It’s a wee bit of a sad state how seldom a full line-up of Kiwi acts take the stage at Vector Arena, but hopefully after the success of Broods’ Conscious tour, we can see the wheels begin to turn a little more in favour of New Zealand bands.
The night opened up with Blenheim-based newcomers, October. Their blend of slick synthy, dark-pop went down well with the crowd, they filled out their set with a couple of awesome covers and closed out with their own Cherry Cola which recently scored some NZ On Air funding – so look out for that in the coming months.
Auckland wunderkind Thomston took to the stage next with his stylised synth-pop and a super tight backing band. Float and Anaesthetic had the crowd singing along wholeheartedly and though at times it was hard to hear his vocals above the mix, it was obvious that the singer’s smooth tones and vocal gymnastics were in full form.
From the killer opening bars and staging of their second album’s title-named Conscious and right on through an hour and a half set, Broods pulled out all of the stops for their home crowd.
Starting the night in all-black stage get-ups, the first half of their set was concise and strangely delicate in a way - containing some of their more popular first album material Never Gonna Change and Everytime mixed in with lesser known new album tracks like Hold The Line and Bedroom Door. Thematically, the start of the set consisted of material based around longing and pain, culminating in a very emotional rendition of Freak Of Nature that was pre-empted with a shout out to the mental health charity ‘Key To Life’.
An acoustic insert served as an intimate and crowd-engaging breather for the duo during which, Jarryd James was brought out for a beautiful rendition of 1000x and Sleep Baby Sleep was given new life as an acoustic piece.
A quick turn around and costume change brought the band members back to the stage dressed in all white for a charged second half, opening with the contrastingly upbeat and contemplative Recovery.
Are You Home was performed with a spectacular, feisty brazenness that was awesome to see in a Kiwi act, whilst throwbacks Pretty Thing and L.A.F killed it with the crowd. The previously heart-tugging Mother & Father has grown a sort of reserved aspect to its live performance now, as if the band have outgrown the feeling a little bit.
Free closed out the main set, with Georgia imploring the crowd to “Please help me sing cause there’s so many words and I’m not sure why I put so many words in it”.
When the band were called back for their encore, phones lit up the arena for 4 Walls and the crowd sighed in collective relief at being able to relive their teen angst singing along to Bridges.
Set List
Conscious
Hold The Line
Everytime
Never Gonna Change
Bedroom Door
Freak Of Nature
All Of Your Glory
1000x feat. Jarryd James
Sleep Baby Sleep
Recovery
Are You Home
Heartlines
Pretty Thing
LAF
We Had Everything
Full Blown Love
Mother & Father
Free
Encore
4 Walls
Bridges
Couldn’t Believe
Meet Broods; the brother-sister duo of Georgia and Caleb Nott who hail from Nelson, and are now based in Auckland. It's been whirlwind time for the two who independently released their debut single Bridges to a heated bidding war to sign the group. Broods signed with Capitol Records in the USA, Polydor Records in the UK, and Island Australia & Universal NZ.
Georgia and Caleb started playing together around the age of ten, more recently, playing together as part of (the now defunct) Peasants. The two started spending time with Joel Little in the studio while he was also working on Lorde's Grammy nominated Pure Heroine.
Their song Bridges has clocked over 300,000 plays on Soundcloud, and Hypemachine says they are “pretty much destined for pop success”.