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CONTENTS
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27. 22.
26. 08.
15. 7. What Goes On/What’s on the Rip It Up Stereo, 8. Call Me; The Telephone in Popular Music, 10. So What…/Tweet Talk, 12. This Month In Clubland, 14. Marlon Williams, 15. Shakey Graves, 16. Style Like Drake, 17. Style Like Kitty and Daisy, 18. Gadgets, 19. Neneh Cherry, 20. Film Reviews, 22. Lindsey Stirling, 24. Album Reviews, 26. Sleater-Kinney, 27. Louis Armstrong & Me, 28. #WINNING.
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WHAT GOES ON Bringing a modern, aggressive approach to Death Metal Depths have been making their mark on the New Zealand heavy music scene since their inception in 2010. Killing Yourself For Profit is a five-piece metal/hardcore band from Auckland. Combining the efforts of local metal juggernauts Burn the Scripture, Fuelset and Upraw. KYFP brandishes a heavier dose of metal for New Zealand metalheads. TICKETMASTER.CO.NZ
WESTFEST Westfest 2015 just added four bands to the festival line-up – Mayhem, Falling In Reverse, Depths and Killing Yourself For Profit. The notorious Mayhem will bring a touch of Scandanavia, not to mention darkness and chaos to this year’s Westfest. Falling In Reverse are a post hardcore band from Las Vegas. Formed by lead singer Ronnie Radke whilst serving time in jail for battery related charges, the bands early demos were recorded while Ronnie was still inside. Depths are from Palmerston North.
RINGO STARR Ringo Starr has announced the release of his 18th studio album, Postcards From Paradise. With 11 original tracks, the solo album is due out Friday 27 March and is the first to include a song written and recorded by Ringo Starr and his current All Starr Band - Steve Lukather, Todd Rundgren, Gregg Rolie, Richard Page, Warren Ham and Gregg Bissonette. Postcards From Paradise was produced by Ringo and recorded at his home studio in Los Angeles and, as always, features friends and
family. As Ringo often says, “If I am recording and you’re in town and drop by, you’re going to be on the record!” .
FOO FIGHTERS Frontier Touring and The Rock have announced a limited release of tickets in the upper south stand at Mt Smart Stadium. They are now on sale for just $50! This stand is located at the rear of the stadium facing the stage. A handful of A Reserve Premium seated tickets have also just been released in Auckland. $50 tickets for the AMI Stadium in Christchurch are now sold out. SEE THEM LIVE: FOO FIGHTERS WED 18 FEB AMI STADIUM, CHRISTCHURCH (ALL AGES) TICKETEK.CO.NZ SAT 21 FEB MT. SMART STADIUM, AUCKLAND (ALL AGES) TICKETMASTER.CO.NZ
POKEY LAFARGE Pokey LaFarge has announced the release of his new album Something in the Water, in-stores Friday 20 March, along side a
New Zealand tour. Something in the Water features a diverse cast of talented players, including his own longstanding touring combo as well as members of such notable outfits as NRBQ, the Fat Babies, the Modern Sounds, and the Western Elstons. “The Midwest is at the heart of this record,” LaFarge asserts.
PLACEBO Steve Forrest has left Placebo. The drummer - who joined the group in 2008 - has “amicably” departed the band to focus on his own music, and singer Brian Molko and bassist Stefan Oldsal will now be joined on the road by former Colour of Fire drummer Matt Lunn. A group statement said: “The split is very amicable and Steve was keen to pursue his own musical ambitions, and has been writing and recording his own material over the last few years. Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal would like to thank Steve for all his work with the band and wish him all the very best in his future career.”
ON THE RIP IT UP STEREO TV ON THE RADIO – SEEDS (2014) TY SEAGALL – MANIPULATOR (2014) FUTURE ISLANDS – SINGLES (2014) BLIND MELON – ‘NO RAIN’ (1993) THE DECEMBERISTS – WHAT A TERRIBLE WORLD, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL WORLD (2015) JAMES BAY – ‘HOLD BACK THE RIVER’ (2014) COURTNEY BARNETT – ‘LANCE JR’ (2014)
FALL OUT BOY – AMERICAN BEAUTY/ AMERICAN PSYCHO (2015) HOW TO DESTROY ANGELS – ‘BBB’ (2010) JONI MITCHELL – COURT & SPARK (1974)
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ANDREW JOHNSTONE
CALL ME; THE TELEPHONE IN POPUL AR MUSIC
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I WENT TO sleep the other night considering ideas for new stories and awoke sometime later with a start – songs about telephones. Who knows which part of my unconscious mind this little gem arose from but considering the importance of this communication device to modern life there must be a plentiful canon of music celebrating its contribution to affairs of the heart, always the leading topic in any popular music genre.
memories for phone-related songs and the first thing that sprang to mind was ‘Sylvia’s Mother’, a droll little piece of ascending emotional drama written by Shel Silverstein and performed by Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show. Later they shortened their moniker (the former part referring to vocalist Ray Swayer’s eye-patch – he lost an eye in a car accident, the latter part of the title referencing the group’s penchant for narcotic substances) to Dr. Hook.
Before I consulted the web for information I decided to trawl through my own musical
Released in 1972 and a massive international hit that got into the top five in the USA, it concerns
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a caller desperate to get through to his ex-lover with a plea for another chance before she goes off to marry someone else, the obstacle being the former lover’s mother who won’t have a bar of it. The tension hikes up a notch each time the operator interrupts the caller’s increasingly desperate pleas with a request for more money. The overwrought vocal delivery is sublime and is the making of the song. Of course, if you were born after the age of the coinoperated phone machine the whole scenario might seem somewhat ludicrous, but yes,
that’s how difficult getting in touch with someone could be before the advent of texting, emails and Facebook. Silverstein was a best-selling crime novelist, cartoonist, children’s book author, playwright and songwriter responsible for such luminous tracks as Johnny Cash’s ‘A Boy Named Sue’ and Dr. Hook’s most iconic track, 1972’s ‘The Cover of the Rolling Stone’, (the refrain pleads – “I want to see my smiling face on the cover of the Rolling Stone” – to which the magazine dutifully obliged), among many other notable hits.
My wayward Uncle Ray (con-artist and fast-talker extraordinaire), was my teenage mentor. I am not sure what my very straight parents were thinking leaving me in his care (he lived in the city I was sent to for my high school education), but there I was, young and ready to be impressed and Ray did not disappoint one iota. Ray, while somewhat sociopathic and not a little narcissistic, had his good points, one of which was his top line Japanese-made quadraphonic stereo system and a record collection big enough to impress even the most hardened of souls, let alone a skinny and largely sheltered kid from the sticks. Ray loved The Eagles (I forgive him for that), and impressively the rather left field country stylings of The Amazing Rhythm Aces. He had a soft spot for Harry Nilsson and like everybody of his generation, worshipped Elvis and the Beatles, but his greatest musical love was the singer-songwriter Jim Croce. After years of struggling, Croce (a blue collar song-smith from Philadelphia), had finally broken through into the big time only to die suddenly in 1973 when the light plane he was travelling on between gigs fell from the sky. He left behind several songs that were to quickly become standards: ‘I Got A Name’, ‘Time In A Bottle’ and ‘I’ll Have To Say I Love You In A Song’. ‘Operator’ is not held in the same regard as these tunes but is a mighty fine track all the same. This time the hapless and heartbroken caller is pleading to the telephone operator for assistance in tracking down his former lover’s new phone number, who abandoned him for his “best old ex-friend Ray”. The phone call turns out to be more of a therapy session as his
need to contact her and tell her that he forgives her gives way to a realisation that it’s now in the past and doesn’t matter anymore. While on the subject of plane crashes and musicians, The Big Bopper had one massive hit – ‘Chantilly Lace’, (which concerns a thoroughly broke suitor negotiating a “date” with his girl via the phone), before his untimely demise in February 1959 alongside Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly in an infamous ill-fated chartered flight that ended abruptly in the wintry snowdrifts of central Iowa moments after take-off. Stevie Wonder, who needs no introduction, scored one of the biggest hits of his career with a “phone call”-related song back in 1984. ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’ was from the Wonder-composed soundtrack to Gene Wilder’s comedy film The Woman in Red. Okay, not the greatest film ever made, but hey, it’s Gene: Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, Willy Wonka and See No Evil - Hear No Evil, and with a record like that you can be forgiven most things. The song secured Wonder an academy award beating out that year’s other big contender – ‘Ghostbusters’ by Ray Parker Junior who was later sued by Huey Lewis claiming that Parker had ripped off his song ‘I Want A New Drug’ to create the iconic theme. The case was settled out of court. I mentioned Johnny Cash a few paragraphs back and the Man in Black has a particular connection to the roots of the modern country music industry through his marriage to June Carter Cash, who was a member of the illustrious Carter Family, the first big stars of the musical form. Carter family patriarch AP Carter was not only a handy vocalist and all-round musician but also a noted musicologist.
Between gigs he would hive off to the hills in search of music for the group to record and perform. Away so frequently and for so long that wife and fellow Carter family compatriot Sara fell into the arms of AP’s cousin for solace. A divorce followed but the group carried on. This angst-ridden little track concerns a little girl who wants to phone her mother who has gone away to heaven. A merchant, the owner of the phone in question, is trying to explain in the most careful way to the young child, that there is no telephone in heaven. Dating from 1929, this original AP Carter composition harks back to the time of “party lines”, (a subject The Kinks will enlarge upon at the end of the article). Back then phones had no dial mechanism and calls were connected via manually-operated telephone exchanges – purposebuilt rooms where people (usually women), matched caller with destination. At this stage I am out of inspiration and turn to Google for further enlightenment and am not surprised to find a Wikipedia page devoted to the subject though the canon is much smaller than I expected, given our reliance on the phone as a means of communicating love, heartbreak and other related conditions. I find, of course, Blondie’s ‘Call Me’. Seriously, as if you have to ask? If Debbie Harry asked you to call her would you hesitate? British band The Electric Light Orchestra’s ‘Telephone Line’ was the fifteenth-biggest selling song in the US in 1976. The band had their sights firmly set on the lucrative American market while recording and the track features an American dial tone. “To get the sound on the beginning, the American telephone sound, we phoned from
England to America to a number we knew nobody would be at. On the Moog we recreated the sound by tuning the oscillators to the same notes as the ringing of the phone,” explained Jeff Lynne, the band’s frontman. Perhaps the last word in telephone etiquette belongs to 1970s jazz/rock ensemble Steely Dan. Their biggest hit reminds the listener that the little piece of paper the number is scrawled on is easily lost, a problem less pressing with the advent of cellular technology and the myriad methods these devices provide for storing valuable lines of numerals that may or may not lead to a potential love connection. As for the fixed line phone, it is a rather humble and utilitarian device that is now quickly being consigned to the graveyard of history and will soon be but a quaint afterthought in our collective memory. The new frontier of communication belongs to a little handheld device that has more processing power than the computer systems on board the spaceship that took the first explorers to the moon in 1969 and time has yet to reveal what lasting artistic inspiration this little gadget might yet engender. As for a song to complete this list I could not decide between something old or new so I went with both. Lady Gaga’s ‘Telephone’, a gratuitous music video set in a prison where hot girls prance about their sexy underwear followed by the Kinks and a track called ‘Party Line’. Yes, once upon a time people often had to share telephone lines. These so-called “party lines” were wonderful places to eavesdrop in on private calls. Beware the unwary here as the local gossip could have a field day listening in on conversations not meant for general dissemination.
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SO WHAT...
Sam Taylor-Johnson was forced to remove jellyfish from a sex scene in Fifty Shades of Grey. The director wanted to use images of the sea-dwelling creatures in a fantasy scene with lead character Anastasia Steele but it was left on the cutting room floor after Universal studios bosses decided it was too odd for audiences. She explained: “We went to a beautiful aquarium and there were these jellyfish. They’re so sexual, jellyfish, when you look at them in tanks. So there was a scene when we go into Anastasia’s world and her head, and we just had these jellyfish on the screen. Everyone went, ‘What the f**k are those jellyfish doing there?’
2 Chainz wants to run for mayor. The rapper - who has collaborated with artists including Jessie J and Kanye West - revealed he is hoping to embark on a political career because he feels so strongly about the legalisation or marijuana and was riled up by a recent debate on the issue with television personality Nancy Grace. He told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper: “I am looking forward to running at the end of this year or next year.” The musician suggested he was considering the role earlier this week when he confessed his fans had been urging for him to run for the position in his hometown of College Park in Georgia in the next mayoral election on 03 November.
T WEET TALK “Today my 10 year old son said:’When life gives you lemons, squeeze the lemons in life’s eyes, and demand oranges.” Steve Carell @SteveCarell
“The less I tweet the more followers I get. What are you telling me?” Steve Martin @SteveMartinToGo
“It’s illegal to change your socks or underwear during a blizzard, right?” Lena Dunham @lenadunham
“Think of hits @katyperry DIDNT EVEN SING: Hot & Cold, Unconditionally, Last Friday night, Wide Awake, ET, Part of Me! SHE DIDNT EVEN NEED EM” Mindy Kaling @mindykaling
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Texas took a tree named Robert Plant on tour. The band’s frontwoman Sharleen Spiteri has admitted they once received a huge bill after trashing a hotel lobby and stealing a tree. “One night in Switzerland we played a gig and we came back to the hotel and it ended up with Rick [Richard Hynd] in the fountain pond in the foyer of the hotel. He was so p***ed that he dragged a potted plant onto the lift and it fell over, and all the stones in the pot went into the lift door so it wouldn’t shut.” She said the evening’s antics escalated further when her bandmates decided to steal the tree for their tour bus and agreed to name it after the Led Zeppelin frontman. Rita Ora doesn’t care about her ex-boyfriends enough to write a song about them. The singer who has dated DJ Calvin Harris, reality TV star Rob Kardashian and rapper Ricky Hil in the past, says, unlike fellow popstar Taylor Swift, she isn’t bothered enough by her failed romances to feature them in her tracks. She explained: “I don’t think I care enough about them to write a song about them. I will be unleashed but I know my limits.” Ora split from Harris last year and was subsequently banned from singing any of the tracks he had produced for her upcoming album.
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3 BREAKOUT MOMENTS FROM STANTON WARRIORS AZZIDO DA BASS ‘DOOMS NIGHT’ (2000) STANTON WARRIORS FT SLARTA JOHN VOCAL MIX When one of the biggest tunes of ’99 is already a remix, how as a producer do you top that? The answer… add a well-suited vocal, a breakbeat and reinvent it. That’s exactly what the SWs did after Timo Maas put a game changing remix of what was originally a German trance record to the eardrums of the world. Simple yet so very effective. MR REDS VS DJ SKRIBBLE ’EVERYBODY COME ON (CAN U FEEL IT)’ (2003) STANTON WARRIORS RE-EDIT This began life in 1999 as two individual tunes. Mr Red’s ‘Can U Feel It’ was a 2 Step track getting plays in the
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UK underground whilst DJ Skribble’s (of ‘90s Young Black Teenagers and MTV fame) ‘Everybody Come On’ featured Flipmode members Busta Rhymes, Rampage and Spliff Star with Consequence and Ed Lover. The Stantons had already done a remix of ‘Can U Feel It’ back then and in 2003 they brought the two together in a mash up to reach number 13 in the UK pop charts. ‘POP YA CORK’ (2005) The Stantons show a clear love for the hip-hop culture and ‘Pop Ya Cork’ is one of those tunes that pays its respects to the Miami bass and breakdance culture of the ‘80s. Enlisted here are some cleverly cut up Twista vocals. A tune that help define the Breaks genre of the mid ‘00s.
TURNING THE TABLES WITH… INFECTED MUSHROOM
rock legends such as The Doors, Korn and Perry Farrell.
1. The brainchild of Amit Duvdevani and Erez Aizen. They formed in 1996.
7. Coming up their favourite acts were Depeche Mode, Primus, Metallica and Prodigy.
2. Originally from Hafia, Israel they now live in Los Angeles, USA.
8. They cite Opiuo as one of their favourite producers from Australasia.
3. They are both trained in numerous instruments.
9. They are often labelled in the genre of psytrance but produce all tempos and variations of electronic music.
4. They average around 120 performances a year from Coachella, Ultra. Tomorrowland to Burning Man. 5. They have released 10 fulllength albums to date.
SEE THEM DJ STANTON WARRIORS (UK) THU 12 FEB 1885, AUCKLAND
10. The video for ‘Becoming Insane’ has had over 20 million views on YouTube. SEE THEM LIVE: INFECTED MUSHROOM (IL/US)
6. They have collaborated with
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MODESELEKTOR AUDIO Having studied the dark art of dynamics at a masters level as an in-house engineer Gareth Greenall aka Audio has used his talent to completely immerse himself into the sound and production of drum and bass. He has been annihilating eardrums worldwide with his unique, crisp, hard-hitting sound since his Resonant Evil days back in 2003. Releasing tune after deadly tune and countless remixes (including the State of Mind ‘No Operative’ Audio Remix). Audio’s debut album To The Edge Of Reason lead him to sign with Ed Rush and Optical,
DEAN MASON The EDM festival sound in NZ has only been represented by commercial radio thus far. “Inspired by the Music, People, Fashion and Euphoric Experience of International Night Clubs & Electronic Dance Music Festivals in the USA like EDC Las Vegas , Ultra Miami & TomorrowWorld”, the big room festival culture gets a local injection with the official launch party of Xphoria. An up and coming star in the L.A. scene
becoming a key-player of the Virus family. Within a period of just five years he has smashed out four ground breaking albums and is now a firm-fixture of Andy Cs label Ram Records. In 2015 he brings the heat on the second instalment of the mix series Ramlife. You know, I’d never thought about what it would be like to be wrapped up inside of a flaming burrito until I heard Audio’s sound.
Underground raves in Berlin in 1992 brought together Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary and the start of their production alias Fundamental Knowledge. In 1996 they renamed themselves Modeselektor. They set up their own label, Monkeytown Records, in 2009 as an outlet for their own and friends’ (Sirusmo, eLan, Mouse On Mars) music. Modeselektor is a favourite group of Thom Yorke. Moderat (the collaboration between Modeselektor and Apparat) have also supported
Radiohead on the band’s concerts in Poznan, Poland, Prague and Czech Republic. Don’t try and pigeonhole them musically though. Their sound is… “Happy metal, hard rap, country-ambient, Russian crunk. We don’t like it if people tag us as being a certain style or school or scene or whatever. We don’t really care about all that.” SEE THEM LIVE: MODESELEKTOR LIVE (DE) SAT 14 FEB STUDIO, AUCKLAND
SEE HIM DJ: AUDIO (UK) FRI 13 FEB BODEGA, WELLINGTON SAT 14 FEB DUX LIVE, CHRISTCHURCH
Dean Mason has held residences at the Hollywood Hard Rock Casino, Sutra Nightclub and the Yost Theater in Orange County, California. He is growing his following via his releases ‘Zinga’, ‘Without You’, ‘Higher’ and ‘Break It Down’.
:
SEE HIM DJ XPHORIA FT. DEAN MASON (US) SAT 14 FEB SKYCITY TWENTYONE, AUCKLAND
KIESZA If they were to make Under Siege Part 3 then Kiesza would be a shoe-in for a starring role. Like Steven Seagal she was in the Navy and boasts a grand set of skills including jobs as a ballerina, sailor, model, jazz scholar and songwriter. In electronic music she is finding her feet with her 2014 album Sound Of A Woman featuring the crossover pop anthems ‘Hideaway’ and ‘Giant In
My Heart’, while also providing the vocals for Skrillex and Diplo as JackU for ‘Take U There’ and she co-wrote Gorgon City’s ‘Go All Night’. You may see the tracks she wrote for Rihanna on her upcoming album too! SEE HER LIVE: OTAGO ORI FT KIESZA (CA) & SIGMA (UK) THU 05 MAR FORSYTH BARR STADIUM, DUNEDIN
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TIM GRUAR
MARLON WILLIAMS concept and I really ran with it.” There are some very dark lines in this song like … “I buried my child…” implying a murder or an ominous event.
WIN
“It’s not actually my song. It was written by a friend of mine, Tim Moore, about a friend of his who died and the funeral was this very Christian, very religious ceremony. And the boy who died was completely, not at all, religious and had no interest in religion. Tim wrote this as an indictment on his parents… to show how parents can sometimes project their view of the world (even) on their dead children.” And are there more songs on Marlon’s new album like this? “Yeah, there’s quite a few songs on the album with someone dying in them.” “WEREN’T YOU AT WOMAD last year?” I ask alt-country singer Marlon Williams. “Ah, no,” he replies, “You’re about the fourth person to ask me that.” Turns out it was “partner-ingenre” Delaney Davidson I was thinking of. But far from being insulted, he’s pleased about the association. “We’ve done a lot of work together. I can understand.” Williams first got noticed when he was only 17, fronting the alt-country band The Unfaithful Ways. After a time of reinvention he then joined Davidson for a series of duet albums titled Sad But True – The Secret History Of Country Music Songwriting, which took out the New Zealand Country Album and Country Song of the Year in 2013. Both of them have accumulated plenty of dirt on their boots touring with the Gunslinger’s Ball Tour and other troubadour excursions. Williams is also a stalwart of the Christchurch alt-country/folk scene that includes Davidson and the Eastern. Described on his website as “the impossible love child of Elvis, Roy Orbison and
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Townes Van Zandt”, Williams likens his style to “Johnny Cash darkness and irony.” Now based in Melbourne, where he’s been “just shy of two years”, he tells me he’s been testing the waters in the sunburned country. Is there much of a “scene” there, I wonder. “There’s two types. I was just up at the Golden Guitar Awards in Tamworth. It was that commercial gross cliché – hay bales, straw cow girl hats, ‘yee hahs’ and hideous backing tracks. And then there’s the alt-country crew who do their 16 variations of Gillian Welch covers. There’s really not a lot that fits in the middle.” Williams has already recorded a few tracks in between constant touring both here and in Australia. Of late he’s toured with Melody Pool, Eb & Sparrow and of course, Delaney Davidson. He finally found time to record at his beloved Sitting Room Studios in Lyttleton. “It’s only a few doors from my parents’ house. I started recording last April and it’s due out this April. It’s taken a full year to get ready.
I recorded it down in the harbour, mastered it there too. It’s not a straight country record, but it’s got elements of it.” Last night I checked out his new video for ‘Dark Child’, which is a repetitive slo-mo scene of two parents sitting on a step while their son is led away by the authorities following the committal of some undisclosed but despicable act. As the song progresses the actors and the details vary yet the overall theme is the same. It’s sort of like the filming of an audition, people swap in and out in some kind of surrealistic groundhog day. “Yeah, it’s pretty out there. It’s cycling through that classic American classic trope of a crime scene and a wayward son – a movie cliché thing - and in a way it’s showing the ‘tiredness’ of that idea. That’s one reading. Then another way is that it’s selling the idea of the different relationships we have without parents.” The video was the brainchild of director Damian Golfinopoulis of Candlelit Pictures. “He came up with this
So where did this fascination with the dark and morbid come from? “I guess I was always influenced by that dark side of story-telling in country music. The bandits, heroes, villains. It has the most rich and interesting topics. Death and sadness are the easiest to write about. Happiness is not easy, and it’s not appealing. My music reflects that story telling tradition. I want to create these stories and to be this sort of troubadour, relaying them to his audience.” And very soon you can do that, when Marlon comes to town. He’ll be touring the country from Dunedin to Auckland telling his dark tales of woe and remorse. If you cross his path – beware the man in black. SEE HIM LIVE: MARLON WILLIAMS FRI 13 FEB CHICKS HOTEL, DUNEDIN SAT 14 FEB ST MICHAELS CHURCH, CHRISTCHURCH FRI 20 FEB TUNING FORK, AUCKLAND SAT 21 FEB SAN FRAN, WELLINGTON DEBUT ALBUM OUT: FRI 24 APR
ANDREW JOHNSTONE
SHAKEY GR AVES musicologist Alan Lomax and sees himself as modern musician working in that tradition. His is indeed a voice infused with the ghosts of prairie and plain, desert and deep mountain range. I would go so far as to say, ‘authentic’, a word that is often used carelessly by music writers, but should be handled with as much care as a dangerous word like genius.
ALEJANDRO ROSEGARCIA, aka Shakey Graves, was born in Austin, the capital city of Texas, which by opportune coincidence is one America’s first cities of musical invention and innovation, (suitable words to describe this young musicians endeavours), and later when he was a teen, moved with his playwright mother to the City of Angels in search of opportunity. Initially his focus was on an acting career. He appeared in four episodes of the critically acclaimed TV drama Friday Night Lights, (a series based around a high school football team in the fictional town of Dillon, Texas), as well appearing in a couple of Robert Rodríguez films; Spy Kids 2 being one of them. In-between times he would retire to his small apartment and write songs with no particular ambition or destination in mind. It was during this period that he found himself out in the wilderness camping with a group of friends. He was strumming the guitar and singing along, (getting familiar with the process of playing in front of people), when a deranged looking dude ambled on up and began shaking his fist
at him and shrieking “shakey graves, SHAKEY GRAVES,” over and over. The moniker seemed to fit, so he put it on and Shakey Graves was born. “In the bad times it gives me something to hide behind and in the good times it gives me something to stand on. It allows me to step away from myself and let larger musical archetypes come through windows.” I describe to Alejandro what I hear in his music- “Southern blues/ rock with shades of Texas style country twang and swing. Echoes of Guy Clarke, Johnny and Jane Carter Cash and moments of voodoo aka Dr John with hints of Radiohead”. He laughs. “You know people are always asking me to describe my music and I never know what to say so I usually go with the ‘sound of two nice dogs fighting’ but hey, that sounds pretty good, lets go with that.”
Anyways, I digress. Back in his apartment Alejandro has assembled enough songs to create an album, though it wasn’t an album he had set out to create and not knowing any better or worse, posts them up on Bandcamp under the title “Roll the Bones” and requests that anyone who might be interested in downloading it to name their own price, an idea he picked up from the aforementioned Radiohead. Well, not far along, a programmer at Bandcamp happened upon this album, (no mean feat because seriously, Bandcamp is like a jungle, an almost impenetrable maze of music that fades into a misty uncertainty), liked it and posted the link onto the sites frontpage along with a glowing recommendation. Before he knew it, Alejandro had beer money, then enough money to pay the rent and then suddenly a money-fall so thick and heavy that he could have gone skiing on it. Alejandro, by a series of serendipitous steps, had found himself riding high on the new music-marketing wave.
meaning when it’s given away.” Roll The Bones, released January 2011, remains to this day one of Bandcamp’s all time biggest sellers. Between then and now, Alejandro has toured extensively and even recorded an album in a flash Nashville studio with noted session musicians and expert producers. He canned it, it didn’t sound real. Instead he slopped off home to his L.A. apartment and his old friends and started afresh with the bedroom-recording set-up that served him so well the first time around. And The War Came is no difficult second album. It’s a masterful effort that mixes the old and new with confidence and surety of voice, this despite the doubts and pressure, because unlike the first album, the creation of this one came with expectations, both from his burgeoning audience and his new record label. He has not disappointed, in fact he has more than likely exceeded all expectations. Shakey Graves is an interesting new voice in American music and he is playing at the Tuning Fork in Auckland on 28 Sat Feb. I ask him what the audience might expect to see at his debut NZ show. He laughs: “I am a curious about that too. A little bit of everything; old and new material and some weird approaches to some of the songs and me and the drummer just being creative.” He also loves a good martini, so if you see him around town, you know what he likes to drink. LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW ON RIP
While he is a young man of his time, informed by hip-hop and the odd peculiarities of modern digital music making, he has explored the ‘old timey’ Americana catalogue of noted
“Bandcamp is an excellent platform but I advise musicians to put a value on their music. It is more meaningful to the consumer when they have had to shell out hard bucks. It has less
IT UP RADIO: SOUNDCLOUD.COM/RIP-IT-UP-RADIO
SEE HIM LIVE: SHAKEY GRAVES SAT 28 FEB: THE TUNING FORK, AUCKLAND
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TIM GRUAR
NENEH CHERRY hung out with various people including Massive Attack, and even contributed on their breakthrough album Blue Lines. Her solo career began with an anti-Falklands War number called ‘Stop the War’, before moving on to work with composer/producer Jonny Dollar, The The and hooking up with future hubby Cameron McVey, aka Booga Bear. It was on Top of the Pops that Cherry gained notoriety for performing ‘Buffalo Stance’ while seven months pregnant with her first child, Tyson. “Everyone was all upset about me jumping around, like ‘pregnant women can’t do this’.” Cherry did not anticipate the backlash from journalists against her for performing while pregnant on TV. Even so Cherry was determined: “I didn’t see the need to separate myself from my music.”
THERE ARE TWO songs in Neneh Cherry’s repertoire that will always define her: The international blockbuster ‘Buffalo Girls’ and ‘7 Seconds’, which she made with Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour. The first literally introduced hip-hop to mainstream Britain, at a time when it was soaked in New Romanticism and Gothic gloom. The song, from her 1989 debut Raw Like Sushi is still a party favourite and even appeared on a cooking show recently. Ironically, Cherry told me, over a dodgy line from West London, that she had, in fact hosted her own cooking show with UK broadcaster Andi Oliver. “It had a mix of Jamaican food, spices, that kind of thing.” So no herrings or Scandinavian cuisine? “Not really.” Apparently the British public weren’t ready for that.
I tell her that initially I was a little confused by her accent. Cherry was born in Sweden but she sounds like she’s from the streets of London. Cherry, along with her brothers and sisters, grew up in the village of Hässleholm. “I was probably the first black kid in my class. I wasn’t ostracised (but) I did stand out.” At 16 she made the move to London to crash with her older half-sister, Titiyo. She’d met The Slits when her stepdad, Don Cherry, was touring with them and had taken the 15-year-old Neneh along for the ride. They encouraged her to move to England and helped set her up. “My parents were a little concerned. But given that I was a bit of an outsider in Sweden, being here in London, I found my ‘tribe’, you know. They could see I belonged.” It was that tribe of friends that got her to her first recordings. She
I raise a point about the core message in ‘Buffalo Stance’ being that it’s anti-female commodification, anti-materialism in music, especially hip-hop. “Yes, I think I told someone that recently. I also thought it was funny that Lorde recently came out with the same thing.” At least half of the time she’s now back in Sweden, where she was born, living with her family near Mariatorget. “That’s to get back my Swedish side. I’ve been in New York and elsewhere for over eight years – time to go back.” Family is important to her. A couple of years ago her mother, Moki Cherry, an influential Swedish artist, passed away. “It took me over a year to come to terms with it… I needed to clear my head but keep that inspiration.” She says she was in something of a dark place following her mother’s death. In
one song from Blank Project she sings “Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide/husband and wife needing protection”. Just quietly, she says it refers to that state where the black dog encourages duvet-diving to avoid the pain. “I started thinking about how you become addicted to misery and I didn’t like it.” It was McVey that may have dug her out of the hole she was trying to bury herself in. Cherry describes her husband as “this crazy force… he has a kind of insight, intuition, maybe.” It was a number of home sessions on the family sofa that produced the ten songs that became Blank Project. Teaming up with her, McVey and the crew RocketNumberNine (aka the Page brothers – Ben and Tom Page) made Blank Project. The music was recorded in Woodstock, New York with Vortex as a live thing. Ten tracks in five days. “I’m recorded as saying that it’s fearless and hardcore because the boys really just play it. We took the songs to them when they were close to finished… and there they are.” You might call the result progressive electronica. The music is instrumentally sparse, but full of pounding tribal rhythms, reminiscent of One In Punch and occasionally Kraftwerk. The opener flows like a ‘60s beat poet, as Cherry weaves her magical spell in the language of the street and the soul. “The band tend to play mostly live, so the interaction between them feels as well as looks real, and that’s important. When you come and see us… you’ll know that!” SEE HER LIVE: NENEH CHERRY TUE 03 MAR JAMES CABARET, WELLINGTON WED 04 MAR AUCKLAND FESTIVAL
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FILM REVIEWS
LAURA WEASER STILL ALICE
*****
DIRECTED BY RICHARD GLATZER & WASH WESTMORELAND STARRING JULIANNE MOORE, ALEC BALDWIN, KRISTEN STEWART, KATE BOSWORTH
Nothing says “be prepared to cry for two hours” like a film about Alzheimer’s disease, so bring the tissues. Still Alice is raw, unflinching and utterly heart-breaking, largely down to Julianne Moore’s career-defining performance. Littered with cruel ironies, Moore stars as Alice, a brilliant literary professor at the height of her career at Columbia University. A few lapses in memory, a regular run that leaves her dazed and confused and a few other warning signs led to a shocking diagnosis. As you can imagine, things go from bad to worse, as Alice slowly but surely becomes a shadow of her former self at just 50. What’s most harrowing about this film is the slow, gradual unravelling of Alice’s life. There’s no epiphany, no moment of triumph to save her or “the moral of the story is…” wrap-up at the end. It’s a horrible disease that anyone can be affected by and we’re offered a window into the world of someone who is. It’s beyond sad but incredibly eye-opening – don’t forget that pack of tissues.
DIRECTED BY CLINT EASTWOOD STARRING BRADLEY COOPER, SIENNA MILLER, KYLE GALLNER DIRECTED BY JEAN-MARC VALLÉE
AMERICAN SNIPER
*****
Director Clint Eastwood works hard to mediate a fine line between “gun”-ho American attitudes and the realities of war, by showing the US military through the eyes of one individual – Chris Kyle. Deemed the most lethal sniper in US history, the man made a name for himself with 160 confirmed kills during his tours of duty. The kudos for this film’s balance goes to the star Bradley Cooper, who is almost unrecognisable as the cowboy turned Navy Seal-turned-hero. Ever stoic, unrelenting in his will to save his fellow soldiers, his disintegration into insanity is so subtle that he barely even knows it’s happening.
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Sienna Miller gives a strong performance as his wife, the pulling force to get him home and safe. Unlike war films before it (Jarhead, Black Hawk Down etc etc), Eastwood steers away from political or social comment. There’s no reflective voice-over or sweeping views of a ravaged battlefield. As Kyle sees it, that’s exactly how we see it. It’s a limited narrative perspective, but it’s obviously done to sit on the fence. Even his status as a national hero seems uncertain, never actively portraying him as a cornerstone of the battle; always bringing it back to reality as the post-traumatic stress disorder sets in. A fascinating character study in a unique profession.
STARRING REESE WITHERSPOON, AURA DERN, GABY HOFFMAN
WILD
****
A movie about one woman’s hiking holiday? Where’s the appeal in that, I hear you ask. It’s in the emotional and physical toll the adventure takes, as Reese Witherspoon and her giant backpack take on the Pacific Crest Trail, a 4264km hike through desert, bush, alpine conditions and dangerous waterways. Based on the memoir of the same name, Cheryl Strayed (Witherspoon) is at her absolute worst – she’s lost her mother in her early twenties, sending her into an uncontrollable downward spiral into addiction and adultery. Her solution? To go on a journey
of soul-discovery by walking the trail, totally underprepared and inexperienced. In the year of America’s Sweethearts taking on their most challenging roles to date, Reese transforms into Cheryl through every unflattering part of her character from casual sex with strangers to a drug-fuelled haze. The power of this film is in Witherspoon’s performance, incredibly raw and gritty, and director Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club) interweaving moments of Cheryl’s troubled past with her confronting future means the audience travels every step of the way of her rehabilitation. An empowering, inspiring watch.
ANDREW JOHNSTONE
LINDSEY STIRLING “Anorexia is such a strange disorder. It’s really hard to describe how real the problem is when it exists in your own mind and it is hard to realise you have it and that it’s not normal or even that it’s a problem. Once she began to acknowledge she had a problem, doctors advised her that it was incurable, but not inescapable.” “You can get past it but it never quite leaves you alone.” These days stress is the main trigger for Stirling’s food obsession. LINDSEY STIRLING, violinist/dancer/ choreographer, first stepped into the public sphere with a series of appearances on the 2010 edition of America’s Got Talent. She made it through to the quarter-finals where she was stopped in her tracks by judges Sharon Osborne and Piers Morgan, who both agreed that she was something of a “one note performer” and didn’t have the versatility for the big time. Stirling says she was “crushed, devastated, humiliated and disappointed but I wasn’t ready to give up.” Taking matters into her own hands, she began creating videos of her choreographed performances, which she then posted up on YouTube. “It’s exciting to be a part of this new wave of how things can be done. I was tired of waiting for a someone to believe in my projects so I thought – ‘I can do videos myself and throw them up on YouTube and find my own fan base.’” Stirling is among a small group of new artists who have used YouTube and other “new media” outlets to market their talents to the wider world with impressive results. Currently she has some six million subscribers and has recorded just over 700 million views. Her productions are lavish and imaginative routines that speak volumes about her personal vision. Her 2012 eponymously-titled debut album, Lindsey Stirling, (released on her on own label), has so far racked up sales of some 700 thousand units worldwide, 400 thousand of those in Germany where she maintains a fanatical fan-base. “The Europeans have a special place in their hearts for classical
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music and electronic music alike. I do both and they love it.” Last year’s ‘Shatter Me’ peaked at number two on the US charts, cementing her place as one of the world’s major independent music artists. Stirling comes from humble origins. Born into a sprawling Mormon family in the city of Santa Ana, California, she discovered the violin through listening to her parents’ extensive collection of classical music records. She was drawn to the sound of the violin and convinced her parents to fund lessons. They could only afford 15 minutes per week from a dubious teacher who assured them that 15 minutes a week was pointless.
“When I get stressed out it starts to come back, but every time I go through this cycle I get better at overcoming it.” These days Stirling is much happier in her own skin and is at pains to stress that fame and wealth have not changed her. She credits the faith she grew up in for helping to keep her grounded and focused. “The Church of the Latter day Saints is my safety net and knowing that there is a God who loves me gives me strength.” Our time is almost up and I ask Stirling what her audience can expect to see at her upcoming gig at The Powerstation in Auckland on Sat 14 Feb
Taking what she could from her weekly lessons, she would go home and improvise and copy what she heard on records expanding her skills and repertoire.
“It’s a loud, energy-filled show; I dance and twirl and do back-flips and jump all over the stage for an hour and a half and there are numerous costume changes. It is suitable for all ages and it’s a fun, eclectic experience.”
“My story would have been very different if I had a tonne of money. Because I had no resources I had to learn how to do things myself and it’s really shaped my art.”
I close the interview by asking her what words of wisdom she has to offer young women contemplating a career in the arts and entertainment industry?
Despite a “gloriously” happy childhood, Stirling’s mood deteriorated through her late teens. “I was incredibly unhappy; I loathed myself and hated everything about myself.”
“Any successful person is successful because they don’t give up. The road to success includes many failures and disappointments. Riding out those disappointments is the key. We have to learn to let failure drive us rather than destroy us. Stick true to what you love and don’t ever change yourself to fit what other people tell you to be.”
Despite possessing a small frame – “I knew I wasn’t fat” – she became obsessed with her weight. “If I wasn’t the skinniest girl in the room I felt like I had failed. I felt that if I got skinnier I would become beautiful and have some self-worth and social value.”
SEE HER LIVE: NENEH CHERRY TUE 03 MAR JAMES CABARET, WELLINGTON WED 04 MAR AUCKLAND FESTIVAL
It took her a while to grasp she had a real problem.
LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW ON RIP IT UP RADIO: SOUNDCLOUD.COM/RIP-IT-UP-RADIO
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ALBUM REVIEWS *** D’ANGELO BLACK MESSIAH
*
RCA
D’Angelo has finally returned with his third album, Black Messiah. A 14-year gap is an eternity by industry standards – long enough for fans to forget you. Luckily, Messiah shakes the dust off with its first two tracks, picking up where his previous 2000 masterpiece Voodoo left off. Opener ‘Ain’t That Easy’ starts off with Hendrixian feedback before kicking into a drunken Sly Stone groove. His vocals are even more off-kilter, multi-tracked and alien-like than before. At times, they’re quite haunting. ‘1000
*** *
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PANDA BEAR PANDA BEAR MEETS THE GRIM REAPER
MARILYN MANSON THE PALE EMPEROR
DOMINO
In 2007, I wrote of Panda Bear’s brilliant Paw Tracks album that it was like listening to the Beach Boys and the Manson Family singing around a beach fire at night while tripping on acid. PB’s parent group Animal Collective never quite tuned into the weird ghosts just underneath classic pop music’s glossy surfaces with as much concentrated focus. Eight years later, Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper eschews the low bitrate steals and the woozy, malfunctioning merry-go-round off-centeredness for a much more outwardly conventional presentation that matches the grown-up subject matter. Panda Bear has gone and gotten all philosophical and lost his impishness, but without losing the most important signature tics: those insistent repetitions of vocal lines, the so-wrong-it’s-right placement of sampled detritus.
Marilyn Manson’s music always seemed like a pale shadow of the monstrous creature that leaped at you in videos, or shocked in articles. Like ‘70s shock-rocker Alice Cooper, who also had a sense of theatricality that eclipsed his music. MM’s own lineage was industrial rock, which has its own penchant for the gruesome. The problem was Nine Inch Nails, whose talent made MM seem as pointless as a Skinny Puppy live poster 25 years later. What a surprise then, to hear The Pale Emperor, on which he collaborates with TV soundtrack guy Tyler Bates on a dynamic collection that actually rocks. This is dramatic rock the way it should sound, refracted through the Doors and early Bauhaus. It’s got grooves that grind and a huge scale that demands excessive volume for maximum impact. Sure, it’s occasionally over-egged and not to be taken seriously, but that doesn’t dent its impact.
GARY STEEL
GARY STEEL
RIPITUP.CO.NZ
COOKING VINYL
*****
Deaths’ is the craziest thing D’s ever released – a dry, stuttering cacophony of bass and drums. So yes, Black Messiah was well worth the wait. It’s rare to witness a release that causes celebrity fans to geek out (Timberlake and Pharrell, for example). The thing is, it’ll take you another 14 years to digest what Messiah is really about. It’s political, personal, sexual and spiritual. Good things come to those who wait. Here’s to 2029. JAKE EBDALE
*** *
BELLE AND SEBASTIAN GIRLS IN PEACETIME WANT TO DANCE
THE DECEMBERISTS WHAT A TERRIBLE WORLD, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL WORLD
MATADOR
CAPTIOL RECORD
Belle and Sebastian should be my kind of band, because I love books and the idea of marrying literary merit to pop writing. But truthfully, I’ve always found them tepid, weak, fey, and unable to convey a line that doesn’t sound affected or contrived. Originally inspired by the painful indie wailings of The Smiths, after 19 years the group has attempted to beef up the fun factor with some disco grooves. Unfortunately, the combination of indie aesthetics, orchestral pop sensibilities and going “funky” makes them sound like the Pet Shop Boys circa 1987. Except the Pet Shop Boys actually had some good songs. There’s nothing on these artfully-constructed conceits that leaps out and makes you want to sing its choruses, but doubtless, fans of their effete constructions will do so anyway.
This is the seventh album from Portland’s musical chameleons. They smugly kick off with a little fan-love on ‘The Singer Addresses His Audience’ – a blatant Brit-Bop anthem acknowledging that “We know we belong to ya/We know you built your lives around us!” ‘Calvary Captain’ rollicks on like Style Council while ‘Make You Better’ is a Billy Bragg throwaway. ‘Lake Song’ gear-changes to a mellow Joni Mitchell ballad but ‘All The Water’s Gone’, like ‘Powderfinger’, drives a blusey, historical narration with bonedeep soulful lyrics. And then there’s the wonderful Silver Bullet Band-styled ‘Mistral’ and the gently treading ‘12/17/12’, inspired by Obama’s response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Two lines became the album’s title, a contemplative juxtaposition lead singer Colin Meloy found between himself and the victims’ families.
GARY STEEL
TIM GRUAR
ALBUM REVIEWS SLEATER-KINNEY***** NO CITIES TO LOVE SUB POP
Ten years since their last album and 20 years since the immediacy of their debut, Sleater-Kinney are back to remind you that there’s just no one quite like SleaterKinney. As weak a descriptor as that is, it withstands closer scrutiny: the inimitable bolting fight of Corin Tucker’s vocals; the peerless drop-tuned brain wheedle of Carrie Brownstein’s lead guitar; the singular ability of Janet Weiss’s drumming to create a complex of forward, fist-inthe-air propulsion and accessible
*** TWERPS RANGE ANXIETY
*
CHAPTER MUSIC
***** POND MAN IT FEELS LIKE SPACE AGAIN
This is the second full-length from Melbourne four-piece Twerps and it struggles to be more than a caring ode to the extensive library of the Go-Betweens. They cook with similar ingredients: Martin Frawley’s voice has hoarser shades of McLennan; melodic guitar phrases livening familiar chord progressions and jangling tones and a rhythm section that honours functionality beyond flair. Even lyrically the record suffers from a closeness to what came before. The foreign beauty of ‘Love at First Sight’ (with eye quality specified) seems to inhabit the same skin as ‘Lee Remick’. Even if this is intentional, in a record already brimming with influence, it’s too close to the bone. That’s not to say that the record is pure progenitor paean – there are gems like twee pop ‘Shoulders’, which has more in common with Talulah Gosh – but there’s not enough of them.
CAROLINE RECORDS
SAM WIECK
SARAH THOMSON
Two things: Man It Feels Like Space Again was produced by Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker; and near all of Pond’s shifting member line-up hail from the same amorphous group of psychloving Perthlings that beget both aforementioned groups. Now, bearing in mind the tropes that those connections may suggest (fuzzy psych phasing, reverbdrenched cosmic narratives), add a pinch of Supertramp synth, squirt in some Of Montreal spangle and add a thorough glob of indulgent noodling. Still here? (Sorry). If so, then congratulations. You’ve just imagined the exact space Pond inhabit. And herein lies the rub: the sum, here, is sadly not greater (or even “other”) than its parts. Some pretty good composite parts though, right? Which means MIFLSA is still an undeniably good time. Just one that, as its title hints, you’ve definitely felt your way through before.
***** FRANÇOIS & THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS L’HOMME TRANQUILLE DOMINO
Cuteness doesn’t have the longest shelf life, especially when there’s no salt to contrast with the sweet. The first track of four on the EP, ‘Ayan File’, stands in the shadow of the Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, politely waiting for you to notice it. Heard from a distance, or through a wall, and you’d be forgiven for thinking it was ‘Born Under Punches’. Track two, ‘Jeans’, adds a plaid shirt under to the Trade Aid necklace. Led by banjo and strings it strolls along, gathering and discarding dusty alt-country melodies. The remaining tracks, ‘Volcan’ and ‘Dessine’, are split-gene leavings of the first two, synthesising but not transcending their lineage. It has grooves, it’s pleasant enough and it’s well-performed. It’s just too nice to reel back and hit you in the guts. SAM WIECK
precision. No Cities to Love is a reminder of those qualities, sure. What it is not, however, is a group reuniting to facsimile past glories or stances. While 2005’s The Woods came off as a bit of a classic rock genre trial for the group, NCtL now stands, white knuckled and hook laden, as an exploration of modern paranoias and the equal dread/necessity of onward motion in an age of endangered attention span. Rad. SARAH THOMSON
THIS PALE FIRE DUSK EP
*** *
SELF-RELEASED
Upon first impression, Aucklandbased Corban Koschak sounds like an early Chris Martin. But remember that before Coldplay became bombastic juggernauts, they made simple, honest songs of hope, love, loss. And that’s immediately apparent from this wonderful little EP. Hook-laden ‘Waves’ is a likely Parachutes outtake but still nifty-clever. Aquatics prevail in ‘Siren Song’, too, with deep sea soul burials and rolling waves. Not original, but effective. What really grabs is a (very Kiwi) girl’s breakup message on the intro to ‘Stormy Weather’. Not the smoky jazz standard of Ella and co, but a dark riveting grind of fading ghosts – memories of a lost lover – which swells to a climatic tempest of angst. Then ‘Unfamiliar’ is the calm after the storm – whimsical but prescriptive as a jilted lover makes rules for new suitors. Okay, there’s room to grow but it’s a strong starter platform for higher creativity. TIM GRUAR
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SLEATER-KINNEY “We pushed ourselves. There was desperation to say it all, to get it all out onto the page...”
Weiss is a thoughtful speaker who explains that the band never meant so much time to pass between albums. “Corin had started a family and Carrie got involved with the TV comedy show Portlandia and I got busy doing session work and touring with various artists, (Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Wild Flag, The Shins, The Go-Betweens, Bright Eyes and Elliott Smith to name but a few), and time went by. We suddenly began to realise that if we were ever going to make another record it had to be sooner rather than later.”
JANET WEISS ICONIC AMERICAN WEST Coast postpunk rockers Sleater-Kinney have just released their first album in 10 years. Called No Cities To Love, it’s a cracker, or in the words of the band’s softly-spoken drummer Janet Weiss, “it’s gangbusters, very powerful and melodic. We sound possessed.” It is an album of sonic and melodic juxtaposition, both dark and light, with hints of late-career Who, lashings of riot grrrl aesthetic and plenty of good old-fashioned impassioned rock and roll. Vocalists Brownstein and Tucker wail and rage in grappling harmony while their twin guitars veer between howling assault and moments of transcendent beauty, all of which is deftly unified by Weiss’s relentless rhythms. The band arrived arose out of Olympia, the capital city of Washington State, in the early 1990s, taking its name from a motorway exit prominent in the city. With Carrie Brownstein (vocals and guitar), and Corin Tucker, (vocals and guitar), at its core, this feminist post-punk band went through three drummers before auditioning Weiss in 1996. Legend tells a similar tale to the one that surrounds The Who and the audition of one of Weiss’s drumming heroes, Keith Moon, who according to Daltrey conducted his audition with such intensity, the band felt like they were standing behind a “jet engine”. For Tucker and Brownstein, their first experience of Weiss was
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similar. Recalls Brownstein – “She started up pounding the skins so hard we stopped playing and looked up at her in astonishment.” I got a pretty good idea of what Brownstein meant when I watched the YouTube clip of the band performing ‘Jumpers’ on Letterman back in 2005. Weiss is a demon; head swinging wildly in time with the beat and arms pumping the sticks like there’s no tomorrow. Weiss recalls – “It’s a small room with a small crowd filled out by TV cameras and Dave Letterman is sitting just a few feet away from you. I was nervous because we had to shorten the song for time reasons and I was worried that I might forget the change. We started playing and the nerves disappeared and I remembered what I had to do. I was glad when it was over and we didn’t screw anything up. It was fun.” Weiss came to drumming late. She loved watching and listening to drummers but didn’t pick up the sticks herself until she was 22. Besides Keith Moon, she is heavily influenced by Charlie Watts, John Bonham and Topper Headon from the Clash, (“the real drummers” as she describes them, adding, “unlike myself”), as well as the drummers with local Portland bands like Crackerbash, Hazel and Bikini Kill.
After several months of songwriting sessions the band entered the recording studio and pretty much punched it out in two weeks. “We pushed ourselves. There was desperation to say it all, to get it all out onto the page. We were realising that we didn’t have forever to do this stuff.” The realisation that time was catching up on them partly informs the ferocity and pace of the album. “It’s different when you are a young band, you have different needs and priorities,” says Weiss. “Now that we are older we are much more aware. Being adults with lives and families and careers forces us into the moment. We have a lot to say in a short amount of time, and that plays to our intensity.” No Cities To Love is Sleater-Kinney’s eighth album but it has been playing live that has really fed the band’s heart. “We are a band that loves playing live. We are ambitious and we want to impress and we always play as good as we possibly can.” I finish up the interview by asking Janet if the band has any plans to bring their sold out US tour to New Zealand. “I hope so, it’s been a while since we were there and we only got to see Auckland and I really want to get out and visit the rest of the country.” NEW ALBUM: NO CITIES TO LOVE
“These drummers I saw with my own eyes and could feel the air hitting my chest. I learned a lot from watching those bands.”
OUT NOW LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW ON RIP IT UP RADIO: SOUNDCLOUD.COM/RIP-IT-UP-RADIO
ANDREW JOHNSTONE
LOUIS ARMSTRONG AND ME conformation that Armstrong, a life-long marijuana smoker and legalisation advocate, did indeed carry his legendary stash with him throughout his NZ sojourn as well as a case of carefully folded handkerchiefs dusted with pharmaceutical-grade cocaine. Brass instrument players need to clear their mouths of excess phlegm while performing, usually into a handkerchief if not straight onto the floor. Armstrong’s apparent technique was to spit into his linen cloth and at the same time take a deep breath of the energising narcotic embedded within.
LEGENDARY AMERICAN JAZZ musician Louis Armstrong entered into my sphere of consciousness sometime in the 1960s via the song ‘Hello Dolly’. Released in 1964, Armstrong’s version of the title tune from the successful Broadway musical was a sensation, taking the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and ending the Beatles’ streak of three number one hits in row. It won two Grammys – for Song of the Year and Best Male Vocal. It was the thirdbiggest selling song that year and at the age of 63, Armstrong became the oldest artist to hold down the number one spot in the rock era. I spent the next few months learning the song and imitating him until I had what I thought was a pretty good impression down-pat. I remember being out on the farm with my dad around this time and I must have been driving him crazy with my Armstrong because one day he, a man of few words, turned to me and said “enough.” Sometime later I discovered the old gramophone in the spare back room of my grandparents house. Like all the houses in our district, the old valve-driven machines had been replaced with transistor radios and stereos and had been consigned to spare rooms, garages and sheds. I loved these machines with their powerful receivers and deep their sonorous speakers that elicited a sound with an extraordinary presence. My grandparents’ machine was the size of a small chest freezer and held an eclectic collection of singles and LPs including a glorious Stan Freberg comedy album, a number of Beatles 45s and a Louis Armstrong single, ‘Gone Fishing’, a duet with the
legendary Bing Crosby. Once again I found myself enchanted and fascinated by Armstrong’s guttural voice, which in stark contrast to Crosby’s silky crooner’s tenor, worked magnificently in concord, elevating what was ostensibly a novelty song, into something of real musical value. It was also my introduction to scat singing, a style often credited as an Armstrong innovation, which Armstrong uses to close the song. As the years passed my fascination with Louis faded while my musical tastes broadened but he came back into my life a couple of years back through the auspices of my then-flatmate Dr Richard Swainson. I vaguely knew he was something of an Armstrong fan and often heard the great man’s trumpet drifting out from under his bedroom door but I did not realise how much of a fan he was until the day he corralled me and asked me if I knew anything about Armstrong’s 1963 Hamilton performance at the Founders Theatre. I didn’t, but Richard had found a bone that he began to gnaw on relentlessly, somewhat excited that one of his musical idols had performed in the city he called home. Historical information about that longforgotten concert was scant, but piece-bypiece, Richard uncovered photos, reviews, advertising and stories from those that had been there. He struck gold when he scored an interview with the daughter of the legendary Australian concert promoter Harry M. Miller, who had organised and financed the tour.
A great story but one that Richard was unable to confirm. It was unlikely, contends Richard, because despite his penchant for pot, Armstrong is well documented regarding his disdain for harder drugs. He had seen the lives of too many friends and colleagues ruined through the course of his long career, by heroin in particular, to have any truck with their use. Armstrong and his All-Stars arrived in Hamilton a few hours before the concert, and in Richard’s words, “Hamilton was in a fairly primitive stage of its development” and there was nowhere for them to eat, so with the help of a local radio personality, bread and fixings were purchased and sandwiches were assembled by the great man and the said radio personality who confirmed that Armstrong was chatty and completely down to earth, the main thing on his mind being the procurement of souvenir spoons for his wife who was an avid collector. Armstrong also demonstrated something of his legendary temper and flair for “salty” language when he cornered his drunken bass player and reminded him that he had broken one of the band-leader’s cardinal rules of band conduct. As for the few concert-goers Richard was able to track down, it was agreed unanimously that a good time was had by all and Armstrong was magnificent. Finally, after many months of work, Richard got permission to place a brass plaque in the foyer of the iconic Founders Theatre commemorating, almost to the hour, the 50th anniversary of Armstrong’s Hamilton concert. LISTEN IN ON EXPLORING MUSIC: WHY LOUIS ARMSTRONG MATTERS, RIP IT UP RADIO:
Among the stories shared was the
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