Boiler Room

On her recent European tour dates, Vera Ellen has been saving one special song to play near the end of each set. “I’ve been performing ‘Broadway Junction’ a lot on this tour,” Ellen says. Taken from her Taite Prize-winning 2024 album Ideal Home Noise, that song is about giving up. “I wanted to jump in Broadway Junction / Feel the tracks against my back,” sings Ellen. “To be super blunt, I was suicidal,” she told RNZ about that song’s inspiration.

It was there when I met Elizabeth Moss on the snowy Toronto set of The Handmaid’s Tale, my hands shaking from the below-freezing temperatures. It was also there when I sat between Killer Mike and El-P backstage at the Echoplex in Los Angeles, just Run the Jewels and me enjoying their hefty rider – a massive tapas platter. The red light was on in an Auckland hotel complex when I spoke to John Paul Jones from Them Crooked Vultures (and Led Zeppelin!) as Dave Grohl mixed drinks behind the bar.

Kia ora! Thanks for joining me on this wintery Saturday morning. Soon, an album I am ashamed to admit I cannot get enough of. But first, a few headlines we need to get through… Controversy has erupted over a live Sydney concert by a band that uses AI in its music. “The shock kind of turned into disgust,” one of the human artists on the bill told ABC about how he felt when he was told he’d be performing with the AI band Afro Charles.

Kane Strang was feeling the pressure. He’d been trying to write the follow-up to Spiel, the acclaimed 2023 debut from his alt-rock band Office Dog. At home in Ōtepoti, songs wouldn’t come. “I realised the issue was I was just hiding away in my room and had nothing to say,” Strang says. As a remedy, he accepted a month-long housesitting offer in the West Auckland suburb of Swanson.

Is it a schtick? Pastiche? An art project? A dumbass dare? They’re taking the piss, aren’t they? Angine de Poitrine – you may know them as “the polka dot band” – is a Québécois duo who make math-rock bollocks and sing in their own twee childish language. I don’t know what’s up with them. I have tried to listen, attempted to climb on board the hype train, have truly forced myself to dig it, man. But I can’t get past the noses, the get-up, those fucking dots. They look like nightmare muppets.

It all kicked off a week ago on that grim, bleak Thursday. A mate joked it was K’ Road’s Red Wedding, but it wasn’t funny. Verona was gone. Flying Out was too. Then came a third kick in the guts: basement club Neck of the Woods would be closing that weekend. “We’ve been struggling since Covid,” the post said. “This year has just gotten harder.” An outcry followed. Social media filled with outrage.

Kia ora! For the longest time, Deftones fans – that’s me! – have obsessed over the band’s lost album, Eros. Over the past 18 years, it has become mythical, earning a reputation it almost certainly cannot sustain. I once asked Chino Moreno about it, just before Deftones played the last Big Day Out, and he said Eros would almost certainly never be released. Earlier this week, Eros leaked online against the band’s wishes. I immediately went searching for it and clicked play.

In a bustling Titirangi cafe, Finn Andrews wraps both hands around a takeaway coffee cup and stares into the abyss. “I think I just start from a position of extreme doubt and fear,” he says. His head is down, his eyes are locked on the floor. “There’s something addictive in reaching for something you can never quite grasp, which used to be the reason I felt so lost in this all the time.

It’s been a rollercoaster. The first bump came on Thursday. Thursday sucked. It was the worst, a day front-loaded with bad news that never seemed to stop. In the morning, the record store Flying Out announced it was closing, effective immediately. I marched down K’ Road to see it for myself. The lights were off. The doors were shut. A giant “BAD NEWS” sign was set up in the window. It was true. I trudged back to my office and began writing a memorial. The headline?

Another headline, another sale, another closure, another liquidation. Over the past few months, it’s felt like there’s been one a day. At least. The details are different, the result is always the same. Verona is in liquidation.Galatos is up for sale. The Gypsy Tea Rooms has to go. Leigh Sawmill is on the market. Nivara Lounge is shutting up shop. Flux is closing. Burger Burger is in receivership. Rosalia’s is ending things. Very few seem capable of making it work.