My First New Zealand Pop CD.



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Sleevenotes:

The odd and beguiling sounds emanating from New Zealand, from the birth of the legendary Flying Nun label at dawn of the ‘80s onwards, have exerted a huge influence on the world of underground guitar pop and weirdo music in general over the past twenty five years. To see that, you only need look at the impressive rollcall of indie troops marshaled for the recent benefit concerts and album for scene mainstay/Tall Dwarfs member/venerable four-track wizard Chris Knox, who has sadly suffered a stroke.

Due to poor distribution, a lack of overseas publicity and the virtual invisibility of many of the scene’s key recording though, the NZ music has remained a pretty ‘cult’ concern over the years – the sole province of those nerdy enough to actually seek out scattered background info and pay inflated prices and international shipping for weird records by scrappy bands, sound unheard.

For the rest of us, the internet has helped a hell of a lot of course, with most of the key Flying Nun bands being widely featured on assorted shady and not-so-shady download blogs, allowing instant access to those of us who’ve heard the hallowed names of The Clean and The Verlaines being tossed around for years, but have never actually heard the music. Long story short: the record nerds were right, IT’S GREAT, and I’ve been consuming as much as I can get my hands on over the past couple of years.

Mentioning this to otherwise well-informed people now and then, I’ve sometimes had response like “wow, there are bands in New Zealand..?”, and this makes me sad. Frankly, anyone who enjoys the work of all the classic American/British indie-rock bands from the ‘80s/’90s really deserves the chance to hear this music, and will almost certainly get a real kick out of it, I hope.

So obviously this is a mix CD I’ve thrown together of some of my favourite Flying Nun/NZ tracks. Even though I’ve started with a few of the scene-defining hits, the emphasis is definitely on “my favourite”, as opposed to “the best/most representative”, so if you like what you hear here there are still whole (kaleidoscope) worlds left to explore.

I’ve started out with some of the defining moments from most of the essential early Flying Nun bands, but things get a bit weirder in the second half of the disc where I’ve included a bunch of my favourite tracks that originated on the Xpressway label (largely pulled from their excellent “Making Losers Happy” singles anthology). The early Xpressway stuff I think presents a useful bridge between the more pop-orientated Flying Nun sound and New Zealand’s equally fertile loner/noise underground… but that’s another story that some of these cuts will hopefully give you a taste of.

I’d imagine any, er, Kiwi-heads (if you will) stumbling upon this post will be pretty outraged by the limited scope of my selections (Wot, no Gordons? No Bailterspace? Straightjacket Fits? 3Ds? Sneaky Feelings? Birds Nest Roys? Three Bats tracks and only one by Tall Dwarfs? etc), but again, I’ve gone for the stuff I like the best – make yr own comp and I’ll be glad to put up a link.

For the record, tunes reluctantly nixed for running time reasons included “Joe 90” by Bored Games, “ Venus Fly Trap” by Goblin Mix, Marie & The Atom, “Life Is Strange” by Tall Dwarfs, “Oncoming Day” by The Chills and something off the Toy Love album. I can’t really defend pushing that lot out in favour of squeezing in six Clean tracks… what can I tell you? I just really like The Clean. If you’ve not heard them before, hopefully you will too.

And if you do, why not show some love by doing the decent thing and buying their excellent “Mister Pop” album from last year, or the Chris Knox tribute comp, or that last Bats record, or whatever?

Images on the cover are taken from the pop video I still want to live in:



I can’t stress enough how brilliant and magical the songs on this CD are – please give them a listen.

Labels: Chris Knox, mixtapes, New Zealand, The Clean, The Verlaines

25. The Super Vacations – s/t (Shdwply Records)

I blathered a bit about this one earlier this year:

“Super Vacations provide a perfect example of a group turning the limitations of home-recording to their advantage, assembling a beguiling psyche-rock sound from the palette of slightly warped rock n’ pop elements at their disposal. Their debut album burns through sixteen songs in about twenty five minutes, each of them a swirling wonder of crisply recorded hi-hat n’ snare grooves, twangin’, FX heavy surf guitar, hazy layers of psychedelic jangle, occasional bursts of chaotic space-fuzz washout and ultra-compressed vocal tracks that range from pristine, chanted harmonies to distorted answering machine skree. […]Then, about halfway through the album they seem to get bored of all the dreamy, haunted psyche and throw down some of the truly groovin’ surf instrumentals that the lead guitar & drums have been hinting at throughout, sidestepping the pitfalls of redundant Dick Dale pastiche and instead recalling garage-racket oddities like The Nick & The Jaguars’ “Ichi-Bon No#1”, with a gleeful mix of rough-hewn rockin’ and out-of-control tremolo, and a lovely sense of Ventures-esque melodic purpose. Fab gear! Add a propensity for “let’s turn this fader all the way up and see what happens” type mixing desk experiments and more alien-planet reverb than the devil’s own bathtub, and Super Vacations start to sound eerily like they're channelling the last cloud of psychic detritus to escape through Joe Meek’s fireplace before the forces of darkness closed in.”

Yeah, that about does it I think.

Mp3> Mr. Mystery


24. Impediments – s/t (Happy Parts)

Hey, remember The Replacements doing “Staples In Her Stomach” and “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out”, with Westerberg spitting stupid/smart non-sequiturs outta the corner of his mouth, before people started to ruin things by telling him he was a genius? [If you don't: education time.] That’s exactly where we’re at with Berkeley’s Impediments, shamelessly mixing sloppy, fuck-off-and-die punk rock with the kind of antediluvian Stones/Dolls raunch that by rights should never be allowed to fly in this day n’ age and ending up with one of the most enjoyable rock n’ roll records of this or any other year. In terms of subject matter, there’s some really great, twisted song-writing talent going on here, and by way of example Impediments seem to be working through a series on all the Vs that are want to afflict impressionable young men - “Vom”, “Violence”, “Vagina Envy” – but the obvious stand-out is “You Want A Square”, an absolute jewel of a song that sees our spurned singer sneering through lines like “you want a guy likes Hall & Oates / rides ponies but he’s not riding goats”. It occurs to me that whether they’re taking aim at an unreconstructed ‘80s square H&O fan or a newly minted ‘hey-those-guys-were-geniuses’ hipster, the result is the same, and just as righteous, hopefully offering succour to every surly, leather jacket clad drunk in a thousand mile radius. Like ‘..Square’, just about every one of these songs goes out in a totally gratuitous barrage of ‘one-more-time!’s and Stinson-worthy ‘will-he-make-it-back-in-time-for-the-chorus’ stunt hero guitar, but they sound like they’re having so much fun it would take a hard heart indeed to try and make them rein it in. Damn, what a great band.

Mp3> You Want A Square


23. Eddy Current Suppression Ring – Primary Colours (Melodic / Aaarght!)

I know this album’s really 2008, but it only got a UK release this year, and I heard it this year, so it stays in the picture. Named after an electrical component, Melbourne’s Eddy Current Suppression Ring set about making guitar/bass/drums/singer rock music with all the utilitarian purpose of a dude fixing your TV. Initially I didn’t think much of ‘em – lots of four minute plus songs where the singer barks a handful of repeated lines over time-keeping rhythmic backing – kinda boring. But repeated listens bring out the near monolithic grooviness, persistent inventiveness and inspired noise-wrangling of their mid-tempo headnodders, cramming themselves into your consciousness until you’d be hard-pressed to deny that the Eddys are getting SOMETHING right in a way precious few other bands are at the moment. Check out the messily spectacular un-solo the guitarist throws into the middle of opener ‘Memory Lane’, or, in fact, the way he manages to do something really cool and unexpected with his trebly, overdriven strat sound in just about every one of these songs, without ever detracting from the overall momentum. Check out the irresistible ‘works outing beach party’ vibe that the singer’s persistent fitness instructor enthusiasm brings to ‘Sunday’s Coming’ and ‘Wrapped Up’, or the way that the rhythm section just…. y’know, rocks it like a rhythm section should, adding an explosive force to simple paranoid/political screed ‘Color Television’ and token instrumental ‘That’s Inside of Me’. Eddy Current are just a great, unpretentious band, reminding us that, when all the right elements are in place and the feeling is solid, four guys playing guitar/bass/drums/sing can still be a real event.

Mp3> Which Way To Go


22. The Coathangers – Scramble (Suicide Squeeze)

Sounding like a veritable Rorschach test of female alt-rock influences, this second LP from The Coathangers switches at various junctures between spiked ESG post-punk, belligerent Le Tigre stomp-alongs, Mika Miko dual vocal punk rock and Softies sweetness – not that I suspect The Coathangers care a damn for such tiresome comparisons and gender-defined baggage. No, they’re too busy just having a great time, writing songs called ‘Arthritus Sux’ and ‘Killdozer’, and laying down weird studio jams full of sci-fi sound effects, audio gags and dialogue samples to pad out their album. My kinda ladies! It may sound like an odd thing to say, but in era when a lot of bands routinely turn in albums of the “here are twelve songs in our signature style” variety, there’s something absolutely delightful about ‘Scramble’s bloody-minded quirk and inconsistency. Cultural precedent does not lead us to expect an all-girl punk band to start goofing off like the Bonzo Dog Band, and it’s a blast that they do. And in between all that, we’ve got a wide variety of A-grade material to enjoy here too – ‘Dreamboat’ and ‘Sonic You’ are absolutely perfect swoonsome crush songs, and ‘Gettin’ Mad & Pumping Iron’ and ‘Bury Me’ make for furious blasts of good natured riot grrl carnage. One of my favourites is ‘Stop Stompin’’, a song about their obnoxious upstairs neighbour (“why don’t you put on some slippers, mr. lead foot?”) – and frankly, any band with the suss to stretch a conceit like that across three minutes and come out with a really great, funny song is richly deserving of our attention.

Mp3> Stop Stomp Stompin'


21. The Clean - Mister Pop (Merge)

What a lovely surprise in the year that I started to make kiwi pop my bread and butter – a new album from The Clean, and it’s actually really good! It seems like the Kilgours and Robert Scott have all been doing a lot of listening and growing and palette-cleansing since the band’s last few scrappy, disappointing efforts in the late ‘90s. No one in a blindfold test would ever guess that ‘Loog’, with it’s phased female vocals and drifting organ textures, was the opening cut on a new Clean album – it sounds more like some forgotten krautrock luminaries scoring a decadent love scene, but it also sounds GREAT, and that’s what counts - and hey, a lot can happen in ten years. Hamish Kilgour has always been one of the best post-Mo Tucker rock drummers around, and his perfect less-is-more timing is at the heart of all these songs, fusing with David K’s distinctively serpentine guitar and the relaxed, melodic sensibility that Scott has perfected in The Bats, turning dreamy ditties like ‘Are You Really On Drugs?’ and ‘In The Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul’ into perfectly realised nuggets of psychedelic pop, transcending the drearily obvious drugs/Beatles references of their lyrics and sounding genuinely blissful - kind of like what I hoped all those ‘paisley underground’ bands might sound like, before I heard them and realised they were crap. ‘Tensile’ is another highlight, taking the krautrock influence a few steps further with a night-driving motorik pulse, Eno-esque synths and mechanised deadpan vocals, but it still can’t help but fall back on an inherently upbeat spirit, sounding less like a menacing trip into the unknown, more like quietly falling asleep in the back of a car driven by someone you trust. It seems to me that several other iconic underground bands (naming no names) have all come out with albums this year that were practically suffocated by their relentless *niceness*, and The Clean are treading similar territory here, but somehow, they manage to pull it off where others have failed, keeping things memorable and inventive throughout. With new sounds and new ideas being thrown into just about every song, it’s perhaps telling that ‘Factory Man’, the most obvious attempt to recreate the jangly NZ pop sound of the ‘80s, is also by far the least successful track here. ‘Mister Pop’ sounds like the work of a gang of collaborators who have aged well and travelled far in their down-time, bringing back a new sense of consistency and open-mindedness to their old band, and creating one of the most comforting, surprising and just plain lovely-sounding records of the year in the process.

Mp3> Asleep In The Tunnel

Labels: best of 2009, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Impediments, Super Vacations, The Clean, The Coathangers

Six Reasons Why I Want To Live In New Zealand in the Early 1980s

After all that marathon record-writin' over the past month or so, I think I’ve earned myself the right to do a post full of videos, so here it is. Actually though, I’ve had this one up my sleeve for a while now.

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently listening to some of the ‘classic-era’ New Zealand / Flying Nun bands. Some would say this is simply the next natural stopping off point for the discerning indie-geek who’s already plundered the vaults of British and American esoteric guitar pop for all they’re worth. Others rather further down that same woeful path may gasp in feigned disbelief that I, who call myself a music fan, previously used to make it through the day WITHOUT an intimate knowledge of the career of David Kilgour or whoever. Myself, I would simply point to off-the-scale levels of creativity, talent, originality and humour of these groups, the impeccably DIY/punk spirit underpinning all of their work, their consistently great songs and smart refashioning of underground rock influences, together with the somewhat eerie, eccentric atmosphere imposed on the scene by – I’m assuming – the sheer geographical isolation of life in NZ, and I would ask how anyone who’s taken the time to investigate it can possibly STOP listening to this wonderfully out of space / out of time music.

One of the joys of discovering the early Flying Nun bands in the internet age is that they all seem to have put a lot of effort into making great, imaginative homemade videos to accompany their great, imaginative homemade songs, and many of these have now been faithfully youtubed. Watching them can provide a perfect introduction to the scene for those who are unfamiliar with it, as well as a whole truckload of low budget pop video fun… assuming your idea of fun includes watching antipodean geeks hop about with guitars in the early 1980s. Needless to say, mine does, and these videos make me very happy indeed.

So to get straight down to business, here’s The Verlaines ‘Death And The Maiden’, perhaps my favourite music video of all time, and I can’t even explain why. I must have watched it about thirty times. The song, the lyrics, the aesthetic, the imagery, the spirit, the curious people who slowly appear and the weird way they dance to the song's peculiar middle section, the bare house and the landscape shots, the bunny rabbits, the bass player's sweater, the girl holding the rabbit and looking lost at 4:12 – everything about it. I want to MAKE THE WORLD more like this video.



Now here’s ‘Anything Can Happen’ and ‘Beatnik’ by The Clean. The more I listen to The Clean’s early stuff, the more of an inspiration it becomes on every level. Need I say more? Watch, watch and all will be clear.





Next up: The Chills. Now I know a lot of people really flip for their Submarine Bells / Heavenly Pop Hit era, and yeah, that stuff’s alright, but for me it’s all about their first few Flying Nun singles. Here for instance is the video for ‘Pink Frost’, which I think was their second, third single..? Something like that. The song is beautiful anyway – as artful a bit of spine-tingling ‘80s moodiness as you’ll ever encounter, fusing lyrics reminiscent of Husker Du’s ‘Pink Turns To Blue’ to the band’s trademark sorta-otherworldly guitar/synth tones. It's possibly not the most exciting video ever shot, but the song itself will have you sold within 90 seconds, and shortly after that the thoroughly misguided singing scarecrow turns up, and you're home safe.



Somewhat lower on the international pop radar than the big names I’ve posted above are the excellently named Look Blue Go Purple, one of the only (the only?) all-female bands to sign to Flying Nun, a few years after the initial heyday of the bands I’ve mentioned above. I’ve been listening to the compilation album of their various EPs/singles a lot recently, and it’s really, really wonderful – smart, spaced out, understated pop of the best possible kind, all centred on some wondrous post-VU guitar strumming of the kind I could happily listen to forever. More people should be aware of this band, I feel. So I typed their name into Youtube, not expecting much, and lo and behold, here’s the charming video for their song ‘Cactus Cat’, along with some brief interview clips. Fantastic stuff – god bless you, internet. (There’s a great live video out there of them covering Buffy St. Marie’s ‘Codine’ in their own unique style too if you’re interested; and you should be interested, cos it's great.)



Dragged even further out to sea by the tides of obscurity, here’s another great, lost video by a NZ artist called Jay Clarkson, of whom I know nothing except that she used to be in bands such as The Playthings and The Expendables. Of whom I also know nothing at the time of writing. ‘The Boy With The Sad Hands’ is a pretty sweet song though, so let's hope she did some more. What I really love though is the brilliant ‘animated band’ conceit of the video… so simple, so weird, so effective – an example of homemade genius that on some level exemplifies everything I love about the Flying Nun aesthetic. Look at the attention the guys behind the screen are putting into trying to fit in with the song, look at the ‘drummer’s cigarette, and somewhere out of the corner of your eye, you’ll see it.



If you’d like to learn more….

Watch a feature length TV documentary on the Flying Nun label here.

Say hello to them here.

Much of the label’s best stuff is out of print and difficult to track down though, so, mum’s the word you understand, but you could do worse than have a look at Kiwi Tapes and The Doledrums if you want to hear some of this stuff. Happy hunting!

Labels: 1980s, Flying Nun, Jay Clarkson, Look Blue Go Purple, New Zealand, The Chills, The Clean, The Verlaines, videos