Graham Reid, Freelance Journalist Profile

Articles

More mega than Metallica: Why Edinburgh Tattoo will be NZ’s biggest show of the summer

6 days ago | nzherald.co.nz | Graham Reid

Put that in your pipe: The bagpipers of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Photo / Ian Georgeson When the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo last marched into New Zealand, it attracted an audience of 82,000 over four nights at Wellington’s Cake Tin. In 2016, the nearly 1300 performers came from seven countries.
Music: New albums from expat polymath Arjuna Oakes and Auckland’s Bub

1 week ago | nzherald.co.nz | Graham Reid |Arjuna Oakes

Take a bough: Arjuna Oakes. Photo / SuppliedReview by Graham ReidGraham Reid is an NZ journalist, author, broadcaster and arts educator. His website, Elsewhere, provides features and reports on music, film, travel and other cultural issues. Learn moreWhile I’m Distracted By Arjuna OakesBritain-based expat singer-songwriter and producer Arjuna Oakes brings considerable experience to this 14-song double-vinyl debut.
Music: Suzanne Vega flies high again with reflective new album

2 weeks ago | nzherald.co.nz | Graham Reid |Suzanne Vega

Suzanne Vega has released her first studio album in nine years. Photo / SuppliedFlying With AngelsBy Suzanne VegaAmerican singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega arrived in a flash in the mid-1980s with two albums and memorable singles Marlene on the Wall, Luka, Solitude Standing and her a cappella Tom’s Diner – all delivered in a distinctive, emotionally flat manner.
Years in the making: Voom make a long-awaited return to the music industry - NZ Herald

3 weeks ago | nzherald.co.nz | Graham Reid

Voom: Showing plenty of drive. Photo / Frances CarterSomething Good is Happening By Voom Buzz Moller and his intermittent project Voom – debut album Now I Am Me in 1998, the follow-up Hello, Are You There? eight years later and given a vinyl pressing in 2021 – have enjoyed great affection for their heartfelt, sometimes raw and always melodic guitar pop which roams freely between ragged rock and slacker anthems (Happy Just Bumming Around on Hello and the power-pop adjacent We Don’t Care here).
Music: Masters of reinvention Bon Iver fail to match their own ambitions

1 month ago | nzherald.co.nz | Graham Reid |Bon Iver

Of mammals and myths: Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon – self-doubt close to paranoia. Photo / SuppliedSALBE, fABLEby Bon IverIt’s almost 20 years since Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) released his breakthrough country-folk album For Emma, Forever Ago, a collection of personal songs born of three months’ isolation in a snowbound Wisconsin cabin, where he considered his broken life in his mid-20s. Since then, the landscape of alt-folk, country-folk and other Americana offshoots have changed considerably.
Kiwi jazzman pays tribute to a version of his father he didn’t know

1 month ago | nzherald.co.nz | Graham Reid |Mark de Clive-Lowe |Julien S Baker

When Mark De Clive-Lowe's father died in 2011, he found photos and letters from his father's time in Japan and came to see a different person, a young man with a zest for life, than the strict and overbearing man he knew.
Songwriters step away from their bands with tales of love lost and found

1 month ago | nzherald.co.nz | Graham Reid |Alisa Xayalith

by Lucy DacusAlongside Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, the inventive Lucy Dacus is one of the women in the Grammy-winning band boygenius. With that informal group on a hiatus, Dacus again steps out under her own name for a tasteful, thoughtful and sometimes provocative alt-rock set that comes with romantic strings attached, and assistance from singer-songwriters Hozier and Blake Mills, as well as her boygenius pals.
US bluegrass star Billy Strings rides his success all the way to NZ

1 month ago | nzherald.co.nz | Graham Reid

The boy’s life rolled out like a bleak American black and white film set in OxyContin County, Kentucky, where fiddlers play on the back porch and fentanyl is the currency. His father died when he was two, his mother remarried but the couple fell prey to meth addiction. The boy left home at 13 and went through his own dependencies. And that could have been where the film reached an abrupt ending.
Music: The wairua is strong on Marlon Williams’ first full te reo album

2 months ago | nzherald.co.nz | Graham Reid |Marlon Williams |Tom Lark

Marlon Williams: Music rooted in Māori concert parties and choral groups. Photo / Ian LaidlawTe Whare Tīwekawekaby Marlon WilliamsAs the kōhanga reo generations have come of age, te reo Māori has become so widespread it has enriched us in ways we perhaps don’t even realise. We’re becoming bilingual by increasing increments and we’re the better for it. That the acclaimed, award-winning Marlon Williams (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāi Tai) should present this, his fourth album, in te reo is not unexpected.
Music: Distinctive new sounds from local talents Womb, Alien Weaponry and Serebii

2 months ago | nzherald.co.nz | Graham Reid

Heading forward (from top left): Alien Weaponry’s take-no-prisoners approach continues, and Womb’s latest is another example of their dreamscape pop. Photos / suppliedOne Is Always Heading Somewhereby Womb The sibling trio Womb – singer-guitarist Charlotte “Cello” Forrester, keyboardist-guitarist Haz Forrester, and drummer Georgette Brown – emerged out of Pōneke Wellington almost fully formed and have been consistent and productive.