Dominic Hoey, aka Tourettes, collaborates with some of Aotearoa’s best for this album and lyric book. His lyrics embody the personal as well as political issues, detailing the exhaustion of surviving neo-liberal New Zealand’s health, work, and housing systems. These tracks are filled with sharp political observation, especially pervasive in John Key’s Sons A DJ, The New New Zealand and No Losers At WINZ. Sarcastic one liners such as “We might never have Australia’s economy, but at least we’ve got bushfires now,” perfectly encapsulate the disillusioned feelings of many as we come to the close of the National government’s third consecutive term. Mastered by Angus McNaughton, the main man behind the music is Abraham Kunin, who created an array of humming electronic tracks to fortify Hoey’s song-poems. A metallic beat lingers throughout many of the album’s tracks like water dripping inside the uninsulated wall of a mouldy, overpriced central Auckland flat. ‘Feel Like Shit, Looking Great!’ is a smoke break half way through the night shift, or taking an important phone call on one bar of cellphone signal outside a gig in some K’Rd basement. The music muffled and pulsing in the background as the line cuts in and out, you can only hear your own frustrated voice, “Can you hear me? Hello?”. The last three tracks feel like sleeping off a hangover while the sun streams in, waking late afternoon, disoriented to find the day has been and gone. This album is rare in that it is hip hop that doesn’t feel Americanised. Everything Hoey raps about is firmly planted within the context of the contradictory mess that is Auckland.