I made a comment in a recent blog about how easy it it to lose touch with the local music scene.  When you start of photographing the usual route is to start with the local scene, build up a portfolio and  hope that it leads to bigger and higher profile opportunities but when that happens those gigs can easily take up all of your time and energy.

However, when the Incremental Records launch night came up I was really keen to cover it thanks to Before Hollywood’s excellent 42 song, triple CD compilation, ‘Stranded’. The launch night included bands who I’d first heard on the CD and who had been wanting to catch live for a while, particularly Nova Scotia who had one of my favourite tracks on ‘Stranded’ and who I kept managing to miss, despite them playing regularly around the Valley.

Ambitious Lovers kicked off the night and you can’t help but think that there’s DIY and then there’s DIY. They’re probably as shambolic a band as you’re ever likely to see. They sounded a lot more together on ‘Stranded’ and obviously could do with a lot more pre-gig practice but maybe that’s not the point.

After Ambitious Lovers’ ukuleles and home-made percussion lo-fi folk, the night has an immediate change in musical style with Turnpike’s frenetic, spiky straight-up punk.

Sometimes you can watch a band and see how much they are enjoying the night, sometimes, like tonight, you can watch a band and see the ever growing frustration as they try to deliver the set that they know they are capable of delivering. This is more than obvious tonight watching Mt Augustus’s Cameron Smith battle broken guitar strings, culminating in him throwing his guitar to the floor at the end of their set. And for the second time in as many Zoo gigs I manage to miss getting a good photo of someone throwing their guitar to the ground; luckily for Cam, and unlike Vegas Kings’s Ben, it was thrown body first. Although you could see the increasing irritation, it doesn’t take anything away from a really excellent set of acoustic indie folk.

After such a long wait I enjoyed finally seeing Nova Scotia; sure they’ve probably got a fair few well worn copies of ‘Slanted & Enchanted’ and ‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’ but there are far worse bands to be influenced by then Pavement.

More photos from the night are on flickr.

I know I’ve blogged previously about photographing keyboard players; it’s the worst and along with saxophonists they’re probably the hardest musicians to get really good photos of.  Not just ok photos, REALLY good photos.  This is possibly because, with a very few exceptions, the keyboard is the most un-rock instrument ever.  So Megan Washington is off to a bad start straight away and getting anything near resembling a really good photo of her is made even harder by her long hair falling all over her face and also by her wearing glasses.  Photographing people with glasses can be a hard task anyway, what with the reflections, but it’s amazing how hard it can be photographing musicians with glasses and to not get the frames covering up the eyes.  Being The Troubadour, everyone is sat down and so I end up just photographing from the same place but afterwards regret not moving over to the other side for a bit, as other photos I’ve seen of her since seem better from that side.

Apart from the pains of photographing, it was an enjoyable gig.  It’s good to see sold out local gig (although I thinks she’s based in Melbourne now).  It’s amazing what a bit of regular play on Triple J can do for you; shame they don’t play Brisbane bands a bit more often…

Some more photos on flickr.

Washington

Last Dinosaurs

I guess I had an inkling of what a Flipper show might be like to attend and tonight I get pretty much what I expected; you can get a sense just from listening to their music without having to even read a single live review.  It’s a bitter, angry, alienated, disinterested, discordant experience and tonight Bruce Loose struts the stage with an obvious air of a man who wishes he was anywhere else but on a stage in Brisbane playing to a the small crowd that’s assembled in front of him and who can’t really be bothered to even pretend otherwise.  The loss of his voice a few songs in results in some sort of bizarre karaoke/Stars In Their Eyes show, with lead vocals taken by various members of the crowd, and it could almost be seen as an improvement.  However, although watching Trash Video’s Stumpy sing ‘Ha Ha Ha‘ is like watching a man fulfill his life-long dream, with a technical improvement in the vocals and the obvious increase in passion, it’s almost as if you need that disinterest and disengagement for the full Flipper effect. 

It must be infectious though, the band obviously bring out the worst in people, with sufficient dissonance causing a post-punk Rite of Spring-type epiphany and tonight is the most obnoxious crowd I’ve been in for a good while, something made all the more depressing by the fact that they’re all old enough to know better.  There’s definitely hate in the air tonight.  Squeezing in at the side of the stage I find my vantage point quickly taken away from me by a guy who looks like he might be an accountant during the hours of 9 and 5 but tonight is so drunk that he can hardly stand up and keeps falling back into me.  What makes it even worse is that despite the fact he’s taken my place against the stage he’s not even paying much attention, talking to a girl behind him and not even looking at the band.  It becomes ever temping to make use of the large bit of metal and glass that I’m holding in my hand in a non-photographic way as I tire of him falling backwards into me as I’m trying to take some photos but I endure it for a couple of songs and then move out to the back of the room.  The view from the back isn’t any prettier, with the aggression in the crowd even more noticeable.  At one point I see a couple of guys being propelled to towards the back of the room, their arms entwined around each other as they brawl.  Luckily I see them coming and move out the way, unlike the girl stood next to me who takes the full force of their momentum and gets knocked to the floor as they continue out the door oblivious to the impact of their actions.

It’s another late starting Thursday night gig, with Flipper not starting until after 11pm, so by midnight I know I’ve seen all I need to see; for better or worse, the full Flipper experience.

More photos on Flickr.

Flipper

Sixfthick

Vaginabillies

MGMT were really shocking when they played at The Tivoli at the end of last year; really terrible and disinterested, a band that had obviously spent far too long on the road. But in seemingly typical style the Splendour organisers obviously waited to see what songs were towards the top reaches of Triple J’s Hottest 100 in January and started seeing who was available to play at their festival. So, have a few months away from the rigours of touring and working on new songs reinvigorated the band? In a word, no. In a few more words, fuck me MGMT you really are the world’s dullest band. With time and key changes, the third song they play sounds like bad 1970’s prog rock but they then play ‘Electric Feel’, with ‘Time To Pretend‘ following straight after, which causes complete pandemonium in the crowd and plenty of people outside the D-ring jumping over the fence whilst security looks on disinterested. All-in-all it’s a thoroughly depressing experience.

I have a mostly love/hate relationship with hip-hop; I mostly hate the music and yet I love the challenge of trying to photograph it. Constantly moving and with microphones held close against their mouths it’s one of the hardest, if not the hardest genres to photograph well, especially when the lighting is less than great. And so while I will always struggle to say anything good about Hilltop Hoods’ music, tonight it’s actually kind of fun to photograph, even though it’s just two guys walking from one side of the stage to the other whilst shouting.

Photographing The Flaming Lips from the best seat in the house is one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had when it comes of photographing bands. It’s complete sensory overload to the point where all you can do is stand there and admire the sheet bedlam with a big smile on your face and at times that’s all you can do as with all the confetti, streamers and bouncing balls it’s impossible to line up clear shots. A misunderstanding from the PR means I don’t make the best use of the opportunity. Having been told “first song, pick a side” I take it that we’re going to get kicked out after the first song so concentrate on trying to get photos of Wayne Coyne as he rolls around on top the audience in his inflatable ball instead of maybe thinking about moving out along the photo pit to get some wider angle shots. And then, with Coyne back on stage and the song ending, I move to the side and start packing up, only then noticing that no one else has moved so move coyly back towards the stage, but always looking over my shoulder for an irate PR rep to turn up and start physically removing photographers from the pit.  It’s a shame as I don’t move into a good position to get a good angle for Coyne singing whilst perched on the shoulders of someone dressed up in a gorilla outfit, although by the third song I am confident enough to realise that I must have misunderstood the instructions and to move around the stage a bit more.

Afterwards I can’t stop thinking that I might as well give up photography because how is anything ever going to compete with being in the photo pit for 25 minutes of the Flaming Lips. How can I go from THAT to a show at The Troubadour or The Zoo? It’s a very sobering thought and one that I’m not sure I’ve answered yet having done a few small club shows around Brisbane since Splendour.  There’s always next time, I guess. 

All of the Splendour 2009 photographs are on Flickr and the individual band sets are in the following links:

Flaming Lips
Hilltop Hoods
MGMT

All plans for an early start and a timely return to the festival site don’t materialise. The early start does happen but the time is spent editing Saturday’s photos, then thinking about making a move, waiting for other people whilst they think about it and then think a bit more about it, then have some food, and then give it a bit more consideration. Tough decisions as to whether see/photograph Dananananakyrod or The Middle East are rendered immaterial as their playing times pass by and White Lies also lose out thanks to the heavy traffic encountered en-route. So the day starts at a leisurely 3:15pm, with Friendly Fires’ set in the Mix Up tent.

I’m there having noted the amount of column inches and award nominations that they’ve been afforded but can’t say I’m impressed. Whilst they are badly beset by technical issues during the first three songs, which makes it very stop/start affair, you can’t help but get the feeling that young people will dance to anything.

Make a detour to see Bob Evans for something to do and am surprised that his second song sounds like something off ‘Wish You Were Here‘ and goes on for about 10 hours. At one point he moves over to the side of the stage and is on his knees on the edge playing his guitar with a gaggle of photographers pressed up against the stage and jostling for position to get close-ups. That he’s in near darkness doesn’t seem important to anyone so either everyone has mega-expensive high ISO monsters or they end up with a load of really underexposed photos. Whilst everyone is chimping to see what they’ve got, he strolls back to the middle of the stage and does it again (albeit further back), this time vaguely near some light. Sometimes laziness does pay off.

I will gladly admit that I never, ever ‘got’ Doves. And having seen them play live I think I can safely say that I will never ‘get’ Doves. And you know, that’s ok, because whilst others may sing their praises with all the superlatives under the sun and talk of ‘anthems’, to me they’ll always be plodding, pedestrian indie rock.

The Gutter Twins, however, are a completely different proposition.

It’s been a long while since I last got to see Greg Dulli play live, back when The Afghan Whigs were touring ‘Black Love‘ in 1997 to be exact and also a few years since I last saw Mark Lanegan playing alongside Dave Grohl with QotSA at Glastonbury. And so seeing the Gutter Twins play at Splendour is a really exhilarating proposition, especially when once again Brisbane is denied a festival sideshow from an international band.

Unfortunately the majority of Splendour are showing their true colours and have decided that their time would be better spent watching Grinspoon, so there’s maybe 100 people in the GW McLennan tent 10 minutes before they are due to start. Numbers swell a bit in the end but it’s still a criminally small crowd.

My excitement nevertheless makes up for those missing out, to the point where I forget to change memory cards and then spend half the first song scrabbling around on the floor of the photo pit in the dark trying to find a spare card.

It’s a completely sublime performance, and whilst most attention is no doubt centred on Mark Lanegan, who could sing the phone book and make it sound captivating, it’s very much Greg Dulli’s band and his songs, voice and playing are superb. It’s no surprise really when the Afghan Whigs always were one of the better ‘grunge’ bands around at the time and one whose albums still hold up today when so much of the early-mid 1990’s albums now sound quite dated and unremarkable. As well as songs from their ‘Saturnalia‘ album and recent Twilight Singers albums, the back catalogues are revisited, included magnificent versions of Screaming Trees’ ‘Sworn and Broken’ and the Afghan Whigs’ ‘Summers Kiss’.

It’s a tough shoot though, with the band playing sat down, eyes shut and with music stands and microphone stands in front meaning it’s almost impossible to get an unobstructed sightline. Sometimes when you photograph a band you have a strong idea of what you want to get, and when considering photographing Mark Lanegan I was inspired by some of Steve Gullick’s photos of him but the conditions just conspire against me.

All of the Splendour 2009 photographs are on Flickr and the individual band sets are in the following links:

Friendly Fires
Bob Evans
Doves
Gutter Twins

From the sublime to the ridiculous; The Living End.  There are so many things that are wrong before they even play a note; they’ve replaced the late-cancelling Jane’s Addiction, hardly a like-for-like exchange, they have just had The Specials essentially support them, the crowd reaction they get from the crowd as they walk onstage makes you despair for Generation Y and their woeful taste in music and Chris Cheney makes a quip something along the lines that if you want a job done right get an Australian band, something that only endears them more to the audience.  And then they play and it’s the usual awful second rate Stray Cats meet Green Day tunes, as played by grown men in their mid-30s who have never gotten over the fact that they weren’t around in the 1950s.

If there is one good thing that has come out of Jane’s Addiction’s pulling out it’s that the time that I planned to spend watching their whole set can now be spent catching a bit of Sarah Blasko over in the GW McLennan tent.  Whilst anything would be better than having to endure a single second more of The Living End, it’s even more of a godsend when finding out the next day that I miss a cover of ‘Jane’s Says‘ featuring Grinspoon’s Phil Jamieson.  Members of The Living End and Grinspoon on the same stage? I’m just amazed that the world didn’t explode Sci-Fi anti-matter style with the coming together of two of Australia’s worst bands.

But Sarah Blasko eases my woes somewhat. She’s a bit of a guilty pleasure but there’s something mesmerising about her even though, having seen her a few times and having her first two albums, I’m still not entirely sure about her voice.  It has an icy crispness and a pureness about it but sometimes lacks something more emotive.  It’s clinical and there’s no rough edges; almost like it’s too perfect. I stay for a few songs and it’s mostly new stuff from her recently released album, which on first listen sound great, although she also slips in an exquisite ‘Always On This Line‘ before I have to run away and photograph over in the Supertop.  She still hasn’t learnt to dance in the last few years though.   

Sold as Bloc Party’s only Australian date, their headline slot tonight proves to be nothing of the kind really, with a show the night before at The Great Northern in Byron, a Nova and Soothers (I can remember when no one wanted to be associated with anything Nestle made) sponsored gig in Brisbane the Monday after Splendour and a special Sydney show at the MCA that only Mastercard holders could buy tickets to.  Selling out or buying in? You decide.  It’s fun to photograph I guess.  It’s an energetic performance but nothing to really write home about.  I saw them back in 2005 and was distinctly underwhelmed.  I guess I’m not their demographic but to me it’s an empty and hollow sound.  I wouldn’t quite put it in the Landfill Indie box, I think there’s a little bit more going on that that, maybe not a whole lot more but it’s just not that interesting and the songs have a very by-numbers, predictable feel about them even with all the cleverness that the band seem determined to put into them.

I first saw The Happy Mondays at my first Glastonbury in 1990 (back when it cost £38 to get in and you could buy a ticket the same week of the festival), just as Madchester was peaking.  They were rubbish. Like really rubbish.  Our paths have crossed a few times over the years and it’s always been the same old story, sometimes to embarrassing levels.  But tonight it’s actually fun, even though the lighting is appalling and makes photographing really hard work.  Maybe my expectations were so low they couldn’t fail to be met; maybe I’m just getting nostalgic in my old age.  (Checking out old videos of theirs on YouTube writing this blog is making me feel very old anyway, realising that it was almost 20 years ago).  Shaun Ryder stays in the shadows at the back of the stage, finger in ear, as ever desperately trying to sing somewhere vaguely in tune, although to be fair I’m not sure he gets that close, and so it’s up to Bez to provide the entertainment, which he does spliff in hand for the duration.  I guess you just have to take you hat off to Bez, someone who’s managed to last 20 years in the music industry by being an onstage dancer with a little indie band.  Having expected the worst, it’s a surprisingly nice way to end Day 1. 

All the 2009 Splendour photos are on Flickr and the individual band sets are in the following links:

The Living End
Sarah Blasko
Bloc Party
Happy Mondays

Bluejuice are a band that’s yet to win me over, having seen them at last year’s Splendour and then a few months later supporting We Are Scientists at The Zoo.  As Stav from the band kindly commented on that post (and which shamefully I didn’t get around to replying to), they’re obviously not my thing.  And yet watching them this afternoon, even though I only see them for a few songs, I find myself warming to them more than before.  It’s a much slicker performance that the one at The Zoo and the sound is a lot less grating than it was that night.  Following Stav around the stage through my viewfinder, as he brandishes his mic stand I suddenly notice Jake out of the corner of my eye leaping theatrically off the fold-back speaker; I think I was the only photographer in the pit not primed and ready for it and that’ll teach me for not paying more attention.  It’s the main jump that he does in the first three songs as well.  He does a smaller jump in the second song but just from the stage and I’m the wrong side of him to really benefit from the second chance.  What the photo gains from the position of the bass player is lost to the height of the stage and the encroachment of the fold-back speakers into the frame.

Bizarrely, given the size and strength of their own back-catalogue and the limited festival time-slot in which to play, You Am I start their set with a cover of Regurgitator’s ‘I Sucked A Lot of Cock‘.  However, after that it’s a real tour de force greatest hits set. 

The band sound pretty rough though, partly due to the sound in the Supertop and partly because despite having played so many of these songs for so long they sound a bit ragged and under-rehearsed.  They bring out Jack Ladder for ‘Heavy Heart‘, which is slowed down even more that the original and played  lounge-lizard style; again it’s a slightly baffling move, killing the momentum and the mood for a few minutes of self-indulgence, before a return to more up-tempo songs as they wind up their forty five minutes stage time.  When they hit their stride they can still give any band a run for their money but they continue to perplex, maybe needing the inconsistency and left-turns to keep things interesting for them.  They’re frustrating to photograph this afternoon, with Tim Roger’s hat brim keeping the light off his face, and Andy Kent and Davey Lane largely hidden in the shadows.  Luckily there’s always Rusty Hopkinson and even luckier he always makes for some really nice photos.

Birds of Tokyo are one of those awful rock bands that Australians just seem to not be able to get enough of.  They’re like those terrible non-descript soft rock bands that were popular in the UK in the late 1980s.  Some congratulations are in order though; given the amount of radio, tv and music magazine coverage they are a worthy addition to ‘The List‘. 

From a new addition to ‘The List’ to a founding member; fellow Perth band Little Birdy.  Katie Steele’s fashion stylings are the stuff of legends; from never-ending, multi-day photo shoots, as she chops and changes between outfits until happy, to the inside of her apartment, which allegedly hardly a square inch of carpet showing from under huge mountains of clothes and shoes piled throughout the place.  However, there are some people who should never wear leather trousers, probably most of the population to be honest, and Katie Steele is definitely one of them.  And especially not with open toe sandal-type heels.  Additionally, there must be something in the rest of the band’s contract which means that when they play live the only person who’s allowed to have any light on them is their lead singer. 

It’s 7:30pm and there’s finally a band that I really want to see.  The Special’s video for ‘Ghost Town‘ is one of my strongest childhood musical memories and it’s a complete thrill just to be having the chance to see them, let alone getting to photograph them.  Whilst band reformations are so often a huge disappointment, especially when it involves changes to the line-up, as tonight does with founder member and songwriter Jerry Dammers not wanted by the rest of the band, tonight there is no disappointment and it’s a seemingly rare occasion of a reformed band actually living up to their reputation.  It’s a truly exceptional display straight from the very first note and it’s startling watching a band whose members are all into their 50s put so much energy into their performance that it makes the rest of the bands who have played today pale into insignificance.  And then there’s the songs.  Even though they made heavy use of covers and reworkings of older ska songs, particularly on the first Specials album, it’s amazing looking at the quality of those first two records, ‘Specials‘ and ‘More Specials‘, which make up the bulk of tonight’s show; all killer, no filler. ‘Do The Dog‘, ‘A Message To You Rudy‘, ‘It’s Up To You‘, ‘Concrete Jungle‘, ‘Monkey Man‘, ‘Blank Expression‘, ‘Nite Klub‘ are amongst the songs played tonight and add on the non-album tracks of ‘Gangsters‘ and ‘Ghost Town’ and it’s a truly stunning hour of music. There’s always so much cynicism related to reformations, much of it well deserved, especially when the bands appear to just be going through the motions (yes Pixies, I’m looking at you), but if The Specials are going through the motions tonight I can’t even start to comprehend just how good they must have been 30 years ago.  Really special.     

Afterwards there’s a bit of an argument between most of the photographers and the promoter’s rep, with the photographers convinced they’ve been short-changed and only got to photograph two songs, leading to the rep apologising.  There’s no need though; we got our three songs fair and square, it’s just that they played the short version of ‘Too Much, Too Young‘ which barely makes it to two minutes.  In retrospect I wish I’d switched to a wider lens as there was just so much happening right in front of you that the 70-200 lens just wasn’t the right choice. The most disappointing thing was that the lighting was pretty poor and with Terry Hall sulking around in the dark with his back to the crowd for the most part I didn’t get a very good a set of photos to do justice to just how good they were tonight.

All the 2009 Splendour photos are on Flickr and the individual band sets are in the following links:

Bluejuice
You Am I
Birds of Tokyo
Litte Birdy
The Specials

Having arrived at our house for the weekend in New Brighton in the dark and just as a heavy rain storm passed overhead, Saturday starts with a quick walk around the locality to try and find if any mobile signal can be found so that photos and blogs can be uploaded.  As not even a hint of ‘3′ mobile signal can be found anywhere near the house, it’s time to get in the car and see where the nearest place with a signal is, which, as it turns out, is about a ten minute drive away in Ocean Shores on top of a big hill.  Friday’s blog is written and uploaded along with some photos from the front seat, although the time taken to upload a few small files indicates that this is not going to be a sensible option for sending photos over the weekend. 

Back to the house and it’s time to get ready for moving off to the festival site.  Making use of the outside toilet I have a bit of a shock on flushing when this little guy gets washed out from under the rim and has to hang on for dear life to avoid being flushed away…

Driving into Byron Bay is a surprisingly painless exercise; there’s no traffic hold ups either on the way or getting into the site and no queues to get the photo passes or get into the festival. In fact it all happens so quickly that there’s plenty of waiting until it’s time to collect the infamous fluoro vests that we need to get into the photo pit.

It’s also at this point that I find that I haven’t got any mobile reception for tweeting, instead having to make do with the time honoured tradition of paper and pen.

With three albums behind them, Manchester Orchestra have to drawn a bit of a short straw when it comes to their positioning on the bill, being the second band of the day after the North Coast NSW’s Glass Towers but before a whole host of possibly lesser, fairly new Australian bands with limited recording histories.  From a photographic point of view it’s a bit frustrating as there’s a lot of ’sideways’ playing – the band members playing to each other on the stage as opposed to projecting out to the audience – and the lighting is kept to a minimum, meaning that there’s a lot of dark areas on the stage.  The songs seem to be really lengthy and with all the tempo and rhythm changes it’s hard to tell whether I’ve been photographing for three songs or fifteen by the time I leave the photo pit.  They drop ‘I’ve Got Friends‘, not surprisingly their best known song given the amount of Triple J play it’s been given, in the middle of their set causing a mass exodus from the tent afterwards.  This seems to be an ongoing theme over the weekend; play your most famous song and watch the assembled masses disappear after you’ve played it.  Given decreasing album sales, the increasing reliance on singles and Generations Y’s 2-second attention span, it sadly looks as if this will be an ever increasingly familiar sight at music festivals.  It feels like it’s going to become a real-time version of those 80s revival gigs; reel out a current band to play a couple of singles they’ve released in the last year - their big hit and the new song – and have them shuffle off stage to be replaced by another current one hit wonder.

Despite last night’s heavy showers and the ominous clouds over Byron earlier in the day, walking over to see Leader Cheetah in the GW McLennan tent it’s suddenly cleared up and has become really warm.  Arriving at the tent brings confirmation that as well as introducing a Big-Day-Out-type D structure in the Supertop, the organisers have also moved the entrance into every photo pit to the opposite side from where they were last year.  For the Supertop and Mix Up stages the entrances are now on the far side from each other, meaning a longer walk around until the evening, when we all get to be escorted into the Supertop pit via backstage.  However, as there’s no escort into the Mix Up tent, it means having to negotiate the crowds any time we want to photograph in the Mix Up tent.

Leader Cheetah have been one of those bands that I’ve been meaning to check out for ages but have managed to miss every time they’ve played Brisbane.  No review of them seems to be complete without a reference to Neil Young but listening to them it’s not as obvious as  it might seem.  There’s a definite late 60s/early 70s Laurel Canyon folk/rock tinge but it doesn’t leap out at you as being particularly Neil Young-ish more than anything else from that era (although re-listening on their MySpace site it is a bit more obvious, especially in a song like ‘Bloodlines‘).  It’s pretty good stuff and definitely something to check out again, ideally when I’m not seeing most bands for a handful of songs before rushing off to photograph at another stage.  The tent is surprisingly busy which is good to see at this early on in the day, especially when compared to last year’s emptiness at this stage for most of the day.    

Back at the Supertop and it’s a Dew Process shoe-in, consecutive-year return for Yves Klein Blue.  And what a difference a makeover has made to the band; you could now believe that they’re bona fide rock stars, they definitely look the part now and singer/guitarist Michael Tomlinson has an undeniable star quality about him.  It’s probably no coincidence that everyone I know who likes them happens to be female.  Musically it’s still fairly unspectacular – Libertines lite - and I still remain to be convinced by them despite having seen them a number of times over the last couple years.  For reasons known only to themselves they decide to cover ‘Born To Run‘ and it’s an ugly mess to say the least, with Tomlinson coming nowhere near to even doing a acceptable Springsteen impersonation, but luckily I’ve got other places to be so don’t hang around to hear it all the way to the end.

Having initially dismissed Bridezilla as a bit of a Sydney-media hyped band, I started to really warm to them first via last.fm and then by seeing them at ATP Mt Buller earlier in the year and so was looking forward to catching their full set at Splendour.  The three songs that we get in the photo pit rush by all too quickly so I don’t get any many shots as I would have wanted.  Unlike ATP, singer Holiday Sidewinder is guitar-less for these three songs and looks uncomfortable without it.  Sitting down to watch the rest of their set there is an onstage awkwardness about the band; it’s as if they’re trying too hard to be alluring and vampish.  Watching them you can understand why they’re the latest Australian band to be picked up by ATP, playing at the Flaming Lips curated event in New York in September.  However, listening to their whole set, there’s still a sense that they still need to develop further, with the songs following similar a template, meandering too much at times and maintaining a very even tempo across the set, even though there’s a maturity and obvious charm about their songs.  There is promise but they need to really start delivering now if they are to make the most of the opportunities being put their way.  

I photographed Dappled Cites back at the first Come Together at Luna Park in April 2005 before they truncated their name and dropped and the “Fly” bit; I was fed up with them after the first song, which involved a mostly floundering instrumental track with much posturing and peppered with the vocalists theatrically approaching their microphones to scream into them.  Fast forward almost 4 1/2 years and nothing much has changed.  Whilst fun to photograph, there’s a really irritating smugness about the band in a “look at us, aren’t we clever” way.  I’m all for arrogance and pretentiousness in music, a single flick through my record collection would show you that, but when you sound like you want to be The Killers it doesn’t wash.  I keep thinking that there’s a real 1980’s wrongness about them but can’t put my finger on exactly who they remind me of, the closest comparison I can come to would probably be something like bad Ultravox.  I think they play that awful song that they started with at Come Together all those years ago.  I don’t think it was this one, but was similar, and hopefully this clip might go some way to explaining why I find them so irritating.    

Five bands down and I’m just not feeling into it, not even in the slightest to be honest, but the weekend is still young and there’s still hope for better things.

More Splendour photos on Flickr.

Manchester Orchestra
Leader Cheetah
Yves Klein Blue
Bridezilla
Dappled Cities

I will admit to be an occasional Pitchfork reader.  I still hate the layout and the font size is still far too small and the wrong colour, but maybe once a week I’ll remember to go and have a look and read a few reviews.  If the physical act of reading reviews on their site wasn’t as painful as it is I might go there more often.  Despite the fact that Pitchfork’s best songs of the 2000s seems to have countless pop, RnB and hip-hop tracks in it, they really are kidding anyone if they’re trying to cover up the fact that they’re anything other than the bastion of beard-stroking, white-boy indie.  They have an unarguable authority when it comes to championing these bands and the high scores afforded the likes of Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear and Deerhunter have undoubtedly, for better or worse, helped bring these bands to a much wider audience.  But listening to and watching Deerhunter it’s a bit of a mystery as to why they’re lauded so much.  There’s a heavy early 90’s shoegaze influence but it’s so generic and unremarkable that they could easily be one of the lesser band from the Melody Maker-hyped ‘Scene That Celebrates Itself‘ .  Ultimately Deerhunter are nowhere near as good as Pitchfork would let you believe; it’s akin to being told in 1991 that Moose or Revolver were one of the best bands in the world.  The Rational Academy more than hold their own against Deerhunter although, in typical fashion, the majority in attendance aren’t paying much attention to the support band.

By a pure stroke of luck I chose my usual side of The Zoo’s stage and end up right in front of singer/guitarist Bradford Cox, although the light isn’t great and he plays with his eyes shut for the most part. His Marfan’s Syndrome is more than obvious at close quarters, with his extremely gangly frame only emphasised by the jacket he’s wearing. After a few songs I move sides and take some shots through the gap between the speakers behind the front facade of the stage. It’s always been a favourite view at The Zoo as it gives you a good side-on aspect and allows you to play around with background/foreground focus as well as often being the best vantage point to try to photograph the drummers located at the back of the stage. Sadly, this is the last time I get to make use of this angle as the next time I’m here to photograph I find that there’s a new and bigger speaker in place and the gap has virtually gone. There’s still a bit of a gap but it’s not really big enough to photograph across the stage, which is a real shame.

Some more photos on Flickr.

Deerhunter

The Rational Academy

Tonight is a lesson in how not to photograph a gig.

As it’s a Friday, a Thursday night decision is made to take my camera gear to work and go straight out, first to the Bleeding Heart Gallery’s Knock-Off Drinks before heading onto The Zoo.  However, forgetting to take my 28-70mm and only realising at 5pm that all I’ve got with me is the 70-200mm doesn’t help my cause.  Neither does drinking an awful lot of red wine. And then some cider.

A combination of taxi and walking to The Zoo means managing to get there towards the end of The Scare’s set.  There’s still a few songs left but I just can’t get my camera to focus and no amount of taking it apart and checking the settings is fixing the problem.  Then I remember that I’d had right eye contact lens issues earlier in the day and had ended up taking it out, something I’d completely forgotten in the drunken haze.  The camera was working fine, it was me that was having the focusing issues… 

So I end up having to photograph using my left eye, something that is a lot harder than I would have expected, with the hand/eye coordination, just the seemingly simple act of looking through the viewfinder with my left eye, posing real problems and poking myself in my right eye with my thumb positioned on the shutter release button causing extreme discomfort every time I try and take a photo.

Wolf & Cub are the best I’ve seen them, but with singer/guitarist Joel much more animated than previous times, it only adds to tonight’s difficulties in trying to take some photos and it seems to take forever to finish off the 36-exposure roll of film. 

And after all this, the photos end up being pretty rubbish.  I decided to try out the Ilford 3200 film again after a long break but the images are very disappointing when compared to my usual choice of pushing Ilford HP5, with the images being very flat and with not much in the way of contrast, and needing Photoshop to tidy them up.

It was probably a good job that I was only photographing for myself tonight and not for any publications…