Pop CultureNovember 18, 2016

The Album Cycle: New releases reviewed from Bic Runga, Tove Lo, The Japanese House & More

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

ALBUM OF THE WEEK

Bic Runga – Close Your Eyes

Last night, Bic Runga was honored with the ‘Legacy Award’ at the New Zealand Music Awards. Today, she released her fifth album, Close Your Eyes, and, as shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, it’s excellent. So, while I have a fundamental issue with artists still in the prime of their creative careers receiving lifetime achievement-type awards, I realise that that’s my cross to bare. Made up of ten covers and two originals, Close Your Eyes is a grab bag of genre, emotion and sound. Kanye West’s ‘Wolves’ keeps much of the vibe of the original, transforming the instrumentation with the deep, fuzzy pulses traded for sprightly drums and a warm organ. (Though if you’d hoped to hear Bic sing “You left your fridge open / Somebody just took a sandwich”, you’ll be sorely disappointed.) Nick Drake’s ‘Things Behind the Sun’ is stripped of its deathly melancholy and injected with a dose of autumn sunshine. And The Mint Chick’s ‘Life Will Get Better Some Day’ is taken from an ironic/depressive dirge (one of my favourite ironic/depressive dirges mind you) into a song that you could sing to your kids to tell them that although they might be crying now, there a good times just around the corner. But, I must say, the highlight of the album is title-track (and original composition) ‘Close Your Eyes’ with its Stereolab-esque layers of voices and organs. Need I recommend more? – Henry Oliver

Tove Lo – Lady Wood

Disregarding the slowly eroding assumed wisdom that albums about sex should be somewhat coy, Lady Wood might be the best full-length example of heavy, unmodulated lust since Miguel’s Wildheart, complete with an 31-minute short film / mood piece that I am absolutely not prepared to risk watching at my desk. The musical reference points are mostly pretty obvious – post-Balearic percussive synths; post-dubstep ominous-ish sub rumbles; big claps on the three – but as a whole it’s carried by Lo’s lyrics and her generally very excellent delivery. ‘Cool Girl’ slaps, obviously, but there’s no shortage of hits here; skip the Wiz Khalifa contributions on the otherwise incredible ‘Influence’ and everything on overcooked Joe Janiak collab ‘Vibes’, but rest assured that pretty much everything else goes very hard. – Matthew McAuley

D∆WN – Redemption

D∆WN (aka Dawn Richard) concludes the trilogy of 2013’s Goldenheart and last year’s Blackheart with Redemption. She’s always been one of R&B’s most Europhile artists ever since her work as third of trio Diddy Dirty Money’s Last Train To Paris, but she leavens the gleaming electronics and fizzy strings with more nods to the American South – audacious centrepiece LA references both to her home state of Louisiana as well as adopted home Los Angeles, and the track’s last minute is a delirious trumpet solo from New Orleans jazz musician Trombone Shorty. The woozy guitar of ‘Hey Nikki’ echoes Blackheart’s ‘Billie Jean’ in treating Prince’s subject as a mythological figure equal to the Greek and Norse reference points of her D&D&R&B (seriously, I can’t believe she hadn’t named a song ‘Valhalla’ until now), Wide Sargasso Sea-ing her into subject not object. A Björk-esque world to get lost in from a master at the top of her game. – Stevie Kaye

Hannah Peel – Awake But Always Dreaming

While Hannah Peel’s album about her grandmother slipping into dementia might be less strictly high-concept than, say, the Caretaker’s Alzheimers-echoing An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, it pulls a balancing act between fragments of song and sonics not seen since Kate Bush’s The Ninth Wave (y’know, the amazing collage-y second side of Hounds Of Love). From the Julia Holter-gone-Scando synthpop of ‘All That Matters’ to ‘Octavia”s evocation of analogue electronic pioneers Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram (see also her side project Mary Casio) to the nine minutes of ‘Foreverest’ that somehow evolves from early Piano Magic “twee industrial” to a microhouse miniature in the style of Ada and Ellen Allien to the murmuring voices underpinning the haunting folk of ‘Conversations’, Awake But Always Dreaming never stumbles. – SK

The Japanese House – Swim Against the Tide

After literal decades of boring dudes in ugly pants doing their best to messily shit on the various legacies of their various Rock Heroes, pastiche in music has a justifiably pretty bad rap. On her third EP, young Londoner Amber Bain poses an interesting question: what if it was actually good though? Swim Against The Tide sees her happily eschewing the idea of genre monogamy as virtuous, instead cherry-picking sounds and signifiers from pretty much wherever – standout ‘Good Side In’, as a somehow nowhere-near-representative example, is a slow-burner that builds from folksy finger-picked guitars and druidic harmonies to a soaring chorus closer to Sincerely Yours favourites jj. I could write another thousand boring-ass words on the skill it takes to make art that’s this reverential without seeing it outweighed by its influences, but all you really need to know is this: these songs are incredibly good. Listen to them. – MM

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Pop CultureNovember 18, 2016

No barriers, no walls, no seams: Seamless bring music to the masses of all ages

Henry Oliver

Guest writer

This weekend, Spark presents Seamless, an all ages show at Auckland’s Tuning Fork. Henry Oliver gathered two of the bands and the promoter in The Spinoff’s boardroom to ask if the kids are alright.

On Saturday night, Auckland venue The Tuning Fork will host Seamless, an all-ages show featuring four young New Zealand bands that are gaining big audiences online, and supporting some of the biggest touring bands from around the world, but find it hard to play their own shows for fans of all ages.

I sat down with all-ages promoter Gabriel Everett and bands Nomad, from Christchurch, and Openside, from Auckland – all only recently of drinking age – to ask about promoting, and playing, shows outside of the traditional bar-venue system.

15095717_1774071882845448_8314765927218721674_n — OPENSIDE: GEORGE POWELL, POSSUM PLOWS, PJ SHEPHERD, HARRY PARKER

The Spinoff: So, Gabe, what is Seamless and how’d you get involved?

Gabriel Everett: I’ve been very lucky to be collaboration with CRS and we came together because there’s a fledgling all ages scene in Auckland and we wanted to take it to the next level with a big event with a collaboration between different musical styles, to get heaps of people together and put something on which is out of the ordinary. There are not many shows catered the all-ages market. And there are many shows as diverse as this – we’ve got rap artists, pop, kinda pop-punk – so we’re doing something that I don’t think’s been done before. Especially in Auckland.

So the all-ages scene is thriving in Auckland?

Everett: Yeah, I’ve been putting on all-ages shows for about two years and I’ve got a couple of mates that do as well. We’ve started out from hiring halls by ourselves, getting our own PAs in, then we’ve slowly built up a scene, really. There’s people that come to our shows regardless of the line-up, there’s big crowds coming out, I’ve put on a couple of all ages festivals, so I’m bring in bands from around the country and we’re getting a good scene going.

So do your bands predominantly play as part of that, or are you mostly playing in licensed venues?

George Powell, Openside: Recently, we’ve been doing a lot of supports this year, so they’re usually all-ages anyway, due to the size of those shows, especially in pop music. With other New Zealand acts we admire like Larz Randa, Nomad and Name UL, it’s cool to be able to cater to everyone that might want to come. We’ve always been contacted when we play shows with restricted access by people who want to come [and they say] “the only reason that’s stopping us is our age”. So it’s cool to have something like this for all to enjoy – all ages, music tastes, friends, trends, whatever. It’s purely about the music.

Cullen Kiesanowski, Nomad: We’ve found it hard to find venues that are good venues that can host all-ages. Most of the venues in Christchurch are bars.

Aasha Mallard, Nomad: Not a lot of bars are open to shutting down the bar for the night and not making a lot of money so that all ages can come in.

How have you approached that, Gabe?

Everett: There aare a few halls in Auckland which we can use – Ellen Melville Hall, the Old Folks Association, and now there’s a venue underneath Musicworks on Hobson Street which I’m trying to turn into a thing. But that’s really it. So there’s a really small number of venues that you can use. I don’t blame bars for not putting on all ages shows because it’s a hard industry and you’ve got to make money, but it is really important to make sure that people under 18 are allowed to see the music they love. Whenever a show’s announced, you go onto Facebook and everyone’s asking, “Can this be all-ages? Can I come along?” and the answer is, almost always, “No”. And that’s pretty shit.

You guys all look pretty near 18. Are most of the bands playing all ages shows young, because they’ve had that experience recently and therefore feel for their younger fans?

Powell: I think it has more to do with your listenership rather than who you are as an artist. It’s more about what kind of people you bring out in a crowd. With pop music, a lot of younger people are into it, like young teenagers enjoy it because it’s quite palatable, it’s not like really intense grime rap which attracts a more aggressive nature and caters to older people. Like with NOMAD, it’s really poppy bass music and everyone just likes it – my mum likes it, my sister likes it, so then you’ve got to think why would they slice our potential audience in half?

Have you found that as a promoter, that there are certain types of music that will succeed in an all-ages context?

Everett: With the shows I put on, I find that everyone’s thankful to be there and all the bands that play are really into it. The crowds are a lot different because they appreciate that it’s an all-ages show, that it’s something that’s quite rare. The last show I put on was this big festival and we had people from Australia come in, all over-age, we had a band from Wellington in their late-20s and they can draw their own crowd at a bar, but for an all-ages show, people really appreciate them as well. So some of these kids that are under 18 are really big music fans and they just absorb everything and want to see as much music as they can.

The obvious factor here is alcohol – that’s why the shows are restricted. And alcohol brings people together around music by lowering inhibitions and opening people up, but in this context, it’s the thing that keeps certain people apart. How do you see the connection between alcohol and music?

Everett: You can be quite cynical and see the sinister side of it, like “Oh, they’re only selling alcohol to make money”, but I don’t blame venues at all. Business is business. You’ve got to pay your staff and make a living. It’s just something that people haven’t figured out how to get around. There are some liquor licensing laws which allow you to have some under-age people on site and then ID everyone that comes to the bar, but it’s just hard to get those licences or people don’t know how to do it. There’s just not that market.

What differences have you found playing in situations where there’s alcohol for sale and where there’s not? Is it noticeable people just drinking anyway, either before or on the sly?

Everett: Underage drinking is a thing, and I’ve been to my fair share of over-age shows and I find that the audiences at all-ages shows, even without the alcohol and drinking, they’re really into it, really appreciated.

Mallard: There more there for the music, less for the drinking.

Will McGillivray, Nomad: It’s almost a more pure audience.

Everett: And you go to an over-18 gig and people are often just there because they like the venue or they’re there with their mates and they’re just having a beer, but under-aged audiences are primarily there for the music.

What are the challenges? As a promoter, you have to take care of everything, right? Sweep the floor and get the venue back to a certain state…

Everett: That is the reality. With hall, it’s just a room. Bare bones. You might need to bring in a stage, a PA, you need to provide all the backline and everything. And you need to get there on time, set it all up, by yourself usually, and then bands play, you run it all and then you pack it up and leave in the early hours of the morning. And it is quite hard. Bars, because they sell alcohol, have the money to invest in permanent PAs and equipment for live music.

But you’re driven to do it?

Everett: It happened as just a thing to get my own band playing shows. And then it developed because they saw that there was an opportunity to keep these shows going for these younger people. Because if I and a couple of mates aren’t doing it, there’s no-one doing it. I don’t want to get all high and mighty, but maybe I’m obliged to do it.

With Seamless you’ve got an opportunity with a proper venue. Is that a novel experience, without having to support bigger acts, to do to a more orthodox show, but have it all-ages?

Everett: It’s a good opportunity. We’re trying to get the Tuning Fork more open to do more all ages shows. It’s one of those venues that has a license to do bar and underage as well. They’ve got a full PA set up, and it’s a great opportunity. I guess we’ll find out how it goes. I’d love to do more of them. But we’ll find out on Saturday. This is a test run.