Category: Music
Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox
Scott Bradlee’s Post-modern Jukebox: The Opera House, 18 October I’ve been a big fan of Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox for years. Their soulful jazz/swing covers of pop hits is just the right way to help me know what’s popular with the kids these days, but without having to actually listen to them in their modern renditions. I missed their show last year and I was gutted, but then this year I saw they were coming back! And there was no way I was missing them again. I even flew down from Auckland where I’d been working just so I could make the show. My date and I arrived a few…
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Slow Listener
ANIMA – Thom Yorke Like just about everyone I went kind of mad on Radiohead in the mid-1990s. There was something angry, anxious and acutely pained in their music. They were also articulate, smart and still somehow proper fuck off rock n’ roll. This hard to find acoustic version of Creep from the Itch EP sums up their unhyped humanity screaming umbrage into the void as a way of getting by. It remains visceral and sits alongside a long lost acoustic version of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here in my personal canon of strong, honest, and deeply affecting songs. My Radiohead sweet spot spanned 2 exciting years of music…
Read More![“my pleasure in other people’s leisure” -Spud [Trainspotting]](https://ruminator.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Screen-Shot-2019-08-19-at-9.37.01-PM.png)
“my pleasure in other people’s leisure” -Spud [Trainspotting]
It’s the middle of winter. We’ve got a broken stormwater pipe somewhere under the berm which means that slowly, indefatigably our driveway is being eaten by errant water. The weed lawn is long over sodden earth where stands our hillside house, and I somehow have a cold, clear afternoon to sort all this out. The thing about getting a little older is that these become times of liberation and meditation where the job becomes automatic and your mind off its leash slow dances the cosmos as the dirt lifts and the grass dies. Enter Leisure. Their latest is hypnotic, ritualistic and it relies on groove-led repetition to keep it’s steam…
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I’m not religious but thank god for Madonna
I listened with intent maybe 4-5 times and except for Dark Ballet (more of which below) really couldn’t find context so in an attempt to get an angle I began with 1983’s Lucky Star and made it all the way to Erotica’s Secret Garden before I had to leave the club. I learned then that I really enjoy Madonna’s vulnerable moments of Papa don’t Preach & Love Don’t Live Here Anymore, but really don’t have any connection with her dominance of the dance floor. It was around then that Madame X really whispered to me for the first time. 1. 2. Cha cha cha. This liquid fantasy opens the bottle…
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Breathe Long
Beastwars IV Album Launch, San Fran, Wellington 5 July 2019 We arrived late and just caught the end of End Boss. The diverse, good natured crowd was loving it and then awesome ockers Witchskull sent them over with a sound and presence that belied the size of the venue, and as Witchskull triumphantly left the stage the abstract LED backdrop lit up to reveal the headliner’s harbinger: IV. Beastwars’ biggest hit Damn the Sky was a dynamic and driven way to smash open a show and would’ve also been an obvious encore. For such hard sounding music, Storms on Mars is desperately vulnerable, honest and raw. I’m a dad to…
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Nothing Without Intention
When I Get Home by Solange As a middle-aged pakeha male from the bottom of the world I can really safely state that i’m not the audience for this, but also I’ve had such a time with it that I want to tell you all about it.
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