Matthew Bannister will play at Lucky Bar in Whanganui on his Rubber Solo tour.
Photo / Hayley Theyers
Matthew Bannister will play at Lucky Bar in Whanganui on his Rubber Solo tour.
Photo / Hayley Theyers
The indie music of 1980s Dunedin has never really gone away as so many of its key players are still at large and still making music.
Two of them - Matthew Bannister of Sneaky Feelings and Hamish Kilgour of The Clean - are heading to Whanganui to play a double bill at Lucky Bar + Kitchen on November 8.
Bannister, now based in Hamilton where he works as a post-graduate advisor at Waikato Institute of Technology (WINTEC), will be making his first visit to the river city.
"I don't know why I've never been there before," he says.
He is about to release his new Beatles cover album Rubber Solo on Powertool Records.
Rubber Solo is Bannister's second Beatles cover album.
He released his Evolver album as One Man Bannister and achieved moderate success, making the album charts in 2013.
It seems an audacious act to record an entire Beatles cover album, and Rubber Soul is considered by many fans to be the fab four's best, but Bannister seems to have pulled it off.
He has played with the tempos and phrasings of the songs while still managing to pay tribute to the originals somehow - a feat that could only be accomplished by a musician who truly loves the songs and means them no harm.
Nowhere Man, The Word, Girl, I'm Looking Through You, If I Needed Someone, In My Life, all work well with the Bannister treatment and an instrumental Michelle with surf guitar is especially nice.
John Lennon is reputed to have said that Run for Your Life, with its menacing lyrics, was the song he was least proud of but Bannister's gentle vocals on his version somehow make it more of a love song and less of a threat.
Beatles aficionados should enjoy hearing his versions played live and he believes they should also appeal to younger audience members.
"The songs on Rubber Soul are familiar even if people don't own the album.
"Everyone will have heard most of them without even being conscious that they are Beatles songs."
A Whanganui audience will also get to hear a set of Bannister's own songs which he says includes early, recent and in-between material.
Hamish Kilgour and Stu Page playing in Oamaru earlier this year.
Photo / Duane Zarakov
Hamish Kilgour, based in New York for many years, makes regular visits home and on this current tour will also be playing in Whanganui for the first time.
"I'm really looking forward to it," Kilgour said.
"I really like playing out of the main cities."
The Hamish Kilgour Trio includes visual artist, filmmaker and drummer Stuart Page (Axemen) and bass player Daniel Mañetto (Shaft, The Fuzzies).
"I'm on guitar and vocals, Danny is on semi-acoustic bass and Stu on drums.
"We will be playing a bunch of songs from my past and a couple of new pieces."
Kilgour released his second solo album Finklestein, on Ba Da Bing Records this year.
"We are not a loud band - fairly low key and have been described as a kind of slower Velvet Underground.
"We endeavour to get some nice grooves going."
He said the band will be travelling with a projector and will have the Finklestein videos screening while playing.
Matthew Bannister - Rubber Solo tour with the Hamish Kilgour Trio: Lucky Bar + Kitchen, 53 Wilson St, Friday, November 8. Tickets $20 from undertheradar.co.nz
