Rachel Ashby is the new host of the 95bFM Breakfast show. Photo / Jessica Philbrick
Rachel Ashby is the new host of the 95bFM Breakfast show. Photo / Jessica Philbrick
Each week we invite music lovers to share the songs that have soundtracked their lives. This week it's Rachel Ashby, visual artist and the new host of the 95bFM Breakfast show.
In the Dark Places - PJ Harvey
I think PJ Harvey is my favourite musician/artist/writer of all time. Thisalbum was the first album of hers I really connected with, and I didn't like it when I first heard it. My mum bought it for me, and I listened to it, and I was like, it's really weird, her voice is really rakey and it's just strange. I left it on the burn for a while, and then somehow I got back into it, and it just blew my mind.
I was like, oh my god – she's writing war poetry that doesn't have a specific time or place. And it's really remarkable that as a woman she's writing this because it's such a masculine genre of writing; it kind of gives it this weird bird's-eye view on a context. It's probably one of my favourite albums of all time. I could talk about (PJ Harvey) for hours; I could write a thesis about her.
Land (Horses/Land of a Thousand Dances/La Mer(de) - Patti Smith
This is another touchstone for a lot of musicians that I love. I think it blew me away that poetry and rock music could just sit so well together, and she's also somebody whose voice is very unusual but totally captivating. And it's just epic. It's nine minutes of roaring guitar and beautiful stream of consciousness that talks about everything from mental health to rock 'n' roll to morality and mortality. Patti Smith is always so epic in her actions – she goes for big, she goes for grand, she goes for poetic and romantic and sweeping, and she's totally unapologetic about it. Even the way she runs her Instagram – it's kind of bonkers but in the best way.
Pilot - Aldous Harding
Designer is just gorgeous. I really like Pilot because it really sounds like a Paul McCartney song to me; the simplicity of just sitting down with a piano, and putting words to a couple of chords, is something that's just timeless – and yet (Harding) somehow manages to make it sound completely fresh and new and like no one's ever done it before. And I also just love that line – 'Like height under a pilot'. That is gorgeous, and I completely understand what she means, even though I would have never thought to say it like that. Also, she's from Lyttleton; she's a fellow South Island wahine, and I really admire all of those musicians who are working in Lyttleton, and I like feeling I can share that little connection there.
Listening for the Weather - Bic Runga
Bic Runga's Beautiful Collision is the first album I ever owned. I was given it when I was 6, and I think it was the first album I really loved on my own terms. I had a Walkman that me and my brother used to battle over, and I just played it so many times. Listening to this album is like putting on a very comfortable jersey or something, and this song in particular just makes me so happy. I had this second love of Bic Runga when I was in my late teens, and I realised that not only was she this musician who I'd loved forever, she was actually also ridiculously cool. I just think she makes amazing music consistently, and she's a national treasure and we love her. We stan Bic Runga She came up to bFM a year or two ago, and I've just never been less cool in my whole life. She was tuning her guitar in the studio and practising, and I was just standing at the door – my cousin was there as well, and we were both just freaking out. Because how do you be cool in front of Bic Runga? She's just the queen of New Zealand music.
Andy - The Front Lawn
This one is very culturally specific in the sense that it names drops North Head, Takapuna, it talks about really particular physical locations in New Zealand, and I really like that. We have a lot of cultural cringe about owning our space or our identity in New Zealand, but I think once you grow out of that you can just revel in how fantastic it is to be from such a vibrant cultural space as New Zealand. This was the first song I can remember that really moved me a lot. It's just a gorgeous song about the awfulness of grief. It will make me cry at the drop of a hat.
Could Heaven Ever Be Like This - Idris Muhammad
This is a song that makes me want to dance. It's epic; it's eight whole minutes of gloriousness, and I, like any good millennial, came to it through a sample. It was in a Jamie XX track, off the In Colour album, and through that I found this song, and I was like, 'wow – this is amazing.' It makes me think of my friends, it makes me think of my flatmates, and it makes me think of just how much fun it is to be a young person living in a really exciting place like Tāmaki Makaurau.
Shame, Shame, Shame - Linda Fields, The Funky Boys
Another one that very much falls in that vein; I love the sentiment of it, just being like, 'go and have fun. Shame on you if you can't dance' – but I don't think that it means that in the sense of actually shaming someone, but just being like, 'go on, just have a good time.' It really reminds me of Golden Dawn; it makes me miss it quite deeply because I feel like I had a lot of good nights dancing to people like Tina Turntables there. It's a song I will relentlessly slam at parties. If you give me the AUX cord, you will hear Linda Fields and The Funky Boys, and I will point at you until you're dancing. I will aggressively make you dance.
