Brick by brick, song by song Mel Parsons has been building her reputation and winning over Kiwi audiences with her husky voice and candid folk music for close on two decades. Two years on from the arrival of her acclaimed 2024 album ‘Sabotage’, the determinedly independent Parsons has followed up with ‘Castle Hill’. The seventh album on her own Cape Road Recordings label delivers another collection of warm-toned, honest folk songs steeped in a sense of nostalgia.

When Mel Parsons visited the remote Southern Alps township of Castle Hill, she knew she wanted to record an album there. Her long-time producer Josh Logan was quick to get on board with the idea.

“We hired a lodge, and Josh stripped out his studio and basically set up a studio in a lodge for a week. It’s a huge, big, great room. Really nice-sounding room! We just had a week of full immersion. We all stayed on site and we were cooking, and we didn’t see another human for the week.

“It’s a really nice kind of pure way to record, without the pressure of logistics, and getting home, and working out what we’re gonna have for dinner. We’d finish a session, someone would cook and then we’d sit around and eat dinner, and then get back to the session.

“I think the further I get into my career, the more I realise that the process has to be really fun. You’ve got to eat well, and it’s got to be a great vibe.”

With the Castle Hill dates set, Parsons admits realising she needed songs to record, and got to work writing. She doesn’t look too far for inspiration, saying that many of her songs come about as a personal pep talk, encouraging herself to be a better person.

“I had a lot of things floating around, but I had nothing finished, so I had a week where I was just working night and day to get them all down and shaped into song form. I don’t consider it that I wrote this whole album in a week. I feel like a big part of my process is the time beforehand, where it’s just ideas floating around and distilling, and going through my day-to-day.”

Parsons’ band for the week consisted of regular collaborators Aaron Stewart on bass and her cousin Jed Parsons on drums, as well as Goldenhorse / Grand Rapids’ guitarist Ben King.

“The band hadn’t heard the songs going in, but they’re all exceptional musicians, so that’s kind of no worries for them. They’ll just have a couple of listens and crack into it. We all know each other very well, and we’ve been working together for a long time – with the exception of Ben, who we do know, but haven’t worked with a lot.

“I think there’s just a great baseline level of trust, and it’s a very open kind of space, so people just throw down ideas and things that work, and if things don’t work, it’s not a big deal. Everyone brings their own flavour, and they’re all very strong harmony singers as well. I think I always lean towards a strong harmony sound, so it’s really cool to have that on here as well for sure.”

She speaks highly of Logan’s expertise, which once again helped to elevate her sound.

“He’s an exceptional musician as well. He can play every instrument and he’s got a great ability just to be able to hear across the board. But he doesn’t imprint his particular sound. I think we share a similar approach to a song. The song kind of dictates the way that it’s produced. You can feel if it needs to be stripped right away, or if it needs a big thumping bass and drums in the background.”

The result of these sessions is an understated yet rich body of work, filled with memorable hooks and emotion. While ‘Castle Hill’ is likely to do well, Parsons says she’s not too worried about replicating the success of her 2024 release ‘Sabotage’. (Read Jeff Wragg’s X-Factory analysis of the album’s title track here.)

“It’s always great when something lands, and people seemed to connect with the ‘Sabotage’ album, which was awesome. But I don’t bring that side of it into the writing and how I want to make something sound.

“It just starts with the song, and I kind of go from there, and everything that happens after it’s released is not up to me. I hope that it does well, and that people connect with it, but you can’t really have any control over that as an artist. I’m really proud of the songs on it, and my greatest hope is just that it connects with people.”

Parsons may abide by this philosophy, but recent career highlights nevertheless played a part in providing inspiration. The hook-laden Post-High Slide (released in March 2025) has lyrics about the comedown after touring, the song’s video featuring footage of her band opening for Crowded House.

“It was just unreal. A real dream tour and such a buzz, such a cool thing to be part of. On tour everything’s kind of hyped up and exacerbated. Every night you’re getting a big hit of adrenaline. You’re meeting lots of people and it’s really buzzy, and lots of fun – and you’re quite removed from your daily life and the mundane kind of realities. I used to get home from tours and get really low, just get post-tour blues really bad. That’s what that song is about.”

The lyrics take a tone of acceptance, with Parsons acknowledging; “I know that it’s coming” and reassuring herself that, “It’s okay to ride it.”

“I’m a lot more prepared for it now. I know that I’m going to feel a bit flat when I get home from tour. Just accepting that that’s a part of it, and that it’s okay. I think knowing that’s what you’re heading into, and just being aware of it for me has helped lessen it a bit. When I get home from a big buzzy tour, I still am like, ‘Oh God, here I am packing lunchboxes again…’ but it’s not so bad!”

Parsons’ own childhood growing up around Cape Foulwind provided the inspiration for the sun-soaked, harmony-laden Caravan (March 2026).

“I grew up on a farm on the West Coast of the South Island, pretty small town and a long way from anywhere, and I really had a pretty idyllic childhood. We were horse riding on the beach, just rough little farm kids, and we had lots of great summer times. At the time, you just feel like this is how it’s always going to be – and then suddenly it’s finished, and you’ve left home. That was the story behind Caravan, thinking back to that time and the nostalgia of it all.”

With a handful of singles already released Parsons initiated a Kickstarter funding campaign for her seventh independently released album, essentially asking fans to pre-order their own copy with offerings of CDs and vinyl to private concerts and ‘tickets for life’.

Aside from the bonus of not going into the red to pay for pressings she describes packaging up the records ordered as a joyful opportunity to communicate directly with fans who’ve chosen to pay her directly in advance, some of who’ve been along with her for the nearly 20 years since ‘Over My Shoulder’ was recorded.

A slew of music videos have accompanied the ‘Castle Hill’ release lead up. Particularly notable was the Adam Hogan-directed video for Brick by Brick, which features Parsons in her backyard, being her authentically goofy and untidy self, surrounded by bricks.

“We were just sort of mucking around, carrying building materials all over the show! Normally, I’m not keen on literal representations of anything from lyrics in the song, but for that one – because it’s such a light-hearted song anyway – I just thought we’d lean into it. So there’s lots of me carrying bricks and stacking bricks up,” she laughs.

The lyrics for that upbeat track offer encouragement to procrastinators, something the apparently always busy artist confesses to being.

“I get sort of stuck a little bit just on starting, and I think, ‘Oh, the conditions aren’t quite right, I better do x-y-z first, or it’s not quite perfect.’ So I’ll just wait until the conditions are perfect, but the conditions are never gonna be perfect…

“Brick by Brick is kind of just a reminder to myself, just to start and then something will happen. That’s the only way anything ever gets done, you know?”