The band, hailing from Christchurch, New Zealand, formed a few years ago and has not touched the ground since. Invading the 2008 CMJ festival, they became KEXP’s indie darlings while U.S. audiences were blown away.

With a recent trip back to CMJ and the States in 2009, the band is ready to take over the world and Southern Death Cuntttt is the secret weapon. With just four songs in a little over 12 minutes, this album will make you feel like you had just experienced a double live album filled with nothing but the Liars covering Sigue Sigue Sputnik songs.

Lead singer Zach Doney jumps off the deep in. I push.

Links: http://www.myspace.com/bangbangeche

Explain to me the essence of this band?

Vanilla. What you get drunk off when you’re thirteen.

Bang Bang Eche came together from a conglomeration of past bands of 
varied styles. How does that mix pose as a benefit and a challenge for the 
band?

If we were all jazz majors things would, obviously, be very different.

The band has existed purely on EPs and has been incredibly successful 
doing so. Your songs are not lengthy and [are] very fast-paced. 


Why the EP and not a full-length, and how has the EP structure worked out 
for the band?

Are you an arts student? These look like the essay questions I encountered 
in my one (1) year of University. Why? Because writing heaps of songs is 
hard. Structure? ADHD is one hell of a drug.

Bang Bang Eche has an incredible amount of energy. How did the band work 
together to capture that on “Sonic Death Cuntttt?”

We don’t ever work together on anything. We work against each other at every 
possible juncture and sometimes on the straights between the junctures.

Explain the mood behind Sonic Death Cuntttt and the emotion behind songs 
such as “Beat Up The Children” or “You’re A Jerk” as they seem quite brash.

Don Brash LOLOLOLOLOLOL

What was different this time around when recording the EP?

We recorded SDC blindfolded in rooms full of naked, gyrating fetish models.

What was it like coming back to the States to play some shows and a 
second run at CMJ?

We spent less time on a couch in New Jersey, drinking ourselves to sleep so 
it was a resounding success resulting in massive payouts from major labels 
and many instances of nudity from James.

If you mentioned Christchurch to many people, they would be clueless as 
to where or what it is, yet it’s a very urbanized city.

Yeah, what’s with that? It’s kind of like 300 million people are just 
ignoring the rest of the world. In real life it’s a beautiful garden of lush 
pastures and broken hearts.

How does the city and arts community there influence you and how do you 
carry that influence with you?

There is a thriving gay party in Christchurch so pass me the amyl, and I’ll 
show a good time, honey. Last night this chick said, “I like your music 
because it’s really faggy – it suits me.”

There is a whole lotta touring going on, how are you keeping up the 
momentum?

Crack cocaine and child pornography.

I cannot imagine seeing the band play live and not go into an epileptic 
fit. What are some of the most rowdiest shows you have played this year?

Actually, we played at the New Zealand Epilepsy Foundation in April! It was 
wild! They asked for clothes and vehicle donations but all we had was our 
music so we just did that and we got the shit partied out of us and I had to 
ask penance from a policeman afterwards.

What plans are in store for the band? What would you like to achieve in 
the near future? Any special surprises for fans?

WE WANT TO TOUR NORTH KOREA. That will be a special surprise for our fans 
because we’d never be allowed back into the States after word gets around: 
COMMUNIST TERRORISTS TRY TO GAIN ENTRY TO LAND OF THE FREE BY LEGITIMATE 
VISA APPLICATION. Try that on for a headline.

Mister Pop, the latest album from seminal Kiwi rockers The Clean, opens with the languid “Loog,” in which a female vocalist (I have no idea who it is) “ba ba ba”s over a Ray Manzarek-style organ riff. Sounding a bit like a half-tempo shoegaze version of The Stranglers’ “Golden Brown,” it’s a subtle introduction to a record that deserves more attention than it demands – one of the best (and most stylistically varied) records I’ve heard this year.

The album’s second cut, “Are You Really On Drugs,” provides its most memorable lyric, delivered alongside an infectiously subdued melody that lingers long after the record concludes. “In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul” is equal parts country-punk twang and poppy tunefulness – it has a sort of a Beatles by-way-of The Mekons feel. “Asleep In The Tunnel” sounds like it could be an outtake from The Feelies The Good Earth; one could imagine Peter Buck (wearing sunglasses and a leather vest over a white tunic, of course) behind the boards for it, too.

“Back in the Day” conjures a simple Velvet Underground vibe, with David Kilgour’s sing-talk recalling Lou Reed at his most jaded. “Moonjumper,” a meandering five and a half minute instrumental psychedelic hoe-down, arrives like a downpour on a hot summer day, leaving the air behind it thick and syrupy. “Factory Man” plays like a Robyn Hitchcock single: cute and precious (dare I say “twee”?), and socially relevant. “Simple Fix” sounds like a filler instrumental track lifted from a Dandy Warhols album, replete with burbling bongwater sound effects and lazy day whistling.

The record’s high point is “Tensile,” which sounds a bit like a Kraftwerk cut performed by a New Order tribute band. Its clean, propulsive rhythm and whimsical keyboard riff are perfectly complemented by an odd-but-appealing vocoder track. The song has a certain timeless quality – no surprise from a band whose career has touched four different decades now.

If Flight of the Conchords has taught us anything, it’s that being “New Zealand’s fourth most…” anything results in a less than whelming commercial reception in the United States. The Clean could lay claim to being New Zealand’s fourth most widely known musical export (behind Crowded House, Split Enz, and the aforementioned Conchords), but judging from the blank stares from some of the most knowledgeable music fans I know, might as well be New Zealand’s foremost manufacturer of fine timepieces. Mister Pop is a pretty strong little (just 35 minutes long) record, but it might be a bit too understated to expand the band’s audience in the U.S.

Something tells me they like it that way.

Mister Pop is currently streaming in its entirety at the Merge Records website: www.mergerecords.com