My Week In Music: 7-11 July
New music abounds from locals Ladi6 and Freya, plus Kesha and Nilüfer Yanya a posthumous release for Low Roar, and birthdays for Big Boi and Sufjan Stevens
Before we get started, the 2025 nominees for the APRA Silver Scroll Award were announced a couple of days ago - congratulations to all the nominees! I was unfamiliar with several of the artists announced, so created myself a playlist to listen through the songs, and figured I’d share it here for you to enjoy too.
The Silver Scroll Award is ostensibly for songwriting - the art of constructing a song - so tends to skew a little more off-kilter compared to the Aotearoa Music Awards, and there are some great songs here. I do not envy the judges.
Full details on all the nominees are here; the awards are handed out October 29.
LE VĀ (released: 1/06/2025)
Ladi6 (NZ)
Ōtautahi Christchurch born and bred, Ladi6 - known to her family as Caroline Park-Tamati - is surprisingly well-travelled: her family lived in Tanzania for a year and a half when she was a teenager, and it was there she started to write music. Tamati’s cousin Oscar Kightley made a documentary about a visit back to Tanzania that explores this period, and it is available on YouTube for free.
Then, around the time Ladi6 released her brilliant album The Liberation Of …, which eventually won the Taite Music Prize, she relocated with her partner to Europe to support Gil Scott-Heron on a tour of the continent, eventually setting up a home away from home in Berlin around the exact time she was coming into her own as an artist, and securing Euro releases for her first two albums.
How is this relevant?, you may be asking. I would submit to you that this international experience has had a long-term effect on Ladi6 as a creative force. She acknowledged it directly in an interview with RNZ in May, admitting that she grew up in Christchurch convinced that she wasn’t book-smart. In recent years she has become a uni student, studying psychology. One imagines that if she were still there, she’d ‘get a job, help around the house economically, and then try and fork out a career for ourselves.’
We also wouldn’t have Le Vā, Ladi6’s fifth album - and first release since 2017’s Royal Blue 3000, thanks to vocal cord surgery - undeniably a piece of work that brings together both local and international influences from New Zealand, Europe, Samoa, and turns it into something that is purely her own.
A tribute to her mother Fuarosa, who passed away in 2020 near the start of the COVID lockdowns, the album crackles with that emotionality without ever making it the centrepiece of the music. Lyrically, Ladi6 is vulnerable, grieving, throwing her entire heart into what she is singing and saying, but the melodies and the rhythms are pure joy, a celebration of life as opposed to a wake.
The title, ‘le vā’, refers to a Pacific belief around the relationship between all things - the people, the environment, and everything else - and the connections between those elements, their importance, the nurturing to keep them alive, their effect on well-being. Its a theme that carries through the album.
‘All I know is what I feel / and what I feel it fills up the room’ Ladi6 sings on highlight “Zoom”, continuing later ‘Come as you are / Don’t want you anyway else’. ‘That’s how I’m feeling now without you / Thought I was lost but I found myself / I couldn’t help it but to celebrate / And in my happiness a tear escapes’ she sings on “Lightbulb”.
In that sense, Le Vā can be seen as an exploration of the connection between Park-Tamati and her mother, Fuarosa. But more than that, with Ladi6 as an artist and us as listeners, we’re part of that now too, a collective.
HOUSE IN THE WOODS (released: 7/02/2025)
Low Roar
A couple weeks ago, I included Caroline Polachek’s track for Death Stranding 2: On The Beach as part of Singles In Your Area and was reminded of Low Roar’s great song from the first Death Stranding game, “I’ll Keep Coming”. As well as that track, the group worked with Hideo Kojima on the soundtrack as a whole.
It was saddening, then, to be reminded that Low Roar’s band leader and chief songwriter Ryan Karazija had passed away as a result of pneumonia complications toward the end of 2022; ‘[without Ryan] Death Stranding would not have been born,’ admitted Kojima in a statement after his passing.
I also somehow overlooked the release of his final album, released posthumously back in February. The singer had already written songs and recorded vocal tracks for a new album and had been hyping it on social media prior to his death. Longtime producer Andrew Scheps, who had worked with Karazija since Low Roar’s debut and through the Death Stranding sessions, took over and finished the album in the late singer’s memory.
The result is an album that is sparse and melodic and front-foots Karazija more than he would probably have liked, but which operates as a perfect tribute to the brilliance of the man; the vocal work here shows he was at the top of his game, a raconteur with a command of how to apply tone and cadence to his words.
Would it have sounded different were he alive? Oh, almost certainly. But it seems rude to nitpick at an album that was released as closure for fans, and for the people in Karazija’s orbit as Low Roar. And as a fan, I’m glad I got to spend another hour in Karazija’s presence anyway.
But wait, there’s more!
. (PERIOD) (released: 4/07/2025)
Kesha
Among the brace of producers working with Kesha on this album - her first release as an independent artist through her own label - is her mother, Pebe Sebert, a songwriter who co-wrote Kesha’s Pitbull collab “Timber”. That family connection - even though Mom has helped on Kesha’s last few albums - speaks to the approach the singer took to this album. It feels distinctly Kesha.
Period is certainly a pop album, but its uniquely odd, building melodies around an accordion on “JOYRIDE.” or swearing profusely on “FOREVER.” (‘maybe this bitch off her meds’ she sings, tongue firmly in cheek) or aping “Where Is My Mind” in highlight “YIPPE-KI-YAY.”. The album is packed with great tracks though; the best here might be “RED FLAG.”, ‘I like chaos dripping head to toe / I love a red flag’ Kesha sings proudly. Period is all green flags if you’re a Kesha fan.
OF WATER (released: 4/07/2025)
Freya
Auckland singer-songwriter Freya - real name Alice Jones - self-describes her music as ‘folktronica’ which is a fun word to say out loud, and a perfect descriptor for the minimalism that binds the songs on the short-but-sweet Of Water together: guitar and strong vocal work, with rhythm sections made of little more than muted low end bass and only occasional percussion.
The vocal work here sets the songs apart, Freya’s voice driving the emotional imprint of each track - “Body Of Water” and “Yours” are standouts, finger picked guitar and harmonic layering giving the songs impact, Freya’s vulnerability on full display, never hiding behind the mix or mincing words. The middle song here proves it: its a voice memo on which the singer recorded “Waiting” among ambient rain and the reverb of the room she was in. It’s gorgeous, as is the whole record. I’m already looking forward to hearing more.
DANCING SHOES EP (released: 2/07/2025)
Nilüfer Yanya
Just four tracks populate this EP from Yanya, presumably released to capitalise on her opening slot as part of Lorde’s Ultrasound World Tour (by the way, no mention of Yanya in today’s announcement of Lorde playing Auckland).
“Kneel” opens proceedings here with an off-kilter guitar part that adds a bit of discordance to its relentless pop beat. “Where To Look” finds the singer in full Portishead, the vocal track mixed in behind effects and a distorted beat before the track takes off in its second half. “Cold Heart” is the most mainstream sounding track here, despite a string section taking the place of a bridge near the end. And closer “Treason” tones things down with acoustic guitar and bongo drums and Yanya at her most vulnerable. Dancing Shoes is a good collection of tracks but I find merely whets the appetite for a full length LP.
FOR THE PEOPLE (released: 4/07/2025)
Dropkick Murphys
Celtic punks Dropkick Murphys have had a long history since forming in Boston back in 1996 and hitting big with “I’m Shipping Up To Boston” in 2005 - For The People is their thirteenth album, and marks the return of singer Al Barr - albeit on just one track - who has been on hiatus since 2022.
Barr doesn’t exactly make the difference here; his song comes near the end and it isn’t the best track here. For The People is fairly by-the-numbers for the Dropkicks, its fun and its entertaining but it isn’t as remarkable as their earlier work. And I hate to say it, but fill-in singer Ken Casey doesn’t have the same edge as Barr; in that sense, “The Vultures Circle High” does stand out, as do guest turns from The Scratch (especially closer “One Last Goodbye (Tribute To Shane)”) and Billy Bragg (“School Days Over”). Enjoyable but ultimately just fine.
Also released this week:
I enjoyed MELODOWNZ’ Melo & Bass more than I thought I would, it’s alternating hip-hop and house beats too charming to ignore.
Well, F1 The Album: Official Soundtrack finally released with the apparently surprisingly good film. I feel like every song got released as a single.
I tried to listen to all of KATSEYE's Beautiful Chaos EP and I just couldn’t do it. Hate is a strong word, but I really, really, really don’t like it.
Souvenirs Worship's Holy Is The Lord landed in the NZ Music Charts which means either a) there is a huge Christian music audience out there, or b) if your congregation all buys a copy of an album, it’ll chart, in which case, could everyone in the Souvenirs congregation please buy a copy of my debut album when I get around to releasing it. And also writing and recording it.
If Rival Consoles's Landscape From Memory isn’t playing as background music in your hair salon, are you even serious about your business?
Nelson rockers Shedheads's Big Milk evokes the Chili Peppers in a mostly good way, and I enjoyed it’s fuzzy rock sounds well enough.
I mean, Rod Stewart's Ultimate Hits is his twelfth album with the word ‘ultimate’, ‘greatest’, ‘definitive’, ‘essential’, ‘best’ and/or ‘hits’ in the title. Surprisingly, not one has the word ‘cash-grab’ in the name.
Happy Birthday!
SIR LUCIOUS LEFT FOOT: THE SON OF CHICO DUSTY (released: 2010)
Big Boi
A couple of years ago, my buddy Richard told me about a game he and his colleagues had been playing in his office: for months, they had been trying to find a song that all of them agreed they enjoyed, even though they had drastically different tastes in music.
Naturally, I started reeling off songs that I thought - “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Go Your Own Way”, “God Only Knows”, “Hey Jude”, “Blackbird” - and they had all been eliminated already by one person or another.
Another song I was surprised had been eliminated? “Hey Ya”, the hit single from Outkast’s Speakerboxx/The Love Below released in 2003.
I thought about this debate - which is fascinating, by the way - again while I was revisiting Big Boi’s debut solo record because I wonder if its lead single, “Shutterbugg”, might be a contender for most enjoyable song.
There are few songs that have brought me more joy. For months back in 2007-2008, my oldest daughter and I would listen to this song, singing along to the verses, putting on silly voices for the vocoder parts, repeatedly singing the bass line (‘ba-ba-ba-ba-baba / baba-baba’) around the clock. I could probably sing the whole song right now simply from muscle memory.
While the rest of the album wasn’t as life-changing/affirming as that lead single, it is still very good. Big Boi is a generational talent, and Chico Dusty captured a little of that magic. I loved revisiting it this week. You should too.
Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty turned 15 years old on July 5.
Happy Birthday!
ILLINOIS (released: 2005)
Sufjan Stevens
It took me so long to enjoy Illinois. For a start, I thought was titled Illinoise, or Come On Feel The Illinoise, for the longest time. And it was indie-folk-alt music at a time that I was almost exclusively inhaling nu-metal and Christian rip-offs of nu-metal as part of my church-going experience.
And the songs have weird titles like “Concerning the UFO sighting near Highland, Illinois” and “Come On! Feel The Illinoise! Part I: The World's Columbian Exposition / Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me in a Dream” and “Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Step-Mother!”
Hindsight is an amazing thing; 20 years on, I appreciate Illinois in a different way - and those long-titled songs are among the best here; I especially love the piano work on “Concerning …” (an absolutely beautiful song) and “Come On! …”, and I hear the Beatles and Neil Young and Cure comparisons of the time.
My one disappointment?
Stevens announced with his prior album Michigan that he planned to do an album about every state in America, ambitiously titled the 50 States Project. Illinois came out next and everyone thought ‘shit, he’s gonna do it!’ And that was it. We’ve not had another entry in the years since.
“Sufjan Stevens did not write and record an album about all 50 states,” wrote The Ringer’s Zach Schonfeld back in 2019. “He didn’t even make it out of the Great Lakes region. No wonder millennials have trust issues.”
I want my missing 48 states, Stevens.
Illinois turned 20 years old on July 4.
Kia ora and thanks for reading this week, e te whanau.
Hope you have a great weekend, wherever you are.
Mā te wā, Chris xo