Netherworld Dancing Toys

Rip It Up, Issue 71, 1 June 1983, Page 33

Netherworld Dancing Toys

Hillsborough, June 14.

There was once a man who refused to slavishly copy his contemporaries. The plaudits of a captious and critical age pronounced him great. Immediately, a mob of imitators rushed to follow in his steps. His name was Kevin Rowland. This chameleon figure devised a number of styles and personas: sweaty soulboy, chaste boxerboy and last year's venture into pastoralism. So what of our very own soulboys? Dunedin's Netherworld Dancing Toys were a modest hit at Sweetwaters this year. It seems they still want to shake off the Dexys comparison but that will take time. Their covers of Pickett, Brown, Dexys were rather listless and predictable. Basically theirs is a miscegenation of styles: rhythm 'n' blues with added brass. And that's the problem. You begin to realise exactly when the brass will enter and in many cases it only acts as a compulsory adjunct to the songs. At times I found their parading of excessive and somewhat spurious emotion a little untruthful but there were moments (and this could be said of a selection of originals: therein lies the talent of NDT) when the band moulded into a cohesive and quite eruptive force. So much did the finer talents of their music work on the devotional feelings of a section of their audience that there seemed often

a danger that it would be lost altogether in the response that broke out around them. Yes, they can excite. But whatever you may think, I found them, at length, a bit of a bore. It is only fair to say that if you measured their passion by degrees, it would never reach boiling point. S.J. Townshend