The Vinyl Files Part 2 … The Gordons – The Gordons (1981/1988)

An interesting one this. I have a vinyl reissue of the classic 1981 Gordons debut album released in 1988. Not to be confused with The Gordons compilation album also released in 1988 – which included additional material from the band’s Future Shock EP of 1980 – or the second self-titled Gordons album of 1984 (aka Volume 2). This 1988 reissue was released on Flying Nun (FN099) after the first version of the debut was self-released by the Christchurch-based band (GORDON2). Same album, different release, different catalogue number. Clear as mud, then ...

Whatever version of the album you listen to, it’s guaranteed your ears will be ringing. It’s likely your eyes will start watering. And there’s a fair chance paint will start peeling from the walls. Even if you don’t have paint on your walls. It is, put simply, a cacophony of guitar-led noise; seven blistering tracks featuring fuzz, feedback, full tilt grinding guitar, with pulsating and frequently chaotic rhythms underpinning everything. All topped off with punky vocals of varying degrees of clarity and adequacy. Don’t ask me what the songs are about. I probably won’t be able to hear you. And who even knew a three-piece could create this much of a racket? 

There was nothing else quite like this album when it was first unleashed upon an unsuspecting local record-buying public back in 1981. Other than perhaps the band’s three-track EP released a year prior. Sure, there was punk and post-punk, both local stuff and releases from overseas, but this album defied all attempts at labelling, and it somehow managed to create a genre all of its own. It was territory nobody else occupied, although the similarly inspired Skeptics would give things a fair old crack later in the decade. 

The Gordons – Alister Parker, Brent McLachlan, and John Halvorsen – would eventually morph into Bailter Space (aka Bailterspace), a band with a much wider commercial flavour and appeal, even if the trio’s basic modus operandi didn’t really change all that dramatically. 

The album was belatedly but deservedly honoured with the inaugural Taite Music Prize ‘Independent Music NZ Classic Record’ award in 2013. 

(The Vinyl Files is a short series of posts covering the best items in your blogger’s not very extensive vinyl collection)

Book Review: In Love With These Times, My Life With Flying Nun Records, by Roger Shepherd

Published a few years back, In Love With These Times is Roger Shepherd’s memoir-come-history of the Flying Nun record label. It’s taken me an age to get around to reading and reviewing it. Never let it be said that everythingsgonegreen is anything other than current and relevant …

There’s a sense that Roger Shepherd is something of an accidental hero in the Flying Nun story. The notion that he founded the label - on the whiff of an oily rag - primarily to release the highly original music being made by local bands he was enjoying live, and regularly networking with as a record shop employee, makes for a wonderful backstory. It becomes quite clear he did so on little more than a whim, without much thought, forward planning, or finance. At the outset at least.

All of these things would come back to haunt Shepherd, and his label, at various junctures over the course of the next three decades. Yet, in many respects, it was Shepherd’s determination to trust his instinct, to embrace the DIY ethic, aligned with a fierce sense of independence, that came to define the label. It was precisely the same modus operandi employed by the many bands that eventually benefitted from his risk-taking. 

The Clean, The Chills, The Gordons, and the rest, would all have existed regardless, sure, but it seems doubtful anyone associated with the conservative major labels of early 1980s New Zealand would have had the vision to release their music. Shepherd grasped their (collective) appeal immediately and made sure the rest of the country - and eventually, more curious or enlightened individuals globally - would get to hear the music. 

Shepherd pays credit to the crucial roles played by the likes of Chris Knox and Doug Hood, among many others, along the way. He writes extensively about the label’s evolution, the rise, particularly through the fledgling years of the 1980s, the relocation to Auckland, the fall, the (forced) financial and artistic compromises, the post-millennium rebirth, plus his own travels, and his personal battles with addiction and mental health.

Shepherd writes passionately and candidly about all of that stuff. He’s a decent writer, an engaging and witty mine of information throughout. 

And while the guts of the Flying Nun story may have been told (elsewhere) before, it’s never been told with the same level of insight and colour as provided here by Shepherd. Just as you’d expect from the man with the most intimate insider knowledge of the label. And it’s this level of detail, the highs and lows associated with that, alongside the personal anecdotes and the frequent self-deprecating stories around his own journey as a man - as opposed to a reluctant businessman - that make In Love With These Times the definitive account. 

Recommended. 

Here's Shepherd’s own account of writing the book, as published by Audioculture:

https://www.audioculture.co.nz/scenes/writing-in-love-with-these-times

Album Review: Fazerdaze - Morningside (2017)

Iggy Pop loves it, the NME raved about it, even the notoriously hard to please rock snobs over at Pitchfork gave it the big thumbs up. So you probably don’t need me to tell you how good the Fazerdaze full-length debut is. But I’m going to do that anyway …

Before I do, however, I should say that Morningside has been the source of some confusion for me. Mainly because when I saw Fazerdaze live and up close earlier this year, the set was played by a four-piece band. Yet, from all accounts amid the hype and hoopla surrounding the album’s release, and there’s been a lot of that, I keep reading that the album, with the exception of the odd bit of help here and there, was written, recorded, and produced in its entirety by Amelia Murray.

Which is quite something else altogether, and it really does mark Murray’s card as an exceptional talent. The whole thing is immaculately produced, pristine pop music, from start to finish. And yes, hindsight is wonderful, I now fully appreciate that it’s impossible for Murray to front these tunes in a live environment without a little helping hand. But for all intents, Fazerdaze is Murray’s project.
 
When an album is still in its post-release infancy – which Morningside surely is – there are a couple of key pointers which can help establish whether or not the work is going to stand the test of time.
 
The first is when you realise that the advance single releases – in this case ‘Little Uneasy’ and ‘Lucky Girl’ – aren’t actually any better than the rest of the material on offer. It means the quality control filter was set high enough, and it makes for a nice even no-skip listening experience.
 
The second key indicator is when it sounds better and better with each and every subsequent listen. Where you pick up little things, sounds that weren’t obvious before, when you hear something new every time you play it, and the album is able to bed into the subconscious with little or no effort at all.
 
Morningside ticks both of these boxes.

So what does it actually sound like?

Without wanting to single out specific tracks (see above), it might just about be the most highly polished thing ever released on Flying Nun. To date, at least. The attention to detail is next level, with ten tight crisp melodic power pop earworms all vying for the honour of being labelled the best thing on the album. Most of it is at the dreamy hazy shoegaze(y) end of the indie pop spectrum, but there’s also some darker fuzzy DIY moments to keep it sufficiently earthy.

But don’t take my word for it, or that of Iggy, just grab a copy and judge for yourself.

Check the clip below - 'Little Uneasy' ...