30 October 2023 - 0 Comments

Great art answers important questions. Questions like: What if The Mutton Birds decided to give their classic Kiwi tunes a bit more of a mariachi feel? What if Florence Welch couldn’t sing? What if Matilda the Musical was actually for depressed teenagers?

Those seeking answers can now turn to Hamilton home-recording genius/newbie, Mike Alpha Xray, and his debut album. It’s a collection of covers entitled Protect the Drive, Give ‘Em the Cut! (Cricketing tacticians will note that when a fielding side protects the drive but gives away the cut, they will have covers but no point.)

This is an entirely self-recorded, 100% solo project that Mike Alpha Xray completed at home. He hoped to learn how to use GarageBand, and to tap into the zeitgeist so successfully mined by New Zealand lo-fi gurus from Chris Knox to Pickle Darling. By the time it was done, he had learned how to use GarageBand.

Opening track Dominion Road breaks one of Aotearoa’s favourite singalongs into a whole new realm, with a partying brass section stealing the show. It would be completely understandable if Don McGlashan would like the show back, please. Other highlights include Street Chant’s Stoned Again rearranged with a can of fly spray as a percussion instrument, and Pressure, originally by Hamilton’s leading pop-rockers Bitter Defeat, played on three synthesised pipe organs. After members of Bitter Defeat heard an early edit of Mike Alpha Xray’s version they insisted on being supplied their own copy. Hastened by fear, he completed the vocals under two couch cushions that night while the rest of his family was asleep upstairs.

All up, Protect the Drive, Give ‘Em the Cut! is 36 minutes of music that you’ll never hear anywhere else. The main reason you won’t hear it anywhere else is because Radiohead were too smart to try to pluck The National Anthem on acoustic guitar, and because Florence + the Machine never found themselves knee deep in EDM-inspired confusion before realising that there’s no way that they could carry the tune of My Boy Builds Coffins.

Great art answers important questions. What’s the opposite of bursting onto the scene? Is it imploding into the background?

Mike Alpha Xray has truly imploded into the background since the album’s release, earning dozens of partial-plays on Bandcamp, a couple of retweets, and not even 20 bucks in name-your-price sales.

Undeterred by such cacophonous indifference from the listening public, critics are saying that Protect the Drive, Give ‘Em the Cut! is “a gem of a listen”, “utterly ludicrous”, “fucking brilliant”, and that it “makes absolutely no sense whatsoever”. That previous sentence ought to have used the singular “critic”, because it’s all from the one and only review that the album has received so far (from the good people of the Hamilton Underground Press).

Mike Alpha Xray himself has advice for listeners. "Track two is really short," he says, "So stick around. It gets better after that."

Protect the Drive, Give ‘Em the Cut! is streaming now on mikealphaxray.bandcamp.com, where people with questionable judgement can pay $1 or more to download their very own copy.

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