Gary Steel is tired of singers who fake their melancholia
Recordings
Mulholland – Eugene Told Me You Were Dead (Frequency Media Group) CD REVIEW
Mulholland’s debut drive is just okay, despite the precocious talent on offer
Jayson Norris – Freedom Twenty Eight (Loop/Border) CD REVIEW
Kiwi abroad fashions an album, but hard bastard that he is, Gary Steel is unimpressed
The Puddle – Playboys In The Bush (Fishrider) CD Review
Gary Steel continues his catchment of 2010 releases he ought to have reviewed, this time with an oddball NZ figure whose new album has a touch of genius about it
The Decayes – Aquarium (Imgrat) ALBUM REVIEW
In the first of a new series – Unknown Pleasures – where he writes about worthy but under-recognised albums and artists, Gary Steel puts his case for The Decayes, one of the great unwritten stories of underground rock.
Plucky South Islanders In Battle
In honour of NZ Music Month, Gary Steel climbs into the crumbling catacombs of his back catalogue, and disinters a different story Every Day In May (EDIM). Today’s piece comes from a pre-Flying Nun South Island: my review of a seemingly completely forgotten album by a seemingly forgotten band called The Newz, published in the Evening Post, 19 July, 1980. I’ve still got this album. It’s alright.
The Rolling Stones – Sweet Summer Sun: Hyde Park Live (Eagle Vision) CD/DVD REVIEW
The review they were too scared to print! Gary Steel was asked to review this album for a publication that shall remain nameless, but with giant display ads for the band’s upcoming concerts, the review was mysteriously absent from the final edition.
The Buckley Curse
Gary Steel sees a movie about father and son Tim and Jeff Buckley, and dies of embarrassment.