MUSIC SOUTHERN MIND LOWTIDE
WE LOVE YOU, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH. PHOTO BY GETTY
SARAH SMITH > Music Editor LAST YEAR I watched Sir Paul McCartney
(who featured on the cover of Ed#550) play a nearly three-hour set covering his vast backcatalogue. The show was mammoth. There were marching bands, fireworks, flames and mass singalongs. But for all the “oohs” and “aahs” that arose during the spectacular sky show that accompanied ‘Live and Let Die’, they had nothing on the visceral impact of the songs themselves. Like so many others, The Beatles were a constant in my life from very young. While I was born decades after they broke up, my sister was a bit of a fanatic. Where most girls her age were covering their walls with pics of Leo and the Spice Girls, her bedroom was a veritable shrine to the Fab Four. Thanks to her, my childhood was subtly soundtracked by John, Ringo, Paul and George. Despite this history, I had totally underestimated the impact hearing those songs live for the first time would have. Sat up in the stands watching (the still charmingly dorky) Paul play the opening strains to ‘Something’ on ukulele, muscle memory kicked in and I was overwhelmed by emotion. It was something I hadn’t felt in such a visceral way in some time. And it was clearly a shared feeling, as people around me smiled wildly at friends and blinked back tears. Such moments can appear hokey or contrived, but this was far from it. It was joyful, uplifting and the perfect antidote to 2017.
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Mingling the airy vocal layers of guitarist Gabriel Lewis and bassist Lucy Buckeridge, Melbourne trio Lowtide delve deeper into luxurious dreampop on their second album. Even better, they establish a lasting sense of meditative ambience. But beyond all the effects-dosed serenity, these songs come anchored with chiming hooks and honeyed harmonies. ‘Window’ taps New Order’s brooding grandeur, while the sun-dazed ‘On the Fence’ is one of the straightest pop entries here, evoking REM as much as Slowdive. Equally satisfying are the subtle structural twists, like how the extroverted chorus of ‘Alibi’ dips away unexpectedly or the fragile ballad ‘Fault Lines’ culminates in overlapping vocals. Southern Mind is a masterclass in immersion, alternately droning and soaring. And if not every lyric is crystal clear on first pass, messages begin to coalesce with time, like the mantra-style encouragement to “celebrate yourself” on opener ‘A.C’. In stark contrast to their band name, Lowtide positively swim with depth. DOUG WALLEN
BLOODY LOVELY DZ DEATHRAYS
In their early days, Brisbane duo DZ Deathrays played an exhilarating mix of punk and dance, their live shows developing quite the reputation. Fast forward a decade, and the group has moved on from playing house parties to winning ARIAs, and their sound has evolved accordingly. Gone are the driving beats and fuzzy guitars, replaced with a clean production aesthetic and festival-ready vocal hooks. Tracks like ‘Feeling Good, Feeling Great’ and ‘Shred for Summer’ feel destined to become summer soundtracks, and speak to the band’s impressive growth. Yet with this growth DZ Deathrays have lost some of their originality. Bloody Lovely is tight and consistently melodic, yet it also sounds like it could have been composed by any number of other Australian indie rock bands. It’s a difficult fork in the road so many bands face, but in embracing a more mainstream sound, DZ Deathrays have lost a part of what made them so unique in the first place. MATTHEW WOODWARD
DREAM WIFE DREAM WIFE
Dream Wife’s fighting spirit is best conveyed by their live favourite ‘F.U.U.’, which closes the band’s self-titled debut album. Packed tight with fiery riffs and the unapologetic menace of its “I’m gonna fuck you up, gonna cut you up” refrain, it’s one hell of a rallying cry. The trio – Icelandic-born lead vocalist Rakel Mjöll, guitarist Alice Go and bassist Bella Podpadec – match their feminist grit with power-pop hooks and propulsive guitars. Dream Wife excels when the band hits the accelerator, like on the biting ‘Act My Age’, which builds to a satisfyingly furious climax. The album’s angriest moments are its best, making songs like ‘Hey Heartbreaker’ and ‘Right Now’ feel slight by comparison. Dream Wife’s punk ethos ensures their debut moves at a swift clip, with no room for indulgence. These songs are built for live shows, and standouts like ‘Fire’ and ‘Kids’ will go down a storm when the band makes their Laneway Festival debut this year. JACK TREGONING VINYL
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BOOKS THUY ON > Books Editor RECENTLY, AFTER A 15-year hiatus, I started writing poetry again. This was prompted by an opportune meeting with someone I will just call “Muse”. This particular fellow inspired me to take up an art form that I had woefully neglected – and the effect was liberating. I spend most of my working life writing about other people’s work, so when I took up the pen to scrawl some words on random scraps of paper in order to rearrange them at a later date, there was a sense that this act was a purely personal one. I was looking inwards and letting things out. It felt cathartic. If you believe poetry is dusty and esoteric, Beau Taplin’s Worlds of You will change your mind. Melbourne-based Taplin is what’s known as an “Insta-poet”. His work has been shared and liked on social media by millions, and this book gathers some of his most recent offerings. His poems are tiny, simple to read and simple to understand. There is no hifalutin language, no classical references, no tricksy textual formats. They are heartfelt and sometimes Hallmark greeting-card cheesy, but they will resonate with anyone who has ever loved and lost: “I want you, desperately, whether we are a match made in heaven or a beautiful disaster just waiting to happen.”
VANITY FAIR DIARIES TINA BROWN
TRAIN TO NOWHERE ANITA LESLIE
Vanity Fair Diaries is Tina Brown’s recollection of the eight years she spent overseeing one of America’s most respected magazines. In the current climate of calling out sexual harassment and highlighting the role of women in media, it’s particularly timely to recall that before Arianna Huffington, Brown proved that a young, headstrong woman was eminently capable of taking on a leadership role based on skill, experience and pure willpower. The first few chapters detail the troubled courtship of Brown from her editor’s role at Tatler (all double-barrel surnames, Brit socialites, horses and diamonds) to the iconic Vanity Fair. Unsurprisingly, big egos and reputations make for explosive episodes and there’s certainly a good dose of salacious he-said-she-said throughout. More interesting are Brown’s collaborations with household names such as photographer Annie Leibovitz. Brown is a skilled diarist, though her narcissistic and bitchy attitude can be cringeworthy. Nonetheless, it’s never boring and the format makes it easy to read. CAT WOODS
This is a recently republished 1948 memoir of WWII veteran, Croix de Guerre recipient, famous socialite and cousin to Winston Churchill, Anita Leslie. It is fastpaced and written with an exuberance rarely found in war writing. Train to Nowhere follows Leslie’s beginnings as an intelligent (but woefully inexperienced) volunteer in 1940 to her achievements as a driver for the Allied forces. The story captures the unique experience of women drivers in WWII – first in the British Army in Syria, Egypt and Italy, then later with the Free French Forces fighting to liberate France from Nazi occupation. While Leslie’s witty and keen observations about life on the front enrich and personalise the tale, the constant and unexplained references to army officers, divisions and battles can become a bit dull. The most difficult element of Leslie’s memoir lies in the cavalier racism of an English soldier in the 1940s. The book is a fascinating piece of history, but should be read as a document of its time.
SWEARING IS GOOD FOR YOU EMMA BYRNE
If regularly dropping four-letter words in conversation is part of your vocabulary, Emma Byrne’s book will provide validation of your filthy practice. But, please note, Byrne cautions against the use of everyday bad language: “Swearing needs to maintain its emotional impact in order to be effective.” In other words, “swearing is like mustard; a great ingredient but a lousy meal”. Judicious profanity, she maintains, can be useful. For instance, research has shown that swearing can help build teams in the workplace (shared vulgar lexicon apparently helps with morale boosting). It’s also good as stress relief and for dealing with pain. The book goes some way to explain how swearing is laden with emotional and cultural significance. It’s a fascinating and informative read; Byrne covers a lot of ground, including how swearing changes over time, how swearing can be used as rhetoric, how gender affects swearing, swearing in different languages and even how (other) primates swear. THUY ON PRINT
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