Bands popping off in Pōneke: Baldleaf

I am a mas­sive fan of ear­ly shoegaze like Slow­dive, My Bloody Valen­tine, Ride, and real­ly any­thing with that ethe­re­al, dream­like qual­i­ty that trans­ports you from your bed­room or local venue into the clouds. For this rea­son I was extreme­ly excit­ed to dis­cov­er the music of Baldleaf, self described “5 chip 1 fish”, and their […]

Bands popping off in Pōneke: Daisy Grae

Funky Welling­ton four piece Daisy Grae have explod­ed in pop­u­lar­i­ty since chart­ing in the top 20 hot NZ sin­gles with their song Con­trol in 2020, pack­ing out venues such as Val­hal­la and San Fran with a strong and irre­sistibly fun live ener­gy. With funky gui­tar licks akin to the Red Hot Chili Pep­pers or Jimi […]

Bands popping off in Pōneke: Debt Club

Debt Club is a band whose sound has gone through a major evo­lu­tion since their ori­gins as high school friends in “The Clas­sic”. Under­go­ing some changes in their orig­i­nal line­up, their sound has also moved from more tra­di­tion­al clas­sic rock to an eclec­tic mix of indie, folk rock and alter­na­tive coun­try. In an impres­sive live […]

Bands popping off in Pōneke: Mall Goth

“I’m hav­ing a ner­vous break­down on stage, if it was any­where else you would think I was crazy. But I’ve some­how man­aged to trick you into think­ing it’s cool. Unless you think we suck, I guess, that’s okay too,” says lead singer of Mall Goth on stage at San Fran, where the band is becom­ing […]

Shadow of figure sitting down in front of two wall size projected images of an abstract image of thousands of blue coloured lines

The Grid — New Digital Art Space

Writ­ten by Nadia Free­man Welling­ton’s newest and poten­tial­ly first dig­i­tal art space opened this month, and I am deeply appre­cia­tive of the entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it of Shan­non Bros­na­han Inglis and Delainy Jamahl. In an era when invest­ment in the arts is dwin­dling, launch­ing a ven­ture of this scale and qual­i­ty is inspir­ing. Ini­tia­tives like this infuse […]

Review: Concept for a Film

A Beau­ti­ful Har­mo­ny of The­atre, Music and So Mush Spore.   I loved the nov­el for­mat of sto­ry­telling that ‘Con­cept for a Film’ deliv­ered. The scene opens with Max Bar­ton, sit­ting at a desk that faces the audi­ence, read­ing out the script for a film. These read­ings are inter­mit­tent­ly dis­persed with many dis­rup­tions includ­ing phone calls […]

Review: Olive Copperbottom

Leav­ing Cir­ca on Wednes­day after the open­ing night of Olive Cop­per­bot­tom, one of the many things I was feel­ing was deep regret that it was the very first of Pen­ny Ash­ton’s shows that I’d seen, and I’d missed so many oth­ers.  Ash­ton is a bright light.  Her ener­gy, her wit, and her joy were incan­des­cent […]

Review: Macbeth

I went into Mac­beth at the St James com­plete­ly cold — I know Verdi’s lat­er operas, includ­ing his lat­er Shake­speare operas; Otel­lo and Fal­staff.  But I’ve some­how missed Mac­beth, and decid­ed to keep it that way, I guess because it’s so excit­ing to go into some­thing com­plete­ly fresh and new, even if it was writ­ten […]

Kia Mau festival another show

Hon­est­ly I thought they were done but the team at Kia Mau have one more show for us on Sat­ur­day June 19. BLOK PARTY at Meow Bar  Nau mai, haere mai! Kia Mau Fes­ti­val presents BLOK PARTY. Join us at Meow Bar with spe­cial guest per­form­ers DJ Deez­Naks, halfqueen & JessB. BLOK PARTY is between 12–4pm on […]

Review: The Look Of Love

I’ve seen Ali Harp­er before, at Old St Paul’s in 2012, and I was struck by her humour and pro­fes­sion­al­ism then.  It was a fun night out with my Robot Mum and we both enjoyed hear­ing songs we knew, and some we did­n’t, per­formed by some­one who knew her craft and was super skilled. On […]