The Naked and Famous worked the Powerstation with all the passion and torment and joy that their songs deserve on Friday night.

Janis Joplin would scare the daylight out of most sleeve-sucking, infantile women pop singers cluttering the charts and few have taken her as a role model.

Allison Pearson's witty novel about the trials of juggling motherhood and a career, I Don't Know How She Does It, was adapted by The Devil Wears Prada screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna.

On his fifth album proper, quintessentially British hip-hop artist Roots Manuva has gone all out. The first thing you notice is that it's 19 tracks long, stretching to almost an hour - which is lengthy in the age of 35-minute, no-filler wonders.

Beastwars’ Matt Hyde saw The Hellacopters play Squid in Auckland on 20 October 1998.

John Rowles, the half-Maori/half-Irish Kawerau Kid blessed with a commanding stature and physique, film idol looks, dandy style and that voice, skyrocketed to the top of the world music scene in 1968.

Reading Airini Beautrais' new collection, Western Line, fills me with joy - through what words can do and through the avenues poetry makes available.

Towards the end of his rambling diary of a road trip through his native country, Garth Cartwright engages in a sly piece of critic-proofing sophistry.

Mostly-silent lonely guy takes a shine to apparently solo mum in apartment next door and her young son. Except her hubby comes back from prison.

Though she's been releasing albums for 20 years, stretching the boundaries of jazz and blues, fusing them with traditional Maori song forms and te reo, this is Whirimako Black's first album entirely in English.

Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried are a futuristic Bonnie and Clyde in this stylish sci-fi action thriller from New Zealand director Andrew Niccol.

Author and screenwriter David Nicholls likes to get the most out of his novels; he's adapted all three for the big screen himself; Starter for 10 and The Understudy, and now One Day.

Even though instrumental prog rock metal is a specialist genre of music, when this Auckland trio released their 2009 debut, Vilayer, they were the finest exponents of it on the planet. It was a monumental and thrilling slab of sound.

Sort of "what I did on my vacation, part two" from this fine singer-songwriter who began so well with albums like Dressed Up Like Nebraska, Under Cold Blue Stars and Nashville, which took him from the late 90s into the middle of the last decade.

It sometimes feels that a band with such huge worldwide presence and such mighty success as Coldplay have a disproportionate responsibility to blow your mind when they release an album.

Raw, melancholic and powerful in its unsettled grace, Metals proves that an 18-month break was exactly what Leslie Feist needed to rediscover her musical direction.