“Not So Sweet” by Pearly*

August 25, 2025 //
0
Image

Been a while, sorry. It’s not like there’s been an absence of great new music. Just an absence of motivation to go through the process here to share it. Hard to concentrate on something as escapist as unpopular music when NZ and the rest of the world is going to hell in a handcart and George Orwell quotes from 1984 are not so much prophetic warnings as simply grim reportage on current events.

However as many of the handful of posts earlier this year were lamenting how much great NZ guitar pop was being made by Australian bands instead of NZ bands at the moment it’s only fair to bring to your attention something from Dunedin that is defiantly NZ guitar pop in the best (often-maligned locally) traditions of jangling earworm East-by-folk sentient guitar pop. “Not So Sweet” by Pearly* is instant-classic-memorable from the first play and gets further under the skin with every repeat play.

Pearly* are Joel Field (guitar, vocals), Phaedra Love (bass, vocals), Ryan Hill (guitar) and Josh Nicholls (drums). Their debut EP was an accomplished mix of well-constructed noisy pop songs in the style of the noisier side of Dunedin music in recent years (as represented by the likes of Bad Sav, Space Bats, Attack! Asta Rangu, Koizilla, Bathysphere, Dale Kerrigan et al.) and the first two tracks shared ahead of the imminent release of their first album at the end of August display a similar combination of the more delicate with more amplified distorted guitar noise (check out first album single “Superglue” as well).

The album “Not So Sweet” is out on 29 August on Flying Nun Records and it’s available on standard black FNR vinyl and flouro green vinyl (a limited band edition I think). Get in quick.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Dunedin Pop Underground

“Astrological Chart” by Sophie Burbery

May 17, 2025 //
0
Image

Following on from yesterday’s disco fever – or feverish disco – from Australian synth-pop experimentalists Blueprints, here’s “Astrological Chart” from a brand-new EP “Antithesynth” from Auckland New Zealand synth-pop experimentalist Sophie Burbery (Little Bark).

“Astrological Chart” is the only of the 5 tracks to have vocals and a beat. It’s more cold-wave synth-pop than disco, but does have a nice kind of dark-disco down-beat mood, and some luscious synth tones. The EP utilises the signal pathways, oscillators, and modulation systems of old Korg MS-20 and Roland System 700 synthesizers.

The other tracks on “Antithesynth” are more minimalist and pleasingly architectural in their composition and sonic form, like the kind of strangely cool soundtracks those obscure 1960s-1970s Czechoslovakian animated art films had. Or that my memory wants to believe they had, because maybe they didn’t use modular synths at all.

Tags , , , ,
Categories New Zealand Music Month, New Zealand Pop Underground

“Artichoke” by Blueprints

May 16, 2025 //
0
Image

More new music from Australia. Kinda sucks how much great new music from Australia I’m still finding. I’d rather find it in NZ and I’m sure I will, but in the meantime Melbourne synth-pop outfit Blueprints have shimmied into earshot and piqued my curiosity, and now my fandom. “Artichoke” opens a 3 song 7″ EP released in February.

The first two tracks “Artichoke” and “Bibbulmun” are bangin’ hard disco dance grooves distressed by subtle sonic weirdness and woven through with the beguiling vocals of Mia Schoen which break all the disco/ dance music rules by sounding more Gilli Smyth did in early Gong albums than your standard mainstream disco diva. All mixed together it sounds much closer to the subversive dance sounds of Vanessa Worm than to Kylie Minogue and it really is a lot of feel-good guilt-free fun. Blueprints show that disco and dance music can be the domain of the DIY, lo-fi, experimental underground and alt-pop/ art-pop scene as much as jangling scratchy guitar-pop is.

Blueprints are Mia Schoen (Sleepy Township, Huon, Possum Moods, and Powerful Owl) and Marc Regueiro-McKelvie (Popolice, Teeth & Tongue). They were previously together in pop-tastic underground superstars New Estate. Another Australian band to explore now… sigh.

Tags , , , , , , , ,
Categories International Pop Underground

“Had To Be You” by The Moles

May 15, 2025 //
0
Image

Last year PopLib mused on the Australianisation of NZ jangle pop and how you were more likely to hear “The Dunedin Sound” now from bands from Melbourne/ Brisbane/ Sydney etc. So of course there’s an Australian outfit including a couple of stellar covers of songs by The Bats (both from their “Daddys Highway” album) on their new album “Composition Book”, which kind of sounds a bit like an Aussie kindred spirit to Yo La Tengo’s legendary “Fakebook” album. Here’s “Had To Be You”

The Moles formed in Sydney in the late 80s by Glenn Fredericks, Richard Davies, Warren Armstrong and Carl Zadro, friends who were fans of Flying Nun, The Fall, Go-Betweens and Laughing Clowns/Ed Kuepper. They dabbled with punk experimentality and reinvented themselves in various styles as they moved from Sydney to New York to London and back until the original line-up split in 1994.

Anyone into ramshackle rough-hewn DIY jangling guitar-pop weirdness will love this. As well as the NZ influence the album reminds me at times of the Go-Betweens and Epic Soundtracks and all the (alt-underground) good stuff from the past 4 decades.

I’ll take Bob’s ‘like’ on my Facebook post as his approval of this version:

Image
Tags , , ,
Categories International Pop Underground, Pop Lib

“Ornithology” by Koizilla

April 29, 2025 //
0
Image

While PopLib was on extended recess Otepoti/ Dunedin psych-proggers Koizilla blasted out another WTF album called “SICK”. It is indeed ‘sick’, a deep and noisy dive into their complex musical labyrinth. Here’s the opening track “Ornithology”:

Koizilla are Zac Nicholls (guitar and vocals), Hilary Faul (flute, vocals, keyboards, percussion), Connor Blackie (bass, vocals) and Josh Nicholls (drums). The band have always seemed to have some accidental early 1970s German psych-prog sound in their skillfully executed blend of melodic riff-rock and prog-rock precision, with keyboard and flute. The first time I saw the Nicholls brothers playing in a band about 15 years ago when they were still at high school guitarist Zac reminded me – in appearance and playing style – of an early 1970s German space rock guitarist, and brother Josh also fitted the archetypal manic psychedelic space-rock drummer.

Koizilla’s version of prog-rock is not some joyless mechanical musical theory precision mathematics that prog-rock forms can sometimes amount to. It’s wild, at times a bit unhinged, playful, and unpredictable. “Ornithology” is one strange and wonderful bird indeed – a bit like early Bowie, Amon Duul II, Gong and The Able Tasmans combined in a musical blender.

Tags , , , ,
Categories Dunedin Pop Underground, Pop Lib

“2 b2b” by Vanessa Worm

April 27, 2025 //
0
Image

From the perfectly-named 2025 digital release “clearly looking to make an extra dollar” by Vanessa Worm here for your ears, your mind, and your body, is the persistently danceable “2 b2b”, which is, in the artists words, “a song i’ve played live heaps but never put out to the world”.

Vanessa Worm is the performing name of producer, performer, and occasional DJ Tessa Forde, emerging from the Dunedin underground electronic/ experimental scene that developed in the now defunct None Gallery performance space. A move to Melbourne and EP releases on Glasgow’s Optimo dance label were followed by an excellent hard to categorise first album “Vanessa 77” in 2020. Back in NZ and based in Auckland still I think, Worm followed up “Vanessa 77” with the just as compelling self-released album “Mosaics” in 2023. The other song on this release is a cool different version of “Lost Memories” from “Mosaics”.

The Vanessa Worm sound could be called “electronic” or “dance” or “minimal techno” or “industrial” or “experimental”, or all of the above. Its willful oddness at times means it rarely fits easily in any one music category or genre. After the guitar intro “2 b2b” is a comparatively regular pneumatic techno (in it’s own Worm-tastic way) with repeated vocal of the title. It’s a dancefloor banger – no wonder it’s a song played live heaps.

Tags , , , , ,
Categories Pop Lib

“Drift” by Drum & Lace + Jeff Parker

April 26, 2025 //
0
Image

Very random keystrokes on the path to find something else (which turned out to be less than the sum of its parts) resulted in finding this gem “Drift” from Drum & Lace + Jeff Parker from a 2021 compilation from LA radio station dublab. I had no idea who Drum & Lace was (Sofia degli Alessandri-Hultquist, a Florence-raised, London-based musician), but Jeff Parker was familiar as guitarist from Tortoise and Isotope 217.

If you want to disappear down the Jeff Parker rabbit hole and sample something at the jazz end of his considerable talents “The Way Out Of Easy” – a double album of 4 longform experimental jazz live tracks by the Jeff Parker ETA IVtet (ETA is the venue, and it’s a quartet, alright?) – is worth bookmarking/ downloading. Or try his boundary-stretching 2016 album “The New Breed” for something different.

Tags , , , ,
Categories experimental music, Pop Lib

“Garden” by Maria Somerville

April 25, 2025 //
0
Image

It’s been six years since Maria Somerville’s self-released first album “All My People” but there’s now a second, “Luster” out today (on 4AD). If you enjoyed that first album (if you’ve heard/ heard of that first album) you will know what to expect. Or at least, you will expect what you know. However “Luster” in places is much more expansive and percussive than it’s predecessor, without losing any of the sonic blurring. Anyway, here’s the quietly MBV-esque (!) “Garden” for your ears:

While “All My People” was created in Dublin, inspired by memories of her home in Connemara, County Galway, in the West of Ireland, “Luster” was created after returning to a house near where she was raised, overlooking one of the country’s largest lakes, Lough Corrib. The music is haunted by the same landscape but in a different way this time.

Here’s what PopLib had to say about the first album 6 years ago. Playing that album today it’s still how I feel about it now. Playing “Luster” for the first time, while it is a different album, these words still seem to fit it as well:

“If this is dream-pop it comes from the deepest dream-state sleep. “All Too Much” sounds like some early ambient work of Eno has been beamed into a cathedral via a shortwave radio drifting on and off station while Somerville sings quietly in the middle of the hall. There are things you imagine you can hear in the mix that may not actually there; audio illusions, like watermarks, or ghostly stains seeping through from a parallel world, smudged hallucinations, warped through time and space.

It’s a magical piece of work and everything on “All My People” possesses a subtle kind of sonic magic. I was reminded at different times of the spirit of Cocteau Twins, Grouper, El Perro Del Mar, and HTRK (sometimes all in the same song). The infinite reverb layers and strange noises washing around in the mix often providing disorienting anomalies, like the kind of things you may imagine half-remembering hearing while drifting off to sleep watching an unsettling a dream-sequence from a David Lynch film. Wonderful.”

Tags , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories International Pop Underground, Pop Lib

“Resident Reptiles” by The Pink Fairies

April 24, 2025 //
0
Image

Time for some pre-punk history. Before there was punk and then post-punk there was PRE-PUNK! Prior to 1976 there were hairy leather-jacket-wearing social deviants playing obnoxiously raucous guitar rock on both sides of the Atlantic who played a part in setting the stage for punk. Some refer to these bands a proto-punk. The US had The Stooges and MC5 and the UK had (amongst others) The Pink Fairies (and before them The Deviants). Were they hippies? Technically, kind of, maybe. They weren’t really heavy metal, but were hard rock, with a psychedelic edge. But full of counter-culture underground anti-establishment attitude. Even Luke Haines says they were “punk as fuck”.

One of the founders of The Pink Fairies was a Canadian called Paul Rudolph who moved to London and joined Mick Farren’s band The Deviants before forming The Pink Fairies with fellow Deviants Russell Hunter and Duncan Sanderson along with drummer Twink. His explanation of The Pink Fairies vision? “To play, have fun, support the community, do free gigs, engage in a bit of civil disobedience.” After two albums with The Pink Fairies he joined Hawkwind as replacement for Lemmy.

Rudolph also appeared as a session musician on four classic Eno albums between 1974 and 1977. Making his story even better is there’s a bicycle/ cycling connection. During his time as musician in the UK he also became a cycling enthusiast and bike builder. In the 1980s he returned to Vancouver, Canada and ran cycle stores. Here he is in the Victoria BC news in 2019 “Rudolph, who manages Fairfield Bicycles, said he’s never had a car and always commutes via bicycle.” Good man, still full of counter-culture underground anti-establishment attitude in his 70s.

The Pink Fairies (in name and spirit) reconvened for an album “Resident Reptiles” released in 2018. Led by Rudolph this line-up included former Hawkwind bassist Alan Davey and original Motörhead drummer Lucas Fox. Another former Pink Fairies member, Larry Wallis, contributed creative ideas to the album and wrote one of the tracks. Here’s the title track which certainly captures absolutely everything about early 1970s Pink Fairies.

Image
Tags , , , , , , , , ,
Categories International Pop Underground

“Easy Window” by The Green Child

April 23, 2025 //
0
Image

On a post-punk tangent still (and why not?) I was curious to see what Australian post-punk favourites Rocky (formerly XR) were up to since I bought and binged on their eponymous debut (released again in 2023 on LP with two extra tracks). Rocky are up to nothing from what I can see. But the related ensemble The Green Child – Raven Mahon from Rocky with the ubiquitous Mikey Young of Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Total Control – has been busy. Their third album “Look Familiar” was released last year (LP sold out* sadly). Hard to pick just one track to give you an idea, but here’s “Easy Window”:

The Green Child has developed the weird low-key synth-alt-pop ideas of their first album into something quite grand and, in places, sounding related to Rocky in its post-punk angles and non-conformist arrangements. As well as the Rocky-sounding post-punk pop there are moments that bring to mind (alternative) Glam (“Year of Books” has a kind of Eno-era Roxy Music or “Here Come the Warm Jets” feel) and the fringes of 80’s synth pop and also the kind of hyper-saturated psych-pop of Melody’s Echo Chamber. The addition of two more members has expanded the sound into something more expansive and adventurous than the first album’s home-made DIY sound. Gimmiezine has a long and interesting interview with Mahon and Young. Words and music definitely worth exploring further and adding to your New Favourite Band list for 2025.

[* Looks like the LP may still be available in some Australian retail record stores. Repressed Records in Newtown, suburban Sydney (which I visited once many years ago) have an easy-to-use mailorder shop with the album in stock. ]

Tags , , , , , ,
Categories International Pop Underground, Pop Lib
« Older Entries
Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started