HAARP, Muse.
I arrived late to Muse fandom but their new live album has firmly cemented them in my mind as worthy inheritors of rocks pomp and majesty crown. Recorded over two nights at Wembley Stadium HAARP is a perfect example of Muse's power to pare back their cryptic and indulgent prog and pop epics into hard hitting crowd pleasing numbers. The album showcases the band striped of much of the superfluous atmospherics of their songs and not losing one iota of their emotion. With the addition of a futuristic stage show, absolutely superbly recorded sound and 80,000 delirious fans the DVD portion is a welcome addition to the Muse catalogue but CD itself is equally enthralling. It has a slightly reduced track-list but is perfectly paced throughout with Matt Bellamy's gifted guitar heroics finely captured for maximum breath taking impact. (Craig)

Complete A and B sides : 1963-1970, Dusty Springfield.
Genius Mercury compilation showcases the complete A & B sides of all of Dusty's UK singles released between the years 1963-70, in strict order; with the A sides on disc 1 & the B sides on disc 2. Full of some of the most recognisable 'pop' music ever made, and a lot of 'should-have-been-hits', all of which show just how astute she was at choosing material and arrangements. No other British singer captured the essence of Motown & Spector's Girl group sound as well as Dusty. If you're getting into the new wave of UK female 'soul' singers (Amy Winehouse, Kate Nash, Adele, Duffy, Estelle) this is where it all began. (Mark)

Shivering king and others, Dead Meadow.
The third album from this Washington, D.C. band, finds them moving away from their more blatant 1970s influences and towards a more solid sense of their own identity and style. A lovely mixture of trippy ballads and riff-laden rockers. (Neil)

Day trip, Pat Metheny.
For anyone fortune enough to have seen this trio a couple of years ago in the Michael Fowler centre this album is essential listening. Guitarist Pat Metheny has led some impressive trios in his career but this one with Christian McBride (bass) and Antonio Sanchez (drums) is a definite equal to the classic Roy Haynes/Dave Holland trio.

It's clearly evident that these musicians love working together as they really sound like they're joined at the hip musically. While they are all virtuoso musicians the compositions (all by Metheny) are just that, rather than vehicles to show how clever they are. This is destined to join the list of classic jazz guitar trio albums. (Robert)

Bill Withers live at Carnegie Hall, Bill Withers.
Cult soul-singer who merged a 'folky' storytelling style with down-home soul, remembered mostly for the oft-covered hits 'Lean on me' & 'Ain't no sunshine'. He 'gave up' on the music biz in the mid-80's, yet his influence still lingers. This live set from 1972 features material from his first couple of albums, and is notable for the intimate presentation of the songs and the 'call & response' interaction with the crowd. Withers' songs were a blend of socio-political observations on life, family (Grandmas hands), war (I can't write left handed) & relationships (Hope she'll be happier). A truly gifted song-writer who was able to marry a true narrative gift, with simple lyrics that, underscored a real emotional depth and understanding. (Mark)

LateNightTales, Air.
Almost as good as this atmospheric collection of oddities, dreamy classics and straight-out classical pieces are the brilliantly un-edited liner note comments of Nicholas Godkin and JB Dunckel, Air itself. On The Band, 'I saw an interview with them on TV... Canadians are special... they look like men in the forest who cut wood.' On The Trogggs, 'These guys are geniuses... and I can relate to this song because I too fell in love with my Cousin... You too? I loved my cousin...'. Their comments around the main character in Jean Luc Goddard's movie Contempt containing the beautiful piece Ghost by Georges Delerue could be about Air's best music also. 'He's strange. It's right on the edge. You don't know if he's a pervert or he's romantic or poetic.' (Monty)

Workers leaving the factory, Actualities.
This mini album from local live faves The Actualities is a great showcase for the sort of talent emerging in Wellington these days. Gorgeously produced by Grayson Gilmour, the cracking songs really get their chance to shine atop a bed of lush strings and a wall of guitars. It manages to sound like the Arcade Fire, Coldplay and even So So Modern all at once. So check this out and then go to one of their shows - they're one of the friendliest bands around and they have a very handsome guitarist too. (Sam)

Rainbow, Boris.
If you happen to be on the lookout for a new album from Japan's finest psychedelic rock trio playing alongside Japan's greatest experimental guitarist then Rainbow is the perfect album for you. Boris and Ghost's Michio Kurihara take things quietly here, it's all about texture and intricacy and when things kick off heavy it's all wrapped up in a wonderfully warm analogue fuzz. While Boris are more renowned for their fearsome collaborations with Sunn O))) this album allows them to step back from their usual drone and feedback and swim about in the primordial psychedelic ooze of Kurihara's more neo-psych and post-Krautrock sound. Rainbow is a hypnotic, gorgeous and deeply involving listen, particularly via headphones, well worth taking the time over on a rainy Sunday afternoon. (Craig)

Cluster & Eno, Cluster.
The first collaboration between Brian Eno and German duo Cluster was a further development in the emerging ambient music of the mid-1970s. Its sense of rhythm and space and its quiet unfussy self-containment make it a mile away from mere new age twiddling. (Neil)

Instrumentals, Isaac Hayes.
Like most major black soul artists of the 70's, Hayes tried his hand at soundtrack work in the 'Blaxploitation' film genre. While the films themselves are mostly forgettable (with the exception of perhaps Shaft) the music created for these films was of the highest calibre incorporating Hayes' jazz influences, and shows off not just his sometimes overlooked skills as a composer, but also just how important the Stax band of musicians was at that time. (Mark)

The Roundhouse tapes, Opeth.
This double live CD from Opeth draws on material from throughout their long and illustrious career. Recorded at London's famous Camden Roundhouse the band, in magnificent form, expertly transposes their sweeping doom epics into the live forum. Frontman Mikael Akerfeldt is in fine voice with some hilarious monologues spread throughout and the superb ability of the band to pace their intensely dynamic material makes this disc a cut above the usual live metal fare. Opeth, often regarded as leaders of the Gothenburg set, show once again that their ability to restrain and then release their monstrous sound at just the right moment means they'll be leading the pack for some time to come. (Craig)

"But what if I don't like it?" Well, it's true one's meat is another's poison, so why not double check with allmusic.com first to see if it sounds like your cup of meat/poison/tea.
Previous staff picks

Librarian's Choice

Recommended by Wellington City Libraries staff members, these CDs are chosen from all genres of our wide collection and are displayed with gold Librarian's Choice stickers on the cover. Watch out for the display of Librarian's Choice CDs and DVDs in the Sound & Vision Centre. A list of the CDs chosen is available here (Word) and from the Central Library Sound & Vision Centre desk.

Recent books

The underlined titles will take you directly to our catalogue. Some featured items are linked via a book cover to enable you to read more reviews.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers : runnin' down a dream, foreword and interviews by Peter Bogdanovich ; edited and additional interviews by Warren Zanes.
"For more than 30 years, Tom Petty has been writing and performing hit songs and rock and roll classics. He has sold more than 50 million albums worldwide. His music has been the soundtrack to the lives of millions of people who grew up in the '70s, '80s and '90s. This celebratory, personal volume includes hundreds of photographs many never-before-published as well as a selection of memorabilia from Petty's personal archives, all of which help to illustrate the songwriter's own description of his amazing life and career. Publication of this book coincides with the theatrical release of a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers film documentary by Peter Bogdanovich and a four disc DVD/CD set. The fall of 2007 belongs to Tom Petty." (Amazon.com)

Death metal, Garry Sharpe-Young.
"Reviled and revered in equal measure since its inception over a decade ago the phenomenon known as Death Metal has pushed Hard Rock music to the very edge of acceptability, and way beyond. Death metal and its bastard offspring Grindcore, has become the pariah of the music world. From the founding fathers Death, Napalm Death, Carcass, Incantation, Impetigo, and Morbid Angel, to the rise of Swedish Death Metal legends In Flames, Carnage and At The Gates, the Black Death Metal of Marduk, the Christian Death Metal of Mortification and the political Noisecore of Agathocles. Every major force in the genre is included - Aborted, Malevolent Creation, Deicide, Dismember, Dissection, Cannibal Corpse, Six Feet Under, Vader, Krisiun, et al. All genres old and new are analysed in depth with full histories and detailed discographies of well over 3,000 bands. Also included are many rare photographs. No area of the globe has provided a safe haven and this book documents the burgeoning uprise of Death Metal bands in the Far East, Eastern Europe and South America.Despite its unceasing growth and increasing legions of fans quite remarkably the phenomenon of Extreme Metal has never been fully documented until now. This book, newly updated and amended, is a must for all serious extreme metal fans." (Amazon.co.uk)

Memories, dreams & reflections, Marianne Faithfull.
"This book is a more personal history than has ever before been written by or about Marianne Faithfull. Anecdotal, conversational, intimate and revealing, this is her no-holds-barred account of her life, her friends, her triumphs and mistakes. A decade after the publication of Faithfull, one of the most acclaimed rock autobiographies of all time, Marianne Faithfull is back, vowing periodically leave her wicked ways behind and grow up, but finding that somehow strange things keep happening. A wry observer of her slightly off-kilter world, Marianne muses nostalgically about afternoons languishing on Moroccan cushions at George and Pattie's, getting high and listening to new songs. She fondly recalls the outlandish antics of her Beat friends Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs; is frequently baffled at her image in the press (opening the paper to read of her own demise: 'Sixties Star in Death Plunge'); terrified by the curse sent by Kenneth Anger; mortified by her history of reckless behaviour; not to mention her near-death experience in Singapore while looking for an opium den. Marianne peoples her anecdotal memoir with legendary characters one can imagine only Marianne assembling around her, both the eccentric and the beautiful, from Henrietta Moraes and Donatella Versace to Sofia Coppola, Juliette Greco, and Yves St. Laurent." (Amazon.co.uk)

Re-make, re-model : art, pop, fashion and the making of Roxy Music, 1953-1972, Michael Bracewell.
"In this innovative and intelligent book, British novelist and essayist Bracewell (The Nineties : When Surface Was Depth) explores how the 1972 release of the eponymously named debut album by Roxy Music - a manifesto written in the language of heavily stylized, nuanced and atmospheric pop and rock music - was actually the culmination of a decade-long British movement in which fine art and the avant-garde met the vivacity of pop and fashion with the goal of dissolving the boundaries between high and low art forms. Bracewell describes in fascinating detail a range of famous and obscure artists, first in the fine arts departments at Newcastle and Reading universities and later in the London of the swinging '60s, and delivers in effect a history of the British pop art movement, with special praise for the influence of artist Richard Hamilton at Newcastle, with whom Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry studied. By the time Bracewell ends his look at Roxy Music at its moment of becoming, he has definitively shown how the roots of Ferry's artistic vision of the band, both as a musical group and as a pop art concept, helped him produce one of the most original groups of its time, fusing an eclectic range of influences from modern music, popular culture and fine art." (Publishers Weekly)

Energy flash : a journey through rave music and dance culture, Simon Reynolds.
"It's a remix! Twenty years since acid house and Ecstasy revolutionized pop culture, here's the expanded and updated version of Simon Reynolds' landmark history of rave. Containing substantial new material covering dance-music developments in the ten years since its original publication, Energy Flash is now even more definitive. Blending vivid reporting, probing research and passionate opinion in the style of his acclaimed post-punk history Rip It Up and Start Again, Reynolds guides the reader on a thrilling journey from the druggy daze of Ibiza and Madchester via London's gritty pirate-radio culture of jungle and garage to the elegantly wasted clubland of contemporary Berlin. From trance to 2step, microhouse to grime, electro to dubstep, Reynolds tracks the scenes and sounds that have kept electronic music at the vanguard of pop culture. Now more essential and authoritative than ever, Energy Flash is the classic chronicle of rave's quest for the perfect beat and the ultimate rush." (Amazon.com)

Please kill me : the uncensored oral history of punk, Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
"A Time Out and New York Daily News Top Ten Book of the Year upon its release, Please Kill Me brings the sound of the punk generation to life. Iggy Pop, Danny Fields, Dee Dee and Joey Ramone, Nico, Patti Smith, and scores of other famous and infamous punk figures lend their voices to this definitive account of that outrageous, explosive era. From its origins in the twilight years of Andy Warhol's New York reign to its last gasps as eighties corporate rock, the phenomenon that was known as punk is scrutinized, eulogized, and idealized by the people who were there and who made it happen. Revised edition." (Amazon.co.uk)

Magazine roundup

Sick of reserving the latest copy of Mojo, only to find a seven-page feature on Val Doonican? Tired of trudging up the stairs to get Rolling Stone, only to find that Yanni review cruelly missing once again? Avoid nasty surprises with our music magazine roundup.

Here's what's happening in:

Acoustic Guitar website
Bass Player fulltext
Downbeat fulltext
Froots website
Guitar Player website
Modern Drummer website
Mojo website
New Zealand Musician website
NME website
No Depression website
Q website
Real Groove website
Record Collector website
Remix website (requires Flash)
Rip It Up website
Rolling Stone fulltext
Songlines website
The Source website
Uncut website
Wire website

For more magazine links, visit our online music resources page.

Popular music collection

At Wellington City Libraries we have a ridiculous number of CDs (well, over 20,000) for you to borrow at the altogether reasonable price of $1 each. Whether Matmos or Minogue, Strokes or Stockhausen, RZA or AWB you may very well find just what you were looking for in our collection.
Try these searches for the latest CDs in these categories

stack of CDs

Popular * Hip-Hop * Electronica * Compilations * Jazz * Soundtracks * Experimental * Country * Punk * Metal * Soul/R&B * A full list of music genres is available on our Catalogue Quicksearch page.

Of course we also take care of classical music.

"Music Ad Lib" radio show

"Music Ad Lib", hosted by our own library staff music enthusiasts, airs monthly on Access Radio 783 AM, at 4.30pm for 30 minutes - look here for the tracks from a recent show.

'Great Waves' by Dirty Three from Cinder.