I just watched Homegrown interviewing Dave Dobbyn on the release of his new album. I don't want you to read this bio, necessarily. But I do want you to look at the photos scrolling down the right hand side. I mean, obviously nature has never been kind to Dave Dobbyn, but has there ever been anyone this talented who is also so *aggressively* cheesy? There are *no* good photos! None! And if you've seen his videos you know that they're like a swift kick in the nuts - even for the 80s, they're appalling. He can take a good concept ('Loyal') and ruin it with a poodle mullet and a Cosby sweater. He can take a poor concept ('Magic What She Do') and make it exponentially worse with a checked suit and dreadful mugging. He's like a distilled eau de parfum of the new fragrance, Anti-Cool! Brent, who can approach Dave without the emotional baggage we Kiwis have, argues that Dobbyn's ratio of songwriting chops to dorkiness may be the most extreme he has ever seen anywhere. (And we're *Elvis Costello fans*.) He's someone who isn't embarrassed to write a song on the entire country's behalf, welcoming new immigrants (see the 'news' section of that site for a snippet of the insurance-ad-esque video and the lyrics). He's *earnest*. He *cares*. He wants to tell anti-immigration tossers like Winston Peters to piss off. And *damned* if I don't think that the song is, um, really lovely. That cheesy bugger keeps on winning me over. He has since 1983 when I was nine, so I don't know why I keep being surprised...