Brag#734

INSIDE:

BECK, TOTO, GROUPLOVE, ROYAL CHANT, RIVERDALE, BLACK PANTHER AND SO MUCH MORE

HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF TRUTH TO POWER

SARAH BLASKO: “SOMETIMES YOU GET TO A POINT WHERE YOU CAN’T EVEN PHYSICALLY KEEP GOING.” WHO IS GOING TO CLEAN UP AT THE 2018 ACADEMY AWARDS?

PRESENTED NATIONALLY BY

FEATURING IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

ALEX LAHEY AMINÉ THE AMITY AFFLICTION BAKER BOY BALL PARK MUSIC CLAPTONE CONFIDENCE MAN COSMO’S MIDNIGHT DEAN LEWIS DUKE DUMONT FLIGHT FACILITIES GRINSPOON LADY LESHURR MALLRAT OCEAN ALLEY PAUL KELLY PORTUGAL. THE MAN PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING ROYAL BLOOD SAMPA THE GREAT SKEGSS SUPERDUPERKYLE TKAY MAIDZA VERA BLUE WINSTON SURFSHIRT & MORE USA

GER

UK

UK

USA UK

UK

USA

MARSHALLED BY

CODA CONDUCT ELLA HOOPER FLEXMAMI FUZZY

WAYVILLE FRIDAY 27 APRIL

ADELAIDE SHOWGROUND

BENDIGO SATURDAY 5 MAY

MAITLAND SATURDAY 28 APRIL MAITLAND SHOWGROUND

PRINCE OF WALES SHOWGROUND

CANBERRA SUNDAY 29 APRIL

#GTM2018

UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA

TOWNSVILLE SUNDAY 6 MAY

MURRAY SPORTS COMPLEX

BUNBURY SATURDAY 12 MAY HAY PARK

SUPPORTED BY

TICKETS ON SALE NOW VIA

GTM.NET.AU

PRESEN TS

2018

Celebrate the talent behind the talent.

It’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 :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 3

in this issue what you’ll find inside…

Beck Hansen photo by Elliot Lee Hazel

“Creating kind of a concept album like Ziggy Stardust, it just freed me.” (6-9) 4

`The Frontline

6-9

Hurray For The Riff Raff

24

10-11

A foolproof guide to the 2018 Oscars

Insidious: The Last Key, The Cloverfield Paradox

25

Out & About

12-15

The Problem With Tarantino

26-27

Beck

16-17

Strong Girl Bong Soon, The Watcher

28-29

Superorganism

30-32

Sarah Blasko

18

The Alienist

33

Royal Chant

19

Riverdale

34

Toto

20

Metamorphoses

35

Totally Mild

21

The Center Will Not Hold

36-37

Kyle Craft

22

Black Panther

38-39

Hookworms

40-41

Grouplove

42-43

Chastity Belt

44-45

Snaps

46-47

Albums, The Defender

48-50

Gig guide

30-32

xxxby Carley Solether Chastity Belt photo

“From a clinical perspective, the value of asking ‘what if?’ as a way of processing generational trauma is dubious.”

26-27

Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool

Sarah Blasko photo by Kylie Coutts

6-9

23

42-43

(12-15)

the frontline with Poppy Reid, Bianca Davino, Nathan Jolly and Tyler Jenke ISSUE 734: Wednesday February 21, 2017

DEVELOPMENT IN THE GRASS

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 GOOD BLOKE: Brandon John ADVERTISING: Josh Burrows - 0411 025 674 josh.burrows@seventhstreet.media PUBLISHER: Seventh Street Media CEO, SEVENTH STREET MEDIA: Luke Girgis - luke.girgis@seventhstreet. media MANAGING EDITOR: Poppy Reid poppy.reid@seventhstreet.media THE GODFATHER: BnJ GIG GUIDE COORDINATOR: 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. 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 :: 734 :: 21:02:18

ONE NIGHT FREE OF LOCKOUT BORES Councillor Christine Forster and Keep Sydney Open have requested that Premier Gladys Berejiklian temporarily relax the Government’s lockout laws, as “a special gesture of goodwill to mark this year’s 40th anniversary of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras celebrations.” Keep Sydney Open wrote on Facebook that “it is entirely appropriate that the lockouts be lifted on the night of the parade”, pointing out that the State Government has previously lifted lockouts during international sporting events and New Year’s Eve for both national significance and safety reasons. They also quote the Government’s official reasoning: to help “reduce street congestion, pressures on public transport, and potential public safety risks.” Forster also cited that the “gesture

would resonate with the LGBTIQ community” because of “raw memories of the terrible events which surrounded the first Mardi Gras in 1978.”

SPORTING FAIRNESS Back in 2017, the entire AFL community was in heated discussion over transgender football player Hannah Mouncey’s desire to compete in the AFLW competition for 2018. However, the AFL has now signed off for Mouncey to commence state league football this year. She commented on backlash with a statement that was posted to Twitter, stating, “This seems to be the only area of medicine where people with no background in medicine, science or the relevant issues are more than willing to dismiss the advice of experts simply because it does not necessarily match what they were brought up to believe.” We’re sure the debate

will continue, but for now, the next AFLW’s game kicks off on Friday February 23.

THE HEALING POWER OF VIKING METAL Osher Günsberg has been wonderfully outspoken about his struggles with mental health, alcohol, among other things over the years, and now he is calling for people to share the one song that has had a positive mental impact on them to be compiled in a playlist. Osher has sorted his own anxiety relief in a unique way: “Sometimes when my anxiety starts piling up on itself, I put on some exceedingly heavy Viking Metal — it’s a whole genre to itself — then I get on my bike and smash out super-intense intervals while listening to gallopy songs about rowboats and dragons and swords and things. I always feel better afterwards.”

BACK IN MY DAY

Ever wondered why the bouncy pop punk reverberations of Blink-182 just don’t seem to get old? Or why the distorted glory of Silverchair’s Frogstomp continues to remain fresh? Even though streaming has made new music more accessible than ever, we tend to gravitate to the music that sound-tracked our formative years. Now, a study from The New York Times shows that the music you cherished in that time does in fact have the most power when in comes to shaping your lifelong tastes. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz’s study evaluated every Billboard chart-topping track released between 1960 and 2000, and used data from Spotify, along with the ages of those songs’ biggest fans. It revealed women’s musical “tastes are formed between the ages of 11 and 14, while an average man’s music tastes are virtually cemented between the ages of 13 and 16.” It furthers states that exposure in individuals’ early twenties seem to be about as “half as influential” as exposure in our teens.

Silverchair xxx

follow us:

@TheBrag

Byron Parklands

The future of Falls Festival and Splendour in the Grass lies in the hands of the public as Friday February 16 marked the final date to send submissions to the Department of Planning and Environment requesting for North Byron Parklands to become a permanent venue for smaller arts, music and community events.

The Parklands are seeking approval for the development of a $42 million 180-capacity conference centre, which would force the festivals to find a new location. Environmental concerns have been addressed, and the venue would operate for 20 days of the year. Speaking to The Industry Observer, Mat Morris, GM of North Byron Parklands, says that while the positive support so far has “been overwhelming”, if the proposal isn’t approved, the blow to the music industry would negatively impact the creative industries, thousands of people along the industry supply chain, and the tens of thousands of punters.

thebrag.com

Mardi Gras Film Festival

ON SALE NOW Feb 15 Mar 1 2018

In Between

Al Berto

SUN 25 FEB 8:00PM

MON 26 FEB 8:30PM

What does a lesbian bartender from a conservative Christian family, a Muslim computer scientist with a worrisome fiancé and a chain smoking, sexually liberated lawyer all have in common? Written and directed by Maysaloun Hamoud, In Between (Bar Behar) is a critically acclaimed and engaging drama that unfolds to reveal the determination of three, strong, Middle Eastern women to live authentically.

Al Berto is a scintillating, dramatic and sensual exposé of a significant time in Portuguese socio-cultural history. Depicting the emotionally charged and erotic relationship between legendary Portuguese poet, Al Berto, and his lover, João Maria, the beautiful lovers confront the conservatism of their society as they party joyfully and embrace their liberation.

queerscreen.org.au

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 5

COVER STORY

“For me, being a child of the diaspora means that I am in the middle,

Enter The

Navigator 6 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

thebrag.com

and being in the middle means you’re a bridge.”

Hurray For The Riff Raff

And The Search For The Real

By Belinda Quinn

BRAG :: 733 :: 07:02:18 :: 7

COVER STORY

“The part of gentrification that I hope to talk to my generation about is the dehumanising aspect.”

H

urray For The Riff Raff’s frontwoman Alynda Segarra is a proud Nuyorican woman, an identity claimed by many Puerto Rican descendants living in and around New York. The city hosts the largest population of Puerto Ricans outside of the Caribbean island, and growing up in the Bronx, Segarra would often dwell in the Nuyorican Poets Café, listening to Latin poetry slams. She felt isolated: she wasn’t considered white enough for the white kids, nor Puerto Rican enough for her peers.

“For me, being a child of the diaspora means that I am in the middle, and being in the middle means you’re a bridge,” she says. “It means that you can never fully experience your homeland, but you still have it inside you. And with that comes a really big responsibility – to honour Puerto Rico.”

Connecting with her heritage has been a long journey, which is captured in her latest album, The Navigator, a time-travelling two-part narrative.

“The album is meant to be a play that I would love to one day write, with the music accompanying the storyline,” she says. “Nivita is a 17-year-old street kid; a really tough Puerto Rican girl [in a] city that could be any big city in any part of the world.”

The first half sees Navita rejecting her ancestry: “She wants to wake up and not recognise anyone around her because she is so ashamed of where she comes from,” says Segarra. “She feels so constricted in society. She just wants to be free and kind of get rid of her roots, which is [how I felt] when I ran away when I was 17.”

The album starts with soulful refrains in ‘Entrance’, chords that sound like they were recorded in a New York subway. Men sing “two for the train that’s rolling, get on board,” an invitation to join the journey with Segarra, who spent time trainhopping across America when she was 18. “I was wandering the country with no money, sleeping outside and sleeping under bridges, and I was treated like shit – I was just a kid.”

‘Living In The City’ starts us off with light and warm Americana; Navita shrugs off casual harassment while detailing caricatures of the lives she passes. “I was just so naïve and so in love with city people …

People who lived on the outskirts and the underground; people who just survived somehow. In reality it seems like so many people shouldn’t survive. They’re homeless, they don’t have any money, no one respects them… The part of gentrifi cation that I hope to talk to my generation about is that dehumanising aspect.” She asks us to see the homeless and the displaced as “warriers and survivors”.

In ‘Hungry Ghost’ Navita moves away from this imagined city: “I’ve been a lonely girl, but I’m ready for the world”. Afro-American drums and brass instruments enter the soundscape in ‘Nothing’s Gonna Change That Girl’ and violins being to swirl; the beginning of a cultural shift in the album.

Although perfectly expressed in The Navigator, it’s taken Segarra three full-length albums for her to begin addressing her lineage. “I was invited to go to a writer’s retreat with an organisation called Hedgebrooke. I was able to go and really be in the woods for a week and write and be around other women artists, and that was a really important time for me,” she says.

“You go to Harlem and like, Harlem’s different. it feels kind of like you’re going crazy.”

Here she soaked up her history with Latinx-centric documentaries like Searching For Sugarman, taking a step back from the traditional blues she’d been focusing on. “Creating kind of a concept album like Ziggy Stardust, it just freed me. I felt like I could talk about whatever I wanted and I felt like my character was allowed to talk about these things.

“The next part of the album, Rican Beach… it’s 40 years [later], and

“Creating kind of a concept album like Ziggy Stardust, it just freed me.”

8 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

it becomes so gentrifi ed that she doesn’t recognise anything,” says Segarra of the place the record moves. “What’s so hard about going back to New York is watching stuff get erased or co-opted. I think it’s a really hard part of resistance and work that people of colour did, watching that get co-opted into something else, that’s just to be sold in like a package – a lot of it feels very maddening.

“You go to Harlem and like, Harlem’s different. There are murals on the walls, but like, it’s for a fancy hotel … it feels kind of like you’re going crazy.

And so that’s what I really wanted to do with this album. I wanted to be like, you’re not crazy if you see this – this is happening.”

On the day of this particular phone call, she mentions that Donald Trump has re-tweeted anti-Muslim propaganda via “white supremacist groups”, AKA the British National Party. “It’s just another busy news day in America,” she says. “Our country is constantly defending its madness.”

It feels hard to imagine that it’s only been a year since Segarra released The Navigator, singing lyrics like, “Politicans run their run their mouths, you say you’ll build a wall to keep them out” and “Poets dying of a silence disease” on ‘Rican Beach’.

When discussing the poor living conditions on Manus Island and the rejection of asylum seekers to thebrag.com

COVER STORY

There are murals on the walls, but like, it’s for a fancy hotel…

Australia, Segarra says, “More and more I feel like we are forgetting that borders are so often manmade.”

It reminds me of lines Tim Harford wrote in the 2017 book, 50 Things That Made The Modern Economy: “The concept of passport as protection goes back to biblical times… [Passports] were, essentially, a threat: a letter from some powerful person requesting anyone the traveller met to let them pass unmolested.”

At the turn of the 20th century it was thought that passports might cease to exist altogether, but World War I reinforced the perceived need for border control. We live in a time where the geographic location of your birth determines your rights and your worth thebrag.com

– that is, unless you have a spare $150,000 US dollars: then you can purchase “citizenship by investment”.

“We’re losing our empathy for people who are less fortunate,” Segarra says.

“Sadly, it can be us at any day. It just takes one catastrophe. It just takes a war that you had nothing to do with to put you in these people’s shoes.”

To combat such dividing lines, Segarra has started a festival called Nosotros (Spanish for ‘us’), wherein intersectional Latinx music, performance and activism are given space at New York’s Licoln Centre.

On a personal level, some people of colour that are inspiring Segarra

“It just takes a war that you had nothing to do with to put you in these people’s shoes.” right now are Residente, Princess Nokia, Downtown Boys and Solange.

Particularly Solange. “Everybody should listen to Solange all the time,” Segarra says. “I just think that she’s like such a gift to us.”

The Navigator’s most gut-wrenching moment lies in ‘Pa’Lante’. Translated from Latin American and Puerto Rican slang, it’s a contraction of para adelante,

meaning ‘forward’. After a recording of Puerto Rican poet Pedro Pietri, Segarra calls to the ghost of Emmett Till and to her family and all those affected by colonisation to move onwards. Some things are better left heard to be felt, and ‘Pa’Lante’ is one of them.

Where: Factory Theatre, Marrickville When: Monday March 26

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 9

THE BRAG’S FOOLPROOF OSCAR Listen, we know it’s hard to get excited about the Academy Awards – we love ‘em here at the BRAG, and even we’re willing to admit they’re nothing more than a glitzy, hollow spectacle designed so an overpaid, overvalued industry can spend two hours patting itself on the back.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE Nominees: Hans Zimmer for Dunkirk, Jonny Greenwood for Phantom Thread, Alexandre Desplat for The Shape Of Water, John Williams for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Carter Burwell for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri In many ways, 2018 seems to be the year the Academy has decided to make up for past transgressions: most notably, they have finally honoured Jonny Greenwood with a nod, showering the Paul Thomas Anderson-collaborator with the acclaim he should have got for his magnificent work on There Will Be Blood.

Not that I think Greenwood is very likely to win, although I wish he was: his sumptuous work on Phantom Thread is slightly too subtle for voters. The oft-nominated John Williams doesn’t stand a chance for his work on Star Wars either; nor does Burwell, whose gentle score for Three Billboards was overwhelmed by that film’s noisy script, and big, Academybaiting performances. Nope, this one is a relative lock for Alexandre Desplat, whose work on The Shape Of Water is exactly what the Academy love – colourful, insistent, and charming.

Will Win: Desplat Should Win: Greenwood Wish You Were Here: Benjamin Wallfisch for his experimental, bizarre work on It What: The 90th Academy Awards When: Monday March 5, Australian time

But even if award ceremonies don’t get you going, chances are good movies do, and this year, in a tradition-breaking trend, almost all of the major awards are set to be taken out by extraordinary, worthy pieces of art. There’s not a La La Land or a Shakespeare In Love in sight: the

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Nominees: A Fantastic Woman, The Insult, Loveless, On Body And Soul, The Square

Nominees: The Big Sick, Get Out, Lady Bird, The Shape Of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

It’s a real blessing that the overhyped and soupy In The Fade, which picked up the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, wasn’t even nominated here, leaving room for subtler, more unusual work like A Fantastic Woman from Chile, and Russia’s extraordinary Loveless.

Out with the melodramatic garbage, and in with the films time will be genuinely kind to, I say.

For my money, the best films nominated are Ruben Ostlund’s viciously comic The Square, a perfect marriage of dark comedy and genuine pathos, and Loveless, a tragedy about a missing child and a broken marriage. But who knows which way the Academy is going to go? The Best Foreign Language Film category is always a bit of a dark horse race – it’s always possible the Academy will spurn the more heavily awarded films, and give the gong to an outlier like the so-so On Body And Soul.

In fact, that film probably has the best chance of all those nominated: it’s performance-centred, which the Academy loves; it flirts with difficult ideas without ever fully tackling them, which the Academy loves; and it’s nice to look at in a postcard-y kinda way, which the Academy goes fucking ga-ga for.

Will Win: On Body And Soul Should Win: The Square/Loveless Wish you were here: Julia Ducournau’s shocking and transgressive Raw

For whatever reason, the Original Screenplay Oscar is almost always a lock months ahead of the ceremony: last year, it was obvious that Kenneth Lonergan was going to scoop up the award for his gently tragic Manchester By The Sea, and this year, there’s no way that Martin McDonagh isn’t going to go home with the trophy for writing Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Which is fine by me. Three Billboards has gotten a lot of hate for supposedly redeeming a racist, but I think its moral code is a lot more subtle than that: the whole point is that Dixon, the deviant cop, doesn’t actually address the rage and hatred that led to his racism by the film’s end; he merely finds a societally-approved outlet for it.

McDonagh isn’t championing the man: he’s using him to make a viciously biting point about the hate we as a society condemn, and the hate that we cherish as valuable.

And that’s not even mention the kind of karmic resetting of the status quo that McDonagh’s win would represent: the man should have picked up the award years ago for his superb In Bruges.

Will Win: Three Billboards Should Win: Three Billboards Wish You Were Here: Hope Dickson Leach for her underrated, heartbreaking The Levelling script

“Historically, the Best Supporting Actress ca reserved for screen mums, and 2018 has fo with a vengeance.”

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Nominees: Call Me By Your Name, The Disaster Artist, Logan, Molly’s Game, Mudbound This… is a weird one, particularly given two of the scripts in this category are creative charlatans, resolutely undeserving of the nod.

Logan was an ugly, unpleasant film that fell victim to every single superhero movie cliché, topped off by one of the most hammily-written evil villain monologues in recent memory; and Mudbound was an ugly, turgid mess, one of the most bizarrely-praised American films of the last decade.

Elsewhere, Molly’s Game was good but forgettable, and Aaron Sorkin’s nod seems to have been handed out almost like a reflex: the Academy can’t help but honour the guy. And The Disaster Artist, although enjoyable, wasn’t exactly groundbreaking either in writing or execution – it could easily have been one more straight-to-video Franco experiment.

So yeah, like I say: weird.

Will Win: Who bloody knows.

Maybe Sorkin?

Should Win: Call Me By Your Name, I guess.

Wish You Were Here: Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman for It

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Nominees: Laurie Metcalf for Lady Bird, Lesley Manville for Phantom Thread, Octavia Spencer for The Shape Of Water, Allison Janney for I, Tonya and Mary J. Blige for Mudbound Historically, the Best Supporting Actress category has been reserved for screen mums, and 2018 has followed this trend with a vengeance: both Laurie Metcalf and Allison Janney have received nods for their turns as screen matriarchs. Of course, their characters couldn’t be more different: in Lady Bird, Metcalf is the picture of perseverance and kindness, whereas Janney plays a helicopter parent with rocket launchers mounted to her sides; an abusive, vicious bully.

Both nail their parts – which doesn’t change the fact they’re both fairly unlikely to win. No, this award belongs – deservedly – to Lesley Manville, whose performance in Phantom Thread as the vinegar-laced Cyril calls to mind Nick Cave’s lines about a ten ton catastrophe on a 60 pound chain. The film would fall apart without Manville’s work, and although Phantom Thread is unlikely (tragically) to pick up many gongs, it’s got this one in the bag.

Will Win: Manville Should Win: Manville Wish You Were Here: Sylvia Hoeks, for her film-stealing turn as Luv in Blade Runner 2049

“There’s two ways Best Picture will go: the traditional route, with Three Billboards taking out the top go 10 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

thebrag.com

PICKS

BY JOSEPH EARP

members of the Academy seem to have finally managed to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, and have handed out nods to only the most worthy of art (Darkest Hour and The Post nonwithstanding.)

ategory has been ollowed this trend BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Nominees: Willem Dafoe for The Florida Project, Woody Harrelson for Three Billboards, Richard Jenkins for The Shape Of Water, Christopher Plummer for All The Money In The World, Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards It’s kind of baffling the way awards frontrunners can change at the drop of a hat. A little while ago, the Best Supporting Actor gong seemed destined to end up in the hands of Willem Dafoe, whose turn as a beacon of light made corporeal in The Florida Project proved to be a career-standout from an actor who has only turned in career-standouts.

But now Dafoe is a dark horse, pushed out of the race by Sam Rockwell, with the latter actor picking up pretty much every award available to him for his turn in Three Billboards. Which, look, I’m not really complaining about – Rockwell is one of his generation’s finest performers, and that he’s getting all this good press is no bad thing. But there was such nuance to Dafoe’s turn – such empathy, and light, and goodness – that it’s a genuine tragedy he’s not going to get suitably rewarded.

Will Win: Rockwell Should Win: Dafoe Wish You Were Here: Javier Bardem as probably the devil in mother!

ahead of the 90th Academy Awards, here are our personal picks for So, a what should win, what will win, and nods to all the films and creatives we thought should have been nominated but weren’t, broken down by category. thoug Enjoy!

Enjoy

BEST ACTRESS

“Molly’s Game was good but forgettable, and Aaron Sorkin’s nod seems to have been handed out almost like a reflex: the Academy can’t help but honour the guy.”

Nominees: Sally Hawkins for The Shape Of Water, Francis McDormand for Three Billboards, Margot Robbie for I, Tonya, Saoirse Ronan for Lady Bird, Meryl Streep for The Post McDormand is going to pick this one up, and that’s fine – Sally Hawkins was far, far better in Shape, but who can begrudge a titan like McDormand?

What is significantly less fine, mind you, is the inclusion of Meryl Streep for The Post and the exclusion of Vicky Krieps for Phantom Thread.

Streep is a hack, and in The Post she’s never been hackier, whereas Krieps was the heart and soul of the deservedly much-nominated Phantom. To give the latter film a Best Picture nod and to exclude the actor who made it the picture that it is may genuinely be unforgiveable.

Will Win: McDormand Should Win: Hawkins Wish You Were Here: Krieps

“For whatever reason, the Original Screenplay Oscar is almost always a lock months ahead of the ceremony.”

BEST ACTOR

BEST DIRECTOR

BEST PICTURE

Nominees: Timothee Chalamet for Call Me By Your Name, Daniel Day-Lewis for Phantom Thread, Daniel Kaluuya for Get Out, Gary Oldman for Darkest Hour, Denzel Washington for Roman J. Israel, Esq

Nominees: Christopher Nolan for Dunkirk, Jordan Peele for Get Out, Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird, Paul Thomas Anderson for Phantom Thread, Guillermo del Toro for The Shape Of Water

Nominees: Call Me By Your Name, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, The Post, The Shape Of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

There is no way Oldman doesn’t have this one in the bag. Sure, he did much better work in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and sure, Darkest Hour is a turkey, but he: A) plays a famous person, and B) does a lot of shouting, and the Academy loves to confl ate both of those things with good acting.

Look at this beautiful fucking category. Two of the finest filmmakers currently working, PTA and Guillermo, are both up for the directing gong, staring down tough competition from two of the most exciting filmmakers that have recently emerged, Peele and Gerwig.

It’s disgusting that The Post and Darkest Hour, two of the worst films of the season, have somehow scored themselves Oscar nods, and even more so given that they have in the process edged out better fare like The Florida Project.

Oh well. At least neither will win.

There’s two ways Best Picture will go: the traditional route, with Three Billboards taking out the top gong, or the upset, with the significantly less ordinary The Shape Of Water beating out the competition.

It’s a shame though, given this one really should be going home with Day-Lewis, or Kaluuya, who anchored Get Out’s frequent tonal shifts with the aplomb of a genuine craftsman.

Any one of the nominees could pick up this award and I’d be over the moon, but my personal preference is for del Toro, who has spent his career generating pure empathy for creatures most filmmakers flinch away from.

Oh, and by the way: what the fuck is Denzel Washington doing here? I mean, I love Denzel, but it makes no sense. Roman is an ugly, unfl attering mess that noone walks away from with their dignity intact.

That said, my hunch is this one belongs to Nolan: he is the most traditional filmmaker on the list, and the Academy might see this one as a pay-back Oscar for not nominating his work on The Dark Knight.

Personally, I’d love to see the latter scenario go down: The Shape Of Water is one of the most beautifullyrealised, important genre films of the decade; a masterpiece like no other. Also, how great would it be for the film world’s top award to be taken out by a movie that features extensive discussion about fish-man penises?

Will Win: Oldman Should Win: Day-Lewis Wish You Were Here: Thomas Jane, for his inspired work in 1922

Will Win: Nolan Should Win: del Toro Wish You Were Here: Denis Villeneuve for Blade Runner 2049

Will Win: The Shape Of Water (fingers crossed) Should Win: The Shape Of Water Wish You Were Here: The Florida Project

ong, or the upset, with the significantly less ordinary The Shape Of Water beating out the competition.” thebrag.com

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 11

arts in focus

History Rewritten:

Django Unchained, Inglouri and the problem with Taran

By Michael Louis Kennedy

The Nature Of Revenge

W

In Inglourious Basterds, an irreverent tale of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust, the point at which the film forks away from true history is clear. Django Unchained is a much more intimate story; a freed slave-turned-bounty hunter seeks vengeance whilst on the quest to find and liberate his wife, Broomhilda. There is no dramatic forking of history in

hat do the Holocaust, slavery in Southern America, and the Manson family murders have in common? Aside from being unthinkable acts of human cruelty, they’ve all received, or are receiving, the Tarantino treatment. The third, a take on the crimes of Charles Manson and his cult followers, is scheduled for release in 2019 and tentatively titled Helter Skelter.

The former two are Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012) respectively.

Both are stylish, hugely successful, and both, to varying degrees, are based on untruths – in a sense they are alternate histories.

12 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

Django Unchained; the hero does not singlehandedly bring an end to slavery in the same way that the Basterds arguably bring an end to World War II. But the film still draws on the horror of Black enslavement to tell a high-camp story of liberation and revenge that ostensibly didn’t happen.

Tarantino has made a name for himself over his long and celebrated career, particularly

in relation to style. His films are graphically violent and draw on numerous cultural references and nods to pulp-cinema. He’s also a divisive figure; few people are ambivalent about Tarantino.

However, as the focus of his films has gradually shifted from intimate personal narratives to the high-stakes theatre of world history, both the films and Tarantino himself have come under greater scrutiny.

“Exactly what place Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained hold in the canon of politically conscious cinema isn’t entirely clear.” thebrag.com

FEATURE

ous Basterds, tino

Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds

Exactly what place Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained hold in the canon of politically conscious cinema isn’t entirely clear. Both films are swashbuckling tales, full of extreme violence usually perpetrated against the oppressors. However, one may ask about the value of their cultural contribution if the stories they tell within the context of these events – particularly given said events have caused such significant generational trauma – didn’t actually happen.

Jamie Foxx in Django Unchained

For example, in Inglourious Basterds a renegade gang of Jewish Americans, called the Basterds, are airdropped behind enemy lines to assist with a plan to assassinate Adolf Hitler. They are a motley crew assembled due to their proclivity for killing Nazis, and fronted by Aldo “the Apache” Raine, a former moonshiner from Tennessee, played by Brad Pitt.

One member in particular causes the Germans to shake in fear: the Bear Jew, played by Eli Roth, given his name after repeatedly beating Nazi soldiers to death with a baseball bat.

“There is something deeply surreal about watching Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels being shred to ribbons by close-range machine gun fire.”

At the same time, a young Jewish woman, Shoshanna Dreyfus, has forged a new identity as a Parisian cinema owner after narrowly escaping the murder of her family at the hands of a master “Jew Hunter” named Landa played by Christoph Waltz. When Reich Minister for Propaganda Joseph Goebbels insists that the premiere of the latest German war film take place in her cinema, she hatches her own plot to burn the cinema down, killing the Nazi high command in the process.

Melanie Laurent in Inglorious Basterds

As it happens, both plots are not only successful but occur simultaneously. Shoshanna burns the theatre down, and the Basterds are able to infiltrate the premier, but only after the nihilistic Landa agrees not to foil their plan in exchange for indemnity.

There is something deeply surreal about watching Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels being shred to ribbons by close-range machine gun fire – and the knowledge that it never happened certainly compounds the surrealism.

There was no such premiere that saw the Reich ministers congregate, the war wasn’t prematurely ended by Hitler’s assassination, and six million Jews, as well as several million Romani, homosexuals, political prisoners, communists, ethnic minorities and those with disabilities, were murdered.

A Society’s Pain In Django Unchained, much of the gruesome detail of slavery is laid bare. There are graphic sequences of whippings and torture, slaves punished with dehumanising bridles, and frequent sexual violence. However, the film is also littered with long shots of “slave” women in lavish satin gowns, resting on swings and sipping cocktails. Further, the film heavily features a concept called Mandingo fighting, essentially the pitting of one slave against another in a gladiatorial fight to the death. thebrag.com

Django, played by Jamie Foxx, and his travelling partner and fellow bounty hunter Dr Schultz, again played by Waltz, must pose as Mandingo purchasers in order to gain favour with an aficionado called Calvin Candie who has also purchased Broomhilda. When the plan is foiled by Samuel L. Jackson’s Stephen, a long time slave loyal to Candie, a violent bloodbath ensues and Django is captured and sold to a mining company. However, after a cameo from Tarantino, featuring arguably the worst Australian accent in cinema history, he escapes again and successfully rescues Broomhilda.

Nonetheless, the historical basis for Mandingo fighting is purely speculation, and for that reason, as well as the depiction of a form of ‘well dressed leisurely slavery,’ the film attracted fierce criticism amongst the accolades piled onto it. Further, in classic Tarantino form, the film borrows heavily in both style and content from the tradition of Spaghetti Westerns and Blaxploitation films of the 1970s.

It’s laden with racial epithets; more epithets than you could shake a stick at.

It’s true the violence in Django Unchained tends to appear in one of two ways; brutal and unwatchable when perpetrated against slaves, and comically grotesque when used against their oppressors.

However, in the third act of the film, after Candie is righteously killed and Django returns to the plantation, it’s Samuel L. Jackson’s Stephen who is the last oppressor left standing, shot in both knee caps and left to die as the manor house explodes. Django walks away, backlit by the explosion, and one may argue the moral liability for the whole scheme falls on Stephen, the slave who betrayed his own, rather than the architects of slavery itself.

Culpability The way these films navigate their subjects is clearly controversial, yet BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 13

arts in focus

to openly condemn them for the arguable misappropriation of human suffering ignores a certain nuance that the conversation demands.

Inglourious Basterds features a signifi cant cast of Jewish actors, including Mélanie Laurent and Eli Roth, as well as most of the Basterds themselves. And Django Unchained relies on the acting talents of Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington and Samuel L. Jackson.

The agency of all the actors involved ought not to be undercut by those who aren’t members of the relevant racial and religious minorities. Samuel L. Jackson once famously defended Stephen’s characterisation to Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe, by stating the loyal slave had a similar philosophy and mentality to conservative Supreme Court

Justice Clarence Thomas.

And however strange the decision may appear to position Stephen as the last oppressor left alive, it is not enough to dismiss Jackson’s rationalisation because it doesn’t fi t into the narrative of our collective discomfort.

Even so, Tarantino has effectively written and directed two big budget ultra-violent revenge fantasies on behalf of subjugated groups to which he doesn’t belong. One has to wonder what exactly he seeks to achieve through the fi lms.

Perhaps the revisionist view of history in the fi lms aims to offer an alternative to the horrors those people actually experienced; both by unwriting them, and by giving the characters greater agency within the stories themselves.

In this way it retroactively provides a sense of justice.

However, from a clinical perspective, the value of asking “what if?” as a way of processing generational trauma is dubious. Professor Michael Robertson is a psychiatrist who lectures in bioethics at the University of Sydney’s academic research centre, Sydney Health Ethics. He’s also a visiting fellow of the Sydney Jewish Museum.

Much of his research has examined trauma on a personal and generational level.

Quentin Tarantino on the set of Django Unchained

His research shows the priorities of those who experience trauma differ depending on degrees of separation from the trauma itself. Interestingly “it’s the grandchildren of survivors that are perhaps more engaged than their children” or the survivors themselves. In this way, they are more likely to be concerned with justice and retribution. Survivors, in his experience, tend to focus on much more basic recovery

Jamie Foxx and Kerry Washington in Django Unchained

strategies. A trauma survivor, he states, “in the first instance seeks safety, they then seek homeostasis which is trying to reduce that hyper-arousal and hyper-vigilance that trauma engenders, the neurological system changes.”

That said, he does recognise the power of film for survivors and their families. “From a clinical perspective we are ultimately storytelling beings and most of our subjective experience of our lives is the stories that we tell and how we retell them and retell them . . . and sometimes with these cultural signifiers, whether they’re films or lines from films, or images, you do have a kind of editorial role and effect, and they do help people annotate or modify their histories.”

“The agency of all the actors involved ought not to be undercut by those who aren’t members of the relevant racial and religious minorities.”

14 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

thebrag.com

FEATURE

“The way these films navigate their subjects is clearly controversial, yet to openly condemn them for the arguable misappropriation of human suffering ignores a certain nuance that the conversation demands.” of cruelty: by depicting such graphic Jewish vengeance, it occasionally tacitly forces sympathy for those that sought to destroy the Jewish people.

In fact, Robertson is quite strident that the revenge fantasy and what he describes as “counter-factual history” has no clinical value for trauma sufferers. “I think it’s probably quite unethical because it’s you trying to give them an alternate narrative so that they’re less symptomatic, but what they have to do is process this moment in their life and integrate it into their story,” he explains.

Where film is most powerful, he believes, is in its capacity to acknowledge and bring light to the horrors that have occurred, not erase them only to replace them with fantasies that didn’t.

Who Tells The Stories?

Yet, just as Brad Pitt says to his band of Basterds, “each man under my command owes me one hunnard Nazi scalps,” one could be forgiven for asking whether Tarantino is the best equipped editor of Jewish history. Actor and filmmaker Eli Roth described himself in an interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg as Tarantino’s “Jewish sounding board” in the scripting of the film.

However, given he also talks in the same interview about the “deep sexual satisfaction of wanting to

beat Nazis to death” and keeping in mind he is the author the gratuitous franchise Hostel, Roth is arguably an interesting choice for this moral arbitration.

When Raine threatens a German commander with a violent death by the Bear Jew’s club unless he surrenders the location of other German troops, it’s hard as a viewer not to find the brutality of the action directly confronting. Further, the commander’s refusal to reveal their location in the face of certain death can almost be read as gallant. In that way the film creates a paradox

Yet this presupposes that both films actually seek to address the collective trauma of the Jewish community and ancestors of American slavery. It is just as likely that the revisionist nature of the films has little to do with a perceived sense of justice at all.

Ari Lander holds a doctorate in history and is an education officer with the Sydney Jewish Museum.

Speaking to the BRAG in a personal capacity, he recalls his engagement with survivors of the holocaust and their stance on various Holocaust films. “It’s quite interesting,” he says, “how they’re critical of one film for

being historically inaccurate whereas another film they wouldn’t be.”

In this sense he recognises that almost all films based on actual events must choose which elements to feature and amplify.

“Most academics who engage critically with film would say it’s representational; it’s an art form, it’s not history,” he explains.

To that end Lander is much more interested in the artistic and cultural value of Inglourious Basterds than its potential as a tool for healing. And he is an avid fan. He believes the film succeeds due to the black satire and exceptional performances. “I think actually what he’s doing is really fantastic and satirical and it implicates us, just like he does in Django Unchained with the question of how we find violence cathartic; how we find violence enjoyable. Maybe that’s actually not such a bad thing.”

In contrast he refers to the 2008 film The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, a weepie that sees a German boy befriend a young Jewish prisoner through the barbed wire of the camps. The “fable of the film is empty” according to Lander, purely because there is no historical record of children being allocated striped pyjamas as Auschwitz; and children were almost universally killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau due to their inability to work.

In Inglourious Basterds however, “you’re aware in your own way

“From a clinical perspective, the value of asking ‘what if?’ as a way of processing generational trauma is dubious.”

thebrag.com

that you’re watching a movie and that the violence is gratuitous and almost comic.” There is no attempt made to masquerade as actual history.

The Nature Of The Truth The strength of Inglourious Basterds is therefore that it “implicates us in this question of ‘why am I liking this violence?’” in the context of the Holocaust narrative. “It’s not like after these films have come out people have run around scratching Swastikas into the heads of Neo-Nazis.”

This alone demonstrates the division in responses to Tarantino’s ultra violent revisionist histories, even within the peoples they depict.

If anything, the quality of the films complicates their reception. If Tarantino didn’t produce films of such exceptional craftsmanship and style, it’s likely the historical liberties and problematic power structures would be written off as poor taste.

Regardless, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and perhaps the upcoming Helter Skelter, locate tales of extreme violence in the forefront of the viewer’s mind in a way that forces engagement. The films evoke questions of morality, taste, compassion, justice and suffering – and they do so in a way that disregards the specific details of the suffering involved.

As self-aware as Tarantino’s brand of violent escapism may be, one has to ask, from what do those who’ve suffered trauma actually gain when their experiences are rewritten for entertainment?

What: Tarantino’s tentatively titled fi lm Helter Skelter is due for release next year

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 15

arts in focus

FEATURE

“In 2016, the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index ranked South Korea 116 out of 144 countries, due to the nation’s ongoing issues with gender inequality.”

Strong Girl Bong-soon: Year Of The Woman [TV] Bernadette Anvia investigates the success of Strong Girl Bong-soon, a South Korean television show that is making waves both at home and abroad

2

017 was very much the year of the woman in fi lm and television – whether she was in front of the camera, or behind it. Doctor Who fi nally saw the TARDIS occupied by its first openly gay companion (who also so happened to be a woman of colour), and its first female Doctor. Wonder Woman secured its place as the highest grossing fi lm of the year, whilst its director, Patty Jenkins, became the highest grossing female director ever. And Girls Trip, starring Jada Pinkett Smith and Queen

Latifah, also ranked as the year’s highest grossing comedy fi lm.

is now available for streaming on Netflix Australia.

But the rise of the empowered woman in the productions of 2017 was not a phenomenon unique to English-speaking countries. In South Korea, one of the nation’s most successful television shows of the year was Strong Girl Bong-soon, produced by Drama House and written by Baek Mi-kyeong and directed by Lee Hyung-min. The success of the series also led to its acquisition by Netflix, and it

The series centers on the lead heroine, Do Bong-soon (played by the captivating Park bo-Young), a 27-year-old woman who possesses supernatural strength – a hereditary gift passed down through the female line of her family at birth. But it’s a superpower that comes with a single caveat – her strength can only be used to aid the innocent and vulnerable, and if used for selfish, abusive or nefarious purposes, will leave her forever.

“The success of Strong Girl Bong-soon is representative not only of women’s changing roles and representations in pop culture, but it’s also emblematic of a growing global movement seeking to end violence and harassment against women.”

The series follows Bong-soon’s struggle to come to terms with her gift and her responsibility to protect others, while working as the personal bodyguard for Ahn Min-hyuk, the CEO of Ainsoft gaming company (played by Park Hyung-sik) and trying to catch a deranged murderer and abductor with her childhood friend and police officer, Gukdoo (played by Kim Ji-soo).

Strong Girl Bong-soon is, above all else, a feminist series concerned with power in its various manifestations – whether it be institutional power, psychological power or pure physical power. The storyline exposes the repercussions of society’s corrupt use of power through a unique blend of supernatural, dramatic and farcical characters and plotlines.

“Bong-soon is confronted on a daily basis with instances of women being abused – from lecherous gropers on public transport, to men exposing themselves to schoolgirls and kidnapping women.”

16 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

In particular, Strong Girl Bongsoon focuses most explicitly on the power of toxic masculinity in patriarchal societies, and the effect of this on women. Bongsoon is confronted on a daily basis with instances of women being abused – from lecherous gropers on public transport, to men exposing themselves to schoolgirls and kidnapping women. Although Bong-Soon is gifted with supernatural powers, the storyline does not have her combatting supernatural villains.

Instead, her role is to protect society from every day evils – in this show, the villains are men who abuse women.

The success of Strong Girl Bong-soon is representative not only of women’s changing roles and representations in pop culture, but it’s also emblematic of a growing global movement seeking to end violence and harassment against women.

The CEO of Drama House, Joon Suh Park, notes that the success of Strong Girl Bongsoon lies in its storyline. “These thebrag.com

ew to stre am sn ’ t a

Carol

ing

W h

arts in focus

The Void

days are a time of change for women’s rights worldwide, including Korea,” says Joon Suh Park.

“The mindset that men are stronger and therefore superior to women has been a setback.

We created a satirical comedy through the character of Bongsoon, who is a seemingly weak and common girl who has within her the kind of power that outperforms and even protects men around her.”

The importance of a series like this one should not be downplayed. In 2016, the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index ranked South Korea 116 out of 144 countries, due to the nation’s ongoing issues with gender inequality.

Indeed, a study released by the Korean Institute of Criminology last year revealed that 79.7 per cent of male participants surveyed had either psychologically or physically abused their girlfriends while dating.

“For many women, [the scenes in the series] would resonate deeply as they relate to their own similar experiences in daily life,” says Joon Suh Park.

“It’s true we wanted women to have a sense of satisfaction through Bong-soon’s actions.

We hope they enjoyed the character. But ultimately, we were aiming to send a message to everyone about general human compassion and true strength.”

That said, for all its triumphs – and there are many – Strong Girl Bong-soon is let down by its reliance on LGBT+ characters and stereotypes for comic relief. The series shifts between depicting homosexuality as either humorous, or problematic. In one episode, rumours about Min-hyuk being gay are enough to potentially stop him from becoming the chairman of his father’s company, and this reliance on an out-dated, but unfortunately still overused trope in television script writing is disappointing considering the show’s central themes and messaging.

Nonetheless, Strong Girl Bongsoon does very much pack a punch with its cautionary tale: power is a positive privilege insofar as it is used to assist those who are powerless. Once that power is abused, there’s no going back.

It’s a series that, by flipping many of television’s gender norms and granting its leading heroine such agency, is inspiring both national and international audiences. As Joon Suh Park emphasises, “we all have an inner Bong-Soon within us. I hope you all put that power in good use, like BongSoon did in the show.”

What: Strong Girl Bong-Soon is available to stream via Netflix now thebrag.com

WITH JOSEPH EARP

T

here’s a new Insidious film out in cinemas, which you’ll know if you’re one of those BRAG completionists who has already read our review of the horror sequel. So, I reckon that makes it a perfect time to go back and check out franchise creator Leigh Whannell’s other blockbuster horror series, Saw. The grisly, low-budget first film has been sitting on Netflix for a while, but it’s now been joined by the first two sequels, the imaginatively titled Saw II and Saw III.

All three films are disgusting, of course – the “dead pigs in a blender” setpiece from III is enough to put you off your dinner for a month – but what makes the ugly little works of art worthwhile is their strange, EC comics style moral sensibility, I reckon. Despite all the furore over their violence, and the outrage of those shrieky, irritating critics who designate themselves the gatekeepers of cultural taste, the Saw films aren’t depraved: rather, they’re intensely ethical, concerned with the rehabilitation of the guilty and the punishment of unrepentant hypocrites.

The Ritual

“The Ritual takes a timehonoured horror tradition and runs with it.”

Similarly concerned with sorting the spiritual wheat from the chaff is The Ritual, a Netflix chiller well worth your time. The film takes a time-honoured horror tradition and runs with it: a pack of old friends, led by Rafe Spall’s Luke, decamp to a cabin in the Swedish woods so as to honour the legacy of a deceased mate. But, as so frequently tends to happen to horror heroes who decide to go rural, the four mates find themselves beleaguered by supernatural nasties that may or may not be arbiters of karmic punishment. You might not be necessarily surprised when The Ritual makes its nasty left-turn towards the disturbing, but you will be surprised by the distinct undercurrent of social commentary – the film is vehemently anti-bro – and by its unique finale.

Oh, and while we’re on the horror kick, let’s talk about Altered States, a Ken Russell-directed mind-bender available on Netflix.

It’s always been hard to find a good quality print of the film, and on that front Netflix have really delivered – their version restores all the saturated, psychedelic hues of Russell’s antiart masterpiece, a film about an abnormal psychologist whose adventures in sensory deprivation lead him to unpleasant realisations about the nature of reality itself.

Looking for something just as bizarre but determinedly more lowbrow? Then look no further than the Patrick Swayze vehicle Road House, recently added to Netflix.

Swayze couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag, but that doesn’t take away from the film’s pleasures one iota – it’s a soupy mess of martial arts madness, musings on the nature of success, and Mills And The Night Porter

Boon style romance. Bill Murray loves the film, and so should you.

“If you’ve never seen Carol, now’s your chance to fill a considerable gap in your viewing history.”

Before we move onto Stan, let’s take a quick detour into the world of SBS On Demand. For a start, they’ve just nabbed the Todd Hanyes-directed, “Our Cate” Blanchett-starring Carol.

If you’ve never seen the film, now’s your chance to fill a considerable gap in your viewing history: it’s a masterpiece, a love story that juggles melodrama and iciness in equal measure. Haynes has always been a Douglas Sirk devotee – with Carol, he mixes that unironic appreciation for star-crossed lovers with the formal innovation that made his prior films, chief among them the horrifying [Safe], so legendary.

Another love story – albeit of a significantly more disturbing variety – is also available via On Demand in the form of The Night Porter. The story of a concentration camp survivor who embarks upon a sado-masochistic sexual relationship with one of the guards who tortured her during the Holocaust, The Night Porter has been courting controversy for the some 40 years since its release. It’s a determinedly difficult film, still as shocking as when it was first released, but in its vicious desire to appal, it has a power all of its own. Watch it through your fingers.

Now to Stan. On the relatively obscure front, the streaming service has nabbed James Franco’s Child Of God, a messy, not entirely successful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s exceptional book of the same name. There are times when the film feels more like an art school project than a real feature, and Franco’s shakiness as a director certainly shows – Child Of God takes a long time to kick into gear, and its first 30 minutes are sure to turn off all but the truly committed. And yet, the film has a weird magnetism all of its own, most of which can be directly attributed to McCarthy’s source novel – if you’re after a violent, experimental curio to pass a little time with, this is the film for you.

I’d also recommend the similarly uneven yet distinct The Void.

A horror film that was partially funded through a successful Kickstarter campaign, there’s quite a lot about The Void that doesn’t necessarily work: the ending is ridiculous, and the film can be humourless in a way that runs against the grain of its sometimes schlocky effects and silly plotting. But there are flashes of genius contained within – the violence has a unique, Lucio Fulci-style beauty all of its own, and the film’s slow descent into madness is genuinely intoxicating. It’s perfect viewing for a lazy Sunday afternoon – dim the lights, settle in, and prepare to be affronted.

“The Saw films aren’t depraved: rather, they’re intensely ethical, concerned with the rehabilitation of the guilty and the punishment of unrepentant hypocrites.”

“The story of a concentration camp survivor who embarks upon a sado-masochistic sexual relationship with one of the guards who tortured her during the Holocaust, The Night Porter has been courting controversy for the some 40 years since its release.”

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 17

arts in focus

FEATURE

The Alienist: More Of The Same [TELEVISION] Craig Hildebrand takes a deep dive into The Alienist, a sad retread of a familiar formula

F

eaturing a stellar international cast, The Alienist was written and produced by Cary Fukunaga, Hossein Amini, Eric Roth and author Caleb Carr, whose 1994 novel provides the basis for the series. Granted an eye-watering $5 million budget for each episode, the show takes its time recreating late nineteenth century New York on location in Budapest – but its careful attention to detail hides a rotten plot.

Following the likes of Mindhunter, Hannibal and Broadchurch, The Alienist offers a retelling of how early criminal psychology attempted to prod and poke the minds of serial killers. Surely, given the success other police procedurals have had with the same material, this series should be an easy sell to viewers?

And yet it falls flat. Terribly flat.

The first episode serves – as it should – as an introduction to both the characters and the concept of the series, but disappointingly becomes a plotby-numbers. As the pilot begins, the murder of a young male sex

worker leads police officers to recruit the help of intellectual oddball Laszlo Kreizler (Daniel Brühl), the series’ titular alienist (an archaic term used for some early psychiatrists who believed murderers were being estranged from their true nature).

He’s joined by his straight-asan-arrow companion and New York Times illustrator John Moore (Luke Evans), who does his bidding unquestioningly, and the police secretary, Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning), who is both a pioneer in her profession, and the only woman in the episode to get multiple lines.

The police consistently resist Kreizler’s methods, yet need him around to solve the crimes (does this narrative sound familiar yet?)

Undermining police suspicions, Kreizler deduces that the murder is not the work of an arrested inmate, but of someone with far darker motivations, and he prompts Howard to break the rules and get access to the case files.

Why would she cave into such requests? Because she’s fascinated by Kreizler’s work.

Why? It doesn’t matter; the plot simply needs to march on to its plodding, stiff, obvious beat.

The characters are horrendously thinly sketched. At one point, Kreizler openly tells Moore that he “represents the good”, almost as though the scriptwriters have never before heard the phrase ‘show, don’t tell’, and the characters’ roles are continuously bashed over our heads with the force of a mallet.

Even the seemingly lush attention to period detail, with its cobblestone streets, charming gaslights, and an under-construction Williamsburg Bridge, doesn’t interest or fascinate beyond the superficial.

Small details, like the manner by which police alert each other to a crime through face-to-face interaction, or the painful imprints that Howard’s corset leave on her skin, are quite banal. They don’t add to any coherent storytelling or reveal anything about the period that a contemporary audience can relish in.

For all of its spend on budget and location, the scenery

“Do we really need another show on an already exhausted storyline?” appears washed out; its outdoor shots are an impenetrable dark monochrome and indoors are a dirty brown. Early modern hygiene aside, surely there was more colour in the 1890s than the excrement-stained visuals of this episode suggest? And despite their efforts at big budget realism, the outdoor set-pieces look like a trashy backlot poorly masked with visual effects.

encouraged audiences to empathise with violent sociopaths and tested viewers’ souls and stomachs with our predilection for extremely grotesque murder cases on the tellie – do we really need another show covering an already

It’s possible that because Fukunaga, the director behind True Detective, decided to scale back his involvement with Alienist due to conflicts with another series, that the show’s moral complexity and visual flare went with him. It’s possible too that it may develop throughout the first season into something more promising than what’s offered here, but I have my doubts.

So, do we need The Alienist?

NBC’s psychological thriller Hannibal has already

“Surely there was more colour in the 1890s than the excrement-stained visuals of the show suggest.”

18 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

thebrag.com

FEATURE

“For all of its spend on budget and location, the scenery appears washed out.”

Mindhunters did something new; it took away the certainty that we can pinpoint who a killer is, and gave us answers as to why some murderous people behave the way they do.

Sadly, the potential exists for the The Alienist to do likewise, but on a larger scale: when did modern crime begin? What is the evolution of the serial killer?

exhausted storyline? Kreizler’s remarks, “only if I become [the murderer] … only then will I truly understand” might be revelatory for the 1890s, or maybe even for the nineties, when the story was originally written, but now they induce little more than a groan.

And The Alienist only suffers by comparison to Netflix’s Mindhunter, which undercut our preconceptions of violence and violent men by taking us back to the beginnings of criminal profi ling in the 1970s, questioning the divide between the good and bad. Even though that was still well-worn territory,

But, despite all the promise suggested by its setting and the source material, The Alienist doesn’t seem interested in tackling anything major; anything more than blood and guts. The glorifi cation of violent crime on TV seems to have broadly and thankfully run its course, but the crimes in this episode are dwelled on at length. The show isn’t just satisfi ed with peppering the audience with descriptions of mutilation: we get Moore’s sketched recreations of the crime scene, with loving and obscene close-ups.

The inspection of a corpse in broad daylight comes not just with sound effects, but with a fi nal slow-motion bird’s-eye dive down toward the body, through a vacant eye socket. And in its ugly luxuriating in horror, the scene brings to mind a line from later in the episode: “Sometimes you can be as subtle as a blowtorch.”

What: The Alienist will be avaliable to stream on Netflix Australia from Thursday April 19

Riverdale: BFF’s [TELEVISION] Britt Aylen discusses the need for more representation of female besties onscreen

T

here is too much focus on the romantic relationship in film and television these days. Actually, who am I kidding? There has always been too much focus on ‘shipping’ (a viewer’s desire for two characters to get together) and ‘OTPs’ (fandom jargon for ‘one true pairing’). And frankly, I don’t care for it; because the only ship I’m here for is friendship.

Luckily for me, there are plenty of conventionbreaking female friendships being portrayed on our screens right at this very moment, notably Elizabeth “Betty” Cooper and Veronica Lodge in Netflix’s Riverdale.

Blossom’s murderer, saved Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe, and most recently, worked together to try and uncover the identity of the town’s murderous antagonist, Black Hood. Oh, and mind if I note here that women coming together instead of constantly arguing over a man really shouldn’t seem like a groundbreaking concept?

This is not to say that Betty and Veronica’s friendship has not experienced its own trials, from the disapproval of Betty’s controlling parents, to what could have been the most detrimental development yet, their near-friend break-up.

But even that particular conflict came not from their own disagreements, but instead from the Black Hood: Betty found herself manipulated into cutting contact with Veronica after the serial killer threatened her best friend’s life, one more failed attempt by a man to come between these two women.

“Women coming together instead of constantly arguing over a man really shouldn’t seem like a groundbreaking concept.”

First introduced by Archie Comics in the 1940s, prior to their modern day reboot in Riverdale, the defining characteristic of Betty and Veronica’s friendship has always been their rivalry over the affections of a certain Archibald “Archie” Andrews – the well-intentioned boy next door. And the comic book version of their friendship continued to centre around a man for decades; a man who could simply not make up his mind.

Thankfully, Riverdale has made an effort to subvert this. While the idea of a love triangle is first introduced way back in the pilot, when Veronica walks into Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe, it’s quashed within two episodes. The initial conflict – Veronica kissing Archie at a party – only leads to character growth, and she realises that she no longer wants to be a New York mean girl, instead deciding that maintaining a friendship with Betty was more important than winning over some mediocre hot-boy musician. And likewise, Betty is able to get over her unreciprocated crush, and is later given a new and better-suited love interest, the curious writer Jughead.

Rather than dividing this pairing through repetitive storylines about which one of them belongs with Archie – who, let’s face it, is the absolute worst – Riverdale has chosen to unite them. Together, Betty and Veronica have fought for their rightful places on the cheerleading squad, battled against slut-shaming, helped Betty’s pregnant sister Polly, searched for Jason

After all, for all the threats from the Black Hood, and the cruel things that Betty was forced into saying, the friendship between these characters has been shown time and time again as a force to be reckoned with.

Ultimately, Betty and Veronica together are stronger than the sum of their parts. Betty’s kindness counteracts Veronica’s catty side, and Veronica’s street smarts have helped Betty out of many a pickle. While both characters are clouded in their own naiveite – Betty’s belief in the justice of morality, and Veronica’s faith in her parents – no other pairing on the show comes close to matching their friendship.

Riverdale may come from source material that is shrouded in sexism and misogyny, and the original Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge would have been better defined as “frenemies” – but that was the 1940s. Trust me: I can tell you (and I think Riverdale agrees), that there is no man worth breaking up the sisterhood for.

What: Riverdale is available for streaming on Netflix Australia now

“Ultimately, Betty and Veronica together are stronger than the sum of their parts.” thebrag.com

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 19

arts in focus

FEATURE

“[In Metamorphoses] you’re very visible and it requires a very big vision to be put onto the text.”

Metamorphoses: Beyond Biology [THEATRE] Michael Kennedy talks to director Dino Dimitriadis about his reimagining of the play adapted from the classic Ovid poem

A

s Sydney gears up for Mardi Gras, the team behind Redline Productions are working feverously to bring Mary Zimmerman’s epic play Metamorphoses to the Old Fitz.

Directed by Dino Dimitriadis, it is a sprawling, lyrical collection of Greek myths with a huge list of characters, earning it a rep for being uniquely difficult to produce.

And yet, it isn’t the first time Dimitriadis has staged the work, having directed the production at Erskineville’s PACT theatre in 2012.

He describes being struck “by the vastness of the piece and its enormous worlds” as well as the “ideas it was exploring; these primal human qualities that we have in the face of extraordinary and large change.”

In spite of a firm belief that he would not return to Zimmerman’s play, plans to mount a show for the 40th anniversary of Mardi Gras were made and the play spoke to him yet again.

Many of the qualities originally attracting Dimitriadis remained alluring, and he thought more about its potential suitability to theatre. He describes the work as “a piece of scaffolding that you can use and hang off.” Indeed, the script itself offers few directions and only sparse splatterings of esoteric dialogue.

The opportunity to revisit the work after so many years has also

20 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

allowed him to approach it with renewed vigour and experience, and the result is a show that is highly ambitious. “It’s definitely the biggest production I’ve ever put on the stage and the most technically demanding. It’s a very big design, not just the set but the lighting and the sound that’s being composed; it’s an enormous cast, who are playing multiple characters.”

Further, for Dimitriadis, the ethereal dialogue and technical challenges provide an answer to the text-based naturalism often found in Sydney.

He recalls being “interested in creating a piece of theatre that was theatrical; that reminded us that theatre could be magic.”

given it was a predominantly queer team working on the piece, Dimitriadis believes the lived experiences of the cast and crew have “threaded [their] way into the production.”

Further, Dimitriadis describes queer theatre as creating a “liminal space that allows the history of queer identity to meet the present of queer identity.”

For that reason, the production contains a number of visual references, both overt and subtle, to queer history.

characters at a moment’s notice and has done everything possible to “dissolve traditional ideas of character” in an effort to explore the notion of changing identity.

The production also draws on the rich tapestry of queer theatre conventions; “camp, genderfucking, parody, sexual explicitness, nonlinearity, irony, exaggeration and surrealism” to illustrate the queer capacity to “create and recreate ourselves.”

Another major way Dimitriadis seeks to explore queer experiences is through the human body.

“For me, a very big idea of queer theatre is an absolute celebration of the body. For me, bodies are really important; the first word of the play is ‘bodies’ and I think it sets the tone not just for the play but for what I’m doing with it.” The audience can therefore expect bodies in all their glory, often nude and always unadulterated. With a stark design, these bodies become “the primary set” for the work.

“Water is one of those things you add to the list of things never to work with, alongside children and animals.”

However, one of the main reasons for remounting Metamorphoses was the potential for a queer reading. Immediately, the “switching or subversion” of the characters’ genders offers different perspectives and “ [allows for] representation of identities that we don’t often get to see on the stage in these sorts of stories.”

While subversion of gender is an important part of the production, this reading manifests in a plethora of other ways. Firstly,

On a thematic level, he also draws comparisons between the very concept of metamorphosis, around which the play centres.

“In a broad sense I’m interested in the idea of nothing being fixed, of everything being in a constant state of questioning and I think the positioning of the play in this fragmented sense very much allows for that.”

As a director, Dimitriadis has dissolved the narration into a “multivoice chorus”, has actors shifting

When asked what it is about the body that is so ripe for exploration in queer theatre, he is quick to answer. “There’s a complex relationship between identity and the body, but also on a very basic

level the body as the primary site of experience in the world.” Queer theatre, he says, empowers us to interrogate our perceptions of the body and the world, as well as the “remnants of modernity” that cause us to categorise and label human experiences along biological lines.

He still breaks conventions even where the text is layered with cultural and historical assumptions about sex and gender. However, he concedes, very few elements of the play are forecast to be smooth.

The scope of the piece is huge, while the Old Fitz is one of the city’s smallest theatres. And one area in which they have remained faithful to the original staging is the inclusion of a pool in which much of the play’s action occurs. The technical challenges this poses are immense, with Dimitriadis acknowledging, “water is one of those things you add to the list of things never to work with, alongside children and animals.”

Even so, the team are regarding the boundaries as a blessing, and regardless of the outcome, Dino is embracing the challenge. “We have an obsession with shiny polish in this city [when it comes to] art, but art can have a few rough edges to it and not be compromised.”

What: Metamorphoses Where: The Old Fitz, Woolloomooloo When: From now to Saturday March 10 thebrag.com

arts reviews ■ TV

The Center Will Not Hold examines the cycles of grief

By Allison Gallagher

T

he first time I ever read Joan Didion I was 20 years old, picking up a well-worn copy of her 1968 essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem from a used bookshop. I was captivated by Didion’s ability to capture some of the most disturbing scenes of 1960s America with a kind of candor that I had never come across before when reading journalism.

“Her essays reflect, with sincerity and wit, what it means to live in a surreal climate.”

Didion’s writing exists in a field of its own. Her work is unique largely in the way it manages to simultaneously pair frankness with intimacy, necessarily coalescing politic with empathy and translating the deeply personal to something universal.

Whether reporting about the adolescent dysfunction of the Haight-Ashbury hippie scene in the late 1960s, or writing on the death of her husband John Gregory Dunne and the consequential grieving process in her 2005 book The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion’s work exists in a liminal zone that refuses to make assumptions or paint things in the black and white dichotomy they are so often presented to us as.

In The Center Will Not Hold, the recent Netflix documentary about Didion’s life and work, the mystique of what is later referred to as “the character of Joan Didion” is pulled back – if only slightly.

The film, directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne, consists of archival footage, home movies and interviews with Didion’s friends and associates, spliced with narration of her work and an interview conducted between Dunne and Didion. While Dunne is careful not to overstep any boundaries, it is nevertheless an insightful, profoundly intimate look at the woman behind the words.

Throughout the documentary, the way Didion’s extraordinary career, character and experiences have co-existed in a kind of symbiotic relationship is explored thoroughly.

David Hare, who directed the Broadway adaptation of The Year of Magical Thinking in 2007, talks about how in her early reporting the “horror of disorder” comes through – noting it as a feature shared equally by her writing and her personality.

Dunne, through both interviews and archival footage, captures the unsettling backdrop against which much of her work is set.

As literary critic Hilton Als notes while discussing Didion’s 1979 book The White Album, you “couldn’t make a cohesive narrative of the times because the times weren’t cohesive.”

Didion’s essays reflect, with sincerity and wit, what it means to live in a surreal climate. “The weirdness of America,” says Als, “somehow got into this person’s bones and came out the other side of a typewriter.”

“Joan Didion’s writing exists in a field of its own.”

Some of the most compelling moments in the documentary are when Didion discusses what she was feeling at the time of documenting certain events. She describes cooking dinner for former Manson Family member Linda Kasabian and her child as “weirdly normal, and yet it was not normal in any way at all.”

Similarly, there is a point at which Dunne asks about an experience that occurred while writing the titular essay in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Didion’s 1967 piece recounting her experiences in the HaightAshbury area of San Francisco. Contrary to the counter-cultural utopia that the neighbourhood was positioned as, Didion instead gives a far bleaker document of her time there.

The essay concludes with her recounting an experience with a five-year-old girl who has been given LSD by her mother. When Dunne asks his aunt what it was like to be a journalist in the room at the time, Didion begins with, “It was…” and moves her hands to seek an answer before landing on “gold”. She offers that as a journalist you live for moments like that one.

The film also explores the relationship between Didion and her husband, who died in 2003, as well as her daughter Quintana,

Joan Didion and family in The Center Will Not Hold

who passed away two years later. The details of Didion and her late husband’s relationship are given light – both in their personal and creative partnership, and how the two intertwined.

Thinking and Blue Nights, and the loss of Dunne affected Didion’s entire sense of reality; of hope. As is noted in the film, the way she approached writing about the subject was not dissimilar to how she wrote about other topics. She documented possibly the hardest thing one can write about – the cycles of grief; the way grief can rip apart our internal sense of meaning; how it voids our comprehension of the world around us. “She did it as a reporter,” notes Als.

“Pauses are thoughtful, as if she is questioning how much of herself to give away.”

In her essay ‘In The Islands’ – later included in The White Album – Didion opens by explaining that she is in Honolulu with her husband (and a 3-year-old Quintana): “We are here on this island in the middle of the Pacific in lieu of filing for a divorce”, states Didion in the essay, plainly as day.

When her nephew asks what kind of agreement her and Dunne shared concerning writing about one another, Didion stares blankly before responding. “We didn’t have an agreement. We thought generally you wrote what you had. You used your material. That was what I happened to have at that moment”.

Grief is touched on heavily towards the end of the film, as Didion recounts losing both her husband and daughter within the course of two years. Her grieving process resulted in the books The Year of Magical

In the interview footage, Didion noticeably talks with her hands when she speaks about her life and her work, accentuating each thread of her history by with expressions of physicality.

At the same time, Didion considers each word. Pauses are thoughtful, as if she is questioning how much of herself to give away with each coming sentence. The most impactful moments are when she decides the answer is ‘everything’.

What: The Center Will Not Hold is available for streaming on Netflix Australia now

“She documented possibly the hardest thing one can write about, the cycles of grief.”

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 21

arts in focus ■ Film

Black Panther is an extraordinary slate-cleaning for the Marvel universe

By Cameron Williams

T

’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) is a king by day and the superhero, Black Panther, well, whenever the fictional African nation of Wakanda needs defending. In Black Panther – the eighteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – Wakanda is introduced as a nation with a lineage of rulers who take on the mantle of Black Panther to help keep the technologically advanced country a secret.

Wakanda offers no aid to neighbouring nations and they’re M.I.A at the United Nations.

T’Challa’s head of border security, W’Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya), remarks: “if we take refugees, we inherit their problems.” Indeed, Wakanda’s extreme privacy settings have allowed their people to stay free from colonialism, famine, wars and diseases.

The world has burned around Wakanda, and they’re just fine.

We’re used to our comic book movies featuring noble-hearted heroes, but rarely has border protection been high on their allmighty priority list. In this way, Black Panther uses Wakanda’s position of privilege to examine what its king and his advisors stand for beyond mere patriotism, as well as highlighting the power

of representation and visibility.

For once, Black Panther proves a Marvel film can aspire to be something more; it has political bite, emotional depth, ethical dilemmas, and regal jostling, but it still manages to maintain a bombastic comic book aesthetic that’s simply spectacular.

Set after the events of Captain America: Civil War, T’Challa/ Black Panther is a king in training following the death of his father.

T’Challa’s first assignment as ruler is to bring Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) to justice for stealing a stockpile of a precious metal native to Wakanda. But Klaue isn’t working alone, and T’Challa discovers the theft is part of plan to challenge the throne instigated

by Erik ‘Killmonger’ Stevens (Michael B. Jordan).

“Black Panther is a vital film for Marvel and one that’s overdue for a franchise pushing close to 20 films.”

Wakanda is alive in Black Panther: the world co-writer and director, Ryan Coogler, and his talented crew build inside a little holographic bubble is stunning.

The film never feels tied to or defined by the gigantic Marvel logo in the opening credits, because it stands confidently on its own.

Wakanda has a history, traditions and rituals that help paint a vibrant picture of what this country

“The biggest surprise is T’Challa’s strength outside the Black Panther suit.”

means to its populace. Each costume tells you everything you need to know about the tribes of Wakanda – they’re all individual works of art by costume designer Ruth E. Carter. Each piece of Wakanda’s culture makes you believe the passion when they yell their battle cry, ‘Wakanda forever!’

But first and foremost, Coogler has instilled Black Panther with an incredible sense of pride.

Wakanda is an African utopia that owns the title of the cradle of mankind.

When Black Panther travels outside Wakanda you feel the

yearning for that sense of pride, particularly when encountering the racial inequality of the “real world”.

Coogler shows black teenagers in Oakland, America, looking up in awe at one of Wakanda’s jets, with one of the kids remarking that it looks like a flying Bugatti.

In this clever, almost meta way, Black Panther makes the case for why a Black Panther film needs to exist. To those who are underrepresented in pop culture, Coogler is saying: you are seen.

The same sentiment applies to the plot, too, and the sublime villain played with heartbreaking vigour by Jordan. Boy is it tough not to empathise with Killmonger’s plan, as he makes the case to use Wakanda’s power to start a revolution – the moral and ethical challenges presented by the character are the hallmarks of a great villain.

Killmonger represents a kind of American radicalisation that leans into Wakanda’s own troubled history, and the extreme actions of past kings who tried to keep their country a secret at the expense of others. Killmonger is a villain who has never once seen himself

22 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

thebrag.com

arts reviews ■ TV

Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool is a troubling, muddled love story

By Joseph Earp

I

t’s a particular kind of agony, having to sit by and watch as your own legacy gets slowly and methodically dismantled in front of you. In the early ’50s, Gloria Grahame was a Hollywood titan – a legend etched out of smoke, the frequent cinematic sparring partner of Humphrey Bogart and James Stewart, and a singularly charismatic presence onscreen.

But by the ’80s, all that work had been largely forgotten, relegated to the dustbin of history.

Whereas she had once spent her time surrounded by cultural glitterati, winning Oscars and being courted by big name directors, towards the end of Grahame’s life she was a nobody, starring in low-rent plays in Liverpool, and fighting off persistent bouts of breast cancer.

That sad decline is charted with varying levels of success in Paul McGuigan’s new movie, Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool, a romance of the most unconventional sort that sees the one-time starlet played with rancour and relish by Annette Bening.

Slumming it in Liverpool, Grahame meets and then aggressively pursues Peter Turner (Jamie Bell), a young wannabe actor who seems both besotted with the idea of bedding a legend, and suitably suspicious of Grahame’s tantrums.

represented, and his rage is misguided masculinity aching for an emotional anchor. The challenge Killmonger presents to T’Challa helps Black Panther find its nobility in heroics. It’s a film about a superhero settling on what they choose to stand for, and fight for, beyond mere self-interest.

The biggest surprise is T’Challa’s strength outside the Black Panther suit.

Boseman’s performance is pensive and regal, but he gets moments to shine as he lets his guard down under the mounting pressure of tradition and while trying to forge a new path for Wakanda. The heartening moments of Black Panther are based on the actions of a ruler, not a superhero.

After all, for T’Challa to become a great ruler he must surround himself with

the best advisors, and Black Panther is stacked with a sublime supporting cast, made up mostly of women who have as much to do as the title character – if not more. Lupita Nyong’o is the leader of a tribe and T’Challa’s choice for queen who resists being classified as a love interest in so many kick-ass ways. Letita Wright is the Q of Wakanda, designing technology to make Tony Stark look amateur, and Dania Gurira is awesome as the leader of Wakanda’s secret service.

In the testosterone stakes, Winston Duke is a great diplomatic rival to T’Challa while Serkis makes a South African accent diabolical, working in the tradition of Lethal Weapon 2.

It must be said for all of Black Panther’s strength and independence within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a little of the woes of these films seep in. The

“Wakanda is alive in Black Panther.” action gets wobbly when the digital effects start to overwhelm. A sequence in which two costumed bodies fall while fighting looks more like something out of the virtual reality in Lawnmower Man. Elsewhere, Coogler stages a cool, James Bond-inspired casino sequence which culminates in a confrontation that smashes its way through South Korea, but it’s tough to keep tracking the action with any sense of clarity. He fares better when tracking closer to the ground in the sequences of hand-to-hand combat, which isn’t a surprise, given this is the guy who directed

the superb Creed. There’s enough time during these fight sequences to savour the physicality of each fight, the stakes of the battle and the importance of tradition.

Black Panther is a vital film for Marvel and one that’s overdue for a franchise pushing close to 20 films.

Coogler takes a comic book movie beyond the realm of the acceptable, pleasing same-same nature of a lot of Marvel’s output on the big screen. And though it might be a film with bombast, it has something more crucial: a soul. Coogler strives to make a film that’s greater than the constraints of comic book blockbuster filmmaking, and in turn, implores us to be better by following the path of king T’Challa.

What: Black Panther is in cinemas now

“To those who are under-represented in pop culture, Coogler is saying: you are seen.” thebrag.com

If only the film itself were as divided on the subject of Grahame. McGuigan mines all of the tragedy from his spent subject, but has little handling of nuance, and falls at her feet when he would do better to take a step back and examine Grahame earnestly. Her vicious sparring matches; her coldness; the sad, useless ways she fights against the passage of time – McGuigan skips over all of these warts, instead manipulating the audience in preparation for a weepy and one-note finale.

In the process, he manages to insult Grahame exactly as he tries to memorialise her. In life, as onscreen, Grahame was uniquely suspicious of sentimentality – a heavy drinker and smoker, she went through lovers like a wildfire through Californian eucalypts. But in Film Stars, she is a Shakespeareloving softie, whose clear exploitation of a man half her age is depicted as a kind of mettle-testing rite of passage for the young actor.

Not that Film Stars is bad – not by any stretch of the imagination. Bening is perfectly cast, and in the careful, controlled way she portrays Grahame, actively appears to be fighting back against the simplistic script she’s been chained to. Bell too is as charming as ever; a dose of empathy and complexity in a film crying out for it.

No. Film Stars is no mess, but nor is it the masterpiece it could have been. It’s simply one more melancholy footnote in the story of an actress who deserved so much more than she ever got.

What: Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool is in Australian cinemas from Thursday March 1

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 23

arts in focus ■ FILM

■ FILM

What the fuck even is The Cloverfield Paradox?

There’s fun to be had in the messy, dumb Insidious: The Last Key

By Joseph Earp

By Joseph Earp

T

he Cloverfield Paradox doesn’t feel like a Cloverfield film. But that’s not particularly surprising, given that for a long time it wasn’t: in its original life as The God Particle, the sci-fi serve of horror wasn’t even meant to be tangentially related to the J.J. Abrams produced Cloverfield series. It was only after a hasty rewrite – obviously very hasty, given the final product – that the film was retconned into the pre-existing cinematic universe, messily recast as a sequel it was never intended to be.

What is more surprising however, given the film’s hefty price tag and the level of talent involved – everyone from Daniel Bruhl, to comedian Chris O’Dowd, to Australia’s own Elizabeth Debicki shows up – is that The Cloverfield Paradox doesn’t really feel like a film at all. It is, at best, a straight-to-video mess from the early thousands; a devastatingly ugly, unbelievably incoherent jumble that doesn’t manage to entertain for one second of its interminable runtime.

“An Alien clone rewritten to resemble an Event Horizon clone rewritten to resemble a Sunshine clone, The Cloverfield Paradox sees a group of stereotypes bump around a space station.”

An Alien clone rewritten to resemble an Event Horizon clone rewritten to resemble a Sunshine clone, The Cloverfield Paradox sees a group of stereotypes bump around a space station muttering to themselves about parallel dimensions, and energy crises, and space demons. No hero is adequately distinguishable from one another, and when one of the central characters turns rogue in the final third, it’s somewhat of a strange relief – at least it becomes clear that somebody on the ship has agency of their own, even if it is malicious.

T

hey’ve never quite gotten the acclaim that they deserve, the Insidious films. The first has a wry, postmodern sense of humour all of its own – upon discovering their house is haunted, the film’s heroic protagonists break with horror conventions and immediately get the fuck out of there. And even the occasionally paltry third instalment, the uninventively titled Insidious Chapter Three, gleamed with a thrilling meanness that revealed the authorial hand of actor/writer/ director Leigh Whannell, also the father of the Saw series.

So, even though Insidious The Last Key is more than occasionally cringeworthy, it almost goes without saying that it has some life to it too – a spark, however faint, of the original black magic that made the first film the

“To call what happens in the film an ‘arc’ is quite generous – it’s often about as subtle as dental surgery conducted with a power drill.” international breakout success that it was some eight years ago.

The plot of The Last Key is mumbo jumbo – it’ll make me feel infinitely dumber for recalling it, and you infinitely dumber for reading it, so let’s keep details scant. All you need to know is that our hero, once again, is the paranormally gifted Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye), a psychic extraordinaire who finds herself forced to unravel a mystery that involves her dead mother, her childhood home, and a key-fingered antagonist. Elise might

It doesn’t help that the film was very obviously testscreened within an inch of its life. Although the “plot” unfurls in space, The Cloverfield Paradox also boasts long, pointless scenes set back here on earth, as the young husband of one of the film’s leads tries to get a young girl back together with her parents. He never says anything of value; the young girl never endears herself to the audience; and none of this shit means anything. It is as pointless and as tiresome as a puppet show mounted by a child, for an audience of none – a meandering exercise in time-wasting seemingly dreamed up by a screenwriter ripping off all the movies he himself would rather be watching.

And that’s not even to mention the final shot of the film, a throbbing middle finger shoved right in the faces of poor audience members who have managed to crawl themselves through the thing with their sanity intact.

It is an insult to the Cloverfield franchise, previously a spotless brace of films. And it is more than that too – it is an ugly, charmless affront to God. Watch almost anything else instead.

What: The Cloverfield Paradox is available to stream via Netflix now

24 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

“Even though Insidious The Last Key is more than occasionally cringeworthy, it almost goes without saying that it has some life to it too.”

have been (spoilers) unceremoniously offed at the end of the original Insidious, but she has been placed front and centre here: the film’s arc sees her coming to terms with her childhood trauma, her great supernatural gift, and the way those two things overlap.

Of course, to call what happens in the film an “arc” is quite generous – The Last Key is about as subtle as dental surgery conducted with a power drill. For almost the entire length of its running time, it repeatedly suggests that it might have something to say about the way the trauma of abuse can echo throughout time, but before it’s even done putting those thoughts in order, it loses all interest and sacrifices everything for a ridiculous final showdown that belongs in another film entirely.

That’s not even to mention The Last Key’s visual language, which is stunted at best. Not content with merely suggesting that Elise is trapped in cycles of abuse started by her spirit-sceptical father, director Adam Robitel has to show her literally trapped in a CGI prison, while repeated attempts to wring emotional worth out of a lock/key motif become eye-wateringly dumb (the film, believe it

or not, is honest-to-god set in New Mexico’s Five Keys.)

Yet underneath all that cheese lies something genuinely, if haphazardly, thrilling. The Last Key’s frights might be of the lowest order variety – quiet, quiet, BANG! jumpscares rule the day – but they are pulled off with real aplomb. One bravura setpiece in particular, set in the tunnels underneath Elise’s old home, is a masterclass in misdirection, and Robitel slowly goes through the bag of tricks he used equally effectively in his debut, The Taking Of Deborah Logan.

And for all the ways The Last Key follows the rules of the Insidious franchise – it has the comedic sidekicks, the weird nods to spirituality, the lazy resolution – it breaks a lot of them too.

Particularly surprising is a blurring of real world and supernatural scares that Robitel somehow has the gumption to pull off twice, the second time working even better than the first.

The Last Key isn’t going to change your life. But then again, it doesn’t really want to. Its targets are visceral, and deliberately small – to get sweat forming on the back of your neck; to get the hairs on your arms to struggle up to attention.

And though it might occasionally flounder, for the most part, it’s a sick, giddy thrill – as dumb as a monster truck rally, and just as thrilling.

What: Insidious: The Last Key is in cinemas now

thebrag.com

out & about

Queer(ish) matters with Arca Bayburt

“IT’S ESPECIALLY DIFFICULT TO CONVINCE PEOPLE THAT HOMOSEXUALITY ISN’T IMMORAL IF THERE ARE RELIGIOUS BARRIERS YOU MUST BREAK DOWN.”

“DESPITE IT BEING 2018, THERE IS STILL A VERY ENERGETIC DISCUSSION ABOUT THE MYSTERIOUS ORIGIN POINT OF GAYNESS.”

Born This Way

H

ere’s a favourite question of mine: “Why are you gay? Why can’t you just be straight?”

Here’s my favourite quote in response to it: “Well, we’re not supposed to talk about this outside of the regularly-scheduled organised meetings of all gays everywhere but since you asked so nicely, I’ll tell you our secret. I’m gay because when I was a little baby, a Cirque du Soleil clown snuck into my bedroom late at night and sprinkled rainbow glitter on my face.”

Despite it being 2018, there is still a very energetic discussion about the mysterious origin point of gayness. People have often brought up the theory of a “gay gene” during debates about nature vs nurture when it comes to the “evolutionary quirk” that is homosexuality.

I mean, if science can explain gayness, that puts it beyond reach of criticism, right? With some concrete scientific proof of homosexuality being completely out of our hands, blaming or persecuting people for it would be as daft as denying that the Earth is round, right?

Well fuck that. Fuck the “born this way” argument. Here’s why: The argument is illogical because the implication is that being homosexual is still bad or undesirable. At best, it says you’re totally awesome and alright as a person despite your homosexuality; at worst it invites pity from idiots.

So instead of perhaps considering the radical idea of accepting homosexuality as part of the wildly varied human condition, we relegate it to some sort of bizarre disease status, wherein we simply mustn’t persecute the poor gays, they didn’t have a choice in ending up how they are.

Out And About photo by Flickr/Ep_Jhu

I understand the allure of crushing a homophobe’s feeble non-arguments and revulsion of gays by hammering them with SCIENCE FISTS – so it’s interesting to me how we appeal to certain arguments despite their flawed nature, simply because despite said flaws, they still sway people. They still have effectiveness.

You might then argue that it does the fucking job, so why am I whinging about it?

I’ll tell you why: because it’s absolutely ridiculous to depend on a deeply flawed and illogical argument as the basis and safety net for an entire people’s existence in the world as a persecuted minority. It allows people to keep their prejudices and their disgust. It allows people to see homosexuality as an aberration rather than an ultimately meaningless trait that has no bearing on their humanity status for fuck’s sake.

It’s especially difficult to convince people that homosexuality isn’t immoral if there are religious barriers you must break down. Hyper-conservative religious folks aren’t often appeased by scientific argument more so that they actively are hostile towards it, so perhaps beating them with the “god made me this way” cudgel is the only way through.

thebrag.com

So: the gay rights movement has used a “born this way” narrative to help neutralise the opposition of the religious and conservative communities to measurable effect.

The first way to oppress or victimise someone is to first dehumanise them, and so the gay rights movement has made efforts to humanise homosexuals by asserting that the trait of homosexuality cannot be helped because it is genetically encoded.

That is, it’s not my fault I’m the way I am.

Implication being that: Being what you are is bad and must be defended; something must be blamed; there is a fault somewhere.

It’s difficult to imagine how long it would take for governments to legislate what they believe to be an immoral “choice” – so I’m sympathetic to the strategic use of the “born this way” narrative, though I do believe that it’s in response to an irrational argument and we should look to abandoning it.

It’s unimportant what trait is inborn when considering the rights of human beings.

Religious protections are granted to people despite the fact that religiosity is not an inborn trait. This same logic should be applied to gay rights.

By proving that homosexuality is a “natural” (in this context, a god-given trait), the idea is to effectively silence the opposition on their grounds and in terms that make sense in their world-view. In other words, we are not attempting to engage rationally, we’re pandering.

Removing the “born this way” argument is about changing how homosexuals and their allies engage with the opposition by shifting the argument from one that is based in logical fallacies to an argument that has its basis in rationality.

By engaging the “it’s a choice” crowd with a “no, we’re born this way” argument, it’s unfortunately validating an illogical premise. If we continue to do this, there will always be a splinter of difference that either results in barely concealed prejudice or varying degrees of “tolerance”.

If someone says something to the effect of, “Well it’s a choice, so stop being gay so then we won’t oppress you!” this might then lead one to reply by engaging with this argument’s fallacy (which is that orientation functions like a light switch, on and off) by pointing out that people can’t just stop being homosexual. This is where the “born this way” argument has historically been useful.

My view however, is that the correct response to “Well it’s a choice, so stop being gay so then we won’t oppress you!” and also, “You’re born this way so it would be wrong to oppress you” is: You shouldn’t be oppressing people regardless.

“THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT HAS MADE EFFORTS TO HUMANISE HOMOSEXUALS

BY ASSERTING THAT THE TRAIT OF HOMOSEXUALITY CANNOT BE HELPED BECAUSE IT IS GENETICALLY ENCODED.” BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 25

Allison Gallagher learns the inimitable Beck Hansen once feared anything that sounded a little too pop

“THE WAY THIS RECORD SOUNDS

WAS SOMETHING I ALWAYS WANTED TO DO. IT’S A BIT MORE TECHNICALLY ACCOMPLISHED AND FOR LACK OF A BETTER WORD, STATE OF THE ART, WHICH I WAS ALWAYS A LITTLE BIT AFRAID OF.

26 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

thebrag.com

AS FAR AS IT FELT LIKE WE COULD.”

FEATURE

“I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO DO A RECORD WHERE WE REALLY TOOK IT

Beck:

Real Joy

F

or over two decades, Beck Hansen has made music that skirts the edges of conventional genre classification, liberally appropriating from different styles while maintaining a unique well, Beck-ness that has carried a thread of consistency throughout a dozen studio albums.

Beck Hansen photo by Peter Hapak

His 1993 breakout single ‘Loser’ paired folk guitars, hip-hop beats, freeform lyrics and an indifferent attitude that would prove an unlikely hit – an apathetic anthem for a disenchanted MTV generation. On his most recent album, last year’s exuberant Colors, Beck swings the dial almost completely in the other direction, turning to the effervescence of classic pop records to guide its sonic motif. It’s also a vivid departure from his previous album, 2014’s Morning Phase, a melancholic and mostly acoustic affair that picked up where 2002 heartbreaker Sea Change left off.

Colors took around four years to complete, with Beck and executive producer Greg Kurstin having the freedom to experiment and trial with abundance. “I think traditionally when I’d go in to make a record, I’d either have songs or I’d go in and just sort of see what comes out and go with it,” says Beck.

“This record was very different in that there was a real sense of throwing everything on the table, every possible idea; trying it ten different ways and really exploring every iteration of a song. It was different. I had the luxury of time. I’ve always wanted to do a record where we really took it as far as it felt like we could.”

While Morning Phase was recorded in a fairly traditional setting, Beck says that on Colors there was a deliberate effort to take the ethos of “real musicians” playing while simultaneously capturing the immediacy and power of the modern pop machine. “It’s still played, it’s still live musicians, but we’re sort of post-digital at this point and all music you hear on the radio is probably 90 per cent digital – it’s all coming in a self-contained computerised world, so it has a certain punchiness and frequency spectrum that you can’t really get by sticking a mic in front of a guitar.”

The end result is that Colors is a layered, sonically complex record, but also likely Beck’s most accessible album to date – a marriage of polished production and vibrant character. The album also takes audible influence from what Beck calls “the apotheosis of ‘80s pop production, the maturing of pop music into the era of something that was a bit more sophisticated”. There’s cues from the likes of Michael Jackson and Peter Gabriel, as well as Bowie – whose chameleonic approach can’t help but come to mind when considering Beck’s sonic oeuvre.

“The way this record sounds was something I always wanted to do. It’s a bit more technically accomplished and for lack of a better word, state of the art, which I was always a little bit afraid of.”

Given that his earliest works were rooted in an intentionally lo-fi, slacker aesthetic, Beck’s initial trepidation about the album’s “accomplished” sound is understandable. “I grew up in an era where that was equated with something that didn’t have soul or personality. But, you know, Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall is an incredibly accomplished and polished record but it does have a lot of soul and atmosphere.”

This month, Beck will return to Australia as part of the inaugural Sydney City Limits festival, bringing an extensive backing band as part of his “energetic” live show.

“When we were doing Morning Phase we’d come out and I think some people coming to hear that record were probably a little surprised, because we try to put a lot of energy and fun into the shows. We just engage with the audience a lot, try to get people on their feet. I think the spirit of [Colors] is a reflection of the kind of shows we’ve been playing for years.”

“I GOT TO PERFORM

WITH PAUL MCCARTNEY

A WHILE BACK AND WE DID A COUPLE EARLY BEATLES SONGS – THERE’S SUCH JOY IN THOSE SONGS.” thebrag.com

Listening to Colors, it’s understandable what Beck means when he says it reflects the vivacity of the live shows. The album is aggressively upbeat, an intentional choice made after the introspective Morning Phase.

“I wanted it to have something that was just a purely kind of uplifting joyous feeling – the effervescence of a great pop record,” says Beck. “There could have been an argument to throwing a few songs in that went other places to kind of balance it out, but I’d just done Morning Phase so I felt like I’d really explored that territory. At the same time, I needed to do it in my own way where it felt true to me and felt like something I could credibly get up and sing and own.”

For Beck, there’s a certain satisfaction in releasing Colors after years of covering pop classics live. “Back in the ’90s we’d play everything from ‘Electric Avenue’ to ‘Blue What: Sydney City Limits Monday’ to ‘Raspberry Beret’. There’s a sort of When: Saturday February 24 joy when you get to play those songs; you think Where: Centennial Park ‘God, I wish I had songs like this’. I got to perform With: Car Seat Headrest, Justice, Grace with Paul McCartney a while back and we did a Jones, Gang Of Youths and many more couple early Beatles songs – there’s such joy in And: Colors is out now through Universal those songs. This is my attempt to capture some Australia of that in my own style.”

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 27

FEATURE

Superorganism:

Detached Chaos Emily Meller talks to singer, lyricist and painter Orono Noguchi of Superorganism about the UK act’s internet-based beginnings

But now they have returned to our timespace-continuum for the release of their self-titled debut this coming March. They even live together IRL in a flat in East London where singer, lyricist and painter Orono Noguchi spends time crafting strange, deeply referential verses. “We still send files to each other like, back and forth because it feels really natural to us to work that way – because that’s how we made friends as teenagers and stuff, like on forums,” she says.

band] are really fascinated with the light and dark of everything in the world, and the way that things have two sides.”

Like their single, the album’s songs reveal a tension between chaos and unfeeling detachment. It would be easy enough to tie this to the band’s fondness for ‘internet culture’ – online, there’s a constant oscillation between overthe-top cartoonish humour and a total disengagement from the outside world.

But that would seem to imply a kind of nihilism that Superorganism constantly resist against.

“At the end of the day we’re all really optimistic people, but that doesn’t mean we’re like, ‘Hey, we should be happy all the time’,” explains Orono. “Especially me being like, an angsty teenager.”

It helps explain the absurdity of their sound, a kind of playful attitude that ties everything together, but also serves a more serious artistic purpose. “I think that not being optimistic is just kind of … going to lead to suicide pretty much,” she says. “And maybe that’s a big statement right there, but you know I think that most people are optimistic, and I think it’s a relatable quality.”

“ALL OF US [IN THE BAND] ARE REALLY FASCINATED WITH THE LIGHT AND DARK OF

EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD.” Orono’s delivery is deadpan on most of the new tracks, which seems to be an intentional complement to the strange chaos of the music behind her voice.

Her words are also often abstract, and very funny. Take the lines “I know you think I’m a psychopath / A Democrat lurking in the dark”. It’s hard to pinpoint where the humour lies: is it in the image of a psychopathic Democrat, or in her totally flat delivery? “I think me sounding kind of deadpan and all ‘I don’t give a fuck’ is because it’s a reflection of my personality,” she says. “All of us [in the

“I THINK THAT

NOT BEING OPTIMISTIC IS JUST KIND OF… GOING TO LEAD TO SUICIDE PRETTY MUCH.”

28 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

Their first release from their debut, ‘Everybody Wants To Be Famous’, is accompanied by a very psychedelic video clip starring Orono herself. It’s an ode to internet culture, but also refl ects the band’s recent experience of shooting to fame in a short space of time. Although at first, Orono was unsure whether she should write a song about fame, as it certainly isn’t the most relatable experience. She says, “connecting on a personal level is really important for good art.”

So the imperative was to connect with her rapidly growing fan base while still writing about her personal experiences. It was while listening to Car Seat Headrest, and lyrics that Stephen Malkmus of Pavement had written, that Orono had a revelation.

“I realised I can write about whatever I want and anyone somewhere, somewhere out there in the world will probably relate to that.”

Orono’s favourite track from the new album, ‘Relax’, represents a lot of what Superorganism set out to do. It’s a

“I’M GLAD

PEOPLE KIND OF GET IT AND PEOPLE GET IN ON IT, ON A JOKE THAT I DIDN’T KNOW OTHER PEOPLE WERE INTO.”

lush, downtempo song woven around cartoonish samples, including one of a car crash. But it’s catchy as heck, and mimetic of the barely contained anxiety that comes from having someone tell you to “calm down” when you’re on the edge of a panic attack.

Absurd lyrics like “Stereo’s getting too loud / Mustard seeds on the ground” add to the feeling of skirting close to the edge of sanity. But Orono says that, like many of her lyrics, it’s a “nerdy reference” from a Steve Malkmus interview with Pitchfork.

“Stephen is saying mustard is a refi ned taste thing and when going through puberty you begin to like mustard and I thought it was really fascinating”, she says.

“I think there is a weird sense of humour, like an inside joke going on with myself inside most of the lyrics,” Orono says. Such nods are littered throughout the album –though it will take a bit of digging to uncover the more obscure references. But in the end, it just seems like another way that the band, and Orono in particular, try to connect with people through their music.

“It’s weird, but I’m glad people kind of get it and people get in on it, on a joke that I didn’t know other people were into. It’s really cool.” And, really, isn’t that what the internet is all about?

“CONNECTING ON A PERSONAL LEVEL IS REALLY IMPORTANT FOR

GOOD ART.”

What: Superorganism is out on Friday March 2 through Domino

Superorganism photo by Steph Wilson

Y

ou’ve probably heard Superorganism dripping out of your local hipster’s speakers.

Their trippy songs are always on the verge of overflowing, bursting with sunsaturated samples that stretch over warped beats. ‘Something For Your M.I.N.D.’ seems to have been beamed to us from a spaceship, quickly taking off as a hit down here on earth. But despite its success, the band behind it have remained mysterious – partly because they only really knew each other from the internet, and together inhabited that weird twilight zone of instant messenger and filesharing that many of us have been intimately connected with since childhood.

thebrag.com

FEATURE

thebrag.com

sarah 30 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

Bla thebrag.com

FEATURE

How To Heal Yourself

By Joseph Earp

Sarah Blasko photo by Kylie Coutts

S

arah Blasko can’t stop looking at a packet of porridge. It’s been staring her down all morning, propped up in its vantage point over in the corner of a vast, empty room at the headquarters of Universal Music Australia, the label set to release her sixth record, Depth Of Field.

“Mind if we sit somewhere else?” Blasko asks, glaring comically at the distraction from the corner of her eye. And so we do, over to a futon by a window, Blasko chatting animatedly about the stifling hot Sydney weather while we move. But we have only been settled into our new spot for a few moments before Blasko’s attention is caught by something else: a passage of gigantic Italian phrases, printed on the wall behind my head.

“This is such a strange room,” Blasko says with a laugh, her eyes flashing. “What is going on in here?”

Which all makes it sound maybe like Sarah Blasko is easily distracted; easily thrown. But nothing could be further from the truth. When the conversation proper begins, the singer-songwriter’s attention doesn’t waver for a moment. She talks quickly but with purpose, answering each question not like a musician who has already had to endure a long morning of press – all while being stared down by a packet of oats, no less – but like someone who finds it particularly important to say exactly what she means.

That level of honesty is reflected in Blasko’s new record, Depth Of Field. Lighter, brighter than 2015’s excellent Eternal Return, it is the sound of a musician at their true peak: an effortlessly cool, expertly controlled collection of songs about reinstating the boundaries of the self. Across it she snarls, snaps, and comes to sound like someone who has resolutely given up on pleasing people – on ‘A Shot’, the record’s blistering lead single, she sings the lines, “you expect me to believe / You only wanted what was best for me?” She has never sounded so assured.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The BRAG: Does it get lonely, making music?

Sarah Blasko: Sometimes. I very actively chose to write with other people for this record. I couldn’t stomach the solitary path. Sometimes that solitude is really welcome and exactly what you need – but this time I knew I didn’t need that. I felt like it wasn’t going to produce very healthy fruit. I needed to be around other people, and I needed to be inspired by people.

I have always kinda worried I am too creatively selfish to work with other people.

It is a worry – it can be hard. It can be a real struggle at times. I reach a certain point sometimes where I just need to take things into a quiet room and close the door. The musical part of things – particularly just the forming of ideas – can feel fun in a group, but only up to a point.

I’m a bit of a walker-outer. I’m all fine, fine, fine, fine, then all of a sudden I’m not fine. It’s not something I’m proud of. It really shocks people sometimes.

Most projects I’ve ever worked on, there’s been a moment when I’ve all of a sudden not been okay, and people get really freaked out by that. I think I’ve often thought it would be better for people to see [the anger] in you constantly in action, rather than it just exploding.

I guess that level of tension comes with the fact that music-making is so personal…

Exactly. It’s gotta be personal to a degree. You have to care about it so much that you want to fight for it.

You want to be able to get a handle on what it is that you’re making. So there has to be a handful of those tense moments.

It’s more than just a job. It’s a weird job. It’s a weird thing to do.

Has your process changed over the time you’ve been making music?

sko

It has changed for this album. This was the most pleasurable album-making experience I’ve ever had.

It was so pleasurable that I felt guilty about it. There was a time when I was making I Awake and I was in Stockholm and I was just so stressed out that I thought I was going to self-combust. I’m the kind of person who would genuinely light on fire. I just get that stressed.

“I’M A BIT OF A

WALKEROUTER.

I’M ALL FINE, FINE, FINE, FINE, THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN

I’M NOT FINE.”

I have other things that are more stressful than making music. Which means music has become even more the relief. When I make music now, I just enjoy those moments so much. I long for them now.

And I get a lot of those moments, because I have plenty of time now [my son] is a little older. I relish it now in a different way than I used to.

When I was younger, I had a lot of tension in everything I did. I grew up in quite a religious household, and there was often this sense of not enjoying the things of the world too much. But I think as I rid myself of that more and more, I learned to enjoy life, and relish things more.

It’s not good to chill out completely when making music, but it’s also okay to enjoy the process of making. I had to really reconnect with the process of enjoying making music, because I had lost my joy for most things. I had to rid myself of the industry, and all those concerns.

But I don’t think I stressed out during the making of this album. Although maybe the people I made it with would say, ‘Hmm, well actually…’ I don’t think I even walked out.

Just before I made this record, I went through a process of really remembering why I started doing this in the first place. I rid myself of the garbage elements of who I had become over the last ten years or so. And I was sort of forced into that by life circumstances. I just reached one of those life crisis points that I think everybody comes to at various ages and times. So maybe that’s why the album became – potentially more so than other times – about the process and enjoying the process and savouring the process.

It was so pleasurable, but I think that’s because I’ve got other things going on in my life – I’m a parent;

The process is everything. Which is potentially a really obvious thing to say, but I needed to

“SOMETIMES YOU GET TO A POINT WHERE YOU CAN’T EVEN PHYSICALLY KEEP GOING.” thebrag.com

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 31

FEATURE

“THERE WAS A TIME WHEN I WAS MAKING I AWAKE AND

I WAS IN STOCKHOLM AND I WAS JUST SO STRESSED OUT THAT I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO SELF-COMBUST.” It’s not an ego thing. It’s actually just a release … It’s kinda sad when you forget that; when you have that time where you don’t play music, and then you go back to it, and you go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right: this is pleasurable.’

Do you get worried by the fact that art-making can be impulsive like that? Like that it can come and go?

Well, see with this record, I made it while I was an artistin-residence. And while I’m a believer in the fact that [art] can come to you, I do think that sometimes you need to lock in some time and make it happen. There’s a time for everything, I think, as the famous Biblical passage says.

And there’s definitely a time for just grabbing it by the collar and making yourself be creative.

So I feel like the artist-in-residence was a perfect opportunity in that way: it was a great way to get the process started. Wherever I was at, wherever my life was at, we just had to get started – we had these two weeks, and we couldn’t do nothing there. I just wanted to anything I could to make a creative space that was really inspiring.

I suppose nothing could have come from it at all – that was the risk with it. But pushing ourselves to do something ended up being really good. It ended up being very fruitful, and encouraging.

You do wanna always think too, ‘Well, what is it that I’ve wanted to do my whole life?’ I had always wanted to make an album with an orchestra, and it was so satisfying when I did it [with 2012’s I Awake.] It was like, this is something that I have been wanting to do since I was a child.

“I HAD TO REALLY RECONNECT WITH THE PROCESS OF ENJOYING MAKING MUSIC, BECAUSE FOR MOST THINGS.”

32 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

remember that. Because otherwise you can get too focused on the end result, or… just over things. It’s about really making the most of the process.

It is funny how you can do that – how you can just allow yourself to accrue all this stuff, till you go, ‘Why am I even doing this?’

Yeah, and I think I had just felt so defeated as a person, that I just… I don’t know. But in some ways it was good to get to that point where you have to get in touch with your truth. Because sometimes you get to a point where you can’t even physically keep going. So there is some truth to that cliche about doors closing in your face and others opening. It’s kind of great. It’s good to be appreciative.

And does that mean when things are going better, the music-making does become cathartic?

I think music-making has always been cathartic for me.

It’s a release – particularly playing onstage. It’s escaping the mundane. It brings a magic into the mundanity of everyday life. You feel like you can bring things into life that you might wanna say, or that you long for. There’s a power in your acknowledging things – it transports you.

So just recreating that environment, with the lights, and the volume… It just felt like something I had always wanted to try. It was like us in our natural habitat; we’re used to spending time together, and doing that stuff together.

Do you ever worry about overfiddling with your music?

Oh yeah. Sometimes if you get into a computer too much you can lose sight of things. I think it is always better to write a song in a non-stylised way to begin with, because you can take it anywhere from there. But once you rely too much on the sounds, you can kinda forget about melody. I think a song should be able to be played in so many ways.

I have always been suspicious of music that’s very tricky… Music with too much going on; show-off music.

Although, maybe I don’t like show-off music because I can’t show off. People who are really trained can do that; I can’t. Although those people would probably look at my music and think, ‘That’s so juvenile. It’s only got three chords.’

I guess that’s historically the power of music. There’s this looking beyond what’s here, either in an emotional way or speaking powerful words that can propel people into the future, or into a better way of looking.

A few times I’ve read reviews and they’ve said things about that. I always enjoy the ones that hate what I’ve done. One review said, ‘Buy this is if you hate melody.’

It was really damning: ‘buy it if you like a droning singer with no expression in your voice.’ I was like excellent; great. I love that. [Laughs.]

That’s always the way it has been for me. Because I don’t really know what I’m doing – I don’t play an instrument that well. I sort of go with my gut, and music provides that for me; it provides this transportive quality.

And when I don’t perform, and I don’t make much music, I feel it. I don’t feel as together as a person.

What: Friday June 1 Where: Metro Theatre And: Depth Of Field is out this Friday February 23 through Universal Music Australia

thebrag.com

Sarah Blasko photo by Kylie Coutts

I HAD LOST MY JOY

Then I realised that I had always wanted to make an album in a performance space. You know, whenever you’re doing sound checks or warming up before playing, you sometimes play around with musical ideas, but you never have the time to actually do anything substantive with them. It always felt really exciting though – it felt exciting to start an idea for a song and think, ‘Wow, that could have really gone somewhere.’

FEATURE

Royal Chant:

Truth And Lies Shaun Cowe learns Mark Spence of Royal Chant is feeling happier with his band and his art than ever

M

ark Spence, the frontman of Australia’s own Royal Chant, is feeling chatty. The musician has just released his band’s fourth fulllength studio album, Pride & Poverty, and, ahead of a national tour that will see them make both regional and suburban stops, Spence is pondering the changes to the way independent music is distributed he has seen over his career.

“Our very first record, that was out in all the stores. It got some hard copy sales. I’d go into JB Hi Fi and go like, ‘Oh, wow, you’ve actually got our CD here.’ But, for us, that’s long gone now. Basically, we just gave up on all that stuff,” Spence says.

It’s no secret that the musical landscape is changing irrevocably, moving towards digital sales and streaming. And while we’ll have to wait until March to get the 2017 ARIA wholesale fi gures, the 2016 fi gures released last year showed digital sales representing around 70 per cent of the market, with streaming taking the lion’s share of that fi gure.

“We stopped doing hard copies on our last record. We’re committed now to only doing digital stuff, sad to say.

We did do a little vinyl run on our last single but it was just killing us monetarily to keep trying to put out hard copies. So, we’ve put all our eggs in the digital basket; now even more so in the streaming basket.”

Pride & Poverty will be available on all the usual digital platforms, including Spotify, Soundcloud, and Bandcamp.

But Spence’s experience tells him that digital downloads are lagging, and he expects most of the listening revenue to be generated in digital streaming.

“Even when we did have hard copies, when we were trying to sell them at gigs I’d wind up getting pretty loose and just giving that stuff away. I’m a terrible salesman. But it’s a real minority of people who come up to us at shows and ask us if we have CDs for sale. I probably haven’t heard that in over a year.”

Outside the realm of record sales, Royal Chant maintain a fairly constant live show schedule. Spence attributes the regularity of shows to his desire to constantly be working, and the

“WE STOPPED

DOING HARD COPIES

ON OUR LAST RECORD. WE’RE COMMITTED NOW TO ONLY DOING DIGITAL STUFF, SAD TO SAY.” band books away gigs to fi t around their work life, fi lling up as many weekends as possible – the frontman himself works as a music teacher and drumline leader for high schools in Port Macquarie.

“As far as the amount of travel we do, I’d say we’re probably punching about our weight. That, or just being stupidly ambitious in going lots of places. We do like to tour a lot and we have at least a somewhat spreadout fan base,” he says. “I’m not sure how much good it’s doing us, but it’s certainly a lot of fun. Which, at this point in the game, is pretty much all we’re aiming for.”

Royal Chant has had a long life by local standards – they’ve been together for 13 years and subject to numerous lineup changes, which have left Spence as the sole original member.

But he feels the band’s finally hitting its stride now: he lists Pride & Poverty as his favourite record, and not just because he’s fulfilling the musician’s obligation of always considering their latest release their finest. He

“IT’S A REAL MINORITY OF PEOPLE WHO COME UP TO US AT SHOWS AND ASK US IF WE HAVE

CDS FOR SALE.

I PROBABLY HAVEN’T HEARD THAT IN OVER A YEAR.” believes communication in the band is strong, and they’re able to have frank discussions about their songs.

“In previous incarnations of the band, communications would be at an all-time low. I’d be too sheepish to say anything if I didn’t like what was happening with the songs. I just learned to keep my thoughts to myself and not ruffle any feathers.

And, you know, you wind up with some resentment, and things like that.

Whereas this recording process was fairly open and honest.”

Spence says the band spent their December down-time going back into the studio to record new songs and do some last-minute touch-ups to Pride & Poverty, work designed to keep them all occupied while on a gigging break. “I don’t function very well with the thought of a break. You’re either working or you’re not. Once we finished with the studio I finally learned to just relax; maybe do a bit of PR for the album.

You know, just get ready and do some rehearsals at a fairly leisurely pace.”

Spence says Pride & Poverty has come at a time when he feels more able to talk about the formation of his music. He says, in the past, questions

about influences and songwriting just went over his head; he didn’t feel he knew how to answer them properly.

But practice over the years has helped him hone his answers to media questions.

“With the album, if there’s any underlying concept that was all ex post facto. At the time, I was just writing a song, then another song. We were actually supposed to have twelve songs on the album but it just wasn’t fi tting right. Then Pride & Poverty came to me as an album title and once I had that we sort of created a narrative to follow. So the themes are a happy accident, or at least an unconscious effort.”

As far as personal favourites, Spence points to the world-weary love anthem ‘Shooting Sparrows’, and folky acoustic jam ‘Cargo Cults’, over the more traditional rock tunes in the album. “Both of those I really have an affection for. I’ve had to make the least amount of compromises in this one.

There’s nothing that I’m hearing that I would want to do differently.”

What: Pride & Poverty is out now independently

“...IT’S CERTAINLY A LOT OF FUN. WHICH, AT THIS POINT IN THE GAME, IS PRETTY MUCH

ALL WE’RE AIMING FOR.”

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 33

FEATURE

Toto:

Steve Lukather Will Rip Your Fucking Eyeballs Out Shaun Cowe talks to Steve Lukather, the genius behind one of the catchiest songs of the ’80s

W

ith 40 years since the historic release of Toto’s eponymous debut album, the band is set to release an anniversary greatest hits record, 40 Trips Around the Sun, that will feature both the band’s golden years chart-toppers and some new tracks, including unreleased songs featuring deceased members, Jeff and Mike Pocaro.

The release couldn’t have come at a better time. After years spent in the critical wasteland, the band have been reborn anew, made heroes via the first ironic, then utterly sincere, reclaiming of their best-known song ‘Africa’. “I think the critics are starting to be more forgiving,” explains the band’s vocalist and guitarist Steve Lukather.

“All the hipster haters are either dead or like 150 years old. Even Jann Wenner [Rolling Stone co-founder] gave up. We outlasted the people who compared us to the punk bands. That’s where it all went wrong for us. They chose us to be the antithesis of punk music. It was easy to pick on a band with a name like Toto – especially back in 1978 – as

opposed to being hip and liking The Clash.”

Indeed, Toto struggled to garner respect in the music community throughout much of the ’80s. After the lacklustre critical reception of their nonetheless popular first album Toto, the band hit hard years with their two follow-up releases. So desperate were their label Columbia Records for a hit that they issued an ultimatum to the band: release a chart-topping album or be dropped entirely, leading to the creation of the historic Toto IV. “We were running up a vertical glass mountain with butter on our feet. The guy who co-wrote my book [Paul Rees] was the editor of Q magazine. He told me he was not allowed to write about us in the magazine. He was like, ‘Why?’ And they said, ‘Well, because we hate them.’

“I’m like, ‘Well they’ve never met me.’

They hate Toto but they liked all those other records that I played on. So they thought I had nothing to talk about?

Really? It’s kind of weird, you know. It’s wrong.”

“WE WERE RUNNING UP A VERTICAL GLASS MOUNTAIN WITH

BUTTER ON OUR FEET.”

The autobiography, The Gospel According To Luke will be released shortly after the album and details much of Lukather’s time as a founding member of Toto, as well as his extensive session work with some of the world’s premiere musicians.

But while the autobiography details his past, Lukather is very much entrenched in the present. He sees the world tour, announced alongside the album release, as a way to connect with younger fans who he believes give Toto a more generous appraisal; though he’s largely disdainful of internet culture.

“The kids are great. They don’t care what the old critics think. And we don’t care anymore. I mean, I don’t want to read someone saying I’m a cunt underneath every Youtube video that we do, just because some guy thought it would be cute and just make my day,” Lukather laughs.

“Some guy who has never met me before. He’s chickenshit because he has a fake name, so he knows who I am but I don’t know who he is. He’d never say it to my face because I’d knock him out. I may be old but I know how to fucking rip eyeballs out.”

Lukather laughs off his combative words. The truth is, while nobody’s getting in line to toe up to the wildeyed old rocker, personal injury, old

“THE KIDS ARE GREAT.

THEY DON’T CARE WHAT THE OLD CRITICS THINK. AND WE DON’T CARE ANYMORE.” age, and the deaths of his close friends and bandmates has taken a heavy emotional and physical toll.

His words often ruminate on his own mortality.

“I’m looking at a photo of my old man right now, back when he was in his prime. He’s laughing at me now. He’s like, ‘look at you, motherfucker. You’re almost my age when I died’. That’s scary. But at the same time, that’s why I get up at 5AM every morning and I’m working on the band and I’m practicing my guitar. I’m still excited about doing this.”

What: 40 Trips Around The Sun is out now

“I MAY BE OLD BUT I KNOW HOW TO

FUCKING RIP EYEBALLS OUT.” 34 :: BRAG :: 733 :: 07:02:18

thebrag.com

FEATURE

Totally Mild:

A Beautiful Struggle Totally Mild’s Elizabeth Mitchell tells Doug Wallen it’s experience that feeds her moving, accomplished songs

D

espite the floaty sweetness of frontwoman Elizabeth Mitchell’s swooning voice, Melbourne dream-pop quartet Totally Mild specialise in pointed studies of depression and isolation. That might not have always come to the fore on their breakthrough 2015 album Down Time – though the spritely ‘When I’m Tired’ did recount waking to a house that’s being set alight – but it’s hard to ignore on the band’s accomplished follow-up, Her. “I am nothing to stay alive for/ I am nothing to die for,” goes the closing line of ‘Underwater’, while the twisty ‘Take Today’ asks, “Why wait for a slow decay?”. That unique combination of slow-burn psychology and breathy pop cues – from woozy rhythms to expressive slide guitar – makes for a moving experience.

“I struggle with my mental health all the time,” Mitchell admits, on the phone from Melbourne. “I pretty much only write from my own experience, so that’s just a really overt theme that feeds into all the other themes. I can’t really avoid talking about that stuff, because it permeates the way that I live and the way that I write.”

As Mitchell explains, however, she approached that key theme in quite different ways between the two albums: “Down Time was very much [about] partying through being unwell. Her is a bit more about isolation, and that real push and pull between being happy but being chronically depressed. Like, knowing you have great things in your life, but still struggling to stay afloat.”

That push-and-pull is most apparent on ‘Lucky Stars’, a piano ballad that’s at once vulnerable and empowering, happy and heartbreaking. It’s incredibly naked, lyrically and instrumentally, and Mitchell’s own favourite song on the album. While the chorus came from another song she’d been working on, the verses were inspired by a drive back to Melbourne after a gig in Ballarat, surrounded by her friends in the band.

Totally Mild photo by Mia Mala McDonald

“It’s such a privilege to be able to feel like you can pursue [music],” she says of that glowing vibe. “But it’s juxtaposed with feeling a bit helpless in the world, and not having control over things.”

Her features another piano song in the closing ‘Down Together’, though that’s given a sighing, atmospheric pop treatment by contrast. The piano was Mitchell’s first instrument, and after

“THE ALBUM IS JUST UNDOUBTEDLY

ABOUT WOMEN.” thebrag.com

“I WAS AFRAID OF PLAYING SOLO FOR A LONG TIME BECAUSE I FELT LIKE IT

WOULDN’T BE ENOUGH.” “DOWN TIME WAS VERY MUCH [ABOUT] PARTYING THROUGH BEING UNWELL. HER IS A BIT MORE ABOUT

writing the first Totally Mild release – 2013’s home-recorded, mostly solo effort Castanet – on baritone ukulele before turning to a four-string guitar that’s tuned like a ukulele, she has enjoyed returning to piano. In fact, she’s working on a solo album written largely on that instrument, following a few solo shows before Totally Mild launch Her abroad and at home.

Beyond ‘Lucky Stars’ and the frisky lead single ‘Today Tonight’, other highlights on Her include ‘Take Today’, re-recorded after appearing on a Bedroom Suck compilation a few years ago, and the slow and sumptuous ‘Working Like A Crow’, originally penned for a children’s choir.

“I was afraid of playing solo for a long time,” says Mitchell, “because I felt like it wouldn’t be enough. But I find it really exciting now. It’s scary, but you have all this control. It’s completely different to playing in a band.”

“I worked at a primary school, teaching singing, and Lehmann and I were making this album for children,” recalls Mitchell. “So we were writing all these songs and recording them with my singing students. [That] was one of them. The lyrics are quite simple – it’s about being different, but [how] that’s okay. They’re quite childlike in their earnestness. We have pretty much recorded that whole album, but we’ve never finished it.”

Mitchell is joined in Totally Mild by guitarist Zachary Schneider, bassist Lehmann Smith and drummer Dylan Young, all songwriters in their own projects. Original drummer Ashley Bundang, also of Zone Out and Ciggie Witch, played on Her but has since departed.

“We’ve always acknowledged that, with everyone being their own songwriters, there’s going to be a point where someone’s out, for whatever reason,” explains Mitchell. “So that had always been a conversation on the table. That happened with Ashley in the middle of last year. But it’s amazing having Dylan in the band: he’s so creative, and he can play every instrument.”

Her shares a comforting sense of continuity with Down Time, again tapping producer James Cecil (Architecture in Helsinki, Super Melody), whom Mitchell praises for his “amazing ear for pop production.” And Mitchell’s wife, visual artist Xanthe Dobbie, graces the album cover, after having her bare legs star on the front of Down Time. This time she’s in a hot tub appearing to eavesdrop against a mirrored wall, again photographed by artist/musician Darren Sylvester. In the background hangs a portrait of Mitchell’s

ISOLATION.” mother that was painted years ago by a family friend; it also appears in the videos for all three singles on the album.

The presence of her wife and mum underscores the album’s short but potent title. “Her makes sense to me, because the songs are coming from a very specific place of being a woman in the world,” says Mitchell. “The album is just undoubtedly about women.”

That’s clear right for Her’s resonant opening line: “We’re told to keep it in/ Don’t aim too high, you’ll fall.” And this time around, Mitchell is fine with making it that clear. “Lyrically, it’s more raw and intimate,” she agrees. “It’s less masked.”

Where: Waywards When: Friday May 25 And: Her is out through Chapter Music on Friday February 23 BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 35

FEATURE

Kyle Craft:

Born On the Bayou The future of psych is in safe hands, as Natalie Rogers learns when she chats to Louisiana’s own Kyle Craft

“Actually no, I won’t say that – I’ve gotta give myself a little credit. So I will say the first two and a half to three years of writing my songs were just like total shit.” He laughs. “I remember a few songs that I had written and looking back I’m like, ‘Oh my god! That was me, I did that?’

But everybody’s gotta learn somehow.”

Craft began to educate himself in the school of rock, and spent hours listening and learning to emulate his heroes Dylan, Bowie, the Stones and the Beach Boys. “I don’t think anyone comes out of the gate swinging with their complete voice and style realised. It takes a lot of learning, I think.”

After spending time in Austin, Texas, the Mecca of live music in the US, he moved to his adopted home of Portland, Oregon. Inspired by the incredibly rich artistic community, he started to write what would be his debut album, Dolls of Highland. “I learned to abandon my obsessions as much as I could when it came to being totally in love with some artist and really search for where I fall,” he says. “It took me a while to transition from, ‘I wanna be Bob Dylan’ to say, ‘No I wanna make music like him.’”

Armed with his laptop and a punk rock ethos, he left the city that had become his muse and headed back to Shreveport, Louisiana, where he set about recording Dolls of Highland in his family’s laundry room cum make-shift studio. Released by Seattlebased independent label Sub Pop, his first LP went on to become a critical success, and soon the former choir boy was living his dream, touring the US and following in the footsteps of his rock and roll idols.

Between time on the road with his band and supporting Chicago’s Fruit Bats and Southern rockers Drive-By Truckers, Craft and his piano player, Kevin Clark, spent their evenings working on a passion project that paid homage to the female singersongwriters who had inspired them. “We had such a blast working on Girl Crazy [2017], but we didn’t even intend on it to be released into the world at all.” Featuring covers of songs by Patti Smith, TLC, Jenny Lewis, Cher and Patsy Cline, the exceptionally crafted 10-track album almost didn’t see the light of day.

“It was this strange time where Kevin and I didn’t have a lot going on, so I thought, ‘Why don’t we do this just for fun over the next month?’”

Craft says. “Then somehow it got passed along to the good folk at Sub Pop, and they were like, ‘Wait, this is awesome! Can we put this out?’ It was kinda out of the blue for us. We actually recorded other covers that weren’t released,” he adds.

FALLING IN LOVE

WITH ARTISTS AND ALBUMS THAT I’VE ALREADY LOVED BEFORE, WHICH IS MAYBE NOT A GOOD PLACE TO BE

– BUT I LIKE WHAT I LIKE.” Cyrus, but that one obviously didn’t get put out,” he laughs.

“There are still so many artists I would love to cover, like Angel Olsen, Courtney Barnett, Janis Joplin, Kitty Wells and Loretta Lynn – there’s plenty.”

While Girl Crazy was a happy distraction, Craft knew he had a lot riding on his ability to produce a worthy follow up album, so he enlisted the help of a new friend, The Decemberists’ Chris Funk.

“Chris is really easy to work with and for the most part he gave the reins to me, which was really nice because I think he knew that I’m kind of a stickler when it comes to doing my own thing,” he says.

“It’s not that I don’t play nicely with others; I just have a hard time letting go.”

Full Circle Nightmare is a testament to that independence; a fiery foray into the mind of a man that lives and breathes rock ‘n’ roll. Whether he’s lamenting over a lost love or relishing in the hedonism of youth, Craft embodies the spirit of his childhood idols. “When it comes to my style and influences I stick to my guns pretty heavily. I always find myself falling in love with

artists and albums that I’ve already loved before, which is maybe not a good place to be – but I like what I like.

Old school rock, and soul it’s just my cup of tea. I do like country and Americana too and I feel like that comes through in my music as well.”

Craft may have fallen in love with song writing in a small town near the mouth of the Mississippi, but he admits it’s wasn’t his only pastime. “I grew up catching rattlesnakes, baby gators and other critters so Australia has always been where I wanna go more than anywhere. I wanna head out, catch some snakes and play some music as well.” Consider that mere proof that although you may be able to take the boy out of the bayou, you can’t take the bayou out of the boy.

What: Full Circle Nightmare is out now through Inertia/ Sub Pop

“I GREW UP CATCHING

RATTLESNAKES, BABY GATORS “IT’S NOT THAT AND OTHER I DON’T PLAY CRITTERS SO AUSTRALIA HAS ALWAYS NICELY WITH BEEN WHERE I WANNA GO OTHERS; MORE THAN ANYWHERE.” I JUST HAVE A HARD TIME LETTING GO.”

36 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

“Kevin and I hand-picked 10 covers that we liked, and we did some strange ones. We did ‘Wrecking Ball’ by Miley

Kyle Craft photo by Sarah Cass

K

yle Craft, the man behind Girl Crazy, started out as a choir boy at a Baptist church along the banks of Louisiana’s Red River. Before too long he swapped sacraments for Ziggy Stardust, and began playing the guitar by the time he was in high school. “I started writing songs when I was about fifteen, but for the first four years of writing they were pretty shitty,” he says now.

“I ALWAYS FIND MYSELF

thebrag.com

Lowtide photo by Tajette O'Halloran

FEATURE

“IT TOOK ME A WHILE TO TRANSITION FROM,

‘I WANNA BE BOB DYLAN’ TO SAY, ‘NO I WANNA MAKE MUSIC LIKE HIM.’”

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 37

FEATURE

“I THINK WHEN WE STARTED OUT IT WAS REALLY DIFFICULT TO DO POLITICS AND MU

Hookworms:

Not So Micro Augustus Welby chats to the enigmatic EO, one of the musicians responsible for the year’s boldest indie rock record

O

n the eve of the release of Hookworms’ third LP, Microshift, the BRAG is chatting to guitarist EO. Like all members of the UK psych collective, the guitarist goes by his initials – he’s joined by drummer JN, co-guitarist JW, bassist/synth player MB and lead vocalist MJ. However, EO is a recent rechristening, having abandoned the less diplomatic SS (his designation for the band’s first two records).

But that’s hardly the most significant adjustment Hookworms have made in the three years since their last album, The Hum. Microshift – released early February via Domino – marks the Leeds quintet’s first deliberate stylistic revision since they debuted with the Hookworms EP in 2011.

“We definitely did want to change the musical direction. You can’t do the same thing forever,” says EO. “We wanted to move away from rock

music and move into more electronic sounds. MB is really into modular synths, so we started doing loops with his modular synths and just took it from there.”

Along with the added electronic component, Microshift reveals an increased melodic focus.

This specifically relates to MJ’s vocals, with their surprisingly pristine high-register supplanting his former penchant for reverb-laden screaming. And that’s not even to mention the improved sonic clarity of the band’s sound in general, which brings the lyrics right to the fore.

“That was a conscious change as well,” EO says. “I think beforehand our singer definitely liked to cloak his vocals quite a lot – you often couldn’t hear his lyrics at all. But this album he’s really been more confident with showing them off. I’m really glad for it, because some of the lyrics are really good.”

The Hum (2014) and Hookworms’ debut LP, Pearl

Mystic (2013), were both rooted in the band’s live sound, honed through constant gigging in the bars and clubs of Leeds. Microshift, by contrast, is a studio-oriented record, with no song getting a live debut prior to the album’s creation.

Nevertheless, many elements of Hookworms’ established live identity – such as the utilisation of dynamics, repetitive intensity and willingness to extend sections towards a sizzling climax – are still evident.

“I think we definitely wanted to change the place we were coming from. It’s only afterwards you realise that often the place is the same,” EO says. “So we have all these electronic loops, but actually the way we used to make music – which was from drum and bass, percussive loops – now we’re just doing exactly the same thing with electronic loops instead.”

Hookworms is a proudly democratic endeavour. But, although boosting the presence of electronics was the record’s founding premise, it’s easy to imagine certain members being more insistent on instituting this stylistic shift. EO explains how the creative

“I THINK WE DEFINITELY WANTED TO CHANGE THE PLACE WE WERE COMING FROM. IT’ 38 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

thebrag.com

FEATURE

SIC AT THE SAME TIME, BUT NOW I THINK OUR CULTURE’S CHANGING A LITTLE BIT.”

“YOU CAN’T DO THE SAME THING FOREVER.”

undertaking played out.

there’s the vocals – we have one of our friends on.”

“Formally it is very democratic, but obviously some people have more influence in the end than others.

Especially with some tracks, some people have more influence. But we did all come from the same place when it comes to the entry of electronics. [We all agreed about] bringing in other people as well.”

That friend is Alice Merida Richards of London band Virginia Wing, who joins MJ on ‘Each Time We Pass’.

This track follows the eight-minute, Formby-featuring epic, ‘Opener’, together constituting the album’s most spellbinding sequence.

The inclusion of various guest musicians on Microshift is another novelty for Hookworms.

In fact, a creative workshop with a fellow Leeds experimentalist essentially provided the impetus for the record’s trajectory.

“We’ve brought on a couple of other musicians on this record as well. There’s a saxophone player [Christopher Duffin of Xam Duo] and obviously

Microshift’s comprehensive merging of psych-rock smarts with electronic textures occasionally calls to mind the likes of TV On The Radio, Animal Collective and LCD Soundsystem. That said, Hookworms has never been hell-bent on becoming a massive commercial success, and it’s safe to say nothing’s changed in that regard.

The band does, however, have a fervent support base and the members regularly use this platform

“I think when we started out it was really difficult to do politics and music at the same time, but now I think our culture’s changing a little bit. It’s become a lot more acceptable and actually required if you’re of a certain mindset that you should use your platform for things like that.

“From the experiences we’ve had, we end up alienating relatively few people. We did a tweet before one of our shows to remind that landlords aren’t welcome at our shows and there was one particular fan of ours who was quite upset by that.

But so be it. You can do quite a lot with politics and music and get away with it. I think most bands should be more confident.”

What: Microshift is out now through Domino

Hookworms photo by Hollie Fernando

“There’s a producer who lives in Leeds called Richard Formby and he has a modular synth,” EO says. “And one of our very first writing periods for this record we had him and we played one live show with him, which was an improvised piece. That was the start of this record.

“She essentially helped us write that song.

Beforehand the song sounded really different – very jaunty, almost happy sounding. It was only when she gave us the vocals that it did turn into the song that it is. When we work collaboratively, that’s often the most successful way of doing something new.”

to highlight causes they feel strongly about. In recent times Hookworms took to social media to wholeheartedly endorse Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn during the 2017 UK General Election, as well as condemning gross misogyny and backing campaigns for social justice.

’S ONLY AFTERWARDS YOU REALISE THAT OFTEN THE PLACE IS THE SAME.” thebrag.com

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 39

I

t was September of 2016 when LA indie-pop dreamers Grouplove dropped their third studio album, Big Mess. A reflection of both the world around them and their immediate private life, the band launched the album into the universe the only way they knew how: by hitting the road and hitting it hard. It’s only now, nearly 18 months later, that the band’s world tour is coming to an end with a run of festivals and headlining dates Down Under. And although that might be a seemingly standard cycle for a record release, Grouplove are restless as they put Big Mess to bed.

“We’ve grown a lot in the last six months,” explains Christian Zucconi, who plays guitar and shares lead vocal duties with his real-life partner, keyboardist Hannah Hopper. “We’ve had so much fun touring Big Mess, and it’s still a record that we’re really proud of. Having said that, I feel like we’re ready to start anew again.

We’re in this new creative space – I mean, that last record was written before our daughter was even born. We’re ready to move on, and that means we’ll hopefully be recording soon.

It’s all a part of the process, man – no matter what direction you take, you’re always gonna find yourself in a new place.”

been in our lives.”

That’s set to continue well into the rest of Willa’s life, as Grouplove are preparing to start recording their fourth studio album as soon as they’re off the road. The excitement in Zucconi’s voice picks up considerably when talk turns to the as-yet-untitled LP. He uses descriptors like “raw,” “aggressive” and “volatile” – which is certainly not the kind of descriptors one would use to describe the band’s happy-go-lucky anthems of their past. Still, to paraphrase the old saying: New year, new Grouplove.

SUPPOSEDLY

“This is the record we’ve wanted to make since we were like 13 years old,” Zucconi enthuses. “Hannah has this whole new voice – she’s nailing this guttural range, really going in on it. She sounds like Courtney Love! She’s never been able to really express herself like she does on this record, and it’s so inspiring to see. I already know how much people are gonna freak out over it.”

Zucconi goes on to note that the album will also serve as an equal and opposite reaction of sorts to the kind of bands that can, at your most generous, be described as inoffensive. “I think, in today’s climate,

“IT’S ALL A PART OF THE PROCESS, MAN – NO MATTER WHAT DIRECTION YOU TAKE,

YOU’RE ALWAYS GONNA FIND YOURSELF IN A NEW PLACE.” The daughter in question is Willa, born to Zucconi and Hopper not long after work on Big Mess was finished. With their trusty nanny in tow, Grouplove admirably took on the work-family balance when touring started. However, it wasn’t long before the tipping point came and the band had to cancel a series of gigs at the start of 2017 – including their return to Australia – on account of Hopper suffering damage to her vocal cords. “It was just too much,” says Zucconi. “Between having the baby and going on this really ambitious touring schedule, she just couldn’t take it. We’ve learned from that now. We know how to do things a little smarter than we used to. It was probably the only lowlight of our entire tour in support of Big Mess. At the same time, we’ve come back from it better than we’ve ever been as a live band.”

In the meantime, Zucconi and Hopper have been watching Willa grow up. Now almost three years old, her dad is, of course, keenly observant of her behaviour and the way she responds to her surroundings.

“She’s such a music fan,” he says lovingly.

“She knows all the Grouplove songs now, too. She immediately pricks up when she hears our voices, just because she knows them so well. ‘That’s daddy!’ she’ll start yelling. ‘That’s mommy!’ It could even just be a voice memo off our phone that we were singing an idea into and she’ll still know. We wrote Big Mess while Hannah was pregnant, so she’s literally been surrounded by music the entire time she’s

a lot of these bands that are supposedly alternative don’t sound alternative,” he says. “Some of the stuff that’s in the rock charts never would have passed as rock before. We wanna bring it back – we wanna make a record that’s gonna wake everyone up.”

Zucconi promises at least one new song will be played on the band’s Australian tour, as well as songs from across their discography. With an Australian label, Dew Process, picking up the first Grouplove EP before any other international distributor, the connection we have as a nation to Grouplove runs deep. For Zucconi, however, it runs even deeper.

“When I was a kid, I did a project on Australia,” he says. “We all had to pick a country to do a report on, and I picked Australia. I became obsessed with it.

For it to be one of the first places we got any kind of support couldn’t have been more surreal. Every time we’ve come over has been incredible. I still think the best set we’ve ever played was when we did Splendour a couple of years ago. It was a dream come true, to come so far and have people as far as the eye can see singing.

You were the first to lift us up – it means the world to us that you’ve kept us up.”

What: Big Mess is out now through Atlantic

TO MAKE D TE AN W VE E’ W D R O EC R “THIS IS THE

.”

D L O S R A E Y 3 1 E IK L SINCE WE WERE

40 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

thebrag.com

FEATURE

“I THINK, IN TODAY’S CLIMATE, A LOT OF THESE BANDS THAT ARE

ALTERNATIVE DON’T SOUND ALTERNATIVE.”

Grouplove:

Cleaning Up The Big Mess David James Young chats with the guitar-slinging half of Grouplove’s leading couple, Christian Zucconi, about fatherhood and album number four. thebrag.com

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 41

FEATURE

Chastity Belt:

Different Now Belinda Quinn talks to Julia Shapiro of Chastity Belt about sad boy music, writing out hard times and tricks to ease band tension

S

eattle-based four-piece Chastity Belt tell tales of everything from 20-feet tall, havoc reeking vaginas, drunken hunger-driven quests for chippies at house parties, through having the odd “nip slip”, right to the process of figuring out how to be softer and kinder.

Originally from eastern Washington, the band kicked things off in 2010 when they played a (kind of jokingly, kind of not) set at a broey fraternity’s Battle of the Bands – they’ve since put out three records that combine full, sluggish sadpop with beaming, post punk guitar riffs.

Since the release of 2013’s No Regerts, Chastity Belt’s obscure and goofy lyricisms have taken a back seat, allowing room for the musicality of the intimate yet expansive I Used To Spend So Much Time Alone to grow. “It wasn’t like we were intentionally like, ‘let’s get more serious,’” explains guitarist and vocalist Julia Shapiro. “I mean we’ve always had more serious songs on every record we’ve released. This record is just [made up of] all of those songs.

“I think it has to do with us just getting comfortable with being in a band and not having to like, hide behind our humour anymore. I also feel like I’m in

a couple other bands that are a little bit more jokey and so that’s kind of how I, uh, get that kind of songwriting out,” she says.

With the increasing emergence of poppy DIY punk bands like Tacocat, Childbirth and Chastity Belt and the support of non-profit radio stations that boast diverse lineups like KEXP, it seems like the rainy seaport city of Seattle is becoming a haven for tongue-in-cheek feminist bands. “The best thing [about the scene in Seattle is] that it doesn’t feel that competitive. It feels more supportive, which is cool. Like we’ve really just been so supported since we’ve moved here,” Shapiro explains.

Shapiro also drums in new band Who Is She, which features Bree McKenna (of Tacocat) and Robin Edwards (Lisa Prank), as well as playing guitar for the maternity-gowned act Childbirth. “[Stacey] knew Bree from Tacocat so then Bree joined in playing bass. They actually used to date each other, which I didn’t know at the time but after like, seeing their dynamic for a while it made sense,” she laughs.

However, despite the positivity within the scene, Seattle is unfortunately beginning to suffer from the creative troubles facing our own Sydney, with rent and

HIDE BEHIND OUR HUMOUR ANYMORE.” 42 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

I DIDN’T THINK I COULD.”

practice spaces becoming excessively expensive. “We all have part time jobs, so when we’re not touring, well like, I bartend, Lydia works at the conservatory here, like gardening, and Annie and Gretchin are both nannies. It can be hard to try and hold a job when you’re constantly leaving town.”

And when it comes to taking time out to empower each other to keep making their tunes, she says they’ll often have “long emotional talks in the car.

“There was this one tour where we were bored so we all took some time to like, write down compliments for each and then we went around and just complimented everyone … That [exercise] really eased some tension.”

With a voice that is warm, rounded and guttural, Shapiro will sometimes direct her lyrics to both herself and her audience: “You’re hard on yourself / well you can’t always be right,” she sings on ‘Different Now’. “Sometimes I’ll write songs like, talking to myself a little bit,” says Shapiro. It’s songs like this that feel like a soft, hopeful hug, holding the weight of our achy, anxietyridden bones; the tonality of the Lydia Lund’s bright, unique guitar riffs and Annie Truscott’s repetitive, heartbeat-like basslines providing melancholic release.

“I had like a lot of people tell me that they were going through some, rough times when they listened to [I Used To Spend] and it really helped them get through that,” she explains. “I feel like that wasn’t necessarily like my intention in writing the songs, but a lot of the songs are me going through hard times so it’s cool that that can help people.”

Shapiro is inspired by emo, but “emo in like the sense of how Elliot Smith is, like that kind of emo,” listening to bands like Hovvdy, Dead Sullivan and Duster.

“It’s kind of like sad boy music, but I’m

into that,” she explains. “That’s kind of just the genre of music that I’m really into right now. Like, kind of slow, mellow sad songs with kind of cool, interesting guitar riffs.”

No Regerts was recorded in three days, and the latest was recorded at Portland’s Jackpot! Studios, which is run by Larry Crane (Elliot Smith, Sleater-Kinney). “With each album we’ve recorded, we’ve had more and more time to work on it but it still never seems like enough.” She laughs. “Each session I feel like has gotten to be a better experience, but we’re just like kind of learning what we want.”

Chastity Belt provided those first steps for Shapiro to come to terms with the idea that she was capable of making music herself, and the band also provided Gretchen Grimm with her first time drumming in a group.

“I guess the reason why it took me so long to start making [music] was just that I didn’t think I could. But yeah, it’s a cool form of expression.

“It’s, I dunno… I feel like it’s very healing in ways. It’s kind of like journaling or something like that; it’s just like a way to get out feelings, whether they’re conscious or unconscious.”

On bringing up their upcoming tour with Camp Cope and the band’s push for representation of women and nonbinary people on lineups, we discuss the simplicity of their request. “Yeah.

[It’s] just like a basic thing.” She laughs.

“It’s really cool what Camp Cope are doing; I’m excited to be around that kind of energy.”

What: Chastity Belt Where: Metro Theatre When: Friday March 23 With: Camp Cope, Sports Bra

Chastity Belt photo by Carley Solether

“IT HAS TO DO WITH US JUST GETTING COMFORTABLE WITH BEING IN A BAND AND NOT HAVING TO LIKE,

“I GUESS THE REASON WHY IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO START MAKING [MUSIC] WAS JUST THAT

thebrag.com

ME GOING THROUGH HARD TIMES,

FEATURE

“A LOT OF THE SONGS ARE

SO IT’S COOL THAT THAT CAN HELP PEOPLE.”

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 43

44 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

07:02:18 :: Enmore Theatre :: 118-132 Enmore Rd Newtown 9550 3666

the war on drugs

27:02:18 :: Oxford Art Factory :: 38-46 Oxford St, Darlinghurst 9332 3711

billie ellish

What we’ve been out to see this fortnight. See full galleries at thebrag.com/snaps

s n a p s

laneway

04:02:18 :: SCA Rozelle:: Kirkbride Way, Lilyfield

thebrag.com

thebrag.com

laneway 04:02:18 :: SCA Rozelle:: Kirkbride Way, Lilyfield

04:02:18 :: SCA Rozelle:: Kirkbride Way, Lilyfield

04:02:18 :: SCA Rozelle:: Kirkbride Way, Lilyfield

laneway

laneway

BRAG :: 732 :: 21:02:18 :: 45

Sounds Like…

NEW ALBUM AND SINGLE RELE A SES WITH JOSEPH E ARP

Love is contextual. How much does that fucking suck? Every single myth tied to the intricate, broken complex that is modern romance relies on passion being a once in a lifetime thing. It doesn’t mean shit if Snow White gets awoken by true love’s kiss when there are thousands of true love’s kisses out there awaiting her. Your first pash is bullshit if you know you could get pashed for the rest of your goddamn life – if locking lips is nothing but biology, inelegantly expressed. And true love isn’t love if, the moment your dearest dies, there is another to take their place.

The Wombats

Oh, and statistically, by the way, there is.

That person you hold dearest – there’s another just like them, somewhere out there.

Maths makes that true. The things that pin our universe together – those are the things that make that true. You could meet someone right now, and they could sweep you off your feet, and they could understand you wholly and totally, and you could spend the rest of your collective time together, and then you could watch them wither and die, and then the moment that they turn to ashes, there could be another to replace them – like that. As though that entire life

“All Snow White needed was a little heat on her lips.” that you lived meant nothing at all.

Which, of course, it didn’t. All Snow White needed was a little heat on her lips. There were a thousand other things willing to fulfil that role for her. She didn’t need Prince Charming. She could have put up with

46 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

“Love is contextual – and how much does that fucking suck?” a loser; not Prince Charming but Prince Derek, a young man with half a mortgage in the bag and a smile that implies he isn’t a straight up sociopath.

That’s modern dating for ya, folks. Not a Nora Ephron rom-com but a goddamn trip through a slaughterhouse. And here we are, playing a game that isn’t exclusive as though it is; forcing ourselves to believe that something emphatically unmagic, and deeply biological, somehow fits into the

“That person you hold dearest – there’s another just like them, somewhere out there.”

“Maybe ‘Let’s Dance To Joy Division’, which you considered the most important song in your psychological development as a teenager – the song that got you, and saw you, and established you – maybe that’s rubbish.” same paramaters that rule the broken but transformative relationships described in popular music and fairytales.

Oh, and let’s zero in on motherfucking music, the intricate part of that particular game that we half-heartedly and limply call love. Music, for better and for worse, makes clear the things we hold dear. Or at least, when you listen to a record like Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life, it’s the worst. This, let’s establish, is the newest record by the Wombats, who maybe you remember playing when you were 15 years old and you were pashing your best mate’s mate behind the kebab shop. And this, let’s establish, is exactly what it sounds like

when the things you once found cool wither and die before you – when a band that guided the literal direction of your life lose their way.

Yeah. Once upon a time The Wombats were a global power, that pack of raggedheaded mutts, invading your psychic space and dictating the pace of your life as you pashed someone you shouldn’t have been pashing. They were a face on your wall, a poster, hogging your intellectual real estate; the very sound of innocence itself.

And now they are this other thing, going on in the background. They charted in the triple j’s Hottest One Hundred despite

thebrag.com

albums

The Defender B Y N AT H A N J O L LY Each fortnight, the BRAG writers pick out a pop culture artefact that they feel has been unfairly slighted. This issue, Nathan Jolly comes out swinging for Jack Antonoff, the pop wunderkind with a bad reputation.

Jack Antonoff

I

f you check the credits for the big pop records that have come out in the past few years, you’ll notice that Jack Antonoff co-wrote and produced a hell of a lot of them.

MGMT

no one you have ever met in your life voting for them. They are as persistent as cancer, or death itself. You thought you knew them? You definitely don’t anymore.

Their new record doesn’t resemble the thing that you knew, decades ago. Now it resembles mush; literal mush. It is the thing that you make when you gather together every colour of plasticine available to you in one hand, take a deep breath, and then squish; the thing that happens when you take something special and drain the life out of it.

Isn’t that like love, really? As in, maybe ‘Let’s Dance To Joy Division’, which you considered the most important song in your psychological development as a teenager – the song that got you, and saw you, and established you – maybe that’s rubbish. Hey, maybe that song, the one

“I saw TFS play ‘You Let My Tyres Down’ live at the end of last year and it turned my face to paste.”

Tropical Fuck Storm

thebrag.com

that you scrawled the lyrics to across your body in marker pen; and danced to while you were shakily and unpleasantly learning a romantic game that would define the rest of your life: maybe it’s bullshit. Maybe it’s a product of a capitalist system; a lie, designed to smother you, spread by people who don’t even realise they are spreading a lie. Maybe everything you know is evil; maybe even your concept of good in its purest form – love itself – is fucked.

Oh, also: here are the records I liked this fortnight. I liked MGMT’s Little Dark Age, and I liked ‘You Let My Tyres Down’, which is the new single by Tropical Fuck Storm. It sounds like nothing else released this year; like pure, unadulterated vitriol.

Highlight Of The Fortnight: Little Dark Age Dud Of The Week: Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life (and romantic love.)

In 2017 alone, Antonoff produced two of the finest songs released: Lorde’s twisted ‘Writer In The Dark’ and Taylor Swift’s ode to lasting love and friendship (and excess glitter) ‘New Year’s Day’.

She would come over to my apartment, and we would talk and eat and talk more, and the things we talked about turned into songs.”

In other words, this is personal art.

It’s quaint that you can hear Antonoff squeaking on a piano stool or something during the intimate scratch track of ‘New Year’s Day’, which they kept because perfection is subjective. It’s quaint that in the liner notes for some of the biggest pop records of the day, one of the studios listed is “Jack Antonoff’s home studio”, which we can only assume is less “studio” and more “home.”

He also released the second album from his Bleachers project, co-wrote and produced Pink’s lead single ‘Beautiful Trauma’ (which we cannot hold against him), produced St. Vincent’s first Top “My way of doing it is: I would never 10 album (plus wrote a third of it with write a song for someone”, he clarifies her), co-wrote Lorde’s massive hit later in that same EW interview. “I ‘Green Light’ and produced her would write a song with entire ‘Melodrama’ someone. I would album (save one never sit down and song) and began say, ‘Okay, I’m going working with “IT’S QUAINT THAT YOU to write so-and-so a the criminally CAN HEAR ANTONOFF song,’ because that, underrated Carly SQUEAKING ON A PIANO to me, violates the Rae Jepsen on her great concept of art. next project.

STOOL OR SOMETHING How could you know DURING THE INTIMATE where that person That’s a strong SCRATCH TRACK OF ‘NEW YEAR’S is going, when the year. only information DAY’, WHICH THEY KEPT BECAUSE you have is where He also broke PERFECTION IS SUBJECTIVE.” they’ve been?” off a five-anda-half year That’s the type of quote relationship with you see on t-shirts.

Lena Dunham, who hinted at their dissolution months back Antonoff is also the driving force (along in an otherwise gushing Variety with singer Nate Ruess) in fun. who had essay, opening with: “It’s easy to forget a breakthrough album in 2012 with the someone’s magic when you’ve lived theatrical Some Nights. Even as the title with them for half a decade. Their track shot up the pop charts, it seemed refusal to pick up their towels or get more troubled than the pomp of the more seltzer or clean the hedgehog Queen-style vocals and ‘Cecilia’-style cage becomes a narrative louder than, drums suggested, with twisted lines like ‘They’re changing the world with their “I found a martyr in my bed tonight, she passion and skill.’” stops my bones from wondering just who I am” and the more pointed “who It’ll be interesting to see if Taylor and the fuck wants to die alone?”

Lorde continue to work with Antonoff after he split with a vital member of This is pop, but it’s personal. While their #squad, or whether work will be listeners speculate as to who Taylor’s treated separately to relationships. It pointed songs are barbs at, maybe it’s will be hard to justify such a distinction: actually Antonoff who pleads for an exthe way Antonoff works is inherently lover to “never become a stranger whose personal. “It’s an intense album, and laugh I’d recognise everywhere”. that’s what I care about”, he told EW late last year, about creating six of the Dunham does have a very distinctive better songs on Reputation with Taylor cackle, after all.

Swift. “The sessions were just her and I.

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 47

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

PICK OF THE THE ISSUE Miss Blanks

SATURDAY M A RC H 3 Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst.

H/A\M Mardi Gras feat: –

Le1f, FAKA + Miss Blanks 10pm. $54.10.

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 21 Chronixx Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $90.85.

Dizzee Rascal Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 7:45pm. $63.35.

Queen + Adam Lambert Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney Olympic Park.

8:15pm. $173.15.

The National + Little May Sydney Opera House, Sydney.

6:30pm. $129.

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 22

George Maple + Cxloe + Flexmami Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $45.20.

The Jim

48 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

Lloyd Spiegel + Charlie A’Court Leadbelly, Newtown. 7pm. $30.

Queen + Adam Lambert Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney Olympic Park.

8:15pm. $173.15.

The National + Little May Sydney Opera House, Sydney.

6:30pm. $129.

Wilder Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $11.61.

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 23

$99.90.

Joe Mungovan Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $10.

Bikini Cops

Shigeto Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 9pm. $28.25.

Statues + Arteries Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 8pm. $10.

Vaudeville Smash Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 8pm. $20.

The Harpoons The Lansdowne, Chippendale.

8pm. $20.

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 24 Honcho Disko Leadbelly, Newtown. 6pm. $28.60.

Alex the Astronaut Bondi Pavilion Theatre, Bondi.

8pm. $20.

Strangers The Lansdowne, Chippendale.

8pm. $28.60.

Dweezil Zappa Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm.

Lil Uzi Vert Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 7:30pm.

Bikini Cops + Nasho + Quick Fix + Orphans Waywards, Newtown. Thursday February 22. 8pm. $10.

For a night full of fast, spiralling, guttural punk, this is looking like the gig of the fortnight. Bikini Cops are a Perth band representative of 76-82-era bands like Black Flag, and are influenced by their local post-punk icons The Scientists. But if I’m honest, you should really go for Nasho – they’re one of the most important bands in Sydney right now, with cutting tracks that pick apart the harms of gentrification and systemically ingrained racism; well worth listening to.

thebrag.com

Miss Blanks photo by Georgia Wallace

Cloud Nothings + Bloods + Smacked Youth Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $57.95.

Mitchells + Rosa Maria + Tropical Strength + Bored Shorts The Lansdowne, Chippendale.

8pm. $12.25.

g g guide gig g

WITH LOL A SOL A

send your listings to : gigguide@seventhstreet.media

1. Draw yourself:

2. Draw the cover for your single ‘All I Need’:

Perfume Genius

3. Draw your favourite musician of all time:

Perfume Genius + Totally Mild + Lonelyspeck

Factory Theatre, Marrickville. Friday March 2. 8pm. $55.70.

As far as we reckon, there are few musicians as exciting as Lola Sola, the pop-cum-folk wonderhouse tapped as one of the participants in 2018’s Courtyard Sessions. Which only makes us happier that, when we asked Lola to get involved with Drawn Out, our fortnightly illustrated column, she was only too happy to comply. For the record: you can catch Lola at the Sessions this Friday February 23. Get on it, hey?

Last year Mike Hadreas of Perfume Genius admitted he believed no one would hear his music; it was originally meant to be a form of self-therapy. Since then, the soulful dissonance of No Shape has reached millions. He’ll be supported at his Sydney show by Melbourne’s sweet bedroom sulkers Totally Mild and Adelaide’s spacious ambient electronic act, Lonelyspeck.

4. Draw your ideal rider: $89.90.

Seaside + Jzmn Jyn Botany View Hotel, Newtown. 8pm. Free.

Sydney City Limits feat: – Stella Donnelly, The Avalanches, Bad// Dreems and more Centennial Park, Sydney. 12pm. $179.90.

SUNDAY FEBURARY 25 Merkules Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $55.32.

Touch Sensitive Pool Club, Sydney CBD. 1pm. $33.

MONDAY FEBRUARY 26 Lucius Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $54.20.

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 28 Say Anything Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 7:30pm. thebrag.com

$62.40.

THURSDAY MARCH 1 Say Anything Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 7:30pm. $62.40.

The Eskies Leadbelly, Newtown.

6pm. $19.90.

Tired Lion Wollongong UniBar, Wollongong. 7:30pm. $24.60.

Twilight at Taronga feat: – The Lemonheads + Jebediah Taronga Zoo, Mosman. 6pm. $71.

Veruca Salt + Bloods Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $69.

FRIDAY MARCH 2 Bicep Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $50.20.

Rackett + Soy + Battlesnake Newtown, Waywards.

8pm. $14.30.

Twilight at Taronga feat: – The Preatures + The Creases Taronga Zoo, Mosman. 6pm. $70.

Timberwolf The Lansdowne, Chippendale. 8pm. $23.50.

Woodes Leadbelly, Newtown.

6pm. $15.

The Vee Bees Marrickville Bowling Club, Marrickville.

8:30pm. Free.

360 Metro Theatre, Sydney. 7pm. $56.10.

5. Draw your dream audience:

SATURDAY MARCH 3 Damien Leith Leadbelly, Newtown.

6pm. $39.80.

Scarlet Kill + Aborview + As We Fall Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 7pm. $14.

Unicorns The Lansdowne, Chippendale. 8pm. $42.85.

BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18 :: 49

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

Tank and the Bangas

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.

SUNDAY MARCH 4 Fallon Cush + Jason Walker Union Hotel, Newtown. 4pm.

Free.

Mogwai The Enmore, Newtown. 8pm. $79.

MONDAY MARCH 5

TUESDAY MARCH 6

King Krule The Enmore, Newtown.

7:30pm. $57.

George Ezra + Ainslie Wills The Enmore, Newtown. 7pm. $64.90.

The Know + Hill Town The Lansdowne, Chippendale.

8pm. $10.

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

Merpire

Tank and the Bangas + Haiku Hands

Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. Tuesday March 6. 8pm. $45.

New Orleans’ TATB spout flawless vocals that push the limits of neo-soul, rap and spoken word poetry; they’re masters when it comes to seamlessly tying together humour-filled funk that flows into soft, sparse jazz and then, suddenly bring it back up again – these changes are so subtle, yet definitive, that you won’t even realise they’ve been playing the same song for seven minutes. And Sydney support Haiku Hands will have you boppin’ before their set, combining the bad-girl attitude of M.I.A and the playfulness of the Ting Tings.

Merpire + FEELDS

Waywards, Newtown. Saturday March 3. 7:30pm. $15.

The surplus of music that completely rips Stranger Things-esque synths and ‘90s nostalgia can feel like it’s washing out indie scenes and being used as an easy marketing ploy to get into triple j’s music-career-affirming panties. And at a first listen, I’m saddened to say I almost dismissed Melbourne’s Merpire the moment the first synth in ‘Holding Breath’ came in. But their full, embodied vocals and at times offbeat drums make for something growingly unique and deeply catchy.

free stuff head to: thebrag.com/freeshit

The Square

WIN

A DOUBLE I worked with a guy a couple of years ago PASS who was in marketing. He was the real deal; he had the awful little pony tail; the sense of entitlement; the grim little smile. We fell out of touch. And then, last year, I saw what felt like an exactly replica of him in The Square, the incredible Ruben Ostlund film of the same name about art galleries, advertising, shame, guilt and modern life itself.

As soon as I saw the film, I contacted him on Facebook. I sent something real generic: something like, ‘Hey, I was just thinking about you: how you doing?’ He replied within minutes. He said he was good, though, out of interest, he was wondering whether I had seen a film called The Square, cause he’d had a few people he hadn’t spoken to get back in touch because they had been reminded of him by that film.

Lesson: sometimes, films get real life exactly right. The Square does that. We have ten double passes of that film to give away. You can win those passes by heading to thebrag.com/freeshit. You should do so.

50 :: BRAG :: 734 :: 21:02:18

thebrag.com

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

1 DAY | 4 STAGES | 28 BANDS | FOODIE FARE | POP UP CRAFT BARS | MAKERS MARKETS | SYDNEY KIDDIE LIMITS | + LOADS MORE

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

11.00

12PM

HARBOUR

BIG TOP

3.00

4.00

5.00

6.00

7.00

8.00

GANG OF YOUTHS

FUTURE

JUSTICE

12.00 - 12.30

1.10 - 1.50

2.40 - 3.40

4.40 - 5.40

6.40 - 7.40

8.40 - 10.00

LDRU

THE LIBERTINES

YOUNG THUG

VANCE JOY

BECK

12.30 - 1.10

1.50 - 2.40

3.40 - 4.40

5.40 - 6.40

7.40 - 8.40

TRIPLE J UNEARTHED PIST IDIOTS

MALLRAT

SIGRID

WINSTON SURFSHIRT

THUNDERCAT

OH WONDER

THE AVALANCHES

GRACE JONES

PHOENIX

12.00 - 12.30

12.45 - 1.15

1.30 - 2.00

2.25 - 3.10

3.35 - 4.20

4.45 - 5.30

6.00 - 7.00

7.30 - 8.30

9.00 - 10.00

ZIGGY RAMO

STELLA DONNELLY

THE HEAD AND THE HEART

CAR SEAT HEADREST

ALEX LAHEY

THE STAVES

OCEAN ALLEY

TASH SULTANA

12.00 - 12.30

1.00 - 1.30

1.45 - 2.30

3.00 - 3.45

4.15 - 5.00

5.30 - 6.30

7.00 - 8.00

8.30 - 9.30

1.00

2.00

ENTRY/EXIT

3.00

4.00

EMERGENCY ASSEMBLY POINT

5.00

GRA

ND D

RIVE

6.00

7.00

MAP KEY BOX OFFICE FOOD & WINE BAR FIRST AID

SCL FEST

8.00

9.00

DISABLED VIEWING INFO POLICE/SECURITY MARKETS MERCH FOOD TRUCKS

FOOD TRUCKS

CRAFT BEER HALL

SYDNEY KIDDIE LIMITS

BIG TOP

PIMM’S BAR

SMIRNOFF PURE BAR

VISA CULTURE FESTIVAL KINGS ESSENTIALS

OUT

H

MINI TOP BAR

KA VEN UE S

THE GROVE

PARKGE STA

LOC

D FOOLL HA

10.00

DUNE RATS

12PM

EMERGENCY ASSEMBLY POINT

9.00

ALLDAY

PAR KES

DRIV

E

11.00

2.00

BAD// DREEMS

HOUSE

PARK STAGE

1.00

RIVE

NS D

E DICK

10.00

TOILETS CLOAKROOM BUSES TAXIS ATM WATER