Suttor recalls: “We were all friends who worked at Whammy, and the others” – including tried-and-true punk guitarists Justin Rendell (Suicide Dogs, Shitripper, PCP Eagles, Master Blaster) and Hariet Ellis (Na Noise, BOZO) – “were very keen to get a new band going. I think it was a happy coincidence with me taking part in punk rock karaoke at the bar (Justin was playing in the band). I can’t remember what was the chicken and what was the egg, but either way it was very good timing.”
The year 2025 has been massive for the band. From writing and recording an album Dream, Believe, Achieve in Australia, while touring there, they also travelled to perform in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, France, and Spain. And, it’s fair to say, the world kept on worlding the whole time they were travelling – the phrase “dumpster fire” becoming a daily part of everybody’s political weather reports.
Their social media often reminds fans of the multi-tendrilled roots of their rage, a righteous example of a band using such media for good, not evil. The arresting red Yolanda Fagan artwork on the cover of their 7-inch single ‘Fuck It’ features one of the most potent symbols of female self-defence – a preservation technique passed down between women who walk at night through the ages – in the shape of a set of keys slotted between the fingers of a fist. ‘Fuck It’ marked Dick Move’s Flying Nun debut (in a joint release with 1:12 Records) in late July. The single was accompanied by a thoroughly disorientating, one-take, “found footage” video shot by Stella Reid, in which singer Suttor wakes, briefly blonde-wigged, in the morning after from hell.
What moves Dick Move politically? Suttor does not hold back.
When I ask her to give me a rev of what’s on top – politically – in terms of fuel to burn in the Dick Move machine at present, she does not hold back.
“Genocide against the Palestinian people. Protesters being persecuted. Families and hard-working communities being torn apart because immigrants are being sent to concentration camps. Concentration camps existing. The Trump administration existing. Governments lining pockets of landlords and under resourcing frontline sectors. The looming threat of privatisation of these sectors. Women’s rights/trans rights/reproductive rights being politicised and weaponised. Rapists and racists running countries. Our government giving 2.9 billion dollars to landlords and nothing to the public health system. The conservative/ libertarian notion that equality equals equity. The government fast tracking racist and hugely destructive bills that threaten the foundational values this nation was built on. No one can afford rent or food. Basically anything that comes out of the mouths of our coalition of clowns is a concern. There is a lot to be concerned about. A lot to write music about.”
New single ‘Nurses’, released late August, takes aim at systems that prioritise profit over people, while hospitals remain understaffed, emergency rooms overflow, and frontline workers are stretched to breaking point. Reid returned to direct the thought provoking video. “ ‘Nurses’ isn’t screaming about the changes that need to be made,” Reid says. “It knows the crisis is here, and it's asking where you stand as it implodes.”
“When the Government chooses landlords over nurses / it’s not neglect, it’s strategy. Defund, destabilise, privatise / that’s the playbook, and we’re calling it out.”
And how! Secure in her rage, Suttor is a woman of multitudinous talents – actor, masseuse, jeweller – a surfeit of raw energy, and a gargantuan set of lungs, she says she was introduced to punk rock at around the age of 10 … “listening through the wall while my brother and his friends watched surfing videos back home in Gisborne.
“It was definitely more of the Australian surfer/second wave California punk rock vibes,” she specifies. “The influence it had on me was pretty huge. My CD wallet was full of burned mixes of NOFX, Frenzal Rhomb, Descendents, Pennywise, The Offspring (and Sublime and No Doubt – honourable mention to ska punk here) etc. I remember buying my first Green Day album, and it absolutely blowing my little head off. I would sit in my room and scream the lyrics about America I did not understand at all. I say it’s not what I listen to now, but I’m definitely not turning it off when it comes on at 3am at the bar. The nostalgia runs very deep.”
She played guitar all through school, played in the Gisborne Intermediate “rock band” – “we just played Tom Petty covers, basically” – and took part in Smokefree Rockquest all through high school.
“I had a band called Pain Repaid – which is an incredibly hardcore name for a band that played very Lily Allen-esque songs,” she recalls. “I loved it. There weren’t many opportunities for kids to play on big stages in Gizzy, so Smokefree Rockquest was always the highlight of our year. We had a legendary music teacher – shout outs, Jane Egan, she is still at Gisborne Girls’ high school being a legend. It was one of those situations where you would just find yourself hanging out in the music room when you had nowhere else to be, or sometimes when you definitely did have somewhere else to be.”
At Gisborne Girls’ High was “a legendary music teacher – shout outs, Jane Egan …”
Suttor says the first music that moved her was the soundtrack of the neighbourhood parties in her family home, in the 1990s: Dire Straits, Herbs.
“I remember being obsessed with ‘French Letter’. I didn’t understand the political importance of it at the time, because I was nine, but I really could see myself under the coconut tree.”
The first album she bought was Anastacia’s Not That Kind, in 2000, with the single ‘I’m Outta Love’ at the top of her rotations.
“I listened the shit out of it. I had a pair of orange glasses, and this was my identity for a while. In my eyes she was a perfect woman – strong, soulful, impeccable style and taking no shit. Really formative, impactful stuff for a 10-year-old.”
As for the rest of the band, Rendell’s first album was The Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill. Macrae says her first album “was a cassette tape from my nana – New Kids on The Block, Hangin’ Tough. I thrashed it on my Walkman.”
Ellis’s first album was the New Zealand edition of Now That’s What I Call Music 1. It was released in 1997 and – influentially – included the anarcho-punk hit ‘Tubthumping’, by Chumbawamba. The same year, Boyes was discovering the pleasures of the double-disc special edition of Shania Twain’s Come on Over.
When it came to live music, Suttor’s first turn as an audience member was the Boost Mobile Hook Up Tour, in 2004.
“What a first gig. DJ Sir-Vere, Scribe, Adeaze, Fast Crew, Savage … and more, I’m forgetting. I think I was maybe 13? I snuck in a Ribena squeezy full of Mum’s Bacardi. This is always a heartwarming full-circle memory for me, because Phil Bell (DJ Sir-Vere) is now a huge Dick Move fan – he buys multiple copies of our albums and gives us shout-outs in interviews – something 13-year-old Lucy would think is fucking wild. I also want to mention the first punk band I saw live, because it was very formative. I snuck into R&V [Rhythm and Vines 2007], at age 16, and ran straight into the pit for The Mint Chicks. Lost my jandals and everything.”
Rendell reaches a couple of decades farther back on the timeline to remember his first live music experience being Kiss playing Wellington, which he witnessed from his nana’s backyard in 1980. “I think we went to Nambassa in 1979 but I have no idea who played,” he adds.
Suttor snuck into Rhythm & Vines, aged 16. “lost my jandals and everything.”
“The first gig I ever chose and bought tickets to myself was Silverchair, 1995, at the Logan Campbell Centre,” Macrae recalls. “The first gig I ever went to was Neil Young and Crazy House at Western Springs Stadium, 1985. Apparently I wanted to go up front and dance.”
Ellis’s first concert was Hot Chocolate at the Napier Municipal Theatre in 1986, recalling, “I fell asleep. ‘Every 1’s a winner, baby, that’s the truth …’”
Boyes reckons his first gig might have been BLERTA, “at a wedding when I was a kid.”
In more recent years, Suttor seeing Patti Smith play at Blues Fest in Byron Bay in 2017 proved definitively transformative. “That was the closest thing to a religious experience I’ve ever had and maybe changed the course of my life forever,” she says.
So, the pump was primed, but when the option to join Dick Move presented, Suttor was initially nervous. “I really idolised all the women/my friends in bands I watched while I was working at the bar (eg, Hariet Ellis, Yolanda Fagan, Fiona Campbell, Dorian Noval, etc) and I hadn’t been in a band since high school and didn’t know if I had the chops. I gave it a shot and safe to say it felt like a very fun and cool idea after that. It’s also a bloody honour to have my first (grown-up) band be with such experienced and hard-working musicians. We would all sit at the bar till the early hours of the morning and talk about shitty things happening around us, and all over the world, so writing music about it definitely seemed like the right thing to do, as I’m sure is the story of how a lot of bands begin.”
Since blasting onto the scene with the eponymous, one-minute-27-seconds single that is their theme song, two albums – Chop! (2020) and Wet! (2023) – have followed. Chop! (1:12 Records) was mixed and produced by Peter Ruddell (Wax Chattels, Sulfate) at his Karangahape Road home studio. The fact it tears through 13 songs in just 18 minutes is an accurate indicator of the band’s one-armed-scissor-style attack. Ruddell also worked on Wet (1:12 Records), which was recorded in The Beths’ studio (also on Karangahape Road), and mastered by leading Wellington producer James Goldsmith (DARTZ, Beastwars).
When asked to describe the superpowers of the bandmates responsible for these abrasively mighty albums, Suttor drops into a rhyming verse (even if she can’t resist breaking the rules of rhyme soon after establishing them, which seems – in the Dick Move way – fitting).
“Lulu Macrae, like a bundle of hay (good for animals) / Luke Boyes, a very kind voice / Justin Rendell, all shouty and gentle / Hariet Ellis, the toughest of fellas.”
Gentle props aside, once Dick Move formed – and once the touring-death years of the Covid pandemic were cleared – it was not long before growth opportunities knocked. In March 2022, with their biggest audience to date topping out around 600 people, they were picked to support The Foo Fighters on their Aotearoa tour dates. Although the shows were cancelled due to the death of drummer Taylor Hawkins, the Foos rescheduled – retaining Dick Move as support for all three dates, alongside The Breeders – for January 2024.
Dick Move blasted on the scene with the eponymous 1'17" single that is their theme song
Suttor recalls: “This was such a buzz, and definitely the most daunting shows we have played – in a stadium with the crowd standing so far away from us, very different from the intimate vibe at Whammy! Bar that we were used to. Also a great opportunity to play to a huge number of people that probably wouldn’t know about us otherwise. When you really care about the message in your music, I think playing to people outside of your bubble is important and good. Flying the flags of Palestine and Tino Rangatiratanga on that stage also felt important and good.”
The Foo Fighters “were genuinely very nice people to play shows with, they took the time to hang out and we never really felt like we were just the little guys. Dave Grohl came and hung out in the green room preshow and gushed about incredible Luke was at drumming, and The Breeders were just absolute bloody honeys. No ego, just normal nice people. By the end of the tour I was sitting at catering eating mashed potatoes with Kim Deal talking about our mums. Individual members of both these bands have meant a lot to us throughout our lives – icons like Pat Smear and Josh Freese, and Kim and Kelly Deal, so we just felt pretty lucky and stoked to be representing Kiwi music on the big stage with them. And I met Jeff Probst [from reality TV show Survivor] backstage, which was the highlight of the tour.”
Australian punks Cosmic Psychos had also snapped up Dick Move by now. “This was the first time Dick Move set foot in Australia, and it couldn’t have been with a better bunch of fullas,” says Suttor. “We joined them on a whip-around regional Victoria to an audience who really didn’t give two shits about us, but it was a fun challenge to try win them over by the end of our set.
“The Psychos were perfect hosts. Fun, kind, generous, hospitable, full of stories and, Jesus Christ, they could sink a lot of piss. As the main drinker in the band I really had my work cut out for me. Being able to play smaller towns like Bendigo and Castlemaine was a real treat, definitely off the beaten track that is the usual tour route for New Zealand bands.”
In 2025, the new school of Aussie punk – in the form of Amyl and the Sniffers – also wanted a piece of Dick Move’s action.
“Amy Taylor is obviously a hero of mine and this had been on the bucket list from day one. The show ruled. It was awesome to experience Meow Nui at full capacity – it’s such a beautiful venue. I had the self-appointed role of hosting them for what turned out to essentially be a three-day bender as they played their next two shows at Powerstation, and boy they can pull themselves together after a big night. Watching Amy perform each night was almost as inspiring as watching Patti Smith play in 2017, she has an ability to speak to everyone in the audience with such honesty and vulnerability, and the confidence of knowing exactly how to articulate how she feels about the world. It was refreshing and empowering.”
Earlier the same year, Dick Move were called on to support Shihad on their Loud Forever farewell tour. “This was just a bloody honour and a privilege to join these guys on their final tour. I think the highlight for us was Kickdown Fest in Whangamatā. Shihad, Kora, Th’ Dudes, The D4 and us, as well as motorbikes doing flips, knights in armour having live action role-play duels and lots of barbecue meats. I honestly couldn’t think of a better day. Again, the Shihad guys were awesome, very humble, very fun. I sound like a broken record but honestly I’m just happy that none of these legends we have played with were dickheads in real life because that would have been stink.”
With a long stretch of overseas gigs propelling them through the latter part of 2025, a great place to grab your Dick Move fix on YouTube is their mid-year 95bFM live session. As customary, it sees them rip through 10 songs in 20 minutes, including ‘Karanga-a-hape’, from the new album to be released late in 2025.
“It’s about the street,” Suttor elucidates. No matter how far they roam …
“They live here! / They own it!” – Dick Move.
