Fruity tunes from Dunedin
If you are after stone fruit facts and etiquette, coupled with grungy pop beats, read on.
As the clock struck midnight on December 31, 2017, Dunedin band Soaked Oats looked back at a year of firsts.
Led by singer/songwriter Oscar Mein, the band released their debut EP Stone Fruit Melodies in April, No Slip Ups in October and played the 9pm New Year’s Eve slot on a stage at Rhythm and Vines.
‘‘We’re still comprehending it really, it was the biggest crowd we’ve ever played to,’’ Mein said. The Press caught up with the fourpiece band in Arrowtown, ahead of their January 3 gig at the Blue Door bar, part of their Soiree De Sludge national tour.
The band is made up of Mein, 24, on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Henry Francis, 23, on lead guitar and vocals, Max Holmes, 23, on bass, and Conor Feehly, 24, on drums.
Mein studied creative writing and film making at Massey University in Wellington. His stone-fruit inspired lyrics are often ridiculous but the pop tunes are infectious.
‘‘Those songs were the first songs I ever wrote, living in Wellington selling cherries one summer. I wrote Cherry Brother one day and then spent the summer road tripping around New Zealand, and all these strange stone-fruit-themed occurrences started happening to me,’’ he said.
‘‘It just sort of happened naturally that I wrote six songs about stone fruits. After the third one it was like, ‘OK, I’m going to have to do every song about stone fruits’. It got to the point where I’d have an idea for a song and I had to think, ‘which stone fruit can I put this to’.’’
One of the band’s tunes, Avocado Aficionado, details the best time to pick avocados and how to know they are ripe. Another, I’m a Peach, educates listeners on the close relation between nectarines and the furryskinned fruit.
It turns out, aside from a recessive gene holding off the fuzziness from nectarines, they are the same fruit. Thanks Oscar.
A keen crowd packed the Arrowtown bar on January 3. Soaked Oats performed after fellow Dunedin band Marlin’s Dreaming, and hundreds spilled out of the bar, into one of the town’s cobblestone lanes.
While Rhythm and Vines was ‘‘a damn good time’’, lead guitarist Francis said playing to tighter crowds was a treat.
‘‘The smaller gigs are so nice because they’re intimate and you can really form a connection with the crowd,’’ he said.
The band played their first gig at Neck of the Woods in Auckland in January 2017, a venue they will return to on January 18, 2018. They wrapped up the South Island leg of their tour in Lyttelton last Friday, and finish their tour at Black Barn Bistro in Hawke’s Bay on January 21.
''It got to the point where I'd have an idea for a song and I had to think, 'which stone fruit can I put this to'." Singer/songwriter Oscar Mein