Grant Smithies - Soundtrack: 118 Great New Zealand Albums

Soundtrack is music reviewer Grant Smithies’ marvellously passionate, insightful and entertaining tribute to New Zealand music.

Smithies has written about 110 albums he loves, each containing music that rises above the background noise to say something significant about the musicians who made it and the place and time from which it came. It is a highly subjective selection which does not pretend to be exhaustive or definitive. Rather, it has been driven by a desire to shine a light on many of the lesser-known treasures of New Zealand music: to uncover albums of equal power and cultural significance to many of the better-known recordings traditionally held up as seminal New Zealand albums.

This remarkable collection of music is, not surprisingly, extremely diverse. It ranges from Flying Nun guitar bands (The 3Ds, The Bats, AK79, The Clean, The Gordons, The Verlaines, Straitjacket Fits, Toy Love) to bedroom-studio techno, punk to folk, Maori showbands to metal, Polynesian hip hop to indie pop, Auckland alt. country to Wellington soul. Whatever the genre, these albums are united by one thing -– they are all superb.

In Soundtrack, the author has also enlisted the help of a range of other writers, as well as a scattering of musicians, designers, actors and academics, all of whom have contributed guest essays about a New Zealand album they love.