Category: Reviews
Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox
- Lord Sutch
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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…
Read MoreSlow Listener
- Adam Simpson
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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]
- Adam Simpson
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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…
Read MoreI’m not religious but thank god for Madonna
- Adam Simpson
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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…
Read MoreThe Dunstan Creek Haunting
- The Reviewer
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The Dunstan Creek Haunting is bloody good fun, a piece of immersive theatre, and the perfect antidote to a stressful week, provide your blood pressure is up to it.
Read MoreBreathe Long
- Adam Simpson
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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…
Read MoreNothing Without Intention
- Adam Simpson
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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.
Read MoreComedy Festival: Tim Batt & Disasteradio in Space Couch: A Live Comedy Chat Show
- Lord Sutch
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Tim Batt has been around the New Zealand stand-up comedy scene for well over a decade now. In that time he has perhaps never quite reached the potential that is quite clearly there. Space Couch is perhaps the best format for Tim’s brand of comedy and is a really really good show.
Read MoreComedy Festival: Hamish & Lynette Parkinson in Me ‘n’ Ma
- Lord Sutch
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This show was either going to be hilarious or an utter train wreck. The premise was so fucking bold. Hamish brings his mother, Lynette, on stage and then the two of them sit on a couch and talk shit and drink wine for an hour.
Read MoreComedy Festival: Eli Matthewson in Myth and Legend
- Lord Sutch
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In 2015 I got an email from Eli Matthewson asking if I’d like to come and review his show “Faith”. I get a lot of these requests and I don’t go to every single show, but I try to get to those who pro-actively ask.
Read MoreComedy Festival: David Correos in Better than I was last time
- Lord Sutch
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David Correos is not going to be for everyone. You should know that about his comedy. He is 100% for me, but I love the insanity.
Read MoreComedy Festival: James Acaster in Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999
- Lord Sutch
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When I last reviewed James Acaster in 2016, I said the next time he came to New Zealand he’d be doing a show at the Opera House or somesuch because he was that good that smaller venues couldn’t contain him.
Read MoreComedy Festival: Ivan Aristeguieta in The Fourth Floor
- Lord Sutch
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Ivan Aristeguieta is a Venezuelan currently living in Australia. It’s his first time in Wellington he tells us, but he’s got a strong supporter base of Wellington’s Venezuelan’s community to cheer loudly and laugh along at the bits of the show which don’t quite land – which fortunately are not many at all.
Read MoreReview: Why are we still here?
- The Reviewer
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Review: Why are we still here? Written and presented by Tempest Theatre Company
Read MoreReview: Emily Writes, Rants in the Dark
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Review: Emily Writes, Rants in the Dark Rants in the Dark is a play based on the book, based on the blog by Emily Writes, whose rant in the dark “went viral” overnight, and led to her creating a space on the internet where Mums who occasionally (or regularly) say fuck can find their life experiences reflected and validated.
Read MoreReview: Mrs Krishnan’s Party
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Mrs Krishnan’s Party Director: Justin Lewis Company: Indian Ink Mrs Krishnan’s Party, by Jacob Rajan
Read MoreReview: Medusa at Circa Two
- The Reviewer
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“Some of it I really liked and some of it I thought ‘What the Fuck’!!!”
Read MoreReview: Meremere: a multi-media performance memoir by Rodney Bell
- The Reviewer
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I’m never sure when I’m reviewing a piece how much to find out about it in advance. My approach in general is to let the performers have first dibs on telling me the story and to read as little as possible.
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