“Waves” by Superette

Yesterday’s New Zealand music post was Beastwars imaginative cover of Superette’s “Waves”, so here’s the original track from the band’s (only) album “Tiger”:

It’s such a lovely tune if you don’t listen to the lyrics, which are about a rural murderer contemplating his own death: “Waves, I don’t wanna live today/ Ocean, ocean blue take me away”.

“Tiger” – originally released in 1996 and on Bandcamp as an expanded edition with tracks from their first EP “Rosepig” and demos for an unrecorded second album – is the work of former Jean-Paul Sartre Experience/ JPSE guitarist/ vocalist/ songwriter David Mulcahy, drummer/ vocalist Greta Anderson and bassist Ben Howe.

It’s notable for being one of a small handful of great mid/late 1990s albums by the third or fourth wave of bands released on Flying Nun Records which were/are never accorded quite the same love and attention here and overseas as those 1980s first/ second-wave albums.

As one of three songwriters in JPSE Mulcahy presumably had a full songbook of tunes that were not elevated to album status in that band. So the expanded “Tiger” includes “Rosepig” EP songs “Slide” and “Disappear” originally written for JPSE. Pretty sure I heard “Slide” played live not long before the band split up in 1994 – that chorus kiss-off is hard to forget – while “Disappear” also had a life as a JPSE song, a 1992 demo version included as one of the extra tracks on their “Into You” CD single in 1993.

“Look Alive!” by Jetstream Pony

“Look Alive!” is from “Under The Bridge 2”, a further volume of a compilation reuniting groups and songwriters who had once recorded for cult UK label Sarah Records in the 1990s. Jetstream Pony here link back through vocalist Beth Arzy to the band Aberdeen (from Los Angeles, confusingly) who released two EPs on Sarah Records in 1994.

Jetstream Pony are Beth Arzy, Kerry Boettcher, Shaun Charman, and Hannes Müller. Self-described as post punk and indie-pop but it’s not all the buzz-saw guitars on display here on “Look Alive!” If you check the well-appointed Jetstream Pony Bandcamp site you will find much fine music to explore, with hazy shoegaze guitars and dreampop melodicism represented as well.

“Under the Bridge 2” is a double LP containing 20 new tracks, set for release on 5 April 2024 on Skep Wax Records.  The tracks range from dark chamber pop to shoegaze and indie-pop.  New combinations of familiar names from Sarah Records era bands appear, including The Gentle Spring (a new project by Michael Hiscock of The Field Mice), Vetchinsky Settings (a collaboration between James Hackett of The Orchids and Mark Tranmer of St Christopher), and Mystic Village (which features new songs by Robert Cooksey of The Sea Urchins).

Familiar names are also here – Even As We Speak, The Orchids and Secret Shine – bands whose line-ups have remained mostly unchanged since the 1990s.  While the music on the album is new, and the present and future is more important than the past, the shared history also gives a shared aesthetic and ethos which continues to tap the same vein of independent uplifting pop.

For anyone interested in going to down an Aberdeen (the band) rabbit hole, Aberdeen also appear on the excellent “Three Wishes: Part Time Punks Sessions” album along with 14 Iced Bears, and The June Brides.

“The Beginning of the End” by CL-Bob

When I posted a track by The Circling Suns in December I was trying to remember other wonderful and unusual avant-garde jazz albums created in New Zealand. It’s not a crowded field, but the glorious CL-Bob has now popped into memory again. Here’s “The Beginning of The End” from their excellent 2002 album “Stereoscope”

“Stereoscope” was the band’s second album and the New Zealand Jazz Album of the Year in 2002. They say they were aiming for some kind of Scandinavian groove-based minimalism. Sure, there’s some of that. I also get a lot of sultry Miles Davis “Sketches of Spain” melodic vibes at times and much more besides.

What stands out most is the fearlessness to bypass convention and go wherever their imaginations take them, which is frequently in directions not associated with mainstream modern jazz. That may have something to do with having initially formed in 1994 to play a surrealist party in Wellington. So it makes perfect sense for a tune (eg: “Titicaca”) starting out as the gentlest purest classic modern jazz to descend (or ascend?) into a musical bar brawl, then tip over into an interlude of musique-concrete, before finding it’s way back to the initial melody and mood.

At other times CL-Bob veer into Henry Cow/ Art Bears experimental avant-rock territory, working dissonances, rapid unexpected shifts in dynamics, layers of electronics, slabs of noise into the groove of the music. Even at it’s wildest extremes it’s more fun than fury, and always finds its way back to a melodic and magical heart.  

I think the band at this time was Nils Olsen* (saxophone, clarinet, flute, vocals) drummer Steve Cournane (The Alpaca Brothers), two guitarists Simon Bowden and Chris Williamson, trumpet and keyboard player Toby Laing trumpet, keyboards and bassist Tim Jaray.

[*As a bonus musical connection Nils Olsen plays saxophone on “In Dreams” from The Puddle album “Playboys in the Bush”].

The Corner of the Party by Emily Edrosa

Emily Edrosa by Keva Rands

In the long wait between the first album by Auckland trio Street Chant and the second Street Chant album (which I’m hoping is ‘near’), guitarist/ vocalist Emily Edrosa has been playing solo shows and assembling the self-titled Emily Edrosa EP via DIY recording and cool/ distressed/ inventive samples/ loops/ percussion). It’s great stuff too.

Dragged outside of the power-trio punk snarl assault of Street Chant Emily’s song-writing reveals a dark, bruised introversion expressing itself with wry self-deprecating gallows humour. ‘The Corner of the Party’ confronts, but does so with so much style.

Try another great song from the EP –  ‘Underground’ – a hypnotic standout from Emily’s live solo sets.