Tinn People are a Westie band who play in the classic Album Oriented Rock (AOR) tradition that made the dominant post Sgt Peppers radio music a golden age on the airwaves.
Dad Rock, if you please.
They come from Muriwai, and it is a small artists enclave in similar fashion to Lyttleton, Christchurch. Home to the likes of Delaney Davidson, Marlon Williams, Adam Hattaway and the music factory called the Eastern.
Paul Cooke guitar, Kirsty Cooke lead singer and keyboards, George Jakich bass, and Steve Duck drums.
They’re not young, I suspect they are late Boomers like me. They do have pedigree as a covers band, which means a large collection of classic albums.
AOR was a term coined in the latter Sixties, when the album became dominant over the single. The Kinks (Something Else) may have beat the Beatles to the first proclaimed concept album by weeks.
There was still American Top Forty, and you could hear late Sixties songs not released on singles, like Led Zeppelin (which made a point of doing that).
Phil Spector made the single into an art form. Like A Rolling Stone was chopped in half on the radio in ’65.
By 1971 you could hear Stairway to Heaven regularly on Radio Hauraki. As a single it would have only made the acoustic guitar driven intro.
Tinn People have an easy practised air around them as they loosen up with first few tunes, You Don’t Really Know Me and Fight Reality. A tight band with Power Pop hooks and muscular rhythm sections.
I Like It is their current single (on Spotify). A slower tempo but still bright and bouncy rhythm guitar riffs. It is reprised as an encore sounding a little different.
You’re So Vain is the Carly Simon song. The lead singer does channel the Rock chick style. The guitar sounds like the great session musicians playing behind Warren Zevon, Waddy Wachtel in particular.
Kirsty Cooke has voice which lies halfway between the young Marianne Faithfull (As Tears Go By), and old (It’s All Over Now Baby Blue). The latter song Faithfull sounds like her vocal cords have become gravel,
On Size of Love, written about her daughter, she has a cigarettes and whiskey huskiness in her voice.
They cover Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain in witchy voodoo fashion.
Broken is introduced as one of their earliest. It starts with a Tumbling Dice intro and maintains a louche Rolling Stone tight but loose groove. The singer puts in some R’n’B phrasing with Gospel undertones.
The two guitarists switch roles in middle third of the set.
They love those Led Zepp crunching rhythm riffs and cover Heart’s Barracuda with gusto.
Money Tree, they describe as another ode to Page and Plant. Kirsty Cooke can power up her voice in hard R’n’B cadences.
I always thought the Sixties Tina Turner and Robert Plant were equivalent.
Ella Culverwell is a young Indie Folk to Pop solo artist from Muriwai, who plays the support slot.
I catch a few of her songs. A vocal style which typically comes from practising in bedrooms and posting on social media. There are a lot, and it means the bar is raised high to then break through as a successful artist.
Recording music is much easier. You don’t need an expensive studio. That aspect is a bonus.
She plays covers of Mumford and Son’s Kansas City and Zack Bryan’s Hey Driver. Passionate Indie Folk and Folk Americana respectively.
Her own song Planet holds up well in comparison.
Tinn People and their easy melodic style with plenty of musical chops would be like the Faces playing behind Rod Stewart. There is the singer’s smoky husk, and she provides the necessary keyboards.
Closer to You has a chanks rhythm riff in early Clash fashion when they were fashioning white Reggae.
The reprise of I Like It on the encore is different. There is guitar twang with Eastern tones in the Surf style of Dick Dale. Not double-picked therefore not at blistering speed.
Tinn People go out on an ecstatic high.
Rev. Orange Peel
Photography by Den
Tinn People
Ella Culverwell
