Erny Belle - Venus is Home

With music that hangs delicately in the spaces between alt-folk and popular song, Erny Belle's songs are bona fide South Pacific poetry, taking inspiration from the worlds she has both been born into here in Aotearoa, and the ones she has built for herself.

Erny Belle (Aimee Renata) made the decision to move from Auckland city to the rural township of Maungaturoto in the summer of 2019, to write and record what would become her debut album, Venus Is Home. The self-produced album is a nine song showcase of gothic storytelling – woven together beautifully, with lilting slide guitar, tremolo guitar, slow-burning melodies, and sublime, harmonised vocals.

On Venus Is Home , the lyrics shift steadfastly from sweet and earnest, to dark and satirical; toying between the artist’s ruggedness and vulnerability, “Drinking on a broken heart was a bad move", Belle confesses on ‘Sorry Not Sorry’. She has sparked heavy contemplation with the brutal opening line ‘Nuclear Bombs’; “I’m gonna go and smoke some P and put my baby in a washing machine", striking a finger at New Zealand’s meth crisis.

Venus Is Home captures a sound shaped by the landscape, with references that are distinct to Aotearoa. The album ends with the title track ‘Venus Is Home’, where Belle is re-centered and grounded by words of wisdom, a “glass of lukewarm cask wine", and “a feed of watercress", with her grandmother Venus. The arc of the album, gravitates towards her connection to home.

Tracklist

SIDE A
- Hell Hole
- Island Time
- Sorry Not Sorry
- Nuclear Bombs
- Baby Blue

SIDE B
- Burning Heaven
- Gone Fishing
- Chuck It In The Trash
- Venus Is Home