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Carly Rae Jepsen: Day and Night Pop’s reigning princess returns with an inspired double album Sometimes the marketing copy gets it exactly right. “Carly Rae Jepsen’s pristine, prismatic pop has long been the blissful soundtrack for first kisses and swirling romances...”—so goes the Canadian singer’s Spotify bio. Pristine, prismatic pop—well, that’s absolutely it. (I guess somebody will hire the English majors after all!) But around the time of the release of her third album,

Bull Tamati Spoilers ahead... read at your own peril. Welcome to Blockbuster Reviews, where I give my honest take on the biggest blockbusters of 2026 and assess whether they’re worth the hype and, more importantly, the price of admission. Project Hail Mary From the producers of the 2023 hit Cocaine Bear comes its spiritual successor, Project Hail Mary. In theory, this movie should suffer the same fate—middling reviews and purely gag-driven enjoyment. Yet somehow, it works. Fo

Dance-Floor Romance Chris Tse’s laureate collection is a sweet-talking triumph Chris Tse was Aotearoa New Zealand’s Poet Laureate from 2022 to 2025, and did the job so well that the National Library literally extended the term of its laureates by a year as a result. Dance-Floor Romance comes in the wake of this achievement, and in some ways is that achievement, distilled on the page: it’s Tse’s laureate collection, arranged into four years, one for each of his term. Romance

An extremely moving, deeply impressive work of musical design from one of our most important living songwriters “Crying in a suit and tie / But you should see the other guy / One more time for old time’s sake / I’ll watch him get carried away.” There’s the formal attire, then the dad joke, then the adage; by the fourth line, we know we’re at the funeral. Gentle synths drone far back in the mix, a quiet needle drop sounds as though underwater or in slow motion; the vocal comes

An outrageously raunchy, funk-riddled ride into the end of the world. Taine Knox By 1982, Prince had already excited, appalled, and amazed audiences with his equally-revolutionary, equally-risqué brand of funk-heavy pop music. He was lauded by his immense and undeniable talent, having played all of the instruments on his 1978 debut For You, for his hit-making abilities (1979’s “I Wanna Be Your Lover”) and especially for his remarkable (and nearly inhuman) rate of output. But

What to watch on Welly’s local streaming service This week's focus: animation! Though this genre has become somewhat synonymous with family-friendly films (which do deserve credit themselves—The LEGO Batman Movie (2017) is in my top 4, after all), animation can also feature adult themes for older audiences such as yourselves to enjoy. This doesn’t necessarily mean sexy stuff—theres plenty of melancholia to go around. Arovision has a lovely selection of artsy animation, so go

Love, death, and the very essence and origin of hard rock. Taine Knox for The Mindstate. The disbanding of legendary band Cream in 1968 changed music history. The supergroup featured Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker, who all went on to have solo careers of their own—to varying degrees of success—while others were left in the fallout. One such example was their producer and frequent collaborator Felix Pappalardi—a man who would go on to lead a career which was, more

Madonna’s dance music has always been social. This might sound obvious; isn’t all dance music social?; aren’t dance floors literally composed of a mass of people? But if you’ve been to a techno or trance gig recently you might be able to hear the difference. (And see the difference, too; as in, a disconcertingly large number of promising young lads slumped over in a K-hole.) Some dance floors are focussed on a self-pleasure kind of hedonism, where the dissolution of oneself i

What to watch on Welly’s local streaming service This week, I’m covering one half of Aotearoa’s fourth most popular folk-comedy duo—Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords. From indie rom-com, to downright absurdity, to Men in Black 3, this national treasure has a varied and pretty weird filmography. Most of his greatest hits are streaming on Aro, so have a read of my picks and then go get watching at ondemand.arovideo.co.nz! An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn (2018) — $5

They Got It Right This Year (Almost)! Ah, the Ockhams. Or, as Susanna Andrew coined last year, the “Shock-’ems”! Her point was not just that there’s something a little weird and very milk-loving-Briscoes-sale-deck-furniture-Kiwi about our national book awards being sponsored by a massive construction company. Nor was it just that her pick for the fiction award didn’t make the shortlist—though that was true, too. She also thought that, in an industry as small as New Zealand bo