Bored Games ‎- Who Killed Colonel Mustard (1982)

I thought that it would be nice to put this one up before the DoubleHappys compilation that I mentioned in the Stones post; I just can't help myself. Bored Games was the high school creation of Shayne Carter and Wayne Elsey, though the latter left the band to form the Stones before they recorded any material together. Interestingly, 1982's 'Who Killed Colonel Mustard' EP was very much a posthumous release, Bored Games having broken up a year prior to its recording. Luckily for us, four of the band's greatest songs were committed to musical posterity: fourteen glorious minutes of youthful, punky exuberance and raucous noisemaking from future members of the DoubleHappys, Straitjacket Fits, and the Chills. This EP features the Bored Games standard "Joe 90," a retro-trash, anthemic slice of kiwi pop heaven, but the particular thorn in my side has always been "Happy Endings," a song that is catchier than it has any right to be given its content. Just try to get that chorus out of your head.

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Shayne P. Carter - Offsider (2016)

This is an absolutely wonderful album. Due to the different songwriting and musical approach, It's a slow burner, much like Dimmer's first album was. In fact, It's very much like an analogue hopeful version of I Believe you are a Star. As ever, Shayne's songwriting, voice and lyrics shine through to produce a wonderful sound that is a unique departure from his rich body of work over 30 odd years. I admit to being very sceptical that this could match up or even get close to Shayne finest output. How could it? It's piano album FFS?! But it is a wonderful surprise, full of beautiful moments which, at times, show a Shayne Carter at his most vulnerable, melodic, open, naive and, at times, also his best. A wonderful album that was a long time coming (in the end...).

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Dimmer ‎- Degrees Of Existence (2009)

Degrees Of Existence is built on the strongest and most consistent lineup of the band and with regular live shows they have become taut and economical with their approach and delivery. Listening to the album it is clear that worked wonders in the studio, such is the flow and ‘in the zone’ feel of the music. Degrees of Existence is his strongest album under the Dimmer moniker and one senses it is the closest he has got to the essence of his songwriting. Maybe Carter named the band Dimmer because he was stepping away from the bright lights of the commercial music industry, or maybe it was a signal he was stepping into the shadows, closer to the place where his best songs exist.

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Dimmer ‎- You've Got To Hear The Music (2004)

It says something for the quality of Shaynes' musicianship that he can experiment with new sounds and musical direction, but still retain the quality that hallmarks his work with Straitjacket Fits, this album is "funkier" than "I Believe You are A Star" but still as experimental, not in a whirrs and bleeps way, but by the blend of aural textures and rhythms, as well as styles. He of course, always manages to infuse emotion into his songs, "Only One that Matters" is breathtaking in its intimacy, its like watching a seduction. Backwards has a slightly off kilter bass/percussion combo that sounds like it has been looped backwards, to add to the backwards vibe of the song, iin fact, as backwards songs go, it reminds me a little of "30 Frames a Second" by Simple Minds, in that you get the "going backwards" vibe in that as well. Cool. Takes you back to where you started, 30 frames a second" - magic.

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Dimmer ‎- I Believe You Are A Star (2001)

The title has the feel of a mantra about it, as if it might be something Shayne Carter has repeated to himself during the seven years since he last made an album. It’s been so long that the man who was once hailed as this country’s most likely rock star now has to reintroduce himself. Not only that, he has completely altered the parameters of his music.  His previous band, Straitjacket Fits, broke up without fulfilling their promise as the last great hope of Dunedin guitar rock. But Carter could have ridden the momentum they created by promptly launching another axe-wielding line-up. Instead he cleared the decks, and began a long process of finding, and then refining, a whole other concept. And those who hailed Carter as the last guitar hero needn’t be disappointed either. On repeated listening, one realises there is much more guitar here than initially appears. But instead of what Carter once called "the anthemic school of glory chords", you’ll find looped riffs that peck and scratch like something out of Sly Stone, shards of notes that might be the fallout from a Hendrix detonation.  Of course Carter isn’t alone in this brave new world of virtual rock. It’s similar to the one Radiohead shifted into with Kid A, that Portishead have inhabited from the start, and that German groups like Can sketched out decades ago. One might even be tempted to see Carter’s electronic shift as opportunism, latching onto post-rock electronica before the rock ‘n’ roll boat goes down forever. But it’s not really like that. As Carter sings in just one of the album’s many enduring cuts, "it’s all evolution". Dimmer’s debut has been a long and perhaps difficult time in the making but it emerges with its own uneasy beauty.

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Shayne Carter & Peter Jefferies - Randolph's Going Home (1986)

Randolph’s Going Home is a gentle, heartfelt nod from Carter to Elsey, mixed with Peter Jefferies’ sonically quirky but structured sound, that, combined with the emotional sentiments have made this song so enduring. While on the b-side is the equally haunting Hooked, Lined and Sunken.

“Randolph was written about the loss of a friend and is still one of the best songs I've been involved with. I wrote it while between bands and played it to Peter Jefferies when he came around to my George Street flat in Dunedin one day for a jam. He added his signature drum line and suggested repeating the chorus at the end. He also said we needed to record the song immediately which we did - within days at the Chippendale House art venue, on four track, the stairwell of the venue adding natural reverb to the vocals, one guitar and drums with one guitar overdub to make the chorus kick.  I've seen this song bring people to tears more than once and it's a good feeling to be associated with a piece that can still wield that kind of power.” – Shayne Carter. 

“For me, Randolph’s Going Home is one of the most enduring things I’ve ever been involved in doing. There are times when mining the soul can produce something that transcends anything that could have been expected as an outcome. And never more so than this”. – Peter Jefferies.

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