THE BETHS
‘Warm Blood’ EP
Nothing was more fun and got me air drumming more this year than the exuberant and irrepressible power-pop found in The Beths’ Warm Blood.
Blasting past in 20 minutes, the five tracks fuse bold and jangling ’90s guitar music with surfy pop-punk hooks and closely harmonised group backing vocals of the ’60s and ’70s.
Opener Whatever is a complete banger, and only gets better after a fizzing guitar solo leads to a climatic chant of "baby, you’re breaking my heart" as the guitars descend. More like "the Best", amiright?
TRUST PUNKS
‘Double Bind’
Auckland-Sydney five-piece Trust Punks casts its ferocious gaze to acidic corroded post-punk in its colossal sophomore album Double Bind. In an album full of art-damaged dirges and angular punishingly dissonant guitar work, vocalists Joseph Thomas and Alexander Grant’s flow of social and political critiques burn like bile as they tear through grim exorcisms on nationalism, suicide, hate crime, depression, the prison industrial complex and neo-colonialism. A brutally angry and inspiring collection of songs.
MERMAIDENS
‘Undergrowth’
Cut as if Sleater-Kinney were pagan-worshipping Goths, Mermaidens’ Undergrowth is eerie and naturalistic, the songs getting lost in flora, enveloped by the darkness of the forest and the unease of the sea.
Reverb-washed twinkly guitars lap against circular all-consuming vocal melodies, which bend and hook like vines entangling your limbs as you crawl through the shrubbery. Haunting and beautiful.
STREET CHANT
‘Hauora’
The second and probably final Street Chant album is perfect guitar-centric offbeat pop music.
Wrestling through suburban ennui, mental health and New Zealand culture with choppy guitars and sneering vocals, Emily Edrosa’s songwriting is urgent and sardonic. The decaying drum rolls of Melbourne will always be a favourite music moment.
ROY MONTGOMERY
‘R M H Q: Headquarters’
R M H Q Headquarters is nearly three hours of experimental guitar music that blurs into one vivid piece of drone folk, an emotive and hypnotic raga of swirling spiral swells and depressive declines. Mood here is almost everything, the Christchurch music-maker deploying various forms of ringing guitar eclecticism for the album’s introspective and contemplative cathartic melancholy. An album for weathering mortality.
New Zealand roundup
1. The Beths Warm Blood EP
2. Trust Punks Double Bind
3. Mermaidens Undergrowth
4. Street Chant Hauora
5. Roy Montgomery R M H Q: Headquarters
6. October Switchblade EP
7. Affsid Kidjhagiffy Memorable Experiences From The Appliance Store
8. prizegiving no harm done
9. Unsanitary Napkin Patriotic Grooves
10. Earth Tongue Portable Shrine EP
11. milk issue(s)
12. Peach Milk Finally EP
13. Hermann Doose R. I. P Beach Wolf EP
14. Clever Calvin Clever Calvin’s Album
15. Bediquette Run From (Your Friends)
16. Madeira Bad Humours
17. Courtney Hate Sleepwalking EP
18. Mr. Amish The Absurdist
19. sere sere
20. Waterfalls Waterfalls
21. Parents Great Reward
22. Hex Calling to the Universe
23. Purple Pilgrims Eternal Delight
24. The Dance Asthmatics Lifetime Of Secretion EP
25. How Get Very Strong EP
26. Yukon Era Yukon Era EP and Consumer & Scratch EP
27. Lawrence Arabia Absolute Truth
28. Merk Swordfish
29. Zen Mantra Zen Mantra
30. Aporia Almost Tropical
31. Koizilla Blunder Brother EP
32. Paquin Paquin III
33. Levi Patel and Suren Unka 5/8
34. So Below So Below EP
35. Leisure Leisure
36. Civil Union Seasick, Lovedrunk
37. Aaradhna Brown Girl
38. The Prophet Hens The Wonderful Shapes of Back Door Keys
39. Invisible Threads Oxide
40. Space Bats, Attack! Sub EP
