William Dart finds some recent songs from NZ artists that buck our general mood these days and actually sound happy.
Graham Candy Photo: Courtesy of Graham Candy
Graham Candy is a youngish New Zealand songwriter who’s been domiciled in Berlin for almost a decade. Earlier this year he marked himself as a spreader of happiness and good cheer with his single, 'Aroha', an exceedingly catchy love letter to his homeland.
Six months on, Candy is still looking longingly across two oceans to us in his latest single, 'Keep on Smiling'. The formula, along with the tempo, is the same, but it’s a good and welcome one, here extending its pop vocabulary to la-la choruses and verses that twist their words around in all kinds of clever and unexpected ways. And there’s even some brave smiling through clenched teeth when Candy admits that his car and girl have been respectively crashed and stolen.
Martin Phillipps belongs to the Iceberg school of songwriters. That is, what you hear on the surface of his songs is just a fraction of what’s lurking underneath. He often likes to put his sad words to a cheery melody. What seem like jolly ring-a-round-a-rosie folk tunes are often imbued with the dark, dark soul of deepest Otago, midwinter.
He himself has described the overall theme of The Chills new album Scatterbrain as confronting aspects of mortality, sharing issues that, although very personal to him, also strike a chord with his contemporaries – the loss of parents and loved ones, the acceptance of probable solitude until death, and so on.
Many of us have become more or less stay-at-homes at the moment, and some find their own contentment and even happiness in it. Which is what Phillips sort of catches in the song 'Safe and Sound'. Even if the gristle behind his singing suggests that maybe things are not so happy at all. Is Martin Phillips, in his own words, going quietly mad at home? Well, at least he sounds reasonably happy doing so.
Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
If you want happiness in Te Reo Māori, then look no further than Anna Coddington’s new EP, Mana-Wā-Hine. This includes new recordings of songs from her magnificent 2021 album Beams, delivered in te reo.
Earlier in the year, on a programme devoted to this singer, I played the song 'Night Class' and spoke of it in terms of Anna Coddington as a mother of two determined to pursue a life in the bigger world. By which I meant, back in 2017, taking classes in te reo to support and explore her own iwi affiliations.
These songs cross over the language divide on gossamer tracks, the whole modest project being untainted by the deluge of publicity around Lorde’s recent Te Ao Marama EP. There’s an unaffected naturalness here that melts any barriers away, and those lustrous te reo vowels simply bask in the cool Latin ambience of 'Night Class'.
In the original version of the song, she ended with a Māori proverb, sung in te reo, translated as “I am a seed. I will never be lost.” Now it fits seamlessly into the new version, 'Akoranga Pō', as if there had never been any alternative.
fleaBITE, Snakes Alive cover image Photo: fleaBITE
The 2021 APRA AMCOS Award for Best Children’s Album of the Year was awarded to fleaBITE for their new album Snakes Alive.
I’ve featured Robin Nathan’s fleaBITE on this programme before, along with its distinguished predecessor Fatcat and Fishface.
As fleaBITE, Nathan has a winning and always lively modus operandi, creating the songs herself and bringing in just the right guests to help them spring to life.
And in doing so she makes music that, in the tradition of English panto, will appeal to both youngsters and oldsters with a craving for cabaret.
The new album features contributions from several guests including Levity Beet, Julian Ferraretto, Adam Page, and Chris O'Connor.
It’s always a pleasure to have Janet Roddick singing on this programme, which she did just a few months ago, when I aired Plan 9’s new album, The Bewilderness.
FleaBITE has given her diva assoluta status in the album’s final track, taking us for a whirl through the orchestral ranks.
It’s undeniably happy, of course, right down to the Ross Payne cartoons featured on the song’s video. But there’s also a streak of sadness here, with our concert halls currently closed and unlikely to open again anytime soon. In the meantime, here’s a song to remind us of happy times past.
Music Details
ARTIST: Renate Müller
TITLE: Today I Feel So Happy
ALBUM: Mir ist so, ich wieß nicht wie
COMPOSER: Gilbert et al
LABEL: Duo-Phon
ARTIST: Graham Candy
TITLE: Aroha
ALBUM: [single]
COMPOSER: Candy
LABEL: Crazy Planet
ARTIST: Graham Candy
TITLE: Keep On Smiling
ALBUM: [single]
COMPOSER: Candy
LABEL: Crazy Planet
ARTIST: The Chills
TITLE: Safe and Sound
ALBUM: Scatterbrain
COMPOSER: Phillipps
LABEL: Fire
ARTIST: Sol3 Mio
TITLE: E Ipo
ALBUM: Coming Home
COMPOSER: Riyanto, Pewhairangi
LABEL: Universal
ARTIST: Anna Coddington
TITLE: Akoranga Pō
ALBUM: Mana-Wā-Hine
COMPOSER: Coddington
LABEL: Loop
ARTIST: National Philharmonic Orchestra/Charles Gerhardt
TITLE: 20th Century Fox Fanfare
ALBUM: Captain from Castile: Classic Film Scores of Alfred Newman
COMPOSER: Newman
LABEL: RCA
ARTIST: fleaBITE
TITLE: What Does Music Smell Like
ALBUM: Snakes Alive
COMPOSER: Nathan
LABEL: fleaBITE
ARTIST: fleaBITE
TITLE: In the Orchestra
ALBUM: Snakes Alive
COMPOSER: Nathan
LABEL: fleaBITE
