Shayne P Carter, subject of last year’s five star documentary Life In One Chord, completes an Australasian solo tour with a series of regional shows through the North Island in late March early April.
The tour mirrors last year’s highly successful South Island tour that Carter described as “a great opportunity to play places I normally don’t play with my band.”
“It was a fantastic excuse to drift through smaller communities and meet the local folk and to immerse myself in the awesomeness of the South Island,” he said “There’s cool people everywhere and gigs like these seemed to serve as some sort of rallying point. I had a great time.”
2025 was a busy one for Carter. As well as the documentary which he backed up with shows in New Zealand and Australia, the year also saw the release of REforms, his album with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra . “The Shayne Carter songbook meets the heft of the NZSO” went the press release which was indeed what occurred.
REforms was released in conjunction with “Music From Home Land And Sea”, a digital only release of Carter’s score for a collaborative work by the Royal New Zealand Ballet and New Zealand Dance Company.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfT_47dvasY&list=RDOfT_47dvasY&start_radio=1
Now Carter steps back from the hi falutin’ world of orchestra’s and dance pieces, to deliver a back to basics show that also covers his extensive songbook, a show he describes as “rather removed from folky strumming”.
“I became addicted to guitar pedals during the pandemic” he said, “and sadly spent a lot of time watching music shop dudes on YouTube playing blues scales. But I brought some good pedals and I use some of them on the solo show to make my guitar sound better and more interesting. “
Sydney writer Mark Mordue on Carter’s Sydney show Dec 2025..
It’s immediately clear something original and very strong is happening in his music. Even more remarkable, that Carter is forging forward from what many people here may have already seen in the new documentary, doing something strangely unique yet again.
It’s a big, singular, dynamic sound, with queerly-chosen room-filling notes and chops, the melodies and riffs decisive, suspended by pauses that verge on guitar-hero freeze-frames as he bends and moves around the stage.
There’s a feeling of the future in Carter’s sound too, the cool spacey modernity of a group like Portishead – if all Portishead had was an acoustic guitar to establish their noirish and aloof otherness.
What’s happening here is so immediate and disruptive you’re simply grateful for an artist’s ability to cohere you right when the world seems to be disintegrating into nothing but horror. One is reminded of art’s more mutable and flowing beauty, its incandescent individuality and unifying complexity in a communal setting.
Shayne Carter is something else.
Date & Time
Location
Thursday April 2nd Pukehou Church
Friday April 3rd Haumoana Hall
Tickets $57.50
Doors at 6.30
Music From 7.30
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