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CONTRIBUTORS Adam Wilding, Andrew McDonald, Anthony Carew, Ben Meyer, Ben Doyle, Bethany Cannan, Brendan Crabb, Cameron Warner, Cate Summers, Chris Familton, Chris Maric, Chris Yates, Cyclone, Dan Condon, Dave Drayton, Guy Davis, Helen Lear, Jamelle Wells, James d’Apice, James Dawson, Justine Keating, Kris Swales, Liz Giuffre, Lorin Reid, Mark Hebblewhite, Mat Lee, Matt MacMaster, Paul Ransom, Paul Smith, Rip Nicholson, Robbie Lowe, Ross Clelland, Sam Hilton, Sam Murphy, Sarah Braybrooke, Sarah Petchell, Scott Fitzsimons, Sebastian Skeet, Sevana Ohandjanian, Simon Eales, Steve Bell, Stuart Evans, Tim Finney
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THIS WEEK THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK • 14 AUGUST - 20 AUGUST 2013
wtf ?
So, in writing about various exhibitions, films and other arty happenings in Manhattan, if you were James Franco, what would you do? Post a pic of yourself atop two nude, female bodies of course. There is a method to his madness of his Instagram post, as it’s in reference to the Paul McCarthy exhibit WS, where he takes aim of American myths and icons, “bombarding the viewer with a sensory overload of scatological, sexual, violent, and debaucherous imagery that boldly forces the viewer to acknowledge the twisted underside to saccharine idols in popular culture”. Think the seven dwarves and Snow White having a raucous house party.
q&a
Upstream Color is Shane Carruth’s second film after Primer. It had its Australian premiere earlier this year at SFF and will open in cinemas 22 Aug. Before its national release, filmmaker Shane Carruth will conduct a Q & A from Paris – where he is currently in pre-production for his next film, The Modern Ocean – for Popcorn Taxi post a screening on this Wednesday at Event Cinemas, Bondi Junction.
ART DIRECTOR
Dave Harvey, Matt Davis
ART DEPT
Eamon Stewart, Nicholas Hopkins
ORIGINAL DESIGN Dave Harvey
Glass Towers have recently released their debut album Halcyon Days and the 11 perfectly formed pop gems are an exploration of the band’s youth, but this time from the perspective of a young man standing on the doorstep of adulthood. Through songs such as Halcyon and the lustful lament of Tonight, Glass Towers are reflecting on where they have been and what might face them ahead. On their largest national headline tour to date, they play Friday at The Standard.
ADDRESS Postal: PO Box 2440 Strawberry Hills NSW 2012 Street: Level 1/142 Chalmers St Surry Hills NSW 2010 Phone (02) 9331 7077 www.themusic.com.au info@themusic.com.au
gig SYDNEY
watch All hail the king. Walter ‘Heisenberg’ White is returning to finish off business in the explosive conclusion to Breaking Bad, a television show that’s put Albuquerque, New Mexico on the map, arguably for all the wrong reasons. Part 2 of Season 5 has just premiered in the States, and although we’ve got to wait a little to dig into that, it seems like the perfect time to immerse in the blood and blue meth from the season’s final chapter thus far. The first eight episodes are available on DVD now.
fail Everyone makes mistakes. But when you’re running in the federal election, you should know a little bit about your party and policies. Jaymes Diaz is the Liberal Party’s 37-year-old hopeful for the Labor held marginal seat of Greenway. But he’s now better known for providing one of the most awkwardly painful campaign interviews ever. Diaz was quizzed about his party’s six-point asylum seeker plan, with a reporter asking him to name all six-points. Fair call. A floundering Diaz skirts around the question – and even after the reporter tried a further eight times for an explanation on the policy Diaz drew blank.
Winter is turning into spring faster than we can say, “ditch the onesie”, but with some solid powder dumps on the snowfields of New South Wales and Victoria there’s plenty of reason to clip in. Mount Buller and Hotham got 20-50 cm of fresh stuff last week and Perisher still has almost 100 lifts operational; head up to the peaks and shred the gnar before it all melts for another year. Perth to Melbourne return flights from $338; Brisbane to Sydney return from $158.
lol Get jiggly with it! Good Samaritan Yoelsan Alfaroone was dropping his neighbour home when she decided to get loose to Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines. In what’s fast becoming one of the most popular Vines of all time, she shimmies and jiggles like a pro, proving that grandma still got the moves, yo.
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THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013 • 15
national news news@themusic.com.au
DELTA BLOW
PARAMORE
When you’re feeling down and low, filthy rock’n’roll is all you need. Bringing it to you in a glass on the rocks are The Delta Riggs, the Melbourne-based quintet riding high following the April release of Hex.Lover. Killer. Alongside The Walking Who, the swaggering Delta boys bring their America single tour to BIGSOUND, Brisbane, 11 – 12 Sep, before knocking over the following dates: Efterski Festival, Thredbo, 13 Sep; Karova Lounge, Ballarat, 20 Sep; The Toff, Melbourne, 21 Sep; Small Ballroom, Newcastle, 28 Sep; Alhambra Lounge, Brisbane, 3 Oct; Elsewhere, Gold Coast, 4 Oct; and The Standard, Sydney, 5 Oct.
RAP CITY BITCH
SHOUT IT OUT LOUD
With millions of fans right around the globe, Paramore have long stood as one of the biggest drawcards in the pop-punk world. But with their fourth record, they’ve come out and offered us so much more. As part of the bumper 2013 Soundwave bill, the band indicated a shift in musical direction, and with their self-titled album of April this year it’s clear they’re relishing in the ideals that anything is possible. Now, the Tennessee rockers will return and present the record properly with their biggest Australian headline tour ever, playing capital cities alongside British favourites You Me At Six and upcoming American pair Twenty One Pilots. The bands will get 2014 off on the right foot for fans, arriving early next year for some licensed/all ages shows, playing 9 Jan, Brisbane Entertainment Centre; 11 Jan, Allphones Arena, Sydney; 12 Jan, Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne; and 16 Jan, Perth Arena. Tickets on sale from 22 Aug.
DYING TO CRY OUT
Prog metal visionary and all-round boundary pusher Steven Wilson – the mind at the centre of Porcupine Tree – will be bringing his latest acclaimed album, The Raven That Refused To Sing (And Other Stories), to our shores with a full band delivering the songs through four channel surround sound so instruments come at you from every corner of the room. Expect your mind to be pulled and twisted until you see the music. Wilson plays east coast shows at Billboard, Melbourne, 2 Oct; Metro Theatre, Sydney, 3 Oct; and The Tivoli, Brisbane, 5 Oct.
NGAIIRE
FANTASTIC FINAL ADDITION
Recognised as one of Australian music’s most important voices, it’s with humble honour that BIGSOUND welcomes Gurrumul to the list of keynote speakers for 2013. Alongside Skinnyfish Music’s Mark Grose and Michael Honhen, the talk will reveal the complex mystic and creative brilliance of the great man and document his journey from Elcho Island to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. In addition, the Live side of things also welcomes a bunch of new names including Adalita, Mitzi, The Trouble With Templeton and Bad//Dreems. BIGSOUND takes place from 10 – 13 Sep, with tickets still available through the venue website.
“I JUST WANT GTA5 TO BE OUT SO I DON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING ELSE BUT THAT” TYLER, THE CREATOR [@FUCKTYLER] MAPS OUT THE REST OF HIS YEAR. 16 • THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013
It’s back again in 2013. Rap City will shake the foundations on Queen’s Birthday long weekend, with a bill that maintains the legendary legacy of the event. The formidable Brooklyn master Talib Kweli will head up the bill, with Homeboy Sandman and Trademark ‘Da Skydiver offering up plenty more leftfield shit for the purists. These three men build this city on 3 Oct, The Hi-Fi, Melbourne; 4 Oct, Villa, Perth; 5 Oct, The Hi-Fi, Brisbane; and 6 Oct, The Hi-Fi, Sydney.
WINGS WIDE OPEN
Sydney via Papua New Guinea songstress Ngaiire seems set to turn the Australian music landscape on its head with debut record Lamentations. Combining bold future soul with evocative tones and delivery, this release finds even brighter colours on stage, where a crack backing band and brilliantly alive costumes turn Ngaiire’s shows into events. Check this future icon out on 12 Sep, Oxford Art Factory, Sydney; 19 Sep, Transit Bar, Canberra; 20 Sept, Baha Tacos, Rye; 21 Sep, Northcote Social Club, Melbourne; 27 Sep, The Small Ballroom, Newcastle; 28 Sept, Heritage Hotel, Bulli; 3 Oct, Brisbane Multicultural Arts Centre, Brisbane; 4 Oct, Solbar, Maroochydore; and 5 Oct, The Northern, Byron Bay. The full tour is proudly presented by The Music.
themusic 14TH AUGUST 2013
#001
INSIDE
THIS WEEK NEWS FEATURED
Dead Letter Circus
feature
Frances Ha The Preatures The Trouble With Templeton Tavi Gevinson Clive Palmer
“I THINK IT’S VERY NICE BEING THE ONLY GIRL IN A BAND FULL OF BOYS.” ISABELLA MANFREDI OF THE PREATURES. (P.28)
MDC Obey The Brave Midnight Juggernauts Dido & Aeneas Wil Anderson Boy & Bear Ash Sindy Sinn Tough Beauty Newsted
REVIEWS
Album: Drenge Live: Grinspoon Arts: Andy Warhol’s Grave Gear: Alhambra Guitars App: Election Apps …and more
THE GUIDE
Cover: Catherine Traicos & The Starry Night
BLOG: WE LOOK AT THE FIVE BIGGEST ADMINISTRATIVE SCREW-UPS IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. THIS SUNDAY ON THEMUSIC.COM.AU
STEVE BELL REVIEWS TY SEGALL. (P.52)
MIDWEEK CHART REPORT: IS ANYONE GONNA STOP PINK FROM BEING NUMBER ONE THIS WEEK? FIND OUT ON THEMUSIC.COM.AU
review “DANIEL LUGO (MARK WAHLBERG) WANTS HIS PIECE OF THE AMERICAN DREAM. AND THE GYM JUNKIE AND ISN’T ABOVE TAKING A FEW SHORTCUTS TO GET IT.” GUY DAVIS REVIEWS PAIN & GAIN. (P.60)
Gig Guide Eat: Breakfast Drink: Sparkling Water Travel: Seeing A Show In LA
12 • THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013
RIGHT NOW ON THEMUSIC.COM.AU
“IT’S A FASCINATING AND QUITE BRAVE NEW FACADE FOR THIS PRECOCIOUS YOUNG TALENT.”
Local News
Culture: Burning Man Costumes
FALLS & SOUTHBOUND: GET AN INDEPTH UNDERSTANDING OF THE FALLS AND SOUTHBOUND LINE UPS, WITH PLAYLISTS, VIDEOS AND ALL MANNER OF MUSINGS.
review
“MEG MAC’S VOICE EFFORTLESSLY CONVEYED EVERYTHING SHE NEEDED TO COMMUNICATE, SUBTLY CHANGING EMPHASIS AN TONE TO ADJUST THE LEVELS OF PATHOS AND THEMATIC FOCUS. MATT MACMASTER REVIEWS THE MARSHMALLOW PAVEMENT LP LAUNCH (P.57)
music
UNITED BY FLAMES Words Lochlan Watt. Photos Kane Hibberd
The last nine years have seen Dead Letter Circus slowly but surely smoulder into a full blown inferno of progressive rock glory. On the eve of the release of The Catalyst Fire, singer Kim Benzie details the journey to Lochlan Watt. Cover and feature pics by Kane Hibberd.
“W
e will be not be not guided/Held apart and counted/Kept within our spaces/ Alone /Some of us have broken free/And we have chosen/Bleeding but we’re conscious/Awake”.
The above lyrical excerpt from Alone Awake is representative of the greater vision expressed by Dead Letter Circus’ second full-length. Sat at a table in Gregory Park, Milton, it’s a remarkably sunny winter’s day in Brisbane. Raised in Perth but having lived in the Sunshine State for the last fifteen years, Benzie is casual all over, completely relaxed, and begins enthusiastically speaking of music, and not just his own band, well before the seated destination is reached and recorder switched on. “It’s like we’re all archaeologists in a way, all moving towards the same mountain, carving a little piece or finding the overall shape of music. I think we just got to the stage where all those points had met, and people
about an idea spreading like a fire – that spreading of change. Over the last couple of years, everyone’s become a little more aware of how the world actually works, and the mechanics of it all.” A bell rings, and within seconds the park is filled with the jubilation of uniformed primary school students. Benzie continues as though the environment hasn’t changed at all.
“All those films like The Matrix make sense to everyone, and so it’s that little quest. Every conversation you have, say it’s the first time you talk to someone about that, and you would take away that idea from me and give it to someone
“Our contract expired with Warner, and we were just looking around,” he explains frankly. “We’d had offers from everyone around the country, because obviously it’s a successful business model. Something about going with a major label again, although the guys at Warner are awesome, it didn’t really feel like it fit us – a bunch of guys raging against the machine – then being part of a worldwide corporation making lots of money off musicians?” Benzie describes their experiences with UNFD so far as being “much more fair. It just feels like an even gift for what we give to them, for what they give to us. It’s not just Warner – any major label that still operates in the old format... it’s pretty brutal towards the musician. I never want to paint a bad picture of those guys, because they were really nice, but the actual company structure we didn’t vibe on.”
Getting back to the music at hand, The Catalyst Fire stands to be hailed as an impossibly cohesive masterpiece of progressive rock. With three guitarists working as one conscious entity alongside a watertight rhythm section, the band effortlessly construct a deeply psychedelic and dynamic grid of blissful hyperspace noise over which some absolutely beautiful vocal melodies are applied. Although Dead Letter Circus performs as a fivepiece, with original bassist Stewart Hill, guitarist Tom
“THE CATALYST FIRE IS ABOUT THAT YEARNING FOR CHANGE THAT’S WITHIN EVERYONE. IT’S ABOUT AN IDEA SPREADING LIKE A FIRE – THAT SPREADING OF CHANGE... THAT’S THE BASIC CONCEPT OF WHAT’S GOING ON THROUGHOUT IT – THE THIRST FOR CHANGE, BURNING FROM PERSON TO PERSON AND SNOWBALLING FROM PERSON TO PERSON TO THAT MOMENT WHERE IT ACTUALLY DOES CHANGE.” were looking for the same thing,” he says of the band’s rising popularity amongst the more extreme end of heavy music fans – a fact quantified by their relationship with US metal label Sumerian Records, as well as their previous and forthcoming overseas touring with such metal acts as Animals As Leaders and Monuments, with their style having subtly influenced their latest effort through sheer subconscious proximity.
“You can say that a lot of alternative rock and a lot of metal has been done now, so the quest for that thing that will stimulate your mind is a little bit harder,” he adds. It’s clear that the scope that Benzie’s consciousness embodies extends much further beyond the self. His world view is holistic, having transcended far beyond a “cellular” existence and “invisible walls” people typically build around themselves. Humanity is one, yet we do not have to follow the hive mind. He retains a polite acknowledgement of rules and borders, and despite a lack of overt preachiness his presence alone seems encouraging of respectfully usurping the status quo.
“Everyone in the world right now, it’s pretty hard to not be awake to the mechanics of the way the world is, and the problems of the world, being the reserve bank, an unfair system which might have seemed fair when they conceived it years ago,” he explains, pausing momentarily to take a sip of coffee. “The big companies hold [power] over the world, and that kind of thing. The Catalyst Fire is about that yearning for change that’s within everyone. It’s 24 • THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013
else. It’s a catalyst fire for change. That’s the basic concept of what’s going on throughout it – the thirst for change, burning from person to person, and snowballing from person to person to that moment where it actually does change.”
The ethos he speaks of has even translated into the band’s business dealings. Back in 2010, Dead Letter Circus were catapulted to success by their debut album This Is The Warning, which under the banner of Warner Music Australia peaked at number two on the ARIA charts. Now in 2013, the release of The Catalyst Fire has been handled by UNFD – an independent label typically home to such metalcore acts as The Amity Affliction and Northlane.
Skerlj, guitarist Clint Vincent and drummer Luke Williams, the latter two formerly of Melodyssey, Benzie explains in detail how and why the album came to be written and recorded with an extra guitarist.
“On the actual CD we’ve listed six musicians as being in the band. At the very start of the record there’s a bit of a grey area where Robert [Maric, original guitarist] stopped writing for the band, and I’d started writing the songs I’d conceived with my friend Luke Palmer, who lives on the Gold Coast, and basically Luke possibly would have joined the band, but he was having a child. DLC is a style, one that has improved with the new album, and the actual style of the band is a style that can be interchanged between different guitarists.
“About the same time that I was a couple of songs in with this guy, Rob left the band and we had all these tours booked, and our tour manager said, ‘Well, I know the songs, I can pretty much play them now’, so he took his broken wrist out of a cast, jumped on a plane and basically two weeks later was playing in the States on South By South West, and he did the tour over there. By the time we came back, we’d just fallen in love with him being in the band. It fit, it worked. We got back and found ourselves in this unique situation where we kind of had a guitar team, in that we had three guitarists playing on the album as a family, as a unit.” Don’t expect to see them playing live with all six members anytime soon, however. “My initial thoughts were I don’t
WHAT’S IN A PICTURE? ART, THE AMAZONS, AND AYAHUASCA The concept of The Catalyst Fire runs through not just every moment of the music, but the album’s stunning art as well – the seed of which happened to be fertilised in the jungles of Amazon. want to demystify the band or anything like that, by making it seem like there’s someone behind the scenes, but it’s actually a really nice story. He’s the only breadwinner for that family, so the state of the industry dictates that no one’s really making enough money for him to do it, but the musical chemistry is just so amazing.” Although Benzie confesses that no one in the band has had a real day job for the last eight years, their existence isn’t glamorous. He picks a spider he’s noticed off his interviewer’s shirt and explains the concept of the “kudos card”. “It’s like a credit card full of the compliments you might receive. What it’s good for – it’s good for drinks at the bar and occasional self-esteem
boosting, like when you’re picking up the home brand spaghetti at the supermarket and someone comes up to you and says, ‘I fucking love your song’, and you’re like, ‘Thanks man! I’m rich! I’m fucking rich!’” “That’s one of the awesome things about being in this genre and writing this kind of music. It’s generally the soundtrack to the intensely emotional parts of your life. It’s very personable music, and it’s not preachy because it’s more of someone figuring it out for themselves, and I just put that into the
song. I think that’s why people can connect with it. That’s probably the best thing about being in the band – it can happen anywhere.” “Deny it but know that we can end and nothing changes/Or decide it and hope that we ascend/ That we can shape at all the f ire that comes/ Or we pretend so we can hope it’s all just pictures in stone/It’s all been for progress/Will we see it fall down just like they dreamed it would?/Will we see it burn down to rise again?/We will see it fall down/Wake from this dream and know/ We must see it burn down to rise again”.
WHAT: The Catalyst Fire (UNFD) WHEN & WHERE: 4 Sep, Zierholz, Canberra; 5, Metro Theatre; 6, Waves, Wollongong; 7, Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle
“I actually met this amazing woman [Klara Soukalova] in the jungle. We were there on an Ayahuasca retreat, and she actually designed this tattoo of mine here. She’s this awesome shamanic artist that does these crazy, huge, intricate [pieces]; it basically looks like you’re looking at this code from an alien race. She drew me this tattoo, because she loved the message of the band, and if you live there and you’re a Westerner, then you’re there fighting for what’s going on in the Amazon. She gave us permission to use some of her symbology in her artwork, and so [with] our Australian artist Cameron Gray we spent about two months working with her just crafting this mandala, and we basically just wanted to create something that was a symbol for change, something that anyone from any walk of life could just stare into and have a bit of an experience looking at it.” Having previously themed an entire tour on the environmentally destructive issue of mining coal seam gas, or ‘fracking’ as it’s known, he reveals that the band soon plans to extend their environmental scope. “We really want to raise some awareness about the fight going on in the Amazon. The oil companies, the indigenous people and the actual river. That’s the heart of the earth. There’s more biodiversity in one hectare of the Amazon than there is in the whole of America. What’s going on there should be at the forefront of global consciousness, as they’re a more defenceless people as well. That’s what we’ll aim our sights on next.” THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013 • 25
film
A DISTANT HEART
And the success of the film is something she couldn’t be more pleased with. “We really made exactly the film we wanted to make, and we never had any considerations towards commercial viability,” Gerwig says. “We made it out of a real purity of heart, and without any cynicism.”
What’s love got to do with it? Nothing, according to Greta Gerwig’s new movie Frances Ha. The writer and actress tells Anthony Carew about turning her back on the expected.
“I
’m always interested in stories about women that don’t include romance, because I think that they’re so incredibly rare,” says Greta Gerwig. “And that’s not true of men. There are plenty of movies about men that have nothing to do with romance, and I think it’s important for women to have stories that have nothing to do with falling in love, or falling out of love, or being in a relationship or desperately wanting to be in a relationship.” The 30-year-old actress is talking about Frances Ha, the film that she co-wrote with boyfriend/director Noah Baumbach, in which she stars as the titular character; a 20-something dame caught in post-collegiate malaise of career dissatisfaction and living-situation confusion. In most set-ups that would mean, really, she’s lacking a man, and waiting around to find one. Gladly, Gerwig and Baumbach dodge that tendency, giving us a flawed heroine, one of the most well-rounded and singular creations to arrive on screen in aeons. “We didn’t start off with a thesis statement. Like: we want to make a film about a woman and her best friend, and ambition and failure,” says Gerwig. “It was only
Gerwig and Baumbach initially worked together on 2010’s Greenberg, which marked the first ‘major movie’ role for Gerwig. Before that, she was mumblecore’s ‘it’ girl: starring in three films with Joe Swanberg: LOL, Hannah Takes The Stairs and Nights And Weekends (the latter of which she co-wrote and co-directed), and playing key roles in the Duplass Brother’s Baghead and Ti West’s retro-horror movie The House Of The Devil. Gerwig’s star would continue to ascend, working with Woody Allen on his disastrous To Rome With Love
Not that Gerwig is ready to put any stock in the plaudits that’ve been thrown at her. “I protect my delicate ego by not reading anything written about me, or anything that I’ve done,” she laughs. “I used to, but I realised very quickly that I could not, because whether it was good or bad it’d just endlessly play on my mind. I am sensitive!” Gerwig’s even bringing her parents along for the ride – in Frances Ha, they play her parents. “We wrote that section where she goes home to visit her parents without thinking it’d be Sacramento, or my parents,” Gerwig offers. “But then, when we were planning her shoot, it felt like we could ask them to do it. We weren’t just coming to photograph their lives, we were asking them to participate in this movie we were making. And I think they were terrific! “I like it when filmmakers do things that intersect with their own lives,” continues Gerwig. “I think when you’re presented with a choice of shooting something that means something to you or shooting something that doesn’t, you should always [go with the former]. Because you’ll be able to see it – to feel it – through the screen. You don’t want every character to be played by a non-actor, but when you surround your main actors with ‘real people’, it gives the film this quality which is otherwise unattainable.” The presence of her parents conflates with the idea that Gerwig is playing a version of herself; that her Frances Ha screenplay functions as a form of creative therapy. It’s an idea she both considers and dismisses.
“I’M ALWAYS INTERESTED IN STORIES ABOUT WOMEN THAT DON’T INCLUDE ROMANCE, BECAUSE I THINK THAT THEY’RE SO INCREDIBLY RARE,” at some point in the writing when we realised there was no traditional heterosexual romance being told in this movie. And once we realised that, we were really excited! I was particularly excited by that, and almost protective of that idea from that point on; and so we went about making it very deliberately the case. The opening scene of the movie, where she’s having the discussion with her boyfriend about the cats and then they break up, that’s almost this moment of dismissal of that narrative. Like, it’s almost a misdirect – you think maybe we’re going to follow that relationship, but instead we pick up on this other non-romantic relationship.” Gerwig’s on-screen best friend is played, winningly, by Mickey Sumner, and Girls beefcake Adam Driver and Michael Zegen play platonic pals of the heroine. For indie-rock-spotters, there’s even an appearance by Britta Phillips and Dean Wareham; the latter having been Baumbach’s recurring collaborateur since 1997’s Mr. Jealousy. 26 • THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013
and headlining Whit Stillman’s comeback movie Damsels In Distress. Baumbach and Gerwig were going to be working on an adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Corrections for HBO, but when it got stuck in development hell they made Frances Ha as a low-budget, black-andwhite indie movie. So, after a long-time seeming like a starlet on the verge of a breakout, Frances Ha looks like the real deal for Gerwig, both as writer and as actor.
“I’m very different to Frances,” she says. “I think a lot of people assume that it’s just me up there, but I had a very different experience in my mid-to-late20s. It’s really an experience I didn’t have. I certainly didn’t have a lot of money, but I had a lot more encouragement from the world than Frances does, and I never made the choice to give up the dream and take the day job. In some ways, maybe I’m exploring an alternate life that could’ve happened but didn’t. Frances really feels, to me, like an outside-of-mybody comedic creation as a character. I don’t feel like her, but I feel like she’s a uniquely Greta Gerwig invention. It’s like the difference between Buster Keaton the person and Buster Keaton the character. It’s a performance, but it’s still completely genuine.” WHAT: Frances Ha In cinemas 15 Aug
FRESH MISCHIEF
F
or Thomas Calder, it all began back in 2011, when the Brisbane singer/songwriter started crafting songs in his home studio. In just over two weeks he recorded his mini-album, Bleeders, under the moniker of The Trouble With Templeton. And then boom! Unforseen critical acclaim followed, forcing Calder to take stock of his lonely boy situation and pull together a band.
Enter Hugh Middleton (guitar), Betty Yeowart (keyboards), Sam Pankhurst (bass) and Ritchie Daniell (drums). “I think part of the reason I did Bleeders on my own, was because I hadn’t really met the right people,” explains Calder.
It turned out to be the best decision Calder has ever made. The first offering from the new outfit was the eerie Six Months In A Cast, which nabbed the group third place in the International Songwriting Competition’s Rock category.
“I know what I want in a song,” stresses Calder, “and I’m not necessarily democratic about my music. Not in an arrogant way – it’s just about me wanting to express what I do best, and I think that up until Bleeders I hadn’t really met anyone that I trusted, or liked what they did enough to hand my songs over to them.” As it happens, Calder found that in his new band members, who, he admits, have even given him a much craved for musical freedom that he couldn’t entertain before.
“I feel a lot freer when I write songs now. With Bleeders I made one sort of album and obviously being myself I know that’s not the only type of music that I make. But people didn’t know that, and so the album was quickly lumped into a ‘folk’-sounding category. I had never considered the music folk in any way. But with this album, I thought having already established that genre, I don’t really need to worry about how people categorise it.” The final fruits of their collective labour is Rookie – The Trouble With Templeton’s real debut – which the band put together with producer Matt Redlich, who’s also worked with the likes of Hungry Kids Of Hungary, Ball Park Music and the ethereal Emma Louise. “I’m very cautious about letting go of control with my music – but it’s really easy when you’re working with someone [and some people] who you know [are] on the same page.”
music
The Trouble With Templeton’s Thomas Calder was already a critically acclaimed, albeit burgeoning muso when he decided to shake up his entire music make-up. He tells Natasha Lee why, and how he’s made it work. Redlich’s fingerprints are all over Rookie. From the echoed, bleeding guitars on the triple j favourite, You Are New, to Like A Kid’s rambunctious yelling – all topped off with a scrappy, luscious acoustic sound.
“Rookie is a lot bigger and a lot more expansive than Bleeders. It’s originally [what I] wanted to do with my sound. This time, I’ve also got a lot more to
this interview, but that’s okay. I’m just really passionate about my music, and I’m really proud of this [album].”
He’s not the only one. First single, Six Months In A Cast, nabbed the iTunes Single of the Week in Australia and NZ. Second offering Like A Kid racked up considerable airplay on triple j. Their latest single, You Are New, is a cacophony of subtle, symphonic notes and rousing vocals. But for Calder, picking a favourite is akin to the Judgement Of Solomon: “They’re all my babies. I love them all equally,” he stresses, before a little nagging sees him confess a particular fondness for the sorrow of Flowers In Bloom. With so much praise so early, Calder could be forgiven for feeling some pressure. Not so, he
“THE SOUND IS JUST A LOT MORE EXPERIMENTAL AND A LOT MORE DARING.” listen to and to get lost in because I didn’t play every instrument. I think now the sound is just a lot more experimental and a lot more daring,” Calder suggests before correcting himself. “Not that Bleeders wasn’t daring. What I mean is that was never the main point of the record. I think now we’re just a lot more in your face and confident. “Wow,” he continues, “I feel like I’m gonna come across really arrogant in
insists: “I don’t really worry about [that] stuff. Of course we always appreciate when people like our stuff, but it doesn’t affect the way we make music. I only ever feel pressured to be true to ourselves and to do what we want to do.”
The band will ride high on the coattails of Rookie’s release, embarking on a tour that Calder promises will showcase their sound in a completely different light: “I think we’re a lot more rowdy… wait, no, a lot more energetic than people expect us to be,” he laughs. “We really get into it.” WHAT: Rookie (MGM) WHEN & WHERE: 22 Aug Transit Bar, Canberra; 23 Aug, GoodGod Small Club THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013 • 29
fashion
HEY, GIRL... If you think the words ‘online publishing powerhouse’ and ‘teenager’ don’t belong in the same sentence, then you haven’t met Tavi Gevinson. Natasha Lee meets the girl who is teaching the pros how it’s done.
Q
uick question: What were you doing at 13? Most of us were either cooped up inside playing computer games or, umm… at school. Not Tavi Gevinson. If you believe the hype, Gevinson is the face of the future of journalism, but if you talk to the now 17-year-old, you’ll find that she’s just trying to “work it all out”. At 13, Gevinson was seated next to the US Vogue’s Editor-In-Chief Anna Wintour at Fashion Week. It caused a great brouhaha amongst the ‘fashion elite’ because, and get this, Gevinson decided to wear a bright pink bow to the event. The youngster was invited courtesy the growing popularity of her quirky blog, Style Rookie, which has now evolved into an online magazine for teenage girls, dropping the Style part in the process. “Oh, gosh, I’m trying to find a place to sit down! I’m walking on a street and there are like cars everywhere,” the insanely busy Gevinson pants. She’s on the phone from her hometown sunny LA ahead of her trip down under to wax lyrical about her “stuff ” at the Sydney Opera House and the Melbourne Writers Festival. And, she’s kinda nervous. Despite a successful tilt at the speaking circuit thanks to a TEDxTeen talk on ‘Still Figuring It Out’ that saw her encourage all girls to “be like Stevie Nicks” (“she gave me a crescent moon necklace after that talk!” gushes Gevinson), this time around the teenager admits that she’s not as prepared. “Well, now I’m kind of still working it out. There are all these notes, and with my TED talk that was about having an idea and I kind of just stuck all these notes together, but this hasn’t been coming together as cleanly. I want to talk about a bunch of different things.” One of those things is her burgeoning interest in feminism. “Basically, I got into feminism at the end of my middle school years. I read a couple of books about feminism and pop culture and the riot grrrl movement, and it
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just resonated with me. It all really started at that age when you think about your body and your image and your relationship to boys…” Gevinson drifts off before adding, “the hardest thing is just figuring out who you are and how your gender comes into that.” Entering the gender wars proved to be
own articles – is now something of a safe haven for teenage girls to escape into. There’s a mix of articles, with everything from music and movies to guides on things like How To Do Bitchface and How To Deal When You’re Caught Masturbating. “I like to explore a lot of problems and the things facing teenage girls,” Gevison says. “Of course, I have an easier time writing about the ones I have more experience dealing with, well, given my limited experience with things – I mean, I’m from a middleclass suburb and I’m a white girl. But the good thing about Rookie is that we have almost 80 staffers now and that’s a lot of people who come from different backgrounds and who can tell their own story.”
“IT ALL REALLY STARTED AT THAT AGE WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR BODY AND YOUR IMAGE...” one of the smartest decisions the then 15-year-old (!) made. Sick of writing only about fashion, she expanded her online publishing empire to include anything and everything for teenage girls and, in turn, launched Rookie. The magazine – unabashedly un-airbrushed and featuring many of Gevinson’s
The online publishing wunderkind now divides her time between editing Rookie and being a (relatively) ‘normal’ teenager. When asked how on earth she managed to fit it all in, Gevinson laughs: “Someone once told me the key to not procrastinating is to do so much that you don’t have time to procrastinate, so I cut out things that aren’t interesting to me. Of course, there are some things that I have to do – I mean, I would not appreciate the irony of doing a blog about teenage girls and then quitting school.” WHAT: Melbourne Writers’ Festival WHEN & WHERE: 18 August, Sydney Opera House
politics
KEEPING UP WITH CLIVE
When Clive Palmer has more political appeal than your prime minister you know there’s something rotten at the head of Australian politics, writes Kris Swales from deep in Clive country.
T
he billboard is the first sign that you’re entering Clive Palmer country. The eccentric billionaire – or just multi-millionaire, depending on whether you trust his personal value assessment of $6 billion or Forbes magazine’s more conservative $795 million estimate – beams down from the sign holding two thumbs up. His ‘she’ll be right, mate’ visage doesn’t quite match up with the ‘serious business’ image we expect from political leaders in Australia. Or anywhere, for that matter. We’re on David Low Way, between Mount Coolum and Yaroomba on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, on our way to a private pre-election “Call To Action” from the mining magnate and his Palmer United Party (PUP) for his local membership base. Palmer’s corporate branding is consistent, the carpet matching the curtains from the billboard to the signage outside the nearby Palmer Coolum Resort. All the Palmer iconography is present and accounted for, from the sign for his Titanic II boat-building project as you enter the gates, to ‘Jeff ’, the full scale Tyrannosaurus Rex who stands off to one side of the hotel complex. The Universal Studios Jurassic Park ride seems a little half-baked compared to this behemoth, so one can 32 • THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013
only imagine what scope Palmer’s recently approved dinosaur theme park will have when Jeff is joined by 159 of his favourite foods. Just a few weeks ago, the resort was alive as the Queensland State Of Origin team completed their preparations for the series decider here. Tonight, as darkness falls, a lone golfer gets in some putting practice under lights on a course that, until recently, hosted the Australian PGA Championships. Stretch golf carts ferry guests from the bitumen car park to the function room, independent Queensland MP Peter Wellington and ‘colourful’ former Sunshine Coast mayor Alison Barry-Jones (formerly Grosse) among them. Why am I here? My old man has joined the
PUP ranks – in part due to exasperation with the major parties, but in the hope of having the ear of a local powerbroker who’ll respond to his policy queries with something more substantial than the political equivalent of an email auto-response. Palmer’s PA says it’s fine for me to tag along and write what I like. After reading Max Robson’s comical assessment of the man of the hour in Fairfax’s Good Weekend supplement on the train north from Brisbane, I’m expecting something akin to a slapstick version of ABC political satire The Hollowmen. It’s a low-key affair, though, this ‘cocktail function’ sans cocktails, and the first social gathering I’ve walked into for a while where I’ve been closer to halving the average age than doubling it. Palmer is personable, working the room, moving from group to group, sipping a soft drink while shaking hands and dropping wisecracks. When he jibes that my old man and I share a similar high forehead as we shake hands, I take it on the chin and ascribe it to his obvious nerves. Bill Schoch, the PUP candidate for Fisher (Palmer is running for Fairfax, directly to the north), takes the stage with little fanfare, calling “the next Prime Minister of Australia” forward to speak. He’s warmly received by the 100-odd rank and file in the room, give-or-take one southern journalist who’s still slightly disappointed that PUP senate candidate and rugby league legend Glenn Lazarus isn’t present. What follows isn’t the rantings of a fool, though Palmer may be insane; nor a regurgitation of party rhetoric, though Palmer does drop some policy ideas. His freewheeling 15-minute speech, followed by a
10-minute addendum, feels like it’s being delivered from the heart – by a man whose heart seems driven by people rather than politics – with zero obfuscation. He reels off stats so quickly that you suspect his habit of running fast and loose with the facts (even when it comes to his own past) is in full effect, but it’s hard not to get caught up in his charisma. Like most of us, he’s fed up with the lowest common denominator political discourse in Canberra. Unlike us, he’s actually got the money to put where his mouth is.
“WHAT FOLLOWS ISN’T THE RANTINGS OF A FOOL, THOUGH PALMER MAY BE INSANE.“
A fortnight earlier, I found myself standing on the outside looking in at Redfern Town Hall. A crowd of several hundred spilled out of the first floor function room and down the stairwell for the A New Way: New Policies, New Politics seminar – an awareness builder for Sydney Greens candidate Dianne Hiles, but ostensibly a forum for human rights advocate Julian Burnside AO QC to elaborate on his asylum seeker solutions. Much as he wrote in his You’ve Been Misled On Boat People: Here Are The Facts piece for Fairfax Media, Burnside spoke of asylum seekers not as political pawns, but people; humans with hopes and dreams and much to offer areas of Australia that need a population boost. That keeping an asylum seeker in detention costs between $200-450k a year, but paying them Centrelink benefits is closer to $25,000 – and if they’re in a struggling regional community, much of that money goes directly back into it. Meanwhile, back on the campaign trail, Messrs Rudd and Abbott continue to promise ‘solutions’ and
announce borderline non-policies that have more to with saving their own careers than human life. In his “Call To Action” speech, Palmer references asylum seekers just once. Playing to his demographic, he says that raising the age pension is one of his priorities. “Talking to a lot of elderly people on the pension, who find that they’re getting – I think it’s $327 a week,” Palmer says. “Asylum seekers that are being paid benefits in Australia are getting $427 a week. “Not to have a shot at asylum seekers,” he adds. “It’s the system we’re talking about here.” A system where those at the top prey on the weak. Much like it was in Jeff the T-Rex’s heyday. THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013 • 33
music
BRAVE WORLD They’ve been together for a little over 18 months, but already Canada’s Obey The Brave are signed to Epitaph, have a debut full-length under their belts and are smack bang in the middle of a world tour. Guitarist John Campbell talks about the wild ride with Tom Hersey.
“T
here’s no rest for the wicked man,” Obey The Brave’s John Campbell says with a laugh. And as though to prove his point, the guitarist calls while on tour through the USA.
So far, 2013 has been a wild ride for the Montreal deathcore five-piece. Formed in early 2012 by buddies from Despised Icon and Blind Witness, this year has seen the band tear it up across North American and European stages, with their debut record Young Blood earning rave reviews. But according to Campbell, the band’s amazing
business wasn’t something that they had planned. “When we started the band we weren’t quite sure what we were going to do,” Campbell explains. “The first talks we had when we got together happened when we’d all come out of bands that had toured fairly heavily, so we were thinking about starting something where we’d play some shows on weekends. As the songs came together we got more into it and decided that we wanted to do it full-time – give it 110 per cent.” As the band was writing for their debut, everything just clicked.
music
From the way Young Blood seemlessly marries a melodic metalcore sensibility with a brutal deathcore edge, to getting signed to punk institution Epitaph Records, it became apparent that, despite the band’s initial plans to keep things small, the opportunity to do something much bigger was beckoning. “The music is the primary reason that we all enjoy being in the band but, even if you’re 100 per cent behind your band, you might not get the opportunity to be able to travel and put a record out. So getting signed up with Epitaph just made us more driven to do this as a full-time thing, and take this band as far as we can. Just do as much as we possibly can, because it’s not an opportunity everyone gets. “And it’s one thing to write a song, but it’s a whole other thing to actually play that song live,” says Campbell. “I think there’s a whole different dynamic. Sometimes one of the least favourite songs on the record becomes one of [the best] to play live. And that all becomes good food for thought when thinking about writing a second record.” According to Campbell, that second LP is very much on the way. “Ideally it would be out early to mid next year. We’ve been writing for a while now. It is more difficult being on the road to get stuff done, but [we’re getting it] done, we’re fitting it in.” WHAT: Young Blood (Epitaph/Warner) WHEN & WHERE: 20 Aug, Pot Belly, Canberra; 21 Aug, Sohier Park Hall, Ourimbah (all-ages); 22 Aug, Hot Damn; 23 Aug, Studio Six (all-ages)
TEXAS TALES Want a guaranteed way to piss people off ? Try naming your band Millions Of Dead Cops (MDC for short). On the eve of their first ever Australian tour, Mark Hebblewhite chats with hardcore mastermind Dave Dictor to talk punk rock survival and Reagan’s America.
D
ave Dictor’s got a set of balls on him. It’d be one thing to start a band called Millions Of Dead Cops in today’s ‘impossible to shock’ musical environment. But doing this in 1981 – in Texas – and in the middle of Ronald Reagan’s conservative revolution? As I said – dude’s got balls. “Yeah, we pissed a whole lot of people off,” admits Dictor. “At the same time it was also very exciting because so many of us were restless and exploding inside. All these bands, Black Flag, Minor Threat, Dead Kennedys, Agnostic Front, D.O.A., us, Circle Jerks – so many others – were doing our thing because nothing around us in popular culture interested us. “As for people hating the band because of its name – well just as we pissed them off, they pissed us off,” continues Dictor. “Down south in our neck of the woods you still had the Ku-Klux Clan viciously attacking Mexican farm workers and black churches. They did what they wanted because they were aligned with the police. And of course the police at that time would often break up hardcore shows and just start beating people for no reason. We were originally called The Stains but then we found out there was a band in LA with the same name so we had
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to change it. Choosing a new name was a no brainer when you considered how the police of the time behaved.” Unlike many of their contemporaries, MDC survived the ravages of time and have been an ongoing concern for 30 years. In 2006 the band got a real boost when the documentary American Hardcore generated renewed interest in the genre’s roots. “That movie really helped us,” admits Dictor. “When I was asked to be involved I said ‘cool’ and did some interviews and thought nothing of it. Then the next minute we’d be in the
middle of New Mexico or something filling up the van and people would come over and say ‘Hey are you Dave Dictor from that movie?” he laughs – “unbelievable.” That MDC are finally getting the chance to tour Australia is exciting for fans and the band alike. Dictor promises that although they are now seen as veterans, collectively they still have a hunger for hardcore. “We’re going to play our arses off for you – I can tell you that,” he says. “We’ve been wanting to come to Australia for so long and we’re really looking forward to playing the shows. Obviously we’ll be playing a lot of the early material – people seem to like that – but overall it’ll be something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. This band has lots of individual ‘eras’ and we want to show people a little bit of each one so they know what MDC is all about.” WHEN & WHERE: 16 Aug, Hermann’s Bar
WET MAGIC As Sydney festival unveils its 2014 centrepiece, Dido & Aeneas, lead mezzo soprano Aurore Ugolin talks to Dave Drayton.
S
asha Waltz’s radical new production of Henry Purcell’s Baroque opera premiered in Germany in 2005 at Staatsoper Unter den Linden (the Berlin State Opera). Waltz is at the top of her game and the dance-driven re-imaging – which features a cast of more than 50 dancers, singers, and musicians – was met with acclaim, and more than a few awed comments about the prologue, performed by dancers submerged in an enormous suspended tank of water. The score is to be performed live by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin conducted by Christopher Moulds, and the set is designed by architect Thomas Schenk.
SCENE FROM DIDO & AENEAS
For France-based Aurore Ugolin, a mezzo soprano who landed the lead, Dido, it’s her first big job following graduation with masters from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (superior not just because it’s in the name, it’s like France’s Julliard). “It was my first big role. During the summer I did one small role and then to have my first big role with a huge company like Sasha’s was amazing. I was very lucky!” exclaims Ugolin modestly. So large is the scope and scale of Waltz’s production (it has been tipped as this year’s Semele Walk, the collision of couture and
opera by Vivenne Westwood and Ludger Engels that took top spot at the 2013 festival) that Ugolin is one of three Didos – Yael Schnell and Michal Mualem bring a more physical force of the lovelorn Queen of Carthage to life, while Ugolin provides the voice.
opera
“It is richer this way, because it gives different sides of the character; all of the emotions of Dido are visible on the stage thanks to the three dimensions. The dancing provides another aspect of the character,” explains Ugolin. Likewise British baritone Reuben Willcox provides the voice for Aeneas, while Virgis Puodziunas dances as him. Perhaps the most famous piece in Dido’s repertoire throughout the tragic love opera is her final aria When I Am Laid In Earth, a tragic musing on fate that has come to be known as Dido’s Lament. Ugolin now joins the ranks of a rather eclectic bunch of musicians who have put their mark on the song (among them Jeff Buckley and Ane Brune). As it turns out, she’d been working on it since before entering the Conservatoire in 2000. “I had been working on the arias at the Conservatoire,” recalls Ugolin, “And I even presented to enter the Conservatoire of Paris the last aria, the lament, so I knew the piece already, I was already familiar. I’ve been lucky to develop it further to find a nice colour that also fit with Sasha’s idea. I found the direction; she is not complaining, and it’s not only sadness, Dido knows ‘He has gone away, but now I have to face this destiny’. There is a lot of dignity, you know, she doesn’t need to be sad or sorry for her destiny, she is going to face it.” WHAT: Dido & Aeneas WHERE & WHEN: 16 to 21 Jan, Sydney Festival, Lyric Theatre
GOODWIL-ING
comedy
Wil Anderson is optimistic about reaching the half-way point in his life, and explains to Liz Giuffre why he thinks his latest show, GoodWil, is his personal Dark Knight Rises.
A
lthough a broadcaster, writer and presenter, Wil Anderson remains once, always and forever committed to stand-up comedy. He’s about to hit the stage again with Melbourne Comedy Festival Five Star show, GoodWil, this time doing a shorter run for those of us not able to make the fest. “Last time I was in Australia there was a Western Bulldogs supporter who was Prime Minister, and much like the Western Bulldogs, she didn’t make it ‘til September,” Anderson laughs from his current digs in the States. Increasingly pushing for an international stage and forum, being home will make a nice (albeit increasingly strange) pit stop. “I’m just happy I didn’t come over here on a boat or else I might be doing all my gigs in PNG.” Still piss funny, Anderson is committed to upping the stakes each show. “While I don’t want to overstate, it is still dick jokes for cash. When it comes to comedy I want to take my work really seriously and myself not very seriously at all. That’s the balance that I’m trying to work on. And I think there’s a point that you get to in your life, and I don’t think it’s any coincidence that often the most creative years in a stand-up’s life are their forties. If you look at the greats, if you look at George Carlin, if you look at Bill Cosby, if you look at Seinfeld and Billy Connolly, if you look at Ricky Gervais, if you
look at all those guys and where they really hit their peak, it was in their forties. And the reason for that is, I think, it’s about halfway through your life, an average life, and also you’re young enough that you remember what it’s like to be young, but also old enough to know that life is not black and white, it is grey, it is complex, and you’ll sometimes change your mind on things. So I’m approaching forty now, and I feel like in the last couple of years I’ve been transitioning, and if these are going to be my most creative years I wanted to work out how to do it. I needed to get my skills to catch up to my ideas.
Because to do the ambitious things that I wanted to do with my stand-up, I feel that you have to have really solid stand-up skills to be able to convey those ideas.” Explaining GoodWil and how it fits his career, he turns to one of the greatest philosophers of our time for help. “I know that I compare everything to Batman, but I feel like this show is like my Dark Night Rises. I feel like three years ago I established the things I wanted to talk about, then in the second one I turned a lot of those things on their head, even in a literal sense where I said ‘hey, you know how I was angry about this last year, but I’ve changed my mind and this is why,’ and now it’ll be like ‘this is the last thing I’m going to say about a lot of these things.’ And then next year I’m going to do something different again.” WHAT: Wil Anderson – GoodWil WHEN & WHERE: 13 Sep, Enmore Theatre and 26 Sep, Concourse Theatre THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013 • 37
visual art
LIFE AS ART Ever thought about all the work that goes into a gig poster design? Sindy Sinn took the direct route and made them himself for his bands, and now he chats to Bethany Cannan about what it’s like to be a full-time freelance illustrator.
I
t’s a cold weekday morning in Sydney, and Sindy Sinn spies us a couple of cosy window seats at Olive Green’s, a small café with a fondness for all things organic. Next door is WorkShop, where Sinn is taking a night off later this month to run a gig poster illustration class. Sinn is obsessed with sharing ideas and being a part of the artistic community, which is why he is taking the opportunity to run a class. He explains, “There’s a specific approach to gig poster illustration. You need to be able to communicate with bands, tailor your illustration for a band, and there’s deadlines and a budget.” Sinn never studied at an art school, admitting, “I think if I had gone to art school, I would have rebelled against it, and been like, ‘fuck that, I’m going to be a lawyer, or a tradie, or a rocket scientist!’” Autodidactism suits Sinn, even though he took art seriously in high school, but was heavily involved in music. Sinn left Sydney soon after school, travelling with bands as a roadie and occasional stage manager. Eventually growing tired of life on the road, Sinn returned to Sydney, where he started a few bands locally, then realising it was easier to draw their gig posters himself, modestly adding that he didn’t think of himself
theatre
as a particularly good draughtsman at that point. But his work was noticed by other bands, who started asking after him. Sinn now works full-time as a freelance illustrator. “It’s incredibly hard. A part of me thinks there’s a really glamorous side to being an illustrator, or an artist. But the reality is that it’s really long hours ... I’ve got deadlines and I’m juggling clients and I’m trying to make sure people pay me on time and I’m trying to pay my rent and have a life.” Sinn says he has no interest in putting out “safe” art. While he feels art doesn’t
A FIGHTING CHANCE “We can say it; girls fighting is still perceived as being really sexy.” Claudia Chidiac talks to Dave Drayton about the misconceptions of female violence and why she put the issue on stage.
C
laudia Chidiac has long been interested in communities and an engagement with their stories, in her work and practice. “For about ten years now I’ve worked with young people in a community engagement context, and through my role as Artistic Director at Powerhouse Youth Theatre I really honed my skills on engagement, contemporary performance and working with young people,” Chidiac explains. When her tenure at PYT was coming to a close she proposed Tough Beauty, a confronting exploration of young girl-to-girl violence in Australia. Three years on, as the
theatre producer at Casula Powerhouse, Chidiac is directing Tough Beauty, the first theatre show to be produced entirely in-house at Casula. “Girl-to-girl violence has not been represented on Australian stages before, and this is an Australian response to girl-to-girl violence. We hear and we see a lot of work on stage and on screen about male identity and male violence. I don’t know a performance piece that has addressed or has looked at female violence, and it’s a gap, and there is something very serious that is taking place.” One need only to recall the 2006 case of two teenage girls beating a cab driver
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ORGANIC BY SINDY SINN
have to be offensive, he loves art that “looks crazy and interesting … and a little bit creepy.” The inspiration for his own work comes mostly from his love of cartoons and movies. I was curious about the tools Sinn uses to create his work, but apart from a computer and Wacom tablet, it’s just a sketchbook and a few pens and pencils. “I don’t have expensive pens that I have to use. I just make the best out of basic equipment. I try not to be too precious about it all.” Sinn is currently designing a collection of boys’ shirts for Mambo, and writing and illustrating children’s books, along with work for his regular bands and venues. Sinn has started painting murals, too, and his most recent work can be found at Mary’s, a bar in Newtown. WHAT: Sindy Sinn’s illustration class WHEN & WHERE: 20 Aug Work-Shop, Chippendale
(it resulted in his death) or the numerous YouTube schoolyard wars to which the likes of A Current Affair have pandered over recent years to realise that Chidiac has found an issue that needs addressing. While touring schools previously with an anti-bullying show, Can You Hear Me, in partnership with South West Sydney Legal Services, Chidiac noticed a common trend among the teenage girls – a silence on the culture of violence that existed: “In an all-girls school it would take a while to get any response. At one school – it was a co-ed school – no one said anything, and then one girl put her hand up and said, ‘Look, no one is saying anything because this stuff happens at this school, and no one wants to talk about it.’ With high schools, again it was that same question, why? Why is this an option, and why aren’t we doing other things? The young women I met would say, ‘You know what, because we can, we can do it,’ and that’s what I wanted to explore, that choice. Why is the ultimate choice for you to make in that moment to hurt somebody else?” Following a series of workshops and interviews that engaged the local community, she enlisted Finegan Kruckemeyer to write a fictional script that illuminated the responses of young participants, that recreated their world. “Both Finegan and myself feel really strongly that it’s not our job as artists to give answers, and something like violence is so complex we can’t give an answer to it and so what we have done is we’ve revealed violence in the lives of four young women, young women who have made conscience choices to commit acts of violence.” WHAT: Tough Beauty WHEN & WHERE: 15 to 17 Aug, Casula Powerhouse Theatre
THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013 • 43
festival 1.
1.
2.
360
2.
Atlas Genius
3.
Lollapalooza Crowd
4.
The Cure
5.
Father John Misty
3.
6.
HAIM
7.
4.
Icona Pop
8.
Jake Bugg
9.
LENS ON ’PALOOZA 5.
Kendrick Lamar
Our photgrapher in the US Andrew Boyle attended the recent Lollapalooza festival at Grant Park in Chicago. He managed to snap many on the huge lineup including recent visitors here, soon to be visitors here, those we wish would visit and some who may yet visit after all.
10.
Major Lazer
11.
Matt & Kim
12. Nine Inch Nails
13.
Queens Of The Stone Age
14.
6.
Thievery Corp
15.
The Vaccines
16.
Tegan & Sara
17.
MS MR
18.
7.
8. 9.
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The National
festival 10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
16. 15.
17.
18.
THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013 • 47
reviews
This week: Boy & Bear are back, election related apps reviewed and our thoughts on Upstream Color.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
BOY & BEAR Harlequin Dream Universal
Boy & Bear have a style and they’re sticking to it. That’s not to say every song on Harlequin Dream sounds the same. It just means if you’re not on board with the album in the opening bars, there’s not much point ploughing ahead. The good news is, those opening bars make a great argument for delving deep into what’s to follow.
★★★★
TRACKLIST 1. Southern Sun
7. End Of The Line
3. Harlequin Dream
9. Real Estate
2. Old Town Blues
4. Three Headed Woman 5. Bridges
6. A Moment’s Grace
8. Back Down The Black 10. Stranger
Harlequin Dream is full of contradictions that almost always work in its favour. The title track somehow manages to be dreamy but driving at the same time. A Moment’s Grace asks contemplative questions about mortality, while not sounding nearly as pretentious as that description would have you believe. End Of The Line almost sounds like Darren Hanlon at his most playful. While Back Down The Black – all subdued piano and restrained synth – acts as a breather before the band launch into the (marginally) more up-tempo closing tracks. Songs like Arrow Flight, with its bouncing harpsichord and lyrics of “fleeting moments” and “basking in the autumn sun” make you feel like everything’s going to be okay. In a post-Mumford & Sons world, quiet, introspective folk music can be found lying under every vintage waistcoat and tin of moustache wax. But it takes more than just whacking in a banjo or mandolin to make this style work. It takes a kind of non-pretentious sincerity that Boy & Bear deliver in spades. Harlequin Dream perfectly combines the jaunty swagger of neo-folk with real emotion and a touch of bitter sweetness for an album of real substance. Pete Laurie
11. Arrow Flight
THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013 • 49
album reviews
DAWES
JULIA HOLTER
Universal
Domino
Stories Don’t End The high and instantly recognisable voice of Taylor Goldsmith kicks off LA Americana/classic rock exponents Dawes’ third album, Stories Don’t End, opening track, Just Beneath The Surface, offering a nowfamiliar display of self-reflective relationship analysis (“When you talk about me/Do you stick to the memories?”), the singer-songwriter still trying to make sense of the myriad travails incumbent in messy affairs of the heart. The album itself is an endless highway of AOR-tinted tones – the top is down and the sky is blue – the only slight distractions from the unrelentingly smooth journey coming in the form of the occasional mildly-indulgent fretwork and the complex, close harmonies liberally littering the surrounds. Goldsmith is one of those writers adept at ringing meaning from minutiae in the rich realm of relationships (Someone Will, Something In Common, From The Right
Loud City Song
★★★ Angle), although he channels that empathy differently at times. In Most People, he uses the perspective of an ostracised female, while in Bear Witness that of both a frail, aging man and a lovelorn dog. The songwriting is uniformly strong and the pristine production from Jacquire King (Tom Waits, Norah Jones) is crisp and adds to the allure; however it all just feels a bit safe and misses the melancholy of their 2009 debut, North Hills. Nonetheless, if you grew up getting down to your parents’ Jackson Browne or LRB records you’ll find a lot to love here – the ‘70s Laurel Canyon vibe given a modern sheen. Steve Bell
Awash with atmospheric backing music, World offers a very gentle introduction to Julia Holter’s third album, Loud City Song. With Holter’s delicate and carefully paced vocals gliding over the top of this minimal musical backdrop, you’re lulled into a dreamy world that carries you away before you know it. Billed as her first proper studio album (her previous two records were recorded in her bedroom) Loud City Song is a mix of highly individualistic and artistic tracks and there are, at times, surreal things goings on. In terms of sound quality, though, there is not as significant a difference between her most recent songs and those she recorded on her own as you’d expect. Some of the more experimental songs such as Maxim’s 2 and Horns Surrounding Me, however, take Holter’s work to a far more out there level than on her previous outfit. The themes explored on Loud City Song take some inspiration from
TY SEGALL
NO AGE
Drag City/Spunk
Sub Pop/Inertia
Sleeper
Prodigious and prolific Bay Area garage upstart Ty Segall is only just now releasing his first album for 2013, having dropped three long-players last year, and he’s lowered the volume significantly to fly his freak flag high. Sadly, Segall’s adoptive father died late last year and the fallout found him estranged from his mother, so now Sleeper sees him using acoustic guitars and ambient arrangements to craft a seemingly cathartic response to those traumatic events. It’s a meditative batch of songs but not mired in melancholy, and Segall is an accomplished enough songwriter to pull this new mood off. He touched on such relatively mellow domains to a degree on 2011’s Goodbye Bread, but here he’s taken that shift to its logical extreme, songs such as the languid psych-folk title-track, the pastoral, Bert Jansch-channelling The Keeper, the swampy blues of 6th Street and the lo-fi acoustic glam 52 • THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013
★★★ ½
the 1944 novella Gigi, written by the French author Colette, with Holter choosing to use this inspiration in a contemporary way. The book deals, in part, with society and appearances, and Holter shines a light on our culture’s obsession with celebrity – something the LA-born musician resents. Loud City Songs is a highly inconsistent album in terms of maintaining atmosphere from one song to the next. There are times when the tracks flow together nicely and then there are times when the change is, quite honestly, jarring. This album is definitely not boring but whether or not you can make much sense of it is another matter. Dominique Wall
An Object
★★★★ number, Sweet C.C., all sounding miles removed from his past fare. Elsewhere the ‘60s-tinged builder, Come Outside, brings a welcome whiff of menace to proceedings, while reflective closer, The West – which actually refers directly to his parents – strangely ends the album on a jaunty, upbeat note (musically at any rate). This relatively dark and desolate batch of songs will almost certainly prove to be a detour rather than a new direction for Segall – expect riffs aplenty next time around – but it’s still a fascinating and quite brave new facade for this precocious young talent. Steve Bell
There are some albums that should only be consumed all at once. The fourth full-length from noise rock duo No Age fits into that category. An Object sees the pair minimising the turbulent noise of its predecessors, taking heed from 2010’s Everything In Between and making a greater use of space and structure with the execution of each track operating at a much more cautious pace. While still brimming with the dissonance that their sound is known for, An Object makes a departure from the more raucous elements of previous releases, hinting at a far more analytical take on noise-rock. No Age appear to be doing a little more genre-bending with An Object, exploring the realms of no wave and post-punk with a subtle incorporation of drone. Save for the more punkoriented C’mon, Stimmung and the krautrock-esque Lock Box, the album functions at a fairly consistent timing. As a result, it
★★★ ½
guides you through from start to finish with the illusion of having barely changed tracks at all – even with the occasional abrupt transitions and sonic curveballs that present themselves throughout the album. The only setback in such fluidity is that the album’s close (Commerce, Comment, Commence) feels far too soon. No Age have taken on a lot of responsibility in having included such a veritable range of sounds in such a minimal fashion. They’ve certainly handled it in the best possible way, though it takes a couple of listens for An Object to prove itself as the musically rich and brilliantly puttogether album that it really is. Justine Keating
album reviews
★★★½
★★★½
★★★½
FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE
LO FIVE
DRENGE
Lo Five Music
Infectious/Liberator
Nuclear Blast
Singularity finds funk soul brothers Lo Five taking a range of retro influences and putting a contemporary electronic spin on them. The result is 13 groovalicious tracks that swagger from sweet neo soul to sly funk. Paying homage to the late great Amy Winehouse, Heavenly Ho was reportedly written several months before her untimely passing. Amazingly, Lo Five collaborate with Aretha and Elvis’ backing singers, The Sweet Temptations; the resulting Little Man is a totally delicious soul funker. If you feel like getting your groove on, Lo Five’s Singularity will certainly help you out.
Labyrinth
Fleshgod Apocalypse’s modus operandi is a bizarre desire to meld music of two seemingly incompatible styles into one and latest release, Labyrinth, has the Italians fusing symphony with technical death metal. The classical orchestration tempers the belligerence of the metal that lies at the core of what this band does. With so much going on musically it could all have easily turned into a sloppy steaming pile of half-baked ideas, but the mix is evenly separated with all elements working together effectively. Upon hearing this musical Frankenstein’s monster, one can only proclaim: “It’s alive!” Glenn Waller
Singularity
Guido Farnell
LAURA VEIRS Warp And Weft
Bella Union/[PIAS] Australia Portland-based chanteuse Laura Veirs’ ninth album is a wilfully diverse collection (she prefers “tapestry”, hence the title’s weaving reference) of disparate sounds, united by her gorgeous voice, intricate guitar playing and distinct sensibilities. Esteemed guests such as Neko Case and Jim James help out, but this is Veirs’ baby (almost literally, with her being heavily pregnant during recording) and the rich imagery of tracks like Sun Song, America, Dorothy of The Island and Ikaria elevates this up with the best work of her still-escalating career. Sublime indie folk stitched to perfection.
Even though it was recorded in fits and starts over almost three years, the debut, selftitled album from Drenge never sounds roughly assembled, disjointed or uncohesive. Drenge the band and Drenge the album seem to be all about no frills, simple rock’n’roll. While the idea of a rock duo is nothing novel these days, brothers Eion and Rory Loveless bring so much energy and attitude to Drenge that not one track sounds like the work of just two people. Lo-fi and no frills, gloriously raw and gritty, you can almost smell the rock and roll coming off Drenge.
PAUL KELLY & MORE
Conversations With Ghosts ABC/Universal
A concept album, Conversations With Ghosts sounds (deliberately) haunted. Beginning with a musical adaptation of Yeats’ poem, The Lake Isle Of Innisfree, the orchestration is stark and spooky; Kelly’s voice is a relief, a sign of life within the otherwise unfamiliar sounds. Some of Kelly’s own words (and sounds) have been included too and somehow it sounds otherworldly, especially on finale I’m Not Afraid Of The Dark Anymore – a simple, gorgeous concept that sees Kelly working without a safety net, but with ultimate skill. Liz Giuffre
LO CARMEN & PETER HEAD The Apple Don’t Fall Far From The Tree Independent
This is the first collaborative album from Lo Carmen and her pianist father Peter Head and hopefully it won’t be the last, such is its endearing mix of country soul and late night jazz. Primarily the songs are built on Head’s elegant and melodious playing and Carmen’s playful purr of a voice that draws you deep into the songs. Much of the album is made up of covers of songs made famous by the likes of Tom Waits, Peggy Lee and Roy Orbison, making this an album high on smoky atmosphere and the ghosts of many a raised glass. Chris Familton
Pete Laurie
★★★
★★★★
Steve Bell
Drenge
★★★½
★★★★
YELLOWCARD
Ocean Avenue Acoustic Hopeless/UNFD
In marking the ten-year anniversary of Ocean Avenue, Yellowcard have re-released the album entirely acoustic. With a newly-adopted fluidity that didn’t exist in the original, Yellowcard have re-invented the 2003 album without disregarding the original elements that made it so successful in the first place. The energy is toned down, but still exists in the powerful vocal delivery of Ryan Key.
★★★★
THE WILD FEATHERS
The Wild Feathers Warner
Yellowcard have taken on a dangerous feat in many aspects, but they’ve pulled it off and ended up with an album of high enough standards to be completely on par with the quality of the original.
A band made up of frontmen who all sing and write; an obvious embrace of country roots; polished musicianship with a Dirty South edge; there’s plenty of comparison between The Wild Feathers and Drive-By Truckers, in the best possible way. Hailing from Nashville, the band’s selftitled debut kicks off strong with the full throttle country infused rock of Backwoods Company and never backs off. Even the slowed down and acoustic Tall Boots still has real, biting edge. The Wild Feathers pays its respects to the past, while carving out something new and pretty great.
Justine Keating
Pete Laurie THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013 • 53
live reviews Lead vocalist Mark Robert Fuller chipped his front tooth on the microphone a few songs in and was seemingly in a fair bit of discomfort but he pulled it together well with echoing falsetto vocals drawing on ‘80s dream pop. The band kept up a constant tirade of tracks with instrumental transitions between songs that kept the crowd dancing. From opener Thunder, with plenty of harmonies, to audience favourite, Treehouse, the band put in the energy for an explosive show and even got a pretty respectable hand clap going during You’re Still Gone. The song structures and vibe got a bit repetitive towards the end of the set but their last track Moves was on point.
My Way has a ‘60s repeating riff, backing vocals and stompy drum line that sounds like it was written while lazing on a sunny afternoon. Whether covering a rockabilly classic, or unveiling a new track only a few weeks old, the groove emanating from the boys had the whole joint shakin’. They ventured into some surf rock vibes on Going Down, and strutted through heavy trash alt. blues territory, before circling back to good old rock’n’roll. Banjo. Upright bass. Horns. Violin. Telecaster. Hollow-body guitar. Drums. Folk. Blues. Country. Cabaret. To say that there are many facets to Cash Savage & The Last Drinks is somewhat of an understatement. It is apt then, that the first song of their set urged the crowd
SAFIA @ UPSTAIRS BERESFORD. PIC: PETER SHARP
With no hint of an encore, the UniBar proved a timid audience and it was an intimate show for the rising stars. As a credit to Gold Fields, they made it work. Lorin Reid
CASH SAVAGE & THE LAST DRINKS, LOS TONES
Goodgod Small Club 4 Aug
Los Tones are of the same breed as Royston Vasie, Drunk Mums, or a punked-up Little Red. They enjoy their garage rock with the slightest hint of country, they don’t shy away from pop, but most of all, it all comes down to the riff. On 58 • THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013
bass create an alloy of strength underpinning Savage’s husky low tones. All of this, as musically high-brow as it might seem, had an eager crowd dancing from the opening bar to the end of the genuine encore. Kristy Wandmaker
STANDISH/ CARLYON, FOUR DOOR, HORSE MACGYVER
Goodgod Small Club 9 Aug
Perhaps it was by result of the small number of people that made up the audience, but witnessing the amount
BATTLESHIPS @ UPSTAIRS BERESFORD. PIC: PETER SHARP
to Let Go And See Where She Takes Me. Which the crowd did willingly. Cash Savage is unlike any other band touring Australia’s pubs and clubs. She is an Australiana soul singer with a colonial blues band, who writes songs brimming with veracity and vulnerability. All of their songs tell the story of a moment. Bareknuckle Boogie captures perfectly the brainless stupidity that can be seen any weekend, in any pub, in any town, of dickheads punching on. Early Morning Comedown Blues evokes the wince behind your eyes as the first cracks of dawn bring reality to a fantastic night out. Musically the band are balanced. The violins and banjo don’t sound like a Mumford & Sons rip off. The guitars don’t battle for solo supremacy. Meanwhile, the drum and
more predictability and a little less obscurity. By this time, the crowd had increased quite significantly, and the accessibility of Four Door was welcomed with nothing but warmth. What could’ve easily been a boring set devoid of any variety was actually a mindmelting onslaught of highly danceable hypnotic electronica. Goodgod’s Danceteria isn’t exactly a big room. With the increased consumption of alcohol coupled with spiked noise levels and more movement, the illusion of an uncomfortably crowded space becomes that much more prevalent. Standish/ Carlyon cut through all of these potential distractions with limited banter replaced for a majority of their set with
BATTLESHIPS @ UPSTAIRS BERESFORD. PIC: PETER SHARP
of concentration with which Horse Macgyver operated his equipment felt almost voyeuristic – it was as if he were performing privately in his bedroom, completely unaware that he was being observed intensely by a small host of people. The acute attention he paid to his craft was as visually entertaining as it was sonically, though that’s certainly not to say that what was being produced was lacking in any way. Starting with sparse and basic arrangements, he applied additional sounds, periodically offering a number of curveballs to create tracks that were anything but predictable, even with the repetitive drum beats and synth lines serving as the backbones for each track. Four Door’s performance wasn’t all that varied to what came before, save for a little
BATTLESHIPS @ UP PIC: PETE
ambient interludes, demanding the attention of what was mostly a restless crowd. And who couldn’t be sucked in by their overwhelmingly cool composure? Everything from how they handled their instruments to the nonchalant choreography carried off during Nono/Yoyo was as sleek as their refined futuristic sound – a sound that even in a gritty atmosphere remained perfectly polished (save for a few moments when they embraced the rougher sound quality that a live space generally produces by implementing an abrasive wall of noise). It’s not particularly easy to stay completely focused during an entire line-up of experimental acts, but each artist proved themselves worthy of total diligence from the audience. Justine Keating
live reviews
BATTLESHIPS, SAFIA, THE DEADHEADS, MEG MAC Upstairs Beresford 8 Aug
Record label The A&R Department have released their first compilation LP, Marshmallow Pavement, and to celebrate they hosted an evening of several acts featured on the record at the Beresford. Kicking things off was local R&B songstress Meg Mac. Her set was made up of her entire recorded catalogue to date (about the length of an EP, all recorded in Perth), and
STAIRS BERESFORD. ER SHARP
and vague psychedelia, and shouted lyrics jostled for space amongst lengthy passages of crunchy guitar work. Despite the looseness of their sound there’s a strong melodic sensibility underpinning the whole thing, and it was fun to wrestle with the noise trying to extract a cleaner song. Early ‘90s guitar sounds were clearly the starting point for them, but they aren’t slaves to nostalgia or lazy affectation. Their set was great. Synth pop outfit Safia were disappointing. Their Facebook describes them as the “newest thing in live electronica”, but that’s so far from the truth it’s almost offensive. Their set boasted an overly simplistic and bombastic series of regurgitated sub-par
MEG MAC @ UPSTAIRS BERESFORD. PIC: PETER SHARP
it was a stunning introduction to what will hopefully be a bright career. Sophisticated songwriting combined with a phenomenal voice to create the best set of the evening. Her voice effortlessly conveyed everything she needed to communicate, subtly changing emphasis and tone to adjust the levels of pathos and the thematic focus. It not only sounded great, but it boasted deep emotional resonance as well. She had a vocal dexterity that bigger names like Jessie Ware and Amy Winehouse exhibit, and the small but vocal crowd responded well. Keep an eye out for this one. Next up were scum-rockers The Dead Heads, whose scuzzy slightly-out-of-tune jams were exciting and vigorous. Their arrangements were a strong mix of garage
short though, so their upcoming headline shows will be a pleasure to catch. Matt MacMaster
BARN OWL, DEAD CHINA DOLL, BROADCASTING TRANSMITTER
GoodGod Small Club Aug 7
For want a better term, a Sydney supergroup of alternative noise, Broadcasting Transmitter, wasted no time in setting the night’s mood. Two parts Dead China Doll, one
MEG MAC @ UPSTAIRS BERESFORD. PIC: PETER SHARP
references to a range of popular styles that came out sounding more like Eurovision than anything else. Glistening synth arrangements devoid of both originality and substance fell in a vapid heap on stage and would have been completely boring if it weren’t so loud. The only glimmer of hope came when they slowed things down a little and the notes and textures had time to settle in and try and burrow into your ear instead of punching them. Too little, too late. Rounding out the night was bright young rock band Battleships, whose rich cinematic songs were a welcome antidote. Lengthy ornate passages of melancholic guitar work wove themselves around dense churning hooks, and it was arresting and powerful. It was too
the noise that makes the group amazing. Gaps between shows and albums have only made their sound more focused, honed and brilliant; noise rock-cum-psychedelic jamming into crashing waves of sound - Dead China Doll mean business and Sydney should be proud. Behind two draped black desks, overflowing with wires and antennae, Barn Owl made their inauspicious Australian live debut. Lush keyboard tones foreshadowed the coming of much darker noise. Deep throbbing bass, felt as much as heard, shimmered behind the surprisingly particularly layered sounds being placed atop one another. Interruptive static pulses and the occasional presence of soft whirring
MEG MAC @ UPSTAIRS BERESFORD. PIC: PETER SHARP
part Laurels, the trio thrashed out an improvised, ear-piercing noise set. Free jazz-reminiscent drumming held together droning guitar and harsh, exciting electronic fuzz. Like most ‘noise’ music, certain passages lulled and weren’t too essential to the sound, but the overall effect was wonderful and frankly inspiring to hear out of the local scene. Less surprising is the continued brilliance of Dead China Doll, who remain one of Sydney’s most exciting and vital acts. With a set seemingly primarily pulled from their second LP, due later this year, Sydney’s finest in experimental rock continued to wow. Were they entirely a vocally-driven band, they’d still be wonderful, but it’s the fact that the vocal moments are used as accent points amongst
and clicking from machinery loops kept the sound from ever sounding monotonous. Impressively, the layers of sounds - from the brutal to the verging on danceable - were all so effortlessly controlled by the band it would almost have been excusable to call the compositions easy; of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The duo’s attention to subtlety behind harshness, and the juxtaposed moments of the two extremes, is what separates Barn Owl from the countless legion of lesser drone acts. From electronic post rock to drone to pulsing experimental dark wave and everything in between, the set could not have been a better presentation of group’s sound here’s hoping they’re back soon. Andrew McDonald THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013 • 59
arts reviews
PAIN & GAIN Film
In cinemas Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) wants his piece of the American dream. And the gym junkie and self-improvement devotee isn’t above taking a few shortcuts to get it. He’s big on ego and entitlement, short on brains and morals. And his partners, fellow bodybuilders Adrian (Anthony Mackie) and Paul (Dwayne Johnson), are just as clueless – not to mention a little low on selfesteem and a little high on drugs, respectively – to think and act rationally. Transformers megadirector Michael Bay may not seem like the first choice for such material, but it’s apparently been a passion project of his for some time. And he actually proves a surprisingly good fit. While his storytelling is a little rickety on occasion, the filmmaker displays a sure grasp of black humour and does a strong job of presenting both the glitzy allure of Daniel’s cheap desires and the grime of the scenario’s reality.
of Figment, EarthCam’s live webcam tribute to Warhol’s 85th birthday, for which a camera has been erected to film his grave 24/7. Watching this midnight stream it appears the aforementioned dudes and sex workers are conducting a hulahoop-driven séance. Actually, considering the skill with which this lady is spinning hoops the ‘sex worker’ label should be revised – it’s much more likely she’s a stripper. Twelve hours later and more strippers have arrived. Either Pittsburgh is a stripper mecca or Warhol has become a stripper icon. Or perhaps this is a tribute to factory girls, but if memory serves correctly Edie Sedgwick did not wear arsebaring dresses and Perspex heels. There’s voyeuristic fun to be had in perving on a gravestone. Most of your time will be spent thinking, “Wait for it, wait for it”, with absolutely nothing happening. But occasionally you’ll think, “Wait for it, wait for it… OVERWEIGHT FEMALE ELVIS IMPERSONATOR!” You could get clever here: a tribute to both Warhol’s 15
UPSTREAM COLOR
Wahlberg’s portrayal of Daniel as the manic, musclebound mastermind of this fiasco is a wild-eyed wonder, but even better is Johnson as a big-hearted, peabrained, easily-led lug hooked on both Jesus and cocaine. Guy Davis
ANDY WARHOL’S GRAVE Live Webcam
There are three sex workers and six dudes congregating at Andy Warhol’s grave for the opening 60 • THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013
minutes of fame and movies in which pretty much nothing happens. That’s not to mention the ridiculousness of watching a grave; dead people don’t do much. But seriously, who needs more justification than strippers and Elvis impersonators? Helen Stringer
UPSTREAM COLOR Film
In cinemas 22 Aug With so many pieces to its puzzle, it’s difficult to summarise, but in a nutshell
Upstream Color is a bio-sci-fi drama that’s part mystery, part romance. As Shane Carruth’s second feature film, it’s undeniably a commendable effort – a cinematic experience that stays ticking in your brain a while after its conclusion. However, its story and ambition outweigh the impact of the final product; Upstream Color is heavy on the allegory, yet skimps on human connection. This is due, in part, to the numb portrayals of the two protagonists, Kris (Amy Seimetz) and Jeff (Carruth) – even when they react strongly they come off wooden. Although, admittedly this is consistent with their clouded, muddled headspace after experiencing traumatic events they can’t seem to recall. It’s contradictory in that every scene – every sparse bit of dialogue, every closeup of plantation, every time the camera follows a hand’s movement – feels like it’s calculated and contributing to the film’s meaning, but nevertheless, much of the time
ENMORE COMEDY CLUB Event
Enmore Comedy Club What’s fantastic about this new enterprise from Century Venues is that it shows that Australia breeds great funny people. Although an all-male bill tonight (we do funny chicks too), the locals were unfailing, diverse, from different schools but overall really strong. Particular props to Tien Tran (old school selfhate but with an awesome local twist – who says Gen Y can’t be bothered to commit?), Jared Jekyll (the type of bizarre that the Poms would love in particular) and one-liners delivered deadpan by Bruce Griffiths. After the short break the host found his stride a bit more easily, thanks to a so-bizarre-it-had-to-be-true feminine accessory, followed by the final Oz act James Smith, who also killed. Now living in the US, he was the right mix
PAIN & GAIN
ENMORE COMEDY CLUB
we’re left with the impression that most of the depth is the ‘of field’ variety rather than the emotional kind. Behind every connection between the several plotlines, you can see the shadow of Carruth’s hand, nudging it lightly towards you: ‘here’s the next clue, pay attention’. Dense in thematics, Upstream Color is worth watching to be a part of its discussion, moreso than merely in and of itself. It’s a film that is ripe to be theorised and analysed but, considering many of the events that occur, is disappointingly unaffecting.
of schmick but recognisible – our loss is their gain - come back again soon, Smithy! All of this was, sadly, undone with headliner Tony Woods. It’s not often, as an audience, you feel sorry for the organisers, but tonight I think we really did. Not charmingly incoherent but just pissed and sloppy, when he trailed and we didn’t follow, he (gently) got the shits. The take-home message was keep an eye on the local scene; there are lots more interesting stuff happening there (and clearly Aussies can handle their drinks better).
Stephanie Liew
Liz Giuffre
THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013 • 61
app it up
ABC
SIZE: 10.6 MB
REVIEW: If you want to be kept up to date with the latest news from either of the major parties, you can purchase 99 cent apps that act as a feed of news direct from the party in question. But, as far as keeping up with the full election scope, you’re almost certainly best off with the ABC. Our national broadcaster is making a pretty good fist of leading the pack as far as embracing new media and their free app is probably the best being offered up by a major media organisation in Australia right now. They offer the smallest amount of click bait and the most amount of real news coverage out of all the Australian news apps we tested. You can argue their bias all you like, but there is no news organisation and certainly no iPhone app that gives more in depth and balanced coverage of the Federal Election. They even have an Election 2013 tab so you can filter out other news if you wish.
FAMILY FIRST SIZE: 3.3 MB
REVIEW: With smartphones omnipresent in just about everyone’s life in 2013, you would think political parties would relish the opportunity to sit in your pocket or handbag all day, every day, and the chance to chirp annoyingly at you every now and then with a pesky push notification. Alas, there are very few apps from Australian political parties and those that do exist are utter tripe. This Family First app, for example, doesn’t let you do shit until you give them full access to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Yeah, nah.
62 • THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013
ABBOTT VS RUDD SIZE: 37.6 MB
REVIEW: A vaguely humourous app that allows the user to throw sandwiches, Australian flag patterned beach balls and boots at the two major party leaders as they rattle off some of their most recent policy based diatribes. Every now and then Julia Gillard walks across the screen shouting “Misogyny! Sexism!” and that, along with the fact it’s really hard to play and kinda unresponsive, makes it one of the most confusing apps out there.
POLL WATCH SIZE: 20.3 MB
REVIEW: It is not a bad idea, but Poll Watch needs more numbers in order for it to be of any real value. Basically, you answer a couple of simple questions about current hot political issues and you see how you stand in comparison to other people around the country being asked the same thing. It’s easy to use and push notifications let you know when there’s a new topic to be voted on, but there’s just no one using it right now.
AUSTRALIAN CHRISTIAN LOBBY SIZE: 9.8 MB
REVIEW: Australian Christian Lobby would like access to all of your contacts. Australian Christian Lobby would like to access all of your twitter accounts… Let me tell you, ACL, if your dimwitted policies about just about everything weren’t enough to make me hate you, this attempted invasion of privacy is. Fuck you, fuck your party and fuck your shithouse fucking app. Having said that, at least they have one, which is more than can be said for the mainstream parties.
muso
NEWS SONOR IS PROLITE The core of the ProLite series of drum kits from Sonor is the sound spectrum provided by the extremely thin Vintage Maple shells with reinforcement ring. The Vintage Maple shell is characterised by a soft, warm tone that highlights the lower pitches and provides balance in the mid-range and treble, without sacrificing projection and power. Sonor ProLite shell thicknesses run at nine plies for tom toms, floor toms and snare drums, which equals four mm plus two mm Dynamic Edge reinforcement rings at the edge of the shells; and 12 plies for bass drums, which equals six mm plus two mm Dynamic Edge reinforcement rings at the edge of the shells. Guaranteeing clean tuning and crisp attack are the 2.3 mm Sonor Power Hoops on all snare drums, tom toms and floor toms. For 14” snare drums also diecast hoops are available.
NEW FROM CERWIN-VEGA
The 1800SX compliments the P-Series with low frequency extension. The powered subwoofer employs an 18” woofer with a custom 2000-watt Class-D amplifier. The large woofer and matched amp are enclosed in a multi-ply hardwood cabinet. While designed for use with the P1500X, the P1800SX can also be used for low frequency extension with other Cerwin Vega tops or even other brands. Additionally, the Thru, Mix and Link outputs allow for system expandability and fast daisychaining between components. 66 • THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013
CAREER PROFILE One of the country’s most respected higher education institutions specialising in all things music from theory to business management and more is the Sydney-based Australian Institute of Music (AIM). AIM is opening a Melbourne campus next year, and attracts students from all over the country. Graduate Mel Cheng kindly answered a few questions about her experiences.
MEL CHENG – ONE LOUDER ENTERTAINMENT What made you want to work in artist management? Whilst I was studying at the Australian Institute of Music (AIM), I started managing a Melbourne band called Dirt Farmer, who I still co-manage to this day. I had various jobs and internships in the industry – before, during and after my degree – but was most attracted to the variety and diversity of work I had within artist management roles. I really enjoy working closely with artists and being involved in their creative processes. What kind of training did you have to do to get into the f ield? One of my first experiences was selling CDs on the road for a very young Lisa Mitchell. From there, I met her managers, who gave me random work opportunities and my entrance into the industry. I studied a Bachelor of Music in Arts Management at AIM. I developed an interest in entertainment law from my AIM studies and went on to complete a Juris Doctor degree at UNSW. Whilst
I was studying I did several internships, including an internship at One Louder Entertainment, where I am now the assistant manager. One Louder is the management company for Ball Park Music, Paul Kelly, Sarah Blasko and Kate Miller-Heidke. What would a typical day at work involve? My work is varied – no day is the same! It depends on the project I am working on, or the artist I am working with, at the time. One day I could be coordinating the advertising for a tour, and another I could be pulling parts together for a CD release. I also lecture at AIM in entertainment and intellectual property law so throw that in the mix! What’s the best thing about your job? Working with interesting and lovely people and artists who I really respect.
“THE INDUSTRY IS CONSTANTLY CHANGING” What’s the most challenging aspect? The most challenging part of the job is not the actual job but things I do to keep immersed and up to date in the industry. Some weeks I may be out every night seeing gigs, which is fun and exciting, but can also be really tiring, especially when you have to get up for work the next day. What skills or attributes do you need to be good at the job? At the most basic level, I would say good communication skills and good organisation skills – you are constantly talking to people and meeting deadlines. The industry is constantly changing so you need to be flexible, adaptable and be able to think on your feet. I also think that in this day, it is an advantage to have a foundation in business – understand the basic principles of accounting, marketing and management. I also cannot iterate enough how important good networking skills are – I’ve received most, if not all, my work opportunities through people I know. Do you have any advice for readers aiming to become an artist manager? Learn everything and work hard! Be willing to do everything and anything (within reason) and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Be open-minded and nice to people – anyone you meet could be a potential career opportunity. The Sydney AIM Campus is hosting an Open Day 10am-3pm Saturday 17 August. AIM will be holding an information evening between 6pm and 8pm at the Intercontinental on Collins Street Melbourne Wednesday 28 August. The first term of the Melbourne AIM campus at 120 King Street in the CBD, applications for which are now open, will commence Tuesday 28 January 2014.
muso
ALHAMBRA GUITARS Founded in 1965, Alhambra manufactures a range of quality Spanish-made guitars that starts with a reasonably priced student model through to a reasonably priced concert instrument. They come in either spruce or cedar. Based in Melbourne, Pierre Herrero (0410 708 338) is the man who brings Alhambra guitars into Australia. The 4P is quite a good mid-range/ mid-priced guitar that serves well for home use, AMEB or Trinity College London exams, small concerts or songwriting and even just playing to your friends. The 10P, however, is a concert guitar that will do a good job at the higher end of things yet at a student price. The 10P comes with a solid red cedar top, solid Indian rosewood back and sides, Honduran cedar neck, ebony fingerboards and is 650mm scale length. I myself have been playing and teaching on Alhambra for a few years.
You’d think this thing was going to take off with some gusto. With its bright red chassis and shiny gold cage, it certainly looks the part. This is a well priced tube mic, but then again it still costs more than, say, a Rode K2, and that’s not to be sniffed at. The Genesis uses a Mullard 12AT7 tube old stock but new valve and these things are highly sought after. Internal cabling is Mogami. The power supply is an external red box, well built and solid. Performance? The Genesis seems to be pretty honest, revealing detail and airiness. The mic does seem a little sensitive to rear spillage and leans a little to the hyper cardioid pattern as opposed to narrow. There’s a 150Hz; 6dB/octave low-cut filter switch located on the mic body, along with a 10dB pad switch, a 15’ seven-pin Mogami connecting cable, and a 15-foot Mogami three-pin XLR mic cable. Distributed by ELFA.
Steve Flack
Barry Gilmour
VINTAGE VXP6BK
68 • THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013
MXL GENESIS
SOUNDCRAFT SI EXPRESSION 3 Vintage Guitars, a UK-based guitar company with some serious names backing the brand like Mick Abrahams from Jethro Tull and Geoff Whitehorn from Procol Harum, have been building these reissue guitars for a while now. Prices of their guitars are pretty cheap and the quality seems solid, with genuine Wilkinson parts used in all their guitars. The Explorer shape has been around since the ‘50s and has been kept in fashion by the likes of James Hetfield of Metallica. It’s just that when I pick it up I feel like I want to look down and see Gibson or even ESP and I can’t help feeling this is influencing my judgement. I suppose with anything established, we stick with the original in our mind as being the top of the mountain. The neck here is decent and feels comfortable, the pickups are decent quality and the hardware feels reliable.
In the ever-expanding world of digital mixing consoles, it’s a wonder each manufacturer doesn’t have a university course for their proprietary operating systems. It’s imperative therefore that any new digital consoles on the market be as user-friendly and intuitive as possible before anything else. That’s where the Soundcraft Si Expression 3 comes in, a neat package, with a true everything everywhere set-up. The effects are hardware-based and the console has internal Lexicon hardware with a variety of effects. Above each channel is a rotary knob, which can be gain, HPF or pan, and each button is just as it would be on an analogue mixer, one function per control. The fader channels illuminate in different colours to organise FX, Stereo, Linked Mono, GEQ, POST Fade Aux, and PRE Fade Aux, there is a BSS GEQ on every bus for plenty of processing and a nice clear touch screen.
Barry Gilmour
Barry Gilmour
the guide culture
eat
drink Answered by: Catherine Traicos – singer, songwriter, guitar How long have you been together? Just over two years. How did you all meet? Darren (lead guitar) is in one of my favourite bands, The Tucker B’s (Perth), and we became friends through my incessant hanging around at their gigs. Tim (drums) also played in the Tucker B’s and I needed to steal more of them so we lured him into the band using tasty vegan treats as an incentive. Kasper (bass) and I played in a band for a charity event in Sydney. I tried to get him to join the Tuckers as well for continuity but it didn’t work out. You’re on tour in the van – which band or artist is going to keep the most people happy if we throw them on the stereo? Well we are all fairly open to most types of music and enjoy listening to bands we haven’t heard before as well as old favourites like Johnny Cash and Neil Young. What we have learned is not to listen to bands that use loops like Laurie Anderson because that can lead to the driver falling asleep. Is your band responsible for more make-outs or break-ups? Why? Make-outs. I don’t know why; we are constantly asked to play at orgies. What’s in the pipeline for the band in the short term? We are launching the single from our recently recorded album on Thursday 22 August at The Union. Then in December we are touring the country. Website for more info? catherinetraicos.com Pic by Josh Groom
travel
CATHERINE TRAICOS & THE STARRY NIGHT
fashion
the guide nsw.live@themusic.com.au
LIVE THIS WEEK
EP FOCUS
BLOODS Answered by: Marihuzka Cornelius
PUGSLEY BUZZARD PUG LIFE
EP title: Golden Fang How many releases do you have now? We’ve released five singles independently since we started recording our tunes. This is our very first ever EP, though! Was anything in particular inspiring you during the making? Unrequited love, distance and anger, mostly. Musically, our songs are inspired by ‘90s girl bands, garage and punk. Lyrically, we like to write about our worlds – kinda like social commentary by Bloods. What’s your favourite song on it? Probably Back To You or Language. Both came together really naturally and I think show where we’re going musically.
ALTERNATIVE CAREER PLUTO JONZE If you weren’t doing music, what else would you be doing? I used to be a bicycle tour guide before getting serious with music, so I’d probably still be doing that. Or I have a psychology degree, so running experiments on people somewhere.
Website link for more info? bloodsband.com
Local boogie artist Pugsley Buzzard has just returned from a massive month of recording and performing in New Orleans and San Francisco, and plays Camelot Lounge this Thursday.
Sydney garage punk pop trio Bloods will be kicking off their very first headline tour at Brighton Up Bar this Friday, the same day they drop their debut EP, Golden Fang. Major Leagues and The Fabergettes will be joining them.
BUSY BODIES
FIFTIES THROWBACK
The guitar-led Steve Edmonds Band will be playing Friday evening at the Beach Club in Collaroy, while Saturday, they’ll be gracing the Kiama Leagues Club stage before heading back up the coast to play the Corrimal Hotel on Sunday.
The 28th Counterfeit Tribute night happens Saturday upstairs at the Gaelic Club boasting a dozen acts paying tribute to the likes of Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and more, among them elafonica, Rex Havoc Banned and The Blarney Stoners.
RING OF FIRE
VIOLENT HUG
Swamp blues singer/songwriter Johnny Cass put his musical career on hold for a decade in order to create an iconic Sydney music venue. Now he’s back and with a new album. This Sunday evening at the Botany View, he’ll be launching Tombstone Blues.
Earlier this year, post-grunge Brisbane quartet Violent Soho entered The Shed studios in Brisbane to record their new album. This Wednesday – with the support of Bearhug – they’ll be giving fans a preview of the new LP at Brighton Up Bar.
SPRING CHICKEN
GLORIOUS GRAHAM
Touring new album, Spring And Fall, Paul Kelly is out on an even more extensive national tour. Due to demand, a second Wollongong show has been added, so he plays Anita’s Theatre Friday and Saturday. He’s at the Recital Hall in Sydney Wednesday.
To celebrate the release of new album, Glorious Momentum, Sydney-based folk-punk singer/ songwriter Isaac Graham and The Great Unknown are playing the Phoenix Bar Canberra Thursday and Black Wire Records Annandale Friday.
Pluto Jonze touring. Check The Guide for dates.
We’ll like this EP if we like... Music that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Songs you can eat pizza to. Cats, Kevin Smith movies, ‘90s girl bands, trips to the countryside and friendship. When and where is your launch/next gig? We’re touring our EP this August and September, hitting the east coast. We kick it all off in Sydney on Friday 16 August at the Brighton Up Bar. Excited!
BLOOD BROTHERS
ESSENTIAL TOUR ITEM RYAN GRIEVE FROM PINK GIN What item must travel with you on tour? A toothbrush. Yep, boring - but true. Pink Gin are touring. Check The Guide for dates.
FOR MORE HEAD TO THEMUSIC.COM.AU 78 • THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013
the guide nsw.live@themusic.com.au
LIVE THIS WEEK
PIZZA PARTY
AN APPLE A DAY
Since launching their debut EP Vomit on the Dance Floor, Sydney’s Chicks Who Love Guns have made quite a stir. They’ll do the big release launch of their new single, Pencil Neck, on Thursday at Frankie’s Pizza.
Indie songstress Lo Carmen has just released an album with her father, Peter Head, titled The Apple Don’t Fall Far From The Tree. It’ll be launched this Thursday at the Vanguard with the support of an array of special guests including Jason Walker.
ALBUM FOCUS
TOM WEST Album title? A Spark In The Dark Where did the title of your new album come from? It’s a lyric from the second track, All The Bees Fled. I think it summarises the spirit of the record.
FAVOURITE ALBUM JOSH PYKE Woah, okay, I’m going to have to say Appetite For Destruction by Guns N’ Roses. Every time I hear it, I keep thinking what a good album it is. I mean, I liked it when I first bought it and I still think the sound is great. Josh Pyke touring nationally check The Guide for dates
RETURN OF THE KING The life of the late King of Rock ‘n’ Roll will be celebrated over two days at Katoomba RSL’s inaugural Blue Mountain’s Elvis Festival. The Elvis Evolution will kick off on Saturday evening, featuring Steve Kelleher, Damian Mullin and The TCB Legends Band.
MOUNTAIN MEN
Holy Holy have just dropped their debut video for the track, Impossible Like You, and will be rounding up the five-piece to help celebrate. On Thursday, they’ll be performing at High Tea, then on Friday you’ll be able to catch them at the Newsagency.
Sydney four-piece The Mountains are touring theor debut EP, Country Doors, featuring debut single, Loose Jaw, and this Thursday, you catch them at the Bedlam Bar in Glebe, while Friday they’re at the Clarendon in Katoomba.
How long did it take to write/record? I spent about a year writing the songs, and then we tracked and mixed it over about four months – most of it in a shed. Was anything in particular inspiring you during the making? It was great to track the album ourselves so we had the luxury of playing around and exploring with the sounds a bit. What’s your favourite song on it? The current single, Malecon. I think it’s a track I’ve been trying to come up with for a long time.
EATS ON TOUR TALE OF TWO CITIES
How many releases do you have now? This will be my first album. I’ve done a couple of EPs a few years back.
JO SYME FROM BIG SCARY What is your staple meal when on tour? Salad rolls. Big Scary touring nationally. Check The Guide for dates.
Will you do anything differently next time? Next time I think I’ll set myself a shorter time limit and do a bit more of the experimenting during the demo-ing process. When and where is your launch/next gig? Folk Club at The Soda Factory, Wednesday 21 August Website link for more info? tomwestsongs.com
FOR MORE HEAD TO THEMUSIC.COM.AU THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013 • 79
eat/drink
BREAK(FAST)ING NEWS The most important p meal of the dayy now seems like it’s it s also the trendiest. Simon Eales p trendiest ponders whyy we re so eager to hunt down the best we’re morning dishes come the weekend. Pics By Holly Engelhardt.
S
unday morning, dried-out to bejesus, wiping crusty spittle from lips: there’s no remedy. Hung like a floppy jacket. Don’t touch. Shut up. Get egg in me. Two long blacks, two icy OJs, a ‘Man Juice’ (half Diet Coke, half grapefruit juice: patent pending) and a huevos rancheros down the hatch and this bloke starts feeling like he might live to see another six-pack. And who delivered this desperately required manna morsel? Not the sweet-as-pie love of my life, who, for starters, doesn’t exist and, for seconds, would be just as dirty as me right now. No, the bloody breakfast joint in (your designated area) – where all the fresh people live – did. The ‘breakfast scene’ has certainly been booming in Aussie metro centres for the last few years. Even in Canberra, just recently, My Café served me up a banging Spanish omelette and espresso. The place was packed and parliament wasn’t even sitting. So what’s with it? Why do I need poached, locally-sourced organic quail eggs on a slice of gluten-free, chia seed loaf, with braised, tarragon-seasoned Chantarelle mushrooms and a goji berry compote when I’m either underslept, still drunk, with my mum, having a nonnighttime friend ‘catch-up’, or a morning-after ‘why the fuck am I still here?’ kind of second-ish date? Louise Charlier, second-in-charge at North Melbourne’s Auction Rooms – which has taken out, ahem, ‘another media outlet’s’ coveted best coffee joint award for the last couple of years – reckons breakfast is just another opportunity to get some great food culture in ya. “I am a serial diner. I go to breakfast and go out at night, I can’t be bothered cooking!” the zesty French lady laughs. “Read the paper, have a coffee… There’s something about someone cooking your breakfast. It makes you feel so well looked after.” But, the bartenders and baristas are colluding, no doubt. The former sets you up with a “same again?” and the latter knocks you down with a “triple shot, then?” In turn, the favour’s reversed, as those zucchini fritters give you just enough chutzpah to slide down the pub for
90 • THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013
TOP 5 BREAKFAST PLACES
1.
Panama House, Bondi – these guys take their menu inspiration from ‘south of the border’. Tacos for breakfast, anyone?
2.
the Sunday session. Make no mistake, this business is country-wide. Brisbane barista and breakfast authority, Ashleigh Dwyer, until recently of Alfred & Constance, reels off Pearl Café, Cirque, Flamingo and Scout, the last being “real Melbourne, with a killer breaky bagel”. Sydney, with its defined breakfast districts, rocks Brickfields, Soda Pony, Three Blue Ducks, The Grounds and Reuben Hills, among a zillion others. Perth’s doing places like Mary Street Bakery, while Melbourne’s Duchess Of Spotswood, Pillar Of Salt, Pope Joan and Proud Mary spring immediately to mind. Just for a moment, let’s take a look at these names. A lot of pastoral imagery going on here – lots of cute little slightly European (but not in a daunting way) echoes and thrift-shop-religious symbols. You’d be given to think these places are gourmet (but not in a ‘90s way), have an in-house band playing bubblecup-post-electro-pop and that baby animals graze and bleat at your feet. But what’s in a name? One breakfast phenomenon from left field is pho, the Vietnamese noodle soup. Hung Vo, of I Love Pho in Melbourne, says that pho’s become a massive craze that people can smash any time of day. Pho joints usually open around 9am and don’t get the usual food-touring crowd. “You get the older, traditional Vietnamese and Asians coming in,” Vo says. “Then we also have the all-night club crew, first thing, nine o’clock on the dot… You’ll often have, like, three friends eating and one person sleeping.” A moment of disclosure: I’ve had some very successful days, after being rat-arsed the night before, just because of pho. But for all the awesome of an obscenely organic awakening, or spicy offal-and-broth party, surely the first criterion for selecting a breakfast joint has to be its capacity to nurse you into this day. The moral is go bloody local, no matter where you live. North in Carlton North is my ‘everyday’, even though Carolina’s staff is cuter, and Small Victories makes a deluxe black pudding. The guys at North know my name, entertain my obsession with professional cycling, and don’t judge my trackie daks. And it’s just a short stumble back to bed.
Centennial Park Mobile Food Van, Centennial Parklands – ride your bike there, get a bacon and egg roll, feed the swans and enjoy the view.
3.
Cook And Archie’s, Surry Hills – go go granola brain. Do your body a favour and load up on their colourful fruit salad and bircher muesli.
4.
Mickey’s Cafe, Paddington – the epic breakfast menu that includes epic regular and Japanese-inspired pancakes runs until 5pm. The perfect place to ease those all-day hangovers.
5.
Kepos Street Kitchen, Redfern/ Waterloo – homemade goodness with a Middle Eastern flavour, with things like tabouli and Iranian spiced poached dried fruit and nut compote on the menu. Just get there early.
THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013 • 63
fashion The Burning Man is a week-long festival located in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert (also knows as “The Playa”). It kicks off Aug 27. Melbourne-based designer Celeste Macleod designed and created these magical disco lizzzards for a group of 15 punters travelling from Melbourne to Burning Man. The outfits were inspired by Australia’s own desert creature the frilled-neck lizard.
MODELS:
Zoe Dealehr
LIZARDS OF OZ
Milky Tomadi
Australian designer Celeste Macleod was commissioned to create 15 outfits to be worn at the upcoming Burning Man festival in the US. Photos by Holly Engelhardt.
Dandylion Donovan Oliver Coleman
STYLIST, MAKE-UP AND COSTUME: Celeste Macleod (cenqeleste.emira@ gmail.com)
SEQUIN ARTIST: Caity Lawson
CO-ORDINATED BY: Cassandra Fumi
ACCESSORIES: The Costume Shop, Melbourne
94 • THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013
travel
A TV TOURIST IN LA A gay g y skeleton robot robot,, an ex-junkie j from Scotland and George Hamilton are amongst the sights Andrew Mast finds inside LA’s Television City.
C
BS Television City is not a city. It’s a television studio in innercity LA. It’s also not a landmark like NBC’s Rockefeller Centre HQ in New York. CBS looks like the studio lots you see in old Hollywood films on TCM.
But there’s no Hollywood glamour for those of us here for a taping of The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson. We stand outside against a fence, on a busy LA street. A motley ice cream vendor wheels his trolley by - no one bothers him for an Eskimo Pie. Alongside us Australians, folk from Spain, Brazil and even Canada make up the gathering audience. But it would seem that not everyone here knows Ferguson. Most days the ticketing agency hand out passes for TV tapings to tourists along Hollywood Boulevard. Earlier in the day unsuspecting sightseers were spruiked seats to this, Russell Brand or Jimmy Kimmel tapings. Entering Television City there’s two security checks and a metal detector. Immediately outside Studio 56, phones and cameras are taken away as we are placed in a holding area for a briefing. We are directed to buy merchandise from a stall with shelves creaking under the weight of dusty How I Met Your Mother mugs. We are then led through fake laugh practice. Hustled inside 56 – single file – it’s a maze of corridors, stairwells and missed photo opportunties. While the walls outside are adorned with posters for current CBS fodder, inside is a tribute to classic Television City talent: Carol Burnett, Art Linklater, All In The Family. I’m ushered to the middle section of the bleachers the main camera would block my view of Ferguson’s monologue. We are handed a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup each by warm-up guy Chunky B. He flails us with lame jokes to test our abilities to fake laugh for any old gag. Applaud and laugh, we are instructed, even if we don’t understand the joke. A curtained enclosure is finally whisked away to reveal the show’s resident gay robot skeleton - Geoffrey Peterson, Ferguson’s version of a talk show sidekick. We applaud and cheer like our lives 96 • THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013
LA LA LANDMARKS 1. Beverly Hills Signs: The 90210 guitar riff goes off in your head.
2.
depend on it. And, we keep doing so as Ferguson bounces into view and gestures us to quieten down. We’ve been warned that the gesture is to be ignored – just applaud and cheer through it.
Capitol Records Tower: Host to all sorts of music making history from Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald to The Beach Boys and Beastie Boys.
Ferguson, a Scottish comedian who trades off a drug-abusing past, found fame in The Drew Carey Show. An out-of-leftfield choice to take the postLetterman late night spot, he takes pleasure in not following the tonight show format. His monologue can sometimes take the form of a history lesson or a puppet show, he has no band and his guests make small talk, rarely getting promotional plugs in.
Random b-list stars: Thandie Newton whizzed out of The Grove by buggy as a handful of papz obligingly snapped.
3.
At the taping, Ferguson is ‘as seen on TV’. He slays the monologue right off then immediately tackles the cold open (the introduction that airs before the opening credits). Often Ferguson pulls random audience members on camera at this point – but not today. My 15 minutes of chat show fame is not to be. Break. Ferguson quickly takes his place behind his desk and reads viewer emails and tweets. We laugh and applaud. Break. First guest. George Hamilton. Hollywood royalty. Tanning royalty. He discusses his own drug taking past - “in the ‘60s… just to be sociable.” Break. A chance to witness what goes on between host and guest during the ad break. But there’s no Larry Sandersstyle uncomfortable conversation… instead, nothing. And straight back into the interview. Break. Next guest. A second-rung star of network TV. Break. Regular closer ‘What Did We Learn On The Show Tonight, Craig?’. Credits. Ferguson races forward and proceeds to shatter illusions by introducing us to the voice actor behind the ‘robot’ and the ‘interns’ inside the horse. Exit Ferguson. But we have one last job. We view a taped sketch. It’s contingency-plan filler for future use and requires a real live audience laugh track. We laugh and applaud, by now fearing that if we don’t we may be forced to stay for a taping of The Price Is Right. It’s still daylight outside Television City. But later, under the cover of darkness, The Late Late Show airs. I make my American laughing and applauding debut.
4.
Random Hollywood Walk Of Famers: “Here we come, walking down the street.”
5.
LA County Museum Of Art: and, then there’s just drop dead awesome architecture…
lifestyle
DANCING THIS WEEK
SHADOW DANCING
MELBOURNE Monday 1000 Pound Bend, 361 Little Lonsdale St, CBD, 6.30pm Tuesday 250 George St, Fitzroy, 7.30pm Wednesday 49 Nicholson St, Brunswick East, 7pm
It works for sex so why not dancing? William Millar learns why some people prefer to bump ugly with the lights out. Pic: Paul Philipson
SYDNEY
First Wednesday of every month Boxcar, 12 Dawson St, Surrey Hills, 8pm
BRISBANE
Every second Monday Upstairs@199, 199A Boundary Street, West End, 8pm First Wednesday of every month Visable Ink, 5 Greensquare Close, Fortitude Valley, 6.30pm
PERTH
Thursday The Chapel Space, cnr Angove St and Scarborough Beach Rd, North Perth, 8.15pm “Shake it like a bowl of soup, And make your body loop de loop”. Sam Cooke For more info head to nolightsnolycra. com
D
ancing around your bedroom half naked to that song you love is the most fun you’ve ever had. Don’t deny it. Hell, when you really want to you can do the MJ crotch grab–pelvic thrust all the way from the kitchen to your bedroom. But there’s a problem with your inner groove child – it doesn’t want to come out around people. Even when it does you have no recollection of it because you weren’t really all there. What could coax it out? The answer is so simple you may just kick yourself for not realising you do it all the time anyway. What’s going to get it out is pretty much just you thinking you are in your bedroom half naked dancing to that song you love, but wearing clothes and in a room with the lights off. Dance lovers Alice Glenn and Heidi Barrett figured that out about four years ago and so was born the all-rhythm, alldarkness gathering No Lights No Lycra (NLNL). “After studying contemporary dance for a few years we had kind of forgotten what made us want to move to music in the first place,” says Barrett of the days pre-NLNL. “We had studied it to death and in some ways we didn’t find it fun any more. We wanted to dance like we did when we were kids again.” The premise is simple: leave your stale two-step at the door and move how the music makes you feel. There is no fear of being judged here, because no one gives a damn, and also because the lights are off. Arms flail, robots come to life, shimmies shimmy. Everyone has a good time, everyone sweats a little and then everyone goes home, some having learnt that their bodies can move in ways they didn’t even know. Walking into NLNL for the first time is a little like the first day of primary school, but with less peeing your pants and this time you think you might have a shot at being a cool kid. Then Biggie Smalls starts rapping about some “bitches in the back
looking righteous in a tight dress” and the memory of being a ginger kid gripping your mums leg evaporates and in its place you become a 150 kilo rapper from Brooklyn, having a sick one with his homies (still not the cool kid, though). A room of silhouettes jumps from here to there, there’s a bump or two and everyone starts finding their feet. The shoes eventually come off, sweat permeates the air before the smell of it becomes lost, and then the hour is over and you desperately want it back. The organisers of each event choose the music, but anyone is invited to submit a mix-tape for rotation. One moment, the ‘80s is in full effect, getting physical and what have you; the next, Darude’s Sandstorm is putting some arms and legs to serious work. A real sense of community has built up around these gatherings and more than a few dance/sweat-offs have been had between regular patrons. After a while, you can start picking out who is who amongst the shadows and people aren’t people any more – they become their moves. Since its humble beginnings NLNL has taken on cult status around the world, with different locations popping up on the regular. It can be found from here to China, up to Ireland and back again, creating what is truly an international dance community. Going global was an accident, says Barrett: “It started with a friend of ours who was visiting from New York. She loved the idea and asked if she could start one of her own. From there it has just bubbled out and we are now in 33 locations around the world.” The nonchalance in which she says this is a little surprising. Making something like NLNL that has taken off the world over is rare. But after a little more consideration it makes sense. People have always been dancing in the dark, it’s just that sometimes we get a little too caught up in the light and forget to flip the switch off. That, and no one likes lycra. THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013 • 97
the end
POLITICIANS
KEVIN RUDD PARTY?
Unlikely.
KNOWN FOR?
Let’s just say he’s had more than one occasion to consider The O’Jays Backstabbers as his theme.
PERSONALITY OR POLITICS?
He has the personality of the creepy uncle who likes to talk about his collection of acrylic insect keyrings at family Xmas parties.
PROS?
Doesn’t go near them after the trouble they caused Craig Thomson.
CONS?
Ask Rupert Murdoch.
TONY ABBOTT PARTY?
Foam parties – only party that has a Speedo dress code.
KNOWN FOR?
Being in opposition… to everything.
PERSONALITY OR POLITICS?
He has the personality of the sleazy uncle who suggests everyone gets changed into bathers for a swim at family Xmas gatherings.
PROS?
Rupert Murdoch likes him.
CONS?
We suspect he’s in the middle of one now.
CHRISTINE MILNE PARTY?
Life’s too serious for a party.
KNOWN FOR?
Not being Bob Brown.
PERSONALITY OR POLITICS? Politics. Politics. Politics.
PROS?
She’s the only candidate with a solid policy platform.
CONS?
No one cares about policies unless they are steeped in panic about border protection.
98 • THE MUSIC • 14TH AUGUST 2013
DEAR READER If you are reading this now you’ve likely noticed that there’s something different about us. The buzz word around here is “evolution” but quite simply, we just decided to fuck with the formula. We wanted to find a way to stay relevant, expand the nature of our content and get more of that content in while still covering all the local music news, releases and gigs that we have always done. So, flip us over and have a nice, long read.
Andrew Mast Group Managing Editor
Sydney Melbourne Brisbane Perth