Hemi Hemingway

Hemi Hemingway channels the sonic palette of 1960s girl group pop into the present decade by merging lo-fi guitar textures with classic pop melodies, yielding tracks that draw optimum qualities from both traditions. His material displays sharp intelligence without tipping into heavy-handed irony, adapting songs originally fashioned for young women through the lens of a more seasoned male sensibility so that chance alignments and inherent tensions serve the music. The project constitutes a side effort by a seasoned indie performer and surfaced in 2021 with the tuneful low-fidelity EP The Lonely Hunter.

Hemi Hemingway functions as the alias of New Zealand-born guitarist and singer Shaun Blackwell, whose early musical grounding came via John the Baptist, the alt-country group assembled in Wellington during 2009. The band delivered its five-song EP Bag O' Nails in 2013 before Blackwell departed New Zealand for London, England. After issuing the digital single "Song of Longing" b/w "Breakfast of the Revival," he aligned with Night Shades, whose hybrid style fused blues, garage punk, surf music, and psychobilly. The group followed with the cassette-only EP Evil Dreams in 2017 and the 2019 7" single "Dead Nerves" b/w "Katipo" and "The Desert."

Amid breaks from Night Shades, Blackwell immersed himself in 1960s pop and composed a set of songs modeled on the melodramatic girl group approach of the Shirelles, the Ronettes, and the Shangri-Las. He recorded a six-song EP partly on an analog four-track machine to evoke the desired period atmosphere, incorporating both his own 1960s-styled material and a cover of the early Randy Newman composition "Move Over, Darling." Released on PNKSLM in June 2021 under the adopted name Hemi Hemingway, the collection appeared as The Lonely Hunter.