Jan 16, 2015 Music
Every year at Laneway we stumble across an artist who stuns us. This year we decided to do some prep by asking prominent Aucklanders for their favourite songs by a Laneway artist. Your perfect introductory playlist.
LEILANI MOMOISEA, broadcaster/blogger/columnist and hip hop fan
SBTRK ft. Little Dragon, Wildfire
I’m not Laneway’s target audience, I only know of Little Dragon thanks to a Drake verse slapped at the start of a remix of SBTRKT’s “Wildfire” featuring the band, but though it’s Drake that drew me in, it’s Yukimi Nagano’s vocals and coolness that kept me there, and there are fond memories attached to the song, mostly made up of many kilometres driven around the city, blasting the song with the windows down, singing off-key, “Heyyyy, yeahhh, you’re like a wildfire! You got me rising hiii-iigh”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIluOj-yoeI
PETER LORIMER, sommelier and the man behind Laneway’s festival winebar The Vivian
Sohn, “The Wheel”
I’m digging Sohn’s soulful lyrics wrapped up in rich and abstract electronic beats. I’ll be swaying and soaking up “The Wheel” with a glass of Cambridge Road “Naturalist” – a new wine from one of NZ most exciting young vignerons, Lance Redgwell. It’s a raw Petillant Naturel (slightly sparkling) from his biodynamic Pinot Noir and Syrah. It’s dark yet vibrant with crunchy red fruit and a pomegranate lick on the finale. A perfect sipper with some Sohn and the sun on your back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AslPYSm7jfg
JACINDA ARDERN, former Laneway DJ/MP
Tiny Ruins, “You’ve Got the Kind of Nerve I Like”
While I am looking forward to see some of the fantastic international acts, I am excited about seeing our very own Tiny Ruins. I saw them play with Andrew Keoghan at Q theatre a few years ago. There are some acts you don’t forget, and some music you can get a bit lost in – Tiny Ruins is one of them. My pick would a track from Some Were Meant for Sea called “You’ve Got the Kind of Nerve I Like”. I’ll let the title, and the song, speak for itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRiG9nZ7-tw
JOHN CAMPBELL, broadcaster/Metro Aucklander of the Year 2013/festival fanboy
Four songs. I want four songs. Is that okay? Go on. I love Laneway. It makes me feel even less than half my age.
FKA Twigs, “Water Me”
My daughter is 13 and I’m 50, but (mercifully) some of the music we like is the same. We went to see James Blake at the Town Hall and it was a night of such happiness I’m smiling as I type this. But Ms Twigs is the artist we really bond on. This song’s lyrics exist somewhere between English-dotty and seriously creepy. But we don’t mind. What a tune.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFtMl-uipA8
Vic Mensa, “Down On My Luck”
This song is so preposterously catchy, so instantly gettable (sing-along lyrics after just one listen), that I kept thinking it must be a cover of a song I already knew. But it isn’t. It’s simply the kind of tune you listen to 500 times in a summer and even the kids don’t mind that their Dad’s become that kind of bore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jUGAVUwhRU
Courtney Barnett, “Avant Gardener”
“It’s forty degrees and I feel like I’m dying.” What a great line. What a great song, about ennui, about being young and adrift. My friend Hannah Sarney put me on to this. It’s a reminder that while a fair bit of Australian music is shit, at its best (The Go-Betweens, Paul Kelly, Courtney herself, etc) their ability to make perfect pop music from autobiography familiar to us is a gift even New Zealanders should be grateful for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcnIhzaDTd0
Tiny Ruins, “Straw Into Gold”
I’m thinking of going on the road so I can see every Tiny Ruins concert there is. They cast spells on you. Hollie Fullbrook is a song-writing genius. This is a song about being a fifty year old man. It probably isn’t. Which makes the fact it so vividly is, even more remarkable.
KATE ELLIOTT, actor/festival florist Fistful of Meadow
Connan Mockasin, “Do I Make You Feel Shy?”
I love what Connan does. This song fits perfectly into my florist vibes for summer – little bit pretty, heavy on the psychedelic. The back rooms [for the bands] are going to be like a psychedelic 70’s Indian wedding: pinks and yellows and oranges. Huge, long garlands of carnations and wreaths of jasmine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZl0ro-Pnb8
TAMA WAIPARA, musician/music programme manager Auckland Arts Festival
Lykke Li, “I Follow Rivers”
This is easy. My friend and producer (on Waipara’s album Fill Up The Silence) Aaron Nevezie introduced me to it right before we started recording. It was in my homework playlist and I love it, there’s a great version on Jools Holland too. Clarity of rhythm, simple melody, epic chorus. [Ed. note: In early January Lykke Li made the sad announcement that she was withdrawing from the Laneway Festival]
http://youtu.be/vZYbEL06lEU
HOLLIE FULLBROOK of Tiny Ruins, playing at Laneway and creator of Brightly Painted One, Metro’s best album of 2014.
Belle and Sebastian, “Funny Little Frog”
I remember when I heard Belle and Sebastian’s album The Life Pursuit for the very first time in the Victoria University library while I was studying. I received this song first, in an email, and it seemed to be speaking right to me alone – young and angsty and getting into trouble. It’s one of the ultimate ‘crush’ songs…so silly and sad at the same time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fT6pssrES8
St Jerome’s Laneway Festival, Silo Park, January 26. auckland.lanewayfestival.com
