Papaiti Records: The Flying Nun of Aotearoa Emo

By Liam Hansen (they/them) FEATURE WRITER

As the youngest of three kids, I can’t deny the privilege I had – being blissfully unaware of my family's hardships whilst playing “Mario Kart Wii” was probably my peak in life. But at ten years old, it hit me that the best part of my youthfulness was the fact that I could watch both my siblings go through their cringeworthy emo phases before me. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise being emo wasn’t actually a required part of teenagehood, and even worse: I discovered My Chemical Romance about twenty minutes and 43 seconds later. That was the beginning of the end, and the reason I’m now the sad queer emo family reject.

My life as an emo kid started in 2016 as a Tumblr troglodyte, before developing into being an insufferable indie kid. I never shut up about Modern Baseball, Cap N’ Jazz, or Taking Back Sunday – and to be honest, I never really stopped. The screamy, emotionally driven lyrics were therapeutic for an annoying teenager in West Auckland, especially when the pandemic hit. The loudest music I could find bled into my ear drums and out into the rest of my year 11 classroom through my shitty dollar store earphones, solidifying me as a pretentious wanker who probably deserved to be bullied a teensy bit more. But after leaving high school and awkwardly inserting myself into the Aotearoa music scene, I stumbled across a multitude of nerds just like myself making music about growing up in shitty small town New Zealand, finding solace in the people who mean the most. This isn’t just Kiwis emulating the sounds of Midwest emo from the United States – it’s a unique and growing subgenre, and brought together by a tight knit community of musicians and artists distinctively formed by the Aotearoa underground.

The origin of emo is a “depends who you ask” type thing, but generally speaking, it stemmed from the post-hardcore scene in Washington D.C. in the mid-80s and developed from there across the nation and world. From a Google search of “emo in New Zealand”, it seems that black fringe emo kids spread like wildfire during the mid-2000s, and countless articles exist lambasting these annoying little teenagers for their feeeeeeeeelings. Ironically, just as the mainstream emo wave died out, the modern Aotearoa emo community started to form. Whanganui-based musician James Stutely has been on the hunt for pre-2010 Aotearoa emo for a while: “Almost all the emo that I can find is in that mid-2000s style”, referring to bands influenced by My Chemical Romance, Paramore and Fall Out Boy rather than the older, original style of American Football or Mineral. James is a bit of a leader in the Aotearoa emo scene (though he’s reluctant to admit it). He’s played in How Get and Yon Loader but his most well-known mahi is as the drummer of Carb on Carb, an emo project formed with vocalist/guitarist Nicole Gaffeney that’s been active for over a decade. Carb on Carb melds beautiful double-tracked guitar riffs with fast paced drums, with the occasional nod to early Flying Nun-esque jangle pop combined with sounds from Midwest emo. Nicole takes up lead vocals while James provides backup, with the lyrics forming a romanticised vision of Aotearoa suburbs and natural environments. “I guess what we’re trying to do is really embrace and celebrate New Zealand. There’s always songs about LA or whatever, but LA fucking sucks in my opinion,” James said. This also translates into their vocal delivery and general atmosphere, which came to fruition after their tours outside of NZ in Australia, Japan, and the US. “We’ve always tried to stay honest to our roots, not changing our accents or singing about other places. Especially after doing a lot of that touring, we’ve become really appreciative of our home.”

James’ work goes beyond Carb on Carb, as he’s spent around 12 years developing Papaiti Records. Papaiti began with James and his friend recording bootlegs of local gigs, and distributing them through their website. “It became a vehicle to put on our ‘Sad By Sad-Western Australia’, ‘Sad-by-South New Zealand’ festivals and other tours.” These days, the label serves as a hub for Aotearoa emo – a move that happened just as gradually as the move from bootleggers to record label. “It started out more indie and punk, and then edged more and more towards emo. We still do a lot of stuff that's only really adjacent to that sound, so it's not just an emo label, but almost everything we’re putting out this year is definitely on that wavelength.” By no means are Papaiti the only people championing Aotearoa emo: Right here in Tāmaki Makaurau we have awesome bands like Melanie, who have been bringing a heavier sound reminiscent of Joyce Manor and The Hotelier to Aotearoa, and K M T P, who have their debut album coming out in late September on Sun Return Records. But Papaiti is truly special, pioneering the distinct sound of Aotearoa emo. They bring together their influences of North American emo and the jangly reverb pop that has echoed through the soundwaves of Kiwi student radio stations from the 80s until now to form it into its own niche subgenre. In my opinion, what Flying Nun was to the Dunedin Sound in the 80s, Papaiti is now to Aotearoa emo.

A great example is Model Home, a self-described “sad songs quartet” based in Ōtautahi/Christchurch. “I think we started in 2018, just playing sad songs in a storage facility in Woolston,” said Rachel Norcross, who helms the lead vocals and one of the band's two guitars. While Papaiti isn’t strictly an emo label, Model Home is perhaps the band most true to the sound the Aotearoa emo scene is carving out for themselves. Their recent releases, ‘Leaky Home Simulator 2031’ and ‘Midnight, Dragon Garden’ come together through a menagerie of influences spread across their band, from radio pop to alternative rock, English folk to theatre. The lyrics continue to romanticise life in Aotearoa, with the debut single of their upcoming album calling Christchurch an earthquake town. “There’s a lot to talk about when you’re in your late twenties, growing up in a city that fell apart. Becoming an adult in of itself has been strange as well – we write a lot about homemaking, and driving, and work taking up all of your time and things like that. It’s basically dad emo.” It all comes together in a defined and strong sound that gives echos of any tune that would soundtrack the intro of a mid-2000s coming-of-age film – although I suppose it’s less “A teenager is sad about Christchurch sucking because nothing happens”, and more “A young adult is sad about Christchurch because too many horrible things keep happening –and also groceries are expensive”.

When it comes to the stuff that veers toward merging emo with different genres, Pōneke based artist Shannen Georgia Petersen is the person to ask, playing in her classically emo solo project, as well as ‘Sports Dreams’ – blending emotionally driven vocals, lyrics and guitars with a more dreamy, electronic sound. She also plays in Welcomer, and has recently reformed her two-piece Fruit Juice Parade to open for American screamo band La Dispute. And yes, all of those projects are on Papaiti Records. Shannen grew up in Te Papaioea/ Palmerston North and shares the same sentiment that James and Rachel hold around the impact Aotearoa small towns had on their youth and music-making. “A lot of growing up in a small town is just driving or walking around being like, ‘far out, this sucks, there is nothing to do.’ So you go and make music with your friends, and even if the music is like, ‘fuck this town, my town sucks’, it’s still a nice way to be able to celebrate it.”

The small-town environments James, Shannen, and Rachel all grew up in were the perfect emotional breeding grounds for each of them to begin making emo music. You can easily draw parallels between the mixture of farms and suburbs in Palmerston North to the Midwest US. Ōtautahi/Christchurch is actually a sister city of Seattle (home to integral early emo bands like Sunny Day Real Estate and Roadside Monument), and despite the size of Auckland in comparison to the rest of NZ, the Carb on Carb song ‘Kei Tāmaki’ accurately calls it “The biggest small town in our small country”. But Shannen gave particular credit to the scene in Palmy for supporting her better than what the bigger cities of Aotearoa could offer. “It was all to do with ‘The Stomach’, really,” she said, talking about the city’s recording studio and all-ages venue. “That was just where we would go on the weekend or after school, just to hang out and pester whoever's working. I guess we were all sort of drawn to each other there.” They were incredibly appreciative of The Stomach and the Palmy music community for being a safe space for them and their friends as teenagers. “It’s not the same experience I’ve heard from my music friends from Auckland, or even Wellington and Christchurch.”

Each of these artists and their projects have now come together under the Papaiti label, often touring and playing at each other's gigs, in each other's bands, and forming a community across the nation. They’ve pioneered Aotearoa emo and what it’s trying to represent about our, to quote poet Hera Lindsay-Bird, “stupid milk-loving piece of shit dumbass mean spirited sale at Briscoes racist sexist 40% off deck furniture piss country” in all of its glory (Hera, if you’re reading this, have you ever thought about starting an emo band? I’ll play bass!).

This is all coming from a fan’s perspective, though. “In terms of an actual subgenre, I don’t think we’re quite there yet,” James said. “I don't think there would be enough musical motifs you could write down, or anything like that. But in terms of a community or a network of bands, Aotearoa emo is definitely here.” Rachel from Model Home shared a similar sentiment, attributing the band's creation to the community. “We were all really good friends with the Carb on Carb guys, and every time they came down to play a show they would crash with us. We always wanted to play shows with them, and eventually we just went ‘let’s just start an emo band, let’s do it’”.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if Aotearoa emo is a fully fledged subgenre or not. In a couple years’ time, Spotify will probably have “Western Marlborough Semi-Hardcore Space Punk with Ska Influences” as one of their millions of genres, so really in 2023 strictly defining music by genre is useless. “What’s really important is the community aspect of it,” said Shannen at the end of our yarn. “The music isn't secondary, but it's just nice to have a network of people that you can, like, share knowledge with. There’s nothing more important than finding your funny little community.”

The good thing is, these folks aren’t gatekeeping their spaces in the slightest. From everyone I spoke to, and through my own experiences in the scene, it’s clear that the focus is to make sure that everybody is safe and having a good time, whether they’re starting their own band or just hanging out to have a little cry to some awesome tunes. “No one in this community would say anything remotely discouraging if a young person came up to them,” said Rachel. Just start writing about anything, playing anything, give us a yell and we'll play a show with you. Especially for a genre that’s been accused of gatekeeping in the past, I think what we're doing in Aotearoa is the opposite. Saving the best parts of emo and leaving all the worst bits. For us, emo is whatever you say it is, and if you play cool music, we'll just come play with you and support you.”

Oh boy, it’s promo time, baby! You can catch Shannen's band Fruit Juice Parade opening for La Dispute at The Hollywood in Avondale this August, hear upcoming albums from Carb on Carb, Yon Loader and Model Home later this year, and support all those bands when they inevitably tour Tāmaki Makaurau. All of them have music out on all streaming platforms now, and more info on the label can be found at @papaitirecords or papaiti.com.