New Music Review - Six60's 'Right Here Right Now' - 13th February 2026
Review By - Faith Hamblyn
Artist/Band Name - Six60
Album Name - Right Here Right Now
Label - Massive Records
Release Date - 13th February 2026
Six60 are throwing a funky roots-reggae party with their new album, Right Here Right Now. Recorded live in a series of single takes, the songs are intimate, like the band are in the room with you, or set up in your backyard with a fire lit and cool drinks sitting on wooden tables. With its stripped-down summer quality, it’s a reflection of the distance the band have travelled from Castle Street in Dunedin, and via Western Springs Stadium and Eden Park.
The Otago lads are back on home soil, and you can hear the Northern Hemisphere in their sound, but with ‘four chords and the truth’ along with a reggae strum, there’s a Pacific base to the new record. Opening track We Made It serves as a toast to cheer, and Knocking At Your Door expands on how they’ve grown along with us – we have been found whānau since day one, but are they settled down, or just back to visit? Far from the stadium-rock boast of 2019’s The Greatest, there’s a down-home reggae appeal on this – sure, they debuted at number one, but they didn’t forget their roots, my friend.
Enjoy The View is more contemplative, introducing shadows to all the bright good times. Matiu Walters introduces some Stevie Wonder to the mix, reminding us that the best roots songs have some torchy catharsis to sing along to, and if you take stock, there’s hope yet. We Are All Kings is where it starts getting into interesting new territory – love is all we need is a theme that’s been well mined, but there’s a cool funk bent here that’s part studio wizardry post-recording, surely, but mostly owes its soul muscle to how easy Walters makes it sound.
The next few tracks return to the theme of romantic love and mellow fatherhood, looking to the past and future, the joys and travails of family life. With this evolution, Six60 on Right Here Right Now turns more toward country, which marries with roots-reggae nicely – it can’t all be drinking and dancing and raising drinks to the current moment. Endlessly rounds out this section of turning to the darker side, and it wraps love into an plaintive, emotive Tracy Chapman-ish cocoon; it’s winsome, but with the light production, it is more suited to an EP.
Cold Chisel-like Red Mist has the immediacy and resonance of a story you’ve heard through the friend of a friend, and its menace is oddly offset by its danceability – should booze and male violence be pop music? Be Gentle, Please is for dancing too – this time with your main squeeze, who has your vulnerable ever-loving heart in their hands. Same Dirt, conversely, is a plaintive pepeha, a tribute to our human unity, the pain of existence and the inevitability of returning to where you came from, no matter how far you’ve strayed from home.
Six60’s fifth album is an accomplished, understated, humble brag – Matiu can sa-a-ang, and the rhythm section just won’t quit. There are a few tracks I’d like to hear as part of a larger work along the same lines, but the closing track Right Here Right Now trips me up with its evocation of cinnamon skies. It’s altogether a lovely whaikōrero, a homage to family and beginnings and legacy. But seriously, is that a nod to the Beatles’ marmalade skies or what?
RATING - 4 Stars
Mai FM and Fabrik Presents
Katchafire - UB40/Kingston Calling Tour
Navigation Homes Stadium, Pukekohe, Auckland