NZ Listener’s Songs of the Week: New tracks by Scribe, Reb Fountain, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Lady Gaga and more

Don’t Worry

by Scribe (feat. Mareko)

Scribe’s long-in-the-works farewell album Scribe is Dead has finally dropped. On first listen it sounds like a solid set that benefits from its next-gen crew of local beatmakers and producers. One of the stand-out
tracks is Don’t Worry, a jazz piano-framed number featuring Mareko of Deceptikonz, who released their own valedictory Evolution: Past, Present, Beyond in 2022. Of course, the first time Scribe got a Deceptikon as guest it became Not Many (the Remix), the 2003 track that did wonders for the careers of both Scribe and guest star Savage. This isn’t trying to make hip-hop history repeat itself, but it’s a reminder how compelling both of their voices remain. – Russell Baillie

Silver Linings

by Reb Fountain

Reverting to a more direct country-folk style, Fountain here offers a simple song which is simultaneously moving, sad, life-affirming, and timeless. Here in a spare four and half minutes Fountain manages all that – and more – as she speaks to a hospitalised friend offering succour and support with frisson of realism about the letting go when darkness descends and the dance is done. “Silver linings at your side, to help you navigate this great divide.” Love and mercy, unadorned emotional directness, beautifully realised in one-take honesty. Extraordinary in its elegant simplicity and tender depth. – Graham Reid

Bring Me the Disco King (Loner Mix)

by David Bowie (featuring Maynard James Keenan and John Frusciante)

The first in a couple of tracks in this column from imminent reissue projects is this song appearing on the remastered Bowie box set I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002 – 2016), of four remastered albums from Heathen onward and lots of extras. The original of this track, with a remix featuring Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan on backing vocal and Red Hot Chili Pepper John Frusciante on guitar was from 2003’s Reality, a fine latter-day Bowie album that was a companion piece of sorts to the return-to-form Heathen. The song was discarded from a couple of 1990s albums before it became this long, languid number with piano by multi-instrumentalist (and regular Neil Finn collaborator) Lisa Germano that starts off a bit like something off that Elvis Costello-Burt Bacharach album but winds up doing Led Zep Kashmir things along the way. Lyrically, it sounds as if the 56-year-old Bowie was addressing his unhealthy thin white duke self of earlier decades. Which is possibly why the original wound up on the soundtrack 2003 to the vampire film Underworld. – Russell Baillie

Trouble Man

by Joni Mitchell, Kyle Eastwood

Just out is a 61-track compilation Joni’s Jazz which collects five decades-plus of Joni Mitchell’s, yes, jazzier excursions from her song book and others’. This was a version of Marvin Gaye’s blaxploitation movie classic theme song, originally on the 1998 first solo album by double bassist and composer Kyle Eastwood – the son and lookalike of actor, director and jazz buff Clint Eastwood. Getting Mitchell to guest star on your first album? He must have felt like a lucky punk. – Russell Baillie

The Dead Dance

by Lady Gaga

And here it is, the song of the video “directed by Tim Burton, starring Lady Gaga” which was shot in mostly spooky monochrome at the Isla de las Muñecas, Mexico’s Island of the Dolls, where dolls hang from the trees and are pinned to walls. The location suits Gaga’s somewhat eerie and dramatic electro-pop thumper (the clip is hilarious without the sound) but the song itself (“I’m dancing until I’m dead”) is so unadventurous you can’t see “the Dead Dance” taking off. Gets by on the names, clip, and energy. – Graham Reid

Patupaiarehe

by Theia

The mysterious fairy-folk of the title here are much sung about in Māori mythology, but never like this. Theia brings a seductive waltz-like cabaret setting for her whispered vocals to sit atop as she sings of these magical beings speaking of their land stolen and villages destroyed. The unearthly vocal and slightly disorientating music means as both a metaphor and an album track this really works. Another early sampling of her Girl, in a Savage World album (due November 7). – Graham Reid

Face The Sun

by Fly My Pretties

With their most recent album Elemental released just four months ago Fly My Pretties now promise an expanded edition with extra material This reflective slice of Americana (“The night are getting colder, I just want to live my last days in the sun”) written by Laughton Kora and with a convincingly weary vocal by the band’s founder Barnaby Weir the first out of the gate. – Graham Reid

Sayōnara

by Kneecap & Paul Hartnoll

More fist-tight bilingual (Irish, English) electro-buzz rap’n’techno-rock from Belfast’s finest which throws back to Prodigy’s energy and is a collaboration with Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll. A celebration of drugs, dancing, and the fast life they now live. The video with Derry Girls’ Jamie-Lee O’Donnell packs in the politics, explosive escapism, bondage, clubbing and more. Play loud and often. – Graham Reid

Lose It Again

by Hatchie

Australia’s Harriette Pilbeam (aka Hatchie) captures a bit of the zeitgeist in this anthemic serving of cinematic dreamy pop which has a phone-waving chorus Noel Gallagher would appreciate. In fact, you can almost hear Liam drawling his way through it up front of the Sundays in overdrive. Catchy advance notice of a new album Liquorice (November 7). Video features cows. – Graham Reid

Shake For Me

by Merv Pinny

There was a time when Kerikeri-based Merv Pinny was a serious rock contender with his soul-filled bluesy attack. He’s been a semi-finalist in Nashville’s International Songwriting Competition five times (as recently as last year) and the gritty horn-driven barroom swagger on this confirms he’s still to be counted on live. The day job running the farm and his own studio have doubtless meant just a drip-feed of songs over the years, but an album is promised by year’s end. – Graham Reid

Your Own Worst Enemy

by The Avondale Spiders

This song as been described elsewhere, possibly in its press release, as having the “dark allure of The Sisters of Mercy and the punch of Mi-Sex” which sounds like pretty awful, deeply uncool cocktail of 80s stadium goth and late 70s synth-rock. But it’s actually an enjoyably fuzzy, big and bassy punk-pop tune. Think a gravellier voiced, heavily leathered Foo Fighters. The Auckland band, which is big on ghoulish, Ed Roth-like artwork, features Dee Dee Taylor of early 2000s all-women band Mary on rhythm guitar among three blokes including frontman Paul Edwards, formerly of Freak Power from about the same era. They’ve been delivering a trickle of singles over past years, and this sounds like they’ve got their big motor humming. Interesting fact: Avondale Spiders was also briefly the name of an Auckland pre-punk band featuring Bones Hillman, later of Suburban Reptiles, The Swingers, and Midnight Oil. – Russell Baillie

Police & Thieves

by Idles

The gentle Junior Murvin 1976 reggae song has already had quite a life, possibly due to being covered on the Clash’s first album and both versions winding up in all sorts of movies over the years, including the 1978 breakthrough Jamaican flick Rockers, Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tennebaums. Now, care of Brit post-punk Idles’ five-song contribution to Darren Aronofsky’s new crime caper, Caught Stealing, it’s got another, though the reggae has certainly been knocked out of it. If the Fall had taken the mickey out of the Clash’s version, this might have been the result. – Russell Baillie

Regular classical contributor Richard Betts is jet-setting around the world and sends his apologies, but as yet, no postcards.