In the same September week that the 2025 Rockquest national finals reinforced just how back-in-fashion guitar rock is among high school students, Wellington indie band Underwire released an album that showed being 50+ is no barrier to making compelling Kiwi rock. The result of two years of recording with producer Scott Seabright, ‘State Between’ compiles the band’s single releases since 2023, along with some new tracks recorded earlier this year, as the band shared with Richard Thorne.

For an independent band of modest profile, Underwire have released a curiously strong suite of singles over the past  few years, several accompanied with inspired music videos, courtesy of guitarist/singer Johnny Mills and a music friendly AI platform.

There’s been forthright protest rock with Greener, a furious rock’n’roll banger in Falling All Over, heartfelt ska of Always, and infectious singalong party rock with Simulation – and more in their palette besides. The hallucinatory spaghetti western-meets-Lego spectacular of their country punk fantasia, Wish I Was A Cowboy, makes a fun place to start a YouTube Underwire exploration.

Mills is an Underwire original, as are vocalist Jane Brimblecombe, and Mark ‘Spike’ Roxburgh, the Te Whanganui-a-tara group’s other guitarist/singer. The trio have been making music together since 2010, Underwire shaped, as they put it, from the collision of Clash and Pixies covers bands.

The five-piece behind the recently released the genre-blending debut album, ‘State Between’, dates back to 2020. Legendary Head Like A Hole drummer Mark Hamill, (‘Mr Hidee Beast to you’), was introduced by Spike from another band they share, while bass player Steve Tremewan joined after a conversation with Johnny on a Wellington bus.

His addition meant a fourth songwriter in the band, and even more unusually, a second left-handed axe-wielder. Underwire re-emerged with new songs, and a fresh energy to their ‘surf-tinged indie rock’.

Apart from a few festivals most of their gigging has been around the capital, typically as part of a multi-band line up. There are videos online of them performing at Porirua’s Loveland, a regular and favourite venue which they lament closed down in late 2024. Often cloaking a dark humour, their songs are full of shared energy and evident enjoyment.

Challenged to pick a number for the average age of the band, they agree on 55, Johnny laying claim to being the oldest teenager among them. Though not all born in the city, they share a very Wellington spirit of support and praise for others in the local music community, and all are in Underwire for the fun of playing live.

“It’s just something we’ve always done,” says Spike. “We’ve just always played in bands. And as well as playing, I love going out and seeing other live bands. There’s always been a great scene here in Wellington, and live music has just been part of my life since I was in my late teens, so it’s sort of difficult to imagine not playing I think.”

After many years playing guitar in covers acts this is bassist Steve’s first time in an originals band.

“That’s what I’ve really loved about Underwire. Being able to express yourselves originally is a wonderful thing, and the buzz you get from playing your own songs is fantastic. Yeah, that’s why we do it, because it’s awesome!”

He embraces the challenge of playing beside the highly experienced Hamill.

“He plays with a lot of character, and overall he’s a very, very expressive drummer. I have to be constantly on my toes to keep up with what Mark’s doing, which is good, makes my job interesting!”

“Mark is just a huge rock to wind your string around,” adds Johnny. ”As far as building songs goes, he’s incredible.”

It was the aftermath of the Covid lockdowns, when gigs were still hard to get due to the bookings backlog, that the idea of an album had its origins.

“I mean, everyone had sort of been on a hiatus when we came out of Covid, plus there were some new tunes written, and recording was one thing that you could do at the time,” says Spike. “In a way it was just keeping that momentum going really, we sort of just hit the studio and recorded some of the tracks that we were happy with.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Johnny confirms. “The opportunity was there, and we found the means – which is the big thing. And when you’ve got a recording ambition without the support budget of a large fan base to drive you along – or a label, or any awareness so you can attract funding – it’s an interesting kind of big first step!”

Recording their first batch of four songs at Massey University’s studio yielded Heatstroke, Gravity, Calling Out and Falling All Over. Plans to engage a producer hadn’t worked out, so looking for advice on how to progress the songs from there Johnny connected with Tony McDonald of Wellington record label/music management company Plastic Groove HQ.

“I sort of rocked up to Tony and said, ‘Look, we’ve got these songs recorded. They’re pretty good. We’d like to get them up to a standard to get them out in NZ.’ And he said, ‘Give them to Scott Seabright, get him to mix and master them for you, and see what you think.’

“Scott got it immediately. He seemed to get inside our minds and pluck out what we wanted, without us really, knowing it was there! And from that point a good relationship was born.”

Seabright was keen to help the band further, and travelled down from Auckland to record a second batch of four songs, again at Massey, then persuaded the band to head north to his own studio, near Tuakau, for two more subsequent album sessions.  

Spike’s working career has been in the AV and broadcasting worlds, including some sound engineering, but he was happy to have a music professional take charge.

“Scott has got a great set of ears and doesn’t sort of just stand back and record you. He gets hands on involved in the production, and makes suggestions, helps you rearrange the tunes. By themselves a band will tend to focus on trying to fix what they think’s wrong, as opposed to somebody who comes in and enhances what’s great about the tunes. And that’s where Scott shines.”

“And in terms of being produced, as opposed to just recording, having that objective set of ears – to listen and give suggestions – made a massive difference. Really, really good,” adds Steve.

The new Underwire’s debut single Gravity, a dark and hard rocking track, was released in June 2023. Three more singles followed that year, and a couple more in ’24, each quite different from the others – reflecting the input of four songwriters plus that three band members can take, or share, lead vocals. Galloping country punk single Wish I Was A Cowboy arrived in May ’25, and the infectious moshing rocker Simulation heralded the September arrival of their 12-track album that incorporates the nine released singles.

Collaboratively written, recorded over four sessions and a couple of years, ‘State Between’ has the charm of being entertainingly different from track to track, while being cohesive in the quality of recording, musicality and production standards. Subversive yet uplifting, as they quip, in explanation of the original Underwire designation.