Living the dream:
Sometime in June 2021, probably around the beginning, Shayne Carter popped up in my messenger to ask me if I would help Straitjacket Fits honour Andrew Brough at the Flying Nun 40th Anniversary gig at the Auckland Town Hall. He asked if I would sing Down In Splendour with them. Holy shit. That was such a beautiful invitation. Of course, I was a fan, I’d fallen heavily for She Speeds, and referred to Life in One Chord in the first line of one of the Boom Boom Mancini songs (“Inspiration in one chord, life could be its own Reward”). I’d seen Straitjacket Fits support REM on the Green Tour in Auckland in 1989. One of the best gigs I had been to, and that wasn’t just because of REM. Melt was one of the few albums I took with me when I moved to London.
When I was a kid, I used to nick a paintbrush from my sister’s art supplies - no paint on it, and pretend to paint on the pictures I liked, in my reading books. This is kind of a precursor to what it is like to imagine yourself (sad but true) playing in one of your favourite bands - I’ve been lucky enough to do that a couple of times, but this one was a doozy.
A complete honour to be asked. That statement doesn’t feel enough.
I felt pretty vulnerable and nervous walking into that rehearsal, but when I got there, it was apparent the band were also feeling more than a bit fresh and emotional about the whole thing. They made me feel comfortable by sharing that feeling. They were nice.
It was at this rehearsal that I first met Tane Cotton, Shayne Carter is Tane’s Uncle Shayne.
Tane was hanging out at the rehearsal and then later on at the Town Hall before show time - we had quite a lot of time backstage to talk, in those nervy pre-gig moments, and I really enjoyed Tane’s company. We’ve bumped into each other at a few Dimmer gigs, etc, since then, and it’s always nice to see him.
Last year, just when I was thinking, what the hell??, where are the angsty, complaining, political, kicking up a stink songs???
Along came Sivle Talk with Bottom Feeder - the work of Tane Cotton
I have always liked introducing new music to friends, and also, there are so few places anymore for young musicians (any musicians really) to get the word out about their music, so that’s why I have started this Friends in Music series.
I asked Tane about his life so far in Ōtepoti.
So here we go - meet Tane Cotton. Read about the world according to Tane, watch his self-directed videos - his music selections are great. I hope you enjoy it.
Photo Credit: emily roy
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Tell me something about yourself - Introduce yourself if you don’t mind.
Kia ora! I am Tane Cotton. I’m 21 and I like making music.
Last year, I wrote Bottom Feeder as a criticism of our government’s scumminess and disdain for the poor. This year, with This City Has Let Our Children Down, I’m continuing the Sivle Talk tradition of one-man-band-cathartic-shouty-post-punk and turning my sights to the incompetence and apathy of Ōtepoti’s local governing body, and their misguided and wasteful attempts at creating third spaces in a city that still can’t shake its decades-long traditions of alcoholism and street violence. And of course, there’s some more “up yours, National!” sprinkled in for good measure.
How can you not laugh at a $60,000 seesaw plonked in the middle of a greyscale block of macro walkable cityness? The music video for This City Has Let Our Children Down supplements the song’s grim tone with a streak of sarcastic silliness that mocks the powers that be with extremely mature caricature and time-stopping shenanigans. It was either that or a feature-length film of me crying for 90 minutes - pick your poison.
You release music under the name Sivle Talk - can you tell me a bit about that?
Yes! I took a very long time to become competent and confident in my songwriting. About 4-5 years after picking up the guitar, I wrote my first good song - “Casings & Threats” - in my former band Allophones (the final product was co-written by my bandmates, so I can’t take all the credit!). Although I look back on that song and the memories we made as a band fondly, at the time I felt frustrated at our limitations and that we were not reaching our full potential as a band - I wanted to go further and further and further and it just wasn’t the right fit.
After the band disbanded in early 2024, I started taking songwriting very seriously with the aim of making my own music where I could say all the things I wanted to say and make the kind of music I wanted to make with no (some) limitations.
I love collaborating with other musicians and artists, but it was really freeing to “go solo”. Being the singer, guitarist, drummer and terrible bassist for my own weird little “band” was and is extremely overwhelming, but it’s also very fun. I think part of it was that since I started playing in bands, I never had the amount of creative control that I truly wanted. I don’t think being a perfectionist/control freak is inherently a bad thing if you’re working alone, but I was definitely quite annoying to my bandmates about it. I guess I’ve always had grand ambitions (most rational and sane humans would say stupid and naive ambitions) and I’ve caused quite a few disagreements over them in my bands. Though now that I have the Sivle Talk outlet I think things would be very different - when I’m doing better health-wise I’d love to just be the drummer in a band!
I understand you have had some health issues - in particular, Long Covid, - that must be not easy on so any levels.. Has that presented any problems with your music output?
I was having a lot of health trouble and hospital visits, etc, and I was at a new low under the crushing weight of chronic illness, helpfully aided by a very unhealthy relationship (which is thankfully over). Long Covid has taken a massive toll on my life and I have had a lot of difficulty explaining it to people - so This Body was my way of trying to shout into the void “PLEASE LISTEN TO ME AND JUST TRY TO UNDERSTAND!”. But even though I had the song, I didn’t know the right way to do this - or if the music was enough to stand on its own - and I sat on that song for a year.
So I got to work on Bottom Feeder - airing my disgust and frustrations with our incompetent government and the appalling way they carry themselves and look down on the people they rule over. In 2013, the John Key National government scrapped the “Sickness Benefit”, and rolled it into Jobseeker. Then the new National government (puppetted by David Seymour - 8% of the votes by the way!) started shaming the people on Jobseeker, and announcing their initiative to cull them. At the time, I was on Jobseeker because that’s where sick people go.. I was terrified that I was going to be cut off and have no means of paying rent or groceries or anything. I couldn’t and still can’t work - fortunately, I am one of the lucky ones that the system finally deemed disabled enough to go on the supported living payment, but it truly pisses me off that there are so many people who need that support and they’re stuck with the threat of their benefit being cut off because their illness is not recognised.
“We don’t just focus on the bottom feeding and just focus on the bottom, we focus on people who want to be positive and ambitious, aspirational and confident” - Christopher Luxon, 2022
Yeah, sure Chris. Who’s the real bottom feeder when you’re renting an apartment you own to yourself for more than double the taxpayer dollars I get to rent from someone else. Prick.
Despite my permanent fury towards the old cunts running our country into the ground (or maybe because of it) I’m in a pretty good space creatively, and I’m writing a lot of songs and steadily trudging along and piecing together an album. It’s going to take some time to complete because I want it to kick ass - and you only get to make your first album once!
You were born into a family that is very much a part of the NZ Music/Dunedin musical fabric - how aware of that were you growing up?
I was aware to some extent, but when one room in your rented house is a dedicated studio, Beastwars show up and record their first album in your living room, you get taken to Dimmer soundchecks or fall asleep at a Die! Die! Die! instore show… none of this stuff is special to the child brain. It’s just what my normal was, so I didn’t even start to understand the importance of it all until I was like 15, so I never appreciated the world I was in while I was in it.
I am still always rediscovering things I learned in my childhood but never understood like the gold plaque for Dimmer’s I Believe You Are A Star hanging up on our kitchen wall - which isn’t a flex because the kids who grow up with gold and platinum-selling records framed on their kitchen walls usually live in mansions.
In the end, I do have slight Nepo status, but I grew up poor and still am - so it balances out!
Do you think this helped or hindered your desire to embark on a musical journey - seeing how incredible it can be, but also being aware of the pitfalls?
Strangely, I don’t think it had any effect on my desire (or as I would put it, absolute need) to make music my life - I came to that realisation on my own without any nudging from my parents. The downside is that I wasn’t playing Chopin at 4 years old, but the much brighter side is that I wasn’t a vessel for my parents to live vicariously through in an attempt to create a child prodigy.
In terms of pitfalls, I wasn’t growing up learning about depression and addiction and the 27 Club; the extent of ten-year-old Tane’s knowledge was that record labels were greedy and made you sign bad contracts to steal your money (which is true). So I have a built-in disdain for the industry and all the executives that make a living doing fucking nothing, and a whooooole lotta suspicion for labels and people offering you deals - which I think is a very good trait to have as a young musician, even if I’m a little too standoffish.
In terms of avoiding pitfalls, I will do my best. But there is no backup plan if music doesn’t “work out” - I will keep going, because I have to make music. It is my life. There is nothing else that could ever bring me the same joy and fulfilment - which is nice in the sense that I know what I want to do with my life, but fucking terrifying knowing how treacherous of a career path it is to follow. I will never own a house, but I probably wouldn’t if I had a corporate job either, because the world is going to hell, and it’s all the fault of woke.
What matters to you at this very moment?
Community. Specifically, the wonderful community of talented and like-minded artists in Ōtepoti.
Tell me something you think is underrated.
Capturing and cataloguing artists’ live performances, and preventing them from becoming lost media. Obviously, the best way to experience a performance is to be there in the room, feeling the bass drum rattling your bones in a sweaty crowd, or sitting outside and taking in the lovely melodies of a solo performer.
But you just can’t go to every show - especially with the obvious separation of the South Island and North Island music scenes (not to mention the distance!). It’s like a different world up there!
And globally, broadcasting companies just sit on old tapes and hard drives full of live music that will slowly rot away in some archive room in the basement of a high-rise office building, only ever dusting it off when they can license it to someone for an exorbitant amount of cash.
This is why I absolutely love dunedinsound.com - that setup sounds like a Truman Show advertisement, but I promise it’s genuine! What Fraser is doing to capture these hundreds of gigs for people to look back on is absolutely vital to the legacies of the incredible artists around us. I hope more people follow in his example.
Tell me something you think is overrated.
Trying to be cool and mysterious as an artist. It’s lame.
I am a pretty blunt person, and I tend to overshare and ramble, which isn’t cool and mysterious, but it’s honest. I always preface a rant by saying “please tell me to shut the fuck up at any time” so that’s gotta count for something, right?
Inauthenticity just pisses me off. Yeah, when I’m not masking, I seem weird and have hyperfixations and endlessly babble about guitar pedals and Formula 1 - which people would see as weird and atypical, and certainly not cool and mysterious! But why can’t we all just be allowed to be a little cringe sometimes? Hiding your personality away means you have no personality, which means you’re boring. Just have fun!
I love the immediacy of the music you are releasing, the urgency and the topical political nature of it. You have something to say.
Is this important in music? Do you see this in your music community?
I see it everywhere in my community - especially in the disillusioned youth. Gen Z are the current punching bag of conservative media, and for a while, we’ve had no voices of our own. Sure, we have people who speak up for us as a collective, but that’s generally from the older lefties who want us to have a good future (and we are forever thankful).
But it’s also really inspiring to have cultural figureheads like Greta Thunberg, or seeing movements like the overwhelming support for Palestine, or the overthrowing of the corrupt government in Nepal. People our age - us - actually stepping up and doing the shit that we’ve been promised.
So I feel that - to us disillusioned youth - these inspirations of resistance are finally giving our generation as a whole the courage to use our voices and learn to use them well. Art is integral to the fight against fascism, and I think in the next couple of years we’re going to start seeing some real political anthems drawing from the likes of Danny Nedelko and I Love You, but with younger voices behind them. None of that both sides wuss shit or liberal anger like Rage Against The Machine sitting on their piles of money. Our machines will be killing fascists.
I hear bands like Fontaines DC, IDLES, The Pixies, in your music, guitar lines and vocals. Is that ok? Tell me a bit about the music you love and that has shaped you up until now.
This is probably musician blasphemy but I’ve never been bothered to listen to The Pixies! Though I am a big fan of IDLES and Fontaines DC, and pretty much anything and everything post punk and adjacent! I’m still trying to find my voice and my “sound” so I’m still very much wearing my influences on my sleeve in my music - both intentionally and unintentionally - which is definitely why you could pick out those bands! (for example, in an early version of This City, the vocals were very clearly a poor impression of Grian Chatten).
There are truly dozens and dozens of incredible artists of all sorts of genres that have influenced me in one way or another - but it’s so hard to list them all let alone fit bits of their sounds all into one song! So when I’m writing the shouty punky stuff, the shouty punky influences shine the most. One day the world will hear my Elliott Smith rip off!!
As of late, I’ve been taking a deep dive into Chris Knox’s discography and it’s all gold. Chris Knox & The Nothing is quickly rising to one of my favourite albums ever and Tall Dwarfs’ All My Hollowness To You instantly became one of my favourite songs ever the first time I heard it; particularly this live performance, which still gives me chills every time I listen to it!
A few days ago, my Step-dad introduced me to Afrobeat via Fela Kuti & The Africa 70’s album Live! and I’m fully hooked. The grooves are so insanely hypnotic that you can truly just get lost in it for hours. And at the end of the record is a 16 minute drum-off between Africa 70 drummer Tony Allen and guest drummer Ginger Baker and it’s fucking GLORIOUS.
Otherwise, I’ve been almost exclusively listening to the new Geese record Getting Killed (after discovering and loving 3D Country a couple of months ago), and I am just fucking obsessed with it. The grooves, the manic percussion, the frenetic guitar, the ethereal vocals, the tightness of the band, the insanely good production… It’s brilliant. So I’ve been taking a lot of cues from that record in my current “phase” of truly starting T H E A L B U M !
Specifically, being inspired by the production and going “Hey… I can actually just do literally anything I want”, which… duh… but it seriously was a bit of a eureka moment.
I’m still a novice audio engineer and I’d been recording demos for my songs as if I were a live band playing them, only adding in overdubs blah blah… but I kind of had the awakening that I can go nuts and put samples of throat singing and impossible riffs that take seven hands to play in my songs because why the fuck not? Playing these songs live is future Tane’s problem anyways!
Maybe that will age poorly and I will either have released a record that is so overwhelmingly packed with bullshit that you’ll need morphine to slow you down enough to listen to it… OR it’ll sound like a rock band in a room. I’m aiming for a healthy middle - wish me luck!
How important is location and environment to music, do you think? Do you see yourself ever moving away from Otepoti or New Zealand?
It is incredibly important. And not just in the physical/social aspects either - I think timing is another huge factor.
Right now, there is a massive surge happening in Ōtepoti, with probably the biggest all-ages scene in the country growing every day. Everybody on the ground feels that this is the beginning of something that will truly be something - I don’t think anyone knows what it will be, but we’re all very excited. There’s electricity in the air. Maybe in 40 years, when someone asks me about the Dunedin Sound, I’ll be able to say “which one?”.
I don’t see myself moving from Ōtepoti - but I think I’d be miserable if I had such an insular life and stayed here forever. The dream is to have my “home base” here and spend several months a year touring overseas as my means of travelling and seeing the world - just long enough to get homesick so I can be happy to be home. Until I want to leave again… I told you my ambitions were naive!
Anything else you want to say? GO!
Advocate for a FREE PALESTINE!
Use your voice and your wallet for good; Boycott Israel! Attend protests! If you can afford to, donate to charity organisations that are providing humanitarian aid to starving populations! The Palestinian, Sudanese and Syrian peoples are in fucking famine and the western world is blocking its ears singing “lalala!” - so keep pressuring our politicians and when elections roll around; BLOODY VOTE!
I love him! You ask such great questions
I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you for finding such a wonderful new voice. He also reminds me of Jeff Buckley in his voice.