Parvyn 28, Darebin Arts Speakeasy

DAREBIN ARTS SPEAKEASY

If you’re looking for the most exciting artistic endeavours this Melbourne Fringe season, the Darebin Arts Speakeasy program is your guiding light.

Words by Clementine McNabb

Partnering with emerging and established artists, the multiaward-winning Darebin Arts Speakeasy program will host several independent performances as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Coming off the back of COVID, the program will be sharing a full season of shows, including Leah Shelton’s BATSH*T, Jonathan Homsey’s TRUTHCLUB and Aseel Tayah & Jason Tamiru’s ARDNA: OUR LAND, many of which have been brewing behind the scenes. With a focus on the world we find ourselves in today, the program continues to present a thrilling calendar of performances for Darebin’s diverse community as part of its nine-year legacy. BATSH*T by Leah Shelton | 5 - 15 October at Northcote Town Hall Arts Centre

After a sold-out season at the 2022 Brisbane Festival, Leah Shelton’s BATSH*T is finally touching down in Melbourne as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. ‘Psycho-siren’ Leah Shelton has come off the back of two acclaimed solo shows. Her first solo show TERROR AUSTRALIS received numerous awards and toured Australia and France, while her explosive sophomore show, B*TCH ON HEAT, toured to major festivals in Australia and the Soho Theatre London. Aside from her solo work, Shelton has played on and off West End in London and has graced the cabaret stages of Club Briefs, Little Death Club and Jonny Woo’s infamous UnRoyal Variety Show, to name a few. She is also the co-director of the artist collective Polytoxic, which performs internationally. Her newest offering, BATSH*T, is an elegy for Shelton’s own grandmother Gwen, in a theatrical, deeply funny and intimate story of female madness. Drawing on personal stories and memories, Shelton explores the fantasies, myths and fears that keep us compliant in a daring and evocative feminist depiction of the systems that let us down. BATSH*T is helmed by the creative team behind Shelton’s two other hit solo productions and is directed by the Olivier award-winning performance artist Ursula Martinez. TRUTHCLUB by Jonathan Homsey & the untitled likeminded dancers of colour | 8 – 10 October at Darebin Arts Centre

In the not-so-distant future, the dancefloor of TRUTHCLUB presents a safe haven for truth and the collective experience in an homage to street and cultural dance. In the creative universe of Jonathan Homsey and the untitled likeminded dancers of colour, there is only one place to decipher society and get the truth. Jonathan Homsey, winner of the 2022 Green Room Award for Dance: Best Production for I Am Maggie, is back in Melbourne for the debut performance of the dance collective, untitled likeminded dancers of colours. Homsey is a choreographer and curator based on Wurundjeri Country, and for the past decade he has been a community leader, working from the positionality of a queer person of colour to contribute to interdisciplinary practice in galleries and public spaces. As part of Melbourne Fringe Festival, TRUTHCLUB is set in a futuristic nightclub and presents an exploration of how a dancefloor can become a site for cathartic celebration. In speaking to collective experiences, Homsey looks towards the world of dance, and pays homage to street and cultural dance.

ARDNA: OUR LAND by Aseel Tayah & Jason Tamiru | 21 – 23 October at Darebin Arts Centre, Grevillea Room

The Palestinian artist Aseel Tayah brings an original collaboration with esteemed Yorta Yorta theatre maker Jason Tamiru to the Melbourne Fringe Festival. This exciting duo works under the name Bukjeh, which in Arabic refers to a package of belongings that refugees travel with. Through their extensive work, the group endeavours to centre and share the stories of refugee community members. The creative team represents a diverse multicultural background, with voices from Palestine, Egypt, South Sudan and Indigenous Australia. As part of their work they also tour and spread their stories to schools in Regional Victoria through the help of Regional Arts Victoria. ARDNA: OUR LAND was created with children seven years and older in mind. The duo explores our connection to the physical land around us through a collaboration of Aboriginal and Middle Eastern dance, songs and storytelling. A powerful exploration of our relationship to land, focussing on the different ways we tell stories, and listen to each other.

For more information and to book tickets to every show visit arts.darebin.vic.gov.au. This article was made in partnership with City of Darebin.

BATTS

THE NIGHTLINE

Album Reviews by Bryget Chrisfield

“Welcome to The Nightline, please leave your confession after the tone…” – The Nightline’s opening title track was inspired by an immersive audio-theatre experience of the same name – commissioned by 2021’s RISING festival – which recomposed late-night anonymous voice messages left between the hours of midnight and 6am.

Grief, trauma, mental health, learning to live with chronic illness – Tanya Batt (who releases music as BATTS) documents some dark times on this album, but it’s definitely not a heavy listen.

Our first bite from BATTS’ second record, ‘Blue’ featuring Sharon Van Etten is poetry in motion: “I feel the moon

descending over backlit high rises...” – oh, how we wish the sound of their stunning voices harmonising could wake us every morning!

“All that I need right here right now, I’m with you I’ve got...” – inventive phrasing unveils a declaration of love during ‘All That I Need’ (“… right here right now, I’m with you I’ve got…”). It’s about tripping (“Let’s feel this high”), but this song also captures the euphoria of recognising a longtime crush feels the same way about you with its percolating synth and gradually intensifying, joyous arrangement. As instrumentation floats in and out – like ever-changing cloud formations, gently cradling Batt’s immaculate vocals – we feel suspended in a state of bliss.

“London In Summer/ The happiest place in the world, just so you know/ I should feel good/ I should feel well/ I should feel something/ My god I feel like I’m in HELL” – ‘Summer In London’, with its spoken-word verses, sees Batt revisiting her childhood stomping ground. Then a repeated affirmation during the bridge (“Feeling good/ Feeling something…”) conjures up some healing energy before Batt reassures, “I think I’m doing alright,” at song’s close. With The Nightline, Batt says she aimed “to make a record I knew my father-in-law would’ve loved” (he passed away towards the end of 2019”) and you’d be wise to have a box of tissues within reach before digesting the softly strummed closer, ‘Keeping On’: “There’s a time and place for crying/ Not when it comes to dying/ And if I had a car I’d drive around crying/ Listening to your favourite songs/ Instead I cry on buses and trains/ Strangers ask if I’m okay...” We’ve always wondered what Neil Diamond was referring to in his lyrics about singing “with a cry in your voice” (‘Song Sung Blue’), but now we finally get it as perfectly demonstrated by Batt! Although she never relies on excessive vibrato, we feel her sorrow deeply.

Label: Mistletone/[PIAS] Release date: 14 October Jade Imagine Cold Memory

The ten tracks on Jade Imagine’s second record explore the notion of connection –to self, nature and others – which we now realise is absolutely everything. Opener ‘I Guess We’ll Just Wait’, with its mellow pace and gleaming guitar parts, gives us ‘Mind Games’ by John Lennon vibes.

Built around a sample created with piano and digital percussion, this album’s standout title track features an ominous undercurrent and striking industrial beats that Björk would surely covet. Then the chorus struts in, all shiny pop perfection, and sounds like a different song entirely! Band founder Jade McInally wrote ‘Cold Memory’ – Jade Imagine’s best work yet – after a mid-winter ocean swim with mates (brrrrrrrr!) in Killarney, a coastal town in Victoria. Ever thought of someone moments before receiving a text from them? “Is my mind playing tricks on me?/ Are we connected in ways we cannot see?” – Jade Imagine’s latest, art-pop single, ‘Instinct That I Wanna Know’, is an ode to ESP during which McInally’s dreamy vocals float atop boppy, danceable instrumentation.

Elsewhere, everything-but-thekitchen-sink percussion infuses ‘Back And Forth’; subtle whistling and the purity of McInally’s pipes enhance ‘Home’; and Tim Harvey joins McInally for some swoon-worthy unison vocals in the last coupla minutes of ‘Down To Us’: “Hoooooold on/ While I get to know you better/ It’s taken so long/ And it all comes down to us.”

Label: Milk! Records Release date: 21 October

Joshua Batten Learn To Live Again

Subtitled “A musical journey through neurodiversity set against the backdrop of COVID-19”, Joshua Batten’s Learn To Live Again is a continuous narrative in four parts: Distress, Depression, Assessment and Acceptance.

Regal strings usher in opening track ‘Prologue – Ignorance & Whispers’, which details the distant murmurings of a mystery virus. And we all know how quickly that “tale from the news” escalated! Throughout Learn To Live Again, Batten draws from a sonic palette of swelling strings, stately keys, guitar histrionics, dynamic drum patterns and even thunderstorm sound effects. At times his timbre calls to mind Tim Freedman (see: ‘Everybody’s Story’).

A nostalgic keys motif evokes the sublime ‘Isn’t It Time’ by The Babys before ‘Oh, Britannia’ morphs into a jaunty, musical theatre-esque romp: “Round about tea time, step off the train/ Victoria Station, out into the rain...” Clocking in at just under 14 minutes – a mini-musical! – ‘Existential Guardian’ features syncopated drum beats, dramatic keys and introspective lyrics: “What have I become?/ Sitting in a glass house throwing stones at everyone/ I’ve been cynical/ Waiting on a miracle to reconstruct a mind beyond repair.”

Slowly building to a triumphant crescendo, closer ‘The End Is Not The End’ is Batten’s resilience anthem: “Adjusting expectations on the way/ As I learn to navigate/ This gift that I’ve been given...” – hope ultimately prevails.

Label: Independent/MGM Release date: 3 October Vera Blue Mercurial

Arriving five-plus years after Vera Blue’s stunning, Gold-certified debut Perennial album, Mercurial intersperses soul-searching ballads (like lead single ‘The Curse’, which is about falling for your bestie) with electropop bangers (see: ‘Lethal’, with its vivacious synth evoking The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Lights’) for dancing the hurt away. Celia Pavey (the gifted artist behind the moniker) found creating Mercurial therapeutic while navigating a breakup and prioritising mental health following her anxiety and depression diagnoses: “Step forward, step back/ I take every day as progress/ I acknowledge, react/ And learn to trust the process” – opener ‘Alright Now’ boasts crisp production and glitchy, skittish beats that channels Flume, a former collaborator.

Latest single ‘Mermaid Avenue’ (named after an idyllic street in Sydney’s South Coogee) explores heartbreak (“I wish that I knew back then/ That we would become past tense”). “I hate it/ I love it/ I’m in it/ So fuck it/ HEY!” – funkadelic riffs and whip-cracking drum-machine beats elevate ‘Feel Better’. Gentle strumming and minimal instrumentation accompany ‘Heart Still Works’ until multilayered harmonies and swelling synths take flight: “Each time I see you I feel something beating/ It’s nice to know that/ My heart still works...”

Her vocals are perennially flawless (even when singing, “Drunk, crying in a fancy dress”) and, throughout the deeply personal Mercurial, Pavey embraces vulnerability as a superpower.

Label: Island Records/UMA Release date: 28 October

The Grogans Which Way Is Out

Opener ‘BUGS’ bursts in with rebellious spirit and implies this band’s musical education ranges from The Monkees right through to Arctic Monkeys (via The Kinks and The Beatles). Then ‘Inside My Mind’ oozes in: psychedelic, seductive and dripping with soul. But it’s really all about ‘Blurred Vision’, which glistens with metallic riffs and “Aaaaah-aaah-aah”s that channel Kasabian at their finest. This standout track’s arrangement is a thrill a minute! After paring right back to just urgent guitar parts and fuzz accompanying “blurred vision” on repeat, pummelling drums and cymbal mayhem cue a stacks-on instrumental thrash sesh.

Rhyming lyrics seem to spontaneously spill from lead singer/guitarist Quin Grunden’s chops, like he’s freestyling. Elsewhere, ‘Le Fangz’ slithers in like a pleasure-seeking lounge lizard (is that cheeky “fa-fa-fa/ fa-fa-fa-fa-fang” a nod to ‘Psycho Killer’ by Talking Heads?); ‘No Thanks (I’m Going Surfing)’ is irresistible ocean escapism; and the record’s downtempo penultimate track ‘Take It Or Leave It’ features a reassuring, strummed singalong moment. Then conversational closer ‘Lucky Enough’ lovingly supports a mate in need: “We’ll get this sickness out your head, man/ And leave the doctors at home/ You’re just laying in bed, man/ Don’t wanna leave you alone…” We’re not exactly sure Which Way Is Out but, when it comes to The Grogans, we’re definitely all in.

Label: Cousin Will Records Release date: 28 October

Northcote Theatre

LIVE MUSIC every weekend for 1,500 people! You can’t ask for better than that. FAMOUS FOR stunning Edwardian Baroque architecture, this was the first building in Northcote connected to electricity, over a century ago. INFAMOUS FOR its eclectic history. Founded as the Northcote Picture Theatre, it was Melbourne’s oldest surviving cinema, taken over by Hoyts, then eventually turned into a reception centre before becoming the stellar live music hub it is today. When it was announced last year that the Northcote Theatre was being transformed into a 1,500-person live music venue, replete with a cocktail bar, rooftop bar, Italian style trattoria and boutique wine bar, Northcote collectively – and this is the technical term – went apeshit.

Northcote may live and breathe live music, but with the Croxton Bandroom, Thornbury Theatre, Northcote Social Club, and a plethora of smaller venues like Bar 303 already on High Street, it was always going to take something pretty special to break through.

Luckily, there’s a lot more to Northcote Theatre than just good looks. There’s oodles of space, and the mezzanine, bar access and viewing angles are all exceptional.

The constant stream of big acts are quickly forging its newfound reputation as one of Melbourne’s foremost gig destinations, with The Butterfly Effect, Kelly Lee Owens, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, No Zu, Allen Stone, Sly Withers, Toro y Moi and Sharon Van Etten all set to rock its foundations over the next few weeks.

“High Street has really evolved over the years but it’s always been a heartland for musicians and artists,” venue operator Andrew Mansfield says. “We just want to compliment what’s already here.

“The theatre is a grand and ornate space, purpose built to host entertainment and right in the heart of Northcote… it’s just perfect for live performance.”

Visit the Northcote Theatre at 216 High St, Northcote.

Edinburgh Castle

LIVE MUSIC is a rite of passage at The Ed. If you’re a low-key act from the northern suburbs, chances are you’ve played here before. FAMOUS FOR being Brunswick’s oldest pub, what a claim to fame! INFAMOUS FOR its gritty gold-rush history. Much like its namesake, a thousand-year-old basalt castle perched upon a volcano, the Edinburgh Castle (Hotel) has a long and storied history that broadly mirrors the development of the area it’s come to embody. Brunswick’s oldest pub, the Edinburgh Castle opened back in 1854 - the same year as the Eureka Stockade - as a pub for gold miners to visit on the day-long journey from the populated areas around Collingwood to the gold fields in what is now Essendon (a commute that still sucks in peak hour). These days, grubby prospectors are replaced by a hip Brunny clientele, but the venue’s inherent quirkiness remains. It’s a big building with a proud white brick and tile facade (also from the 1800s) that beams at you as you trundle down Sydney Road. Upon entering, you’re greeted by a large alpine mural. We’re not quite sure why, but it’s lovely. There’s a self-described ‘DJ Tank’ with funky murals dropping beats outside, a dedicated band stage, a spacious beer garden, a 500+ person capacity, and a classic gastropub menu with a spread of beers and cocktails. As its age and prime location would suggest, the Edinburgh Castle has a large, loyal following. It boasts a front bar, two dining rooms, and the aforementioned garden that’s often bathed in sunlight well into the afternoon. It all leads to a fantastic atmosphere. We love it most for its commitment to live and local music: gigs six days per week, often multiple per day, offering emerging and established talent the chance to strut their stuff.

Visit the Edinburgh Castle seven days per week at 681 Sydney Rd, Brunswick.

The Gem

LIVE MUSIC is heartily embraced from solo acts to bands inside the venue, with it occasionally hard to distinguish where the musicians end and the patrons begin. FAMOUS FOR its unique ambience, especially in modern Collingwood. Our September venues are all about a blast from the past and The Gem is the pinnacle of this. INFAMOUS FOR the fact Elvis never left this building, there are shrines to him throughout. For well over 100 years, 289 Wellington Street in Collingwood was the rather non-descript provincial-style home to the Curry’s Family Hotel. Few could have possibly predicted that in the mid-2000s, this simple pub would explode to life, taking the last 60 years with it, into a honky-tonk paradise that’s one of Melbourne’s true gems.

The Gem boasts everything good, warm and welcoming that a neighbourhood bar with live music, DJs and great food can offer. Melbourne has long been in love with its country, soul and rock n roll vibes: it’s 50s kitsch meets good ol’ fashioned southern hospitality.

In addition to The King’s presence, there are old-school pinball machines, plenty of cowboy memorabilia, and more wooden surfaces than a timber yard. There’s always a barnstorming lineup on offer, in October you’ll get to see Super American Eagle, Metdog, Imperial Leather, Hot Blood, Extension Cord, The Vovos, The High Heavens and plenty more.

There are also a bunch of usual attractions; happy hour until 6pm on Wednesday to Friday, $10 margaritas and bloody marys on a Sunday. Reserve special consideration for the menu, bursting with comforting delights made for all seasons thanks to Sonny’s fried chicken, burgers and sides.

Head down to The Gem Bar at 289 Wellington Street in Collingwood.

Ragtime Tavern

LIVE MUSIC is utterly transfixing when it’s being played on a rotating piano shrouded by a smoke machine, which slowly carousels around such a warm, intimate space. FAMOUS FOR the rotating, motorised piano. Did we mention that yet? INFAMOUS FOR being a time machine back to the golden age of inns, taverns, jazz clubs, speakeasies and prohibition. It’s like the Great Depreston never happened. The Ragtime Tavern oozes character out of every beautifully curved surface, from the fluid edges of their velvet Chesterfieldstyle lounges to the bar that flows around the room, to the spinning plate that hosts their baby grand piano.

Deep reds and browns adorn nearly every surface, gently lit by hanging chandeliers, while mirrors and renaissance art decorate the walls. There are regular open piano evenings, where anyone and everyone can play the north’s most famous keys. It appears almost everyone who works there is a secret Liberace as well.

In addition to the talented staff and owner, local talent and sing-a-longs abound with plenty of famous faces dropping in from time to time.

With New Orleans front-and-centre in the venue’s ethos, there’s a laidback, anything goes spirit to the Ragtime.

“We try to get them to sing-along, to get people to be part of it as much as we can,” Ragtime’s regular boogie woogie and rockabilly pianist, Ezra Lee, told us recently. “That’s what rock’n’roll is all about, especially this gig because people are literally two feet away from you. Everyone’s yelling out songs or singing along. It’s a big party in there.”

And in case you’re wondering how fast that piano can actually spin… “One night we tried it out and it’s pretty wild. You’re hanging on,” laughs Lee.

Visit Ragtime Tavern at 206 Tyler Street, Preston.