‘Let your freak shine’: Meet the artist adored by Nirvana, Radiohead and REM

3 months ago 18

When touring the US with Straitjacket Fits in the early 1990s, Shayne Carter was told by an American A&R guy that the New Zealand band needed to sound more like Nirvana.

“That’s because that was his frame of reference. The people who run the music industry run all their judgment on stuff that already exists,” says Carter, on the phone from Wellington.

“Our job wasn’t to sound like Nirvana – our job was to find something that we hadn’t invented yet.”

The artist’s job is to create what doesn’t already exist, says the singer/songwriter whose band, Straitjacket Fits, was beloved by groups including REM, Sonic Youth and Nirvana too.

Carter is doing a rare interview as he prepares for an Australian solo tour next week. He’s loved performing around New Zealand recently, playing material from across his entire career.

The documentary Life in One Chord, about his life and work, has also just been released. Made by Christchurch-born, Melbourne-based Margaret Gordon, it’s a tender, at times dark, very funny portrait of a remarkable artist and a self-confessed outsider.

“I just always felt like a misfit. I like the individual flavour of that but, like, I’m Maori and I’m European as well, but I don’t really feel like I belong to either party,” Carter says in the film.

After premiering at the New Zealand Film Festival in August, the documentary was made a general release and screenings sold out across the country.

Gordon says Carter was central in the scene that grew up around New Zealand record label Flying Nun, and Straitjacket Fits were name-checked by many of the bigger international indie acts of the 1990s.

Many of the key players from the landmark Christchurch record label have died: Martin Phillipps of the Chills last year, the Clean’s Hamish Kilgour in 2022, and Andrew Brough from Straitjacket Fits in 2020. “Shayne is one of the few key players in the Flying Nun scene who are still alive and actively playing and touring,” Gordon says.

Carter called his 2019 memoir Dead People I Have Known. “One maxim I’ve learnt getting older is life is harsh, life is beautiful, it’s just going to be both those things. And if you realise they are the two sides of the same coin, it’s a lot easier because it’s just the way it is.”

Carter formed Straitjacket Fits in Dunedin in 1986 with John Collie, David Wood and Brough.

“We were all sort of punk kids and that gave us an independent spirit. Rock music and music generally gives marginalised people a voice, and I feel like I’m one of those. I was a marginalised kid, I was mixed race and working-class background, so I can testify that that was so true.”

His advice to aspiring musicians is to trust your instincts and stick to your guns.

“When I see the freaky kids who are playing music and stuff like that, I encourage them, I say let your freak shine. What can make things difficult for you is also to your advantage because it makes you unique … Especially in the creative world, your individuality and your own voice is totally what you should aspire to.”

Carter continues to write and play with bands including Dimmer and Farewell Spit, as well as releasing solo material.

“I just want to keep exploring. I wrote a book, I’ve done the theatre stuff, I’ve done some dance work, I’ve got an improvisational band, I played with the [New Zealand Symphony] orchestra, I did an interesting abstract score for the ballet,” he says.

“Everything I do, it’s all coming from the same place, but it’s just interesting. I also like working with different forms because whether it’s writers or classical musicians, it’s just a pleasure working with people who are good at what they do and it’s interesting to watch them go about their work. The one thing I realise is that people who are good at what they do, very few of them have got there by cutting corners – it requires dedication and putting in the hard yards.”

Carter recently created a piece for the Royal New Zealand Ballet called Homeland and Sea; the soundtrack is out now.

“It’s about identity and place, which are pretty pertinent topics in this day and age … In New Zealand, there’s been attacks on indigenous rights and on cultural unity … I tried to express it through the music. It was quite a political statement,” he says.

“It’s important, as artists especially, to provide some kind of counternarrative. It’s times like this to speak up. Why should those idiots have the mic all the time?”