Radio One 91FM

I have heard the gospel and its name is IVY…

As a newcomer to the Ōtepoti gig scene, I am cutting my teeth on new live venues often these days. This was my first experience with Errick’s in any capacity, and there were some negative rumblings about the venue passing my ears earlier in the day. Shortly after entering and taking in the scene that was set by a stage with upwards of twenty chairs for orchestra members, a friend said that ‘it [was] a shame that this is happening here and not in some grand church or something’.

By the end of the gig, IVY and the Dunedin Youth Orchestra had proven that any space can be a place of absolute reverence and awe, bordering on the holy, if the creative will is there to make it so.

At first, there was a palpable and slightly nervous anticipation from what was a sold-out crowd. It’s not every day you see a local band play with a full-strength orchestra behind them. And it was a youth orchestra. Dangerous territory, some might say.

One song in, and any fears that were out there in the audience were assuaged and then some. They could already feel the power of the thing that was about to wash over them, the moment in a band’s career they were about to experience alongside them. 

IVY are the real deal. It was entirely possible this sort of occasion would rattle them, the pressure of being the five lads in front of a collective of twenty would cause them to shrink and not flourish. Instead, they commanded the stage with a swagger, a love for the craft, and a healthy joie de vivre. 

Locked in would be underselling it. Every member entirely in service of the song, a collective triumph. Jesse’s vocals were undoubtedly immaculate, but to highlight any one element of the performance would be remiss of me, because there wasn’t a note out of place, literally or figuratively. 

And while the whole night could have been entirely about IVY ‘the band’, and in some sense, it was, the beauty of the event was that in another sense it wasn't just about IVY at all. For a solid hour on stage, this band was “IVY and the Dunedin Youth Orchestra”. One whole.

When the members were joining the stage, a few of us in the audience were lightly joking about the presence of the bassoon player, and what role he would play in the whole piece. In hindsight, he played as pivotal a role as any. Every single horn note, every single vibration of a string, every single rattle of an egg-shaker or ting of a triangle was crafted to service the sound. 

An absolute credit to the arrangement and composition of Maddy Parkins-Craig and Anthony Ritchie, and an equally great reflection on all of the young musicians on stage. 
A shout out is owed to the audio team at Errick’s too, as despite any misgivings I might have heard, they did an incredible job wrangling what was an immense amount of sound. 

By the end of the event, there was that pleasant sense of giddy shell-shock in the audience. Had we just witnessed the genesis of something? Time will tell for IVY, but after hearing the extra gravitas that the horns, strings, and pipes can lend to their songs, I don’t doubt they’ve just walked away with a plethora of inspiration for future music.

As I said on Radio One during the DPAG Late Breakfast the following day, I could ramble for hours about this gig. But it is best just to say I was totally floored. And I am now a believer.

Is it possible to create music that sounds like it belongs simultaneously to a distant future and to your own childhood? Apparently, it is. Magdalena Bay have come into their own in a generational way on sophomore album Imaginal Disk, a perfect balancing act between wearing their influences on their sleeves and pushing the envelope on pop music. Hell, even to call it pushing the envelope is underselling it. They’ve cut up the envelope and made an origami discman out of the damn thing.

Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin, the duo behind the name, originally met while studying music in Miami and started a prog-rock band before eventually forming Magdalena Bay. The prog roots are evident all over the album, with extremely strong and sometimes vaguely confounding production choices and song structures that are willing to diverge heavily from any rigid verse-chorus-verse nonsense.

However, any pretension that is often associated with prog music is completely absent here. There is a healthy respect and admiration for femme-vocal pop music that spans the history of the genre, from ABBA, to Cyndi and Madonna, all the way through to Britney and Christina and even more modern icons such as Caroline Polachek. Fragile and wispy talk-sung vocals often sit next to, or even crash into blaring club synths that sound like they belong on a Daft Punk deep cut. It is an album that (rightly) prioritises fun and danceability over intellect, and yet is all the deeper and richer for it.

To paint a picture of how the influences grapple with each other and synthesise into something wholly new, you only need to look at the lead single, Death & Romance. It leans on this stumbling piano intro that sounds undeniably Fatboy Slim, but once Mica’s vocal waltzes in like something from a late 90s Kylie album and the extremely fuzzy (bordering on Kid A fuzzy) bassline comes and lays down over everything, it transforms from the sum of its parts into something greater, a greater that is equally unique, catchy and perplexing.

A true triumph of fun, movement, and oddly satisfying juxtaposition, the album is an excellent example of why any sweeping dismissal of pop music for being banal or bland is ridiculous and simply cuts you off from swathes of the most interesting music being produced today. Recommended for anyone who is big on enjoying being alive.

Donald Glover has always been clear on one thing: he prefers making movies to making music. But if you look at his streaming numbers, the public has been clear on one thing: they like Childish Gambino’s music. So how does he gracefully go about sending off this moniker that has been practically ever-present in pop music since I graduated high-school? A soundtrack album, of course.

Now while Bando Stone and the New World is indeed (supposedly) the soundtrack to an upcoming piece of visual media by Glover (with a release date of TBA), I feel I should note that I mean ‘soundtrack album’ in a nebulous sense. The kind of genre-sprawling album that reaches for a different emotional crescendo in almost every single track, and often defies categorisation into one era or one location. Think Paul Thomas Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Wong Kar-wai… I’m sure you have a favourite.

And while separated from the visuals they are supposed to be accompanying they can be jarring and incoherent, they’re also always a lot of fun to listen to. Here on Bando Stone it’s no different, and you bounce from one era of Gambino to the next at such a clip it’s hard for any of it to drag or outstay its welcome.

There’s more rapping here than he’s done in a long while, and yet, it’s also only a handful of tracks from a total of seventeen. There are pop bangers that WILL make white people turn up at parties, in the rich tradition of tracks such as 3005 and Bonfire. His soul and R&B side from Awaken, My Love gets plenty of love and the Kauai summer vibes shine through on certain tracks too.

To me, this is less the soundtrack of any actual film and more ‘the soundtrack to the film of the artist’. While it doesn’t appear coherent on the surface, if you put it within the context of the film, it makes total sense. Donald Glover runs it back one last time, and touches on all of the high points of his career as Childish Gambino. Fans of his will love it, and those not familiar will surely find a few tracks to enjoy.

How do you reconcile art you made eleven years ago with the person you are today? Abel Tasman-born bedroom pop artist Salvia Palth shows us the way on last chance to see, their eons-awaited follow up to 2013 debut melanchole.

While said debut is full to the brim of fifteen-year old angst, insecurity, and a healthy dose of Phil Elverum and Mount Eerie worship, there is an overwhelming authenticity to it. An insistence, when you listen, that these are real feelings being felt. Perhaps it is understandable why multiple generations of sad teenagers have treated it as gospel, and why Salvia Palth is a name you hear whispered next to bedroom pop icons, your teen suicides and your Elvis Depressedlys.

However, when you're in your late twenties, sadness feels markedly different to how it felt when you were fifteen. It has sat with you for a decade or more, and the immediacy of it has waned. Teenage sweethearts are no longer the central source of pain in your life, for one. It would have been easy for Salvia Palth to follow up with more of the same, but it wouldn't have been authentic.

Instead, on last chance to see, everything has grown. The instrumental palette, the emotional palette, the person. Rather than being rigidly defined by a genre, or an emotion, this album is an exploration of a decade of new influences and experiences. There is still the same emotional haze, the same airy bedroom pop production, but there are instrumental hints all over that suggest a much wider pool of influences – the programmed drums on 'you wouldn't ask a fire to stop', for example, have a hint of hip-hop to them.

It is a fantastic work of growth for a New Zealand artist that has been as elusive as they are successful. It invites many fans who put the debut on a pedestal to grow with the artist, to move on from all-consuming teenage emotion, but without a hint of judgement. Hopefully it won't be our last chance to see what they have to offer.