Searching for your summer playlist for road-trips, picnics and days at the beach? Karl Puschmann picks the 10 best New Zealand albums to put on rotation.
It’s been a banger of a year for local music. There have been so many brilliant records released that it’s been hard to keep up, let alone narrow it down to a list of 10 favourites.
This could have been a Top 50 and there still wouldn’t have been enough room to highlight all the great music produced by our local artists. So, here are 10 albums I’ve been digging this year. Check out any that sound interesting or that may have flown under your radar. You won’t be disappointed.
The former Goodshirt frontman puts away the fuzz pedal and unplugs the electric guitar for this collection of gentle, meditative indie-folk songs. Crafted in collaboration with Ōtautahi duo The Response, Art School Dropout is an intimate slow-burner that flickers with relatable humanity and swells with private vulnerability.
Tasteful electro flourishes and rousing sentiment embellish Fisher’s acoustic guitar and his knack for a memorable chorus remains as strong as ever. A beautifully lush album. Fans of The National will find a lot to love here.
Listen: Single Keeping Up Appearances with fellow indie-folker Terrible Sons is a highlight but if you only listen to one track, make it Down by the Sea.
This self-titled debut record is instantly beguiling. Right from its opening track My Daughter, My Sister, My Son, Lamb transports you into her world of hazy urgency and smoky mystery. She’s joined by national treasure Bic Runga and former enfant terrible Kody Neilson, who not only handle bass and drums duties respectively but also produced the album.
Together the pair have captured a timeless sound that’s as cinematic as it is off-kilter, like a soundtrack for a film David Lynch is yet to write. Lamb’s sublime songs are sparse and tastefully decorated with woozy guitars, giddy mellotrons, Runga’s subtly funky bass and Nielson’s tumbling drums. It’s a vibe.
Listen: The mesmerising Take My Hands at Night.
It has to be the year’s most unexpected album. I don’t think anyone had the triumphant return of the celebrated hip-hop crew Home Brew on their 2023 bingo card. But here we are.
It’s been 11 years since the group topped the charts with their self-titled debut album and fans who have been hanging out for more won’t be disappointed. Although the title may refer to resetting the score to zero and playing again, the album itself is a slam dunk.
It’s filled with smooth, jazzy beats and impressively dexterous wordplay that details local life and local concerns. They may want a do-over, but it’s clear Home Brew has released another winner.
Listen: The old-school musing and soul-searching of Probably.
There’s no doubt this album was released at the wrong time of year. It’s an album full of laid-back funk, breezy R&B jams and a vibe that’s more relaxed than someone lazing in a deckchair with a cold beer on a scorcher afternoon. It’s a record that should be soundtracking your summer so it was a huge disservice that it came out at the start of our bleak winter.
So don’t sleep on it now. This bilingual record from the award-winning singer-songwriter is a joyously, sun-drenched collection of head-nodding, poly-funk jams with some undeniably groovy basslines, buttery smooth melodies and a Pacific flavour. It should be the album of the summer.
Listen: Tropical
It seems like everyone has fallen in love with this second album from Tāmaki Makaurau’s singer-songwriter Erny Belle. And yes, we’ve also succumbed to its charms.
Following on from her award-nominated debut Venus is Home, Belle expands her folk-pop sound with deep pianos, stirring strings and even a sitar to create its cinematic sound. But the real star remains Belle’s breezy vocals and wryly enigmatic lyrics.
Here she flits around genres with a determined focus, hopping from doo-wop to French pop to lush dream-pop without missing a beat. Impossible to resist.
Listen: The dark Americana of macabre ballad Midnight Madness.
In a world that’s questioning the relevancy of the album format, it’s typically provocative that UMO’s Ruban Neilson would go all in and release a double album.
Taking inspiration from stadium rock dinosaurs like Toto and Journey - but not their studio-polished sound - V is a sprawling record. It encompasses aspects of each of UMO’s previous four records while also leaning heavily into Neilson’s Pacific roots for the first time. Along with the new ′70s rock influence, there’s hipster pop, Prince-esque funk, scuzzy rock heroics and jazzy instrumental jams all slathered in UMO’s trademark, molasses-thick layer of fuzzy distortion and analog grit. Endlessly repeatable.
Listen: The melancholic instrumental Shin Ramyun.
Tiny Ruins’ fourth album is crushing. But it doesn’t sound like it. Instead, it’s full of hummable verses, earworm choruses and catchy hooks. There are songs of defiance, challenge, acceptance, wonder and hope. But underpinning it all is a despairing grief over singer-songwriter Hollie Fullbrook’s miscarriage.
Emotionally intense Fullbrook’s raw emotion is heartbreaking as she details her struggles with well-meaning friends, the miscarriage itself and her own pain.
Despite this, musically Ceremony is not a morose album. Fullbrook’s indie-folk is augmented wonderfully by her crack band who orchestrate the songs with wandering basslines, memorable guitar lines, twirling organs, inventive percussion and all-encompassing harmonies. Simply astounding.
Listen: The quietly devastating beauty of Diving and Soaring.
If brevity is the soul of wit then Ōtautahi’s Lukas Mayo clearly has smarts to spare. Most of the songs on their third album under the Pickle Darling moniker clock in at a spritely 90 seconds or so.
But don’t be fooled by these brief running times. Each of these handcrafted, bedroom-pop songs cram in an astounding amount of creativity, instrumentation, emotion and structure into their preciously short length. Mayo truly makes every second count.
When he does stretch out, like on the superbly named Invercargill Angel, he gets suitably weird with it and makes the journey worthwhile. You do occasionally wonder how the album would have turned out if every track was afforded the luxury of time.
Maybe, it wouldn’t have worked. The joy here is in experiencing Pickle Darling’s delightfully compact pop genius.
Listen: The bite-sized pop perfection of King of Joy.
The fourth album from alt-pop trio Mermaidens sees the group embracing the catchy side of their songwriting. It’s the most accessible they’ve got. Which is not to say they’ve sold out. There’s still enough piercing feedback squawks, spiky riffs and abrasive noise to satisfy even the most staunch anti-corporatist.
Combining the best parts of American noise-pop, grungey power and British post-punk Mermaidens have landed on a distinctive sound. It makes for short bursts of quirky, guitar-stained pop cuts (Foolish, Sour Lips) and gorgeously mellower moments in the second half like Comet and Greedy Mouth. Addictive listening.
Listen: The stompy Dress for Success.
Tāmaki Makaurau’s Jess Penson and Carly Gill, aka Kédu Carlö, have been storming through clubland for a couple of years now. Beginning as a DJ duo, the pair transitioned into a fully-fledged live act after blagging their way into a club slot and hastily putting together a live set.
This debut record is the result of that journey and it’s an absolute banger of club-ready hits and dancefloor fillers. Penson’s enigmatic and cheekily humorous vocals add a welcome dimension to their vibey blend of acid house, techno, breakbeat and electro. Sometimes leading the song, other times sitting out entirely to let her atmospheric keys and bubbling arps and Gill’s rhythmic drum work take centre stage. An album for when the party’s well and truly started.
Listen: The ′80s club banger Shotgun Baby.
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