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Home / The Listener / Reviews

NZ Listener’s Songs of the Week: New tracks by Courtney Barnett, Reb Fountain,Sam Fender and more

Review by
Russell Baillie & Graham Reid
New Zealand Listener·
18 Oct, 2025 04:00 AM5 mins to read

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Courtney Barnett raises the roof.

Courtney Barnett raises the roof.

Listen to the playlist on Spotify here

Listen to the playlist on Apple Music here

Stay in Your Lane

by Courtney Barnett

It’s now ten years since Courtney Barnett made the world take notice with the deadpan wit and warm indie guitar framing of her debut album Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit. Her most recent album was the instrumental End of the Day, a reworked soundtrack to Anonymous Club, the anxiety-inducing, very personal 2022 documentary about her which suggested that it was not a good idea that someone so shy should become a left-field pop star. Even if she was really good. But now, Barnett returns with the spikey, fuzz-bassed, drum-machine-driven Stay In Your Lane, a song which reminds of the 1990s likes of Britpop one-album-wonders Elastica. It comes with a peculiarly grisly video – possibly inspired by the line “rip this thing out of my head” – from Alex Ross Perry, director of Pavements, the recent rockumentary about American indie heroes Pavement. – Russell Baillie

Talk to You

by Sam Fender featuring Elton John

Britain’s biggest rock singer-songwriter of the moment, Sam Fender won the Mercury Prize for his third album People Watching last week and the added-track, December-due, deluxe edition will have this new song which features Elton John as guest pianist. He isn’t that prominent in the mix in the E Street/War on Drugs heroic haze behind the song but still, nice to hear Reg Dwight getting back to his roots as a London session man. He could probably do with the money. – Russell Baillie

The Future

by Proteins of Magic

Multi-disciplinary artist and musician Kelly Steven (Proteins of Magic, Dimmer bassist, collaborator with Paul McLaney/Gramsci) here digs into the nervous energy of the young David Byrne/Talking Heads for an agitated slice of art-pop cum indie-dance with its head in New York’s No Wave of the early 1980s. It’s enjoyably bonkers and threatening, and the lyric video brings another dimension of a comic book Hieronymus Bosch hellscape into the mix. – Graham Reid

One Way Trip

by Reb Fountain

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Fountain’s recent single Silver Linings was wonderful slice of alt-country written for Tami Neilson (and was enthusiastically received when she sang it opening for Paul Kelly at Auckland’s Town Hall). This moody slice of downbeat alt-country was written years ago but she never captured it in the studio, until when recording Silver Linings with band member Dave Khan, a slow and reflective meditation on wrong decisions and hopefulness captured in one take. “Some times you lose and get lucky in the blink of an eye, lucky keeps you going while the losing left you high and dry, gotta keep your eyes on the winning prize ... .” Words to live by. Excellent video by her daughter Lola Fountain-Best, a compilation of family home video footage too. – Graham Reid

Mona Lisa Money

by Macey

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It’s been two years since Auckland’s Macey (Harry Parsons) delivered his fine debut The Lovers and a year since his thoughtful How to Say Goodbye EP (and his take on the Christmas song It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year). So, this swinging piece of pop-rock social comment is very welcome. The message is an old one, what does it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his soul. In this case it’s a businessman who “if he could he’d buy the Louvre, counts his cheques but I don’t count him lucky, Living for that Mona Lisa Money”. The Mason Bennett-directed video spells it out too. – Graham Reid

Greener

by Coast Arcade

Not that long ago Coast Arcade frontwoman Bella Rafflyn was being pushed as a solo star by a local major label. So, the release of the debut album by her Auckland band which has been putting out singles since 2022 is interesting. Maybe, it’s a case of whatever gets the breakthrough first. The album is certainly a solid set of emo and grunge-sauced guitar-pop and a confident one for a band not long out of Rockquest (they got into a final which was cancelled by Covid). Greener is one of the more impressively scorching tracks. – Russell Baillie

Godlike I

by Silk Cut

The third album by Auckland jandal-gaze mega-janglers is out and this is the track which brings things to a dramatic close with its swerve from something that might remind of Andrew Brough’s Bike days – Justin McLean, Silk Cut co-vocalist and guitarist is Brough’s step-brother and played in an early lineup of Bike – before hitting all very many guitar pedals the quartet have at their disposal, quite thrillingly. Good album too. – Russell Baillie

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Tripping over Time

by Boy & Bear

The regular visitors to this side of the Tasman put their leanings towards big-reverb, shiny 1980s pop to good work on this, their infectiously groovy, big synth-scape single that starts a run to the band’s sixth studio which is out in December. – Russell Baillie

Burning Up with Fever

by Kiss

RIP Ace Frehley, founding member of Kiss, whose guitar can be heard quite prominently on this newly-released demo from the forthcoming 50th anniversary edition of the band’s 1975 album Dressed to Kill, the first of their pop-oriented releases, which possibly explains why this cod hard rock song didn’t make the cut. Still, clearly Ace gave it his all. – Russell Baillie

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