My Week In Music: 30 June-4 July
A string of brilliant new albums from Lorde, Auckland rockers Ringlets, and emo prodigal sons Moving Mountains, plus birthdays for D'Angelo and Vince Staples
Earlier in the week, my buddy Chris Schulz over at Boiler Room pointed out something kind of astonishing: John Bradbury’s review of Virgin, hosted over at the excellent local music site 13th Floor, was the only locally written, in-depth review of the new album from our very own international megastar Lorde.
New Zealand’s biggest news publications simply summed up everyone else’s thoughts in easy-to-write review wraps. NZ Herald did this on the same day as Virgin’s release, then RNZ and Stuff followed suit. TVNZ lifted its review from AP. The Spinoff came closest to reviewing Virgin, sharing brief but entertaining early impressions from four staff writers.
The comments were full of readers sharing their surprise. Yours truly was (rightly) called out; as per usual, I waited a week to share any thoughts, and in this instance that might have been a mistake. Actually, not even might. One commenter, excellent pop culture writer Karl Puschmann referred back to something Bradbury said in Schulz’ piece:
There are so many talented people out there, so much stuff coming out. You kind of go, ‘If I am the only person who wrote a Lorde review, where does everyone else sit in terms of getting a review?’
“Bleak question. Bleaker answer.” Puschmann added.
And, so, here I am now, pondering my own place in all of this. Should I be reviewing big titles like Virgin sooner? Could I do a better job of including Kiwi releases in My Week In Music? What else could I do?
And that is where I’ve kind of landed. While my ‘take the week’ approach helps with work load, especially since I consider myself a hobbyist and - like a lot of the writers mentioned - do all of this in addition to working an unrelated full time job, it is clear that there are times to add my voice to the cacophony. So going forward, I’m going to try to include more Kiwi releases, make them a little more timely, and make sure I get on some of the big releases. And who knows what else - collaborations with other writers, interviews, all that stuff.
Mostly though, thanks for reading - as always, in the attention drought, I appreciate you spending some of your attention on my wee newsletter.
Ngā mihi me te aroha nui,
Chris
VIRGIN (released: 27/06/2025)
Lorde
Okay, let’s start here:
I think it’s past time to stop thinking of Lorde as a pop star, and start to think of her as an artist, as an auteur, as someone indelibly linked to her art.
As I surveyed the state of reviews for Virgin, aside from being shocked by the lack of local coverage, it struck me how many reviewers were praising the album simply because it was more upbeat, or was somehow linked to artistic reinvention, as compared to 2021’s Solar Power, the implication being that Solar Power was a blip, an oddity, a lull in her career.
One reviewer even called back to her second album, describing Virgin as ‘all mellow and no drama’, which is a clever play on words but a dumb take. And I can’t help but feel that a lot of this ties back to this idea that pop music is somehow less than (or that ‘sad rock dudes playing guitars are inherently more meaningful and lasting and real than exuberant pop ladies not playing guitar’, as Rob Harvilla put it this week on his podcast 60 Songs That Explain The 90s-Colon-The 2000s; he was discussing Kelly Clarkson at the time).
My impression, as I’ve gone through the single releases, and now the full length album, has been a little bit of excitement to see what she’ll do next, how she’ll sound on the next song. Lorde is an endlessly inventive songwriter who chooses her collaborators carefully - in this case, co-producer Jim-E Stack.
Yes, Virgin deals with reinvention. But it seems an incredibly personal version of the theme; in interviews, Lorde has talked about how gender identity and body image played into the album, and even spoke with Triple J about hormonal changes and the idea of a second puberty.
Lorde is clearly going through some stuff. And that comes through in the music: the production here is raw, song structures unorthodox and taking surprising turns, instrument use intrusive and discordant.
Lyrically, its direct and explicitly stated. You find her addressing identity as she sings ‘I burn and I sing and I scheme and I dance / Some days, I'm a woman, some days, I'm a man, oh’ on “Hammer”; acknowledging the past with ‘I become her again / Visions of a teenage innocence’ in “Shapeshifter” and ‘Yesterday I lifted your body weight / I pick a song and I listen to it / Till it's just a piece of music’ on “If She Could See Me Now”.
I loved it when I first heard it, and I still think “Man Of The Year” is the best track here. The shifting instrument work, moving from organic bass work into mechanical synths and distorted, syncopated drums. Its also the most revealing. ‘My babe can't believe I've become someone else / Someone more like myself / Who's gon' love me like this? / Oh, who could give me lightness?’ she sings, acknowledging both the change itself and the fear of embracing authenticity.
Lorde’s Virgin isn’t a comeback album or a simple musical reinvention. It’s more akin to Lorde: Chapter 4, the next part of an ongoing memoir told through music. It is brilliant at times, but never less than enthralling. A wonderful record.
THE LORD IS MY GERMAN SHEPHERD (TIME FOR WALKIES) (rel: 27/06/2025)
Ringlets
I don’t know what they’re putting in the water cooler over at Flying Nun Records, but it is working. Following brilliant releases from Voom (May’s Something Good Is Happening) and Womb (March’s One Is Always Heading Somewhere), Ringlets land this month with their second album.
Firstly, The Lord Is My German Shepherd (Time For Walkies) is the best album title of 2025 and entries are now closed. I don’t make the rules.
But secondly, and more importantly, the album is really, really good. Opener “Posh Girl Holds A Whip” starts out with jangly, clean guitars before rocking out in lavish, alt-rock royalty style, then hands the baton over to “I Was On That Roof Once”, exquisitely structured and full of clever wordplay; ‘I’ll prapañca if you keep spewing aphorisms rolled in glitter balderdash / And each to their own but you’re sprouting different feathers than that fountainhead’ singer Leith Towers delivers as a run on sentence in the chorus, guitarist László Reynolds trading call-and-response lines throughout as well.
The title gives the impression of a band who aren’t serious, but its clear this is a remarkably serious album. “Half An Idiot” finds the band slowing things down before a post-hardcore crescendo in the back half, Towers again delivering seeming non-sequitors that somehow make sense together. “Rolling Blunts On The Dresden Codex” is a gorgeous track, proving the musical pedigree of the group. “Sucking On A Surly Pout” is a high speed, insanely tight stream of consciousness with bassist Arabella Poulsen on vocals.
Another really strong album from a local artists and, after a half dozen listens, one of my favourite alt-rock records of the year. You should check it out!
But wait, there’s more!
PRUNING OF THE LOWER LIMBS (released: 27/06/2025)
Moving Mountains
It takes a bit of nerve to disappear for a decade then return with a brand new album a fortnight after you announce it, but late 2000s emo rockers Moving Mountains have done exactly that, releasing opener “Ghosts” as a single two weeks ago then dropping an entire album they’d made without a peep on social media or in any of the industry publications. I guess they figured they didn’t need to split their attention. And it proves that studio diaries and song snippets and press releases are really non-contributive to a brilliant record.
And Pruning Of The Lower Limbs is a brilliant record: the group have shown signs of this kind of brilliance before, always a band for whom the highs were very high, but they seem to be hitting that peak with more consistency here. The song structuring is clever - second track “Cars” bounces along without giving away where it might be going - and the group picks its moments perfectly, knowing exactly when to switch into pop-punk guitars, knowing exactly when to drop the right chord to tug your heartstrings (the ‘singular turbocharging moment’ as Rob Harvilla called it recently).
I suspect this is one that I’ll enjoy more over time. Its a helluva record.
SPUN (released: 27/06/2025)
Wavves
The ninth album from Wavves finds them at their catchiest in years: simple guitar hooks and vocal melodies that you can’t help but find yourself sucked into, tapping along in time to the music and nodding along appreciatively.
“Lucky Stars” is an early highlight, surf rock guitars giving way to a Pennywise-esque chorus complete with gang vocals. “Goner” finds the band scream-yelling over near perfect pop-punk riffage before halting suddenly for an ‘ooh / wa-ooh’ interlude. If I had a criticism, its that it apes a few too many acts, evoking Weezer at times, Smashing Pumpkins at the start of “In Good Time”, punks like NOFX and Pennywise at others. Spun is a fun record and I certainly enjoyed it, though it may pay to think of it as an homage to the 1990s.
FAIRYLAND CODEX (released: 20/06/2025)
Tropical Fuck Storm
A veritable supergroup of Australian rockers from The Drones, High Tension and Mod Con, the enticingly named Tropical Fuck Storm have been at it since the mid 2010s, putting out a mix of post-rock and alt-experimentalism that relies heavily on bass guitar, distorted at times, and swings from hard rocking (opener “Irukandji Syndrome”) to balladry (“Stepping On A Rake”, the title track “Fairyland Codex”). It sounds like King Gizzard at times, Morcheeba at others.
Vocally, The Drones’ Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin switch back and forth, Kitschin lending a soft upper register to the slower tracks while Liddiard evokes a ranting storyteller, borrowing from the sprechsegang style of The B-52s Fred Schneider while the instrumental gets gradually more unhinged behind him.
Entertaining record, though I wouldn’t say it is a great album. But it is pretty good for what it is - more odd alt-rock from Oz.
Also released this week:
The daughter of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates, Frankie Cosmos's Different Talking is twee and ultimately forgettable, though not bad for a nepo baby.
Ska punk legends Fishbone's Stockholm Syndrome is an entertaining, beautiful throwback that ultimately sounds a bit dated these days. Fun, though. And MAGA denouncement “Racist Piece Of Shit” is worth a listen for the wordplay alone. ‘I see you coming down the street / with tiki torches and hate speech / you're not a proud boy, you're just a fuck boy / Drinking the kool aid of a mad orange king’ made me laugh HARD.
It’s a mixtape but Lizzo's My Face Hurts From Smiling is a massive improvement from 2022’s Special.
Public Enemy's Black Sky Over the Projects: Apartment 2025 is only available on Bandcamp for now, but its worth a listen - not exactly to my taste, but I enjoyed it well enough.
Experimental electronic artist Nick León's A Tropical Entropy is vibey and unintrusive and perfect as background music while you work.
Auckland songwriter Paul Cathro's Catapult is a solid piece of work, though I wonder if the vocal needed to be front-footed a little more.
Barbra Streisand's The Secret Of Life: Partners, Volume Two is a series of duets with artists old and new, and occasionally on their songs - Paul McCartney on “My Valentine” for example, or Laufey on “Letter To My 13 Year Old Self” - that essentially turns them into showtunes. Do with that piece of knowledge what you will. (What did I do? Turned it off.)
Happy Birthday!
BROWN SUGAR (released: 1995)
D’Angelo
A few years ago, I got talking about D’Angelo with a workmate-slash-friend named Jake; he was a huge fan, extolling the virtues of Brown Sugar, how it was one of the best soul-funk albums ever made, and one of the best albums of its time, if not of all time. He talked about the production quality, the vocal.
In short, he bloody loved it.
So I messaged him this week to see if would be willing to write a few words about the album on the occasion of the anniversary of its release.
It turns out he was talking about Voodoo, the studio follow-up to this record that was released in January 2000. But he assured me that he feels much the same way about Brown Sugar as well. “Brown Sugar was pretty groundbreaking for its time. The title track is perfect really; produced by Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest.” You won’t find more acclaim in under 150 characters.
Ground-breaking is the key term there: in hindsight, Brown Sugar - and the rest of D’Angelo’s work - has been acknowledged as laying the groundwork for what is now called neo-soul, a term coined by Motown Records’ Kedar Massenburg as a way of marketing D’Angelo, Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill. More recently the tag has been applied to artists like Steve Lacy and Tyler, The Creator.
And D’Angelo? He is still out there performing, popping up every now and then, though he hasn’t released anything since 2014’s Black Messiah, his third album, amid personal troubles. Apparently he is working on a new album now and is in a good place mentally, so we can hope to see something eventually.
Brown Sugar turned 30 years old on July 3.
SUMMERTIME 06 (released: 2015)
Vince Staples
Like quite a few hip-hop and pop songs, I discovered Vince Staples a half dozen years ago thanks to a mobile game called Beatstar, a Guitar Hero-style scroller where you had to tap tiles on the screen in time to the music.
One of the best songs on the game - in my humble opinion - was “Norf Norf”, the third track from Summertime 06, Staples’ debut album. Summertime 06 was instantly acknowledged as a brilliant and iconic piece of work, The AV Club writing “It's a major triumph disguised as a minor one, 60 minutes of lean, inventive, important rap music that never pats itself on the back for being any of those things” while XXL declared “It is, simply, one of the best rap debuts of the year”. In hindsight, it might be one of the best debuts ever.
I don’t know what attracted me to “Norf Norf” initially, but when I listen to it now, I can appreciate the minimalist beat and subtle bass flowing along behind this weird drone-like horn sample. Staples’ verses are insanely clever too, covering familiar themes while personalising them; ‘Know when change gon' come like Obama would say’ he spits in the second verse, ‘But they shootin' everyday 'round my mama and them way / so we put a AK where Kiana and them stay’. The whole album is like this, like he’s letting you in on a secret.
Summertime 06 turned ten on June 30.
OUTRO
I love Summertime 06 and I hate that the vinyl is split over two releases that cost $80 each.