Beatin Hearts

After a couple of earlier singles, the legend of New Zealand’s Bill Direen began here, 1983’s Beatin Hearts – originally credited to the Builders – fully introducing his distinct, fragmented but never sloppy or pointlessly chaotic way around rock music to the world. Direen’s singing ranges from murmuring understatement to soft cracking falsetto, the often direct songtitles – “Moderation,” “Evidence,” “Friend” among many others – suggesting rather than spelling out the sometimes striking song narratives. Not that he can’t simply rock out in a distinctly scrappy NZ fashion, as songs like “Bedrock Bay” show.