A Million Pleading Faces

  RECORD REVIEW : Ringlets , New Life (2024)     i tell ya, i’ve got the Ringlets fever. i’m fucking mad for Ringlets . i can’t get enough. if i had to pick a favourite (formed in the last five years) new zealand band it’d be Ringlets all the way. the interview i did with them earlier this year is one of the funniest things i’ve ever published. i love them too much and i wish they’d make some t-shirts already. when i heard they were putting out a new single i preordered it as soon as it was available. i told myself i wasn’t gonna listen to it till i had the 7” because i’m some kind of hipster scum but, annoyingly, someone fucked up and my copy got delayed (i was promised it would show up around friday the 7th) and it only manifested days after i made plans to leave wellington for a week † (wednesday the 12th). so my copy is currenting sitting in the flying nun store in wellington, a 3 hour drive away from where i’m typing from.  the A side of the new single is pre...

  LIVE REVIEW: Silicone Tongue, Jilter off Kilter. 5/06/24, San Fran (eyegum wednesday), Wellington.   after some time experimenting with being a shut-in (can't recommend it enough), i once again must brave the outside world to heed the siren song emanating from the mecca of 7 dollar beer and sticky hardwood floors. it's been a while since i've reviewed an Eyegum Wednesday, and i picked a really great one to come back on. i'd go as far as to call it a pretty historic moment. a rare night when everything was extremely perfect and nothing was bad. if i was stabbed to death at this show the worst i could give it would be a 4/5. it's easy to come down on Eyegum Wednesdays, for being studenty, for the mediocre bands, and for being pretty empty most of the time until the nursing students start to filter in when the DJ comes on, but this week it was very close to being a perfect night. i was genuinely shocked by Silicone Tongue . i'd like to think of myself as being o...

RECORD REVIEW : Carb on Carb , Take Time (2024) if i, randomly, compiled a list of who i thought were the ten nicest people in the new zealand music scene (i have done this) and released it (i will not do this), i’m assuming most of you wouldn’t be surprised by Carb on Carb taking a pretty high spot. that’s ten nicest, not friendliest, not most likely to let me into gigs for free, i’m talking about selfless, genuine, human niceness. i’m yet to meet actually anyone who has anything seriously awful to say about the emo-indie two piece, which is something i can’t say for most of you.  besides, you know, helping found Girl’s Rock/To the Front , one of the few actually worthy music organisations, and running the record label (Papaiti) which is single handedly preserving the entire history of manawatu-whanganui emo music (i’m serious. we had, like, a whole scene and everything. we from the west coast did midwest emo in new zealand long before you did. it’s rare for me to say nice things...

LIVE REVIEW: Chlorine w/ B.O.G, Mudgoose. 17/05/24, Valhalla, Wellington.   i must admit, i have my own problems with valhalla as a venue. i hate vaping, i hate hoodies with writing on the arms, i hate dudes who wear shorts and i hate hardcore, still, i must concede that they have one of the best sounding stages in all of wellington, plus cheap drinks and a nice vibe, so when they put on bands that aren’t usual crapola metal garbage, i like to be there. i mostly went to catch Mudgoose , to be fair, and because i knew some of my friends would be around, but i was open to new things. informants told me that headliners Chlorine are a shoegaze band from some part of auckland that no one else i know is from, and that they’re hitting it big on spotify thanks to some careful playlist promotion. cool, whatever. i intentionally didn’t listen to any of their music because i wanted to go in raw for this, and i got the sense that hearing them before i head out would discourage me from ever m...

INTERVIEW: Reclusive Noise Popstar Elizabeth Sanctuary Welding School for Girl s spills the bean s on Process and Persona .   i’ve been chasing this person on and off for a few months now, after making a less than spectacular pair of first appearances and a semi-obsession with their first single , we finally met under better terms at a cramped newtown noise show house party (how many people with unwashed op shop clothing and facial piercings does it take to fix a laptop that’s been completely doused with smirnoff? like 3, and the crowd either doesn’t notice it or think it’s part of the act.) and melted the ice with a couple of brewskis. i’ve always said that anyone who’ll wear a computer mouse as a belt is someone worth listening to, and her work, which exists in a league of its own, proves me right as it deservedly rises above the chaff in the noise/lofi/folk/singer-songwriter vector that’s making up most of the new releases for this year so far.  i present to you an intervi...