Feature: Opshop - Second Hand Shopping

"Before we started recording the songs we knew that there would be the marketing process after we'd recorded the album, and we thought about how we'd present ourselves - if we had concerns that we wanted to be known and had to put them out there in the world, what would they be? The biggest one, and it might sound quite trite now, but it's definitely topical... is global warming. Just the way we generally treat the planet. In another way it's us putting up our hands and saying you know, 'We're guilty of this, we're all guilty of this in a bigger context'. I'm pretty sure that when Bob came up with that, that's what he was considering."

Sounds deep. U2 kind of deep even, and definitely not the sort of inspiration usual among NZM subjects. Subject matter mostly covers relationships, life, death, parties, girls - that sort of thing. Raising awareness of global warming is certainly necessary in our complacent society though, what with sea levels posited to rise at an alarming rate and temperatures higher in the Scottish Highlands than Christchurch last Christmas.

"Second hand planet, if you spell it as three separate words, it alludes to the teetering on a knife edge, it's counting our seconds, it's the Doomsday clock," Jason muses.

"Not that it's a depressive album," laughs guitarist Matt Treacy and he's right. It's sweeping, non-confrontational, engaging pop rock in the big picture, big guitar way of, well U2. Song titles include Helpless, Noah and One Thing Worth Preserving, and all up it cements Opshop's position as our Stereophonics, and Jason (who could well have made it further than the last 26 in last year's Rockstar Supernova search but for his Kiwi attitude), our Bono or Kelly Jones.  The charismatic frontman currently holds the full time position of DJ/assistant programme director at Kiwi FM.
It's been close on three years since Opshop released their platinum-selling debut 'You Are Here' and in that time the band have had their own sea change to deal with.

Opshop opened for business in mid 2002 in Auckland but the band's combined history goes back way further. Jason, Matt and original guitarist Tim Skeddon met at their Christchurch high school (exclusive catholic institute St Bedes) and formed their first band in the late '80s. They met up again in Auckland, formed GST (which quickly became Opshop) with fellow Cantabrian Bobby and signed to Siren Records late 2003. Losing band members is always difficult and for Opshop losing Skeddon in 2005 was fairly devastating. No sordid story surrounds his departure - being a solo dad and a member of a rock band simply proved too difficult to juggle. It made a double blow for the band as Ian Munroe, their English import bass player, had left Opshop earlier in the year to pursue a solo career back in the UK. No hard feelings there either, but filling the ozone hole both players left proved a considerable challenge. Opshop has down-sized to a four-piece.

"We needed a bass player that we really felt could take the sonic energy that was missing when Tim stopped playing because although he plays guitar, he played really big, deep chords and we needed someone that was going to fill that sonic spectrum," Jason explains.

Clint Brown, another ex-Cantabrian and a former member of GST, was recycled into the bass player position.

"Matt takes care of the heavy little melodies, you know the twinkly parts, and Tim was more the roar at the bottom of the sound so we all had to move [when he left]. Matt's got more roar in his twinkle now and Clint isn't playing just straight ahead clean solid bass lines anymore. He's playing punchy dirty ones and it seems to work."

Jason adds he still feels the gap left by his old bandmate and not just because he is having to play more guitar.

"There's still moments, particularly in the writing process, where there's the frustration, I guess for me mostly, where I don't have the guy who was always at my right hand side from high school right through to when we recorded the first Opshop record and took that on tour. We really worked that album quite hard too so it was a real dynamic and personality change within the group when Tim left."