Broods and Yumi Zouma

It's been a big year for Kiwi acts Broods and Yumi Zouma. The two bands have very different origins and takes on electronic pop, but have similarly found themselves darlings of the international blogosphere. While the former is a brother/sister duo produced by Lorde producer Joel Little, the latter formed when all three of their members were based in three different countries (and funnily enough they'll be touring with Lorde in the US).

The two acts have found themselves signed to overseas labels and blog aggregator Hype Machine has them both sitting in their 2014 (and a half) ones to watch list. Head over there to check out what they had to say and listen to the rest of the blogosphere's heir apparents.

www.broods.co
www.yumizouma.com

Last night's NZ Music Awards were predictably dominated by our favourite teenaged, world beating pop star Lorde. Although her album was released too late to qualify for this year's awards, she took away Single of the Year for Royals, Breakthrough Artist of the Year, the International Achievement Award and the fan-voted People's Choice Award, not to mention her video for Royals won famed designer/director Joel Kefali another Best Video award. Being a library blog, special mention goes to one of her acceptance speeches, where she said:

"Thank you to my management, without whom I probably would have become a librarian, or something equally nerdy," 

Awesome. It's not a diss, she's spoken in interviews about the crucial role of books in her life, but lucky for us all she's found her true calling. Other highlights included the charming Lawrence Arabia winning Best Male Solo Artist, Aaradhna winning the Album of the Year (as well as Best Urban/Hip Hop Album and Female Solo Artist of the Year) for her soulful Treble & Reverb.

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All Things Musical isn't exactly a hard-hitting journalistic institution, more of a little side project in between shelving music scores, withdrawing Nickelback CDs and explaining to the odd patron the difference between "the internet" and "Google" (bless).

Fortunately there's much better music blogs out there fighting the good fight ever after the latest nail in the coffin of quality music journalism in New Zealand. One of the best is Russell Brown's Friday Music, which comes out weekly on Russell Brown's Hard News blog on Public Address. He's passionate and thoughtful and has an enviable awareness of a variety of music. I wouldn't say the same about Simon Sweetman's Off The Tracks, a spin-off of his Stuff.co.nz musings at Blog On The Tracks, but his writing does seem to attract a lot of readers. Those worlds collided this past Friday's post when Brown outlined his objections to a flimsy Sweetman attempted takedown of Lorde's The Love Club EP. Here's a taster.

"Sweetman thinks of himself as an iconoclast, and, yeah, it takes some nerve to denounce barbecue reggae in a Wellington paper. Someone had to. He can write well about the range of music he likes, and completely miss the point of anything outside that range. Too often, he seems to be merely seeking attention. But in this review, he writes like the troubled child he believes Ella Yelich-O'Connor to be. The one who needs to grow up isn't Lorde. I think it would be decent of him to apologise for parts of what he wrote."

Read the full post on Hard News for an excellently thought out rebuke to a rather thoughtless and insulting dismissal.

And while Lorde smartly ignores bad reviews (and finds others going in to bat for her...), elsewhere on the internet a local band is taking matters into their own hands. The Neo-Kalashnikovs took issue with reviews of their single Gorgeous Baby over at The Corner and took to the comments section to defend their honour. Context: the website has a panel of writers who offer their thoughts on local singles. While I can't say I always agree with them, more content focusing on local bands is a positive. And even if the reviews aren't always so, it opens up a dialogue. Anyway, check out the post and the comments here, and take a look at the video if you feel like making up your own mind or happen to be a really big Coronation Street fan.