The Puddle
About The Puddle from Dunedin
The Puddle celebrated 25 years of continual existence in 2009. Formed in Dunedin 1984, they released an EP (Pop Lib), a live album (Live at the Teddy Bear Club), a studio album (Into the Moon) and a 7" single (Thursday) on Flying Nun Records between 1986 and 1993 and single on the French Acetone label in 1993. These notorious recordings of songs about space travel, philosophy, the Romantic Poets, sex, emotional co-dependence and non-medical use of pharmaceuticals have all long since been deleted and are rarer than radium now.
Their 1993 album (Songs for Emily Valentine) - which The Puddle leader, George D. Henderson, thought was so good it would release itself - was finally released in 2005 on Powertool Records. They recorded another (unreleased) album in 1996, then featured on the Californian college radio station KFJC's "Dunedin Sound" live CD in 2001. In 2005/06 The Puddle recorded two dozen songs in a Wellington studio, the first half of which form the album "Playboys in the Bush", finally released in November 2010 on CD and vinyl.
Continuing their creative re-birth in the new millennium The Puddle, while awaiting the completion and mixing of "Playboys..." recorded and released two new critically-acclaimed underground albums on a new Dunedin label, Fishrider Records - "No Love - No Hate" (2006) and "The Shakespeare Monkey" (2009) - with a new line-up.
In the winter of 2009 The Puddle embarked on their first NZ tour for over 15 years to appreciative audiences of the young and old, the curious and the confused. They capped the year by returning to Sammys, the scene of their Flying Nun 10th Birthday show crimes, for a one-off show with Haunted Love, David Kilgour & the Heavy Eights and The Bats.
“the pinnacle of the indie pop craft in Aotearoa.” * * * * The Southland Times
“Such tender vocals, such wonky guitars, such marvelous meandering arrangements, such knowing meditations on human frailty – indie pop comes no better” Sunday Star Times
“beautifully resigned guitar pop… full of the kind of articulate and well-read pop songs that made Henderson’s home country the epicentre of literate guitar music in the 1980s and ‘90s” Uncut
“encapsulates perfectly that distinctly velvety Aotearoan drone-pop sound… the tortoise of New Zealand rock finally honours his forgotten promise.” Sunday Times (UK)
“it places Henderson squarely where he has long deserved to be: among the pantheon of Kiwi rock deities... it's impossible to deny the charm of these 17 tracks." * * * * Otago Daily Times
“a new album of shimmering, shambling pop songs … this album makes a perfect soundtrack to summer” Real Groove magazine
" endearingly eccentric, with an almost hypnotically laidback feel that keeps you wanting more" SoundsXP (UK)
Live The Puddle remain an enigmatic and uncoventional masterclass in anti-pop. Their honest and sometimes frayed live performances are often sublime and spellbinding, like watching a blind man crossing a busy road carrying a mirror. In 2010 regular collaborator Al Starrett was added to the line-up on keyboard and viola, returning The Puddle to their the distinctive psychedelic sound of their keyboard driven period.
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