Dark, damp, leaden drone-rock from Wellington. What next?
Recordings
The Civil Wars – Barton Hollow (Columbia/Sony) CD REVIEW
The Civil Wars don’t quite live up to the hype, but Barton Hollow is very nice anyway.
JONO MCCLEERY – THERE IS (Counter/Border) CD REVIEW
Gary Steel is tired of singers who fake their melancholia
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.