Jun 22, 2017
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The Pin Group - When I Tell You [1982]
It's time for Beginnings, the podcast where writer and performer Andy Beckerman talks to the comedians, writers, filmmakers and musicians he admires about their earliest creative experiences and the numerous ways in which a creative life can unfold.
On today's episode, I talk to guitarist and composer Roy Montgomery. Originally from London, Roy grew up in Christchurch, New Zealand, and his first band, The Pin Group, was part of the forefront of the New Zealand post-punk scene in the early-1980s, that, along with bands like The Clean and The Chills, centered around Flying Nun Records. After this, he began recording on his own, and he began to draw acclaim by his second solo album, Temple IV, which was released on Kranky. Since then, he has recorded any number of fantastic albums, collaborated with groups like Bardo Pond and Flying Saucer Attack, and become a lecturer - and head of the Environmental Management Department at Lincoln University. His most recent work Camera Melancholia was released on Grapefruit a few years ago, and like everything else Roy does, it's wonderful!
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Roy Montgomery & Friends – Broken Heart Surgery LP (Discreet Music)
RECOMMENDED
The importance and depth/body of work of Christchurch, NZ's Roy Montgomery is too long for me to get into here, and probably redundant for a lot of you, but the gap between his '90s works and the spate of releases from 2016 on (dutifully documented by Omaha's Grapefruit label) feels nearly closed now, and in 2024 it's all had time for new chasms to open around it. (If you're mistaking him for the character from TV's Castle, put down the remote and go outside). Other works of recent years have been dedicated to Montgomery's longtime partner Kerry McCarthy's passing back in 2021, but Broken Heart Surgery really feels like the effort where the grief has settled in his bones, some of the acoustic crispness of more recent releases like Rhymes of Chance muted down into mournful low clouds of chorus pedal chords and the haunting vocals of longtime compatriots and collaborators like Stephen Cogle (Terminals, Victor Dimisch Band, Vacuum; essentially the other lynchpin of New Zealand's modern music) and Garbage and the Flowers vocalist Emma Johnstone. Barricaded in by gentle vocal reveries, haunted poetry and atmospheric synths, this one feels colder and slower, yet more immediate than some of his other works, looking back to his '90s touchstones Scenes from the South Island and the soon-to-be-reissued Temple IV, as well as the massive RMHQ box set, as milemarkers in his astonishing career. Words like "goth" don't even begin to set the stage for the desolation and ultimate rebirth that takes place across these six tracks, and I find myself at a loss for an audience who needs to discover this and won't feel it within their bones, forever attached. Unlike the Grapefruit titles this one's a Swedish import and will not hang out for long. Absolutely essential, the first true stunner of 2024. (Doug Mosurock)
I haven’t crawled as deep into the Flying Nun/New Zealand scene as many have, but The Pin Group has stood out in particular to me, perhaps due to my love of Roy Montgomery through his solo work (mainly the somewhat-recently reissued 324 E. 13th Street #7, which runs through the singer-songwriter sides of his singles). Some rather excellent vintage footage of the crew in 1981, suitably in scratchy, rehearsal-room mono.
3/6/17.
Pin Group were Roy Montgomery’s 1st band. They were also Flying Nun’s first release - a 7″ of Ambivalence b/w Jim. Pin Group was based in Christchurch, New Zealand and must have been in tight with the other early Flying Nun bands - fellow Christchurchians The Bats, and The Clean (based in Dunedin - a couple hour drive to the South), are both from the South Island.
Pin Group do have the pop sensibilities, but they also have a noisier sounds than say The Bats. The vocals can tend to a Joy Division quality.
I was pretty excited to see that Superior Viaduct is reissuing they’re recorded output in the original form - (2) 7″s and a 12″ EP.
