''Ciggy-punk bandits'' Rackets swing into town tonight, escaping their Auckland home for a show at Port Chalmers' Chick's Hotel.
The heavy-pop trio of talented multi-instrumentalists Oscar Davies-Kay, Vince Nairn and Jeremy Goatsman are making their first foray down South since the release of their fourth album back in July, a frantic whirlwind of irreverent, jocular indie rock called Walking The Skeleton.
These guys have never been ones to do things by halves - the group having completed a staggering 42-consecutive-date tour in tandem with Dunedin's Alizarin Lizard in 2010 - but this year they topped themselves with the Auckland leg of the Walking The Skeleton tour.
Across one week, employing a trailer, a PA and plenty of gusto, the band completed a 20-show tour of Auckland, gracing schools, rooftops and downtown Auckland sidewalks in the process. It's a bit of a gimmick, sure, but who cares when the music is this good?
Walking the Skeleton is everything the band have been refining since their first records back in 2010: angular, bendy, and melodic guitar parts at times reminiscent of early Modest Mouse, plenty of yelps and yells from vocals, and a consistently high-quality pop-song craft.
The mid-album pair of the more blissful Swan Song and the biting TV Started Talking To Me stand out in particular.
Much like Dunedin's favourite nuggety trio Left or Right, profiled a couple of weeks back, the Rackets lads employ their own little quirks of lingo and language, much of which shares a common etymological root in the combined tour with Dunedin's Alizarin Lizard.
Like Left or Right, Rackets have their ''groms'' and play ''gegs'', but on this tour Rackets are asking fans to do something completely of their own, ''cum scorch those almonds''.
Head out to Chick's tonight and find out just exactly what that means.
SKEWED FOLK TROUBADOUR
Audio Foundation programme Altmusic is continuing its finely curated series of sound art and avant-garde touring acts this month with English singer and guitarist Richard Dawson (UK) touring New Zealand throughout October, including an appearance at Chick's Hotel next week.
Northumbrian Dawson is a skewed esoteric folk troubadour, at once charming and abrasive. His shambolically virtuosic guitar-playing stumbles and chases his booming, swinging voice from music-hall tunesmithery to spidery swatches of noise colour, swathed in amp static and teetering on the edge of feedback.
His songs are both chucklesome and tragic, rooted in a febrile imagination that references worlds held dear and worlds unknown. It sounds at once like the past and a bizarre future.
A remarkable artist sure to be loved by fans of other singular talents such as Jandek, Laura Cannell, King Creosote, or even the Red Hot Chili Peppers' John Frusciante in his heroin days.
See Dawson next week at Chick's.
THE GIGS
• Rackets NZ Tour, tonight at Chick's Hotel, Port Chalmers, with support from Astro Children, $10 at the door from 9pm. The Chick's Hotel Magic Bus leaves Countdown at 8.30, the uni library at 8.35, returns to town after the show.
• Altmusic presents Richard Dawson (UK), Wednesday, October 14 at Chick's Hotel, Port Chalmers, with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, 8.30pm doors. The Chick's Hotel Magic Bus runs as above.
