My Cassette Pet

Craig Stephen on the cassette tape mini-revival …

Defying logic, there has been something of a cassette revival over the past few years. We even have a Cassette Store Day – the format’s equivalent of Record Store Day, which has done much to revive sales in vinyl.

Its revival is one of the more curious revival movements because for decades the humble cassette effectively disappeared from store shelves. Well, in the west anyway. In some African countries, the Middle East and South Asia the tape has never gone out of fashion.

They’re cheap and don’t take up space so you can see their attraction. With new release vinyl albums now costing $NZ60 and upwards, it’s clear why a far more economical format might gain traction.

I wasn’t entirely convinced about the availability of cassettes so I had a look around. The JB Hi-Fi website has a section for cassettes for sale, and as I write there’s 15 listed. Four of those are reissues by De La Soul and there’s also 72 Seasons by Metallica and Autofiction by Suede. The retailer’s prices vary from $28 up to $49, but generally they are around the same price as the CD.

Marbecks didn’t have a separate tape section but did have a pack of blank cassettes, Southbound in Auckland had the same number as JB Hi-Fi and Real Groovy had 115 listed, which I guess was a mix of new and second hand.

There are even tape-only labels in New Zealand catering to bands that don’t have the money to invest in vinyl. This is a subject to be developed for later.

 In the big music markets, sales are on the up. The British Phonographic Industry says cassette sales have increased for 10 consecutive years – rising from less than 4000 in 2012 to more than 195,000 in 2022. That’s still small fry compared to vinyl and digital, but it’s a massive increase nevertheless. It’s the same for the United States while in Japan there are cassette-only stores and Tower Records, which is still around in the country but not anywhere else, has increased its shelf space of the format.

In the 1980s the cassette was sold at the same price as vinyl. Back then blank tapes abounded and the mixtape was an artform. This was a way of making tapes for your mates, or for yourself from a selection of albums.

You could select whatever songs you wanted, and in a preferred order too. Sod a ballad, I want just fast tracks, or I could rearrange an album whereby the weaker songs are at the start. Furthermore, I could tag on B-sides and unreleased tracks.

Meanwhile, live gigs were easily recorded and issued on cassette, providing a source - the legendary bootleg - for fans that otherwise wasn’t available in the pre-internet age.

While much of the technology we have used in the past has become obsolete (eight-track cartridge, mini-disks etc), cassettes, like vinyl, still have niche value for the music fan.

This mini revival comes as this writer is culling a box of cassettes. I have the ability to play them, I just don’t, so something has to give. I gave three to an op shop: the Stranglers’ No More Heroes because I now have the vinyl version, but the Wedding Present cassingle was a no-brainer: I just don’t like the band anymore.

Here a small selection from my all-time homemade favourite tapes:

The Associates double: Sulk, the American edition, which is slightly different from the UK release, is on one side, and Perhaps, released a couple of years later, is on the opposite. This was one of the first tapes I had and was made by a friend who introduced me to the band and other Scottish delights such as the Jesus and Mary Chain and the Cocteau Twins.

Midnight Oil 1982 to 2003: I’ve got very little Midnight Oil music as they were an oft-erratic band so it made perfect sense to go through half a dozen albums and fill up two sides of their best songs.

 Mix and match Vol 67: Hot Hot Heat – three tracks; Electric Six – three tracks; Maximo Park – nine tracks; and a bunch of tracks by the likes of Wolfmen, Razorlight, The Rapture, Stephen Duffy, and Manic St Preachers. This is quite a varied selection. The Maximo Park tracks are a selection of the B-sides compilation and 2007’s Our Earthly Pleasures.

Reggae Classics Vol 48: Reggae is so wonderful and there’s so many compilations around. I used to get loads of them out of the Napier City library and stick them on tape. This one features Gregory Isaacs, Mikey Dread, Poet and the Roots, Junior Murvin and many others.

Godzone’s Gifts: There are some great acts from New Zealand. This mixtape includes Goldenhorse, The Front Lawn, Collapsing Cities, The Bats, The Clean and Cut off Your Hands. Bands you might be challenged to lump together but it actually melds quite well.

David Bowie 1980-84: Nobody could truthfully say the eighties were a productive era for Bowie so this condenses the best of the early part of the decade, starting with Scary Monsters and Super Creeps, which takes up most of the tape. By 1984 and the Tonight album, he’s lost it, and the quality avoidance would continue until 1993.

And now for some that were commercially available, made in a factory.

Various – C86: The superstar of a long line of New Musical Express cassettes and a legend of compilations. A Nuggets for the 1980s.  Somebody has even written a book about the cassette which was later released on vinyl that same year (and much later on a 3-CD deluxe edition). The timing of the release was crucial. An underground indie scene had been brewing for a couple of years and came to the boil in 1986 with clubs and scores of releases. The twee or jangly scene featured bands that apparently only wore anoraks, had floppy fringes and played guitar music that sounded like the Byrds or Love.

 The first side of C86 included many of those scenesters: Primal Scream, The Pastels, The Bodines, Mighty Mighty, The Shop Assistants, the Soup Dragons and the Wedding Present. If it was only a round-up of all the greatest twee songs of the time it probably wouldn’t have the impact it did. Conversely, an album that showcased a burgeoning scene was in fact a varied, Catholic collection with the inclusion of agit rock-dance band Age of Chance, sarcastic bastards Half Man Half Biscuit, and acts such as Miaow!, Stump and The Mackenzies. It was a deft adventure into a world that had no boundaries.

The The – Soul Mining: Soul Mining is a classic of the time but at seven tracks was deemed to be too short for American tastes even though most of the tracks stretched to more than five minutes and ‘Giant’ clocked in at 9:34. So a version of ‘Perfect’ was added to some versions and the UK cassette version had another five goodies. It’s likely that at least one of these tracks was from the discarded Pornography of Despair album.

The Phoenix Foundation – Trans Fatty Acid: This tape came with initial editions of the band’s Give Up Your Dreams vinyl album released in 2015. Of the four tracks (all great btw), there’s a special cover of Can’s hit single ‘I Want More’. 

The Cure – Standing on a Beach, The Singles (And Unavailable B-sides): Now, isn’t that title a giveaway or what. With the extra space on the tape, there was always the opportunity to expand the track listing, and in this edition the 13 singles were joined by a dozen B-sides. These included the likes of ‘Another Journey By Train’ and ‘The Exploding Boy’. Some tracks were B-sides for a good reason, but some could have been included on a studio album. 

Various – The World At One: Another NME cassette only release available by sending a cheque or postal order and hoping that you received it in a week or so. The World At One was one of the most valuable of the series as it introduced readers to music from Bulgaria to Zambia to the French Antilles. Readers could hear almost certainly for the first time Jali Musa Jawara or Kass Kass. It was issued in 1987 as the term ‘world music’ was becoming a saleable asset.

Orange Juice – The Orange Juice: Over to my OJ-obsessed mate Scouse Neil for this one … “The Orange Juice cassette, which I got from a Woollies sale for the giveaway price of £1.99, had the 10-track album on one side, and a whole side of B-sides and 12-inch mixes on the other. Considering I hadn’t heard some of these versions before, this was like gold dust to an OJ fan. Apparently, the tape version sold more than the vinyl, which is not saying much since it was the only one of their albums not to make the Top 100.” Scouse Neil did perk up a bit at learning that the album reached No.28 in the New Zealand charts in 1984.

Bow Wow Wow – Your Cassette Pet: Released in November 1980 only on cassette, and therefore it was classified as a single for the UK charts. They were musically inept but something of pioneers as a single released a few months earlier ‘C-30,C-60,C-90’ (a nod to the different lengths of tapes) was apparently the world’s first cassette single.

For the record, the first compact cassette, in the format that became million sellers, was first introduced in 1963. The first Walkman appeared in 1979.

Albums of 2020

It’s time for the annual wrap of the best new albums added to your blogger’s collection this year. There’s been a few, but I’ll choose ten for this post, and then take a look at the best of the rest, compilations/reissues, and EPs in a series of separate posts as we enter the new year. This is not so much a “best of” 2020, because I’ve no doubt I’ve missed many of the actual best albums, but more of a personal “most-listened-to” list. As ever, the only prerequisite for inclusion is that I picked up a copy of the album during the year (in any format), which does, admittedly, rule out a good number of decent albums I merely preview-streamed via Spotify and failed to follow through with.

10. The Beths - Jump Rope Gazers

2020 saw Auckland indie-pop nerds The Beths consolidate their reputation as one of the best young bands in the country. A fact confirmed when they picked up three gongs at the annual Aotearoa Music Awards. Sophomore album Jump Rope Gazers wasn’t dramatically different from the band’s debut, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. My full review is here.

9. The Phoenix Foundation - Friend Ship

Five years on from the release of Give Up Your Dreams, which for me was something close to a career high watermark for The Phoenix Foundation (and an album rated number two on this blog’s year-end list for 2015), Wellington’s most eclectic pop collective returned with Friend Ship. And while it didn’t quite scale the lofty heights of GUYD, or earlier work like Horsepower, Pegasus, or Buffalo, it was another great set from a bunch of guys who continue to poke away at boundaries without compromising their core sound. On Friend Ship we got everything from elaborate orchestral stuff - see collaborations with the NZSO - to odd psychedelic moments, proggy flavours, and more snippets of humour than you can shake a funny cigarette at. But mostly we got crafty intelligent pop music dressed in a variety of threads, and the collaborations with Hollie Fullbrook (‘Decision Dollars’, ‘Tranquility’) and Nadia Reid (‘Hounds of Hell’) were outstanding. I also really loved the pomp and swagger of ‘Guru’, the scene-setting album opener. Oddly though, given that it was one of the more high profile album takeaways, and clearly loved elsewhere, I was less taken by the faux-disco of ‘Landline’, which for me veered beyond pastiche and into the realm of just plain cheesy. But then, I’ve always struggled with irony, and it wouldn’t be a proper Phoenix Foundation album if there wasn’t at least one track that left me scratching my head. Not reviewed on the blog.

8. Murmur Tooth - A Fault in This Machine

I was heavily invested in this one during our autumn lockdown period. In my original review (here), I called it the most uneasy listening “easy listening” album you’re likely to hear all year, and nothing happened to change that view. I loved it.

7. Alicia Keys - Alicia

I’m a fan of pure unadulterated pop music, and although Alicia Keys is not usually an artist I’d necessarily gravitate towards, Alicia was an album for the ages. Socially conscious, empowering, and life affirming. My review is here.

6. Nadia Reid - Out of My Province

How could any local not love an album that opens with the line “you took me to Levin”? ... for the uninitiated, Levin is a small soulless market town, about an hour’s drive north of Wellington in New Zealand’s lower North Island, and a million miles removed from any of the romance implied on Nadia Reid’s album opener ‘All of my Love’. And coincidently, a town not a million miles away from where your blogger resides. Anyway, it’s that sense of “us” that first attracted me to Reid’s work as long ago as her Preservation album (of 2017) after overlooking far too much of her early stuff. Out of my Province was probably the biggest “grower” of this year’s bunch. After the first couple of listens I concluded it was all a bit too beige and “generic folky”, but I stuck with it, and as time passed I became far better acquainted with all of its many hidden charms. In fact, although it is only number six on this list, Out of My Province was probably the album I listened to more than any other across the full year. It just wasn’t my ultimate favourite. It helped that it was so workplace (office) compliant and I was able to spend a lot of time with it. Best cuts: ‘Best Thing’, and the silver scroll-nominated ‘Get the Devil Out of Me’. Not reviewed on the blog, which is perhaps just as well, because I feel very differently about it today than I did when I first picked it up.

5. Matt Berninger - Serpentine Prison

Another genuine grower, after curiosity got the better of me. I mean, a Matt Berninger (The National) solo work in collaboration with the great Booker T. Jones, what could possibly go wrong? Not much, evidently. My review is here.

4. The Orb - Abolition of the Royal Familia

An all new intoxicating blend of disco, deep house, ambient electronica, and skanky dub. New Orb, just like old Orb, and if there was a track that summed up the post-apocalyptic nature of 2020 better than album closer ‘Slave Till U Die No Matter What U Buy’, which appropriates Jello Biafra’s ‘Message From Our Sponsor’ spoken-word narrative, then I didn’t hear it. My review is here.

3. The War on Drugs - Live Drugs

Given that I’m going to do a blog year-in-review write-up specifically on compilations and reissues, I was tempted to save this one for that piece. A live album is a compilation by default, right? Um, I guess, but Live Drugs was just too good to ignore and there were a few occasions late in the year when I had this on repeat, so it has to qualify on my most-listened-to list instead. Way more than the sum of its parts, the album is essentially a collection of live extracts from a bunch of different gigs played in support of the band’s two most recent - and most commercially successful - albums, Lost in the Dream (2014) and A Deeper Understanding (2017). Yet it plays like it could all have been recorded at the same gig. The flow, the feels, and sense that this was, or is, a band right at the top of its game. It’s a virtual live “greatest hits”, with eight of the ten tracks coming from those two albums, including seven singles, while there’s one very early TWOD offering, ‘Buenos Aires Beach’, and a fairly choice Warren Zevon cover ‘Accidentally Like A Martyr’. I’ve never been able to put my finger on exactly what appeals most about The War on Drugs; all those classic rock touchstones - big keys, harmonica breaks, and lengthy guitar solos - and all that big Springsteen-esque Americana would usually be enough to have me reaching for the industrial-strength Nurofen, yet somehow it works. There’s some truly epic moments on Live Drugs, and highlights include wonderful versions of ‘Pain’, ‘Red Eyes’, ‘Thinking of a Place’, and ‘Under The Pressure’. No blog review.

2. Antipole - Perspectives II

If I’m going to break unwritten but notional blog rules by including live albums, then I simply have to throw in this remix album, which revisits tunes from Antipole’s 2019 album, Radial Glare. It’s a sister release for the Anglo-Norwegian dark-wavers to Perspectives (which topped this list in 2018), and it was another regular go-to album for me during the autumn lockdown period. My review is here.

1. Fontaines D.C. - A Hero’s Death

I was very slow on the uptake when it came to Fontaines D.C., somehow missing all of the initial hype surrounding the band’s debut album Dogrel (2019), before being seduced into complete and utter submission by the sheer post-punk majesty of this year’s follow-up, A Hero’s Death. I had to chuckle when I read the band’s claim in the NME, upon completion of the album in late 2019, that it “was inspired by the Beach Boys”. Yeah, only if the Beach Boys had been raised on the rain-swept streets of Dublin, consumed Guinness for breakfast, dressed entirely in black, and listened to nothing but the Velvet Underground. This is post-punk 101, 2020-style. A state-of-the-art example of raw, gritty rock n roll, propelled by big basslines, weighty guitars, and a vocalist with a thick booming Irish accent to die for. Which is more than enough, but what really gives A Hero’s Death its next level heft is its clever and artful collection of lyrics. Songs packed full of urgency, insight, irony, and humour. There’s no filler here, and tracks like ‘Televised Mind’, ‘I Don’t Belong’, ‘A Lucid Dream’, and the title track itself, would all be fully legit contenders for any notional eveythingsgonegreen tune of the year.

If there was such a thing. For now, I’ll stick to album reckons. And I’ve got no valid excuse for not giving A Hero’s Death the full review treatment on the blog. Of the ten albums covered here, four are local releases, yet I could just as easily have included a couple more (not least Darren Watson’s Getting Sober release) and I thought it was a pretty good year for homegrown stuff. More on that in my next post.

The flip side to that of course is that it was a terrible year for the local live music scene. With Covid-19, closed borders, lockdowns, and social distancing in effect for large chunks of 2020, quality live gigs were hard to come by. I can’t even really present a decent case for a gig of the year, given I attended so few. I guess it has to be The Beths at Wellington’s San Fran in October, pretty much by default. And I suppose if there was one positive to emerge from a lack of overseas touring acts, it was that local artists got more opportunities to shine as headliners when our nightlife did finally spring back into life mid-year.

Anyway, I’ll have a few more reflections on an extraordinary year over the next few weeks when I take a look at the best of the rest (albums), the best compilations and reissues, and even a post on the remarkable number of great EPs I managed to pick up during the year. In the meantime, be gone 2020. Don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out …

Gig Review: Blam Blam Blam, St Peters Hall, Paekakariki, 31 August 2019

Saturday nights don’t get much more Kiwiana than a quick drink at the Paekakariki pub, then popping over the road to the St Peters Village Hall for a nostalgia fuelled Blam Blam Blam reunion gig. That’s exactly how my Saturday night unfolded, and it was nothing short of terrific from start to finish. 

The Paekakariki set was the band’s sixth of seven reunion gigs played across the country in little more than a week, with the tour’s finale locked in for a matinee show at Wellington’s Meow on the Sunday. Personally, the Saturday night gig held a lot more appeal even if the surrounds were less auspicious and the venue itself - as a community trust-run hall - was unlicensed. There was just something so very fitting about it, and past experiences informed me that few venues in this part of the world could offer the same peak levels of acoustic clarity. I’d seen the band just once before, back in 1981, right at the start of their long and very fragmented musical journey. 38 years between drinks had been a long wait.

Phoenix Foundation dude, Luke Buda, offered a surprise support slot by throwing in a little bit of everything, managing to fit acoustic pop, guitar solos, loops, and keyboard-led power ballads into an impressive half hour set. Apparently, it was Buda’s very first live solo performance, something that I found hard to fathom, given his longevity and wider national-level profile. He was the perfect curtain-raiser. 

Blam Blam Blam - Don McGlashan (drums, euphonium, and vocals), Mark Bell (guitar), and Tim Mahon (bass) - took centre stage at 9.20pm and didn’t let up for something close to 100 minutes. Each new track - starting with rollicking instrumental ‘Dr Who’ and finishing with signature tune ‘No Depression in New Zealand’ - being greeted with large smiles and knowing nods by those in attendance. Which amounted to a packed hall of mostly 40 and 50-somethings. A few younger, and a few older, some local, and a lot of townies visiting the wilds for their own Saturday night fix. It was a full house. 

I already knew it, but I’ve probably never said it out loud before; if the gig confirmed one thing for me it is that Don McGlashan is a rare talent. A musical genius. A living breathing national treasure. I’d forgotten what a great drummer he is, and his stick work was a real feature of the night, but his mastery of the euphonium really is next level. That rarely used weapon (in a “pop” context, at least) added depth and texture to a number of key tracks, with the best example coming on an epic version of ‘Don’t Fight It Marsha (it’s bigger than both of us)’ near the end. That tune remains a genre-defying trip, all these years on. 

Mark Bell was flawless on guitar, driving tunes like ‘Battleship Grey’, ‘Businessmen’, and ‘Like My Job’ to inevitable peaks, while adding craft and subtlety on more eccentric stuff like ‘Got To Be Guilty’ and ‘Bystanders’. Tim Mahon was not without his moments either, holding things together with tight basslines, and providing a brilliant spoken cameo-vocal on what felt like a hugely ironic take on ‘Respect’ … where most in attendance were once those kids being asked to show “respect”, they’re now of an age where they’re the ones most likely demanding it. 

After virtually all of the band’s material from sole studio album ‘Luxury Length’ (and more) had been given an outing and the band downed tools, we knew it wasn’t over. The ‘No Depression’ box had yet to be ticked, so it was absolutely no surprise to see them return for a three-song encore; ‘Luxury Length’, ‘Time Enough’ and naturally, ‘No Depression’ to close. 

Well worth the wait, then. And a night made all the better for the presence of many old (literally) faces and friends amongst the crowd. If things don’t get more Kiwiana than that, they certainly don’t get much more enjoyable either.

Albums of 2015

Yes, yes. I know. We’re practically a tenth of the way through 2016 already and everythingsgonegreen is still living in the past. Even more than it usually does. Still wrapping up the formalities of bidding 2015 a fairly fond farewell. And other “F” words. But being late is nothing unusual for this blog. To be fair, I would have published this a fortnight ago, but my AA meeting went on longer than planned, and the barman wouldn’t let me leave.

And so these are the albums that made the most impact on me throughout 2015. Not “the best albums”, not the most popular or critically acclaimed, but the albums that were significant to my world. The music I played the most, I guess is the best criteria to use. I make no apologies for the local bias. The only prerequisite for an album’s inclusion was that I had to have my own copy of it in one form or another. Spotify and streaming mean nothing to me.

10. Blur – The Magic Whip

Damon Albarn has his moments, and I think The Magic Whip is one of his better ones. I really didn’t need any more Blur, and Modern Life Is Rubbish was always going to be enough for me, but this turned out to be a lovely unexpected bonus, and a real grower as the year progressed. My original review can be found here.

9. Adrian Sherwood – At The Controls Volume 1 1979 – 1984

It probably goes against all of the unwritten rules of music blogging to include a sneaky retro-compilation on these sorts of year-end lists. But everythingsgonegreen despises rules, especially those pesky unwritten ones, so here it is, another superb set of tunes from ace producer Adrian Sherwood. I loved this, and I dribble from the mouth a wee bit when pondering just how deep the yet-to-be-released On-U Sound archives might run. Despite being a huge fan of the label and of the Eighties, I was gobsmacked to discover a couple of bands here that I’d never even heard of before. And then there was the primo Shriekback track I knew nothing at all about. We’re nothing if not current and cutting edge up here at everythingsgonegreen towers … or the tree hut at the bottom of the backyard as it’s otherwise known. Shame – with some mitigating circumstances – on the hapless JB Hi Fi guy who didn’t know this album even existed. My original review can be found here.

8. Fat Freddy’s Drop – Bays

It's no secret that everythingsgonegreen is a massive fan of local dub/reggae/funk crossover merchants Fat Freddy's Drop. But even I baulked at the option of paying something close to $150 for two tickets to the band's recent NYE (2015/2016) gig at Petone beach. It was effectively a homecoming or hometown gig, but nothing about that price was especially festive or neighbourly, and it was all a little too rich for yours truly. Less disappointing and even less prohibitive was the $24.99 I'd already forked out for a copy of Bays, the band's rather excellent fifth album from earlier in 2015. All of the regular Fat Freddy's touchstones are present and accounted for on Bays – bass, horns, drops, laid back grooves, and songs about food. You mostly know what you're going to get with these guys. Some (local) critics will doubtlessly argue that's a bad thing, but I reckon the intense progressive electro vibes found on 'Razor' and 'Novak' actually do represent something quite different here. Of course it won’t be enough to satisfy those naysayers, nor the bandwagon-hoppers who continue to tag the band with the lazy and tiresome "barbecue reggae" label. But who really cares about unimaginative worn-out labels? Beyond wanting to give one or two regular grizzlers a poke in the eye with a particularly sharp stick, the band obviously couldn’t care less.

7. Belle and Sebastian – Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance

We live in a topsy-turvy world. A world where everything we once believed is now in danger of being turned completely on its head at any given moment. For proof of such a claim, look no further than Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance. A rare and barely imagined two-headed beastie; a disco-pop album made by long-time kings of bedsit twee, Belle and Sebastian. An album that challenges all of the things I thought I knew about Stuart Murdoch and his stalwart gang of Scottish indie pop perfectionists. Two decades into their journey, album number nine feels like something quite special for the band. It’s clever stuff, charmingly existential, as ever, while shamelessly strutting its way across the dancefloor with its arse hanging out. Always a good look. And I don’t know if Belle and Sebastian have peaked inside the Top 10 of the ‘fishal UK album charts all that often, but Girls In Peacetime did exactly that, by hook over crook, all part of the plan, as espoused on notional centrepiece ‘The Everlasting Muse’ … “a subtle gift to modern rock, she says ‘be popular, play pop’ … and you will win my love”. I’ve had a fractured relationship with Belle and Sebastian over the years, but who doesn’t love a happy ending?

6. Mel Parsons – Drylands

Mel Parsons is a huge talent. As a musician, as a vocalist, and as a songwriter. Drylands represents exhibit A, and is, from all accounts, her best work yet. It’s also an album that just gets better with each and every listen. My original review can be found here. 

5. New Order – Music Complete

When it first arrived, I never expected Music Complete to wind up on any year-end lists. But then, when it comes to New Order in context of 2015, I really had no expectations at all. Why would I? The band has nothing left to prove, and this barely anticipated late addition to an already astounding musical legacy was the band's best full length work since 1989's Technique. And if you think that's merely a case of blatant fanboy hyperbole (which it partly might be) then it's still a long way short of Mojo magazine's rating of New Order as its 2015 band of the year. Yes, really. My original review can be found here.

4. She's So Rad – Tango

Tango was such a long time in coming that by the time it arrived I'd already heard most of it in one form or another. But that did nothing to dampen my enjoyment of it. Circles, the band's 2011 debut, largely flew under my radar, and to some extent a steady drip-feed diet of this stuff has given Tango an impetus the first album probably lacked. Main Rad dude, Jeremy Toy, wears his musical influences on his sleeve for all to see, and Tango is an exercise in blending a strong Eighties synthpop aesthetic with copious helpings of early Nineties shoegaze. And who doesn’t love a little bit of both of those things? But it’s not all retro-centric, with David Dallas’ straight-outta-Auckland hip hop cameo on ‘Say The Word’ taking things to another place entirely. Best bits: ‘Levels’, ‘Cool It’, ‘Confetti’, and ‘Sewn Up Sunshine’.

3. Yoko-Zuna – This Place Here

When I spoke to Cam Duncan, this album’s producer, early last month, he talked a little bit about how music fans can *feel* music before they actually *hear* it. That was all a bit flowery and “out there” for a mere layman and pragmatist like me, but I think I partly knew what he was trying to get at. For me, This Place Here conjures up widescreen cinematic imagery the very instant I do hear it, so I suppose that’s close enough. It’s probably just the sax and the wider jazzy feel, but I’m reminded of that scene in Scorcese’s Taxi Driver, where there’s a downpour and a narrative/voiceover describing how the rains arrive to cleanse the streets of all the gunk and grime. All of mankind’s sins are washed away, as if the drenching was all part of some great masterplan (Travis: “someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets”). It’s Seventies New York at twilight, dusky downtown streets, and film noir black and white imagery. Only it isn’t really New York. This Place Here is a trip. It’s an album conceived on the streets of urban Auckland, on Grafton Road, on Queen Street, and on K Road. In the small clubs and jam-bars in the side streets off the main drag. And that voiceover? … it comes in the form of multiple narratives from some of the best hip hop exponents those streets have to offer – from David Dallas to Team Dynamite, Spycc, and others. In more simple terms, the album was a mature, multi-collaborative, and perfectly formed mix of hip hop, RnB, and jazz. With a super-sized “just jamming with mates” feel right at its core. My original review can be found here.

2. The Phoenix Foundation – Give Up Your Dreams

I reckon The Phoenix Foundation might just about be the best band in New Zealand right now. And I'm not saying that just because they're regular neighbourhood guys from just down the road; the band's output across more than a decade speaks for itself, and album number six, Give Up Your Dreams, is arguably the best work yet. With its capacity for musical surprises and a more than generous sprinkling of lyrical brilliance, it certainly appeals as the band's most consistent full-length effort. From the psych-rock of opener 'Mountain' to the electro-pop textures and harmonies of closer 'Myth', and everything in between, The Phoenix Foundation effortlessly conjure up a masterclass in state-of-the-art pop on GUYD. While it’s tempting to single out the bouncy hooks of 'Bob Lennon John Dylan', or the title track itself as highpoints, no single track really stands out ahead of the rest, and it’s the sheer variety on offer that ultimately leaves the longest lasting impression. A career high for the band.

1. Of Monsters And Men – Beneath The Skin

I’m not sure whether I should feel guilt pangs for loving Of Monsters And Men as much as I do. But, just quietly, sometimes I do feel that way. I have form for this sort of thing. Back in 2012, the band’s excellent debut, My Head Is An Animal, also featured highly (number 2) on the blog’s end-of-year album wrap. There’s just something so damned irresistible about Of Monsters And Men. Is it still too soon to call them Iceland’s best pop export since Bjork’s imperious Sugarcubes? There’s a strong argument to be made there, it has to be said. If the debut was all about embracing childlike magic and feelgood triggers, and I think it was, then 2015’s Beneath The Skin is a far more adult and grown-up affair. As an album it’s altogether an earthier, more grounded, inward-looking work. But being a little darker lyrically, and unafraid to broach some of life’s more existential questions, just means the band’s music is all the broader in appeal this time out. Thankfully, none of the quirk or charm of previous work was lost in the process of giving this stuff a more introspective or serious hue. For the absence of any doubt, check out ‘Crystals’, ‘Empire’, ‘I of the Storm’, and ‘Wolves Without Teeth’. Guilty pleasures be damned, I can’t wait for album number three already.

Honourable mentions:

The Orb’s Moonbuilding 2703 AD, a four-track epic spanning some 52 minutes, making it rather reminiscent of the now archaic Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld. Without being quite as good as that particular masterpiece.

Leftfield’s Alternative Light Source, which was effectively Neil Barnes and a whole list of collaborators making Leftfield’s first set of new and original material this century. I especially enjoyed the contribution of James Williamson (Sleaford Mods) on the mildly amusing but nonetheless slightly disturbing ‘Head and Shoulders’.

St Germain’s “comeback” work St Germain, a self-titled third album for French producer Ludovic Navarre. While this one was not quite in the same league as its predecessor, Tourist (2000), I thought it was a wonderful exercise in exploring the concept of rhythm, specifically as it relates to Africa and naturally, the blues. Put like that, it might also have been about the meaning of life …

Oxford band Foals released What Went Down mid-year and for a long time it was a stick-on certainty to make this list. But as the year wore on, the more I listened to it, the more bored I became. A decent collection of songs, just lacking one special element … even if I’m not entirely sure what that element was. I preferred 2013’s Holy Fire, but still love Foals, and this one possibly suffered from me becoming overly familiar with it a little too quickly.

Finally, Jamie xx’s In Colour was hailed everywhere else, and while I liked the vast majority of it, the stuff I didn’t like – and I include the big “hit” ‘I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)’ in that – really put me off. When he’s good, he’s great. When he’s not, he’s … well, not. In Colour was, for me, despite all of the bouquets, a patchwork album. But still worthy of an honourable mention.

Biggest disappointment of 2015: The Pop Group’s Citizen Zombie. A 35-year wait. For that? Really? I expected more from Mark Stewart. Because I know what he’s really capable of. But then, that’s easy for me to say. I’m not a once angry young man who has grown old. I’m a once happy (and extremely handsome!) young man who has grown angry.

Was there also a Prince album I could get my knickers knotted over? I think there might have been. It’ll be the one in the recycle bin.

Best reissue: Paul Hardcastle’s 30th anniversary edition of ‘19’. You probably knew that was coming. So many different versions, so many of them truly epic. Seemingly more relevant today than it was back in 1985.

Best live album: The abbreviated version of Live at Carnegie Hall from Ryan Adams (not the sprawling three-album set), which set me up nicely for seeing Adams live at Wellington’s Opera House in July. It was my first time seeing him and he was truly impressive.

Best gig: I’m tempted to say Ryan Adams, but Fleetwood Mac in Auckland was pretty special. The swirling wind and monsoon conditions made it difficult at times, but boy oh boy did it up the drama quotient tenfold. I’ll never forget Stevie Nicks taking ‘Gold Dust Woman’ somewhere very special indeed, just as the heavens opened one last time. It was a thoroughly mental but very memorable 24-hour blast getting up there and back.

Just quickly, another thing on Fleetwood Mac: I couldn’t include the three-disc Rumours deluxe box in the best reissues because it was released as far back as 2013. But it was new to me this year and quite special in its own right. Aside from the additional disc of alternative takes and demos, there’s live tracks from the band’s 1977 World tour – which somehow seemed especially poignant and timely.

So that more or less wraps things up, and puts 2015 where it belongs – in a big fuck-off box. And ties the bow. I’m reaching up and placing it on the shelf beside the others right now. Thanks for reading. You had the easy bit. I think.

 

New Year's Eve, SFBH, and all that ...

It’s been a quiet start to 2014 for everythingsgonegreen. I’m sure my reader will have noticed (note: Mum, just pick up the phone). From the highs of the festive period – and one or two extreme lows – right on through to that bastard we know as the mid January return to work, your blogger was hotly pursing that near mythical thing called rest and recreation. It’s apparently something people who live in the real world do at least a couple of times a year. Something normally reserved for “other people”.

I found a variation of it somewhere up in the far-flung north, but as much as I’d like to bore you with tales of wild dolphin trekking offshore in the sun-baked Bay of Plenty, this is a pop culture blog, dammit. Suffice to say the blog has been neglected while your blogger attempted to recover from such wanton pursuit of “rest”.

So before any of that, there was the small matter of a New Year’s Eve gig to attend – a party to say farewell to the iconic Wellington venue San Francisco Bath House, which officially closed its doors in the wee small hours of January 1 2014. I just couldn’t let the passing of the venue go undocumented on everythingsgonegreen – aside from Bar Bodega (old and new versions thereof), I’ve probably spent more post-millennium drinking hours at SFBH than I have at any other establishment. But I try not to think too hard about that, and neither should you (Mum). So I have to say my piece on its closure if only to sate some kind of weird need to do so purely for posterity purposes.

 

I’ve blogged about SFBH before and it seemed appropriate that the subject of that blog, DJ Bill E, was on hand to help give it a proper send off by way of his annual NYE bash ‘Hang The DJ’ – which combines the Eighties aesthetic of ‘Atomic’ with the more (or less) contemporary hue of ‘24 Hour Party People’. And it was equally fitting that the Phoenix Foundation, another iconic Wellington staple, opened proceedings … a band with plenty of “previous” at the venue.

I know New Year is a special night on the party calendar, but the first thing that struck me was just how crowded the venue was on the night. I’ve been to a lot of ‘Atomic’ nights up there over the years (less so the past two years), plus a fair few ‘24 Hour Party People’ nights, and plenty of other gigs as well, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it so busy up there. There’s no doubt the band brought its own following, and there were a lot of old faces I hadn’t seen for a while. It all made for a pretty special gig.

The Phoenix Foundation kicked things off early on, before 10pm. There were a few songs I couldn’t quite place in my vodka-induced haze, but the core of the set – the likes of ‘Walking In The Rain’, ‘Buffalo’, and ‘Sideways Glance’ – was well worth the price of admission alone. The band’s take on ‘Walking In The Rain’ is one of the most twisted Grace Jones live cover versions going, and the weird processed vocals give it a sleazier, even more decadent feel than that of the original … if that’s actually possible.

The brand new song, ‘Bob Lennon John Dylan’ was another attention grabber, before the set concluded amid a crescendo of squally guitar and other psychedelic nonsense, the band building to its all-hands-to-the-pump wig-out best on the closing couple of “songs”, most notably Fandango’s monster jam, ‘Friendly Society’.

A typically loose and infectious Phoenix Foundation set was the perfect way for SFBH to rock out on its final night, and a great way to see off another calendar year.

From there DJ Bill E and his ‘Hang The DJ’ time machine took us all the way into 2014 and beyond. I thought our man called it pretty shrewdly early on in his set, dropping a couple of Kiwi music classics with The Clean’s ‘Anything Could Happen’ and Coconut Rough’s irrepressible ‘Sierra Leone’ to help generate a second wind amongst the strong local muso contingent and older sections of the spillover crowd still dazed from the band’s onslaught.

 

The DJ remained meticulous in his selections well into the wee smalls, and the dancefloor was packed to overflowing for much of the night … or at the very least until sometime after 1.30am when your blogger and his dance partner said goodbye to a special venue one last time. Our cross-town post-gig scout around revealed a paucity of anything remotely close to the vibe of SFBH, as it so often has in the past, and Wellington nightlife will be very much poorer for its absence.  

One story I’ve heard is that a refurbished premises will return as a “jazz bar”, whatever that actually means, but I can’t account for the veracity of its source. That particular Cuba Street site has a long and illustrious history (read dubious) … it had links with the capital’s red light scene – various incarnations and uses – for many years in the Seventies through to the mid-Eighties. I first encountered the premises as a cave-like club around 1989, early 1990, as a venue known as The Sub Club, a short-lived yet hugely popular Thursday - or was it Sunday? - night scene catering to the first waves of Techno and Acid House. From there it underwent various states of refurbishment, re-emerging as a player on the live circuit in the Nineties as Indigo, before eventually evolving into SFBH roughly a decade ago.

In another development, it turns out that a second iconic Cuba Street venue is set to close, this coming May, with the owners of Mighty Mighty this week announcing that the bar has also run its course. The “four month closing party” commenced in earnest on Friday night (just gone) with a three-pronged gig featuring “bigger-in-Portland” local darkwave duo Black City Lights. I was lucky enough to make it down to Mighty Mighty for that – so I’ll do a quick review of that set for everythingsgonegreen at some point in the next week or so.