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Music

The 10 Albums and Songs That Influenced Cut Off Your Hands’ Nick Johnston

To celebrate Auckland's second annual the Others Way festival we asked vocalist and wild showman Nick Johnston to share the music that helped Cut Off Your Hands.

Image: Provided by artist

Auckland’s The Others Way festival is already proving handy in getting bands we miss back up on stage. Last year, in only the festival’s second outing, it was 90s indie-rock hitmakers Garageland. This year sees post-pop-punks Cut Off Your Hands play their first gig in nearly two years.

Taking a cue from CMJ and SXSW, The Others Way takes over Karangahape Rd this weekend and fills venues with some of the best New Zealand music including performances by King Loser, Fazerdaze, Mermaidens, David Kilgour and the Hard Eights, HEX, Shocking Pinks, and Scuba Diva. To celebrate we’ve asked Cut Off’s vocalist and wild showman Nick Johnston to share the 10 albums and songs that helped influenced the band when they were at their height of their game in 2007-2009.

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Gang Of Four - Entertainment
Dry stabby guitars and dub-like bass lines, with snotty lyrics. I equally could choose a Wire or the Fall record in this vein. Gang Of Four were it for us though. I don’t think any bands in the so-called ''post punk revival" came close to what these guys were up to on this record.

At The Drive-In - Relationship of Command
A bridge record of sorts for me, responsible for pulling my interest away from the hardcore side of things into something that seemed more tangential to me at the time.

The Stooges - "I Wanna Be Your Dog"
I managed to get up on stage with Iggy during that Big Day Out in 2006 or 2007. I’m not sure if it was the year we first played BDO or not, but getting to touch his leather in real life seemed to change it all for me.

Ex Models - "Sex Automata"
Me and Jason who was the main songwriter in Nova Echo (Cut Off before Shaky Hands) were obsessed with this track, it was full of weirdness with unhinged energy and blasts of guitars in sounds we spent hours trying to emulate..never came close. This was the band we wanted to be in - for Nova Echo at least

Les Savy Fav - "The Sweat Descends"
I had Les Savy Fav and Ex Models obsessions at the same time, flipped over the record and saw the lil Frenchkiss symbol, and added it to my list of labels to email with about my band. Pretty sure that email went to bottom of their email list, or maybe it was a letter—it was a while ago. I ended up becoming great friends with these guys, particularly Syd who also runs Frenchkiss, and they’ve put out most of our records in the States since.

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Talking Heads - Remain in Light/Speaking in Tongues
I took the “Girlfriend is Better” vocal melody and put a Chinese Stars/Arab on Radar guitar line over the top of it, and voila!—there was our first Shaky Hands song “Take Slowly Over”.

The Smiths - The Smiths
Unashamedly one of my favorite bands ever. We recorded “Turn Cold” with Stephen Street who had produced Strangeways, Here We Come. I always tried to sneak in a Johnny Marr guitar line in as many songs as i could. Johnny Marr himself told me he was a fan of turn “Cold”. I guess it flattered him.

The Go-Betweens - Before Hollywood
You can't really go past “Cattle And Cane”, but the whole record is great. This YouTube of them playing the record here is pretty good.

This Night Creeps - S/T EP and The Noise of Music LP
A great local band that was pushing the tangents outside of the usual punk and hardcore perimeters where everyone else in the scene was so stuck.

The Mint Chicks - Octagon and Anti-Tiger EPs
They made live music make sense to me. It was so visceral and infectious. I remember the feeling of the bass thudding against my chest in the Grey Lynn library. Their albums were obviously very good too, but I was most taken in those early shows and recordings.

The Ronnettes - "Be My Baby"
After a while I got sick of writing songs for the live set. I was turned on to Spector's productions by Bernard Butler after we recorded the Blue on Blue EP with him. The album You and I was mostly influenced, at least sonically, by songs like “Be My Baby”.

Check out the Others Way full timetable, map and band details here.