Classic Carter

After many years in Auckland, Shayne Carter has been enjoying the space and change of pace that...
After many years in Auckland, Shayne Carter has been enjoying the space and change of pace that Dunedin provides. Photo: supplied.

A new album, a new (yet old) name ... the latest stage in the evolution of Shayne Carter continues to fascinate, writes Shane Gilchrist.

Shayne Carter, he of guitar lines both fluid and angular, is in a mood for riffing and there’s not an instrument in sight.

He’s sitting in a Dunedin cafe, not so much slouching as leaning back, relaxed yet committed to the conversation, which ranges from people and  places to  songs old and new.

If the hour-long chat were a piece of music, its core theme would be metamorphosis, be it the don’t-give-a-damn attitude that comes with getting older or a relatively recent consideration of the power and beauty of classical compositions.

There is also the matter of his forthcoming album, Offsider, to be released on September 9.

Significantly, it’s the first to come out under the name Shayne P. Carter.

There’s a story in that, too, though it can wait until later.

At the risk of promulgating regional parochialism, Carter is ours again.

The Dunedin-born and bred musician upped sticks from Auckland, where he’d lived for 25 years, around Christmas.

He says the move was prompted by a range of factors. These include the death of his mother Erica and an increasingly nagging question to do with the relationship between cost and benefit.

In fact, the only thing he really misses about Auckland is his soccer team.

"I was completely over Auckland, so I thought I’d come down here and spend some time with my family," Carter explains.

"But, to be honest, I  don’t really know what I’m doing at the moment. I just thought I’d get this record out and see which way the wind blows."

The move has been good, he says. As a young man, he couldn’t wait to leave. Now, at the age of 52, he views the city in a more favourable light. He appreciates the space, the change of pace.

"And it’s such a beautiful region. I get around to all these wonderful places," Carter says, alluding to the fact he recently got his driver’s licence. 

Not that it’s much help when your car dies, which his did recently, in the Cromwell Gorge. Still, it’s going again, Carter enthuses. The engine was fixed by his cousin, a much more mechanically-minded type, he confesses.

Carter prefers to tinker in other ways. Take Offsider, which was only completed last month.

"It’s been mental," he says. "But that’s the lifestyle. You are either sitting around twiddling your thumbs or it’s full-on."

The piano-infused approach to Offsider has been fairly well-documented.

Carter signalled his intent to create such an album back in 2012, when he sought crowd-funding for it.

So let’s reframe the angle: could this record have been made had he not decided to learn the piano a few years back?

"Hmmm ... interesting. I still think my aesthetic would come through anyway. It still sounds like my stuff.

"I did say somewhere that the approach had more to do with the essence of classical music, rather than the sound of it. I don’t sit there and think, ‘oh, I’m going to write something that sounds like Chopin or whatever’."

Carter did, however, immerse himself in the works of Chopin (particularly his preludes and nocturnes) as well as piano music by Beethoven, Schubert, and Debussy.

"What I found inspiring was the soul of all that music, the fact that it reached out and touched me 250 years later. When I listened to those classical people, it was more about the soul, integrity and truth of what they were doing.

"It moved me. It gave me faith in the universal timelessness of creativity."

Carter’s technique, he concedes, is rudimentary.

Yet with that comes a child-like naivety, a no-frills path that has taken him to some interesting places.

"I knew I was technically unable to play the piano in a normal way, with all those classic piano fills and all that. But I thought if I didn’t know, that would mean I wouldn’t sound like anyone else.

"It’s the same when I play guitar. Because I was never taught scales or anything, I would throw my hands at the fretboard and wherever they land is usually within range, although I might have to move up a fret or two. But I take it from there. It means you can come up with distinctive, non-cliched guitar parts.

"I just threw my hands at the keyboard. Every time I looked at it, I had no idea where I was. It was a challenge, man. I had some dexterity in my right hand [he is left-handed, meaning he uses his right to fret notes, strumming or picking with the other], but not much in my left."

Carter says it’s  a punk-rock idea. And that’s an ethos to which he has long been drawn.

He thinks it has to do with his working-class Dunedin upbringing. He likes artistic expression that gives the middle finger to snobbishness and pretension.

"I think you can find that in the music on the album, too."

Certainly, Offsider covers a range of moods. It’s sparse, yet in parts also cluttered, as the warmth of strings (opener I Know Not Where I Stand) collides with off-kilter arrangements (Man For Every Season) and the cool jazz vibe of Mat lurches towards the introspective Just A Moment and the defiant clatter of We Will Rise Again. Yes, there is piano, but there are also drums, bass, guitar and other textures.

"There can be some very pristine, beautiful moments then the next song will have this big ... blugh".

He looks across the table. Blugh? He’s just invented a word.

In part, Carter is referring to the concept of harmonic dissonance, or at least of unexpected turns. He doesn’t like songs he can second-guess. He prefers "stuff that’s imperfect, a bit f***ed-up". He reckons it better reflects humanity.

"I like off-notes, stuff that’s a wee bit unsettling. Although I do like beauty and am a sucker for a beautiful melody, all my favourite classical pieces are the slow, depressing ones. But I don’t find them depressing; I think they are uplifting."

AMBIGUITY

Carter also took great care with his lyrics.  And words needn’t be long to be powerful. In fact, he prefers the ambiguity that a string of small words sometimes provides.

"If anyone is willing to invest in it and listen with that level of attention — which I doubt many people will — I think it will stand up to scrutiny.

"I’d never liked poetry because I’ve always felt there was something self-important about it but that’s just my own ignorance speaking. It’s like when people say they don’t like the blues. Well ...’’ he trails off with a laugh, as if his statement has more than a thread of that ambiguous quality he so enjoys.

"A friend gave me a motherlode of poetry to read. It was great. Once again, it was about seeing how great art can be. In the world of pop and rock, the aspirations can be f***ing mediocre, man."

Carter says he has always worked really hard on his music. He’s not into cutting corners.

"I’m conscious that if I do something half-arsed, it’s not as though it’s going to be great in 15 years time. It will still suck.

"I think I’ve written one song over the years when I felt like I let the lyric go. I was just a dude writing rhymes. That was a lesson. I’m not going to name the song but it ruined the record for me."

He has made a fair few records over the years, ever since he picked up a guitar in the late 1970s with Kaikorai Valley High School band Bored Games, which had actually split up before the release of 1982 EP Who Killed Colonel Mustard.

Then followed the Doublehappys, a band whose promise was curtailed by the death in 1985 of Wayne Elsey, who climbed out of a train carriage and was instantly killed as it passed under a bridge south of Auckland.

Carter and drummer John Collie went on to form Straitjacket Fits the following year, the pair being joined by bassist David Wood (Working With Walt) and singer-songwriter Andrew Brough (The Orange).

The first fruits from the new musical venture were four gems on Life In One Chord, the group’s 1987 EP.

Released by Flying Nun, Dialling A Prayer, She Speeds, Sparkle That Shines, and All That That Brings mixed cathartic guitar noodling with a focused form of power-pop.

By 1990 (like fellow Dunedin band The Chills), Straitjacket Fits was touring the world on the back of its 1988 debut album Hail and follow-up Melt, fetching strong press coverage in Europe, in particular.

Following a short-lived arrangement with British label Rough Trade, it then secured a deal with American major label Arista.

Yet one of the results of that alliance, 1993 album Blow, was to be the band’s last. Its lead single, Done, was aptly named.

By then, fellow songwriter Brough, whose melodic sensibilities and choirboy harmonic abilities sweetened Carter’s darker, angular output, had left the band (he was later replaced by Mark Petersen).

Other factors, too, conspired to clip the Fits’ wings: grunge rock had largely deafened  the ears of the major label’s A&R types to other strains; and one of the Fit’s key Arista supporters had exited that outfit.

By 1994, his band over, Carter returned to Dunedin with little to show for years of touring.

He eventually headed to Auckland in 1997, secured an advance from Sony and used the money to set up a studio in Ponsonby, where he spent five years obsessively reconfiguring his musical approach under a new moniker, Dimmer.

The result: I Believe You Are a Star, the taut 2001 debut album that included the hypnotic Seed, the dark groove of Evolution and a minimalist title track featuring a video of Carter winning a trotting race.

There followed the slightly more upbeat groove of 2004 album You’ve Got to Hear the Music and the darker Degrees of Existence (2009).

Yet Dimmer is no more. Its instigator parked the longstanding vehicle in 2012. 

Still, Carter has not been idle in the past few years. He spent two and a-half years being a caregiver for his good friend Chris Knox, who suffered a stroke in 2009, a decision that was neither easy nor hard. Simply, he had the time to do so.

"I was also at the point where I needed a holiday from myself, because I’ve been writing songs since I was kid. I’ve always been writing the next record. I just thought it would be good for me to get outside my own head.

"And there was this thing going on with someone who I really cared about. I didn’t do it because I thought people would think, ‘oh, what a good guy’. I did it because I thought it would be a good life experience.

"It was full-on ... I have a lot of love for Chris and his family. It hasn’t been an easy road. But whatever the opposite of a sook is, well, that’s Chris. He has a lot of character."

Despite Carter seeking a break from music, he managed to keep his hand in pretty well.

He recorded and performed with The Adults, the project of Shihad frontman Jon Toogood (it also featured Julia Dean, of Fur Patrol, and Anika Moa); played and sang on his mother Erica Miller’s 2010 album Reconsidered, a collection of Elvis covers; and  collaborated with Don McGlashan for a show at the Auckland Arts Festival earlier this year.

"That was great fun. We went through each other’s back catalogues and chose songs we liked. It was really interesting to have another songwriter curate your set. We ended up with a lot of B-sides," Carter says, adding he and McGlashan will tour nationwide in October.

Before then, however, there will be a tour to promote Offsider.

Carter says the shows, which will feature former Dimmer bandmates Gary Sullivan (drums) and James Duncan (bass), both of whom played strong roles on the album, will feature songs both new and old.

Which brings us back to the subject of his name.

"The first time I played some older stuff was at a benefit concert for Chris Knox. As a nod to Chris, I thought I play songs I’d written when I was a kid.

"Maybe through sheer weight of numbers I probably have some good tunes. And you can tell the good ones because they still feel good to perform. I thought if I went and used my name that basically gave me license to perform songs from any part of my career that I feel like playing.

"I’d called myself Dimmer because the idea of using my own name used to creep me out as being too folky or singer-songwriter-ish, even though I am a singer and a songwriter ... [but] I think the name Dimmer got associated with one aspect of my career. I short, it’s liberating being Shayne P. Carter.

"One of the few benefits of getting older, as things begin to fall to bits, you don’t give a s***. As you become more aware of mortality and have more people you know fall away, you realise what’s important.

"And right down the list of what’s important are other people’s opinions."

 

The gig

• Shayne P. Carter (and band) perform at The Cook, Dunedin, on Saturday, August 27. Offsider (distributed by Flying Nun) will be released on September 9.

See Shayne P. Carter’s selection of videos from his days in Straitjacket Fits and Dimmer: www.odt.co.nz

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