The Clean – Anything Could Happen

2nd December 2024 · 1980s, 1986, Music

The Clean were pioneers of New Zealand’s so-called Dunedin Sound, blending a punk influence with a bucolic brand of jangly psychedelia.

Hearing this song in the climactic final episode of C4’s superb New Zealand drama After The Party brought an immediate smile to my face.

There was something about the jangly Dunedin Sound, with its bucolic air of jangly psychedelia, that’s just how I imagined music in a remote, largely rural country on the other side of the world to sound.

On this sound The Clean sound like the Velvets in their quieter moments… If they had come not from urban New York but rural New Zealand.

Formed in Dunedin in 1978 by drummer Hamish Kilgour, his brother David on guitar, and school friend Peter Gutteridge on bass, they were the pioneers of the sound associated with their label, Flying Nun Records.

In a country with no real music industry, they were one of the first bands to play their own material, with a sound that married what you might call the after-effects of punk with an ear for melody and a gentle brand of psychedelia.

They operated in fits and starts up to Hamish’s death in 2022. After a false start when the Kilgour brothers briefly relocated the band to Auckland 1,000 miles away at the tip of the North Island, only for Gutteridge to stay put, they moved back to Dunedin and formed a second line-up with Robert Scott on bass.

This song, Anything Could Happen, comes from their early EP Boodle, Boodle, Boodle, which surprised everyone, including themselves, by reaching New Zealand’s top five in the charts.

In another surprise, David left the trio in 1982 and moved to Christchurch, where Flying Nun Records was based, but returned to help Hamish finish some songs with a folkier and more acoustic flavour than before, then reunited with Gutteridge and released them under a new band name, The Great Unwashed.

David then stopped playing for several years while Hamish formed the outstanding band Bailter Space with guitarist Alister Parker, and Gutteridge began a new band called Snapper.

Back together in 1988, they came to England for the first time, followed by a world tour, and once again split up, with Hamish moving to New York to form The Mad Scene, but they reunited in 1994 to make two more albums before once again parting company.

After time working on solo projects and with other bands the trio got back together for the umpteenth time in 2000 for a festival in their Dunedin hometown, they stayed together for more shows and made a new album, Getaway, with guests Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley of Yo La Tengo.

If you haven’t heard them before, have a listen to The Clean; and if you haven’t seen it, watch After The Party, which may be the best TV series of the year – and definitely has the best performances, by Robyn Malcolm and Peter Mullan.