Brag#721 by The Brag Magazine

IS THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION HURTING AUSSIE MUSICIANS?

PAUL KELLY ON THE JOYFUL NEW ALBUM HE'S WANTED TO MAKE FOR YEARS.

SERENIT Y NOW

ALSO INSIDE: VERA BLUE, PETE MURRAY, AVEY TARE, CASH SAVAGE, MTV UNPLUGGED IN NEW ZEALAND AND MORE!

Internal is out now through Island Records. Safia play Snowtunes, which runs Friday September 1 to Saturday September 2 in Jindabyne.

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in this issue

free stuff

what you’ll find inside…

head to: thebrag.com/freeshit

The Frontline

Back To Business

8-9

Meet Safia, the wildest electro pop pioneers to ever name-drop Tim Burton and Compton’s own Kendrick Lamar in the same interview

10-13 Is The Digital Revolution Leaving Artists Behind

10-13

Vera Blue

Cash Savage

17-20 Paul Kelly has just written the most upbeat record of his career. We talked to him about it Rings Of Saturn

Avey Tare

Pete Murray

25-26 MTV’s Unplugged is one of the most iconic music programs in history, and now it’s hit New Zealand 27

PACT Salon

Album reviews, Ali’s Wedding

Food Review: Hacienda

Out & About, Off The Record

31-32 Live snaps

“We could soon be left in a 33 world in which consumers find themselves playing a game that they no longer have a stake in.” 34

14-16

(10-13)

Live reviews, Test your knowledge: can you match the instrument to the artist? Gig guide

QUEEN: IT’S A KINDA MAGIC

Queen: It’s a Kinda Magic is the world’s finest Queen tribute act, and this is because they take it dead seriously. Forget seeing two of the four original members drag Adam Lambert around the globe in an attempt to keep the magic alive – catch these guys recreate the band at their mid-’80s peak. This isn’t an RSL run-through, with a dude with curly, kinda-Brian-May-hair approximating the guitar solos. No: this show recreates Queen’s 1986 World Tour concert down to the setlist and costume changes, featuring a number of the band’s greatest hits, such as ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and the three Mighty Ducks ones: ‘We Will Rock You’, ‘We Are the Champions’ and ‘Under Pressure’. We have two double passes to give away to the State Theatre show on Saturday July 29. Enter the draw at thebrag.com/freeshit.

Psy illustration by Sarah Bryant

“[My label] has been going, ‘When are you going to do a normal record?’ (17-20)

the frontline with Brandon John and Nathan Jolly ISSUE 718: Wednesday June 21, 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 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 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 DISTRIBUTION: Wanna get the BRAG? Email george@seventhstreet.vc PRINTED BY SPOTPRESS: spotpress.com.au 24 – 26 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville NSW 2204

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Peter Hook loves touring Australia, and why wouldn’t he? We are obsessed with two bands of his, Joy Divison and New Order, and because of this obsession, he and his backing back The Light have sold out a Saturday October 7 show at the Metro which will see him perform the greatest hits of both these groups. As I said, we are obsessed. But given he will be here anyway, Hook has announced that Peter Hook & The Light will also perform both Joy Division albums — Unknown Pleasures and Closer — in full, in Sydney, for you and you alone. This show will be on Monday October 2 at the Metro. How much more Hooky could any one person want?

EASY LIKE SUNDAY MORNING Aussie rock bands have no qualms about playing together, and we’ve seen plenty of Aussie supergroups take shape over the decades – but this is without a doubt one of the biggest to ever squeeze onto a stage. Grinspoon frontman Phil Jamieson, The Living End’s frontman Chris Cheney, You Am I frontman Tim Rogers, Spiderbait vocalist/drummer Kram, and Aussie icon Tex Perkins are all teaming up in tribute to late Easybeats frontman Stevie Wright. “The Australian rock’n’roll landscape would look very different without the contribution of the Easybeats,” said Cheney. “The energy and electricity of those old black and white TV performances have always been a source of inspiration to me. I get goosebumps thinking about [them].” The supergroup will take to the stage on Friday December 15 at the Enmore Theatre.

CASH FOR GRABS Sydney Film Festival have recently announced the largest cash fellowship for short films in Australia. Four cash fellowships of $50,000 are up for grabs through the 2018 Lexus Australia Short Film Fellowship. Submissions are open until Thursday August 24, and to be eligible, you need to enter the Lexus Short Films competition, the winners of which will collaborate with The Weinstein Company on a film project. Australian actor and director Damian WalsheHowling won the Lexus Short Series (the

SHOOTING FOR THE STARS

Peter Hook

international version of the Fellowship) and recommends you try to win, too. Finalists will be announced in November 2017, with the Lexus Australia Short Film Fellows announced in June 2018.

The Heroin Diaries by Nikki Sixx is one of the greatest autobiographies of all time, detailing a hedonistic life too ridiculous to be true – except, of course, it is. Now, Sixx is teaming up with rock magazine Heavy Metal to create a graphic novel adaptation of The Heroin Diaries which he announced yesterday at San Diego Comic Con. “The Heroin Diaries has always been deeply personal to me”, Sixx says (of course it has – it’s his life story). “So when the idea came up for a graphic novel based on the story, who better to partner with than the iconic Heavy Metal brand? I grew up reading their magazine as a kid. This is really a passion project and I’ve been intimately involved in every step along the way, from the storyline to the look and feel of the art.”

PVT

GET IN THE VAN Vanfest is back for its fourth spin in regional NSW, and this year’s lineup is almost certainly its best yet, with Dune Rats, Tash Sultana, Amy Shark, San Cisco, Thundamentals, Cosmo’s Midnight and more joining the fray. Kicking off in Forbes on Friday December 1 and running through till Saturday December 2, the festival will once again feature all of the boutique additions we’ve come to expect, including market stalls, carnival rides, beach bars, and even stage-side spa baths. “We have such huge amounts of talent in this country, and so have specifically selected from the local talent pool where we have tapped into most genres,” festival organisers say, and with a lineup that covers all the bases, it’s hard to argue.

NOW IT’S DARK The Darkness are one of those amazing parody rock bands who also happen to be an actually great rock band. Like Tenacious D or Spinal Tap before them, they have taken their band past parody and turned it into its own specific thing, smashing sell-out tours and becoming embroiled in band squabbles that aren’t scripted. Now the band have announced their fifth album Pinewood Smile, which will be out on Friday October 6, lead

PIVOT ON THIS Sydney’s PVT released their fifth album New Spirit earlier this year, but aside from a launch show in February, the band have been too busy touring Europe to play in their home city since. But don’t worry, they haven’t forgotten about us poor Sydneysiders, and they will be playing what is sure to be an unmissable gig at the newly-reopened Landsdowne Hotel on Friday September 15. Support will be provided by Nico Niquo and Dongelis, and space is sure to fill up fast – so sort your tickets quick, won’tcha? xxx

@TheBrag

by the massive pop single, ‘All The Pretty Girls’, which sits in that sweet spot between mid ’70s Queen and Cheap Trick. Pop your collars and give the song a spin.

HOOKING YOU IN

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Back To Business Music Industry News powered by The Industry Observer

LIFE OF PABLO NOT SO EXCLUSIVE

A.B. Original

Kanye West, his album The Life Of Pablo, and the concept of what constitutes an individual work of art are currently the subjects of a proposed class action, with claims Tidal and West engaged in “deceptive conduct” by duping fans into signing up to the streaming service under the belief it was the only possible way to hear the album. The album was released on Apple Music and Spotify within a month of the Tidal release, prompting the suit. The class action references a tweet by Kanye, who wrote: “My album will never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale... You can only get it on Tidal.” Kanye and his team are taking an interesting legal defense, claiming that the version of the record that appeared on Tidal remains exclusive to it, while versions of Pablo on other services are a different work. The suit also quotes another Kanye tweet, which refers to the record as a “living breathing changing creative expression” pointing out he has “he has altered lyrics, changed vocals, added new beats, and remixed songs.” In other words, the original version of The Life Of Pablo, which debuted on Tidal in February 2016, was always exclusive to it.

GOVERNMENT MOVES TO BAN TICKET BOTS

Fair Trading Minister Matt Kean has vowed to halt the use of technology in ticket scalping, outlining plans to ban the use of automated bots to buy large quantities of tickets which are then resold at inflated prices. In a speech to staff at Parramatta last week, Kean was firm on his stance: “We need to

“The versions of The Life Of Pablo that are available on other streaming services are different from the original, Tidalonly version”, the response continues. “Plaintiff does not dispute that there are differences between the versions of the album available on the different streaming services, and therefore he has not shown that Mr. West’s tweet about the exclusivity of The Life Of Pablo on Tidal was false.” It’s an interesting legal distinction that could cause havoc with similar “exclusive” deals. If Beyonce had bumped ‘Daddy Lessons’ from Lemonade, sped up ‘Formation’ by a few BPM and remixed ‘Freedom’, could she have legally released this version on Spotify? According to Kanye and his team – yes.

BEST INDIES UP FOR AIR AWARDS The 2017 AIR Awards are set to take place later this month in Adelaide, and just over a week out from the event, the Australian Independent Record Labels Association have announced the nominees in the category of ‘Best Independent Label’. Those nominees are Barely Dressed Records, Elefant Traks, UNFD, Jazzhead, I OH YOU and Pieater. Taking place at the Queen’s Theatre on Thursday July 27 and hosted by media personality and beloved host of Recovery, Dylan Lewis, the event will also feature a number of live performances as well, with A.B. Original, Ngaiire, Henry Wagons, Russell Morris and Elizabeth Rose all set to perform on the night. Henry Wagons

address these problems because it is fair, because consumers should be safe and because consumers should not be taken advantage of. “Profit gougers [are] using computers to buy tickets to concerts .. ahead of ordinary fans and then putting those same tickets online the same day, [and the] massive mark-up undermines the public’s confidence that consumers are being put first.”

GUNS N’ ROSES ARE STILL PACKING HEAT

Reunited stadium rockers Guns N’ Roses have shifted more concert tickets than any other act in the world this year, according to a mid-year report published by touring trade title Pollstar. The classic lineup of Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan is hitting it out the park with their Not In This Lifetime trek, which has sold nearly 1.4 million tickets this year and generated a whopping US$151.5 million. Nostalgia is a powerful factor on box office right now. U2’s global trek to commemorate the 30th anniversary of The Joshua Tree is in a distant second place, selling almost a million tickets in the first half for a gross of US$118 million. Also, heritage acts account for the lion’s share of the top 50 earners. A glance through the top 20 reveals some familiar faces in Metallica (No. 4), Depeche Mode (No. 5), Red Hot Chili Peppers (No. 6), Garth Brooks (No. 12), Take That (No. 13), Celine Dion (No. 14), Bon Jovi (No. 17), Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band (No. 18), Green Day (No. 19) and a Tim McGraw/Faith Hill double bill (No. 20).

Justin Bieber

No Australian acts have made the cut this time, and only five of the featured artists (or 10 per cent of the total) are female, led by Adele, whose monster tour of Australia and New Zealand earlier this year for Live Nation sold 600,000 tickets for a US$59 million gross, good enough for a No. 7 ranking.

USER DOWNLOADS EVERY TRACK ON SOUNDCLOUD

Metallica

‘DESPACITO’ BECOMES MOST STREAMED SONG OF ALL TIME Times they are a-changing. Just last fortnight, ‘Gangam Style’ was dethroned by ‘See You Again’ as the most-watched video on YouTube. Now ‘Despacito’ has knocked Justin Bieber’s ‘Sorry’ off the top spot as the most streamed track of all time with over 4.6 billion plays. ‘Sorry’ and its associated remixes accumulated 4.38 billion plays. But we’re sure Bieber doesn’t mind; it’s his remix alongside Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee that took the crown.

Soundcloud has been the subject of major concerns this week, with rumours that users have less than 50 days to download any music from the service before it disappears forever. The company has since rejected talks of its demise, but considering it cut 40 per cent of its staff and shut offices in London and San Francisco earlier this month, many users aren’t taking the chance that their mash-up of the Donkey Kong Country theme and ‘Crossroads’ by Bone Thugs N Harmony will stay safe on the SoundCloud servers. Enter a Reddit user by the unceremonious name of makemakemake, who has claimed they have downloaded every song on SoundCloud’s public archive. That’s 900TB worth, or the length of roughly one Springsteen gig. The download took a weekend at 80GB a second, and although they claim they won’t make the archive publicly available – there are numerous legal reasons why that would be a terrible idea – it’s nice to know it’s all sitting there safe… somewhere.

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Henry Wagons by Taylor Wong

Released just six months ago on Friday January 13 via Universal Music Latin Entertainment, the original version of ‘Despacito’ has accumulated over 2.66 billion streams on YouTube and 563 million streams on Spotify. Meanwhile, Bieber’s remix topped the charts in 35 countries, spent ten consecutive weeks at number one on US Billboard Hot 100, and his video

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was the fastest ever to hit two billion views. It has now received 427 million streams on YouTube and 619 million streams on Spotify. The single helped Daddy Yankee become the first Latino artist to lead in Spotify streams, overtaking streaming king Ed Sheeran.

Sydney Meet ‘n’ Greet The Lansdowne Hotel (cnr City Road & Broadway)

5:30 pm Tuesday August 1 Four great speakers, veterans of over 30 years of SXSW Music, Interactive & Film Conference & Festivals Dan White—Director of Technology, Rapid 3X SXSW veteran and panel presenter 2016

Luke Girgis—CEO Seventh Street Media, Manager and former A&R for Shock Records 2X veteran

Marc Sousley—Promoter, Secret Sounds Touring, prior C3 Presents in Austin SX 10x years in a row veteran

Glenn Dickie—Export Music Producer Sounds Australia, former A&R EMI, a whopping 17x SXSW veteran TO ATTEND:

Presented by 15 year SXSW Senior Business Development Manager Phil Tripp

RSVP tripp@sxsw.com

Starting with networking drinks at 5:30 and program commencing at 6pm to 7:30, we reveal the ins and outs of attending, applying to showcase, travelling, performing or screening a film, interfacing with interactive and marketing attendees and generally having a great productive time profitably. Tips, secrets & hot advice. For over 30 years, the world’s greatest and largest creative content gathering of over 70,000 delegates from 96 countries; more than 2000 bands performing in 100+ venues; 4000+ media/press and more than 5000 Conference speakers in 2000 sessions. Over 40 Australian bands performed in 2017; more than 450 in nine years. 60% of our 750 delegates in 2017 were Interactive/Marketing, 30% Music, 10% Film and Comedy.

Both veterans of SXSW wanting to hone their skills and first timers using SXSW to break through the global convergence industries. In Music; artists, managers, agents, publishers, promoters, venue operators, lawyers, streaming and music tech companies and media.

In Interactive; developers, startups, advertising and marketing pros, app and software brainiacs, ISPs, telcos, VCs, incubators and coders.

Who should attend FREE?!? In Film; producers, directors, music video makers, broadcasters, video streaming and imagineers.

SXSW.COM thebrag.com

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SAFIA Sound Like Yourself By Joseph Earp

“We’re trying not to give ourselves many boundaries or to pigeo We try not to think, ‘Oh, our music is this, so we’ll write like this.’

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COVER STORY

“We’re all very hands on. We try to … work on improving different aspects of us as a band, whether it be boring admin stuff, or merch, or thinking up art and video concepts.”

hen the operator connects the BRAG’s call with Ben Woolner, lead singer of rising stars Safia, the first noise that comes rattling down the line is not a voice, but the crash and bang of several things being knocked over. Then there’s what sounds suspiciously like the thumping of a hammer, followed swiftly by the clanging of metal, the tearing of something that might be cardboard and then, finally, Woolner’s sheepish apology. “Sorry,” he says, “I’m currently out here, setting up a new studio. I’m just doing some building, which is fun.”

they don’t have a master plan in mind. And sure, maybe sometimes they don’t – maybe there are times when they are adapting, and growing, and learning – but it’s important for Woolner that it never seems that way.

It’s a fitting introduction, really. The kind of alien ordinariness that kicks off our call – the sound of just about recognisable objects being divorced from their source, and the mundane being made strange – is, after all, the driving force of Safia. The band might have had their pop hits, and they might have once featured on a song performed by commercial heavyweights Peking Duk, but they are at their heart experimenters, and their songs have always paired poppy hooks with the kind of fizzing imagination more usually associated with bands like Kraftwerk or Liars than Top 40 hitmakers.

For this reason, Woolner has been eagerly taking notes from Compton’s own son Kendrick Lamar. He sees the ‘Humble’ rapper as a perfect realisation of what it means to be an artist – a musician playing chess while his contemporaries are playing checkers. “Every aspect of what Lamar is doing is thought out to the final degree,” Woolner says, a little awed. “He has a reason for everything, and a reason for every choice. It’s not like he goes, ‘I’ll pitch for a video and see how that works out.’ He’s got something to say in every single little thing that he does. And he’s using his art to further himself.”

Not that you’d get that sense talking to Woolner. The band’s frontman talks about his music-making with a disarming lack of pretence: it seems he’s not interested in asserting his band’s position as one of the greats, or unpicking their back catalogue as though he were a historian tasked with unravelling his own legacy. No. He’s just a dude who has somehow found himself doing what he has always wanted to do.

Not that Woolner has fooled himself into thinking what Lamar does is easy, or that it requires nothing more than a keen eye and the willingness to make it work. He knows that it’s a struggle to play the game the way that K Dot has – that it “takes time, and sometimes money, and having the ability to get all these plates spinning in the air at once.” Woolner takes a breath. “But if you do have the time, and if you can work it, then man, it’s really worth it.”

“We’re on a break from touring,” Woolner says, his voice winking down the line. “We’re writing a lot, and we’re always in the studio making things. It’s kinda fun, actually, not having to stay in one place and worry about getting up and getting early flights. We’re all just enjoying the cooldown, I think.”

It’s not hard to imagine that Woolner and his band will get there someday. Safia might never become K Dot, but they could easily become a startlingly efficient creative machine: a streamlined group of artists able to synthesise the disparate creative fields of songwriting, visual art making and writing into one beautiful package. After all, one need only look at how far the band have come, and how much ground they have covered in how little time.

The band have been hitting the road almost non-stop for the last three years, so it’s little wonder Woolner and his compatriots are relishing the opportunity to put their feet up and have a bit of a breather. But there’s parts of life on the road they miss as well – Woolner describes it as a “grass is always greener” type situation. “Touring is a lot of fun. When you’re kind of in the position that we’re in, and music is your whole living, when you’re at home you have to learn about the things that give your day structure. Whereas when you’re on tour you have that all set up for you.” Indeed, one gets the sense that Woolner is a person who struggles when life forces him to be idle. Hence, he admits, his tendency to take on odd jobs like building a new studio, or diving headfirst into fresh, unexplored aspects of the business. “We’re all very hands on,” he explains. “We try to divvy things out and try to work on improving different aspects of us as a band, whether it be boring admin stuff, or merch, or thinking up art and video concepts, or making sure things are moving forward with new music. So there’s a whole array of stuff we try to be involved in – not just making music and writing the songs. There’s enough to do to keep us busy.” For Woolner, the key is all about synthesising his band’s brand. He doesn’t ever want it to come across as though Safia are making up things as they go along, or as though

nhole ourselves when we’re writing. ”

“Obviously the music is first and foremost in our minds – it’s the reason why we want to do this. But I think when you’re in a band and you have this opportunity, you can really try to make sure everything complements everything else. So it’s always fun to branch out into art and video and promo and try to tie it all in together and make it one singular vision.”

Woolner is aware that the further along the band get, the more people will start wanting things from them: that the blueprint they laid down last year with their debut album Internal will only become more important to fans; that every single from here on in will be tested against the preconceived notion audiences have about what the phrase ‘Safia’ now denotes. But Woolner isn’t allowing that to tie him down. He is, in the words of his hero Lamar, not stressin’. “We’re trying not to give ourselves many boundaries or to pigeonhole ourselves when we’re writing,” he explains. “We try not to think, ‘Oh, our music is this, so we’ll write like this.’ We try to just write what we’re feeling and it goes from there.” That, Woolner explains, is what makes Safia who they are; not their chart position, or their commercial success, or even the whims of outside forces like their label and some of their fans. Safia is what happens when the band write what they’re feeling; when they let themselves be themselves. “No matter how different the songs start out, something about how we write songs – whether it be my voice, or my lyrics, or the way we write chords – it always brings it together in the end. It always makes it sound like us, even if the songs are different in terms of genre, or style, or whatever. It always is us.” What: Snowtunes With: Thelma Plum, Nina Las Vegas, Tigerlily and more Where: Jindabyne When: Friday September 1 – Saturday September 2

“No matter how different the songs start out, something about how we write songs – whether it be my voice, or my lyrics, or the way we write chords – it always brings it together in the end.” thebrag.com

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FEATURE

WHERE IS THE

DIGITAL MU$IC REVOLUTION HEADING? DOLLARS AND NO SENSE BY JOSEPH EARP

“Daniel just saw the oppor tunities of streaming music before anyone else.” – MARK MARK ZU ZUCKE CKERBE RBERG RG ON SPO SPOTIF TIFY’S Y’S DA DANIE NIEL LE EK, K, THE NE NEW W YORK YORKER. ER.

ou w wou ould ldn’ n’tt th thin inkk mu much ch o off Da Dani niel el E Ekk if you m met et h him im iin n th the e fles esh. h. H He e is n not ot one on e of ttho hose se p peo eopl ple e wh who o im imme medi diat atel elyy impr im pres esse sess up upon on yyou ou,, an and d he h has as llitittltle e of the th e ch char aris isma ma a and nd p pan anac ache he w we e us usua uallllyy asso as soci ciat ate e wi with th tthe he vver eryy we weal alth thy. y. S Sur ure, e, he iiss a te tech ch g gia iant nt,, an and d itit’s ’s ttru rue e ve very ry ffew ew tech te ch g gia iant ntss ha have ve a any nyth thin ing g re rese semb mbliling ng a ro rock ck ssta tarr pe pers rson onal alitity, y, b but ut e eve ven n wh when en plac pl aced ed b bes esid ide e fe fellllow ow ssililic icon on vval alle leyy bi billllio iona nair ires es llik ike e Pete Pe terr Th Thie iell an and d Bi Billll G Gat ates es,, Ek ccom omes es a acr cros osss as a lilitt ttle le cclo loyi ying ng.. Part o Part off th that at,, su sure rely ly,, is ttha hank nkss to h his is o out utfifits ts,, wh whic ich h are ar e ha habi bitu tual ally ly a ado dole lesc scen ent. t. H He e we wear arss ho hood oded ed jump ju mper ers; s; d dar ark, k, sscu cuff ffed ed ttro rous user ers; s; tt-s -shi hirt rtss an and d po polo lo shir sh irts ts.. An And d pa part rt o off th that at ttoo oo iiss th than anks ks tto o hi hiss ma mann nner er,, whic wh ich h is sso o re rela laxe xed d an and d un unas assu sumi ming ng a ass to b be e almo al most st a llitittltle e ru rude de.. “[ “[Ek Ek]] do does esn’ n’tt gr gree eett yo you u wi with th a firm h han ands dsha hake ke ffro rom m be behi hind nd a an n im impo posi sing ng d des esk, k,”” read re adss a liline ne iin n a 20 2008 08 Ne New w Yo York rker er st stor oryy ab abou outt Ek Ek.. “He “H e do does esn’ n’tt ha have ve a d des esk. k. H He e sp spra rawl wlss on a ccou ouch ch with wi th his his llap apto top, p, llik ike e a te teen enag ager er doi doing ng h hom omew ewor ork. k.””

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Ek e eve ven, n, sstr tran ange gely ly e eno noug ugh, h, sser erve ved d as tthe he C CTO TO of S Sta tard rdol oll, l, an an on onliline ne g am ame e de desi sign gned ed ffor or pre re-teen te ens, s, iin n wh whic ich h us user erss ca can n dr dres esss up a vvar arie iety ty of g gri rinn nnin ing, g, e eer erie ie d dig igit ital al a ava vata tars rs iin n wh what atev ever er clot cl othe hes s th they ey d des esir ire. e. B Byy Ma Marc rch h 20 2014 14,, th the e si site te,, whic wh ich h Ek h has as n now ow ssol old, d, w was as a att ttra ract ctin ing g 30 300 0 millllio mi ion n us user erss fr from om a acr cros osss th the e gl glob obe. e. But de But desp spit ite e su such ch ssuc ucce cess ss,, up ttililll 20 2006 06 E Ekk wa wass rath ra ther er a n non on-e -ent ntit ityy as ffar ar a ass th the e br broa oade derr pu publ blic ic wass co wa conc ncer erne ned. d. H He e wa wass a fa face cele less ss ssililic icon on valllley va ey n ner erd; d; a m mul ulti timi millllio iona nair ire e wh who o ap appe pear ared ed in n no o go goss ssip ip ccol olum umns ns,, bo boug ught ht n no o ou outr trag ageo eous usly ly expe ex pens nsiv ive e pr prop oper erti ties es a and nd d dat ated ed n no o supe su perm rmod odel els. s. IInd ndee eed, d, d des espi pite te his his vvas astt we weal alth th,, he h has as a alw lway ayss lilive ved d re rela lati tive vely ly h hum umbl bly, y, sset ettl tlin ing g down do wn w wit ith h hi hiss lo long ngte term rm p par artn tner er S Sofi ofi a L Lev evan ande derr to lliv ive e a lilife fe o off su subt btle le w wea ealt lth; h; o off un unlilimi mite ted d oppo op port rtun unit itie ies, s, rrat athe herr th than an tthe he u unl nlim imit ited ed g gililttcoat co ated ed d det etri ritu tuss we u usu sual ally ly a ass ssoc ocia iate te wit with h peop pe ople le w who ho h hav ave e mo more re m mon oney ey ttha han n th they ey ccou ould ld ever ev er u use se u up p in tthe heir ir lliv ives es.. And th And then en,, in 2 200 006, 6, e eve very ryth thin ing g ch chan ange ged d fo forr Ek Ek.. Part Pa rtne neri ring ng w wit ith h Ma Mart rtin in L Lor oren entz tzon on,, on one e of tthe he foun fo unde ders rs o off Tr Trad adeD eDou oubl bler er,, Ek b beg egan an w wor orki king ng o on n a vi visi sion on ffor or a n new ew m mus usic ic sstr trea eami ming ng sser ervi vice ce;; on one e that th at w wou ould ld w wor orkk on tthe he b bas asis is o off a “f “fre reem emiu ium” m” mode mo del. l. C Cus usto tome mers rs w wou ould ld p pay ay a m mon onth thly ly subs su bscr crip ipti tion on,, ra rath ther er ttha han n an iind ndiv ivid idua uall do down wnlo load ad fee fe e – an and, d, ffor or ttho hose se n not ot rrea eady dy tto o pu putt do down wn a paym pa ymen entt up ffro ront nt,, it w was as a alw lway ayss po poss ssib ible le tto o acce ac cess ss m mus usic ic w wit itho hout ut sspe pend ndin ing g a di dime me..

Illustration by Sarah Bryant

Ek w was as b bor orn n in 1 198 983, 3, in in Sw Swed eden en.. He was was,, lilike ke sso o many ma ny o oth ther er ttec echh-he head ad u ultltra ra-a -ach chie ieve vers rs,, re rele lent ntle less ssly ly hand ha ndss on a ass a ch chilild, d, n not ot tto o me ment ntio ion n sm smar artt as a whip wh ip.. By tthe he a age ge o off 14 14,, he h had ad a alr lrea eady dy ffou ound nded ed hiss ve hi very ry firrst st ccom ompa pany ny,, an and d be befo fore re llon ong g he w was as in tthe he b bus usin ines esss of b bui uild ldin ing g up ffas astt-gr grow owin ing, g, a agi gile le lilitt ttle le b bra rand ndss on only ly tto o se sellll tthe hem m of offf to tthe he b big igge gerr fish sh,, ac accu cumu mula latiting ng b bot oth h a co cons nsid ider erab able le amo amoun untt of equi eq uity ty a and nd e exp xper erie ienc nce e al alon ong g th the e wa way. y.

Perhap Perh apss un unsu surp rpri risi sing ngly ly a ass a re resu sult lt o off th this is omni om nivo voro rous us a att ttit itud ude e to b bus usin ines ess, s, E Ek’ k’ss re resu sume me is a ast ston onis ishi hing ngly ly vvar arie ied. d. H He e wo work rked ed w wit ith h th the e Nord No rdic ic a auc ucti tion on ccom ompa pany ny T Tra rade dera ra,, a ki kind nd of o onl nlin ine e ma mark rket etpl plac ace e th that at w was as e eve vent ntua uallllyy sold so ld tto o th the e wo worl rld’ d’ss mo most st ffam amou ouss on onliline ne mark ma rket etpl plac ace, e, E Eba bay. y. H He e br brie ieflfl y se serv rved ed a ass th the e CEO CE O of u uTo Torr rren ent. t. A And nd h he e fo foun unde ded d Ad Adve vert rtig igo, o, a co comp mpan anyy so p pro rofifi ta tabl ble e th that at h he e al almo most st cons co nsid ider ered ed rret etir irin ing g at tthe he rrip ipe e ol old d ag age e of 2 23 3 afte af terr se sellllin ing g it o off ff tto o Tr Trad adeD eDou oubl bler er ffor or a m mul ulti ti-millllio mi ion n do dollllar ar ssum um..

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“W e could soon be lef t in a world in which consumers f ind themselves playing a game that they no longer have a stake in.” As a res resul ultt of suc such h a mo mode del,l, d die ieha hard rd d dig igit ital al m mus usic ic love lo vers rs ccou ould ld g get et as as mu much ch ccon onte tent nt a ass th they ey m mig ight ht poss po ssib ibly ly w wan ant, t, b but ut e eve ven n ca casu sual al,, le less ss ccom ommi mitt tted ed cust cu stom omer erss co coul uld d ch chec eckk th the e se serv rvic ice e ou outt fo forr them th emse selv lves es.. Th The e br broa oade dest st p pos ossi sibl ble e sp spec ectr trum um of of musi mu sicc lilist sten ener erss co coul uld d th thus us b be e co cove vere red d – an and, d, as a rres esul ult, t, tthe he b bro road ades estt po poss ssib ible le spe spect ctru rum m of cons co nsum umer erss co coul uld d be e enc ncou oura rage ged d to ffor orkk ou outt th thei eirr hard ha rd-e -ear arne ned d ca cash sh.. Within With in a ffew ew m mon onth ths, s, a and nd b bas ased ed o on n th that at sin singu gula larr mode mo del,l, S Spo potitify fy w was as b bor orn. n. T Tho houg ugh h Ek lat later er a arg rgue ued d that th at tthe he n nam ame e wa wass a po port rtma mant ntea eau u of ““sp spot ot”” an and d “ide “i dent ntififyy”, it w was as n not othi hing ng q qui uite te sso o pl plan anne ned d – th the e tititltle e wa wass a mi mish shea eard rd b bas asta tard rdis isat atio ion n of a ano noth ther er name na me b bel ello lowe wed d ac acro ross ss a ccro rowd wded ed o off ffic ice e by tthe he eage ea gerr Lo Lore rent ntzo zon. n. For tw For two o ye year ars, s, L Lor oren entz tzon on a and nd E Ekk wo work rked ed awa awayy on p per erfe fect ctin ing g Sp Spot otifify, y, a and nd a altltho houg ugh h it m mig ight ht ffee eell lilike ke iitt wa wass on only ly a m mat atte terr of a yyea earr or sso o be befo fore re the th e se serv rvic ice e be beca came me a h hou ouse seho hold ld n nam ame, e, tthe he rollllou ro outt wa wass co cons nsid ider erab ably ly sslo lowe werr th than an ssom ome e mi migh ghtt reme re memb mber er.. Sp Spot otififyy la laun unch ched ed iin n 20 2008 08,, on O Oct ctob ober er 7, a and nd a att firs rst, t, iitt ma made de o onl nlyy th the e titini nies estt of sspl plas ashe hes. s. Afte Af terr al all,l, tthe he d dig igitital al m mus usic ic w wor orld ld w was as a kkin ind d of wild wi ld w wes estt ba back ck tthe hen; n; tthe he d doo oorr ha had d be been en b blo lown wn open op en,, an and d ev ever eryy en entr trep epre rene neur ur a and nd tthe heir ir d dog og w was as stru st rugg ggliling ng tto o ge gett a sh shar are e of tthe he rrev even enue ue.. And th And that at’s ’s n not ot tto o me ment ntio ion n th the e fa fact ct ttha hat, t, a att th the e hear he artt of iit, t, E Ekk an and d Lo Lore rent ntzo zon n di didn dn’t’t h hav ave ea part pa rtic icul ular arly ly u uni niqu que e pr prod oduc uct. t. N No o us user erss we were re g goi oing ng to b be e dr draw awn n to S Spo potitify fy b bec ecau ause se o off th the e sh shin inin ing g ne new w poss po ssib ibililititie iess of d dow ownl nloa oadi ding ng m mus usic ic fro from m th the e we web, b, and an d th the e ge genu nuin inel elyy re revo volu lutition onar aryy th thri rillll o off ac acce cess ssin ing g cont co nten entt vi via a th the e in inte tern rnet et h had ad llos ostt so some me o off ititss on once ce stri st riki king ng g gle leam am.. Af Afte terr al all,l, N Nap apst ster er,, th the e pe peer er-t -too-pe peer er musi mu sicc sh shar arin ing g br brai ainc nchi hild ld o off Se Sean an P Par arke ker, r, h had ad been be en o out ut ssin ince ce 1 199 998; 8; iitt wa wass al alre read adyy te ten n ye year arss ol old d by tthe he ttim ime e Lo Lore rent ntzo zon n an and d Ek u unl nlea eash shed ed tthe heir ir own ow n st stre ream amin ing g ba baby by iint nto o th the e wo worl rld. d. T The he d dig igitital al usur us urpa patition on o off th the e mu musi sicc in indu dust stry ry w was as n not ot n new ew.. Lore Lo rent ntzo zon n an and d Ek w wer ere e no nott ch chan angi ging ng tthe he gam game; e; they th ey w wer ere e pl play ayin ing g itit,, ju just st llik ike e ev ever eryo yone ne e els lse. e. But wh But what at E Ekk an and d Lo Lore rent ntzo zon n di did d ha have ve w was as e eas ase e of acce ac cess ss.. Th Thei eirr pr prod oduc uctt es esse sent ntia iallllyy so sold ld its itsel elf. f. T The here re wass no n wa nee eed d fo forr cu cust stom omer erss to ssig ign n up ffor or irr irrititat atin ing g free fr ee tri trial als; s; n no o ne need ed for for tthe he pai airr to llau aunc nch h ov over er tthe he top, to p, e ext xtra rava vaga gant nt ad ad ca camp mpai aign gns. s. L Lik ike e fe few w ot othe herr serv se rvic ices es a ava vaililab able le,, Sp Spot otifify y ut utililis ised ed the the p pow ower er o off word wo rd o off mo mout uth. h. S Som omeo eone ne cou could ld tel telll yo you u ab abou outt th this is cool co ol n new ew tthi hing ng ccal alle led d Sp Spot otififyy th they ey h had ad hea heard rd a abo bout ut,, and an d tw two o mi minu nute tess la late terr yo you u co coul uld d be dow downl nloa oadi ding ng iitt your yo urse selflf,, lilist sten enin ing g to tthe he wid wide e ra rang nge e of b ban ands ds and and song so ngss th the e se serv rvic ice e ha had d to o off ffer er..

“W ithin but a single year, S potif y … had gone f rom being a scrappy little underdog to an unq uestionable, unstoppable music streaming giant.”

It w was as d dififfe fere rent nt,, in ttha hatt wa way, y, tto o a se serv rvic ice e lilike ke Pand Pa ndor ora. a. A Altltho houg ugh h Pa Pand ndor ora a ha had d be been en a aro roun und d a lo lott lo long nger er ttha han n Sp Spot otififyy – it w was as ffou ound nded ed b byy Willll G Wi Gla lase ser, r, JJon on K Kra raft ft a and nd Ti Tim m We West ster ergr gren en b bac ackk in 2 200 000 0 – it h had ad n non one e of the the ssle leek ek,, st stre ream amliline ned d inte in terf rfac ace e of E Ek k an and d Lo Lore rent ntzo zon’ n’ss br bran and. d. P Pan ando dora ra wass ab wa abou outt re reco comm mmen endi ding ng m mus usic ic,, an and d th the e bala ba lanc nce e of p pow ower er w was as tthu huss al alwa ways ys iin n th the e se serv rvic ice’ e’ss favo fa vour ur.. Yo You u di didn dn’t’t h hav ave e fr free ee rrei ein n as yyou ou d did id w witith h Spot Sp otififyy – Pa Pand ndor ora a ma made de tthe he d dec ecis isio ions ns ffor or yyou ou,, reco re comm mmen endi ding ng m mus usic ic b bas ased ed o on n yo your ur pre pre-e -exi xist stin ing, g, prepr e-pr prog ogra ramm mmed ed llik ikes es a and nd d dis islilike kes. s. Pandor Pand ora a wa wass mo more re ccom ompl plic icat ated ed,, to too. o. S Spo potitify fy w was as only on ly e eve verr as d dififfificu cultlt tto o us use e as llis iste tene ners rs w wan ante ted d it to b be. e. Y You ou ccou ould ld – a and nd ssti tillll ccan an – llis iste ten n to S Spo potitify fy with wi th o onl nlyy th the e ba bare rest st o off te tech chni nica call kn know owho how. w. A Allll you yo u ha have ve tto o do iiss op open en tthe he sser ervi vice ce u up, p, ttyp ype e in tthe he n nam ame e of a b ban and d or a sson ong, g, a and nd tthe he a app pp does do es tthe he rres estt fo forr yo you. u. Y You ou ccan an,, of ccou ours rse, e, iiff you yo u wa want nt,, di dip p yo your ur ttoe oess in into to S Spo potitify fy’s ’s w wor orld ld of of reco re comm mmen enda datition ons, s, a and nd a art rtis istt ra radi dios os,, an and d pl play aylilist stss – bu butt yo you u do don’ n’tt ha have ve tto. o. S Spo potitify fy ccan an b be e us used ed

by e eve very ryon one, e, ffro rom m yo your ur 9 900-so some meth thin ingg-ye year ar-o -old ld gran gr andm dma a to ttha hatt hi hip p yo youn ung g ma mate te o off yo your urss wh who o ha hass the th e wo worl rld’ d’ss mo most st omn mniv ivor orou ouss mu musi sicc ta tast stes es.. So p per erha haps ps iitt wa wass un unsu surp rpri risi sing ng ttha hatt be befo fore re llon ong g Spot Sp otififyy wa wass ro rollllin ing g ou outt ac acro ross ss tthe he w wor orld ld,, pi pick ckin ing g up m milillilion onss of u use sers rs iint nter erna nati tion onal ally ly.. By F Feb ebru ruar aryy 2009 20 09,, Sp Spot otif ifyy ha had d op open ened ed u up p he head adqu quar arte ters rs iin n the th e UK UK,, an and d in tthe he ssam ame e mo mont nth, h, u use sers rs ffro rom m th that at coun co untr tryy we were re g giv iven en tthe he o opp ppor ortu tuni nity ty tto o si sign gn u up p forr th fo the e fr free ee vver ersi sion on o off th the e se serv rvic ice. e. B But ut S Spo poti tify fy had ha d ga gath ther ered ed sso o mu much ch sste team am b byy th this is p poi oint nt – wass ge wa gene nera rati ting ng sso o mu much ch iint nter eres estt – th that at tthe he comp co mpan anyy ha had d to rrap apid idly ly sswa wap p ov over er tto o an iinv nvit ite e only on ly p pol olic icyy wh when en tthe he ffre ree e re regi gist stra rati tion onss sp spik iked ed tto o unma un mana nage geab able le llev evel els. s. Within With in ttwo wo yea ears rs,, Sp Spot otif ifyy ro rolllled ed a acr cros osss Am Amer eric ica. a. Real Re alis isin ing g th the e co coun untr tryy wa wass th the e mo most st iimp mpor orta tant nt mark ma rket et tto o cr crac ackk fo forr th the e fu futu ture re o off th the e se serv rvic ice, e, E Ekk and an d Lo Lore rent ntzo zon n ma made de sur ure e no nott to m mes esss ar arou ound nd:: when wh en S Spo poti tify fy llau aunc nche hed d in tthe he S Sta tate tess in JJul ulyy 2011 20 11,, ne new w us user erss co coul uld d en enjo joyy si sixx wh whol ole e mo mont nths hs of u unf nfet ette tere red, d, ffre ree e lilist sten enin ing. g. W Whi hich ch tthe heyy di did. d. IIn n drov dr oves es.. And wi And with thin in b but ut a ssin ingl gle e ye year ar,, Sp Spot otif ifyy wa wass a ma majo jorr play pl ayer er n not ot o onl nlyy in A Ame meri rica ca,, bu butt in inte tern rnat atio iona nalllly. y. It h had ad g gon one e fr from om b bei eing ng o one ne m mor ore e se serv rvic ice e in a an n over ov ercr crow owde ded d ma mark rket et,, to th the e se serv rvic ice e in a rrap apid idly ly shri sh rink nkin ing g ma mark rket et – ffro rom m a sc scra rapp ppyy lilitt ttle le u und nder erdo dog g to a an n un unqu ques esti tion onab able le,, un unst stop oppa pabl ble e mu musi sicc stre st ream amin ing g gi gian ant. t.

“Spotify is now in fifty-eight countries. (Canada, its latest market, got the service at the end of September.) It has raised more than half a billion dollars from investors, including Goldman Sachs, to fund its expansion, and there are rumors of an I.P.O. in its future, to raise more.” – JOHN JOHN SE SEABR ABROOK OOK,, THE NE NEW W YORK YORKER. ER.

f co cour urse se,, si sinc nce e th then en,, Sp Spot otif ifyy ha hass on only ly grow gr own n in ssta tatu ture re.. Wi With th a m mas assi sive ve lilist sten ener er b bas ase e be behi hind nd iit, t, tthe he sser ervi vice ce h has as been be en a abl ble e to a ada dapt pt a and nd a alt lter er iits tsel elff to itss au it audi dien ence ce’s ’s ttas aste tes. s. N New ew iinn nnov ovat atio ions ns lilike ke a ““Sp Spot otif ifyy Pl Play ay B But utto ton” n” ttha hatt al allo low w albu al bums ms tto o be e emb mbed edde ded d on onto to ssit ites es a and nd a fr fres esh, h, e eas asyy-to to-u -use se w web eb p pla laye yerr ha have ve kept ke pt p peo eopl ple e si sign gnin ing g up – a and nd h hav ave e kept ke pt tthe he ssit ite e ex expa pand ndin ing g an and d gr grow owin ing. g. E Ekk an and d Lore Lo rent ntzo zon, n, ssma mart rt iinn nnov ovat ator orss wh who o lo long ng a ago go llea earn rntt that th at tthe he kkey ey tto o a co comp mpan any’ y’ss fu futu ture re iiss mo move veme ment nt,, have ha ve n nev ever er rres este ted d on tthe heir ir llau aure rels ls,, an and d ha have ve spen sp entt th the e la last st ffew ew yea ears rs m mag agpi piee-in ing g to toge geth ther er a rang ra nge e of ffre resh sh n new ew e ele leme ment nts. s. These Thes e da days ys,, Sp Spot otif ifyy bo boas asts ts fful ully ly iint nteg egra rate ted d musi mu sica call re reco comm mmen enda dati tion ons; s; a an n au auto toma mati ticc pl play ay feat fe atur ure e th that at ssta tart rtss up n new ew a alb lbum umss as ssoo oon n as you’ yo u’ve ve fin nis ishe hed d lilist sten enin ing g to o one ne;; an and d th the e pr pres esti tige ge and an d ex excl clus usiv ivit ityy of tthe he ““Sp Spot otif ifyy Se Sess ssio ions ns”, ”, Spot Sp otif ifyy-on only ly p per erfo form rman ance cess fr from om w wel elll-es esta tabl blis ishe hed d inte in tern rnat atio iona nall ar arti tist sts. s. A And nd iin n ac accu cumu mula lati ting ng tthe hese se ▲

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BRAG :: 721 :: 26:07:17 :: 11

▲

FEATURE

Jay Z

Mark Zuckerberg

“We could soon be left in a world in which consumers find themselves playing a game that they no longer have a stake in.” new bougie attention grabbers, the service now has very few direct competitors. That’s not to say Spotify has had an entirely easy ride – there have been bumps along the way, of course, and new obstacles emerged that the company was forced to nimbly skip between. Indeed, it may seem laughable to imagine now, but Tidal, the brainchild of rapper and entrepreneur Shawn Carter, AKA Jay Z, once appeared to be the service that might stop Spotify’s seemingly irresistible rise. After all, Tidal had that thing that Spotify had long ago been forced to sacrifice: personality. Spotify was a faceless company presided over by a boyish looking, singularly uncharismatic Swedish man, while Tidal, by contrast, was run by a collective of instantly recognisable faces. While Ek had his ad men and his board rooms of executives, all scurrying away behind the scenes to make a depersonalised company feel like the listeners’ best mate, Carter had his wife, Beyonce, not to mention Win Butler of Arcade Fire and a host of musical gamechangers described by the site Noisey as a “pantheon of pop music Avengers”. And, perhaps more worryingly for Spotify than that, Tidal had the cool factor. They were the underdogs – something Spotify had not been for a long time and could maybe never be again. There is, after all, considerable danger to commercial success. It’s what Mark Zuckerburg of Facebook has had to face, and it is what all like him will eventually have to come up against too: make too much money and before long you will always be the bad guy. But despite all that was on the streaming service’s side, Tidal opened with a commercial impact more akin to a drop in an ocean than a wave, tidal or otherwise. Before long, the service was a laughing stock: living proof that no matter how rich and successful you are, you can’t just buy your way into a world that you don’t fully understand; that you can’t haul a bunch of famous people in front of a camera and hope that paves your way to international domination. And, in that way, the slow, still unfurling failure of Tidal turned out to be nothing more than a notch to

“Making money as a musician is hard, and, the more Spotify gets its teeth into the world, it is only ever going to get harder.” 12 :: BRAG :: 721 :: 26:07:17

be carved into Spotify’s bedpost. The company had weathered threats of all sorts, but most impressively of all, they had weathered one from a brand that had everything that they didn’t – a brand that had star power, and panache, and prestige. So perhaps it is unsurprising that we are gearing up to a world of music streaming sites in which Spotify is unparalleled; a world in which we might have only one viable option for our music listening. A world where only one service is left.

Pandora’s Tim Westergren

NOW THE OTHERS HAVE GONE “Since we opened the doors [of Pandora] in 2012, the team grew our user base to over one million monthly listeners, delivered market-shaping advertising … and executed highly successful music events and sponsorships. To that end … I’d like to thank our listeners for giving us the opportunity to connect them with the music they love.” – RICK GLEAVE, PANDORA’S DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND PARTNERSHIPS.

few months ago, an industry insider found themselves at an event hosted by the streaming service Pandora. It was, they say in no uncertain terms, an absolute shambles. “There were expensive drinks, and high profi le acts, and it was all taking place in an incredible, massive venue,” the anonymous insider told The BRAG. “It was the kind of event that execs hope will make their company seem big, and powerful, and hip and exciting, and all that fucking stuff. But it was an absolute disaster.” The problem, the insider explains, was mostly one of vibe. Massive signs that hung around the venue encouraged punters – some of whom were industry players, some of whom were members of the public who had won a competition – to take photos of themselves that could then be sent out on Instagram with an accompanying, prescribed, tongue-in-cheek hashtag. But nobody was taking pictures. The crowd were hanging around awkwardly in corners, sipping on insanely overpriced drinks and quite obviously wishing they were somewhere else.

Bands played, but none of them played well, and before long the bored audience started pegging the large infl atable balls that had been dropped down onto them at the shellshocked artists. One of them, a fairly uninteresting Australian pop star who had her heyday in the early two thousands, started getting narky. “Are we going to watch where those balls are going?” she said, her stunningly artifi cial laughter barely covering the grating edge to her voice. Before long, even more balls were being hurled her way, and those who weren’t trying to bang the artist’s microphone away from her mouth were shuffling out of the venue, shaking their heads in quite genuine disappointment. It was a nightmare that only got worse as the evening wore on. Before too long, the massive, industrial looking venue was almost completely deserted. Punters milled around the back, eager to get away from the blaring noise of a nobody rapper trotting out the world’s most uninspired set to an audience who wished he’d just shut up. When the event fi nally did wrap up, it did so with all the tragic, lingering inevitability that defi nes the end of a wake. Which is all to say, it is not surprising that Pandora recently announced that they were shutting up shop here in Australia and New Zealand. They have been on the back foot for long enough now, and their extravagantly organised events have spoken only to their great desperation. A successful company thebrag.com

Taylor Swift

doesn’t need to organise cloying, desperate, attention grabbing events – doesn’t need to artifi cially inject themselves with a shot of prestige, and with power. Indeed, the desperation exhibited by Pandora over the last few months makes it hard to feel entirely sorry for the company. In the late capitalistic age in which we live, the once wild entrepreneurial freefor-all has settled down, and the deaths of once promising companies doesn’t feel like anything worth mourning. Pandora fl ew too close to the sun – overcomplicated what should be a very uncomplicated way of accessing digital music – and then they fell apart. Fuck ‘em. Who cares? The world is full of such companies and such commercial disasters, and who is going to shed any tears over the end of a gaggle of overpaid businessmen who only ever wanted our money anyway?

Mark Zuckerberg photo by JD Lasica/Flickr, Taylor Swift photo by Eva Rinaldi/Flickr, Tim Westergren photo by David Shankbone/Flickr

But the aftermath of the digital revolution – the destruction and the economic collapse happening all around us – should give us cause for concern. Not, mind you, because we should give a damn about the suits behind these failed companies, but because we should fear what might happen if we are left without competition; if our life becomes bound to a series of unrivalled, all powerful technological companies. You can see it already begin to happen now in other areas of the digital world. Facebook has enjoyed a position in the sun for a long, long time now – but it is not just content with suckering up the colossal traffic that it reaps every single day. Zuckerberg, like so many success stories before him, understands that adaptability is the key, and so has his sights set on companies that one wouldn’t even necessarily consider his competition: sites like Youtube, and Instagram. Hence why Facebook is boosting video content across the site and hence why the success of content creators depends entirely on their willingness to work with Zuckerberg, and to upload their work to his site.

“It’s clear the real winners in the streaming wars are the companies big enough to hold the public attention in a stranglehold, and the artists that they work side by side with to achieve that.” thebrag.com

It’s scary, but not too irrational, to imagine that soon almost every aspect of our online lives will be taken care of by a handful of privately owned sites that can and will do whatever they want with our data. If Facebook does indeed land a blow on Youtube and if Spotify absorbs all competition, and no longer feels the heat of its rivals against its back, then we could soon be left in a world in which consumers find themselves playing a game that they no longer have a stake in.

Of course, there’s no such issue for Spotify’s big earners – for the superstars whose albums are streamed millions up millions of times via the service. For them, the money adds up, and fast. Even if Drake is only making 50 cents a stream, he has still been streamed 3.185 million times. With that kind of reach and influence, he never has to tour again, and could spend the rest of his life watching the revenue tick slowly upwards, as more and more people turn to Spotify, and to his tunes.

Because, when it comes down to it, companies like Spotify only play nice with us when they have to, and only come across as friendly, and wholesome, and eager to please as a way of getting to our wallets quicker than the other brands out their trying to do the exact same thing. And the moment they don’t have to do that – the moment the world of online music streaming becomes a one-horse race – is the moment that we, the consumers, lose out.

Which, needless to say, helps Spotify too. The company might only pocket 30 per cent of revenue, but when you consider how many active users the company has in its tow – 140 million using the service for free, and 50 million paying – it’s clear the real winners in the streaming wars are the companies big enough to hold the public attention in a stranglehold, and the artists that they work side by side with to achieve that.

A GRIM FUTURE

In the process, what we are moving towards is a future where the only way to succeed creatively is to become very, very famous. Soon enough – maybe sooner than we think – it could become difficult for musicians to ever achieve a middle-tier of musical success. It’ll be all or nothing, and it’s hard to imagine that bands smaller than Arcade Fire and Beyonce but bigger than your local act playing covers down the RSL will get by without turning to their fans for support.

“In my opinion, the value of an album is, and will continue to be, based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of work.”

– TAYLOR SWIFT, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

aking money as a musician is hard, and, the more Spotify gets its teeth into the world, it is only ever going to get harder. Spotify pay 70 per cent of the revenue they make off streaming straight back to the rights holders, which sounds good until you realise chances are the rights holders and the artists are not one and the same. Exactly how rights holders dish out the earnings they have made off Spotify streams to artists is entirely up to them, and can often lead to situations where bands are making a matter of cents off streams, not dollars. “You can’t survive on Spotify streams,” one anonymous artist told the BRAG, “but that’s really what most labels and agents are pushing for. They like to be able to use Spotify streams as a way of advertising their brand – they go, ‘Oh look, this band we have on our roster just got however many streams, isn’t that amazing?’ And it’s good for marketing in that sense, but it’s not really good for making money.” Indeed, more and more musicians are turning to touring as their major source of revenue, marking a 180 degree shift from the way that the business of making music used to be conducted. Whereas touring was once seen as a necessary and yet regrettable way of spreading a band’s profile while sacrificing a huge amount of cash, now it is both a form of promotion and a significant money earner. “You take enough merch out on the road with you, and you’ll make maybe just about enough money to live on,” the anonymous artist told the BRAG. “But that’s if you’re really lucky – if maybe you pick up some radio play, or have a single out that enough people want to go and see live.”

Which indeed, so many acts are doing, in the process paving the way for what might well be the only viable future for the bands who make up the middle-ground. Sites likes Bandcamp and Patreon allow fans to give (relatively) directly to their favourite acts, and as a result, means emerging creatives and independents can receive a boost they could otherwise never have gotten from giants like Spotify. Of course, not all major, top-tier musicians are happy to sit and eat crow, and many of Spotify’s biggest critics speak out not to save their own hides, but the hides of others. Eternally grumpy old man Thom Yorke has called the service the last farts of a dying corpse, and pop star Taylor Swift wrote a passionate explanation of why she spent so long resisting Spotify (that she put her content back on the service as a way of fucking with longtime rival Katy Perry is a genuine, heartbreaking shame.) And indeed, though there is the temptation to be cynical – to argue that even comments from such respectable, successful musicians as the singer behind the chart crushing 1989 and the provocateur responsible for some of the most accomplished albums of this decade will do little to turn the tide against streaming – it is important that we don’t start becoming wearied. As with so many of the other issues and pressures we face today, the easiest – and not coincidentally, most damaging – thing we could do would right now would be to put our feet up and wait till this all settles down. Because all this will settle down, but it will do so in ways that will hurt us down the line. The more power we give specifi c, individual streaming sites – the more we mock and belittle their competition, not to mention their most outspoken critics – the more jeopardy we put ourselves in as consumers. And for that reason, a world in which Spotify’s power is unchecked should not only worry the musicians who will fi nd their revenue severed by the brand, but all who use the service; by all who, unwittingly or otherwise, are slowly feeding a swollen beast with nothing but the consumer’s wallet in mind. ■ BRAG :: 721 :: 26:07:17 :: 13

Vera Blue

FEATURE

Back In Fashion By Joseph Earp

elia Pavey is playing the waiting game. When we speak, the singer behind the Vera Blue moniker, a one-time contestant on The Voice and rising Australian talent, has but a week until her new record Perennial comes out, and not much to do but twiddle her thumbs and stress about it. “Recently I’ve just been feeling like it’s definitely a weight on my shoulders,” Pavey laughs. “I feel like because I’ve been working on this record for so long, I really want it out in the world and for it to just not be mine anymore. I want to give it to listeners, and for them to make it their story as much as it is mine. I just want them to be able to feel what I feel. I’m excited.” That, as far as Pavey is concerned, is the real goal here: to call out to her fans, old and new. And in that way, she considers Perennial to be a kind of smoke signal, or a message borne by carrier pigeon. The record is, after all, the sound of a young woman making her heart public; a woman singing out for all who will listen, and in its unabashed honesty it has a power all of its own. “I work with very closely with Andy [Macken] my producer and his brother Tom [Macken]. When we’re writing, we’ll always write on an acoustic guitar or a piano and then we will mould what the song is about, and make sure we get out the feeling we want to communicate. But when we are writing, we’re first and foremost going off my emotions and what I’m going through. The songs are very honest.” So honest, in fact, that a less experienced singer might be worried about airing such a huge amount of emotional laundry. But Pavey has been here before – her first album, released under her own name, might have been packed with covers, but in its rawness and its unfettered beauty it came to feel like the full force of a young woman making her personhood known. And anyway, Pavey understands that her fans will always have

14 :: BRAG :: 721 :: 26:07:17

“[Perennial] was written from the ashes of a relationship that had just come to an end. But it’s not like a breakup album – it’s more an album about self-discovery and personal growth.” her back – even more so when she honours their intelligence and tells them the truth, as plain as she can make it. “It’s really nice to have people connecting to your music,” Pavey says. “And I love it when I can talk to people about how songs have made them feel, and what they’re going through. Sometimes they tell me my music has helped them, or that they can dance to it… It’s really special. I love it. I love being able to release music that I’m so passionate about, and that people can feel the same way about it when they hear it.” But Perennial is not only Pavey’s most intense, wide-eyed release: it’s also her most structurally complex. Rather than just a straight up-and-down collection of pop ballads, the piece unfolds in three acts – a late in the game development that surprised even Pavey. “It’s what’s really special about Perennial. It was written from the ashes of a relationship that had just come to an end. But it’s not like a breakup album – it’s more an album about self-discovery and personal growth. It’s structured into three chapters, which were formed after we had completed the album. Tom, my co-writer, put [the songs] into that

three chapter structure, because working with me from the beginning to the end of this record allowed him to see my progression as a person.” The first chapter, kicking off with the song ‘First Week’, is located in the very epicentre of hurt. It’s about those first few days when you come stumbling out of a relationship, bleary and without centre – a song with all of the vulnerability and heartache of something like the Mountain Goats’ ‘Woke Up New’. “It’s about coming off a relationship,” Pavey says, simply. By contrast, the second chapter is “a little more exciting”. Kicking off with ‘Private’, one of the record’s standout tracks, the central section of the album is “about feeling fresh new ideas and having new ideas about people,” Pavey says. “It’s about opening my eyes to things around me that weren’t necessarily to do with love. So it was a really exciting period. “And then there’s the third chapter,” she continues, “which is much more about reflecting on the relationship, so you get a little bit of that vulnerability coming back. And that’s the end. So really, this record acknowledges vulnerability, and

acknowledges that you can wear your heart on your sleeve. I mean, everyone wears their hearts on their sleeve, but I really do it strongly and that’s what the title is about. That word ‘perennial’ means feelings and emotions will come and go. The title is about acknowledging that it’s okay to be vulnerable; acknowledging that all those memories will come back.” Of course, Pavey knows that for casual listeners, such a subtle structural pattern might go unnoticed. But she doesn’t care. She is just ready to give Perennial away: to hand it over to those dedicated fans who have never once left her side. “Some people won’t listen to the album top to bottom, and that’s totally okay. But I think the way the album is structured will give them an impression of what I was going through. So even if they don’t go through it from top to bottom, that’s alright, because they’re just going to be able to take the story into their own hearts and relate to it in their own way.” Where: Metro Theatre When: Saturday July 29, Saturday September 2 And: Perennial out now through Universal Music Australia

“I love being able to release music that I’m so passionate about, and that people can feel the same way about it when they hear it.” thebrag.com

Find out what you could create at SAEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Open Day. Our studios will be in action, equipment ready to try, student exhibitions on display and your future mentors ready to inspire.

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BRAG :: 721 :: 26:07:17 :: 15

FEATURE

“I have written a bunch of songs, but will I write more songs? I don’t know. I guess all I can say is keep doing it – keep writing.”

Cash Savage And The Last Drinks Truth Telling By Joseph Earp

“N

obody really knows what they’re doing,” says singer-songwriter Cash Savage after 15 or so minutes on the phone spent talking – or at least trying to talk – about the difficulty of explaining one’s creative urges. See, Savage knows, as so many other creative people do, how bloody impossible it is to put your process into words. Sure, you can talk about the particulars of it all – what time of the day you sit down to write; how long it takes you; how you feel afterwards. But there is something about the actual, practical making of art that doesn’t really belong to language; that eludes it somehow. “It’s so weird when someone asks about it,” Savage says. “When someone says, ‘What is writing to you?’ It’s very hard to answer. When you’re in that moment of writing, you really have no control. All I ever really say when people ask is, ‘Just make sure you’ve got a pen in your pocket.’ Because you never know when those moments of inspiration come. I don’t think there’s many creative people in the world who say they can manifest those moments of inspiration. They just come when they come.

If that makes the creative process sound rather terrifying – like something that can come and go at whim – that’s because for Savage, it is. The singer-songwriter may have delivered a pitch perfect record in the form of One Of Us, 2016’s roughly hewn masterpiece, but the thing took work and skill to whittle into shape. “It’s terrifying, writing. It’s completely out of your power. I know there’s writers who sit down every day and write and write. “I found when I was writing One Of Us, I needed to just lock myself away in the studio once a week and sit down and write, and that was incredibly productive for me. But the studio didn’t necessarily give me the sparks of the songs – it just gave me the time to toy with them, and muck around with them. Yet those little moments of inspiration… If I had a way to create those, I’d be rich.” Indeed, while some of Savage’s songs require very little of her, echoing through her head almost ready to be written, at other times

she must spend months slaving away at them. “One of the songs on the album, the title track [‘One Of Us’], took me a year and a few days to write. And I didn’t fi nish it until the night that we recorded it. “I had the words, but how they were being presented… That took me a long time to fi gure out. Other songs just fall out of me. There’s another song on that record, ‘Sunday Morning’, that I wrote in the time that it takes my partner to have a shower. I just sat down with the guitar and it just happened. It can go that way: songs can just write themselves.” As a result of One Of Us’s success (it was rightfully deemed one of the best records of last year), Savage is now in the position where she is turned to as an expert, and fi nds herself invited to join panels and answer questions about the intricacies of a process she has never once claimed to fully understand. “When I get asked to join panels and stuff, I always say, ‘I don’t think I know any more than the people sitting there in the audience.’ I have written a bunch of songs, but will I write more songs? I don’t know. I guess all I can say is keep doing it – keep writing. See what happens. It’s the only advice I have, which would make my panel a very short one.”

“I mean, one of my songs I wrote in a bar, and the lyrics just came to me. I wrote them all right there and I worked out the chords later.” 16 :: BRAG :: 721 :: 26:07:17

Perhaps as is to be expected, Savage doesn’t put much stead in those cheap paperbacks that claim to have the answer to every artist’s struggles; the ones that have a habit of amassing at the bottom of bargain bins in used bookstores, their promises to unlock the hidden secrets of creativity largely ignored. “I’m stubborn and I don’t really want anyone to tell me what to do,” Savage says. “So I just do it my own way. I don’t read books, and I don’t go to panels, because I don’t want to create in that way – that doesn’t really help me. I always say to myself, maybe there’ll come a time when I have awful and severe writer’s block, and those books will become an option. But for the moment, I could think of nothing worse. But that’s just me. That’s how I create.” Ultimately, when it comes down to it, Savage is battering about in the dark – and that, she thinks, is the way it should be. “People have been creating for so long that all the rules that were originally built around creating have already been disqualifi ed just by the fact that people are creating in different ways.” She laughs, happily. “None of that really matters in the end.” What: Yours And Owls With: At The Drive In, Dune Rats, A.B. Original, The Orwells and more When: Saturday September 30 – Sunday October 1 Where: Stuart Park, Wollongong And: Dashville Skyline, Friday September 29 - Sunday October 1 in Belford

thebrag.com

Cash Savage photo By Lisa Sorgini

“I mean, one of my songs I wrote in a bar, and the lyrics just came to me,”

she continues. “I wrote them all right there and I worked out the chords later. I had to furiously type the words all down into my phone, which was tedious, because my thumbs aren’t made for texting. It was an effort getting it out as quickly as it was coming to me in my mind.”

FEATURE

Being Paul Kelly Life Is (Still) Fine BY JOSEPH EARP aul Kelly makes music. That’s apparent, of course, but it bears repeating – Paul Kelly makes music, and he does so the way a carpenter builds doors; the way a tailor spins suits. To be perfectly honest, you or I probably don’t have anything like that in our lives. Sure, we have things that we are good at – but Paul Kelly is not just good at writing songs. And sure, we have things that make us happy – but Paul Kelly is not just made happy by writing songs. Songwriting is not off Paul Kelly. It is him. So yeah, you could say, “his discography is his life’s work” or something hoary like that, but that would imply that there is some kind of distinction to be made between the day-today detritus of his everyday existence and his songwriting; that some line exists between the Kelly who gets up onstage and performs his beautiful, rich songs and the Kelly who sits across from journalists at a table scattered with semi-nibbled sandwiches and half a glass of red wine. Which, to be perfectly honest, there doesn’t appear to be. For instance: There is a guitar in the corner of the room. Kelly is sitting across from it, perched on a tall stool in the headquarters of Universal Music in King Cross, a part of the world he has both memorialised and glorified in a number of his songs. Throughout the interview, Kelly is attentive, and he is kind, but he can’t seem to keep his hands off the guitar, and he’s playing it when I first walk in, strumming a few bars of a pleasant, pretty song, entertaining no-one but himself. “I have this group of friends and we have these music nights,” he says at one point during the interview, smiling an easy, corner-of-the-mouth smile. “And we’ll go, ‘Okay, it’s going to be an Elvis music night tonight.’ And I’ll learn a whole bunch of Elvis songs and print out the lyrics and we’ll all have a night where we just sing Elvis and drink some wines for a few hours. So far we’ve had a Hank Williams night, a Johnny Cash night…” He counts the artists off his long fingers. “I think the next one is going to be Neil Young. “It’s good for me because I go, ‘Oh good, now I get to learn another five Hank Williams songs.’ And I know quite a few of them anyway, so it’s good going the extra mile and learning some new ones. And sometimes you think, ‘Oh I know that song’, but then you realise, actually, you can’t sing it and play it all the way through. You don’t know all the chords. So you get to learn the internal workings of the songs – the mechanics.”

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Kelly goes to a lot of concerts these days, he says: tonight, when the interview is done, he will head off to Cockatoo Island to watch a set

“Songwriting isn’t like prose writing, where at least you can put down one sentence, then another sentence and you’re going somewhere. With music, you might try to write and you’re not going anywhere at all.” BRAG :: 721 :: 26:07:17 :: 17

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“[My label] has been going, ‘When are you going to do a normal record?’ And I’ve been saying, ‘It’s coming, it’s coming.’”

by the young New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde, whose first record he enjoyed immensely. And he listens to a lot of music too, mostly, these days, by streaming it online, but sometimes by dipping into his enviable library of cassettes and CDs. “The digital thing came just in time – just as things were getting a little crowded in the house,” he laughs. He laughs a lot, actually: maybe more than one would imagine a man who has written songs as wrenching as ‘Winter Coat’ might laugh. “I’ve got a lot of CDs. I’ve never had many records because I started travelling as soon as I left school when I was 17, so I had already moved around for many years. But I do have a lot of cassettes, which I still hang on to and treasure. I’ve still got a cassette player. I used to make a lot of cassette compilations. I like hanging on to them and playing them from time to time. They’re like little snapshots.” For Kelly, listening to music is all about drinking in the things a record can do when the needle is lowered and doesn’t rise till the last song is done.

“Some people will like this album, and some people won’t. You know, same as it ever was. For those who like it then off it goes.” 18 :: BRAG :: 721 :: 26:07:17

So as far as he’s concerned, ominous milestones like the oft-discussed death of the album are to be ignored or to be laughed at, which he does, shaking his head gently from side to side. “I grew up making albums and listening to albums so that’s my natural inclination when it comes to writing music. So that means even more so nowadays I want to make records; I want them to be really strong and to have a coherent framework. I want to be able to say, ‘Hey, if you want to, you can listen to this from start to finish and it’ll take you on a little journey.’ Of course I know that people break it up anyway that they want, and that’s all well and good. But it makes me sort of strive harder to make an ‘album’. Now, more than ever, I think the album is really relevant. It sounds paradoxical, but I like having the framework.” When Kelly was a young listener, he used to “graze”. At the age of six or seven, when music first really made itself known to him, he was all about singles rather than records, and he used to greedily eat up those passed down to him by his sister. “I loved The Beatles, Peter, Paul And Mary.” he says. “I loved them a lot.” The radio was a good friend too. “I’d always listen and just think, ‘Oh I love that song.’ But I always thought I could never do anything like that; never thought I could write songs like that.” Kelly grew up in a big family – he has seven brothers and sisters, who, as Andrew Denton once noted in a televised interview with Kelly, have variously worked as “a nun, a social worker, a Buddhist, a music teacher and a candidate for the Greens.” Kelly’s father died due to complications associated with Parkinson’s when Kelly was only 13 years old, and a lot of his musical taste was guided and shaped by his siblings, particularly his

brothers, who steered him towards the gentle magic of the record when he got a little older. “When I was a teenager, the album came into my life,” he says. “My brothers gave me Bob Dylan records, and Pink Floyd, and The Moody Blues, and Jethro Tull. Those were albums that you sat down and you listened to.” Kelly still listens to a lot of those records now; still turns to them when he is feeling creatively exhausted. He is famous for his tendency to magpie together pre-existing songs, and, when stumped, will use old favourites for inspiration. “You learn how to write songs by copying other people,” he told Denton in that televised 2004 interview, and it’s a sentiment he echoes now. “Songwriting isn’t like prose writing, where at least you can put down one sentence, then another sentence and you’re going somewhere,” he says. “With music, you might try to write and you’re not going anywhere at all. You’re just bored. But then you can think, ‘Oh, nothing is happening? Okay, I’ll go and learn this other song.’ You can learn, I dunno, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ or ‘Love Hurts’. So that’s still part of what I do. Learning other people’s songs. It’s just fun.” But is that always the way Kelly wrote? Is that how he used to work, say, back at the very beginning, when he first got drawn to songwriting at the tender age of 21? But Kelly isn’t into self-mythologizing, or indulging in the florid origin stories that some musicians drape themselves in. So when the question is posed to him, Kelly just shrugs goodnaturedly, the brown, three-piece suit he is wearing heaving up and down with him. “I just wrote a song,” he says, with a grin. “And then I wrote another one.”

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FEATURE

So it fits that the centrepiece of his new record is a song called ‘My Man’s Got A Cold’, an emphatically, unashamedly big number about coming down with a flu. “When I wrote it, I went, ‘Oh, that’s a funny song, that’ll fit with something one day’,” Kelly says. “I knew it’d be a good one when I put it to the band.” It’s not the only serve of slapstick on the record, either. There’s the gently comic ‘Josephina’, a lilting love letter of a song that Kelly has spent the last four years trying to find a home for. And there’s ‘Leah: The Sequel’, which starts soulful and ends demented, as the song’s long-suffering narrator gets saved from drowning only to end up toiling away at a cannery at the behest of a beloved. “Toe-tapping” is maybe a cliché these days, but it’s hard to call Life Is Fine anything else. There are streaks of Kelly’s beloved blues in there, and the old-time soul he has spent the better part of three decades chasing down – not to mention those moments where Kelly’s high voice takes on the unmistakable throaty timbre of the King himself. Clearly those nights strumming through Elvis tunes have played on Kelly’s mind; have shaped this record, a collection of songs with all the panache of something like Loving You. Which maybe makes Life Is Fine sound old fashioned – like a glorified golden oldies compilation, or an unholy cross between Aussie pub rock and a classic hits radio channel. But thanks to Kelly’s band, and his rich, cutting lyrics, the thing never becomes a history project. Without ever obviously straining towards the contemporary, Kelly’s compatriots keep the thing fresh, and for Kelly, working with a full rock band has been one of the pleasures of making Life Is Fine. “When you take a song to the band and you’re not always so sure about it, they go, ‘Yeah great!’ and they sink their teeth into it. And that’s when the song starts to happen. It’s come out of you then, and other people are reacting to it. The band start reacting to it. And that’s one of the joys of this record for me. I can hear the verve and the joy of the band in the record.”

ext month will see the release of Life Is Fine, Kelly’s 23rd studio album, and his first record of strictly original material since The Merri Soul Sessions. In the Facebook post that announced the record, Kelly called it a “widescreen, technicolour album with the whole band”, and it’s certainly true that fans of the musician’s work in the ’80s – bold, big records like Gossip and Under The Sun – will appreciate its richness and its light.

The album came together relatively easily, Kelly says, once he had his starting point. He knew he wanted to make a “joyful” record: something that could house all the optimistic, oddball songs he has been writing over the last few years. “It’s been coming for a while,” he says. “I’ve wanted to put out a rock’n’roll record; a band record. An upbeat record. The kind of record that EMI have wanted me to put out for about five years now.” He laughs. “They’ve been going, ‘When are you going to do a thebrag.com

With that framework in mind, actually assembling the album was pretty easy. “I make my records fairly quick. I don’t really get too lost in it. This record was done in two sessions, a year apart, one in February 2016 and then one in February 2017. But in both those sessions it was just about recording the songs I had already written. So it wasn’t like, ‘We’re making a record!’ “Once I knew I was going to make an upbeat record, I started gathering together the songs that were like that. The songs are more playful, so every time I wrote a song that had that feeling I was like, ‘It’ll go on this record, the playful record.’ Then I started writing some more. You get a few songs that are starting to talk to each other, then you write the rest, and that sort of finishes the record off.” Life Is Fine is effortless, sure, but it’s also distinctly, deliciously odd. Kelly’s skills as a surrealist tend to go under appreciated these days, and he is often unfairly regarded as a strict documentarian – a kind of stoic, Antipodean Ken Loach, or an ochre Woody Guthrie-type. But there has always been a glimmering sense of the otherworldly to him as well, and his songs tend to glint and wink with something that sets him apart from those other chroniclers of the everyday. The best of his discography makes no claims on objective fact, and he is as likely to tell fables as he is to tell stories; to buck away from the real world at the last minute, swerving off into somewhere stranger. There is a reason, for instance, that one of his best-known songs contains a gravy recipe; that another includes lines about being “in the middle of a dream”.

It hasn’t all been perfect writing Life Is Fine, because of course it hasn’t – because not even the things that we love always treat us kindly. Kelly has had the mundane, itching agony of the mixing process to endure, and he found it hard to sit around twiddling his thumbs while the album got its final layer of post-production polish. “I get most wrapped up in the record around that point,” Kelly says, looking, for the first time, a little glum. “That’s when you’ve got this thing that you’ve made and then you’ve got to balance it and mix it, which is kind of time-consuming, but nothing new is really happening. The engineers do all the mixing. And by then I’m sort of getting impatient – I just want to get it out; to get back the test pressings and just listen to it.”

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Listening to Life Is Fine, the first impression one gets is that Kelly is having fun; pure, unashamed fun; fun without boundaries. The album is packed with the ease and grace that Kelly just kind of naturally gives off these days – the kind of effortless precision that comes from a lifetime of effort’s expenditure. Listening to a song like ‘Firewood And Candles’, the record’s first single, is rather like watching old footage of Maradona batting about a ball in his prime, or listening to Sylvia Plath read her poetry in the recordings she made just before her death. Something just clicks, things just fit, and the song creaks with the most uncomplicated kind of pleasure.

normal record?’ And I’ve been saying, ‘It’s coming, it’s coming.’”

Kelly was also helped along the way by Bill Miller, a good friend and longtime collaborator. Miller contributed to four songs on the record, and his deft, playful touch suits the tone of the thing to a tee, offsetting the occasionally more reverential moments with pulse-quickening pop flourishes. “He’s one of those guys that knows every pop song,” Kelly says, somewhat enviously. “He’s just an encyclopaedia of pop music, so he’s a lot of fun to write songs with. I mean we usually just get together, just to watch sport, and then we might play the guitar and play tunes for fun.”

“I’d always listen [to the radio] and just think, ‘Oh I love that song.’ But I always thought I could never do anything like that; never thought I could write songs like that.” BRAG :: 721 :: 26:07:17 :: 19

FEATURE

“Writing a song is a bit … like fishing. You doodle around, you sing a bit, you try to make up a melody. But you might never get anything. You might be there for days, and get nothing.”

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these days: accidentally. He has no grand plans anymore – if he ever did, he’s long since abandoned them, and his career simply follows whatever twists and turns the world has in store for it. That’s why he released a record of songs he’s played at funerals with his friend Charlie Owen last year, and why he went on tour with Neil Finn back in 2013, the two of them taking turns performing each other’s hits. Kelly describes that experience as being like “taking apart a clock and really learning how it gets made”, and it taught him that even the things you think you know – things as familiar to him as the Crowded House songs he’s pored over for decades – have a way of surprising you.

That’s happened by now. Kelly has the test pressings at home, and he listened to them the other day in full. The album finally felt real, he says. It wasn’t just a thing in his head anymore; Life Is Fine became a real-world object, something to be shared. And now, finally, he can start to tour it. “That’s when it really comes to life,” he says. “That’s why you do all this.” For a lot of musicians, the little window between an album’s completion and its release date is its own special kind of torture; a patience-testing, nerveshredding few weeks in which all you can do is waste your time and worry. But Kelly is beyond all that these days. He is, in this way as in so many others, at peace. “Some people will like this album, and some people won’t,” he says. “You know, same as it ever was.” He claps his hands together, and they make a thin, papery sound that echoes through the room. “For those who like it then off it goes.”

few years ago, a key got turned for Kelly. Around the release of Spring And Fall, his melancholic 2012 record, he was asked to collaborate with a classical youth orchestra. The project intrigued him, but it intimidated him as well, as it required him to pen a song cycle with the help of a classical composer – something he’d never done before. It was all a little overwhelming. “I just didn’t know how to write songs with a composer,” he says now. But venturing into the creative unknown in itself wasn’t something new for Kelly. Though he is recognised almost universally as a master, he doesn’t consider himself one; doesn’t think he has an edge over anyone else engaged in the thankless, unforgiving struggle that is writing songs. Even when he’s just writing – when there is no song cycle to be penned, or deadline to be met – he’s never really sure where he’s going. He just picks a road and follows it, and more often than not

“Now, more than ever, I think the album is really relevant. It sounds paradoxical, but I like having a framework.” 20 :: BRAG :: 721 :: 26:07:17

he’s as surprised as his listeners by where he turns up. It wasn’t like that when he was writing prose, mind you. His book, How To Make Gravy, a beautifullywritten dance through his creative process, was surprisingly easy for him to write. “It was much more enjoyable,” he says. “Because I was writing about things I loved: about songs I loved, about people that I loved. It wasn’t like I was sitting down and going, ‘What am I going to write about today?’ I had my way in each day. “I mean, I knew if I sat down at the beginning of the day, then by its end I would have something to show for it – 500 words or a thousand words, or you know, whatever. It was like bricks and mortar. It was much more graspable … I started to love the word count. I’d be like, ‘I’ve written 20,000 words!’ Whereas writing a song is a bit more like fishing. You doodle around, you sing a bit, you try to make up a melody. But you might never get anything. You might be there for days, and get nothing.” And that’s exactly where he found himself while trying to write the song cycle: he just sat around, getting nothing. He’d noodle a bit on a guitar, but none of his rough sketches ever really came to much – he was simply unsure of where to start. So, flummoxed, Kelly once again turned to the work of others for inspiration. But rather than playing a few of his favourite tunes, he instead turned to his library, and to poetry. “I just started picking poems that I liked and that fit together thematically,” he says. He was just trying to get the ball rolling; to do something, hoping that things might click. And eventually, gloriously, they did. “That was the first time that I tried putting poems to music,” he says. “So that changed things for me in turns of writing songs, because I’d always written my own lyrics. I put poems to music pretty regularly now. It’s good because writing words is the hardest part of writing songs for me. Melodies, I find, are much easier. It’s good when you’ve got the words there and they’re really great words. So suddenly having this whole other way to write a song was a revelation.” That revelation is particularly evident in Seven Sonnets And A Song, a paean to Shakespeare that saw Kelly set a selection of the bard’s poems to music. “I just put some music to Shakespeare’s sonnets because I like them, and then I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll try a few more.’” He shrugs. “And the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death was coming up so I thought I’d give it a go and release a record.” That is how music tends to happen for Kelly

And, just as pertinently, those strange creative whims explain why his new record – the most jubilant and expressive record he has released in years – ends with a song about suicide. For all of Life Is Fine’s bombast and the strange, colourful places that it goes, it ends not with a technicolour cry but with a whisper. The title track – what Kelly describes as a kind of coda – is as subtle and as sad as the record gets, closing the thing out on a note of quiet, tragedy-tinged defiance. It’s also one of the record’s sparsest songs. There’s nothing in there but Kelly and a nylonstring, his voice gossamer thin, an organ and an electric guitar occasionally warbling up behind him. “If that water hadn’t been so cold I might have sunk and died,” comes Kelly’s voice skipping across the chorus. “But it was cold in that water, so cold.” The song is based on a poem by Langston Hughes, one passed on to Kelly by a friend a few years ago, and it gives the record its sense of finality. The album might be stuffed with songs about canneries and about colds; pockmarked with punchlines and carried with the lightest of touches, but it ends with a song about living in spite of; about life as a form of defence. Indeed, it’s only when the song is done that you realise the double-edge to the record’s title. Life Is Fine is no jubilant testament to life’s goodness: that’s “fine” as in thin, fine like a thread. But because Paul Kelly is Paul Kelly – because he is a man who doesn’t have to fall over himself to explain away his songs, or to disseminate them into cheap quips – he doesn’t describe any of it that way. “It’s got a deft touch to it, that song,” Kelly says, simply. “I could have saved it up for another record, but it just felt like a nice little ending for this one.” And then he smiles, gently, as though it is all so simple – which, to be perfectly honest, more often than not, it is. “And it gave me the title.” The door clicks open. It’s the publicist, come to whisk Kelly away; to take him back to his hotel so he can settle in a bit before the evening’s concert, and then, tomorrow, a media showcase during which he will play some of the songs from Life Is Fine in public for the first time. But before he goes, Kelly has the guitar to attend to. It is in his arms before my dictaphone even gets shut off, so this is how the recording of our interview ends – with strumming, a few gently plucked chords and Kelly’s high voice winding around some mumbled words. And in this way, his playing gives the impression that our conversation has all been one long tune: that Kelly has been singing all this time, waiting patiently for the guitar to kick in. ■ What: Life Is Fine available Friday August 11 via EMI/Universal Music Australia. Pre-orders are available via PaulKelly.com.au thebrag.com

Rings Of Saturn

FEATURE

The Sound Of The Future By Shaun Cowe

nature of metal’s fanbase, not to mention their enviable technical knowhow. “It is important for [bands] to be playing instruments live. If anything, it’s kind of a compliment when people tell us that we’re faking it because it means we sound as perfect as we do on the recording,” he says. “I think metal is more of a unique genre than everything else. Most people who listen to metal are also musicians themselves. You go to a metal concert and the majority of the crowd are probably in bands already.” Alongside Rings Of Saturn and his other musical projects, Stechauner also runs a Youtube channel showcasing some of his live performances and giving him a chance to talk to fans. For Stechauner, it’s a way to expand his name beyond Rings Of Saturn and set himself apart from the horde of other professional drummers in the industry.

“There are tonnes of bands and millions of Instagram accounts of guitarists and drummers. You have to have your own thing and keep pushing that when you stand up next to everybody else. For example, I’m in Rings Of Saturn, but say I didn’t make my online presence known and nobody knew who I was. I go on these tours and I’m on these records, but that doesn’t mean people know me. The drum endorsements I have, I probably wouldn’t have had without my online content,” he says. “ But on top of that, I don’t want to just be known as the Rings Of Saturn drummer, or some other band’s drummer. I want to push myself on the side. I want to be my own artist.” What: Ultu Ulla available Friday July 28 through Nuclear Blast

“There are tonnes of bands and millions of Instagram accounts of guitarists and drummers. You have to have your own thing and keep pushing that when you stand up next to everybody else.”

ings Of Saturn’s combination of Sumerian cuneiform album titles, up-tempo technical riffs and lyrics largely concerned with galactic warlords and DNA harvesting have cemented the band’s fame in the self-created genre of aliencore. But although the band happily have their niche, they’re as keen as ever to prove themselves. Indeed, as drummer Aaron Stechauner tells it, that unquenchable desire for the new lay at the very heart of the group’s upcoming fourth studio album, Ultu Ulla. “Right now, in the world we live in, the music scene – especially the metal scene – is so saturated with music. You have to stick out; you have to make something different,” Stechauner says. “It’s your art and your craft, so sometimes it’s tough to do that because you want to do whatever you can to express yourself, but you have to do both things at once; you have to express yourself so you can be happy with your product, but you have to keep in mind it is a business.” Today Stechauner is at home, practising in preparation for The Summer Slaughter 2017 tour, a series of shows that will see the band hit up venues across the States. He joined the band full-time after the release of the headbangers’ last album, Lugal Ki En, and has been busy learning the demanding repertoire since. “With what we play, there’s a lot more upkeep. I can’t focus as much on thebrag.com

performance and stage presence as I could if I were in a different band and it didn’t require so much energy. It’s fun for sure, but it’s definitely taxing.” An often-criticised aspect of Stechauner’s performance is the use of bass drum triggers. Within the metal world, triggers are a contentious subject. A touch-sensitive pad is placed on the bass drum which triggers a virtual drum sound with each strike. Purists consider this a form of cheating – Stechauner, however, believes people have a fundamental misunderstanding of this technology. “If you’re a sloppy drummer and you get your kit mic’d up, nobody’s going to be able to tell if you’re playing sloppy because the natural rumble a kick drum produces isn’t going to pick up all those subtleties. But if you have the trigger and you’re not playing consistent note values on the kit, people are going to hear that. The worse you are, the more of your errors the triggers showcase.” It’s not just the triggers that draw criticism: the band also get poked at for using synth backing tracks, and a number of years ago false rumours swirled that they deployed heavy performance trickery. When asked why he thinks there’s a hyper focus on authenticity in metal that is not always seen in other genres, Stechauner explains it’s probably due to the diehard BRAG :: 721 :: 26:07:17 :: 21

FEATURE

“I was trying to write about birth and death, not necessarily the death of a person but more the death of the landscape. I’ve been noticing the landscape around me going through so many changes.”

Avey Tare It’s About Time By Declan Melia

ave Portner, AKA Avey Tare, is thinking about time. Unsurprisingly for a founding member of genre-pioneers Animal Collective though, he’s not doing it in any way that you might expect – instead, he’s expressing his thoughts in windy, reverb-soaked song. “Corals were the fi rst timekeepers on planet earth, for half a billion years their internal clocks have been synchronised with the sun and the moon” sings a disembodied American voice on ‘Coral Lords’, the centrepiece of Portner’s recently released second solo album, Eucalyptus. It’s conceptual stuff, and food for thought that might help us understand his approach to his wider musical career, which, by his own admission, is a little bit all over the place. “To me, it’s always important not to view [my career] as a linear trajectory,” he told Noisey in 2014, and in conversation Portner goes out of his way to avoid the myth-building that sometimes comes part and parcel when talking to journos.

“I’m going back in time to what Animal Collective was in the first place, which was sort of a studio thing, when there wasn’t necessarily a band called Animal Collective,” he says. “Once we started touring more, we started making records in quick succession. We’d tour for a year, writing and putting out records and I think because we started doing that, it sort of set our music into that linear structure.” Things are a lot different now. After 14 years and more than 20 albums, EPs and collaborations, Animal Collective have helped define indie music in the new century. Their indescribable music has provided a soundtrack to the internet age, with their pastiche of avant-pop tropes expressing themselves in hypercoloured sprays. Justifiably adored by critics and the masses for nearly two decades, the band are in a position where they don’t have to release another note for any reason other than wanting to do so. It’s a position that Portner feels is creatively liberating, and he doesn’t see any distinction between solo or Animal Collective projects. “[We’re] doing more stuff on our own, having more time and space on our own, the ability to make and release records the way we like,” he explains. That headspace must be working.

Eucalyptus encapsulates everything we love about Animal Collective and all of its offshoots. Springy sing-alongs sit comfortably next to serpentine soundscapes on a succession of songs that feel both completely new and also oddly familiar. ‘Child-like’ is a term long associated with Animal Collective, and for good reason: their songs tap into that near subconscious aural world of Golden Books, Sesame Street and coloured chalk on pavements; a uniquely American sound celebrated so well by the Beach Boys, De La Soul, and Tin Pan Alley. Of course, it’s also a form of longing; of wanting to return to a state of innocence. “When I was younger I would have said I hate nostalgia. I don’t like the notion of missing the past or feeling that something has been lost. But now I think of it as a sort of sweet sadness. I’ve read that a lot of what attracts people to the music they prefer individually is related to nostalgia or something that they’ve lost.” If Animal Collective have always had a nostalgic appeal it has now become something new entirely – a kind of double nostalgia. The albums that most fans consider essential – Strawberry Jam, Feels, and Merriweather Post Pavilion – are all around ten years old, and most of the band’s fanbase have swapped their leather jackets for mortgage

“When I was younger I would have said I hate nostalgia. I don’t like the notion of missing the past or feeling that something has been lost. But now I think of it as a sort of sweet sadness.” 22 :: BRAG :: 721 :: 26:07:17

repayments, making Eucalyptus a record about nostalgia to feel nostalgic to. “I’m inspired by music that confuses me, by throwing in chords or changes that I’m not comfortable with,” Portner explains. “It goes back to the linear trajectory kind of talk. For me it’s about wanting to challenge myself to write a kind of song I haven’t written before.” A lot of that challenge emerged in the form of the record’s weighty themes, and Portner sings about everything from environmental destruction to a kind of spiritual rebirth on the album. “I was trying to write about birth and death, not necessarily the death of a person but more the death of the landscape. I’ve been noticing the landscape around me going through so many changes. Some not so good.” The comment prompts something in me, and for the first time I realise that if fans are nostalgic for Merriweather Post Pavilion, maybe it’s because the year that it was released now seems like part of a comparative golden age, with Obama recently elected and America’s position as the global superpower unquestioned. But Portner, as always, is not keen on being pinned down, and he has no desire to slot his music into some grand picture of historical progression. After all, like the coral marking the passage of years in the billions, pop music was here before Portner and will be here after he’s gone. “When you’re making music, when you’re in the headspace, time doesn’t exist,” he says. What: Eucalyptus available now through Domino

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Avey Tare photo by Atiba Jefferson

But as liberating as this disjunction from time may be from a creative point of view, for music writers it’s disorientating. Comparing or evaluating new music against an artist’s back catalogue presupposes that music – like life – works in a trajectory, and that a musician moves forward by building upon a musical past. This is a concept that Portner

doesn’t seem to care for.

X Still Angry By Anna Rose

FEATURE

hen Australian punk revolutionaries X first emerged in 1977, they stepped out in solidarity into a disenchanted world; a world sick of absolutism. X wanted change, and from a basement in Glebe, they plotted revolution. At the peak of punk, the band took to painting red X’s across Sydney, which at the time was considered an eye-opening act of anarchy. With a weighted sigh, last living original member Steve Lucas explains the band’s true reasoning for this action. “In terms of the whole point of the red X, [anarchy] wasn’t the initial concept. “It was a symbol, it wasn’t a name at all. By being a symbol the gigs were more than gigs: they were a gathering of like-minded people. Kind of how like Christianity uses the fish. It sounds pretentious, and we weren’t trying to create a new religion, but we wanted to have a symbol that represented something we thought was lacking at the time in society.” Fast forward to 2017 and those things X sang about are still common issues blighting society today. In response, Lucas has put together X-Citations: Best Of X. The Early Years 1977-82, and he believes that the compilation will revitalise a message about the band and a message about our world. “It sounds a bit wanky but over 40 years, stories get distorted, history gets distorted,” he says. “The point we may have been trying to make 40 years ago gets lost in the retelling or the interpretations of journalists over the years… drunken conversations. I just wanted to set the

record straight and go, ‘Look, this is how it started, this is what we were about.’ Also, I wanted to demonstrate how little had changed in the world. The political climate is just ridiculous, music is just as important.” Lucas also has a firsthand knowledge of the impact that global shifts have had on the music scene, particularly in Sydney. “Even back in the ’80s, the death knell was ringing for Sydney. You could see it everywhere – at the time we thought the government was trying to make a revenue out of the black market money that live music was – and it generated a huge amount of money back then. “I suppose the worst thing was that we coincided with the punk movement and whatever that was, by the time it got here via the headlines and sensationalism, people had already seized upon it as a new commercial enterprise. Punk wasn’t punk here.” The venues X played in their heyday are now but a shade of what they once were, and this generation may not be able to appreciate the camaraderie and excitement that was associated with pub rock in the ’70s and ’80s. Indeed, when asked whether he thinks contemporary musicians have the opportunities Lucas’ generation had, the musician’s voice goes firm and sad. “No. No, no, not remotely. “The advent of the internet has given people the notion that they’re part of a much broader global community, but it ’s lies. [In the ’70s and ’80s] people were out in droves. People today have no idea how physically we

“Little [has] changed in the world. The political climate is just ridiculous, music is just as important.” were supporting pub live music and it’s not like we played half a dozen gigs – in Sydney we were banned from 32 [venues] consecutively and still playing on a regular basis. I’d be flat out trying to name 30 [venues] in Sydney and Melbourne [today]. It’s crazy, really.” The face of music in Australia has certainly changed – but perhaps in looking to the past, we might find our way forward. Taking to the road for a 40th anniversary tour, Lucas says that whilst the socio-political climate is much the same as when X first performed the songs featured on X-Citation, time and age have understandably got to him, and his music. “It’s probably more tempered, more confident,” says Lucas of his band’s live show. “I don’t get up there and pretend I’m 20-years-old but I’ve been playing for 40 years. I’ve gone out of my way not to become too polished, but then I’m not going to get up there and play like crap just to be punk – I’m gonna do what I’ve always done. “I’m gonna get up there and channel the same emotions and passions and I’m going to deliver it as best as I can.

I mean, it’s not going to be the same but it was never the same from one gig to another even back in the day – every audience has its own vibe and what they give back to you, you hand back in return.” Lucas still hopes that people relate to the band’s ethic and take something away from their performances. “[Audiences should] be taking it away and putting it in their own life context,” he says. “There’ll be things they can relate to, experiences they’ve had like we had as a band when we wrote it – and if they can understand how that felt then, I think they’ll be walking away feeling pretty much the same now. But I can’t assume anything, I’ve got to get out there, deliver the songs, put the ego aside and be there for the music. “There’s a relationship [between a band and an audience] and you realise there’s a peak moment and when you’re there peaking, it’s very powerful. People use words like ‘passionate’ but sometimes I wonder if they know what it actually means.” What: X-Citations: Best Of X. The Early Years 1977-82 available now independently

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X photo by Carbie Warbie

“The advent of the internet has given people the notion that they’re part of a much broader global community, but it’s lies.”

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FEATURE

Pete Murray Beautiful Days By Adam Norris

n truth, I hadn’t really heard much about Pete Murray over the last few years. Difficult though it was to escape the hits he dropped at the start of his career – bangers such as ‘So Beautiful’ and ‘Better Days’ – his radio presence began to slow down around ten years ago. As it turns out, this was somewhat deliberate. “You know, when Feeler came out and just got so much airplay, and then See The Sun came out with ‘Better Days’, by the time I came to write the third album, I didn’t really have a single in mind,” Murray recalls. “I wanted to just write an album, and I was kind of inspired by Neil Young. I mean, I have been for years, he and Bob Dylan. But by [Summer At Eureka] I’d had all this airplay and I didn’t really care – that wasn’t the point of writing songs for me anymore. I kind of wanted to get away from that. “So when I didn’t get as much airplay, it sounds strange but I was kind of happy about that. I think everything I’ve put out is different, and all I’m trying to do is find different flavours; to go from something folky to something more electric. And for this one, I’m trying to … I guess go back to those [songwriters] who influenced me a lot but who I haven’t really listened to for years. The last few years I’ve listened to a lot of electronica, a lot of hip hop; not really any one band in particular, but just a lot of styles so I can find ways to be inspired to change my own sound.”

“I sit in the bathroom. That’s where I write. There are nice acoustics, and that’s where I’ve always done my writing. It works.” In that respect, the Byron Bay local has very much succeeded. Camacho still sounds like vintage Murray: after more than 20 years in the business, the man knows how to write a song and enlist the best talent to help him along the way. But he’s clearly trying to reach for new heights, as the latest energetic single ‘Take Me Down’ attests. Although, tempting as it is to imagine that the buzz of Byron is serving as his inspiration, Murray says porcelain tiles are much more his muse. “I’ve been [in Byron] for 12 years now. It’s this feel-good place with a great lifestyle, but a lot has changed. Everyone comes here to take it easy. You chill out and surf all day. But when there’s a lot of people... Well it’s different. At first I thought maybe I’d move to Byron and go down and write songs by the beach, but really you go there and look at the surf and just think, ‘Well, I’d rather just be out there!’ “So I sit in the bathroom. That’s where I write. There are nice acoustics, and that’s where I’ve always done my writing. It works... Sometimes I’ve thought maybe I should get out and try something different. Maybe go

and write songs in somebody else’s bathroom for a change,” he laughs. “But you know, sometimes when I’m overseas I’ll find I get inspired to write things maybe a little differently. But when you’re on tour, it’s hard to find the time to write songs anyway.” Murray is 47, and despite the vein of mourning that runs through many of his lyrics, you get the sense talking to him that he is quite content at where he has found himself. The reluctant performer entertaining his audiences with Crowded House covers has evolved into a thoughtful bloke with a quick sense of self-deprecating wit. Murray hasn’t exactly followed your standard road to success, but that may be exactly what keeps him from resting on his laurels, and when Murray says he’s still searching for the next sound, you believe he means it. “I was pretty shy back at the start. I think I’ve come out of my shell a bit. I think the fame thing kind of took me by surprise, because it was such a quick take-off. I still try and keep a low profile, but looking back at my early days, and those videos, I think you can see how shy I am about being on camera. You know, [these days] I’m probably more of an extrovert than

I think, especially live. Though the biggest thing I remember about being onstage in the early days was not talking much. I’d just stand there and almost try to take the back seat. “Now I’ll step up and have fun with the crowd,” Murray continues. “There’s still a bit of a melancholic feel to some of those songs, and I feel like I just want to get right away from that. I think every album I’ve got further and further from that melancholy. So I try to make things more uplifting and punchy. I put in some anthemic choruses. I think with the earlier albums people would listen to them in the car or in the bedroom, whereas this one you can turn it up and get a lot of energy from it that way. “I think the older you get, the more you think about these things. When you’re younger and you find success, you just think that it’s going to always be there, easy. But when you’re not the new kid on the block any more, with every album you’re more conscious of wanting to say something that’s still relevant.” Where: Enmore Theatre When: Saturday July 29

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“I was pretty shy back at the start. I think I’ve come out of my shell a bit. I think the fame thing kind of took me by surprise, because it was such a quick take-off.” thebrag.com

FEATURE

MTV Unplugged’s New Zealand Launch Was Something To Behold The Rise Of Maala By Poppy Reid

hen Nirvana filled Sony’s Hell’s Kitchen studio in New York for an uncharacteristically tender MTV Unplugged appearance, New Zealand singer-songwriter Maala wasn’t even born. In ’93, In Utero had signposted a more abrasive direction for the grunge titans, and the stripped-down MTV franchise was creating iconic music history in an industry where bold exuberance was king. 24 years and dozens of Unplugged performances later – including those by Bob Dylan, Oasis, Adele and KISS – 22-year-old Maala has been tapped to launch the series in New Zealand. Performing at the very first Unplugged this side of the equator, Maala, AKA Evan Sinton, was so aware of the undertaking, he broke down before taking to

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the stage. “It was the first time I’ve ever broken down, it was fuckin’ dramatic,” he says after the show. “I was just so nervous – like I haven’t been for any other show.” Granted, his ten-song set in the famed Concert Chamber of Auckland’s Town Hall made global headlines before it even occurred, but Sinton wasn’t just the name at the top of some Unplugged shortlist, and he wasn’t chosen for any other reason than he is a beloved, exciting new artist. In fact, he was the first and only choice as far as Simon Bates was concerned, and the vice president and head of MTV Asia Pacific is tremendously excited about Sinton’s fresh new sounds. “MTV is famous for working with the world’s biggest superstars. Additionally, MTV locally are committed to supporting local artists,” says Bates. “We launched Maala via [new talent initiative] MTV Brand New in 2016. His incredible talent stood out and our audiences loved him.

This year when we decided to launch Unplugged locally he was our first choice. We knew it was the perfect format to showcase his incredible ability.” The New Zealand’s Got Talent alumni, a beatsmith who took out the best male solo artist Tui with his debut LP Composure last November, was determined to create his own Unplugged opus. “It’s like this iconic thing,” he says backstage. “There’s all these stars that have done it, so there’s already that layer. That’s the bar. This clearly means a lot to people. So how can I make this mean a lot to me?” Watching Maala take the intimate crowd on a ten-chapter epoch felt as career-defining as it undoubtedly will turn out to be down the track. Under a queue of low-hanging Edison lightbulbs, his reworking of tracks like ‘In The Air’, performed on a Steinway piano, and new, unreleased single ‘Crazy’, revealed an artist both assured and thrillingly uncomfortable in his own skin.

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FEATURE

“It was the first time I’ve ever broken down [backstage], it was fuckin’ dramatic. I was just so nervous – like I haven’t been for any other show.” – New Zealand singer-songwriter Maala

Backed by a string quintet who manipulated the concert chamber’s acoustics with precise mastery, there were moments when Sinton sat so far outside of his comfort zone that the whole proceedings began to feel gloriously vulnerable – for example, when Sinton covered ‘People Say’ by UK band Seramic, it was the first time he’d played acoustic guitar onstage in five years. Then later, as he sipped beer from a water bottle and paid homage to producer Josh Fountain by performing his band Leisure’s track ‘All Over You’ – a surprise for his longtime collaborator – Sinton could very well have been in his bedroom with his MIDI keyboard on his lap. “Given the status that Unplugged has,” he says from his dressing room, “it felt like I needed to tie up some things, or say some thank yous, or approach it as a pretty sentimental thing. I’ve written work and I’ve released stuff that I’ve kind of gone, ‘That’s safe’. It’s easy to do. Unplugged was always going to be out of my comfort zone but I really wanted to push it.” Such is the legendary status of the show that people

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have pored over, replayed and dissected various Unplugged episodes. Indeed, the obsessive attitude people have towards Unplugged might explain why Sinton refused to watch any of the previous episodes in advance of the performance. “I was too nervous because of all the names that had done it,” he laughs. “I was like, ‘If I look at these I’m going to hate myself after this’.” That isn’t to say Sinton didn’t meticulously plan out his setlist. He did, even enlisting award-winning composer and music director Godfrey de Grut to help with the arrangement.

tall with meaning – “Man, who knew an acoustic gig could get so rowdy,” he quipped onstage. And when he closed the set with ‘Touch’, the honest, raw sentiment at the heart of that unbeatable track was laid bare, with the trance only broken by the abrupt silence of his backing band. “Artists and audiences want something different, something unique and intimate,” says MTV’s Simon Bates after the show. “To hear artists perform in an intimate, stripped back environment was, and still is, totally unique. It’s all about the music and the fans. With Unplugged, there are no gimmicks, which is why it’s been dubbed with its iconic status.”

“I was terrified that people were going to be bored out of their skull; that they’d be like, ‘Oh okay, another fucken’ ballad, like ten in a row, you reckon…?’” Sinton laughs. “I was like, ‘If I’m going to play ten ballads, I’ll play ten ballads in different ways and broaden the experience’. I wanted to shape the set a little bit and share a different story that kind of felt like a narrative of sorts.”

Indeed, that iconic status was not lost on Sinton for a moment. “I knew that this was going to mean something,” he reflects backstage. “It just keeps kind of blowing my mind. It’s not something I’m striving for, but I keep being presented with these opportunities and it’s magic.” ■

When Sinton performed ‘Kind Of Love’, his co-write with ‘Wrecking Ball’ lyricist MoZella, the lyrics grew

What: MTV Unplugged with Maala When: Sunday August 6 at 8:30pm on MTV

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arts in focus FEATURE

“I want people to think about the way that we project ourselves to the world and what we conceal or what we choose to show.”

PACT Salon [Visual Arts] Do What You Want To Do By Meg Crawford

ACT, Sydney’s home of experimental and emerging theatre, is gearing up for the second in its series of Salon events, this time with actress, writer, activist and all-round inspiring gem Emily Dash at the helm.

PACT Salon 2 Skeletons & Self-Portraits. Photo by Carla Zimbler

Dash is a well-regarded Australian creative force known for her collaborations with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Sydney Opera House. She’s also a Tropfest shortlisted filmmaker responsible for a number of shorts including The Milky Pop Kid, a funny but telling work that she cowrote and co-starred in. The film explores the shitty but widespread phenomenon of able-bodied actors playing characters with disabilities, and screened at the Sydney Film Festival. For PACT Salon 2, Dash has pulled together a four-hour mini-festival featuring a range of female artists who specialise in works that explore our collective sense of self and the clash of our differing perceptions. The program also draws to the fore oft-ignored voices, and will feature older artists and those with disabilities (Dash herself has cerebral palsy) and mental illness. This is not Dash’s first dance with PACT either. Her initial involvement with the outfit was through its creative program for emerging artists, a think tank designed to develop art and give young creatives a springboard to reap the opportunities of a sometimes thebrag.com

overcrowded industry. Off the back of that, Dash was invited back this year to curate Salon 2 and was given free rein over the program. Immediately, Dash was drawn to the idea of stacking Salon 2’s deck with women whose art immediately and memorably shows off their considerable creative strengths. “The reason that I wanted to do that was because, as a female artist, it occurred to me that a lot of the time our perceptions of ourselves differ from the way that other people see us,” Dash says. Furthermore, Dash wants everyone attending to get in on the act, and the Salon will not just be a minifestival but also a masquerade, with all attendees encouraged to either bring a mask or whip one up on the night. “I want people to think about the way that we project ourselves to the world and what we conceal or what we choose to show,” Dash notes.

perform a dramatic monologue about society and its treatment of women; Kay Armstrong, who’s organised a movement piece called The Last Half based on the concept of being an older woman in the industry; and Lorraine MacLarty, who will exhibit a series of photos that all capture the moment when a secret is revealed. Louise Kate Anderson’s piece is shaping up to be another high point. Anderson, an impassioned disability activist and experimental artist, is setting herself up at the centre of an interactive installation. “Basically, she’s inviting people into her artist’s studio and then inviting the audience to ask her whatever questions they want, no matter how personal, with the aim of breaking down stigmas around invisible disabilities and mental health,” Dash says.

“It’s quite an eclectic array of artists I think,” Dash says. “It’s a multi-artform exhibition, so there’s lots of different ways that we’ll be exploring the theme of skeletons and self-portraits. Each of the artists has a different level of experience too, so there’s diversity there.”

Dash has worked with the majority of these artists previously. “When I was asked to curate a PACT Salon, I was told that I had a slot of four hours to fill, and what was interesting was that even before I thought of the theme, these were the artists who popped into my head. I knew that they’d all work well in the space and I built the theme around that and they’ve responded to it: it’s been a back and forth art development.”

Some of the standout creatives included in the lineup are 18-yearold Brianna Harris, who’s set to

Alongside this pantheon of creatives, Sydneysider Jessica Wiel will also be emceeing

“For me, as a person who very much enjoyed the arts, the problem was that I wasn’t seeing myself at all in the arts and didn’t see a future for myself there. That was devastating because I’ve always been a creative person.” and performing live, providing a soundtrack for the evening’s events. In this way, the night won’t just be a showcase of fantastic, timely art – it will be a fully-formed, multi-faceted experience. And that’s not even to mention the inclusion of Dash’s shorts. The touching dramatic films screened will examine the misrepresentation of people with disabilities in the media, especially in relation to the issue of sexuality and discrimination, and will surely prove eye-opening for those heading along. “People with disabilities are underrepresented in mainstream media, whether that’s film, TV or theatre – and often when they [are shown], it’s by people who are not disabled and haven’t properly engaged with the disability community,” Dash explains.

“What results is an inaccurate representation at best or a negative and damaging one at worst. “For me, as a person who very much enjoyed the arts, the problem was that I wasn’t seeing myself at all in the arts and didn’t see a future for myself there. That was devastating because I’ve always been a creative person. I’ve been writing since I was about 12, but I just didn’t think it was possible for me to have a future in that way.” She laughs, happily. “Luckily, I went and did it anyway and I’ve been supported along the way, but there’s a long way to go in terms of adequate representation. Things are changing [and] I’m happy to be part of that.” What: PACT Salon #2 Where: PACT Centre For Emerging Artists When: Saturday July 29

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review

arts ■ Film

Ali’s Wedding proves that diversity strengthens our storytelling By David Molloy

n a decade when Australian film is suffering under the sheer weight of so many uninspired, dry suburban dramas, what a refreshing change a film like Ali’s Wedding can be. It’s not the year’s best romantic comedy, but it’s certainly the most unique story to emerge from the suburbs in far too long.

Ali (Osamah Sami) feels the pressure of living up to his father’s image, as Cleric Mahdi (Don Hany) is the most respected man in their community. When he fails his medical exam, he tells one little white lie to impress his father, his mosque and Dianne (Helana Sawires), the girl of his dreams – but the lie quickly spirals out of his control. Those who haven’t spent much time in Auburn may not be familiar with the Australian Muslim community (save from their occasional vilification in

Murdoch’s rags). Lead actor Sami, who also wrote the picture based on his own life, brings the entire social network to brilliant life, with familiar archetypal figures emerging that never stray into total cliché. Ali’s tale is one of classic struggles – the idealism of the young versus the traditions of the old, the need to chase one’s happiness, and the pressures of conforming to your community’s standards – realised in cheery fashion. It’s a surprisingly complex story, and not just because of the web of lies that Ali spins to try and be happy. There are a dizzying array of agendas and alliances at play, all atop traditions that even one versed in Islam would struggle to comprehend: one nail-biting sequence sees Ali trying to bodge a tea ceremony to avoid being cast into an arranged marriage. It’s also especially moving as the relationships between Ali, his

betrothed Yomna (Maha Wilson), Dianne and their respective parents come into conflict. The Iraqis (Ali’s family) are mistrustful of the Lebanese (Dianne’s family), and the mosque is the site of subtle power struggles. The lengths these parents will go to to see tradition followed – all with love for their children – are startling, and flashbacks to early childhood in Iran even more so.

On genre terms, Ali’s Wedding is a solid romantic comedy, and makes an impressive effort to foreground the difficulties faced by young Muslim women in Australia. Ali’s bogan brother Moe Green (Khaled Khalafalla) and boofhead mate Wazza (Ryan Corr) enrich the world of the film, and Mahdi’s painfully awkward musical about the late Saddam Hussein is made

more hilarious by the fact that it actually happened. Guaranteed, you’ve never seen a rom-com like this before. And few things make your neighbours more endearing than learning to laugh along with them. Ali’s Wedding opens in cinemas on Thursday August 31.

“Few things make your neighbours more endearing than learning to laugh along with them.”

reviews

albums

ALBUM OF THE WEEK LINCOLN LE FEVRE & THE INSIDERS Come Undone Poison City Records

“I should warn you I’m not built to last,” croons Lincoln Le Fevre on the opening few bars of his third studio album, and it’s immediately clear the Tasmanian (via Melbourne) singer-songwriter has gone dark on his new album Come Undone. Returned to the saddle after an album’s break, le Fevre’s backing band The Insiders provide an

instant tonal shift, with some of the folk elements being stripped away and replaced by pure rock‘n’roll. Sure, there’s a few extra guitar solos thrown in, but there’s still plenty of room for the songwriting to shine through. And make no mistake: it’s le Fevre’s songwriting that shines brightest on this album. His natural ability to pair heartbreak and defeat with a spark of optimism allows him to craft honest and captivating tales at every turn. Songs like album standout ‘Newcastle’ are grim and raw, while lead single

‘Useless Shit’ is a fist-in-the-air cry of hope. Of course, it’s le Fevre’s voice that allows him to travel these peaks and valleys, and his Australian drawl finds power in its imperfections. The ability to go from tender balladry to almighty wail is fully realised across the album – le Fevre has got one hell of a set of pipes, that’s for sure. Come Undone is an honest and engaging release from one of Australia’s most consistently great songwriters. Spencer Scott

“The ability to go from tender balladry to almighty wail is fully realised across the album – le Fevre has got one hell of a set of pipes, that’s for sure.”

INDIE ALBUM OF THE WEEK MICHAEL CRAFTER Mince For The Recently Retired Independent

Michael Crafter have released more material in the last eight years than most bands have in a lifetime – and yet none of those releases have ever amounted to a full length. So when the Mince Lords of Sydneytown announced the release of their debut album, Mince For The Recently Retired, it was to an emphatic, emphysemic wheeze from crusties nationwide. Michael Crafter themselves explain the record’s themes best, saying the work explores “the everyday struggles of a wokked heshlord run outta pingers at a Blackwire show, smashing lo-fi 28 :: BRAG :: 721 :: 26:07:17

“Mince For The Recently Retired is a double-edged sword, full of hilarious songs that take aim at counterculture icons in a Frenzal Rhomb style piss-take.” grind tapes til 4am.” It’s this selfaware savagery that makes this band fuck-loads of fun on record, as well as in the flesh. Mince For The Recently Retired is a double-edged sword, full of hilarious songs that take aim at counter-culture icons in a

Frenzal Rhomb style piss-take, coupled with 18 minutes of unrelenting, blasting grind. Few are spared, including the band themselves. Any of those searching for deeper meaning or groundbreaking musicality will walk away emptyhanded. Michael Crafter aren’t reinventing the wheel, and nor are they concerned with fl avourof-the-month political opinions. What you will fi nd on the record is short, fast and abrasive bursts of grind with just enough breathing space to stop the thing from becoming a frenetic mess. After all, there’s nothing better than a steady beat to crowd kill your friends to. Aaron Streatfeild

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FOOD + DRINK

REVIEW

Hacienda CIRCULAR QUAY

BY JESSICA WESTCOTT

PRICE PER MAIN:

$: $0-10 $$: $10-20 $$$: $20-35 $$$$: $35-50 $$$$$: $50+

inding a nice spot to relax in Circular Quay might seem baffling to the first-timer – the place is constantly swarming with seas of tourists and opera-goers. But quiet corners do exist, and the trick is to look up. If you’re in the market for a drink with a view, you’d be hard pressed to find a more stunning location than the third floor of the Pullman Quay hotel. Hacienda is the newest offering from the Pullman group, with a stunning, Cuban plantation-inspired interior designed by Applejack Hospitality. The decor is all pastels and florals, with an enormous feature topiary shaped in a circle adorning the furthest wall. Wall-to-floor glass lets in so much natural light that very few artifical light fittings are actually needed, and the sun gets almost uncomfortable levels in the later parts of the day. The glass panels can be pulled back for events and give off a terrace-like feel. Upon arrival we are greeted with a white paper bag of prawn crackers. It’s... confusing. As unappealing in their presentation as they are in their taste, the only purpose

of the crackers (I assume) is to tide us over until the wait staff take our drinks order – which, as this takes around 20 minutes, is more delayed than necessary. As this is a day-night bar, cocktails are clearly the venue’s magnum opus, and we try a few which are exceptional. With drinks costing around $20 a pop, the menu exhibits an intriguing amount of range – although things are pretty rum-heavy. The flame-thrown Pina Princessa ($21) features Plantation pineapple rum, mezcal, apricot brandy, and ginger beer and is wonderfully sweet and drinkable. We also try the Monk’s Secret To Happiness ($21) – a nod to Dom Bénédictine. It’s tart, and it’s fruity, and it’s just right. We are also brought a selection from the bar food menu, and unfortunately no full meals are available – just tapasstyle bites. While the spiced lamb riblets are really quite more-ish, the chorizo balls feel heavy and over-flavoured, though are saved somewhat by a fruity tomato relish. An enormous plate of corn chips and dips fills out the rest of our meal. Ultimately the food and drink is fine, but for the price it would have been nice to see more thought put into the menu, which is chock-full of fried goods and very light on vegetarian options. A few lighter, fresh dishes wouldn’t go astray.

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“

Ultimately the food and drink is fine, but for the price it would have been nice to see more thought put into the menu, which is chock-full of fried goods and very light on vegetarian options.”

Nonetheless, we are most let down by the service. Our waitress is kind and helpful but the bartender is snobbish and rude. Over the course of the visit we feel like we have to ask for assistance at every turn, which takes away from the “temporary oasis” we would have liked to experience instead. The place might want to give off a vibe of rustic luxury, but unfortunately the overriding feeling one gets is of awkwardness and arrogance. Nevertheless, on the strengths of a few of its drinks alone, Hacienda does have a lot of potential to be a Circular Quay stalwart to rival the Opera Bar down the Quay. Where: 61 Macquarie Street When: Monday - Friday, 12 till late

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out & about Queer(ish) matters with Arca Bayburt

’m well aware that biphobia is alive and kicking in the queer world as much as it is the straight world. Bisexual folk just can’t seem to catch a break. They’re viewed as sluts, not to mention as indecisive, greedy, immoral and confused: y’know, the same stuff most queer people get called by heteros. That’s why it’s all the more disappointing when homosexuals often use that same language and that same aggressive policing of sexuality against bisexuals. It’s a truly unforgiving position to be in if you happen to be bisexual – although it seems men of that persuasion are often marked as definitely, 100 per cent gay and women as definitely, 100 per cent doing it for attention. A woman can be bisexual, or rather, can have, in the eyes of judgemental morons, meaningless dalliances with other women and remain “straight”.

much so that a man kissing another man is evidently more serious and less likely to be attributed to attention seeking or experimentation: it’s not titillating, it’s just fucking gay. It’s with this attitude then, I suppose, that we collectively assume that a bisexual man is something that can’t really exist. He’s either really gay and in denial, or he’s really gay and in denial.

“A MAN KISSING ANOTHER MAN IS EVIDENTLY MORE SERIOUS AND LESS LIKELY TO BE ATTRIBUTED TO ATTENTION SEEKING OR EXPERIMENTATION: IT’S NOT TITILLATING, IT’S JUST FUCKING GAY.”

If a man even just kisses another man, it’s not enough that he may be bisexual, it’s not enough that he may just be doing it for no reason: the ultimate and immediate conclusion many people reach is that this man must be homosexual.

But bisexual men exist, and sexual fluidity is not something that is exclusive to women by any stretch, so it’s bizarre to me that this mythical treatment of bi men still persists despite all of our knowledge and progress.

The stigma attached to bisexuality, regardless of gender or expression of gender, still appears to be holding strong. Even if it’s acknowledged as a legitimate orientation, there’s still the risk of being accused of having “straight privilege” and therefore not being “queer enough” to have properly suffered the true queer experience – whatever the hell that means.

I guess it can be boiled down to what our society takes seriously in terms of sexual orientation. Women are far more likely to be “forgiven” for their sexual practices because sex without a penis is seen mostly as something that doesn’t count, or something that just isn’t very serious, or perhaps not even real.

Homophobia fucks us all, and there’s no need for us to turn on each other in the face of that. Telling somebody else that their identity is invalid based on some arbitrary level of suffering you’ve decided to ascribe to said identity isn’t going to make a lick of difference to the crap you’ve gone through in your life, so policing somebody else’s is essentially useless – and a dick move.

It’s this undercurrent of unsexy social mores that determines how people view bisexuals of any variety. A man’s sexuality is a serious, real thing – it counts. So

Your default reaction to somebody else’s personal identity should not be disbelief. After all, we’re talking about people, not unicorns.

this week…

he Red Bull Music Weekender returns to Sydney in September with another outstanding catalogue of artists and events to celebrate its second year. This week I’m taking its catalogue apart a little to give you an idea of what to expect and enjoy!

Indigenous reggae-rock legends No Fixed Address have reunited the original lineup and joined fellow Indigenous Australian outfit Coloured Stone, the two bands rekindling the powerful grooves and socially-conscious lyricism that catapulted them into the public consciousness in the 1980s. Redfern’s 107 Projects will host the iconic groups on Friday August 31 in what promises to be a very special, very spirited evening. Following Gigi Masin’s 2016 appearance at the inaugural Talk To The Sea, which found him nestled in the seaside scenery of Bradley’s Head with band Gaussian Curve, Japanese ambient producer Midori Takada will perform her minimal percussive journeys among the ruined fortifications of Sydney Harbour National Park’s Middle Head. The location adds a new layer of experience to these events, distinct of the nightclub or industrial surrounds we might normally expect: sounds entwine with the natural surroundings, and rhythms and frequencies develop uninterrupted and acoustically unconstrained. You might call it part-field recording. Talk To The Sea takes place on Friday September 1. Personal favourite Peven Everett brings his quartet to a secret open-air location on Saturday September 2. As far as this writer is concerned, Everett is without equal. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, has a stunning set of pipes and a fantastic ear for a sultry groove, and can roll up R&B, soul, house, hip hop and jazz into one special package. Expect a lot of love and sweat at this one as you shake up those jazzy bones. Local support will be provided by Melbourne mainstays J’Nett and CC:Disco and the extended house licks and riffs of The Posse. CC:Disco

Making (quite remarkably) his first visit to Australian shores is New York maestro DJ Tony Humphries. Aside from his famous Kiss-FM mixes of the ’80s and ’90s, which became crucial points of reference to thousands of listeners (and no doubt converted a fair few to Tony Humphries house music’s charms), it was his residency at New Jersey’s now-famed Zanzibar club that firmly etched the man into the annals of house music’s history. He’ll be sitting down with RBMA’s Lorna Clarkson for a chat on Saturday September 2 before heading down to Marrickville Bowling Club to headline Mad Racket that night!

THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST We’re all about US soul legends this week. The supremely talented and underrated Amp Fiddler, educated via his time on the road with George Clinton and co., has laid down some gorgeous keyboards riffs over house-influenced soul on his solo albums. He’s long been affiliated with the Motor City backbone of modern Detroit soul and house, having collaborated with Moodymann and Paul Randolph among other luminaries. Also, D’Angelo’s performance at Holland’s North Sea Jazz Festival warrants a special mention – it’s available on Youtube and represents a sparkling, triumphant return to form, with the singer-songwriter playing alongside one of the tightest modern bands ever assembled.

RECOMMENDED SATURDAY AUGUST 5 Vibe Positive Secret Location

Roland Tings

SATURDAY AUGUST 12 Fernandes, Beau Kirq, Joe Pol, Matt Format and more to be announced. Tickets are available now, and all proceeds are to be donated to the Russian LGBT Network. Also on Friday July 28, The Shift Club on Oxford Street is hosting Hellfire after a five week wait.

The event is set to feature a fabulously friendly fetish crowd, deviant DJs, perverted performances and prizes from Australia’s finest kinky product creators and suppliers. Dress code is and has always been no effort, no entry. Tickets are available only on the door.

Disco Delicious Tenth Birthday Freda’s

SATURDAY AUGUST 26

Oliver Dollar, Roland Tings, Phlegmatic Dogs Chinese Laundry Sven Weisemann The Bunk3r

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 2

Secret Open-Air Peven Everett w/ Quartet Location

Zanzibar Meets Mad Racket: Tony Humphries Marrickville Bowling Club

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CC:Disco photo by Ian Laidlaw

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Dance and Electronica with Alex Chetverikov

Mama Alto

On Friday July 28, Head over to Giant Dwarf in Redfern for QUEERSTORIES. There’s more to being queer than coming out and marriage. Listen to an unexpected tale or two from a diverse line up of stars and strangers. It’ll be hosted by Mon Schafter and will feature refugee advocate Tina Dixson, scientist Kaya Wilson, artist Guy James Whitworth, gender transcendent diva Mama Alto, comedian Tessa Waters and community leader Alex Jones. Tickets are available now. Also on Friday July 28, get down to the Bunk3r on Oxford Street for a fundraiser for queers in Chechnya, MINCE 4 FREEDOM, which has been organised to draw attention to the fact gay people are being thrown into illegal prisons and tortured in Chechnya. Featuring Ben Drayton, Kate Doherty, Dave

Off The Record Mama Alto photo by Alexis Desaulniers-Lea

Why Are Bisexual Men Treated Like Mythical Creatures?

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What we’ve been out to see...

21:07:17 :: Metro Theatre :: 624 George St Sydney 9550 3666

Japandroids’ Continuous Thunder Was Lost In The Distance At The Factory By David Molloy Considering what a bro-down the night would become, the choice to program Body Type as the openers could not have been more refreshing. Each member of the band has their own distinct style visually, vocally and musically, making their indie rock tracks excitingly complex. Imagine if members of The xx, Sonic Youth and Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head formed

a supergroup, anchored by tight post-punk drum fills. No doubt they’ll headline this venue in no time. Speaking of headlining, it was kind of a strange sight to see Canada’s beloved Japandroids on a raised stage. Sure, their reputation warranted the size of the venue, but having a metal barrier between the audience and the band cut the warmth and intimacy that characterised last year’s sweat-drenched hugfest at the Red Rattler and their sneaky Botany View Hotel set last week. In fact, the distinction between this gig and those that came before was palpable – by no means was it messy or regrettable, but it was nowhere near as heart-swellingly

emotional. The crowd were not drunkenly embracing, but rough; the sight of one young woman berating a pissed belligerent seemed bizarrely out of place during ‘Continuous Thunder’, a track that normally has people arm-in-arm. This dynamic changed the normally cheerful rapport of the duo, bringing a note of seriousness one doesn’t expect from Brian King or David Prowse. Tearing up his drum kit as usual, Prowse made stabs at banter, but the Factory’s muddy amps saw his efforts lost in translation. Still, they’re two of the best songwriters and performers you’ll ever have the pleasure of seeing live. Near To The Wild Heart Of Life has only grown

“Having a metal barrier between the audience and the band cut the warmth and intimacy that characterised last year’s sweatdrenched hugfest at the Red Rattler.” stronger as a live staple since its release, and the classics from their first release have lost none of their punch. The mammoth ‘Arc Of Bar’ (at least, mammoth

by Japandroids’ short-fast-loud standards) now strikes one as a bar-setting song for the boys; placed square in the middle of their set, it’s a strong indicator of where their sound may head as their music matures. It’s hard to imagine a Japandroids set that wouldn’t close out with ‘The House That Heaven Built’ – but somehow it seemed that night that we were in outside that house, looking in. Suffused with life and love though the gig was, it inspired nostalgia for the incredible night we shared before, rather than forming new untouchable memories. Japandroids were reviewed at the Factory Theatre on Friday 14 July.

PHOTOGRAPHER :: ASHLEY MAR

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live reviews & snaps

haim

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What weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been out to see...

lany

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20:07:17 :: Enmore Theatre :: 118-132 Enmore Rd Newtown 9550 3666

queens of the stone age

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22:07:17 :: Metro Theatre :: 624 George St Sydney 9550 3666

19:07:17 :: The Hordern Pavilion:: 1 Driver Ave, Moore Park 9921 5333 32 :: BRAG :: 721 :: 26:07:17

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Splendour In The Grass wowed punters for another excellent year By Emily Gibb Featuring glitter boobs, crisp yet freezing weather, reunions and huge guest appearances, the 2017 iteration of Australia’s favourite music shindig, Splendour In The Grass, has come and gone again. And blimey was the fest over and done for quickly – almost as quickly, in fact, as the version of ‘All My Friends’ headliners LCD Soundsystem smashed out on Sunday evening. With the Mix-Up Tent hosting homegrown talent on Thursday, the added evening of solid performances proved a treat for eager campers. GL, Sampa The Great and Mansionair all graced the stage, and if their set was anything to go by, Mansionair’s debut album is a release to anticipate. Much loved local artists played huge crowds on Friday, with Winston Surfshirt, Tash Sultana and Peking Duk all blowing punters away. Peking

Duk’s explosion of a show was an assault on the senses in the best possible sense, and even if the gang switched between live show and DJ set several times the pace wasn’t ruined for an instant. But between wavering sound levels, confetti and countless guests (Vera Blue, Nicole Miller and Safi a’s Ben Woolner all made an appearance), the real highlight was seeing the duo get behind their guitars for the first time in a live setting. While the Haim sisters skipped the theatrics, The XX’s refl ective and rotating staging thrust their set firmly into mesmerising territory. Romy Croft and Oliver Sim were almost unrecognisably confi dent up front, while the legendary Jamie Smith hung back on percussion, slinking behind the decks. Thrillingly, the British trio bumped up the tempo on classics like ‘Islands’ and ‘VCR’, ensuring old and new melded seamlessly together. The serendipitous inclusion of ‘Loud Places’ from Smith’s 2016 solo album was a standout, while the group’s latest single ‘On Hold’ provided another one of those famous, unforgettable Splendour moments to cap off their set. The great music kept coming thick and fast as a heaving

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and overjoyed crowd went nuts for Bag Raiders’ memetastic 2009 earworm ‘Shooting Stars’ early on day two. There were also cameos aplenty, as Airling were joined by Tom Iansek, Dune Rats by Phil Jamieson and Bad//Dreems by Robert Forster, with the latter in particular proving a collision of two of Aussie music’s most beloved acts. But none of those guest appearances could have prepared fans for what Bernard Fanning had in store, and the icon gifted Splendour with the ultimate surprise in the form of a Powderfi nger reunion. Fanning hardly needed to open his mouth for ‘(Baby, I’ve Got You) On My Mind’ and ‘These Days’, as a massive crowd sing-along roared over the hill and carried the song away from him. By the time the evening chill hit, it was hard to be torn away from the Amphitheatre as Future Islands, Royal Blood and Queens Of The Stone Age all delivered an evening of ferocious, dynamic and hip-shaking rock. Although the three acts enthralled the masses equally, pumping out truly visceral sets, QOTSA’s Josh Homme proved why he has so few contemporary rivals, and right from the

“Fanning hardly needed to open his mouth for ‘(Baby, I’ve Got You) On My Mind’ and ‘These Days’, as a massive crowd sing-along roared over the hill.” moment he threw his cane into the crowd on arrival, he revealed himself to be one of Splendour’s standout performers. All types of dance set the tone for day three as Moonbase defrosted revellers early on with a booming set of fl oor fi llers, including ‘It Don’t Matter’ and a live version of ‘Oblivion’ performed with the help of Ecca Vandal. Then it was time for Client Liaison, who mirrored Peking Duk’s day one blockbuster with their signature brand of Australian cool. From their deliciously corny choreography to the jawdropping appearance of queen Tina Arena and her fl awless vocals on ‘Foreign Affair’, the

band proved their worth even to their detractors. Between the trees and over at the GW McLennan tent was a lineup worthy of the main stage as Pond, Meg Mac and King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard all played to overwhelming crowds, each of them giving theatrics-free, stellar performances as their new and old tracks were met with equal and justifi ed amounts of love. As the frosty air and fog set in one last time, Bonobo conjured a toasty jungle rave with his catalogue of sublime – and mostly instrumental – tracks to close the Mix-Up Tent, while LCD Soundsystem saw the weekend out to the delight of an adoring audience. It was epic, to say the least. As a digital clock counted down the minutes onstage during ‘All My Friends’, frontman James Murphy playfully kicked it over, basking in the moment alongside the 30,000 odd punters who had been given a weekend that will be hard for them to forget. Splendour In The Grass was reviewed at North Byron Parklands, Friday July 21 – Sunday July 23

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

ART BY KEIREN JOLLY BRAG :: 721 :: 26:07:17 :: 33

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

pick of the week

RL Grime

Jack Ladder And The Dreamlanders

RL Grime + Tkay Maidza

Hordern Pavilion, Moore Park. Friday July 28. 6:30pm. $98.40

SATURDAY JULY 29

Get on your dancing shoes you sexy little swine. The Hordern will shake with the sound of grime, with stellar support from the incomparable Tkay Maidza.

Oxford Art Factory

Jack Ladder And The Dreamlanders 8pm. $28.90 WEDNESDAY JULY 26 K.D. Lang ICC Theatre, Sydney. 8pm. $112 Tove Lo Metro Theatre, Sydney. 8pm. $59.90

THURSDAY JULY 27 Full Steam Ahead w/ The Henry Fjords + Art Vandelay + more Valve Bar, Ultimo. 7pm. $8 Georgia Fields + Phia + Elizabeth Hughes + Sarah Belkner Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $12

Walk Off The Earth Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 7:45pm. $85.25

FRIDAY JULY 28 America + Russell 34 :: BRAG :: 721 :: 26:07:17

Angelcorpse + Cauldron Black Ram + Laceration Mantra + The Plague Blad Faced Stag, Leichardt. 8:30pm. $45 Dom Diaz Queenie’s, Surry Hills. 8pm. FREE Jonval + Mel & Jade + The Henry Fjords The Hideaway Bar, Enmore. 7pm. FREE Josh Pyke Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 7:30pm. $53

SATURDAY JULY 29 Big Merino + Rogue Company Gasoline Pony, Marrickville. 7pm. $7 Floyd Baker And The Temple Dogs + Lapis Sky Lazybones Lounge, Marrickville. 8pm. $15

The Lockhearts + Flickertail + Hello Bones + The Ugly Kings Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 8pm. $10 Miles And Simone + Nic Cassey Golden Age Cinema, Surry Hills. 9pm. FREE Pete Murray Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $61.10 Pretend Eye + Stone Cold Fox Pete Murray

Wet Lips

Waywards, Newtown, Friday July 28. 8pm. Free.

Death Grips

Melbourne’s own unbeatable punk trio Wet Lips are heading Sydneyside and bringing their exceptional selftitled new album along with them, so head along for a chance to hear bangers like ‘Can’t Take It Anymore’ in the flesh.

Get get get get got got got got like all the damn dancefloor tickets did already. Sydney is so noided they had to move this set from the Metro. Let’s Ride.

Enmore Theatre, Newtown. Thursday August 2. 8pm. $49.50

Steve Hackett

Petersham Bowling Club, Petersham. 2pm. FREE Real Friends + Columbus + Harbours Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 8pm. $35.20

+ Alphawolf + Curse Death + Deadlights Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $25

SUNDAY AUGUST 5

The Red Rattlers Annandale Hotel, Annandale. 8:30pm. FREE

Foreday Riders Factory Floor, Marrickville. 7:30pm. $40

SUNDAY JULY 30 Garage Rock Show w/ Vacations + Space Carbonara Valve Bar, Ultimo. 5pm. $10

TUESDAY AUGUST 1

SATURDAY AUGUST 4

Syntax Error + A Blunt Modern + Fever Pitch Gasoline Pony, Marrickville. 4pm. $7

Train State Theatre, Sydney. 6pm. $99.90

Monatomic World Bar, Kings Cross. 9:45pm. FREE

FRIDAY AUGUST 3

Steve Hackett Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $149.90

MONDAY JULY 31 The Monday Jam The Basement, Circular Quay. 8:30pm. $6

Badgirl Garden w/ Alphamama + DJ Lou Lou + Janna Beth + many more Slyfox, Enmore. 9pm. $5

The Bravados Gasoline Pony, Marrickville. 7pm. $7 Thy Art Is Murder

Ocean Grove Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $20

MONDAY AUGUST 6 Bernie Hayes + Elmo & Pete V Gasoline Pony, Marrickville. 5pm. $7 Sunday Social w/ Helena Ellis + K-Time + Lavida + Melkior The Argyle, The Rocks. 9pm. FREE

For our full gig and club listings, head to thebrag.com/gig-guide. thebrag.com

Steve Hackett photo by by Cathy Poulton

Real Estate Metro Theatre, Sydney. 7:30pm. $56

Morris ICC Theatre, Sydney. 8pm. $99.90

Death Grips

Wet Lips

SAFIA