Brag#719 by The Brag Magazine

BISHOP BRIGGS SPEAKS OUT AHEAD OF SPLENDOUR

Why Festivals Are Good For Your Mental Health

LORDE HER SPECTACULAR RISE TO STARDOM

ALSO INSIDE: JOSH PYKE, JULIEN BAKER, THE LATEST SYDNEY FOOD TRENDS AND MORE!

22 JULY I Max Watts NEW ALBUM

THE ALTAR AVAILABLE NOW

08 SEP HORDERN PAVILION (ALL AGES)

GANGOFYOUTHS.COM NEW ALBUM

‘GO FARTHER IN LIGHTNESS’ AVAILABLE 18/8/17 PRE-ORDER NOW

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in this issue

free stuff

what you’ll find inside…

10-13

head to: thebrag.com/freeshit

The Frontline

Back To Business

Hiboux, Bonny Doon, The Pinheads

7-9

Seven Of The Most Vicious Acts Of Vengeance In Musical History

Julien Baker is living the antirock star life, but her fame is set to soar

10-13 The Making Of Lorde: Three Of Her Career-Defining Moments Revisited

Bishop Briggs

14-16 Meet The 23-Year-Old Melbourne Writer Behind The Biggest Pop Song In America 17

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20-21 Why Music Festivals Can Be Good For Your Mental Health 22-23 Arts reviews, Velvet giveaway 24

The latest in Sydney food news

Out & About, Off The Record

Album reviews, First Drafts

27-29 Live reviews, Test your knowledge: how many artists can you name? 30

Gig guide

AUSTRALIAN MUSIC WEEK

Sydney’s own Australian Music Week, the annual three-day live music and entertainment industry conference, is back for 2017. Organisers have unveiled the first 30 showcasing artists for the November event, as well as its lineup of industry speakers, including Bluesfest’s Peter Noble, author Stuart Coupe and Seventh Street Media’s Luke Girgis. Showcasing acts include William Crighton, Letters To Lions, Eliza and The Delusionals, Tenderfoot and many more. AMW 2017 takes over venues around Cronulla Beach from Wednesday November 1 – Friday November 3, and we’re giving away a conference gold double pass valid for the welcome party, conference sessions, networking events and live show venues. Enter the draw at thebrag.com/ freeshit.

Lorde photo by Brendan Walter

Josh Pyke looks back on the last ten years of his recording career

“The best way to maximise your experience at a music festival, researchers say, is to come prepared.” (20-21)

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“It’s a pretty nostalgic thing to look back on songs from particular periods of your life.”

the frontline with Brandon John, Chris Martin and Nathan Jolly ISSUE 719: Wednesday June 28, 2017 PRINT & DIGITAL EDITOR: Chris Martin chris.martin@seventhstreet.media SUB-EDITOR: David Molloy STAFF WRITERS: Joseph Earp, Nathan Jolly, Adam Norris NEWS: Nathan Jolly, Tyler Jenke, Brandon John

The live music performances are included in twilight Bridgeclimb tickets every Saturday and Sunday throughout July and August. Visit bridgeclimb.com for the full schedule.

Caligula’s Horse

THE STARS DESCEND ON SOFAR SOUNDS

ART DIRECTOR: Sarah Bryant PHOTOGRAPHER: Ashley Mar ADVERTISING: Josh Burrows - 0411 025 674 josh.burrows@seventhstreet.media PUBLISHER: Seventh Street Media CEO, SEVENTH STREET MEDIA: Luke Girgis - luke.girgis@seventhstreet.media MANAGING EDITOR: Poppy Reid poppy.reid@seventhstreet.media THE GODFATHER: BnJ GIG GUIDE COORDINATOR: Anna Wilson gigguide@seventhstreet.media REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS: Nat Amat, Arca Bayburt, Lars Brandle, Tanja Brinks Toubro, Chelsea Deeley, Matthew Galea, Emily Gibb, Jennifer Hoddinett, Emily Meller, David Molloy, Annie Murney, Adam Norris, George Nott, Daniel Prior, Natalie Rogers, Erin Rooney, Anna Rose, Spencer Scott, Natalie Salvo, Leonardo Silvestrini, Jade Smith, Aaron Streatfeild, Augustus Welby, Jessica Westcott, Zanda Wilson, Stephanie Yip, David James Young Please send mail NOT ACCOUNTS direct to this NEW address Level 2, 9-13 Bibby St, Chiswick NSW 2046 EDITORIAL POLICY: The views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher, editors or staff of the BRAG. ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE: Carrie Huang - accounts@seventhstreet.vc (02) 9713 9269 Level 2, 9-13 Bibby St, Chiswick NSW 2046

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Pioneering Aussie prog rockers Caligula’s Horse are touring the country once again this year. In celebration of their fourth record In Contact, the Queenslanders have been, well, in contact to announce a new run of tour dates, including the Factory Theatre on Friday October 6. Tickets are on sale now.

BIGSOUND’S BIG LINEUP Australia’s biggest music industry conference and artist showcase, BIGSOUND, is back for its 16th year, and has revealed its first lineup of over 60 acts who’ll be performing across 17 Brisbane venues this year. The 2016 event saw 7,000 people from Australia and overseas descend on Brissy’s Fortitude Valley, and this year promises to be bigger again when it all fires up from Tuesday September 5 – Friday September 8. The first lineup announcement includes some of the most talked-about local prospects including Winston Surfshirt, Alex The Astronaut and Ruby Fields, plus the return of rising stars like Hockey Dad and The Creases. International guests this year include UK-via-Aus rockers Splashh and New Zealand’s Critics Choice-winning outfit Bespin, joining other Aussie acts like Mansionair, Polaris, Hatchie, Mama Kin, Total Giovanni, Baker Boy, Haiku Hands and The Cactus Channel. See full details at bigsound.org.au.

VOLUMES FESTIVAL RETURNS Volumes Festival, a one-day live music extravaganza taking place across multiple

stages at three Sydney venues, is back for 2017. Oxford Art Factory, The Cliff Dive and Brighton Up Bar, all in the live-musicloving Oxford Square precinct, will host a bunch of great Aussie talent spanning indie, rock, electronica and more. The 2017 lineup features Jonti, Gold Class, Baro, The Ocean Party, Retiree, Fortunes., Lucy Cliche, Orion, World Champion, Mezko, RVG and Wallace, among many others. And to ensure Volumes 2017 is an inclusive event that supports the cultural community of our city, a ‘pay what you can’ ticketing option is now available for a limited time. Volumes Festival takes over Oxford Square on Saturday August 19.

GIGS ON THE HARBOUR BRIDGE As far as live music venues go, this one will be pretty special. The Sydney Harbour Bridge is hosting its Sunset Sessions series this July and August, with a total of 16 gigs taking place at the summit of the coathanger during twilight Bridgeclimb sessions. The artists include Ron Of Ra, When Elishia Met Tommy and Taryn La Fauci, who releases her debut album Cycling on Friday June 30.

Paul McCartney

WHY DON’T WE DO IT ON THE ROAD Yes, it’s actually happening – Paul McCartney is touring Australia and New Zealand this year for the first time since 1993. The music legend and former Beatle made the announcement during a live Q&A with fans, hosted by comedian Tim Minchin, telling fans that he’s heading over in December for five local dates as part of his ‘One On One’ tour. See him at Qudos Bank Arena on Monday December 11.

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Paul McCartney photo by MPL Communications

DEADLINES: Editorial: Friday 12pm (no extensions) Ad bookings: Friday 5pm (no extensions) Fishished art: No later than 2pm Monday Ad cancellations: Friday 4pm Deadlines are strictly adhered to. Published by Seventh Street Media Pty Ltd All content copyrighted to Seventh Street Media 2017

CALIGULA’S HORSE RIDE AGAIN

Sofar Sounds, the global movement of loungeroom and backyard gigs, is hosting a special event in support of Amnesty International this September. More than 200 cities will take part in the celebration of intimate live music, including Sydney, which will host an up-close-and-personal show from The Jezabels, Megan Washington and Ngaiire. Performing simultaneously at secret venues around the world on Wednesday September 20 will be the likes of The National, Jessie Ware, Jack Garratt, Kate Tempest, The Naked and Famous and Oh Wonder. For your chance to win tickets to the invite-only Amnesty International show in Sydney this September, make a small voluntary donation at sofarsounds.com.

Back To Business Music Industry News powered by The Industry Observer

Flume

Mallrat

NEW SIGNINGS FLUME IS A POWER PLAYER Flume has landed at number six on Billboard’s Fourth Annual Power Players List: Best DJs & Dance Execs of 2017. Billboard’s “annual list of DJ-producers, tastemakers and other movers and shakers who are driving the $7.4 billion global genre” has been topped by The Chainsmokers’ manager Adam Alpert, with other big-hitters in the higher reaches including Steve Aoki, Clean Bandit and Diplo. Flume sits one place higher than Martin Garrix and one below DJ Snake. He outranked massive players such as David Guetta and Calvin Harris.

breaking biz A new industry conference dedicated to independent artists and record labels is launching in Australia this year. The inaugural Indie-Con Australia will be held in conjunction with the 11th annual AIR Awards on Thursday July 26 – Friday July 27 in Adelaide, Australia’s current UNESCO City of Music. Indie-Con was first established in the UK, and its debut Australian edition will feature speakers including Portia Sabin (Kill Rock Stars/Future of What), Richard James Burgess (A2IM), Paul Pacifico (AIM), George Howard (Berklee/ Forbes), Amy Dietz (InGrooves), Merida Sussex (Stolen Recordings/ Paradise Motel), Jen Cloher (Milk Records) and Briggs (Bad Apples/ A.B. Original), with Sebastian Chase (MGM) delivering the opening keynote. More info via air.org.au.

SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS LAUNCH ON FACEBOOK Ever been talking to your friends in a Facebook group chat, only to wish that you had the ability to curate a playlist to soundtrack the conversation? Well, good news, because your dreams are coming true thanks to Facebook Messenger

and Spotify. The streaming service has announced its newest feature, Group Playlists for Messenger, which integrates with Facebook’s messenger app to help users curate and listen to playlists. As Spotify puts it, the new feature is “ideal for parties, road trips, or simply collecting new favourites … a seamless way for users to collaborate and share music more easily than ever before.”

IS TESLA MOVING INTO STREAMING? Tesla has reportedly held discussions with major record labels regarding licensing deals for a Spotify rival. According to Recode, the luxury car manufacturer is readying a music streaming service with multiple tiers of pricing. Its entry-level tier is thought to follow in the footsteps of Pandora with an internet radio offering. Those familiar with Tesla’s multi-billionaire founder Elon Musk won’t bat an eyelid at the prospect of the car company entering the music streaming market. Musk is also the founder of PayPal, SolarCity and SpaceX, which launched a landmark commercial spacecraft in 2012. He’s renowned for entering struggling markets with ventures that rail against what is perceived profitable.

TAYLOR SWIFT TRIUMPHS AGAIN Early this month, Taylor Swift finally relented and allowed her music back

The Slants

THE SLANTS WIN IN COURT Back in 2011, members of the Portland band The Slants sought to have their name registered as a trademark. However, their application was denied because it could be considered disparaging to “persons of Asian decent”. The group’s frontman, Simon Tam, took issue with this, namely due to the fact The Slants’ name was never meant to be offensive, but rather a means to reclaim ownership of a word that has historically caused much hurt to members of the Asian-American community. Now, the US Supreme Court has ruled that the initial refusal of the trademark was unconstitutional “because it allows the government to be the judge of what private speech is offensive: ‘Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend.’”

onto streaming services, a move she framed as a celebration of her 1989 album selling over ten million copies worldwide – an impressive figure in this day and age, especially considering streaming seemingly didn’t make up any of these sales. It seems that fans have embraced her return to Spotify and co., with Billboard reporting her first week back generated over US$400,000. That’s a lot of figurative spins, considering these are US numbers only. While it may seem like a lot of money left on the table by not embracing streaming earlier, this is clearly a firstweek surge; plus her 1989 sales wouldn’t have been at all as impressive if streaming the album was a possibility. As usual, Swift has played this perfectly.

APPLE LOOKS TO PAY LESS When Spotify negotiated a reduced royalty rate with Universal Music Group in April – believed to shift from 55% to 52% – Apple was watching closely. According to Bloomberg, Apple is seeking similar treatment to Spotify to bring its label revenue share rate down from 58% to a number more in line with the Spotify agreement. The Cupertino tech giant may just get its wish, but it must be willing to adhere to the same compromise as Spotify. Universal has reportedly set Spotify paid subscriber growth targets in return for the revenue share dip. And if the streaming giant doesn’t reach them, UMG has the option to either postpone the agreement plans, or give them up entirely.

LUCIAN GRAINGE HONOURED

movers & shakers Sean Parker has stepped down from Spotify’s board of directors, making way for four recent additions to the board. Parker joined Spotify in 2010 after purchasing a five per cent stake of the company for a cool US$15m. Back in the day, Parker co-founded Napster, before becoming the president of Facebook. You may remember him being played by Justin Timberlake in Aaron Sorkin’s film The Social Network – a portrayal that many saw as negative, despite acting to make Parker seem infinitely cooler than he is. Parker’s exit will make room for the likes of former Disney COO Tom Staggs and former YouTube product head Shishir Mehrotra, both recent additions to the board, as the company prepares to float itself on the New York Stock Exchange. Meanwhile, Sony Music Australia is drilling deeper into artist management, concerts promotion and live events through an initiative that brings together two of the Australian music industry’s top power players. The music major’s Parade Management division has struck a joint venture with Glenn Wheatley’s Talentworks to create Talentworks Parade, which, according to a statement, will manage artists and promote touring events among its long to-do list. The deal was engineered by Denis Handlin, chairman and CEO (Australia and New Zealand) and president (Asia) of Sony Music Entertainment, and his long-time friend Wheatley, who serves as managing director of Talentworks.

Universal Music Group chief Lucian Grainge broke new ground for the music biz last week when was honoured as the Cannes Lions Media Person of the Year 2017, an award he promptly dedicated to his late brother, Nigel. The accolade, established in 1999 and handed out during the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, has never been awarded to a music executive, until now. Grainge’s latest win “says much about the convergence of entertainment with marketing and advertising”, enthused Cannes Lions CEO Philip Thomas as he introduced Grainge during a ceremony in the south of France. Describing the Britishborn, US-based UMG chairman and CEO as the “great hope” for the music business and “a champion of new business models and fresh approaches”, Thomas and his organisation credited Grainge for “laying the foundation that has led to the music industry’s recent return to growth after nearly a decade of decline”.

AUSTRALIAN MUSIC WEEK SPEAKERS MGM Distribution’s Beth Deady, Skegss’ manager Aaron Girgis, celebrated author, publicist and promoter Stuart Coupe, Bluesfest director Peter Noble and Seventh Street Media’s own CEO and founder Luke Girgis help make up an impressive list of industry speakers for Australian Music Week 2017. The annual conference and showcase summit has also announced its first 30 showcasing artists for this November, with indigenous singer-songwriter Gawurra, Central Coast duo Winterbourne and Germany’s Lilly Among Clouds all set to perform. Returning to Cronulla Beach from Wednesday November 1 – Friday November 3, this year’s Australian Music Week is set to tackle topics such as radio, touring, marketing, emerging technologies, artist management, and mental health within the music industry.

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18-year-old Brisbane artist Mallrat has left Create/Control to sign with Dew Process/UMA in Australia. The deal was announced alongside the news of her first international label contract with Nettwerk Music Group. Mallrat, AKA Grace Shaw, joins fellow Australians Gossling, Hermitude, Boy & Bear, The Paper Kites and Xavier Rudd on Nettwerk’s roster, along with international players including Passenger, Milo Greene and Angel Snow. Following her packed show at last year’s BIGSOUND, along with airtime support from triple j and Beats One, and tour spots supporting Allday to Peking Duk, the big brands now want in with Mallrat. Google has inked a sync deal with Mallrat for her track ‘For Real’, making it the soundtrack to its new US campaign for the Pixel phone.

BAND PROFILES

five things WITH

JEZ PLAYER FROM THE PINHEADS got massively into skating and skate videos and turned to T-Rex, The Saints, Gang Of Four and Eno-era Roxy Music.

Inspirations First love would have to be Bowie – Luke and I listened obsessively for two years, from Space Oddity to Scary Monsters. The constant reinvention of himself and his sound does a lot for us. Speaking for the band, we’re into everything from early country, blues, bluegrass, jazz and folk through punk, no wave, hip hop and all between.

Growing Up I’ve got vivid memories of cruising around on day trips with my brother Luke (guitar) and

our dadda and mumma blasting early stuff by bands like The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, Dylan and all sorts. Dad grew up in

England seeing people like Pink Floyd (with Syd), Little Richard and The Zombies, which he showed us from a young age. As we grew, we

Your Band We’re from the north of Wollongong and all mostly grew up together. We were good mates before ever thinking of playing music, drawn to each other over a shared love of art,

skating, surfing and music. The band happened by accident, most of us have no musical experience so we’re kind of learning as we go. There are some differences in our approaches but it doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. We’ve got an old corrugated iron shed as a makeshift studio so we can work on music and record regularly, it’s a blessing and a curse as we don’t know what we’re doing. Owen Penglis from Straight Arrows mixes our stuff which really helps.

The Music You Make At the moment we’re trying to make some pretty raw rock’n’roll sort of stuff. It seems to be the baby of rockabilly, rock’n’roll, punk and garage and God only knows what else seeps in. I don’t get to watch us play live but it sounds/looks like we’re a hot mess.

Music, Right Here, Right Now We don’t really feel as though we’re part of a scene as we’re from the Gong, which does have a lot of good bands but not much of a sound. We’ve got lots of mates from all over Oz and we all help each other out – we connect largely with the people in bands like Dumb Punts, Skegss, Wash, Drunk Mums, Hoon, Solid Effort, Pist Idiots, Hockey Dad, Amyl and The Sniffers, Shining Bird and more. I’m personally digging bands like Spike Fuck, Straight Arrows, Orion, Royal Headache, Rhysics, Den and Low Life at the moment. Where: The Chippendale Hotel / UOW Unibar When: Friday June 30 / Saturday July 8

on the record WITH

LESTER LITCHFIELD FROM HIBOUX

The First Record I Bought The Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness on doublecassette. I listened to it until my Walkman batteries died, at which point I went to the lounge and plugged headphones into the stereo. It was life-changing.

The Last Record I Bought Kodama by French band Alcest. We had the pleasure of opening for them earlier in the year. It’s intense, melodic and fierce. My favourite album this year.

The First Thing I Recorded I was 13 and had just received a nylon-string acoustic guitar for Christmas. Shortly after I was on a particularly

unpleasant holiday when I took it up a tree and wrote my first music. I recorded it on a 1970s tape player I found lying around. If anyone finds the tape, I’ll pay you $50 to bury it in salt.

The Last Thing I Recorded I record most weeks on my phone, sketches. A few months back we finished recording our first album Command The Earth To Swallow Me Up, which we’re now touring around New Zealand and Australia. I’m pretty happy with it, and still enjoy listening to the songs, which is rare after recording for me.

The Record That Changed My Life Explosions in the Sky’s The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead

Place. I’d just come out the end of a long-running musical project and was a bit disillusioned with the whole idea. Was music worth the time? What happens if you don’t get famous? This record just leapt at me across a bar, and I remember asking the bartender who it was. It led me to a new kind of music that centres on the experience of listening, rather than the image or the people. It saved my love of music. Where: Frankie’s Pizza / Town Hall Hotel, Newtown When: Thursday July 20 / Friday July 21 With: Psycho Smiley / Panic Syndrome And: Command The Earth To Swallow Me Up available now independently

speed date WITH

Your Profile Hi, we are Bonny Doon from Detroit, Michigan. We sound like a band that loves Neil Young but also loves Scott & Charlene’s Wedding in a cosmic punk/free rock/longwave folk sort of way. We love jamming, non-violent communication and being in nature. Our fans are on a different plane of existence, a spiritual path. Those who embrace longwave musics.

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second album is our main focus right now; hoping to get it wrapped up and out into the world as soon as possible.

Best Gig Ever Two summers ago in a park in Bloomington, Indiana. Our friend Will set it up, everyone brought food and beers and we played outside. Purple 7 played an acoustic set, it was incredible, they all harmonize together and have such great chemistry. The vibe was high, it was the first day of our first-ever tour.

Current Playlist I’ve really been enjoying the Hand Habits album Wildly Idle which came out earlier this year. I listen to the Solange album A Seat At The Table pretty much every day. Really digging the new Tops record. As a band

we are pretty heavy into the cosmic country stuff from the ’70s like Gram Parsons, Gene Clark, Kathy Heideman, etc. All the more contemporary Australian punk stuff was a big influence for us when we formed the band. We’re always jamming Eddy Current and Total Control among many others. Bobby and I saw Royal Headache when they came to Detroit last year and we were blown away. Your Ultimate Rider Well no one really knows who we are so we haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing any sort of rider. I think hummus, some sort of soft cheese and a nice bottle of sauvignon blanc would probably be sufficient.

What: Bonny Doon available Friday June 30 through Spunk

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Keeping Busy We have spent the last year recording our second album. We did a ten-day tour of the Midwest and East Coast of the United States, got to spend time with friends and jam. Other than that, we’ve just been doing some shows in town with a great band called The Vitas. They are all poets and people who see the world in unique and beautiful ways. The

BILL LENNOX FROM BONNY DOON

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VAN MORRISON VS. BANG RECORDS

FEATURE

Van Morrison’s first solo album Blowin’ Your Mind! could be considered a success to basically everyone who isn’t Van Morrison. When he signed with Bang Records to record the album, he didn’t exactly study his contract too hard, and basically signed away total control of his music to the record label. While he was desperate to find another label to sign him, Warner Bros. appeared, but there were issues that needed addressing – namely, that Morrison was under contract to record approximately 30 more songs for his previous record label. Morrison jumped at this chance, picked up his guitar, and laid down 31 songs of…

bsolutely everyone has a disagreement from time to time, but if you’re famous, such disagreements can become pretty public pretty quickly. Of course, these are usually grievances that equate to nothing more than the equivalent of a ‘rap feud’, but sometimes these disagreements can get a little bit larger, and start to involve everyone from fellow musicians, to record labels, to those in charge of copyright. At this point, it would probably be best to resolve the issue amicably.

Of The Most Vicious Acts Of Vengeance In Musical History

questionable quality. One of the most memorable and most famous of these tracks is called ‘Ring Worm’, and is basically about letting someone know that they have ring worm. Of course, this wasn’t up to the label’s standards, so these songs went unreleased for a while until they turned up on the appropriately titled Payin’ Dues record. While some may have just assumed at the time this was Morrison’s new direction and he had just plain lost it, you need to remember that his very next record, once signed with Warner Bros., was Astral Weeks – a record often referred to as one of the greatest of all time.

THE SHAMEN VS. ONE LITTLE INDIAN RECORDS You might remember Scottish ravers The Shamen from their track ‘Ebeneezer Goode’ and its litany of drug references. The album, their second with English record label One Little Indian, was a hit and even saw the group make it to number 99 in the very first Hottest 100 countdown. However, the followup record wasn’t received quite so warmly, and the group’s popularity began to wane. In 1996, the Scots were dissatisfied with One Little Indian and wanted to move to a different label, but their contract told them they still had to deliver one more record. This, in addition to the label’s founder Derek Birkett’s insistence on a return to their earlier sound, saw the Shamen take one week to record a deliberately terrible instrumental record that they knew wouldn’t sell. Oh, but that’s not all – if you were to look at the track listing for their record Hempton Manor, the first letter of each track spells out the phrase “Fuck Birkett”. Again, subtlety wasn’t exactly their thing.

However, some musicians out there have decided to take the low road and fight fire with fire in an attempt to gain the most cathartic result out of the situation. Because there are some pretty great stories of musicians winning against those who have wronged them, we’ve decided to take a look at seven of the best stories of musicians out for vengeance.

THE SISTERS OF MERCY VS. EASTWEST RECORDS The Sisters Of Mercy are one of the most famous goth bands of all time. Despite having broken up and reformed a few times, they managed to pump out three highly influential records between 1985 and 1990. However, like some of the entries in here, the group’s record label piped up and told The Sisters that they still owed a couple of albums. Of course, the band’s frontman Andrew Eldritch had basically given up on recording by this point, so he wasn’t too keen on the idea and decided to mess with the label. Eldritch formed a group called SSVNSMABAAOTWMODAACOTIATW, who were “absolutely not” The Sisters Of Mercy, and whose name ‘allegedly’ stood for ‘Screw Shareholder Value – Not So Much A Band As Another Opportunity To Waste Money On Drugs And Ammunition, Courtesy Of The Idiots At Time Warner’. This group released a record called Go Figure, which contained droning techno music (composed by musicians hired by Eldritch) with only occasional sampled mumbled vocals from Eldritch. Because of the presence of Eldritch’s vocals, EastWest Records accepted the record sight unseen as a replacement for the two contractually obligated records from The Sisters Of Mercy, and let Eldritch go free from his contract. Happy days. thebrag.com

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DEAD KENNEDYS VS. THE WHOLE RECORDING INDUSTRY Music piracy has been around for a very long time, and with the rise of home recording techniques came a rise in anti-piracy efforts by the music industry. Cheap home recording technology meant that music lovers could record their own music onto cassette tapes to listen to at their own leisure, which led to the creation of a British campaign which warned that “Home Taping Is Killing Music”. This made sense, because with more people recording bootleg audio, fewer people were buying records, and less money was going into the industry. It’s a tune we’ve all heard before.

Enter Dead Kennedys. The Californian punk band weren’t exactly friends of the music industry, and in fact their 1985 record Frankenchrist would see them brought up on charges of obscenity due to the record’s artwork. In 1981 though, they released the EP In God We Trust, and one of the formats this EP was available on was the trusty cassette tape. The Dead Kennedys decided to cram all the music from the EP on one side of the tape, with a message on the other side that simply read “Home taping is killing record industry profits! We left this side blank so you can help.” You certainly have to hand it to them: they knew how to make a scene.

THE KLF VS. THE MECHANICAL COPYRIGHT PROTECTION SOCIETY The KLF were a strange band, to say the least. They enjoyed pushing boundaries and seeing how far they could get, but when it came to their debut record, this attitude would cause some problems. Their debut record was titled 1987 (What The Fuck Is Going On?), and featured a vast amount of unauthorised samples which were used in the album’s composition – imagine a much more illegal version of The Avalanches’ Since I Left You. As a result, the British Mechanical Copyright Protection Society,

You might have thought a Metallica entry would focus on their lengthy feud with Napster, but no – this one takes place 13 years prior to that, in 1987. See, Metallica had just finished recording an EP full of covers of ’70s and ’80s punk and metal songs, and wanted to make sure their fans weren’t ripped off. As a result, they decided to make sure the price was universal, and titled it The $5.98 E.P.: Garage Days Re-Revisited. Of course, some record stores instantly ignored this, charging a higher price for the CD versions rather than the cassettes, and even went so far to retitle it as The $9.98 C.D.

acting upon a copyright complaint from ABBA, ordered the group to recall and destroy all copies of the record. Of course, they did, but they were feeling pretty jaded about this whole affair. So what did The KLF do? They passiveaggressively re-released the record, except this time, it featured none of the offending samples. This would be great if it wasn’t for the fact that the majority of the record was samples, which meant that the record they ended up releasing contained very little music, and long periods of silence. In fact, it contained so little music that the new version of the album had to officially be called a single.

METALLICA VS. RECORD STORES

The band, of course, foresaw this and included stickers on the original release of the EP which included the phrase, “If they try to charge more, STEAL IT!” While it’s not clear if a higher rate of theft was reported as a result of the stickers, we’d like to think Metallica had a small win with that one. However, Australia wasn’t exempt from shady retailers, with many Australian stores placing a sticker on the front that made sure fans were clear that this suggested price was merely the title, and not what fans would pay for it. Sneaky, but understandable. 8 :: BRAG :: 719 :: 28:06:17

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FEATURE

TAYLOR SWIFT VS. KATY PERRY It’s never really been made clear why exactly there’s been bad blood between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, but the generally accepted version is that while the two were touring together in 2012, Perry snatched some of Swift’s backup dancers, causing them to leave the tour early and leaving Swift without. Oh, then there’s also the fact that both of them dated John Mayer, but who knows how much weight that carries. Then a couple of years ago, Swift, like Jay-Z and other famous musicians, decided to take their music off Spotify to boycott the streaming service. Fast-forward to 2017, when Katy Perry spent most of May aggressively promoting her new record Witness on Spotify, released on June 9. You know what else happened on June 9? Taylor Swift just happened to release all of her music back onto Spotify. This move attracted huge publicity, but was it enough to cause folks to completely forget about Perry’s new record? Not quite, but good try, Taylor.

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FEATURE

The Sound Of Tomorrow: This Is Melodrama “I would go to sleep thinking about it and I would dream about it, and I’d wake up in the morning thinking about it. Its grip on me was unrelenting. I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t make something different, singular and something that I would be proud of.” – LORDE ON MELODRAMA, NPR eople expect things of Ella YelichO’Connor. The 20-year-old behind the Lorde moniker is the kind of musician that critics tend to call the voice of a generation – which is only a way of saying that YelichO’Connor puts to words the things that so many people don’t, and maybe the things people can’t. She sings songs about loving yourself; about falling in and out of friendships; about that messy, broken kind of love we sometimes confuse for grace. She sings about emerging through the other side of adolescence, but she sings about more than that too – she sings about the things that never leave us; the wounds that scar up and stay put. Not that she is entirely happy with the idea of being a mouthpiece. Lorde doesn’t want to be one of those pop musicians who get treated like politicians, called upon to explain away the thoughts and desires of their listeners. “Young people have never needed a specialised spokesperson – one young voice – less than right now,” Lorde told NME this month. “‘I’ve always known that it’s bullshit when people would say ‘voice of a generation’. I’d be like, ‘I’m gonna nip it in the bud now … This is not what this is, and it will never be that.’” Still, it’s not hard to see why people flock to Lorde, searching so desperately for the soothing, impossibly wise quality to her words. Her new record Melodrama is a break-up album, but it’s also a retrenchment of Yelich-O’Connor’s personhood; a thrilling song of the self. It is the loud, crashing sound of a pop musician putting their life into words, and although it is at least tangentially concerned with Lorde’s publicised split from photographer James Lowe, the album is mostly about Yelich-O’Connor; about the faith she finds within herself. The ‘Royals’ singer knows herself now – she understands what she wants from her world and who she wants in it. “I’m always gonna have myself, so I have to really nurture this relationship and feel good about hanging out with myself and loving myself,” she explained to Beats Radio’s Zane Lowe. That said, achieving the self-confidence that defines Melodrama did require a certain kind of sacrifice. Business could not go on as usual; Yelich-O’Connor couldn’t draw on the forces that had shaped Pure Heroine, her 2013 debut. In order to write Melodrama, she had to embrace isolation, eventually becoming so hermetic that she now uses the metaphor of the selfsustaining house in Ray Bradbury’s There Will Come Soft Rains to describe the recording process. “We were just holing up in my house, drinking and making a concerted effort to block out the rest of the world, as if there’d been some sort of nuclear fallout,” Lorde told NME. “When there’ve been two years that have been so turbulent and traumatic, and the climate is so tangible when you walk outside … There was definitely an element of, ‘If we just make our own little universe inside and no one looks at their phones, then none of it’s really happening.’”

“[Lorde] knows herself now – she understands what she wants from her

“Lorde doesn’t want to be one of those pop musicians who get treated like politici

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The Making Of

Lorde Three Of Her Career-Defining Moments Revisited

By Joseph Earp elodrama was produced by Jack Antonoff, an in-demand producer who also helped co-write all but one of the record’s 11 tracks. Yelich-O’Connor flew to Los Angeles from her home in New Zealand to be with Antonoff, and the pair would hole up and pummel the songs into shape together. “Jack would always say: ‘Every time you come back from New Zealand, you just have all this stuff in your head,’” Lorde said in an interview with The Guardian. “We would always write a few real good songs as soon as I got in from the airport.” The result is one of the most profound pop records of the year – one defined by raw honesty and Lorde’s unique turns of phrase. She has a poet’s eye for detail – the kind of unblinking, unsentimental gaze that defines the work of Raymond Carver and Flannery O’Connor. When she says she makes people wild and makes them leave, as on the rubbed raw ‘Liability’, you believe her; you understand that she means every word. “I think what makes her most special to me is the way she tells her stories,” explains a young fan named Zalan Orban to the BRAG. “There is a rejection of pop glamorisation in her music that I love so much. She tells the truth without ever having material motivations to do so – her music is stripped bare. It’s so special to hear something on the radio that I can finally relate to for once. That’s so important for me as a teen, being so heavily reliant on music for influence and inspiration.” “She’s like a weird famous person who isn’t lost in the celeb life and has a pure soul,” adds Walter Nelson, another Lorde devotee. “Her writing [is] special, her personality glows, and her love for music makes me love her even more.”

world and who she wants in it.”

ans.”

There are parts of her that all the profiles and the press have neglected to cover: a side of her story that can only be understood if one goes back to the beginning, and to the shows that introduced a young woman making music that sounded like tomorrow.

G Goodgod g Small Club, , May 2013 “And as [Lorde] finished her set with lead single, ‘Royals’, l it was clear we were watching more than just a star in the making; we were witnessing the coronation of new music royalty.” t – TIMOTHY SCARFE, THE MUSIC

She was dressed in red, her long hair splayed out over her shoulders. Occasionally, she’d take great handfuls of her brown locks and throw them over her back – a move somehow both studied and effortless, dropped at the end of songs with all the finality of a full stop. Later, much later, she’d describe her own stop-start dance moves as “kind of broken”, and it’s true there was a kind of stylised stiffness to the way her limbs shot out and then froze in mid-air, as though Lorde was reaching out for something she didn’t quite have the nerve to touch. Lorde’s 2013 performance at Sydney’s Goodgod Small Club was only her third live show, so perhaps it was unsurprising that she seemed a little shy. “She was this gangly, trembling girl,” explains a long-time fan named Faith who managed to score a ticket to the sold-out gig. It set her back $10. “You could tell she was nervous,” she says. “She found it hard to make eye contact with the crowd.” Whether she could look at them or not, the fans were so close that the then-16-year-old Lorde had no chance of ignoring them; no way to make them fade into the blurred space just beyond the bright stage lights. Goodgod was like that – it was a tight, dark venue, the kind of space critics fall over themselves to describe as intimate. The crowd could have reached out and touched her if they wanted to. They didn’t, of course. They were quiet, painfully respecting of the figure onstage. And there were a lot of them. The venue was heaving – and, perhaps unusually – with punters rather than industry types. People were there to see Lorde because they loved her, not because they’d been given the nod by a fellow bigwig. “Pretty much every new act with a label push is thrown at you as: ‘Going to be huge, guaranteed sellout, get on this’,” explained the booker of the show, Adam Lewis, to FasterLouder in an excellent ▲

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But as open and honest as her music might be, it’s not always obvious how Yelich-O’Connor became the person she is today – how she transformed from a young New Zealand teen to a global influencer whose every move is covered by a critical establishment desperate to understand her.

Early Mysteries:

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“Lorde’s 2013 performance at Sydney’s Goodgod Small Club was only her third live show, so perhaps it was unsurprising that she seemed a little shy.” article about that low-key first show. “Usually [the reality] is nothing close. But I got sent The Love Club EP and it was pretty incredible. It stood out so far from everything else coming through that it was something I was really excited to work on.” Most of the crowd, if not all of it, was there because of ‘Royals’. The song had become an overnight success after being picked up by Australia’s national broadcaster triple j and added to heavy rotation. For so many at the show that night, ‘Royals’ had provided their entrance into Lorde’s sound. It was a glimpse at a self-contained world populated by spun-out stars and determined heroines, all of them of Yelich-O’Connor’s own making; a tapestry of unique characters and tones. “I got into Lorde because I was leaving the hospital after surgery and I turned on the radio and ‘Royals’ was playing,” explains Nelson. “I didn’t know who had sung it, but I loved it.” At that point, there was no debut record to speak of: Pure Heroine was still months off. Instead, Lorde was making her name with The Love Club EP, a five-song release she had dropped on SoundCloud. Written with friend and collaborator Joel Little, the work combined glassy synth sounds with some raw, biting lyrics, as Yelich-O’Connor smokily sang about deception, love, heartbreak and all the things that hurt when you are 16 years old. “I first encountered Lorde’s music on SoundCloud,” says April Atteridge, one of YelichO’Connor’s earliest fans. “One of my best friends is from New Zealand and she got me hooked on Lorde. The [Love Club EP] SoundCloud stream barely had 1,000 listens. I remember listening to it and thinking it sounded like a new type of mainstream music I’d never heard before. I was hooked instantly.” “I heard it driving home from school when I was in high school,” says Lauren Bailey. “The radio announced they were going to play this song from an ‘up-and-coming Kiwi artist’ and then they played ‘The Love Club’. I’ll never forget that moment. I got home, found the EP online and then five years later, here we are.”

lthough the kind of warm electropop that dominates The Love Club was very much the flavour of the month at the time, Lorde set herself apart from the crowd thanks to the varied nature of her influences – both sonic and otherwise. She is, and always has been, a voracious listener and reader – the kind of musician who soaks up sounds and tones like a sponge, magpieing together a nest of artistic touchpoints all of her own.

There is a reason, for example, that the expanded edition of The Love Club included a Replacements cover, a shuffling, enjoyably jumbled version of ‘Swingin’ Party’. Lorde has always had a punk sensibility to her; a kind of anti-establishment flair that drives a loping, shuffling tune like ‘Bravado’. She might sing about royals, but she is not one, and her sympathies have always settled with society’s undervalued – with people feeling lost, and hurt, and maybe a little forgotten. “When I first heard Lorde I was 18 and still in school,” says Gabriella McLennan. “I went to a tiny conservative all girls’ school in the middle of suburbia. One day in science class, this girl snuck in her iPhone to listen to music at the back of the room and she played us The Love Club EP. She introduced us to a few of her friends and it spread like wildfire throughout the year level and bonded everyone. “It was a pretty huge moment. She was a young girl like us, from a normal suburb and family – but there was something about her that was so captivating. And she didn’t try to hide it and pretend to be something she wasn’t. She writes your standard pop music, but she does so with soul and poetry, which is an unusual and beautiful combination. She possesses a range of influences, yet still manages to somehow sound completely original. And she writes about the teenage experience in a way that isn’t patronising or unrealistic – which I don’t think anyone nails quite like her.” Seeing Lorde that night in 2013 at Goodgod only highlighted her myriad of skills. Despite the wafty, somewhat ephemeral tone of the pre-show promotional material – most notably a spiel posted to the venue website that emphasised Lorde’s status as an “enigma” – when all was said and done, Yelich-O’Connor stood behind the microphone unadorned. She had no grand theatrical lights, no carefully choreographed stage manoeuvres – and sure, maybe that was because she wasn’t able to afford those things yet, or because they wouldn’t fit onto the crowded basement stage. But there was some deeper level to her normality too – that kind of beautiful mundanity that comes to inflect music we love enough to make it an everyday part of our lives. YelichO’Connor stood there under those hot lights not as a pop star, but as a person; as a singer making music because she couldn’t imagine anything else she might want to do. “I just think what makes her special is that she isn’t really special,” McLennan says. “She’s down-to-earth, yet still has this magic about her. She sings about normal things, yet has a voice that is anything but boring. I don’t know. She’s like the girl next door that just happens to be a musical genius on the down-low – but then we all found out about it.”

Happy Accidents: Splendour In The Grass, July 2013 “There was an element of reaching out. ‘Do you see me? Do you hear me? I’m over here.’” – LORDE ON PURE HEROINE

here are rules to the music industry. Nobody likes to admit it, but there are: the business’ players are bound to a collection of invisible, universally agreed upon guidelines that all those looking for fame must follow.

So strict are these rules, in fact, that they could almost be considered commandments: Thou Must Always Be Touring; Thou Must Set triple j In Thy Sights; Thou Must Always Be Releasing Content. But these are rules, not guarantees. Just because you play the game, there is no assurance you are going to win, and the world is full of hurt, bitter musicians who slaved away for years without ever receiving the dividends that were owed to them. But if you

“She might sing about royals, but she is not one, and her sympathies have always settled with society’s undervalued.” “Lorde was booked for 5:30pm on the Sunday … the timing could have spelt disaster.” don’t do as you’re told, you are setting yourself up for failure – working actively towards defeat, jamming yourself voluntarily between a rock and a hard place. And then there are the exceptions. Every few years, an artist is allowed to skip some of these steps. A combination of luck, circumstance and sheer raw talent gives them a boost, and musicians who would otherwise have had to graduate from Goodgod to Newtown Social Club to Oxford Art Factory to the Metro to the Enmore are allowed to jump to the front of the queue. They pass “Go” and they collect their $200. Lorde is one of these artists. Within two months of that Goodgod show, Yelich-O’Connor was playing Splendour In The Grass, one of Australia’s most prestigious and popular music festivals. And although it would be wrong to ascribe the holding share of her success to anything like luck, certainly it’s true that her appearance at that 2013 event was never planned. It came about thanks to fate – or whatever version of fate it is that guides the careers of pop stars – and the unpredictability of one Frank Ocean. Ocean, the US hip hop star, was in the country for a highly anticipated Australian tour when he was laid low by an abrupt illness. He managed to play but one show, a sold-out Melbourne gig, before he was forced to can the rest of the dates – including, notably, his set at Splendour In The Grass. With only days to go, the organisers turned to Lorde. She was a sensible choice. The Love Club EP, bolstered by the success of ‘Royals’, was climbing the UK and Australian album charts. Yelich-O’Connor might have still been an unknown entity in the States, but here her profile was on the ascent, driven by a sold-out national tour at venues of about Goodgod’s size. “Someone called me about it, my manager, and I didn’t even know what Splendour was,” Yelich-O’Connor recalled for Pedestrian. “I was like, ‘OK. Alright. That’s cool. Why not?’ I’m so glad I didn’t know what it was because it turns out it’s a really big deal and, yeah, I was definitely the underdog. You know, filling in for Frank Ocean. I don’t know. The whole thing was crazy.” Lorde was booked for 5:30pm on the Sunday, one of the very last slots of the weekendlong festival. As she was undoubtedly aware, the timing could have spelt disaster. Not

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“There is nothing more terrifying than getting everything that you want.”

FEATURE

there by forces she had long ago submitted herself to. She nodded in thanks to the crowd, smiled shyly, and then launched into the set that would change her life.

A Global Force: Hordern Pavilion, , July 2014 “[It] could have fucked me, you know?” – LORDE ON SUCCESS, NPR orde got to skip a few steps on the road to success, but she had to make up for it in other ways. After all, even if you buck the system, the system will eventually buck you back: everyone pays penance whether they like it or not, and although Pure Heroine was a massive commercial and critical success when it dropped in September 2013, Yelich-O’Connor soon found she had to face the side of fame we don’t too often talk about. “I remember being made aware of my looks and my body in a way that I had never been,” Yelich-O’Connor told NME. “I remember all these kids online … and they were like, ‘Fuck her, she’s got really far-apart eyes.’ I remember being like, ‘Whoa! How did I get all this way without knowing I had far-apart eyes?’ Just weird shit like that.” Maybe such a rapid ascension would have destroyed someone else in Lorde’s position – or at the very least, given them creative whiplash. There is nothing more terrifying than getting everything that you want; nothing more damaging than having your desires sated. And Yelich-O’Connor had that in droves. In October and November 2013, she toured the US, making an appearance on David Letterman’s Late Show, where she was introduced as a young musician from “the wonderful country of New Zealand”. If she was nervous in front of all those television cameras, she didn’t look it. You could have mistaken her for a performer with decades of experience under their belt – she looked like a musician promoting their fifth album, not their first. Singing ‘Team’, one of Pure Heroine’s many standout tracks, Lorde danced a little like Kate Bush, the musician she is most frequently compared to, and her voice cut cleanly through the studio space. When it was all over, the audience members screamed and whooped like they had seen something they had never encountered before. Which maybe they hadn’t. There were other appearances too: a fiery performance on New Zealand’s own 3rd Degree; a graceful, heartfelt version of ‘Royals’ on Later… With Jools Holland. Slowly but surely, Lorde was becoming a kind of icon – a pariah for all who felt undervalued and forgotten by other pop stars. Crowds began to flock to her in greater numbers than ever before. Her fans were no longer Australians and Kiwis checking out some local musician on Spotify. They were spread across the globe – devoted, dedicated.

“She had nothing to prove any more; no need to win anyone over.”

“I got into Lorde because of a project I had to do at school,” explains Laila Strzygowski, a Brazilian fan. “I had to talk about a song that I thought was powerful. I didn’t know what song I was going to do, so I started researching and I found ‘Tennis Court’. I fell in love with her music at very that instant.” For a lot of the new followers stumbling across Pure Heroine, the attraction lay in Yelich-O’Connor’s youth. She was the same age as those she played for, and innately understood the things they loved and worried about. Her music was somehow of them and for them, and in her songs they encountered lines they could well have written themselves. “What makes her such a special artist for me is her lyrics,” says Lachlan McPherson, a young devotee. “A lot of her fans, including myself, are the same age and essentially growing up alongside her. She’s able to put a lot of the emotions and experiences we’re having into words. Pure Heroine was so relevant to all the 17-year-olds at the time.” That inclusive quality was rapidly being reflected in Lorde’s live shows. Even as the venues she played grew larger and larger – even as her audience drifted farther away from the stage – the separation was only physical, never emotional. She played stadiums as though they were clubs; made cavernous spaces feel like living rooms. hen she took to the Hordern Pavilion stage in July 2014 and peered out at the vast crowd, she might have been back in the basement at Goodgod. She seemed just as honest as she had then; just as unhurried and unfettered by fame. Of course, everything was different. At Goodgod she had been a rising act. At the Hordern, she was risen. She had nothing to prove any more; no need to win anyone over. She was such a global force – such an icon – that she could have easily turned her back to the crowd and played the whole set facing the stage wall.

because of her music, but because of the crowd – by the Sunday, punters were tired, hungover, ready to go home. There’s a reason that most festival promoters book the biggest act for the last day: an acclaimed act can survive the bad disposition of a crowd packing its bags, and can weather the audience grumpiness that might otherwise be able to decimate a smaller artist. Clearly, the odds were stacked against Lorde. But as time has shown us, that’s when she works best; when the resilience of her music makes itself most clear. Nobody needed to have heard of Lorde, ‘Royals’ or The Love Club EP to see what made her Splendour slot special. She didn’t require anything of her audience, or ask anything of them. She was there to play. That was all. You could tell as much from the moment she took to the stage. There was no fanfare, no theatricality, no stylised artifice. She just walked up to the mic as though she was drawn

what made her Splendour slot special.” thebrag.com

She didn’t, of course. She was as animated and engaged as ever, her eyes flicking over the dark mass of punters in front of her as though it were one body. She laughed with them; played for them; paced back and forth across the stage, long hair in one hand, the mic in the other. The fans didn’t want it to end. Neither, seemingly, did Lorde. They could have all stayed there, together, the whole lot of them: Yelich-O’Connor singing songs about hurt, love and salvation, and the audience drinking in every moment of it – both parties giving each other everything. And when the house lights did eventually come on, nobody moved. Nobody made a sound. They all just sat there, bolted to floor, as the memory of the show settled around them like slow rain. ■ Melodrama is out now through Universal. Lorde plays the Sydney Opera House Forecourt on Tuesday November 21 and Wednesday November 22. BRAG :: 719 :: 28:06:17 :: 13

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FEATURE

Meet The 23-Year-Old Melbourne Writer Behind The Biggest Pop Song In America BY POPPY REID

You may not have realised it, but there is no escaping the work of 23-year-old Melbourne songwriter Sarah Aarons. Her name might not be familiar to you – unless you still buy CDs and read all the liner notes – but her songs are constantly bookending the radio ad breaks on both sides of the Pacific. Marking the beginning of her mainstream recognition, her US Platinum-selling co-write ‘Stay’ for Zedd and Alessia Cara has spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Pop Chart. It’s also number one on the US pop radio airplay chart, has reached number one on iTunes charts the world over and recently came in at number 16 in The Industry Observer’s Aus Radio airplay chart. Incredibly, ‘Stay’, which peaked at number three on the ARIA chart, is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Aarons’ songwriting catalogue – as the charts will discover over the next 12 months. In a little over four years since signing to Sony/ATV Music Publishing, she’s penned tracks for – and shared studios with – some of the biggest stars in the business, including Flume, Demi Lovato, Mø and many more whom she can’t actually name due to the strict NDA that comes part and parcel with the gig. So, how did Aarons go from studying media and communications in Melbourne to living in Los Angeles and booking in co-writing sessions at Jay Z’s Roc Nation?

Aarons has autoimmune disease. Speaking over the phone from her home in LA, she says it was one of the factors that made her decide to “do something incredible” with her life. “It’s a disease that affects your whole entire life and it’s going to get worse. I was kind of like, ‘Screw that!’” she says, sounding every bit as cool as her resume suggests. “If this thing I can’t change is going be so huge in my life and I literally can’t do anything about it – all I have to

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First steps to stardom Proving Sia’s accomplishments as a songwriter stretch far beyond her accolades, Aarons says finding out her fellow Australian was behind Rihanna’s ‘Diamonds’ was a Eureka moment. “It had just become public that that was a job [Sia] had, other than being an artist – and that blew my mind. I went into this wormhole of like, Diane Warren, one of the biggest songwriters of all time, and Julia Michaels, and all these incredible people. “I realised all my singing awards from when I was a kid were songwriting awards. I won a $3,000 songwriting grant when I was 11 or 12 … I was like, ‘Oh crap! That’s what I’m supposed to do. I can sit on a couch all day, and I can do it from whatever location. This is perfect. I have to do this.’” As Maree Hamblion, the joint head of A&R at Sony/ATV, soon found out, Aarons’ tenacity is matched only by her talent. When Aarons realised all her favourite songwriters were tied to Sony/ ATV (Sia, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift) – and that Hamblion herself had signed the likes of Jarryd James, The Veronicas, DNA Songs and The Presets – she became the first person to receive a demo from Aarons. “She was this incredible woman that only signed shit that she thought was great. And she didn’t give a fuck what anyone else thought about it. If she liked something, she’d sign it, and just had this crazy success. She was the woman to know if you want to be a writer in Australia.” “I listened to the first demo and loved her lyrics,” says Hamblion. “The track was very ordinary, but with her vocal and lyrics the demo just stood out.

Following regular emails to Hamblion, including demos Aarons had self-recorded, Sony/ATV’s storied talent scout finally reached out and offered her a spot on an APRA AMCOS-run writing camp in Sydney. Using the money she had earned babysitting, Aarons flew to Sydney and landed a session with Eskimo Joe’s Kav Temperley and Thirsty Merc’s Rai Thistlethwayte. The resulting track, one of Aaron’s favourites, hasn’t been released, but it was the reason for her signing to Sony/ATV. “I look back and all my best and favourite songs may not have even come out,” says Aarons. “Yet. It’s always ‘yet’. But, they got me into a session. Like, someone heard it and got me a session because of that song. It’s the reason Maree signed me.” Good news travels fast in the local music industry, and it wasn’t long before other publishers caught wind of the then-19-year-old wunderkind. “I got emails from all these people,” Aarons remembers. “I didn’t meet with any other publishers – I met Maree once, and I was just like, ‘This woman is the one, I don’t want to weigh people up against each other, there’s something about this woman.’ She cared about me before anyone else did. And she’s absolutely changed my life.” “To sign a writer from an MP3 demo email is very rare,” admits Hamblion. “Sarah had no contacts in the industry and just sent an unsolicited demo to my inbox. “Sarah is a very rare songwriter as she has no interest in being a recording artist – she is happy to feature every now and then, but her true love is songwriting and having her songs cut by other artists. She has a determination that is rare to find and she is more than happy working seven days a week with two sessions a day without complaint. She is a magic unicorn!”

Keeping score After months of sleeping on a friend’s mattress in Sydney so she could spend days writing for Sony/ATV, Aarons penned a track specifically for a DJ from the comfort of her Melbourne bedroom. The track, ‘Keeping Score’, was given to Drew Carmody, AKA LDRU, who wanted to release it as his first single. ▲

Sarah Aarons photos by Amanda Ratcliffe

“[Doctors] were like, ‘Well, you’re going to be dealing with this your whole life, you probably can’t work a normal job.’ And that was terrifying for me at the time, especially being in Australia, because that’s like, ‘Oh shit, there goes every option of a normal job.’”

control is what I do with my life; that’s all I have control over. So, I’m just going to run at it as hard as I can, and see what happens.”

“I called her and asked her to keep sending me songs – I wanted to see what other tracks she was working on and to see how interested she was in songwriting, and Sarah kept sending me MP3s on a regular basis.”

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“All my best and favourite songs may not have even come out.” Ironically, despite Aarons’ desire to shy away from the limelight, her first radio hit was a track she performed on. “He came down to Melbourne, I met him and I was like, ‘Cool, who’s going to sing it?’ and he was like, ‘You.’” To get her to lend her honeyed vocals to the song, even under the moniker Paige IV, Carmody actually had to convince her it wouldn’t become a mainstream hit. “He was like, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll only be on triple j,’” Aarons recalls. “And then it got added to Nova and all the other radio stations, and then it ended up going in the top ten on the iTunes chart, getting nominated for Song of the Year at the ARIAs and all that bullshit – which is incredible, don’t get me wrong. But I was mortified.” Aarons’ understanding of what she was capable of developed fast. It wasn’t long before she was back in Hamblion’s office relaying her ambition to relocate to the US. “I was very supportive of Sarah’s move to LA,” says Hamblion. “There is just not enough projects for a songwriter to work on in Australia.” Aarons says she stayed in “the most terrifying Airbnbs you will ever see in your life” while on her initial 90-day visa, back when she barely knew anyone in LA. But just like it had on home soil, it wasn’t long before her work did the networking for her. “When I went back to LA, everyone knew who I was before we even started writing,” she says. “The first guy I worked with when I went back said, ‘I cancelled on someone else today to work with you.’”

Aarons is one of a few female Australian songwriters to be making the jump to the US. Writers like Alex Hope (Troye Sivan, Broods), Vassy (David Guetta, Tiësto) and Starley Hope (‘Call On Me’) have all relocated to the States, where opportunity isn’t capped. “It’s just such a small pool to pick from,” Aarons says of the Australian songwriting market. “There are about five successful producers to pick from or something. So if you don’t like the style, you’re stuck. “In Australia there’s a huge divide between triple j and mainstream radio, and you’re frowned upon for being all one and not the other, but you’re not allowed to be in the middle,” she says. “As a writer, no one knows if you’re triple j or mainstream – I do both, and no one would ever know that. And I think it’s really exciting in Australia when people try to cross over and it’s really exciting when they do, because I think that’s a divide that doesn’t need to happen.”

Setting the benchmark Aarons is fast becoming one of Australia’s most successful songwriting exports. As ‘Stay’ enters its third week at number one on the Billboard Pop chart, her co-write of Cosmo’s Midnight’s ‘History’ is currently the most played track of 2017 on triple j. According to Milly Petriella, APRA AMCOS’ director of member relations, Aarons is setting a benchmark for local songwriters with global aspirations. “Sarah has grown from a young unknown writer in Sydney to holding her own in international studios with some of the world’s biggest names – in less than two years,” she says. “We’re hanging off every new release at

the moment, excited to be a part of Sarah’s phenomenal success. APRA AMCOS is all about developing and supporting the next generation of songwriters and opening up international markets to Aussies.” Speaking with Aarons, it’s clear her experience in arguably the songwriting capital of the world hasn’t been a beautiful string of collaborative connections and hits that just roll off the tongue – although the bones of ‘Stay’ were finished in an afternoon. When asked about whether rumours of the cutthroat industry were true, Aarons offers this: “I’ve had this happen before: ‘I’ll get you in a room with Rihanna!’ But most of the time it’s bullshit. I think if you’re not sucked in by fake promises and stuff, and you meet someone and see that they’re genuine, you’re probably better off … I’ve cut it down to about ten producers who I work with and who I love, there’s never a problem.” This young Australian musician is not your average hitmaker. She’s uninterested in rubbing shoulders with high-profile artists and industry figures, and even less interested in writing with people based on their song credits. Looking at a few of the globe’s biggest songwriting luminaries – Sia, Max Martin, Warren et. al – all of them seem to carry modestly reticent character traits similar to Aarons’. “A lot of people go to events and do the hand-shaking stuff, but I don’t really think it works,” she says. “Instead of getting industry drinks or schmoozing, I would say, ‘Hey, let’s go write a song.’ So while everyone else is just shaking hands, you’re actually making something beautiful.” If you write or perform your own songs you can fi nd more information about APRA AMCOS at apraamcos. com.au.

“In Australia there’s a huge divide between triple j and mainstream radio, and you’re frowned upon for being all one and not the other, but you’re not allowed to be in the middle.” 16 :: BRAG :: 719 :: 28:06:17

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FEATURE

“I’m still every day compelled to come down and write songs.”

Josh Pyke A Songwriter At Heart By Anna Rose

t’s been a mere ten years since the release of Josh Pyke’s debut album, but he already seems like a veteran of Australian songwriting. Since that formidable 2007 LP, Memories & Dust, Pyke has released a further five studio albums, and with several EPs thrown in, his discography amounts to around 150 songs – not to mention his collaborations with the likes of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Shane Nicholson. “I’ve had a pretty good time,” Pyke chuckles. “It just felt like a good time to consolidate what I’ve done so I can put it in a period of my life and start again, move on to the next period.”

The timely release of Pyke’s Best Of, B-Sides & Rarities offers not only a reflection of the Sydneysider’s music but an opportunity to look back over his life up to this point. “It’s a pretty nostalgic thing to look back on songs from particular periods of your life,” he says. “Particularly the way I write songs, which is pretty much kind of to just delve into my own personal life and what’s going on. “The biggest part for me, though, was going back into all the B-sides and rarities which are included in this release

– those ones never made albums or stuff like that, but I’ve always loved those songs. So in a way it’s almost like an album of new material, but it’s just stuff I wrote 12 years ago. It was really great to look at them and think about what they were all about.” Nostalgia was just one emotion among many Pyke experienced as he compiled this volume. But while some artists might look back on their earliest songs and cringe, Pyke was more than happy to revisit a 2004 composition, ‘Note To Self’. “There’s no embarrassment – I don’t wish I had done anything differently,” he says. “I’ve tried very hard over the years to stand by all my creative decisions, and whether or not I would write another song like I wrote ten years ago is another question. They’re kind of like children, you know? You do your best, but beyond that, you can’t be embarrassed. You kind of have to let them live their lives!” If not embarrassment, Pyke does admit to having been reacquainted with one old feeling: frustration. Especially when it came to his earliest songs. “At the time I wrote them I was working four jobs, trying to make money to keep doing

“I don’t wish I had done anything differently. I’ve tried very hard over the years to stand by all my creative decisions.” music, keep doing little tours up and down the coast, and a lot of the songs, kind of thematically, were reflecting that frustration of not quite being where I wanted to be in my life, personally and musically.

“That some of my songs have become part of experiences in [people’s] lives is a massive thing and something I don’t take for granted, but it’s certainly not something I expected when I started out.”

“There’s themes of that kind of frustration all the way through my career, because I don’t feel like you kind of… every time you get where you want to go, you kind of decided there’s a new place you want to go, and for me, that was a battle.”

Despite the accomplishments of his last ten years, and having reached so many listeners on a personal level, Pyke certainly isn’t ready to hang up his coat just yet.

If Pyke’s songs are like his children, then it’s no surprise he feels they’ve grown into more than he ever anticipated when they were originally released. “Just the other day somebody posted on my Facebook page photos of their wedding with quotes of two different songs of mine, and you know, people have tattoos of my lyrics – things like that. “I never had expectations, I just wanted it to become my job. I never really understood how far songs could travel.

“It’s a pretty nostalgic thing to look back on songs from particular periods of your life.” thebrag.com

“Creatively I really want to branch out,” he says. “I’d love to get more into doing music for TV and films – I did a few songs for a show this year, but I’ve also really been enjoying writing prose. I’ve always written songs and I’ve kind of learnt how to refine a story back into three minutes, but I’d love to explore writing a book or something. “There’s a lot of things I want to do in future but at the end of the day, I’m still every day compelled to come down and write songs – it’s not something I feel like I want to move on from yet either.” What: Best Of, B-Sides & Rarities out Friday June 30 through Ivy League With: Kyle Lionhart Where: Enmore Theatre When: Friday July 28

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FEATURE

Julien Baker The Quiet Life By Kate Streader

“I’m like the Martha Stewart of music – I’m like, ‘Well, I make a nice French press and then I read.’” nown for her harrowing lyrics and mellifluous guitar melodies, Julien Baker is as poetic in conversation as her songs would suggest.

since releasing Sprained Ankle in 2015. Although touring “comes with its own set of challenges”, according to Baker, she has had plenty of practice adjusting to the constant travel.

It’s 8am in Munich, and Baker is sitting down with her morning coffee. Despite being thrust into the limelight at the age of 19 following the release of her debut album Sprained Ankle, Baker remains humble about her fame.

“One thing that’s important to me is trying to keep consistency with what I do when I’m on tour and what I do when I’m off tour, so that it’s not such a jarring step back into reality,” she says.

Baker speaks and sings with such wisdom that it’s easy to forget she is just 21 years old, though she attributes a lot of her perspective and growth to the time she has spent on tour. “I’ve had time to re-contextualise the lyrics, and by extension, how I remember the events that then formed the lyrics into something positive,” she says of Sprained Ankle.

“I think what’s most important is creating places to be solitary and reset.”

Baker’s second album is due for release towards the end of 2017. “We’re releasing it in fall and I’m really excited about it, I think mostly just because I’ve been touring Sprained Ankle for so

“We played an incredible show last night in Munich and the kids were just really excited to be there,” she says. “It reminds me I’m just very lucky and it’s worth dragging your stuff through the airport and not sleeping much and driving five, eight or nine hours in one day to get to have that moment with the audience. I love touring abroad and I think Germany is one of my favourite places to play. Germany has got some really engaging crowds.” Baker is no stranger to life on the road – she’s been touring almost non-stop

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“It’s going to be interesting – there’s more piano and strings. It’s equally as sparse, it’s not like a full band [with a] drum kit and like eight guitars, but I think I took the time to be meticulous and make the best art I possibly could. At the end of the day it’s all I have to offer, so I’m really nervous because when it comes out I have this thing and I’ll be like, ‘I did my best.’ “It’s your baby, you put [together] this nascent idea and nurtured it into maturity and now you’re releasing it out to behave and interact with the listener on its own, and I hope it fares well.” What: Splendour In The Grass 2017 With: The xx, Queens of the Stone Age, LCD Soundsystem and many more Where: North Byron Parklands When: Friday July 21 – Sunday July 23 And: Also appearing at the Facfory Theatre on Thursday July 20 thebrag.com

Julien Baker photo by Nolan Knight

“I feel like that’s so boring, like, ‘What do you do when you’re home?’ and I’m like the Martha Stewart of music – I’m like, ‘Well, I make a nice French press and then I read,’” she laughs.

“The songs themselves are like working through emotions and those things that were happening, but then when I had to think every night onstage – like, ‘I’m about to go out in front of audience members and scream about ruining everything I do and everybody running from me, and are those really the things that I believe?’ – I’ve reassessed my values, and now I get to go onstage and say, ‘This song is about thinking that you ruin everything and finding out that’s a fallacy and mistakes are just opportunities for growth.’ And that’s cheesy and it sounds like a birthday card but it’s true, trite or not.”

“When I get home I wake up pretty early and just enjoy quiet time. I just enjoy not having to be anywhere or having to get back into the car, and so I make breakfast and a cup of coffee and read and do all my work and just have peaceful time. I think what’s most important is creating places to be solitary and reset.

long I’m just excited to have some new material out there,” she says. “The new songs are equally as autobiographical, but I’m going into performing them live and having that equipment to have a mental balance about coping with sharing very personal things live.

Bishop Briggs Many Rivers To Cross By David James Young

ithout even so much as an album to her name, Bishop Briggs – born Sarah McLaughlin, but unable to use her real name for obvious reasons – has already staked claim to international recognition and garnered considerable hype as a talent to watch in the realm of indie-pop. A multi-faceted and genre-flexible performer, the 24-yearold re-released her eponymous debut EP back in April to take advantage of said momentum. Although repackaging a release less than six months old may seem a curious tactic, for Briggs it’s about impacting on the collective conscience and maintaining a sense of vitality in the present tense. “It’s always a goal for me – and, I think, for any artist – to release something that you’re proud of,” she says. “When you’re putting out something new, you want it to be a reflection on who you are currently. That’s certainly what I was able to achieve with this EP – two of the songs on it were written and finished a month before it came out. They’re fresh recordings, based off recent experiences, and it’s really exciting to share that. The great part of releasing a body of work like an EP is that people are able to get a better sense of who you are as an artist. They might even learn the words and sing along when they come to see you at a show.” Through singles such as ‘River’, ‘Be Your Love’ and ‘Wild Horses’, Briggs has already showcased a malleable approach to her music. These songs incorporate liberal use of beats and artificial instrumentation playing yinand-yang with her blues-tinged vocals. She’s not quite pop, not quite rock... truth be told, she’s not quite anything. That’s a point of pride for the woman herself, mind you: “My hope is just to remain authentic,” she affirms. thebrag.com

“Sometimes, authenticity can come from a willingness to experiment; other times it can come from wanting to put together something cohesive. I love having gospel elements in my music, I love using hip hop beats, I love having soulful melodies and vulnerable lyrics. It’s important to me to maintain that level of where I found my inspiration originally. Growing up, I was dancing in my living room; listening to Janis Joplin and Aretha Franklin. I hope that’s always something that’s influential on my music. I’m writing every day, and I try to record as much as possible – just so I have these stories on record, and so that one day I can look back on my entire body of work as something that I’m really proud of.” Away from her own solo music this year, Briggs also unexpectedly made an appearance on L.A. Divine, the sixth album by indie rockers Cold War Kids. That’s her providing vocals on track three, ‘So Tied Up’, which was also turned into an acoustic version to focus more on Briggs’ vocals in duet style. No one – least of all Briggs herself – saw it coming. “I have no idea how it came about,” she says. “It was this stars-aligning moment – I still can’t believe that it happened. “I got this phone call out of the blue one day, and it was Nathan [Willett, Cold War Kids frontman]. He had heard my voice on the radio! I had no chill at all. I completely lost my cool! I just turned into this super

FEATURE

“I love having gospel elements in my music, I love using hip hop beats, I love having soulful melodies and vulnerable lyrics.”

“I got this phone call out of the blue one day, and it was Nathan [Willett, Cold War Kids frontman]. He had heard my voice on the radio! I had no chill at all.” fan-girl on the phone. He asked if I would be interested in potentially collaborating, and that’s how the ‘So Tied Up’ video came about. That was our first time meeting – we only had a few hours, and we just instantly connected. I’ve been a fan of theirs for ten years now. They’re a band that means so much to me, so I was beyond flattered that they wanted to work with me.” As for future collaborations, Briggs has no current plans. There is, however, one act that is at the very top of her wishlist: “I am obsessed with Jack Garratt,” she says. “He went on before us at Coachella, and seeing him live was so eye-opening. I feel that I could really learn a lot from working with someone like him.” Without pushing too contrived a narrative, Briggs has certainly been raised as a citizen of the world, so to speak. The story goes that she was born in London to Scottish parents, was raised in Japan and moved to Los Angeles after finishing high school. She has spent the majority of her life seeing what the globe has to

offer her – which is why her first-ever tour of Australia does not double as her maiden voyage. “This is my first time playing in Australia, but I have been an obnoxious tourist in the past,” she explains with a laugh. “I was in Sydney, I got to go to Bondi Beach and I’ve visited the Gold Coast too – I’ve been lucky enough to see a part of the country, and I loved it. I have to say, I think that it’s going to be so different this time around – I’ll be performing and getting to do what I love. I had such an amazing time the first time that I visited, so my expectations are very high for this next experience.” What: Splendour In The Grass 2017 With: The xx, Queens of the Stone Age, LCD Soundsystem, Royal Blood, Haim and many more Where: North Byron Parklands When: Friday July 21 – Sunday July 23 And: Also appearing at Oxford Art Factory on Thursday July 20 More: Bishop Briggs out now through Island

“Two of the songs on [the Bishop Briggs EP] were written and finished a month before it came out. They’re fresh recordings, based off recent experiences.” BRAG :: 719 :: 28:06:17 :: 19

FEATURE

Why Music Festivals Can Be Good For Your

Mental Health A Smarter Approach By Joseph Earp

iven festivals can be a noxious cocktail of loud music, intense physical activity, excessive alcohol consumption and poor sleep, perhaps it’s not surprising how frequently a weekend at one of these events can end in a mental health nightmare. We’ve all been either that person who’s lost, confused and tripping out in the middle of a moshpit, or we’ve seen them there. After all, a good night’s sleep is one of the best ways to stave away anxiety, as are proper hydration and good, square meals. But who worries about those kinds of things when they’re enjoying a festival? It’s rare that punters get the nine good hours of shut-eye they need to stay alert and happy when they’re sleeping in a cramped, hot tent, surrounded by drunken revellers and noisy hoons – and rarer still that anyone will chow down on anything but salty, fattening snacks. “Large outdoor music festivals are about music, fun and having a good time, but unfortunately they can and will pose many health-related risks,” Paul Gilligan, CEO of St. Patrick’s Mental Heath Services, told the website Walk In My Shoes. “Many of those [risks] result from increased use of drugs and alcohol. All psychoactive drugs have the potential to cause both short and long-term mental health problems. Festivalgoers need to be aware and mindful of this fact”. And, finally, there’s the music itself. Some controversial studies conducted by Finnish researchers have found that obsessively listening to dark and heavy music can increase one’s propensity to negatively brood over past hurts, impacting the chances of self-regulating their mood. “This style of listening results in the feeling of expression of negative feelings, not necessarily improving the negative mood,” Dr. Suvi Saarikallio, one of the authors of the study, told Medical News Today. But for every disturbing study concerning music’s potential for harm, there is a more optimistic one to offset it. Therapists have known for many years that listening to beloved music can have a positive effect on those suffering from depression and anxiety – there is a reason that so many practitioners use music therapy as a way of helping those who might otherwise feel hopeless.

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“What is a music festival but and nothing else; thebrag.com

FEATURE

“The best way to maximise your experience at a music festival, researchers say, is to come prepared.”

“The research is suggesting that we are looking at about ten minutes to 20, 25 minutes of intentional music listening can put you right into that [positive] headspace,” music therapist Jennifer Buchanan told Fox News. Indeed, many specialists believe the element of intent is key. To properly boost one’s mental health, it’s imperative to set aside the time to listen to music – not to do it while distracted, or otherwise occupied. And what is a music festival but a chance to listen to music and nothing else; to lose oneself in sound? Furthermore, music can actively combat stress – as can dancing. Both trigger biochemical stress reducers which in turn help stop one from spiralling into a panic attack. A 2012 article published in Women’s Health highlighted the latter as a particularly important way of staying happy and mentally healthy. “The ample flow of mood-improving chemicals that dancing releases means, of course, that raising the roof can elevate your mental state,” goes the article. “Just one lively dance session can slay depression more than vigorous exercise.” Clearly, there are two sides to this story. Festivals don’t have to be the dens of freak-outs and panic attacks they can sometimes be. The best way to maximise your experience at a music festival, researchers say, is to come prepared. Drink a lot of water; bring a lot of good, nourishing food; try, to the best of your ability, to get good sleep before, during and after a festival; and try to steer clear of most major drugs.

Of course, all of this is very easy to say, but much harder to put into practice, and some of the onus of responsibility falls onto festival organisers. Luckily, they are stepping up, frequently employing the services of such mental health advocacy groups as Chill Welfare – a not-for-profit, volunteer-led organisation that seeks to give assistance to any festival-goers who might need it. “If you’re a man with a mental health illness, you’re much more likely to die early,” GP and Chill Welfare support worker Amy Reimoser explained to The Guardian. “You’re more likely to smoke, more likely to abuse substances. A festival is a good chance to perhaps get hold of people like that who don’t know they have a problem.” Good mental health does not come easy. It’s not something you should ever take for granted, let alone abuse. And it’s something you can actively preserve in the high-pressure environment of the festival. Be prepared, and you’ll be able to enjoy the music in the way it was meant to be enjoyed. Australia has a huge lineup of positive music festivals to enjoy in 2017, including the two-night Snowtunes at Jindabyne on Friday September 1 and Saturday September 2. Get more festival news at thebrag.com.

a chance to listen to music ; to lose oneself in sound?” thebrag.com

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arts in focus

■ Film

By Joseph Earp

The Beguiled is the movie equivalent of a fart in a bathtub

f Ken Loach is the poet of the disenfranchised, then Sofia Coppola is the prophet of the privileged. Ever since Lost In Translation, her surprise 2003 hit, Coppola’s glacial films have infallibly tried to account and apologise for the bourgeoisie, painting society’s most wealthy citizens as isolated and unhappy – to which the less sympathetic might respond, “Boo fucking hoo.”

So perhaps it’s unsurprising that despite its wartime setting, Coppola’s new film The Beguiled is overstuffed with anachronistically lavish banquets, spotless, beautiful dresses and unrelenting shots of dappled light swimming through the trees of the deep south. This is no gothic horror, nor the thriller that its marketing material hinted that it might be – instead, The Beguiled is just another tedious exercise in excess, albeit one a little less blatantly offensive than Coppola’s prior slicks of cultural diarrhea. A remake of the 1971 Clint Eastwood vehicle of the same name, The Beguiled opens in the third year of the Civil War, as a wounded union soldier named Corporal John McBurney (Colin Farrell) seeks shelter in a boarding school for young women. Although the school’s students and skeleton staff – most notably headmistress Martha Farnsworth (Nicole Kidman) and young pupil Alicia (Elle Fanning) – initially consider surrendering McBurney to roaming Confederate forces,

they eventually decide to provide him with sanctuary, driven by both Christian ideals of charity and some significantly more fleshy considerations. From there, The Beguiled follows the beats of the original, albeit in a tediously muted way. The 1971 film was downright leery, full of bed-hopping and bawdiness, but Coppola tries to rein her subject matter in, focusing instead (surprise surprise) on lavish displays of culture and wealth. As a result, an odd discrepancy between filmmaker and film emerges: every time Coppola goes high, you can hear her script straining towards the depraved, and for a work largely concerned with lust and longing, The Beguiled sure feels neutered. By the time it’s all done, there’s not much separating The Beguiled from a glorified perfume commercial, or a Civil War-set advert for sleeping pills. Whereas the original was a flawed yet admirably deviant investigation into the interplay between sex and control, Coppola’s remake is one more somnambulistic slice of decadence, a film with all the impact of a fart in a bathtub. The Beguiled was reviewed as part of Sydney Film Festival 2017. It opens in cinemas on Thursday July 13.

“By the time it’s all done, there’s not much separating The Beguiled from a glorified perfume commercial.”

Risk steps inside Julian Assange’s embassy room, but leaves more confused than it started

ulian Assange, dressed in a grubby T-shirt and holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy, is being asked what his favourite food is. “I am not a normal person,” he blurts back at his interviewer who, weirdly enough, happens to be the pop star Lady Gaga. “I am not a normal person,” he says again, apropos of nothing, his sallow face lighting up with one of his trademark knowing smirks. This is one of the many surreal scenes that overstuff Laura Poitras’ Risk, an equally infuriating and enthralling documentary that took the US filmmaker seven years to complete. But for all its oddness, the moment also happens to be a rare, unfettered glimpse at Assange’s character. Preening himself for the camera in Gaga’s hands, Assange does not seem like a traitor, or an arch raconteur, or the mastermind his fans and detractors alike believe him to be. Instead, Assange comes across as a spoiled, slightly irritating brat. If only the rest of the film was so consistent. Risk doesn’t ever really seem to know what it wants to be, or what it has to say about Assange. “At first I tried to ignore the contradictions in the story,” Poitras says in one memorable voiceover. “But then I realised the contradictions were the story.” Which, sure, is probably true, but it doesn’t exactly make for satisfying viewing.

Nor does it help that Poitras’ documentary has no central thrust. For its first third, the film is an illuminating, fascinating examination of Wikileaks’ internal power struggles. Then it becomes a portrait of a slightly repellent man under investigation for sexual assault (in one particularly uncomfortable moment, Assange blames “radical feminists” for the allegations against him). Then, finally, it tangles itself up in the tale of the Russian hacking of the 2016 election and Assange’s potential role in it, as Poitras makes the risky decision to end her film with a still unfolding, still unresolved story. None of which makes the film anything less than intensely, immensely watchable, albeit in a “can’t tear your eyes off a car crash” kind of way. At its best, Risk is a gleefully erratic, unsettling look at a conflicted man – although one should be prepared to walk out of the film knowing less than one did going in. Perhaps it’s pertinent that the image you’re left with when it’s all over is Assange preparing to flee the Ecuadorian embassy wearing a disguise, his hair dyed, popping in contacts to alter his eye colour, an unknown man obscuring his own personhood. Risk was reviewed as part of Sydney Film Festival 2017.

“Risk doesn’t ever really seem to know what it wants to be, or what it has to say about Assange.”

free stuff VELVET

win

Craig Reid in Velvet

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To celebrate the return of Velvet following its stints at the Adelaide Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, Brisbane Festival, Sydney Opera House and The Coopers Malthouse in Melbourne, we’re giving away a double pass to the Wednesday July 26 show. Enter the draw at thebrag.com/freeshit.

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Craig Reid photo © Sam Ostermin / Marcia Hines photo © Tony Virgo

The most fabulous show in town, Velvet, is back after a sold-out Sydney season and national tour. This celebration Marcia Hines in Velvet of all things disco starring Marcia Hines, hula hoop pro Craig Reid and a troupe of musicians, acrobats and muscle men, returns to the Roslyn Packer Theatre from Wednesday July 26 and Parramatta’s Riverside Theatres from Saturday October 21.

arts reviews ■ Film

King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword is a forgettable action film with some unlikely cameos By Amy Henderson

ing Arthur: Legend Of The Sword is the newest creation from Britain’s badass director, Guy Ritchie. For months we have been promised high action, the crème de la crème of CGI and, most importantly, a no-holds-barred take on a classic fable. Instead, what we’ve got is clunky direction, unremarkable CGI, weak tea dialogue and a bland aftertaste, along with the distinct feeling that this could have been done so much better. The film opens with a humdinger of an action scene. You settle in. Complete with ginormous Lord Of The Rings-esque elephants, a cracking soundtrack, Eric Bana leaping like a gazelle and Jude Law getting a nosebleed, it is entertaining enough – although you do start looking out for Orcs. Legend Of The Sword stars Sons Of Anarchy’s Charlie Hunnam – whose body has responded nicely to Hollywood’s “be ripped, you’re an action hero” ethos –

“The main problem with Legend Of The Sword is that you never really find yourself committing to this world.”

plus our very own Bana, Law, the creepy brothel owner from Game Of Thrones (Aiden Gillen) and a host of Ritchie’s mates – including none other than… David Beckham? That’s right, even more irrelevant distractions to divert from a lukewarm plot heading roughly to a hero’s end.

Many of the supporting cast screams “inner city casting session”. The distance from London’s Southend to the shores of Camelot is but a stone’s throw, and that degrades the code of fantasy. The pockets of interesting CGI and damn fine soundtrack just become micro testaments to a VFX/sound

team’s skill and not aggregate fuel beneath the film’s overall force. The main problem with Legend Of The Sword is that you never really find yourself committing to this world. With its weak acting, Law cast as a bad guy, a plot that has gone to drown its sorrows in

■ Film

Rough Night Actually Makes For A Fun Night At The Movies By Rylan Dawson

the Thames and miscellaneous cool stuff that just dilutes it all even further, this is a film that could have had us by the throat but instead passed some light wind. King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword is in cinemas now.

“The scene takes a wrenching turn from comedy as blood starts pooling on the floor.” body in numerous ways: no corpse, no crime. One of the problems with these types of films is that they require the characters to make the most ridiculous decisions possible, which can get a little frustrating. If everyone acted responsibly, the movie would be realistic, but about 15 minutes long and totally uninteresting. However, Rough Night manages to acknowledge the most logical course of action and then explain why it’s not possible. After all, what is a comedy if not for characters acting irrationally for our entertainment? It’s a mix of Bridesmaids and The Hangover, with an obvious touch of Very Bad Things, but the dark humour is most akin to Death At A Funeral. Unlike the cast of Bridesmaids, whose welcome wore out as each seemingly vied for the biggest laugh, the women of Rough Night have a strong and interesting dynamic.

ess (Scarlett Johansson) is in the midst of running for the State Senate. She is engaged to Peter (Paul W. Downs) and is about to embark upon the most sacred and holy of prenuptial rituals: her bachelorette party, in Miami, no less. She’s joined by her old college friends for the weekend: the hyper-needy Alice (Jillian Bell),

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the activist and weed enthusiast Frankie (Ilana Glazer), the snooty, classy af Blair (Zoe Kravitz), and ‘Aussie’ Pippa from Jess’ Australian semester abroad (Kate McKinnon). Shout-out also to the hilariously uncomfortable cameos by Demi Moore and Ty Burrell. Keeping with tradition, the girls hire Jess a male stripper. When

an overeager Alice launches herself raunchily at him, the scene strays from the cliché bachelorette party as Mr. Stripper’s head clips a concrete corner and hits the ground. I know, you saw all this in the trailer, but the scene takes a wrenching turn from comedy as blood starts pooling on the floor and the women realise CPR isn’t going to bring him back.

They know they’ve seriously fucked up, and it’s almost touching when they apologise to the body on the floor, acknowledging that “he deserved better”. And then he ends up with penis party glasses on his face, because, you know, bachelorette party. Desperate to avoid prison, Jess, Alice, Frankie, Blair and Pippa attempt to conceal and dispose of the

The death scene is actually done with delicate sensitivity. The light-hearted humour is only mixed in with short breaths, enough to keep it a comedy, but not an extraneous amount to deter from the main storyline. The film lovingly mocks every bachelorette cliché, and it may be a familiar tale, but if you go into this looking to have a good time, you’ll have fun with it. Rough Night is in cinemas now.

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FOOD + DRINK

WHAT’S NEW IN

Sydney

The Lansdowne Is Back, And Boy Did We Miss It The boys behind Mary’s and The Unicorn, Jake Smyth and Kenny Graham, have rebirthed the classic Lansdowne Hotel with a vengeance. A fully repurposed kitchen downstairs has been created to serve up a menu that prizes poor students first and foremost – nothing is over $20. There’s a classic, homestyle-with-a-twist menu, featuring a pork lasagne and a new version of a classic mi goreng. Plus, the famous Mary’s Burger has been squashed and served as a pizza, and all the food is served piping hot, perfect alongside a shit tinny or a cocktail.

Food BY JESSICA WESTCOTT

The Nutella Food Truck Takes A Road Trip Sydney can’t get enough of Nutella. We put it in hoppers, we eat it in our doughnuts – we even whack it in pastry and stick it on a milkshake. So the obvious next step in our obsession is to combine it with our insatiable love for food trucks. A Nutella Food Truck, you say? How inspired. The Nutella Food Truck is back again by extremely popular demand, and it’s headed out on a massive road trip from Sydney up the east coast of Australia, stopping to serve up tasty chocolatey goodies. Food truck aficionado and chef Alistair Fogg (The Nighthawk Diner) has put his hand to six different Nutella-inspired concoctions for the early morning revellers to try out. The smashed sweet potato and crushed pretzels on a toasted brioche sounds more than tantalising, as do the egg waffles with banana, roasted hazelnuts and (duh) Nutella.

Now that this classic watering hole is back in business, we’re excited to see a full program of live gigs kick on through the coming months.

The best part? It’s all free! With a limit of one visit per day per customer. The Nutella Road Trip started its epic trip last week, and as we speak it’s heading towards the North Coast. Follow its journey at nutella.com/en/au.

Summer Hill’s New Community Dining Area The renovation of Summer Hill’s old flour mill, a towering

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relic of the 1950s, is set to bring about a brand new community dining area with an abundance of food options. The first announcement from the design team is the addition of The Farm Wholefoods – a market-like, straight-

from-the-source retailer that specialises in ethically sourced and sustainable fare. The retail concept is to create a contemporary, exciting and vibrant retail food precinct: “a place to meet, eat, entertain and relax”.

The Flour Mill is still under renovation, but upon opening it’ll play host to heaps of new restaurants, cafes and al fresco dining options, as well as more than 400 apartments. Summer Hill already enjoys a plethora of great cafes

and restaurants, including One Penny Red and the Goblin Kitchen and Bar. We’ve no idea whether the announcement of this new food-tropolis is going to help or hinder these establishments, but it will certainly bring a fresh audience to Summer Hill.

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out & about Queer(ish) matters with Arca Bayburt

Reasons Why The Word Lesbian Sucks

brag beats

Off The Record Dance and Electronica with Alex Chetverikov

Four Of Sydney’s Best Small Nightlife Venues

’m not alone in that I don’t like to use the word ‘lesbian’ to refer to myself. Technically speaking, it does fit, but the fit is uncomfortable. I’ve asked some other gay pals and they agree: sometimes the word ‘lesbian’ chafes and pinches. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of reasons why.

It’s a noun Seriously. Ever refer to a gay man as ‘a gay’? Hello, pleased to meet you, I’m a gay. The word ‘lesbian’ manages to make you into an object. Whereas a word like ‘gay’ is used to describe a particular trait or set of traits and behaviours, ‘lesbian’ is authoritatively taking over the whole person. Saying something like, “That is a lesbian,” sounds kinda gross to me – like you’re narrating a creepy nature documentary.

It sounds like an obscure diagnostic term Maybe this comes from years of siphoning off endless homophobia, but the word ‘lesbian’ has connotations of sickness and disease for me. When it’s paired with a person, the fact that it’s also a noun just makes it sound like somebody is a walking STD.

Too many syllables and it sounds awkward Just by referring to yourself as gay instead of lesbian, you’ll save up to 45 minutes per year.

It’s difficult to divorce the word from its stereotypical baggage The word ‘lesbian’ immediately conjures an image that is usually unflattering and grossly misrepresented. Nobody wants to be affiliated with that shit. When you’re reduced to a stereotype, your humanity is disrespected.

It’s fetishised Search “lesbian” in Google and let me know what you find after you climb out of the vagina avalanche you’re gonna get buried under. Go ahead. I’ll wait. One time I typed in “Lesbian career advice” and all I got was “LESBIAN GETS ON THE D FOR A DOLLA”. So,

this week… On Wednesday June 28, head over to Slyfox on Enmore Road for the return of Birdcage’s epically dorky party, Nerdcage. Grab your books, your spectacles and your long cotton socks – Birdy is getting Nerdy. Triple j’s The Kick On host Shantan Wantan Ichiban is

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this might illustrate why words other than ‘lesbian’ serve us better. Tumblr automatically fl ags the tag ‘lesbian’ as NSFW, for fuck’s sake. The word ‘lesbian’ has become shorthand for a category of porn rather than a sexual identity alone. Searching for lesbian content online is just going to lead you down the yellow brick road right into a stilettorepurposed-as-dildo party. No thanks.

Something about it sounds pejorative Growing up, I heard ‘poofter’ and ‘faggot’ in reference to gay men quite a lot – but the difference between gay men and women is that the slur and the descriptor have clear separating lines for gay men but not women. Nobody shouts, “UGH GAY MAN!! YOU’RE A GROSS GAY MAN,” but are far likelier to shout, “UGH LESBIAN,” or something to that effect.

ith live music well on the way back in Sydney and the lockout laws being gradually eased (along with Freda’s getting a later licence – hooray!), it’s boding to be a positive and regenerative time for our city’s music scene once again. Vivid has just come to the end of another successful year, with some magical nights of music, and the Lansdowne’s historical doors have been prised open for another 90 years of merriment. All that in mind, it’s as good a time as any to remind ourselves of the great little venues we’ve got fl oating around, and to introduce a few of the uninitiated among you to a few proper party spots (the legal ones, anyway). There are a few old faithfuls still powering away, along with the new kids on the block.

Freda’s

107-109 Regent St, Chippendale A hop and a skip down the road from the Lord Gladstone Hotel and White Rabbit Gallery is Freda’s, which has fast become one of Sydney’s fi nest little cultural spaces. Tucked in an unassuming alley in Chippendale, the open underground gallery-styled design has hosted many an exhibition from new and emerging artists. Its greatest asset is its versatile approach to music, though – mid-week slow tempo vibes make it perfect for a chill-out, while the traditional party nights see a slew of locals and internationals laying down anything and everything. The cocktails aren’t half-bad, and they’re now open past midnight!

Goodbar

11a Oxford St, Paddington Another on the list of resurgent reopenings,

For gay women, the slur is ‘lesbian’ or ‘dyke’ – same as the descriptor. That’s where the discomfort comes from. I think that when you hear the word ‘lesbian’ weaponised like that, it’s hard not to feel like reclaiming it is incredibly difficult to do. After all, gay men don’t need to refer to themselves as faggots, but gay women generally are referred to as lesbians.

Club 77

Your mileage may vary I used to hate the word ‘gay’, but now I feel neutral about it. My favourite is ‘queer’ because I feel it’s the most apt for me, personally. I don’t see myself coming around to the word ‘lesbian’ because I think it’s too far gone into fetish land to be easily retrieved, but of course, my views and the views of my friends don’t represent every homosexual. We just noticed a trend about the ‘lesbian’ label thing and fi gured it was still worth talking about.

Bonus round If you’re a heterosexual and you meet a woman who refers to herself as gay, don’t correct her by saying, “Don’t you mean lesbian?” They may just be your last words.

gracing the decks along with NatNoiz, Mowgli May and Maple Behaviour. Entry is free. On Thursday June 29, head over to The Shift Club on Oxford Street for The Real Housewives Of Sydney Drag Tribute Show. It’s presented by Lay’d Girls and

hosted by Polly Petrie, so let yourself be treated to a musical extravaganza with a stellar cast of queens including Fran Gipanni, Annie Mation, Burley Chassis and Sunday Best. Rumour has it that a Real Housewife might show up, too. DJ Kirby will be on the decks all night after the show. Admission is free!

the Peoples Club team has been steadily booking a fantastic string of artists since the Oxford Street underground playground swung its doors open again late last year. Up top you’ll find a dimly lit cocktail bar soundtracked with the best local talent, while its underground hosts top-notch local and international DJs. They’ve even set up a special weekly Wednesday night boogie.

Hotel Harry (Harpoon Harry)

40-44 Wentworth Ave, Surry Hills Fresh off the back of yet another wildly successful and entertaining Vivid showcase, Kali Picnic shows she’s not slowing down with her direction of the music program at the Surry Hills venue. With a funky booth bistro packed with tasty North American cuisine on the ground fl oor, a quick walk upstairs reveals an intimate dancefl oor with wood-panelled seating redolent of its 105-year history.

77 William St, Darlinghurst Simple, sweaty and strong on the sleaze, 77 is a Darlinghurst institution. While it’s eased off a little on the sauciness since its reopening, recent bookings have suggested a resurgence in its ranks. If you like dark and nondescript spaces that make up in music quality, this is your bag.

THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST Dawit Eklund and Mikael Seifu’s split EP Psycho Animus / Tuff Ruff – I love when a split has such different appeal. ‘Psycho Animus’ draws comparison to resonant bass and warm organ tones of early ’90s deep house, on a Larry Heard tip. The flip is as well balanced a merger of East African melody and vocal with Western dance rhythms as you’ll find.

RECOMMENDED FRIDAY JUNE 30 Florian Kupfer Club 77

SATURDAY JULY 1

Freda & Jackson, Taridas & Comfort

Club The Flinders Bar

FRIDAY JULY 7

Leo James, Cop Envy Club 77

SATURDAY JULY 15

Mad Racket DJs, Baron Castle vs Dave Stuart The Bunk3r T. Williams, Kinder Chinese Laundry

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Album Reviews What's been crossing our ears this week...

ALBUM OF THE WEEK TLC

Pay attention to the little Easter eggs thrown in just for the OG fans, like the lyric “We don’t need no scrubs chasing waterfalls” in the opening track as a nod to their signature hits.

Melodrama Universal The best-selling American girl group of all time, TLC, have reunited for one last album of smooth, sexy, R&B goodness. Their swansong is delivered to us via a Kickstarter campaign that saw the likes of Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake, Bette Midler and New Kids On The Block donate to help fund the LP (because Katy had to contribute to at least one good album in 2017, right?). The remaining two members of TLC – Tionne ‘T-Boz’ Watkins and Rozonda ‘Chilli’ Thomas – have done the band, Lisa ‘Left

Eye’ Lopes and old-school R&B fans proud by sticking to their roots and producing tracks that sound like they could’ve been stripped right off an album from their heyday. Their final hurrah even attracted the attention of Snoop Dogg, who lends his cool-as-a-cucumber vocals to the lead single, ‘Way Back’.

Speaking of which, the deluxe edition of the album includes remastered versions of your favourites – ‘No Scrubs’, ‘Creep’, ‘Unpretty’, ‘Baby-Baby-Baby’, and ‘Diggin’ On You’ – to serve as the best friggin’ parting gift ever. Hats off to the women of TLC: your contribution to music has been noted and appreciated, and any time we ditch a scrub or chase a waterfall, we’ll be thinking of you. Matthew Galea

“Pay attention to the little Easter eggs thrown in just for the OG fans.”

INDIE ALBUM OF THE WEEK HOLLOW EVERDAZE Cartoons Deaf Ambitions

For those who have been watching Hollow Everdaze play these songs live over the last couple of years, the thought of finally having studio tracks streaming from a browser – and eventually playing on vinyl – is both exciting and a long time coming. The Victorians have braved both a studio fire and having their equipment stolen to deliver one of the most cinematic and sonically cohesive albums to land in these parts for a long while. Cartoons features a perfect distillation of strong pop

sensibility, heart-melting lyrical themes and lush instrumental arrangement. Put those on a triangular diagram and you usually get to pick only two. The album touches on themes of tearing down and starting over, letting go of obsession and loss, particularly on near-centrepiece ‘Running Away’, which is a real tearjerker. One abstract interpretation of Cartoons would consider this a break-up album: it’ll help you be you again. There are so many standout moments on Cartoons, but the biggest triumph is closer ‘Out Your Window’, a two-minute pop song with a stunning four-minute instrumental tail on the end that opens itself right up in a really

beautiful way. Wait for the egg shaker; you’ll see what I mean. It’s a perfect closer to an utterly untouchable debut. Nicholas Johnson

“One abstract interpretation of Cartoons would consider this a break-up album: it’ll help you be you again.”

FIRST DRAFTS Unearthed demos and unfinished hits, as heard by Nathan Jolly Radiohead – ‘Karma Police’

s perhaps the most hyped band of the last 25 years (Thom Yorke could record the sound of his son playing scale-electrix with The Bill on in the background, add reverb and it’d be hailed a masterpiece), the ceremony around the 20-year anniversary of Radiohead’s most unassailable work, the dystopic mope of OK Computer, has been at fever pitch in recent weeks. We’ve learned they cut a potential hit song to avoid another ‘Creep’, we’ve learned they all believe in ghosts, and we’ve even heard Alanis Morissette’s memories of the prealbum tour.

They create albums in the studio, they tinker and labour and layer – which means cul-de-sacs are often wandered into, pop songs shunted for no other reason than they don’t fit the overarching concept of the album, and demos and unreleased bits are created, then kept in airconditioned vaults to roll out on anniversaries, like old photo albums. One of the very best demos from the OK Computer sessions is ‘Karma Police’. Whereas early versions of ‘No Surprises’ contain a completely different lyric – including a troubling “bleeding in the bathroom” stanza – the

“This version builds like a classic rock song, with loose harmonies and a rollicking rhythm section showcasing a great live band.” 26 :: BRAG :: 719 :: 28:06:17

theme of ‘Karma Police’ is fairly established: a less mystic version of John Lennon’s ‘Instant Karma’, with truncheons and uniforms, swaying to a similar sound as ‘Sexy Sadie’. A more dainty touch on the keyboard intro gives the demo a Kinks ‘Village Green Preservation Society’ feel, while the snarky line “Arrest this girl, she stares at me as if she owns the world” was annexed in favour of giving her a Hitler hairdo. The chorus is sung a lot higher, and sweeter, too; Yorke’s beautiful coo quite at odds with the worn, tempered voice on the finished version. Another slight lyrical change: “This is what you get when you mess with me” is far less ominous, despite the personal nature of the threat. The ‘us’ in the finished version takes on the weight of the collective, be it a faceless corporation, a dangerous government, or those opposing and protesting either. While the ending of the studio version dive-bombs into

dissonance, the computer eating the band, this version builds like a classic rock song, with loose harmonies and a rollicking rhythm section showcasing a great live band that basically doesn’t feature live in any real way on the album.

OK Computer is a masterpiece, pieced together in a movie star’s secluded mansion, but it’s also just a very good rock album. Listen to the original ‘Karma Police’ demo at thebrag.com. thebrag.com

Hollow Everdaze photo by Andrew Bibby

As with any band that receives unanimous praise, the hype is both well deserved and fairly extreme, with attention being granted to the most inconsequential studio

snippets from the Englishmen’s glory days. Radiohead are very much a sum-of-their-parts band, which means raking over the forensics is often rewarding.

live reviews & snaps

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the amity affliction + pvris

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What we’ve been out to see...

ayla

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22:06:17 :: Hordern Pavilion :: 11 Driver Ave Moore Park 9921 5333

holy holy

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23:06:17 :: The Factory Floor :: 105 Victoria Rd Marrickville 9550 3666

23:06:17 :: Factory Theatre :: 105 Victoria Rd Marrickville 9550 3666 PHOTOGRAPHER :: ASHLEY MAR

Dragonforce Proved Both Their Skill And Their Age By David Molloy What can one expect going into a show by British power metal heavyweights Dragonforce? This far on from the worldwide sensation of Guitar Hero, the shape of the night was anyone’s guess, but Saturday’s show both met the high expectations set by their reputation and proved them to be (at least personally) relics of a bygone era. The crowd ran a gamut from skinny nerds drawn to the ‘Nintendo metal’ moniker the band adopts, to leather-clad old-school

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rockers, neon-haired women, and drunk young guys drawn to loud noises. Dragonforce T-shirts proudly extolling the merits of drinking irresponsibly were rife. It’s been seven years since singer ZP Theart departed Dragonforce – and from the reaction of the crowd to the emergence of Marc Hudson, he’s hardly missed. Hudson need no longer plead his case as frontman – his powerful vocals saw him through. Herman Li and Sam Totman are unparalleled in both their technical prowess and abandon when it comes to guitar. Their virtuoso sparring, in which one soloed while the other threw ‘wanker’ gestures and aped their noodling, rendered all other guitar duels obsolete. Li, especially, looked boyishly gleeful as he lifted his guitar by the whammy bar before

“Dragonforce remain absolutely astonishing musicians, but, as it turns out, mean drunks.” slamming into a monstrous choral riff. Totman, preferring to sneer, playfully leaned into scumbaggery, but his two-handed tapping was as clean as it was incomprehensibly fast. The rhythm section, too, shone. With legs like tree trunks, Gee Anzalone maintained a nearconstant blast beat, all with a smile on his face, and Frédéric Leclercq overcame a sizable hangover to deliver the goods. In the night’s most cheerful moment, he and Anzalone held the stage with a cover of the Super Mario Bros. 2 theme, played on an electric guitar emblazoned with Sonic The Hedgehog.

It’s exactly that nerdy aesthetic that grinds against the masculine posturing of the band. For such incredible musos, they still act a bit try-hard. One minute Li was playing a lightning guitar solo with a fidget spinner as a plectrum (yep, that happened); the next, Hudson was pulling a punter onstage to rip a shoey, and the rockers started trawling for trim. They’d starting imitating ‘Aussie slang’ early on, and employed it here to see if a female punter was “up for a root”. When Hudson greeted us as “c**ts”, the first time, we cheered along with the ruse; he later qualified that in Britain, it’s the

worst thing you can call someone, before telling us we were c**ts “in the British sense of the word”. The attitude had shifted to toxic, and only continued when Hudson dismissively referred to ‘Through The Fire And Flames’ as “the only reason you fucking came here tonight”. Dragonforce remain absolutely astonishing musicians, but, as it turns out, mean drunks. Through the fire and the flames they have carried on, but they have not gone unscathed. Dragonforce played Manning Bar on Saturday June 24.

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live reviews & snaps What we’ve been out to see...

Winston Surfshirt Announced Their Arrival At A Dynamic Sydney Show By Emily Gibb Little over a year ago, the thenmysterious Sydney act Winston Surfshirt were filling support slots in small rooms and starting to make waves with their woozy tracks led by Surfshirt’s smoky vocals. Two strong singles later, alongside an exclusive support set for Midnight Oil’s first show on their worldwide reunion tour –

Here’s What Happened When Hanson Made Their Comeback To Sydney By Poppy Reid Hanson’s live show has ushered in a multi-million-dollar business for the band. With 16 million records sold, they’ve been able to remain wholly independent, launch their own label (3CG), a beer company, a festival, and support the 13 children they have between them. Of course, none of this was relevant at their Sydney concert as Taylor Hanson tipped his hat to the absent, the uninitiated, and thanked the lifers.

plus a tick of approval from Elton John himself – and Winston Surfshirt have found themselves selling out their maiden national headline tour. The question was, with all the hype and less than a handful of songs out there, what could they deliver? The band’s own support act was carefully chosen, and it was a refreshing treat to have Wallace warm the room up with her thick New Zealand accent and stellar jazz delivery mixed with future soul electronic vibes. As she powered through her groovy, bouncy tracks including ‘Raffled Roses’ and a Peter Pan-inspired number featuring a delightful hook, it was hard not to bob along and mirror her hip-flicking moves.

“We know you guys have taken some shit,” he said to 1,600 fans at the Enmore Theatre on Wednesday. “It’s not about the battles, it’s about the war.”

It was cool to see a relatively simple staging concept set the scene effectively thanks to two sets of decks – one lit up to read ‘Winston’, the other ‘Surfshirt’ – on either side of the frontman and his fluorescent-lit mic stand, giving off a dramatically holy effect alongside his white tee and long scruffy hair. There wasn’t any preaching but plenty of praising in the room as Winston Surfshirt kicked off proceedings. Their second single ‘Ali D’ featured early on, which meant the bulk of the night was filled with tunes recognisable from previous sets, helping familiarise the crowd with a taste of just what’s to come for the band.

one with ‘Wannabe’ – but if the thought of eight packed theatres across Australia confuses you, then you haven’t seen them live.

But time has been kind to the brothers three, with any suggestion their spark may have dulled quickly dismissed from the opening notes of ‘Already Home’, taken from 2013’s Anthem.

Across tracks like ‘Look At You’, ‘Weird’ and ‘Where’s The Love’ from Middle Of Nowhere, through to ‘This Time Around’, ‘Penny And Me’ and ‘Get The Girl Back’ from confessional records Underneath, The Walk and This Time Around, Hanson’s pondering of fragility and painfully wise life lessons were nowhere to be seen. In their place were three pop icons (with two largely ignored onstage guitarists) delivering two hours of rapturous escapism.

It might age you to think that Hanson have been regularly releasing albums since before The Spice Girls went number

The concert, part of Hanson’s global Middle Of Everywhere tour, also marks the 20-year anniversary of their first

It’s been 20 years since Hanson released their rarefied pop spectacular Middle Of Nowhere, and 25 years since they started making music together at ages six (Zac), nine (Taylor) and 11 (Isaac).

Thanks to some stanky bass and trombone bubbling its way through the setlist, the dynamics were solid – without them, the group wouldn’t nearly be as impressive live. The seductive ‘Be About You’ felt like it came around all too quickly to close out the set, until Surfshirt said: “We’ve got one more real song and then we’re gunna fuck some shit.” Scampering in and out of the audience, Surfshirt breathlessly pumped out Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Humble’ and Pharoahe Monch’s ‘Simon Says’ before popping above the heaving masses for Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s ‘Shimmy Shimmy Ya’. It was

Australian visit – back when they were deemed Aussie anyway because of their long blonde tresses and the fact they surfed in the ‘MMMBop’ video clip. Those of you who remember Hanson’s maiden Australian voyage will also remember the pandemonium of truanting schoolgirls who went to see them – their faces red from screaming and streaked with black ink as the letters in “I <3 Hanson” were sliced with tears. Hanson’s first of two sold-out Sydney shows may have been a little more subdued, but when one woman interjected Taylor’s heart-breaking (and morbid) ballad ‘With You In Your Dreams’ by screaming “Zac is fucking hot!” it wasn’t deemed rude. We all got it.

“There wasn’t any preaching but plenty of praising in the room as Winston Surfshirt kicked off proceedings.” an encore, and a moment, that certainly couldn’t have been predicted but will leave many saying “I was there” for years to come. Winston Surfshirt played Oxford Art Factory on Thursday June 22.

“If the thought of eight packed theatres across Australia confuses you, then you haven’t seen them live.” The fans weren’t just hanging out for the radio hits or the hair on this 25-year milestone – although there were plenty of both. When Hanson performed brand new single ‘I Was Born’ – the only song they’ve put out this year – they crowd sang along verbatim. Hanson were reviewed at the Enmore Theatre on Wednesday June 21.

PHOTOGRAPHER :: ASHLEY MAR

28 :: BRAG :: 719 :: 28:06:17

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24:06:17 :: Chinese Laundry :: 111 Sussex St Sydney 9254 8088

name the artists

Share your answers at facebook.com/thebragsydney. thebrag.com

How many musical legends can you identify from these fashion clues?

ART BY KEIREN JOLLY BRAG :: 719 :: 28:06:17 :: 29

g g guide gig g send your listings to : gigguide@seventhstreet.media

pick of the week

For our full gig and club listings, head to thebrag.com/gigs. Grinspoon

Electric Lady

FRIDAY JUNE 3 0 Metro Theatre

Electric Lady Ali Barter + Alex Lahey+ Jack River + Gretta Ray + Bec Sandridge + Rackett + Body Type 6:30pm. $40. WEDNESDAY JUNE 28 Arsenic & Old Lace + Tania Bowra Gasoline Pony, Marrickville. 7pm. $7 Bliss N Eso Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 7pm. $69.90 Cameron James Henderson + Heirs Leadbelly, Newtown. 8:30pm. $15 Rock The Valve Bar feat. Drover Mad + Mister Mystic + The Deadliners Valve Bar, Ultimo. 8pm. $10 The Other Woman – The Life And Music Of Nina Simone feat. Lisa Schouw + Peter Bailey Camelot Lounge, Marrickville. 7pm. FREE

THURSDAY JUNE 29 Eat Your Heart Out + Blue Velvet + False Plaintiff + Vacant Home Red Rattler,

Marrickville. 7pm. $10 Florentine + Indigo Aisle + Just Breathe Lazybones Lounge, Marrickville. 8:30pm. $10 Get Folked Punk feat. Amends + Wilson And The Castaways + Brad Harrison + Essem Leadbelly, Newtown. 5:30pm. $5 Jessica O’Donoghue + Merpire & Matilda Abraham Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $10 Night Of Indie Rock feat. Secondhand Sellout + Convex + more Valve Bar, Ultimo. 8pm. $10 Ruby Fields + Rachel Maria Cox + Uncle Axel Hudson Ballroom, Sydney. 8pm. $10 The Villebillies + Reuben & Elmo Gasoline Pony, Marrickville. 7pm. $7

FRIDAY JUNE 30 Andy Golledge

Band + Caitlin Harnett + Ruben Neeson Lazybones Lounge, Marrickville. 8:30pm. $20 Flipped Out Kicks + Lang Langs + Men From Uncle Petersham Bowling Club, Petersham. 7pm. $10 K-HAND + Estée Louder + Magda Bytnerowicz + Sveta Red Rattler, Marrickville. 9pm. $22 King Tide + Fripps & Fripps Leadbelly, Newtown. 9pm. $23.50 Martha Argerich Plays Beethoven feat. Sydney Symphony Orchestra Sydney Opera House, Sydney. 8pm. $79 Michael Griffin Octet: Tribute to Thelonius Monk Foundry616, Ultimo. 8:30pm. $21.50 Nick Nuisance + Cakewalk + The S Bends + Uplifting Bellends Captain Cook Hotel, Paddington. 9pm. $10

Orsome Welles + Genetics + Mercury Sky + Sevsons Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 8pm. $13 The Pink Floyd Experience Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $99 The Reserection of Fuckfest! feat. Earnest Raw + Ghostings + Passenger Of Shit Valve Bar, Ultimo. 10pm. $10 Superheist + Dreadnaught + Frankenbok + Rival Fire Bald Faced Stag, Leichardt. 8pm. $30.61 Vancouver Sleep Clinic Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $20

Grinspoon + Hockey Dad

Enmore Theatre, Newtown. Thursday July 6 and Friday July 7. 8pm. $68.45 In celebration of Guide To Better Living’s 20th anniversary re-release, the Lismore lads are taking two nights to pull the Enmore apart brick by brick.

The Aston Shuffle + Icarus + TCTS Chinese Laundry, Sydney. 9pm. $15 Bakoomba The Basement, Sydney. 7:30pm. $20 Bliss N Eso Towradgi Beach Hotel, Towradgi. 8pm. $59.90 Ministry Of Sound Pool Club feat. Boy George (DJ Set) Ivy Bar/Lounge, Sydney. 9pm. $83.20 Luca Brasi + Pianos Become The Teeth + Maddy Jane + Speech Patterns Metro Theatre, Sydney. 8pm. $34.80 Ultimate Eagles State Theatre, Sydney. 8pm. $90.60

SUNDAY JULY 2 Bernie Hayes + Elmo & Pete V Gasoline Pony, Marrickville. 5pm. $7

SATURDAY JULY 1

Melodic Rock Night feat. The Vegas Nerves + Wicked Children + M’Leigh + Mandarin Tree Valve Bar, Ultimo. 5pm. $10

All Our Exes Live In Texas Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 7:30pm. $25

Trent Bell + Jesse Teinaki Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 7pm. $25

Aqua Zebra + DJ Nothing + Haze Trio + Lo Five Lazybones Lounge, Marrickville. 7pm. $20

StereoBuss + Cub Callaway & The Révolutionnaires Leadbelly, Newtown. 6pm. $10

MONDAY JULY 3 The Monday Jam The Basement, Circular Quay. 8:30pm. $6 Orli Shama in Recital City Recital Hall, Sydney. 8pm. $59

TUESDAY JULY 4 Ben Ottewell (Gomez) + Buddy Lansdowne Hotel, Chippendale. 8pm. $38 Gavin DeGraw Metro Theatre, Sydney. 7pm. $59.90 Pallbearer Manning Bar, Camperdown. 8pm. $48.21 Stiff Sox + Anna & Jordan + ELASKA + Marguerite Montes Leadbelly, Newtown. 6:30pm. $15

WEDNESDAY JULY 5 Bay City Rollers North Sydney Leagues Club, Cammeray. 7pm. $30

THURSDAY JULY 6 Ben Ottewell + Buddy The Bunker, Coogee. 7pm. $25 George Michael – Praying For Time: A Tribute With Your Sydney Symphony feat. David Campbell + Diesel + Sam Sparro Sydney Opera

Royal Headache

Royal Headache + Low Life

Factory Theatre, Marrickville. Friday June 30. 8pm. $18.50 Having ridden the High of their second album’s skyrocketing success, a new-look band brings a distinctive soul influence to Shogun’s garage-punk missives.

House, Sydney. 8pm. $69 Merpire + Elizabeth Hughes + Georgia Mulligan Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $10 SCK CHX + WAWAWOW Marlborough Hotel, Newtown. 8pm. FREE Steve Gunn The Basement, Circular Quay. 7:30pm. $35

FRIDAY JULY 7 Cable Ties + Imperial Broads Factory Floor, Marrickville. 8pm. $13 Carb On Carb + Prizegiving Red Rattler, Marrickville. 7pm. $10 George Michael – Praying For Time: A Tribute With Your Sydney Symphony feat. David Campbell + Diesel + Sam Sparro Sydney Opera House, Sydney. 8pm. $69 Hey Geronimo Hudson Ballroom, Sydney. 7:30pm. $16.90 Kayzo Home Nightclub, Darling Harbour. 9pm. $40 Spit Syndicate + Jackie Onassis Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. Friday July 7. 8pm. $25 Touché Amoré +

Turnover Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 6:30pm. $51.60 Trapt Bald Faced Stag, Leichardt. 8pm. $60

SATURDAY JULY 8 Primordial Bald Faced Stag, Leichardt. 8pm. $55 The Undertones Metro Theatre, Sydney. 8pm. $73.55

SUNDAY JULY 9 Clare Bowen Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8:30pm. $79 Jacob Sartorius Luna Park Big Top, Milsons Point. 6:30pm. $66 Sunday Social feat. Helena Ellis + K-Time + Lavida + Melkior The Argyle, The Rocks. 9pm. FREE

MONDAY JULY 10 The Monday Jam The Basement, Circular Quay. 8:30pm. $6

TUESDAY JULY 11 Acoustique Lounge L1 Lazybones Lounge, Marrickville. 7pm. $15 The Wedding Present Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 8pm. $39.50 xxx

30 :: BRAG :: 719 :: 28:06:17

thebrag.com

Melodrama out now through Universal. Lorde plays the Sydney Opera House Forecourt on Tuesday November 21 and Wednesday November 22.

LORDE

PS MUSIC GROUP, MUCHO BRAVADO & LIFE WITHOUT ANDY PRESENT

AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND

FRIDAY 15TH SEPT AUCKLAND NZ, THE STUDIO SATURDAY 16TH SEPT BRISBANE QLD, MAX WATTS MONDAY 18TH SEPT MELBOURNE VIC, 170 RUSSELL WEDNESDAY 20TH SEPT SYDNEY NSW, METRO THEATRE THURSDAY 21ST SEPT FREMANTLE WA, MOJOS FRIDAY 22ND SEPT PERTH WA, ROSEMOUNT SUNDAY 24TH SEPT HYDEN WA, WAVE ROCK WEEKENDER TIX AT: