What does a Sleater Kinney collaboration with St Vincent, an epic mashup, and the return of bro-music’s moodiest navel-gazers have in common? They’re all in The Spinoff Music’s best songs of May 2019. International ‘Hurry on Home’ by Sleater Kinney 2019, and the only thing that can save the world is a Sleater-Kinney song produced … Read more
The Red Bull 64 Bars series has become a hotbed of local hip-hop. Hussein Moses asked the artists who had stepped up to the mic to break down their favourite one-liners from a series that’s full of them. Now seven seasons deep, and on the eve of the next group of young talent stepping up … Read more
Today is Love Your Local Venue Day, part of NZ Music Month, and it marks the 15th anniversary of beloved Auckland venue The Wine Cellar. Gareth Shute pays tribute to the best dive bar in town. This piece is republished with permission from Audioculture.. The Wine Cellar has become a well-loved landmark within the live music … Read more
Season 11 of RuPaul’s Drag Race comes to an end tonight, leaving a void in the souls of its massive fandom. But don’t put away your merch money yet – there are plenty of local acts waiting to steal your heart. In the immortal words of Jasmine Masters, RuPaul has fucked up drag. With the … Read more
Despite the outdated format, the premiere of Wife Swap NZ felt quietly revolutionary thanks to one woman. Alex Casey explains why. Everything about the Wife Swap format is cause for teeth-shattering cringe. Two families trade their wives – who are often also their precious unpaid cook, cleaner and child-minder – for a week in the … Read more
Season three of The Handmaid’s Tale drops on June 6, exclusively on Lightbox. Brush up on all the bonnets, babies and body horror of the first two seasons here. !!! Contains spoilers for season 1 and 2 of The Handmaid’s Tale !!! The first three episodes of season three of The Handmaid’s Tale drop on Lightbox … Read more
Twenty minutes, seventeen songs – Miniatures 1 is an EP you can listen to over a large coffee. Taylor MacGregor talks to musician SJD about the process behind making his audacious new album. As someone prone to losing focus and getting deep in an endless Youtube hole, the proposition of listening to an album of … Read more
Avi Duckor-Jones won Survivor NZ after 40 days living on a deserted stretch of coast, fighting to stay alive. He’s also a teacher in a New Zealand school. I have often been asked the question: “Which has been harder? Survivor or teaching?” In the past I’d laugh and provide a practised answer, but on the … Read more
Let’s Get Inventin’ was a late-noughties reality TV show that pitted children and scientists against common sense. Josie Adams looks back at what made it great. Our screens have played host to many questionable children’s television shows over the years: Bumble, Drew Neemia-era Sticky TV, and Worzel Gummidge Down Under are just three examples. But … Read more
Alex Casey goes down a YouTube rabbit hole to try and find the best New Zealand advertising jingle ever created. It happened without warning. Staring into my simmering bolognese last week, something came over me. I turned slowly, the harsh kitchen lights dimming to a single spotlight. I held the saucy wooden spoon up to … Read more
They’re not tiny dancers, they’re Elton John sized! Thank the lord! Sam Brooks power-ranks week seven of Dancing with the Stars. I could have lived my whole life without seeing Dai Henwood play at being Elton John! But here we are in May 2019, readers. The world burns and drowns around us. Sincere question: Do … Read more
Ten years on from its first episode, Sam Brooks revisits all the wild, dumb, and plain terrible things that happened on Glee. Ten years ago, a little show from the brain of Ryan Murphy premiered. Up until this point, he’d had a minor failure with black teen comedy-drama Popular and a minor success with scuzzy hospital … Read more
At over five hundred million streams, Ava Max is proving to be one of the biggest popstars of 2019. Not only that, writes Sam Brooks, she might actually be the most perfect. Ava Max is like a Frankenstein of a popstar, which I mean in the best way possible (also yes, I know Frankenstein was … Read more
Controversy erupted over The Project host Kanoa Lloyd’s decision to wear an ‘it’s OK to be white’ t-shirt this week. Newshub’s Sophie Bateman looks into the co-option of a seemingly innocuous slogan. The Rorschach test is a famous psychological tool in which patients are shown a series of random inkblots and asked what they see. … Read more
The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in reality television and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s. It’s Jane’s second to last podcast in New Zealand and we have pulled out all the stops: a fire hazard, a cheesy bread cake from Nando’s and some incredibly interesting analysis of everyone’s favourite dancing show. There’s … Read more
All four seasons of Laura Linney’s cancer comedy The Big C drops on Lightbox today. Sam Brooks writes about the series’ surprisingly uplifting journey through a woman’s nightmare. There’s a moment late in the first season of The Big C that hits you right in the gut. After finding out his mother Cathy (Laura Linney) has terminal cancer, her … Read more
Enough of those inoffensive, latte-sippin’ jams selected purely to appease the baby boomers: the most memorable places to dine use music as just one more way to express themselves. If you’ve worked in a restaurant or café in the past 20 years – even if you’ve dined out a whole lot – you’ll likely be familiar … Read more
LEGO Masters Australia is a new show that will grab you by the heart with its extendable Technic arm and never let go. Before LEGO Masters, Lego was nothing to me. It was an evil beast that gave me the shits when I stood on it in bare feet at 3am, and I took great … Read more
The six members of City of Souls previously played in some of NZ’s heaviest and most beloved guitar bands – Blindspott, Blacklistt, and 8 Foot Sativa, to name a few. Guitarist Trajan Schwencke tells Gareth Shute why they’re just as focused on melody as they are on riffs and why in this case, three guitars … Read more
Creative professionals struggle to make a living in New Zealand, according to new research by Creative New Zealand and NZ On Air. Is it hurting the country’s creative future? Just two months after releasing his critically-acclaimed album Avantdale Bowling Club, Auckland rapper Tom Scott tweeted that he might not be staying in the music industry. … Read more
A lion escapes from the zoo and kills a Rotorua poodle. Weird story, but how did it actually happen? Jean Sergent watches Who Killed Lucy The Poodle?, a TVNZ documentary that attempts to get to the bottom of the legendary affair. For some reason, this story makes perfect sense to me. The premise of Who … Read more
To celebrate the release of her third album, Dedicated, here’s our guide to becoming a Carly Rae Jepsen fan. A Carly Rae Jepstan, if you will. You, an idiot: “Is that the girl who did ‘Call Me Maybe’?” Me, an intellectual and someone with a lot of time on their hands: OH LET ME TELL YOU. … Read more
It’s week six of Dancing with the Stars, and the cream has risen from beneath the crop! Sam Brooks power-ranks the contestants. Week six! We’re at the stage of the competition where I can listen to a judge’s feedback and guess, with 100% accuracy, what their score is based on their comments. What a specific talent! … Read more
Katie Meadows reviews Catch-22, George Clooney’s bleak and boring TV adaptation of the classic novel. Even if you are not familiar with Joseph Heller’s 1961 satirical novel, you will be familiar with its title — a catch-22 at its most technical is a paradoxical problem with no solution because its rules inherently void the possibility of … Read more
Anna Knox reviews the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s Shed Series – Responses and finds that Shed 6 transforms the experience of live classical music entirely. Last time I wrote about the NZSO, I claimed that hearing them perform was not about the ‘whole experience’. I’d like to say in hindsight that was foolish and I’ve changed my … Read more
With the first 101 issues of Rip It Up going online this week at Papers Past – about 3000 pages in all – where to start? Two dedicated readers and contributors share their favourite moments from the magazine’s early years. In 1980 Simon Grigg founded the influential indie record label Propeller, which launched Blam Blam … Read more
The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in reality television and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s. This week on the pod we’re absolutely snowed under with exciting news from the reality TV world, the real world, and the Nando’s world. There’s a 24 year-old sheep knocking around, the old Milo formula is the … Read more
Forget his problematic Instagram and his pet monkey, Justin Bieber made his most evocative piece of art during a whirlwind trip to New Zealand in 2010. Cast your mind back to 2010. Donald Trump was just a guy asking budding entrepreneurs to manage a doggy day care on his reality TV show. The Social Network … Read more
The first 101 issues of Rip It Up have been added to the free online archive Papers Past. Gareth Shute tracked down some of the people behind this legendary publication to get a sense of how it started and why it was so essential to the local music scene. Rip It Up magazine was a … Read more