In case there’s any doubts about whether cello and accordion go together, attendees at the Auckland Folk Festival can testify. They go together like macaroni and cheese, like peanut butter and jelly, like Bonnie and Pete. The musical dream team returns to Aotearoa New Zealand after their first international tour and trip to the island nation in 2020 resulted in a two year stay over COVID. The artists credit their time in Aotearoa with inspiring their decision to pursue performing full time. Since returning home in 2022, Good Habits has quickly become one of the UK’s quirkiest up and coming acts to grace airwaves like BBC and stages like Glastonbury.
Opening with “I Will Still Be Here,” a song about “realizing we were the two luckiest musicians in the world” to be riding out COVID in New Zealand (then COVID-free), the song skips jauntily along, fleet fingers traipsing across keys and strings like the duo traipsing across the countryside. Most of the songs performed were composed during this COVID period, and prefaced with a New Zealand based story and association that thrilled the audience of folk lovers from around country. “The Earth Moved,” inspired by experiencing a minor earthquake in Wellington NZ, featured contrasting sections in half time and break neck speed, clever trad-inspired accents, and sudden, delightfully surprising stops and transitions. Their set was a display of virtuosic, thoughtful musicianship. Bonnie’s story telling, accompanied by Pete’s appropriately comedic, sincere, or otherwise expressive accordion, endeared the musicians to their audience as much as the music.
Bonnie’s sunshiny disposition and compositions are well complimented by Pete’s
philosophical, sentimental contributions. New song, “Itchy Feet” is Bonnie dominant and sounds as it reads, “I’m ready to go again…got itchy feet and I love the road, no two days the same,” while Pete dominant “Fridge Photos” reads like an unorthodox love song, revealing what a weighted and romantic gesture it truly is to buy a fridge with someone then populate it with photos of your life together. “Pictures watch us getting older as we watch pictures of us getting younger and younger.” Bonnie’s clear, sweet voice deftly carries their audience through all these feelings, scenes, observations, and more.
Good Habits chose three covers for their ten song set. “Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush experienced a mammoth revival after it’s placement on Stranger Things, but even before then, Good Habits was onto – in this writer’s opinion – the best cover of this song that there is. Something about the quirkiness of Kate Bush is preserved in the quirkiness of this version for accordion, cello, and voice. See this fantastic live recording made by one-take video artist Cadby Kong.
If anyone in the audience was not yet suitably impressed, a cover of Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You” performed with chopsticks on the cello by both performers simultaneously surely would have won them over.
A percussive kiss that the couple share solicited cheers from the crowd as the showy number wound them up for the big ending; a mashup of “Those Were the Days” by Mary Hopkin and Aretha Franklin’s “I Will Survive.” Good Habits closed the official set with a high energy, hand clapping, audience sing along that erupted into some of the most roaringest applause of the festival.
Good Habits is on tour to promote their upcoming album release, Quarter Life. Catch them in NZ and Australia through March, and in the UK in May. Details available at artist website.
Keep up with Good Habits:
Facebook // Instagram // YouTube // SoundCloud // Bandcamp // TikTok // Website
