BLAIR MORGAN

There was a moment in the early "noughts" when it seemed as though indie guitar music was about to save everything.And now, roughly a quarter of a century later, three of those acts ,or in Brandon Flowers' case, one of the principal creative forces behind one of them ,have new albums. The Strokes have Reality Awaits. Interpol have This Mirror Weighs a Ton. And Brandon Flowers, stepping outside The Killers again but carrying much of that band's identity with him, has released

I went along to see Hothouse Flowers at the James Hay Theatre with a strange sense of déjà vu. The last time I’d seen them in Ōtautahi was across the foyer in the main auditorium at the Christchurch Town Hall in early 1991. More than three decades on, beards were in place, the hair a little wilder, and four of the five musicians looked like they’d stepped straight out of the set of The Hobbit .

I made a clumsy attempt at writing a couple of album reviews at school in 1984. One was "Born in the USA" by you know who and the second was "A Walk Across the Rooftops" by The Blue Nile. Looking back I cannot think of 2 x contrasting releases. On the one hand the Boss about to be launched into the stratosphere of world entertainment domination assisted by CBS and his savvy management team and on the other a trio from Glasgow whom it seemed were quite happy to record (very oc