Two Neilsons, one night. Only a couple of days shy of their Auckland shows, the wavering uncertainty about who would be drumming was resolved and Volume got confirmation that Kody Nielson would be manning the skins for his older brother's Portland psych-out come the weekend.
Straight away, there was a sort of morbid, gossipy hum - if the last couple of Mint Chicks gigs were the fraught separation of siblings, would this be the dysfunctional family reunion from hell?
Horseshit. Dwelling on the messy demise of the Mint Chicks is to see them through rose-tinted glasses. I think I must have seen the group a couple of dozen times from my teens onward, and it was the disorder, the seesawing on the brink of chaos, the tension that you could cut with a knife that made them amazing.
You didn't go along for an authentic album experience unless you craved disappointment.
So Unknown Mortal Orchestra live? Different to the record. The hermetically-sealed dayglo pop universe on there is teased out into long claustrophobic passages. 'Nerve Damage', which sounds like an Ariel Pink slurry on disc, comes across as a stop-start collision between Gun Club twang and some noodly, long-lost Brazilian guitar oddity.
