Heading the evening is i.e. crazy, the new project of Auckland songwriter and performer Claire Duncan.
Duncan rose to prominence under the name Dear Time's Waste (DTW), but as she told me in a beautiful and evocatively written email a couple of years ago, the name came to represent the wrong direction for what she wanted to do.
"It was conceited, conceptual to the point of pretension, consciously distant from my life and identity; built on a desire to be lauded and accepted and heightened by the ego that comes with critical praise and vain ambition. The name became a yoke too constrictive to be useful to me any longer.''
At the same time, circa 2013, Duncan was suffering from a terrible cocktail of depression and anxiety.
Near the end of her tether emotionally and physically, she entered a careening spin of panic, even quitting music and briefly attending law school.
Now more interested in scraping a usually cringe-inducing barrel of emotional rock music, from PJ Harvey to R.E.M and the Drones, Duncan began writing songs out of a cathartic necessity: after all, yelling at people alone on stage is cheaper than CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) sessions.
"I was mostly making the music from a subconscious impulse I couldn't really stop. But I suppose I was increasingly drawn to things that tapped into a sense of raw confessionalism; I wanted to develop a voice that had the emotional reach to tell good stories. I also knew I wanted the stories to be real, not in a ‘dear diary' sense but in that they are visceral, physical, bodily; not suspended in fairy dust like so much DTW stuff was.''
She's certainly realised her goal in the i.e. crazy material released to date.
You're a Stranger (to me now), which topped my list of favourite singles of 2015, is overwhelmingly raw and visceral in its telling of the story of a jilted lover, while An Incident on the Edge of Town explores the death of a young girl who went to the same school as Duncan.
Her new works never fail to stun with their emotional impact, honesty, and her ability see the absurd and horrific in everyday situations and exploring those to dramatic effect, part of Duncan's fascination with the idea of New Zealand Gothic.
(For an example of the material Duncan draws from, search "I Feel Fantastic'' on YouTube.)
From the project, Duncan chose a moniker from J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, a book which showed her a pathway towards meaningful creativitly for its own sake, towards setting your own standards/ideals, appreciating the sacred in the mundane and performing for the smallest just as you would for the largest.
"[Franny] asks the questions I ask myself very often: where do you go when it seems the whole world runs on fraudulence and greed, and you're no better? When all action feels pointless? When your decisions, your job, your education, your body don't even feel like your own, and maybe never were?''
Duncan's i.e. crazy debut, Non Compos Mentis (or, The Trial of Maggie Magee) isn't fully finished yet, and as it stands she doesn't quite know how to let go of it.
Her goals for the year are wider than that though.
"The primary goal is to stay alive,'' she says.
"Secondary goal is to not get sucked into the whirlpool of status-seeking and hollow self-aggrandisement.''
Heed the call to the ordeal, catch i.e. crazy, Seth Frightening, and Terrified for spooky night at the Crown Hotel on Friday the 13th.
See it, hear it
• Radio One & The 91 Club present: i.e. crazy (Auckland), Seth Frightening (Auckland), & Terrified (Dunedin), Friday, May 13, Crown Hotel. Free with your 2016 Onecard, or $10 without. Doors from 9pm
