"We're just a sort of a pop band with verses and choruses," Matthew Plunkett says. "Trying to make fun, slightly absurd songs."
It's a Friday night at the Settler Theatre in Ōamaru, a quaint and quirky town on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island. Plunkett's band Cuticles are uncomfortably sandwiched between Jenny Don't and the Spurs, an exuberant country and western band from Portland, OR, and the much less exuberant country and western stylings of Adam Hattaway And The Haunters, from Christchuch, 150 miles to the north.
It's a show that balances on the cusp of chaos. It's rowdy, and it's ragged, and several songs disintegrate rather than climax, as if the band have learnt how to take off but neglected to figure out the landings. But it's also oddly exciting, with Plunkett chopping out frantic, frequently discordant melodies on his guitar while the rest of the band – bassist Tom Harvard, drummer Austen McMillan and keyboardist Rebecca Anderson – attempt to keep the flight airborne and heading in the right direction
"A lot of the time we are hanging on by fingertips," Plunkett says. "But I think I've just come to accept that. That's part of the beauty of it. And that's who we are.
"There's no need to be boring. There's no need to just go through the motions. What's the point of that? I'd prefer to walk off the stage. When things do go off the rails, I just lean into it."
Cuticles are a pop band, but it's pop music informed by some of its most frazzled proponents: English post-punks like The Fall and The Swell Maps (whose guitarist, Jowe Head, released a song called Cuticles with his Househunters band in 1988), and South Island favourites The Clean, The Gordons and Bailter Space.
With their recently released collection Major Works, Cuticles may have made one of the great South Island albums. It mixes an often childlike approach to songwriting (titles include Helping Out My Dad and Cheese In My Brain with an enthusiastic, music obsessive's certainty about how those songs should sound. From the rumbling garage rock of Rabbit Fur Lined Glove to the weird rockabilly of Pile, it's an album that's regularly off-kilter, occasionally hair-brained, and frequently joyous.
It's also an album that's been well-received by people who matter, most notably by Tom Lax, proprietor of much-loved Philadelphia label Siltbreeze, who've released albums by several cult NZ artists over the years including The Dead C, Alastair Galbraith, The Mad Scene, Roy Montgomery, The Pin Group, Scorched Earth Policy, The Terminals and the Victor Dimisich Band. And now, Cuticles.
"He just said, 'I'll do an LP', and this was almost before he even heard the music," Plunkett says. I mean, he'd heard the few little songs we've released, but he's always just stuck with that. It was almost like whatever we turned around, he was going to do the LP."
Another person who matters is American alternative music legend Gerard Cosloy – the man who signed Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Volcano Suns and Big Black to Homestead Records back in the late 80s – who played Wind//, one of Major Works' many highlights, on his weekly radio show.
If all this sounds like a remarkable turn of events for an English teacher from Ōamaru – by day, Plunkett is Head of Department at a local school for boys – this isn't his first brush with such acclaim.
In 2017 his previous band Trendees released the 7" single Go To Town, described by The Wire as "true face-loading no-fi blasterooo" (that's favourable, honest), while Boring Party, taken from the band's We Are Sonic Art album, was played by Henry Rollins on his radio show.
When Trendees broke up, Plunkett and drummer McMillan hooked up with Lisa Preston – formerly of Nux Vomica and Portage – and the trio rehearsed for a time under the name Foot Foot.
The lineup was completed when bassist Tom Harvard joined, the name was changed to Cuticles, and a stream of releases followed: two digital singles in Steal My Statue and Acquaintances Or, an extremely limited lathe-cut 7" single of Cheese In My Brain, and an EP, Pavlova.
Then came the album, recorded at Sublime Studios near Kurow, where Harvard is the in-house engineer. And they've just released a video for album opener Mattress, a dizzying affair that's as frayed as the music itself.
There's more to come. Plunkett has more releases up his sleeve, and the band is already different, with Lisa Preston departing and Rebecca Anderson joining the ranks.
"Ambition seems like an ugly word," says Plunkett. "I guess I'm just ambitious to make up a good song. It's just the next song. We now have Rebecca and it's kind of a different sort of a band. So I'm not sure how that's gonna go.
"But I think we will give it a go. We'll do some recording and see how that sounds. There's no master plan. I'm just grateful for anything."
