“Best Friend” by The Bellamys

“I wanna be your best friend” promise The Bellamys in this track from their brand new 4 song EP, but it almost feels more like a sinister threat than an infatuated admission.

The label – Cardiff’s fine Odd Box Records – says “for fans of The Pastels, Talulah Gosh, and Slayer”, and I totally get all those. The beat and persistent hypnotic drone in particular evokes the spirit of The Pastels’ “Truck, Train, Tractor” single.

The most immediately striking thing about this brilliant song is the guitar tone, which is not the heavy metal of Slayer but just as brutal and could best be described as aluminium foil. Strummed aluminium foil. With an electric current run through the foil and the person strumming it. What a sound!

When the vocals kick in the drone-like qualities forming the song take on something of a psychedelic Eastern mantra. It’s fantastic.

The tinny but electrifying frenetic strum, synth drone (I’m guessing), the pounding drums. It’s all very post-punk and mixes the ephemeral with tension.

Very keen to hear the rest of this EP from The Bellamys.

Only 50 cassettes. Half gone already. Don’t sleep on it if this is your thing.

“Underground” by Emily Edrosa

It’s the final day of PopLib’s May Month of Madness Marathon for NZ Music Month 2015 and Sunday is the perfect day for Emily Edrosa’s “Underground” as the song mentions Sunday mornings in the lyrics.

Listen carefully to the lyrics. ALL OF THEM.

Emily – who is perhaps better know as Emily Littler; guitarist, vocalist, songwriter for Auckland grunge-punk trio Street Chant – can write a savagely intelligent snarly lyric injected with bile like the best of them. It’s poetry to these ears. And the music is, well, music to these ears, obviously. Hopefully to yours too.

PopLib mentioned “Underground” last October as being a live favourite. If you are in Dunedin and want to experience it live, Emily is back playing in Dunedin this coming week at a Radio One 91 Club Presents event on Thursday June 4th along with some other PopLib favourites; Birdation and Embedded Figures.

As with every year I do these crazy daily posts for NZ Music Month I almost immediately regret undertaking the challenge. Not because there is no shortage of great local music I think people should hear. It’s the need to write something intelligent about each one to help convince anyone reading these posts to play the song and check out the links etc. which is the chore. Some posts write themselves though…

The idea around the May posts is that May has been decreed “New Zealand Music Month” by various music agencies in NZ. No-one involved in ground-level (or underground-level) New Zealand Music Month really knows why the month exists or cares much any more. But, rather than be a default-curmudgeon, shaking my fist at clouds like Grandpa Simpson, it’s an opportunity to go discover stuff. This year it has helped ne to find many new releases and bands/ musicians I didn’t know about previously. And I’ve discovered a fantastic Wellington label – Sonorous Circle.

It’s always interesting to see what posts are popular and in what parts of the world. Perhaps unsurprisingly the most popular of the posts (so far) was for the Sam Hunt with David Kilgour & The Heavy Eights post for their excellent album of poetry & psychedelic rock called “The 9th” which was featured here on the 9th of May. But there are also strong showing for new discoveries like Jim Nothing’s “Raleigh Arena” which was picked up and shared by some overseas music websites. That’s the kind of thing that helps make doing this month worthwhile each year.

“Awful & Awesome” by Pumice

Day 27 of the May Month of Madness Marathon for NZ Music Month is the accurately-titled “Awful & Awesome” from Pumice.

“Awful & Awesome” is from a collection of songs from a couple of releases dating from 2006. “Recorded September 2006 on Chris Moons 4 track during an Artists Residency at AS220, Providence, RI, USA” is what it says on the Stabbiesetc. Bandcamp. It IS awesome, in that lo-fi fuzzy damaged DIY way Pumice’s Stefan Neville has made his trademark. The ‘awfulness’ becomes just another part of what we might euphemistically call “character” here.

Pumice is an acquired taste. If you are used to your music being like a fine wine, or maybe the half-decent cider of indie-pop, or even the Scrumpy of DIY-recorded music, then Pumice will come across a bit like the organic cider vinegar of music (the cloudy unfiltered, unpasteurized stuff with the floaty bits in it). You know it’s good for you in small doses, but most of us just can’t take a lot of it.

Anyway, that’s all just a roundabout back-handed way of telling you there is a huge treasure trove of Pumice obscurities (and other related lo-fi artists) reaching back into last century, all assembled on Stabbiesetc. bandcamp. There’s also a Stabbiesetc. website.

For those who lament the demise of great Scottish underground/ experimental music store Volcanic Tongue, then Stabbiesetc. might provide some of your unfiltered yeasty fermented music fix.