Part of Melbourne music experimentalists City City City, Ned Collette’s debut solo release Jokes and Trials strips his music of most extraneous instrumentation.

Instead, the ten cuts found here are for the more part bare; they focus on the interplay between Collette’s world-weary voice and a myriad of guitar sounds from acoustic to slide. Playing near all instruments throughout Jokes and Trials, the sound is relatively dry and bare.

Strings are added to the likes of “Boulder” and “The Laughter Across the Street”, while drums appear on the latter too. Undoubtedly the most frustrating aspect of Jokes and Trials is that it doesn’t really do anything all that different to a myriad of artists that have come before, and nor does Collette mystify with word play or oddball construction, a la Dan Bejan’s Destroyer. Instead, Jokes and Trials feels very much like a solo indulgence.