Our Day 24 song for 31 Days of May Madness, attempting to post a New Zealand track every day of the month of May, is “The Four Seasons” by Tidal Rave:

“The Four Seasons” is a new song from the Wellington band, released in March this year, and following their first album “Heart Screams” released last year just as the pandemic lockdown commenced in NZ. That album demonstrated Tidal Rave do the dark garage guitar and keyboard thing that New Zealand is world famous for really well.

Anyone into those peculiarly dark and brooding Christchurch bands that were on Flying Nun Records in the 1980s (Pin Group, The Terminals, Max Block, Scorched Earth Policy, and their later post-FNR offspring Dadamah) would have recognised the uneasy listening claustrophobia lurking in Tidal Rave’s music on last year’s album. 

“The Four Seasons” seems a step up in the short disrupted year since the album, and the band here sound less like those NZ antecedents, and more like Vivian Girls with urgent its urgent pulsebeat drumming, three-guitar+keyboard density, those vocal harmonies, and a killer chorus.