Choice Kiwi Cuts 2020: Mystery Waitress - Bedhead

Wellington songwriter/vocalist Tessa Dillon combined with Olivia Campion and James Morgan as Mystery Waitress to release an album called Nest back in September. Introspective, melodic pop of varying shades, there is a lot to love about the band’s sound, and the strangely beguiling ‘Bedhead’ was my pick of a pretty decent bunch.

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2020: Murmur Tooth - Memory

Right at the start of the year, the Berlin-based Kiwi artist Murmur Tooth (aka Leah Hinton) released a very special album called A Fault in This Machine. Equal portions weird and wonderful, it felt deeply personal and defied any attempt at genre classification. I could have selected any of its tracks for this choice cuts series, but I’ve opted for the first single lifted from it, ‘Memory’:

Classic Album Review: The Beatles - Revolver (1966)

So far as classic albums go, The Beatles’ 1966 effort, Revolver, has to rate right up there with the very best of them. Although often pushed hard by Sgt Pepper, Abbey Road, and the White Album when those ubiquitous “Beatles’ Best” lists are compiled, the general consensus is that Revolver is the one to have best stood the test of time. The one that still resonates most some 50-plus years on, and perhaps even one of the rare few that has improved with age.

Certainly, for my money, it is the most consistent studio set The Beatles ever released, and it does tend to showcase the band at its formidable peak. Rather than go into too much detail here - after all, if you’re reading this you’re unlikely to need an introduction to the band or what it sounds like - I’ll just list the key tracks to be found on Revolver:

‘Taxman’ (the opener), ‘Eleanor Rigby’, ‘I’m Only Sleeping’, ‘Here, There and Everywhere’, ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’, and the feted closer ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. Then of course there’s Ringo’s most famous composition, the throwaway studio sing-along, ‘Yellow Submarine’. A little bit of something for everyone there and some terrific stuff from one of the most important bands of all-time. 

Any serious music consumer ought to be ashamed (yep, ashamed!) if they don’t already own a copy of Revolver. Buy it, download it, steal it from your parents, do whatever you need to do, but make sure a copy in some format is never too far from your fingertips. That’s all you really need to know.

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2020: The Beths - I'm Not Getting Excited

Just quietly, I chuckled when I saw The Beths had claimed ‘best alternative act’ at the NZ Music Awards, because I’d placed them firmly in the straight-up “pop” realm. That award was one of three gongs the band won on the night. ‘I’m Not Getting Excited’ was the energetic opener to the band’s second album, Jump Rope Gazers.

Classic Album Review: Primal Scream - Primal Scream (1989)

Fresh from his last Primal Scream album review receiving more actual page hits (5,700+) than any of my own 2020 blogposts (bah humbug), Craig Stephen returns with a look at the self-titled follow-up to that debut release, offering a thoughtful and measured take ...  

Occasionally, a single track subsumes an entire album.

Primal Scream’s second album isn’t by any stretch of the imagination their finest 35 minutes, as they made the move away from the twee 60s pop of their debut, Sonic Flower Groove.

But it certainly contains some outstanding moments, chief among them the track which closes out the first side, ‘I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have’. It’s feted as being the progenitor of the band’s lauded ‘Loaded’ single, whereby producer Andrew Weatherall faithfully followed the band’s instructions to “just fucking destroy it”. And so he did, mangling it almost beyond recognition. All that was retained were elements of the lush orchestration and sinister beauty of the original.   

If its infamy lies in that phoenixisation, ‘I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have’ is a strong and masterful work in its own right, initially starting in a similar way to a pair of ballads included on the same side, before developing into a full-blown bitter love song, as the protagonist attempts to find redemption for his cheating.

“I betrayed you/ You trusted me and I betrayed you/ If I obeyed you/ I can't be me so I betrayed you/ I don't want nobody else/ I just want you to myself/ But I betrayed you/ I'm sorry I hurt you.”

At the end of it, Bobby Gillespie’s tale of self-pity is so heartfelt you can’t help but want him to succeed.

But otherwise, Primal Scream is a full-blown rock’n roll animal. It was the first time the group would shake off one style and adopt another on such a wholesale basis, but it wouldn’t be the last. The sole single to be released from it, ‘Ivy Ivy Ivy’ comes from the deep recesses of the early 1970s while not entirely shaking off the jangle tendencies of that aforementioned debut album. “My eggshell head is your to break I feel like dirt” sings Gillespie in another plea to be loved and forgiven.

‘Gimme Gimme Teenage Head’ is clearly a nod to The Stooges both in the title and how it uses and abuses the American proto punk pioneers’ modus operandi, with ‘Kill the King’ and ‘Lone Star Girl’ carrying on the 1972 blues’n’roll snot rock.

The reviews weren’t overly enthusiastic. The NME called it "confused and lacking in cohesion", imagining Gillespie "standing in the middle of the recording studio so dazzled by the pressures of what he's achieved so far (and not achieved) so far that he can't even find the exit door let alone the key to making A Good Record."

Rarely has a band ditched a style beloved by its fanbase by alienating much of that core support, and so Primal Scream was dismissed by the anorak-adoring bohemians that set them on the road in the first place. It didn’t exactly win them new fans but it was another step to where they would ultimately lift themselves up to during their magnificent and highly creative 1990s. 

(This blogpost is dedicated to the memory of long-time Primal Scream collaborator and superb vocalist Denise Johnson who died suddenly on 27 July 2020)

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2020: Nadia Reid - Get the Devil Out of Me

Nadia Reid’s Out of my Province was another album that got multiple plays during my autumn lockdown. An album that needed time before revealing all of its hidden gems, one of which was the Silver Scroll-nominated ‘Get the Devil Out of Me’, which addressed mental health, self-harm, and other existential dilemmas ... 

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2020: Dead Little Penny - Honeycomb

Every year, around this time, as we hurtle towards the mayhem that is the December/New Year festive period, it is tradition for the blog to start taking stock of all of the musical bits and bobs that helped to define your blogger’s year. To reflect, to rate, to rank, and to celebrate. 

I’ll have a “best of 2020” (albums, EPs, gigs etc) blogpost for you sometime next month, but for the past couple of years I’ve always kicked the year-end process off by posting a series of clips from local (Aotearoa/New Zealand) artists which made the biggest impression on me throughout the year. Ten of them. See 2018 (here), and 2019 (here). 

To commence EGG’s countdown of this year’s Choice Kiwi Cuts, I’m going to start with a tune which initially surfaced as far back as 2018, but one that appeared on a late 2019 album I couldn’t stop listening to during the March to May lockdown period – Dead Little Penny’s Urge Surfing. Album opener ‘Honeycomb’ set the tone nicely for an album chock full of fuzzy shoegaze treats.

Classic Album Review: Bryan Ferry - Let’s Stick Together (1976)

Let’s Stick Together was released as Bryan Ferry’s third solo album back in 1976, but it isn’t so much an orthodox studio set, made in the usual way, rather it’s a compilation of previously released material – including singles, covers, b-sides, and even re-recordings of stuff that Roxy Music had earlier put its name to.

As such it all feels a little bit patchy and lacks flow. Taken as a whole, the album is basically a hybrid of different styles; part rock (as with the title track – a two-time hit single for Ferry), part easy listening cabaret, throw in some mellow jazzy interludes, and as always, much of it finds Ferry in classic crooner mode. 

Compiled at a time when Roxy Music was very much in recess, it’s interesting to note the alternative takes on the early Roxy material, with Brian Eno’s more experimental influence obviously purged to be replaced by Ferry’s own interpretation on several key tracks. This, despite the continued involvement of fellow Roxy Music members Paul Thompson (drums), Eddie Jobson (violin and synths), and Phil Manzanera on many of the recordings. 

Best bits: the title track and album opener, which has become something of a signature tune for Ferry, plus ‘Casanova’, ‘You Go To My Head’, the Lennon and McCartney cover ‘It’s Only Love’, the Everly Brothers’ ‘The Price Of Love’, and the Jimmy Reed track ‘Shame Shame Shame’. 

Something of a mixed bag, but still well worth checking out.