Mess+Noise: Today

News: Tumbleweed, Drones Set For Lost Weekend

2009-11-06T03:00:00Z

Savvy festival-goers looked towards Queensland’s recently announced Lost Weekend Festival as an indication of what acts might be appearing at Golden Plains next year – and they weren’t far off.

International acts Dinosaur Jr, The Dirty Projectors, Wooden Shjips, Jeffrey Lewis and Nashville Pussy – all confirmed for Golden Plains – will perform at the inaugural event at the Ivory's Rock Conference Centre on the outskirts of Brisbane in March.

The festival will also feature a strong local contingent including Little Birdy, Tumbleweed (pictured), British India, The Drones, Wolf & Cub, Dan Kelly, Whitley, The John Steel Singers and Regular John. Full line-up below.

Ticket prices range from $166-$187 for a two-day pass, or $207-$228 for all three days. The extra $20 is for camping with power (now where’s the fun in that?). For more information click here, but beware of broken links.

LOST WEEKEND FESTIVAL

March 5-7
Ivory's Rock Conference Centre, QLD

Dinosaur Jr (US) + The Brian Jonestown Massacre (US) + Little Birdy + Tumbleweed + British India + The Dirty Projectors (US) + The Drones + Nashville Pussy (US) + Butterfingers + Wooden Shjips (US) + Littlered + Whitley + Wolf & Cub + MM9 + Dan Kelly + Busdriver (US) + Jeff Lewis and The Junkyard (US) + The John Steel Singers + New Pants (China) + Regular John

News: SMAC Nominees Announced

2009-11-06T01:00:00Z

Decoder Ring, Seekae, Lost Valentinos, Sarah Blasko and Dappled Cities (pictured) will battle it out for Record of the Year at the Sydney Music, Arts and Culture (SMAC) Awards next month.

Held last year for the first time, the publically voted SMACs aim to celebrate “the best Sydney has to offer” in the fields of music, art and culture. Voting is now open in 12 publically-voted categories including Best Music Event, Best Live Music Act, Best Sydney Song and the Next Best Thing award for up and coming acts. The winners will be announced at a ceremony at Helm Bar on December 8. List of music-related nominees below.

Last year’s winners included Dappled Cities (Best Music Performance), The Presets (Record of the Year for Apocalypso) and Cloud Control (Newcomer of the Year). Voting is open until November 25 at smacawards.com.

2009 SMAC MUSIC NOMINEES

Best Music Event
Spunk Records’ Another Night on Earth
Brian Eno’s Luminous Festival
Nick Cave’s All Tomorrow’s Parties
Jingle Jangle
Gay Bash
Parklife

Best Live Music Act
Sarah Blasko
KillaQueenz
Jack Ladder
Bluejuice
Seekae

Record of the Year
Decoder Ring – They Blind The Stars And The Wild Team
Seekae – The Sound Of Trees Falling On People
Lost Valentinos – Cities Of Gold
Sarah Blasko – As Day Follows Night
Dappled Cities – Zounds

Best Collective
Cab Sav Collective
Interesting South
Even Brooks
Red Rattler
Trust Fun

Best Sydney Song
Philadelphia Grand Jury – ‘Going To The Casino’
Jonathan Boulet – ‘A Community Service Announcement’
Fergus Brown – ‘John, She Was Never Only Dancing’
Sarah Blasko – ‘We Won’t Run’
Dapples Cities – ‘The Price’
bluejuice – ‘Broken Leg’

Next Big Thing
Sherlock’s Daughter
Megastick Fanfare
Jonathan Boulet
Danimals
Canyons

Live Review: Wagons - Northcote Social Club Hotel, Melbourne, Nov 2 09

2009-11-06T12:00:00Z

At 9am on Monday morning the streets of Melbourne were empty; the consequence of an orphan working day nestled between the weekend and Cup Day, that most incongruous public holiday perversely embraced by even the most strident anti-gambling advocates.

Twelve hours later and every man, woman, child and their dog seemed to be in public view, taking in the sights and sounds of a balmy late spring evening. Competition was plentiful: in St Kilda there was Timmy and Johnny, in Fitzroy some bloke called TJ was putting on a show and in Northcote we had the cast of Wagons in all their plaid glory.

Henry Wagons is a born entertainer. Unlike those other tortured souls for whom art is a means of purging emotional demons, or massaging a fragile ego, Henry is as happy as the proverbial pig in shit. And why shouldn’t he be? Modern times are certainly good for Henry and co. The band’s latest album, The Rise and Fall of Goodtown, has precipitated a quantum leap in the band’s national popularity. As he introduced ‘Eagle on the Hill’, Henry joked that even Adelaide seems to have come ’round to his shtick.

The band appears on stage with Henry out front. A western shirt, black jeans, the headband a subtle indicator of the enthusiasm with which he’ll approach his craft tonight. His eyes dart around the crowd, and the banter begins. He’s like the MC you always want at your cousin’s wedding, able to make a couple of marginally ribald jokes that will put the crowd at ease, punctuated with a self-deprecating edge that dilutes any suggestion of inflated ego.

The gig begins with ‘Man Sold’ from the Draw Blood album and there’s a surge of attention – and bodies – to the front of stage. Much of the set is drawn from Goodtown – ‘The Gambler’, the Wangaratta meets Canned Heat boogie of ‘Drive All Night Till Dawn’, Elvis’ Vegas-era ‘Never Been to Spain’, ‘Goodtown’, ‘Keep Your Eyes Off My Sister’ and ‘Evette’ – with the occasional dip into the back catalogue (‘Send a Message’, ‘Pamela May’ and a crowd augmented ‘Willie Nelson’).

The whole show is permeated with the sense of fun and enjoyment you might associate with the touring circus shows of yore. Henry never loses his Cheshire cat grin and even Matty Hassett’s impromptu rendition of ‘Believe It Or Not’ (the theme song from The Greatest American Hero) slides under the radar of acceptable taste purely on account of the goodwill with which the band has flavoured the room.

Having encouraged us to return the next day to witness him calling the “Race That Stops A Nation”, Henry bids us farewell. The next day will be characterised by the twin demons of gambling and drink, but tonight there is only goodness in the air.

Review: Tara Simmons - All You Can

2009-11-06T12:00:00Z

As far as female solo artists in this country go, there are few as idiosyncratic as Tara Simmons. She thinks about songwriting the way someone like Van Dyke Parks thinks about pop music, how arrangements and embellishments can enhance a song, rather than just support it. Following on from her enchanting album of this year, Spilt Milk, this five-track EP documents a more focussed Simmons. She mightn’t be as versed in the pop idiom as Megan Washington or Clare Bowditch, but her songwriting is wonderfully quirky, blooming with voices and instruments.

Opener ‘The Fundamentalist’ feels like the bridging song between Spilt Milk and this release, and it’s the song that’s most reticent of Simmons’ strongest influence, the eclectic Argentinian chanteuse Juana Molina. You can hear it in the horse-clop beats, the rustic banjo and the swimming spectre of voices. ‘All You Can’ is arguably the strongest pop song Simmons has written to date, and though I have some qualms with the mix on this one, its ebbing texture helps to bolster the tune’s simple melodic nucleus. My favourite, however, is the one song that tends towards the darker side of things, both lyrically and tonally. ‘I Cannot Be Saved’ is archetypal Simmons, a slow-burner that subtly builds, climaxing with a squiggly Korg, cellos, trumpets and her scatting BVs. But the most beguiling thing of all is her voice, one that soars exultantly and majestically right throughout All You Can, consistently grabbing your attention, even with myriad layers in the music.

If you’re looking for a cure from the seemingly never-ending onslaught of twee girls with acoustic guitars, consider Tara Simmons your panacea.

News: In Brief: Last Dinosaurs, Call The Medic, MusicNSW

2009-11-05T11:00:00Z

Brisbane teens Last Dinosaurs (pictured) have recently inked a deal with Dew Process, home to The Grates, Sarah Blasko and Yves Klein Blue. The four-piece, whose average age is 18, will release their first single, ‘As Far As You’re Concerned’, digitally through Dew Process/UMA on November 27. The signing follows a triple j-endorsed demo, Honolulu, and a showcase at the Big Sound conference in their native Brisbane in September. The band will be playing across the east coast throughout November, supporting the likes of You Am I, I Heart Hiroshima, Red Riders and Leader Cheetah … After three years of gig-related injuries and general riff-raff, Sydney four-piece Call The Medic, Call The Nurse!! have called it quits. The band will play their final show on November 20 at Spectrum in Sydney. Formed by guitarist Dave and singer Simo in suburban Sydney, the band features members of Simo Soo, Hira Hira, The Reverie, Nice Guys, Yeah Bears, Between The Devil and The Deep and Pissy Elliott. They self-released one EP, and while it’s long out of print, you can download it for free here. Their epitaph: “We ruled at life.” … Music industry support organisation MusicNSW (the guys behind the recent Sound Summit conference in Newcastle) are on the hunt for a new corporate director after Jane Powles stood down earlier this week. The organisation is now seeking a new permanent part-time corporate director to work alongside creative director and occasional M+N contributor Eliza Sarlos. A full position description is available via the MusicNSW website. Applications close on November 13.

Feature: Skinny Jean: Narrative And Diagnosis

2009-11-05T01:00:00Z

Shem Allen from Brisbane’s Skinny Jean talks to CRAIG MATHIESON about writing from the heart not the head, literary inspirations and being unfairly typecast as a Christian band.

Brisbane five-piece Skinny Jean cover significant terrain on their debut album Dolce Doggerel, including cotton field spiritual, freak folk, ’90s alternative rock, electronic soundscapes and stratospheric pop. It may explain why the record has been released twice: first as an independent project in their hometown and more recently on a national level with the backing of a distributor.

The record is busy to the point of distraction. Named for the opening number on Powderfinger’s 1996 album Double Allergic, the band – Shem Allen (vocals/guitar), Andrew Sydes (guitar/vocals), Jemma Hicks (keyboards/vocals), Graham Ritchie (bass) and Sam Schlenker (drums) – remakes itself from track to track. But it’s not mere restlessness, instead there’s a sense of trying to evolve, of a desire to push themselves as a means of earning their opportunity. Responsibility matters with Skinny Jean.

At the comparatively young age of 22, Allen has more than a few responsibilities himself. Married, for all of four weeks (Skinny Jean didn’t play the reception despite his coaxing), with a nine-month-old baby, he’s trying to finish a small ensemble arrangement for the jazz standard ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ before talking to M+N and then heading off to band rehearsal. The assignment is part of his Bachelor of Music degree from the Queensland University of Technology.

Allen grew up in Toowoomba, the inland city 150 kilometres to the west of Brisbane. It was there that he first met his future bandmates Sydes and Schlenker, with whom he’d jam on blues classics. In Brisbane they went through several bassists before Ritchie joined in 2007, while the following year Hicks replaced Heidi Minchin to cement the current line-up. With Dolce Doggerel already ageing they intend to have a new EP out in May.

The nominal frontman, and chief lyricist, in a committed democracy, Allen is a curious mix of ambition and non-committal observations; occasionally his answers drift away because he doesn’t want to give voice to where they’re leading. On the band’s MySpace page, he credits himself as Skên Onion, partly to see if journalists will use that name without checking and partially as a reminder that his great-grandmother, a member of the Stolen Generation, had Onion forced upon her as a surname.

Silliness and historic tragedy sit together within Allen’s ploy, and such contrasts are a recurring event within and around Skinny Jean.

How does what you’re studying inform what the band’s doing?
It’s quicker to throw an arrangement together, or a vocal part, than if we were untrained so to speak. For me, when I write, I like to use the skills I have to pull things apart and that tries to be more thoughtful in what I write than I used to be. There’s a visceral and cerebral dichotomy that you have to keep a balance between.

The classic rap on studying music is that it over-intellectualises, so that technique and analysis replace feel and inspiration.
The stuff on Dolce is feeling-based – there’s no analytical edge to it because it’s older material. These days the stuff I write is more technical, but if it’s too technical I tend to scrap it.

Are the two streams merging into one?
I hope so. That’s what I want it to become. [Film composer] Bernard Hermann was someone who could create this incredible feeling, but it was also very technical. If something is too technical I think that’s a reflection of immaturity on the composer’s behalf. For me, I want to get to the stage where I can marry cause and effect to a state where you can’t distinguish.

What are your memories of Toowoomba?
Sometimes Toowoomba feels like a country town and sometimes it feels like a big city. It can be pretty, but generally pretty bleak and suburban. Some places in Toowoomba are kinda magical – like the tops of the [grain] silos.

Is that something you’d climb as a teenager?
Yes. Those and the cemetery, which was between my house and the silos, were the key features. We’d climb them at night. But Toowoomba was not conducive to pursuing a career in music, so I moved to the big smoke.

Were you always going to be a musician?
Yes. I’ve been playing guitar since I was two or three, and I’m basically shit at everything else. I wrote a song at 11 – lots of power chords, but I can’t remember the lyrics.

When did you first write what you considered a decent song?
I’m still wondering about that. I wrote [Dolce Doggerel’s] ‘Anhedonia’ when I was 16 or 17. I sat on it for a while, as I did with most things I wrote at that age.

It’s a good small town song.
At the time I was really depressed over high school. I was in the midst of teen angst.

When did you think that there was something to pursue with Skinny Jean?
When we got a triple j Unearthed feature spot [in late 2006] with a very early recording of ‘Anhedonia’ – they liked it and gave us the slot, at which point we went, “Oh, we could do something”. Up until then it had been for kicks.

Did you feel part of a scene in Brisbane?
A little bit divorced. We were just doing what most young bands do – MySpace messaging other bands and asking them if we could play a show together. We were all pretty naive, even Sam who’d played in a touring band previously. We didn’t know how to do anything. The best thing was having mates whose bands were a big further along, plus a lot of friends to come to the shows.

Did you create your own scene or join an existing one?
We merged the two. I’m pretty sure we feel a part of what we do now and I’m pretty sure we brought in other people to join it.

Did you feel a connection to Brisbane’s musical history?
That’s an echelon that’s so beyond everything we know. Even with Regurgitator and Powderfinger it’s like they exist on this other platform – we’ve never supported anyone who has even supported them.

“There’s a fear on our part as being construed as a Christian band, as several members of the band attend church regularly. When you’ve got that connection there, in our experience, it’s so easy to be written off.”

The album is very ambitious, and it sounds like the ambition that comes from having a group of people working together who have very different ideas; no-one worries about how the outcome will be perceived because they’re just interested in whether the ideas can fit together.
Everyone in the band certainly has a creative flair. Everyone is hands on with writing, arranging and producing. It can lead to conflict, it can lead to too many ideas, but it can also lead to some really interesting results where we screw as much out of the songs as possibly can. There’s definitely an ambition on Dolce.

You can hear it in the unexpected changes, the way parts drop in and take over, that signify someone’s idea gaining the ascendancy within the piece. ‘Army Wife’ taking off mid-song is a good example of that.
On ‘Army Wife’ Andrew came up with that guitar line, that belting climax, and I felt that was appropriate. I’d wanted something like that there when I wrote the song, but he exceeded my expectations.

Do you think of the bass and drums as being a rock rhythm section?
Well, jmag said we had too much jazz drumming. A fair proportion of it is 4/4, although our future is less about it. I just get bored with that. As good as so much music is, I feel personally that there’s so much more you can do than stick to 4/4. I want to try and advance that.

You’re embarrassed saying that, aren’t you?
Kind of. Yes.

But many musicians think that: it’s not like everyone starts a band with the aim of maintaining the status quo.
You’d be surprised though. We see a lot of bands where I don’t know how they couldn’t be thinking that, but thankfully they’re outweighed by the ones who aren’t.

A lot of ideas in the songs are dramatic in that they reach for a transcendent moment. It’s not just cathartic, because musically that denotes a brute force, but an attempt to attain a quality beyond that.
When I write songs, and I’m only speaking for myself in this regard, I ask myself, “Is this worth saying and what is the best way of saying it?” More so these days than with the songs on Dolce, which are more lighthearted, when you ask yourself what’s worth saying you think about what you can say and there’s a whole bunch of philosophical questions stemming from that. But the best way to say it musically is with a real drama that hammers the point home, and it feels good to do that live because you can connect with the audience and revivify the song as part of your performance.

Do you get a physical sensation when it works at a gig?
It’s kind of euphoric when something connects with the audience, but also anxiety-inducing as well. It drives you on, but that can lead to over playing it. We’ve had reviews where people have said I lay it on way too thick.

So there’s an addiction to those moments.
Exactly.

You open the album with ‘Good Morning’, a traditional African-American spiritual that’s virtually a century old. Was that a tribute to another time and place or an attempt to capture that emotion for contemporary use?
It’s a mixture of both. I was in this back alley bookshop in Toowoomba and found this book called American Negro Songs [by Harry Work] and it was the first edition from 1940. I put it on lay-by and eventually took it home because I was in the mood for it at the time. So I learned a whole bunch of songs out of it, took them apart, but when the idea went around of putting one on the album it was more suggested as, “Haha, yeah right”, but actually everyone agreed at the same time. We still stick by it, but we’re the whitest people ever and we’re not fantastic singers either.

What do you get out of it?
I grew up in a Christian family and for me that song symbolises a real connection to religion as opposed to a superficial one.

What denomination were you raised in?
Kinda non-denominational. In high school I started going to a Lutheran congregation of my own volition, but basically after high school I haven’t been back to church. My congregation was a very progressive one for the Lutheran church – women were allowed to be laymen. It was pretty liberal.

There’s a thematic stream on the album concerned with the ills of the modern world, on cuts such as ‘AntiOkie’ and ‘Ape’, what inspired that?
That comes from my Stanislavksi-ing myself into books: [John Steinbeck’s] Grapes of Wrath for ‘AntiOkie’ and [Fyodor Dostoevsky’s] Crime and Punishment for ‘Ape’.

But the setting feels distinctly modern.
I try to do that so it’s not completely alienating. The emotions behind the ideas are still relevant, but I wanted to express it in a way that’s compatible with the times now.

It’s post-Globalisation, not the Great Depression, which adds to the sense of dread, of individuals being dwarfed by a system.
I think that comes across more in my songs than in the everyday. I just try to put myself into the character’s shoes in those particular songs. I also wanted to tip my hat to the wars in the Middle East – some of the footage left the impression on me that the cycle of killing has the same sense of justice that’s resorted to by Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.

Many artists, whether due to post-modern distress or the distance of irony, find it hard to take classical themes and play them straight, but you do take them seriously. You’re not interested in satire or distortion, it’s narrative and diagnosis. How did that eventuate?

With some of the songs on Dolce narrative was the most coherent way I could express an idea. I’m not in any way trained as a writer, my only education is from reading. And reading the classics manifests itself in my lyrics. I don’t listen to a lot of music that has narrative-based lyrics, so I felt there was a paucity there.

There’s something to be said for a library card. Tell me about ‘Anguish Sandwich’, which ends with a litany of the modern age’s ills and then contrasts that with the final line, “To think we could’ve touched the face of God.”
When I was about 11 I went to the Philippines with my mum and our church to visit congregations and help out there. We went to some slums and that left a big impression on my about how lucky we are here. I get angry sometimes that we, well at least in my circle of friends and people I know, get bogged down in things that are really quite luxurious. I have seen Coca-Cola billboards above terrible slums and it’s ripe for imagery, but when I finish with the line of touching the face of God it’s more saying that we’ve wasted our lives on trivial things as opposed to doing something meaningful.

Does that idea tie into Dolce Doggerel’s “Ecclesiastes” – Andrew [Sydes’] lyric, not yours – which uses the title of the Hebrew Bible book that references the debate between earthly pleasure and spiritual dedication?
I still don’t understand completely Andrew’s lyric, but I know from talking to him that it’s his favourite book from the Bible because it’s like, “Well, everything is meaningless, so just enjoy life”.

You’re being a touch gentle with that interpretation. Isn’t there an alternate take where the book stresses leading a spiritual life to compensate for those pleasures, which should be ignored?
The author of the books says that they’ve worked hard and tried all these things and they still weren’t happy and the only real happiness can be achieved from a transcendent connection in whatever manifestation that is. In terms of how we live our lives it’s saying do whatever’s good for you, which is a comforting thing to read when the Christian church can be so cut and dried.

Does getting pleasure from music accentuate or sit side by side with faith, or does it replace it?
I’m not in the position to say that I have much faith. Perhaps being immersed in spirituality is reflected in that visceral quality. If there’s a connection to Christianity in the lyrical content or a reference in the actual music it’s just my experience. It’s not forced.

To a lot of people in secular life music replaces what they once might have got from religion – music supplies their sense of spirituality. Now that’s plainly apparent within Skinny Jean, but obviously there’s also the original spirituality of faith present.
It’s a psychological connection and I don’t profess to understand it completely. If I grew up in Morocco and had listened to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan all the time, I’d reflect that.

We’re just circling that uncomfortable phrase “Christian band”, aren’t we?
There’s a fear on our part as being construed as a Christian band, as several members of the band attend church regularly. When you’ve got that connection there, in our experience, it’s so easy to be written off. We’ve heard comments about the band, backstabby things, about our connection with that. Apparently it matters to some people.

Was there a reason you grew away from your religious upbringing?
It was a gradual change. Sex before marriage is frowned upon, so living with my partner would have been difficult to reconcile with the church. And out of that stems questions about certain doctrines and theories. Then again I have a friend who grew up and studied philosophy and after a long time he’s back to where he started with the church.

Dolce Doggerel still forms the basis of your live show, even though it’s quite an old album to the band. How do you feel about it now as another tour looms?
We’re kind of over it. I’m the most over it out of the band and I’m the keenest to get songs happening, but as much as I thought I’d be playing these songs live and moaning about it, I’m actually still revivifying whatever the inspiration was, so it manifests itself on the stage.

SKINNY JEAN LAUNCH ‘DOLCE DOGGEREL’

Friday, November 6
Q Bar, Darlinghurst, NSW
w/Megastick Fanfare + The Parking Lot Experiments

Saturday, November 7
Heritage Hotel, Bulli, NSW
(w/Megastick Fanfare + The Parking Lot Experiments)

Saturday, November 21
Pony, Melbourne, VIC
w/Megastick Fanfare + The Parking Lot Experiments

Feature: Dave Graney: The AB Box Of Adelaide

2009-11-05T01:00:00Z

DAVE GRANEY goes in search of a mythical box of fast food – the kind Elvis would be proud of – while on tour in Adelaide.

Last time we played in Adelaide – myself, Clare Moore and the Lurid Yellow Mist – we were in a tent down by the river. I’m into Chris Farley, but I don't think many other people are, so I kept this thought to myself … until now. Farley played a life coach on Saturday Night Live, who proudly proclaimed he, “LIVED IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!” to everybody he was trying to help up out of the gutter. The fact he was still living “IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER” never dampened his enthusiasm. If ever I see an old clip of him it cracks me up when he explodes with that routine. Chris died in a hotel room where he’d been partying for several days until his body gave up. It blasted through his mind and was found there, like an old balloon, one day by the irrelevant authorities. We know better now, we have Dr Phil.

I ran into an old friend from the punk rock wars in Coffs Harbour last year. He's a Sydney cat but we pass each other now and again over the years. Its a light thing, low maintenance, that's how I like it with friends. Anyway, he came out of the swamp, literally, to a gig in the middle of winter in that grim retirement camp of a town. (The streets are full of tiny investment motels in which you can see the owners, sad retired fellows staring at a flat monitor in the evening gloom).

Yes, my friend turned up at the Wednesday night show and we shared many easy laughs after hours. Especially the news that he was living in a van down by the river in an area called “The Gallows”. I stowed my gear away and went off with him and his girlfriend to a nearby house where we ate burritos and drink tea. They also had a couple of skinny joints. We spoke of Arthur Lee and Roky Erickson, of friends with liver damage, and of madness, drugs and booze.

“There were lots of circus type people about. Not dodgy, rootless and toothless strongmen and the like, more your modern educated variety. Bright young things with degrees in unicycle tricks.”

While I was at the gig, the sound man had been playing Howlin’ Wolf. It sounded great but it was the London Howlin’ Wolf sessions where he is backed by all the Limey blues-rock royalty and Eric Clapton tells him how to play 'Little Red Rooster'. My friend had commented that it sounded too slick but you could still hear the madness in the Wolf’s voice. I was so happy to be gifted with such a sophisticated and easy opinion. Someone in the room knew stuff, they had drank deeply of real dark and tonal music, the brandy of the damned. Bathtub stuff! And I knew what they were talking about. We laughed like friends.

I digress, last time I was in Adelaide I myself was in a tent down by the river. There were lots of circus type people about. Not dodgy, rootless and toothless strongmen and the like, more your modern educated variety. Bright young things with degrees in unicycle tricks. I wanted a taste of the other side of Adelaide. The washed-out blue collar side of town. I had heard of a place where they sold a dish called an “AB Box” and I wanted one. I had been told it was originally called an “Abortion” and that political correctness had, once again, gone mad.

We got to the joint and parked Miles Davis-style: illegally, but right out front. A guy was asleep in his chair with his arse hanging out into the traffic. I mean his arse too. He was probably dreaming of being on the can.

There was a pack of kids hovering around and sticking forks into a giant AB. They were all in skinny jeans, but the giant box – yiros meat covered in chilli sauce and yoghurt on top of a vast bed of chips – was going somewhere. The hollow legs of youth, I guess. We ordered our food in the brightly lit room and enjoyed the carnival that was in front of us. A really drunk man carrying a Central Districts holdall bag was sitting and eating in giant gulps. Swaying all the while. Suddenly we were all ordered out as a fire started. The Central’s player saved the day when he wandered around and put his drunken two cents worth in. Whatever he did or said, it galvanised the crew of cooks into proper action and normal service was soon resumed. We eventually got our food and sat down to eat. It was a mess o’ food right there! Elvis would have loved this place. Moby would have been revolted.

We were happy to be rollin’ with E and Miles. As we drove off we saw the Centrals payer slumped in his chair on the footpath next to the man with his arse to the world – shittin’ on the world! Another man was throwing up. Another table of young boys and girls were tucking into a giant AB. With the demise of the floater I suggest the AB for that late night evil mess o’ Adelaide grub.

Dave Graney started to write songs in the post-punk period when ideology and self expression and mythology were all screwed up and meeting head on. He currently plies his trade in the Lurid Yellow Mist and recently released a solo album, Knock Yourself Out.

Review: David McCormack - Little Murders

2009-11-05T06:00:00Z

It’s been five years since David McCormack’s last full-length release and it certainly sounds like those years weren’t wasted, with 20 tracks crammed into Little Murders. Maybe releasing all of these songs in one big hit is McCormack’s concession to the playlist age, when a lot of his listeners are going to rip these songs to whatever we listen to music on and then jumble up the order and skip half of them anyway. He’s just giving us more to choose from, making it less of a question of whether Little Murders is a great album and more whether you can make a great 10-song playlist out of it. Let’s see if I can.

1. We’ll begin with his restraining order blues ‘A.V.O.’ (“Legally our love is dead, but justice is blind”), which has three bass tracks, soaring keys and a prison-yard choir finale. After the song ends, one of the players says, “Fucking nailed it,” while McCormack screams, “Yeah!” Yes sir, you did just fucking nail it.

2. The loungy love song ‘Living Under The Flight Path With You’ for its gently shuffling drums and tinkly piano and McCormack getting his croon on while singing about the romance of having Virgin planes passing overhead.

3. Prohibition-era shuffle ‘I’ll Do Anything For You’ is a love song for a B-grade film star full of movie sound effects: cheesy western gunshots, flying saucer wobble and cartoon-feet skidding to a stop.

4. This is the moment when you need a rock break and ‘The Good Times (Keep Following Me Around)’ is a song that provides one in spades.

5. ‘Hey Anne Maria’ because there should be at least one song where McCormack’s voice doesn’t quite make it to the note in his trademark way and he namechecks a Brisbane suburb. (Indooroopilly, Brisbane fans.)

6. Part of the mid-album love song suite, ‘Landslides’ is a self-aware song that declares it’s “not even three minutes long” and that’s true. It’s 2.59. There’s a nice bit of a Sergeant Pepper’s breakdown when the band starts to play.

7. ‘Hit Me’, the sound of an Indian bazaar flying through space on a ship powered by saxophones, combined with giddy nonsense lyrics.

8. For a couple of moments ‘Lost Control’ sounds like he’s doing Radiohead or the Flaming Lips, but the lyrics are typically McCormack: “I didn’t know my left from right/Stalactite or stalagmite.”

9. ‘Future Ghosts’ is included not just because it’s a lovely tune with some nice synthy bits, but because it’s evidence that McCormack really has been putting some brain-time into confronting the issues surrounding the way we experience music today and how he fits into that. The answer is “awkwardly” but then, it always has been: “These days we’re constantly recording ourselves/But I want to allow the past to disappear/You’re never satisfied.” This is what you want, he seems to be saying, and I hope you choke on it.

10. I can’t think of a better way to end than a 47-second instrumental version of ‘The Blue Danube’. Bless you, David McCormack.

There, easily done. And that’s not just leaving out the filler, but a few gems that on a different day in a different mood would have made the list. Even back in the Custard days, McCormack was always a singles man. His strength was writing gloriously naive pop tunes that lasted for less than three minutes, while the rest of the album often felt like a collection of afterthoughts.

Little Murders has plenty of the giddy pop songs that have always been his forte, but 20 is a lot of anything. As such, it’s an endurance race with wide-eyed and whimsical tunes as the hurdles.

News: Golden Plains 2010 First Round

2009-11-04T10:00:00Z

For most of us, the early announcement of Pavement (featuring Melbourne’s own Spiral Stairs) was good enough, but organisers of next year’s Golden Plains festival haven’t stopped there.

Nineteen more acts have been confirmed for the annual event including local acts Midnight Juggernauts, Tame Impala, Super Wild Horses, Crayon Fields and Royal Headache (amazing what a Pitchfork endorsement and a “special” set at Flip Out can do). There’ll also be a rare appearance for the Tex Perkins-fronted Cruel Sea, who last performed at the Supernatural Amphitheatre at the Meredith Music Festival in 1997.

They’ll join a strong international contingent that includes Dinosaur Jr (yep, start choppin’), Dirty Projectors, The Big Pink, Calexico, Nashville Pussy, Jeffrey Lewis and The Junkyard and Wooden Shjips (typo intended). Full line-up below.

The fourth annual Golden Plains festival will take place at the Supernatural Amphitheatre in Meredith, Victoria, from March 6-8. For everything else click here.

GOLDEN PLAINS THE FOURTH

March 6-8
Supernatural Amphitheatre, Meredith, VIC

Pavement + Dinosaur Jr + Dirty Projectors + The Big Pink+ Midnight Juggernauts + Tame Impala + Super Wild Horses + Optimo + Calexico + Monotonix + Gaslamp Killer + Nashville Pussy + Jeffrey Lewis And The Junkyard + The Cruel Sea + Crayon Fields + Ransom + Andee Frost + Royal Headache + Wooden Shjips

News: Luscombe Hospitalised As Drones Cancel Dates

2009-11-04T10:00:00Z

The rigours of a seemingly non-stop touring schedule have caught up with The Drones as they make their way through Europe. According to reports in the UK press, the band have been forced to cancel their remaining dates in UK and Ireland after guitarist Dan Luscombe was struck down with pneumonia.

Luscombe was reportedly hospitalised after the band’s show at Cargo in London with Aussie expats HTRK. Seven dates in total have now been cancelled including shows in Dublin, Manchester and Glasgow. However, the band’s upcoming performance at All Tomorrow’s Parties 10th Birthday Festival in Minehead on December 11 is still listed on their MySpace page.

In other (cheerier) Drones-related news, ‘Shark Fin Blues’ has been voted “The Greatest Australian Song Ever” by a panel of musicians in the latest issue of jmag.

(Photo by Justin Edwards)

Live Review: Underground Lovers - The Toff In Town, Melbourne, Nov 2 09

2009-11-04T10:00:00Z

Band reunions are about shared memories, a back and forth between audience and artist. But when the definitive line-up of Underground Lovers played their first show together in 15 years, the group, typically, strove for the opposite effect: they tried to wipe away the nostalgia and the narrative, until there was only that roiling, thunderous wall of sound left. They wanted sound as ever, a time-machine instead of a flashback.

At first the audience didn’t come into it. The Toff, on Melbourne Cup eve, was close to capacity, but it was a matter of the instrumentalists – guitarist Glenn Bennie, keyboardist/vocalist Philippa Nihill, drummer Richard Andrew and bassist Maurice Argiro – trying to cut vocalist Vincent Giarrusso loose from his moorings. The band’s best shows had always seen the singer sent into a shuffling, possessed trance and that doesn’t come easily, if ever, after such a long absence.

Sticking to their first three albums (1991’s self-titled debut, 1992’s Leaves Me Blind and 1994’s Dream It Down) they opened with ‘Nice G.I.’, which proved that Baghdad references and American imperialism are near timeless. Giarrusso bounced up and down, but there was a theatrical edge to his vocal performance that indicated nerves. A few numbers in, with ‘Get to Notice’, Bennie’s guitar moved beyond the mere rousing, and slowly they locked into something deeper and possessive.

The rhythm section remained a study in contrasts: precise funk inflections from Argiro, who finally has the distinguished grey hair to match his boulevardier outlook, versus the rattling backbeat of Andrew, who thankfully no longer looks like he’s starving – even though he still plays with his head thrown back and to his left. It’s as if the sound has clocked him right on the jaw.

Nihill’s lead vocals peppered the set and she needed no time to acclimatise, summoning the icy, immaculate detachment of ‘Holiday’ and ‘I Was Right’. By the latter, Bennie was starting to take heads off and he found the vast oceanic echoes that the rumble of ‘Eastside Stories’ requires. The song left Giarrusso dancing at the rear of the stage and for the final few numbers of the main set he gave himself over to the music.

The slashing drones of ‘Get Off On It’ followed – one of the few songs tinkered with, a keyboard line of cantering bells adding to the mesmeric effect – before the accumulative might of ‘Your Eyes’ built over nine minutes. It was a finale that restated Underground Lovers’ ambition. As fans of post-punk noise who insisted that groove could be just as powerful, they’d been one of the first groups to demand that indie kids take heed of their hips.

The encores were loose and celebratory, as the band knew that they had done enough. Underground Lovers weren’t magically better than they had previously been – you can only storm the Winter Palace once – but they did enough to convince the audience, and more importantly themselves, that they could still hold their own. They were good verging on the great and if this show was a starting point they’ll turn more than a few heads, old and young, over the coming two months.

News: Dirty Three, Laughing Clowns At Sydney Fest

2009-11-04T09:00:00Z

The Dirty Three will take care of some unfinished business when they perform Ocean Songs in its entirety at Sydney Festival next year.

The band’s reprisal of their 1998 opus was cut short at All Tomorrow’s Parties at Mt Buller in January – and while it didn’t stop us from describing their performance as “swooningly special”, they’ll be playing it again at the Enmore Theatre on January 26. Joining them for this unique “Don’t Look Back” double header will be the Ed Kuepper-fronted Laughing Clowns who will perform a History of Rock ‘n’ Roll Vol. 1.

Other local events of note include a performance by experimental pioneers Severed Heads at a Beck’s Festival Bar event at the Hyde Park Barracks Museum on January 14. The performance is part of “Circa 1979: Signal to Noise”, a series of events celebrating Sydney’s experimental scene in the late 1970s. Support by The Reels and DJ Mark Murphy.

Sydney Festival runs from January 9-30. For a full line-up click here.

Review: Parallel Lions - Holding Patterns

2009-11-04T09:00:00Z

With Art of Fighting’s current status officially described as “on hiatus”, frontman Ollie Browne has sought to fulfill his creative urges by forming Parallel Lions, a trio consisting of himself on vocals and guitar, Hamish Michael on guitar, keyboards and computer, and Sam Bates on drums. Holding Patterns is their first album.

At the centre of this record is the unmistakable voice and songwriting skills of Browne. So distinctive is his vocal palette that it’s virtually impossible not to draw immediate comparisons to AOF. Opening track ‘Taste of Your Heart’ is built around a soaring melody that wouldn’t sound out of place on Runaways, but a rich underpinning of electronic textures and Bates’ muscular drumming effectively nix any notion of Parallel Lions as some kind of mini-AOF. It’s a pattern that holds true throughout the album. Rather than riskily attempt to push the boundaries of his songwriting further than they will comfortably go, Browne’s allowed a more natural evolution to take place, guided at least somewhat by his choice of collaborators. Michael and Bates, with their backgrounds in film soundtracks and jazz, respectively, bring a freshness to the album that in all likelihood couldn’t have been achieved by your standard rock rhythm section. Certainly, songs like ‘For You’ and ‘Black Clouds’ benefit greatly from this.

But if these slightly non-traditional arrangements are the open-minded brain of Parallel Lions, then Browne’s songwriting is its exposed and vulnerable heart. From the gently strummed acoustic guitar on first single ‘Separated’ to the stripped bare ‘A Song with an Ending’, Holding Patterns boasts a plethora of incredible songs, equally as good as anything Browne has penned for his “other” band.

There’s no doubt that fans of Art of Fighting will find plenty to love about Holding Patterns without finding it to be a rehash of old ideas. Parallel Lions has provided a new context for Browne to flex his songwriting muscles without ever straining them.

Feature: Kitchen’s Floor: Nothingness You Can Dance To

2009-11-04T03:00:00Z

TIM SCOTT talks to guitarist Matt Kennedy from Brisbane trio Kitchen’s Floor about the origins of their shambolic sound, their lyrical inspirations and what it’s like to be described as a “terrifying Beat Happening” by UK rock crit Everett True.

You won’t find a better descriptor of Kitchen Floor’s music than on ‘Deadshits’, a song from their debut LP Loneliness is a Dirty Mattress. Its boozy, nonsensical line, “Find her soul in the drunken wreck of deadshits”, aptly sums up the Brisbane trio’s brand of shambolic, no-frills punk that’s almost autistic in its repetitive riffs and melodies. Lo-fi guitar, bass and drums barely hold up songs about self-loathing, drunken paranoia and clammy insecurities.

Guitarist Matt Kennedy goes from a wail as if someone has just stabbed him in the thigh, to a monotonic drone that has him sounding so bored he could stab his own thigh. Combined with Julia Norris’ slurred OxyContin-fuelled floor tom beats and the crud-rock bass lines of Glen Schenau, it all fits together into one beautiful and ugly mess.

‘Deadshits’. Great expression. Great song.
The title of that song is directed at me more than anything else. I wrote it one night when I was drunk alone in my room and probably had some sort of self-loathing thing going on. The lyrics don't make any direct sense but I think it's about knowing you're fucking your life up but doing nothing to improve it, and instead you take that frustration out on the people around you.

Your album art has been similar both on the EP and LP. That similarity is plain black bleakness.
I've always liked the idea of keeping the art simple because too many times I've associated the music of bands with their artwork, which isn't always a good thing if the art is crap. If people are going to associate any image or art with our music it might as well be black nothingness.

How would/do you describe your sound?
Short and simple downer pop music.

Of the Everett True review I read, he pretty much likens to you as a brutal Beat Happening.
That's a pretty cool thing to hear from him. We're also a lot uglier, dumber and more Australian than them too. Beat Happening are awesome.

Do you see Everett around Brisbane much?
I see him around a bit, he's pretty awesome. He's been fronting The Deadnotes for the last few months and we've played with them a few times. They’re a really good band. He could've easily just moved here and become a recluse but I like how he's actively embraced Brisbane and the music scene here.

There is no drum stool for Julia? That can’t be too great for her posture.
You're right, it's not good for posture but we don't practice very often so it's not like she does it every day. It's just neat having a Moe Tucker vibe in the band and I believe it allows her to hit harder.

“About 90 percent of every magazine/website/radio station I send our stuff out too gets no response. I'll save the postage costs and quietly enjoy the fact that YouTube exists.”

You have a music video for ‘Left’ which I have yet to see on Video Hits. Have they gotten back to you?
About 90 percent of every magazine/website/radio station I send our stuff out too gets no response. I'll save the postage costs and quietly enjoy the fact that YouTube exists. I've never been on TV before though so hopefully someday, someday.

What has become of Glen’s blog, Permanent Dirt? Has the activity moved onto to somewhere else?
The blog died earlier this year from a soup accident. Glen always recorded everything he put up on Permanent Dirt with an iRiver mp3 player. One day he bought some takeaway soup and put it in his bag and as he was walking along he was unaware the soup had spilt in his bag, destroying his iRiver and ending his promising bootlegging career. It was a really good blog that hopefully will be continued in the future. I've started my own blog in the last few months called Eternal Soundcheck. It's very similar to Permanent Dirt but focuses on video footage rather than audio.

Do you play many bar or pub venues? Judging by the photos I've seen, house parties and warehouse spaces seem to be the norm.
There are only so many bars and pubs to play in Brisbane that after a while you realise that playing at most of them is a shit waste of time. To fight the boredom of that, we set up and play a lot of our own shows in houses, warehouses, squats, parks etc. because that way it's on our own terms and it keeps things exciting and fresh. The problem with that is you're usually playing to the same 30 people every time so the occasional venue show with a more general audience can be OK, but we don't get asked to play those places very often anyway. If we go interstate we enjoy playing anywhere, pubs included, just because it's somewhere new.

What is the reaction to you in the Brisbane music scene?
We get a lot of support from a very small community of other like-minded bands, artists, friends and weirdos. Outside of that we are pretty much ignored or overlooked. Brisbane has a reputation for championing mediocrity in music which can be frustrating when you're missing out on decent support slots to boring middle-of-the-road bands. Reading the street press or listening to 4ZZZ, our local radio station, can also be very depressing. In my opinion, the best band in Brisbane right now is Blank Realm and the best thing to read is the Negative Guest List fanzine.

Back in the day wasn’t your former band French Horns considered shit-stirrers in the Brisbane scene?
French Horns was a pretty harmless band. At the time, around 2004/05, Brisbane live music was stagnant and we just came from nowhere and put on this crazy live show that was a bit different to anything else in Brisbane then –some people liked it and some didn't. We never took French Horns that seriously, it was a band we did for fun and we broke up when it stopped being fun.

How did you hook up with [Sydney label] R.I.P. Society? They seem to be one of the more interesting indie labels in Australia right now.
Nic Warnock who runs it is just an awesome guy and I asked if he'd be interested in releasing the album and he agreed even before he heard it. He used to go to high school in Cairns with my housemate Andrew, who plays in Brisbane's legendary Cured Pink Radio. I definitely feel privileged for our album to come out on R.I.P. Society, it's a great label.

You’re playing in Melbourne this weekend [at the Empress on November 6 with Wasted Truth and Acid Casualty, and at El Joyero with Ghosts of Television and Super Star]. Do you enjoy playing there and in Sydney?
We always enjoy it, if we don't it's usually because we've run out of money or are dealing with brutal hangovers. When we played Sydney in August the crowds were the best we've ever had, totally enthusiastic and great. Melbourne is like a giant playground for fucked up 20-somethings, it's really nice. Some of our favourite bands are from there like Super Star, Acid Casualty, Fabulous Diamonds, Chrome Dome, etc. It's always a downer when we have to leave.

My favourite song on the CD is ‘Back Home’. I like the simple tambourine and dual vocals. Are the characters based on real people or events?
The hitchhiker bit is a reference to something that happened to a girl in America in the ’70s. I remember reading about it in the library at high school and there was a really brutal picture that went with it. Naturally I thought, “Whoa that's fucked up!” The rest is all fictitious. I just wanted to write a country death song. It's also a song that pre-dates Kitchen's Floor. I wrote it about five years ago when I was 18 and always thought of it as a joke song.

News: Dick Diver To Release Debut EP

2009-11-04T02:00:00Z

A combination of widescreen Australian sweep, ’70s New York punk edge and scratchy ’90s indie rock.

This is how Chapter Music describes their latest signing Dick Diver, a Melbourne four-piece featuring songwriting pair Alastair McKay and Rupert Edwards, bassist Al Montfort (UV Race, Straightjacket Nation) and drummer Steph Hughes (ex-Children Collide, Home & Hosed co-presenter).

The band will release their debut EP Arks Up through Chapter on November 28. Featuring obvious first single ‘Walk For Room’, which you can preview over at MySpace, the EP is part of a new Chapter Music series that pairs a vinyl single and a CD with bonus tracks. The series kicked off with The Twerps’ debut self-titled offering on October 31.

Arks Up will be launched at The East Brunswick Club in Melbourne on December 4 with support from The Nation Blue, The Twerps and Woollen Kits. Cost: $8/$10 on the door.

News: Undies To Reissue Back Catalogue

2009-11-04T01:00:00Z

It’s been long out of print, but most of the Underground Lovers’ celebrated back catalogue will finally see the light of day this month.

Melbourne label Rubber Records will digitally reissue several albums, rarities, EPs and singles on November 21 through iTunes and other download services. Releases include the Simon Grounds-produced Get To Notice; fourth album Rushall Station; Whitey Trickster, a home studio collaboration with Sonic Animation; Ways T'Burn and Cold Feeling, both recorded at Birdland Studios with Mikey Alonso and Lindsay Gravina; and Evil Underground Lovers 94-97, a compilation of live tracks.

Rubber will also release singles ‘In My Head’, ‘Takes You Back’/‘Undone’, ‘Starsigns’ and ‘Infinite Finite’, as well as the Cold Feeling EP. Three early albums – Underground Lovers (1991), Leaves Me Blind (1992) and Dream It Down (1994) – still remain unavailable.

To celebrate the digital reissues, the recently reformed original line-up – Vincent Giarrusso, Glenn Bennie, Phillippa Nihill, Maurice Argiro and Richard Andrew – will perform three shows: at Syndey’s Annandale Hotel on December 4, Homebake on December 5 and at Melbourne’s East Brunswick Club on December 19.

Formed by Giarrusso and Bennie in the late ’80s, The Underground Lovers played their last show in 2002 supporting New Order on their Australian tour.

Review: royalchord - The Good Fight

2009-11-03T11:00:00Z

The third album by Melbourne’s royalchord is an unassuming triumph, writes DOUG WALLEN.

Whether out of oversized enthusiasm or to mask insecurities, so many bands resort to inserting extra instruments and sounds anywhere they’ll fit. In the right hands, an ambitious palette can lead to greatness, but often such excess is a Band-Aid that only exposes what’s not working. What a relief then, to hear The Good Fight, the third album by globe-trotting Melburnians royalchord. There’s so little happening here that the barest of ingredients become hypnotic, while the songs prove all the more evocative for their sparseness. It’s like in a good suspense movie, where what happens off-screen sets our imaginations running, exponentially enhancing what we actually do see.

Once an eight-piece with an alt-country bent, royalchord has been mostly the work of Tammy Haider and Eliza Hiscox, who now function as a duo. On this album they tinker with minimal shades of organ, Omnichord, an outdated drum machine, the odd glockenspiel and guitar, and anything else that’s sitting around. Their approach suits close listens more than casual exposure, while the overall aesthetic puts royalchord in the same league as Au Revoir Simone, Bachelorette and a growing number of homespun, synth-reliant female acts that are aimed at the heart instead of the dance floor.

The scaled-back musical treats of The Good Fight are only half of the story, however. Each song packs at least one line that leaps out from the rest of the lyrics. Often sung in a sort of featherweight deadpan, these gems may look bland on paper but hit home within royalchord’s dreamy trappings. A few examples: “Sell myself short just this one last time” (‘Black Trash’); “Run along till you’ve got what you want” (‘Mr Light’); and “I’m in love love love with three men at a time/Wouldn’t it be great if I could make one mine?” (‘Mighty Minor’). These are minor ripples of uncertainty and dismay compared to some bands’ lyrics, but royalchord’s careful touch and newfound restraint enhance each key moment. If one can be bowled over by a whisper, this is the band to do it.

“Each song packs at least one line that leaps out from the rest of the lyrics. Often sung in a sort of featherweight deadpan, these gems may look bland on paper but hit home within royalchord’s dreamy trappings.”

The album is even more effective once its back story is illuminated. Following fleshed-out previous efforts I Gave You A Mountain (2001) and Nights On The Town (2004), The Good Fight was inspired by time spent in Guatemala. Compared to the duo’s six-month stint in Berlin, it was something of an awakening. Haider and Hiscox then relocated to a tiny village in the south of France to record the batch of songs they’d been writing. More recording was later done in Australia with a few guests. There are scattered traces of the band’s unique past on The Good Fight: the rascally lilt of vocals and soft twang of ‘Magic Hands’ betrays that erstwhile fondness for alt-country, while the lyrics and instrumental tinges of ‘All Your Caribbean’ have their roots in Guatemala.

There’s a late-night, narcotic vibe to royalchord that’s all about the details – from the sneaky beats of ‘It’s Not Who’ to the sighed harmonies and tumbleweeds of distortion on the closing ‘Midnight Lines’. Countless other joys hide within these dozen tracks, and though it’s a gentle triumph, The Good Fight is a triumph nonetheless.

The Good Fight is out now on Mistletone/Inertia.