jaynekiely

Pop CultureDecember 5, 2016

Shortland Street Power Rankings: Hello Jayne Kiely my old friend

jaynekiely

Tara Ward delivers her Shortland Street power rankings for last week, including sexy fish and chips and the return of some old friends. 

1) Leanne sails back into Ferndale

Our favourite triage admissions clerk sailed her ship back into Ferndale’s dank and dirty waters this week. While Leanne was bright and shiny from the splendours of her luxurious honeymoon, hot potato Howard was missing, floating somewhere in the Pacific after falling overboard from their cruise ship of love.

Was this a Titanic role-play moment gone wrong? If a dead husband is Leanne’s honeymoon party trick, imagine what she has planned for the Christmas party. YOLO, Leanne.

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2) TK is a bloody mess

A badly beaten TK suffered the indignity of being driven through the streets of Ferndale in the back of his ute, like he was a float in the Santa Parade from hell.

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Pretty sure this looks worse than it is, like when you prick your finger with a kitchen knife and it bleeds through seven paper towels and all over the salad. TK was practically unconscious but still managed a decent one-eyed glare, so a quick rub down with a wet wipe should see him right.

The entire hospital united to push TK into triage, in the most impressive slow-motion montage ever seen on Shortland Street. Never before has Harper’s hair had so much bounce.

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3) Jayne Kiely returns to our screens and everyone should be excited

This can only mean one thing: Weddings is making its long awaited comeback. If we say it enough times, it will happen.

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4) Nicole and Vinnie sort everything out forever and ever amen

Nicole and Vinnie resolved their marital problems by eating fish and chips and having hotel sex. There aren’t many problems that a feed of greasies doesn’t fix, other than heart disease and obesity, so it’s wonderful that these two are back on track for a long and healthy relationship that will withstand any frenzied disturbances from a random nurse they’ve only known five minutes.

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5) Sass kisses Cam and there is tongue involved

Two of the most annoying characters in Ferndale were pulled together like a pair of horny magnets, compelled into a passionate clench by forces beyond their comprehension. Between 1 and 10 on the Pain Scale, this new relationship rates at about 23. The endless flirting and tarty desserts were bad enough, but then Sass had to describe the kiss as having “just the right amount of tongue.” Ugh.

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6) Ruby is very busy

Rushed off her feet, poor love.

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7) Kylie admits the truth

Kylie waited until the worst possible moment to tell TK she still loved him: he was nearly dead. Pretty sure he can still hear you, Kyles, so you could also mention his sideburns need a trim and that you hate being called Princess Kylie in public. Good luck.

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8) Finn gets in big deep trouble

Continuing the Warner tradition of being self-centred idiots, Finn’s ego led him down a path of surgical strife. He ignored Boyd’s instructions and stuck his scalpel where he shouldn’t have, saving Jayne Kiely’s life as she lay on the operating table dreaming about whether A Question of Sport was better than Game of Two Halves. Jury’s out on that one, but the verdict’s back on Finn: still a dick.

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Shortland Street airs on TVNZ 2 at 7pm weeknights

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: THE WEEKND, ROLLING STONES, KACEY MUSGRAVES, LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: THE WEEKND, ROLLING STONES, KACEY MUSGRAVES, LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA

Pop CultureDecember 3, 2016

The Album Cycle: New releases reviewed from the Weeknd, Rolling Stones, Kacey Musgraves and more

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: THE WEEKND, ROLLING STONES, KACEY MUSGRAVES, LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: THE WEEKND, ROLLING STONES, KACEY MUSGRAVES, LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA

Every Friday, ‘The Album Cycle’ reviews a handful of new releases.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK

Various Artists – The Hamilton Mixtape

Cover albums are never as good as originals. But The Hamilton Mixtape – a reimagining of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton, by some of today’s biggest voices – comes pretty damn close. They’re not all straight covers, in fact some merely sample the original beat, which makes it work as both a musical soundtrack and a standalone hip-hop mixtape. Nas, John Legend, and Kelly Clarkson all nail their respective tracks while Usher and Alicia Keys surprisingly fail to live up to their Broadway counterparts. The highlight, though, is the reunion of Ashanti and Ja Rule on ‘Helpless’ which takes you right back to the glory of nineties duets. – Madeleine Chapman

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: THE WEEKND, ROLLING STONES, KACEY MUSGRAVES, LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: THE WEEKND, ROLLING STONES, KACEY MUSGRAVES, LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA

The Weeknd – Starboy

Over the course of his still-reasonably-young career, Abel Tesfaye has established a curious kind of identity: a phenomenal single and EP artist who struggles to hold interest on longer format releases. On Starboy, he hasn’t quite shed his tendency to go too long – its 18 tracks could very easily be a lean, digestible 13 – but he’s a lot more assured in his own music’s songs-about-drugs-and-fucking-that-you’ll-want-to-play-at-your-wedding duality. There’s a deep genre ambivalence throughout – standouts touch on everything from radio R&B (‘Reminder’, ‘Attention’) to funk (‘Sidewalks’) to 4×4 house (‘Rockin’) to straight-up soul (the shockingly good ‘True Colours’) – but, even at its most reverent, it feels organic; a celebration of his obvious influences, rather than a straight jack. It’s clearly built for night drives in winter, but it’ll play just as nicely in an Aotearoa summer – put it on at family Christmas and upset your uncles. – Matthew McAuley

Rolling Stones – Blue & Lonesome

Despite an eleven-year gap, nobody other than Stones apologists and fanatics are really crying out for a new record from the band in 2016. The group do have some unfinished business to tend to, however. Every album since 1986’s Dirty Work has been a compromise between the discrepant visions of band leaders Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, resulting in all these efforts feeling carefully calculated and constructed, even if they were often quite good. The simple concept of Blue & Lonesome dissipates this tension between art (Keith) and commerce (Mick) nicely, as the band rollick (‘Ride ‘Em On Down’) and groove (‘I Can’t Quit you Baby’) through a dozen old Chicago blues numbers by the likes of Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter live in the studio. In this setting, even the obligatory superstar cameo (Eric Clapton appearing on two songs) feels like an off-the-cuff addition, and the result is a potential coda to their career that is both fun, and as fitting as could be. The Rolling Stones finally embody the aesthetic they pined for from the very start – gnarled old veterans playing the blues like the artists they first idolised and bonded over. – Pete Douglas

Various Artists – Emotion, No

There’s something about the movement of specific into the universal into the specific again when regional genres thought inextricably locked in time & space revive in foreign locales (think of the half-lives of the ‘Dunedin Sound’ in America & Europe) and it’s been fascinating witnessing the flowering of Midwestern emo in places far removed from late nineties Chicago & environs. Emotion, No is a cassette compilation of Asian emo co-released by Hong Kong’s Sweaty&Cramped and Guangzhou’s Qiii Snacks, the latter co-founded by Howie Lee who helped arrange Guangzhou shows for Kiwi bands like Carb On Carb, God Bows To Math, Die! Die! Die! & the Shocking Pinks. Side A – “Punky” – has more fist-pumping gang-chants, with Yokohama’s MORETHAN evoking genre ancestor Hüsker Dü in ‘Waterfalls’ while Side B – “Nerdy” – trades more in twinkling guitars, fiddly time-signatures and yearning vocals – the drolly-named (and most well-known of these bands in the West) Chinese Football provide a ballad rather than banger in ‘Last Emo Boy’ from their self-titled 2015 album, while Malang, Indonesia’s Beeswax tug at the heartstrings with the lost-in-time ‘Wellspring’. – Stevie Kaye

Kacey Musgraves – A Very Kacey Christmas

To the cynical ear, a Christmas album might seem like a mere opportunity for artists to pump out some product at the peak time of year for sales, but the seasonal country record is actually a long-established Nashville tradition. Kacey Musgraves isn’t an obvious candidate for a festive collection – she’s only two records into her major label career, and is often marketed as ‘country music for people who don’t like country music’. Audiences who’ve discovered Musgraves this way may be shocked by A Very Kacey Christmas, which is for the most part an old-school helping of Music City corn. If that makes the album sound slight, it shouldn’t: Musgraves uses the Christmas concept to pirouette through a range of styles (including the wonderful Motown of “Ribbons and Bows”) and collaborators, like Leon Bridges on the lovely “Present Without a Bow” and Willie Nelson on the silly Hawaiian sway of “A Very Willie Christmas”. The relaxed approach allows Musgraves to casually show off her chops, and produce a record much more fun than her sometimes muted sophomore effort Pageant Material. – PD


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