I really, REALLY, wanted to get these reviews out before the official Taite Music Prize shortlist was announced, but this morning I was scooped. To offer a slight spoiler, let me just say we are three-quarters of the way through an epic journey and have yet to encounter half the finalists.
The first three parts (alayna - Erny Belle, Eyeliner - Mice on Stilts, and Miriam Clancy - Serebii) all opened with a bit about the Taite Music Prize. Not this one though. Enough facts. Instead, we’ll end with some pretty tasty opinions, including my own personal Taite Music Prize shortlist. If I’d been listening to all 68 of these albums just for fun, there would have been quite a few skipped tracks by now. But every single one of these reviews is based on a complete playback, no cheating. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to so much unfamiliar music for so many days in a row before. It’s been tiring, and fun, and eye-opening, and I am already thinking that I might do it again another year. But let’s get through the last quarter of 2024’s nominations first. We start in the Ss, and soon learn that the official list of nominations has filed The Fuzzies and The Veils under T, for "The". To all the librarians reading this: I'm sorry, I didn't realise until it was too late. Anyway, let’s knock these 17 bastards off and then force me to play judge and jury. 52. Ala Mai, by Shepherds Reign
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This is the 15th year of the Taite Music Prize, and the ceremony is going to happen in Auckland on April 23, just ahead of NZ Music Month. The winner will take home $12,500, unless they blow it all on celebrations that night.
But who will that winner be? There are 68 albums in the running, and Max is listening to all of them. In this alphabetical journey through the Taite Prize longlist, part one got us from alayna to Ernby Belle. A few days later, part two covered Eyeliner to Mice on Stilts. 34 down, 34 to go. Now to finish off the Ms and get as far as the first few Ss. 35. Black Heart, by Miriam Clancy The Taite Music Prize is named in honour of Dylan Taite, a music reviewer and journalist who was, to put it lightly, like no other. He had an ear for artists who give a shit, and he never thought twice about whether something fit the formula. All of which helps explain why the 68 albums that I’m reviewing here are so incredibly varied. (Because we love a local connection, let me quickly add that Taite’s career got started with the Waikato Times and then local TV news show Top Half. He was meant to file stories about Hamilton, but he never really stuck to that particular beat.)
Anyway, back to the reviews. The enormity, and perhaps stupidity, of this project is starting to dawn on me. In part two we take in blues, hip hop, metal, jazz, and a few things that aren’t so easy to pigeonhole. If you missed it, here’s part one. 18. Brb, by Eyeliner The 2024 Taite Music Prize will honour a New Zealand album released in 2023. It’s run by Independent Music NZ, whose criteria say that “this is a critically judged award for originality, and considering the artistic merit, creativity, innovation and excellence of each NZ album in its entirety”. Sales be damned, this is all about quality.
The list of previous winners includes Former Hamiltonian Princess Chelsea (2023), and artists as different as Troy Kingi, Avantdale Bowling Club, Jakob, Lorde, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Whatever sort of music it is, it’s in with a chance if it’s good enough. A massive 68 albums (and EPs, so long as they're longer than 25 minutes) are nominated for the first round this year, which 1200 judges will cut down to a shortlist for 10 judges to tackle in April. Rather than wait for the experts to weigh in, Max decided to listen to every album exactly once and fire off a quick review. It’s a big job, and 68 happens to divide by four, so that’s how many parts this ridiculous exercise will run over. Let’s go with part one! 1. Self Portrait Of A Woman Unravelling, by alayna A debut album that promises to dig into questions of self-perception and identity but serves up consecutive tracks with the lyrics, “I don’t know”. Soaked in lush production that makes alayna’s soft R&B/soul sound like any number of artists around the world, this album is all very well assembled without breaking any new ground.
Exploring the hashtags on Bandcamp, I happened upon the experimental synth-pop of Hamilton based ‘The Steak Place’. How have I not stumbled across ‘The Steak Place’ before? They have roughly yearly releases going all the way back to 2001?! But that timeline also gets confusing. Their barely touched Facebook page tells me that they began recording and performing in Athens, Georgia – that’s the hometown of the B52s and R.E.M. – only in 2007, being presently based in Hamilton. Were the earlier releases under a different name? And at what point did they arrive in Hamilton? There is barely a mention of them on the internet… but that needs to change, because there is some fantastic music on this release.
The latest album, released on the most awkward date of December 27th, is titled “Recording is a Dead Art Form and I Don't Care”. Track 1, ‘Pathogens’, is a, infectious little song, and is an excellent start to the album. Musically, it reminds me a lot of Depeche Mode’s sophomore single ‘New Life’. Lyrically, it has a speculative theme, which runs through a proportion of the album, with this one declaring that “We are the pathogens”, “Filthy pathogens, Viral pathogens”. While musically this song reminds me of that Depeche Mode track, others on the album remind me somewhat of Soft Cell songs such as ‘Frustration’ and ‘Bedsitter’.
Track 2, ‘Parthenogenesis’, is a song after my own heart. My first listen through the entire album was while undertaking my day job, counting rotifers, the parthenogenetic poster children. I’ll add this to my list of favourite songs mentioning this particular and peculiar asexual reproductive method, following on from Shriekback’s ‘Nemesis’:
“Replicants in the image of our mother We are not born with any innate respect for copyright law Duplicates, facsimiles of each other”
While some of the songs on the album may appear to some as lyrically frivolous, rooted in sci-fi, there are some deeper, more personal tracks here – I particularly like the wonderful love song ‘The Future’:
“I used to see nothing ahead But pitch black infinite darkness But now when I look forward When I imagine my future All I see is you”
Another early favourite is ‘Salt the Wounds’, featuring keyboard auto-accompaniment with arpeggiation, which reminds me a lot of John S Hall & Kramer’s ‘Hide the Knives’. While musically flippant, this is another deeper track, lyrically:
“Now you've made mistakes You've got an ugly past And all that shit you use to numb your brain, and chase those thoughts away But those thoughts are fuel And that pain is you You gotta hurt yourself to make it through another day So just salt the wounds”
Overall, this is a fantastic album, and I am so happy I stumbled upon it. If experimental synth-pop is your thing, be sure to spend some time exploring this.
Visit the Bandcamp HERE.
It’s a New Year, and my resolution is to look forward, not backwards, as I feel I have done since the pandemic began. So, it is perfect timing for a new album from Auckland’s synth-heavy Anecdata, as I can never resist stepping into the mind of Dan Satherley while attempting to disentangle his lyrics. His new album, “A Better Plan B”, had the ridiculous release date of December 23rd, so I am understandably only getting onto this now.
Anecdata lyrics commonly revolve around politics, conspiracy theories, the supernatural and sci-fi, and the new album doesn’t disappoint. Here, I’m mostly going to let the lyrics that resonated with me most speak for themselves.
The album title, “A Better Plan B”, is a lyric from the song 'Amelia Through the Looking Glass', which is on the speculative sci-fi end of the lyrical content. There are theories that famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart reached an uninhabited island, while recently there was some speculation based on a blurry photograph – rapidly debunked – that she was taken prisoner by the Japanese. But what if, Satherley ponders, Earhart didn't crash at all, but instead piloted her Lockheed Model 10 Electra into a rift in spacetime? “they said you died in the Pacific Ocean ran out of fuel to keep the plane in motion and couldn't come up with a good solution but I believe you had a better plan B than living with Moby they never found your body and never will you're on another planet, mission fulfilled in 1937, pushing air uphill and I believe you had a better plan B than living with Moby” This is exactly the kind of nerdery I’ve come to both expect and love from Anecdata. Satherley’s political observations also commonly come through clearly. “Staging a Coup” feels like an update to his 2017 (pre-pandemic) song “Anti-Faxxers”, and obviously refers to a specific event from recent times, perhaps written from the perspective of Trevor Mallard: “what are you doing on my lawn? better not be there in the morn what do I need to get this grime off the beehive” It also doesn’t take much to work out the events referred to in “Holidays in Hawaii”, harking back to a prominent politician giving the impression on social media that he was in kiwifruit country, while actually spending time with family in his international holiday home, as he said he tends to do in July. “I'm a rich man going on holiday But I gotta look like I give a shit Be a common man, not a con-man Eat a meat pie, not a stir-fry Ride a motorcycle, not an e-bike I'm going on holiday Have you ever been to Hawaii? It's a lot better than Te Puke” Overall, this album has given me exactly what I expected lyrically, and I still have plenty more to pore over. Find the new Anecdata album on Bandcamp, and on all the other usual streaming sites. Ian Duggan If absence makes the heart grow fonder, there's going to be a very loving crowd joining Cowboy Dan at Nivara Lounge on the 22nd. Five or six years since they last played here, and with their two sharp-as EPs freshly pressed as a new LP, there'll be a lot to celebrate. Leighton Edwards fielded a few pre-tour questions and told us about new songs, a new bassist (Steve), and old memories of Future City Festival 2018. HUP: It’s official: Cowboy Dan’s on vinyl! Congratulations! What inspired you to press your two digital EPs into a real-life LP? Leighton Edwards: Thanks! We love the format. We are collectors and love the record buzz. It’s long been a dream to have something of our own spin on a turntable and the time felt right to take the step. We still love the songs and feels of both EPs - having them together on the same record feels right. The EPs are from 2017 and 2021. Has it been long enough for the LP to feel nostalgic? LE: Yeah it does feel a little nostalgic for sure. I love looking back. I often find the purest joy in something when looking back on it, this feels a little like that. At the same time, the songs still feel fresh. We still love playing them too. So whilst we are looking back, we are reaching forward with the release a little. Like we are blowing a little freshness back into them. We expect these songs to continue being a big part of our live sets. You’re bringing the release mini-tour to Hamilton on December 22. It’s been a few years for us here in Kirikiriroa, so what can we expect from the live show? LE: We have aged a touch, but I don’t think we have slowed down too much. We have a blast playing live, and we want the energy to reflect that. We play happy sad music, and the live show leans into the happy side. Last time we were in Kirikiriroa was for the Future City Festival - we look back on that show very fondly. We felt connected to the room in a real special way that night - something about being away from home, perhaps. I’m hoping we can create that sort of a feeling again. Cowboy Dan has been a bit on-again, off-again over the years. It’s great that you’re gigging again now. How has this latest get-back-together felt for you all? LE: I’d say we are feeling energised by it all for sure. We are sort of in this great balance where the old songs are feeling fresh, and the new songs are coming together in exciting different ways. Together, these two elements are motivating. We also have a new member on Bass, Steve - and having him around has energised us too. He constantly reminds us that we have a great thing going - little things that may have been taken for granted can come back into focus with a fresh set of eyes and ears - and it's a pleasure to respond to his playing and energy. Are you a goal-setting, plan-making kind of a band? What do you want 2024 to look like? LE: Loosely, yeah. There are little ambitions in amongst it all for sure. I think the main goal is to work towards a full album in 2024. We have half of one written and a few more ideas kicking about. As music-makers with a few years behind you now, do things feel as bleak as recent commentary suggests? RNZ says that music-focused media is near-dead, which means no reviews or critical analysis of deserving bands like yours. That cuts rungs out of the ladder to recognition and sales, which The Spinoff covered under the headline The sound is off for New Zealand music. What’s your take? Is the end nigh? LE: As a loyal listener to RNZ, I’d tend to agree with whatever they say. I'm inclined to think the Spinoff is usually right too. Having said that, I thought their latest rankings of canned coffee was trash. So who knows. No more gloomy questions. Who’s impressed your ears this year? What have you been listening to? LE: Best find this year has probably been ‘Rat Saw God’ by Wednesday. The perfect blend of raucous and refined. Most importantly, it’s full of stunning melodies. A bunch of favs released great albums this year too. Slowdive, Jenny Lewis, Yo La Tengo and Jason Isbell all released special little albums. Locally, I have really enjoyed ‘Feed Me to the Doves’ by Guardian Singles. I picked up a copy of Justin Townes Earle’s ‘Yuma’ which was reissued for Record Store Day too, which is currency on my turntable. I can’t get enough of JTE, and the feel and rawness of this debut EP still blows my mind. Is there anything else we should have asked? Anything you want the world to know? LE: We are super excited to have The Changing Same playing with us at both our upcoming Auckland and Hamilton shows. It’s pretty wild to think we will share the stage with the legendary Matthew Bannister - what an incredible songwriter. He wrote literally my favourite Kiwi song of all time in ‘Husband House’. The Changing Same are wonderful, and we are pretty chuffed. Catch the second and final stop of Cowboy Dan's "Two EPs" Vinyl Release Mini-tour at Nivara Lounge, Friday December 22. Tickets (including very reasonably-priced vinyl pre-sales) at Under the Radar.
As keyboard player for Bitter Defeat, I’ve sometimes daydreamed about being questioned regarding who my favourite synth player is. I haven’t yet, but my first answer would be a local – Grant Brodie, who played in Hamilton’s Dribbly Cat Attraction, Tweeter and Grok, and who I believe was largely responsible for giving these wonderful bands their distinctive sound. But if I was pushed for something more international, my answer would likely be Vince Clarke. My older brother had Depeche Mode’s 1981 debut album ‘Speak and Spell’, which included the song ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’, which despite only reaching 29 on the New Zealand charts left a huge impression on little me. The next of Clarke’s songs to really resonate with me was the 1986 song ‘Sometimes’, with his synth-pop duo Erasure, which I had recorded off the TV and onto video tape, meaning I could play it over and over whenever the urge took me. But there was plenty more magical synth-pop that Clarke was responsible for that I discovered through time, from these bands, and by Yazoo in his collaboration with Alison Moyet.
Vince Clarke’s new solo album, Songs of Silence, is something entirely different from any of these, however. No Dave Gahan (Depeche Mode) or Andy Bell (Erasure) or Alison Moyet out front singing the songs – this album is purely instrumental, devoid of lyrics (…well, almost). And it certainly isn’t synth-pop. These songs are from the opposite extreme, being as ambient as they could possibly be. Have you been to a planetarium? Or experienced its modern equivalent, where you explore space, planets and other celestial objects using virtual reality googles? Bandcamp describes the music on Songs of Silence as ‘evocative’; that is, they bring strong images, memories, or feelings to mind. It is that feeling of exploring the universe that this album largely evokes for me. I agree with the description given on Bandcamp, that the sound embodies a “synth generated, cosmic remoteness [that is] is often jolted by stark interventions”. On the song ‘Red Planet’, for example, I can see myself doing a close fly-by of Mars, or a similar coloured planet in another solar system altogether, taking in the serenity – which is broken occasionally by the odd volcanic eruption from the surface. Most songs are even more ambient than this, like sitting on the edge of the universe looking out into the nothingness, without any fear of explosions. Take a listen to ‘Last Transmission’, for example. But these are the things I paint onto these songs. You will likely create different imagery entirely. One song that starkly takes you outside of the realms of space, and into a more explicit time and place, is “Blackleg”, which also – unlike the other songs – has words. The lyrics on this one are derived from the folksong "Blackleg Miner", written in the 1840s, which depicts the stance by unionized strikers from the coal mines against strike breakers (a.k.a., 'the Blacklegs’). The vocal delivery and meaning behind the folksong give this track an extra power. They also make me reminisce about a song from closer to home - ‘Miners Song’ by Hitler’s Kock, which provided backing to lyrics based on the poem ‘The Miner’ by Philip Larkin. It may also resonate with my roots, growing up as I did in a coal mining town. Overall, this is not what I expected from Vince Clarke, but it is a very welcome surprise, nonetheless. Ian Duggan
I first encountered Andrew Newth back in the early 1990s, when he played keyboards in the synth-pop-cum-industrial outfit Love and Violence. There, Andrew played, while brother Scott screamed blue murder about God watching us sin and begging for Eros to be his goddess. Well, the boys have mellowed. Both went off for an extended period to Rumpus Room, without a synth in sight. Andrew did carry on with the synths, in a limited fashion, releasing a few tracks here-and-there from the late 1990s – though with a far more downtempo sound than in Love and Violence – under the name Southern Tribe.
So, it has taken a number of years for Southern Tribe’s debut album, ‘Polyphon’, to come to fruition. Comprising 11 tracks spread over a 78 minute album, it follows on nicely from his ‘Retrospective’ compilation released earlier this year. That was a clearing of the decks, collecting together his older work in a single place, and thus, he feels, did not really constitute his debut album proper. This, instead, is it. The first thing I noticed before pressing play was the album art. Is that some kind of scientific mudflat exclusion experiment on the cover? As an aquatic ecologist, this was enough to raise my stress levels ever so slightly… But fear not, as the music held within will ease all anxieties. I’ll do the lazy reviewer thing here for a description of the music, as it is summed up much better by Southern Tribe’s own biography that I ever could: “Floating in and out of the trip-hop and downbeat music genres, Southern Tribe’s lush instrumental recordings transport the listener into immersive, textural soundscapes”. For the most part, it is instrumental, not letting any pesky vocals get in the way of the overall vibe. Well, except on ‘Mouth Breather’. There are a few vocal samples on this track that I can’t place, even after Googling, or indeed can’t entirely understand. One says, ironically considering the largely instrumental nature of the album, “I could spend the rest of my life listening to you sing". What is it trying to say? Why the use of what might be seen as a pejorative term for the title? These are probably all the things you can contemplate while allowing Southern Tribe’s music to wash over you. Ultimately, ‘Mouth Breather’ is one of my favourite tracks on the album, though it is also one of the more up-tempo songs; the subtle rhythmic breathing running through the background is somewhat reminiscent of that in Kraftwerk’s Tour de France, and the beat a happier Trans-Europe Express. While, at the same time, it’s really not similar to these at all. There are other great, more downtempo tracks, also. ‘Will We Make it This Time’ features some wonderful glockenspiel-like chiming sounds – given the atmosphere, I imagine that the “will we make it?” in the title is more an allusion to the survival of humanity than the fear of missing the bus. In a contemplative mood? Give Polyphon a listen on Bandcamp, and likely lots of other outlets besides.
As a young university student, I returned home for a visit to the family farm. Trying on my mother’s glasses I could suddenly see flowers in the distant paddocks, all in sharp focus. They had of course been growing there all along – they were just going unappreciated to my failing eyes. It was a moment that was as surprising as it was beautiful. And it was a similar experience I have had listening to ‘Brave Words (Expanded and Remastered)’ by The Chills. I knew the songs already, as ‘Brave Words’ was one of my favourite albums back in those same early university days. But like my mediocre eyesight, the sound on the original ‘Brave Words’ release was also decidedly below average. So, finally, similar to the addition of glasses to my face, the album has now been remedied by remastering. And it has opened up a whole new world of sounds that were previously hidden from my senses. Hearing these songs in this enhanced form has been akin to obtaining some magical aural aids for ears that I never fully appreciated weren’t working properly.
‘Brave Words’ – the band's only studio album without ‘S’ and ‘B’ initials – was The Chills’ debut album, released in 1987. I didn’t discover it until a few years later, after leaving my rural isolation, and following its chart-topping follow-up ‘Submarine Bells’. But what a discovery it was. Perfect pop songs, with angst-ridden lyrics that perfectly resonated for the age and stage I was at. Take ‘Look for the Good in Others’, for example: “I used to be in love, but that is long since through; we used to be one living thing, but now we’re back to two”. Oh, my feels! And ‘Wet Blanket’ – you can take any lyrics from that song... it’s all enough to just liquidise any tormented teenager’s heart.
It is not just the songs though, but the newfound lushness of the sound here that makes this album worth revisiting, in its new form. The guitars are more jangly, and the keyboards are… well… there. You might have been mistaken for thinking that keyboard player of the time, Andrew Todd, had simply been left off the original release altogether. Not so here. Hearing these enhanced keyboard lines just adds so much to the overall sound. If you are familiar with the songs on the original release, nowhere is this more evident that on ‘Ghosts’ and ‘Push’. Highlights on the album for me include the spine-tingling ‘Night of Chill Blue’, which the band commonly open their gigs with; the further heart-tugging ‘Sixteen Heart-Throbs’ - “Jayne with a why, why, why….?”; ‘Push’, with its heightened keyboards lines giving the song a greater sense of uneasiness, which was previously A.W.O.L.; ‘Rain’; and anguished ‘Wet Blanket’ – more ‘full’ than the original recording, while also much superior in quality than the remixed version that appeared on the 1994 ‘Heavenly Pop Hits’ compilation. Beyond the songs ‘Remastered’ from the previous album, there are also a few bonus tracks – the ‘Expanded’. One is ‘The Oncoming Day’, which appeared in a different form on ‘Submarine Bells’. This version is a bit less angry and intense than what appeared there, especially with the inclusion of an amusing carnival-esque keyboard line, which proves a little distracting when familiar with that ‘Submarine Bells’ version. Also included are the non-album single ‘House with 100 Rooms’, which appeared on the ‘Brave Words’ CD with ‘Party in My Heart’ and ‘Living in a Jungle’, and ‘Wet Blanket’ B-side ‘I Think I’d Thought I'd Nothing Else to Think About’. Closing it all out is an instrumental version of ‘Wet Blanket’. Overall, this album has been a revelation. It has hit all the right nostalgic buttons, while providing a quality of sound that makes it seem like an altogether new release. Listen particularly to the original twelve album tracks. It’s brilliant. Ian Duggan |
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