Kirikiriroa-based songwriter Nicholas Joseph has shared “Make It Simple,” the second single lifted from his forthcoming debut album Sailing, due via Sonorous Circle on 18 September. The Nicholas Joseph new single marks a deliberate change of direction for the artist, trading the keyboard-driven approach of his earlier work for a rawer, guitar-led sound.
By his own description, the track is the “sweetest and most pop-leaning” moment on the record, drawing inspiration from the landscapes of regional Aotearoa and channelling a classic 1990s guitar-pop sensibility, complete with a hushed, intimate vocal delivery. Joseph has said the song explores “the freedom of it, and the isolation,” a tension that runs through much of Sailing as an album shaped by his experience of readjusting to life in New Zealand after several years living in Shanghai.
That sense of recalibration extends to how the record was made. “Make It Simple” was tracked live over three days at Bagnall Hill Studio in Te PΔhu, with drummer Arden Tanner-Dempsey and producer De Stevens on bass rounding out the sessions. The live-tracked approach suits the song’s stripped-back warmth, favouring feel over polish in a way that fits Joseph’s stated aim of keeping things, well, simple.
Joseph is also one half of the duo Big Sigh alongside Rachel Hope Peary, but Sailing represents his most fully realised solo statement to date. With one more single expected before the album’s September release, “Make It Simple” offers a strong hint that Sailing will lean into warmth and directness rather than studio complexity.
For listeners who have followed Joseph’s earlier, more electronic-leaning output, this new guitar-pop direction marks a genuinely interesting reinvention, and one well worth keeping an eye on as the album’s release date approaches.
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