"It’s rock music," admits Emma Cameron, vocalist and guitarist with Decades. But they don’t sound like Foo Fighters to me. Emma agrees.
"In the studio we coined the term ‘dark pop’ because our songwriting style really focuses on the pop structure. We like good songs, we like banging choruses and cool verses, but it is rock music."
Decades are a dark pop/rock band mostly from Christchurch, and tonight they’ll be playing their first gig in Dunedin. Their debut album The Truth And Other People dropped last week and landed straight in the NZ Top 40.
I spoke to Emma, who plays lead guitar and sings vocals. There’s also Liam Muir on guitar, Curtis Booth on bass and Dan Perry on drums. Last year Tom Larkin from Shihad saw something he liked and took them under his wing as producer and manager.
"And he was like, ‘I like your music but you’re kind of like this in between where you can’t get played on ZM or The Edge but you can’t get played on The Rock ... Do you want to be a pop act or do you want to be a rock act?’. And we were like, ‘well obviously we want to be a rock act: we’re real musicians, we want to play guitars’."
Touring the country with them is a trio of killer rock bands; Bakers Eddy, Dead Favours and Skinny Hobos.
"I kind of didn’t know what to expect going into this tour but as soon as we had that first night in Hamilton I was like, ‘oh shit, we’ve got a pretty good show here on our hands’."
So what should people expect from the show?
"Volume ... Lots of volume. I kind of like to interact with the crowd a lot. And Curtis and Liam who play either side of me just go absolutely nuts; climbing off tables, jumping off barriers ..."
Astro Children on the other hand are no strangers to the Dunedin gig scene. Over the past few years the duo has gained a reputation for visceral performances fuelled by Millie Lovelock’s discordant yet catchy songwriting and punctuated perfectly by Isaac Hickey’s drumming. Tonight they’ll be playing their first Dunedin gig in about seven months.
Somewhat apologetically (it’s a boring question), I asked Millie to describe their music.
"It might be a boring question but I still don’t have an answer to it, every time I get asked it ... I don’t know: it’s loud?
"I tend to like, try to feed off the crowd and feed off how I’m feeling on a given day and it’s a huge release for me to play those songs, so it often ends up a lot more aggressive and performative than it is on a record."
Millie also confirmed they’ll be playing some new songs from the album they just finished recording with Jonathan Pearce in Auckland.
"Our new album is quite different to other stuff that we’ve put out ... I guess we kind of leant into the much more discordant side of my songwriting.
"I like to play really disgusting chords and try to make them sound not nice, but catchy."
Two intense live acts both propelled by aggressive vocalists channelling totally different sorts of energy. I might have to flip a coin.
- For more from Fraser Thompson go to dunedinsound.com.
The gigs
• Astro Children play The Attic (no glass), supported by Opposite Sex and Millie Lovelock’s solo project Repulsive Woman. Doors 9pm, $10.
• Decades, Bakers Eddy, Skinny Hobos and Dead Favours play Re:fuel. Doors 7.30pm, $30.
