NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Entertainment

The Drab Doo-Riffs: Fix up, look drab

By Joe Nunweek
Volume·
7 Sep, 2011 02:00 AM6 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

As well having a tight sound, the Drab Doo Riffs are a tightly functioning group of people. Photo / Milana Radojcic

As well having a tight sound, the Drab Doo Riffs are a tightly functioning group of people. Photo / Milana Radojcic

If F. Scott Fitzgerald once glumly declared that there are no second acts in American lives, Karl Steven appears to be onto his third. Plus an encore or two. The rule, I think as I watch him devour Malaysian tofu and noodles with great gusto, is obviously not universal.

The most recent act, Auckland's Drab Doo-Riffs, has just finished a nationwide tour in its own right with Liam Finn. Exuding a sort of frazzled but chatty energy, Steven is the first to admit to being "knackered".

"Once upon a time it felt like I was able to do it every night. Now, it's like my body protracts every late night and every hangover out into the next week and beyond. Like it's telling me: what are you doing?"

That said, he's aglow - the tour went well. Frazzled but chatty.

It wasn't always like this. Steven's best-known project, Supergroove, succumbed to touring. A death by a thousand cuts - "the Australian pub and sports club circuit killed us."

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Even then, he was escaping from an environment "that had just got too f**ked to continue, had stopped being fun."

The antidote was to throw himself into books - loads of deep thought, lots of theory.

"I figured it made sense for someone looking to figure out some sort of system to understand it all with. And you can either go down the route of philosophy, where you're given the right questions you need to be asking, or religion, where you can be given all the answers."

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Not someone to do things by halves, he threw himself into academia and renounced music.

He made it to Cambridge, bearing out gloomy winters and musty libraries to emerge with his doctorate in philosophy.

It is not, we agree, the most lucrative path of study ever.

"But I hate that sort of thing, the idea that the value of study is connected to its dollar earning value. That's not why I went into it at all."

Discover more

Entertainment

Karl Steven can't get enough

06 May 07:00 PM
Entertainment

Album Review: Drab Doo-Riffs, A Fistful of Doo-Riffs

06 Sep 06:30 PM
Entertainment

Concert Review: The Drab Doo-Riffs, The Winchester

18 Sep 08:00 PM
Entertainment

Sundae Sessions to get even more awesome

01 Nov 11:00 PM

And it was in the exhausting home stretches of that study that the pendulum swung back the other way. ("I guess that's what I do. I kind of get obsessed with a thing until I burn out on it.")

By his own admission, he avoided listening to music for years. And then he started making it again.

There's something refreshing about the Drab Doo-Riffs, even after some two years of raucous performances in and around Auckland. Between Marcus Joyce and Mikey Sperring, they have one of the best rhythm sections in the North Island.

Caoimhe Macfehin forms a gentler foil to Steven's kinetic yelp. Their sound flaunts the nascent sounds of surf, rhythm'n'blues, electric blues. It's rock before it fattened on extended suites and tape loops and tritones.

By his own admission, Steven isn't too big on these digressions. "I don't think I'll ever do my big psychedelic opus. I'm too much of a pop guy for that."

It's a palate cleanser - what better way for a jaded soul to return to music?

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

The first Drab Doo-Riffs songs got written and laid down by dictaphone over in England, but the ease with which a band coalesced around them is striking. Steven speaks affectionately of "a particular time when all the players have this extraordinary feel and care about the songs, and it's almost intangible.

The songs are hot. Even if there's a couple of flubbed notes, it feels better than something which is played perfectly but where you can hear how sick everyone is of the whole thing."

Accordingly, the band have blasted out quarter-hour EPs rather than let these songs stagnate for an album. The latest, A Fist Full Of Doo Riffs, is out this week.

The band itself is tight - sonically, but as a functioning unit of people as well.

"We turn each others weaknesses into strengths. Mikey loses shit all the time, but he likes to drive and be in control, so he'll drive the van around. Whereas Marcus is a bit more OCD about stuff. So now he keeps the keys so that Mikey can find them when he needs to drive."

Their poster art is all Joyce's lurid grimaces, the production and arrangements their own. "The industry's a very different place. Now, we can keep all of those things in-house."

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

And Auckland?

"Auckland," Steven says, "is a different place. I mean, my fondest memories of Supergroove are when it was small - it was just playing house parties at friends' places. There wasn't really anywhere else to go - it was the '90s, and people didn't go to see rock'n'roll shows. They all went to nightclubs, you listened to music out of PAs."

Sometimes, it's not the same when you come back - it's better.

What's In A Name?

A Drab Doo-Riffs interview in Rip It Up last year gave the game away - asked for the origin of his latest group's moniker, Karl simply said: "What do Dune, the second Lord Of The Rings movie, Star Trek: Voyager, Deadwood and Dune have in common?"

With all due respect to that venerated publication, it wasn't the irreconcilable riddle they made it out to be. 'Drab Doo-Riffs' comes from cult horror and fantasy actor Brad Dourif - he of the pallid complexion, soft tone, and chilling gaze.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Wormtongue in LOTR, Doc Cochran in Deadwood, the voice of Chucky in Child's Play. A creep for the ages.

Why Dourif? Karl picks up: "We were at this comedy gig, years ago, and we were watching this guy up on stage who was specialising in impersonations. Just a pretty stock-standard repertoire of imitating voices and tics and stuff, then a heckler yelled out 'Do Brad Dourif!' And we were just... What? He's a character actor. How do you begin to do an imitation of a character actor?" Faced with that uphill battle, the poor comic's 'drab Dourif' set the scene for the group.

In-jokeyness aside, the flippant, fun name rolls off the tongue. Steven is a fan of Nuggets, the seminal '60s compilation of garage-punk obscurities, and 'Drab Doo-Riffs' feels like a good fit alongside inscrutable titles like The Shadows Of Knight, Zakary Thaks, and The Cryan Shames. It's got to be better than just calling yourself 'Tool'.

The Drab Doo-Riffs' A Fist Full Of Doo Riffs EP is out this Friday on Liberation Music.

- Volume

Follow Volume on Twitter

Like Volume on Facebook

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Entertainment

Entertainment

Nip/Tuck and Home and Away star Julian McMahon dies aged 56

05 Jul 12:36 AM
Entertainment

Rock legends Oasis kick off 'historic' comeback tour

04 Jul 08:05 PM
Premium
Entertainment

Is Romeo & Juliet the greatest love story of all time?

Sponsored: Get your kids involved in your reno

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Entertainment

Nip/Tuck and Home and Away star Julian McMahon dies aged 56

Nip/Tuck and Home and Away star Julian McMahon dies aged 56

05 Jul 12:36 AM

He starred in shows like Nip/Tuck and Home and Away.

Rock legends Oasis kick off 'historic' comeback tour

Rock legends Oasis kick off 'historic' comeback tour

04 Jul 08:05 PM
Premium
Is Romeo & Juliet the greatest love story of all time?

Is Romeo & Juliet the greatest love story of all time?

Premium
'The 60s was a decade synonymous with love'

'The 60s was a decade synonymous with love'

04 Jul 08:00 PM
Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper
sponsored

Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP