Photo: Polly Walker
In 1994, Supergroove had been drip feeding singles for a few years, leading up to the release of their debut album, Traction.
Listening back to their first single ‘Here Comes the Supergroove’ - the only one not on the LP - it’s a far sight from what did make the cut, songs that had fully absorbed the band’s funk rock influences into their own distinct brew.
Take ‘Bugs & Critters’, admittedly one of the weirder things here, slap bass alongside Karl Stevens’s mumbled - and then yelled - delivery.
Traction is much grittier than you might remember, vocals often buried in thrillingly noisy arrangements. For this reason among others it’s aged exceptionally well.
It set the stage for Che Fu to step into the spotlight over the next decade, and Karl Steven to delve into all sorts of musical pursuits, including film scores.
The singles, like ‘You Gotta Know’, ‘Sitting Inside My Head’, ‘You Freak Me’, and ‘Can’t Get Enough,’ still sound great, but so do album cuts like ‘Only the Rain’, and ‘Don’t Look Down’.
My personal pick is ‘Next Time’, which fully realises Supergroove’s ability to build excitement over the course of a track, brass swelling then receding, and palpable enjoyment from every player.
Another genre-busting local album was released in 1994: the third from then-duo Strawpeople. Paul Casserly and Mark Tierny had met at Auckland’s 95bFM in the mid-80s, and bonded over the possibilities of musical technology.
They were ahead of their time, using the studio as an instrument well before that approach was common, and melding musical samples with contemporary beats.
Broadcast had a complicated history, and contains re-recorded tracks from their previous album Worldservice. It was the band’s breakthrough, charting in NZ and winning them a Silver Scroll.
Like Traction, it’s held up very well. Vocals are largely split between Stephanie Tauevihi and Fiona McDonald, but the album’s standout, ‘Sweet Disorder’ features Leza Corban. It’s something of an anomaly, the smoothest track and perhaps the most of-its-time, but still eminently listenable.
The first track on The Mutton Birds' debut is certified NZ classic ‘Dominion Road’. A few years later, in 1994, their second album Salty started in a much stranger place, with ‘The Heater’, slightly gothic and featuring parped euphonium by Don McGlashan.
The album also features ‘Anchor Me’, a track etched in local songwriting lore, and ‘There’s a Limit’, a similarly sweeping ballad, as well as the banjo-assisted ‘You Will Return’, and triumphant ‘Ngaire’.
But its most potent might be that first entry, haunting, and slightly silly.
A few members of The Mutton Birds show up on Dave Dobbyn’s Twist, including Don McGlashan and his euphonium. There’s also Emma Paki, Neil and Tim Finn, a young Liam Finn, and Nathan Haines on sax.
It was Dobbyn’s first locally-recorded solo album, and quite a prickly outing, that ends with a few lovely ballads, and features an all-timer in the song ‘Language’.
It’s worth revisiting some of those other cuts though, like opener ‘Lap of the Gods’: classic, comforting Dobbyn, with a few rough edges.
