The wait is over. Here it is. The playlist for Offshore Service & Other Stories, which comes out on 13 August and has its public launch here in Dunedin on the 19th.
(You can find my playlists for previous books here: A Man Melting, The Mannequin Makers, and Nailing Down the Saint).
As with the playlist for my first story collection, I've picked one song per story. Here's a little about each selection.
1.
The story: My Yale and My Harvard
A man reflects on his childhood in Brisbane where he spent his evenings in the passenger seat of his father's cab (solo parent, economic necessity). He later moves to Auckland for the first America's cup defence, only returning home when his father becomes ill.
The song: Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away) by Deftones
A classic from Sacramento's finest (sorry Cake). In my head, this is the soundtrack to the narrator when he returns to Brisbane and leaves the Mater Hospital in a stranger's cab. That blend of quiet and loud at once. Sadness and anger.
2.
The story: Offshore Service
A kiwi engineering grad heads to the mines in Queensland in search of easy money but winds up crewing a helicopter that services the coal ships waiting off the coast. "Service" has a few meanings.
The song: Hanging in the Wire by Dave Dobbyn
You can already tell from the first two stories that people hoping from one side of the ditch to the other is a bit of a theme in this collection. So it's important this playlist features some acts from either side of the Tasman. It's funny that in Australia, Dobbyn is considered a one-hit wonder (Slice of Heaven), whereas in Aotearoa he's more revered. That gulf is part of what these stories explore.
This track comes from the 1998 album, The Islander. I was asked to write a story for an island themed issue of the Griffith Review, and it became 'Offshore Service'.
I don't think Dobbyn is singing the lines, 'Whatever you need for your redemption / Anything you want I can supply' ironically... but he is for the purposes of fitting with my story.
3.
The story: Parents in Decline
'Everything is fine and then one day it isn't...'
Starts in the first person plural 'we', as if all the calamities affect the whole community equally, but eventually an 'I' voice emerges - posing the question: was he just projecting the whole time?
The song: I Me Mine by The Beatles
Is there a better song about selfishness and pronouns?
4.
The story: Recessional
Amelia is a twenty-something Kiwi working in Perth on the cusp of the next recession. She's invited to a colleague's annual ANZAC Day barbecue, wherein differences between how they each perceive of ANZAC Day become clear.
The song: Holy Grail by Hunters and Collectors
One of Amelia's gripes is that the barbecue's playlist is exclusively Australian bands. Many are name checked in the story, but 'Holy Grail' gets the nod here for the way it was later co-opted by the AFL (and maybe the NRL also...) and skirted over all that religious crusade stuff to focus on good old Aussie mateship.
5.
The story: Processional
Picks up right where 'Recessional' left off, but has a very different approach to time than the first story (which covered a week or so). Here we get the rest of Amelia's life, from marriage, children, infidelity, empty-nesting in the space of a few pages.
The song: Distant Sun by Crowded House
Crowded House is one of the few truly Australian-New Zealand bands Amelia can come up with in 'Recessional' for a more appropriate ANZAC playlist. It's also the name of a hostel on the Gallipoli peninsula that Amelia visits in both stories.
'Distant Sun' is paddling in similar waters to 'Recessional' - thinking about what you might change, the process of time, and putting things into an astronomical scale - while still being a love song.
6.
Told in the form of 24 author bios from the British writer Terry Voss, moving from early in his career through the literary successes of his wife (and then children) and other family dramas to the eve of publication of his potential magnum opus...
The song: Sigourney Weaver by John Grant
Like 'Recessional', there are lot of songs/artists namechecked in this story, from the cook at his estranged father's house who liked to sing 'Da Doo Ron Ron', 'Do Wah Diddy Diddy' and 'Let's Spend the Night Together', to a full list of songs to play at his funeral for his kids... which is where 'Sigourney Weaver' crops up.
It's such a weird song, lyrically, which vibes well with Terry Voss and his novel about Tim Berners-Lee and the members of One Direction fighting a zombie apocalypse.
7.
A numberless, nameless group of farmers from the Waikato try to find purpose while on holiday in Fiji. They get excited when a tropical cyclone looks as if it may wreak havoc on the island, as they might finally be allowed to make themselves useful.
The song: Hurricane by Kyuss
Okay, so you don't get hurricanes in the South Pacific, but that hasn't stopped a Super Rugby franchise from the lower North Island rocking that name for the last three decades.
I think this Kyuss song manages to capture the drive and excitement of a cyclone/hurricane/typhoon, while lyrically it's more like a panic attack, or at best: a dog chasing its tail.
8.
Sierra is a sustainability-minded high school history teacher in a small Otago town. She keeps getting cut-off on her bike by utes. Her partner drives a ute. Life is peachy.
The song: A Change is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke
This is the song Sierra sang to herself on her socially-isolated walks during COVID lockdown. Unfortunately, the new normal isn't much better than the old normal...
9.
This is actually a sequel to the story 'Copies' from my first collection. In 'Copies', Angus was on the cusp of becoming a father, but unfortunately we find out in 'The Pits' that his son did not survive infancy, triggering a period of self-sabotage and his partner leaving him. Angus moves back home to Palmerston North to regather himself and figure out what next.
The song: Oh! You Pretty Things by Harvey Danger
I chose Harvey Danger's song 'Diminishing Returns' for 'Copies' in A Man Melting' playlist back in 2010, so it seems appropriate to pick another track from them (albeit a cover, so I can echo the echo motif).
10.
The story: Robinson in the Roof Space
Robinson has taken time away from paid employment to finally write his novel, but must resort to extreme measures (writing in the roof cavity above his garage, with the ladder only replaced by his wife after enough time has elapsed) to actually get some words down.
The song: Stayin' Alive by Bee Gees
At one point Robinson feels taunted by the flashing cursor in his word document and wonders if matched the beats per minute of 'Stayin' Alive'. But he can't Google it because he deliberately doesn't have internet access while in the roof space.
There's something manic about both the beat and the falsetto ah ha ha ha's (and all the background stuff Barry - I think - does in the latter half of the song) that matches poor Robinson's overactive imagination and underactive fingers.
11.
The story: 30 Ways of Looking at Marumaru South
Actually, it's thirty 100-word micro-stories, all set in the fictional South Island town of Marumaru South (which featured in my historical novel, The Mannequin Makers, but everything in '30 Ways' is set in the present.
The song: Eleanor Rigby by Aretha Franklin
Okay, I realise this the second Beatles cover, and third song written by The Fab Four. But things are connected.
This version is explicitly referenced in the section: The Karaoke Queen, which was one of the two most worked and reword sections (the other was The Dieter). It feels like the kind of song you could really go to town on in a TV singing competitions (in this case: Homai te Pakipaki) - at the risk of a televised train wreck.
12.
The story: Kia Kaha Ōtepoti
A refugee family rocks up on some dude's doorstep and manages to wrangle their way inside, and slowly it becomes clear that this is not an isolated incident. Families across Māori Hill and Roslyn now have 'house guests'... all of this prompts a shift from the individual to the collective.
(So basically, the opposite to 'Parents in Decline', here we start with 'I... I... I...' and then move to 'we', which become more inclusive with every utterance).
The song: Heavenly Pop Hit by The Chills
Gotta be a Dunedin band for a Dunedin story. This might be Martin Phillips' most upbeat song (maybe that's not saying much) - but I love the way it works in different perspectives (the sun setting on five billion faces / 'we swoop low on trees, or we sweep under carpets' / 'I find it hard to believe'), and the gift economy.
13.
Jared moved back to Wellington after pulling pints on his OE in the UK. He moves in with a friend from high school, Daniel, who is still working towards his doctorate in astronomy and hasn't ever had a proper girlfriend. Maybe Jared can help with that...
The song: Resident Evil by Friendship
While 'Paper Universe' is told from Jared's perspective, it's really Daniel's story (or a story about why Jared's not the right narrator). So I like pairing it with this great song of Friendship's 2025 album Caveman Wakes Up.
I imagine it's Daniel singing the lines 'New roommate moving in / Guess this is how some people live x2 / Some shithead in my living room / Playing Resident Evil / Playing Resident Evil', reflecting on what a fuckup Jared is (yet the chicks seem to dig him).
(It's also valid to interpret Dan Wriggins' lyrics as a kind of dissociative moment, where the singer is looking at himself playing Resident Evil, but my story is definitely not a Fight Club / Shutter Island / Secret Window / The Machinist / Nabokov's 'The Eye' scenario... because there's enough of those already, eh?).
14.
The story: The Kick Inside
David visits his dying mother in hospital. The narrator intrudes a lot to tell us about his middle name and warming to Kate Bush and his love of Robert Lowell...
The song: Pigeon Camera by The Tragically Hip
I could have picked a Kate Bush song (the story shares its title with a Kate Bush album) or even Bush or Soundgarden who get namechecked... But it wouldn't be one of these playlists without at least one Hip/Gord Downie song (I actually had one Hip and one Gord Downie solo song for The Mannequin Makers playlist).
The intrusive narrator, on one of his tangents, says the story of Robert Lowell watching his mother bathe when he was young reminds him of the lines in 'Pigeon Camera' about a brother and a sister with something they could no longer contain.
Plus it probably has the best guitar solo in the entire Hip catalogue.
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