IVY and The Beatniks; Dunedin's Up and Coming
Looking for new music? Or perhaps a fun gig? The Beatniks and IVY have you covered on both fronts! Craccum got to sit down with these two Dunedin Bands to talk about their new releases and up coming national tour.
Sprung from the creative garden of Dunedin, bands IVY and The Beatniks are spreading fast across Aotearoa. With new music and an upcoming national tour, these bands are revitalising our alt-rock community. I sat down and chatted to both IVY and The Beatniks about their groups and their upcoming activity!
After cycling through some questionable names, Jesse, Ocean, Connor, James, and Louis settled on IVY, a tribute to a student from the school where they all met (wholesome), and have made that name known in the music scene. After putting out music for the past three years, the band are releasing their first full album 'HUSH' on September 12th (out now!!!). The band said that after exploring what type of music they want to create, 'HUSH' really captures what they want to be known for, resulting in an album that they hope orchestrates a "spacey, semigothic, and vulnerable," air around its listeners. Together, we decided this album would make an amazing The Batman soundtrack, so take that as my review of the album.
IVY spent endless hours perfecting their album, wanting to create a "long-sighted," project that flows together and has a unique contextual fit, reflecting their diverse musical backgrounds. A large part of their distinctive sound is their melding of alt-rock and classical. Ocean, their drummer, works the rhythm section with Connor to "positively contradict the beautiful strings and voice," and provide that slight gothic-grunginess looming over the classical elements supplied by Louis and Jesse. Coming together, the different sections are conversational rather than unharmonious, an outcome the boys have had to learn over time.
The other band in this duo tour is The Beatniks, and I had the luck to chat with Sam, Kendall, and Logan about their upcoming EP 'Today/Tomorrow' that released September 19th! I asked the boys for a one-word summary of the EP, and after much deliberation, they settled on "raw, smorgasbord, and 👍." Listening to the EP myself, I 100% agree with Sam's smorgasboard definition, in the best way, and would like to add my own few words; these songs are a collective physicality that is either rubbing against your sternum, reverberating your bones, or swirling inside your brain cavity, and are likely to do them simultaneously.
Since releasing their first album 'Archetype' in 2023, the group has been working on 'Today/Tomorrow', but with a different approach to their creative process. They reflected that with their first album, a lot of the songs were pre-written by the main vocalist, Sam, and then reconstructed to fit the band, and that wasn't how they wanted to go about their new collection. This process was much more collaborative, consisting of just spending time together and jamming out without a set goal, letting things fall into place naturally. They felt this way of working would prevent them from simply recreating a version of 'Archetype'. Instead, they allowed the band to explore new territories.
A very interesting perspective they share about their music is that each song is a "timestamp of what is going on," around them and is created out of their reaction to their environment. This flow and reactivity lend to what Sam calls the transitional theme of the EP. Many of the new songs surround the subtleties of change and are reflective of someone in their twenties just coming out of uni and having no idea what they are going to do (with the end of the academic year coming up, this is the perfect time to listen to it!!).
Luckily for alt-rock lovers, the IVY and The Beatniks' NZ tour starts soon! It kicks off in their home, Dunedin, on October 3rd and makes its way up to Wellington, then Auckland, before returning south to Christchurch to finish on October 17th. Even if you're a new fan, come along! Both bands even advise stripping down your expectations of what the shows might be like and just coming with the energy to groove. Both bands have pretty unique performances, focusing on the fans in the room and the physicality of being in that shared space. Ocean from IVY reckons that being able to watch people experience their music for the first time is a special part of playing live. The Beatnik's Kendall thinks a special part of playing live is the physicality in the room of both audience and band, getting out all your energy with other people and feeding off one another. Also from The Beatniks, Logan praises the visual aspect of playing live- playing only for what people are seeing in that moment rather than recording the performance to look back on. So break in your dancing shoes, throw out your expectations, and start stretching your necks for the show closest to you!
