Papaiti Records: The Flying Nun of Aotearoa Emo
By Liam Hansen (they/them) FEATURE WRITER
As the youngest of three kids, I can’t deny the privilege I had – being blissfully unaware of my family's hardships whilst playing “Mario Kart Wii” was probably my peak in life. But at ten years old, it hit me that the best part of my youthfulness was the fact that I could watch both my siblings go through their cringeworthy emo phases before me. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise being emo wasn’t actually a required part of teenagehood, and even worse: I discovered My Chemical Romance about twenty minutes and 43 seconds later. That was the beginning of the end, and the reason I’m now the sad queer emo family reject. My life as an emo kid started in 2016 as a Tumblr troglodyte, before developing into being an insufferable indie kid. I never shut up about Modern Baseball, Cap N’ Jazz, or Taking Back Sunday – and to be honest, I never really stopped. The screamy, emotionally driven lyrics were therapeutic for an annoying teenager in West Auckland, especially when the pandemic hit. The loudest music I could find bled into my ear drums and out into the rest of my year 11 classroom through my shitty dollar store earphones, solidifying me as a pretentious wanker who probably deserved to be bullied a teensy bit more. But after leaving high school and awkwardly inserting myself into the Aotearoa music scene, I stumbled across a multitude of nerds just like myself making music about growing up in shitty small town New Zealand, finding solace in the people who mean the most. This isn’t just Kiwis emulating the sounds of Midwest emo from the United States – it’s a unique and growing subgenre, and brought together by a tight knit community of musicians and artists distinctively formed by the Aotearoa underground.
Sad by Sad South.
The origin of emo is a “depends who you ask” type thing, but generally speaking, it stemmed from the post-hardcore scene in Washington D.C. in the mid-80s and developed from there across the nation and world. From a Google search of “emo in New Zealand”, it seems that black fringe emo kids spread like wildfire during the mid-2000s, and countless articles exist lambasting these annoying little teenagers for their feeeeeeeeelings. Ironically, just as the mainstream emo wave died out, the modern Aotearoa emo community started to form. Whanganui-based musician James Stutely has been on the hunt for pre-2010 Aotearoa emo for a while: “Almost all the emo that I can find is in that mid-2000s style”, referring to bands influenced by My Chemical Romance, Paramore and Fall Out Boy rather than the older, original style of American Football or Mineral. James is a bit of a leader in the Aotearoa emo scene (though he’s reluctant to admit it). He’s played in How Get and Yon Loader but his most well-known mahi is as the drummer of Carb on Carb, an emo project formed with vocalist/guitarist Nicole Gaffeney that’s been active for over a decade. Carb on Carb melds beautiful double-tracked guitar riffs with fast paced drums, with the occasional nod to early Flying Nun-esque jangle pop combined with sounds from Midwest emo. Nicole takes up lead vocals while James provides backup, with the lyrics forming a romanticised vision of Aotearoa suburbs and natural environments. “I guess what we’re trying to do is really embrace and celebrate New Zealand. There’s always songs about LA or whatever, but LA fucking sucks in my opinion,” James said. This also translates into their vocal delivery and general atmosphere, which came to fruition after their tours outside of NZ in Australia, Japan, and the US. “We’ve always tried to stay honest to our roots, not changing our accents or singing about other places. Especially after doing a lot of that touring, we’ve become really appreciative of our home.”
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