Music News

Weekly Round-Up: Friday 1st November

Friday 1st November, 2013 2:10PM

Congratulations, you have survived your four day work week and it is Friday again! The past week in music began melancholically, first with the passing of sonic icon, King of Cool (all of the things really - Transformer for life), Lou Reed, followed up with the cancellation of Fleetwood Mac's New Zealand tour because John McVie requires treatment for cancer.

With every cloud there is a silver lining though and this one is reserved mostly for the ladies, who now have the privileged opportunity to witness the self-confessed serial self-pleasurer and lover of women's Wonderlands in the flesh - yes, John Mayer will play one show at Auckland's Vector Arena in April 2014. WOMAD announced their 10th anniversary line-up this week and it includes awesome nineties hip hop group Arrested Development, Delaney Davidson and DJ Yoda (full line-up here), while well-endowed country music icon Dolly Parton will return to New Zealand for the first time in 30 years to celebrate, wait for it, her 42nd(!) studio album. This morning Neko Case just announced this morning that, on top of her appearance at 2014 New Zealand Arts Festival in Wellington, she will also play one show in Auckland, in March at the Powerstation, Atlanta heavy-weights Primate, featuring members of Mastodon and Brutal Truth, have announced two shows in January and finally 90s trip-hop legends Morcheeba have been announced to be heading our way for two shows in April.

In release news, seminal Scottish post-rockers Mogwai have announced they will release their new album, Rave Tapes, in January 2014, the Melvins are streaming their new album Tres Cabrones out officially next week, Connan Mockasin is letting everyone into the private, satin-y coven of his forthcoming album Nothing Lasts Forever with an advanced stream, Beck will release his first album-proper in six years (following 2008's Modern Guilt), Morning Phase, next February. Locally, Totems has released a new EP and offering it up for free download and atmospheric Wellington troupe Glass Vaults are doing the same with their new EP Bright - go get 'em.

Basically all of the bands everywhere decided to release videos this week, including excellent offerings from here by Princess Chelsea, Males and Surf City. One of our must-see Laneway Festival 2014 acts, Savages, were inspired by meeter-of-aliens Kurt Vonnegut for the video to accompany their single 'Marshal Dear' and Kirin J Callinan has shared a relatively conservative clip for his single 'Landslide', by which we mean he's still upside down, topless and covered in mud - just another day at the office, then. Surf rockers Best Coast and Bleached have both shared Californian-appropriate clips for their singles 'I Don't Know How' and 'Love Spells' (Halloween!) respectively, while James Murphy's directorial debut and short film Little Duck is now streamable, and Broken Bells (Danger Mouse and Shins' frontman James Mercer) also released a short film, well a chapter of it, as part of the starring Anton Yelchin (Star Trek) and Kate Mara (American Horror Story) in anticipation of their new album After Disco and here it is...