The 13th Floor

Brian Fallon delivers a muscular, hard-rocking sound on Not Bad For New Jersey, but not for the first time the appeal of his songwriting is undermined by production choices. The Gaslight Anthem frontman has been one of the most reliable architects of heartland rock hooks and heartbreakers for the past 20 years, a late-night romantic whose songs often evoke forlorn scenes of lonesome underdogs hunched in classic cars, hanging on the hopes of FM radio anthems.

Three and a half decades into their punk rock career, Strung Out delivered a masterclass in high-tempo precision and volume to a dark room of sweaty bodies. With spirited supporting sets from The Vile Maxim and Tooms, this was one of the most satisfying club shows I’ve been to in some time. While hyped to see Strung Out live again, I approached the show with a mild sense of disappointment in the knowledge they were performing their 1996 sophomore album Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues in full.

Chet Faker brought his A Love For Strangers Tour to Auckland’s Town Hall last night and a full house was waiting to catch up with the man also known as Nick Murphy who was last here in 2023. Since then Nick, or Chet, has released A Love For Strangers, 10 years after his debut album, Built On Glass, with 12 new songs that “emerged from a sense of personal rediscovery”. At 8pm the crowd was already filling up the Town Hall’s main floor….general admission on the floor…seats up top.

For much of her career, Rhiannon Giddens has asked where American music comes from, who gets remembered within it, and how traditions survive. On Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, those questions become increasingly personal as she gathers people, songs and relationships accumulated across two decades and lets the connections speak through the music. Her seventh studio album feels like a summation, though its attention is firmly on the present.

There is something fitting about Buddy Miller returning with his first solo album in fifteen years and simply calling it Buddy Miller. Across twelve songs he gathers together much of what has defined a remarkable life in music: country, soul and gospel, a circle of long-standing collaborators, the songs of his wife Julie Miller, and questions about what we do with the time available to us, who we share it with, and what we create along the way.

Scottish identical twins Craig and Charlie Reid, better known as The Proclaimers, are back with their 13th studio album, You May Offend, a collection of 12 original numbers taking a wry look and the occasional sideswipe at contemporary culture and society, with their trademarked Scottish accents singing over punk-folk with more than a hint of rock and roll.

“If you go down in the mangroves today, you’re sure of a big surprise.” That could be the tagline for new play Mangrove Eaters down at Basement Theatre, produced by the theatre collective S.L.U.G (Society for Little Ugly Girls). The surprise here for the children is crocodiles. Yes, crocodiles, in the mangroves of small-town Aotearoa. There’s humour here, a little, but it’s dark.

There is something appealingly unsettled about Hannah Virk’s third album, Half of My Cup. Its songs shimmer, pulse and occasionally stumble forward, as though the music itself is trying to make sense of the memories and emotions running through it. Virk calls these twelve songs a collection of “happy sad moments”, and that tension between optimism and disappointment gives the album a clear emotional centre. Virk remains very much a DIY artist.

Happy Mondays returned to Auckland’s Powerstation to celebrate the 35th anniversary of their seminal album, Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches. The 13th Floor’s Simon Coffey and Den O’Keeffe were there. It was pure Brit city inside Tamaki Makaurau Powerstation tonight as the lights dimmed, a crowd of a few young faces and many older veterans were crammed together in anticipation.Fashioned in late-1980s Manchester, Happy Mondays were always equal parts band and magnificent anarchy.

Today, Young Fresh Fellows unveil Three Gasconading Saints, the third track from their forthcoming studio album, Loft, out March 27 on Yep Roc Records. Here is the blurb with more: Of Three Gasconading Saints Scott McCaughey says, “I honestly don’t know where that phrase came from. I wrote a poem called “Three Gasconading Saints” years ago and loved the sound of it before I even knew what ‘gasconading’ meant. When Jeff Tweedy asked me for suggestions for a Wilco album title, I suggested this.