One goal for this blog this year is to engage with new music more regularly, and I’m planning to feature a feature length review of a recent release each month. The Beths are from Auckland, New Zealand, and Future Me…
I’ve undergone a career change this week – I’ve dropped from full time to a few hours a week, while my wife has returned to work almost full time. It’s been quite a sudden change – we realised that I…
Every country has a musical act who’s part of the national identity, but who is little known internationally. Australia has Paul Kelly, Canada has The Tragically Hip, and New Zealand has Dave Dobbyn. Beloved songs like ‘Loyal’, ‘Welcome Home’, and…
Of the indie guitar bands proffered by Dunedin’s Flying Nun label in the 1980s, Straitjacket Fits were the most likely to break through to a mass audience. The Fits were based around two vocalists and songwriters who were an unlikely…
My favourite musical discovery of 2018 has been Nadia Reid. Reid is from Dunedin in the south of New Zealand, and ‘Richard’ is from her second album, 2017’s Preservation. Preservation was runner-up for album of the year in Mojo magazine,…
Welcome back for the 4th and final episode of my run through of New Zealand’s 30 greatest pop songs – today we look at the final 6 songs. If you missed them, the first three installments are part 1, part…
This post is part of the collaborative blog series on compilations organised by Vinyl Connection. Welcome back for the 3rd installment of New Zealand’s 30 greatest songs, as voted by APRA in 2001. Today I’ll count down from #15 to #7…
This post is part of the collaborative blog series on compilations organised by Vinyl Connection. Welcome back for the 2nd examination of New Zealand’s 30 greatest songs, as voted by APRA in 2001. Today I’ll count down from #25 to #16…
Welcome to the Various Artists/Various Blogs Festival! Check out this page at the Vinyl Connection for all the posts as we go along! ———- In 2001, members of the Australasian Performing Rights Association voted for the top 100 New Zealand songs…
Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly doesn’t have a lot left to prove with the 23rd studio album of his career. While he’s never broken big outside of Australia, he’s a beloved songwriter in his own country; he’s a member of the…
Neil Finn is a respected elder statesman of New Zealand pop, with a recording career that stretches back to Split Enz‘s 1977 art rock album Dizrythmia, when he joined the band as a guitarist at the age of 18. He…
