Interviews and live sets from the New Zealand music underground. This week we catch up with Plum Green.
To the uninitiated, Plum Green presents an enigmatic surface upon which people often project their own expectations: “Well you’re a woman with a guitar so you must be a 'singer-songwriter'.” But for anyone expecting a facsimile of Bic Runga and friends, it’s an opinion that’s readily dispelled once she and collaborator Daniel X start playing.
Plum's dark subject matter - with seemingly every second song a dedication to a lost friend, or a wish for some divine karma on the demons of the world - are all sung in a beguilingly strong voice that hints at her parents musical background.
In Melbourne, where Plum has lived for the last four years, this dark-gothic-melodramatic-folk music has found it’s own audience amongst those who don’t connect with the beach and barbie religion of The Lucky Country’s "oi, oi, oi” brand of nationalism.
Recording her latest album Karma in a succession of candle lit basements, Plum channels her quiet, seething rage of helplessness and despair, like a black velvet glove around the throat.
Video shot by John Lake and Jonathan Shirley.
Edited by John Lake.
This content is brought to you with funding support from NZ On Air.