I have had the pleasure of reviewing the full-length album III by NZ’s original Ukulele Trio – The Nukes.
Dave Parker, David ‘Snapper’ Thiele, and Ben Collier are a power-trio of NZ music’s finest – former credits include Goldenhorse, Rhythm Cage and The Parker Project – as well as Thiele’s extensive contribution to the local music community through Kiwi FM.
The Nuke’s have hit the ground running with their third offering to date – reaching the top 10 position in the iTunes charts within a few days of release.
The first thing that strikes me whenever I listen to The Nukes is how happy and upbeat their music is – while lyrical content may sometimes contain some very real, gritty content, its often coated in a metaphorical or poetic type of rhythm reminiscent of Tom Waits. This record in particular seems to have a distinctly ‘Kiwiana’ – Feel, with lyrics about the IRD or mentions of towns like Napier or Te Awamutu and titles like Pohutukawa Blooms, this is an album with roots that are un-deniably New Zealand.
Their thick 3 piece vocal harmonies and upbeat bluesy piano and Ukelele/Banjolele/Trumpet sort of give the album almost a Beach Boys meets Ragtime jazz feel in tracks like Palomine, which is offset with a nice contrast by the reggae feel of tracks like On Your Side and Indigenous – though each track is of similar instrumentation and production, they seem to really diversify in genre from song to song, even having trumpets, piano, guitar solos and guest vocals from other artists on different tracks.
A personal highlight for me was the 9th track Salad Dragon – not quite sure on the official story behind this one but it almost seems like it could be a kids story transformed into a song?
The band list under their biographies on their website ‘semi-fictional’ and they seem to have a tongue-in-cheek nature about their music which lends itself to a few light-hearted laughs.
The album is available on iTunes, Spotify, Deezer or directly from their website http://www.thenukes.co.nz/
About the author LoraThompson
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