My Week In Music: 14-18 April
Indie superstar Bon Iver and local rockers There's A Tuesday drop two of the best albums of the year, and I look back at Fugazi and Justice too
A couple of quick notes before we get into it:
It’s rare that an award ceremony gets it right but it happened twice this week: first, Mokotron’s Waerea won the Taite Music Prize for 2025 in a ceremony on Tuesday night - and then, closer to home, I want to extend my sincere congratulations to Chris Schulz, the writer behind the brilliant local music SubStack newsletter Boiler Room, for winning the NZ On Air Outstanding Music Journalism award for his work on the local industry.
Chris and I frequently trade links - and I’ve been working with Chris in various capacities since 2010; he was my editor during a stint at the NZ Herald in 2013-14, and is one of the most generous and supportive people I’ve come across in my time writing for public media outlets, and a key voice in my decision to take up writing again in the last few years. Well done, Chris, I’m so pleased for you.
Lastly, I’m taking next week off - between Easter Monday and ANZAC Day, its a short week so feels like a good opportunity for a break. See you back with Singles In Your Area on Tuesday 29 April.
Alright, let’s get to the albums …
SABLE, fABLE (released: 11/04/2025)
Bon Iver
Okay, full disclosure, I’ve been a fan of this album since the first few songs were released last year as the SABLE EP, a collection of the opening tracks “Things Behind Things Behind Things”, the incredible “Speyside” and “Awards Season”, so it was just a matter of time till I heard the rest and loved it as well.
The remainder of the album (designed and released here as FABLE) is different from the opening tracks, but no less potent. After a short linking track, the album elevates into “Everything Is Peaceful Love” and “Walk Home”; where the openers hark back to his early work, these tracks bring back the electronic and digital tendencies from his later work.
Yet, where I would say those albums are experiments that didn’t quite hit, these tracks feel like they manage to meld those two sides of Justin Vernon’s work: the soulful acoustic and the experimental electronic pop. Tracks like “Day One” and “If Only I Could Wait” (featuring Danielle Haim) and “There’s A Rhythm” (‘there’s a rhythm to reclaim, get tall and walk away’ sings Vernon).
SABLE, fABLE is a realisation of what I think Vernon has been trying to do all along, a fantastic return to form where everything just works. Loved it.
AND THE ADJACENT POSSIBLE (released: 11/04/2025)
OK Go
The beat on OK Go has long been that they are a rock band staying afloat on the back of clever, often elaborately choreographed one-shot music videos that are entertaining to watch but offer little musically. And while I think they’ve had some strong tracks over the years - I would say “Here It Goes Again” absolutely slaps - its hard to argue with the main point.
It gives me no joy to report that And The Adjacent Possible isn’t likely to change any minds. There are some really decent songs here; “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill” is an early highlight, while later “Once More With Feeling” stands out.
But for the most part, this album just kind of is. And The Adjacent Possible is very much an OK Go album; it just doesn’t stand out in any way, it’s run-time going past without anything to really grab your attention.
I sometimes joke that there are bands who make new albums purely as an excuse to go on tour (see: Stones, Rolling). Maybe OK Go are the first band making new music purely to make new music videos. The success of the video for single “Love”, versus the passive response to this album, implies as much.
BLUSH (released: 11/04/2025)
There's A Tuesday
Formed in Ōtautahi (Christchurch) but now based in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), Kiwi indie rockers There’s A Tuesday have been steadily rising up the ranks - hitting the local charts with Rockquest 2019 song “Piñata Head”, scoring a Silver Scrolls nomination in 2022, and playing major festivals all around the motu, including Electric Avenue and Rhythm & Vines.
While I’ve been looking forward to Blush since the brilliant single “Margo” dropped in February, it feels like the group have been building and evolving toward this release since that first single. The resulting album is a work of art.
Opening with the emotional “Billie” (‘all the love we keep using up’ sing front-women Nat Hutton and Minnie Robberds on an extended outro) and leading into “Margo”, the album only gets better from there: “Water Baby” leads off a string of mid-album highlights including the gorgeous vocal harmonies of acoustic ballad “London & Leaving”, sparse and moving “Long Distance Lovers”, and the downbeat “Brighton”. The vocals throughout are amazing, Hutton and Robberds leveraging their harmonic chemistry to great effect.
I loved this album. Easily one of the best I’ve heard so far this year.
LITTLE HOUSE EP (released: 11/04/2025)
Rachel Chinouriri
I reviewed Chinouriri’s debut album What A Devastating Turn Of Events last year, writing that you’d ‘be hard pressed to find someone with a wider array of expressed influences’ - and that continues to be true here, a short EP with a couple of indie-pop tracks and a couple of ballads.
In a broad way, the opening tracks show an evolution of Chinouriri’s sound: “Can We Talk About Isaac?” is a guitar driven track even as it leans into pop composition and vocal, while “23:42” is a more overt alt-pop track that feels ready for radio already.
The back half of the EP is - like her debut album - dedicated to acoustic balladry: a demo of a track called “Judas” is raw and emotive as it plays with strumming in minor chords, while closer “Indigo” starts as a simple guitar part, and builds to a synth-drive, choir-backed crescendo, leaving you on a high.
Little House EP is a teaser for sure. But it works: I’m looking forward to whatever Chinouriri puts out next.
Also released this week:
There is an interesting nostalgic sound to Valerie June’s Owls, Omens And Oracles but I didn’t find it riveting beyond the first couple listens.
The so called ‘Golden Voice Of Africa’ is in fine form, but I don’t know enough about Mali or its star to do justice to a review of Salif Keita’s So Kono.
Back to their high-output selves, The Mars Volta’s Lucro Sucio; Los Ojos del Vacio is a solid record but I found it a bit samey in the back half.
Its an experimental indie-acoustic-rocker but Tom Lark’s Moonlight Hotel, a local release, didn’t quite grab my attention fully. Decent record though.
Happy Birthday:
REPEATER (released: 1990)
Fugazi
The history of Fugazi actually goes back to 1980: that year, singer Ian McKaye formed the legendary hardcore punk band Minor Threat - one of the genres formative acts in the 1980s, along with Black Flag and Bad Brains - and, along with drummer Jeff Nelson, formed Dischord Records, one of the most famous indie labels for hardcore music that is still operating today.
After the split of Minor Threat, McKaye switched focus to a handful of moderately successful acts before the emergence of Fugazi, the DIY hardcore act that went on to influence a generation of acts including Nirvana, Jimmy Eat World, Thursday and Chili Peppers’ John Frusciante.
Fugazi became famous later for their strict ethics, including charging as little for concerts as possible, refusing to sign with corporate record labels (despite plenty of interest), deciding not to offer merchandise on tour to keep costs down, and removing crowd members who were endangering other punters with slam-dancing, handing them an envelope containing a ticket refund on their way out.
All of that started with Repeater, a self-made piece of work released through tiny Dischord Records that brought the band to the mainstream. Admirable indeed.
One I missed last year:
HYPERDRAMA (released: 2024)
Justice
Okay, so I think I know why I didn’t bother with this one last year, and it is entirely due to my own bias against electronic music: my theory is that I saw the name Justice, associated with an outdated form of unchallenging dance music personified by their hit “We Are Your Friends”, and tossed them aside with acts like Calvin Harris and Avicii and The Chainsmokers.
Little did I know the pair had been innovating, working with indie acts like Tame Impala to expand their sound into the realm of alt-pop; indeed, Hyperdrama features collabs with The Flints, Miguel, and even NZ alt-rock star Connan Mockasin on experimental highlight “Explorer”.
The album starts with “Neverender”, with Tame Impala on vocals, and it is a fairly unassuming start, a decent dance track that belies the rest of the album, which is cleverly composed and well produced all the way to “The End”, the closing track featuring former Suicidal Tendencies bassist Thundercat.
The lesson as always: don’t be too quick to dismiss something because you never know, it might be really good. And also, I’m an idiot.
Thanks for reading this week, e te whanau.
Ngā mihi nui ki a koe - you are the best.
Have a great Easter, and a great week - see you on April 29.
Cheers, Chris xo
Aww, thanks bud!
Loving that new Bon Iver too. It’s so … happy? Upbeat? What’s the word? Positive?