It's staggering to consider the sheer number of fine artists thrown up by New Zealand in the Eighties and Nineties and associated with the Flying Nun record label. The main players are well known and relatively claer enough for those with the remotest interest in these matters but lesser lights are still showing up and coming to my attention.
Take Dead Famous People as the latest example. Not a band I was even aware of until a few weeks ago when I read a review of their new album Harry and gave it a listen.A band that made little impact first time round, a couple of John Peel sessions and a period spent in London, before splitting in 1990.
Now they're back with Harry, their thrid album in all and it's a sunny little record, parking itself somewhere between Aztec Camera, Go Betweens and The Chills. Highly Poppy, highly positive, yearning, lovesick and very listenable. A band that have clearly not forgotten what it feels like to feel young and fancy another slug of the elexir.
This is a world where 'hold your hand' is always destined to rhyme with 'understand'. Some of these songs more than brush with cliche, (quite knowingly, to give the band their due), but that doesn't stop them being highly alluring for those prone to this stuff.
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