Summer Sounds With A Bit Of Bite - John Steel Singers

It’s a quarter to eleven on an unseasonally hot October morning and the John Steel Singers are running late.  A punishing schedule of press meetings arranged ahead of the release of their long-awaited debut Tangalooma have proved no match for delayed flights and Sydney’s traffic. The Surry Hills offices of their label Dew Process are pleasant enough though, and before long, trimly hirsute frontman Tim Morrissey and spectacularly afro-ed drummer Ross Chandler are ushered in - gratefully clutching cups of instant coffee and muttering about time zones and sleep deprivation.  “I’ve been up since a quarter to five this morning,” murmurs Morrissey, “so I’m a little bit tired – we lose an hour cause of daylight savings.” Despite his lethargy Morrissey is all business, carefully sticking to talking points while Ross seems content to sit in the corner, offering occasional clarification. “I’m a very quiet person,” he explains simply.

Expectations have been percolating for the JSS for some time now. The band was formed close to five years ago by Brisbane natives Morrissey and fellow songwriter Scott Bromiley, the project being named in homage to Morrissey’s childhood toy horse, John Steel.   “I wanted to start a band since about grade eight,” he says, eyes boring intently  through his glasses. “I didn’t know how to play anything so I would just write songs in my head. I would meet people, and I was always trying to envisage them in my band, but it wasn’t until I was actually twenty years old that I met Scott… He ended up teaching me some guitar, and we ended up forming a band after that.”

From this seed the pair gradually expanded the line-up (currently stabilised at an even six), juggling personnel (“we’re like Spinal Tap with bass players”), incorporating brass (a move that was “never intentional”), cutting their teeth through some persistent touring up and down the east coast while developing their own idiosyncratic style with a pair of EPs and mini-album. And acclaim began to flow, the band taking out triple j’s Unearthed Artist of the Year award back in 2008, while garnering a reputation among punters for live sets brimming with youthful exuberance and prodigious quantities of hair.

It’s odd then that their debut long player Tangalooma, a collection of breezy pop songs buoyed by some creative arrangements and tempered with lyrical bite, has taken so long to emerge. “We’ve always taken a long time to do things,” says Morrissey. “We never did any really rough early demos, we just went into the studio after we’d saved up enough money to do it, and I think that was a little bit like the same thing with the album – we wanted to make sure we could do it the way we wanted to do it.” The album was actually mixed and mastered by October last year. After that, he says, the “music industry side of things” took over. “It has definitely been a year longer than we hoped,” he continues, “but that has its benefits as well – in that year we’ve been writing new songs, and the next album definitely won’t take as long as this one did.”

In order to get the right sound on the record, the band were fortunate in being able to call on the talents of Robert Forster; producer, critic, songwriter, and one of Morrissey’s musical idols.  “The Fire and Flood benefit up in Brisbane was on, and we were playing and Robert was also on the bill,” he explains. Forster’s drummer Glen Thompson and bassist Adele Pickvance weren’t available, “so he actually asked us if we wanted to be his backing band. For people who are massive Go-Betweens fans, to [be] asked to play Go-Betweens songs as Robert Forster’s backing band, that opportunity doesn’t come around very often … [it] was bloody surreal,” Morrissey says. “We wanted to get a producer and Robert’s name came up, and we were like, ‘yeah! Let’s do it!’”

The result is one of the best Australian releases in a year that has seen no shortage of strong debuts. Morrissey claims inspiration from sources as diverse as David Byrne, Ray Davies and The Kinks and widely influential English post-punk group Wire. He also pays due respect to the morphing euphoria of post-rock pioneers Talk Talk, with the moody atmospherics of Spirit of Eden being an important shaping force for Tangalooma, particularly its closing track, ‘Sleep’.  “I guess the album’s pretty densely layered so there’s parts you’re not necessarily aware of,” says Morrissey, “Nicholas [Vernhes] the engineer [who’s previously worked with Animal Collective, Deerhunter and Spoon] probably stripped away a lot of unnecessary stuff as well… Hopefully it sounds like John Steel Singers, and hopefully whether we flop or go well it’ll rest on us sounding like the John Steel Singers.”

While the JSS sound is generally bright and bouncy, lyrically Tangalooma delves into darker territory. Although it’s “definitely not a concept album”, Morrissey and Bromiley’s thoughtful and literate lyrics draw on a shared fascination with Ernest Becker’s 1974 Pulitzer winner The Denial of Death - exploring ideas of mortality, desire and the stories people tell themselves to stay sane in a material world. “Both Scott and I were getting to a time in our lives when we were experiencing similar anxieties about the nature of everything,” explains Morrissey. “You sort of have to lie, have a vital lie to keep yourself going as a human being … most functioning humans lie to themselves about certain things, but everyone does it and it’s vital to being human… I dunno, I’m not very good at explaining this out loud!”

Rather than buying into any of the solutions offered by the world of the gainfully employed, the John Steel Singers seem intent on becoming their own heroes (as the caped horses adorning the cover art of Tangalooma might suggest), throwing themselves into the musical lifestyle with total dedication. The forecast for their next year is a whirlwind of touring, writing and recording.  “I worked out the other day that I’d only, in my twenty-seven years, worked about three or four months at most of full-time work in, like, jobs,” says Morrissey.  “So, as long as I can avoid doing that for as long as possible, that would be excellent.”

First Published in The Brag, Iss. 390, December 6th 2010

Avey Tare - Down There

Avey Tare
Down There

****

The problem with getting high is that, by and large, most people have an unfortunate tendency to come crashing down again. Having heaved themselves up to the top of the indie heap with last year’s soaringly optimistic Merriweather Post Pavilion, Animal Collective’s various members seem to be working through the issues brought to the surface by rapid success in their own idiosyncratic ways. While Panda Bear continues to produce stellar solo work, enjoying the odd dalliance with the likes of Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox along the way, Avey Tare (Dave Portner, to his mum) has exorcised any iniquitous spirits that may’ve been bothering him by bottling them in his own solo release, the appropriately named Down There.

“Down there”, announces a cybernetic voice at the start of opener ‘Laughing Hieroglyphic,’ before breaking into maniacal laughter. “One of these might jump out and do you in,” observes a demonic one through the murk at its close, a track that otherwise might be the downbeat country cousin of ‘Summertime Clothes’. It signals the gloom-laden quicksand to follow.

Third track ‘Oliver Twist’ makes good on this promise, sinking down with the gators and squelching methane, as does ‘Cemeteries’, as Tare stares back at the world from the cocoon of a waterlogged grave.While there are more than a few moments of the macabre here, the itchy helplessness of ‘Heather In The Hospital’ is easily the blackest spot as well as the most poignant, leading into the sunny-side up ending of ‘Lucky 1’.

Tare has bared his wriggling neuroses to the light, with results that are oppressive, introverted and weird. Highly recommended.



First Published in The Brag, Iss. 389, November 29th 2010

Mirah @ The Red Rattler, Thursday October 1

Mirah, Shiver Like Timber, The Smallgoods

‘Was, was that a plane?’ asks Betony Dircks, AKA Shiver Like Timber, in the mildly timorous tones of one who’s not as yet quite comfortable stage-side. The rumbles of the flightpath overhead provide permanent competition with tonight’s performers; The Red Rattler has the most appropriate name of any venue in Sydney. Under such circumstances, Dircks’ slight hesitance is unfortunate – her carefully picked guitar lines and striking lyrics (‘Arctic Esplanade’) are delivered in permanently breathless vocals, only building up a real sense of conviction when fed through some enticing loops.

No such difficulties for Melbournites The Smallgoods, the hirsute trio filling up the warmly lit, milk crate-strewn space, with their simply fashioned, richly harmonised old school pop. Songs such as ‘Traipse Through The Valley’ are suggestive of ploughman’s lunches and smoking mugwort, harmonies reminiscent of The Byrds or (lord help us) Simon & Garfunkel enveloping a rapt audience with a sense of ruminative stasis.  Particularly entrancing was ‘City Full Of Sky’, a captivating chord sequence washing away the occasional twee lyric.

Aeroplanes were the cause of more amusing difficulties for an extremely jetlagged Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn (observed pre-show enjoying a sack-of-potatoes style cat-nap back stage), who repeatedly, and with effortless charm, forgot the lyrics to her own songs – calling on an extremely well-informed audience for prompts. Although Mirah has now been recording for well over ten years, this gig marks her first Australian visit, numerous requests for older material being cheerfully deflected with a variety of creative excuses.

Her back catalogue was nonetheless widely traversed, more recent material from (a)spera being mixed with much-loved songs like ‘Cold, Cold Water’ or crowd-favourite ‘The Garden’. Her firm and sassy vocals were overwhelming, even with the low thunder provided courtesy of Qantas. A left-field cover of ‘Changes’ rounded out a buoyant night; with luck, she’ll return soon.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 387, November 8th 2010

Ólöf Arnalds - Innundir Skinni

Ólöf Arnalds
Innundir Skinni [Within Skin]

***

There’s a pretty amusing interview with Ms Arnalds (singer, recent mother and ex-Múm member) in this month’s issue of UK street rag The Stool Pigeon, in which she immediately declares her personal life to be off limits – despite the fact that many of the songs on her second album, Innundir Skinni, deal with the deeply personal matter of her father dying. Not that you can tell what she’s singing about most of the time without recourse to the lyric sheet, as most songs here are rendered in her native Icelandic. Indeed, even those few songs which are sung in English are nigh on incomprehensible thanks to her sweetly lilting accent and Joanna Newsom-esque delivery.

There are some lovely moments here regardless. ‘Svif Birki (Tree Love)’ for example, which mixes her creamy enunciation of the Icelandic tongue with an understated acoustic guitar, prismatic vocal harmonisations occasionally rippling through the simple texture. Cloister something like ‘The Sprout And The Bean’ off Milk-Eyed Mender away within a smoke-filled hut while an ash-strewn winter rages outside, and you’ll be close.

Most songs here feature spare acoustic backings that provide a gently swimming complement to Arnalds gentle voice. It’s a delicate balance, the backing vocals provided by an under-utilised Björk on ‘Surrender’ – not quite avoiding the obvious risk of overwhelming Arnalds with her turbo-charged lungs.

An undoubtedly attractive listen, Arnalds ultimately comes off a touch precious – her seriousness is unleavened by any sense of play or release, providing little counter to the weight of her emotions.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 383, October 11th 2010

El Guincho - Pop Negro

El Guincho
Pop Negro

****

Since the release of his jubilant second album Alegranza! back in 2008, Barcelona-based synth’n’sample artist El Guincho (AKA Pablo Díaz-Reixa) has developed a reputation for producing breezy, sun drenched pop mélanges. He blends dozens of influences from the spectrum of Latin American music, fused with psychedelic indie. Atlas Sound (the solo project of Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox) or even Ariel Pink are relevant touchstones, in that all mine the back catalogue of their choice, reconstructing cherry-picked vintage sounds in utterly original ways.

Often citing the folk songs taught to him by his Canary Islander grandmother as a formative inspiration, El Guincho laid some of these influences bare on his recent Piratas de Sudamerica EP – a collection of early 20th century Latin American pop and folk covers rendered in an effects-laden creole. But Pop Negro is a different animal altogether. Tropicalia, afrobeat and dub are blended with production techniques directly borrowed from 80s and 90s dance – specifically, the work of chaps like Rhett Davies (Bryan Ferry, Luther Vandross) and Babyface (Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey).

To a certain extent, Díaz-Reixa is doing for ‘the golden era of recordings’ what Ariel Pink has done with 80s radio schlock, utilising the expansive sound and gleaming finish of the pop of the last few decades in the pursuit of some heretofore un-thought-of hybrid which critiques as it celebrates. That said, it doesn’t pay to intellectualise this album too much.


Above all, Pop Negro provides a half hour of effortlessly expansive pop ecstasy, guaranteed to get any party started.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 382, October 4th 2010

Colour and Light - kyü

If they were characters in a sprawling nineteenth century novel, Alyx Dennison and Freya Berkhout might be described as ‘ardent spirits’. As kyü, the electronic pop project that brought them together, the pair impart a sense of limitless expansion; they’re brave enough to allow themselves to be led musically by a shared sense of epiphany, following their instincts towards a point of revelation in a way that is endearingly vulnerable, completely genuine and utterly captivating.

When they aren’t doing that, they do things like bake brownies, listen to the Spice Girls and watch Doctor Who. Alyx does convincing impersonations, and also likes to paint. Freya speaks Hindi and aspires to make film soundtracks. Both would like to travel more; both are buoyant, bright-faced, smiley-eyed and completely disarming to talk to. And then of course there’s the small fact that they’ve created one of the most exciting sounds to come out of Sydney in a very long time.

kyü came together at the beginning of 2009 as a swift consequence of the duo’s newly-fledged friendship. Alyx needed someone with a student card to enter the Sydney University band comp, and Freya volunteered. Although their initial attempt at rehearsal was “pretty awful”, a second try produced their now-signature song, ‘Sunny in Splodges’, in just a couple of hours. Realising that they didn’t have enough material, and with the band comp imminent, they wrote almost all of the material that makes up their self-titled and full-length debut release in a single creative burst, the week before the first heat. Legend has it they reduced a judge to tears the night they won the grand final.

“We never consciously made a decision to be that band” says Alyx. “We never thought ‘oh let’s be experimental’ or ‘tribal’ – all those phrases really weird us out … It really kind of evolved naturally, it was all stuff that was lying around the studio as well.” She says that the week before the band comp they felt as though they were waiting for something to start: “We refer to that period of our life as limbo.”

Plural personal pronouns are par for the course for kyü, both girls picking up each other’s sentences, filling out the other’s thoughts and chasing each other down inviting tangential trails – so that it often becomes difficult to determine who said what. The impression of a single mind at work is at times uncanny, each being the perfect foil for the other. And they don’t disagree. “We are one brain when we’re writing,” says Alyx, “it’s a strange experience.” “It’s weird though,” adds Freya, “they’re not the same – they’re so different that they just fit together.”

Although Freya has had the benefit of formal vocal training, Alyx is essentially self-taught. Each arrived at similar musical conclusions by circuitous routes of their own. Both have a solid grounding in the Western classical canon – Alyx admits to an (as yet) unrequited love for Beethoven, while Freya thinks that Mahler’s 5th Symphony has “the most amazing chord progression in the history of the world”. But they also draw inspiration from sources as diverse as Indian classical music and the soundtrack to Akira, while being rabid fans of bands like Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear.

Not that the kyü sound can be reduced to a catalogue of influences; their lush mix of electronics, synths, glockenspiel, drums and strong, startling vocals produce an almost primal alchemy. But both are quick to dismiss any accusations of derivation on the one hand, or originality on the other. “People say we’re like Björk or Fever Ray” comments Alyx, “not because we are, but because we’re girls who’re belting… We do stuff with our voices that isn’t particularly dignified or pretty – we use our voices instrumentally,” she explains, before Freya continues: “I don’t think our music is hard to listen to. Some of it isn’t middle of the road, but it’s not ‘pushing boundaries’. If we’re experimental it’s because of the way we sing – but it’s not like no one’s done it before.”

Either way, an air of timelessness pervades the kyü LP. Dan Johnston (of local folk rockers Big Smoky) drew on his filmic sound design background to lend the recording an almost cinematic sense of space. Suggesting a shifting series of emotional states rather than any conscious narrative, the music nonetheless follows a definite arc, moving from the midnight awakening of ‘Sistar’ through to the ecstatic dissolution of ego in ‘Sunny In Splodges’.

“We spent a lot of time designing the track listing,” says Freya. “I hate the word ‘journey’, but there’s a progression … It is projections from the same time. It’s all a response to the same thing in our life.” Which was? “When we met each other, a new life really did start for us,” she explains. “We were meeting new people, and just kind of finding the ropes with them and ‘our sound’ … [It was] the most amazing, crazy time.” ‘New people’ here is a euphemism for the fellas from local group Megastick Fanfare, who provided the catalyst that kyü bonded over. “They’re the reason why we started. We just decided to go to every show. We wouldn’t be making the music we’re making if we didn’t have them in our lives.”

While a Megastick collaboration is still up in the air, the girls have been open to allowing other musical cross-pollinations to occur – a stint as the guests of Parades lead to friendship and mutual remixes with Jonathan Boulet (“I don’t think anything anywhere will ever be as good” says Freya of his kyü remix, “it’s going to blow everyone’s minds”), both drawing inspiration from the local music scene. “Sydney music is amazing” declares Alyx, “the world’ll catch on soon.”

Since their victory at Manning, kyü have had a crash course in performing, refining their act and building confidence while supporting local lights, as well as opening for an increasingly high profile series of touring groups including Why?, Yeasayer and High Places. “I would like people to love it or hate it, because I don’t want anyone to feel middle of the road.” says Freya. “And I think so far we’ve had pretty good evidence of that. There are people who love us and there’s people who detest us – and we just want to send out love to those guys. We love you guys!”

With things off to a sparkling start, for kyü the future seems alight with possibility. So, what’s next? “I think things will be happier, brighter maybe,” muses Freya. “We’ve been through a lot since we met, and have evolved a lot as people and evolved a lot as musicians and songwriters. We wrote a song recently which is really different. Vocally it’ll be a bit more weird.”

“Stimulation is to be had before we do any more writing” adds Alyx. “We’ve written about everything around us, about the things that we love and the people we love and the things that we’re doing – and now we need to move on and do other things.”


First published in The Brag (Cover Feature), Iss. 381, September 27th 2010

Robert Plant - Band of Joy

Robert Plant
Band Of Joy

****

While other survivors of his generation do fun things like undergo high-profile divorces, languish in obscurity or snort their father’s ashes, Robert Plant has managed to perform that most difficult of manoeuvres over the last few decades, The Post-Mega-Success Reinvention; honouring the Led Zeppelin legacy by becoming, well, Robert Plant.

To get this one together, Plant utilised the momentum from last year’s sessions for the abortive follow up to Raising Sand – his lauded collaboration with country goddess Alison Krauss. Band Of Joy sees him resurrecting the spirit of his first group of the same name – pressing his fingerprints all over songs that come from a diverse range of sources. While the aura of the Krauss alliance hangs around the edges in a ragged shroud, Band Of Joy also recalls Led Zeppelin III – it’s a heady blend of rock, country and half a dozen varieties of folk.

There are some wicked moments here. Plant pays homage to selected sixties fellow travellers, with a leanly electric version of Richard Thompson’s ‘House of Cards’, and a deceptively easy-going rock-rendering of Townes Van Zandt’s devastating ‘Harm’s Swift Way’. Less successful is the early sixties pop of ‘You Can’t Buy My Love’, which sits uneasily alongside the cleanly pure lines and spine-itching harmonies of Low covers ‘Silver Rider’ and ‘Monkey’.

Plant has an excellent production and arranging partner in Buddy Miller, while the new ‘Band of Joy’ seems to consist of a cherry-picked best-of Americana session musicians – including a more than adequate Krauss-replacement in the form of Patty Griffin.

This is a warmly generous collection that suggests Plant’s best days are by no means behind him.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 381, September 27th 2010

Still On Form - Die! Die! Die!

There are big things stirring across the Tasman, and we’re not just talking about seismic instability and tectonic plate grindage… Although with their new album Form, Dunedin punk-pop outfit Die! Die! Die! have supplied an appropriately abrasive soundtrack for any nonchalant stroll through the wreckage of downtown Christchurch.

Although more melodious than the almost icy sonic assault of 2007’s Promises, Promises, Form is still a furious dervish of an album. Andrew Wilson builds richly layered guitars over Lachlan Anderson’s sturdy bass and Michael Prain’s unsettled yet relentless machine gun drumming. “We were throwing up names for what we were doing,” says Prain from Auckland, where the band are currently laying down some new songs in between tours of New Zealand (and the rest of the English speaking world.) “And that [‘Form’] summed up the album best in a way, keeping things really simple. If you look up the definition of ‘form’ [as a verb] it’s like a new beginning, a new start – it’s quite a blocky record, it’s simple and to the point.”

Unlike their previous two efforts, which were recorded in a matter of days, with Form the band consciously tried to allow a bit more time in the studio to see what might develop. Good friend, and The Skeptics alumnus, Nick Roughan provided a fruitful sounding board as producer. “We were never like, ‘Fuck, we want this really intense layered album,’” says Prain. “It was never super intentional. As we went along though, we were like, ‘This sounds cool, we should pursue it.’ It was sort of like one of those happy accidents – listening back, we were all a bit shocked, like, ‘this definitely doesn’t sound as nasty as we thought it would!’”

While journalists tend to throw around adjectives like ‘relentless’, ‘blast’ or ‘onslaught’ in describing the Die! Die! Die! sound (as is our wont), Prain is bemused by the hyperbole. “I think our band has always been described as being a lot more outrageous and angry than we ever intended to be. Reviews use words like ‘jack hammers’, but we’ve never been about that; when people see us it becomes apparent that it’s not like that.”

On release, Form enjoyed an entire fortnight at #19 on the official NZ chart, which Prain describes as “kind of a weird thing for us!” Playing no small part of the band’s gradual ascent into the public eye is their internationally cemented reputation for delivering live shows that leave punters dazed, sweat-drenched and plastered with big happy grins. “We want to take different angles on how we do it,” says Prain. “For our last NZ tour, we took our own PA with us and just set up in warehouses and stuff. They were really wild and fun and cool; we really like mixing it up and doing that sort of thing. It’s a lot easier and not as contrived as some other things.”

With a recent move to iconic Dunedin record label Flying Nun streamlining the operational side of things (“they’ve still got the same really good ethos about music, which we can totally relate to. It’s good to be releasing on a label that we’ve always identified with,” comments Prain), album number four or possibly a 7” single is in the oven, and tours to Australia, the US and the UK have been lined up. Die! Die! Die! seem to have their feet firmly on the accelerator. “We haven’t changed – the way people receive the band and react to it have,” says Prain. “It’s an exciting time to be doing stuff.”


First published in The Brag, Iss. 381, September 27th 2010

Don't Think, Just Write - Emma Davis

Emma Davis doesn’t put people in boxes so we should probably return the courtesy, and abstain from labelling when speaking of her music. Categories like ‘Female Singer Songwriter’ for example, while accurate, are singularly unhelpful in describing her style; her clear, sweet voice, her sure instinct for a story, and the way it’s all clothed with deft picking, folksy hooks and gently precise turns of phrase.

Meeting for a leisurely breakfast of avocado on toast ahead of the release of her self-titled debut album, Davis seems like the sort of person who may not always feel the need to offer an opinion – but will deliver it with unerring aim when provoked. “I don’t think of myself as a singer, [but] as a guitarist who sings,” the Sydney-based artist tells me, with trace remnants of a London accent still clinging to her speech.  “I feel like a lot of people use guitar as a way of accompanying singing, so it’s just this thing that’s there for the sake of it. For me, the songs get their character from the guitar.”

Davis began writing songs at a tender age under the influence of the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel albums slipped her way by her classical guitar teacher. A stint as the “gimmick” lead guitarist in an otherwise all-male, Chili Peppers-idolising high-school rock band allowed her to deal with the “terror of hearing the sound of one’s own voice in a microphone,” before she decided to forgo the Oxbridge future of her peers to pursue music at Boston’s Berklee College of Music – and finally followed her family to Australia.

In between studying Italian (“you might not know this, but to major in something you don’t actually have to be very good at it”), learning to talk Aussie and schlepping in hospitality, songs began to be written. “I always start with the music,” she explains. “I always try to think as little as possible when I do that. If I sit down to write a song, I won’t write a song. If I sit down to play my guitar and am sitting there and not thinking, something will come. Because I have such a non-methodical way of working, writing a song might take a long time…”

As might recording an album. Davis spent the last year working sporadically with Sydney troubadour Brian Campeau in his homemade Newtown studio, placing older songs that were weighing down her pockets alongside newer material written over the last few months. “I think we worked well together, because we both had a similar idea of what should happen,” she says of the production partnership. “Both of us kind of felt like the songs were quite delicate. We tried to add to it really slowly so that we weren’t piling things on for the sake of it. [Campeau] inspires me because he doesn’t give a shit – he wants to do what he wants to do.”

And what does Emma Davis want to do? “If I try to write a song that’s going to relate to everyone, then it’s going to sound like a load of wank, and I’ll start saying things that I don’t really think. [I want my songs to] sound like that’s just how it was, like someone didn’t even write it, it was just there,” she continues. “That’s what I’m trying to do, and that’s why I try not to think when I write.”


First published in The Brag, Iss. 385, September 25th 2010

Brian Wilson - Just Keep Breathing

Brian Wilson is a survivor. It can be heard in his voice; in a life which has overcome more than its share of turbulance, his is a stubborn yet graceful vitality that has found its purpose and expression through a persistent dedication to music. “Love means… to breath is to love I would say,” he affirms. “I’ve got a lot of love in my heart; all you gotta do is breath to love.”

At 68, the pioneer of Californian surf pop, iconic frontman of The Beach Boys and composer of one of the most influential pop albums of the sixties, Pet Sounds, isn’t resting on any laurels. Speaking down the wire from Los Angeles ahead of an extended tour of the Australian capital cities, Wilson is crisp, matter of fact and to the point. That he’s still performing at all is in no small way miraculous – but a mechanical quality to some of his responses and a tendency to repeat himself are the only audible scars of the psychological illness that has ravaged his career.

As principal songwriter of The Beach Boys, Wilson propelled the group to international fame in the early sixties with singles like ‘I Get Around’, ‘Surfin’ USA’ and ‘California Girls’. Pet Sounds, generally regarded as Wilson’s masterpiece, was released in 1966 to muted acclaim, its import only becoming clear in subsequent decades. But his lush vocals, innovative production and densely experimental arrangements did have an immediate impact on at least one other group… “Pet Sounds inspired the Beatles,” he explains with enthusiasm, “which I think – the most famous group in the whole world, influenced by us? That’s a trip for me! John, Paul called me when they heard [it] and they both said they loved it … they flipped for it.”

Tragically, from this watermark, Wilson imploded; band and label turmoil, the birth of his first daughter, the release of Sgt. Pepper (Wilson felt he was in deep and personal competition with the Beatles), and LSD overuse all combined to send him into a creative and psychological no man’s land. His follow-up to Pet Sounds, Smile, emerged stillborn as Smiley Smile in 1967, Wilson only returning to complete the project as originally envisioned in the early noughties.

Releasing new material only intermittently through the 70s and barely at all through the subsequent two decades, Wilson’s creative stagnation was accompanied by an ongoing battle with inner demons. He was diagnosed with schizo associative disorder in the late 1980s, the development of which he directly attributes to his drug intake. Considering the enormous personal cost his youthful experimentation has exacted from him, it’s perhaps not so surprising that his views on psychedelic substances are these days less forbearing than in the past.

 “Do I have any regrets? Oh, of course I do!” he exclaims. “I wouldn’t have taken DRUGS if I’d had a marble in my head – if I’d had a brain in my head – and thought to say, ‘Well, what does this do to you when you take this drug?’ Well, I wouldn’t have taken the drug, right? When I found out how much damage it did to my brain?” – he chuckles, drily. “Very bad. That’s what I would have not done, taken drugs – and I would advise young people who get this interview not to take drugs.”

The last decade has been considerably kinder to Wilson; his wife and four adopted children, as well as many productive collaborations, have provided him with much-needed stability. “I keep myself motivated by exercising, and I’ll play the piano and keep in touch with music, y’know? I walk about two and a half miles a day. Which is pretty damn good.”

Apart from concluding his thirty-plus year labour of love with the release of Smile in 2004, he has released two collections of original material, as well as this year paying homage to one of his own idols on Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin. The result of an alliance between the Gershwin estate and Disney (Wilson is to record an album of Disney covers as part of the deal), the collection features a dozen covers of Gershwin classics as well as two Wilson originals, constructed from fragments left uncompleted at Gershwin’s death. “It was a joy because I love Gershwin, and I love his music,” he says. “They sent us over 104 unfinished Gershwin songs, with George himself playing piano. Can you believe that? That I’d get to work with George that way? This Gershwin album was a rough album for me to make, because I didn’t want to let my band members down or anyone down with the vocals, y’know?”

Driven by a prodigious work ethic, Wilson continues to perform as much for its rehabilitative effects (“there is a therapeutic element to being on stage, it is good for you”), as for a belief that someone really needs to bring back the good vibes. “The music nowadays is not as positive and as warm, y’know? The music of this time, 2010, is very, very, very, VERY unbecoming to how I think music should be … I think people should write better melodies and sing a little sweeter, and knock off that stupid rap crap, y’know? Rap is really ridiculous.”
What matters most, though, is to just keep on breathing. “What I most want to do is I want to get my health to the point where I’m not like, ‘Oh I can’t do this, or I can’t do this tour, I can’t write songs’ you know, stuff like that,” he says. “That’s where I want to be.”


First published in The Brag, Iss. 385, September 25th 2010

Tame Impala, The John Steel Singers @ Enmore Theatre, Thursday October 14

Three years ago, the friend I brought along tonight saw Tame Impala play in a scunge ridden hole in the wall at Hoxton, to about fifty of London’s most in-the-know drop-outs. Oh how things have changed. The hordes were out in force tonight, Kevin Parker and Co. pulling an apparently sell-out crowd to the Enmore.

Brisbane’s The John Steel Singers have their live set nailed down at the moment, ripping through a medley of material from the soon-to-be-released debut that we’re all hanging out for. They didn’t get the crowd quite as revved up tonight as they have in the past, however; a lack of engagement with the audience, coupled with a certain sense of going-through-the-motions combined to prevent lift-off, in spite of the guest appearance by Tame Impala drummer Jay Watson (double kit action! woo!) for signature track ‘Rainbow Kraut’. Perhaps the band are saving it up for their album launch tour – or the crowd simply hadn’t had enough bevvies.

A half hour later and Perth’s Tame Impala amble onto stage, blowing straight through ‘It Is Not Meant To Be’ and ‘Solitude Is Bliss’. The band have a tendency to play their songs considerably slower live than the recorded versions – and these songs in particular – and the results are laid-back, verging on horizontal.

Fortunately, those unable to concentrate on anything else (hi, how’s it going) could simply sit back and pick out shapes (the ABC logo, love hearts and the marshmallow man from Ghostbusters were all observed) in the synchronised projections that accompanied the expansive, abstract jams that filled out bulk of the show. Although their cover of ‘Remember Me’ is beginning to reach its use-by date, it was great to hear ‘Glass Half Full Of Wine’ off the Tame Impala EP.

But if the JSS had difficulty engaging with this crowd, a spotlight-illumined Kevin Parker barely tried, a tight sense of scripted control emanating from his corner of the stage, accompanied by the odd monosyllabic grunt. An almost total lack of affect succeeded in keeping an entire theatre of fans at arm’s length – not that they seemed to realise. Tame Impala make admirable music.  Bloody difficult to warm to, but.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 385, September 25th 2010

When The Devil Goes Blind - Charlie Parr

Charlie Parr
When The Devil Goes Blind

****

There’s something rather lovable about Minnesota bluesman Charlie Parr. His attitude to technology lies towards the ‘Luddite’ end of the spectrum and he’s crafted six albums, so far in relative obscurity. Parr enjoyed a mini-explosion of publicity in this country in the wake of his 2002 song ‘1922’ being used in a TV commercial for mobile phones. This brought him to the attention of Paul Kelly; the resultant tour around Oz acquainted Parr with that other infamous Kelly, Ned. And so it is that the bushranger is invoked alongside an iconic American outlaw on this album’s opening track, ‘I Dreamed I Saw Jesse James Last Night’.

As with Paul, Parr is firmly on the side of the underdog, the outlaw and the ruined, spinning his yarns of big skies and long memories with wry economy. Take the hapless farmer on ‘South of Austin, North of Lyle’ for instance, who happily grows corn, ‘sips his whisky and smokes his pipe’, before hanging himself when the bank forecloses. The songs are filled with a keen awareness of the weight of history – Parr tells of the Indian massacre at Wounded Knee in ‘1890’ with almost documentary horror, and a voice hoarse from grief and disgust.

With his own songs appropriately complemented here by traditionals ‘Ain’t No Grave (Gonna Hold My Body Down)’ and ‘Turpentine Farm’, Parr’s blues feel lived-in, his delivery unaffected, the traditional forms worn lightly by a bloke who’s made them his own.

When The Devil Goes Blind is an album of unpretentious grace and a generous, expansive sincerity – it just makes you wanna give the great shaggy fella a hug.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 379, September 13th 2010

Changing Lanes Festival

Moaning about the scarcity of awesome things happening in Sydney is beginning to get a bit old. If the scene is as full of holes as many would have you believe, why not get off the couch and actually do something about it? Such was the thinking of the indomitable Ruby Marshall. Along with logistical juggler extraordinaire Danae Goiser, Ruby has masterminded the Changing Lanes festival, which is set to light up Newtown with some cruisin’ tunes, phat beats and live art this Sunday.

The idea behind Changing Lanes is simple: to shift public perceptions of what kinds of events are possible in Sydney. Not that this was at all the initial plan. “I was volunteering at FBi when the Save FBi gigs came up,” explains Ruby. “I was thinking of doing something like having a few market stalls [to raise funds] on a Saturday outside the Hub.” Realising that her ideas were quickly snowballing, she hit upon Eliza St – bookended by two well-known watering holes, the Courthouse Hotel and Zanzibar – as a more appropriate site. She floated the idea to Danae and from there things exploded: “Before we knew it, we were working on a full blown festival!” laughs Ruby.

Inspired by various events in Melbourne, the duo set out to create a festival that drew upon pre-existing venues, unique infrastructure and the local creative talent in a celebration of all of the above. So, why hasn’t someone tried to put on a festival of this kind before? “Because it’s so hard!” says Ruby. “It’s taken almost two years to get off the ground and we’ve worked seven days a week for the last four months. You’ve got to really want it and believe in it and have a lot of incredible people behind you to make it happen, or it just won’t. With [local] council there’s no infrastructure to help get events off the ground. The paper work you have to go through is so ongoing – it’s not tailored to setting up events.”

For Ruby and Danae, diversity has been the name of the game when selecting the performers most likely to set the streets ablaze (figuratively speaking). With sounds as eclectic as smouldering songstresses Bridezilla, hip-hop crew Thundamentals, pensive tunesmith Ernest Ellis, and veteran beat-benders Itch-E & Scratch-E, they seem to have succeeded, though the late addition of Tame Impala to the line-up was a particular triumph. “It was very last-minute,” says Ruby; Danae adds, “They’re such good-hearted guys.”

The attractions won’t just be musical however, with artists including SMC3, Vars, Gem Lark, Ears and Max Berry set to transform the wall of the Courthouse Hotel with a back-to-back collection of works in a diverse array of styles. While punters won’t be watching the unfolding creation of a permanent Newtown icon (the space is heritage listed), pieces done on the day will be displayed at aMBUSH Gallery after the event. “We kind of wanted to give back a bit to the artists that are involved,” explains Ruby, “and give them the opportunity to get a bit more exposure and sell some pieces.”

Considering the amount of red tape that’s been tangled with, it’s heartening for all involved that community response has been so overwhelmingly positive, with tickets rapidly selling out. And with the first Changing Lanes set to be a roaring success, the organisers are already looking towards next year – though ideally, the idea will spread beyond that. “I hope we do it again or that it inspires people to go away and do something themselves,” says Ruby. “I hope that when people leave this event they’ll go, ‘Yeah, that was really great’ and are inspired to make art themselves.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 379, September 13th 2010

Isbells - Self-Titled

Isbells
Isbells

***

It’s not saying much to note that while Bon Iver’s success a couple of years ago was undoubtedly deserved, the whole ‘retreat-heart-broken-to-a-log-cabin-in-the-woods-and-pour-your-wounded-soul-into-sound’ thing certainly didn’t hurt. With their self-titled debut, Belgian folksters Isbells seem to have attempted to ride Mr Vernon’s wake with respectable, but hardly overpowering, results.

Leading man Gaëtan Vandewoude apparently wrote and recorded the material here in a ‘decrepit stable’ in the country, although the buffed Mr Sheen finish to the sound perhaps belies the mythmaking. A pity too, as a more lo-fi recording would perhaps have lent the songs a bit more character than they otherwise seem capable of mustering.

Not that these tracks are by any means bad; Vandewoude combines a crisply efficient picking style with simple but effective melodies, his sweetly soaring voice sitting somewhere between Bon Iver and Jonsi. Lyrically, he’s very much preoccupied with what sort of future the next generation are likely to inherit, with musings delivered in a simple and direct voice. “What do I tell my child / its future’s gone for life” he sings on opener ‘As Long As It Takes’ while squaring his jaw to the life of art – “I can’t change the world with melodies / but I’ll try” – on ‘Without A Doubt.’ Elsewhere things veer towards the saccharine: “a tender word and a sweet, sweet kiss / is what I need from you” he pines on ‘My Apologies.’

What irks me is that although the music compliments Vandewoude’s reflective tone, his insights aren’t terribly insightful – and what drama there is isn’t hugely dramatic. Together it makes Isbells is a peculiarly monotone listen… Sure is purty though.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 378, September 6th 2010

Maps and Atlases - Perch Patchwork

Maps and Atlases
Perch Patchwork

****

Maps and Atlases took their sweet time getting around to their debut LP. Sporadically releasing three and a half EPs since their inception back in 2004, the Chicagoan alt-popsters seem to have allowed themselves as much time as required to find the right setting for their talents, moving away from the Don Caballero-style math-rock that they were initially attracted to towards a more inclusive, folk-inflected indie style. Their patience has borne some nourishing fruit.

Framed and unified by the brief instrumental tracks ‘Will’, ‘Is’ and ‘Was’, Perch Patchwork is, as the name suggests, a carefully plotted journey through sections of light and shade. Take the exposed electrical wiring of ‘The Charm’ for instance, vocalist Dave Davison’s almost off-hand statement that “I don’t think there’s a sound I hate more / than the sound of your voice when you say you don’t love me anymore” – accompanied by what sounds like a full military tattoo. Or the flashing sun and sparkling water of upbeat pop track ‘Israeli Caves’, which mixes luscious female backup vocals with a cello solo and tubular bells, in a picture of open-eyed optimism.

Even more straightforward indie meat-and-potatoes tracks like ‘Living Decorations’ are regularly punctuated with rhythmic flourishes or touches of instrumental colour – marimba, sax, flute and harp also get a look in – that manage to feel spontaneous while being placed with utter precision. And this is what impresses most about this album: the band forging such cohesive and imaginative material from so many diverse elements.

Perch Patchwork is a sonically diverse, richly textured and unremittingly rewarding listen.

First published in The Brag, Iss. 378, September 6th 2010

Heaps Decent - Spring Party

Heaps Decent is what happens when committed folks who love music set out to change the world. It started back in 2007, when Sydney promoter & DJ Andrew Levins and Nina Agzarian (better known as triple j’s Nina Las Vegas) began putting on workshops for disadvantaged young people, under their own steam. “We do a lot of workshops, and that means going out to jails, community centres and schools out in the suburbs [to reach] indigenous youth, or kids with behaviour problems and learning difficulties” explains Levins.

“They’re usually music based workshops – DJ, song writing, beat making, recording – the aim is to raise the self esteem of the young people involved in the workshops. We get them to do that by writing lyrics about themselves or a situation they’re involved in and sharing that with everybody.”  The results have been impressive, the workshops often providing the catalyst for lasting change in the lives of those who need it most. “It’s all about keeping them interested and expressing themselves in ways other than getting in trouble” says Levins. “It’s about giving back to a community that you’re a part of – or that needs you to be a part of it.”

To this end, Heaps Decent acts as an intermediary, developing songs written through workshops, often with the aid of high profile touring artists like M.I.A, Diplo (‘Smash A Kangaroo’) or A-Trak (‘Anywhere But Here’). Helped along by some famous friends, the finished tracks are shared with the broader music community and the media (check out the Parklife 2010 DJ Mixtape for two choice samples), before feedback was delivered to the kids who were originally involved. “[That way] they can see that being creative, you feel good about yourself, you get your voice heard by other people – that’s what Heaps Decent is all about,” says Levins.

In order to reach those young people who need the most assistance, Levins and other Heaps Decent facilitators regularly travel to far-flung corners of the state like Broken Hill, Wagga Wagga and most recently, the red-dirt surrounded hamlet of Wilcannia. “It’s an amazingly beautiful town, with big sense of community” Levins enthuses. “That’s where I really want to go back – I want to find appropriate people in remote areas, give them training [and] equipment and set up this Heaps Decent hub, so that they can encourage young people to keep making music with them, and pass on the knowledge that we’ve given them.”

Making Heaps Decent as self-sustaining as possible is the plan as far as Levins is concerned, the goal for 2011 being to open more permanent regional facilities as well as a Heaps Decent studio space somewhere around Redfern – providing former students with a place to come and continue to make music, and facilitators with a greater ability to self-finance the project. Things have gained considerable momentum over the last year, the philanthropic enthusiasm of guest facilitators such as Diplo, Jack Beats, Sinden and A-Trak leading Fuzzy to step up as the organisation’s official benefactor, providing staff, equipment and helping raise funds through Parklife and Field Day.

But all things cost money – sound equipment and long-distance travel, especially. Which is why Heaps Decent is throwing a huge fundraiser on Saturday night. Featuring live sets from artists from the Heaps Decent workshops and members of the family, as well as a wealth of DJs including Ro Sham Bo, Beni, Kato and Dizz1, it looks set to be a pretty mad bash – and there’s a raffle happening too. “We rarely have an opportunity where people can come and support us like this,” says Levins with characteristic enthusiasm. “It’s going to a really awesome fundraiser, it’s cheap and I really hope that tons of people come and show their support.”

The Heaps Decent Spring Bash is this Friday the 3rd at Oxford Arts Factory, with attractions including (but not limited to: Kween G & Belizian Bombshell, Stunna Set, Miracle, Young Nooky, Tweak, DJs: Bag Raiders, Beni, Kato, Sham Bo, Nina Las Vegas, Dizz1, Wax motif, Disco Punx and more.  Be there or be somewhere else!


First published in The Brag, Iss. 377, August 30th 2010

Grinderman - Grinderman 2

Grinderman
Grinderman 2

***

The second round of Grinderman mayhem opens with Nick Cave in midlife crisis mode, announcing to the universe, ‘I woke up this morning and I thought “what am I doing?”’ With the first Grinderman album (Cave’s sideproject with a few fellow Badseeds, principally Warren Ellis), many were left asking exactly that, dismissing it as little more than an exercise in grossly indulgent whining from a bunch of aging lotharios. But those who managed to discern the blaring self-parody underscoring the lewd posturing of songs like ‘No Pussy Blues’ will find much to enjoy in this sequel of razorbacked blues and whirring psychedelia.

The absurd deadpan tone of the first album is carried here by songs like first single ‘Heathen Child,’ Cave mocking the existential quandaries that plague the young with some surreal lyrics delivered with a leer and a snicker. But he’s at his best in the role of arch-seducer (aka dirty old man), like on ‘Worm Tamer’ or ‘Kitchenette’ – with lines like ‘I stick my fingers in your biscuit jar / and crush all your gingerbread men’ delivered in a voice dripping with post-peepshow mank.

Not that the lecherous and the grotesque are the only tones striven for here – they’re just the ones that Cave and co. seem to relish most. ‘When My Baby Comes’ contains all the mawkish desperation of the washed-up flip-side to the Grinderman persona; ditto the rasping pathos of ‘What I Know’.


There are misfirings sure, but if you’re in on the joke then Grinderman 2 is plenty fun. And if not, well, you can clean yourself up.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 377, August 30th 2010

Jinja Safari - Jinja Safari EP

Jinja Safari
Jinga Safari EP

***1/2

Sydney’s Jinja Safari don’t seem to be the sort of folks to mess around. The band consists of soulfully-bearded sorts Marcus Azon and Pepa Knight, and has been in existence for less than eight months – yet they managed to swing the rather neat trick of winning triple j’s Unearthed Splendour competition, netting them the privilege of opening the festival a few weeks back. Not too bad for a local group that performed its first show at the beginning of May.

Not that the pair are quite the greenhorns the PR line suggests. 21-year-old Knight released a solo album Start late last year, which stood him in good stead for producing the lush, exuberant sound typical of Jinja Safari’s self-titled debut EP. As with recent stuff from groups like the Ruby Suns or Vampire Weekend, Jinja Safari reeks of the influence of Graceland-era Paul Simon, although the spectre of Peter Gabriel also seems to hover at the edge of the firelight… Cue the sound of synthesized pan flutes.

In practice this simply means: tribal beatz, the twanging waft of sitar and delicate arching harmonies that seem to speak of morning light and crisp mountain air – all very North-Coast NSW really. First single ‘Peter Pan’ is a case in point; bells, chimes and handclaps supporting an effortlessly optimistic lyric (‘love has come at last / leave your sorrows in the past / dancing in the rain’).

It’s all very life affirming, to be sure – and it’ll be interesting to see if the fellas can muster up a bit more depth for the long player which is undoubtedly in the works. In the meantime, go see them live – it’ll be a blast.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 376, August 23rd 2010

Menomena - Mines

Menomena
Mines

****

Portland experimental rock three-piece Menomena have a more unusual writing process than most groups of their stature, laying down loops by the dozen before slowly assembling the resulting audio mess into distinct songs in the comfort of their bedrooms. Either they were working to sharper schematics than in the past, or they’ve honed the process to a fine art – Mines is their most coherent yet consistently surprising release to date.

Surprising in every sense, too. A track like ‘Taos’ rolls along quite nicely in alt-rock cruise control before veering through half a dozen musical flourishes – strings, a lone arpeggiated piano, a choir of Loony Tunes extras, slickly irregular drum licks from Danny Seim, sudden Zepplinesque guitar vom. And Brent Knopf’s not-quite-unlikeable yowl provides the pivot on which the whole thing turns; a sweetly unassuming lyrical come-on developing the confessional overtones of a serial sex addict. More exhilarating ground-dropping-away-beneath-you moments in the space of one song than many manage in an entire album.

Menomena draw their emotional oomph by picking through the detritus of failed relationships, and they do it in lyrical style: ‘you’re five foot five, not a hundred pounds / I’m scared to death of every single ounce’ (‘Queen Black Acid’). But Mines pulls together far too much diverse musical territory for it ever to become depressing; more moments of consummate awesomeness include the ascending piano hook and girl-group back-up vocals on ‘Oh Pretty Boy, You’re Such a Big Boy’ or the bitter twist of the saxophone on ‘Five Little Rooms’.

Full of surprises, this is one of the most endlessly listenable rock releases of the year.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 376, August 23rd 2010

Ben Sollee - Learning To Bend

Ben Sollee
Learning to Bend

***1/2

Listening to Ben Sollee’s rather lovely debut in the middle of an election campaign is a somewhat bizarre experience. First released in the US in 2008 B.O. (Before Obama), Learning to Bend overflows with deeply felt left-leaning political sentiment generated in the lead up to Bush the II’s ousting from the White House. Not that this dates Sollee’s songwriting in the least; a song like the opener ‘A Few Honest Words’ channels public disgust at political duplicity in a sentiment that’s timeless: “I don’t need no handshake or a firm look in the eye / don’t tell me what you think I oughta hear”.

Sollee is undoubtedly a committed activist – if it wasn’t clear from his own lyrics, which occasionally veer on the side of the overly direct, his decision to cover Sam Cooke’s sixties classic (and Mr O’s spiritual theme song) ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ confirms it. But the real attractions to be found here are musical; Learning to Bend is, aside from anything else, an invigorating cross-pollination of bluegrass and soul.

Sollee wields his instrument of choice, the cello, with understated skill. His effortlessly articulated pizz provides the foundation for some great contributions from banjo-picking fellow travellers Abigail Washburn and Bela Fleck (from Sollee’s other project The Sparrow Quartet), while he sings in a soulful lilt – think Eli “Paperboy” Reed meets Andrew Bird.

With Sollee’s subsequent LP Dear Companion (written with Daniel Martin Moore and produced by My Morning Jacket’s Jim James) already available, it’s a shame that this debut has taken so long to reach Australian ears.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 376, August 23rd 2010

Twin Sister - Colour Your Life

Twin Sister
Color Your Life

***

Brooklyn’s Twin Sister garnered considerable buzz Stateside on the strength of their debut EP Vampires With Dreaming Kids – which they thoughtfully made freely available through their website. Although their second LP delivers some radiantly chromatic moments – assuring them their place on the ‘ones to watch’ list – it does so without ever becoming uncontrollably drool-worthy.

The tone is set from the get go, ‘The Other Side Of Your Face’ kicking Color Your Life off to a hypnotic start with rippling phased guitars parsing over an unfaltering drumbeat. Singer Andrea Estella’s waifish vocals unobtrusively cut through the texture, before allowing the song to collapse into a post-rock fade out – kind of like a moving light refracting through a steadily held prism. Radio-ready single ‘Lady Daydream’ is beguilingly chilled as is ‘All Around And Away We Go’, which circles around a point of white euphoria and provides the EP’s most memorable moment. But this same moment also makes the group’s debt to the likes of Stereolab abundantly clear – and ‘Milk and Honey’ leans towards the ‘theft’ side of ‘influenced’.

While Estella’s voice takes a little while to warm to, being beautiful in the same way that Charlotte Gainsbourg is (strangely, undefinably so), Twin Sister works better with her than without. The EP’s single instrumental, ‘Galaxy Plateau’, is a piece of sinister ambience straight from the void, which acts as little more than an extended introduction to original final track ‘Phenomenons’ (the actual final track, Australia-only ‘#6’, sounds more like an undeveloped demo’).

Color Your Life is a moody little collection which suggests that as soon as the band shrug away the burden of their influences, only good things are possible.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 375, August 16th 2010

Midlake, Big Scary @ The Metro Theatre, July 31

Kudos to Melbourne duo Big Scary (or the management thereof) for landing the support slot tonight. With their breadcrumb trail of EPs having yet to lead to an album, opening for a Major American Rock Group is no small feat. They certainly deserve the exposure, the pair providing a toothsome showcase of their gentler side – the downside being that Tom Iansek’s sweetly warbling tenor was often overwhelmed by the friendly babble of a restive crowd. While this was mostly the sound guy’s fault, some material seemed a touch tentative, a concern that certainly didn’t apply to an innervating rendition of ‘Autumn’.

Midlake raised eyebrows with their third album The Courage Of Others, songwriter and scraggly troubadour Tim Smith’s fixation on the likes of Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull giving rise to an exercise in ’70s English folk revivalism with a peculiarly American flavour. The turn of the century log cabin shtick of the band’s breakthrough Van Occupanther gave way to ancient woods, fair maids and a deep and abiding melancholy. And such was the tone this evening, Smith performing much of the set comfortably seated whilst intoning lines such as “I will never have the courage of others” with an appropriate amount of gravitas.

Not that this was a downer in any way; the Texan septet generate a magnetic atmosphere with a decidedly old-school air (aided and abetted by the odd whiff of weed and the high ratio of grey hair scattered through the audience), while building some utterly electrifying climaxes (‘Core of Nature’ as a case in point). But while it’s difficult not admire the conviction and stature that Smith & Co. bring to their newer material, the VO favourites ‘Bandits’ and ‘Branches’ with which they chose to encore were like a ray of sunshine on the woodlands after rain.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 374, August 9th 2010

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Arcade Fire
The Suburbs 

****1/2

Two albums down, and Arcade Fire have arrived at the most enviable position; they now have the time and resources to do whatever they want. It’s telling then that what they want is to return to the neighbourhood setting of their groundbreaking debut. Where Funeral was closely focussed on individual angst at the reality of death, The Suburbs takes the long view – the band bring their observant lens to bear on home territory.

For co-vocalists Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, the dormitories of the first world are the site of deeply conflicting emotions. Half-remembered images of after school shenanigans play like a home movie behind the apocalyptic fatalism of reality: full-time employment, mortgages, two-and-a-half kids.  The Suburbs is as much an exorcism of personal cobwebs as it is a carefully aimed post-sub-prime attack on American complacency, and Wall St usury.

Butler is less precious lyrically than in the past, though direct as ever – in ‘City With No Children’ he asks, “do you think your righteousness / could pay the interest on your debt?” Musically, things tend towards the steady, complex mellowness of an album that will grow on you – punctuated by radio-ready amphetamine-fuelled, string-orchestra-backed dance anthems (‘Empty Room’), and hyper-accelerated electro whirls (‘Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’). And there is nothing more exciting than ‘Ready To Start’. All in all, it’s a bit top heavy – and things start to feel flabby at sixteen tracks. The emotional peak of ‘Sprawl’ I and II, for instance, are reached only after some leaden purgatorial dross… But all in all, you’ll pay those dues.




First published, and featured as Album of the Week, in The Brag, Iss. 374, August 9th 2010

Washington - I Believe You, Liar

Washington
I Believe You, Liar

****

I Believe You, Liar has been gestating in the brain of Megan Washington for a while now.  Her three EPs over the last eighteen months have seen the former Brisvegan dabbling with various blendings of jazz, folk and pop, with mixed success but always with a quirky twist unmistakably her own. With her LP debut, her patience in establishing herself has paid dividends – it’s not just a collection of the most fully formed examples of a young songwriter’s craft, but an immensely enjoyable pop confection with a kick in the aftertaste.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is how musically upbeat so much of the material is; the extent to which you’ll go for a song like ‘Rich Kids’ depends entirely on how open you are to throwing yourself around the kitchen like a lunatic. It’s immaculately produced, radio-ready pop (congrats are in order for studio mastermind John Castle), tempered by the vicious flavour that is Meg’s fingerprint – lines like “I wonder how you ever made it / Holy shit, you sure can turn it on” (‘Sunday Best’) are delivered with a butter-wouldn’t-melt sort of smile.

Although her voice effortlessly carries the laughing challenge and knowing twinkle required by the songs, she’s just as capable of tenderness, wringing hard-earned eloquence from a line like “maybe people in love are all on the same side when they fight” (‘Lover / Soldier’). At no point is Washington anything less than utterly convincing; the searching self-interrogation of ‘How To Tame Lions’ for instance draws its power from the chastened understanding that can only come from having been there. And that’s a fact true of the album as a whole.

I Believe You, Liar is a strident first effort which promises even better things to come.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 374, August 9th 2010

Perfume Genius - Learning

Perfume Genius
Learning

*** 1/2

Learning is a devastating little record. What it lacks in longevity it compensates for in intensity, with a lyric sheet constructed almost entirely around an unflinching look at the three A’s – abuse, addiction and alienation. Creating richly heartfelt songs seems to have provided Seattle-local Mike Hadreas with a cathartic means of purging a painful past.


The intimacy of the lyrics are alleviated somewhat by disarmingly vibrant music. Most songs in the collection are grounded in chord loops hammered out with Cat Power-style minimalism on what sounds like a battered old brown honky-tonk in someone’s aunt’s lounge room, and the lo-fi recording lends the sound a comforting warmth. Over this sturdy foundation, Hadreas sweetly warbles of the lost and broken people who “didn’t have a family to begin with” (‘Lookout, Lookout’), his waifish voice carrying the kind of aching compassion redolent of Sufjan Stevens, in ‘John Wayne Gacy, Jnr’ mode.

The apparent safety of suburbia is no protection for characters like the tortured high school teacher in ‘Mr Peterson’ or ‘Perry’, who struggles on despite “marks healing on your hands”. But amidst the pain glimmer moments of redemptive beauty, like the woman and child who go out into the backyard to watch the moon rise in ‘When,’ or the luxuriant synths of ‘Gay Angels’ and ‘No Problem’ – where Hadreas dispenses with lyrics altogether and allows himself to revel in the twisting possibilities of his voice.

Although limited by an unrelenting minor palette, imperfect recording and the wrenching content of Hadreas’ biography, Learning is an unassuming but crushing debut.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 372, July 26th 2010

Reviewing your life, one misadventure at a time

Emerging from the gelatinous quagmire of television comedy, Review with Myles Barlow has quickly proven itself one of the most entertaining and original Australian comedies to grace our television screens in recent years. Each half hour episode sees the earnest Myles responding to letters from a curious public by purposefully undergoing all manner of human experience – such as compulsive theft, voyeurism, acrimonious divorce, and sex with a male prostitute – before offering a critical analysis and star rating.

Myles’ ‘real world’ alter ego Phil Lloyd is in good spirits when we catch up, excitement at the impending airing of Review’s second season being eclipsed by his status as a newly fledged father – having a month-old baby “kind of puts everything else into total perspective,” he informs me.

As with so many great ideas, Review was born out of a booze-fuelled evening, shared by Lloyd and his long-time writing partner Trent O’Donnell. “I started giving things a rating” he explains, “[like] a stain on the carpet, I gave it a stupid analytical dissection and a star rating. In our drunken state we thought it was pretty funny and we thought, well wouldn’t it be funny if there was a guy who applied the whole arts critic rating framework to real life objects. So we started doing that then we took it to experiences and it snowballed from there.”

From these innocuous beginnings, the pair took the idea to Sydney-based Starchild Productions, developing four initial sketches under their own steam, before pitching a pilot to the various Australian broadcasters – Auntie being the only one savvy enough to take the bait.

Season one yielded paydirt, their efforts being rewarded with critical praise, a couple of AFI awards and the enduring buzz of word-of-mouth recommendations. Says Lloyd, “it’s always a worry, when you go out on a limb and do your own thing, whether everyone else will find it funny or not; so it was heartening to get a good response.”

As with shows such as The Office, The Thick of It or Summer Heights High, Review employs a fly-on-the-wall mockumentary style, generating laughs through the excruciating situations that Myles determinedly braves. Segments have an eerie tendency to end in acts of gross inebriation, unforgiveable duplicity, utter degradation, or some happy combination of all three.

“I’m a fan of all those comedies,” admits Lloyd. “We don’t try to emulate anything, but we are fans of that stuff so it probably comes through in our work. That’s certainly my favourite kind of comedy, that’s got some teeth and is sort of a bit awkward and uncomfortable, and that’s certainly what we try and do with Review. A lot of the feedback is that it’s sometimes really hard to watch – which we take as a compliment.”

Although Review is often as painful as funny, Lloyd is adamant that being ‘controversial’ for its own sake was never the goal. “If we go there it has to be justified, even if it’s very dark … Sometimes we can be gratuitous, but hopefully it’s funny because its gratuitous; it’s so ridiculously extreme and over-the-top that it’s stupid; it’s funny because he shouldn’t have gone that far.”

Pushing things to the limit might well be the duo’s unspoken mantra; it’s also the underlying principle of Myles Barlow’s elaborate metaphors, which meander off on tangents of their own. “They’re the hardest bit to write because they’re so verbose and absurd and often nonsensical” explains Lloyd, “they take a lot of work, we’ll write them and rewrite them over and over – it’s all about the language…

“[Also] there’s a certain absurdity about having an expert give something a rating out of five stars and telling you how good something is. I guess we play on that, that’s kind of the character of Myles, why he’s ridiculous at times and why his summations are…” he pauses to reflect, before admitting, “Maybe we are having a little dig there; not consciously though.”

In a case of art imitating life, season two features Myles starting his own cult (promising his disciples salvation through ‘the five stars towards enlightenment’), enjoying the dubious thrill of being a B-Grade celebrity, and acting out the popular fantasy of killing Kyle Sandilands. A more generous budget has also enabled Myles, already a man of the world, to become much more of a globetrotter, his critical dedication taking him to India, Europe and the United States.

While obviously pleased with the fruits of his labour, Lloyd is unassuming about the show’s future. “I think the concept holds up okay. I think it’ll hold up as long as he’s doing new and interesting things, but that’s the trick with anything I guess, coming up with new ideas that have enough legs to sustain it. I wouldn’t want to keep pushing it so that everyone gets tired of it.” With a show that hits the mark as consistently as Review, this isn’t likely to happen anytime soon.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 371, July 19th 2010

The Boat People - Dear Darkly

The Boat People
Dear Darkly


*** 1/2

Brisbane’s The Boat People have a lot in common with fellow indie-popsters Dappled Cities. Both groups have built dedicated local followings in their respective capitals, garnering critical acclaim for music that combines intelligent lyrics with poppy, upbeat tunes – while always just falling short of broader commercial success. With Dear Darkly, the Boaties seem to have arrived at a similar point to that reached last year by the Sydneysiders with Zounds, producing not only their most mature and ambitious statement to date, but also one with the most potential for wider recognition.


There’s a sense of self-possessed assurance at work here – especially with tracks like opener ‘Under The Ocean’ or ‘Live In The Dark’, which are buoyed along by effortlessly hummable melodies, and shimmeringly consonant textures. Lyrically the album conjures an all-too-familiar world of weekends spent with a slab of beer for company, and evenings of television and takeaway – reflecting relationship stagnation and malaise with lines like “you’re an antidote to an ugly world” (‘Antidote’) balancing the weariness of “things used to be terrific / now they’re barely anodyne” (‘Soporific’).

Songwriters Robin Waters and James O’Brien are confident enough to throw in the odd experiment, ensuring that things never get dull. But they don’t always hit the mark. First single ‘Echo Stick Guitars,’ for example, is as likely to piss off as many as it charms, its absurdly bouncy videogame-chant being a dalliance with electro that quickly wears thin. The compulsively danceable ‘Dance To My Pain’ or ‘Too Much In My Mind’ are more effective.

A laid back collection of thoughtful pop goodness that generally succeeds on its own terms.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 371, July 19th 2010

Beach Fossils - Self-titled

Beach Fossils
Beach Fossils
***

Beach Fossils’ self-titled debut technically ticks all the right boxes. Recorded last year by South Carolina’s Dustin Payseur from the comfort of his new Brooklyn bedroom, it’s an immaculately-assembled and disciplined collection of low-fi pop – drenched with the kind of day-glo nostalgia that’s going down so well at the moment.


The album’s strength is the unaffected simplicity of Payseur’s song-writing, which beguiles with a combination of deceptively uncomplicated riffs and naïve lyrics, evoking a craving for uncontained spaces and sunny afternoons wiled away in undisturbed indolence. It’s quite similar in this sense to label-mates Best Coast: but where Bethany Cosentino’s songs are endearing in their unadorned candour, Payseur’s have a tendency to wallow in a maudlin yearning for escape.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that; but after a while a sense of uniformity begins to set in, the emotions evoked on a song like ‘Lazy Day’ (remembering a day spent lolling around outside) being strikingly similar to those suggested by ‘Vacation’ (skipping town to a place where “the trees and sky collide”) or ‘Golden Age’ (“everything’s blue from the top of the sky to underneath you”).

The lyrical consistency isn’t helped by the interchangeable feel of the music – Payseur’s reliance on the loop pedal to develop songs dooms them to becoming rigorous little exercises in knitted guitars. Not even his attractively reverb-saturated vocals prevent them from becoming dully repetitive.

While Beach Fossils is a good-enough listen, the album’s wistful charms are quickly forgotten after a few spins.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 371, July 19th 2010

Big Scary

Two things about Melbournite two-piece Big Scary (full stop): a) their name is charmingly inapt, containing all the solemn eyed intensity of a child passing judgement on a thunderstorm and b) they are versatile, ambitious, assured and well and truly on the make.

Big Scary formed back in 2008 after Tom Iansek (guitar, piano, vocals) and Jo Syme (drums, guitar, ukulele, vocals) returned to Australia after six months of invigorating European moochings.  Shaken out of their holding patterns – travel was “an eye opening experience” says Tom – the pair set about “mucking around” with music with a renewed sense of possibility.

The results are eclectic, the band sailing through bright, heady waters where defining choices have yet to be made and each new song is an entity unto itself.  Their EP At the Mercy of the Elements mixed crunchy garage (‘Hey Somebody’) with piano-driven indie (‘Falling Away’) while their new release Autumn veers into Bon Iver inflected folk.  So, what’s the go?

“I guess we’re trying to figure that out for ourselves” says Tom.  “We write parts based on what it feels like the song should have.  We sort of mix it up as much as we can and try and make it fun for ourselves and squeeze as much out of being a two piece as we can.”

‘Squeeze in as much as fits’ may as well be the band motto, with ‘ain’t nothin’ gonna stop us!’ running in close second.  With At the Mercy of the Elements only released in February, the band has already moved onto bigger things, with Autumn being their first EP release in a planned set of four, one for each season slated for release over the course of 2010.

“The idea of nature is a bit of a recurring theme in our music and my lyrics” explains Tom.  “We recorded [At the Mercy of the Elements] during a week of crazy weather at the end of last year – fire, rain, dust storms and hail, all at the same time, all over the country.  I suppose that’s where the four seasons idea stemmed from originally.”

It’s a lovely idea that’s off to a promising start.  While b-side ‘Microwave Pizza’ is a finely crafted miniature, reflective of the self-disclosed influence of Bon Iver on the songwriter, ‘Autumn’ is a warm and wistful piece of pop, suggesting bracing mornings with a nip in the air as well as a certain precipitatory nursery rhyme.

“I’m definitely a cold weather person” says Tom.  “Autumn is my favourite season – I get over summer really quickly, it’s just a bit of a drain by the end and I can’t wait for it to be over.  Autumn it cools down and you can actually start to do stuff again.  In autumn I really come alive, creatively and in other ways.”

Wanderlust for example, the travel bug having well and truly sunk its teeth.  Big Scary just returned from a five week tour around and about supporting the Vasco Era – which was “SO MUCH fun” – and are planning on accompanying the release of each of their seasonal EPs with a tour to different parts of the country.  Tom is enthusiastic about the possibilities.

“Before the tour I loved recording and I still do love being in a studio.  But I really love being on stage.  It’s really a great adrenalin rush, it’s just forty minutes of fun.  I think we’ve surprised ourselves.”

Crab Smasher :: It Is What It Is

Its half past two on a Sunday morning in Alexandria and Marnie Vaughn’s birthday party has been a great success. The party theme was the humble Rubik’s Cube, guests being required to come dressed in blank primary coloured garb. Earlier in the evening a frenzied clothes swap ensued as people in various stages of inebriation attempted to become the first to assemble a complete outfit in a single colour. The young man who won is stalking around downstairs, dressed in a uniform yellow. His prize: a rainbow umbrella.

We sit on Marnie’s bed, attempting to talk about Crab Smasher, the experimental noise / cheese-slathered pop outfit in which she plays drums. This is difficult. Out the window, Will, a young gentleman dressed in Himalayan garb, souvenirs from a recent trip to Nepal, is attempting to negotiate with police in reference to a noise complaint, irate neighbours taking umbrage to the hardcore punk being cranked from the stereo in the backyard. Neither of us are tremendously impressed by the choice of music either, preferring the Pixies that are competing for attention from the lounge.

“I was in my brother’s band called Anal Discharge” says Marnie, an assured twenty-two year old with a ready laugh. “We had a show and my brother wanted to replace me with another drummer who was my boyfriend at the time… it was a touch awkward, [as] my brother chose the other drummer to play the show. Crab Smasher said ‘Hey, we need a drummer, come and play with us.’ I was seventeen – I didn’t even know what noise music was at the time.”

Will strides back into the room, stopping in front of Marnie. “Hey, can you help us get the music off? There’s like six cop cars.” He holds up his hand, one finger adorned with an over-sized ring, and starts laughing, relating his exchange with one of the officers. “I fuckin’ shook his hand and cut it open”. He wanders off to tell more people of this amusing encounter without waiting for a response. Someone is playing Fur Elise on the honky tonk downstairs, Beethoven adding a suitably civilised edge to proceedings.



“I like improvising because it’s always different and you always react to the audience” Marnie continues. “It’s also very dependent on everyone’s mood and how we respond to each other. It’s great to be able to react to the audience and not have a set that you always just play. It can be rather nerve-wracking, it can go well, it might not – it’s difficult just overcoming that. There’s always an element of uncertainty. Expectations I think are always difficult – I like that no one really expects us to amaze them.”

Drumming is only one of Marnie’s talents. Aside from undertaking a Masters in Gallery Administration, she is an accomplished photographer, the downstairs lounge area being heavily decorated with her work, although she seems to spend more time “working in a horrible world where photography is commercial and brides are my enemy.” Above her bed hangs one of her pieces, a surreal primordial swamp scene: a Hadrosaur stands in the foreground, its vivid golden shape drawing the eye away from a pair of demonic eyes that emerge from the drenching green murk. I later discover that she used a garden gnome as a model.

An endearing youth with big brown eyes comes up to us. “Oh, is this an interview?” We explain that we’re talking about Crab Smasher. It quickly emerges that he is an avowed fan, his favourite Crab Smasher moment being Grant Hunter, the band’s de facto leader, or possibly someone else (the details are hazy), playing a typewriter at an impromptu gig at Grant’s old house in Newcastle. We sit and introduce ourselves. “I’m really drunk” says Simo Soo, “but I’m still here.” The pianist seems to have given up, although noise still emanates from the backyard in a half-heard background scuzz. It’s getting late.

“Have you got enough material?” Marnie asks.
“Well… about fifteen minutes” I reply.
“Fifteen, oh that’s a lot of minutes. I’m surprised I could talk for fifteen minutes about Crab Smasher.”
“Really?”
“Usually I let Grant talk and if I talk he gets angry about what I talk about. ‘That’s not what it’s about!’ The whole time I’ve been in the band it’s been like, ‘So Grant, what’s it about? I’m an artist, I can understand these things!’ and he would never tell me. It’s a mystery. It is what it is.”

***



It’s a chilly, somewhat desultory day in Newcastle. Aside from a few window shoppers and the odd bored-looking white-collar worker, the Hunter St mall in the middle of the city is deserted. It’s certainly doubtful whether many of the clothing or record chain outlets lining the main drag are bringing in much in the way of custom.

It’s pleasant enough on the other side of the railway line however, sunshine occasionally trickling through the clouds where we sit outside the Brewery, the stately flat-screen adorned boozatorium that squats next to the grey expanse of Hunter River. A middle aged man stands fishing off the end of the wharf, while seagulls play noisy territorial games in the puddles next to our table.

Perhaps it’s just the reheated pumpkin risotto and gargantuan banana smoothie that served as breakfast sloshing around his system, but Grant Hunter, artist, stoic, electronic wizard and self-confessed “bossiest member” of Crab Smasher, is in a talkative mood, despite being here on sufferance. His distaste stems from the fact that the Brewery and nearby Fanny’s nightclub are apparently focal points for the kind of nightlife that finds the dispensation of random beatings to be the highlight of any given evening. “If you’re out at night by yourself, you’re just a target for being assaulted” he tells me.



Crumbling commercial infrastructure and seeming stagnation of the local economy notwithstanding, Newcastle has changed considerably for the better over the last year – it was “like a ghost town” says Hunter. Although much of the CBD’s business real estate stands dormant, bought up by property developers with an eye toward eventually constructing a Westfield-style megamall, a ballooning number of the empty shop-fronts and office spaces have been occupied by young creative sorts, shielded from the prohibitive horrors of commercial rents under the enveloping wing of the Renew Newcastle scheme.

Conceived by arts philanthropist Marcus Westbury (writer, broadcaster and founder of the Newcastle-based This Is Not Art festival) and modelled on a similar project of urban regeneration in Glasgow, the project is aimed at keeping the mall area of the CBD active by providing space for people to pursue creative or community focussed interests. Successful examples include a millinery (The Mad Hatter, its front window resembling a race day madam’s wet dream), an animation studio (with the delightful moniker of Specially Trained Monkeys) and zine shop (the Bird in the Hand, run by the formidable Susy Pow).

Before we crossed over into enemy territory, Hunter gave a brief tour of Art Hive, the small art gallery and catacomb of studio spaces that he co-directs and utilises along with a number of other local artists. “There’s a lot of good people doing stuff under the radar of the rest of the country” says Hunter of the project. “You’re able to create opportunities for yourself without having to rely too much on other people. You just put your head down and do what you like without really worrying about it.”




“Do what you like” along with “don’t take any of it too seriously” and “it’s all about having fun” may as well form the unofficial tripartite band motto for Crab Smasher, a group that take outright pleasure in conforming to no one’s expectations but their own. The band began life as a duo back in 2002 when Hunter and fellow crustacean demolition expert Nicholas French (guitar) started making “really bad, cheesy stuff” for their own amusement on Windows Sound Recorder, uploading their sonic doodlings online for whoever cared to look. “We didn’t know how to play any of the songs live” says Hunter “[so] we just improvised, [which then] influenced how we recorded. We did that for a while – then we started taking it all too seriously.”

Boredom with making “arty noise stuff” was accompanied by a sense of going through the motions, as well as a recognition of the very real danger of the group disappearing up their own collective fundament. Hunter certainly seems to prefer party cats to chin strokers: “We were playing with lots of dudes who were really pretentious” he reflects, “people chewing chips into a microphone and making really boring noise music. We realised that we were kind of going down that path, [so] we went back to where we started, recording and layering stuff, but trying to get as far away from that sort of serious art noise as possible. So we started recording pop songs – I don’t know whether it was just to confuse people or to amuse ourselves.”

Of course, there’s pop songs and then there’s pop songs, Crab Smasher’s take on the genre being not dissimilar to Hunter’s version of breakfast: uncontained exercises in improvisatory dementia, suggestions of melody emerging from all manner of droning ambience, grinding scuzz and electronic discordance, all within a friendly verse chorus structure.



“It became a question of improvising smarter” he explains. “We stopped playing the twenty minute noise pieces that we had been and [started] playing songs without writing them, writing them on the spot with the emphasis on melody, rhythm and all the kind of stuff that pop music’s all about and trying to do that live. We kind of sound like a weird sort of rock band now. In the last year or so we’ve improvised stuff that’s in a pop song structure that we’ve recorded and then memorised from the recordings and then tried to play live. It’s sort of a backwards way of doing it.”

It’s perhaps unsurprising that for a group that takes unalloyed delight in provoking a reaction from its audience, Crab Smasher have practically exhausted the limited possibilities provided by the watering holes of Newcastle. Given some of the absurdities they’ve put up with, this may well be for the best, archaic curfew laws and militant security guards on two occasions gifting the group with the joyous experience of being locked out of their own gig. “It was ridiculous!” says Hunter. “They didn’t pay us and then they wouldn’t let us take the rest of our gear home. That’s the kind of stuff you deal with when you play in pubs.”

Not that such challenges have stopped them from taking on drinking establishments up and down the Central Coast, one night at a “pretty rough” pub in Wyong providing a crystallising moment as to the band’s raison d’être. “We had some new gear and were totally harsh and chaotic and noisy and the sound guy pulled the plug after nine minutes and the house DJ wanted to beat us up. From that point on we convinced ourselves that we were serious improvisers and that became the point of doing the band, creating something in the moment – later our recordings became more about documenting that process.”



Although such fearlessness can only be marvelled at, no wonder that Hunter prefers the infinitely friendlier forums provided by house parties, warehouses, galleries or Vox Cyclops, the nearby underground record shop (another Renew Newcastle project) run by the folks from fellow noise-meisters Castings, the mutual encouragement provided by this tight knit community of culture manufacturers as well as the solid friendships that lie at the group’s core perhaps helping to explain Crab Smasher’s surprising longevity. “There’s a really supportive group of friends that’re doing similar stuff around town. It’s really low key” he says. “I think that that’s much more valuable.”

As well as generously streaming all of their material through their website (newer stuff for a small nominal fee), Crab Smasher put an exceptional amount of effort into producing small runs of aesthetically interesting physical products, adorning a steady flow of releases with the original artwork of band members as well as that of illustrator or cartoonist friends. Their new cassette Thick Mosquito Sky is a case in point, a total of sixty covers having been hand screened in a tri-coloured design. “It was a bit of a nightmare trying to get it all to line up” sighs Hunter, “I like that they’re all a bit different and uneven though. They’ve each got their own character.”

While recognition from initiatives such as New Weird Australia have undoubtedly provided satisfying ego-boosts, it’s clear that fundamentally the band gain most fulfilment making music by and for themselves while gleaning as much amusement from it as possible. “I try not to get too philosophical about DIY” Hunter muses. “it’s just a means to an end. None of us agree on anything, but we go into a room and something comes out. It’s not identifiable as being any set thing, it’s its own thing. It’s just us having fun together. That’s what it’s all about – we’d probably be doing it even if we didn’t invite people to listen to us. Just us in a room, doing it.”

***



It’s Friday night at the Hardware Gallery and a girl has just thrown up in the corridor. “I drank warm beer” she gasps weakly to the concerned lip-ringed woman who moves to assist her before she vanishes into the bathroom, mortified. A pair of gallery attendants nearby seem more interested in apportioning blame for allowing the girl entry than locating a bucket and mop. It’s a minor shemozzle. Ah well. Better out than in.

The front room of the gallery is elegantly lit, people standing around chatting and sipping wine. A young woman in what look to be second hand men’s clothes stands to one side, painting a pair of female figures on a large canvas. Her hands work quickly, her face a picture of absolute focus; it’s a moot point as to whether she’s working to a plan or making it up on the spot. Not that it seems to matter either way.

Vinyl twelve inch records, painted with an amazing array of designs line the walls – a pair of large mutated ears; a man in a suit with the head of a beagle smoking a pipe stands before a blackboard inscribed “A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence”; one enterprising sculptor has created a glass duplicate of the vinyl single of 90s dance hit Groove is in the Heart by Deee-Lite, recording the resulting scratch-ridden cacophony and making it available for the public’s consideration through a pair of headphones next to the artefact. The original beat is almost perceptible within the resulting din, a half-remembered image emerging through fog.

In a shadowy corner in the back room, Grant is fussing over a small bank of sound equipment, adjusting levels on the keyboard, twiddling knobs, completely oblivious to the surprised squawks of people stepping over the splatter of vomit in the corridor. Marnie looks nervous sitting next to him, occasionally picking up her sticks before replacing them, while Nicholas French, his face obscured by a heavy mop of blonde hair, and bassist Nathan Martin fiddle with their instruments in the corner opposite.



Finally they begin, the music commencing without any clear signal to the sparse audience, the fading murmur of the listeners blurring into the growing soft distortion emanating from Nicholas’ guitar. People stream into the darkened space, standing in a thick clump at the back while others form a cross legged semi-circle a respectful metre or so around the band.

Alien sounds emerge from the noise, both harsh and strangely muted, Grant yelping into a microphone before twisting and contorting the sound around the ostinato of the guitar. Then Marnie kicks into action and suddenly the noise is transformed, Grant moving to the synthesizer, a twist of harmony curling out to twine around the bass line – lines of attention focus the band members on one another, cues being given and responded to.

The room is pulsing now with a jaunty beat – why isn’t anyone dancing? – Nicholas striding over to stand in front of the desk, ripping a new theme into the mix, the sound kicking up a further gear for a long minute before they allow the layered noise to dissipate back into the air. “That was fantastic” someone calls out as people start to clap. The girl with the lip ring is standing close by. “That was shit” she mouths into a friend’s ear. “C’mon, I want more wine.”

Contains material originally published at Throw Shapes.