Dave Dobbyn "Twist" 1995

...It was evident he had not lost his sense of humour, though, as he compared himself to Ned Flanders, the pious neighbour from The Simpsons, and remarked that telling people you were a Christian was “like admitting you’re a cross dresser.”...

...Of perhaps equal significance was another change in Dobbyn’s lifestyle: he had given up drinking. Both events were reflected in the upbeat tone of his 2000 album, the aptly-titled Hopetown. Being a teetotalling Christian is not just the antithesis of the rock and roll stereotype. It is also a long way from the mainstream New Zealand that had, for more than two decades now, embraced Dobbyn’s music as its soundtrack. And yet far from alienating his audience, he continued to attract adoring crowds, whether in downtown Auckland or rural Kihikihi. And the anthems kept coming. Possibly the most anthemic of all was the one that opened 2005’s Available Light. ‘Welcome Home’ was inspired by several incidents that had drawn attention to racial prejudice in New Zealand society. One was the case of Ahmed Zaoui, an asylum seeker from Algeria who was imprisoned as a suspected terrorist. “To treat anyone who comes to these shores as an alien nuisance is exactly the wrong way to go forward in the 21st century,” he told John Russell. “The man was imprisoned for two years with no charge and no trial and that’s not supposed to happen in a democracy. I can’t live with that, that’s why I back the guy.” After he was granted his release, Zaoui appeared on stage with Dobbyn at the New Zealand Music Awards, joining the singer in an emotional rendition of the song. Yet ‘Welcome Home’ has an ongoing resonance that has outlasted the particular events that inspired it. The image of the “woman with her hands trembling” and the phrase “haere mai” are evergreen, evoking for any New Zealander the pōwhiri, or Māori welcoming ceremony. Alongside ‘Po Atarau’ (or ‘Now Is The Hour’), the great Māori song of farewell, it almost makes a matching pair. For his next project, the 2008 album Anotherland, Dobbyn went to England, where he worked with dub reggae producers Adrian Sherwood and Skip Macdonald. Though the result had a definite dub flavour, it didn’t really sound like anyone but Dobbyn... to be continued - audioculture

trax:
01 Lap of the Gods 02 Naked Flame 03 P.C. 04 It Dawned on Me 05 Protection 06 What Do You Really Want 07 Gifted 08 Betrayal 09 Language 10 Umm 11 Rain on Fire 12 I Can't Change My Name
…served by Gaius…