NZ music essay by Simon Sweetman

Photo / 123rf

The blessing, the curse and the craving of local music

DRIVE ALONG any coast of this country and listen to Pink Frost by The Chills or Anything Could Happen by The Clean or Hanging in the Wire by Dave Dobbyn or Clockhouse Shuffle by Waves, or, well, I’m obviously just naming songs.

New Zealand songs. New Zealand artists.

Some well-known, some less obvious, but from the youngest age, I’ve felt this country come alive when I hear the soundtrack to the movie as it’s happening. Cows and sheep and paddocks blurring, Tip Top dairies and roadside fruit stands, with Jordan Luck or Phil Judd or Chris Knox telling me not at all how I should feel, but absolutely how they feel.

The New Zealand music I crave doesn’t so much tell me anything about myself — doesn’t necessarily make me feel I belong, instead it is by outsiders reminding themselves and whoever is listening that they don’t really belong, that they’re just hanging on, and that, really, we’re all just hanging on.

And through that, I’ve learned about myself.

I drive into Hawke’s Bay, hills golden gleaming like one of Freeman White’s paintings and the songs of The Front Lawn could only be the soundtrack. Jan Hellriegel singing the word “quagmire”, where else in the world would you get that?

Once I had the biggest lump in my throat as I drove home, tail lights nearly dragging on the ground and I had to explain myself, but what really set it all off was Paul Ubana Jones singing Lust for Life. His lines about how he had changed, about how he was so fragile, about the titular lust that drove him on, leading and misleading. I had yet to get my story straight, but no other song could ever guide me.

For many years, I wrote about music every day. It was a gruelling and thankless task. It limited my career opportunities, but people said that I was lucky because, hey, free tickets to gigs. I kissed so many frogs and, in the end, I finally got to see Prince! (Had to pay my own way.)

Bands would release bland albums and publicists would trot out the same lines and be disappointed that I didn’t do so too.

And, yes, yes, music is subjective — so the band I didn’t like might be the band you love, but how could I feel anything about the latest copycat when I had heard such powerful truths?

The woozy swagger of Split Enz’s Late Last Night, the deep social heart and desperate plea of Emma Paki’s System Virtue, the frankly, skull-melting times getting as close to whatever it is that bands like Jakob and Bailterspace conjure and twist. A reggae rewrite means nothing in comparison. The latest graduate of a music course using the same three chords in boring old ways, or a cynical cash-grab to brag that a Kiwi band made it into an American movie.

I couldn’t lie. I could not say I loved any of this. It was impossible. And maybe I shouldn’t have smashed quite as many walnuts with such a giant sledgehammer. But I did. And I did it because the song in my head, driving me around this country, was The Mutton Birds’ A Thing Well Made. Or it was French Letter by Herbs. Or it was Drive.

Bic Runga, The Subliminals, The Swingers, Vorn, Tall Dwarfs, David Kilgour, Hello Sailor, Dianne Swann . . . There’s no record store anywhere else in the world, no library, no radio station that would place them together. We’re lucky we can do that. And we’re cursed by this also. Because music isn’t a competition. But the very best music I ever hear is the song — or the theme — that tells me more about the writer than it could ever tell me about myself.

With the best New Zealand music, my guess is we all have some clue of what it might have taken, how it could have formed, what it is hoping to say. But if I get any sense of my identity through someone else’s work it’s an insight, but also a bonus. It’s not what drags me to the dance. Yet it might be enough to get me back home.

And that’s it in the end. Home. Sharon O’Neill singing Smash Palace, Chris Knox in his jandals rewriting Velvet Underground songs, Eddie Rayner’s piano glissando — and the worlds he can slot inside each and every note — these are the doorways that lead me home. Sir Dave Dobbyn with his skeleton key.

There are another 800 words to follow where I just name songs and bands. It’s the best playlist I’ll ever make. Until I create another. It’s every imaginary movie I’ve cooked up, every road trip I’ll ever take, my best and worst moments — the memories I hold deep and ones I cannot shake.

And it’s the best music from New Zealand. Some of the best music I’ve heard, and got to hold, from anywhere in this world.

Poet and music podcaster Simon Sweetman reflects on what NZ music really means and the sound of home

Photo / Getty Images

‘‘ I couldn’t lie. I could not say I loved any of this.

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