While Auckland rapper and poet Tourettes (real name Dominic Hoey) is not so much of a smart aleck on fourth album Tiger Belly, he's just as clever, cutting, and hilarious.

Constructed in the manner of ensemble films such as Nashville, Grand Canyon and Crash, this novel by the award-winning Australian writer Carroll again refracts the lives of some characters who have populated his previous work.

In 1967 the great critic Frank Kermode published The Sense Of An Ending, a series of lectures that not only mined the apocalyptic theme in art, but reviewed the ways in which fiction carves order and pattern out of the chaotic flux of time.

While it’s easy to be sceptical about the side projects of well-established musicians, particularly when they consist of odd amalgams of collaborators, they can often emanate a certain charm.

Mel Parsons' sophomore album is like high quality aural chocolate - sweet, comforting, sometimes dark, full of subtle layers, and a treat for your ears.

The often disgusting and downright mean things rappers get away with really is something. On Game's fourth, star-studded album everyone from Erykah Badu to the cronies at Interscope records are in his sights.

Atamira Dance Company's's beautifully crafted new Te Houhi - The People and the Land are One draws on intricately connected layers of dance, video imagery and narrated text to share poignant ancestral stories from the Ngai Tuhoe lineage.

It was a little disappointing really, only for the fact Alice Cooper - still the reigning king of gonzo shock rock after more than 40 years in the business - died just once, maybe twice, last night.

Are Super Villains New Zealand’s first masked hip-hop group?

As the title implies, Friends with Benefits deals with the social convention of what is meant to be meaningless sex between good friends.

It would be nice not to feel the need to eviscerate yet another New Zealand Film Commission-backed local horror that isn't up to its genre job description.

The songs still ring out with trumpets and french horns, a wurlitzer and ukulele, among many other instruments.

It's a little cheeky having the same song on consecutive albums. Soundtrack To Forever (featuring Tiki Taane) appeared on Bulletproof's 2010 album, and it also popped up on Tiki Taane's album from earlier this year - which makes it twice as cheeky.

Joe Nunweek's take on the APRA Silver Scroll Awards, the country's premiere songwriting awards ceremony.

What kind of historical novelist is Barry Unsworth? Despite his practised ear for the idioms of the mid-18th century drawing-room, and weather eye for the contents of the era's wardrobe, he is not a pasticheur.

For the past 50 years Detroit has given birth to genres that would be heard worldwide. Motown's deep back catalogue, house and techno are all musical exports of this great city.

Felicity Perry found Aucklanders @Peace very much at home in Wellington.

The Rugby World Cup opening ceremony may have hogged the TV, but there was plenty of entertainment across town at The Winchester, writes Joe Nunweek.

A family history. Also a social and intellectual history, and a different take on the Australian Dream.

This new package from Australia's John Butler Trio includes a DVD of their June 2010 concert, and a double audio CD. The two-hour-plus set ranges over material from their five studio albums, with emphasis on last year's April Uprising.

Think of songs in the spirit of Weezer and Elvis Costello with a touch of The Strokes, though with a relaxed and youthful Kiwi attitude.

These 18 songs are made up of selections of tracks taken from all of punk rock poet Smith's albums, starting from 1975 debut 'Horses', through to 2007's 'Twelve'.