7 Oct 2024
UsernamePassword

Remember Me? | Join | Recover
Click here to sign in via social networking

Repairs - Album Review: Disappointing Sequel

19 Apr 2024 // A review by Michael Durand

The following might be words that relate to the sound and feel of Disappointing Sequel, the second album from Repairs, out this week: tension, discordant contrarianism, tearing metal, nosebleeds, morse code, ensemble yelling, guitar feedback, aneurisms, anarchy machines, absolute defiance ….

In case you didn’t know there’s a revolution coming and its being led out by Martin Phillips, James Milne and Nicola Edwards. Disappointing Sequel looks like the post-rock, post nationalism soundtrack to the revolution’s first wave. It’s virtually unrelenting, like waking up reconceived as a dead punchbag, being processed by some futuristic noise machine, and shot up by guns-cum-weird futuristic metallic guitars. 

I don’t think the beginning a new world order has ever sounded so good. Almost good enough to look forward to it? Well here’s what this record did for me: I listened on repeat, over and over, I pranced around my lounge pulling weird anarchistic faces, I prayed for a most colossal home stereo, prayed for a revolution party, I dealt with some anger issues, I had moments of clarity, and I slept better afterwards. It’s all entirely consistent with the message sent by the band’s very name: to restore something damaged or broken to good condition or working order. 

The opener Tailspin sets the scene. Overcome, as if gone mad, the band sets up for the next half hour with a repeating bass, computer and industrial clatter, coded beeping and noise. Then we’re straight into Mosaic, the second single released off the album (following Map, Territory), with bass and drums driving the song like an industrial hammer, a metallic guitar piercing through and the protagonist reflecting on what’s going wrong: The same mistakes over and again, and not so much freewheeling to nowhere but running flat out on some hellish hamster wheel.

Throughout this record the band builds a convincing landscape to share what seem to be an authentic view on the shape of the current world. The song titles alone give you a sense of this topography: Strange Times, Math Grenades, Auto Icon, Open Plan Anxiety, Doomscrolling. The titles might seem overt, but the lyrics are often beautifully obscure and wide-reaching. Musically, it’s inventive, riff-driven, catchy, but also complex and full of trickery. It’s shape and mood are unrelenting (quite an achievement for an album-long sweep), but there are still brief moments of space between the mayhem and anxiety, there are hoax time signatures, phrasing in the delivery that deliberate and effective. The album as a whole has a sense of having been executed pretty much exactly as the band intended.

Is it post-rock? Avant-garde post-industrial? I don’t think Repairs are aiming for, or even care for, a neat fit into any established genre or scene. Inevitably there might be comparisons with High Dependency Unit and Die! Die! Die!, both pioneers in New Zealand – but I think what Repairs are doing here is something else. This music stands up on new terms that are this bands alone. Its complex, loud, critical, current, and brilliantly executed. 

 

About Repairs

Hi, we’re Repairs. It’s nice to meet you.

Repairs are three people who play high-tempo, loud, emotional music together for fun. We love being a band, but first and foremost we are friends. Two of us also happen to be married to each other.

Repairs have been making noise since 2017 in various places across Aotearoa, but especially in our home base of Tamaki Makaurau. Our shows to date have been lucky enough to include support for local heroes Die! Die! Die! and Poison City faves Bench Press and Moody Beaches; opening for international legends June Of 44 (2023) and Screaming Females (2019); and slots at 95bFM’s Fancy New Band (2019) and The Others Way Festival (2022).

Visit the muzic.net.nz Profile for Repairs

Releases

Disappointing Sequel
Year: 2024
Type: Album
Repeat, Repeat
Year: 2020
Type: Album
Repairs / FADOHT
Year: 2019
Type: EP
Repairs! The Band!
Year: 2018
Type: EP

Other Reviews By Michael Durand

Peace Love Perfection - Album Review: Nirvana Is Peace
29 Aug 2024 // by Michael Durand
Nirvana Is Peace the debut album from Wellington native and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Barnao’s project Peace Love Perfection – a 50 minute trip around psychedelia, EDM, jazz and mysticism. These are mostly instrumentals with low key dance grooves or classic jazz rhythms, Rhodes pianos, retro synths, funk bass lines walking across octaves, claves, shakers and central to the picture, Barnao’s inspired saxophone playing.
Read More...
Toby Sussex - EP Review: Weather Dependent
08 Jun 2024 // by Michael Durand
Toby Sussex’s debut EP Weather Dependent is a compact and ultimately satisfying set of singer-songwriter style reflections on life, death and relationships. It has catchy melodies and is well performed and produced, signalling at the outset that Sussex has what it takes to produce a full album in the singer songwriter genre.
Read More...
Polite Company - Album Review: Please Go Wild
24 May 2024 // by Michael Durand
I guess it’s not a surprise that after the Mutton Birds (Dominion Road, Anchor Me, etc.) all the members went on to further greatness: David Long to scoring movies and the Labcoats, Ross Burge to play drums for virtually all of New Zealand’s musical royalty, and Don McGlashen to solo notoriety.
Read More...
The Feel Good Service - EP Review: DirtyFunknSoul
24 Apr 2024 // by Michael Durand
Funk, soul and disco music seem to be so defined by their blueprints of the 1970's and 1980's that almost any serious modern attempt at them risks sounding nostalgic. As if these genres lived and died in history, and now we may only pay tribute to them – rather than contribute any further.
Read More...
Seafog - Album Review: Slow Death
14 Apr 2024 // by Michael Durand
Port Chalmers four-piece Seafog have been with us for a few years now, pumping out some very well received doses of cross genre guitar type stuff — Raise Your Skinny Fist (2016), Dig It On Up (2017) and Animal Lovers (2019) — that each seemed to be spawned from a world none other than Port Chalmers itself. This week sees the release a further full album from the same place, Slow Death.
Read More...
Grant Haua - Album Review: Mana Blues
12 Feb 2024 // by Michael Durand
If you’re not paying close attention, it would be easy to think Grant Haua has a bout of the blues. His new 2023 album Mana Blues follows closely behind his 2022 release Ora Blues at the Chapel Vol.
Read More...
Metanoia - EP Review: Green Peaceful Lake
30 Jan 2024 // by Michael Durand
During the pandemic some said that isolation, the loss of communal music experiences – and perhaps for some, the chance for reflection – brought about a growth in the supply and demand for ambient music. How else to relieve existential dread and balm the soul?
Read More...
HOIHOI - EP Review: Tahitahi
06 Jan 2024 // by Michael Durand
Whatever defines post-punk in our times — post-Trump, post-covid, post-war, pre-war, pre-Trump — perhaps isn’t too clear to most of us, as long as it’s loud, raucous, and anti-whatever the current thing is. Christchurch band HOIHOI are working on a current version of that definition for us with their new EP Tahitahi – four tracks of guitars and vocals, half in Te Reo Maori and half in English, two thirds an uprising, one third introspection.
Read More...
View All Articles By Michael Durand

NZ Top 10 Singles

  • DIE WITH A SMILE
    Lady Gaga And Bruno Mars
  • TASTE
    Sabrina Carpenter
  • BIRDS OF A FEATHER
    Billie Eilish
  • TIMELESS
    The Weeknd And Playboi Carti
  • ESPRESSO
    Sabrina Carpenter
  • GOOD LUCK, BABE!
    Chappell Roan
  • A BAR SONG (TIPSY)
    Shaboozey
  • LOSE CONTROL
    Teddy Swims
  • TOO SWEET
    Hozier
  • BEAUTIFUL THINGS
    Benson Boone
View the Full NZ Top 40...
muzic.net.nz Logo
100% New Zealand Music
All content on this website is copyright to muzic.net.nz and other respective rights holders. Redistribution of any material presented here without permission is prohibited.
Report a ProblemReport A Problem