Amplifier

Modern Classics

Vorn's Modern Classics is the work of an artist at the very peak of his game, a blind fury of creation that takes pop music as we know it, pulls its ironic T-shirt over its head, batters it with a sock full of dollar coins and leaves it stunned, bruised and strangely grateful.

Besides being a clutch of mature, perfectly crafted pop songs, rich in texture and unceasingly varying in tone, the Modern Classics are a work of musical revisionism - an alternative history of rock and/or roll.

Listening to this album, you step into a world where Abbey Road and Teen Pan Valley are midgets, overshadowed by the bedrooms and garages of Dunedin and Wellington. Where hip-hop starts with The Great Unwashed and Phil Spector waves his revolver at a young Don McGlashan in Chris Knox' garage - a concept album written for an age of iShuffling single-worshippers.

All the hallmarks of previous Vorn albums are there in spades - barbed-wire-sharp lyrics, stylistic U-turns, insanely catchy melodies - but here they are joined by lush horns, soaring strings and a sense of the big studio production of the 60's jammed into a damp basement in Johnsonville.