I Want to Rock And Roll
By Jazmine Mary
Anyone expecting something like Joan Jett or Suzi Quatro from Auckland’s Jazmine Mary on the basis of the louche, rebel-gal album cover here hasn’t been paying attention.
Jazmine Mary is the noir-folk vehicle for Australian-born Jazmine Phillips, (they/them) whose downbeat The Licking of a Tangerine picked up Best Independent Debut at the 2022 Taite Prize and their follow-up DOG appeared in many best-of lists in 2023.
Experimental, ethereal and hypnotic, their songs can have an untethered quality as they sing lengthy lines and make sudden vocal leaps (Narcotics Anonymous Meeting) or arrive as a whisper.
The distinctively diverse arrangements here suit the material: Back of the Bar sits atop a tricky percussive rhythm (“your biggest mistake was thinking you knew what I meant”), June is a piano ballad with repetitious strings for added tension, and the impressive Memphis, with glistening pedal steel and strings, rides a simple but affecting melody with a sense of defeat: “That’s it, I quit, I can’t handle it. This love, this love …”
Recorded in Auckland’s Roundhead Studios with Louisa Nicklin, Dave Khan and others, I Want to Rock And Roll is a misdirecting title, much like the cover of DOG, where they posed with a fish. There’s barely a punchy backbeat in earshot, not even on the low menace of the title track.
But that hardly matters because this mysterious, slightly surreal collection adds further depth to Jazmine Mary’s deftly crafted catalogue of distinctive alt-folk.
Jazmine Mary tour dates: Last Place, Hamilton, July 25; Double Whammy, Auckland, July 26; Meow, Wellington, July 31; Lyttelton Coffee Co, August 1; Erricks, Dunedin, August 2.
Fuck Ratso
By Ratso
For authentic, fuel-injected rock’n’roll, this short-lived Auckland band deliver their first and final studio album as self-described “rock ’n’ roll ramraiders” offering disciplined and furiously energetic originals (10 on vinyl, 12 digitally).
Fronted by singer/guitarist Jake Harding (formerly in The D4) and rock archivist, garage band aficionado and shouty cheerleader John Baker, the five-piece stormed the country with life-threatening shows (in one small venue, Bruno Paparelli’s wildly swinging bass nearly took my head off) and fired off short, sharply focused songs with titles like Kill The King, Living Dead and Iron Cobra, all on this terrific album.
Their explosive Live For Nothing, On the Run and Space here bridge classic hard rock and unleashed garage-band adrenalin, the sound nailed down by Alex Willi’s pneumatic drill drumming.
Reference points for the uninitiated might be The Damned, the 1970s new wave of British heavy metal (Def Leppard, Saxon) and The New York Dolls with a seasoning of stadium-shaking lead guitar work by Tomi Marin (also credited with “howls”).
The band have already broken up (let’s just say “differences”), leaving a live album recorded in Christchurch and this.
From the kick-start of Like Caine (“C’mon everybody”) to Rock’n’Roll Ramraiders, Ratso carve out solid chunks of unapologetic, timeless, powered-up rock ’n’ roll, which – with twin guitars and concrete-hard pop riffs – is more clever and crafted than it might seem.
They’ll be much missed. Remember them this way.
These albums are available digitally and on vinyl; Ratso also on CD.
