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New music: The Mint Chicks

The New Zealand globe-trotting punksters, The Mint Chicks, have posted up some new songs on their website. These are the first recordings to emerge after the band lost their drummer (to love in London) and relocated themselves to Portland late last year.

The three new tracks are I Can't Stop Being Foolish, Life Will Get Better Some Day and a re-working of the previously released track, Opium For The People, which is simply called Opium Redux.

The band will be heading home in April to play a handful of shows. Fingers crossed (although it does seem unlikely) that they make their way across to Australia.

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Artist Pages: The Mint Chicks  

Friday wrap-up

The Mint Chicks recently announced that they are relocating to Portland at the end of the year to give the Yanks a chance to experience their 'power' and also possible record some new material. According to their website bassist Mike will not be going with them - instead opting to move to London to be with his girlfriend. The band will be continuing as a trio for the time being with no word as to when they will replace him - or if they will.

It is esimated that Radiohead have made $10 million from their recent In Rainbows experiment on the launch day alone. They have also just signed a record deal with XL to release a CD version of the album early next year.

Trail Of Dead have ditched Interscope ... via their Interscope blog. We have linked to the cached version of the post - where they slag off their former record label - as the original posting has been pulled down.

According to this thread an Australian edition of the incredibly cool Take Away Shows is starting up. The first few episodes are set to feature Darren Hanlon, The Paper Scissors and Holly Throsby.

Local label etcetc, who recently signed a deal with Pnau to release their new album, have just signed a deal with Universal Records for Australia and New Zealand.

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Artist Pages: Batrider   Etc Etc   The Mint Chicks   Pnau   Radiohead   Trail Of Dead  

Tonight! The Mint Chicks vs Die! Die! Die!

This evening... The Mint Chicks playing over at Spectrum and Die! Die! Die! headlining a show at Candy's Apartment.

In a perfect world one of them would have booked a show for tomorrow night and we could have had a double-dipped New Zealand awesome adventure again like we did a few years back when both bands visited us within the space of a week.

But, these decisions have to be made with careful consideration...

The Mint Chicks

• Award-winning
• Bar-walking
• Slam-dancing
• Large back catalogue
• Supported by Talons
• Have never disappointed

Die! Die! Die!

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Artist Pages: Die! Die! Die!   The Mint Chicks  

The Mint Chicks clean up at the New Zealand Music Awards

The Mint Chicks have taken home the awards for Album of the Year, Best Group and Best Rock Album at the recent 42nd Annual NZ Music Awards.

The clean sweep - with the band winning all of the awards which they nominated for - caps off a highly successful year for the Auckland four-piece who have enjoyed a tonne of praise (and some commercial success) for their most recent album - Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!

They were even fortunate enough to find themselves getting 'media-scrummed' after the award show...

The Mint Chicks were also involved in a fourth award on the night with Sam Peacocke winning Best Music Video for their single Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!.

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Artist Pages: The Mint Chicks  

Gig Review: The Mint Chicks + I Heart Hiroshima @ Gaelic Club - 10/08/07

We are pretty biased when it comes to The Mint Chicks. Sure we talk about a lot of bands and enjoy a pretty diverse array of talented artists that hail from both locally and abroad. But if we were guilty of being too far up the arse of a particular band it would be them. So when an opportunity to see them with decent support and FREE tickets to boot, it is safe to say we made all sorts of messes in our pants.

The aforementioned support was I Heart Hiroshima, and they put on a pretty impressive and entertaining show. They seemed slightly less edgy and dark than the idea of them I had in my mind, but this was far from a detractor; their accessible yet twisted songs only going to show just how much fun this band is to watch.

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Artist Pages: I Heart Hiroshima   The Mint Chicks  

Video: The Mint Chicks - Walking Off A Cliff Again

Directed by Sam Peacocke

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Artist Pages: The Mint Chicks  

The Mint Chicks announce Australian tour

New Zealand punk-rocking legends, The Mint Chicks, are heading to Australia for a quick little tour in August with I Heart Hiroshima.

9 August - Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle
10 August - Gaelic Theatre, Sydney
11 Auguet - The Corner, Melbourne
12 August - JIVE, Adelaide
14 August - Step Inn, Brisbane

Check venues for ticket details.

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Artist Pages: I Heart Hiroshima   The Mint Chicks  

Video: The Mint Chicks - Welcome to Nowhere

The first single from the fantastical album Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!, with a fairly standard, but still fun video clip.

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Artist Pages: The Mint Chicks  

Our Favourite Albums of 2006

Ok, so in the past week or so we have been reading a lot about the 1000 greatest albums of the year and top 50 best singles that start with the letter 'H' etc etc.

Now these lists are all great and fun to read but we wanted to do something a little different. We didn't want to have a limit on how many albums we came with. We wanted to recognise only those genuinally fantastic albums. The ones that are great from start to finish, not just one killer song or a handful of mind blowingly awesome tracks sprinkled across a full length, but 100% good.

So, we put no limit on our favourite albums list of 2006. We could have come up with 50, we could have come up with 1. We poured some super large vodkas, whipped out our favourite LP's of the past 12 months and started to listen. And get drunk. This is what we came up with..

TV On The Radio - Return To Cookie Mountain When this leaked on the interweb at the start of the year it completely floored us. It has hard to describe. Poppy yet not completely accessible, cosmic but not soo arty that the listeners were alienated from the music. In short, this was the clear highlight for us in 2006 and the one thing we could agree to. As we sipped our badly mixed lemon vodka drinks we both agreed that nothing came even close to beating the engaging and pure awesomeness of this release.

Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I Am Dreaming On this release, a slighlty more minimal version of Wolf Parade, Spencer Krug's emotional and distinct voice marries perfectly with the floating style of the production and music. Everytime I listened to this album this year I picked up a new little clever line and double meaning in the lyrics of a song, which is what made this album so much more interesting than numerous other releases this year which we good for a short time but grew tiresome and boring once I crossed the border into Over Listening Town. This never got old.

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Artist Pages: The Dears   Die! Die! Die!   The Mint Chicks   Sunset Rubdown   TV On The Radio  

2006 b-Net Award Winners

The music awards for the New Zealand music industry were awarded over the weekend. The Mint Chicks, deservedly, picked up a couple of awards. Other winners included Shapeshifter and The Sneaks.

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Artist Pages: The Mint Chicks   Shapeshifter   The Sneaks  

Gig Review: The Mint Chicks + Jump 2 Light Speed @ Annandale Hotel - 08/12/2006

Ok, so The We HEART New Zealand Weekend "officially" kicked off last night, with The Mint Chicks performing at Annandale Hotel.

My sister, while recently browsing through my CD collection, was curious as to why I owned sooo many Mint Chicks CD's.

Well, everything they have done to date, I have enjoyed. They are unique, but not so strange that they alienate their listeners in any way. They are energetic, suprising and not afraid to evolve their sound naturally.

With the release of their latest album, Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No! the band has now formed an impressive back catalogue. Another reason I was sooo very excited for this show - they now had the luxury of hand-picking songs from their back catalogue to play.

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Artist Pages: The Mint Chicks