Thursday music corner: New Zealand music stalwart Sir Dave Dobbyn was born in Auckland in 1957. He is famed for both his band career - with Th' Dudes from 1975 to 1980 and DD Smash from 1980 to 1986 - and as a solo artist since 1986. With Th' Dudes he had three New Zealand top 40 singles, plus the classic Walking In Light. With DD Smash he scored a New Zealand chart-topping album, 1982's Cool Bananas, the platinum-certified The Optimist from 1984, and three New Zealand top 10 singles: Outlook for Thursday, Whaling and Magic (What She Do). All nine of his solo albums have reached the New Zealand top 20, with 1998's The Islander hitting number one and 2005's Available Light being certified double platinum. He has achieved three New Zealand chart-topping singles, and his first, Slice of Heaven, also topped the charts in Australia driven by the success of the Footrot Flats animated movie soundtrack. He was knighted in 2021.
Lament for the Numb (1993) was Dobbyn's third solo album, and was credited to Dave Dobbyn and the Stone People. The band consisted of Crowded House producer (and, much later, band-member) Mitchell Froom, plus two members of Elvis Costello's band, and the album was recorded and mixed in Hollywood by Tchad Blake, also a frequent Crowded House collaborator. In 2009 he discussed the album with Simon Sweetman:
I went to Hollywood to record the Lament for the Numb album; I was on a label that had connected me with Elvis Costello's great rhythm section [Pete Thomas and Bruce Thomas] so I couldn't help but want to pay tribute to him; and I was offering nods to Randy Newman and all of these heroes. I delivered an album that I thought was edgy. The record label called it 'un-releasable' and they shelved it. It sat for a year before being released."
The sparse romanticism of Belltower was a Lament for the Numb album track. Dobbyn performed it solo last year for RNZ Music.
Dave Dobbyn - Belltower (live, 2025; orig. 1993)
