Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: Leisure - 'Flipside'

I’m not going to lie. I’m partial to the odd bit of 70s-style soft rock. Or yacht rock as it may sometimes be called. Just not too much of it. Small doses etc. I just don’t like to talk about it. Or write about it. In fact, I give a mate of mine some grief occasionally for admitting the exact same thing, whilst harbouring my own dirty little secret. It’s a nostalgia thing, a throwback to a 1970s childhood, when that sort of stuff dominated mainstream radio. When we had very little else other than mainstream radio. Which may or may not be my excuse for listening to a fair bit of Leisure over the past year or so … shamelessly lush, soft disco-infused tracks like ‘Take You Higher’, ‘Mesmerised’, and this Choice Cut, ‘Flipside’. All great slices of pure pop. All of which can be found on the Auckland band’s recently released Sunsetter album.

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2019: Leisure - Too Much of a Good Thing

I don’t mind admitting I’m a bit of a sucker for the pure pop of Leisure. The band’s single, ‘Too Much of a Good Thing’ is one part funky disco, one part dreamy synthpop, and one part chill. But what I like most about it, whether it’s intentional or not, is the way the lightweight groove unrepentantly conjures up recall of yacht rock’s mid-70s heyday. Exactly the sort of thing I spent years trying to avoid. Which is probably why it still sounds so fresh to me.