Kiwis offer music hope
Aotearoa truly is the envy of the music world right now. We’re the only place able to confidently organise, attend and enjoy concerts again. With the trans-Tasman bubble in trouble, summer festival organisers will be digging deeper than usual to find diverse enough lineups to cater for everyone.
We cannot, after all, subsist on Shapeshifter and L.A.B alone. Luckily, there’s always plenty of talent on the rise.
The second album from Milly Tabak and the Miltones is a classy slice of Americana, full of sly guitar solos, soft, sweet brass and gorgeous keys that swirl around the coy, confident voice of Tabak herself.
The band won the Taite Music Prize for best independent debut in 2017, exhibiting musical fluency, flair for melody, and a love for ‘‘jamming out’’ every tune like good blues bands should.
Recorded live to capture the effortless ease and energy they’ve built their reputation on,
Honest Woman gives the whole band time to shine, but Tabak is its clear, glittering centrepiece.
The sultry, 1970s vibe of Cognac should be consumed in a smoky bar somewhere full of regret and repressed desire.
Strong gospel overtones give glorious weight to Hey Sister, they let rip a little on Roam and Why Don’t You Love It, before Tabak’s furious finale, Woman You Need, brings it home with blasts of brass and chaotic keys.
Tabak’s Miltones would nicely fit on a lineup with the likes of Reb Fountain, Nadia Reid, Tami Neilson, and Julia Deans at a winery somewhere, while our next new discovery might be more suited to a bill featuring Benee, Chelsea Jade, Lexxa and Kimbra.
Always Growing is a great title for the first full outing from Paige.
She’s trying something new on every song, sizing up genres and flirting with different styles like she’s deciding what to wear. It turns out, she makes everything pop.
Cold Blooded is a shiny, sequined number, slow-jamming under a mirror ball.
Hit N Run flaunts a tropical print to catch the wandering eye of mainstream radio.
Too Much H8 pulls on some trackpants and slouches into sweet self-loathing on the couch. She leaves the best for last though, and makes her most adventurous choices, on Make Room, which makes space for her to really hit those emotional sweet spots.
Finally, Gutta Girl slaps from go to whoa and its creator Vayne emerges as one of the vital, vivid voices in Aotearoa rap. Her sound is more club than radio, with titles like My Next Ex giving a sense of the attitude she brings to every verse.
Aesthetically, we’re leaning towards the slow, heavy trap that dominates current rap with loads of vocal manipulation and punctuation. She has a keen eye for producers, with Montell2099 and LMC bringing blazed beats to back up her hectic rhymes.
Just spitballing here, but she would suit a Jess B, Bailey Wiley, Chaii, Ladi6-type lineup.
Roll on the summer of envy.