Music Plus with Winston Watusi watusi@thesun.co.nz

We often hear about things that are the “centre of the community”.

Schools are often said to be the centre of the community, and post offices; the library, or even the local pub, can be. And followers and lovers of music would once have pointed to the record store.

For a long time, it was. Then it was the CD store. Then it was...well, gone. Closed. Such meeting places for a de facto community to swap notes on shared passion, to discover the different, to be informed of the new, disappeared. The world changes.

Gillian Welch. Photo: supplied.

I’m not forgetting the few remaining music shops. I’m a big fan of Record Roundabout at the Historic Village, a veritable collector’s paradise. But a collector’s paradise is not the place to scope out the newest trends, to check the latest haps.

Kudos Tony 

It is, however, the place to buy – or sell – Tauranga music. As a long-time supporter of the scene here, Tony Pill takes no cut from local sales. Kudos Tony; bands and listeners, be aware.

But there are no music shops these days as there once were, where a suitably louche proprietor would discretely share slightly-secret lists of new music from around the world.

There are simply too many now anyway and many releases now are not albums or even EPs but, for maximum social media attention, they’re singles that aren’t really singles in the traditional sense but just single songs to download or maybe just watch as videos or as some Tik-Tok clip with a giraffe dancing. The music biz is fragmented and often more about promoting things than selling actual music.

Spine-tingling alternative 

From this morass, I have new local releases, from Fiona Cosgrove, Frances Ellen, Janne Izett. But I’ll hold them right now and share international things that recently quickened my heart.

Tom Waits released an old “new” song. It’s 25 years since ‘Mule Variations’, still an album of endless wonder and beauty. To commemorate there’s a spine-tingling alternative take of the song ‘Get Behind The Mule’; it’s slower, moodier with just Wurlitzer backing.

Nick Cave.

As a preview of new album ‘Wild God’, due any day, Nick Cave has released piano ballad ‘Long Dark Night’. He describes ‘Wild God’ as lighter and more fun than his recent examinations of grieving and loss, though that’s not immediately obvious from the song.

After a gap during which they completed a number of online-only projects, the great Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings return with two new songs from their upcoming ‘Woodland Studio’ album; ‘Hashtag’, sung by him, and the particularly beautiful ‘Trainload of Sky’, sung by her.

Gillian Welch.

Exploratory jazz 

Lastly, gigs, two at the Jam Factory. For lovers of exploratory jazz, The Melancholy Babes – three genuine legends of New Zealand’s avant-garde scene – Jeff Henderson (sax), Tom Callwood (bass) and Anthony Donaldson (drums) – are there on August 30. Hear them on Bandcamp; it will be unique and wild, trust me. Heavier but possibly less wild, on August 31 catch post-punk Te Puke trio Dead Simple and Mount rockers Somacaine.