13 May 2020 // A review by Callum Wagstaff
Repairs are kind of like the band next door. I get the same bro-hang vibes from their mission statement as I did watching Sex Bob-omb rehearse in the movie Scott Pilgrim vs the World. I really love that Repairs are friends first, band second. They have their community and fellow bands and musicians they like to play with, (many of whom they plug on their website), and they've just got a really good attitude. They exude a fun atmosphere that makes it enticing to go see them live.

But that's not to say that the music is fluff. While it's punchy and peppy and it's clear that they wanna have fun, their music is still a vehicle for certain feelings and thoughts that need an outlet.

Last Chances is a post-punk slam poem about relationships you hope are going to change, but never do, so you keep going through the same patterns expecting different results. It's a universally relatable subject prompting solitary nods from those who've been there and a range of idiosyncratic reactions from those in the middle of it. The subject matter articulates a sense of unrest which is parlayed by the music into an energetic statement of frustration boiling over into ill-conceived action.

I picture this song playing against a teenage coming of age drama like British E4's Skins or Misfits, Netflix series The End of the Fucking World, or YouTube Premium's Wayne. It's a song to throw rocks at a window to. Or get kissed and ditched and left with a dumbstruck look on your face. Or run away from the scene of a shoplifting crime. Or fight on bicycles.

The song features an amazingly well-balanced first verse. The words used are lean and impactful, punctuated by generous beats. The way they interact with a listener's brain, giving it the perfect amount of room to process what it just heard and get curious about what comes next, is a masterclass in catchy songwriting. The verse drum beat has a syncopated flip that promotes a pendulum bop from listener's necks (listeners being me, alone, in my bubble). When the chorus comes in it switches to serial snare rolls provoking a classic up and down bop with some definite shoulder action. I highly recommend this song if you are into bopping.

In what at first seems like a bridge, the tempo changes down and the instruments churn out a lurching malaise with which to keel over your own pelvis to. Then, surprise! That was an outro! With no chorus reprise, you're forced to listen over, and over. Over, and over, and over, and over, again.
In a live setting you will have no choice but to pester Repairs for encore performances of this 2 minute gem.

So for gold diggers there's a decent amount of heftiness there to lay into if you wanna look for some emotional nuggets, but you could totally glaze over the meaning and just chant back the lyrics in that great rhythm scheme and have an awesome time.

Sometimes when I listen to this song I imagine the Wine Cellar. I guess it could be because Repairs are an Auckland band but I just have a really romantic image in my head of being in a dark room that can't handle more than about 50 people in it and everybody is dancing with their hair pointing straight at the ground.

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ ( 4 / 5 )

"We play high-tempo, loud, emotional music together for fun. We are a band, but first and foremost we are friends. We are also three people, but only two of us are married to each other. We all used to perform variations of pitch, tone and rhythm with other people under different names – some too embarrassing to mention, and some that aren’t – but in the interest of fairness, we won’t mention any of them here. We are situated in a city called Auckland, which is itself situated in a country called New Zealand. This informs the music we make, but nationalism is still stupid. One of the band is Scottish, of which she is very proud in spite of the previous sentence. Our contradictions define us.

We love playing live shows and are lucky to have played lots of gigs with many good friends. Recordings are less numerous, with a handful of singles to date, but 2020 will see a marked increase in the lead up to our debut album."

Visit the muzic.net.nz Profile for Repairs

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