No shortage of Smurfy sass
IT’S easy to get swept up in the numbers of fledging success. Play counts and streaming stats all play a part, and in 2017 you can near enough work out exactly how many Mexico City-based fans dig a new artist, if you please. But for anyone making music, ‘‘IRL’’ (in real life) encounters are way more important.
Hazel English gets plenty of these, and for her, these conversations with fans are why she makes music in the first place.
‘‘It’s really cool to hear when people say, ‘This song really helped me this week’,’’ says the Australian-born, Oakland, San Francisco-based artist. ‘‘Although writing personal lyrics can play a primary, self-facing purpose (‘‘it’s cathartic’’), nothing tops the realisation that someone else feels the same way.
‘‘Actually having a conversation with someone who loves my music, that means a lot to me. Suddenly it’s not just a number, it’s a physical person standing in front of me that’s getting something out of this.’’
Her latest release, the 2 X EP Just Give In / Never Going Home, is a collection of old and new, compiling her debut EP alongside six new tracks to create her first full LP-length release. Stone Foundation’s latest album Street Rituals features a major contribution from Paul Weller as well as vocal contributions from both William Bell and Bettye Lavette.
The band’s fourth studio album was produced by Weller, who also features on all the tracks. Having been hugely impressed by Stone Foundation’s previous endeavors, he contacted the band to propose the idea of working together, initially on one specific track but having enjoyed the process so much, the resulting 10 compositions on Street Rituals now all have musical input from him.
‘‘Paul contacted us at the start of 2016 after hearing our last record,’’ Stone Foundation’s Neil Jones says. ‘‘He wanted to know if we’d like to get involved with a demo he’d been working on and we obviously grasped the opportunity with both hands. The Limit of a Man was born out of those early exchanges and from that point onwards we never looked back’’. ● Compiled by Mike Alexander Smurfs: The Lost Village (G) Directed by Kelly Asbury Starring Demi Lovato, Rainn Wilson, Mandy Patinkin, Julia Roberts 90 mins SMURFETTE (Demi Lovato) is tired of being ‘‘the only girl in the village’’.
While everyone else has a purpose reflected by their moniker, she isn’t known for having a particular skill or trade. SEPTEMBER 29, 2016 is a date Thomas Oliver will probably remember for the rest of his life.
That was the day (or rather night) that he was named the winner of the 2016 APRA Silver Scroll, the most prestigious songwriting award in New Zealand, for his song If I Move To Mars
‘‘It was exciting and pretty surreal,’’ Oliver recalls ahead of the release of his new album, Floating In The Darkness, which is set for release on April 28 and features If I Move To Mars. ‘‘For the most part I just sat back and enjoyed the ceremony. I loved the level of celebration of Maori culture. That was something that really stood out for me.
‘‘I kept my nerves pretty well contained but when John Campbell [host] got to the point of inviting Godfrey de Grut [winner of the award in 2002 with Che Fu for Misty Frequencies] to announce and present the award,
Worse still, there are some who still can’t get over her questionable origins and connection to the Smurfs’ archenemy Gargamel (Rainn Wilson).
However, just as she’s beginning to feel all alone in the world, Smurfette spies what appears to be an unknown Smurf, who then proceeds to drop their hat in terror. But before she can investigate further, Smurfette is captured by Gargamel’s vulture.
Seizing the hat, the evil wizard divines that it has come from another Smurf village, deep in the Forbidden Forest. Can Smurfette everything got pretty intense.
‘‘When he said my name that was definitely surreal. This amazing feeling just washed over me and before I even had a chance to process it I was being hugged and congratulated by the people around me. My aunty and uncle had won tickets to the event in a radio competition and they ran over to hug me.’’
At Oliver’s table were his manager, Cushla Ashton, three representatives of his Australian publishing company Mushroom and his guest of honour and former partner Hayley Gray, who played an essential role in the creation of If I Move To Mars.
‘‘The idea came about when get to them first to warn them of the danger Gargamel poses?
The first all-animated Smurfs movie since 1983’s Smurfs and the Magic Flute, director Kelly Asbury’s film owes a far bigger debt to more recent, similarly themed tales like Trolls, Angry Birds and his own Gnomeo& Juliet.
Like those adventures, this boasts a tween-potent combination of brightly coloured visuals, toe-tapping tunes, empowered female protagonists and no shortage of sass.
The Lost Village‘ s plot will also BEVAN READ/ Fairfax NZ Hayley and I were driving from Wellington to the Hawke’s Bay. She was my girlfriend at the time,’’ Oliver says.
‘‘We were barnstorming ideas for songs as we had a four-hour drive and thought why don’t we think about cool song ideas. Hayley works in senior management at Weta and is incredibly creative but certainly not a songwriter, so it was an interesting thing to do. Mars had been in the news a lot at the time and it was Hayley who actually said what about a song about Mars.
‘‘I thought it was a great idea and put the songwriting touch on it and said ‘what if I move to Mars, seem more than a little familiar to fans (and parents of fans) Disney’s Tinkerbell adventures, with its introduction of mirror image characters, while adults may wonder at some of the more ‘‘hallucinogenic visuals’’ and a Star Trek- style climax.
And if it seems a little strange to be rebooting the little blue Belgian creations just six years after they were resurrected for a live-action series – just remember this is the same company that is about to bring us the third different version of Spider-Man in 15 years.