Brag#736 by The Brag Magazine

Unknown Mortal Orchestra On Trumpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s America

Trying To Be Kind, Kind, Kinder

ALSO INSIDE: Jade

Superchunk And The Fight To Be Real

Angie McMahon Bird, Andrew W.K., Doug Stanhope, Two Short Stories And Much More

7 APRIL ICC SYDNEY THEATRE thebrag.com

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HD 25

Music legend. For music lovers. For music makers. For perfectionists. At home. On stage. In the mix. For 30 years. Rediscover the legend: www.sennheiser.com/hd25

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in this issue what you’ll find inside…

8-11

“It’s weird to have ambition and then have things put in front of you.” (8-11)

36-37 Is Romance A Lie?

The Frontline

44-45 Brockhampton

8-11

Angie McMahon

46-47 Tim And The Boys

The Wicked And The Divine

48-49 Emily Wurramara

Bookshelves

50-52 Hinds

14-15

Riverdale, The Watcher

54-55 Hop Along

The Shape Of Water

56-57 Jade Bird

18-19

Have You Seen The Listers?, Last Flag Flying, Mute

58 Seu Jorge

20-21

Ready Player One, Swinging Safari, Love, Simon

62 Superchunk

Parent Talk

64-65 Woodes

Game On

66-67 Tom Lyngcoln

26-27

Doug Stanhope

68-69 Short story: Just

28-31

Annihilation

70-72 Short story: The Intruder

32-35

The Greatest Showman

74 The Defender

42-43 Andrew W.K.

26-27

60 Iron Maidens Angie McMahon photo by Ian Laidlaw xxx

“I’ve been doing comedy longer than I didn’t do comedy.” (26-27)

38-41 Unknown Mortal Orchestra

76-77 Sounds Like 78-82 Snaps

28-31

the frontline with Nathan Jolly, Joseph Earp and Poppy Reid

ISSUE 736: Wednesday April 4, 2018 EDITOR: Joseph Earp joseph.earp@seventhstreet.media NEWS: Nathan Jolly, Tyler Jenke, Bianca Davino, Lars Brandle ART DIRECTOR: Sarah Bryant PHOTOGRAPHER: Ashley Mar ADVERTISING: Josh Burrows - 0411 025 674 josh.burrows@seventhstreet.media PUBLISHER: Seventh Street Media CEO, SEVENTH STREET MEDIA: Luke Girgis - luke.girgis@seventhstreet. media MANAGING EDITOR: Poppy Reid poppy.reid@seventhstreet.media THE GODFATHER: BnJ GIG GUIDE COORDINATOR: 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:

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FEELING PRETTY BASIC

Did you get what you paid for? It’s a good question that probably wasn’t a consideration for you if you’ve been visiting 123movies (aka GoMovies) over the past few years. But if you log on this weekend to download My Girl 2 (solid film, though not a patch on the original – 4 stars) you’ll be met with a message announcing the site’s demise. “We’ve been providing links to movies and shows for years. Now it’s time to say goodbye. Thank you for being our friends and thanks for staying with us that long. PS: Please pay for the movies/ shows, that’s what we should do to show our respect to people behind the movies/ shows.” No doubt this about turn comes after the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) called them “the most popular illegal site in the world”, which isn’t the type of press criminals tend to court.

There’s a pretty good chance that if you’ve been to a live gig in Sydney at any time over the last few decades, you’ve probably found yourself making your way over to The Basement. Now, after 45 years of serving as one of Sydney’s go-to nightspots, the Macquarie Place venue is set to close its doors in less than a week. Primarily a jazz venue, since The Basement first opened its doors in May of 1972, it has managed to become one of the most beloved live venues in all of Sydney, with huge names including Dizzy Gillespie and Herbie Hancock having performed there over the years. However, it now seems that all the history and culture that The Basement has played host to over the years is about to be rubbed out, with news breaking that the venue is set to be turned into office spaces at the behest of the building’s owners. While The Basement did undergo a few years of closure in the late ’80s, it managed to reopen in 1992 a few doors down from its original location. Considering that its current location is set to be turned into office spaces, there’s no telling whether or not The Basement will be able to fi nd another nearby location in order to continue its status as one of Sydney’s most beloved venues.

EYE-CATCHING STUFF Sydney Film Festival, the absolute highlight of any Antipodean movie lover’s year, has recently teased 22 of the films already booked in for this year’s bumper program, and goodness gracious have they snagged some doozies. Leading the pack as far as us horror movie hounds here at the BRAG are concerned is Piercing, a Mia Wasikowskaled exercise in protracted torture and horror based on the book of the same name by Ryu Murakami. But every kind of film lover is represented: there’s Foxtrot, perfect for world cinema nuts; there’s Maya The Bee – The Honey Games for the kids in your life; and there’s the Sundance-acclaimed The Miseducation Of Cameron Post, which is almost guaranteed to be a Juno-like American indie breakout hit. SFF kicks off on Wednesday June 6 and runs through ’til Sunday June 17.

KULTURAL KENDRICK’S THE KING Pitchfork scribe and Bandcamp’s Senior Editor Marcus J. Moore has announced he is writing what he is calling “the cultural biography of Kendrick Lamar”. The Butterfl y Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America will “detail his rise to superstardom” and will

SYDNEY AT ITS BRIGHTEST

KRISPY D’OHNUTS Krispy Kreme have teamed with The Simpsons to launch Australia’s first official Simpsons doughnut – or rather, the d’ohnut. We’re surprised it’s taken this long, to be honest. As for the actual food item itself, the official description explains: “Starting with the classic Krispy Kreme Original Glazedä, the doughnut is dipped in strawberry-flavoured white chocolate truffle to achieve the unmistakable pink hue. And of course, no Simpsons D’ohnut would be complete without coloured sprinkles.” The D’ohnut will be available from all Krispy Kreme and 7-Eleven stores until April 30, when the remaining ones will be placed on a contraption and force-fed to one lucky competition winner as is Treehouse Of Horror tradition.

be released via Touchstone Books. There is no release date as of yet, but no doubt this will fi nd its way into bookstores and college curricula before too long – where it absolutely rightly belongs.

Cat Power

Last month, we received the news that none other than Solange will be heading to Australia in June for this year’s Vivid LIVE festivities. Since then, we’ve been eager as anything to discover who else will be descending upon the Sydney Opera House in a couple of months to take part in the huge event. Now, our prayers have been answered by one massive lineup. Announced today, the lineup for the tenth anniversary of Vivid LIVE is set to feature exclusive performances from the likes of Solange, Ice Cube, DREAMS (the debut Aussie shows of Daniel Johns & Luke Steele’s new project), Cat Power (who will be performing her 1998 record Moon Pix in full), and Mazzy Star (who finally make their Aussie debut). “Vivid LIVE this year is a celebration of ten years of excellence and ambition in contemporary music, completely taking over the Sydney Opera House,” explained Ben Marshall, curator of Vivid LIVE. “It’s a remarkable moment, and there’s no other way to experience the Opera House like this.” xxx

@TheBrag

HERE BE PIRATES

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COVER STORY

“I want to be the best songwriter and performer that I can be. But it’s so easy to say those things, and when it’s real,

you just go, ‘Fuck.’”

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COVER STORY

Angie McMahon And The Things Songs Can Do By Joseph Earp

A couple of years ago, Angie McMahon tried to kick music. She was nearing the end of a literature degree, and had taken the opportunity to study abroad, in England, in the hopes that it would focus her learning. Taking English literature had been her second choice – just after graduating high school, she unsuccessfully auditioned for a music college. “I can’t sing jazz, and my technique is terrible,” McMahon laughs now. “I played them a sad breakup song I had written instead, and they were like, ‘This is not going to get you into the course.’”

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COVER STORY

“It’s weird to have ambition and then have things put in front of you.”

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COVER STORY

“Making music is hard, and scary, and will take a long time,

but you never have to worry that you’re doing the wrong thing. You can just do it.”

ut the set-back was only minor: studying literature appealed to her too. She had long enjoyed reading, ever since she was little – her father, who works in law, loves books, and she grew up surrounded by them. “I always loved writing,” she says. “It was always songwriting I was most drawn to – but I did the degree because I wanted to get better at writing, and have more knowledge of books.” But the degree had been hard. Or, maybe not the degree itself. It was more juggling music – the thing she so loved – with her studies. Working out which one sustained her: that was the puzzle. And self-doubt only made it harder. “While doing the uni degree, I went through periods where I was like, ‘I’m not good enough, I’m not brave enough.’” So, away from home, studying overseas, she decided to see if it was viable to drop music altogether; to test how much it would hurt to abandon that part of her life completely. “I did almost no music while I was there,” she says. “I dropped it for three or four months. I had a guitar with me, but I didn’t pick it up. And in a way, that was actually really good. When you’re overseas, that’s when you have your self-realisations.” She laughs. “I came back from that feeling more confident about myself just generally. I was like, ‘Get over yourself, you’ve had a big breath, now you can try harder.’” It can be a scary thing to come to terms with, the idea that there are these parts of yourself that you desperately need to indulge. But it can be joyous too. One day you just wake up and there it is: the understanding that the course of your life is set. “Realising I wanted to make music made it so much easier after I graduated, because I knew that had to give music a good shot,” McMahon says. “It was hard, but I was so ready. “And it’s a nice feeling, in a way. Making music is hard, and scary, and will take a long time, but you never have to worry that you’re doing the wrong thing.” She shrugs, contentedly. “You can just do it.”

ast October, McMahon released ‘Slow Mover’, an extraordinarily elegant and intelligent song about indecision and the aching desire to be kinder. The song is a stunning work – a compact piece of art, so sharp it could draw blood – but that never guaranteed its success. After all, there are a lot of perfect pieces of art that go under the radar, or draw only modest crowds; a lot of songs that have to wait decades to be properly appraised.

Camp Cope photo by Naomi Beveridge

Not ‘Slow Mover’. In one of those beautiful, rare cultural moments that see great art recognised in its own time, ‘Slow Mover’ caught almost immediately. But as much as McMahon was deeply

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honoured by the suddenness of the success, she felt dangerously unprepared for it too. “I struggled,” she says. “I was crying a lot and I was really anxious; really overwhelmed. I went to a therapist for the first time. There was so much to process. I was not coping at all; there was too much to think about; too much to schedule; too many things to put in my brain.” McMahon pauses; takes a sip of her coffee. She’s sitting towards the back end of Bondi’s Gertrude And Alice, stretching out across the table. It’s a Friday, the day outside is muggy and oppressive, but in here it’s as cool and as still as a church, and the books – teetering in piles; packed tightly into shelves – only enhance the space’s sense of reverence. There’s something about being surrounded by all that literature that changes the lilt of one’s voice, so McMahon talks gently, only slightly louder than the soft folk being piped over the shop’s speakers. “All these plans started happening,” McMahon continues. “You have to plan releasing the album, and plan the next three years, and plan your international career. I want to be the best songwriter and performer that I can be. But it’s so easy to say those things, and when it’s real, you just go, ‘Fuck.’ It’s weird to have ambition and then have things put in front of you. “It would be ridiculous to complain about it, but it’s just overwhelming. The reception was just lovely. And that was overwhelming. And the industry is such a big one – made up of so many moving parts – you suddenly feel like you need an opinion on everything. It’s like, you need to learn how to belong in all these new spaces. You need to learn how to be again.”

cMahon records a lot of voice memos these days, and on planes, as she tours the country promoting ‘Slow Mover’, and her precise, subtly furious follow-up single ‘Missing Me’, she listens back to them. “I have 2,000 voice memos on my phone. None of them are labelled.” They’re songs – or rather, they’re the mutant, halfformed things that come before songs; automatic writing exercises, rambly and long. “There is one that is like ten minutes. When I heard it, I was like, ‘What is this?’ It’s just me in a songwriting mood: I clicked record on the phone, and then it’s a stream of consciousness thing. There’s just all this shit. At three minutes in, I’m listening, and I’m like, ‘That’s not a chord. And what words did you just sing?’ But then seven minutes in, there’s something I never would have got to otherwise.” It’s a songwriting lesson McMahon has found valuable to learn – that you have to silence your inner critic, and accept that sometimes it takes six

minutes and 59 seconds worth of nothing to create something, even though you have no idea how good that something is going to be. “You have to drop the judge,” she says. “You have to get rid of that voice for a length of time – a day, an hour. And then you have to put on all these different hats throughout the creative process. There’s the writing hat; the editing hat. You have to treat the song in different ways.” McMahon needs the creative process. She knows that; accepts it. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t also that worry in the back of her head that there might be some vanity to what she does. After all, Bob Dylan might be Bob Dylan, but he’s not a cure for cancer; Leonard Cohen was a singer, not a heart surgeon. And there are times when McMahon finds herself concerned that what she’s doing is so much indulgence. “I had this existential crisis this other week where I was like, ‘My job is so selfish, because it’s only for me.’ There’s enough music; no-one needs to hear more songs about sad shit. I’m not serving anything. And I think it can feel that way for a lot of people, creating things. “I was talking to my dad about it, and I was like, ‘Do you think it’s worth all this stress?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, because people want art. They need art. People want things to connect with, and new things to connect with. And as the world changes, art needs to change. We have to keep writing things and developing things.’” Noise disturbs the quiet of the café: at the table next to McMahon, a woman has surprised her friend with a birthday cupcake, into which a lone sparkler has been stabbed. She’s singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to her friend, and soon, McMahon starts singing along too. The music rises to fill the space. And suddenly, it’s like this neat little illustration of exactly what music can do has manifested itself out of nowhere – music in its most primal, unsophisticated form. There’s this song – one so simple a child could sing it – and it is doing something to another human being; making this woman smile over the top of her cake and its sparkler, which is burning down to a blackened wire nub. “It’s not necessarily about writing something that is going to change politics or the structure of the world,” McMahon says when the song is done, and the two women start sharing the cake. “You’re writing something that will touch people. It’s a good thing to remind yourself.” She smiles. “I’ve had to remember that. People want art. They really want it. And it’s an important part of our lives.” Where: Oxford Art Factory When: Saturday July 7 And: ‘Slow Mover’ and ‘Missing Me’ are out now

“There’s enough music;

no-one needs to hear more songs about sad shit.” BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18 :: 11

arts in focus

FEATURE

The Wicked + The Divine:

Kill Your Idols

[COMICS] Chris Neill explores the critically acclaimed The Wicked And The Divine comic book series, a collection of graphic novels like few others e treat musicians like gods, so what if they were actually gods? What if Kanye West’s brags were literal, and he actually is a Canaanite storm god who could strike you down with a bolt of lightning at any given moment? That’s more or less the premise for The Wicked + The Divine.

90 years, 12 gods reincarnate as humans. Known as The Pantheon, these 12 gods (based on deities from different religions and mythologies) take on the form of the most popular art form at the time. In this cycle, they’re pop stars: “They are loved. They are hated. In two years, they are dead.”

The series follows Laura, a superfan that manages to enter the Pantheon’s inner circle by befriending Lucifer (there’s a sentence), allowing her to rub elbows with the pop deities. Think Almost Famous, but in a world where Billy Crudup calling himself “A golden god!” is fact, not exaggeration.

Written by Kieron Gillen and drawn by Jamie McKelvie, this comicbook series focuses on an event known as the Recurrence: every

Their purpose? As put by the goddess Amaterasu, “We live to inspire. We make life worth living, for an evening at a time.”

Wic + Div’s main concept is the idea of pop culture fandom as religion, with fans worshipping at the feet of their favourite musicians

as though they’re actual gods. The club is their church; the live performance their sermon. The god’s two-year lifespan is not unlike the pop music cycle, where the hottest act sits comfortably atop their cultural throne, until the next new thing comes along and replaces them. It’s all a very obvious metaphor, but Gillen is a clever writer and manages to use it to its full potential. If there’s one thing Gillen “gets”, it’s fandom. He gets why you’d spend an exorbitant amount of money on that rare vinyl pressing of your favourite band, or why you’d line up at a venue six hours before the doors open to guarantee a spot. He also gets that there’s something inherently unhealthy about fandom. For all the time you spend obsessing over the minutia of your favourite band, it’s a predominately onesided relationship. “Mortals have always shown more interest in gods than gods ever have in mortals,” explains the Pantheon’s advisor-cum-publicist Ananke. “Generally speaking, gods desire nothing but adoration.” The gods wield a power that normal people can only dream of, allowing them to exist outside the restrictions of regular society – just like celebrities. The series’ opening arc is focused around whether the goddess Lucifer is actually

responsible for publicly killing an innocent man, raising two major questions: How do you deal with someone for who the rules of normal society don’t apply, and in the case of Laura (and many other fans), how do you deal with the revelation that the figure you love is problematic? The series also does a good job of reminding us that there’s a human heart beating under the mass-produced image of pop stars. The closer Laura gets to them, the more the shroud of celebrity fades away. From afar they might appear as these beautiful, perfect deities, but the closer Laura gets to them the clearer their faults and vulnerabilities are. These gods have feet of clay. If fandom is the act of wanting to be special like your idol, what happens when you achieve that specialness? If you have everything, what else is there? Wic + Div gives us the view from the bottom of Mount Olympus, as well as the view from the top. When you’re given a definite date of death, what do you do with those two years? Is “Live fast, die young” a way to live, or is it better to fade away? Are the lows worth the highs? Dionysus, the god of bacchanal pleasure by way of an ecstasydropping raver, constantly hears other people’s voices in his

“For all the time you spend obsessing over the minutia of your favourite band, it’s a predominately one-sided relationship.” 12 :: BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18

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arts in focus The BOOKSHELF:

Each month, we talk to one of our favourite Aussies about their personal libraries – the books they own, the books they love, the books they hate. This time around we chatted with Mia Dyson, whose exceptional new record If I Said Only So Far I Take It Back has netted the singer-songwriter some of the best reviews of her career.

“After loving Patrick DeWitt’s The Sisters Brothers, I was excited to read his latest, Under Major Domo Minor.” What is the most prized book that you own? Postcards by Annie Proulx. It’s one of my favourite books of all time by one of my favourite authors. What was the first book that you bought? I can’t remember what the first book I bought was, but I do remember falling in love when I read The Red King – it’s a book that took me to another world. What’s the last book that made you cry? Magda Szubanski’s Reckoning – it’s a deeply touching life story by one of my favourite Australians.

“Thinking Fast And Slow by Daniel Kahneman was fascinating to me.”

What’s the book you fell in love with when you were a teenager? David Guterson’s East Of The Mountains. It’s strangely not at all centred around a teenage subject, but his writing about a man contemplating life without his recently deceased wife and considering ending his own was so moving to me.

“How do you deal with the revelation that the figure you love is problematic?” head and hasn’t slept since his reincarnation. In one of the more confronting moments of the series, a god takes their own life, unable to shoulder the rampant abuse directed towards them and unable to live up to the audience’s expectations. Being famous doesn’t make life easier. If anything, it paints a bigger target on your back by becoming the centre of popular culture. Nothing is without a price. It’s not all doom and gloom; Gillen is one of the best comic writers out. He knows his mythology, as well as he knows his music (and god, does he know his music). It’s fun trying to pick out which pop stars influenced the gods. Some are easier than others; Inanna, an ancient Sumerian deity of desire and sex, is heavily inspired by Prince (purple rain included). McKelvie is the Richards to Gillen’s Jagger. His art is gorgeous

and expressive, with character designs that are the epitome of cool. He also knows how to draw the hell out of an action scene. There’s a moment where the Pantheon throwdown against one another, in what can only be described as, “What if Joseph Kahn directed The Avengers?”

If you were trapped on a desert island, what’s the one book that you would want to have with you? The Dao De Jing. Just something to help me deal with my mind, alone on a desert island… What is the last book you hated? After loving Patrick DeWitt’s The Sisters Brothers, I was excited to read his latest, Undermajordomo Minor. But I couldn’t finish it. I just felt repelled by the characters.

What’s a book people might be surprised to learn that you love? I really love books about science and particularly brain science. Thinking Fast And Slow by Daniel Kahneman was fascinating to me and The Better Angels Of Our Nature by Steven Pinker, a book about the decline of violence, really gave me a lot of hope. Who’s the writer that changed your life? That’s a big call to make. I don’t think it was any one writer, but authors like Annie Proulx, Ian McEwan, Eleanor Catton, David Gutterson, Naomi Wolf, and Cormac McCarthy have given me vastly different perspectives from my own and opened up the world to me.

“The Better Angels Of Our Nature by Steven Pinker, a book about the decline of violence, really gave me a lot of hope.”

Heading into the final third of the series, with 30 plus issues under its belt so far, Wic + Div has the makings of being a modern classic. It has the deft storytelling and strong characters that let it easily stand toe-to-toe with other non-superhero favourites like The Sandman, Y The Last Man or Preacher. If you worship at the altar of pop culture or have ever loved an artist so much that it hurts, The Wicked + The Divine gets you. What: The Wicked + The Divine is out now

“In one of the more confronting moments of the series, a god takes their own life, unable to shoulder the rampant abuse directed towards them and unable to live up to the audience’s expectations.” thebrag.com

What’s a “classic” book that you’re ashamed you haven’t read? I haven’t read any of the Russian classics like War And Peace. I just can’t seem to get to them.

“I remember falling in love when I read The Red King – it’s a book that took me to another world.” BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18 :: 13

arts in focus

FEATURE

Riverdale: Smarter Than The Average Soap [STREAMING] Dave Crewe dissects the soap’s ostensibly trashy backdrop to find a nuanced portrayal of queerness and teen identity

here are a lot of ways to describe Riverdale. It’s a CW teen soap (loosely) adapted from Archie comics. It’s – to crib Charles Bramesco’s term – “Hot Archie Who Fucks.” It’s gloriously trashy melodrama. But if I were to pick one word, it’d be this: Extra. Riverdale is as extra as extra gets. This is a show where Hot Archie (K.J. Apa) is blackmailed by an FBI agent to investigate Seductive Veronica’s (Camila Mendes) mafioso father, while the bookish Jughead (Cole Sprouse) asserts his authority over the local bikie gang and his girlfriend

Betty (Lili Reinhart) helps her mother cover up a murder. In the background, Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) is presumably pirouetting in a ball gown as Kevin Keller (Casey Cott) delivers dry bon mots. It’s the sort of delicious trash that mimics masterpieces by draping its awful dialogue in red velvet and beautiful people. God, it’s fucking wonderful.

denying this show is frequently very stupid. Here’s the thing, though: to frame its exquisite melodrama as ‘so bad its good’ entirely elides Riverdale’s genius. Perhaps “genius” is a stretch, but the way the show combines queer aesthetics with an exaggerated exploration of teen identity experimentation is far cleverer than you’d expect from its egregiously silly storylines.

To a large extent, Riverdale – streaming here on Netflix when it’s not on Olympics-inspired hiatuses – is the kind of show you have to qualify your enthusiasm for. You know: “Oh, it’s dumb, but that’s why it’s so great!” Which, yes, is true. There’s no

First of all: the show looks spectacular. Riverdale’s heightened aesthetics – a neon-lit diner, gritty biker bars, candy-coloured school halls – ensure that even when the dialogue is deeply daft, the sight on screen looks sumptuous.

“The way the show combines queer aesthetics with an exaggerated exploration of teen identity experimentation is far cleverer than you’d expect from its egregiously silly storylines.” No surprise that the series has steadily picked up teen fans through the screengrabs and gifs inundating Tumblr (the impossibly photogenic cast doesn’t hurt). These aren’t just pretty pictures. Showrunner Roberto AguirreSacasa and his rotating suite of directors (a roster featuring, refreshingly, plenty of women and people of colour) demonstrate a debt to film and television history. The episode titles pay homage to classic films – “In A Lonely Place”, “The Sweet Hereafter”, “Death Proof” – and film references are often incorporated wholesale into the episodes proper. You just have to look at the casting for acknowledgement of the teen soaps gone by; 90210’s Luke Perry as Archie’s dad, Twin Peaks’ Mädchen Amick as Betty’s mum and All My Children’s Mark Consuelos as Veronica’s dad. (One-time teen heartthrob Skeet Ulrich, as Jughead’s dad FP Jones, may never have starred

“It’s the sort of delicious trash that mimics masterpieces by draping its awful dialogue in red velvet and beautiful people.” 14 :: BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18

in a teen soap, but he’s settling into his twilight years as a bikieboss-cum-diner-waiter with commendable grace.) I mentioned queer aesthetics earlier, and the show’s low-key queerness is key to its success. I’m not (solely) referring to queer narrative elements, whether it’s an episode about Gay Best Friend Kevin’s flirtation with cruising, or Betty’s long-lost twink brother (Hart Denton) who’s probably a sex worker and is definitely creepy. Nor am I (solely) referring to the wrestling episode directed by Gregg Araki, though that’s set a high bar to clear as the gayest thing you’ll see on network television this year. Rather, the show’s queerness is embodied in the show’s play with camp and melodrama, all that aligned with an exaggerated sense of hyperreality that mimics the heightened emotions of our teen years. This is a show that revels in trash soap tropes, for sure, but it’s also a show about the play with identity that comes in our young adult years, where we try on personas like a makeover montage, looking for the version of ourselves that thebrag.com

ew to stre am sn ’ t a

“God, it’s fucking wonderful.” fits just right. Riverdale realises queerness as an expression of who we are, as a rejection of norms and an experimentation of self. And this is crucial to why Riverdale works so well as a melodrama. This play of personas allows the show to create a sequence of big shocking twists that, while lurid, don’t feel inorganic. Many of its more grown-up soap compatriots – Revenge, Empire, anything by Shonda Rhimes – rely on storytelling surprises to keep audience attention and jolt us out of peak TV stupor. But as these shows progress, narrative coherency is sacrificed to keep the twists coming (think the latest season of Game Of Thrones, which gave up on a rich, realistic universe in favour of unadulterated fanservice). Character consistency is less important than those Big Moments, but the net result is an erosion of any kind of emotional foundation for the show as the years drag on. Riverdale has (so far) avoided this problem and presented a string of lurid, ludicrous twists by steering into the fluidity of teen identity. When nice girl Betty does a burlesque number in a crowded bikie bar, it’s not a cheap ploy – well, not only a cheap ploy – because it’s tied to her rejection of her demure image (complicated by her recognition of her parents’ supreme hypocrisies). Archie becoming an ally of Veronica’s mafia-aligned father is silly (two words: “Papa Poutine”), but it also represents him chafing against his awshucks earnestness. By framing its Days of Our Lives For Kids! schlock as a heightened, pseudocinematic exercise in identity experimentation (and just generally being extra), Riverdale manages to have its cake and eat it too. It’s smart and dumb; trash and superb; crude and sophisticated. It’s a deeply selfaware show filled with deeply naïve characters, and a perfect antidote to the seriousness of so many contemporary television dramas. Long live Riverdale.

“To a large extent, Riverdale is the kind of show you have to qualify your enthusiasm for.” What: Riverdale is now streaming on Netflix thebrag.com

Wish Upon

ing

W h

arts in focus

The Belko Experiment

WITH JOSEPH EARP

harlie Kaufman should pay someone to whisper encouraging words into his ear. The man is one of the most talented screenwriters and directors currently living, a genius responsible for a brace of the best films of the last decade – namely Synecdoche, New York and Anomalisa – and yet he’s still worried, in his own words, that he’s “blown it”.

Maybe it’s not hard to see why he’s been rattled: Synecdoche haemorrhaged money at the box office, and despite nabbing a well-earned best animated feature nom at the Oscars, Anomalisa struggled to make a return on a rather modest and mostly crowdfunded budget. But who fucking cares? Some of the finest films ever made have been commercial and critical flops, and some of cinema’s greatest financial hits have sunk into the waters of pop culture consciousness without making so much of a ripple (would any of us be able to recite Avatar’s story beats without checking in on the Wikipedia page to jog our memories?)

“Some of the finest films ever made have been commercial and critical flops, and some of cinema’s greatest financial hits have sunk into the waters of pop culture consciousness without making so much of a ripple.” Anyway, if you haven’t seen Anomalisa, Kaufman’s very adult, very galling stop motion masterpiece, the thing’s on Netflix, and is more than worth your time. A withering study of depression, the film follows a self-help coach named Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis) who lives in a world where everybody speaks with the same voice. Men, women, children; airline pilots and taxi drivers; opera singers and hotel concierges: all of them are voiced by esteemed character actor Tom Noonan, doing his best lilting, insistent drone. Then, suddenly, Michael meets Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh, as excellent as always) – a woman whose voice is as refreshingly new to Michael as it is to an audience who have spent almost an hour of the film’s running time listening to Thewlis interact with a thousand versions of Noonan. But is Lisa really special, or is she just one more grey face in a world of them? Anomalisa is odd, of course, as that description hopefully makes it sound, but it’s also utterly effective: full of subtle, deeply sad humour; extraordinary performances; an almost unbearably tense dream sequence; and one of the best (and certainly the most human) sex scenes ever put to film. Go on, watch it. Help Charlie fully realise his self-worth. On the significantly less illustrious front, Netflix have also nabbed John R. Leonetti’s Wish Upon. I’m not going to lie to you – Wish Upon is not a great movie. It’s an ugly, impossibly cheap thrill ride;

“If you haven’t seen , Kaufman’s very adult, very galling stop motion masterpiece, the thing’s on Netflix, and is more than worth your time.” Sleeping Beauty

“I’m not going to lie to you – Wish Upon is not a great movie. It’s an ugly, impossibly cheap thrill ride; as rickety and oddly thrilling as a broken-down rollercoaster in a particularly grubby carnival.” as rickety and oddly thrilling as a broken-down rollercoaster in a particularly grubby carnival. But that doesn’t detract from its joys at all. Rather, the film leans into its flaws, becoming a slick, nasty exploitation flick for the new age. A variant on the classic “monkey’s paw” morality tale, Wish Upon hinges on a cursed music box that has the power to grant its owner their wildest dreams. But (who woulda thunk it?) such wish fulfilment comes at a terrible price, and soon our intrepid, morallyconfused heroes learn that maybe there’s a downside to getting exactly what you want. So yeah. Wish Upon is dumb. But it knows that. It sees your criticisms, and your raised eyebrows, and your sniffed rejections of its bizarre and clumsy plotting, and it gives not a single shit. And for that, it’s oddly, insistently loveable. A little classier – but only a little – is The Belko Experiment, the newest film from Antipodean genre pioneer Greg McLean. With its elevator pitch-structure – “It’s The Office meets Battle Royale!” – and its ungainly second act, the film is absolutely not without its flaws. But it’s nice to see McLean embrace every single one of his messier skills, utilising his Takashi Miike-style cruelty and avoiding his impulse to coat the whole thing in a thin, ersatz veneer of esteem as he did with the dry and austere Jungle. In The Belko Experiment, he embraces every single head splatter, bludgeoning and brawl, and his film is markedly better for it. Over to Stan, who have just nabbed one of the greatest Australian films of the last five decades – Julia Leigh’s haunting Sleeping Beauty. The film was unfairly mauled by critics on first release, and died a death overseas, but it’s smarter, harsher, and more powerful than its initial reception might make it seem. As cold and unforgiving as a Claire Denis picture, Sleeping Beauty sees Lucy (Emily Browning, perfectly cast as an icy and distant boundary-pusher) take up an unusual occupation – she commits to being sedated by rich men, so that they might sleep beside her for an evening. They’re not allowed to penetrate her, but the manner in which her work makes her vulnerable is excellently exploited by Leigh, who gives the proceedings the woozy, uncomfortable quality of a nightmare. The film should have made Leigh one of the most respected and important cinematic voices in this country – that it didn’t is only proof that Australia can be a cruel, cruel place for artists.

Anomalisa

Oh, also, last column I promised that I would print a full-page picture of me eating my hat if I didn’t like Annihilation. Sorry to disappoint, but I loved the film, and I would highly encourage all of you to watch it – it’s a difficult, beautiful work of sci-fi; exactly the kind of film we need to praise and support. Thank fuck. Not gonna lie: I had absolutely no interest in eating a goddamn hat.

“Sleeping Beauty should have made Leigh one of the most respected and important cinematic voices in this country – that it didn’t is only proof that Australia can be a cruel, cruel place for artists.” BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18 :: 15

arts in focus

FEATURE

“Elisa and the Amphibian Man first fuck underwater, after flooding the bathroom where he comes to live.”

The Shape Of Water: Sense And Sensuality [FILM] Following The Shape Of Water’s Best Picture Oscar win, Cameron Colwell takes a look at the subversive way the film examines sexuality

here’s a lot of things The Shape Of Water does brilliantly, but one of the things that feels particularly new about the story of the mute janitor, Elisa, who falls in love with a strange ‘fish-man’ held captive at a laboratory, is the sophistication in its depiction of sex. Monster movies do not have a great track record on the issue, largely using sex as a source of fear or voyeurism: Alien is one of the more obvious examples.

Filled with violently phallic imagery, the screenwriter Dan O’ Bannon is on record as saying to create fear in his audiences, “I’m going to attack them sexually.” There’s also the fact director Guillermo del Toro took his influence for the film from a childhood viewing of The Creature From The Black Lagoon, back when he thought it was a love story. Now, he’s said that the film is a “counter-point” to a scene from the film, when protagonist

Kay, dressed in a tight swim-suit as she glides across the lagoon, is ogled by the monster, who threatens to touch her but pulls away at the last moment. Kay becomes the centre of conflict in the film after the creature abducts her, which leads to the climactic stand-off where the creature is killed. As with other movie monsters, the fear is sexual. By contrast, sex in The Shape Of Water is much more multi-

“It’s not right to say that disabled people are not ‘whole,’ or are ‘broken,’ as much stigma insists.” faceted: it fulfils the mundane outlet of libido in the opening, when del Toro frankly displays Elisa masturbating in the bathtub, and is used as a means of power by the villain, Colonel Richard Strickland, whose extremely loveless marital bed belies the same pathetic need to control that sees him fastidiously studying The Power Of Positive Thinking. Elisa and the Amphibian Man first fuck underwater, after flooding the bathroom where he comes to live. And in the moment’s climax, just as Elisa and the Amphibian Man embrace one another, the scene abruptly ends. For a moment it seems that del Toro is shying away from the tricky logistics of how Elisa and the Amphibian Man screw, but signs of a cop-out fall away when Elisa explains to her co-worker Zelda, using hand gestures, how the sex works, while both of them giggle. It’s not a romanticised vision of sex, it’s one that recognises the reality that sex can both feel lifechanging and be hilarious.

“Elisa, who is mute, falls into an identity category whose sexuality films have a history of either ignoring or mocking.” 16 :: BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18

Also notable is the film’s diversity. There is a queer character in Giles, Elisa’s best friend and neighbour who at first resists her pleadings for help in rescuing the monster. Later, Giles misinterprets friendliness from a cute male pie shop manager as flirtation and comes close to being physically assaulted by a

bigot. It’s this that provokes him to take the leap Elisa has taken, and plot to heist the Amphibian Man from his incarceration at the laboratory. Elisa, who is mute, falls into an identity category whose sexuality films have a history of either ignoring or mocking, particularly in women. Elisa seems to woelessly deal with her muteness until one of the film’s most poignant scenes, in which she makes Giles deliver her signing vocally as she explains her love for the Amphibian Man: “He does not see what I lack.” It’s a loaded phrase to me, with my experience of disability: it’s not right to say that disabled people are not ‘whole,’ or are ‘broken,’ as much stigma insists. However, it’s also not wrong to say that to have one’s particular everyday pain relieved – the pain of supposedly failing to reach a standard of ability – can be inexpressibly liberating. This idea of the freedom this brings culminates in the ending, when the Amphibian Man’s touch saves Elisa from death and she is reborn, newly-gilled, to a life with him in the ocean. Sex becomes a means of both restoration and access to another world, a transcendence both literal and metaphorical. What: The Shape Of Water is in Australian cinemas now thebrag.com

6â&#x20AC;&#x201C;17 JUNE FIRST FILMS ANNOUNCED FULL PROGRAM 9 MAY

65 YEARS OF STORIES thebrag.com

BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18 :: 17

arts in focus ■ FILM

■ STREAMING

Have You Seen The Listers? is a troubled portrait of a troubled man

Mute is a bizarre, lopsided misfire

By Joseph Earp

t’s an interesting experience, going into a film like Have You Seen The Listers? blind. A documentary portrait of street artist Anthony Lister narrated by the man himself, the film is painfully honest – and for those who don’t know Lister’s work, it’s not apparently clear from the outset whether Lister will end the film achieving the success and acclaim he so clearly wants. So for the ignorant the question quickly arises: is Have You Seen The Listers? making the case for its own value because it’s about an important visual artist? Or is it valuable because it’s about a man who has sacrificed everything – his family, his sanity, his health – all to follow a creative vision? The answer ends up falling somewhere between those two extremes. Lister’s artwork has received enough success to guarantee him a revenue source for the rest of his life – as his long-suffering, mistreated ex-wife points out in a voicemail message cribbed for the film, he will never have to worry about finding work again. And the film is clearly made by a fan of the man: the closing lines of the documentary see Lister address the documentarian by his first name, and the camera scoops up loving close-up after close-up of Lister’s work. But the narrative crux of the film isn’t strictly Lister’s paintings – it’s the gradual and irreversible implosion of his family. Which is where things get tricky. Have You Seen The Listers? doesn’t pretend to be objective: although Lister’s ex-wife gets some kind of say, she is relegated to the position of a talking head, whereas Lister remains wholly in control of the proceedings. It’s his story, and his voice telling it, which, by the film’s overtly saccharine, uncomfortable conclusion, becomes genuinely problematic. By the film’s end Lister is, as one might imagine, heartbroken that his wife has left him, ostensibly taking his three young children with her – but he is not removed enough from the situation to see the great luxuries she once afforded him. For instance, in one extraordinary sequence early in the film, she allows him to travel to New York by himself while she stays at home with their young child – but neither Lister himself nor his documentarian friend seem willing to applaud her for this, and the third act denigrates into petty couple sniping and an awkward, unpleasantly one-sided appraisal of Lister.

By Cameron Williams

ill we ever get over Blade Runner? Last year’s sequel Blade Runner 2049 says, ‘no’. Mute, the new film from director Duncan Jones says, ‘Give it a rest’. But I never want to get over Blade Runner: it’s a science fiction film that still manages to inspire our urge to prod at what it means to be human. So it’s understandable why Blade Runner is such a huge reference point for Mute. The lead character, a mute bartender Leo (Alexander Skarsgard), could have his voice box fixed by robotics but chooses not to because of his Amish background. And in that way, Leo’s humanity becomes a beacon in Mute. The story is centred on outsiders trying to re-build their lives in a foreign land with the backdrop of technological advances, but one look at the futuristic design of Berlin conjures the spirit of Ridley Scott’s iconic film. That said, as important and revered as Blade Runner might be, it has become a crutch. There are only so many times the same stories can be told and retold, and the emphasis on Scott’s epic is starting to feel a little like current practitioners of the genre running out of ideas. Simply put, in the year of our lord 2018 it seems very much as though Blade Runner has become a drain on the potential for cutting edge and important science fiction to forge ahead with originality and purpose. Mute is set in Berlin, 40 years from now. The film’s plot is (as in the case of Blade Runner) startlingly simple: Leo is looking for his missing girlfriend, Naadirah (Seyneb Saleh), and his search leads him past the threat of gangsters, and two Tweedledum and Tweedledee-esque American surgeons (Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux) who seem to be the only constant in Naadirah’s disappearance. Mute struggles in the shadow of its influences, however endearing

they may be, and fails to leverage the sum of its parts into something worthwhile. As a result, the film pays a lot of lip service, but has nothing to substitute in the place of all that homage work. Naadirah’s blue hair recalls Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind; the noir-style story evokes Chinatown; and the Amish element pings memories of Witness. The heart sinks at the number of times Jones references Moon, almost as if he is desperately trying to remind us of his once oh

“Skarsgard never has the gravitas to anchor the film with his silent presence no matter how wide his eyes might get.”

so promising capability, but we’ve already hit play on the goodwill of his previous work. Mute never forges its own identity and the plot is lethargic and directionless. Jones and cowriter Michael Robert Johnson take the plot of their admittedly straightforward mystery and make it complicated to the point where there are so many diversions and laborious detours that it never feels like there’s a concrete story. Nothing ever truly begins; everything feels slow and stuttering. Mute is like getting lost in a shopping centre – one of those nightmares that is designed by its very nature to keep you inside so that you might buy things you don’t need.

Paul Rudd in Mute

Perhaps that’s fitting. Have You Seen The Listers? Is a film about a troubled artist – it makes sense then that as a finished product, it is just as lopsided, frustrating and problematic as the man that inspired it.

What: Have You Seen The Listers? is in cinemas Thursday April 5

“The narrative crux of the film isn’t strictly Lister’s paintings – it’s the gradual and irreversible implosion of his family.” 18 :: BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18

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arts reviews ■ FILM

“Blade Runner has become the ‘Stairway To Heaven’ of science fiction, and it’s no more apparent than in Mute.”

Last Flag Flying does an admirable, gentle job of breaking your heart By Joseph Earp

Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell and Laurence Fishburne in Last Flag Flying

ichard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! is that rare thing: a heartfelt celebration of masculinity. It also happens to not be very good. Overly obsessed with its dopey, braggadacious heroes, it lacks the subtle nuance of Linklater’s finest work, and spends too much time ogling behaviour that is dull at best and actively toxic at worst.

In that way, it serves as an interesting counterpoint to Linkater’s newest film, Last Flag Flying. If Everybody Wants Some!! had nothing but love for that jealous heat men give off when packed in close confines with one another, Last Flag Flying looks at what happens when that heat cools, and men must deal with the repercussions of the crimes – however slight and seemingly harmless – they committed while young.

“As important and revered as Blade Runner might be, it has become a crutch.” The very apparent pressure to stack the backend of Mute with twist (a hallmark of Jones’ films Moon and Source Code) is apparent, but in this case Jones seems to be working harder to make his film do the opposite, and he pays particular emphasis to the need to explore the lives of each character with long conversations and minimal action. The performances are scattered, and Skarsgard never has the gravitas to anchor the film with his silent presence – no matter how wide his eyes might get. Elsewhere, Theroux can never crawl out from beneath a shocking blonde wig and Rudd stumbles in trying to make the

transition from comedy to drama, finding himself rapidly stuck in a performance purgatory. There’s a heartfelt moment close to the finale, but it overcompensates for the messy road to settling on an ending.

terrifying prospect of a future without equality of the sexes, and if Mute is trying to make a statement about a male-dominated future – vital in the current political climate – it’s putting its pulpy aesthetic over substance.

The future depicted in Mute is one that falls into line with a misogynistic point of view where women are objectified and murdered haphazardly. Not everything needs to pass certain standards of political correctness, but we’re at a point where these themes in science fiction are being explored with zero depth. There’s no attempt to make a significant point about the

Someone needs to stage an intervention with anyone hoping to dabble in science fiction filmmaking. Blade Runner has become the ‘Stairway To Heaven’ of science fiction, and it’s no more apparent than in Mute.

What: Mute is available to stream on Netflix now

The set-up is simple. Vietnam vet Larry “Doc” Shepherd (Steve Carrell, delivering a career-best performance) has suffered two brutal tragedies in the space of a year: his wife has died of cancer, and his son has been killed in Iraq during a routine mission gone wrong. With no friends or family left, Shepherd recruits two of his old ‘Nam buddies, serial philanderer Sal (Bryan Cranston in a rusted tin can of a performance: all decay and sharp, glinting edges) and the pious, born-again Reverend Richard Mueller (Lawrence Fishburne) to help him transfer his son’s body to its final resting place of Arlington. Of course, because this is a road trip of the most archetypal form, in the process of honouring Shepherd’s son, the three men most confront their own dark pasts, acknowledging the part they played in the great, senseless war that defined them. That said, Linklater has limited interest in these big story beats. Revelations about ’Nam are dropped almost casually – when the men finally reveal their transgressions, they do so quietly, on a crowded train. And just as the film seems to want to flirt with the idea of criticising the military industrial complex, it spurns the political in favour of the personal, going smaller and smaller before eventually ending on a moment of gentle devastation, calmly uttered on the front porch of a suburban house. Not that the film is perfect. There are moments it feels confused – a side plot concerning a vicious Colonel, the iron-jawed Willits, seems teleported in from another movie, and proceedings do eventually strain towards the saccharine. But at its undemanding core, this is a sophisticated tragedy; a simple story told softly, and filled with a curious kind of grace.

What: Last Flag Flying is in cinemas Friday April 25

“At its undemanding core, this is a sophisticated tragedy; a simple story told softly, and filled with a curious kind of grace.” thebrag.com

BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18 :: 19

arts in focus

“Swinging Safari tells the story of three families living in the same cul-de-sac; the Marshes, Halls and Joneses.”

■ DVD

Swinging Safari is a dizzyingly on point investigation of suburban Aussie life By Michael Kennedy

atching Stephan Elliot’s new film Swinging Safari is a bit like accidentally driving your car full speed through a salvation army. You can barely see the carnage unfolding around you for all the red plastic kitchenware and beaded kaftans clogging up the windscreen. Everything is a blur; a colourful, eclectic blur. The film tells the story of three families living in the same cul-de-sac; the Marshes, Halls and Joneses. After an ill-advised key party orchestrated by Marsh (Asher Keddie) and Jones (Radha Mitchell) matriarchs ends in disaster, the three sets of parents leave shell-shocked and the neighbourhood is thrown into disarray. At the same time as the urban post-coitus trenches are dug, a blue whale washes up on the beach, and between it all is a sweet and tender coming of age story for Jeff Marsh (Atticus Robb) and Melly Jones (Darcey Wilson), the youngest of their respective families.

Guy Pearce and Kylie Minogue in Swinging Safari

Swinging Safari is a huge success on a number of fronts. It is visually sumptuous – though not always in the most pleasing way – thanks to the styling efforts of set decorator Justine Dunn and the overarching art direction of Jodie Whetter. Much of the film’s comedy is visual and almost every frame is packed with hilarious 1970s ephemera, so of course it’s chock full of flares, gold lame, sunburns, visors, and fondue sets. Further, the pacing and editing is feverish. The story offers an unrelenting onslaught of information, largely told through the firstperson narration of an adult Jeff Marsh. At any given moment there is so much to soak in; so many subtle jokes that most audiences would likely benefit from a second, maybe even third watch. As the feud between the parents escalates, and the rabble of children descend deeper into lawless chaos, you can’t help but feel as a viewer that you’re watching a catastrophe unfold in real time.

Atticus Robb and Asher Keddie in Swinging Safari

However, as heightened and stylish as the film may be, it also offers real substance. The six adult cast members, Julian McMahon, Radha Mitchell, Jeremy Simms, Asher Keddie, Guy Pearce, and Kylie Minogue are all exceptional in their roles. Minogue in particular delivers a startlingly good performance in a mostly non-verbal role as Kaye, the Hall matriarch, who gradually slips into alcoholism and agoraphobia. The nervous tics and pained expressions that flash across her face are often fodder for some of the strongest laughs the film has to offer, and on the few occasions when she does speak she delivers the lines with incredible charisma. The children are also an excellent addition to the cast, portraying a ragged intensity and hair-raising disregard for their own safety. In many ways it’s not a film for the faint-hearted, particularly given the frequent darkness. There’s more than one instance of children being set alight, instances of burgeoning sexuality that would raise alarm bells for any parent,

“The script is so tightly and playfully written that you cannot help but be swept up in the dizziness and wonder of it all.” 20 :: BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18

“The film is a huge success on a number of fronts.” and some horrendous examples of pet abuse. Further as a satire of the suburban grotesquery of the 1970s, there are multiple occasions of shockingly cavalier racism and sexism. The one immediate criticism that may be levelled at the film is that there is a turn around the third act that sees the adults adopt a radically different approach to parenting their children, and while the results are equally hilarious, it feels at times a strange and arguably convenient abandonment of the ruthlessness that characterised much of the rest of the film. Even so, the script is so tightly and playfully written that you cannot help but be swept up in the dizziness and wonder of it all. And in spite of the characters’ various glaring flaws, at the end of the day, it’s difficult not to love them.

What: Swinging Safari is available via DVD and pay-per-view on Wednesday April 18

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arts reviews ■ FILM

■ FILM

Ready Player One is a joyless exercise in nostalgia

There’s no film in recent memory more misguided than Love, Simon

By Joseph Earp

Love, Simon

n paper, Love, Simon is an admirable, important work. A teen-centric rom com that subs in a homosexual protagonist instead of a heterosexual one, it is a clear attempt to Trojan Horse middle America; to force people who might otherwise feel queasy about anything other than a You’ve Got Mail-style heteronormative setup to get on board for a story about a young man struggling to come out and accept his sexuality. And of course, it’s a film designed to achieve true cinematic representation; a note of comfort and acceptance for all those who might need it most.

teven Spielberg has made a name for himself by leaning into his adolescence. A filmmaker utterly unable to carry off anything more nuanced than a fairy tale, his skills are in making films as brash, over the top and thematically vapid as possible. Which is fine. Sometimes that works. The Indiana Jones films are the cinematic equivalent of a Big Mac – obviously bad for you, but in a way that thrills rather than repulses, and there is a time and a place for Spielberg’s teenage obsessions.

In that way, Ready Player One is so quintessentially Spielbergian – so dead-headed, and loud, and obnoxious – that it could almost be his mission statement. It’s just a shame that the charm that has defined his best works has been abandoned here, swapped out in favour for a kind of vicious, insistent stupidity. Based on the book by Eric Cline, Ready Player One imagines a dystopian future where the global population is addicted to a VR world known as the Oasis. In the Oasis, people can leave behind their troubled realities and get sucked into a world of ’80s references, shitty music cues, and ugly, ugly computer graphics – which, to be honest, seems like a fate worse than death.

“There is a time and a place for Spielberg’s teenage obsessions.” Indeed, the Oasis is one of Ready Player One’s deepest fl aws. The virtual world is meant to be an idyll; an escape that serves as a thematic stand-in for Spielberg’s own fi lmography. And as a result, proceedings very quickly feel horrendously self-serving, as though the fi lm is a two-hour exercise in a fi lmmaker loudly and obnoxiously making the case for his own relevancy. “This is why entertainment and escapism matter” screams every scene, and the thematic and emotional arc of the movie – if the fi lm’s barely explained “point” can be described in such charitable terms – is about fi nding the correct time and place for pure fantasy. But, here’s the thing: there’s no fantasy or magic to Ready Player One. The Oasis is Spielberg’s own back catalogue writ large, and made literal – but why then does it have to look like dogshit? The film is about as aesthetically

interesting as a PS3 game from the early thousands – all smooth, slick textures and poorly rendered faces that belong firmly in the uncanny valley. It is a film about excitement utterly lacking in anything of the sort.

“The film is a two-hour exercise in a filmmaker loudly and obnoxiously making the case for his own relevancy.” It’s hard to imagine even the people the fi lm was made for – nostalgic lovers of pop culture – will appreciate what Spielberg is trying to do. By trying so desperately to posit his own importance, he has delivered another horrendous misfire – a colossal, overstuffed fi lm that barely registers at all.

What: Ready Player One is in cinemas now

“The Indiana Jones films are the cinematic equivalent of a Big Mac – obviously bad for you, but in a way that thrills rather than repulses.”

It is a desperate shame then that as it stands, Love, Simon is an ugly, mean-spirited work of pure exploitation; a devastating misfire utterly lacking in empathy. After all, for all the ways it tries to champion the outsider, and to normalise all human experience and connection, it has a sadism to it: a knee-jerk fear of nerds, the overweight, and anyone who falls outside its narrow, Wonder White bread conception of queerness.

“Love, Simon is an ugly, mean-spirited work of pure exploitation; a devastating misfire utterly lacking in empathy.” So yes, although its hero Simon (blandly played by Nick Robinson, who is dull enough to barely register in the film in which he stars) repeatedly stresses he believes all people should be accepted by their peers, he also visibly retches at the sight of plus sized bodies in one bizarre, Game Of Thrones-referencing scene; explicitly scolds a young man for wearing a dress; and is repulsed by anyone who has more vibrancy and strangeness to them than your average Abercrombie And Fitch model. Simon’s not the only problem either – the things that the film does to Simon are just as troubling. When his secret, online-only relationship with another anonymous gay student at his school is discovered by the scheming Martin (Logan Miller, in an utterly thankless role), Simon is blackmailed, forced to help Martin score a date with Abby Suso (Alexandra Shipp). It’s an ugly manipulation Simon is forced into, made only more problematic by the film’s willingness to utterly absolve Martin – he’s a one-dimensional teen who essentially commits a complicated series of hate crimes, only to receive his own saccharine, happy ending. And that’s not even to mention the utterly baffling climax that caps off Love, Simon: a scene that tries to disguise slack-jawed voyeurism as support, and that treats a moment of uncomfortable, unnecessarily public queer-ogling as though it were some kind of grand celebration of true love. In that way, as in so many others, Love, Simon is a stunningly, almost irredeemably ugly trainwreck – a cinematic disaster that snipes at the very people it claims to want to support.

What: Love, Simon is in cinemas now

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parent talk

with Nick Hollins

T H E B R AG DA D

CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION

A PIG’S EAR OF IT Our four-year-old son is a fan of Peppa Pig. In my opinion it’s one of the least offensive of the infinite TV shows for children. The accents are quaint. The animation style is colourful and jovial and it’s quite positive in its messaging. There’s friends playing together, jumping in muddy puddles, enjoying outdoors, holidays, school and family. He watches the show fairly regularly, and we have eight of the hard cover picture books. They’re nicely presented and quality material for young ones when learning to read. It’s difficult not to impersonate the Peppa Pig voiceover guy when reading aloud. But over the past month, my son has started up hard on the “boys are on one team, girls are on the other” thing. “You can’t do that because you’re a girl. That’s only for boys” Call me crazy, but it’s coming from Peppa Pig. He won’t go on my partner’s “team” when we’re out in the backyard kicking a ball around playing football. Boys need to be against girls. It’s definitely the show, and sure he’s going through a massive grown spurt and has a bunch of “raah I’m a boy/man” hormone stuff happening, but he’s being socialised to team up against girls because of Peppa. It’s a go-to theme for story lines. You’ll notice it now. Stories pivot around Peppa having her group of female-only friends, and her brother George having his group of male-only friends. For our little guy, it’s been of note because he’d never previously said anything like not wanting to play with someone “because they’re a girl.”

The future is racing up fast. Science fiction will need to come up with some new ideas, because some of its most outlandish AI dreams have arrived. Self-driving cars are being normalised in a hurry. Imagine that first journey, sitting in a vehicle travelling well over 100km/h with a computer at the wheel, surrounded by other cars, buses and trucks all being run by software. But have you considered that kids now aged 10 might never actually learn to drive? Why would they? If machines are proven to reduce road fatalities, perhaps by a magnitude, then why would anyone drive themselves? I can remember a long series of stupid and dangerous moments in my teenage driving career. I might easily been seriously injured or killed. And I was average, not an overly reckless driver. Just young and dumb. The classic teenage job of delivering pizzas will be extinct. Self-driving cars in partnerships with car share companies and Dominoes, Pizza Hut etc will deliver to homes on autopilot. Teens will need new jobs. Although, on the plus side, the painful and terrifying process of teaching them to drive will be gone forever. Although, when all of this starts happening, what becomes of car culture? Perhaps old-timey sections of road will be created through mountains so people can still take out their “classic” cars?

GET YER BEAT ON With great thanks to Beat Bugs and our own soundtrack to his life, our son is obsessed with The Beatles. Although that’s great, and a sign that quality music taste is probably genetic, over the past few months his mania reached the stage of screaming at us if we play any other bands. That’s an issue in a music-obsessed household where we listen to all kinds of music. I asked the little man for comment. He said: “I don’t like songs that’s not The Beatles cause that’s not my best ones. But I like songs that is The Beatles. Is that all you were talking about?” Our son helped craft a 90-minute playlist of his favourite tunes, best read as “Songs featured in Beat Bugs”. It’s actually a pretty banging playlist which he now demands when we’re at home and when driving in the car. But it works in keeping him engaged in quality music, which is important. Also, we’re loading up on a lot of great Beatles merch to keep him intrigued too. Given they’ll be selling Beatles shirts and toys well into the 22nd century, pending some cataclysmic disaster that deletes all music, the band must be close to being the most merchandised entity in history. Endless new novelties are put out each year. So why not combine your child’s own interests with a LEGO Beatles set? Actually … just wait for me to get one first. They tend to sell out.

THE POWER OF SEUSS Theodor Seuss Geisel was the American writer behind Dr. Seuss. The scenes and characters he imagined into being are like a portal to another dimension: a jaunty, silly and hilarious world. Not a word out of place. An actual poet. His most famous work Green Eggs And Ham gets it done in 49 words. Book stores are full to the ceiling with children’s books. Few approach the artistry of Seuss or Roald Dahl (another favourite). Sometimes the oldies are still the best. I recommend Horton Hears A Who! as an intro movie for the kids. Starring Jim Carrey and Steve Carell, it’s hilarious and subversive like the works of Seuss. And it has an important lesson at its heart. Just because no-one believes you doesn’t make you wrong. Sometimes the majority are wrong.

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game on New Releases

Hands-On With Nintendo Labo

2017

While April is certainly more of a quiet month than most, things kick off on Tuesday April 3 with a journey to the strange Deadfire archipelago via Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire for PC. Expect a bit of a pirate theme as well. A few days later JRPG fans get some love when The Witch And The Hundred Knight 2 makes its way to PS4. The game tasks you with finding a cure to a mysterious illness that sees young girls awakening as deadly and dangerous witches. You can find it on store shelves from Friday April 6. Meanwhile Tuesday April 10 ushers in a change of pace thanks to the frantic action title Extinction. You’ll be able to parkour yourself around the ground and air whilst attempting to do battle with 50-metre monsters seeking out destruction. You can grab it on either PS4 or XBO. Jump ahead to Friday April 13 and Darkest Dungeon gains a physical release with its Crimson Edition hitting PS4 and Switch, packing in its Crimson Court DLC to boot. Alternatively, Yakuza 6: Song Of Life allows you to explore Japan’s underworld from Tuesday April 17. No doubt the biggest release for the month, and perhaps the year so far, heads our way on Friday April 20. That’s when Kratos makes his grand return to PS4 in God of War. The game has completely reworked the series’ traditional formula, switching to Norse mythology instead of Greek, and unexpectedly adding his son, Atreus. It also looks absolutely jaw-dropping.

reviewroundup By Adam Guetti

If you had to describe Nintendo’s upcoming Labo with one word, it would be ‘incredible’. But a single adjective hardly does justice to the experience it provides. It’s inspired, creative and joyous; simple, yet wonderfully complex. It all starts out simply enough. You grab a cardboard Toy-Con design, pop out its pieces, and get constructing. For those worried about making fatal mistakes, your Switch is smartly used to recite instructions on-screen, breaking every fold down stepby-step. We built the simplest of the bunch – an RC Car that, once connected to your Joy-Cons, uses vibration to move itself along.

NEWS

APR

Gaming news and reviews with Adam Guetti From there your options escalate rapidly. The Labo House, for example, sees you inserting combinations of other pieces to trigger different minigames, while the fishing rod grants you the addictive opportunity to snag yourself a shark. Then there’s there piano, which aside from being capable of playing various cat noises bound to make kids chuckle, can be turned into an unexpected music studio, layering custom sounds and beats atop one another. But while the piano is certainly impressive, Labo’s shining star is its incredibly complex robot. Construction of the kit reportedly takes anywhere from two to four hours, and it’s easy to see why. A cardboard backpack is secured to your back, while separate straps are placed over your feet and rod-like handles in your fists. Every element helps transform you into a destructive machine causing absolute mayhem – making use of nearly every part of your body. While Sony and Microsoft are focusing on blowing you away with realistic graphics and 4K resolutions, Nintendo is doing what Nintendo does best, venturing off the beaten path to create things you would have only ever thought up in your dreams. Labo is more than just cardboard. It’s magical.

Review: Sea Of Thieves (XBO, PC)

Review: Final Fantasy XV Royal Edition (PS4, XBO, PC)

f you somehow missed the original release of Final Fantasy XV back in 2016, then fear not because this Royal Edition is the best way to play it. Not only can you enjoy the core adventure of Prince Noctis, but a wealth of other benefits, too. There’s an expanded map, brand new vehicles, a 4 first-person mode, and all current Season Pass content. It only adds welcome content to an already strong offering.

ea Of Thieves had a lot of wind beneath its sails going into its launch, so it’s a bit of a shame that some of that has been lost in its final release. A few too many fetch quests and lack of an enticing progression hook undermine a beautiful world filled with the opportunity for mayhem. That 3 said, some of the charm is lost when playing on your lonesome, so be sure to bring some seaworthy friends aboard.

Review: A Way Out (PS4, XBO, PC)

Review: Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom (PS4)

he original Ni No Kuni was a solid RPG backed up by a strong visual aesthetic from animation powerhouse Studio Ghibli. Its sequel lacks that same support, yet is equally impressive thanks to some smart choices – primarily its revamped combat, which swaps out turnbased antics for real-time action. Even better is that this is an entirely 4 separate story from the original, so if you’re a JRPG lover, Revenant Kingdom is worth jumping into.

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ade by the mind behind Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons, there’s a lot of noticeable parallels at play with A Way Out – namely the huge focus on cooperation between the game’s two leads. It leads to some truly tense moments, like one player chiselling out an escape hole in a prison cell while the other looks out for guards, especially with a friend sitting beside you. The lack of a single-player option will frustrate some, and 3.5 gameplay can be on the simple side, but A Way Out’s creativity should certainly be commended.

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arts in focus

Doug Stanhope:

[COMEDY] Avowed nihilist Doug Stanhope gives Olivia Costa a glimpse of the anger that underwrites his comedy n more than one occasion, Doug Stanhope has been compared to Charles Bukowski. Sure, the comparison between a very famous and influential poet and a crude stand up comic might initially seem discordant. But upon watching Stanhope’s performances, the similarities between the two become apparent: the same inclination for a drink (or seven), and the shared critique of society born from a disenchantment with life, delivered with nothing-to-lose honesty. Indeed, Stanhope is lauded for his brutally honest, cynical sets that are socially and politically charged – and often highly controversial. Stanhope describes his foray into comedy as almost accidental: “I just did it. I did well at it, and it’s fruitful without really working. I’ve been doing comedy longer than I didn’t do comedy. There’s nothing like stand up once you know what you’re doing. You yell at people for an hour a night, you drink cocktails, go to another tavern and yell at people again.” Despite his laissez-fair description of his job and his seething cynicism at the world around him, it’s clear that when Stanhope really cares about something, he really cares about it, atheism being an example. In the wake of the 2013 Moore Tornado in Oklahoma, USA, Stanhope raised over $125,000 for a victim, Rebecca Vitsmun who, when asked by an interviewer on a news broadcast if she “thanked the lord” for her survival sheepishly replied “I’m actually an atheist,” which Stanhope thought was an act of bravery, with Vitsmun living in a vehemently religious state.

“There’s nothing like stand up once you know what you’re doing. You yell at people for an hour a night, you drink cocktails, go to another tavern and yell at people again.” 26 :: BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18

On the matter, Stanhope said “charity feels good, even when you’re doing it as a big ‘f*ck you’ to Christians who you’ve pre-judged, and not because you care about someone losing their shit. Realizing you’ve actually changed an individual’s life: it was pretty goddamned thrilling.” Despite a half-hearted attempt at running for president in 2008, Stanhope doesn’t perceive himself as overly political: he doesn’t include any material on Trump because it bores him, he says. Nonetheless, his political engagement is undeniable: a section of his 2016 stand up show No Place Like Home drills straight to the heart of the stigmatisation of mentally ill people and the ineptitude of the shockingly administrated US health system in aiding them. The nature of his stand up emerges from a sad disbelief in the trajectory of society; he discusses mental health, social welfare, racism and suicide, all with the same vicious intelligence. “I like it when you can see everyone in the room ... when you’re looking out at smoky, cramped, small cocktail tables, where it’s like a dialogue instead of a show.” His moral indignation at the state of our world is clear: when describing his distress at overpopulation as a major contributing factor to the destruction of our planet, he advocates anal sex because “sodomy is ecofriendly.” Nothing is off limits for Stanhope: perhaps his most famous bit is the description of his mother’s suicide, which he was present for, and assisted. The raw honesty and scathing observation of his mother’s final moments cement why Stanhope’s voice, though biting and at times unpleasant, is refreshingly truthful. The idea of quipping sharp one-liners at his mother as she dies in front of him somehow positions Stanhope as extremely empathetic. “It was a fun way for her to go,” he agrees.

“I like it when you can see everyone in the room ... when you’re looking out at smoky, cramped, small cocktail tables, where it’s like a dialogue instead of a show.” feels a moment of apprehension before delivering a particularly controversial line he responds, “how they react is not really my main concern. I don’t know how I could offend my audience. Like, I could see my audience crumble if I told them I was a born again [Christian], or if I was in a 12 step program.” Stanhope’s penchant for controversy has in the past spilled into his personal life, as with his public rebuttal of Amber Heard’s domestic violence claims against her former partner Johnny Depp, who is a close friend of Stanhope’s. Heard threatened to sue Stanhope concurrently with her lawsuit against Depp, before later dropping the lawsuit. He discusses the Me Too campaign with slight derision. “I’ve grabbed a lot of people inappropriately… Half of my book is fucking Me Too instances where I was the aggressor.” Although he does hasten to add he did “nothing egregious, nothing that I would ever have to apologise for.”

A standout feature of Stanhope’s shows are the regular instances of walkouts, something that doesn’t seem to faze him. It’s easy to see why people leave: Stanhope isn’t immediately likeable and brazenly engages with issues often treated with a fragile reverence, for example his questioning of whether what is today considered child abuse is simply what was known as discipline in his generation. For further provocation, see his book, Fun With Pedophiles: The Best Of Baiting.

Of his new set, Stanhope says he doesn’t remember it and doesn’t have to for another couple of weeks: he speaks casually about being singularly unprepared to stand up in front of a room full of people who expect him to make them laugh. Coming from a few shows in Asia he’s sure he’ll have new material by the time he gets to Australia in April. He says it’ll be the same stuff he’s been saying for the past 28 years – and that audiences shouldn’t expect anything different.

He lovingly refers to his audiences as “scumbags”, saying that people know what they’re getting into when they come to his shows. When asked whether he ever

Where: Hayden Oprheum Picture Palace When: Friday April 13

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FEATURE

“I’ve been doing comedy longer than I didn’t do comedy.”

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arts in focus

CHANGE IS LIFE, CHANGE IS DEATH:

By Joseph Earp

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FEATURE THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ANNIHILATION.

little under an hour and 20 minutes into Annihilation, a new feature film directed by Alex Garland and loosely adapted from the Jeff VanderMeer novel of the same name, a character vocalises a peculiar worry about her persistency. Her name is Doctor Ventress, and she, like the four women accompanying her on a mission into “the shimmer” – a strange, potentially alien haze spreading slowly over the surface of our planet – has begun to suspect that she is altering in ways she can no longer control. “We are disintegrating,” she spits. Her concern: if she doesn’t reach the quintet’s shared goal, a lighthouse at the epicentre of the shimmer, that “the person that started this journey won’t be the person that ends it.” Perhaps it seems like this is a worry specific to the world of Annihilation; one removed from the logic that guides our own lives. After all, in both Annihilations, VanderMeer’s and Garland’s, it is not necessarily termination the characters face and fret over, but surreal alterations. In the book, VanderMeer’s unnamed heroine is changed by the shimmer to become something more than those around her; in the film, Garland’s named heroine Lena is changed to become precisely the same as those around her. She is driven through a prism, mixed with the world around her, and focused to a fine point. She does not die, but at the same time, she does not continue living in the way we generally tend to use that word. So yes, maybe our first impulse is to suggest that such concerns about selfhood should be restricted to worlds wracked by shimmers. But that impulse is wrong. On the subject of our persistency – on the nature of what makes us ourselves, and, moreover, keeps us that way – philosophers are divided. They have been for hundreds of years. Our bodies are always in flux. We are changing constantly, in the most literal way possible. New cells replace old ones, and although our bodies keep their shape – almost – the stuff that makes us dies. Come every seven years, there is not one cell in your body that hasn’t been replaced. You are reborn, and that often; forever a thing that is changed and still changing. So maybe then the natural response is to turn to memory, and suggest that is what anchors personhood to a random collection of constantly swapped out cells. “I can remember who I used to be yesterday; I am that person today; thus, I have not changed.” But this is a preconception that can be tested too.

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What happens then to the old woman going through Alzheimer’s? Is there a point she no longer resembles herself? And does that mean when we lose our memories – when, as in the case of both Annihilations, we can no longer track what has gotten us to a particular place; when we lose all sense of time – that we are leaving behind ourselves? here is one change that hangs heavy over VanderMeer’s Annihilation, and indeed most of his writing to date – that great, seemingly terminal ecological change we are all living under; a change threatening to undo the future of our species. VanderMeer is the first truly great writer of the Anthropocene, and precisely because he is one of the few writers willing to engage with it properly. In his Annihilation, the shimmer is so unpredictable – so powerful, and yet so without what we would usually call agency – that it makes a mockery of all the ways we might hope to contain it. It is as impervious to our barriers as the rising ocean soon will be to sea walls; as unforgiving as famine. And yet VanderMeer understands the true nature of our impending ecological collapse. Crucially, his shimmer, though plainly disruptive for humankind, is not a wave of desert, or of death. Quite the contrary. It is vibrantly, astonishingly full of life; a burst of biomatter, as haphazardly spread as a Pollock. Even as everything else changes, often to the point of being unrecognisable, some kind of life persists. In that way his Annihilation calls to mind the oddly hopeful, ugly threat hidden in the beginning of John Gray’s eerie philosophical cross-examination of the climate crisis, Straw Dogs. “Humans are like any other plague animal,” Gray writes. “They cannot destroy the Earth, but they can easily wreck the environment that sustains them … Disseminated primatemaia [a plague of people] may be cured by a large-scale decline in human numbers.” In VanderMeer’s Annihilation, it is not the Earth that is doomed to be irreversibly changed. It is people. Or, perhaps more subtly than that: it is people as they currently are. Everything else continues.

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arts in focus

t’s not hard to see how a change could be construed as a death – after all, it happens, in a way, in Garland’s Annihilation. Kane, the subtly estranged husband of Lena, is an explorer of the shimmer himself. He, like her, is driven by selfsabotage – just as she tries to destroy their relationship by cheating on him with a colleague, he tries to destroy their relationship by taking a suicidal journey into the shimmer, a doomed trek that prompts Lena’s own later mission. Kane’s journey ends worse. Reaching the lighthouse, tormented by change, he self-immolates in front of a malleable creature – the shimmer’s true centre – that has copied him; an alien that has draped itself in a version of his skin. Or then again, maybe it is the alien that burns, not the original. After all, it is not clear which Kane sits crosslegged before a wall with a triggered phosphorous grenade in hand, talking to a camera used to record his journey into the shimmer, and which Kane steps into shot after that other Kane has been reassembled into ash. “People called me Kane,” the creature before the camera says before burning up, “and now I’m not so sure. If I wasn’t Kane, what was I? Was I you?” In either case, our first response is to treat this event in the same way that Lena does, watching the footage back later – which is to say as though we have just borne witness to a suicide. During the burning, Garland’s camera hangs back; then, quickly, he cuts in close to Lena’s face, wracked as it is in shock. It brings to mind a similarly edited moment in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona in which a disturbed woman watches a TV news report about a Buddhist monk self-immolating to protest the Vietnam war, sitting in the lotus position as the flames consume him. And it brings to mind grief in its purest form; the grief locked up in all of us; an ache triggered only by death. Yet Kane hasn’t died – not really. We have not witnessed a suicide. What we have witnessed is an alteration; the most abrupt and irreversible kind of change imaginable. After Lena burns down the shimmer, and returns to the outside world, she is told that Kane – or, at least, a version of Kane – has persisted. And when she goes to greet him, he does react to her, but groggily, as though she is from some time in his life he can only recollect by closing his eyes firmly and thinking of nothing else.

ome philosophers like to use the image of the river to talk about personhood. We are like a river, they say; a fixed body made up of unfixed parts, forever changing and altering, held in place but not really. Garland likes to use a version of that image too. Before he changes, Kane describes his skin as being liquid. Elsewhere, variations on a theme, physicist Josie Radek disseminates into shoots. And still elsewhere, surveyor Cass goes from a woman to a scream locked into the bloodied throat of a bear. Certainly it’s tempting to say that there are better and worse ways to persist in both VanderMeer and Garland’s worlds. In the film, Josie is horrified by what little comes to remain of Cass; in the novel, the psychologist is shocked by the changes that overcome the biologist. Some alterations seem utterly akin to a kind of death; other alterations even worse than it. “Imagine dying frightened and in pain and having that as the only part of you which survives,” Josie says of Cass’ fate, stroking the plant matter poking through the self-inflicted wounds in her wrist. “I wouldn’t like that at all.” And yet despite their horror, both works are ultimately and oddly optimistic. In both, as bleak as things get, as much as things alter, something continues. For VanderMeer: the shimmer might mean the end of the human race, just as climate change soon might. And yet life, of a certain kind, persists. And for Garland: humans might drift away from one another – they might cheat and deceive one another, and become so alien as to resemble strangers – but still some part of them remains the same. It helps to come back to the very last scene of Garland’s Annihilation. The film’s central couple are reunited. Kane is not sure if he is Kane; Lena leaves the question whether she is Lena unanswered. So maybe they really are unknown to one another; maybe every single cell in their body has been forever altered, so much so that there is barely anything that connects them to the people they were who once loved one another. Maybe change of the kind that we most fear has overtaken them. Maybe they have altered in the same way that shifts in the climate have doomed our species; the way change to our bodies means cancer; the way change to our minds means madness. Maybe they are strangers. And yet they look at one another, eyes shimmering. And they embrace. What: Annihilation is available to watch on Netflix now

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FEATURE

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arts in focus

Comes e l b i s s o p m I e h T

True :

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An overfirst notes blare. e th n he w d ow e cr warm up for ripple through th e first words. We th on t ar st e ls fa a nts, this is excited few make t. “Ladies and ge gh fli ke ta e w , Then d the audience out big moment. ugh Jackman an H r,” fo d te ai w ve for nearly two the moment you’ n’t stop buzzing es do ce en di au The songs like croon in unison. ng at the end of pi ap cl e, lin y er t ev sping and hours, singing ou s up the front, ga ee kn s hi on g in id is sl Jackman himself y with each kiss. el at rn te al g cheerin gh’ and s of ‘Never Enou on iti nd re st be r ou phant We have practiced now, with a trium d an , rs ca d an s ower lt the hell ‘This Is Me’ in sh of being able to be t en om m e th at e th here. To exhale, we realis mpany is nearly co e iv pt ce re t gs you ever amon out of the songs ant, it’s everything w er ev u yo ng hi eryt paraphrase: it’s ev u. right in front of yo re he s it’ d need, an By Ella Donald

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FEATURE

“I

t’s been a long time since I’ve seen a film that brings me such unadulterated joy,” Stephanie, a filmmaker and editor says. She has seen Showman four times – three times in a normal session, once in a sing along. “The music, the heart in the story, the ‘spectacle’ element; it always leaves me feeling happier than when I came into the cinema.” Rujeela, who has just seen it for a third time, agrees with her. “The sing-along was such a fantastic experience, because most of the people there had already seen the movie and loved the music and were so passionate and loud and happy. It felt like going to see your favourite band in concert.” “It unites everyone who has ever felt out of place and it embraces differences,” says Cecilia, who has seen the film three times, but doesn’t think “that is enough”. “I saw it in London one night with my friend and we walked out mesmerised. The damn Greatest Showman soundtrack; it basically became the soundtrack of our trip. Then when we were in Glasgow it was really gloomy and snowing a lot and we weren’t up to walking around, we saw the movie again. We screamed when Hugh Jackman came in with a husky voice in the first few minutes. “Flashforward to me being back in Australia and dragging my boyfriend to another session. He hadn’t seen it before, but I wouldn’t stop talking about it and he reluctantly agreed to seeing it. He loved it, thank goodness.” She laughs. “It would have been an issue had he not liked it. It makes me feel hopeful.” For a film that mere months ago looked like an expensive passion project gone wrong, this is quite some recovery. So how did we get here?

saw the film at a premiere in December, loving its impeccably choreographed exuberance and joy, but

unsure whether it would find a home with an audience. My worry: are we too cynical for something that’s basically been ripped from the screens of 1952 and plopped into 2017? The Greatest Showman has the type of disregard for history that most are resistant to these days, proving a loosely P.T. Barnum flavoured musical instead of an autobiography that confronts the ugly reality of his circus. Critics were mostly uncaring or negative. “This ersatz portrait ... is all smoke and mirrors, no substance” said The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney. “The Greatest Showman takes a billion of the world’s oldest story beats and refashions their prefab emotions into something that feels like it’s being projected from another planet” agreed Indiewire’s David Ehrlich. And Ehrlich’s is one of the more positive reviews; he uncovers a hint of what makes the film work. Over two months after release, The Greatest Showman hasn’t left the top ten at the box office in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Instead of starting big, it has only grown through word of mouth. It’s an amazing and rare success that hasn’t so much come out of nowhere, but been a fantastic against-the-odds victory.

, t n a c s s i t o l p e “Th ds and spoken wor gy ner are a waste of e have Showman doesn’t time for.” The records it has broken are numerous, so here’s a small selection. It opened in the US in fourth place with under $10 million on Friday December 20, a reception that Fox’s chairman told The Hollywood Reporter left her feeling “gut-punched” and as though the film’s journey would soon be over. But then, it held on. The soundtrack, described as “unbearably amazing” by someone I talked to, is only the fifth soundtrack in the last ten years to spend multiple weeks at the top of the Billboard charts. Figure skaters at the Winter Olympics simply couldn’t let it pass by. Covers and dance routines have flooded YouTube, and lead song ‘This Is Me’ has become an anthem, helped by an emotional behind the scenes video of star Keala Settle. Even as the

Showman’s main competition, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, halved its gross weekly, closing out February at number 28 at the box office, the musical has only increased – or barely declined – every weekend. The film even did the unheard of in its second weekend outing, nearly doubling its gross. Opening at a soft third place on Boxing Day in Australia, it has remained steady since, making history both here and in the UK by taking the top spot in its sixth week.

aving defied expectations and made records, and currently showing more staying power than even Titanic, it’s a mystery as to what the end gross will be when the film takes its final theatrical bow (no sign of that yet). In the US, it has already surpassed La La Land, which ended its run at nearly $500 million worldwide, to become the fourth biggest musical of all time. It’s

a fact made more remarkable by the market currently. Films quickly clean up with dizzying openings and vanish, with a hotly anticipated release like the Last Jedi making $1.3 billion and disappearing in the space of ten weeks, audiences increasingly proving uninterested in 3D and other gimmicks. In contrast, Showman is still boasting sold out sing-along sessions across the world, full of wholehearted whooping and cheering; a rare film that can be seen by anybody. “The lesson is that certain audiences are underserved, particularly in a world where Disney is delivering all these monster tentpoles,” said producer Peter Chernin to The Hollywood Reporter. With the exception of the radioready soundtrack, the film has more in common with Singin’ In The Rain, The Greatest Show On Earth, and the escapist hit parades of the WWII era than La La Land. Showman doesn’t attempt to update to the mindset of 2017 or reinvent its formula, and it doesn’t have a hint of the sly winking at the audience that defined that film and distanced viewers from the characters. The plot is scant, and spoken words are a waste of energy Showman doesn’t have time for. Rather, it will do absolutely anything it can with its endlessly energetic cast – moonlit dances on rooftops, romantic duets on trapezes,

e in r o m s a h m l i f e h “T n I ’ n i g n i S h t i w n commo est t a e r G e h T , n i a R The e h t d n a , h t r a E n Show O s of e d a r a p t i h t s i p esca n the WWII era tha La La Land.”

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arts in focus

urs, o h o w t y l r a e n for g n i z z u b p o t s like ’t n s s g e n o o d s e f c o n d e i n d e u e a h “The g at t n i p p a l c , , e t n n i o l r y f r e e h v t e t p u u o s e g s kne i singin h n o g n i d i l s s i s.” s f i l k e s h m c i a h e n h a t i m w k c y Ja atel n r e t l a g n i r e e h gasping and c

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FEATURE

both its more ridiculous parts and its genuinely gorgeous elements with the same enthusiasm and humour is extremely seductive and thrilling. It’s such a wild ride, but always a beautiful and earnest one. It almost transcends notions of good and bad, to reach into sublime fun.

Hugh Jackman in The Greatest Showman

cover-ready power ballads – to make you smile. It’s consciously doing something radical and unseen; something that has been sucked from the multiplex in the age of mega-serious superhero franchises, horror, and disaster movies. But viewers are no less hungry for what Showman has to offer: unfiltered joy and a communal experience.

t’s a success not entirely dissimilar to one that took place over 50 years ago. In 1965, after expensive gimmicks, a series of disastrous and poorly recieved films, a steady drift to television, and declining attendances (sound familiar?), 20th Century Fox brought itself back from the brink with The Sound Of Music.

While significantly more expensive than the quickies the studio had been producing in a bid to make some cash (it cost a little over $8 million, which equates to around $63 million now) and dismissed by critics (iconic critic Pauline Kael called it “the sugar-coated lie people seem to want to eat”), it was a hit in the way the studio hadn’t seen since the 1950s. It opened in a limited number of cities around the United States, playing only two shows a day with allocated seating and costlier than average tickets. Despite this, after four weeks, playing in only 131 theatres, it took first place at the box office. It stayed there for the next 30 weeks. Billed as “the happiest sound in the world”, like Showman it thrived on repeat viewings, with some

towns in the US selling more tickets than there were inhabitants. A year later, it was the highest grossing film of all time. It didn’t leave theatres until the 1960s became the ’70s. “[Before] I never really understood the impulse to rewatch a film as many times as possible, over even the shortest period of time. This is definitely new to me,” says Elena, a critic and editor who attended the world premiere of the sing along version in London. “The film is such a spectacle – in the sense of a full-body experience. The songs are so good, I listen to them all the time, but they are even better with the image. I think the way in which the film itself embraces

ry g n u h s s e l o n e r “Viewers a : r e f f o o t s a h n a for what Showm nd a communal unfiltered joy a nce.” experie

“[It’s] such an unruly beast. At the first screening, I was mostly baffled. By the second viewing, I knew the lyrics of the songs already, and being able to follow with the characters was a whole other kind of thrill. At my third viewing, I became extremely involved in the emotional story of the characters, which itself is at the core of the songs, and I cried. The fourth viewing was a singalong, and that was again something else entirely. “Everyone in the room was just so happy and so free: there was this amazing energy where everyone screamed the songs of course, but also very much had fun with the more ridiculous aspects of the film. People would actually respond to what was going on. It was amazing!” “For example, when Jenny Lind was about to kiss Barnum on the lips in front of the audience of her last show, everyone of course already knew this was going to happen, and we all anticipated the moment so much. There was a huge crescendo of sound in the room; then everyone screamed ‘No!’ when the kiss happened. It was very playful, but never mocking. It’s hard to believe a film like this can exist. And it’s just so funny it does!”

s with the success of La La Land, there are questions as to whether the success hints at an untapped market for musicals. Few and far between but proven box office magnets, some say that there is a hunger for more music at the multiplex, while others say that musicals are too individual to make such a distinction. Back at the Brisbane multiplex, as the credits roll, my audience continues singing ‘This Is Me’ and ‘Rewrite The Stars’, and a crowd of girls start dancing in front of the screen (a sight that has been repeated at many sing-alongs), I wonder if Showman’s success shows something else audiences are looking for that has mostly disappeared: an unambiguously joyful and uncynical escape, and one that can be shared. “I’ll admit when I went to go see the movie [the first time] I had no clue what it was about. The movie took my expectations and completely blew me away,” Rujeela says. “The next time I saw it I convinced my friend to go watch it. My favourite part was getting to watch her face light up the way mine did.” What: The Greatest Showman is still playing at selected cinemas across Australia

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arts in focus FEATURE

TRUE LOVE

Very Important People is our new monthly column in which we seek out notable individuals from all walks of life and find out what makes them tick. This month, Joseph Earp talked to Sam Shpall, a contemporary philosopher who examines the tricky, hard to pin down nature of modern romance. Is love really the ultimate driving force of all contemporary life? Or is it nothing more than a glorified biological impulse, a desire for procreation obscured by years of artificial myths and lies? And what might happen if your beloved was replaced by a robot programmed to resemble them in every conceivable way? These are some of the questions that we posed to Dr. Shpall – read on for his answers.

A Lie?

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ROMANCE

THE BRAG: Why are we so attached to the concept of romantic love? Sam Shpall: I like your question’s internal witticism, though I’m not sure if you intended it! Romantic love involves an intense form of attachment that produces powerful emotions and, sometimes, revelatory insights. It also involves some unique joys – sex and intimacy with loving partners probably chief among them. Many have thought that it represents the, ahem, climax of interpersonal relationships, or even, as Erich Fromm said in The Art Of Loving, the mature response to the problem of human existence. I myself am a bit less of a fanboy. Romantic love is wonderful, of course. Yet the obsession with it in contemporary society leads to failures of imagination when it comes to other forms of love.

“I worry that we ask strictly monogamous, lifetime-duration romantic love to do too much when we ask it to satisfy all our sexual desires, as well as our desires for emotional intimacy.”

Close friendships can be just as important as romantic relationships for human flourishing, and would probably be deemed more important than they currently are in a more morally evolved society. Yet how many columns or novels or films or songs explore friendship with genuine sophistication? 1/100th of the number that explore romantic love, I would guess. I also suspect that our obsession with a prevailing, yet arguably dated vision of romantic love reflects an unhealthy and unstable channelling of attitudes towards sexuality. It is unsurprising that sex is a central human preoccupation. But I worry that we ask strictly monogamous, lifetime-duration romantic love to do too much when we ask it to satisfy all our sexual desires, as well as our desires for emotional intimacy, intellectual companionship, partnership in life projects, etc. Is love purely a biological impulse? Questions about reduction to biology are often misleading. We are biological creatures, so love is a biological phenomenon. But this doesn’t imply very much about the right level of analysis. That depends on the kind of inquiry we’re interested in. Scientific research can give us important insights. For example, it may help us to understand the distinctive nature of early stage romantic love, which may be chemically similar to certain kinds of addictions. However, I do not think that this research can alone answer the most significant normative and conceptual questions. It can’t say whether you are required to love your child, or whether it is wrong to love your dog more than you love your grandfather. It can’t articulate the proper place of love in a virtuous person’s life. It can’t tell us how the love of literature or God is related to the love of human beings. Philosophy is essential,

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just as science is essential. The tendency of some commentators to pit them against one another is shallow and regrettable.

Is there a reason why we distinguish our love for other ‘creatures’ like humans and pets with our love for ‘things’, like our jobs, or hobbies like movie watching? In fact, philosophers tend to separate human beings from all other objects of love, including pets. But you’re perhaps right that others draw the lines differently. There are diagnoses of this tendency that I fi nd fairly plausible as explanations, but not as vindications. One is that we tend to assume that people, or living creatures, are more important than other things. This may be true in general, but I doubt it vindicates a sharp distinction. I think we should pay much more attention to love for activities, artworks, places, and various other inanimate objects. For instance, the love of art is a central ingredient in my own happiness and fl ourishing. I wish that more people were given the tools to cultivate this form of love from an early age.

“Close friendships can be just as important as romantic relationships for human Why are we so unnerved by flourishing.” the possibility of our love being

Some of us pride ourselves on being very rational, and yet love is often depicted as the lack of rational thought. Can love therefore be seen as an “escape” from a rational kind of thinking we don’t actually enjoy as much as we think we do?

Nice question. This is a common thought, and a dangerous one. My sense is that it derives from a very Hollywood conceptualisation of romantic love’s beginnings. True, we rarely control what sights and sounds and smells we find most titillating. Plausibly this puts attraction of certain kinds beyond the pale of reason. But attraction is not love. My (controversial) view is that love is governed by reasons and by standards of normative evaluation, in many of the same ways that (e.g.) belief, intention, desire, and anger are. In other words, love can be irrational, inadvisable, or wrong; and we should not pretend that it is insulated from rationality. To make this claim is not to suggest, absurdly, that we always actually think and behave rationally in love. There’s no doubt that love can lead to various distortions of our understanding of the world, and to poor reasoning, deliberating, and choosing. We should not embrace this. Appropriately circumscribed, minor irrationalities may have some charm. My concern is that our idealisation of irrationality licenses a lot of imprudent and immoral behaviour. Just think of the “but he’s in love!” excuse…

replaceable? Could our loved ones be replaced by identical robots, and, if so, should we be freaked out about this? There are many fascinating issues here. In one sense you could never replace a Mom or a boyfriend with a robot. Even a perfect intrinsic duplicate would not have memories of raising you, or of supporting you when you were in the dumps. (They could have apparent memories, but I take actual memories to involve actual remembrance.) Likewise, even a perfect intrinsic duplicate would not have the morally relevant property of being the person who raised you, or the person who supported you. (They might think that they were this person, and that consequently you owed them certain allegiances, but they would be mistaken.) Still, I think we should be pretty freaked out about the possibilities on the horizon. Sex robots are already here, and there’s a lot to say about what that portends. A bigger challenge will be from artifi cial intelligences that are capable of complex thought and behaviour. Would you choose to date an AI if it is likely to satisfy all your desires better than a human being? Would this be irrational or wrong, and if so why? I’m unsatisfi ed with my own thinking about these questions. Luckily my students are smarter than I am. I look forward to plagiarising their answers in future interviews.

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Illustration by Jini Maxwell thebrag.com

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FEATURE

Unknown Mortal Orchestra

And The Future’s Sharp Edges By Belinda Quinn

“The best sound that I ever got out of a guitar was an Orange AC30 five minutes before it blew up,” says Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s vocalist/ guitarist Ruban Nielson of a (disastrous? Inspired?) show he played in Australia. “It started smoking and smelt like a BBQ. And I think I’ve been trying to make that sound ever since.”

ielson attempted to recreate this thick, grating tone with a homemade Fuzz Face guitar pedal for ‘American Guilt’, the most rock and roll track off UMO’s new record Sex & Food. “What I like about this pedal is it sounds like something is almost wrong; like the amp is broken.”

Like said smoking amp, Nielson has a knack for pushing himself right to the edge of burning out. He’s fl own from the States to Sydney for two days to push Sex & Food into the Australian eye, and when asked if he’s jetlagged, he sounds a little stunned. “I don’t even know,” he says, with a laugh.

He is also somewhat of a perfectionist. “I get really nerdy and specific about [sound]. I use a lot of tape recorders and of different qualities.” He lists the tape and cassettes used to make the album: quarter inch, half-inch, micro cassette tapes, all of which add a different quality. “I think growing up I listened to a lot of cassette tapes and that sound is really a part of what I think good music should sound like.” After making his own pedals, Nielson made the natural progression to building his own modular synths, machines that added noise and textures to the album, patiently withstanding the irritating struggle of building power supplies. “There’s just a lot of math involved and I’m not very good at math,” he explains with a shrug.

“I ALWAYS THINK THAT WHAT I’M WRITING IS

SOME KIND OF SURREAL POETRY. LATER I REALISE THAT IT’S JUST A SHOPPING LIST OF VERY EXPLICIT THINGS THAT HAPPENED TO ME.”

Unknown Mortal Orchestra photo by Ashley Mar

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FEATURE

“LIBERALS’ BRAINS HAVE BEEN BROKEN BY DONALD TRUMP.”

ielson was raised in New Zealand by musician parents. His father is a renowned horn player and his mother is a two-time winning Hula Champion from Hawaii (although the first time she entered she was disqualified for being underage).

“I was going to art school when I was around 19 and my dad was going through a 12-step program – like, going through rehab – and one of the steps is to make amends to people,” Nielson explains. “One of those people was me, so he bought a guitar for my birthday.” His brother Kody convinced him to start a punk band called The Mint Chicks, and they were soon picked up by iconic NZ label Flying Nun. “The New Zealand punk scene, the thing that I was really grateful about it was that it’s a very small, tight knit scene,” he says. “A lot of promoters would join forces and a lot of bands put eclectic lineups together, so it wasn’t that weird to have indie rock or even like, a DIY rap group playing with death metal bands. I’ve always thought that was really normal. “It’s funny, a lot of people that came out of that scene have a similar ability to appreciate all kinds of music. Like, Kimbra came out of that scene and the guys in her band, they play everything from prog rock to jazz to RnB and chart pop. It’s like everybody’s unable to figure out what niche they’re in because they’re kind of everything.” While he identified more with punk when he first started playing shows, NZ’s mixed bills gave Nielson access to different styles of playing and making music; this, he says, is rare to come by in the States. “I think that the exposure to all of the old Flying Nun bands had a massive effect on me. Just their whole songwriting approach and also the fact that a lot of those bands did everything themselves: it made me really self-sufficient.” Nielson soon learnt how to make an entire record from scratch, doing everything from the layout to packaging the album to web design and sound engineering. One of the particular scenes in New Zealand Nielson has a soft spot for is the port town of Lyttelton. “It’s weird, it’s quite a dark spot. I heard that it was the suicide capital of New Zealand and it doesn’t get as much sun as other parts but it’s so picturesque,” he says. “The mood there is different from anywhere else and it has its own sort of community, but I think it’s quite hip now. It used to be sort of strange and there were a few weirdos, but I think the weirdos have taken over maybe. “There’s a bar called Wunderbar there which was started by a guy from Berlin and it has pieces of the Berlin wall in there. It’s one of the coolest places; I really recommend it. That’s the scene that Marlon Williams and Aldous Harding and a group of people came out of in Lyttelton. It’s a very special place.” On commenting on the dark sense of humour that seems to emerge from NZ, he says, “Yeah, people are quite [dark]. I get misunderstood a lot because I have a pessimistic, dark sense of humour. It’s just a way of talking about the world.”

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FEATURE gained essentially immediate recognition in 2010 when Nielson anonymously uploaded the hypnotic and soulful ‘Ffunny Ffrends’ on Bandcamp, with the song being picked up by Pitchfork within the day of its release. Sex & Food’s predecessor, 2015’s Multi-Love, was a deeply personal narrative that explored a polygamous relationship between Nielson’s wife, himself and a young Australian woman. On the title track, he sung in fluttering falsetto: “Multi-love checked into my heart and trashed it like a hotel room.” After extensively describing the experience to music media outlets, Nielson found himself questioning the publicity of the relationship. “I realised that I don’t have to talk about my life anymore after the fact, which is the mistake I made last time. I’m already telling everybody what’s going on in my life. I thought that I owed that to people, but I don’t think I do.” Multi-Love spins imagery of Aurora Borealis, the upper hemisphere’s Northern Lights, and the record ends on a request for America to open its doors. That final note seamlessly makes way for one of Sex & Food’s central themes: namely, what does it mean to be a modern American, and what does the future hold for what he dubs the “land of the expensive” in ‘American Guilt’? Sex & Food begins with a surreally cool instrumental, which is foreshadowed by a swerving and glitching bassline in ‘A God Called Hubris.’ The meaning of the Greek word ‘Hubris’ has changed over time and is now commonly used to describe an overconfidence that leads a person to

In interviews Nielson often comments on the importance of detaching from his own ego while he’s writing music. For each record, he’s not sure what he’s trying to say until the dust has long settled. “I always think that what I’m writing is some kind of surreal poetry when I’m writing it and when it’s about a year and a half later, I realise that it’s just a shopping list of very explicit things that happened to me and how I was feeling about those things,” he explains. “It’s quite weird and embarrassing, because you realise that you were confessing all these feelings,” he says. “I think that when you’re writing songs properly that should be the way it is, because you shouldn’t be hyper-aware of what’s going on. That’s when your ego gets involved and you start thinking about the quality of what you’re making. “When you’re being unaware of it a little more and it’s coming from a different place, then you make better work. But later when you figure out what the songs are about, you learn that you’re really just writing really honestly; you’re just writing your entire life down.” When asked if this record is less personal than Multi-Love, he laughs. “No, I don’t think so. But I think that I’m not going to spell out exactly what was going in my life to explain the record because I think that’s kind of a boring way to present a record.” The songs are peppered with references to information technology: he sings, “Terraform a hostile wasteland” and “my thinking is done by your machine” among mentions of Freudian auto-correction.

The symbolism of Sex & Food remains rooted in Nielson’s dark, blunt satire and socialist politics, criticising fake democracies, the age of paranoia, crying Nazis and an incoming doomsday. But the heaviness of the record’s themes is broken up with tracks like ‘The Internet Of Love’, ‘Not In Love We’re Just High’ and ‘If You’re Going To Break Yourself’, songs that ooze with the romantic sentimentality of seventies-era artists, a period he’s most fond of. The songs were recorded in every corner of the planet; Hawaii, Vietnam, Seoul, Mexico, Reykjavik, Auckland and Portland. Nielson brought in guest professionals from all over the world to build upon the tracks that were initially written for acoustic guitar as fi nished folk songs. “I think at the moment a lot of music, especially on the radio and stuff sounds like they’re recording, producing and writing as all one process. People will put down an entire bed of music and then write lyrics and vocals on top of that but it makes music sound a certain way. “I want the songs to feel sort of old fashioned, and still have a little bit of harmonic sophistication,” he says, listing Stevie Wonder, Prince and The Beatles as major influencers; he describes his music as “dumb pop” in comparison to rhythmically and harmonically sophisticated bands like Hiatus Kaiyote. Nielson collaborated with his brother and the band’s bassist Jake Portrait for Sex & Food, as well as Australia-based New Zealand animator Greg Sharp, who interpreted the track ‘American Guilt’. The animation pans onto the fi nal resting place of our material excess: we see discarded porno mags,

“TRUMP IS IN SOME WAYS THE ULTIMATE AMERICAN PRESIDENT FOR RIGHT NOW BECAUSE IT’S NOT LIKE HE DOESN’T REPRESENT A BIG PART OF AMERICA.” 40 :: BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18

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Unknown Mortal Orchestra photos by Ashley Mar

UMO

ignore the limits of humanity in an ordered cosmos. But it can also be used to describe an act of intentional violence that aims to humiliate – which might even be a diagnosis of modern America.

FEATURE

“IT’S EITHER MUSIC OR

OR I WOULD HAVE TO MEDICATE MYSELF. takeaway containers, and green bills soaked in a bloody, dark colour palette. When it’s mentioned that the aesthetic is similar to the 1988 Japanese post-apocalyptic sci-fi Akira, Nielson lights up. “That was a big, big reference for me, because it was one of the things that I liked when I was a kid … for some reason I kind of felt like that was important. “It’s pretty easy for [Sharp] to understand what the themes of the record are … Sometimes I think it’s more like somebody is going to get the record before I will. So I think it’ll be interesting because like watching those videos and what he did with them will make me hear different things in the record.”

ex & Food features the soft psych track ‘Everyone Acts Crazy Nowadays’, so naturally the question arises: what’s the craziest shit Nielson’s seen recently? “Liberals’ brains have been broken by Donald Trump and it’s really quite scary – how do you make things better? It seems so impossible,” he says. “They have this fantasy with having this collusion with Russia as if there’s going to be some piece of information that’s going to bring Trump down. I think it’s just so far from possible that any single document or recording would stop him.

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“Trump is in some ways the ultimate American president for right now because it’s not like he doesn’t represent a big part of America. He’s the most American president ever in some ways. He’s just the really bad parts of it. But the worst part is dominating now, so it makes sense.” As a “Bernie-Bro”, Nielson discusses the socialist push for single payer health care and unravels the absurdities of how less fortunate people are cared for in America. “Yeah, it’s crazy because the way they argue about it is like, ‘Well if I’m smart and I make money and I’m strong then I should be able to choose whatever healthcare I want.’ “It’s weird for a place that claims to be so Christian to have such an unchristian way of looking at it … And people aren’t just weak because they’re just born that way, like some people get old, you know? Some people were strong until they turned 75.” It seems Western narcissism and material excess is a kind of Hubris at the centre of Sex & Food: its arrogance and self-centeredness leads to a violence caused by the refusal to acknowledge and support those less fortunate both within its borders and, just as importantly, outside of them.

ielson recently spent time in Hawaii connecting with his heritage. For a while, he wanted to record the entire album there, although he eventually decided against it. “I’d love to live

in Hawaii but a lot of my family cautioned me against it because they think that I’m too ADHD; like I’ll get too bored there, which might be true,” he says. When bringing up different meds to treat ADHD, he says, “I’m scared of medication and that if I take something I won’t deal with life because I’ve spent my whole life using music as a way to regulate myself. I get scared that if I take anything I won’t be able to make music.” On the subject of friends that started medicating their mental illnesses, Nielson can’t help but feeling a little betrayed. “I got really angry at them for abandoning me in crazy town.” He laughs. “It depends on how manageable your stuff is though and whether you can actually function. Some people are just over that line where they’re just constantly on the edge of falling to pieces and that gets really tiring I think.” When it comes to what motivates him to make music, Nielson says, “I feel like I don’t really have an option. It’s either this or I would have to medicate myself. It really is what keeps me functioning in the human race and gives me a place that makes sense and a bit of dignity.”

What: Sex & Food is available on Friday April 6 through Inertia / Jagjaguwar

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Brockhampton:

The Future Is Theirs Sam Williams investigates the curious mythology of Brockhampton, the world’s greatest working boyband

he rap collective/ boyband Brockhampton released a whopping three albums in 2017: Saturation I, II and III, all of which received acclaim from critics and the general public alike. Singles released from the albums throughout the year received millions of listens on various platforms, and the group took out the coveted 11th place in triple j’s most recent Hottest 100 with their single ‘Sweet’. By the end of the year, one thing had become clear: with Saturation I, II and III, the group had definitely succeeded in saturating the music scene with themselves. It now seems like every Tom, Dick and Sally knows that Brockhampton are in the midst of a boom. As of 2018 the 15 individual members boast impressive stats on social media, having garnered thousands upon thousands of followers on Instagram and Twitter, with head of the group Kevin Abstract having more than 200,000 on each. I’m almost certain you will have mutual followers with a Brockhampton member if you’re big into Instagram or Twitter – take that as a sign of their amassing fandom. The group has come a long way since 2010, when Abstract posted on a Kanye West messageboard looking to start a band. Before 2017, undeniably their biggest year, Brockhampton were more or less underground artists. Although they had released various singles over the years and the album All-American Trash in 2016, they hadn’t quite hit the big time. I personally hadn’t heard of them before being sent Saturation I by a friend not long after its release – and even then I thought they had something to do with Rockhampton, Queensland, a city known for its beef production.

Mid-2017 Viceland released the eight episode documentary series American Boyband, which follows Brockhampton in the pursuit of their current success. The members of the group are shown to all live in a house together in

“MID-2017 VICELAND RELEASED THE EIGHT EPISODE DOCUMENTARY SERIES AMERICAN BOYBAND, 42 :: BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18

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FEATURE

“BEFORE 2017, UNDENIABLY THEIR BIGGEST YEAR, BROCKHAMPTON WERE MORE OR LESS

UNDERGROUND ARTISTS.” South Central, California, lovingly branded the Brockhampton Factory, which also doubles as their creative hub.

his current popularity and status within Brockhampton, even having featured on all three album covers in 2017.

It’s worth noting that not all members of the collective are vocalists; the Brockhampton name encompasses producers, directors, designers, engineers and managers of the group, all of whom share a single house. It’s a cozy living situation for certain, but also a hotbed for creative collaboration.

Fans who have only listened to Brockhampton on record might consider Abstract and Vann as the group’s beating heart, but American Boyband gives a voice to the members of the collective who aren’t as present as the frontmen. Producer Romil Hemnani and creative director and designer Henock “HK” Sileshi in particular are given a long overdue spotlight in the series: they exchange witty remarks and creative pointers with the collective at large.

A central part of American Boyband follows Brockhampton founder Abstract as he embarks upon a solo tour of the United States. Accompanying him are producers, managers and friends of Brockhampton, all of whom are stuffed into the van with him for the month long tour. Travelling between states, they play shows for passionate fans who resonate with Abstract’s lyricism, while Abstract aims to be someone the young fans aspire to, himself have been an outsider who only eventually achieved success. The series nicely depicts the ups and downs of life on the road. Abstract directs a short film entitled Helmet Boy while on tour, enlisting help from his friends who act, film and edit. And the members are seen to bond with one another as they eat fast food, show each other mixes and meet fans. Of course, the tour isn’t without its stresses, as the collective experience live technical difficulties for the first time and become fatigued after a long time on the road. Acclaimed Brockhampton vocalist Ameer Vann also has a prominent role in the series. At the start of the show he’s unable to go on tour with Abstract due to having a security job in California, even getting a call from his supervisor midinterview. After eventually quitting he’s able to meet Abstract and the others on tour, even performing a song onstage at their hometown in Texas. Vann’s presence in the documentary is intriguing given

This spotlight contrasts with the lack of attention given to some of the vocalists who have proven very popular following the group’s recent success. I was personally surprised by the lack of screen time of Merlyn Wood, my favourite vocalist thanks to his work on verses in songs such as ‘Sweet’ and ‘Boogie’, as well as Matt Champion, Joba and Dom McLennon. But the documentary series couldn’t predict the huge success of the group, let alone the popularity of certain members of the collective. The last episode of American Boyband is more or less a preview of what were to become Brockhampton’s music videos ‘Heat’, ‘Gold’ and ‘Star’. After returning from tour the entire collective is present to give some insight to the clips which have since become so popular, each having accumulated millions of views. It provides a neat point of reference for Brockhampton’s success and leads you perfectly into the world of big-time Brockhampton. American Boyband gives fans an unparalleled look at the boyband just before the big-time, and as the group continues to grow it will always display the humble beginnings of the guys from the Brockhampton Factory in South Central. What: Saturation III is out now

“A CENTRAL PART OF

AMERICAN BOYBAND

FOLLOWS BROCKHAMPTON FOUNDER KEVIN ABSTRACT AS HE EMBARKS UPON A SOLO TOUR OF THE UNITED STATES.” WHICH FOLLOWS BROCKHAMPTON IN THE PURSUIT OF THEIR CURRENT SUCCESS.” thebrag.com

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FEATURE

Andrew W.K.:

The Power Of Partying Paul McBride learns that Andrew W.K. wants nothing less than to change the world

“A

professional partier and an amateur human being,” is how Andrew W.K. says he would introduce himself to someone who doesn’t know anything about him. There’s a lot of truth to that short bio too – it neatly reveals the depth that lies behind the hard-rocking, party-anthem-wielding force of nature W.K.’s fans have come to adore since he blew up internationally with the single ‘Party Hard’ way back in 2001.

Like so many people, we can just imagine a song, and it sounds so much better in our heads than it does being played. It permeates the best part of our soul, and if we can hold onto that in the face of difficulty, it will see us through.”

Since 2010, the 38-year-old American has stepped back from recording music to explore motivational speaking, writing, authoring an advice column, and collaborating with other artists. So important has his work been that it has recently seen him named person of the year by suicide prevention group the American Association of Suicidology.

“Including those was suggested to me by someone in my management team, and it never would have occurred to me,” he says. “It’s a very exposed and vulnerable contrast to very dense and celebratory music. I didn’t allow my own fears or trepidation to sway me from recording them. I recorded them at the very last second – I literally could not have delayed putting them off any further.

Now, he’s back with You’re Not Alone, his first album of new songs in nearly 12 years. It’s a typically triumphant collection of rock tracks featuring his trademark big riffs, infectious hooks and buoyant choruses. And while he acknowledges he is lucky to have made another album at all, the finished product was only ever going to have one goal: to make the listener feel better. “I only want to put good vibes out into the world, and I’m very focused on that mission,” he says. “I imagine we have a perpetual need for positivity. The best things in life give us the strength and resilience to face the challenges that are worth solving.” Importantly, for the King of Partying, partying can mean a whole lot more than just getting drunk with friends. “I’ve had a lot of experience with getting drunk, but it’s not limited to that,” he says. “First and foremost, it’s a decision to break away from the torturous debate over whether life is good or bad, and it’s an acceptance of the possibility that it is intrinsically good. Then it’s about finding the wherewithal to celebrate all that goodness. It’s basically looking at life as a celebration of not being dead, and trying to find the value in the difficult parts of that experience.” Taking a philosophical approach to partying is fairly unique among hard-rocking musicians, but W.K.’s power of positivity reaches further, into all areas of his life. His remedy for feeling low is a common one. “Music never fails. There are people out there, and they’re few and far between, who don’t get the power of music. I could be in a completely defeated frame of mind and turn to music, and it will instantly change not just my thoughts and mood, but the way my body changes physically. It changes the way it feels to exist for the better.

Another uncommon thing for a hard-rock musician to do is to include spoken-word pieces in an album, something that W.K. does three times on You’re Not Alone. Again, the themes are positivity and overcoming doubt.

“I recorded them in the mastering phase – you’re supposed to be completely done with all your recording by that point. The engineer was very generous, and I recorded them quickly and spontaneously. I didn’t realise it at the time, but when I transcribed them for the lyric book, those words were what I was telling myself through the recording of the album and what I tell myself in everyday life. I thought maybe someone else could relate to them as well.” While he is reinvigorated and empowered by his new album and seemingly feeling freer than ever, W.K. is sticking firmly to his stated mission – albeit with 17 years more experience and maturity since ‘Party Hard’ made his name. “I’ve not yet done most things, as far as what I would like to do,” he says. “I would like to get better as a person and serve this calling. That’s really all I should allow myself. There were times in the past I felt pressure to be ambitious, to think bigger and broader, and do all sorts of other things. I’m not cut out for those things – I’m barely cut out for this. I just want to get better and better at delivering on the promise that I have committed myself to, and that’s party power.” Australia, known internationally for its party power, is firmly in mind for a visit. “We have been talking about coming over for concerts and I’m extremely excited about that,” he says. “Australia has never faltered in not only appreciating party power, but conjuring it up. It would be great to be re-energised and refuelled with a Down Under trip. Hopefully it will happen this year.”

What: You’re Not Alone is out now through Sony Music Australia Andrew W.K. photo by Nina Ottolino

“I IMAGINE WE HAVE A PERPETUAL NEED FOR POSITIVITY.

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FEATURE

“[PARTYING IS] BASICALLY ABOUT

LOOKING AT LIFE AS A CELEBRATION OF NOT BEING DEAD,

AND TRYING TO FIND THE VALUE IN THE DIFFICULT PARTS OF THAT EXPERIENCE.”

“I COULD BE IN A COMPLETELY DEFEATED FRAME OF MIND AND TURN TO MUSIC, AND IT WILL INSTANTLY CHANGE NOT JUST MY THOUGHTS AND MOOD,

WORTH SOLVING.” thebrag.com

BUT THE WAY MY BODY CHANGES PHYSICALLY.”

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FEATURE

“WATER AND THE ENVIRONMENT WERE A CONSTANT PART OF MY LIFE GROWING UP.”

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FEATURE

“I’M FOREVER INSPIRED BY THE FACT THAT

I COME FROM THIS REALLY BEAUTIFUL PLACE WITH SUCH A BEAUTIFUL COMMUNITY AND LANGUAGE.” Emily Wurramara:

Fanning The Smoke Alex Chetverikov and Emily Wurramara talk music, inspiration, and storytelling

t its heart, music is among the most powerful modes of storytelling. It transfers and translates our oldest traditions from generation to generation, and empowers the many rich cultural voices that make up our Australian community.

One of Australia’s brightest young musicians, Emily Wurramara, is one such modern custodian. She hails from one of Australia’s most remote Indigenous communities: the Warnindilyakwa mob of Groote Eylandt, an island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. In a few short years, and at all of 21, Wurramara has performed on TedX, garnered awards and acclaim from around the country, and rightly been earmarked as one of Australia’s finest contemporary songwriters. Off the back of single release ‘Ngarrukwujenama’, a newly penned record deal with Mushroom Music, and the recent birth of her daughter K’iigari, she sat down with The BRAG to talk music, culture, and ensuring future generations can appreciate the legacy of the land. “I’m forever inspired by the fact that I come from this really beautiful place with such a beautiful community and language,” Wurramara explains. “My childhood experiences there were so enchanting and mystical.

preserve language and history to pass down to the next generation, so that they can listen back.” Wurramara’s recent single, ‘Ngarrukwujenama’ (‘I’m Hurting’), reflects a significant change to her songwriting approach. Working closely with acclaimed producer David Bridie, the acoustic folk of first EP Black Smoke makes way for jazz-inspired song structure, Rhodes piano, and a more distinctly politicised context. Written in response to BP’s seabed mining around her native Groote Eylandt (and 2013’s subsequent landmark victory for the Warnindilykwa against the petroleum giant), it embodies the pain and sadness not only in people, but of the ravaged Earth. “I’m very politically driven when it comes to nature and preserving and protecting the earth and the sea. That’s what’s always motivated me. Rather than government politics, it’s about what benefits the community and nature. We all come from the sea, and we need to protect that. You feel that sense of belonging; you feel that connection to the Earth.

“[MY GRANDMOTHER] TAUGHT ME TO USE MY PERSONALITY AND

“I’m also driven by being a woman. I most definitely feel that being a new mum has made me wake up to myself. What am I going to pass down to my daughter and the next generation? I always ask myself what I’m doing here, and how I can make the biggest impact … I don’t know the answer to that, and I’m not sure if I ever will. But I can share my message through the universal language of music. It doesn’t matter what language you’re singing in, so long as you feel it in your heart.”

USE MY HEART TO HEAL PEOPLE.”

“Water and the environment were a constant part of my life growing up. We’d always go island hopping and swim in waterholes. My grandmother would show me the sacred islands, and our women’s Dreaming stories. She was a witch doctor, and would take me out and show me all these plants with healing properties. She taught me to use my personality and use my heart to heal people.”

Nature and healing are ever-present themes within Wurramara’s songs of being and becoming. Like the water that physically accompanied her island upbringing, the energy of the elements seeps through her music. It flows broadly through the bittersweet melody of ‘Turtle Song’, an ode to the importance of conserving our turtle habitats. And on ‘Black Boy’, her intimate cover of the Coloured Stone anthem, it floods unceasingly through her soulful, vulnerable vocals. While her music engages us on a deeply personal level, its themes of redemption and restoration are communal experiences – themes of shared healing instilled in Wurramara from a young age. “When I moved to Brisbane as a child, I was a very lost person. I didn’t know what world I belonged in. I felt really homesick. My mum said to me, “Why don’t you just write your feelings down?” So I did. “I started as a writer. I voraciously read a lot of the major poets and drew ideas for my own expression, and embraced music. Music naturally developed this sense of healing to me. It’s a universal language, and a way for me to communicate and share my experiences and culture to others. A lot of the songs I sing are in my ancient language of Anindilyakwa. Through music, I can revive and

In a global context where languages and cultures are disappearing at unprecedented levels, Wurramara’s is an important contemporary voice for all cultures. Much like her infectious laugh and broad smile, she retains an essential sense of humour and humility that cuts through the sadness and destruction. And perhaps most importantly, her music echoes the need for appreciation of language and history; a notion that, though gaining momentum, is undoubtedly obscured in our broader discussions of Australian identity. “It’s really sad that you don’t hear any Indigenous music on the mainstream radio – there are so many wonderful Indigenous artists who never get their voice heard. That’s Australian music to me. It’s raw and real … It’s sad, too, when people overseas are more curious about your culture than many back home. I travelled to Paris and Sweden to play and the reception was really wonderful. You almost feel a bit exotic. “One day I was visiting a friend in The Bronx in New York City. A woman called out to me and asked, ‘Where are you from, sister?’ I said, ‘I’m an Aboriginal woman from Australia.’ And she replied, ‘Oh my god, I thought Aboriginals were extinct there!’” What: ‘Ngarrukwujenama’ is out now

“WHEN I MOVED TO BRISBANE AS A CHILD,

I WAS A VERY LOST PERSON. I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WORLD I BELONGED IN.”

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FAIRLY GROTESQUE, OR AT LEAST CONFRONTING.”

FEATURE

“I TRY TO MAKE [MUSIC THAT IS]

Tim & The Boys:

What’s The Truth Anyway? Doug Wallen spends time in the company of Tim Collier, principal songwriter of the alternately curious and callous Tim & The Boys

f you like your punk hard to pin down – and often veering quite far from punk altogether – Tim & The Boys will be an exciting proposition. The Sydney trio’s debut album, Growing, is a drummachined curiosity that opens on a diffuse experimental note before doling out itchy faux-New Wave (‘White Guys’) and longer, slower dirges (‘Hear Us’), among other contrasts. By the time we reach the brooding post-punk of closer ‘Silent Room’, the band seems much evolved from their rawer, more overtly punk beginnings on the 2015 demo Hard Won. Despite that nebulous genre citizenship, frontman Tim Collier usually describes the band as ‘punk’ to people who haven’t heard it yet. “It’s the closest semblance to a label that makes sense,” he says, pointing out that he’d call Devo punk too.

“I THINK ONE OF THE MOST PROBLEMATIC AREAS OF SONGWRITING IS THIS IDEA THAT

EVERYTHING IS A SELFPORTRAIT.”

Growing is the first release for Sydney label Meatspin, whose founder Max Easton has contributed to the city’s underground music scene as a journalist and musician. Tim & The Boys settled on Meatspin while mixing the album, but when asked if being on a label in the same city made sense for the band, Collier laughs. “I don’t know that anything necessarily makes sense for us. Or that much of what we do makes any sense. It’s more having a bit of an idea and then going with our gut on a lot of things.”

That notion of chasing a vague idea from the outset gets to the very heart of the band, from their tongue-in-cheek lyrics to the sputtering Roland TR-505 drum machine that powers every song, despite Collier referring to it as a toy. “I constantly have nightmares about it not working,” he admits. “It takes six double-A batteries, so if you leave it on and don’t play a show for a week, it runs out of batteries. So I freak out about all the songs being erased, because the memory doesn’t have any access to power.” To that end, the band has been talking about buying another one to recreate all the songs on it as a backup. Collier starts out writing drum patterns on that not-so-trusty Roland – either on his own or with the band – before building up a catalogue of patterns that then inspires the actual songwriting process. “That’s how we’ve written pretty much every song,” he recalls. “Putting on a drum pattern and going, ‘What’s going to work?’ And carving our way towards the right thing.” Flanked by bassist Daniel Grosz (Dead Farmers) and guitarist Will Harley (Housewives), Collier sings and handles the drum machine and synth parts. He’s the focal point when the band plays live, which can lead to audience members wondering how seriously to take Tim & The Boys. Collier says the crowd response ranges from chin-scratching analysis to punk-y thrashing about.

“I had [someone] tell me it was really good dancing music,” he says. “That’s funny because I think about it more thematically. I try to make it fairly grotesque, or at least confronting.” Circling back to his earlier mention of Devo though, he concedes that a band can be danceable and subversive at the same time. “That’s a good place to start,” he agrees. “Not to be conclusively anything. If you can work from that and then fi nd something within a solid grey area, I think you’ve done a good job.” Launch shows are being planned for Growing in Sydney and beyond – but not until the vinyl has arrived. That said, the album is out digitally via Bandcamp, and you can hear Collier’s mischievous popculture reappropriation in the sample songs ‘Gary Glitter’s Eyes’ and ‘Hey’. There’s also an unabashed nod to a classic Cat Stevens tune in ‘First Cut’.

“It started as a way for us to joke about things,” explains Collier. “Then I started doing it intentionally as a way of not necessarily owning the intellectual property that I was presenting. I think one of the most problematic areas of songwriting is this idea that everything is a self-portrait, and that you’re constantly writing songs from your own perspective.” So when the band drops a few iconic Spice Girls lyrics in ‘Hey’, it becomes a potential talking point about how music is packaged and sold – in this case, the girl group’s 1996 smash ‘Wannabe’. “That song was written by a guy in the first place,” observes Collier, “and you think about the Spice Girls as a marketing tactic for record labels to sell feminism to teenage girls. All of a sudden it kind of reveals itself, because we made it disgusting.” More serious, though, is ‘Silent Room’, which he admits is one of the few songs he’s written about his own experiences, rather than some analysis or critique. It’s about his dog dying, and he gets emotional when singing it live – especially if his wife is in the room, because the lyrics came from conversations about losing their pet. Given the absurd edge of much of Growing, that late fling with autobiography could be Tim & The Boys’ biggest twist of all. “That’s part of the dynamic of the band,” he concludes. “All of these contrasts, all of these weird twists on what you might expect us to do.” To that end, the band members relish teasing out just how much to reveal in their songs. “What part do we want to stay a mystery? We have a lot of fun fi guring that out.” What: Growing is out now through Meatspin Records

LOT OF FUN FIGURING THAT OUT.” thebrag.com

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Belinda Quinn shoots the breeze with Carlotta Cosials of Spanish indie rock group Hinds.

he sun-soaked garage-pop of Madrid fourpiece Hinds often feels so brazen that it dances on the edge of the ear-piecing. Their songs are full of tales of lavish crushes and misleading ex-lovers, and their second record I Don’t Run stays true to the band’s signature unapologetic harshness; an unlikely mix that makes the Spanish goofballs so endearing and fun. Their desire to push the limits of sound meant the initial recording of bright single ‘The Club’ became so distorted that it was impossible for engineer Shawn Everett (Perfume Genius, The War On Drugs) to mix. Co-founder, vocalist and guitarist Carlotta Cosials explains this cheerily, clearly unafraid of the band’s imperfections. “I think people are gonna freak out when they hear it,” says Cosials of I Don’t Run through a thick accent. “We decided to just leave a month and a half free to vomit every sensation we’ve had during two years and write the album.” I Don’t Run moves through sad and swooning tracks like ‘Linda’ to the upbeat and self-critical ‘New For You’, combining the lo fi hazy vocals and slacker-pop of The Stokes with the confident flirtiness of April March and the straightforward lyricisms of Best Coast. Cosials says right now she’s inspired by Chicago’s Twin Peaks’ penchant for songwriting (they they toured with the band across the States): “We completely had a crush on each other,” she chirps.

Hinds photo by Neelam Khan Vela

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FEATURE

Hinds Living To Serve

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FEATURE

YOUR LIFE TO SERVE YOUR ART.” “YOU CAN CHOOSE

“WE DECIDED TO JUST

LEAVE A MONTH AND A HALF FREE TO VOMIT EVERY SENSATION WE’VE HAD

DURING TWO YEARS AND WRITE THE ALBUM.”

Hinds began as a two-piece called Deers in 2011 when Cosials and co-founder Ana Perrote became bored of watching their boyfriends play in bands. “We just started as two friends taking two guitars, singing over two chords and falling in love with the sensation – it was pretty easy though,” she explains. Cosial’s favourite haunt in Madrid is Orchoymedio, a venue she describes as a cross between a discotheque and a club, and it was long, boozy nights at indie venues in Madrid that solidified her passion for making music. “We came out of the garage scene in Madrid, because before having the band we were such music lovers and we went to all the shows you can imagine.” When asked if their male-dominated local scene was supportive during their emergence, Cosials shoots down the question. “No. No. Definitely not in Madrid. It was just intrusive for them. They were like, ‘What are these girls doing? They just started and they are going further than we’ve ever done.’” Hinds didn’t allow themselves to become stagnant, rushing around the world to play their third and forth shows in London and Berlin. “There’s, in my opinion, two different paths you can choose from. You can choose your life to serve your art – and we chose that one,” she says. They’ve since been propelled into a state of constant international touring. They were one of the first Spanish bands to play Glastonbury Festival and have shared the stage with The Strokes and The Libertines; having recently played SXSW in Austin, they’ll (finally) play Primavera Sound in Barcelona this year, one of Spain’s biggest music festivals, and plan a return to Australia in early 2019.

Perrote and Cosials turn a tender shared experience into a fun release of tension on the song, shouting the teasing antagonism: “Should I have known before you were also banging her?” It was in part producer Gordon Raphael (The Strokes, Regina Spektor) who empowered them to access different sides of themselves. “He made different takes in different moods,” she explains. “Like, this take is going to be the funny one, and this take we’re going to do like, more angry or more furious so you can investigate and you can discover what is better.” Hinds have a strong DIY ethos, making their own merch and videos, so Raphael gave them space to be themselves. I Don’t Run shows their fearless ability to dive head first into their problems. They sing “I wanna show you it’s cool to grow up” on ‘The Club’, a song “about the saddest and darkest part of the nights in Madrid … We have a lot of friends that are getting lost into the night.” They’ve spoken out about sexual harassment in a campaign with Madrid City Council, which she says was met with “a lot of love and a lot of hate … [but] we just wanted to do it for ourselves.” And while their songs often reference romance, their friendship is at the front and centre of Hinds. “When we were playing in the middle of Europe in a festival that we really didn’t belong to, and it’s raining and it’s cold, suddenly you look around you and see your friends and it feels so good; like, ‘Dude, we’re here together.’” Hinds photo by Alberto Van Stokkum

While their debut record Leave Me Alone was mainly made up of loose party bangers, I Don’t Run centres around the trials of growing up. “We decided to be more honest and to be braver and more straight with things that are going on. I think that’s why I Don’t Run is deeper than Leave Me Alone. As an artist you see good things and bad things; things that you could be proud of and things that you could be ashamed of,” explains Cosials.

One of the album’s highlights is the pulsing, angry and cheeky ‘Tester.’ When the song is brought up, Cosials responds with a shudder and cries ‘bleeeergh!’ “[It’s about] a moment in a relationship that isn’t a relationship yet, but suddenly you realise that person is fucking with another person and you’re not the only one so it’s kind of like a shocking moment.”

What: I Don’t Run is out Friday April 6 through Inertia

“WE DECIDED TO BE

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THE NEW SINGLE A pelvis swinging slice of gnarly power-pop rock with vocals so saucy they make ketchup seem like mere water. NME

AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE FROM MARCH 2ND SSHHMUSIC thebrag.com

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Hop Along:

Untangled Minds Belinda Quinn learns the complications of artistic expression with Frances Quinlan, one of Philly’s most prolific musicians.

“W

hen you feel like someone has seen you and then rejected you, what could be more heartbreaking than that?” Frances Quinlan wants to know. The musician and bandleader of indie rock revivalists Hop Along is talking through the band’s deeply personal nine-track Bark Your Head Off, Dog, an album that might well be their most delicate, revealing and direct work to date. It’s a cold, rainy night at Headroom, her bandmates’ studio, and Quinlan has just finished up recording back-up vocals for Thin Lips. She’s explaining the feeling of being exposed after queried on the vulnerable lyric in ‘How Simple’: “how simple my heart can be, frightens me.” She mulls it over for a second. “I want to connect with people and I still feel that I want to be understood, but there is a humiliating aspect to that.”

Quinlan describes feeling small and summed-up; each question triggers a complex thought-cycle unravelling within her. There’s a certain curiosity and warmth to Quinlan that I’m yet to see in an artist before her. While to one ear her style of singing might sound derailed, to another it breaks in all the right moments. Moving from raspy shrieks to buttery croons, her voice is an arrow meeting its target with near-perfect expressive accuracy. “Every time I’m a part of making a record, the biggest challenge for me is the permanence of the piece,” she explains. “Being at peace with my performance and feeling that it is a good enough representation is always a huge struggle.” She’s spent the past two years patiently tidying her thoughts in order to build Bark Your Head Off, Dog. This dedication, particularly when

“EVERY TIME I’M A PART OF MAKING A RECORD, THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE FOR ME IS

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FEATURE

“I WANT TO CONNECT WITH PEOPLE AND I STILL FEEL THAT I WANT TO BE UNDERSTOOD, BUT THERE IS A HUMILIATING ASPECT TO THAT.” combined with the band’s apt musical and technical skill, is what sets Hop Along apart from other folkrock and indie bands. “They were so eloquent at interpreting what I had to say,” she says of her bandmates. Influenced by Flannery O’Connor’s satirically dark writing, Quinlan’s lyrics are more akin to short fiction; Bark Your Head Off, Dog ties together imagery of pale banshees, biblical references to fratricide and ever-relatable reflections on heartbreak. “The lyrics I do all on my own; that’s a very solitary act,” she says. “A lot of the songs writing-wise were collaged together from all sorts of sessions.” Indeed, the band’s poppiest track to date, ‘How Simple’, was originally written for a coming of age fi lm. “I wanted it to be accessible. Some of my writing can be ultrapersonal and pretty strange and dark. I just thought, well, you know, singing about a relationship ending; it’s pretty universal.” Soon, her thoughts take a sharp turn and she explains how the characterisation of women in fi ction she read growing up let her down: “I read stories that were mostly written by men and the women characters, I just didn’t relate to them at all.” She picks at their recurring traits: they were indecisive, passionless, designed to serve the male characters she related to more. “I think I distanced myself to such a degree that I thought I was even above women I knew at a younger age. I mean, I’m really beginning to realise my own sexism over the last decade,” Quinlan explains. “I think a lot of women think that by virtue of their sex that they’re not in anyway participating in sexism, but I’ve realised in recent years my…” She breaks to sigh. “I guess my innate hostility and anger towards the fact that I was born a woman.” Her interpretation of her lyrics are in constant flux: “[‘How Simple’] already means something different to me now than it did when I started writing it two years ago … By the time you’ve made [a song], you’ve changed.

“FOR THIS RECORD

I WANTED TO BE A LITTLE MORE DELIBERATE.”

“And people aren’t going to understand you if you don’t explain [yourself] to them,” Quinlan says. “For the longest time, in any record I have made in the past, I have not quite known how to express what I mean, even with my solo work. I had an idea of the feeling I wanted to convey but I just did not have the skills to do that.” While proud of Hop Along’s second album Painted Shut, she still feels that sense of incommunicability. “The solo version of demos for songs on that record are very strange. I mean, when I go back to them, I totally forgot how they used to sound. For this record I wanted to be a little more deliberate: ‘How should the song sound?’ and ‘what needs to be here?’ I was far more thoughtful.”

Over the past few years, Hop Along (which includes her brother Mark Quinlan), have toured the States relentlessly, allowing Quinlan to grow and write more complex arrangements. “I never consider myself a guitar player. I mean no one’s gonna hit me up to play guitar on their record,” she says. But the growth of her technical skills, she says, “created more space for everyone else to express themselves too by virtue of just my being better.” Bark Your Head was self-produced by the band and engineered by their guitarist Joe Reinhart and Kyle Pulley at Headroom. “It is rigorous,” she says of their recording process. “Even though we had that extra time there was still so much we wanted to add that we were still, as usual, up all night the very final night of recording just adding whatever we could think of.” They left room to include strings and a wider breadth of instrumentation, deciding not to worry about how they would present the record to a live audience. As a result, a significant difference between Painted Shut and Bark is that the band’s focus lent more towards mood, rather than specific energies. “We wanted to be subtle enough to let the melody convey what we meant,” she says. When asked how the two concepts differ, she explains, “Well, I think energy is very immediate. And I think you can hear right away when someone is angry or hysterical or aggressive, and you know, that’s an easy thing to convey with sound: now it’s quiet, now it’s loud! Whereas mood, it just requires more.” Rather than relying on dynamics, the band implemented a wider use of tools and would ask whether a section needed to be “tense” or “snappy.” Philly is home to a plethora of bands with strong DIY roots – Modern Baseball, The War On Drugs, Cayetanya and Sheer Mag are just a few of the bands that have shot out of its various scenes. This year will mark a decade since Quinlan moved to the rainy city with her brother, who’s now married and has a daughter. Over the years she’s been a dog walker and a dishie, but her longest running career started when she was 14 and she began painting houses for her Aunt’s business, which is largely comprised of women painters. “A lot of the jobs I’ve had for money, I’ve not been among the top people there.” She laughs. “But making music and just writing in general, doing these things, these are moments that I actually feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be.” When asked what drives her to make music, she takes a moment to think. “Generally, it’s the feeling of not having said what I meant to . What is it with human beings and a sense of purpose? I mean everybody needs that.” What: Bark Your Head Off, Dog is out Friday April 6 through Saddle Creek / Remote Control

“WHAT IS IT WITH HUMAN BEINGS

AND A SENSE OF PURPOSE? I MEAN EVERYBODY NEEDS THAT.” thebrag.com

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“SOMETIMES I STRUGGLE EVEN NOW, AND I’M DOING EVERYTHING THAT I BLOODY WANT TO DO.”

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And The Sound Of The Future By Joseph Earp

ade Bird has found a ping pong table. She’s meant to be upstairs, filming an interview at BRAG HQ, but she and her team have managed to lose themselves in the building, and have burst into a completely different office space, which contains, amongst other things, a long, blue ping pong table. And there she is, beaming, sending tiny orange balls flying across the room while her friends and colleagues look on happily. In some ways, this feels like an apt metaphor for the young singer-songwriter’s career to date. With her rich, classically trained voice, and her warm, confessional lyrics, there’s an alternate universe out there where Bird is a popstar in the Lorde or Selena Gomez vein – a musician who makes the kind of silky, electro beats that consistently seem to dominate the charts these days. But in our world, Bird is no glitchy chanteuse – she is a country artist in the purest, most unfettered use of that word; a Ryan Adams type, or a Lucinda Williams, with an exceptional ear when it comes to robust, full-throttle choruses. Indeed, so powerful is her unique set of creative gifts, that stardom does not seem far off at all for the 20-year-old; she’s already toured with the likes of First Aid Kit and Son Little, and has impressed at Austin’s own SXSW two years in a row. Make no mistake – she knows where she’s going, and she’ll get there too. She’s just taking an alternate route, and, crucially, having fun while she’s there; turning a brief stop in an unfamiliar office space into an opportunity to hone her ping pong skills, and to live her best life. The BRAG: What’s your proudest accomplishment? Jade Bird: Getting an album together. We’ve almost got it together now, so composing and putting the album together – that’s something to be proud of. And I think being able to keep holding onto myself throughout the process; that’s really something too. What inspired you to become a musician in the first place? I just ended up doing it – like when I started playing the guitar, it was just a channel for what I was feeling at the time. It kinda just happened. And I love performing – I think I discovered that when I started gigging when I was 14. I love people, I love music, so it’s the perfect match. But it feels almost accidental. And you were never nervous about playing live? Oh yeah. I used to get the shakes. I’d be playing my grandma’s old guitar and I’d be like, ‘Oh god.’ But I still get nervous now when I’m playing big shows. It’s a nervous energy that I enjoy in a way. It’s a bit sadistic. Is it a generalised fear, or is it a fear of something going wrong onstage? I’m a perfectionist, and I do not like mucking up onstage. I work as hard as possible to make sure I don’t. So the fear is kind of people not enjoying it as much as you want them to. But I mean, touch wood, everything has gone well so far. What tends to inspire your songs? It can be anything, really. I mean I work with words, obviously, so it can even come out of something like a conversation. I landed in Germany once, and I said something about “always bringing the rain”. So I’ll write down a line like that, and then wait a while until it works itself into a song. And it can be things like books, as well. I’ll find a word that I love – it’ll just speak to me. But it can almost be spiritual as well. Sometimes a line will just pop into my head. So it can be all different things. You’ve just got to look for it. And then do you sit down and go, ‘I’m going to write a song today’ or does it have to be more impulsive? It’s a bit of both. I force myself to write. Like, at the beginning of this month, I went back to writing a song a day because I was worried that I wasn’t writing as much. But with ‘Lottery’, that was quite spontaneous. You can never put a formula on creativity; I think that’s why I really like it. It’s different every single time.

FEATURE

Jade Bird

“I LOVE PERFORMING – I THINK I DISCOVERED THAT WHEN I STARTED GIGGING WHEN I WAS 14.

I LOVE PEOPLE, I LOVE MUSIC, SO IT’S THE PERFECT MATCH.”

If it was a job, and it was the same every day, it could get pretty dull. Exactly. And that’s exactly why I’m doing what I do. There’s a spontaneity to it; a magic that I hold very dear. If you weren’t a musician, what would you be doing with your life? Well, I was never daft when I was at school. I was never stupid. So I think I was like, ‘I want to be a criminal lawyer’ when I was about seven. I had images of being in court going, ‘Guilty!’ I was very dictatorial even when I was young. But it would have been awful, and I doubt I would have been very happy. I mean, sometimes I struggle even now, and I’m doing everything that I bloody want to do. Does this feel like everything? Like, this is all you’ve ever wanted? It’s everything and more. I’m not even being cliched about it. That’s why I’ve worked so bloody hard to make sure that I can keep doing this for as long as I can do it. That’s why I write so many songs, and I gig as much as I do, and get on the 25-hour flights and don’t complain about it. Because I do really appreciate how lucky I am.

“THAT’S WHY I WRITE SO MANY SONGS, AND I GIG AS MUCH AS I DO, AND GET ON THE 25-HOUR FLIGHTS AND DON’T COMPLAIN ABOUT IT.

BECAUSE I DO REALLY APPRECIATE HOW LUCKY I AM.”

It’s about being able to put your creative vision across. I mean, I’m quite resistant to calling myself an artist – it feels like that’s something you’ve got to earn in a way. But I guess I do have a thirst for knowledge, and the desire to grow. And just being able to travel the world and play my music and create albums – it’s just it. For someone like me, it’s all there is. So making an album was always the dream? My biggest aspiration is to create a really great album. You know what I mean? One of the records that really stands the test of time. And who knows if we’ll be able to get that on the first try. We’ll see. But that is definitely the biggest goal. And it’s always been that way? Were you into music when you were very young? Growing up, my parents were into different music than I’m into now. They liked dance music and stuff like that. But I remember really loving music when I was at my saddest, when I was younger. I had the songs that I used to cry to. And then after that I found Bob Dylan, and lots of the blues musicians I listen to now. I love that moment when you find a song that you wish you’d written. There’s one by Chris Stapleton called ‘You Should Probably Leave’ and that is a bloody great song. I just heard it, and it clicked. And I do it for those moments. You want to write those songs; the songs that just mean so much to people. You do it for yourself, almost. What: ‘Lottery’ is out now through Liberator Music / Glassnote Records

“YOU CAN NEVER PUT A FORMULA ON CREATIVITY; I THINK THAT’S WHY I REALLY LIKE IT. IT’S DIFFERENT EVERY SINGLE TIME.”

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FEATURE

“I SAW THESE TALENTED PEOPLE – ACTORS, MUSICIANS AND DANCERS – AND I THOUGHT

I WOULD LIKE TO DO THAT.”

Seu Jorge:

Bowie Reborn Natalie Rogers learns that Brazilian folk legend Seu Jorge has lived a life shaped by love, death, and dance

ike so many musical icons, Jorge Mário da Silva (perhaps better known by his moniker Seu Jorge), has led a colourful life, one rich with experience. Born in Belford Roxo, just outside Rio de Janeiro, he grew up in the favelas. By the age of 10 he began working odd jobs to help support his parents and three brothers, but his love for music and dance – especially the samba – was obvious from an early age. “Growing up in Brazil music was all about dancing and the rhythm: samba, soul and funk,” he says. “I was never really into rock ‘n’ roll.” A gifted performer, Jorge would regularly stay out late, singing at clubs across Rio. In 1989, at the age of 19, he became homeless – not that such a setback did any damage to his career. He continued to make a name for himself among the local dance halls until a fateful night in 1990 that would cement his determination to succeed. “My brother was killed and I knew I had nothing more to lose,” he explains, simply.

“THREE DAYS AFTER BOWIE PASSED AWAY MY FATHER PASSED AWAY ALSO, SO I DECIDED TO DO

A TRIBUTE TO BOWIE.”

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Taken under the wing of Brazilian music legend Paulo Moura and his nephew, the composer and performer Gabriel Moura, Jorge learned to play guitar, auditioned for a musical, and worked tirelessly to become a cross-cultural artist with the discography and film credits that would later propel him to superstar status. “I saw these talented people – actors, musicians and dancers – and I thought I would like to do that.” At around the same time, almost 10,000 kilometres away, David Robert Jones – David Bowie to his mates – had just left his New Romantic-era behind to form rock four-piece Tin Machine. So in retrospect, it’s bizarre that Jorge and Jones’ paths would ever cross, or that their lives and music would be forever linked thanks to the vision of one American director. “I never really knew much about Bowie growing up; most of the musicians I listened to were black,” he says. “I remember in the ’80s – his song ‘Let’s Dance’ – and I saw him as an actor in a couple of roles.” By 2002, Jorge had released one solo album, Samba Esporte Fino and one with his band, Farofa Carioca, Moro No Brasil in 1998. But it was during this time that he captured the imagination of critics and viewers alike, thanks to his break-out role of Knockout Ned in Fernando Meirelles’ City Of God. “Soon after that Wes [Anderson] called

“MY BROTHER WAS KILLED

AND I KNEW I HAD NOTHING MORE TO LOSE.”

me about playing in a movie for him. He started talking about doing some versions of David Bowie’s classics. I confessed to him I’d never heard these songs before,” Jorge laughs. “Songs like ‘Rebel Rebel’, ‘Changes’ and ‘Ziggy Stardust’.” Anderson knew Jorge was the perfect fit for the role of the singing sailor Pelé dos Santos in his star-studded masterpiece The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, despite the fact Jorge has admitted to barely speaking English at the time. “When I got this opportunity to do this movie with the great director Wes Anderson, side by side with so many amazing actors like Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett and Willem Dafoe, it was awesome, you know? “It was a highlight of my career for sure,” he adds. “The big challenge for me was to perform all those classic songs, especially without the equipment you need to record. I was just alone with my guitar. It was a lot of work, but I had a lot of fun too.” The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou went on to win a slew of awards, and the resulting soundtracks continue to convert Bowie fans to Brazilian music and vice versa, much to Jorge’s surprise. “I never played these songs after shooting the movie because I never expected that Wes was going to release an album,” he explains. “He asked me all the time while we were

shooting the film to record a session for him but I didn’t think he would use the recording, except as part of the movie, but he did.” Indeed, Anderson did so twice. In 2004, the original soundtrack was released – then a year later The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions – Featuring Seu Jorge was dropped. “I first discovered the album in 2005 when I was playing at Coachella – that was a huge surprise for me,” he says. “A lot of people wanted me to perform the album. It has a strong connection over two generations. Young people really connect to my songs with their older brother, sister or father. They bond over my covers. It’s so beautiful to see.” Only after Bowie’s untimely death did Jorge feel compelled to play his acoustic re-stylings for a large audience. “Three days after Bowie passed away my father passed away also, so I decided to do a tribute to Bowie. It was a really big honour to do a tribute to this icon who has brought so much joy and pleasure into the world, and it’s very flattering.” Before Bowie lost his battle with liver cancer, he praised Jorge’s reimaginings, calling them a “new level of beauty”. Australians feel the same way about Jorge’s work, evidently. “I have a connection with the people in Australia. I wish my dad could see me.”

“YOUNG PEOPLE REALLY CONNECT TO MY SONGS WITH THEIR OLDER BROTHER, SISTER OR FATHER. THEY BOND OVER MY COVERS. IT’S SO

BEAUTIFUL TO SEE.”

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aperfectcircle.com

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the new album OUT APRIL 20 BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18 :: 59

FEATURE

“MY DAD WAS IN A COVER BAND, FUNNILY ENOUGH.”

The Iron Maidens:

Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter One of the world’s most unique tribute acts are making their way to Australia for the first time ever. David James Young ran to the hills to talk about the evil that women do with guitarist Nikki Stringfield

aised in a heavily musical household, Nikki Stringfield latched onto tunage from an early age. “My dad was in a cover band, funnily enough,” says the 27-year-old guitarist. “In that band, they’d play Iron Maiden songs – I’d see them play stuff like ‘Flight Of Icarus’ and ‘Wasted Years’. I got into it early – when I started playing guitar as a kid, ‘Two Minutes to Midnight’ was one of the first riffs that I learned how to play. I loved them – I found them so inspiring.” Fast forward to the present day and Stringfield has found herself in the fold of The Iron Maidens, a heavy metal group billed as the world’s only all-female Iron Maiden tribute band. Originally forming in 2001 with a different troupe of women, the band has carried on for over 15 years with different iterations and members. Stringfield is the most recent, having entered the group back in 2015 after serving as a guest

player for a run of shows. “They needed a guitarist, and I did a few rehearsals with them,” says Stringfield.

of the act, Stringfield is not only across every Maiden song you can think of, but also the mannerisms of the band itself.

“I remember getting grilled by [vocalist] Kirsten [Rosenberg, AKA Bruce Chickinson]. She asked me, ‘Do you even like Iron Maiden?’ First of all, who doesn’t like Iron Maiden? Second of all, how could you be in a tribute band and not love the music? The funny thing is that if you go and see my old YouTube videos I did when I was in high school, you can see a poster for [Iron Maiden’s 1981 album] Killers up on my wall. There’s no denying it!”

“We pull up the videos, we go see them live and we pay close attention to how they play,” she says. “Obviously, we don’t have the same budget as those guys. Still, we like to think that we get as close as we can. Courtney [Cox, guitarist] have been doing this for so long, we instinctively know how to plan out each guitar part – every time we learn a new song, it’s more or less instinctive.”

Under the stage name of Davina Murray, Stringfield is responsible for replicating the blistering solos that come part and parcel with Maiden’s hits. Of course, it’s not just about the songs – an Iron Maidens performance is about getting as close as the band can to the full-scale live performance itself. Through being a part

Through being a part of The Iron Maidens, Stringfield and co. have gotten the opportunity to tour across the world and play to fans that are just as crazy about Maiden as they are. “When we went to play in Colombia, that was actually my first time ever leaving the US,” says Stringfield. “We spend more time on the road now than we do at home.”

“WE PULL UP [IRON MAIDEN] VIDEOS, WE GO SEE THEM LIVE AND

“EVERY TIME WE LEARN A NEW SONG,

IT’S MORE OR LESS INSTINCTIVE.” The band will make their – ahem – maiden voyage to Australia in May, playing a run of club shows that have been long-awaited by both local fans and the Maidens themselves. “It’s funny... [drummer] Linda [McDonald, AKA Nikki McBurrain] and I were talking in the car while we were over in Europe,” says Stringfield. “We were saying how I’ve been to a new country every year since I joined the band, and how I really wanted to do Australia and New Zealand. Literally that afternoon, Linda yells at me and is like, ‘NIKKI! Did you see the email? It’s happening!’ I just couldn’t believe it. I still have to pinch myself that we get to do things like that.” Where: Manning Bar When: Thursday May 31

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FEATURE

Superchunk:

Of The Moment Doug Wallen and Mac McCaughan of Superchunk talk the election of Donald Trump, creative blocks and other maladies

t hasn’t been easy to get Mac McCaughan on the phone. Between fronting his veteran indie rock band, Superchunk, and his daily role at Merge Records, the label he co-founded decades ago with bandmate Laura Ballance, McCaughan is flat out right now. But he’s beaming nonetheless, having just come off the first clutch of dates for Superchunk’s fiery, of-the-moment new album, What A Time To Be Alive. “I tend to think the internet ruins everything,” he quips, half-joking, “[but] if you stream the album a week before it comes out, people know the songs right away.” That leads to more satisfying gigs for the band, which includes guitarist Jim Wilbur, bassist Ballance and drummer Jon Wurster – though these days Jason Narducy tours in place of Ballance. The band, who last played Australia in 2013 and would love to come back again soon, are famously high-energy live.

But it’s not just an advance stream that’s burnt these songs into fans’ brains. What A Time To Be Alive is one of the catchiest, most direct and more memorable records in a career that’s been defined by those qualities. Formed in 1989 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina – a vibrant Southern college town that

they’ve helped to enshrine as an indie mecca – Superchunk put out raw and punky classics like No Pocky fFor Kitty and On The Mouth through Matador before releasing 1994’s watershed Foolish themselves via Merge. After eight strong LPs, they sat out most of the ’00s before returning with 2010’s invigorated Majesty Shredding. Galvanised by Trump’s election win, McCaughan wrote most of the new songs between November 2016 and February 2017. He and the band render them with buzzing immediacy, right from the sugar-high hook that opens the album. Driven by acidic commentary and lean forward motion, just one of the songs cracks the four-minute mark, and the hardcore-slanted ‘Cloud Of Hate’ ends after a blurted 74 seconds. “The energy of the songs as they were written lent themselves to short, fast song structures,” confirms McCaughan, who says a new Superchunk record wasn’t even in the cards until these songs came pouring out. “[But] once I had the songs written – and they were written pretty quickly – it made sense not to sit on it. Like, let’s get this out while it’s fresh.” While he concedes that the album doesn’t vary as much as usual in

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“SOMETIMES SAYING

‘FUCK YOU’ IS JUST WHAT YOU NEED TO SAY.”

terms of tempo and texture, “this just felt right to be a loud-guitars-andshort-songs kind of record.” It’s the first Superchunk LP in more than 20 years without keyboards and, unlike the past couple of records, McCaughan didn’t take the studio recordings home to flesh out with dubs. Reuniting with engineer Beau Sorenson, who worked on 2013’s I Hate Music, the band did tap backing vocalists like Stephen Merritt (The Magnetic Fields), Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) and David Bazan. For McCaughan, who also has a long-running solo outlet in Portastatic and released the 2015 album NonBelievers under his own name, it was clear where these new songs would land. “They were so guitar-focused,” he recalls, “and had the energy of a Superchunk record. One of the luxuries about being in a band for this long is that it’s easy for me to imagine what a song is going to sound like with Superchunk playing it.” But does that muscle memory sometimes make it hard not to repeat yourself? “Our guard is always up for something that sounds rote,” says McCaughan. “And it always has been, which is why we’ve chosen to make records with [producer] Jim O’Rourke or records that were more keyboard-heavy, like [2001’s] Here’s To Shutting Up. So we always try to make things different, just for our own interest and so we don’t make the same record over and over again. At the same time, I think that stepping

away for a few years allowed us to see what our strengths are. It allowed us to embrace them without repeating ourselves.” Except for album closer ‘Black Thread’, which starts more slowly with acoustic guitar, much of What a Time To Be Alive harks back to Superchunk’s punchy, unpolished early years. “Since the beginning,” explains McCaughan, “we’ve recognised what’s been influencing us. Bands like the Buzzcocks and Hüsker Dü that combine this punky energy and really good songs, as well as a wider range of stuff like the Flying Nun catalogue. That really hasn’t changed – it’s just that obviously as people you change, and as a band you hopefully get better and learn how to do different things, while naturally incorporating those influences.” Songs like ‘Lost My Brain’ and ‘Reagan Youth’ are especially pointed, rivalling 1990’s defining anthem ‘Slack Motherfucker’ for sheer angst-ridden catharsis. “I was definitely aware that lyrics that are too on-the-nose are boring,” he says. “Or preaching to the choir. It’s not something that’s very interesting to listen to. I think the key is that there’s a personal angle on it that differentiates it from more pedantic or just obvious takes on something.” Cue a subtler song like ‘Dead Photographers’, which tackles both mortality and the consumption of art. For Superchunk, who long ago honed their eruptive, mouthy indie rock to a razor-sharp edge, there’s always a balance between ire and articulation. “There are moments,” admits McCaughan, “when you can find humour in saying something in the most plain way. Sometimes saying ‘fuck you’ is just what you need to say. But you can’t say it all the time, because that would be boring.” What: What A Time To Be Alive is out now through Merge/Rocket

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lle Graham takes everything in. The musician known as Woodes might have only just walked into a sleepy café in Redfern, but it’s quickly apparent that she has already clocked all that she needs to – she has noticed this reporter’s notebook, hidden behind a carafe of water; she’s already decided what she wants to order from the drinks menu; and she seems to immediately know the best way to position her chair so she gets the most amount of afternoon sun. Her work boasts the same absolute attention to detail – songs like ‘Dots’ and ‘Flash Mob’ are precise, carefully realised tunes of self-actualisation, and her new EP Golden Hour is as cutting as crystal. She has an ear for emotional honesty all too rare in contemporary pop; she means every word she sings. And then there’s the matter of her voice, which, like a liquid, expands to fill the container in which it is housed; all encompassing, it’s both ethereal and deeply, recognisably real. When, she sings about love, as on ‘Origami’, she is not singing about some intangible romance, but about something inescapably physical; about love as a kind of ache; a wanting. She is in that way one of those most unique of artists – a true original. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. The BRAG: How do you feel playing smaller gigs? Is it scary? Woodes: It’s not so scary if the people there are your mum and your auntie; people that you know. [Laughs.] And in some ways if it’s a smaller audience that means it’s a more dedicated audience. If they’ve come early for the opener, they’re looking out for you. And even if there are only a couple of people there, I’m lucky that I’m playing with my mates. You can create your own energy that way. And that’s also pretty good when you’re having bad shows – it means you can say to your [bandmates], ‘Yeah, that was pretty strange.’ But if you do it by yourself it’s more like, ‘Am I strange?’

“I THINK AT THE BEGINNING I WAS JUST ALWAYS HONOURED THAT

PEOPLE WANTED TO MAKE MUSIC WITH ME.” We released ‘The Thaw’ which was I guess my first song that was written from a writing session – I worked on it with Blanks. He plays guitar, and that was what was best for the song. And then when it came time to play it, I thought we’d put guitar in the backing track. So I got in touch with my friend Hayden [Jeffery] who I went to uni with and asked him if he wanted to play. I was like, ‘Let’s jam and see if you can play this part and what this feels like.’ Then even a few hours into that, I just asked him; I was like, ‘Can you come on the Dustin Tebbutt tour with me?’ which I had only just confirmed. It just felt right. Then we had the tour together. And it was just the two of us, stuck in a car with my parents, driving from Sydney to Canberra. That was our first travelling experience together. But we had a pre-existing network together. We knew how we wanted to work together; we had a sense that we shared an idea about how we wanted music to sound. And now we’ve been together as a band for over a year, so we know how we sound together.

Have you always felt comfortable about performing? No. That’s fairly new. I think adding other members onstage has been really good. I used to ramble and then feel like I was being a big dork. But these days I’m embracing that. With some of my favourite artists, I’ll go see them play the exact same show twice just so I can see different banter. So I feel like people like that.

Woodes photo by Andy Hatton

When did you decide to bring in other band members to play with?

Woo Knows Exa “WOODES BECAME SOMETHING THAT

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WASN’T JUST A HOBBY. thebrag.com

I think at the beginning I was just always honoured that people wanted to make music with me. I wanted to test my production skills and my approach to making music; I wanted to fi ne-tune my process. And then through that I had to learn how to communicate that with other people in a way that was constructive and creative. It’s all learning. That must be fun though right, the learning? Oh yeah. That’s everything, the process. There’s so much learning going on. Sometimes too much – I’m like, ‘Ooft, that was a brutal thing to learn.’ [Laughs.] Independent music is an interesting path to take. But it’s rewarding. And because of [how hard it can be], you have to love it. You just have to. It’s a thing about passion. Was there a moment when you decided you wanted music to be a career rather than just a hobby? For sure. I’ve always wanted to make music for a career. I used to think I wanted to be a music supervisor, or work in soundtracks; I used to do a lot of instrumental production for fashion videos and did some runway things. I was into that, and also started making Woodes while I was at uni. But I remember this Grimes interview – she was like, ‘I’m my own CEO.’ For her, Grimes isn’t just music; it’s about directing, producing, being a studio engineer, being a stylist. And I remember thinking, ‘That sounds really fun if you know how to make it work.’ So I started making a business plan – like a three year, fi ve year plan – and I presented it to my now business manager. He was like, ‘Heck yeah, let’s do it.’ So it was very intentional. But there always is a whole bunch of stuff that comes up that you never expect.

“EVEN IF THERE ARE ONLY A COUPLE OF PEOPLE THERE,

FEATURE

Was it hard to fi nd a common sense of creative ground like that?

I’M LUCKY THAT I’M PLAYING WITH MY MATES. YOU CAN CREATE YOUR OWN ENERGY THAT WAY.”

I did always know I wanted it to be a career. But I didn’t know – I mean, I still don’t know – how that might work in the long term. I’m not sure where I am going to end up. Although I have learnt how small the music industry is. So many of my favourite artists are really flexible in terms of working and collaborating with other people – it’s not just about being performer or a recording artist, it’s about working across a lot of disciplines. And that’s the exciting part for me. Because you have no idea where any of that is going. You don’t know if Lorde will be touring and playing pop music in ten years time. She’ll probably be owning it doing whatever she eventually decides to do. It must take a lot of confidence going, ‘This is my three year plan.’ Did you ever doubt yourself? No. I just needed to set some goals. Woodes became something that wasn’t just a hobby. I needed to know how much of my money and time I was investing in it. I guess with any business you look at the three years before you make a profit or whatever. So having some set parameters to gauge success – to understand if you’re doing the right thing – that’s helpful. I couldn’t just ride the wave; I’m not that kind of thinker. Although it would probably be nice to just chill out. [Laughs.] What: Golden Hour is out now independently

des ctly What She Wants By Joseph Earp

I NEEDED TO KNOW HOW MUCH OF MY MONEY AND TIME I WAS INVESTING IN IT.” thebrag.com

BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18 :: 65

FEATURE

Tom Lyngcoln:

Head Space The Nation Blue frontman talks discomfort, distortion and disturbing his grandma with David James Young

om Lyngcoln has just clocked off from work when he picks up his phone. The 39-year-old singer, songwriter, and guitarist runs a carpentry business out of a workshop on the Mornington Peninsula, commuting from south Melbourne every day. “It’s a family property – they’ve been out there since the ’70s,” he says. “I’ve worked here on and off for the better part of my whole life, and I’ve been running it for about the last 10 years.” He’s happy to discuss business and family and other small talk, but Lyngcoln’s tone definitely shifts into a more apprehensive one as the very purpose of the interview is broached. “This is weird,” he confesses. “I’m talking about something I’ve actively avoided doing for a very, very long time.” Said thing is Doming Home, Lyngcoln’s debut solo LP. It’s literally solo, too – there’s nothing more than Lyngcoln’s haunting voice and the buzz of his electric guitar to guide the 11 original songs on offer. Having cut his teeth at the helm of bands such as The Nation Blue, Harmony, and Pale Heads, there’s absolutely a curiosity pertaining to the how and why of releasing Doming Home. “I was playing solo sets in the front bars of a few pubs in Melbourne, just to try and stay active,” Lyngcoln begins. “I’ll be honest – playing solo makes me very uncomfortable. I guess doing it more was me trying to learn something; trying to get better at it. I was just playing a bunch of Nation Blue and Harmony songs at these gigs, but a lot of those songs are a bit too hard to play solo. It just wouldn’t cut it. That’s when I started writing songs specifically to perform at these residencies and these shows. 11 songs later, here we are.” Doming Home opens with ‘Gemini Orion’, which makes for quite the compelling headphones listen. The stereo mix has Lyngcoln’s vocals emerging from the low end of the left pan, moving closer to the centre as the song progresses. It’s almost as if Lyngcoln is entering the room as he’s singing – probably because he literally was. “Yeah, that’s exactly how it was done,” Lyngcoln confirms with a laugh. “It was actually pretty complicated. There’s a lot of physics involved there; a lot of microphone techniques and that sort of stuff. It’s pretty elaborate for what is ostensibly just a dickhead walking into a room. I just thought it would be a nice introduction – a big entrance.” The recording process for the song, however, didn’t come without its setbacks. “I had this ongoing argument with my grandma,” says Lyngcoln. Yes, really. “I was recording at the family home which she still occupies, and my singing was interrupting her watching the dog race in the next room. What should have only taken a couple of goes ended up being the better part of a couple of hours.” Not that Lyngcoln was going to step up to gran anytime soon: “She’s a fiery, 94-year-old Irishwoman,” he says. “She even kicked me out at one

“I’M TALKING ABOUT SOMETHING

I’VE ACTIVELY AVOIDED DOING

FOR A VERY, VERY LONG TIME.”

“THERE’S THIS DOMESTIC HUM

THAT’S PICKED UP ON ALL THE RECORDINGS; YOU CAN JUST HEAR IT IN THE BACK. I LIKE THAT IT SIMMERS AROUND THE EDGES OF THESE SONGS.” point! I had to find somewhere else to record the last two songs on the property.” On the album credits for Doming Home, Lyngcoln is credited with recording and mixing the record himself “in lunch breaks.” While still running the aforementioned carpentry business, Lyngcoln was indeed taking his spare time and putting it towards recording the album out in the Peninsula. “A lot of it was recorded there in the living room,” he recalls. “I quite liked it, even though there was always traffic going past. If anything, all of that added to it – there’s this domestic hum that’s picked up on all the recordings; you can just hear it in the back. I like that it simmers around the edges of these songs.” The album is named after a term Lyngcoln has coined for his own brain. Everything you hear on the record is based on his own thoughts, visions from his dreams, stories from the past... all swimming around his shaved head. “I’ve got a big, beaten-up dome of a head,” he says, snickering. “That’s the cover photo! It’s just the brutal reality of my face and what I’ve done to it over 20 years.” Since the release of the album a few weeks ago, fans have been sending Lyngcoln photos of them doing a “record face” – the tried-andtested gag of placing an album cover donning the artist’s headshot over your own face. “It’s just bloody tourism, mate,” Lyngcoln quips sarcastically. “They don’t have to live with this face! I’ve had a couple of mates get their kids to do it, too – surely that counts as child abuse?” With Doming Home out in the world, Lyngcoln now draws his attention to dreaded solo shows. This will include a visit to Sydney at the end of April, in which Lyngcoln will perform at both the Golden Age Cinema in Surry Hills and the legendary Beatdisc Records in Parramatta. Although the tension and discomfort Lyngcoln has expressed about playing solo hasn’t quite subsided, he’s finding ways around it. “I’m mitigating the pain,” he jokes. “I’ve got some HD projections that I got a mate to shoot using drones and stuff like that.” Where: Golden Age Cinema When: Thursday April 26 And: Doming Home is out now

THE DOG RACE IN THE NEXT ROOM.” 66 :: BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18

Tom Lyngcoln photo by Ian Laidlaw

“I HAD THIS ONGOING ARGUMENT WITH MY GRANDMA. I WAS RECORDING AT THE FAMILY HOME WHICH SHE STILL OCCUPIES, AND MY SINGING WAS INTERRUPTING HER WATCHING

thebrag.com

“I’VE GOT A BIG, BEATEN-UP DOME OF A HEAD.

THAT’S THE COVER PHOTO! IT’S JUST THE BRUTAL REALITY OF MY FACE AND WHAT I’VE DONE TO IT OVER 20 YEARS.”

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BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18 :: 67

Joseph Earp is a Sydney-based film and music critic, and an author of short fiction. He tweets at @TheUnderlook.

Just

BY J O S E P H E A R P

ne morning, spooning out instant coffee into a chipped mug, the woman realised that the phrase I just thought you should see this filled her with instant, unavoidable dread. The revelation was so sudden she had to sit down. The kettle, temporarily ignored, stopped humming and clicked once as its light went off. Her hands felt around for the cigarettes on the counter, but they were not there. And anyway, she was quitting. And anyway, she was sick of the room smelling like smoke. And anyway I just thought you should see this was still rattling around her head, and she felt numb. She tried to remember the last time she had heard someone say it to her, under what circumstances. But she came up with nothing. She had no idea where the sentence had come from in the fi rst place (I just thought you should see this) or why it terrified her. Maybe not terror. Just a kind of sadness, anxiety, that collected in the pit of her stomach and made her want to spit. She stood up and poured the hot water into the mug. The sound of the water pouring relaxed her a little. But there was still something there, rattling around her. She was worried. She picked up the phone and called her brother. “Hullo?” He said, hoarse. He sounded like he’d just woken up. “Hi David.”

“Her hands felt around for the cigarettes on the counter, but they were not there. And anyway, she was quitting. And anyway, she was sick of the room smelling like smoke.” “Alright. Okay. How’s work?” “Work’s good.” He went quiet. She sat back down in the kitchen, folding her legs and picking absently at the Tattoo on her ankle. “How about you?” He said. “I don’t know. Alright, I guess” “That’s good.” Silence. “Okay,” he said, quickly. “Okay.” He rolled the words around his mouth. “I reckon I’ve got to go.” “Why? What are you doing?” “I’ve got to get up.” He paused for a moment. Perhaps he was testing the potential impact of what he wanted to say – trying to figure out how to infl ict the least possible harm – and then he relented and said it anyway. “And I don’t know why you’re calling.”

“Oh. Hi. What time is it?”

the kettle. She liked to imagine that the person was a mirror image of herself. Maybe her double. The same hair. Same skin. Wore the same clothes, and lipstick and perfume, and was now standing in the kitchen with her lips screwed up trying very hard not to think about the sentence I just thought you should see this. But she knew who lived next door. It was a young guy, skinny, with long hair that tipped across his face and almost covered his eyes. She had even been into his apartment once, when he had invited her to a party, probably because he thought she was lonely. It was a disappointment. His apartment smelt strange. Not unpleasant, just unlike how she had expected. Beads hung from the ceiling, and he spent a drunken half hour telling her about this band that was really fucken awesome, stretching out each of the words slowly. She had left early. Come home. Listened to the partygoers make noise next door. She walked over to the window. She really wanted to have a cigarette. She hadn’t smoked in so long, but now the desire to do something with her hands came back to her, uncontrollably. She noticed after a moment that her fingers were balled up into a fist.

“I don’t know. Early.”

She moved her head from side to side before she realised he couldn’t see her.

“What are you up to?”

“Fine.”

She looked over at the coffee.

She hung up the phone. But there it was, again, pulsing in her head. I just thought you should see this. It was clearer now, stronger, and she said it aloud, just once. But it made her feel uncomfortable.

The phone rang again. She jumped, then picked it up after a few rings.

“I just thought you should see this.”

“Hi. What’s up?”

It made her think lots of things at once, none of which she could name, and it made her want to cry.

“Sorry if I sounded rude before,” he mumbled.

“Breakfast.”

“I just thought you should see this.” She said it to herself, slowly, and felt as though she was about to collapse.

“Hullo.” It was her brother.

“Is all okay?” “I don’t know.” “What?”

“What? No, don’t worry about it.” “I said, I’m not sure.” “Just want to chat?”

She shook a little. She touched a finger to her cheeks. They were still dry, but she left her hand there, waiting for something to happen.

“I was just confused.” “Yeah, it’s a little silly.”

“Maybe.” “Okay. About what?” “I don’t know.”

Maybe it was some fucked up Freudian thing. Something in her past. She started thinking silly things, and as soon as she did, she laughed, as though she could scare the words away with noise, like they were little sparrows hopping into her house on hard little feet.

There was a pause. “You don’t know?”

68 :: BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18

It was raining outside. In the apartment next door, someone was waking up, moving around, boiling

“What happened?” “I just thought about something. And it made me sad. And kinda scared.” “Oh,” he said, and his “oh” was fi lled with the kind of quiet meaning that let her know he was thinking about the wrong thing.

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SHORT STORY

“It’s not like that,” t,” she blurted. “Are you still… Are things still hard?” her brother er went on, still wrong. “No, it’s not him.” .” “You can talk to me.” “Really. I don’t want to.” “You don’t have to be alone in this.” “I’m not.” She shook hook her head. “I wasn’t n’t thinking about Mark. I was thinking about...” bout...” She drew a breath. h. “I was he sentence thinking about the ou should see ‘I just thought you de me sad.” this.’ And it made The phone line went silent. After rother made a wet a moment, her brother sound in the backk of his throat. “That’s weird,” hee managed. .” “Yeah. I suppose.” They talked for a little while longer, awkwardly, without direction, n, and then she hung up. But she was angry. People le had tried to console her using the same sentiment many times – You i bbefore f Y don’t d ’ have to be alone in this – and they were always wrong. What a dumb thing to say. Everyone’s always alone in Grief (the word had a capital G even in her head). And she wasn’t even Grieving anymore. Wasn’t sad at all. Hadn’t thought about Mark all day. Actually, that wasn’t true. When the sentence fi rst came to her she had tried to remember if he had ever said that to her (“I just thought you should see this”: maybe taking her to a cafe he had found, or an art exhibition, or something.) But it didn’t make her sad to think about Mark anymore. When she did it now it was casual, like playing with something on the side of the road. Rolling a coin between her fi ngers. She could even think about That Night (mentally capitalised in the same way as Grief, The Ocean, Love, Tattoo, and a few others. But not suicide. Nothing like the word suicide; suicide didn’t have a capital letter, didn’t need one, deserve one) without getting too worked up. Illustration by Jini Maxwell

There had even been lovers since Mark. No one permanent. Maybe the first few had been a way to unwrap the bandages, to say to people “see, see. Didn’t even leave a scar” but there had been people after that who she had genuinely been attracted to. Made love to. Without thinking about Mark at all.

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Her mind was moving faster now, and because it was, and because she was thinking to herself “ look, I’m fine, I’m not even sad” she realised she really was sad, and started trying to remember why, and then found it again. The long haired boy in the room next door was talking. She could hear him. His voice was low, and the words were incoherent. There was the sound of a bottle being opened. She walked through to the living room, sat down, pulled up a notebook and a pen. She looked down at the Tattoo on her ankle. It was ridiculous: this crude black star, printed onto her skin, already bleeding out like pen marks on tissue paper. She had gotten it when she was young, sixteen, because it looked cool, and made her feel rebellious. She was already hating it when she fi rst met Mark, the soft-spoken guy with the dark hair and a Tattoo almost identical to hers on his hip. He hated his too. And they talked about it, what jerks they had been when they were younger. And they laughed. She looked at her Tattoo and it made her think about Mark’s. Still printed on his body. Underground. Her mind went places she did not

want it to go. Maybe it wasn’t there anymore, she suddenly thought. Maybe it had already started to – She pressed the pen down to paper. “I just thought you should see this”, she wrote. It looked even worse on the page. She took a breath. The phone rang. She didn’t answer it. Next door the sound of a door closing. Footsteps. •

“People had tried to console her using the same sentiment many times before – You don’t have to be alone in this – and they were always wrong. What a dumb thing to say.” BRAG :: 735 :: 07:03:18 :: 69

Alice Hughes is an author of short fiction based out of Melbourne. She wrote The Intruder at the beginning of this year, and has called it a way of testing what the short story form can do with sound, and stripped of images.

The Int r uder BY A L I C E H U G H E S

he awoke like this: in the black. Not darkness. Black. Darkness had no relevance to her. Darkness was as meaningless as the table lamps that littered her apartment.

She stretched, feeling towards the space where Eric should have been. But she was alone in the bed. Her hands gripped at absence. “Fine,” she muttered to herself. “If it’s like that.” They had fought the night before, and he was good at holding a grudge. He had probably slept the night on the couch. She sat up, and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Using her toes, she sought out the cane that lay on the floor, delighted as always to feel its presence and its permanence. “Eric?” She called out, picking up the cane with her toes and then slipping the leather band around her wrist. She did not need it to navigate the apartment – she knew every nook and cranny of the place; could see it in her mind’s eye; could feel it, in the way she knew people with sight could not – but she liked having it with her. It was her extra limb. She felt odd without it. “We’re going to argue this morning as well?” She called out. No answer. What a bastard he could be. How much egomania lay within that thin frame. Eric believed his problems were problems grand enough to disrupt the pattern of life itself. Eric was not only the hero of his own story, but the story of the goddamn planet earth – in his mind everything before his birth was a prelude to his great and awe-inspiring dance along the mortal coil. “Whatever,” she called, and then rose, the cane limp around her wrist, navigating herself into the corner of the room where her dressing gown hung on the back of the door. She had slept naked. She hated the feeling of clothes as she slept. Pajamas suffocated her. She could drown in cloth. The gown felt good against her skin; she felt the material as it slid up every inch. Of course, those with sight liked to talk about how the blind had heightened senses: it was one of the things they found interesting. They liked it the way they are amused to discover that apes can solve simple wooden puzzles.

“Her whole body went into spasm. It was fear, and it dripped through her.” She waited, and in the silence heard the drip, drip of the tap coming from the bathroom. He had forgotten to turn off the fucking tap. Again. This was another problem: he treated her like he would treat anyone else. But she wasn’t anyone else. She had needs – individualized, specific needs – and one of them was a certain kind of silence. Nothing drove her as mad as the little noises that people with sight tend to ignore: the slight buzzing of the TV when it was asleep, rather than off; the whine a radio developed when turned down low; the taps – the fucking taps – dripping. Why couldn’t she find the happy medium? Why couldn’t she find the man that didn’t tease her, but didn’t just try to ignore her blindness either; didn’t consider her sight deprivation some odd personality trait that would go away if disregarded? She strode straight through the living room, past the couch she saw Eric sleeping on in her mind’s eye, and through to the kitchen. She opened the fridge, heard its hum (loud), and pulled out a carton of orange juice. She didn’t want to fight with Eric anymore – she was rarely angry the morning after – but now she was being pulled into another domestic. She was being forced to play the part of the bitchy fiancée, annoyed over nothing, because he was playing the part of the bastard fiancée, and he was playing it well. She took the carton over to the kitchen counter, placed it down, and then moved to get a glass from the cupboard, brushing her arm over the counter, feeling it strike against something, anticipating the crash of whatever she had just knocked over before it even hit the ground. It shattered – it must have been a glass Eric had left on the counter, stupidly, stupidly. How hard was it to put the glasses back where you found them? “Jesus fuck,” she exclaimed. “There’s fucking glass everywhere.”

And yet she had to admit for all of his faults – and how many there were – Eric had never treated her with the patronizing curiosity most of those with sight did. He never asked dumb questions. He never exploited her, not even for a joke. Not like the rest of them. There had been other boyfriends who thought it funny to move around the furniture in her apartment; thought because she was comfortable with her blindness they could be comfortable too. Thought they could poke fun. But Eric never had. Eric: respectful to a tee. And yet here he he was, sulking. Like a child. Like he so often did. And all because of a stupid argument over his stupid mother.

There was silence, save the slow drip of the tap from the next room. “Eric? Eric, you have to come help me. I don’t know where the glass is. It must be all over the floor.” No answer. No sound. Except: drip, drip, drip. “Please, honey,” she said, and was ashamed to find fear had crept into her voice. “Eric?” Drip. Drip. Drip.

“You’re really not talking to me?” she called, a little softer now. She was standing in the doorway to the bedroom – the couch where he must have spent the night was only a few meters to her left.

“Fuck you then,” she muttered. “You fucking asshole.” Drip. Drip. Drip.

“She had to admit for all of his faults – and how many there were – Eric had never treated her with the patronizing curiosity most of those with sight did.” 70 :: BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18

She took a step towards the living room, out of the kitchen, and pain shot through her foot. She had trod right on a piece of glass – a splinter of the stuff, she could feel it, deep – and she let out a squeal of pain as she practically leapt over the rest of the linoleum, and through to the safety of the carpeted living room. “I’m bleeding,” she barked, hobbling over towards where he was on the couch, ready to hit the guy, cane out, all prepared to feel the tip of it go sinking into his stupid, sleeping back…

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SHORT STORY

But her cane did not strike Eric. It hit the back of the couch.

And then, from the bathroom: a cough.

“Maybe Eric had had a heart attack. Maybe he was on his knees on the bathroom floor, gasping for breath, bright light blinding him, close to the end.”

Her whole body went into spasm. It was fear, and it dripped through her. That was Eric coughing, wasn’t it? Then why wasn’t he answering?

supposed, what her mother would have liked to call the voice of reason, because such phrases are a mother’s bread and butter.

“Eric? Hey, baby?” She called out, slowly.

Don’t be stupid, came the voice. You would have heard an intruder. It’s Eric in the bathroom, but he’s hurt. Maybe not badly: don’t always think badly. Maybe he’s sick. Maybe he’s vomiting.

He was not there. She was a little stunned. All the air seemed to be sucked out of the room. He wasn’t in bed. He wasn’t on the couch. The apartment was so small; there were very few places he could now be. Suddenly, she was afraid. Genuinely afraid.

From the bathroom: a shuffle, the unmistakable sound of sock clad fleet stumbling over the tiles. She raised her cane up, instinctively. “Eric,” she cried, almost hysterical. “Eric, for fuck’s sake.” There was another hacking cough, followed by the sound of fluid hitting the sides of the sink. She was suddenly sure she needed to be very, very quiet. She stood perfectly still. There was somebody in her apartment. Eric would not ignore her like this, no matter how angry he was. Her mind flashed with the word: intruder. It strobed through her brain, searing itself there. What had happened to Eric, then? He was not strong – what if he had been beaten up? What if he had been killed? She let out a whimper, and then threw her hands up to her mouth, clamping it shut. A moan came from the bathroom. It was a complicated noise, made from the back of the throat, but wet, as though a person with a mouthful of fluid was trying to speak. Fluid. That was the word she used in her head. She did not want to use the word blood. Although, what else would it be? A scenario rushed itself through her mind: an intruder had broken in. Eric had heard (how had Eric heard, and she hadn’t? a voice inside her probed, but she ignored it) and had risen to attack. He had gotten a knife from the kitchen – maybe the glass fit into that somehow (somehow? How? came the voice again), and then he had gone to attack the intruder, had managed to stab him. But the intruder was too strong, he had hurt Eric, maybe he had knocked him out, and now the intruder was in the bathroom, coughing up blood, wounded, but still dangerous. Another terrible, agonized sound came. She fl inched at it. In no time at all the voice that kept interrupting her resurfaced. It was, she

“A moan came from the bathroom. It was a complicated noise, made from the back of the throat, but wet, as though a person with a mouthful of fluid was trying to speak.” thebrag.com

Or, she thought, taking over from the voice, maybe Eric had had a heart attack. Maybe he was on his knees on the bathroom floor, gasping for breath, bright light blinding him, close to the end… But then the noise came again. That moan. And with that noise, she could no longer convince herself that it was Eric, sick in the bathroom. She could no longer convince herself that the figure in the bathroom was Eric at all. She took a step backwards. She raised up her cane. There was no way out of the apartment without passing the bathroom door. She was going to have to make a run for it, straight through the corridor, past the bathroom, out, out of the front and down the stairwell, and – She needed a knife. The intruder would hear her pass the door – Christ, he had already heard her, she had been walking around the place shrieking like a mad housewife – and he would come bursting out, armed. Maybe she should just stay still. If she could make it clear she was no threat – she was blind, for Christ’s sake – maybe the intruder would leave her be. Maybe if she could call out to him, let him know that she was not going to try to stop him… A terrible, pained howl came from the bathroom, horrendously loud. Before she even knew what she was doing, she was running. Fear had seized her body. She dashed straight through the corridor, approaching the bathroom – BAM – the bathroom door flew open, just as she passed it, and a terrible stench, fi nally released, came from the room; it smelt like rot, like blood, like shit. She turned, her back to the now open bathroom door, and her hands slid up, trying to find the doorknob for the front door, just as she felt a sudden, swift rush of air against the back of her neck, the intruder right fucking behind her, and then her hands clamped on the doorknob, and she threw it open, and stepped straight through, into the stairwell of the apartment. She screamed. The intruder had caught onto her long, flowing hair, and as she had darted forward, he had held on. The hair was pulled out at the roots. Her hands flew to the back of her head, instinctively protecting herself. She stumbled – so close to falling down the stairs – but steadied herself against the bannister. “Get away from me!” She managed. She wanted to be loud: Terrence and Holly, the old married couple. They lived at the apartment at the bottom of the stairs. Surely, if she shouted loud enough, they would be able to hear her.

BRAG :: 735 :: 07:03:18 :: 71

SHORT STORY

T he Int r ude r CONTINUED…

They weren’t that deaf. She stumbled forward, gripping the bannister, down the stairs, one foot at a time, the cane tapping uselessly at her side. A sudden rush of air came against the back of her neck, and she screamed again. The intruder was swiping at her, and there was no doubt anymore: he wanted to hurt her. He hadn’t broken in to steal anything; he had broken into kill her and Eric. Eric had tried to stop him. Eric had failed. The intruder wanted her dead. She could feel that intent emanating from him. That was all he wanted. He wanted her dead, but before that, he wanted her pain. The simple barbarity of his actions told her that.

“He wanted her dead, but before that, he wanted her pain. The simple barbarity of his actions told her that.” From right in front of her. “Terrence? Holly?” She said.

She slipped down the stairs, all her weight propelling her forward, and let out another desperate shriek. “HELP! Please help me!” She was all the way down the stairs now. She could no longer feel the intruder behind her, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there – that didn’t mean anything – and she stumbled forwards, and straight into Terrence and Holly’s door. She expected it to be closed, but she also expected it to be locked. As soon as she pressed her weight against the door, it flew open, and she hit the ground hard. Sudden pain shocked through her wrists. Of course: Terrence and Holly bragged about the way they never bolted their door – never even latched it – because they were old, and old people though that naivety was a virtue. She was stunned; pinned to the ground. She didn’t think she’d be able to get up again at all, until she heard the sound. It went like this: thump. Thump. Thump.

Another moan. This time, more feminine. There was a shuffl ing sound, and then a sudden, terrible gasp of air hit her in the face. It smelt like blood. It smelt like meat. They were so close she could feel their breath. She fi lled her lungs, ready to scream again, when suddenly, from behind, something grabbed her shoulders so tight she thought they would break like twigs. Of course, those with sight like to talk about how the blind have heightened senses: it is one of the things they find interesting. But it did not take heightened senses for her to feel the hard, cold thing as the hands grabbed her. It was the hard, cold thing she had bought with Eric almost a year ago now. She had never seen it with her own eyes of course, but knew it. She knew it because the man in the shop had handed it to her, and she had worked it through her fingers, testing its shape and size.

It was the intruder walking down the stairs. It was Eric’s engagement band. She got to her feet, desperately, and scrabbled forward. She did not know Terrence and Holly’s apartment: had no idea where the obstacles lay, had never seen it from the inside. “Terrence? Holly?” She shouted, and was greeted with a sudden sharp pain in her right shinbone – she’d walked straight into something. She stumbled backwards three good steps. She couldn’t move – had no idea where to go – she was a rat in a maze.

A hoarse, pained scream escaped her lips. As though that were the cue it had been waiting for, the thing that had once been Eric gently pulled her head to one side, and held it there, exposing the clean white waiting flesh of her neck. •

She threw her hands forward, desperate to feel something, anything, but there was just so much empty fucking space, and that noise from upstairs – that thump, thump, thump, getting louder and louder… She let out a terrible, anguished scream. It was louder than she thought any scream could be. It stunned her. It must have stunned the intruder, too. Because now there was silence. The slow, terrible footsteps on the stairs had stopped. She stood in Terrence and Holly’s apartment – in their living room? their corridor? – and there was total silence. Silence. And then: a slow moan. Not from behind. Not from the intruder.

“A terrible, pained howl came from the bathroom, horrendously loud.” 72 :: BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18

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Send a lemon to someone you love (hate)

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ou y y Wh ad? m

Deliver-A-Lemon is a service that allows you to send anyone a Lemon with a personalised message on it. Thinking of sending a Birthday, Congrats, Get Well Soon card? This is a quirky and hilarious alternative to the traditional card!

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The Defender BY CHRIS NEILL Each month, a BRAG writer picks a pop culture oddity that they feel has been hard done by and puts in their plea for a retrial. This month, Chris Neill makes the case that Prince’s Batman soundtrack is a hidden gem in the back catalogue of a truly unstoppable artist

he late ’80s were somewhat rough for Prince. While remaining a critical success, his sales were less desirable. Wanting another hit from him, Warner Bros. (his label at the time) decided to utilise some good ol’ brand synergy and tapped him do the soundtrack for the most anticipated film of 1989: Tim Burton’s Batman.

Burton himself was a big fan of Prince, and had been using two of his songs – ‘1999’ and ‘Baby I’m A Star’ – in the films’ rough-cut. Prince was asked to contribute new songs to replace those two, but because Prince is Prince he turned in an entire album. It would go on to be his highest-selling record since Around The World In A Day. If you’ve seen Burton’s Batman, you know that Prince’s music barely appears in the film and, tonally, Batman the film and Batman the album could not be more different. Strip away the dialogue samples and ‘Batdance’, and you wouldn’t know it was a Batman soundtrack unless somebody told you. But Batman is something more than just another Prince album. When you stop thinking of it as a soundtrack and treat it as Prince’s take on the Dark Knight’s mythos, everything takes on a new meaning. This isn’t Prince’s usual narrator singing about sex and partying; it’s Batman and the Joker. In the liner notes, each song is credited to a different character; e.g. Bruce Wayne and Vicki Vale sing the duet ‘The Arms Of Orion’. In the music video for ‘Partyman’, the album’s second single, Prince offers his take on the Joker, depicting him as a funky, hedonistic crimelord, who dances around a lavish party while proclaiming, “All hail the new king in town!”

“THE BATMAN SOUNDTRACK WOULD GO ON TO BE HIS HIGHESTSELLING RECORD SINCE AROUND THE WORLD IN A DAY.”

“BATMAN IS SOMETHING MORE THAN JUST ANOTHER PRINCE ALBUM.” “MAYBE PRINCE IS RIGHT; MAYBE BATMAN’S INTERNAL DEMONS WOULD BE LESS PREVALENT IF HE TOOK A LOAD OFF, TIME TO TIME.”

‘Scandalous’, an overwhelmingly horny song, has the Dark Knight telling Vicki Vale, “Tonight why don’t we skip all the for play, mama; And just get down here on the floor.” Maybe Prince is right; maybe Batman’s internal demons would be less prevalent if he took a load off, time to time. It’s an adaptation that feels more like a piece of pop art than a soundtrack – a version of Batman we’ve never seen before. He’s funky, sexy, cool. No single track on the album embraces that pop art aesthetic more than its’ closer, ‘Batdance’. It’s a fevered Frankenstein’s monster of dialogue snippets and samples from multiple Prince tracks – even the iconic theme from the camp 1960s TV series pops up. It sounds nothing like anything Prince had done at the time. ‘Batdance’ is the real reason I love this album; more specifically, I adore the music video. It features Prince simultaneously dressed as both Batman and the Joker, with backup dancers flocking around him in a neon-purple drenched and smoke-filled Batcave. Essentially, It’s the Batman movie Joel Schumacher wishes he could’ve made. Compared to other Prince albums, Batman is fine. It’s got a few good tracks (‘Partyman’, ‘Vicki Waiting’, ‘Scandalous’) interspersed with mostly okay ones. Released in-between Lovesexy and the Graffiti Bridge soundtrack, its not as good as the former and about on par with the latter. Batman is seen as a black sheep of the musician’s discography, which is fair. Taste is a weird thing sometimes. For the most part, we know why we like or dislike something and we’re able to articulate that feeling into a coherent reason. But every now and then, you encounter something that defies any internal logic that you have. Something that, for all intents and purposes, you shouldn’t like (or love), but for some unexplainable reason you do. That’s how I feel about Prince’s Batman soundtrack. It’s just one of those things, like asking someone if they’ve ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight. I have no idea what that means; I just like the sound of it.

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“IF YOU’VE SEEN BURTON’S BATMAN, YOU KNOW THAT PRINCE’S MUSIC BARELY APPEARS IN THE FILM AND, TONALLY, BATMAN THE FILM AND BATMAN THE ALBUM COULD NOT BE MORE DIFFERENT.”

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

The rule of thumb is that it takes a work of art eight years to date. Give a film, a record, or a novel eight years, and you’ll know whether it’s got what it takes to survive the ages, or whether it will wither and sour like so much unrefrigerated mayonnaise. So tell me why then Boarding House Reach, the new record by Jack White, has been out for a little under two weeks, and already sounds like some curio of the early thousands – an impossibly uncool melange of conflicting sounds, tones, and halfhearted musical ideas that’s about as unified and cohesive as a slice of swiss cheese. It’s easily the worst thing the man has ever released, but it’s more than that too: it might well be the worst record released by a mainstream musician in the last decade. There’s no rhyme or reason to anything that happens – it sounds like the kind of cash-grabbing collection of curios and half-

Yo La Tengo

finished tunes packaged together after a musician has died; a tribute, rather than a real record. Jack White

“Tell me why then Boarding House Reach, the new record by Jack White, has been out for a little under two weeks, and already sounds like some curio of the early thousands.”

Not a single creative choice sticks, songs like ‘Why Walk A Dog?’ are barely songs at all, and ‘Corporation’ is as sophisticated and put-together as the ditties Tom Green hums in Freddie Got Fingered while playing a keyboard and with sausages tied to his fingers. I hate it. Equally baffling – although not quite as disastrous – is the new record from Dami Im, I Hear A Song. I feel like Im almost had something for a moment there: she was a sub-Regina Spektor type who managed to pivot from her turn in the fifth season of The X Factor without losing too much of her audience and while retaining some vestige of class, and successfully staked a place for herself in Australia’s overcrowded pop music scene. By most metrics she shouldn’t have worked – her songs are too sincere for the current musical climate; too wholehearted and wholesome – and yet somehow, against the odds she did. But now, confoundingly, she has dropped a lifeless uninspired collection of jazz standards – a move seemingly designed to get the allimportant octogenarian market slobbering and absolutely no one else. So all the staples are there – everything from ‘Feeling Good’ to ‘My Funny Valentine’ are sung with a pretty but utterly detached voice and backed by the world’s most stock standard instrumentation. Even worse still, I Hear A Song has two – count em, two – originals thrown into the mix, which rather gives the impression that Im has tried to salvage the only workable tunes born from what was clearly an unproductive album session by sticking them into the centre of derivative Michael Buble dribbling. Dami, take some time off; hire a better producer; and come back when you have something to bring to the table. Trying to cheat your listeners like this achieves absolutely nothing.

“There’s not a single cloud troubling Yo La Tengo’s sky, giving the record an awkwardly slight feel. It’s background music; as thin and quaint as wallpaper samples.” Elsewhere there’s the new Yo La Tengo record, There’s A Riot Going On which is the very definition of good but not great; serviceable but not inspired. The band’s sound has always flirted with the toothless – there’s long been a general amiability to them as a group, a kind of fuzzy warmness that worked best when expertly and intelligently combined with solid songwriting and the ever-so-slight hint of unpleasantness and melancholia (see their 2013 masterpiece, Fade, which was an acoustic and string heavy exercise in toeing the line between the gentle and the devastatingly, oppressively sad.) And yet There’s A Riot Going On seems to have substituted all vestiges of grit and heft the band once had for excessive and overwhelming cuteness – there’s not a single cloud troubling Yo La Tengo’s sky, giving the record an awkwardly slight feel. It’s background music; as thin and quaint as wallpaper samples. Not that the last month has been nothing but duds. The new record from Preoccupations, the band formerly and unfortunately known as Viet Cong, New Material, is their most accomplished work

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albums

Sunflower Bean

“Twentytwo In Blue feels like an important maturation.”

Then there’s Twentytwo In Blue, the excellent new record from Sunflower Bean. In the past, Sunflower Bean too have struggled with their habit of playing into their similarities with a swathe of bands from pop culture’s history – mostly Blondie, from whom Sunflower Bean have cribbed their sense of sparkly sadness.

Who knows where they have found this renewed faith in their process, but thank God they have found it. Sunflower Bean are great songwriters writing great songs; everything else, thankfully, they have apparently realised is so much noise, the kind of arch nonsense better left to the likes of Father John Misty. Long may they run.

H U N T E R VA L L E Y

Highlight Of The Month: Twentytwo In Blue

Dud Of The Month: Boarding House Reach

@ Kelman Vineyards

C O O P E R A G E

to date. Excitingly, the band have traded in their cheap and often reductive auditory homage-paying – the kind of lip service that defined their overlong and exhausted 2016 self-titled album – and have instead found a sound that is emphatically their own, namely melancholia mixed with drawn-out, desiccated disco. ‘Espionage’, a collection of woozy vocals, tic-like percussive work, and shouted choruses feels like a new chapter in the band’s life; a single that creates history rather than replicating it. We can only hope they keep it up.

But Twentytwo In Blue feels like an important maturation. For instance, ‘Puppet Strings’ is exactly the kind of song the band might have once tackled with irony and self-referential, tongue-buried-deepin-cheek fun. And yet they don’t. Instead, they treat the thing with the respect that it deserves, in the process creating an oversaturated but deeply sincere work of art; an intelligent and inspired pop single.

Bed & Breakfast Hunter Valley Cooperage Bed & Breakfast 41 Kelman Vineyards Oakey Creek Rd, Pokolbin NSW

Tel: 61 2 4990 1232 www.huntervalleycooperage.com thebrag.com

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21:03:18 :: Big Top Luna Park :: 1 Olympic drive, Milsons Point

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

21:03:18 :: Big Top Luna Park :: 1 Olympic drive, Milsons Point

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s n a p s eves karydas

21:03:18 :: Big Top Luna Park :: 1 Olympic drive, Milsons Point

dua lipa

21:03:18 :: Big Top Luna Park :: 1 Olympic drive, Milsons Point

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28:03:18 :: Metro Theatre :: 624 George St, Sydney

leon bridges

28:03:18 :: Metro Theatre :: 624 George St, Sydney

leon bridges

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

s n a p s

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sydney gay & lesbian mardi gras 2018 03:03:18 :: Oxford Street :: Darlinghurst

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

s n a p s

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15:03:18 :: ANZ Stadium :: Edwin Flack Ave, Sydney Olympic Park

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