With a hiss and a roar, Ahuriri’s Stretch, with his newly renamed entourage The Sinners, has burst back in to the public arena. The increasingly essential quick ’n’ dirty October experience that is Fringe in the ‘Stings (or FITS for the impatient!) provided the setting for this, an opportunity that the troupe grabbed with both hands and ran with, shining as brightly as the aurora promised for the same night!

It was some 4 years ago that I was invited to a pre-release event for Stretch’s album Our Dreams Are Changing, an album born of its time, in that first frantic year when people actually still cared about Covid. Unfortunately, it was also an album that suffered the effects of the time, going cruelly unnoticed in the midst of the prevailing state of affairs-a great piece of work that deserves discovery and exploration! Since then, the ongoing uncertainty of things, and the fuckery of life in general, have combined to make appearances somewhat more sporadic, rare glimpses of what could be. But on this night, the clear and emphatic message was that it’s business time (with no business socks involved!), and there’s unfinished business indeed!

Opening with Last Call For The Road, also the album opener, set the mood up nicely, added electric guitar flourishes showing the evolution of the sound, before hitting a nice demonstration of the deliciously noisy possibilities of this outfit with an impassioned rendition of I Know You’ve Been Bad.

Lonely Star, sporting an extended intro sequence, brought a more reflective feel, its intrinsic humanity feeding nicely in to Not Saying Goodbye’s heartfelt statements of both origin and intent. A deft mix of loud and quiet introduced House Full of Ghosts, given extra chunk and power by the guitar of Cam Burns, before Less Rock, More Roll saw some extra bluesy and powerful tones take the tune almost in to the territory of ZZ Top!

The slower pace of Here Come The Starlings allowed cellist Paula Sugden to come to the fore, playing without the main man in her life, the 300-year old that is Cyril, his stand-in being a considerably more streamlined electronic version. Happens to us all, I guess, as we start to get too old and cumbersome to lug everywhere-but maybe that’s a tale for another day...

An extremely energetic Walk on Water allowed Cam to really let rip on the gat, and closed out the part of the set made up of original material-the full effect of this portion being a demonstration of how much these songs have grown since their genesis-which is what all parents worth the name want for their offspring, innit?

But then the surprise package of the evening came along-a quartet of what Stretch introduced as "Our favourite waiata of Aotearoa", kicked off with Anchor Me, with its poignant plea for a core of support and emotional stability. The next song led to reminiscences of Stretch having many years back, while working in Slow Boat Records, obtained the signatures of the members of Garageland. Now he has their drummer, Andrew Gladstone, in his band! So Beelines To Heaven might almost be a matter of muscle memory for him, one might expect...

The next song was admitted to, both by Stretch and the time and later by Paula, as being one they were somewhat nervous about assaying, given its place in the Aotearoa musical firmament. But there wasn’t anything for them to worry about-the very nature of Stuff and Nonsense, the song in question, and the fragility that is at its core, almost demands (and simultaneously forgives) an individualistic interpretation, one that honours the work while not parroting it-and this was delivered!

The final act in this homage was a rendition of Love My Leather Jacket, the joy of its playing clearly visible on all the Sinners’ faces. Such is the power of social media, and the random connections formed within, that I’ve been able to share video of this with a member of Martin Phillipps’ family, and it received a seal of approval-and you can’t do much better than that!

Continuing in this vein, the encore was a subterranean deep dive into the puoro of Aotearoa, in the form of Tutira Mai Ng? Iwi, further exemplification of deep cultural roots, and a reminder of the essential humanity of this performance, one that put smiles on many faces, and a song in many hearts. Let’s hope life allows the next time around to be a little sooner!

Photo Credit: Andrew Caldwell

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