The residents of Ōamaru are well served for musical entertainment this weekend, with award-winning Australian singer/songwriter Ben Salter playing at the Grainstore Gallery on Friday night, and Dunedin music legend Matthew Bannister headlining the Settler Theatre on Saturday.

Friday's (December 15) show at the Grainstore will be the gallery's last night out until late January (bring a plate!), and Salter promises to offer something truly intriguing, taking the traditional singer-songwriter template and quietly twisting it into unusual, occasionally disconcerting shapes, with songs backboned by shifting, simmering soundscapes and a voice that often sounds David Bowie with an Australian accent.  

Salter is an old hand at this, with debut album Cat – released more than a decade ago – being chosen as Album Of The Year at the Queensland Music Awards in 2012.

Since then he's released several more, with this year's Sublimation out now. He's also worked with legendary bassist Mike Watt (Minutemen, Firehose, The Stooges and many more) as well as NZ music icons Marlon Williams and Robert Scott (The Clean, The Bats), and supported a host of international acts, including Built To Spill, Counting Crows, Cat Power, J Mascis and the Violent Femmes.

If you'd prefer something a little more homespun – or a second show in two days – The Settler Theatre is the place to be on Saturday. Matthew Bannister is best known for his role fronting Dunedin's Sneaky Feelings, who appeared on the fabled Dunedin Double EP in 1982, alongside The Chills, The Verlaines and The Stones, kick-starting the Dunedin music scene in the process.

Since then he's had a long career as a musician, author and academic, and even performed at Ōamaru's Opera House as a member of the Mutton Birds, filling in for guitarist Chris Sheehan after he pulled out of the tour supporting the Rain, Steam and Speed album in 1999. After the show, he relocated to the Penguin Club to jam with local musicians.

Bannister's latest project is a forensic dive into Songs From The Front Lawn, the debut album by The Front Lawn, the previous band of Mutton Birds' leader Don McGlashan. He's written a book about the album – part of Bloomsbury's much-loved, long-running and ever-growing 33 1/3 series – and will be playing songs by The Front Lawn on Saturday, alongside material by Sneaky Feelings and his own solo career. His current band, The Changing Same, released their second album, Go To The Movies, earlier this year.  

He may even play something by The Beatles. In 2013 he recorded a cover of the Fab Four's Revolver album in its entirety (calling it Evolver), and repeated the trick with Rubber Solo (a cover of, yes, you guessed it, Rubber Soul) in 2019.

Support on Saturday will come from local musicians Matthew P. Schöbs & The Flaming Bridges, who released the excellently titled Fear And Loathing In Oamaru EP earlier this year, complete with cover art from the Grainstore Gallery's Donna Demente.   

Tickets for Ben Salter are $20 from Under The Radar or from the Grainstore on the night, while tickets for Matthew Bannister are also $20 from the same source.