The Bats - Space Academy - Christchurch 26th January 2017

The Bats are a longstay of the NZ music scene forming in my hometown of Christchurch in 1982 and releasing their music on the legendary Flying Nun Records. Their quirky pop sound typifies the Flying Nun/Dunedin sound of the early 80's to a tee. I was familiar with some of their very early songs via student radio back in the day but never really owned any of their music and sometimes found their sound to be a bit too lightweight for my tastes. They have been touring and releasing music sporadically for the last 35 years now but I am not familiar with their latest music. 

 This gig was a kinda hometown warmup for a couple of upcoming gigs across the ditch in Australia in support of their new album which was released the following day after this gig. I thought it would be interesting to see them live again, the last time being when they supported the Violent Femmes here in 1992. 

  Space Academy is a small warehouse venue, just across the road from The Darkroom( where I have been seeing a lot of Bands lately), which doubles as a cafe during the day and hosts other arty events also. It was my first visit there.

  The gig was sold out but with modern fire regulations in a small venue like this there was probably less than 100 people there in all and there was certainly room for more.

  I took my place near the front of the audience for the first set as they kicked off about 9pm with a couple of songs from their previous album"Free All The Monsters" from 2011. I was impressed with the sound of the music and although their sound has altered little over time their song construction has matured  and I enjoyed the material even though I was unfamiliar with it. The next bracket of the first set was dedicated to their new album "The Deep Set" and I was even more impressed with the songs they played. Some pretty catchy songs which look like making for a pretty good new record. The sound quality was ok but slightly too loud and distorted to really get a strong feel for the material and unfortunately when they added in a couple of additional musicians on strings for a couple of tracks the sound got a lot more muddled and the strings were pretty hard to hear in the mix.

  A short break was had before they got stuck into their past catalog of songs for the second set. I decided to try standing nearer the back of the room near the mixing desk to see if the sound improved back there but it didn't really and now I couldn't see the band at all as there was no stage, with the band on the floor with us and they are all kinda short. Although I was not familiar with most of what they played in this set, I think they kinda worked their way back through their catalog, finishing the set with ":North By North" From their 1987 album "Daddy's Highway", which was the only song I really knew. Apart from the slight issues with the sound(usual for rock gigs) I really enjoyed their playing and also their music more so than I thought I would. A great little live band.

Jay Clarkson and Breathing Cage - Blue Smoke - Christchurch 21 January 2017

Jay Clarkson is a bit of an underground music legend in New Zealand, a bit like Bill Direen who I saw play live late last year. She started off in a post punk group called The Playthings, who released two fantastic singles in the very early 80s before going on to record EP's and a single with her next two bands, They Were Expendable and The Expendables, who put out some absolutely wonderful uncategorizable haunting pop music in the mid 80's. She then went on to form The Breathing Cage who released one LP before she went off to have a sporadic solo career. Most of these early bands recordings are pretty hard to come by nowadays and as usual I regret selling off the stuff I did have back in the day. I did recently pick up a CD compilation of The Breathing Cage recordings of whom I was not all that familiar. It's is a good CD and the music is slowing growing on me as I get more familiar with it.

  The gig was held at another cool venue that I have not been to before, Blue Smoke. A bar attached to The Tannery shopping center in Woolston, Christchurch.

  The crowd was not too bad for this musical legend, fairly gray haired and I suspect, like the Bill Direen Gig, pleny of the audience were themselves musicians. It is a quite small venue and I guess there were about 100 people there.

  I had an appointment in the City earlier in the evening and with a couple of hours to fill in before doors opened at  8pm, I had dinner and went browsing records in another mall nearby. I arrived at the venue before doors opened and wandered around The Tannery checking out the closed shops while waiting.

 After an hour of sipping orange juices the support act mounted the stage. Motte is a lone young lady with a violin and a bunch of effects equipment where she played shot pieces on her violin and set then into playback loops building on each other and then playing on top of the loops. It was quite ambient and haunting and on two pieces she sang some lovely melodies with a very good voice. From reading on her Facebook Page some of it might have been improvised. She created a lovely sounds collage  which the audience seem to appreciate well.

  Jay hit the stage alone for the first part of her show, armed with an acoustic guitar, she kicked things off with a song off her recent album "Spur" which was released last year. Her current music is quite folky from what I have heard of it. She was having some sound issues with the acoustic and swapped to electric for the rest of her solo slot, playing more recent songs I am not familiar with and a quite grimm Chris Knox song as well.

  The next slot She had bass and drums backing her as she played several songs from her earlier material including the fantastic " Boy With The Sad Hands" Which I think was her first Solo single way back.  This showed she was going to play some of the other stuff she had done in the 80's, not just The Breathing cage stuff. This set was great, really got my toes tapping and although I don't know all of the material played it was bloody good.

 The last set She swapped bassists and added another guitar for what was almost the full Breathing Cage lineup I believe except for the new bassist as the original guy had broken his finger or something. The Breathing cage material sounded fantastic live, better than the CD and I was just lapping it up. Stand outs were "Big Life" and the old Expendables Track " The Man With No Desire" which I was just so chuffed that they played. as well as a couple of others I recognised but don't know the names of.

 Jay said they hadn't played this stuff  together for 25 years and there was a couple of times things went slightly off the rails but  I left the venue with a very big grin on my face and the knowledge that I had just witnessed a very good gig.

The Prophet Hens - The Darkroom - Christchurch January 12 2017

Been a few months since my last gig and seeing as I had picked up both of the Prophet Hens albums not that long ago and was getting to enjoy their Flying Nun/Dunedin brand of jangly indie pop more and more with each listen, I thought I should also go and check them out live while I had the opportunity. Regular readers(If such a thing exists) will now be familiar with The Darkroom in Christchurch after I saw several local bands there last year ( see previous posts). It is a tiny venue but I like it a lot and the sound is pretty good and not too loud.

   An all to familiar tale in Christchurch, a quality young band with two good records under their belt and some pretty catchy well constructed pop songs coming up from their home of Dunedin to play for us and only about 20 people come to see them play and it wasn't exactly an overly enthusiastic audience either. It is probably because of playing to audiences this small that the band announced during their show that this was probably going to be their last tour. That being said, they put on a good show and looked to be enjoying themselves as they played a good selection of their album tracks. They don't sound too much different from their records and the band gell together well as I was tapping my feet throughout the whole set. Really glad I saw them and the gig just deepened my appreciation of their music.

  They actually supplied their own support, as the opening act, Grawlixies, is actually The Bass player(Robin Cederman) and singer/keyboardist (Penelope Esplin) from The Prophet Hens. A nice folky duo with Robin on acoustic guitar and Penelope playing accordian. They played some lovely folk pop with interesting song lyrics/subjects and great vocal harmonies. Again I enjoyed their set a lot. A good night.