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Top-five lists - music fans love ’em, as Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity proves. Top five songs about space. Top five eponymous albums. Top five solo singers who also charted in a band. And how about top five bands from New Zealand?

Well, there are Split Enz and Crowded House (though the latter were formed in Melbourne). OMC, with How Bizarre. The Datsuns. Then Flight of the Conchords, if spoof comedy bands count. The past 12 months, however, have seen the musical contribution from the home of The Lord of the Rings grow from hobbit-sized to something as big as those walking trees that turned up in the second movie. Acts such as the Ruby Suns, Lawrence Arabia, the Brunettes, the Phoenix Foundation and the beautifully named Connan and the Mockasins have started signing deals with British and American record labels (Memphis Industries for the Suns, Sub Pop for the Brunettes, while the eccentric folk/electronica/whatever outfit Lawrence Arabia’s forthcoming tour supporting Feist has the majors circling) after almost 10 years spent building their blend of psychedelic, grunge and indie pop into a distinctive melodic sound. In part, this is down to that essential ingredient all strong music scenes require - isolation.

“To generalise, the New Zealand music scene, in my opinion, was split in two back in 1998,” explains the Brunettes’ Jonathan Bree. “There was still a big dance-music movement; clubs would deal with cost-effective DJs over bands. The backlash to that was the emerging rock-music scene. We opened for these bands, but never found much of a home with their audience, either. We ended up playing more often at coffee shops such as Roasted Addiqtion and Rakinos, in Auckland.”

Although these acts hail from across the two islands, Auckland appears to have drawn them all into its orbit at some point. The Brunettes, the Tokey Tones, the Reduction Agents, Lawrence Arabia, Connan and the Mockasins and the Ruby Suns have all shared members and played on each other’s albums over the years. Indeed, several members of this resolutely coed cooperative have dated each other - the Brunettes’ core duo, Bree and Heather Mansfield, formed the band when they were a couple.

This mutual-appreciation society can lead to spectacular effects when any of these bands play live. “We’ve had up to eight people in the band at times, and sometimes the majority of them have had their own bands as well,” explains Ruby Suns’ main man, Ryan McPhun. “We supported Animal Collective in Auckland recently and everyone who’d ever played with us was on stage - full brass section, unexpected free-noise jams and confusing amounts of instrument-swapping - but we all knew each other so well, we managed to play a really tight show.”

Right now, it’s the Suns who are garnering critical approval, with the UK press salivating over the band’s recently released album Sea Lion. The 10-track, sun-dappled guitar-pop bubble of joy has a range of eclectic influences, from Beach Boys through Heroes-era Bowie to Polynesian folk, 1980s synth pop and the Flaming Lips. The band start a UK tour on May 16, playing a blend of hip urban bars and festivals such as The Great Escape and Dot to Dot.

“I’ve grown up listening to everything from my parents’ 1960s tracks to Nirvana,” McPhun explains. “But New Zealand kind of shapes the music, too. For instance, our first gig was outside a community hall, doing a benefit for the Green Party on an island called Waiheke. It was midday, and there was a barbecue, so we got free veggie burgers, and after we’d played we all went for a swim at the beach - which was, like, 10 metres away.”

You can hear the echoes of this upbringing in the rest of the Auckland crew’s material. Although the Tokey Tones are essentially an electronica studio band, the Brunettes channel the Velvet Underground, Television and the Modern Lovers, and Lawrence Arabia is effectively a modern version of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, all have an uplifting, summertime, shoulders-back essence - without the dreary machismo of 1960s and 1970s Californian motorcar boogie.

This unity of sound comes from a sharing of influence, environment, musicians and, most important, record label. After failing to generate interest from international labels - and finding that New Zealand labels just wanted to sign carbon-copy versions of whatever was charting overseas - Bree and the Tokey Tones’ Scott Mannion decided to set up their own label in 2002, called Lil’ Chief, which helped this constantly mutating artistic collective to come closer together.

“Sometimes, it just takes a record label to focus on a number of acts cut from the same cloth, and this helps to gain a greater focus on its artists’ work,” Bree argues. “This was the case for early Flying Nun [a New Zealand label] and Sub Pop in the late 1980s. How both these labels operated was a good blueprint and an inspiration for Lil’ Chief. Within Lil’ Chief, there is a healthy competitive spirit between the bands nicely balanced with a genuine desire to help with each other’s projects. I haven’t seen that too often within music scenes in other cities that I have visited.”

International interest, however, has meant the caring, sharing spirit surrounding Lil’ Chief is in danger of evaporating. Speaking to me over the phone, Mannion sounded vaguely mournful that his buddies were now living in the UK. “I’ve been desperate to record some new stuff,” he said, sounding a little glum, “but I really need Ryan and Jonathan to make it work, and I think the earliest they’re going to be back is July.”

“The scene seems to be in a state of flux,” McPhun agrees. “I’d say it’s suffering a little right now. There isn’t much new stuff happening, a lot of bands are spending more and more time overseas, and some of the really great bands have moved away.”

Fortunately for New Zealand, where creative forces fail, the UK Border Agency can lend a hand. Although plenty of these Kiwi acts are currently based in London, two-year visas mean that they’re going to have to make it really big really soon. Lawrence Arabia, for instance, used to be a band, but has now become a one-man show - with that one man being James Milne.

“I had a band of New Zealanders, but everyone’s visas ran out,” he explains. “We’re exploring visa options at the moment. I have a British passport, so I can stay on, but it’s difficult, as the band has to keep changing every two years. My interim plan is to form a band with the Sneaks, who are an Auckland band. They usually play quite a different style of music, but they’re adept musicians, so it should be okay.”

Usually, when the media latches on to a new scene, journalists urge their readers to catch these guys live while they’re hot and hungry. With this flowering of Auckland talent, however, you’d better catch them live before they’re kicked out of the country. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to think of five great New Zealand bands. We keep on sending them home.

The Ruby Suns’ Sea Lion is out on Memphis Industries; their tour starts on Friday. The Brunettes play the Water Rats, WC1, tonight. For Lawrence Arabia live dates, visit myspace.com/lawrencearabia

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