Review by
Graham Reid
Music writer·New Zealand Listener·
25 Nov, 2025 05:00 PM2 mins to read
Graham Reid is an NZ journalist, author, broadcaster and arts educator. His website, Elsewhere, provides features and reports on music, film, travel and other cultural issues.
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Tauranga-raised Ny Oh’s new album: Dreamy pop, cool jazz, adult sophistication. Photo / Supplied
Wildwood
by Ny Oh
Ny Oh played keyboards, guitar and theremin in Harry Styles’s touring band for 22 months until July 2023, and helmed her own band Neon Gru. But British-born Ny Oh – Naomi Ludlow – grew up in Tauranga.
She moved to London at 17, attended the Institute
of Contemporary Music, and began her solo career after busking, backpacking and joining bands.
She recorded Without in 2018, Neon Gru’s I Am a Bird EP in 2021, then Ny Oh’s Garden of Eden (2022).
Now in her early 30s and based in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles, she arrives at this album after a string of diverse singles of mellow, jangling indie pop (Aperture), wistful and ethereal electro-folk (Bloom Baby Bloom) and rhythm-driven pop with hints of Talking Heads-like funk (Shine).
These were all enticements into Wildwood, produced and well-executed by Jonathan Wilson, who has worked with Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst, Angel Olsen and, as exec-producer, on Father John Misty’s excellent Mahashmashana.
And it reveals even more divergence: dreamy pop balladry (the sensual Love For Two), smooth and languid country-pop (There’s a Dog), gently swinging jazzy coolness (Don’t Forget) and folkadelic mysteriousness on the five-minute Conduit, which might appeal to Twin Peaks/Blue Velvet fans.
After front-loading the more up-tempo pop, the second half of the 12-song album dims the lights (Super Duper Baby Love from the sophisticated 1950s), and even on the slinky break-up song labouring under the title Automated Message From a Distant Machine, Ny Oh reveals an adult persona and a dextrous voice that eases from intimacy to a rich fullness.
On the message-to-self piano ballad Marie, about her Irish grandmother, she taps that rare, spare lyrical honesty of Dolly Parton.
Intelligent, unexpected directional shifts and a convincing case of strength through diversity.
Ny Oh’s Wildwood is available digitally.
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