The decennial cyclical nature of pop culture is currently throwing everything back to the late 2010s, when New Zealand indie was having an international renaissance. The United States was enduring the first Trump administration by pushing hip hop and rap to the top of the charts, ushering hundreds of fantastic new underground artists into the mainstream but unfortunately opening the door for white rappers like Machine Gun Kelly, Jelly Roll, and Post Malone to appropriate other cultures until the second Trump administration, where they let go of the schtick to sell bad country songs to conservative governments who shovel millions into tours the artists were going to cancel anyway. In the death of American culture, our music shines brighter than the rest - especially before the pandemic ruined our economy and the collect US-NZ voters decided to shift us into the shitter.
Within a few years, several New Zealand bands broke across the pacific ocean, signing with major stateside record labels and gaining genuine virality on their songs and music videos before the term was co-opted by the song's usage in TikToks. Princess Chelsea exploded on music blogs with ‘The Cigarette Duet’ before riding into the next generation with a stellar 2020s so far, Fazerdaze took Morningside from Tāmaki Makaurau to the rest of the world, and smack bang in the middle of it all was a young Kane Strang, signing to Dead Oceans and seeing his self-loathing 2017 exodus, ‘Two Hearts and No Brain’, take on millions more eyes than he ever could have imagined. ‘Amelia and I have talked about it over the years,’ Kane says. ‘Some days I'll still be quite proud of a lot of it, and other days I listen to it and I'm just like, "What the fuck are you doing, man?”’
We’re outside of a pub in Ponsonby that I used to walk by every day while immersing myself in Office Dog’s 2023 debut record Spiel. While I was off living in my first overpriced flat with rent paid by student loans, the three-piece slowly trickled out singles that were immediately chucked onto the SRN playlists of the time. Everyone seemed to already know who the frontman was, but the debut of ‘In The Red’ on breakfast radio was my first introduction to the sauntering and haunting depths of Strang's music.
Hailing from Ōtepoti Dunedin, Kane Strang began writing music across various bands and names toward the end of high school, with various blogs in the early 2010’s praising early demos that have since been scrubbed from his Bandcamp page. Across these tracks, many of which were re-recorded for his later albums and EPs, Strang tears his Two Hearts and No Brain out for the world to see, at a time where that looked like a few faceless people on the internet that you’d never meet. ‘There's no way in the world when I wrote some of those, essentially my biggest solo songs, thought they'd have millions of streams.’ The best example of this is ‘My Smile Is Extinct’, which has a music video with close to ten million views and hundreds of comments from American yuppies lamenting the passage of time.
Much like Lontalius and Salvia Plath, the international audiences took the singles they liked and ran, talking about these crazy indie artists in various message boards while ignoring the fact that most of them were people their age from New Zealand that were still releasing great music. Early bandcamp recognition saw Strang's solo project signed to Dead Oceans, who rolled out the most balls to the wall international campaign for the Phoebe Bridgers album a few weeks ago and gave Kane a not-quite-planetarium-level-but-still-quite-good treatment.
Despite successful and fulfilling tours after Two Hearts released, Kane got stuck in a rut. “I went through this big experience and then was spat out on the other side very suddenly, and it took a while to work through that.” The start of 2021 saw the release of the solo LP Happy To Perform and it’s successive tour, accompanied by a supergroup of Peter Ruddell of Wax Chattels and Sulfate, Leith Towers of Marlins Dreaming and Ringlets, Gussie Larkin of Mermaidens and Earth Tongue, and Mitchell Innes - a childhood friend of Kane from Ōtepoti, who he managed to then lock down on drums for a new project to take shape.
‘Raz had also moved up from Dunedin after I'd said to Mitch, "Hey, I'm ready to do something else.” So that felt perfect, even though maybe it's a little bit bad to move to Auckland and only play with people from Dunedin.’ He was keen to break from the confines of his old work, utilising a new band and name as a way to challenge himself and strip everything back. ‘I just knew I wanted to do something that was quite strict, and relied on me to write more interesting songs at their core. It also forced me to get a bit better at guitar again and learn some new things - it definitely completely changed how I play guitar, forming this band.”
There’s a few key locations that host much of the mythos of Office Dog. I bought up the press releases proudly presenting their Storage King residency as the rugged inspiration for the record, to which Kane cringed and said it wasn’t really the full story. Early on, they’d practice between Raz and Kane's flat in South Auckland and the basement of a church in Mt Eden. Around the corner, I had seen them last at the old Sports Team office when they were filming Live Music Bar and spoke of recording Spiel within the same block at Roundhead Studios with De Stevens - another old mate from Dunedin. Just as much as the band is stuck up north, its roots remain in Otago. For Kane, those roots have been dragging him back year after year, finding himself relocating between the two cities constantly for various work and family priorities while writing new material for the band. “It just didn't take much for me to just pack up and go on either side. For some reason, I just thought I could handle it "- “I don't care where I am, you know.”
The timing lined up for Stevens to start working at Roundhead during a stint where all band members were in Auckland, allowing them to squeeze in two days at the studio while De was still learning the ropes. The initial tracking of the record was quick to a point of haste - “We just thought Spiel sucked for a minute there, aye? Mitch told me he thought he was gonna quit drums after that session because he thought he played so bad.” After some distance, they went back in at the late hours after Night Lunch producer Stephen Marr finished up their sessions, adding overdubs and re-recording various vocal and guitar parts.
“Genuinely every vocal take on that album was recorded after 11PM. I think Raz had some kind of strep throat or something when we were recording. We were hanging on by fucking threads in every way.”
The release of Spiel was acclaimed in Aotearoa, netting the trio an SRN award, an American release with New West Records, and tours across the States and Europe. The momentum was kept strong in 2024, with the release of Doggerland shortly following the winter. ‘I remember posting a video of us in the studio, playing ‘Nancy’ or Mitch doing some percussion, and the dude from New West, Brady - who's a really great guy - messaged me being like, "What? What is this? What is happening?” While the label agreed to release the mini-album, it ended up being their last release for Office Dog, leaving the trio back in independence with a slate to wipe clean. ‘What's the saying, don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness or some shit.’
I remember a question that I asked which got cut from their Live Music Bar episode after hearing Doggerland single ‘Nancy’, regarding which guitar tunings Kane leaned toward. I’m pretty sure he sheepishly said he’d been playing around with DADGAD, but it was still mostly standard. That was reaffirmed today, as fucking around with open tunings became the starting point for several of the bands newest album, Prime Corner. “That almost felt like a bit of a hack, you know, because it was this whole untapped world that I never delved into.”
The consequences of the long commutes were reaching their breaking point, as a split life between two cities couldn’t be bared any further. “It’s a running joke, and it’s kind of what Prime Corner is about. I've just lived in this really unsettled way for the last few years, never being able to make my mind up about where I want to be. That caught up with me after a while. Around the time the album came out, I was just completely over the moving, and realized I needed to like to settle back up here, have my own space and slow down a bit. ‘
At long last, after the forthcoming tour with Office Dog to celebrate the album has been and done, Kane will know he’ll be settled in Tāmaki Makaurau - for now, at least. But the love for Ōtepoti will never cease. ‘I'm just so glad that that was the environment I went into after high school, where it was like it was all quite different bands playing with each other and just being themselves, it was really fucking inspiring to me. Because in high school, I didn't even realize that whole world existed, I was just hanging out with two friends in Tainui.’
For as much as Kane and the band have travelled between the ends of the motu, their music has gone even further. After a pitch email or two for Office Dog to play Kiriata me Puoro mistimed when he was back in Dunedin, a recent conversation with a friend about them listening to Kane while living in Singapore as a teenager prompted me to email Kane again on their band's behalf. I told Kane this, probably taking away our cool points in the process, but he was thankful. “It's that sort of thing that never feels real. I've had to check out from a lot of the internet stuff to stay sane in a way.” Again, ‘My Smile Is Extinct’ has a strong fifteen million streams on Spotify.
With the band's latest album being released across streamers, vinyl, and the fancy new Lume shortly after their European tour, it’s evident that they’re remaining at the forefront of the next wave of Aotearoa indie. Kane, Mitch, and Raz are achieving it through what Kane called “an obsession with being authentic”, via tuning out the internet noise of Pitchfork reviews and Reddit threads.
The rest of the country will get their fix across Great Sounds Great in Wellington and successive Ōtepoti/Ōtautahi tour spots. If you’re Tāmaki bound like the rest of us, get a ticket for Office Dogs show this Friday at Double Whammy. Fazed On A Pony will be supporting alongside our very own Masc/Femme. Their mic swapping between members, intense dynamics, and guttural builds will play incredibly against such stellar Auckland emo legends and one of the best New Zealand bands of the decade. I’m hoping we’ll see you there.
