Brag#732 by The Brag Magazine

CHANGE THE DATE

SECRET SOUNDS, LIVE NATION, C3 PRESENTS & TRIPLE J INTRODUCE THE INAUGURAL MUSIC & ARTS FESTIVAL

JUSTICE • BECK • FUTURE • VANCE JOY • PHOENIX TASH SULTANA • YOUNG THUG • GRACE JONES GANG OF YOUTHS • THE AVALANCHES • DUNE RATS THE LIBERTINES • ALLDAY • THUNDERCAT • L D R U OH WONDER • CAR SEAT HEADREST • BAD//DREEMS THE HEAD AND THE HEART • OCEAN ALLEY WINSTON SURFSHIRT • THE STAVES • ALEX LAHEY MALLRAT • SIGRID • STELLA DONNELLY • ZIGGY RAMO

TICKETS AVAILABLE SYDNEYCITYLIMITS.COM INSTAGRAM @SYDNEYCITYLIMITS | TWITTER @SCLFESTIVAL | #SCL2018

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 3

in this issue what you’ll find inside…

6-8

Indigenous activist Gavin Stanbrook explains why he won’t be celebrating Invasion Day

There is nothing to celebrate about Invasion Day, writes Candy Royalle

26-29

Jeremy Neale

Cattle Decapitation

The terrible, intoxicating lie of Australian patriotism

Cloud Nothings

32-34

Lindy Morrison

Wolfenstein II

Julie Byrne

16-19

Paul Thomas Anderson

36-37

Sounds Like, The Defender

Primal Scream

38-39

Paramore

22-23

Big Thief

The Post, The End Of The F***ing World, Mary And The Witch’s Flower

Snaps

40-41

The Shape Of Water, Coco, Molly’s Game

Porches

Phantom Thread, All The Money

44-46

Gig guide

Out & About

Drawn Out

“I’m always trying to help create a unique and coherent world that the player can indulge him or herself in.” (14)

16-19

22-23

xxx Big Thief photo by Shervin Lainez

The Frontline

10-13

“I wouldn’t call myself an artist, and movies about artists are tricky – moments of inspiration are usually pretty corny.” (16-19)

the frontline with Tyler Jenke, Bianca Davino, Nathan Jolly and Lars Brandle ISSUE 732: Wednesday January 24, 2017 EDITOR: Joseph Earp joseph.earp@seventhstreet.media PRINT EDITOR: Belinda Quinn NEWS: Nathan Jolly, Tyler Jenke, Bianca Davino, Lars Brandle ART DIRECTOR: Sarah Bryant PHOTOGRAPHER: Ashley Mar COVER ARTWORK: Blak Douglas ADVERTISING: Josh Burrows - 0411 025 674 josh.burrows@seventhstreet.media

SOME CHEESY NEWS Last year, it was announced that Domino’s was testing the waters to see if there was a demand for vegan cheese on their pizzas. Well, it seems as though the test was worthwhile, with the pizza giant announcing that they’re launching vegan cheese options this week. Back in November, Domino’s took to Facebook to ask customers whether or not they would be keen on the introduction of vegan cheese to their pizzas, although at the time, there was no news of concrete

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

ALL THE SHARK THINGS

GIG GUIDE COORDINATOR: Belinda Quinn - gigguide@seventhstreet.media REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS: Arca Bayburt, Lars Brandle, Tanja Brinks Toubro, Alex Chetverikov, Max Jacobson, Emily Gibb, Emily Meller, Adam Norris, Holly Pereira, Daniel Prior, Natalie Rogers, Erin Rooney, Anna Rose, Spencer Scott, Natalie Salvo, Aaron Streatfeild, Augustus Welby, Zanda Wilson, 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.

Benjamin Booker

BEARING WITNESS 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) Finished 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 jessica.milinovic@seventhstreet.media PRINTED BY SPOTPRESS: spotpress.com.au 24 – 26 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville NSW 2204 like us:

THE BRAG

4 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

The lineup for the 2018 Byron Bay Bluesfest has proven that Australians are one of the luckiest countries in the world when it comes to live music. Now, as more and more artists find themselves added to the alreadystacked lineup, these same acts continue to announce sideshows for their time in Australia, with blues guitarist Benjamin Booker being the latest to add his name to that evergrowing list. Excitingly, Booker is also set to play a sideshow in Sydney while in the country. With his sound being described as being a mix of soul, blues, boogie, garage rock, and good ol’ fashioned rock and roll, Booker is a one man party-starter who never fails to put on an amazing show. Booker plays the Factory Theatre on Thursday March 29.

Following a stellar year in 2017 which saw Amy Shark almost top the Hottest 100, win two of the six ARIAs she was nominated for, and absolutely dominate the live music scene, you could be forgiven for assuming she might want to take some time off for a change. Instead, the Gold Coast musician has been hard at work in the studio with punk royalty. Taking to Instagram, Amy Shark shared an image of herself with Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus, and soon after she took announced via Twitter that she’s making music with him. This news comes after former Blink-182 member Tom DeLonge professed his admiration for Shark’s work. We’re not sure what’s in the water over in California, but whatever it is seems to result in some of the punk world’s finest musicians discovering a love for our own Aussie acts.

PSYCHIN’ OUT Championing all things fuzzed out, hazy and delayed, Psych Fest has gained a reputation as one of the nations most enthralling boutique music festivals. After a successful 2017, they’ve announced this year’s slew of international and local favourites set to take on Sydney’s Manning Bar on Saturday February 24 and Melbourne’s The Tote on Saturday March 3. Topping off the roster of incredible acts will be the USA’s Flavor Crystals and Italy’s New Candy’s who’ll be playing in Australia for the very first time. With the acclaim of acts like King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Tame Impala, there’s no hiding Australia has a burgeoning thirst and talent for delay-drenched tunes and fuzzed-out tracks. Local acts kicking things off will include Moaning Lisa, Glitoris, Sports Bra and many more.

Powderfinger

IN A TOUGH SPOT Many artists have opposed to being featured on Cory Bernardi’s laughable AC100 playlist, an Australia Day alternative to the Hottest 100 after triple j dared to listen to growing concern that hosting a celebration on a government-funded radio station, on a day that many Australian citizens deem a day of mourning and tragedy, isn’t a good idea. Among those who have spoken out are Powderfinger, Colin Hay, Barnesy, and Darren Hayes (who threatened legal action), and they’ve made it clear they do not endorse the Australian Conservative Party or their stance on anything. Now, even Spotify, the delivery system for the crackin’ Australian Day partystarter, want to make it clear they have no association with such nonsense: “Spotify has actively supported marriage, gender, and Indigenous equality initiatives over the last five years, and believes in a diverse and multicultural Australia.”

HUNGRY FOR MORE Since Carrie Brownstein has wrapped shooting on her hilarious hit series Portlandia, she is looking to her earlier life for her next television project. Hollywood Reporter have announced that Brownstein has signed to Hulu for a series based on her memoir Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl. The show is said to be, “loosely inspired by her memoir as well as her experiences as a young musician growing up in the Pacific Northwest during the underground feminist punk-rock movement in the 1990s.” So far, no release date has been set, however, Portlandia‘s final season has commenced screening in America via IFC. thebrag.com

xxx

@TheBrag

plans for the addition. As we noted back then, considering that Finland introduced a vegan burger at McDonald’s despite only two per cent of their population naming themselves as vegetarian and 0.5 per cent as vegan, it seemed rather rather likely that Australia’s 11 per cent population of vegetarians and vegans would be in for some good news. Now, Domino’s have announced that vegan cheese is set to be introduced as a limited item, but customer demand will be used to determine whether it becomes a permanent fixture on the menu.

Team Hurricane

Feb 15 - Mar 1 2018

ON SALE NOW queerscreen.org.au

SWING !T

SUN 18 FEB 5:00PM

SUN 18 FEB 7:00PM & THU 22 FEB 8:30PM

Winner of the most innovative film award at the Venice International Film Festival, Team Hurricane is an immersive, experimental look at several young girls’ friendship over one summer.

In A Moment in the Reeds, director Mikko Makela captures the splendour of a Finnish midsummer and the rush of an intense romance in one of the most sexually charged films of the festival.

Susanne Bartsch: On Top

Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution

TUES 20 FEB 7:00PM

TUES 27 FEB 8:30PM

Picking up where Warhol left off, Susanne Bartsch: On Top tells the story behind the enduring icon of the New York alt-art party scene. Join us for a post screening event curated by DJ Sveta!

Take a roller coaster ride with some sexy butch-dykes and gay skinheads in Queercore. This empowering trip through queer counterculture reminds us we can all create our own reality and find our tribe.

Black Divaz

The Substitute

WED 28 FEB 6:30PM

WED 28 FEB 7:00PM

Black Divaz goes behind the glitz, glamour and hot glue guns of the inaugural Miss First Nation pageant. Over five steamy days contestants will battle it out in fierce challenges that will see each contestant stretch more than just their wardrobe choices.

From Teddy Award winning Taiwanese director Zero Chou comes The Substitute, a fun take on modern romance, that sees charismatic internet celebrity Nicole, and shy Lu, battle it out on the judo mat for the win and possibly more?

Mor e!

SEYMOUR CENTRE PRESENTS

MUSIC This way

COURT YARD SESSIONS

SING IT

Mardi Gras Film Festival

A Moment in the Reeds

19 JAN JA – 23 MAR 2018 FR FRIDAY 6 – 9PM

FREVEE LI IC MUS

MUSIC makers

Cheers! seymourcentre.com thebrag.com

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 5

COVER STORY

Indigenous activist Gavin Stanbrook from Gumbaynggirr country on the mid-north coast of NSW investigates the troubled history of January 26

anuary 26 is, and always has been, Invasion Day. It marks the day the British colonised this country and brought with them the exploitative and oppressive practices that made the British Empire so barbaric, yet so profitable. It’s an annual punch in the face for Aboriginal people, a day spent listening to television and talkback radio either ignore the truth about this invasion, or attempt to rewrite Australia’s history entirely. We are pissed off – and we are not alone. As of 2017, 61 per cent of young people viewed the celebrations negatively, expressed most clearly in triple j’s decision to move the Hottest 100 to the fourth weekend in January. Even more positive is the significant turnout at the annual Invasion Day rallies across the country, most notably Melbourne and Sydney. The fact that people are willing to come out and protest on Invasion Day rather than get pissed with mates is important, and the pathetic attempts by Triple M to reinstate the celebration of invasion with its Ozzest 100 cannot change that. It’s important that the campaign to change the date has forced people to question the narrative of “Australia Day” and in doing so has galvanised widespread support for Aboriginal people, strengthening solidarity between us and our non-Aboriginal counterparts.

There’s nothing to celebrate The nationalism that underpins “Australia Day” assumes there’s something to celebrate about this country. I don’t agree. Nationalism is a cancer on our society. It tells us that although there may be deep inequalities, like the fact that worker’s wages have either stagnated or gone backwards over the past three decades, or that most workers would have paid more income tax than some of the most profitable business in Australia, at the end of the day we are all “Aussies” and we all share a collective interest in the prosperity of this nation. It attempts to cover up the reality of how deep the division is between the “haves” and “have nots”. Last year once again saw profit rates increase

for big business. At the same time, average living standards declined by the greatest amount since the recession of the early 1990s. The idea that a worker like myself has anything in common with Malcolm Turnbull or the CEOs of big business is ludicrous. So rather than change the date, I am against any day being allocated to celebrate the foundation of Australia. There’s nothing to celebrate, and some honest research into the past 230 years only makes this clearer. In the early days, the drive for profit through the establishment of the colony’s pastoral industry defined the relationship between Aboriginal people and the colonisers. From very early on, the invaders labelled my people an inferior race that could not compete with white civilisation and were doomed to extinction. This was the precursor to outright genocide, massacres such as Myall Creek and Appin that occurred up and down the east coast, and further inland as the colonies expanded. This is not an anomaly, and the reality of colonisation in Australia was very similar to colonialism more generally across the globe: an attempt to dispossess and syphon profit out of the colonised people to the benefit of the occupying power and their rich elite. What followed were over two centuries of oppressive laws and practices imposed on my people by state and federal governments. The Half Caste Acts of Victoria and Western Australia and the Aborigines Protection Act in the late 1800s dictated the entire lives of Aboriginal people, from who they could marry and associate with, where they could work, what they were paid with, to the denial of democratic rights and freedom of movement. The land grab also led to the establishment of Aboriginal reserves or “missions” across the country. These missions still exist. I’ve lived on one and let me tell you, the only difference between now and when they were first established years ago is that they now have proper toilets. The government literally rounded up hundreds

“The Australian government relishes the opportunity to have us biting at each other’s throats while the real leaners, the rich, slash our wages and make off with huge tax breaks.” 6 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

thebrag.com

COVER STORY

WHY I WON’T BE CELEBRATING INVASION DAY “From very early on, the invaders labelled my people an inferior race that could not compete with white civilisation and were doomed to extinction.” of thousands of Aboriginal people, dragged them from their land, and placed them on sites on the outskirts of towns that would be managed by the Catholic Church – or in some cases, the local police. The rich pastoral investors needed the land and the state was going to do what needed to be done to meet their needs. State repression towards Aboriginal people morphed but only escalated in the 20th century – as if the first 100 years of invasion weren’t bad enough. The policy for the newly federated government had shifted from open genocide to assimilation, in the hopes that we would die out, and that those children born with a lighter complexion could be “saved” and “reintegrated” into white society. This led to a ramping up of the Stolen Generations, the project of stealing Aboriginal children from their families which destroyed the lives of countless Aboriginal families. The land grab continued, this time for the interests of the mining sector. It was the same strata of society, the rich and their servants in parliament, who led the charge. More recently we’ve had the Howard governments’ “Northern Territory Intervention”. They will say they sent the military into NT Aboriginal communities because they cared about the children. I’m calling BS on that. After all, they didn’t care when Elijah Doughty was killed in Kalgoorlie in 2016: instead they called him a young criminal, implying he deserved to die. They didn’t care about Colleen Walker, Evelyn Greenup or Clinton Speedy-Duroux, the three Aboriginal children murdered in my home town of Bowraville in 1990/1991. Instead they blamed the families, or in the case of my Aunty Muriel (Colleen’s mother), asked her if she was even Colleen’s mother, and suggested that Colleen had just “gone walkabout”.

But our story is not one of passive acceptance to state repression, because like all oppressed people, there is only so far you can push us before we resist, and my people have an impressive history of doing exactly that. The idea of an “Australia Day” where we supposedly celebrate what unites us, regardless of the date it’s held on, can’t paper over these struggles which reveal deep divides built into Australian capitalism. First off, the Frontier Wars tell the inspiring history of Aboriginal struggle. From Pemulwuy and the Battle for Parramatta and Windradyne of the Wiradjuri, to Tullamareena, a Wurundjeri man who burnt down the first ever prison built in Melbourne after being imprisoned with his family for taking cattle from Wurundjeri land “owned” by a British banker. The outbreak of resistance started early, with skirmishes and guerrilla warfare waging well into the mid 1800s. As Aboriginal people became more integrated into mainstream society, via a process of struggle and the entering into the workforce of a large section of the urban Aboriginal population, so too did we see the rise of Aboriginal working class militants who become leaders of our struggle. All of our heroes deserve a mention. “Australia Day” could aptly be called “Amnesia Day” for the way in which our struggles have been ignored or written out of history altogether. But, just to name a few, we should remember those who resisted invasion and its consequences. Fighters like Mumaring (also known as Daisy Bindi), a leader of the 1946 Pilbara strike, who fought for better wages and conditions for Aboriginal people working on pastoral stations in the Pilbara. The 1966 fight for better wages and conditions at Wave Hill station in the NT, led by Gurindji lore man Vincent Lingiari, very quickly developed into the struggle for land rights. Arthur Murray, a leader of the campaign for justice for Aboriginal deaths in custody after his son Eddie was murdered in the Wee Waa lockup,

▲

That we’ve had a Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody in 1991 with very limited implementation of its recommendations, and a spike in deaths in custody over the past two years, tells you something about the way in which the Australian government relates to Aboriginal people.

Resistance

“There’s nothing to celebrate, and some honest research into the past 230 years only makes this clearer.” thebrag.com

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 7

COVER STORY

The front cover of this issue, exclusively commissioned for the BRAG, is a painting by Blak Douglas, AKA Adam Hill, named Deride And Concur. Synthetic polymer on canvas, it is one of a series of images Hill has painted that reappropriate familiar images - in this case, the stick figures on bathroom doors - and use them to make a striking point about colonialism and patriotism. For more information on Hill’s work, head to blakdouglas.com.au.

“Nationalism is a cancer on our society.” ▲

was a working class militant who established the Cotton Chippers Union for seasonal Aboriginal (and non-Aboriginal) workers in Wee Waa in 1973. Arthur led an indefinite strike of 500 cotton chippers in Wee Waa against appalling working conditions, underpayment by the boss and the terrible living conditions provided to the Aboriginal community at the time.

We are still fighting The struggle for Aboriginal rights continues today. In 2016 gains were made from the campaign led by Aunty Jenny Munro and other Aboriginal activists to demand Aboriginal housing on “The Block” in Redfern. Only a year earlier, a mass campaign hit the streets in response to the Abbott Governments’ plans to forcibly close Aboriginal Communities in SA and WA, drawing solidarity from broad sections of society. The campaign to bring justice to Black Deaths in Custody and against police brutality continues in the face of indifference from state and federal governments. Many of these struggles are still underway because the underlying

causes of Aboriginal oppression have not fundamentally been resolved. And so while it is positive that there is a movement to change the date, the history of this country’s relationship with Aboriginal people is nothing to celebrate on any day of the year. But nor is the history of exploitation of workers, or attacks on unions; the racism, sexism, and homophobia that is built into Australia. The government uses every opportunity to fan the flames of racism and other divisions. Whether it’s “Sudanese Gangs” in Victoria, the “threat” of refugees somehow languishing on the dole and stealing our jobs at the same time, or a homophobic denial of equal marriage rights for over a decade, the Australian government relishes the opportunity to have us biting at each other’s throats while the real “leaners” – the rich – slash our wages and make off with huge tax breaks. An anti-racist movement for Aboriginal rights can cut against such attempts to divide us. So I will not be celebrating on Invasion day. I’ll be protesting, and you should too. Join us on January 26 for Invasion Day 2018 at The Block, Redfern, 10am. ■

“Like all oppressed people, there is only so far you can push us before we resist.” 8 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

thebrag.com

FEATURE

WHY I WON’T CELEBRATE GENOCIDE

By Candy Royalle, Sydney-based poet

“I HAVE CLEAR MEMORIES OF HEARING MY PARENTS BEING CALLED ‘FUCKING WOGS’ BY WHITE NEIGHBOURS, LISTENING TO THEIR STORIES OF DISCRIMINATION IN THE WORKPLACE AND THE SUPPOSEDLY ‘LIGHTHEARTED’ RACIST JOKES WE’VE ALL HAD TO ENDURE OVER THE YEARS.”

“THE SYSTEMICALLY RACIST POLICIES OF EACH SUCCESSIVE WHITE GOVERNMENT HAS ENSURED THAT THE OPPRESSION OF INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS HAS CONTINUED UNABATED.”

hen my father fled the civil war in Lebanon, he decided on Australia because he believed it to be a land of opportunity – and he made it that. He and my mother worked multiple jobs, sacrificing much so that my brother and I were able to reap the benefits. People often talk about what Australia gives to immigrants, but we rarely hear about the positive impact immigrants have on Australia – their economical, physical and emotional contribution to a nation that without immigrants would flounder. Rarely do we hear the stories of racism either, but I have clear memories of hearing my parents being called “fucking wogs” by white neighbours, listening to their stories of discrimination in the workplace and the supposedly “lighthearted” racist jokes we’ve all had to endure over the years.

Photo top by Kate Ausburn / Flickr, Photo bottom by David Jackmanson / Flickr

What my father didn’t know, and couldn’t guess, was that he had fled a country occupied multiple times, only to put down roots in another occupied nation: one born of genocide in which the systemic oppression of First Nations People is still rife. Such language is often shied away from here in the great land of the Australian Dream, where one need only be a Great Aussie Battler in order to be successful; there’s nothing that a bit of hard yakker can’t achieve. And my parents are proof of that – they came from abject poverty and managed to work their way up to middle class. As a first generation Australian, I am reaping the benefits of living in a country that has offered me many opportunities, granted in part to my parent’s hard work – but at what cost? Off whose backs am I gaining these opportunities? How egalitarian is Australia actually? Each Invasion Day for the last decade, I have publicly acknowledged the suffering and resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and have been attacked for it. January 26 is fraught with tension; those who wish to change the date go up against those whose patriotism seems to blind them to the incredible insensitivity of celebrating the day that marks the beginning of a massacre so extreme that it’s not hyperbolic to call it a holocaust. During the Frontier Wars white men invaded Australia, bringing diseases that resulted in thousands of Aboriginal deaths. According to Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine, the Indigenous population dropped from 250,000 to 60,000 by 1920 (figures vary from source to source, which is likely due to the destruction of records). This change in demographic is largely a result of planned massacres of entire tribes, where bodies were dumped in mass graves.

thebrag.com

“THIS RECENT HISTORY IS STILL VERY REAL AND RAW FOR MANY INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS WITH INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA.” This recent history is still very real and raw for many Indigenous Australians with intergenerational trauma, further exacerbated by policies that saw their culture all but decimated. Where once over 250 languages were spoken by First Nation’s People, now less than half that are still in use, with the number of speakers dwindling steadily. The systemically racist policies of each successive white government has ensured that the oppression of Indigenous Australians has continued unabated – even as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders continue to show extreme resilience in the face of a violent oppressive government. Recently, 300 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders gathered at Uluru to hold a First Nations Convention intent on pushing important reform on the constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians. They developed a document titled the Uluru Statement From The Heart, which included requests such as: “We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.” These wishes for self-determination and the self-determination of their children were unceremoniously rejected by Turnbull and his government, a decision that inevitably translates into more black deaths in custody – and of the 1400 deaths in custody since 1980, an alarming percentage have been Indigenous Australians. We’re talking about a group that makes up three per cent of our population but 28 per cent of those incarcerated by the state. And it means higher sustained rates of black youth self harm. Suicide rates are higher for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders: 5.2 per cent of deaths amongst First Nations People are suicides, in comparison to 1.8 per cent for non-Indigenous Australians according to one 2015 government study.

It means the removal of Aboriginal children from their families at a rate higher than the first Stolen Generation; as of 2016, 15,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are reportedly in out-of-home care – that’s a rate nine times higher than non-Indigenous children. And let us not so quickly forget Don Dale Youth Detention Centre – one of multiple institutions dedicated to the abuse of Aboriginal children by the state, which is reportedly due to close next month after a Royal Commission investigation. How can I feel anything but shame to celebrate the nation I live in, knowing these statistics? Knowing the rightful, sovereign owners of this land have repeatedly expressed the negative impact that “celebrating” Australia Day on January 26 has for many, makes it impossible for me to show my love and gratitude to a country that offered my family a safe haven from war and opportunities we may not have been granted elsewhere. I love this nation so much – its vast seas and skies, its dense bush and colossal size, the opportunities it has given me. And it’s because of my love for this nation that I refuse to “celebrate” Australia Day on January 26. I believe we can do better as a nation. Let’s change the date to one that Indigenous Australians choose. I will happily be led by a people who have suffered the greatest injustices and degradations; who have fought for their freedom and that of their children; whose resilience is absolutely astounding. Only then will I feel comfortable and able to celebrate Australia, because it will mean we are stepping away from a white extremist state towards a more progressive, honest nation, finally willing to come to terms with its genocidal beginnings. ■

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 9

FEATURE

THE TERRIBLE, “THE THINGS WE PRIDE OURSELVES ON ARE THINGS WE HAVE ONLY GAINED VIA YEARS SPENT PERSECUTING, MURDERING AND ABUSING THE INDIGENOUS CUSTODIANS OF THIS LAND.”

10 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

thebrag.com

FEATURE

INTOXICATING LIE OF

AUSTRALIAN PATRIOTISM By Joseph Earp

very country must develop its own creation myth – a story for citizens to tell themselves so that they might pretend they are more than a collection of isolated strangers, claiming ownership of a land that should not be owned. For some countries, this is an easier process than for others. Americans, for example, have the illusion of a revolutionary birth to cling to. They can forge their national identities via a myth that paints them as a throng of freedom-loving diehards, willing to sacrifice their lives for what they believe in. It is useful to them: it allows them to play make believe as a group of musket-toting, Constitution-writing saviours; warrior poets determined to resist tyranny in all its forms. Of course, such a myth conveniently leaves out the First People who white Americans subjugated and murdered – those original custodians of the land who were massacred, and poisoned, and displaced. But that is exactly the myth’s worth. It helps turn a story of great pain and loss into a story of dynamic birth. Through it, white Americans cleanse themselves. Through it, they re-establish the boundaries of their national character: they transform from murderers into saints. Elsewhere, the white English have history on their side. They forge themselves through hundreds of years of wars, and art, and the stories of great men (and they are, in the realms of these myths, almost all men.) And they use this great weight of white culture so that they might unknow; so they can ignore the stories of those they have spent centuries enslaving and displacing.

▲

White Australians like myself have neither of these things. We are peculiarly lacking both in the supposed moralistic fire and fury of the Americans, and in the culture and history of the English. The national identity of white Australians was not born in a revolt. We were sent to this country as prisoners, and we remain, to this day, desperate to conduct our business in the shadow of

“THERE IS SO LITTLE TO UNITE US – SO LITTLE BUT THE CULTURAL PHILISTINISM THAT SEES US UNDERFUND AND DISREGARD OUR ARTISTS.” thebrag.com

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 11

FEATURE

“AUSTRALIA DAY UNITES A GROUP OF PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT UNITED, AND IT ASSISTS WITH AN INTOXICATING AND FABRICATED STORY THAT WE WISH TO TELL OURSELVES.”

▲

the Americans and the English. We are terrified of abandonment; horrified by our own shortcomings, both real and imagined. And we have never revolted: we still swear allegiance to a Queen who has no business with us; who remains irrelevant, anachronistic and functionally useless. Nor do we have a clearly delineated culture of our own. We have only the most minimal of a state-sanctioned history, and we ignore our true national character – the one defined by the violence committed against Indigenous people that continues to be enacted up to this day. The things we pride ourselves on are things we have only gained via years spent persecuting, murdering and abusing the Indigenous custodians of this land: our beaches; our rugged outback. And the larrikinism and sense of humour we claim as our own – the Akubra-hat sporting, shrimp on the Barbie, ‘Strayan maleness – is a flimsy disguise for our great racism, sexism and homophobia.

“IT SEEMS TO BE OF NO MATTER TO LATHAM THAT THE HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA DAY ITSELF IS LARGELY A MYTH – THE CELEBRATION HAS ONLY REALLY BEEN LINKED TO JANUARY 26 SINCE THE MID ’90S.” 12 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

THE TERRIBLE, INTOXICA

There is so little to unite us – so little but the cultural philistinism that sees us underfund and disregard our artists; the cruelty we enact on immigrants fleeing persecution and seeking refuge; the continuing systems of oppression and dispossession that we profit from, and refuse to dismantle. There is so little to us but the wrongheadedness and arrogance that defines all of those who are not willing to accept their status as invaders. So little to us but our cruelty, and our anger.

hite Australians have aids to help us, so that we might forget the widespread and systemic murder and displacement of Indigenous Australians. Intense patriotism, often disguised as a form of all-encompassing, harmonious national unity, is one of them. And the things this patriotism demands from us – servitude and awe – make it indistinguishable from faith. It is a form of belief; a civil religion with its own complex system of rules, regulations, and practices. “[Civil religion] is used to explain the religious awe and sacredness we attribute to the state as citizens, whilst also pretending that the modern state is neither sacred nor religious,” explains Dr Christopher Hartney, a senior lecturer in the Studies of Religion

at the University of Sydney. “Ritual has a homogenising effect for large groups of people. In this respect, the Dawn Service for ANZAC Day can have parallels with firing up the BBQ and listening to triple j’s Hottest 100 on Australia Day. But the ritual is only powerful if the largest possible number of people are willing to participate in it.” And, as white Australians, we are willing to participate; unfailingly willing. We commit annually to events like ANZAC Day, a highly ritualised religious celebration born out of deliberate mistruths. For, despite its supposed historical significance, ANZAC Day has only the most tangential of connections to the facts. After all, the significance of the August Gallipoli offensive that inspires so much of the ANZAC myth and serves as the cornerstone of ANZAC Day itself has been “distorted” according to many historians. Australians made up a mere five per cent of the forces involved in the offensive, and only seven per cent of the casualties on both sides. The relatively inconsequential outcomes of the offensive are often overlooked in favour of painting a much grander story of Australia’s independence and awakening, one imbued with great international importance. “The only reason … ANZAC is considered a special, once-in-alifetime [myth] is because we have imbued it with that meaning,” writes James Brown in ANZAC’s Long Shadow. thebrag.com

FEATURE

ATING LIE OF

AUSTRALIAN PATRIOTISM

Pic below Newtown Grafitti / Flickr

Pic left and previous page: Cronulla Riots photo Brook / Flickr

Then there are the Diggers we have spent so many years determinedly transforming into martyrs; soldiers who were considerably less saintly than they are often depicted in retellings of the myth. These were not smiling, resolute martyrs; these were young men facing “fear of death or mutilation … the trauma of appalling sights, sounds and smells, [and] extreme discomfort, exhaustion and illness”, as Alistair Thompson notes in Anzac Memories: Living With The Legend. That amongst the ranks of Diggers there were “frightened cowards, murderers of prisoners, businessmen, con-artists willing to swindle their ‘mates’ and a host of other less romantic things” (Inventing Anzac, Graham Seal) is inconsequential to white Australians. We desperately need Diggers to be heroes. We need them to absolve us. After all, the galling, unpleasant reality is too horrible to celebrate – that these were poor young men sent en masse to die in a war that Australia had no part in. We are not happy to merely mourn the great tragedy of their deaths; to weep over the senseless loss of their lives. We need them to be more than that. And so we elevate them, and we whitewash them. The involvement of Indigenous Australian soldiers is consistently downplayed in favour of the myth of the white male Digger, and attempts by Indigenous Australians to reinsert themselves into the ANZAC narrative – as when members of the National Aboriginal and Islander Ex-Service Association staged a march in Thornbury so as to spread awareness of those in their community who had died in wars overseas – are broadly ignored. All this so that we might pretend it was through the cleansing fire of war that

Australia came of age. All this so that, every year, we might hold up an enforced, artificial image of the Australian: the beatific, Caucasian, calmly smiling soldier, armed with a rifle, and topped with a broad-rimmed hat. And all of this, so that we might deny the real bloodshed that defines us – the continued torture and murder of Indigenous Australians.

ustralia Day fulfils much of the same role. It unites a group of people who are not united, and it assists with an intoxicating and fabricated story that we wish to tell ourselves. That it takes place on a day of national sorrow and mourning for Indigenous Australians is horrific in its own right, and is an issue in desperate need of being addressed. But whatever date the celebration falls on, unless the myth of our Australian national character is broadened, the day will remain a ceremony tied to oppression, and exclusion, and cruelty. Not that all white Australians are open to even entertaining the discussion of whether or not the date of Australia Day should be changed. Mark Latham, the one-time Labor leader and a man whose life post public office has seen him get in a brawl in a fast food car park, meet with an altright sympathiser, and allegedly set up a Twitter account to disparage and troll his opponents, has launched his own campaign to counter a potential change of Australia Day’s date. The campaign, spearheaded by an amateurish and desperately confused satirical video, crystallises a lot of the wilful misinformation that some white Australians offer up when confronted with the barbarity of their traditions. The video imagines a world in which the constant prying of surveillance cameras stops poor, disenfranchised Caucasians from being able to conduct barbeques on Australia Day; in which pensioners must hide their lamingtons and their proud history from a vicious, Nurse Ratched-esque overseer. It seems to be of no matter to Latham that the history of Australia Day itself is largely a myth – the celebration has only really been linked to January 26 since the mid ’90s. Moreover, as Dr Hartney points out, there are other supposedly sacrosanct, traditional Australian national days that have been recognised as inappropriate and cast off like so much unwanted baggage. “My father remembers [when] we used to celebrate Empire Day in Sydney,” says Dr Hartney. “But as a child of Irish-Australian parents he came from a family who felt such a day was ridiculous and offensive to Irish Australians. Thankfully, such a day no longer exists. But if people really don’t want to change the date [of Australia Day] because of ‘tradition’, then they should be made to explain why we don’t go back to Empire Day.” At the start of Latham’s video, a young mother must shred the Australia Day card her child has made for her, scared of the retribution she might face if she embraces her national identity. Such an image is

thebrag.com

“THE THINGS THIS PATRIOTISM DEMANDS FROM US – SERVITUDE AND AWE – MAKE IT INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM FAITH.”

nicely ironic. Changing the date of Australia Day – or giving up Australia Day altogether – does not require hiding the truth, or destroying it. It requires embracing it. It requires understanding that to be a white Australian is to be an invader; to have a violent, bloody history of oppression, and of pain. Latham’s video is also laughable – if only sadly so – in its weirdly twee and limp imagining of what a totalitarian state might entail. Its villains are cartoon-esque; shadowy; like something pulled out of a children’s book. Although, perhaps it’s unsurprising that Latham has summoned up such a misguided and half-baked impression of what oppression might look like. After all, like so many other white Australians, he has had so little firsthand understanding of it.

t hurts to leave myths behind. We are not very good at it. We struggle when it comes time for us to let go of stories that we have embedded so deep within ourselves that they are indistinguishable from our flesh and blood – and it feels like a kind of assault when other people come along and get rid of them for us. But it is the only way forward. It is the only means of progression that makes any sense. “I have very little in common with many other people in Australia except perhaps for language,” Dr Hartney explains. “The concept of the ‘Australian’ nation must always be renewed and refreshed – Australia Day allows me to share a very abstract communion with every other Australian. [But] if some Australians feel that they are left out of this totemic projection, or if the ideal of Australia becomes irrelevant, then it is wiser to change the day and make the name more effective.” We gain nothing when we hold on to outdated systems; when we enforce an image of ourselves that is old, embarrassing and, even worse, actively damaging. Australian patriotism does not connect us to our history, or to one another. At its best, it is a white lie, uttered to absolve white Australians of their collective guilt. And at its worst, it is an evolved, subtler form of oppression: one more atrocity in a great, bloodied history of them. ■ BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 13

arts in focus

FEATURE

“I’m always trying to help create a unique and coherent world that the player can indulge him or herself in.”

Wolfenstein II: A Colossal Composition [GAMES/MUSIC] Adam Guetti talks to the brilliant mind behind Wolfenstein II’s esteemed soundtrack

f all the elements that comprise a video game, the soundtrack is one of the most modest – a quiet achiever many overlook once in the thick of it. This couldn’t be truer for MachineGames’ Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, as carnage and destruction feature in gleeful abundance. But working tirelessly behind the scenes was the game’s co-composer, Martin Stig Andersen, who was able to take some time out of the studio to shed some light on his process. It all starts with the inspiration, which he says can come from anywhere. “Everything is open, and yet you have to tune in on something,” Andersen says. “What mostly helps me set the direction is the visual style and

the mood of the game. Apart from that, I’m gathering as much information about the title as possible in order to get a solid understanding of it on which I can make informed judgements and decisions.” Visuals or video capture can also be an essential tool, but according to the Danish composer, not all guidance can be helpful. “I don’t want a clear description of a musical style, especially if that style already exists. It’s like taking away the fun part of the job… On Wolfenstein II the brief I was given for the music to accompany the Nazis was simply: ‘marches of the machines.’ That’s a perfect brief in my opinion.” As it turns out, The New Colossus was widely praised, not just

for its captivating story, but the grim world it portrays. Andersen believes sound design and compositions play a critical role in that. “To me that’s everything,” he admits. “When working on a game I’m always trying to help create a unique and coherent world that the player can indulge him or herself in. Ideally, they’ll continue to play the game, not only because it’s fun, but because they want to be in that world.” But how does one balance a stirring composition against a barrage of bullets? Is it even possible? “For me it helped a lot to have gameplay captures available for context as well as going to MachineGames from time to time to play the game,” Andersen reveals. “My general approach was, rather

“I always hear young people being told that most importantly they have to become versatile, for example, to be able to compose in any musical style. I always thought that was rubbish.” than composing something that sounded great on its own, to create something that sounded cooler when random gunfire and explosions were playing on top… You can almost consider my music in Wolfenstein as an accompaniment to all that.” Interestingly however, the BAFTA-nominated superstar never worries that his work will

“I don’t want a clear description of a musical style, especially if that style already exists. It’s like taking away the fun part of the job.”

be lost in the firefight. “Contrarily, I’m trying to make my work fit into the chaos,” he explains. “I’m doing that by listening to the noise and composing something that complements it. In that way I’m avoiding the awkward situation where you suddenly notice a fragment of a melodic theme otherwise covered by noise. Accordingly, my music for Wolfenstein is much more about texture and energy than harmonic progression and melody.” Having already built a strong portfolio while working on acclaimed games like Limbo and Inside, Andersen has valuable advice for budding composers. “When attending conferences, I always hear young people being told that most importantly they have to become versatile, for example, to be able to compose in any musical style. I always thought that was rubbish. I guess it’s a personal thing. When going out to dine I prefer a restaurant that excels in a specific cuisine, whether traditional or modern, rather than one doing a bit of everything at a mediocre level. I believe that if you want to excel you’ll have to do something you love, do it relentlessly, develop your own voice, take a stand and be brave.” What: Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is out now for PS4, XBO and PC

14 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

thebrag.com

2018

Celebrate the talent behind the talent. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time to recognise those who stand behind the artists and celebrate their genius, dedication and creativity.

LOCATION:

SYDNEY CRICKET GROUND DATE:

TUESDAY 27TH MARCH 2018

Head to theindustryobserver/awards to reserve a table thebrag.com

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 15

arts in focus

Paul Thomas Anderson: The Master

Phantom Thread

hese days, it seems like every other director gets called “a filmmaker like no other.” And yet Paul Thomas Anderson, the mastermind behind a swathe of the greatest films of the 21st century, from There Will Be Blood to Punch-Drunk Love to Magnolia, truly is that rarity among modern artists – a genuine original. His latest film, Phantom Thread, combines the heart and warmth of his work pre-There Will Be Blood with the formal innovation of everything that came after it. It’s funny; ferociously acted; bleak and twisted; and yet profoundly affecting. It is another masterpiece from a director who has made nothing but masterpieces. We talked to Anderson about working with Daniel Day-Lewis, his research methods, and the line between artist and entertainer. 16 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

Q. Phantom Thread is another very different film for you. Do you consciously look to push yourself with each new project? It’s a push but it’s an organic push. I’ve had an instinct for a while to return to a kind of romance story. And I’ve always thought I’d love to make a story with a woman as the protagonist, y’know? Lord knows there are enough good actresses out there. I had a particular Joan

Fontaine thing at that time. A couple of years ago, I could not get enough Joan Fontaine. I guess you’re either a Joan man or an Olivia [de Havilland] man, and I’m camp Joan. But the most obvious thing was wanting to work with Daniel again. And thinking it was time for a good old relationship movie. Q. Phantom Thread is a gothic romance. Did you go back and

watch a bunch of them or are they already in your DNA? They’re there. Top of the list are the ones we all know – the Vertigos and Rebeccas, right? Gaslight, though there’s a bunch of different versions. Then you get maybe into the Suspicions and stuff like that. But digging around, there was a lot of stuff I’d never heard of – Dragonwyck was an interesting one. It was actually kind of nice for

“I wouldn’t call myself an artist, and movies about artists are tricky – moments of inspiration are usually pretty corny.” thebrag.com

FEATURE

Paul Thomas Anderson

me to discover some I hadn’t heard of before. The internet is a glorious place. You really start going down rabbit holes and having a good time doing it. Shirley Jackson. I got a little M.R. James thing going there for a while. He’s a classic, though not so much gothic-y romance. Caroline Blackwood is a really great writer. Q. This film is also a portrait of an artist. Did you mine your own experiences? Loads of it I know at first hand. I wouldn’t call myself an artist, and movies about artists are tricky – moments of inspiration are usually pretty corny. But … I needed a character that was self-consumed. There are a few different fields you could go to. It could have been a doctor. The idea of making him a fashion designer seemed like a smart one – it could get you into a world that was very glamorous and controlled. You can recognise a lot of similarities between being a film director and being a fashion designer, I suppose – ultimately you are making something that people are going to pay cold hard

“It’s not the easiest thing in the world shooting inside an actual Georgian townhouse in the middle of London. What you’re supposed to do, y’know, is build a set, but that seemed crazy to us.” cash for and go and see. So you’re doing it for yourself but you’re not, are you? Q. You and Daniel Day-Lewis, who plays 1950’s fashion Magnolia

designer Reynolds Woodcock, had a lot of back-and-forth while you wrote the script. Why was that? For a number of reasons. Number one is that I don’t speak English, I speak American [laughs], so I needed help in that department for the silliest things like having a character say they’re “mad” as opposed to “angry”. He was incredibly helpful for me to understand class, which is completely foreign to me. Well, not completely, but it is distant. And I think we knew on a practical level that we weren’t getting any younger, and for me to go away and write a movie alone in a room and then to show it to him would have been counter-productive. That would have left him twiddling his thumbs for a year, and I’d have been lonely! So it was, ‘Let’s just get this going together’, and that just means constantly being in touch with each other, whether that’s once a week or three times a week, or a

thebrag.com

couple of weeks off going to your separate corners, then coming back with new material to present. And all the while that that’s happening, informing each other about your new discoveries in terms of the research. And that’s how Daniel works anyway. Once you have a completed script, for him it’s about a year to go through every nook and cranny of it. Once you start shooting with Daniel, there’s not a lot of dialogue, not a lot of thinking. You adapt to the moment here and there, but the work has been done. Q. Vicky Krieps and Lesley Manville are terrific as, respectively, Reynolds Woodcock’s love interest, Alma, and his sister, Cyril. How did you decide on them? I knew Lesley from Mike Leigh stuff. But Daniel was the one who suggested Lesley first – great idea. There are so many good actresses of that age, and I’m glad that we went with Lesley, but there are so many good ones. But when it comes to Vicky, the mission was finding an actress that, ideally, no one had seen before, and who is beautiful without being ‘current fashion model’ beautiful – try to avoid pouty lips and that kind of thing. I saw a film called The Chambermaid which she was very good in. But more to the point, we did the traditional thing of actresses making audition tapes and coming in. Early on, it was clear – bingo. And meeting with her made it no contest. Q. Did she inherently possess that unyielding quality? Alma is resilient… Good. That was the mission. If she didn’t have that, I don’t think we’d be as excited talking about the film. Let me put it to you this way – she’s not acting [laughs]. Well, she is, because she’s a great actress, but that determination and power reminds me of Vicky. She’s not

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 17

arts in focus

completely pulling it out of left field. She leads with her chin. If she was intimidated, I didn’t see it, I didn’t feel it. If anything, I did hear from Daniel from time to time that he was intimidated! Q. You shot the film yourself. Would it have been a different film if you’d collaborated with a cinematographer? If you’re collaborating with someone, they’re going to add something to it. [Shooting the film myself] grew out of a lot of the projects that we have done in the cracks between the films: the Radiohead stuff we did; I went to India with Johnny [Greenwood, composer] and did this thing Junun; I did some stuff with the Haim girls… We were doing it without [usual Director of Photography] Robert Elswit who was always so busy, and it was a confidence booster. It felt like, ‘This really works’… It was a good dynamic. Going

into Phantom Thread, it felt manageable. It’s essentially interior, between the Fitzroy Square house and the Cotswold country house. It was a natural progression, and Robert was busy. It felt good. It really felt good. Q. Will you be your own DP in future? Certainly I would do it again, but also I wouldn’t want to miss out on the joys and opportunities that can come with collaborating with a really great cinematographer. There’s too much you can get out of that. I’d love to have the opportunity to work with somebody like Bob Richardson or Chivo [Emmanuel Lubezki] or Roger Deakins. I don’t know if they’d want to work with me. Q. Despite filming mainly interiors, the film is very cinematic…

Sure. Worst case scenario is that it just turns into bad BBC where it’s claustrophobic to the point of choking. Unpleasant. So how do you glide around a bit and find opportunities to be cinematic in a very limited space? It was actually fun. There’s only so many places you can go. When you shoot outside, where do you put the camera? You can very easily scratch your head and say, “I have no fucking idea.” But inside a good Georgian townhouse, you’d have to be a fool to blow it. They can be so gorgeous. We had a fantastic skylight coming down those stairs. It’s not the easiest thing in the world shooting inside an actual Georgian townhouse in the middle of London. What you’re supposed to do, y’know, is build a set, but that seemed crazy to us and not really our style. It was limiting in terms of what you can do, and hanging lights.

Paul Thomas Anderson on the set of Inherent Vice

Q. Visually, the film has a soft, muted quality, both tactile and sensual… There was never any one big idea that we aimed towards. It was a trial and error thing. Yeah, there are photographs you see of the period – there are a billion fashion photographs – but they are generally gorgeous, full-stop. That didn’t seem instinctually right somehow. We tested all different things. ‘What does this look like if it’s a bit grainy, a bit mucked-up? What are the practical concerns of shooting in tight locations with very low light?’ It was such trial and error, and then suddenly coming across something that just felt right. Soft and painterly. And seeing the costumes Mark [Bridges] was coming up with, what they lent themselves to. A lot of

“There’s the golden child boy who can sew, the mother who obsesses over him and pushes him to be the best that he can be, and then the daughter on the side, who is marginalised.” 18 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

There Will Be Blood

thebrag.com

FEATURE

“Once you start shooting with Daniel [Day-Lewis], there’s not a lot of dialogue, not a lot of thinking.”

Phantom Thread

the [gothic romance] films we’re talking about are black-and-white. You can’t really light it like a blackand-white film. That’s just going to be ugly. So miles of testing and then finally agreeing on what looked elegant. There’s also a bit of a natural rub against what you see a lot on television these days, which is an over amount of clarity, a kind of jacked-up… everything seems to be overly-modulated and crystal clear. I think we were fighting against that. Not wanting to be something that you’d stream.

was this woman here, and she’s this strong force in his life. Then I thought, ‘This is her sister’. And by coincidence, my research showed that all these guys – or a lot of them – had sisters who were the frontlines of their business. But it’s not too weird [to comprehend] – there’s the golden child boy who can sew, the mother who obsesses over him and pushes him to be the best that he can be, and then the daughter on the side, who is marginalised and told, “You’re going to take care of him when I’m gone.”

Q. Phantom Thread, like all of your films, deals with the theme of family. It’s the through line of your films, isn’t it?

Q. Did you look at many designers to research the story?

Absolutely. I can’t get away from it. It’s food and drink to me. I guess you ask yourself, ‘If Cyril were his assistant or Girl Friday, is it the same?’ No, it’s not. When I began writing it, I knew there

Everybody. You try to learn as much as you can. Then there are the ones who rise to the top. [Cristóbal] Balenciaga is the obvious one. Of the same era is [Christian] Dior. Balenciaga could

Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread

sew and he had great taste. Dior couldn’t even sew a button on a jacket but he had taste, charm, vision. His workroom was joyous. That’s not really what we’re doing. Balenciaga’s workroom was pin-drop quiet. He was intensely superstitious about how work would have to flow and go, so that’s more like our story. Then you get into other designers who are less known and exciting, but there are details to steal from them – a guy named Michael Sherar who ran a house in London who only had 35, 40 employees. That worked for us. We didn’t want to make it, ‘He’s the greatest fashion designer in the history of the world!’ Our guy was more bite-sized. Obviously a majority of them were gay, which probably lent itself to a more internalised existence. The ones who weren’t gay generally loved women, passionately. It’s fun. It’s

great to go into a world you know absolutely fuck all about. I look at what people are wearing now – it’s hilarious. Q. Johnny Greenwood has once again come up with an incredible score… This one was particularly great, only because it started way back at the very beginning. I always knew Phantom Thread was going to be a load of music that was always present. Sometimes it’s low, sometimes it’s loud. It was like requesting from the DJ: “I think we need something that’s very romantic...” He’s capable of doing that but it perhaps doesn’t come to him naturally, so it was nice for him to push that direction. I pointed him towards a couple of films. [David Lean’s] The Passionate Friends was one that Daniel and I were obsessed with, which has a really nice score.

Ann Todd, Leslie Howard and Claude Rains. A little love triangle thing that’s really fucking good. It’s got a New Year’s Eve scene which we kind of tried to do. So I’ve had loads of piano demos from Johnny for the last couple of years as I was writing and as we were shooting, and just the process of putting them in as we started editing, and orchestrating, and making them bigger. Lush was a word that we’ve never really used before, but thought it would be good to apply. Because it fits. If the score can open up to give you some scope and scale, it keeps things from becoming claustrophobic in a bad way. It keeps the movie up on its feet. And it goes along with the dresses too – you just score the dresses. He’s outdone himself. What: Phantom Thread is in Australian cinemas from Thursday February 1

Boogie Nights

The Master

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 19

FEATURE

Primal Scream: Sounds Of The Future Arch style icon and all round great bloke Bobby Gillespie talks Thin Lizzy, longevity and the nature of time itself with Meg Crawford

rimal Scream’s singular frontman Bobby Gillespie is one of the world’s coolest men: he’s sharp, sartorially splendid, unabashedly socialist (his Dad was a union organiser, so it’s in his DNA), charismatic, and has spent the last 35 years fronting one of the greatest rock and roll outfits in musical history. While the band’s changed its lineup during that time, and has genre hopped all about the place – touching on everything from garage rock through to acid house, Krautrock and electronica – Primal Scream have never swayed dyed-in-the-wool fans. They’ve also remained surprisingly on point. Take Primal Scream’s breakthrough album, Screamadelica, for instance, which merged the club-kid fascination with E and house with dirty grunge, producing tunes that are still gold standards, like ‘Loaded’ and ‘Come Together’. Now take their 2016 album, Chaosmosis: while it’s a sexy, dark, danceable and trippy-throw back to Screamadelica, it also features an electro-pop gem of a duet pairing Gillespie with singer, model and actress – and now David Lynch muse – Sky Ferreira on ‘Where The Light

Gets In’. It’s proof the band doesn’t just surf the wave: they have an uncanny knack of predicting the zeitgeist. “Two weeks ago, on a Saturday morning, one of the DJs played a song called ‘Velocity Girl’ from a BBC John Peel session from 1986 or something,” Gillespie says. “It’s funny, because the original song had one verse and one chorus and then it ended. It was very short, like a one-minute 20 seconds sort of thing, and when I heard this version, I thought it was going to end, but it never ended: there was a second verse. I hadn’t even remembered that we’d ever done that, because we played it live.” Over the years, Gillespie has spoken about the band being one big, long art experiment, naturally, with sometimes mixed results. “We’ve done a lot of stuff over the years that I’m very proud of, and did some other stuff that maybe we never quite hit the mark with, for one reason or another,” Gillespie explains. “So that’s what I mean by experiment: it’s exploratory. We’re trying to work within the structures of a pop or rock song and do something good with it, and sometimes it’s worked and sometimes it hasn’t.

“OH MAN, I SAY SOME

FUCKING WEIRD SHIT.”

“A lot of the time, the music is a document of time. Like at various points, the keyboard player may have been absent for an hour, or the guitar player was absent for three hours, so we had to do other things. So maybe the compositional approach was different, and, therefore, the recording that came out was something other than what it could have been. I dunno, I’m just supposin’. At the time, you’re just making stuff and trying to get a new sound or a new direction, and trying not to repeat yourself.” Gillespie has also described Primal Scream’s music as being both a shield and a sword. When the statement’s put to him, Gillespie erupts with laughter. “Oh man, I say some fucking weird shit. Alright. Yeah. I think I basically meant that it gives us some dignity and selfconfidence. I guess, it gave us power and a form of attack. Basically being able to express yourself and make art and having your voice heard is a powerful thing. I think that’s what I meant. Sorry. “Also, when you’re onstage and you’ve got a band, especially with someone like Robert Young, the guitar player who died a couple of years ago, when he was on stage he wielded his guitar like a fuckin’ weapon. I guess it came from that. He once said to me that, ‘When we go onstage man, it’s a war between us and the audience’.” After years of storied excess, Gillespie’s successfully wound it in and is now around nine years clean and sober. That said, he doesn’t shy away from a tune that taps back into that vein. “I don’t feel uncomfortable at all,” he

confirms. “Yesterday we were working on a piece of music. We had this really great introduction – kind of a dark sound: acoustic guitar, bass drums, heavy rhythm and a really great lead line. It had a sexy kind of vibe. “Then we added a second slide guitar piece and suddenly it was so fucking sexy – but also really druggy. It sounded really smacked out. It was like, ‘Whoa, this sounds amazing.’ It was just missing that component part. It sounded sexy, and then it sounded druggy and sexy. I have no problem with that. I have no problem talking about drugs or anything like that.” As we talk, Gillespie mentions a book sitting in front of him, open to a picture of Thin Lizzy playing at, of all places, the Sydney Opera House. “The picture is taken from behind the stage, so you get the band and the crowd, then the Opera House,” he explains. “So, hopefully we can be as high energy as Thin Lizzy – but that’s tough fuckin’ call. They were the first band that I’d ever seen. It was fucken’ amazing. It set the standard. The first things you do set the standard in your life. That’s what I think: those experiences established for me, ‘Okay, that’s what a rock show is. It should be that good’. Thank God it was Thin Lizzie.” Anything to add? “I don’t know what else to say, but Warren Ellis said to say hello to everybody in Australia. He was texting me two days ago.” Where: Enmore Theatre When: Tuesday February 20

“YOU’RE JUST MAKING STUFF AND TRYING TO GET A

NEW SOUND

OR A NEW DIRECTION, AND TRYING NOT TO REPEAT YOURSELF.” 20 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

thebrag.com

FEATURE

Paramore: New Eras Hayley Williams, Zac Farro and Taylor York told Brianna Jamieson all about their pop revival, and Belinda Quinn put it to the page.

eleased after a four-year recording hiatus, Paramore’s new album After Laugher was deemed by Rolling Stone, among others, to be one of the best records of 2017 – but it proved to be a polarising release for its devoted pop punk and emo following. “To be honest, we can just never win,” sighs the band’s guitarist Taylor York. “As an artist, you wanna play new songs; things that you’re inspired by. You’re trying to kind of show people a new era; an era where we currently are.”

Paramore photo by Lindsey Byrnes

While Paramore have always appeared self-assured and proud of their pop punk roots, the band’s fresh mainstream confidence comes from their trying to move away from a certain immaturity – even though they know they’ll be criticised for it. “No matter what we do, we’re always letting people down, and they’re always gonna be like, ‘Why didn’t you play that?’ We’ve gotten better at kind of brushing that off a little bit, but we always care,” explains York. “We’ve spent so long trying to figure out, ‘Alright, how do we put all the songs in the set?’ We wanna make it special for our fans who have been supporting us for a long time, but they have also heard us play the songs so many times, so…” The guitar tonality on tracks like ‘Hard Times’ manages to stay true to the band’s original sound without feeling jarring in the new pop context; a move that’s difficult to pull off without seeming naff or like you’re selling-out. Indeed, the band are more proud of After Laughter

than almost anything they’ve released – even if Williams does admit recording the album came with its own emotional baggage. “It was kind of a heavy record to write, even though it was a lot of fun. We got to do different things than we used to do – things that we really enjoy.” Throughout the record, what with her bold voice, and the lush instrumentation unfolding around her, Williams calls to mind a 1963 Lesley Gore singing about teen heartache on ‘It’s My Party.’ Tracks like ‘Rose-Coloured Boy’ burst with colour, life, and above all, rebellion – on which Williams shouts, “Just let me cry a little bit longer, I ain’t gonna smile if I don’t want to”. Original drummer Zac Farro has spent the last seven years making music under the HalfNoise moniker, but with After Laughter, the titan has returned to the fold. As far as he’s concerned, the time away from the group has allowed him to develop a clearer, more uncluttered headspace, and to bring something significantly more honest to the record. “I feel like as a songwriter, taking that time away from touring meant I learnt more about my passion for writing music,” explains Farro. He describes his return Paramore and becoming “friends with Hayley and Taylor in a musical way” as “effortless”. The band have always tried to do their own thing. Although some members of the media have noted a certain sonic camaraderie between Paramore and

“TO BE HONEST, WE JUST CAN NEVER WIN. AS AN ARTIST, YOU WANNA PLAY NEW SONGS; THINGS THAT YOU’RE INSPIRED BY.” their Fueled By Ramen labelmates – bands like Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco – they’ve always felt a little like outsiders. “It kind of was weird for us, like growing up … like we’ve never played with Panic,” says Williams. “I think it was a really cool atmosphere, especially for bands who supported that sector of the scene that we were a part of … But in other ways we felt like we didn’t fit in to it completely, and we needed to forge our own paths as well, so we’ve taken steps throughout the last decade or so to try and enforce our individuality as a band [and] find our own voice in a sea of bands that were young and that were playing fun, kind of more punky music. “Ultimately, I’d say we’re really lucky that we grew up playing and touring at the time that we did; like, to be where we are now and to only be in our late twenties and be able to look back at the memories that we have had is pretty incredible. And now that we’re older, we have an even clearer vision of where we wanna go. It’s like, we can take all those lessons we leant and be more confident in where we want to go.”

“BOYS NEED TO BEGIN TO SEE EXAMPLES OF VULNERABILITY AND SHOW RESPECT TOWARD THE OPPOSITE SEX AT A VERY YOUNG

AGE.”

thebrag.com

For many young emo devotees, Williams was one of the few female heroes to be found in an overcrowded, male-dominated scene. Thankfully, that’s starting to change, and Williams embraces the emergence of new calls for gender equality – although she’s in no rush to demonise or idolise. “I don’t believe any human being is worthy of being worshipped because we all have the exact same capacity to hurt each other, hurt ourselves, and just generally make an absolute mess of the lives we’re given,” Williams explains. “And narrowing it down to the issue of masculinity and gender is tough. Of course, boys need to begin to see examples of vulnerability and show respect towards the opposite sex at a very young age. But it also shouldn’t solely have to do with gender and sexuality – it should have to do with humanness and co-existence. “I’m tired of seeing people speaking from regret and not from a place of actual intelligence on the matter. “There has to be some educational, compassionate conversation so that we can get ahead of these problems before they turn into real pain.” Where: Qudos Bank Arena When: Friday February 9 With: Bleachers BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 21

FEATURE

Big Thief: Understanding Capacity Belinda Quinn takes the members of Big Thief out for dinner on Oxford Street, and learns they are a band as ambitious as ever

“T

he show is over so everything is over, it’s crashing down,” says Big Thief’s vocalist and guitarist Adrianne Lenker, lifting her arms up over her head and propelling them down while having dinner at Oxford Street’s Don Don restaurant. “There’s no more music career, there’s no more fans,” she says, running us through her head after an overwhelming show. “Sometimes it all feels so huge in my mind. And [my bandmates] are really good at making it lighter.”

The Brooklyn-based folk-rock act are in Australia to tour Capacity, their second album, which, like its predecessor Masterpiece, was recorded in upstate New York with the help of a dear friend. Bowls of Japanese dishes swirl around our table while they talk band dynamics and notions of gender and human capacity, amid the occasional clumsy drop of food: “Oop, there goes a bean,” says Lenker, watching an Edamame bean roll across the floor. Lenker was born into a cult that her family fled a couple of years after

22 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

her birth – her father raised her to be a musician. Texan guitarist Buck Meek met Lenker at a show in which they shared a bill; he was dressed in a tuxedo (shirtless) while donning a Mohawk. Israeli-born bassist Max Oleartchik grew up by the Mediterranean Sea, moving to frequent jazz trios in New York City, while drummer James Krivchenia is an engineer based out of New York who also plays with the jazzy and dreamy Mega Bog. The bandmembers have a warmth between them that on a first glace appears effortless – but when this is pointed out, they laugh. “We’ve learned what each others’ moods are and like, also what hurts each others feelings,” explains Lenker. They’re currently in sync after a twoyear slog of touring, and when it comes to pushing conflict under the rug, it’s Krivchenia who says, “The goal is to not have things fester.” Oleartchik agrees. “Holding it inside... It hurts because you’re one organism, you know?” That unity is clear across all of Capacity, but particularly its bold title track. “I like that it’s a question, rather than an answer,” Lenker says of the song. It came to her in a dream – on it, she spurts, “We’re make believing everything”.

“To me it’s like, what does that mean: capacity? Do we have a limited or unlimited capacity? Is there any such thing, or is it an illusion? What’s this idea of containment anyway? Like, a container? Do we live in like, a vessel of the earth? Is everything infinitely bigger outwards than inwards? Or is it like, do we only have the capacity of what we can do, what’s in our beings?” Lenker points to her body. “Like, is Adrienne contained here? It’s a question that just brings up a lot of questions.” Elsewhere, on ‘Black Diamonds’, Lenker sings: “Come and let me make a man out of you / You could cry inside my arms like a child.” The band openly challenge the confinement of the gender binary, wherein masculinity is seen as strong and without sadness, and femininity is soft and delicate. “I remember growing up and feeling my strength and my muscles and like, my passion and my intensity, where all those were [considered] masculine things,” Lenker explains, “It’s twisted how genders have been compartmentalised… We’re so much of everything... I think there’s a dysfunction in both sides.” ‘Pretty Things’ contains the lyrics: “Men are baptised in their anger and fighting / There’s a woman inside of me, there’s one inside of you too / and she don’t always do pretty things.” When pressed on the lyric, Lenker takes

IS L A O G “THE

thebrag.com

FEATURE

” . R E T S E F S G N I AVE TH

H T O N O T

a moment. “I feel within myself a constant dialogue between my masculinity, my femininity and the part of me that is neither of those things. “I’m just trying to talk about it because I feel like I’m something that is very ambiguous, and I’ve never felt like I wanted to like call myself anything – I feel it’s strange to have call yourself something. What if I’m just simply a pulsating, glowing, amorphic organism that is just like, existing and fluttering through a moment of eternity?” In ‘Coma’ she sings, “he kissed her skin to get off”, an act of self-service disguised as affection. The narrator’s “mama” retreats into her mind – “you can wake up now Mama, from your protective coma”, with Lenker’s lyrics poetically capturing dissociation and the freeze response (similar to the well known fight-or-flight behavioural response) that often affects survivors of sexual abuse.

thebrag.com

When asked how she knows when she’s ready to write out and perform a painful memory, Lenker thinks for a moment. “It’s just like, an inner personal kind of knowing. If something feels too intense to share or if it’s not the right environment or the right time, it can feel really harsh to not have it be received. [In Masterpiece] I hadn’t even peeled back the layers to the most tender stuff. By the time that those layers were peeled back, we had already developed an audience that was dedicated and attentive.” Playing to a respectful audience “can actually be like, a healing thing,” Lenker says. During their show at Oxford Art Factory, this is felt. The crowd is dead silent while the band checks their tuning. A whisper is deafening. Having opened shows to empty rooms and large open spaces before, Lenker says now, “I would just chose not to play them because [the songs are] too vulnerable.”

“‘Coma’ and ‘Watering’ and another song, ‘Black Diamonds’, are songs that go together. They’re speaking to rape, sexual assault and like, um…” Oleartchik interrupts to dive in for a spoonful of Lenker’s soup and they all giggle a little. “Sorry, right in the middle of that,” Lenker smiles. “It’s pretty dark stuff to be singing about – but I felt a desperation to actually sing about them.”

Sharp experimental rock hooks and soft acoustic arpeggios caress Lenker’s fleeting experiences. She creates characters (Mary, Hayley, Paul, Lorraine, Randy) to sing her stories back into herself; a way of processing experiences that is light and gentle, at times moving to outraged instrumentals, and always coming back into soft lulls.

“I definitely believe in the power of like, vocalising to make change… it’s really imperfect, but it’s the best thing we have,” Krivchenia adds. “It’s a blessing to somehow convey understanding of what you’re going through. That has a precision to it, but also, you know, it’s limited.” Oleartchik, listening intently, nods.

“They’re definitely sung with love,” says Lenker. “The songs are about how I want to cradle myself and talk about things with myself and be like, ‘Let’s bring these things out now.’ It’s about being like, ‘I love you and I’m here for you’. I’m holding myself through that space. And I also want to make sure to leave room for my story,

“What if I’m just simply , a pulsating glowing, amorphic at is h t m is n a g r o isting just like, ex g and flutterin through a moment of eternity?”

not to just take up the entire space of the songs. “I’m still learning about how I want to deal with those more intense issues, of gender and of … yeah, all of it. I’m still just sorting out my thoughts about how I actually want to address certain things to our audience, and it’s because I’m still learning about that. “I’m still untangling my own inner world that’s been affected by all these things.” Capacity is an imperfect sonic and poetic analysis of the things human beings are capable of handling with empathy, mess and grace, all at once. What: Capacity is out through Saddle Creek and Spunk now. BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 23

What weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been out to see this fortnight. See full galleries at thebrag.com/snaps

s n a p s

run the jewels

05:01:18 :: The Big Top, Luna Park :: 1 Olympic Dr, Milsons Point

vince staples

06:01:18 :: Enmore Theatre :: 118-132 Enmore Rd, Newtown

24 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

thebrag.com

FEATURE

Porches: Family Matters Meg Crawford learns synth-pop mastermind Porches, AKA Aaron Maine, is willing to share everything

ith his third album The House, Porches, a bottle-blond, cool AF New Yorker has another synth-pop gem under his belt, and it’s as good for a boogie as it is for latenight state-of-the-union musing. As is customary for interviews with Aaron Maine, the man behind the moniker, the dude is so laid back he might as well be lying down, but damn if he isn’t candid. While all of his albums are to some degree autobiographical, Maine describes The House as his most linear record to date. Plus, it’s testament to what you can achieve when you slog at something daily. “I suppose my music has always been a documentation of my experiences, to a certain extent,” he explains.

Porches photo by Jason Nocito

“The House was about doing that, but taking it further. It wasn’t necessarily something I set out to do initially when I started recording, but I did find myself with a strong desire to write and record every day and set up a regimen. After I had recorded a handful of songs, it just felt – even more so than in the past – that it lent itself to the same idea I’ve always had with making music, which is being true to the experience. But it also felt like it was very much of that time. When I realised that, I didn’t change too much: I just kept going with it and recording and writing every day, ongoing with that process.”

Maine admits that this musical diarising also had the benefi t of giving him an escape hatch from the grind of everyday life. It turns out the same shit plagues him as rest of us, and he recites a litany of the stuff he was dodging. “Having a job, spending money... I honestly feel like I neglected my relationship at the time [and all sorts] of responsibility: health insurance, taxes: anything that smelt like a responsibility,” he confesses. “I was still feeling hyper-productive making music – that’s always been the thing that generates most self-worth, so I could just trick myself. There I was being productive, skirting a lot of other aspects of my life, but the combination of escaping and generating selfworth when you’re feeling loneliness or depression... Well it’s a massive escape. You get to create something, and that’s when I’m happiest. It’s like a drug.” It’s a good drug too apparently, because The House is peak Porches. Indeed, the record is so personal – so keenly felt – that it even features a collaboration with Maine’s old man on ‘Understanding’. As he runs through the song’s background, Maine’s love for his dad is palpable. “I grew up with my dad singing, writing songs and recording for as long as I can remember,” he explains.

“THE THOUGHT OF WRITING SONGS OR MAKING ORIGINAL MUSIC WAS NEVER

CRAZY TO ME.” thebrag.com

“I GREW UP

IN A SMALL TOWN, AND EVEN THOUGH IT WASN’T VERY FAR FROM THE CITY, IT WAS VERY DETACHED.” “It was an inspiration, but it also meant that it felt from an early age like something I could do. The thought of writing songs or making original music was never crazy to me. It’s always interesting to me when I hear people saying, ‘How do you it? What’s the first thing you do when you write a song?’. I feel blessed to have grown up around it and that it was a natural thing. “But as for the song, I went upstate last year to visit my dad and he has a little set-up in a room in his house: it’s a digital eight-track and he makes these whacked-out recordings with really dated equipment, and they’re so special. Imagine him up there in this old house, still at it, writing and recording like a teenager. The song originally had an entirely different arrangement with drums and bass and guitar and banjo and shit. I just remember the vocal take being so fragile and intimate. When I got back home I asked him to just send the vocal take solo and I wrote those chords underneath it, fucked with his voice, pitched it up an octave at times and brought it into the world the rest of the record was in.” These days Maine is routinely featured in lists of artists embodying New York City’s DNA, having grown up a stone’s throw away. Part of the reason he’s

so universally embraced then maybe boils down to the fact that he swears by moving to the Big Apple if you’re looking for artistic salvation. “I grew up in a small town, and even though it wasn’t very far from the city, it was very detached, unless you went in to the city – and I found myself not doing that so often. I had a good group of friends who I skated with and made music with and art with, but it was a very, very small bubble and I went to college only 20 minutes from where I grew up. “For some reason, I was never really drawn to the city. I never really imagined that I’d move here. I was kind of content in my little space and comfortable. Getting out of my comfort zone and moving here was massive for me. It opened up my world and my eyes, and I was exposed to so many things I liked, so many people and so many exciting things that I was mindblown. I feel like if I’d moved anywhere else I could have been making some completely different stuff. It felt good to absorb my surroundings and of all of the places in the world – my surroundings here are pretty fucking amazing.” What: The House is out now through Domino

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 25

FEATURE

JEREMY NEALE

The Velociraptor frontman chats to Holly Pereira about his debut solo 26 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

o record, self care and alien dinosaur DJs

“I WAS CONSTANTLY

STRESSING MYSELF OUT BY MAKING

SELF-IMPOSED DEADLINES THAT NEVER REALLY MATTERED.”

FEATURE

hen we receive our coffees at a Melbourne hole-in-the-wall cafe, Brisbane musician Jeremy Neale looks uncharacteristically displeased. “I never get latte art in my long blacks,” he sighs. “Surely Melbourne of all places would do it?” It’s the first time I’ve heard him complain in the few times we’ve conversed, but even so, it’s an accurate snapshot of his quirky, yet endearing personality. Released last November, the Velociraptor frontman’s debut solo album Getting The Team Back Together proves there’s more to his character than just nonsensical humour and an upbeat demeanour, and there’s plenty of depth to his infectious indie anthems. Before meeting, I feel well acquainted with him, largely due to his social media presence – which I’m assured is all him. “I value entertainment above all else, probably to my detriment as an artist.” Neale laughs. “Social media is a fun time. I figure I’ve got a platform, I can talk about whatever. It’s harder when you’re directly trying to promote a record I guess. I’m a bit of a rambler and I’m never really succinctly saying, ‘Hey, I’ve got a record out.’ If you watched the one-and-a-half minute video of me and my cat doing Fan Mail Friday, there’s probably a hidden mention of the record in there somewhere.” Neale first caught my attention with the Velociraptor track ‘Sneakers’, in which he sings, “I put my sneakers on, I leave my house in a rush. Whatever, I’m trying.” His songwriting has only strengthened since then; Getting The Team Back Together delves deep into love, mental health and being kind to yourself. “I think the record largely revolves around picking up the pieces and trying my best. That’s really all you can ask of yourself,” he says. It’s been over two years since the release of his second EP, Let Me Go Out In Style, and Neale readily admits that the work was not the most profitable move he could have made. “I went really deep ’80s on the last one: I don’t think it was a commercially viable release. I like it though!” When I mention it may go down better now that there’s a resurgence in ’80s-inspired acts like Client Liaison and Donny Benet, Neale jokes about a potential reissue: “You ignored the flamenco guitar and sax solo on this song [back then], but what about in 2018?” The two-year break between Let Me Go and Getting The Team was a conscious decision made by Neale and his record label. “When you have something and you really want to share it, you’re like, ‘Come on, come on! We can do this, we can get it out!’ I wanted to get the record out at the end of 2016, but that was when I was in a mindset that wasn’t helpful to me. I was constantly stressing myself out by making self-imposed deadlines that never really mattered. By doing that I never got things 100 per cent right, so I was forced to slow down. I wasn’t really having a good time in life [and I wasn’t] prioritising my own happiness. Ultimately it has been the best thing ever to be relaxed… and have all the assets ready to go, instead of my usual thing which is, ‘Oh cool, the single’s out in a week. Better do a film clip!’” Neale is remarkably candid when he discusses the themes of the album. “You know what you’re feeling and you understand what you’re thinking, but putting it in a succinct way that somebody else can understand is really tough sometimes. Your own headspace is a confusing place, but I think over time I’ve gotten better at communicating and that’s why I wanted to share some bigger concepts. There’s a song on there called ‘All My

DOING VELOCIRAPTOR.

“I THINK I LEARNT ALL OF MY HARDEST LESSONS THROUGH

I DON’T THINK THERE’S ANYTHING HARDER THAN THE LOGISTICS BEHIND THAT BAND.” Life’ [which is] about when I reached this juncture point where I was turning 30 and I was still occasionally very depressed. I was like okay, this is a thing that’s been with me for years – maybe it’s not going away. I wanted to communicate that in a song, so I did.” Neale admits that he’s come to a point where he’s crucially appraising his lifestyle. “I find myself asking, ‘Okay, if my life isn’t working, why isn’t it working?’ and then going, ‘Well, you’re hitting the booze too much Jeremy’. I’m trying to be pretty blatant and not try to hide things with metaphors. A song like ‘Small Talk’ is basically saying, ‘I’m a party animal and I feel crap about myself’. It’s all about the reprioritisation of that too. Someone shared this meme the other day and it was a succinct summary of how to get life right and it’s like, ‘Me: Drinks too much, eats terrible food, drinks 0.5 mls of water a day, doesn’t sleep. Me also: Why am I sad?’” Fronting Velociraptor, a garage party-rock band with upwards of nine members, has prepared him for his solo project; Neale explains he gained the majority of his working knowledge of the music industry through the group. “I think I learned all of my hardest lessons through doing Velociraptor. I don’t think there’s anything harder than the logistics behind that band, so everything seems comparatively easier in a solo project. The band has been nothing but kind to me even in troubled times; it’s ultimately a beautiful home base and an incredible support.” With Velociraptor allowing him to cut his teeth as a songwriter, he feels his lyrics benefited from its influence. “It was a good learning lesson as a songwriter I feel. When we did the self-titled album in 2014 that was when I was first comfortable about sharing very direct experiences because it could be under a moniker. I wrote about my life experiences, and at the time there was a lot of very legitimate heartbreak. I put it all on the line.” As for whether Velociraptor will be back with new material soon, Neale admits that juggling his solo project and the band is tough work – it takes a lot of preparation and long-term planning. “If I look at the schedule and go, ‘Oh, we can totally do this here and that wouldn’t be stretching things’, then we’ll get back in the studio and put something out early next year. We still get people messaging, ‘When’s the new stuff out?’ It’s like, ‘We’ve got it, I guess we should put that out’.” The album features collaborations with some of Brisbane’s emerging talent, including Jaimee Fryer (Major Leagues, Pool Shop), Harriette Pilbeam (Hatchie, Babaganouj) and members of The John Steel Singers. “I’m really lucky being in such a strong community, there’s a way to make anything possible and you know who the best person for each job is as well. For example, with ‘All My Life’ I was like, ‘It’s got to be Pilbeam singing,’” says Neale of bringing the singer in. “I was like, ‘Hey Harriette, do you mind doing this?’ and she’s like, ‘Yeah, I’d love to’ and then boom, Harriette’s in the studio the day later making the magic. It was the same with Jaimee Fryer. I knew for ‘Small Talk’ her voice was exactly what I needed. “I’m really hesitant to ask people for help because I feel like I’m bothering people sometimes. There’s a lot of core elements to Jeremy Neale – my live band are the players on the record, and there’s other ring-ins like Luke McDonald and Scott Bromiley from John Steel Singers. They came in and did all those beautiful male stacked harmonies you hear on the record.”

It’s no surprise Neale remains humble, given his work outside of music is with the Starlight Foundation, a charity that provides joy and comfort to hospitalised children. “It’s the best job,” he says. “My specific program is called Livewire and it’s for teenagers in hospital. It’s all creatively based stuff, but it’s also patient-directed. It’s kind of the one place in the hospital where they get to call the shots. Nurses and doctors tell them they’ve got to do this or that, whereas we can go, ‘What are you into?’ We also try to connect teenagers with other teenagers in there because they understand what they’re going through. It’s a wonderful program. “It’s a job that is very engaging the whole time you’re there,” continues Neale. “You don’t think about anything else other than where you are ... Everyday you leave and you feel better than you did before you went in. I think it was part of the journey for me, and part of getting all those aspects of life right was finding a job I really cared about and could invest myself in.” Additionally, Neale’s got one vivid imagination. This is demonstrated when he’s asked to discuss the star of his recent comic T-Rax – the story of a billionaire dinosaur DJ who is Neale’s best friend. “T-Rax is from another planet where everyone learns how to DJ because it’s an expected skill,” Neale explains with utmost seriousness. “He crash-landed in Brisbane in the ’80s – he has a cool catchphrase and dinosaurs were really hip at the time so he was living the dream. He’s super famous, DJing and making heaps of cash, and even though he’s so rich, he refused to fund the album. “He’s like, ‘Jeremy, I think you need to do this, it’s character development.’ I respect that.” As for where the adventures of T-Rax will go from here, Neale is anticipating exciting things ahead. “We’ll see how the comic goes, but we do have a video game in development. I’m also thinking me and T-Rax will get matching tattoos in the first scene of the follow up comic.” For his national tour this year, Neale will have his live band in toe, but when the time comes to play shows internationally, he’s preparing to go it alone. “When I do a solo set I do some Velociraptor songs and I also do some of own songs. I also throw in some April Fools songs, a power metal song, and a hip hop song by my alter ego Jeromeo. It’s a real variety set. I don’t know if I’m logistically up for touring the whole band overseas – even getting to Perth is an effort.” While it’s easy to become jaded by rock stars with bad attitudes, Jeremy Neale is a welcome reminder that down to earth artists who appreciate the team supporting them exist. When it comes to how he gets by when things get a little hectic, he imparts some simple advice: “You can really reset if close your eyes and breathe, and be like, ‘Okay, I’m back.’” It’s this pragmatic quality that makes me think Neale might just be one of the most pleasant musicians in Australia.

The tight-knit Brisbane scene has left Neale spoiled for

“YOU IGNORED THE FLAMENCO GUITAR AND

SAX SOLO ON THIS SONG [BACK THEN], BUT WHAT ABOUT IN 2018?”

28 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

choice when it comes to collaboration, and he’s grateful for its (almost signature) mix of amicability and proximity. “We’ve got a very fortunate community, in that all our venues are clumped very closely together. It’s great because you can hop and see all the bands you want to see in one night. We’ve got such a supportive community, there’s no hostility, everybody gets along – it’s like one big hug.”

What: Freedom 4 Where: Oxford Art Factory When: Saturday January 27 With: Good Boy, Retiree, Rainbow Chan and many more And: Getting The Team Back Together is out now through Dot Dash

thebrag.com

FEATURE

“I THINK THE RECORD LARGELY REVOLVES AROUND

PICKING UP THE PIECES

AND TRYING MY BEST.

THAT’S REALLY ALL

YOU CAN ASK OF YOURSELF.”

FEATURE

Cattle Decapitation: Weed Koalas

Meg Crawford learns Travis Ryan of the inimitable Cattle Decapitation is significantly more charming than his music might suggest

or the unacquainted, it might come as something of a pleasant surprise to discover that US death metal outfit Cattle Decapitation are more about animal rights than their mutilation. While only two members of the band – including frontman Travis Ryan – are vegetarians these days (previous lineups saw all members committed to a cruelty-free diet), they’re just as devoted to the cause, and the bulk of their lyrics and album art depict the demise of humankind, usually at the behest of animals. Take Humanure, for instance, which depicts a cow shitting out some dude that has been devoured. It’s gross, sure, but its none-too-subtle point has been appreciated by Cattle Decapitation’s fans, animal activists and PETA alike.

Ryan’s always been something of a groundbreaker in death metal circles for other reasons too. For a start, he sometimes uses clean vocals, which are more akin to a traditionally melodic style of singing as opposed to the guttural, often incomprehensible roar that’s customary of the death metal genre. “I’m personally into all sorts of different kinds of music and always have been,” he explains. “I really appreciate stuff that can seamlessly blend styles; say a band like Mr Bungle. Bizarre stuff: that’s always been my forte. I brought some melodic vocals to the table, more so just out of boredom and because I’m getting older. I have less and less time on earth to create music, so while I’m doing it I want to be something different you know? Something new. We’ve added a lot more musicality: there are more catchy parts, singing and coherent vocals, especially on the last two albums – but they’re not so much changes as evolutionary points.” That said, Ryan roars with the best of them. Although, when it comes to that particular topic he lifts the lid on a death metal secret. “Earlier this year we went on tour in Europe with a band called Hideous Divinity and the singer is actually an ear, nose and throat doctor

“I’VE ALWAYS BEEN MORE INTO BANDS WITH

SOMETHING TO SAY.” 30 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

“I’M NOT A

BIG SCARY MONSTER,

I JUST KNOW HOW TO SOUND LIKE ONE THROUGH A MICROPHONE.”

in Italy, specialising in working with vocalists,” he says. “I did a lot of talking with him and between that and the stuff that I’ve learned from my buddies, I’ve realised that I’m doing the right thing: I’m faking it. I’m not a big scary monster, I just know how to sound like one through a microphone. Where as CJ [McMahon] from Thy Art Is Murder in Australia, he’s this fucking refrigerator of a man. He’s got a gigantic chest and he can do it: he can belt out that shit. Whereas I had to develop techniques back when I was 16 years old. “I’m 43 this month, so I’ve been doing it for ever and ever now. But honestly between touring as much as possible and experimenting with different house sound systems and monitor set ups, you just develop methods to cheat, if you’re paying attention. I’m longevity minded. I don’t know about anyone else; I don’t know what makes a singer go up there and ‘ARGGHHHH’ yell, because when you yell, you’re just going to lose your voice. “Because I’m in it for the long haul, I realised really early on that the only way this was going to work was to develop a technique that allowed me to do the low guttural vocals. That was the stuff that always made me cough and makes most people cough when they go to do it, but you can employ the same technique to do guttural vocals

as high vocals: it’s fakery. Go listen to the vocalists up the side, they’re usually very low in volume.” Having toured Australia previously, Ryan is genuinely excited about the prospect of returning. In fact, in a recent short doco about the band’s European tour, Ryan nominated Australia as his favourite destination thus far. “A lot of it had to do with the fact that I’ve always wanted to go there,” he says. “To finally get over there was quite an achievement for us and something that I’d personally been trying to make happen for years. It was a hard territory to nail down.” And sure, the band had a grand old time playing for appreciative Aussie audiences, but it turns out that Ryan’s frothing more over our wildlife. For instance, the local fauna is going off in the background our end during the interview. “Is that a bird making all that noise? Oh my God, that’s awesome. It’s one of my favourite things about out there, the biodiversity.” Ryan’s even cuddled a koala before. When the fact that they kinda stink is put to him, Ryan demurs. When it’s explained that they smell a bit like weed, Ryan has a lightbulb moment. “Oh, really? I probably smelled more like it than the koala did.” Where: Bald Faced Stag When: Friday February 16

thebrag.com

Cattle Decapitation photo by Zach Cordner

“I’ve always been a big fan of animals, but in terms of how it came to be part of what we talk about, we sort of pulled it from our love of the band Carcass,” Ryan explains. “They were vegetarian and they mostly sung about medical textbook, terminology kind of stuff and disgusting things to do with death. Their album covers always had people and meat mixed in and that always attracted me. I’ve always been more into bands with something to say, although at the same time, I’m a believer that music is first and foremost and everything else is secondary, but while you’re doing it you may as well make it about something

that’s worthwhile. Also, no one else was really talking about it.”

Allison Gallagher chats to nouveau post-punk legend Dylan Baldi, a man with a determinedly upbeat outlook on life

n its early days as a one-man bedroom project, Cleveland’s Cloud Nothings thrived on a certain kind of chaos. Frontman Dylan Baldi’s lo-fi, fuzzed out songs had a frenetic energy and immediacy about them even in their prettiest, poppiest moments. Over the course of three studio albums, their sound grew more abrasive, embracing a caustic, post-hardcore aesthetic that reflected Baldi’s lyrics. Songs like ‘No Sentiment’ from 2012’s Attack On Memory were underpinned by anxiety, carried by dissonant guitar riffs and Baldi’s howled vocals. Back in January, however, the band released their latest record, Life Without Sound. Their fourth studio album dials back on the furious sonic assaults to highlight the melodies a little more clearly, and features a brightness throughout that’s never before been present on a Cloud Nothings record. It’s far from clean and polished, and it’s more cautiously optimistic in its positivity than it is sugary sweet – but it’s the most mature the band have sounded to date. “I wanted to make something that was a little slower,” says Baldi. “I like fast, angry stuff, but you can only make so much of that before you start repeating yourself. The record before, every song was similar in the way they were executed, so for this one I wanted to make sure every song had its own place on the record and all sounded different enough to not mistake one song for another.”

Rather than the aggressive punk urgency of 2014’s Here And Nowhere Else or the hyperactive noise-pop of the band’s early output, Life Without Sound remains energised yet contemplative – what it sounds like to earnestly try and make sense of the world and your place in it, rather than simply thrashing it out. Importantly, Life Without Sound was recorded with the famously handson John Goodmanson, known for producing the likes of Sleater-Kinney and Los Campesinos!, two other bands to have undergone a significant maturing process over several records. Life Without Sound’s optimistic tone belies the less than ideal conditions that prompted it. Written during a period of isolation amidst a turbulent relationship, Baldi says that in retrospect, the album was partially an experiment in wishful thinking. At the time, he was listening to a lot of new age music after discovering an ‘80s cassette label that specialised in it. Whether that had an effect on the songwriting itself is hard to say, but the album is definitely the closest that the band has come to ‘new age’ music. “Looking back on it, I was definitely trying to feel happier than I was, and that’s what I was using the record for: to try to project a happier version of things. I don’t think I realised that was what I was doing, but looking back on it two years after we recorded it definitely seems like that was the case. Which is weird because I’m not usually, like, extremely happy, so I think making a

record that was a lot more optimistic and with a brighter tone was an interesting choice.” That juxtaposition of striving for lightness that seems forever out of reach is most immediately apparent on songs like ‘Modern Act’, where a sunny coda of power-pop guitars provides the backdrop for Baldi’s frank reflections on struggling to feel a sense of purpose – “I want a life, that’s all I need lately / I am alive but all alone”. Baldi thinks that it will be interesting to see how the new sound gets translated into live shows – don’t be surprised if on the band’s upcoming Australian tour, punters aren’t stagediving over the top of one another. “Something I noticed on this tour was, we toured Here And Nowhere Else and people came to, like, go crazy. Kids were moshing and stuff constantly throughout the whole gig. But immediately on this record from the first show, it was a lot more calm an audience. I don’t really know what that means: I don’t know if this record brought in a bunch of sad immobile people or it’s just the case that it’s a more mature crowd that was attracted rather than people who just wanted to flip out.” It could also be the fact that the band’s current live shows, now with the addition of guitarist Chris Brown, have a little more space to articulate the more subtle nuances. While Here And Nowhere Else, which was written while the band was a

FEATURE

Cloud Nothings: Searching For Brightness

“I DON’T KNOW IF THIS RECORD BROUGHT IN A BUNCH OF

SAD IMMOBILE PEOPLE.”

three-piece, flourished in its directness, Baldi admits the band sounds better with the addition. “Chris is an old friend of everybody in the band; he grew up with our drummer and bassist,” says Baldi. “I actually wanted him to be in the band for the last record, and ended up writing the record for one guitar instead of two. It’s been great: the band definitely sounds better with two guitars instead of one.” Looking ahead, Baldi feels unsure whether or not the band’s next album will have such a sunny disposition – though he’s reluctant to rest on his laurels. “I’m not interested in repeating something I’ve already done,” says Baldi, before taking a pause. “Musically at least. I’ll repeat drinking coffee every morning forever until I die”. It’s an apt way of describing Baldi’s approach to songwriting – no matter how Cloud Nothings evolves, one senses there’ll always be the whirring, electric combination of a caffeine buzz and amplified guitars behind it.

Where: Oxford Art Factory When: Thursday February 22

“I LIKE FAST, ANGRY STUFF, BUT YOU CAN ONLY MAKE SO MUCH OF THAT BEFORE YOU START REPEATING YOURSELF.” thebrag.com

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 31

FEATURE 32 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

thebrag.com

FEATURE

DRUMMER LINDY MORRISON GIVES ALLISON GALLAGHER HER TAKE ON THE BRISBANE BAND’S MYTHOLOGISED TALE AND JUSTIFIES HER CONTRIBUTION TO ITS LEGACY

or many, 16 Lovers Lane is the record that defines Australian indie legends The Go-Betweens. Released in 1988, it was the last album to feature long-standing drummer Lindy Morrison and multiinstrumentalist Amanda Brown, and includes some of the band’s most iconic tracks – ‘Streets of Your Town’, ‘Was There Anything I Could Do?’ and ‘Love Goes On’, to name but a few. Soon after the album’s release, the band dissolved amidst internal tensions – and when founding members Robert Forster and Grant McLennan reformed the band back in 2000, Morrison and Brown were not invited back into the fold. Morrison and Brown continued to perform both together and individually, and the “new” Go-Betweens lineup released two albums before McLennan’s death in 2006. In July of this year, Morrison, Brown and the album’s bassist John Willsteed reunited to perform 16 Lovers Lane together in Brisbane. Commissioned by Katie Noonan of George as part of Queensland Festival, it was the first time the trio had all played music together in three decades, and the performance included a host of guest vocalists including Kirin J. Callinan, Montaigne and Jen Boyce of Ball Park Music. “It was fabulous,” says Morrison of the evening. “I haven’t played some of those songs since 1989, so for me it was just wonderful. The band had never played some of those songs live at all – we had never played ‘You Can’t Say No Forever’, nor we had ever played ‘The Devil’s Eye’.” Additionally, Morrison, Brown and Willsteed recently performed the iconic album as part of Sydney Festival, again including guest vocalists like Romy Vager, Shogun of Royal Headache and Izzi Manfredi of The Preatures. “The way the show works is that we do the album, and then we do some b-sides and some other favourites. You couldn’t not do ‘Cattle And Cane’, for instance.” For Morrison, collaborating with other artists and sharing pieces of those songs with other musicians was one of the most rewarding aspects of the project. “For me, that was probably the best part,” she says. “To see Kirin J. Callinan do ‘Twin Layers Of Lightning’ or to see Katie Noonan doing ‘Quiet Heart’ – I mean, you could not imagine anything more beautiful than that. Having these singers come in and sing with their beautiful voices is just extraordinary, because you see how great the songs are, how authentic they are – how original the lyrics, how unique the melodies. All of that comes out when you hear someone else sing them.” Morrison’s continuing passion for new Australian music shines through when she excitedly gushes about the musicians that partook in the 16 Lovers Lane State Theatre show. “Rob Snarski from the Blackeyed Susans doing ‘Apology Accepted’ with Romy Vager was amazing!” Artists like Shogun of Royal Headache (“I am such a fan of him; he’s got such a beautiful voice, but he’s such a punk!”) and Kirin J Callinan receive similarly enthusiastic appraisals. “Kirin did ‘You Can’t Say No Forever’ as well as ‘Twin Layers Of Lightning’. I love Kirin – one of my favourite songs is ‘(Just Another) Song About Drugs’.”

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 33

FEATURE

continued…

declaration that they have as much place in the band’s history as anyone else. “I’ve been trying to say for 25 years that I had as much place in the band’s history,” says Morrison. “But very few people were really listening. You read any interview with Robert and Grant, and we were never mentioned in 25 years. It was very hurtful, because I felt my contribution was enormous. My involvement in [the 16 Lovers Lane performance] really just stemmed from a chance to play the songs. You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to play those songs. You really do fi nd salvation in art, so to spend a whole year, really – six months leading up to the Queensland performance and six months leading up to this – having a creative project to hold onto, it is so inspiring. It gives you a reason to live.”

“I HAVEN’T PLAYED SOME OF THOSE SONGS SINCE 1989, SO FOR ME IT WAS JUST WONDERFUL. THE BAND HAD NEVER PLAYED SOME OF THOSE SONGS LIVE AT ALL.”

Looking back on 16 Lovers Lane now, it’s clear Morrison’s drumming anchors the bittersweet album and its understated rhythms. “It’s a very romantic album, and quite forlorn and melancholy in many ways”, Morrison replies when I ask what reflecting on the album is like after all these years. “It speaks to lost love and longing, so I can’t say I feel incredibly happy when I listen, but I still can’t get over the beauty of the production of the album, nor can I get over how great the songs are; they really are great.” The Go-Betweens are arguably one of the country’s most mythologised bands, but Morrison has long stopped publicly discussing the group’s tumultuous history. She has described The Go-Betweens: Right Here, the documentary about the group directed by Kriv Stenders and released earlier this year, as her “final say” of sorts on the matter. “There is a lot of mythologising about The Go-Betweens and I think that’s because it is such an interesting story. I can’t deny that”, she says when I ask how she manages to avoid self-mythologising while re-creating the band’s landmark album – and the necessary press cycle that comes with it. “It’s a truly authentic story, so that’s why people like to talk about it, and why people keep

Morrison has remained active as a musician since The Go-Betweens first disbanded, but has been getting especially ‘drum-fit’ – “particularly necessary at my age”, she says – for the better part of the last year, practicing every day. “I’ve been driving down, hiring a studio, spending at least an hour, playing full on”. She’s also been regularly performing drumming duties for acts such as rising star Alex The Astronaut and Dave Mason of The Reels. In the documentary, Morrison comments that the breakup of The Go-Betweens has been “substantial” for her and Brown’s individual careers – “because it made us want to seriously make a mark”. Morrison has spent decades ensuring that mark has been left, and will be remembered as much as an icon of the

“YOU SEE HOW GREAT THE SONGS ARE, HOW AUTHENTIC THEY ARE HOW ORIGINAL THE LYRICS, HOW UNIQUE THE MELODIES. ALL OF THAT COMES OUT WHEN YOU HEAR SOMEONE ELSE SING THEM.” asking questions about it – despite the fact that the film, for me, was the last word. People still want to talk about specific incidents and events and are still obsessing over the breakup. I don’t want to talk about the story any more, but I’m happy to talk about a project. So it’s a fine line between self-mythologising and letting the work speak. But at the end of the day, I have the opportunity to play these songs and I can’t tell you how much pleasure it gives me to do that.” The band’s history often sees Morrison and Brown being positioned as little more than the former partners of Forster and McLennan – something Morrison refutes with conviction in the documentary. There is a moment in the film where Morrison, sitting beside Brown, puts it bluntly. “Both of us refused to be defined as ‘the girlfriends’ – and that’s what they did when they dumped us. They treated us like ex-wives, and that was the greatest insult.” There seems to be a sense of empowerment then in Morrison and Brown finally being able to perform these songs themselves – a bold

“I’VE BEEN TRYING TO SAY FOR 25 YEARS THAT I HAD AS MUCH PLACE IN THE BAND’S HISTORY. BUT VERY FEW PEOPLE WERE REALLY LISTENING.” 34 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

Australian music scene as anyone. With the advent of the internet, as well as the recently-released documentary, there’s been a renewed interest in The Go-Betweens among a younger audience. Their legacy has carried on through the jangly pop melodies of contemporary indie groups like Twerps and Dick Diver, as well as Grant & I, Robert Forster’s 2016 memoir about the group. Morrison – who only joined Facebook last year – says it’s been incredible to discover that so many people continue to love and support the band. “It feels fabulous. It’s been a very good year,” she says, reflectively. “A career in show biz is so up and down. One year you’re up, and one year you’re down. Sometimes it’s ten years you’re up, ten years you’re down. I think it’s great and I’m so happy that young people are finding our music and loving it. I’m also grateful for all the old fans who’ve continued to support us. I always knew the work would stand up, but I’m really grateful that there’s so much love for the band and the music and my quaint, simple drum playing. People get it.” What: The Go-Betweens: Right Here is available to watch in full on ABC iView

thebrag.com

FEATURE

“SINGING’S ALWAYS FELT LIKE SUCH A CLEANSING AND THERAPEUTIC EXPERIENCE FOR ME.”

Julie Byrne: A Moving Spirit Belinda Quinn talks to a no-longer flighty Julie Byrne about the pitfalls of solo travel and the intensity of committing to music

Julie Byrne photo by Jonathan Bouknight

ulie Byrne’s music is sweetened by its simplicity, but that’s not to say that it’s lacking in intellect. The New York-based singer-songwriter weaves thematic threads of romance, natural landscapes and the isolation of solo travel with hefty reverence throughout her latest album Not Even Happiness. Byrne has been in constant transit since she was 18, settling for brief periods in Kansas, Arkansas, Montana and Wyoming. On ‘Sleepwalker’, a track full of significant warmth, her soft and strong vocals accompany quick successions of fingerpicked acoustic guitar, neither one overpowering the other: “I travelled only in service of my dreams,” she sings, “I stood before them all / I was a sleepwalker.” Indeed, Byrne’s roving lifestyle caused her to develop a dependence on being alone – that is, until falling in love rooted her to New York City. “There was a long period of my life, and even now I feel this way, where travel felt

so freeing,” she explains. “I prioritised that lifestyle over any other option. But now I’m faced with the importance of building a home for myself … that wideopen feeling of groundlessness; it’s not healthy.” While there’s the temptation to romanticise travel through our social networks, treating life on the road as a symbol of freedom, Byrne reveals this isn’t always the case. “I have dragged my lives across the country / And wondered if travel led me anywhere,” she sings on ‘I Live Now As A Singer’. And when prodded as to exactly why it was an unhealthy lifestyle, Byrne explains, “Because everyone needs a space where they can rest and recover and have some solitude and privacy – it’s difficult to live without that for so long.” Byrne was raised on the sounds of her father’s finger-style guitar playing and February marks her tenth year playing the instrument. “I’m a late learner,” she says. “When I was 17 my good friend had taken an acoustic guitar class as an elective in high school and so sometimes we would hang out and she would teach me the chords she was learning.” While her storytelling seems indicative of trends in alt-country and folk – there are images of passing scenery and a feminine strength similar to that of

Gillian Welch, as well as Townes Van Zandt’s self-aware loneliness – she never intended to write to a specific genre. “I’ve never really listened to too much folk music, so it’s not like it was particularly a genre that I was looking to embody, it was just a natural thing,” she explains, “and singing’s always felt like such a cleansing and therapeutic experience for me.” Not Even Happiness is the result of a collaboration with producer Eric Littmann and violinist Jake Falby; together they travelled to her childhood home in Buffalo to record the album. “They’re my family. We’ve really been through thick and thin together and they’re my soulmates in music … Eric is involved in a lot of projects in New York. In the day he works as an infectious disease researcher and by night he makes music and produces his friends’ albums … we’re pretty inseparable.” The trio have carefully balanced the record with ambient noise and orchestral builds. “Eric and I had this vision for the accompaniment that it would always be building in the background until all of a sudden it would emerge and there would be these burgeoning moments of emphasis with synth or with field recordings.” It’s subtler classical elements can be attributed to Falby. “Jake is a classically trained musician and he’s played like symphony orchestras – he has a very strong intuition for the music.” Having moved across different fields of work, studying Environmental Science and working as a seasonal park ranger, she’s currently struggling with her newfound settlement in the music industry. “It’s very painful to say that [I only work in] music,” she says. “For over

a decade I’ve always worked odd jobs: I’ve worked in the service industry, I’ve worked in sales, I’ve worked in retail, I’ve worked with the parks department. And I was always balancing music with what I had to do to make a living, so now it’s kind of a really profound moment of finally just having music be the only thing I’m working on. “It is [scary] because the lifestyle of being a musician contains two kind of polar opposites … You have this lifestyle of touring where it’s very intense and you’re moving so quickly. You have very little personal space or even time enough to really get your bearings in a place before you leave for the next one, and there is something beautiful about surrendering to that rhythm and that pace. But then once an album cycle ends, your time is just open-ended … I’m definitely not a prolific writer … I feel like I don’t have any kind of control over when I feel that inspiration; I just find myself waiting for it.” She weighs up each thought with care before speaking, ensuring honesty in her answers. On writing, she says, “It takes me a really long time.” Refusing to rush appears to be her approach to living; she’s spent a significant portion of her life moving through the States at a ponderous, gentle pace. With healing self-awareness, she sings, “I’ve been seeking God within.” Perhaps her music asks us to carry ourselves with similar care.

What: Sydney Festival Where: City Recital Hall When: Tuesday January 23 And: Not Even Happiness is out on Spunk

SPACE

“EVERYONE NEEDS A WHERE THEY CAN REST AND RECOVER AND HAVE SOME SOLITUDE AND PRIVACY – IT’S DIFFICULT TO LIVE WITHOUT THAT FOR SO LONG.” thebrag.com

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 35

Sounds Like… NEW ALBUM AND SINGLE RELE A SES WITH JOSEPH E ARP

New year’s resolutions are fun. Don’t listen to those old fuckbags who rise out of their no-fun caves at the dawn of every fresh year to tell you that calendar time is a construct and that reinvention is impossible. Those people are bullies who sneak their aggression under the cover of rationality. They will always be the way that they are, and will spend the rest of their lives stagnating in their own tepid personalities, while the rest of us get to continually strive for the better and change skins and lives like so many snakes. Idles

I had four resolutions this year. The first was to get swole. This is a work in progress. The second was to catch up on all the good music that I missed last year. The third was to listen to a lot more music this year. The fourth was to learn a new language. My feeling is two and three are the only ones I’ll actually do – mostly cause I have this loverly column to do them through, and you loverly people to do them for. So! If you’ll permit me to cast my mind back into last year’s garbage fire, I missed a whole bunch of albums that I really shouldn’t have missed. Perhaps most significantly, I totally slept on Brutalism, a new record from British punk rockers Idles. Carrying the torch of The Fall and, to a lesser extent, The Clash, the band make noisy, abrasive punk rock that addresses everything from rape culture, to depression, to that failing fucking machine known as capitalism. ‘Mother’, the album’s standout track, contains these lines: “The best way to scare a Tory is to read and get rich.” A-fucking-men. I also failed to realise Simon Joyner, the weepy folk titan who carried me through Simon Joyner

36 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

many of my teenage years, released a record. It’s called Step Into The Earthquake, and it’s the best thing he’s released since Hotel Lives, his heartwrenching masterpiece. For fans of: Bright Eyes (Conor Oberst and Joyner are mates, and have covered each other’s songs), sad Replacements, and Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. Now! Onto the new year. We’re only a month in, but already there’s been some grand stuff dropped, at home and abroad. I am particularly enraptured by Lucy Dacus’ ‘Night Shift’. Dacus emerged around the same time as Courtney Barnett, and was unfairly and unfortunately lumped into the same category as that ’Strayan living legend. But Dacus has skills that are hers and hers alone – running at six minutes at thirty seconds long, ‘Night Shift’ shows off them all. A song about a bitter break-up that manages to feel as light and sweet as a cracker dissolving on the tongue, it’s just aces. One can only hope

thebrag.com

albums

The Defender

Shame

BY LISA DIB In The Defender, the BRAG’s writers make the case for something they feel has been hard done by. This issue, Lisa Dib comes out swinging for the too often maligned genre of nu-metal. Korn

N that the rest of the record it is designed to promote, Historian, is as good. Also brilliant, also recently released, is Shame’s Songs Of Praise. Like the aforementioned Idles, the band combine incisive social commentary with walls of feedback and noise. They make music that’s like dialogue from a Mike Leigh film run through about ten amps – dirty, ugly rock and roll that dips into spoken word and poetry and abrasive, barked curses. I love the whole record, but ‘Donk’ is my favourite. Get on it. On the pop front, I am besotted with Camila Cabello’s Camila. Fifth Harmony never got the proper respect that they deserved – while One Direction eventually muscled their way into something resembling critical acclaim, the Harmonisers were locked out from esteem. But they shouldn’t have been. Fifth Harmony are a fuller, more exciting band than One Direction ever were, and Cabello, who left the pop group in 2016, was long their secret weapon. Excitingly, her solo record shows her talent pool has only deepened. Songs like ‘Never Be The Same’ and the chartbusting ‘Havana’ have this richness to them – this intelligence – that might surprise those expecting something chirpier and less mature from Cabello.

At a youthful 20 years of age, the singersongwriter has more emotional nuance to her than a whole heap of those boring rock octogenarians that regularly get trotted out when it comes time to talk about great songwriters. Trust me, within a decade Cabello is going to be running the fucking world. Not that this year has been a total joy, mind you. There’s been a whole goddamn load of bullshit going on, the most egregious example of such slop being Fall Out Boy’s new and hilariously poor album Mania. The thing’s bad enough to make one’s gums bleed – it’s a melange of soupy lyrics, laughable dashes of electronica, and the cringeworthy posturing of a brace of musicians who should have quit it while they were ahead years ago. I will take knitting needles to the flesh underneath my fingernails before I listen to this trash again. We’ve also had to sit and take it while ole mate Justin Timberlake, ruiner of great Coen Brothers films and longtime dopey, smug-faced twit, has dribbled a slow stream of shite over us. Both of his new singles are atrocious, but the real evil is ‘Supplies’, a vile concoction. Decide who you want to be, Justin, and stop trying to cast a net so wide you catch nothing but the bottom feeders and the sand. After all, you just starred in a (terrible) Woody Allen film, your most fondly remembered look is that time your hair closely resembled two-minute noodles, and you’re significantly less likeable than your significant other.

Album Of The Fortnight: Songs Of Praise Dud Of The Fortnight: Mania

thebrag.com

u-metal, as a popular genre, is a real snapshot of its own time. In the same way brown and orange is unequivocally the 1970s, nu-metal is the early 2000s, and this mish-mash of alternative genres proved ever so à la mode between years of, approximately, 1997 and 2004. In that brief window of time, some people did some silly things (see Limp Bizkit’s Faith), but some people, like Linkin Park, made landmark albums that people lwould cherish for years to come. Nu-metal was no different to any other genre: it found its feet, grew its fanbase, surged in popularity, developed its kings and copycats and, eventually, found itself the victim of backlash and decline. Trends are the word of God; once upon a time, bands like Linkin Park and Evanescence were in the top ten of the US singles chart. Nowadays, we’re on a much more popflavoured bend.

about 1000 per cent more Phil Collins than I did then, too. But you can’t change what music means, or meant, to people. You can shame someone for their taste, but they’re not going to flick a switch and stop enjoying or relating to it, are they? Hybrid Theory, for instance, for me and many others – 10.5 million others, evidently – was a real game-changer. It was music I related to and enjoyed listening to (there were bands like The Icarus Line whose lyrics I found very ‘relatable’ and ohso deep, but I was no fan of the unpleasantly guttural vocals, through which I could not understand said lyrics). I had been a pop music fan until my punk transition in my mid-teens, so I was still looking for music that had some of those sensibilities and hallmarks. All I wanted was dark but catchy tunes with angsty, angry and ‘deep’ lyrics, and numetal delivered.

“IN THE SAME WAY BROWN AND ORANGE IS UNEQUIVOCALLY THE 1970S, NU-METAL IS THE EARLY 2000S.”

Most people credit Korn, who burst onto the scene around 1994, with inciting the nu-metal sound, although the specific nature of the genre came as a development of a mixture of various other sounds: hip hop, grunge, and those myriad other metal sub-sections. By 1996, Korn’s Life Is Peachy made it to number three on the Billboard 200, legitimizing the genre. Of course, the defining album of the genre – Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory – wouldn’t be released until 2000. It’s easy to criticise music you instinctually don’t like, and I can see why people didn’t latch onto nu-metal: it was more palatable than screamo and other subgenres of metal music, making it less ‘credible’ to some. Metal fans in particular saw it as pandering to the mainstream. At 30, I don’t listen to nearly as many nu-metal bands as I did when I was a wee angry 16-year-old; I mean, tastes change, and I listen to

Every genre has those performers that make it ‘look bad’; personally, as much as I enjoyed nu-metal at the time, I had a real loathing for Crazy Town, and Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst shat me right up the wall. But would you stop seeing comedies just because Grimsby was so bad? I didn’t just stop listening to hip-hop just because Iggy Azalea popped her head in – many bands went through a ‘nu-metal phase’ to keep up with the times. Nu-metal represents a point in time, and it’s only fair to say it might not have aged that well. A lot of nu-metal’s current popularity is based in nostalgia, in fairness. But there were those of us who were angry teens back then, and in between pop acts and punks, you would find us screaming along to Evanescence’s ‘Bring Me To Life’, Linkin Park’s ‘In The End’ or Drowning Pool’s ‘Bodies’, feeling satiated and thankful for music that spoke our enraged, miserable language.

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 37

arts in focus ■ TELEVISION

The End Of The F***ing World is as bleak as it is beautiful By Cameron Williams

The Post

■ FILM

The shockingly awful The Post is proof “timeliness” only gets a film so far By Joseph Earp

t the height of his fame, Pablo Picasso’s sketches were worth a considerable sum more than the things that he sketched. He could park himself on a street corner, draw a quick picture of a nearby mansion, sell the sketch, and have enough money to buy the property several times over. He could own things by rendering them. Steven Spielberg is in a similar position these days. Such is the director’s legendary status that if he sets out to make an old fashioned, awardsshowered, and frightfully serious Best Picture

contender, he can. He has the money, the prestige, and, perhaps most importantly, the perceived artistic heft to get the critical establishment falling over themselves to heap praise and nominations upon him, even though he’s spent the last few years only drawing sketches – and not particularly impressive ones at that. And so it goes with The Post, 116 interminable minutes of Oscar catnip so stuffed with cheese it’d be better placed under a deli counter than in multiplexes. Set in the ’70s and based on efforts by those at The New York Times and The Washington Post to get the

Pentagon Papers – proof that the United States government sent American soldiers to die in Vietnam knowing the war could not be won – to the public, the film spends most of its swollen running time making the repeated and strained case for its own relevancy. So, although the film is ostensibly about the owner of The Washington Post, Kay Graham (Meryl Streep), and the paper’s editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), what it’s really about is the freedom of the press, and, even more importantly, Donald J. Trump. Richard Nixon might be the film’s

“Cliches are almost too numerous to detail, but let’s try anyway.”

38 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

shadowy, barnstorming antagonist, but he’s only a stand-in; a cipher designed to represent the similarly paranoid, similarly puttyjowelled fascist currently pacing up and down the halls of the White House. Yet, rather than allowing the audience to draw their own contemporary parallels, screenwriters Liz Hannah and Josh Singer stuff their script with speeches so insufferably on the nose that you half expect them to be delivered down the barrel of the camera. Nothing is subtle, nothing is communicated with nuance or class, and at times The Post more resembles a Funny Or Die version of a prestige picture than the real deal. Cliches are almost too numerous to detail, but let’s try anyway. Whistleblowers melodramatically pause, burdened with the great weight of their task, Spielberg’s trademark lens flares popping around them. Serious men in serious suits charged with serious business stand around endlessly talking, outqupping each other like characters from an Aaron Sorkin script dumbed down by about 60 IQ points. Interns tremble at the feet of great, impossibly wise editors. And people spin on their heels and face the wall halfway through conversations in order to stare into middle distance in a manner that no one in their life has ever – ever – actually done.

Nobody emerges from the mess unscathed. Hanks and Streep turn in the worst performances of their respective careers – the beloved and mischievous twinkle in the former’s eye has been replaced by something more akin to a look of genuine desperation, and the latter hems, haws and mutters herself into a creative corner. There’s no reason to care about either of their characters; no reason to empathise with these bourgeoisie fucks, the kind of speechmaking bores you would fake a stroke to get out of a dinner party conversation with.

panicked when The End Of The F***ing World finished. How the hell was I going to recommend this show if I couldn’t explain what it’s about? Worries aside, it’s a good problem to have. Shows that leave me uttering nonsense when trying to think of a synopsis are a rarity. TV loves formula: cop show, doctor show, CW show where dudes take off their shirts. Even expensive, prestige dramas from the likes of HBO have a repetitive streak, and seldom leave you gobsmacked. Yet The End Of The F***ing World is a rush of originality that portrays teenage angst with the pitch black darkness of those gloomy hormonal years. Based on the comic book series by Charles S. Forsman, The End Of The F***ing World centres on James (Alex Lawther), a teenager who believes he’s a psychopath and is planning his first kill – stay with me. When James meets the rebellious Alyssa (Jessica Barden), he decides she’ll be his victim, but Alyssa sees James as a chance to escape her home life. The duo go on a road

And that’s not even to mention the film’s genuinely gobsmacking conclusion, a tone deaf mess that sees Spielberg suddenly shift into Marvel worldbuilding mode. He seems to be either hinting at a sequel (The Post 2: Electric Boogaloo) or desperately straining for historical relevance – either way, he grossly underestimates the intelligence of the audience he has spent two hours beating over the head with the supposed importance of his turgid film. After all, The Post might be out to criticise Trump, but like the US President, it just can’t stop letting you know what a big deal it is. What: The Post is in Australia cinemas now

thebrag.com

arts reviews ■ FILM The End Of The F***ing World

Mary And The Witch’s Flower is a disappointingly by-the-numbers fantasy By Joseph Earp

“The show takes the platform of young love on the run in True Romance and blends it with the dry, austere sensibility of a Yorgos Lanthimos film.” trip together where they bounce from situations that rapidly go from bad to worse. We’re used to moody representations of teenagers on TV, but those depictions are signified by pouts, scowls and sarcastic comments. Dramas from the 1990s like Beverly Hills 90210, all the way up to the The O.C. and Gossip Girl, gave us twenty-something actors passing as teenagers in a glossy world of melodrama. These shows excelled at presenting an adolescent fantasy of privilege that thrived on ‘OMG’ moments and perfectly fed off the way teens sniff out drama. If you want to get closer to earth there’s My So Called Life, Freaks and Geeks and Friday Night Lights. And if you want to turn out all the

lights, cradle a knife and crank The Cure, there’s The End Of The F***ing World. The show takes the platform of young love on the run in True Romance and blends it with the dry, austere sensibility of a Yorgos Lanthimos film (The Lobster, The Killing Of A Sacred Deer). The first time James and Alyssa meet they tell each other to ‘fuck off’. Their first encounter sets the tone for a tumultuous relationship, while avoiding the saccharine ‘boy meets girl’ scenario. The End Of The F***king World never wavers from its abrasive take on adolescence. James claims he can’t feel anything while Alyssa is an expert at self-destruction. They are misfits of their own creation, but dedicated

to getting what they want. The show taps into the sociopathic nature of teenagers, and isn’t ashamed to do a jig in the selfish pride that enables James and Alyssa to make horrific decisions. There’s a cycle of mistakes in The End Of The F***ing World and the personal anguish of James and Alyssa is tied to tragic moments at their hands of their parents. The adult characters make questionable choices with little regard to the wellbeing of others – even the police are narcissistic – and you get a sense of how trauma manifests itself from parent to child. Yet, James and Alyssa are drawn together more than their propellant personalities and turbulent

“There’s a cycle of mistakes in The End of the F***ing World and the personal anguish of James and Alyssa is tied to tragic moments at the hands of their parents.”

backstories suggest. The more Alyssa agitates James, the closer he feels to her. The circumstance of their meeting is grotesque but fortuitous. By the end of eight sharp episodes you understand why these two decide to stay together. When it comes to romance, we think too much about boxes of chocolates and roses, and less about the way a partner can simply level out the worst parts of ourselves. Being in love isn’t about similarities, it’s about differences and how each side balances out the other to form a whole. If this all sounds relentlessly bleak, it is, but light leaks in when the show isn’t painting the world pitch black. One scene shows James and Alyssa walking through a forest as beams of light fight their way through the thick canopy of trees surrounding them. Darkness is dominant in The End Of The F***ing World, but the sweetness trickles through, and it becomes crucial to the way the pair bond. Directors Jonathan Entwistle (the show’s creator) and Lucy Tcherniak have an incredible eye for how to position their lead characters against a world threatening to consume them. And we’ve all had that feeling – whether you’re a teenager now or those years are way behind you – of wanting the world to swallow you whole to end the misery. And the world will oblige in those wishes if you let it wear you down, but it’s the people who make us think greater than ourselves for the sake of others that makes it worth sticking around. James and Alyssa 4 Eva.

ayao Miyazaki, the head honcho over at Japan’s Studio Ghibli, is the kind of subtle genius who makes great art look easy. His hand-drawn animated fables exude effortless charm – films like Ponyo and Princess Mononoke are so carefully realised, it’s easy to imagine they came into the world without a struggle, fully-formed. And yet something like Mary And The Witch’s Flower, the new film by Studio Ghibli alumni Hiromasa Yonebayashi, proves exactly how much skill it takes to pull off a heartwamer like Ponyo. Although all the pieces are in place to make Mary work, from a beautiful, colourful art style, to a charming protagonist, to an important message about self-worth, nothing ever quite clicks. Part of that is surely the fault of the script, which is so overloaded with cliches and coincidences that it always feels moments away from buckling in the middle. You have Mary, your wide-eyed innocent hero, separated from her parents; you have a magical, all-powerful object – in this case the enchanted flower of the title – that has the power to transport one to another world; you have a pair of misguided, mischievous antagonists, the witchy Madame Mumblechook (Kate Winslet in the English dub) and her right-hand man, Doctor Dee (Jim Broadbent); and you have a cute, animal companion (an enjoyably grumpy cat.) It’s entirely thanks to lacklustre plotting and hastily drawn motivations that nothing about the film ever truly surprises, or properly engages. In its predictability, Mary’s quest zigzags from the uninspired to the tiresome, and the final act feels more like a methodical clean-up of loose ends than a climax. Not that the film is entirely frustrating. The animation is spellbinding – as he proved with his debut feature, The Secret World Of Arrietty, Yonebayashi knows how to make a world feel rich and full, and even if Mary and her mates never feel particularly nuanced, they sure look impressive. After all, there is a singular, if fleeting joy, to watching precisely drawn characters moving through space, and Yonebayashi relishes in making his heroes dash and fly about the screen. From the very first scene, as a young woman escapes an inferno, it’s clear Yonebayashi is determined to show off the skill of his animators – it’s just a shame he couldn’t hold his writers to as high a standard. In that way, Mary will work best amongst younger audiences, who will surely be won over by its anarchic humour, and colour, and movement. It’s just a shame that, unlike Studio Ghibli’s masterpieces – or even Yonebayashi’s first film – Mary works best as a method of distracting children on a rainy afternoon and very little else.

What: Mary And The Witch’s Flower is in Australian cinemas now

What: The End of the F***king World is available to stream now on Netflix Australia

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 39

arts in focus ■ Film

Coco is a stunning, musical celebration of diversity By Molly McLaughlin

t first glance, you could be forgiven for being sceptical about Pixar’s latest offering, Coco. A large, U.S.based studio taking on a film centred around the language, music and traditions of Mexico was always going to run the risk of exploiting the culture for cheap laughs – or perhaps misunderstanding it altogether. But rather than presenting a glossy, inaccurate version of Mexico’s Day of the Dead traditions, Coco uses the story of a young boy named Miguel with big dreams to open up a whole new world for audiences young and old. Coco is the tale of 12-year-old Miguel, who lives with his family in a small town in Mexico and dreams of becoming a musician like his idol, Ernesto de la Cruz. However, music has been forbidden in his family since his great-great grandfather abandoned his roots for the life of a touring musician. It’s only on Dia de Muertos, when many Mexicans celebrate the opening of the bridge between the afterlife and the land of the living by making offerings to their deceased family members, that Miguel

“Music plays a huge role in the joy that is Coco.” Coco

makes a discovery which leads him into the land of the dead itself in search of his great-great grandfather.

Coco

Director Lee Unkrich, who does not have Mexican heritage, has spoken extensively about the multiple false starts and wrong turns throughout the six-year gestation period behind Coco, and the work of his team of cultural consultants that influenced the direction of the story. Indeed, screenwriter Adrian Molina, who grew up in the States with his Mexican family, earned a co-director credit midway through production for his contributions. The most significant change to Coco came through realisation that, in contrast with Western traditions, Mexico’s Dia de Muertos celebration stems from an attitude of holding onto the past and loved ones who have died, rather than letting them go. This essential difference drives the plot and characterisation of the film, as Miguel eventually learns the importance of remembering his family and honouring his roots. Music plays a huge role in the joy that is Coco, and the song ‘Remember Me’ recurs throughout the movie to great effect. Newcomer Anthony Gonzalez’s performance as Miguel makes it clear he has all the hallmarks of a star in the making, appearing as he does alongside stars like Gael Garcia Bernal and

“In a time when Latinos in the U.S. are facing increased hostility from the Trump administration and its supporters, a film like Coco is a hugely welcome surprise.” Benjamin Bratt. Like in Mexico, music is everpresent and passionate in Coco. To quote Ernesto de la Cruz: “The music is not just in me… It is me.” In another example of authentic inclusion, the deliberate use of the Spanish language in a big budget animation like Coco is groundbreaking. For example, at one point Miguel uses the phrase “No manches!” to express disbelief, a phrase that is idiomatic in Mexico. And although English-speaking audiences may not know the exactly translation, we can intuit just what he means.

The specific animation style of Coco was also inspired by the production team’s trips to Mexico. The bright colours and friendly skeletons that populate the film are an achievement in and of themselves, but the rendering of the Land of the Dead, which recalls colourful, rambling, colonial cities in Mexico like Guanajuato, is the film’s most memorable creation. In a time when Latinos in the U.S. are facing increased hostility from the Trump administration and its supporters, a film like Coco is a hugely

welcome surprise. When the film was released in Mexico just before Dia de Muertos, it quickly became the highestgrossing blockbuster in the country’s history. (The previous record holder was The Avengers.) Of course, one great movie can’t combat generations of racism and oppression. But representation matters, and Coco represents what we can only hope is the beginning of a new, more collaborative and inclusive era of mainstream animated films. What: Coco is in Australian cinemas now

■ FILM

In the superb By Joseph Earp

olonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), the antagonist of Guillermo del Toro’s perfect tenth feature, The Shape Of Water, is a character as old as time. He isn’t as much a man as he is the man – the archetypal authority figure, his features as white and mechanical as a clockface. He is the bootheel slapped across the forehead of the oppressed; the apparatus that has driven every totalitarian regime from the Romans, to the Nazis, to Francisco Franco’s Spanish fascists. Nor is he an entirely new character for del Toro. Just as the auteur’s films all share key themes – imagination versus reality; the horror buried in beauty, and vice versa – so too are his characters one big, multispecies family. Hellboy, the red-skinned and defiant hero of del Toro’s film of the same name shares essential DNA with Ofelia, the radical innocent at the heart of Pan’s Labyrinth. Amphibian Man, the gilled love interest that sets the plot of The Shape Of Water in motion, doesn’t just

40 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

thebrag.com

arts reviews The Shape Of Water

■ FILM

Molly’s Game is a gooey, enjoyably erratic mess By Joseph Earp

aron Sorkin was always going to outgrow the need for a director. The creator of The West Wing and the man responsible for the crackling, ruthlessly sharp scripts behind The Social Network, A Few Good Men and Moneyball is so one-minded – his dialogue so instantly recognisable – that his vision has frequently outshone that of his director. Steve Jobs isn’t a Danny Boyle film; it’s an Aaron Sorkin film. Charlie Wilson’s War doesn’t belong to its veteran director Mike Nichols; it belongs to the man responsible for writing its barbed, barked insults, and its razor sharp comedy. So with Molly’s Game, his directorial debut, Sorkin has finally and inevitably taken full artistic control, penning a blistering if uneven script and overseeing proceedings with a distinctly fresh-faced naivete. The end result? A bizarre if admirable mess that feels somehow both overtly polished and cringeworthily roughshod.

The Shape Of Water, order is the ultimate evil share the slick skin of Hellboy’s Abe Sapien – he shares his complexity, and his psychedelic, touching weirdness. And, importantly, Strickland, with his neatly parted hair, his pressed suits, and his overbearing maleness, is Captain Vidal from Pan’s Labyrinth reborn with a new, fresher face. Just as he did with Vidal, del Toro communicates Strickland’s complexities with a particular kind of understanding – understanding stripped of any kind of approval. A ladder-climber obsessed with cheap penny candy and self-help books, at the outset of The Shape Of Water Strickland finds himself responsible for caring for “the asset”; an amphibian creature discovered in South America that may or may not be the key to delivering a harsh blow against the Soviets and winning the Cold War. A most unappreciative surrogate step father, Strickland despises the creature. It’s not hard to see why. The pair are twinned versions of one another; two carefully sketched pictures of the intersection between masculinity and power. Strickland’s authority is artificial: he leads with insults, lascivious, thebrag.com

deliberately belittling come-ons directed at The Shape Of Water’s hero, the mute Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins), and a particularly phallic cattle prod. And he fucks for the same reason he tortures – to control. Meanwhile, the Amphibian Man, with his broad shoulders, and carefully contoured abs, has the kind of strength that only needs to be sparingly used. His early violent episodes come from a place of confusion; then, later, from a need to retaliate. While for Strickland, power and violence serve to subdue the vulnerable, for the Amphibian Man, pain is worthwhile only as a means of protection. And his alien, beautiful sexuality isn’t a tool for violence; it’s a means of healing. But there is another distinction between the two – a more crucial one. Strickland, one more cog in a colossal, international military machine, is order. And the Amphibian Man, a creature outside the scope of science and the strict confines of Strickland’s fundamentalist religion, is chaos. There is a cleanness to Strickland’s gelled, all-American surface; a neatness designed to hide the spiritual and moral rot

that, in several genuinely stomach-churning scenes, slowly begins to manifest itself physically in him. Strickland is several decades worth of soap opera fathers condensed into one Cadillac-driving, God-fearing package, and his life outside the work he does with the Amphibian Man could be pulled straight from the pages of a furniture catalogue. He is, at least according to the stereotype, the safest, most reliable kind of American there is: the patriarch. The patriot. The picture of order, and of grace. He is also, of course, a psychopath – a cruel, vengeful monster. In the spiritual system of The Shape Of Water, he is the devil to the Amphibian Man’s God; a clockwork horror, and one more manifestation of the great, horrible cleanness of fascism. It’s easy then to draw contemporary parallels between the man and the multitude of fascists cluttering up the U.S.; to see Strickland’s harsh haircut as a visual echo of the style sported by arch neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, or his sexual violence as a mirroring of the behaviour of the President of the United States. But Strickland is not merely a hat-tip to our present. He is

an acknowledgement of the terrible allure and longevity of evil; a face slapped onto an ancient force. In his acceptance speech at the 2018 Golden Globes, at which he won best director, del Toro noted that throughout his life, monsters had absolved him. He was not talking about monsters like Strickland – those cleanfaced lovers of efficiency that could almost be the heroes of another kind of film. He was talking about monsters like the Amphibian Man; like the creature from the black lagoon; like Frankenstein’s stone-jawed creation. He was talking about beings capable of a form of understanding that only comes from being born different. That, after all, is the great power of The Shape Of Water, the most moving film of the year. It is a film that finds great beauty in isolation, and in difference. And it is a film about a kind of chaotic kindness – a startling, essential compassion – that is as foreign to fascists like Strickland as water is to the surface of the sun.

Based on the true story of Molly Bloom (played with astonishing class and grace by Jessica Chastain), the so-called poker princess and one-time world class skiier, Molly’s Game is a film about ambition. After an accident derails her promising sporting career, Bloom begins climbing the ranks of the US poker scene, hosting high-stakes games frequented by celebrities (most notably Player X, a supposed mash-up of Leonardo Di Caprio and Ben Affleck, played with mawkish charm by Michael Cera) and running ever afoul of the Russian mob. Sorkin does an admirable job communicating what makes poker exciting – not to mention its basic rules – with enough nuance to ensure novices won’t be lost and experts won’t feel spoken down to. What he is significantly less good at, mind you, is allowing for some kind of moral ambiguity. Bloom is, in Sorkin’s eyes, a kind of contemporary saint; a figure of impossibly ironclad values who doesn’t let her association with less savory mobster types diminish her character. It’s a shame. Sorkin shines most when turning real life people into amoral monsters – think his nerdy and vicious Zuckerberg, the rat at the heart of The Social Network – and Molly’s Game suffers from its overt attempts to valorise Bloom. And never is that heavy moralistic hand clearer than in the film’s extended and unfulfilling climax, which spends so long tying up loose ends and fawning over the real life Bloom’s reputation that it leaves a particularly sour taste. Still, as it goes with even failed Sorkin projects, there’s a lot to love here. The film might be some two hours and twenty minutes long, but it doesn’t drag for a second, and the Preston-Sturges-on-crack dialogue is carried admirably by Chastain and the charismatic Idris Elba, playing her beleaguered attorney. It’s just a disappointment that audiences, like the power-hungry Bloom herself, are likely to leave cinemas wanting just that little bit more. What: Molly’s Game is in Australian cinemas Thursday February 1 Molly’s Game

What: The Shape Of Water is in Australian cinemas now

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 41

arts reviews

arts in focus ■ FILM

Phantom Thread is a pitch perfect masterpiece

■ FILM

Here’s why Christopher Plummer was perfect for All The Money In The World By Tim Byrnes

By Joseph Earp

Phantom Thread

ack in 1999, after the release of his third feature film Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson reckoned he’d reached his peak. “I guess the way that I really feel is that Magnolia is, for better or worse, the best movie I’ll ever make,” he told a reporter.

And he was right – in a way. Magnolia was the best movie of a certain type that he’d ever make; the natural endpoint suggested by his debut, Hard Eight, and the purest form of his early, warm, crackling style. But then came a seismic shift. With There Will Be Blood, Anderson’s humour and energy transformed into something darker but no less gripping – a stripped back, formally innovative kind of harshness that he honed and strengthened with The Master. Some filmmakers spend their whole career trying to perfect one style – in less

“Day-Lewis has never been better.” than 20 years, Anderson perfected two. Now, with his latest film Phantom Thread, Anderson has married both of his selves. The Daniel Day-Lewis starring masterpiece has the heart and humour of Magnolia, and the great, almost unbearable sadness of The Master. It is vicious and funny in equal measure; a gothic romance about perfection, and vulnerability, and the intersection of sickness and love. It also so happens to be one of the most astounding and perfectly realised films of the last few years. The plot is simple. Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis), a fashion designer-cum-megalomaniac who boasts a particularly intense relationship with his sister, Cyril (Lesley Manville) and a striking, bottomless appetite, meets waitress Alma Elson (Vicky Krieps). The pair are perfectly matched – Alma is as brooding and determined as Reynolds, and, at least initially, seems able to control his almost toddler-like tantrums. But before long, their relationship is forced to adapt and evolve under the pressure of Woodcock’s demands, and the fi lm flits from delicate comedy, to drama, to something altogether more sinister. Day-Lewis has never been better. He embodies Woodcock wholly, from his flutey, lilting voice to the gentle, gliding way he moves his hands. But this is no one man show, and he is supported perfectly by the film’s other players – Krieps, her eyes burning, proves an admirable sparring partner, while the icy Manville, a Mike Leigh regular, is all tight lips and occasional, expertly controlled flashes of softness. Phantom Thread is a collection of contrasting pleasures: a film that works emotionally, academically, tactilely. There are times it rewards the way running a hand across velvet rewards; moments that engage the heart, others that engage the head, and still more that engage the gut. It feels like another endpoint for Anderson – a summation of years of lived experience. One can only dream of what he might do next.

What: Phantom Thread is in Australian cinemas Thursday February 1

42 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

All The Money In The World

ritish acting legend Christopher Plummer is receiving acclaim for his supporting role in director Ridley Scott’s new thriller All The Money In The World, including Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. Based upon the 1973 kidnapping of John Paul Getty III, the film tells a fascinating story – even though a behind-thescenes controversy has repeatedly threatened to overtake the real-life drama that the film is based on. After all, the world nearly received a very different version of the film: originally, the role of the elderly oil tycoon J Paul Getty was filled by disgraced actor Kevin Spacey. After numerous allegations of sexual harassment and assault were revealed against the actor, Spacey was removed from the already completed film a month before its original premiere, replaced by Scott’s supposed original choice, Plummer. Not that Spacey has been completely scrubbed from the work: audiences were given a very brief taste of his performance via the film’s original trailer, and his past work gives a good indication of what his

portrayal of Getty would entail. The elder Getty may not have been the kidnapper responsible for John Paul Getty’s disappearance, but his refusal to pay his grandson’s ransom makes it hard to deny he is the film’s villain. Indeed, villainy is a common theme across Spacey’s filmography, from See No Evil, Hear No Evil to Horrible Bosses – even to him voicing the antagonistic Hopper in the Disney-Pixar animation A Bug’s Life. Spacey has acknowledged his villainous typecasting, saying, “I think people just like me evil for some reason. They want me to be a son-of-a-bitch”. Although, that doesn’t necessarily explain him playing a cat in Mr Fuzzypants. Spacey plays a specific type of villain: the calculative and manipulative sort. His characters are disturbed, lacking empathy, and are highly intelligent. His work in Seven and The Usual Suspects, the latter winning him an Oscar, are based around scheming sociopaths; murderers who pride themselves on being one step ahead of the police at all times. His portrayal of Frank Underwood in the Netflix

All The Money In The World

series House Of Cards took those qualities to new extravagant heights, as he inhabited a manipulative, double-crossing murderer who will do anything to become president. In 1973, Getty was 80 years old, and he passed away a mere three years later. He was growing senile – obsessing over his fortune and claiming he was the reincarnation of the Roman emperor Hadrian – and his cunning had long faded away. Plummer’s portrayal reflects this; he plays Getty as a greedy dotard, only just a touch more likable than the last person to be called that word. There’s warmth to the way Plummer plays Getty. He’s a loving grandfather who spends a lot of time with Getty III, attempting to mould him in his own image. But what makes

“In 1973, Getty was growing senile – obsessing over his fortune and claiming he was the reincarnation of the Roman emperor Hadrian – and his cunning had long faded away.”

Plummer’s portrayal truly interesting is his reaction when he refuses to pay his grandson’s ransom. Whereas its easy to imagine Spacey might have played the part as a greedy caricature, Plummer’s warmth makes it seem like he genuinely believes his refusal will do everyone good, while asking if ransoms are tax deductible reinforces his detestableness. Eighteenth century philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft famously wrote, “No man chooses evil, because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.” Spacey showed this in his best roles, but Plummer’s warmth adds another dimension to Getty, making his terrible decision seem like a strange act of love. And it’s this complexity that makes Plummer’s Getty definitive, and Spacey’s unimaginable. That Plummer was able to do it with only a month’s notice and a week of work is magical. What: All The Money In The World is in Australian cinemas now thebrag.com

out & about

Queer(ish) matters with Arca Bayburt

Queer Resolutions! (And Music Videos) Welcome to 2018.

“MY 2017 RESOLUTION WAS: ‘I RESOLVE TO RESOLVE MORE’.”

I guess I should have some pre-packaged wisdom to espouse about new beginnings, clean slates or starting over, blah blah. But I don’t have any of these things. 2018 is as much a mystery to me as 2017 was at its start. I know nothing and I’m comfortable with that. Not to say I haven’t tried to be thoughtful about it – in fact I tend to put a lot of superstitious effort into my New Year’s resolutions.

It also happens to be the case that I’ve never failed in any of my resolutions. That might sound impressive, but really, I just make them either extremely specific (or conversely, vague as hell) and quite achievable. Sometimes they’re just bits of wanky nonsense that sound glib or useless, but I try to imbue even the most ridiculous of resolutions with something meaningful and applicable to real life. 2017’s resolution was: “I resolve to resolve more.” It sounds like nothing, but because it fit my usual NYE resolution parameters, I found it easy to sneak into my life. It’s kind of like sneaking cardio into your life. Like, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, or taking frequent breaks from your desk, or making one trip with ten thousand grocery bags, or jogging in the shower, or leaping everywhere instead of walking, or sleeping standing up. I dunno, the point is I could apply this resolution everywhere. It was flexible enough that I adhered to it for the duration of the year.

“I’M SOMEONE WHO GETS ALL STARRY-EYED AT THE POTENTIAL OF THINGS, THEN GETS UPSET WHEN THE OPPORTUNITIES INEVITABLY SLIDE BY, NOT WAITING FOR MY SORRY ASS TO MAKE A DECISION.”

Anyway, the result of all these mental gymnastics was that I did things more decisively than I was used to. I’m someone who gets all starry-eyed at the potential of things, then becomes upset when the opportunities inevitably slide by, not waiting for my sorry

ass to make a decision, because I’m greedy and want everything. I resolved to resolve more, and so I did. It also made it easier to cope with the same sex marriage survey freakshow we all reluctantly had to be part of.

This year’s resolution has a similar ethos, although I almost did change it to, “Must see Cher or die” when I found out she’d be coming to town for Mardi Gras. Speaking of queer musical iconography, however, there is something that’s caught me by surprise recently, and that is Hayley Kiyoko’s music video ‘Curious’ from her upcoming debut album Expectations. I watched the video after a friend mentioned it was one of the gayest things she’d ever seen, so I checked it out. It’s pretty gay.

“QUEERNESS CAN BE SEXY: IT CAN BE CONFIDENT AND ASSERTIVE TOO. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A DIRTY LITTLE SECRET, AND I FUCKING LOVE THAT.”

The song is about Hayley singing to a girl she’s been seeing (or hooked up with in the past, or dated?) who is dating a guy. Ten seconds into the video, Hayley is singing her lusty longings while laying beneath a pile of women sliding their hands all over her. Somehow this isn’t cheesy or creepy or weird.

What a time to be alive. I mean seriously, while I was midway through high school, I had faux-lesbians t.A.T.u. singing “All the things she said, wah wah wah” while hiding beneath a protective layer of rain, poor colour-grading and heterosexual palatability. Tegan and Sara never really did it for me (please don’t send me hate mail) so I made do with just substituting pronouns in songs to make them queerer in my head, while simultaneously, diligently, covering my binders with stickers of “hot boys” – y’know, hetero camouflage. But ‘Curious’ is something so distant to all of that it feels downright foreign. This music video, aside from the fact that it’s a little sophomoric for me now, has lyrics I immediately connected with, despite myself. I think this is what surprised me most. It’s not so much that the video has decidedly queer content, it’s that said content isn’t pandering to anyone. It’s for itself, and maybe that’s why the connection was made. This isn’t some Katy Perry-esque performance of lesbianism to titillate the straighties. It’s not Britney and Madonna chasing each other around the sweaty set of ‘Me Against The Music’, baiting the queers with insipid sexual tension and capitalising on the controversy of their 2003 VMA’s kiss. It’s authentically queer. With new, young queer icons who aren’t there to exploit or be exploited, comes a feeling of being seen. Queerness can be sexy: it can be confident and assertive too. It doesn’t have to be a dirty little secret, and I fucking love that. Happy New Year!

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 43

g g guide gig g

send your listings to : gigguide@seventhstreet.media

PICK OF THE THE ISSUE

FRIDAY JANUARY 26

Kardajala Kirridarra

Victoria Park, Camperdown.

Yabun Festival 2018

– feat: Troy CassarDaley, Baker Boy, Kardajala Kirridarra and more 10am. Free. Good Boy

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 24 Chris Webby – feat: Cheese TV Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $53. Papa Roach Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 7pm. $90.

THURSDAY JANUARY 25 Deez Nuts + Reactions Metro Theatre, Sydney. 7:30pm. $24. Forevr + Narrow Lands + Sports Bra Waywards, Newtown. 8pm. $10. Greame James Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $10.

Freedom 4 – feat: Good Boy, Retiree, Jeremy Neale and more

Holy Holy Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 8pm. $35.

There’s much more to celebrate on January 27 than triple j’s hottest 100. Freedom are back at it with yet another gutful of stellar genre-diverse emerging acts, from the dreamy alt-rock of Good Boy to the twisted grooves of Imbi The Girl. Plus, Gusher DJs will have you dancing your mid-long weekend woes away.

Kardajala Kirridarra Leadbelly, Newtown. 6pm. $17.85.

Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. Saturday January 27. 7:30pm. Free.

44 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

Lo! + Arteries + Grvlls The Lansdowne, Chippendale. 8pm. $17.85. Ministry of Sound’s Orchestrated – feat: Alison Limerick, Deutsh Duke, Llan Kidron, Owl Eyes Sydney Opera House, Sydney. $99.90. 8pm. Papa Roach Metro Theatre, Sydney. 7pm. $90. The Living Eyes + Gonzo + B.B. and the Blips + Satanic Togas Freda’s, Chippendale. 8pm. $10. The Vanns + Los Scallywaggs + Little Coyote Coogee Bay Hotel, Coogee. 8pm. Free. Vanishing Shapes The Temperance Society, Summer Hill. 7pm. Free.

FRIDAY JANUARY 26 Backyard Barby – feat: Trouble In Paradise,

Whispering Jackie, A Big Mistake, Devon Sandwich, Diplazar The Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt. 12pm. Free. Bad Day Out 5 – feat: Wolf and Cub, Sunscreen, Party Dozen and more Petersham Bowling Club, Petersham. 1pm. $30.60. Clean Bandit + Glades Metro Theatre, Sydney. 7pm. $59.90. MNDSGN + Ivan Axe + Joyce Wrice + Benedek + Silentjay + Jace XL Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 9pm. $40. Palms + Bloods + Shag DJs Botany View Hotel, Newtown. 8pm. Free. Royal Chant + Bunt + Wasters + Whooping Big Naughty The Townie, Newtown. 9pm. Free.

thebrag.com

g g guide gig g WITH TESSE

send your listings to : gigguide@seventhstreet.media

Dream Wife

1. Draw you and your band: 2. Draw the cover of your debut album How It All Unfolds:

3. Draw your ideal rider:

Dream Wife + Moaning Lisa

The Lansdowne, Chippendale. Tuesday February 6. 7:30pm. $39. This Icelandic-Brightonian three-piece are packing a show with a punch. Rakel’s vocals reflect elements of Karen O and Bjork, emitting sweet and powerful feminist politico-pop. Starting out as a college art performance, Dream Wife realised the band could become much more – catch them at the Lansdowne if you know what’s good for ya. Yabun After Party Lansdowne, Chippendale. 8pm. $15.

SATURDAY JANUARY 27 Amyl and the Sniffers + Nick Nuisance and the Delinquents + Viral Eyes Botany View Hotel, Newtown. 8pm. Free. Banoffee Hudson Ballroom, Sydney. 8pm. $22.70. Electric Gardens Festival Centennial Park, Sydney. 12pm. $150. Foo Fighters + The Preatures + Weezer ANZ Stadium, Sydney Olympic Park. 8pm. $99.05. Hottest 100 Day – feat: Alex The Astronaut, Jen Boyce, Dom Alessio (DJ sets) The Marlborough

thebrag.com

Hotel, Newtown. 12pm. Free. HTID Australia Sydney Showground, Sydney Olympic Park. 4pm. $113. The Radiators + Toni And The Stonehearts Leadbelly, Newtown. 6pm. $30.

SUNDAY JANUARY 28 Mac The Knife The Lansdowne, Chippendale. 6pm. $15. The Selector + The Beat Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $91.

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 31 Boyz II Men + TLC The Star Event Centre, Pyrmont. 7pm. $100. Father John Misty

Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8:15pm. $79.50. Loyle Carner + Rebel Kleff Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $56.

4. Draw your dream audience:

Sydney outfit Tesse boasts grounded lullabies complimented by gritty vocals, soft piano runs and slightly sad acoustic and baritone guitars – the sonic sweethearts will surely melt your heart while putting you in a contemplative ‘what does this all meaaaan?’ kinda state. Ahead of the release of the band’s debut record, How It All Unfolds, we asked the man behind the project, Tom Stephens, a few questions. He drew us some minimalist, cute and, at times, a little eerie responses.

Slowdive Metro Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $75. Wiki Lansdowne Hotel, Chippendale. 8pm. $31.15.

5. Draw your favourite musician of all time: (Sparklehorse)

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 1 Ben Folds Sydney Opera House, Sydney. 8:30pm. $89. Boyz II Men + TLC The Star Event Centre, Pyrmont. 7pm. $99.90. The Ahern Brothers Leadbelly, Newtown. 6pm. $23.50. The Maine +

BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18 :: 45

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

Waterparks Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 7pm. $52.80.

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 2 Diesel Leadbelly, Newtown. 6pm. $45. Motherfunk + The Big ILCH + Megan and the Vegans Factory Floor, Marrickville. 8pm. $10. Stonefield + Rosa Maria + Gamjee The Lansdowne, Chippendale. 8pm.

$23.50. Twilight at Taronga – feat: The Jezabels, Stella Donnelly Taronga Zoo, Mosman. 6pm. $70.

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 3

Twilight at Taronga – feat: Dan Sultan, The Tesky Brothers Taronga Zoo, Mosman. 6pm. $70.

Have a gig or club listing to get in The BRAG? You can now submit your gig and club listings, head to thebrag.com/gig-guide. $174.50. Iron Chic

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 4 TUESDAY FEBRUARY 6

Damien Leith Leadbelly, Newtown. 7pm. $35.

Leah Flanagan + Alice Skye Leadbelly, Newtown. 6pm. $20.

Macklemore Hordern Pavilion, Moore Park. 8:30pm. $101.85.

Tek Tek The Bearded Tit, Redfern. 4pm. Free.

St. Jermone’s Laneway Festival Sydney College of the Arts, Rozelle. 11am.

Ben Folds Sydney Opera House, Sydney. 8:30pm. $89. Billie Eilish + Okenyo Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $49. Mark Lucas and the Dead Setters The Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt. 7pm. Free.

Anderson Paak

Iron Chic Factory Floor, Marrickville. Sunday February 4. 8pm. $30. What better way to spend your Sunday eve than by boppin’ your bod to the sombre sounds of DIY punk rock sincerity? Any band described as “Springsteen-meets-pop punk” is probably worth your time, in our humble opinion.

Anderson Paak Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. Tuesday February 6. 8:30pm. $81.50. Funk, RnB and hip hop pioneer Anderson Paak promises to stay “sweaty” for his Laneway sideshow, and if anything, we’re sure he’ll stand true to his confident, cool and cheeky lyrics: “Don’t I make it look easy / Don’t I make it look good.”

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

free stuff head to: thebrag.com/freeshit

Insidious: The Last Key James Wan and Leigh Whannell might be best known as the twisted minds behind the Saw series, but as far as we here at the BRAG are concerned, the duo are responsible for a much more interesting franchise – the Insidious films. Intelligent, sensitively written haunted house movies, the Insidious flicks are mini-masterpieces, all of them heightened and enhanced by the appearance of genre regular Lin Shaye, who stars in the series’ newest instalment, Insidious: The Last Key. To celebrate the excellent upcoming film, which hits Australian cinemas on Thursday Februrary 8, we’ve got ten double passes to giveaway. To enter, head over to thebrag.com/ freeshit, won’tcha? 46 :: BRAG :: 732 :: 24:01:18

WIN

A DOUBLE PASS

thebrag.com

CREATIVE COURSES FOR CREATIVE MINDS At SAE, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll learn the skills you need to create your future in Creative Media. With FEE-HELP* available on all Bachelor, Associate Degree, Diploma and Postgraduate courses, you can learn what you love and live it - sooner. Are you ready to focus on your career? *Visit sae.edu.au for information on FEE-HELP.

YOUR CLASS STARTS FEB SAE.EDU.AU | 1800 723 338