gothic/Texas borderlands feel make Mother of Gloom an elusive creature, the prevalence of acoustic guitar and intimate sharing of lived experience point to what Fairlight self-deprecatingly calls, “doom-folk”. Her vocal style – a powerful quivering vibrato and a stark, haunting tone, teak-hard yet soft as crushed velvet – elicits comparisons to PJ Harvey, Bridget St John, Emmylou Harris

Jo Meares reviews:-
‘I was hipped to this Australian singer/songwriter in the very best way: A mate kindly gave me one of his LPs and just told me to listen. I did. And I still am! Jo Meares has a dark whisper of a voice. He is like an introverted, quiet Paul Kelly. The writing is profound, the production and delivery exquisite. He might be the Aussie Bill Callahan in fact’
– Simon Sweetman, Radio NZ/Off the Tracks

‘Man, this is gorgeous!’
– Mark Rogers Nashville Babylon (Radio New Zealand) on ‘The Dream Hotel’

‘…the whole album hit me in a way that some albums do; something by Richmond Fontaine, say. Or Springsteen’s ‘Ghost of Tom Joad’. A complete thing, a completed album that plays out like a movie or a book or a stage-play. It’s there. It unfolds for you. You’re listening to it but you can see it in front of you – you can imagine, the mind wanders due to the beauty and intensity and integrity of the music and the lyrics. Big bold stories. Real’
– Simon Sweetman, Radio NZ/Off the Tracks on ‘King of the Crystal Mountain’

‘Dream Hotel’ is a magnificent tour de force: an assemblage of pure emotion that breathes softly down your neck and take possession of your very soul. Enchanting, transfixing, mesmerising: weaving an indelible spell. This is pure magic’
– Arun Kendall, Backseat Mafia 9.5/10