Indie kiwi pop and other sweet sounds

This is the start of a wee series I'm going to do on kiwi music; at least, the kiwi music I enjoy. New Zealand has a fantastic music scene, encompassing a ton of genres, and which punches well above its weight in terms of international presence and diversity.

I think there are two main reasons for this. New Zealanders are accustomed to travelling overseas at the drop of a hat. "The big OE" - overseas experience - is a staple for middle-class kiwis, and is much more culturally significant than the UK equivalent of the "gap year". Kiwis tend to stay overseas a lot longer, while still often keeping their intention of returning home, or at least while maintaining significant ties at home. This causes a lot of cross-fertilisation in the musical sense.

The other reason that NZ has a strong indie music scene is due to the strong campus radio network (now called the b.net), which is not just a preserve of student listeners. While the majority of over-20 kiwis probably don't listen to stations like bFM or RadioActive most of the time, they undoubtedly have done so at some point, and large numbers keep listening in their 30s and beyond, especially the speciality shows (for example, bFM had 5.1% of Auckland listeners aged 18-34 in a recent survey). Their tireless promotion of kiwi music has kept it going through some significant doldrums. These days, all radio stations have a mandate to play 13% NZ music, and the fact they have such a big pool to draw on is due in large part to student radio.

This post is going to start you off nicely with some kiwi pop music. There's always been a strong "indie" flavour to kiwi pop, even before the term was invented. Everyone goes flatting in NZ, student or otherwise, and these songs to me are the soundtrack of flats full of zillions of flatmates and their hangers-on. Most of what I have here is 80s pop, since that was what I listened to when I was a teenager. We're going in rough chronological order as well.

Blam Blam Blam were one of my favourite bands in the early 80s, which was the time I was really starting to get interested in music. They were political, and did some good tunes. The lead singer, Don McGlashan, is one of those multi-talented guys who continues to pop up everywhere. There Is No Depression in New Zealand is the soundtrack of the Springbok Rugby Tour of NZ in '81. At the time, South Africa was deep in the depths of apartheid, and there were plenty who felt that their rugby teams should be under just as much of an embargo as their economy supposedly was. The National prime minister of the time invited the Springboks to play a series of rugby tests, and the resulting demonstrations split NZ very evenly in two. It was the first time that normal NZers got exposed to the joys of riot police - everyone very quickly got a lot less politically naive. This track also shows up another cool aspect of certain kiwi pop - a nice sense of irony: There is no depression in New Zealand / There are no sheep on our farms. There are tracks of Blam Blam Blam's I like better musically, but this one says a lot.

The Chills is the band who best epitomises "The Flying Nun Sound" to me. Flying Nun is an extremely influential record label in NZ, and again kept NZ music going through the doldrums of the 80s. While a lot of their acts were repetitive and sang dirge-like lyrics (I'm not a fan of the Dylan/Waits school of groaningsinging) with boring jingle-jangle guitar accompaniment, The Chills (who recorded another EP a couple of years ago) were one of their success stories, and produced some excellent music.  Other bands that I particularly liked on this label were The Abel Tasmans and The Verlaines. While Heavenly Pop Song is probably my favourite track of The Chills, Pink Frost really is their best track, in a pleasantly creepy way. Most of NZ film has just that atmosphere too, except I really prefer listening to that kind of thing to watching it. On YouTube, you can see the boys do that quintessential singalong track, I Love My Leather Jacket, filmed while they were doing their OE in London.

Just to show that not all kiwis like to write depressing numbers, The Swingers, featuring Blam Blam Blam's ex-drummer, have their shiny happy rockabilly-style track Counting the Beat. I defy you not to go la da de da in the choruses. It's a shame that The Swingers broke up just as that track hit No. 1 on the charts (and stayed there for weeks). It would have been good hearing more from them.

We can't be shiny happy people all the time, so of course Split Enz's homage to eeemmmooooo, I Hope I Never, was pretty much mandatory listening for a teenager in the 80s. I still have True Colours, their best album, on vinyl somewhere (hopefully at my mother's), and I nearly wore the grooves out on it. I've always preferred Tim to Neil Finn, although his output is way more uneven. His voice is better for a start. We won't mention the fact I had a massive crush on him when I was about 14. Also, getting back to the song, I like the piano part.

Now, I need to be honest and admit that I wasn't listening to groovy indie stuff all the time, and in fact, I liked some out-and-out schmaltz. I have no idea why I love Sharon O'Neill's Asian Paradise so much. I mean, cheesy lyrics, anodyne backing vocal, very 80s arrangement complete with trite guitar solo, the works. But I do love it, still, and I really don't mind (too much) if you laugh your heads off at me. :-)

While we're on the topic of cute love songs - and we're finally into the 90s - Chris Knox is another one of these kiwi musicians who have been around forever. He was part of a post-punk outfit called The Tall Dwarves - not my favourite music - and has done a whole pile of stuff in various other guises, which has all been recorded by Flying Nun. He's also a great cartoonist, and I tend to like his art more than his music or voice, which tends to the whiney. Not Given Lightly is his best-selling track ever, and is apparently the most-requested song at weddings in NZ. It certainly makes an excellent change from a lot of the saccharine stuff served up on those occasions. And they're sentiments I can certainly relate to: What can I say? / The words destroy all meaning / They're only cliches / To get across this feeling / But it's you that I love.... Awww. He lives in a cool house in Grey Lynn, Auckland, and I covet the sculptures he has littering his front lawn. "Littering" being an apt word for their placement.

Finally, The Mutton Birds, featuring the ubiquitous Don McGlashan, have done a remake of the best kiwi song ever, Nature. The original was a truly dippy hippy song by a band called Formulya, but the Mutton Birds' arrangement has a lot more grunt. You'll also find a lot of contemporary kiwi stuff makes reference to the joys of nature, and given what we grow up with, it's no wonder really. There will be more of that in some posts to follow, especially with the electronic music.

By the way, muttonbirds are a type of sea bird traditionally harvested by Māori once a year, and preserved in kelp tubes in their own fat. A mark of how much Māori culture is further pervading yer kiwi joker's life now is the fact that you can often buy muttonbirds in Auckland fish shops, especially in the more ethnic areas. They're disgustingly greasy, but bloody yum. The traditional Māori answer to KFC, heh.