Concert Review - Shayne P Carter - Hawke's Bay - 2nd April 2026
Presented by The Small Hall Sessions
Review By: Rob Harbers
Event: Shayne P Carter - A Small Hall Session
Venue/City: Pukehou Christ Church, Hawke's Bay, New Zealand
Date of Event: Thursday 2nd April 2026Legendary status doesn’t come easily. Nor does it always sit easily on the shoulders that bear it. But tonight’s guest for the latest instalment of the Small Hall Sessions — legendary in their own right — is one who has surely earned that mantle, off the back of a musical career spanning some 40-odd years. This veteran performer, a veritable stalwart of the cultural landscape of Aotearoa, is none other than Shayne P Carter, a man whose status approaches that of rock royalty, a royalty free of at least some of the vices and peculiarities associated with the more temporal royalty that oversees this land from Old Blighty. I mean, we’ve all of us been close enough to some of these guys in full flight to know that they actually do sweat, right?
Anyway, it’s in the nature of royalty that it has a retinue, a supporting cast, if you will. And tonight this position was attended by local star Richie Setford, who plies his trade under the name of Bannerman. Richie delivered a set of raw and intimate odes, all of them original, which was warmly received indeed — even if it did stretch the boundaries of time a little. An artist well worth checking out in his own right — and one of these days I’ll do just that.
With the page having admirably performed his duties, the stage was set for the prince himself. He got straight into it with Straitjacket Fits’ Burn It Up, a powerful reminder of the jangle that lay at the heart of the Dunedin sound from which it sprang. The observation that the world is not currently operating at an optimal level of fellow-feeling, to put it mildly, led into Short Change, a more subtle evocation of the sentiment expressed by Jarvis Cocker’s C***s Are Running The World, delivered with a degree of passion that suggested some fire and brimstone could be being summoned in the otherwise staid surrounds of the chapel!
The brooding Pendulum from Dimmer was paired with Straitjacket Fits’ Hail for a powerful duo of numbers, the latter of which the audience were invited to sing along with (an invitation declined, by the way). This one-two punch approach was echoed by the next pairing of Evolution and Degrees of Existence, together forming the traditional mid-point of a set, the bit where things get a little philosophical. This philosophical bent carried into Left To Defend, a song inspired by a combination of being asked to sing at a friend’s wedding and an appreciation of the Gospel songs of Elvis. Not the usual kind of thing mentioned as song inspo, that’s for sure!
One of the standard experiences of the Sessions is that before we know it, it’s time for bye-byes! This night followed course in that regard, but with the novel twist of Shayne announcing that he wasn’t really into the whole ‘encore’ schtick, preferring to inform in advance that he would be performing two more songs, after the first of which it would be nice if we could go nuts, so he could pretend that he was coming back for one more that might otherwise not be sung. Pretty much the standard procedure, stripped of the usual artifice!
This final brace, then, consisted of, firstly, Life in One Chord, followed by the rather more downbeat Comfortable, Shayne promising to ‘bum you out before heading home’! Regardless, this served only to cap off the night, on a more sedate tone. A night that once more encapsulated the Small Halls ethos, bringing the best of music to the smallest of places, the ethos ably satisfied by this veteran stalwart, a truly legendary member of Aotearoa music royalty indeed. Thanks, Mr Carter!
Shayne P Carter Small Hall Sessions PR 2026