Alli's Articles
INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS, CULTURE PIECES, MUSICAL RAMBLINGS.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t imagine that this hobby of mine is very uncommon: I am obsessed with looking into other countries’ music scenes. Whether it be Danish electronica, French indie pop, or even Italian metal, it’s always interesting to me to listen to music that can sound so similar, but vastly different, to what I’m used to with the artists popular in the US. I use that phrase because I enjoy many bands and artists that are well known in America that are from different countries or even speak different languages. When I talk about these little musical excursions, I mean going on a full-on deep dive to reach things that never broke the seal of their mother countries. The main subject of this article was completely coincidental, and brought to you by the sheer algorithmic powers of Spotify’s Discovery Playlist. I must say, they always truly hit all of my niches in the right places every time, but clicking on a song called “Slug Song” by a band I’ve never heard of called The Clean was something of a divine intervention. I had to check the title as it started playing, because at first I thought the playlist gave me some sort of Guided By Voices b-side. As I looked at their profile, I discovered that The Clean were in fact “one of the most influential New Zealand bands of the post-punk era.” Being an absolute sucker for that genre, that opening line of their biography made my heart leap. We know about the 80s-90s American scene (all the Pavements and Built to Spills) and our Brits (literally everything. The Smiths. The Clash. What else do I have to say) but we don’t hear enough about the Kiwis. The Clean’s sound goes along with those groups in perfect harmony, and probably inspired a number of acts that came from NZ and beyond, but the hype for them is lacking. None of the bands originating from the country seemed to take off internationally, and a lot of acts probably got lost in translation somehow while transferring over from the great blue sea that separates New Zealand from most of the world. Despite this, when I started exploring bands similar to The Clean, I started hearing the perfect blend of American and English post-punk. A lot of the fuzzy distortion that the guitars of Pavement and GBV produced was curated and experimented with, and the subject matters of Britpop acts were also heard. It seems that NZ has their middle-class anthems and showcases of the working folk that “Common People” by Pulp and “Parklife” by Blur could be for the people of Britain. One song that I stumbled upon that captured this essence for me was by a band named Blam Blam Blam called “There Is No Depression in New Zealand.” The media here in the U.S. usually portrays New Zealand in a positive light, with screenshots of news stories announcing their successful containment of the Coronavirus, a successful female prime minister, and their almost automatic ban on military grade semi-automatic rifles after the Christchurch mosque shootings. NZ is a model for us, an example to the rest of the world of the things that can go right when we challenge tradition. However, that’s not to say that they don’t have their own internal issues, and that their society is completely flawless. “We have no racism”, “We have no sexism”, “There is no depression in New Zealand” are just three of many sarcastic lines in the song, mocking anyone who wants to perceive the country as perfect. It came along in 1981, a time of extreme economic struggle in the country. Life seemed to go on, with a giant rugby tour happening as planned that same year. It became a protest anthem in the ignored civil unrest that occurred in the country, one that I’ve never learned about. Artists like Blam Blam Blam and The Clean were part of this ever-growing indie culture in New Zealand in the late 70s and early 80s, a scene which would be known as the “Dunedin sound.” The sounds of the movement highlighted the lo-fi-ness that was happening overseas, and it became the catch-all term for the college radio-type music that was coming from the country. As I was doing my research about all of this, I found a list of artists outside of NZ that confirmed my claim of this era inspiring more bands than I expected. R.E.M., Pavement, and Mudhoney are just three well known acts that cited the Dunedin sound as a major influence. Another band in the scene I enjoyed was 3Ds, a noise pop group that carried the “jingly jangly” guitar style that was a trademark of this time. After opening this whole portal to the world of the NZ underground scene, it made me feel happy (as discovering any niche music genre does) but also disappointed. After paving a good portion of the way for many famous rock bands from the 80s and 90s that we still appreciate today, these bands simply faded into obscurity, only to be discussed by the people of New Zealand and bored American teenage girls with music blogs. What famous New Zealand musical acts do we even know today, as listeners across the ocean? I do love Kane Strang, a modern indie songwriter from Dunedin who had a hit with “My Smile is Extinct” a couple years back. I was reading an interview with him to inspire me to write this article, and even he was discussing the hidden problems of the country in the spirit of Blam Blam Blam. When asked about the music scene of New Zealand, he said that “It has its problems like everywhere else – like a lack of safe spaces and venues in general – but there are always heaps of people doing really positive things.” Like mentioned earlier, I don’t think about the bad side of NZ because of its positive media reputation; I even downplayed its existence before writing this. It sounds naive of me to say, but this little adventure truly made me realize that even the countries America aspires to follow has its own issues (even though they handle some of them better than we do).
You can learn a lot about the history of a country through its music, especially music that was written during a time of economic struggle, like the Dunedin sound in this case. These artists created a movement, a movement that would later have its own name and place in the country’s history, which not only defined New Zealand, but musically influenced countless bands around the world. I hope this article educates some of you on this strange blurb of knowledge, puts you on to some quality music, and also inspires you to take the journeys that I have. Living through history at this current moment has made me realize that I want to educate myself on what goes on beneath the inner workings of my own country, as well as outside of it. What better way for me to do that but with music? If there’s a time period or location that you want to learn more about, I encourage you to look into the music scene. You’ll always find more of a story than you expect.
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