Been hearing a lot of buzz out of New Zealand lately, so I wanted to check out an early release from one of the original New Zealand bands. Might as well start at the beginning if you're gonna go on a kick.
This sounds sort of derivative until you realize that it came out in 1981. It sounds vaguely Kinks inspired, but it also has a Pavement/GBV/Smiths thing going, while predating all those bands. Heck, this came out the same year as Radio Free Europe, putting these guys at the very forefront of a sound that was just burbling up. Its funny what difference timing makes.
[Edit: apparently Pavement cited them as an inspiration. Well there you go.]
As for the actual music, its pretty good, vaguely garagey, fairly hooky, brisk pop-tinged rock, with an abundance of jangly acoustic guitars. It's strangely charming, just off-kilter and lo-fi enough, with just enough structural turns to keep things interesting. The longer, Krautrockey closer kind of comes out of nowhere, but is enjoyable enough. I'm curious as heck to see what these guys did next 3.5/5
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment