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 […]