The Sampler: Hans Pucket, Goodnight My Darling, Boycrush, Amamelia

Tony Stamp catches up on four recent local releases, from power pop to indie breakbeats.

No Drama by Hans Pucket

Carpark Records is based in Washington DC, but they evidently have a growing interest in NZ music, releasing albums by The Beths, Chelsea Jade, and now Hans Pucket, the band started as a duo by brothers Oli and Callum Devlin that’s grown to a four-piece who specialise in power pop, but on their second album No Drama, find increasing room to flex into new modes and forms. 

This is a band held in high esteem - label mates and Beths members Jonathan Pearce and Elizabeth Stokes show up on a few songs, and it feels like mutual admiration more than label synergy. Musicians from jazz-inflected groups Yoko Zuna and Skilaa also make appearances, hinting at this album’s ambition - different songs incorporate brass, woodwind and string sections.

It’s an album that fits into a certain lineage of NZ bands - the chorus on 'Misery Loves Company' evokes Split Enz, and the single ‘My Brain is a Vacant Space’ comes off like Lawrence Arabia (possibly fronting The Cars).

The PR for No Drama emphasises that it’s the work of twenty-somethings working through a certain amount of anxiety, and certain songs do have plenty of nervous energy, but Hans Pucket isn't defined by it  - they're not afraid to slow down and spread out when necessary, and have embraced the chance to make their well-written, engaging songs as ornate as possible.

Goodnight My Darling by Goodnight My Darling

It must be tough to come up with an ear-catching band name, but Goodnight My Darling is certainly one that stands out. It’s the project of Pōneke musician Maxine Macaulay, which started as a vehicle for her to write shoegaze songs, and while there are certainly plenty of dreamy, fuzzed-out numbers here, the most immediate element is her voice, which, rather than recede into the background, holds these tunes aloft with its powerful tone. 

Goodnight My Darling has had a reasonably rapid ascent, enough that Macaulay was able to mount a national tour. Written in Berlin during lockdown and recorded in Wellington, this self-titled album has plenty going on under the surface - it was at least partly a response to not being able to come home -  and she has a knack for slightly perplexing word pairings and phrases.

Musically there’s a certain restraint here - even when things are comparatively raucous, like the songs 'Until I Return' and ‘Let Me Sit A While’, it’s as if her voice is keeping everything else similarly precise. 

There’s a lot of electric guitar on Goodnight My Darling, and the shoegaze influence is often audible, but around half the album is reasonably quiet, happy to focus on Macaulay’s delivery, which is often pitched high, alternating between icy and emotive.

The most stripped back is closing track ‘Luminescent Green’ which adopts a waltz time signature and folk chord progression, and even when a rumbling synth makes a subtle appearance, feels timeless.   

Wriggle by Boycrush

Tāmaki musician Alistair Deverick has a career you could neatly divide in half. On one side, he’s played drums on world tours with Neil Finn and The Ruby Suns, and currently sits behind the kit for Lawrence Arabia and Carnivorous Plant Society.

On the other, he’s indulged a love of electronic music, producing for Chelsea Jade, Jack Panther, and his own project Boycrush, his debut under the name earning him a nomination for Best Electronic Artist at the NZ Music Awards.

His second album Wriggle is full of similar synthetic textures, paired with some extremely considered hooks - this is a pop album through and through.

Deverick’s processed voice takes the lead on tracks like 'Kitchenette', which evokes bittersweet nights out (and sadly missed bar Golden Dawn), but many are sung by Carla Camilleri from the band Recitals. On tracks like ‘Winooski’ the pair conjure a melancholy kind of pop that could easily have come from an army of ghostwriters in Los Angeles, rather than two people in Auckland.

Elsewhere Boycrush embraces the rush of dancefloor euphoria on tracks like ‘I Can’t Sleep’, Camilleri’s measured delivery atop Deverick’s gradually swelling instrumentation until we finally hear him behind the drum kit in the song’s urgent final stretch.

Wriggle is a great name for an album, and I suspect it’s the physical reaction Deverick wants this music to provoke. Its eight tracks feel amiable and kind, and influenced by modern pop as much as dance music. The final one, called ‘Cold Shoulder’ is the closest Boycrush comes to sounding like a band, with live bass and guitar buoying Camilleri’s torch song vocal, unashamedly sentimental and quite lovely.

Banamelia! by Amamelia

There was a moment in my early twenties when I was studying music production, and dial-up internet had become widely available, and it felt like my classmates and I were suddenly playing catch-up on musical history. A lot of us were interested in dance music, and there was a culture of chat rooms and forums dedicated to its production starting to spring up. Folders of famous drum breaks - snippets of songs where only the drums were playing - were circulated, and it all felt very exciting. 

I say all this because when I listened to the new album by Tāmaki Makaurau producer Amamelia, I heard many of the same breaks I’d played with twenty years ago - albeit edited and sequenced with far more flair than my fellow students and I had the ability to do.   

As someone who follows Amelia Berry on Twitter, I can say she seems like a student of musical history, downright encyclopaedic in her knowledge of those famous beats and the many iterations they’ve been through since I first heard them.

The record feels like a celebration of the last thirty or so years of dance music, layering break upon break alongside exuberant synths and occasional field recordings.  

A line from the song 'Colourbox' about “a wet Sunday in June” (sung by Madison van Staden) grabbed my ear, mainly because much of the track is blanketed in summery cicadas. There’s also one called ‘Lawnmower Heaven’ which heavily features nighttime crickets, which seems equally counterintuitive. There may be a deeper meaning here, or maybe Amelia just thinks it’s funny.

Halfway through the album its emphasis on junglist rhythms eases off, giving way to the scorcher ‘Gap Selection’ - half the tempo, but equally infatuated with the nineties. 

Bananamelia! feels like the work of someone who’s absorbed the rich history of dance music, and married it to certain impish indie impulses. There are synth noodles that hark back to the likes of Mort Garson in the seventies, drum fills stuffed with eighties gated reverb, and inspiration from early drum and bass.

Amamelia’s personality is present throughout, in her interest in hyperactive editing, and a healthy sense of humour. More than anything, it’s a lot of fun.