SoundBites: Låpsley, Bowie tribute concert, Pixies

Låpsley - from the cover of the album Long Way Home

It's probably not the done thing to mention Adele in the same sentence as Låpsley, the Southport teenager who has released her debut album Long Way Home.

But one listen will tell you there's a similar talent on the rise here. And like Adele, Holly "Låpsley" Fletcher has painted her emotions and life events into her music, creating something uniquely personal.

Along with the album, Låpsley has released the single Cliff, which she says is "a metaphor which represents the feeling of distance between two people and the gradual self destruction of an individual in a relationship". Heavy.

The David Bowie tributes continue with the announcement of Bowie: Waiting In The Sky, a tour featuring an array of musicians including Eddie Rayner's Dark Horses band, Finn Andrews from The Veils, Jordan Luck, Alastair Riddell, Zaine Griff, Olympia & Skyscraper Stan.

They'll be performing more than 25 Bowie tracks in honour of the great artist who died in January, in what is being billed as an explosion of sound and vision.

Bowie: Waiting In The Sky is on at Auckland's ASB Theatre on April 15, Wellington's St James Theatre on April 16 and Christchurch's Isaac Theatre Royal on April 19.

Revisit a classic

To mark

the launch of a beer

named after a Pixies concert favourite (Orbit's Hey IPA), why not dig out that copy of Doolittle, the band's second studio album, without which there may never have been 90s grunge (yes, that would be a bad thing ).

The 1989 album was a gateway for many to the delights and angst of alternative rock and a major influence on Kurt Cobain and co.
Its melodic singles Monkey Gone To Heaven and Here Comes Your Man were a long way from the rawness of the band's debut album Surfer Rosa, but elsewhere their trademark quiet/loud dynamic, Black Francis' screams and themes of violence ("slicing up eyeballs", anyone?) kept you on your toes.

Top track, other than the seminal opener Debaser, would have to be No 13 Baby, a bizarre mishmash of Spanish and Polynesian references to a girl with a chest tattoo saying No 13.