SOUNDS FROM YOUR LOUNGE: Kiwi-as musician Don McGlashen brought the soundtrack to New Zealandness into our lives and in September he’ll drop into the Dome lounge for a bit of a concert. File picture
New Zealandness was delivered to us by the ute load when musical/theatrical duo The Front Lawn, then The Muttonbirds, turned up in our lounges throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Front Lawn titles such as The Reason for Breakfast, The Washing Machine, and The Story of Robert tapped into anxiety in
the Kiwi psyche while a seam of ambiguous menace threaded through The Muttonbirds’ first album.
Central to both acts was Don McGlashan who transmutes the ordinariness of an Auckland road, a sporting goods store, and the Kiwi OE into nerve-hitting narratives inflected with 1960s naive guitar styles and haunting brass. Post-Muttons, McGlashan has delivered solo albums Warm Hand, Marvellous Year, and Lucky Stars while his gospel anthem Bathe In The River, sung by Hollie Smith, was one of the biggest New Zealand singles of all time.
McGlashan is now to perform in Gisborne as part of his Free Flight NZ Tour in September. He will performing recent songs, along with favourites from his sprawling back catalogue.
Released in 2015, and described by the musician as his “most personal album yet”, Lucky Stars was written mostly in a windswept bach on the Thames Estuary south of Auckland. McGlashan had ideas of stillness and isolation in mind for the album, he says, but some of the songs that came out were more positive and sociable than he expected.
