Album review: New Zealand > You – Axver And The Quiet Minority

Yes, that Axver. This album just sort of fell into my lap and I felt it was my duty, as a music blogger (term used loosely) to review it.

So let’s begin, shall we?

The Weekly Roundup

First full week of the blog existence and it was an exiting one, we quickly went from two members to a hell of a lot more than two, so to try and summarise it all for you here goes

The Dunedin Sound

New Zealand’s best known musical exports are the Finn brothers, Neil and Tim (notably Neil’s band, Crowded House), and the Flight Of The Conchords. The various projects of the Finn brothers reflect the country’s rich heritage of melodic but not always conventional music, especially in the music of Split Enz. The rather unfunny Flight Of The Conchords, on the other hand, reflect a poor comedy scene – New Zealand, as much as I love it, has never been able to rival even its near neighbour, Australia, for humorous output, let alone approach the quality of British comedy.

Most musical encounters with New Zealand start with the aforementioned acts, but you are doing yourself a great disservice to let the encounter end there. For, beneath the surface, New Zealand produced a musical scene the likes of which are rarely seen – what is conventionally known as the Dunedin Sound. It began around 1980 in the beautiful and isolated southern city of Dunedin, home to a thriving student culture that had grown up on the music of the Beatles and the Byrds, and was embracing what punk influences gradually dribbled down to it – New Zealand, much more so then than now, has a habit of being a good few years behind the rest of the world when it comes to popular culture.