The Music (Melbourne) Issue #123

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27.01.16 Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture

Melbourne / Free / Incorporating

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Music / Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture

Get Low

US indie-rock outfit Low have announced they will be returning to Australia for a headline tour this April. The tour comes off the back of the group’s latest 11th studio album Ones & Sixes released in September last year.

Low

Montaigne

Dark Dates Montaigne has dropped a new single, the percussion-heavy and brass-laden In The Dark, and some national tour dates to go along with it. The singer is hitting up venues in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide in April. Peking Duk

Where and when? For more gig details go to theMusic.com.au

6 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

Are You Peking Having just unveiled some huge plans to tour North America, Canberra electronic duo Peking Duk have announced that they’ll be back to party with us this March on the Australiana tour, with last year’s Songs To Sweat To release in tow.


/ Arts / L Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture

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Busy P

The Ed Banger House Party tour is coming to Australia. It’ll be headlined by Busy P and Boston Bun, and is hitting our shores in March. Club culture enthusiasts, prepare for a night of dance music to remember.

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Full Of Wisdom Melbourne outfit The Bennies have announced they’ll be hitting the road this March for a national headline tour with the release of Wisdom Machine imminent. The tour kicks off in Launceston 27 Mar, followed by the rest of the country.

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Seeing The Light

Jordan Rakei

2015 was a stellar year for Australian artist Jordan Rakei. Now, the upand-coming star is announcing a set of massive headline tour dates in Australia in February to celebrate the release of his energetic new single The Light.

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THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 7


Music / Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture

Party All (White) Night

White Night Melbourne has released their full program. Highlights include Tae Gon Kim’s The Dresses light installation; new theatre show SKATE; and the Les Meduses glowing jellyfish. The all-night party is on 20 Feb, 7pm - 7am.

Love Life

Head to Dominique Portet Winery & Cellar Door for ‘Pique-nique With The Portets’, January through February. Taste award-winning wines and nibble a selection of the family’s fave French delicacies before taking a bicycle tour around the French-provincial style grounds.

Penelope Bartlau, Les Meduses

Somethin’s Brewin’ Skate punk veterans Millencolin evidently still have plenty of fuel in the ol’ tank as the group announce their Aussie tour plans for 2016, taking in six shows around the country in support of last year’s full-length effort True Brew.

Yumway Nourishing punters at Melbourne’s Laneway will be Gelato Messina, My Miyagi, Beatbox Kitchen, Nuocmarnas, Chillbro Paletas, Taco Truck, Slice Girls West, Gyoza Records and more. Beers from Stone & Wood, Young Henrys, West City Brewing and Temple Brewery.

Absolutely Fuming After dropping off the radar for a number of years, Australian two-piece blues band The Fumes have added a third member to their line-up and will hit the road to launch their new album, Bloodless, this February. 8 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

The Fumes

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Arts / Li Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture

Frosty The Showman

Pique-Nique With The Portets

Multi-instrumentalist Max Frost has announced he will be heading to Australia for the very first time this March to perform two exclusive headline shows in Sydney and Melbourne.

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Sydney rapper Tuka has announced his Don’t Wait Up solo national tour, coming to most major cities in April. This is the last time you’ll get to see the artist before he disappears into the studio to work on the pcoming Thundamentals album.

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THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 9


Music / Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture

In The Works

Penny Arcade: Longing Lasts Longer

Theatre Works’ program for this year sees five international works as well as five world premieres cross its stage, including the anticipated Susie Dee-directed Animal, Little Ones Theatre’s Dangerous Liaisons and opener Penny Arcade: Longing Last Longer.

Got Some Nervo Australian DJ sisters NERVO have released their video for the single The Other Boys, featuring famed guests including Kylie Minogue, Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears and Nile Rodgers. They’ll play a few shows around the country in February/March.

Nervo

At The Station

Elle King

‘Ello, Elle Grammy-nominated rocker Elle King will be embarking on a short headline stint to coincide with her Bluesfest appearance. She’ll bring her gritty blues-rock to Melbourne and Sydney mid-March. 10 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

The Substation celebrates 100 years this year, and its new program features highlights Miss Gay & Miss Transsexual Australia, performative lecture Unpacking The Vietnam Archive Project and new residents Plastic Loaves and The Rabble.

The Rabble


/ Arts / L Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture

Friday Revue

774 ABC Melbourne has announced a brand new radio program, The Friday Revue. It will be presented by Richelle Hunt and Brian Nankervis Friday arvos from 29 Jan and will cover music, news, comedy, interviews and unsurprisingly - some quizzes.

)5, 29 JANUARY

Richelle Hunt & Brian Nankervis

Yarra Valley Ice Cream Festival

We Scream For… Yarra Valley Chocolaterie & Ice Creamery has created 144 flavours for their annual Ice Cream Festival. On top of that there’s limited edition ice cream desserts, tasting sessions, a showroom and more. 10 – 21 Feb.

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69 Squad Assemble Victorian youth music organisation The Push Inc are adding a new program, called SQUAD, to their Music Industry Mentoring suite that offers women performers aged 18 to 25 to develop their craft with industry professionals.

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Music

WHAT

HOUSE? Shamir Bailey learnt about house music after he’d already started work on his standout debut record. He talks to Cyclone about making house music in the middle of the desert. Cover pic by Mathew Parri Thomas.

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hamir was 2015’s breakout star, with his soulful avant-garde house. But, for all the buzz, this ebullient, androgynous and mononymous singer-songwriter from Las Vegas, Nevada remains an enigma - a pop outlier. Who is the real Shamir? Shamir Bailey, possessing a supple countertenor, even speaks in a sing-songy voice. The 21 year old is headlining Laneway on the back of his (ambiguously) celebratory debut, Ratchet. “I’m super excited,” Bailey announces. He says “super” a lot. Bailey also reveals a sense of the absurd. Halfway through the phone call, Bailey’s line erupts into hideous white noise - it sounds like a UFO is hovering over him. “Oh, my god!,” he shrills. It’s actually a military aircraft flying scarily close. Bailey hasn’t been abducted by aliens. “I’m still here,” he giggles. Bailey grew up opposite a pig farm in Northtown, a surreal suburb located between the glitzy gamblers’ resort of Vegas and the barren Mojave Desert. Curiously, it’s in range of Area 51 - that secret US base where conspiracy theorists believe extraterrestrial life is investigated. Bailey was raised by a young bohemian single mother (working in real estate) and his aunt, Mila Bailey. Mila wrote songs. She set up a home studio “before it was even more accessible - she put a lot of time and money into it” - and

she invited in local musicians. At nine, Bailey, inspired, was given an acoustic guitar by his mum. He taught himself to play country songs, albeit unconventionally. Bailey entered country talent comps, only to be advised that he should study Taylor Swift, which he’d shake off. Incongruously, Bailey, his family members of the Nation Of Islam, attended “a Mormon-ran high school” - it was “very basic”. “Everyone was kinda just like the same and white bread and white picket and cut copy.” Bailey, eccentric, flamboyant and individualistic “stood out like a sore thumb”. Though he charmed his school mates and was popular, he felt his “weirdness” was a novelty to them. Instead he found personal - and spiritual - validation in music. Massively into The Slits and Vivian Girls, Bailey developed a promising “twee” punk combo with Christina Thompson transgressively called Anorexia. What happened? “’Shamir’ happened,” Bailey

When I presented it to Nick, he was like, ‘Oh, you must listen to so much house music.’ I was like, ‘What is house music? laughs. “Anorexia was very active about three years ago. We had a few months’ hiatus while we were working and we had to graduate from high school and everything. So we were just taking a break before we started a new project or something. But, in between time, we were just doing little side projects. Mine happened to be Shamir and, obviously as you can see, it just kinda took a life of its own!” Bailey, enamoured of countercultural pop acts like Marina & The Diamonds, began “experimenting” with a Dr Groove drum machine that was bequeathed to him. He submitted his demos to the New York indie GODMODE, run by Nick Sylvester - a onetime Pitchfork contributor - after discovering its noise band YVETTE. “I had no idea who I was hitting up,” Bailey admits. Sylvester, amped, sought to produce the unassuming Nevadian. “I was flipping out because I produced all my stuff in my bedroom up to that point, but it was because I was the only producer that I trusted - in Vegas, at least,” Bailey quips. “It was completely out of necessity. So the fact that he was offering his production service... I was super-down.”


Sylvester had been struck by Bailey’s apparent affinity with classic house, imagining him as “an R&B Yeezus”. But Bailey now attributes his “vintage sound” to Dr Groove. “I was not familiar with house music at all, and I’m still very, like, at basic-level knowledge when it comes to house music,” he confesses. “I just knew that I wanted to do something different than the super-overly produced, hi-fisounding electronic music that I was hearing around me on the radio and on The Strip in Vegas... I just wanted to make more minimal electronic music - and it just happened to sound like old-school house music. When I presented it to Nick, he was like, ‘Oh, you must listen to so much house music.’ I was like, ‘What is house music? I mean, I’ve heard of it, but I really don’t even know the components.’ Then it just turns out that Nick already had such a huge love and knack for house music. He just completely schooled me on this oldschool house, and electronic and disco music.” Mid-2014 Bailey unveiled the Northtown EP, cut with Sylvester in Brooklyn. The hipster fave subsequently confirmed he’d signed a deal with the UK’s XL Recordings (home to Adele and FKA Twigs), airing the hip-house single On The Regular. Bailey chucked in his job at Topshop in Vegas. (“I absolutely loved working at Topshop,” he effuses, when probed for horror chain-store tales.) Bailey’s sanguine debut Ratchet - its title urban slang for ‘diva’ - traverses ‘80s house, from Frankie Knuckles’ pure strain to acid, to ‘90s crossover diva house (more Ultra Nate than Robin S) through to DFA Records’ ‘00s disco-punk. Bailey summarises his musical relationship with Sylvester as “very back and forth”. However, he had another eager collaborator - Auntie Mila was pushing to co-write. Initially, Bailey was resistant. “I kinda wanted to do it all myself,” he says. Yet Mila convinced him. “Nick sent me an early demo of [the song] Vegas and my aunt heard me playing it and she was like, ‘Shamir, I really love this track - let me write to it’. I was like, ‘Ok, whatever.’ I was like, ‘I’ll see what she can do,’ but I was super-prepared to reject it anyway. [But] she sent me back the demo of the lyrics and I was like, ‘Ok, this is really good!’” Vegas is a twisted tribute to Sin City. Now that Bailey has lived in New York, and travelled, he’s unsure about returning to tedious Northtown. “I have no roots right now, I’m just touring non-stop,” he says. “I’m still trying to think about if I wanna go back or if I wanna chill somewhere else, so I don’t know. I’ll have to wait until I’m done touring, but that won’t be for, like, forever.” Ratchet received glowing reviews, yet the media is especially intrigued by Bailey’s cultural fluidity. He’s no ‘EDM’ artist, but nor is

A LANE AFIELD With Big Day Out’s fate unclear, Laneway is now Australia’s key touring music festival. The 2016 edition has big draws like Beach House, Chvrches and, finally returning here, Grimes. And that’s not forgetting homegrown heroes like Flume, previewing album material. But Laneway hasn’t forfeited its underground cred. So who, aside from urban-houser Shamir, are the must-see leftfield artists?

he ‘urban’ or ‘indie’. Ratchet’s ballad Darker is gospelly. In fact, Bailey considers genre “a confine”. “I listen to so many types of music and I just want to find a way to express that in my own music as much as possible,” he says. Bailey has no qualms about being designated ‘pop’, “because pop music just has to be relatable, it doesn’t necessarily need to fit inside of a genre”. And he perceives his gender identity in the same amorphous way. The New York Times’ Wesley Morris proclaimed 2015 “The Year We Obsessed Over Identity” – racial, gender, sexual– with Caitlyn Jenner becoming the world’s most famous transgender person and, contentiously, civil rights activist Rachel Dolezal declaring herself to be “transracial”. The androgynous Bailey looms as a zeitgeist popstar. He’s mentioned along with openly gay Riot Boi rapper Le1f or Mykki Blanco, but you could throw in OG gender-benders like David Bowie, Prince or Annie Lennox. Nevertheless, Bailey isn’t into labels. A tweet from last March says it all: “To those who keep asking, I have no gender, no sexuality, and no fucks to give.” Still, this transcendent anomaly doesn’t mind that his identity is “a conversational topic” it’ll liberate others. “It’s just perfect timing,” Bailey says of his success. At Laneway, the mercurial performer will be accompanied by his band: a keyboardist, drummer and (female) back-up vocalist. Known to hug punters, Bailey approaches his show as “a party” and “a shared experience”. “It’s not necessarily like, ‘Hi, I’m Shamir - all eyes on me, watch me.”

When & Where: 4 Feb, Howler; 13 Feb, Laneway Festival, Footscray Community Arts Centre

If you’re still miffed about Soulfest’s cancellation, then get your neo-soul fix with the Sydney Bennett-fronted The Internet - possibly Odd Future’s oddest act. They’re performing as a six-piece behind their third (and definitive) album Ego Death. Then there’s Thundercat, the badasss bassist (and vocalist) down with Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder. An emerging ‘it’ producer, the Californian is all over Kendrick Lamar’s opus To Pimp A Butterfly. Long Beach, Cali MC Vince Staples is hitting these shores for the first time. He lately aired the acclaimed Summertime ‘06, with No ID’s input, via Def Jam. Hip hoppers should also catch Washington DC MC GoldLink. He has recorded with Chet Faker and quietly toured Oz previously. GoldLink’s career has been building since 2014’s mixtape The God Complex introduced his “future bounce”. Rick Rubin guided his hot-new LP, And After That, We Didn’t Talk. Those into IDM, not EDM, will appreciate Silicon, aka New Zealand vocalist/ muso/producer Kody Nielson (younger brother of Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Ruban). He’ll play such songs as the (true!) Justin Timberlakeapproved God Emoji off 2015’s debut Personal Computer, which sounds like a glitchy Air. THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 13


Music

Interpreting Suffering Sufjan Stevens talks to Simone Ubaldi about taking up sewing in the wake of the death of his mother, and the impossibility of narrativising grief.

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fter a long year on the road, Sufjan Stevens felt an urgent need to domesticate. “I’ve been sewing,” he smiles. “I inherited this old sewing machine that was my great grandmother’s and I’ve had it for years.” He carried mounds of fabric back to his Brooklyn home and set about making shirts and pants. “I made curtains too, for my windows. They’re made from Dutch wax fabric, these beautiful African prints, and they’re this bold, bright, yellow colour. Vibrancy, that’s what I’m interested in right now.”

It kind of taught me something about our desire to interpret and explain and make sense of tragedy.

early 100 shows in 2015, supporting Stevens played nearly hing but vibrant. Recorded in an album that is anything er’s death, Carrie & Lowell is a the wake of his mother’s heartbreaking record of conflicted grief. Stevens was estranged from his mother, who suffered from mental m. She was an inconstant figure in illness and alcoholism. er son when he was in nappies then his life, abandoning her reaching out to him when she remarried, at the urging of her new husband, Lowell Brams. Carrie & Lowell sifts ries from the side of the grave. It is through these memories an attempt to make sense of suffering through a window of faded polaroids. The intimacy of Carrie & Lowell takes your breath away. “I’ve never been one to shy away from the realness of things,” Stevens says. “I knew I need to get at the core of this loss, and a lot of it had to do specifically with Carrie and her illness, and her suffering through 14 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

life. I felt complicit in that and she was complicit in my own suffering. There was a really tragic dynamic between us and I didn’t want to talk about it generally or metaphorically, I had to talk about it and sing about it with concrete details.” The result feels hopelessly raw, crushingly vulnerable to listeners, but for Stevens it is a distant echo of his feelings. They are diluted in rhyme, melody, allusions and metaphors. “It’s no longer personal,” he says. This was a problem for the singer, who eschews bullshit. The older he gets, the more feverish Stevens is about authenticity, his guiding star. But if he missed something in the making of Carrie & Lowell, he found it on the road. “In spite of the record, in spite of the songs manifesting, in spite of having survived that grief, I still felt like the music fell short of the experience,” Stevens remembers, “[But] when we started playing the songs live, I began to encounter the music differently. I felt an entirely new perspective on the experience of suffering. It kind of taught me something about our desire to interpret and explain and make sense of tragedy. It taught me that it’s not always necessary… It’s disingenuous to anthropomorphise misery or give it some kind of moral summary, as if life is a series of homilies about the wisdom of suffering. “As I was playing the music I was really thinking the world is chaos, human nature is chaos, we project order as a defence mechanism to create meaning, to make sense of things, but all of that is really unnecessary. What I really wanted to do was just live in the moment and live abundantly, and really rea celebrate life. As I’ve been singing songs about death day after day after day, I’ve been really feeling motivated, in spite of the presence of death in the room, to live ful fully, with eyes wide open; to eradicate metaphor, to eradic eradicate meaning and to just be spiritually and emotionally present pre in the moment; to not worry so much about the trag tragedies of yesterday or the speculative tragedies of tomorrow.” tomorr Stevens played the Sydney Opera House last May as part of Vivid LIVE, LIVE just months after Carrie & Lowell’s release. Projected o onto a screen at the back of the stage were home m movies from his childhood; scraps of sun-bleached innoc innocence, poignantly lost; a mother who was and is a ghost. But as the films played, the Concert Hall was filled with spectacular fragmented silver light, these beautiful radi radiant bursts. And Stevens, on stage, was smiling, though the songs could make you weep. “The show is de designed to have a catharsis,” he explains. “Music is such a joyful, spiritual force and when it moves around the room, it lifts people up. Even though the content is dark and the narrative is about suffering, there’s a kind of sequence seq of events that takes place, and there are stage stages of grief, and in the end you come to fullness of understa understanding about what death really means.” Death can lead to joy, Stevens says. It doesn’t have to consume you. With bright yellow curtains hanging in his window, Stevens has ha let it go.

When & Where: 26 - 28 Feb, Hamer Hall


Theatre

Woman Of The Sea

Canberra-born cabaret queen Meow Meow gets set to make a splash with the Little Mermaid, speaking to Dave Drayton about the contradictions and emotional castration of modern love woven through her retelling of the classic fable.

S

omewhat fortuitously, I find a collection of Hans Christian Andersen fables in Elizabeth’s Books the day of my interview with Meow Meow (born Melissa Madden Gray) and, flicking through the contents wonder how her Little trilogy – which began with the smash hit Little Match Girl, premiering in 2011, and the second installment of which, Little Mermaid, will premiere in January at the Sydney Festival – may end. Little Tuck? Little Ida? Little Christina? A Little Green Ones with an overabundance of collaborations? But we’re getting too far ahead of ourselves, Meow Meow is still developing the show, and will make yet another trip to the US before the year is out. “I’m just back from Boston where I was doing a show called An Audience With Meow Meow... then I did Brecht/ Weill Die Sieben Todsunden with the orchestra here in Melbourne, and the minute I finish rehearsals I’m back to San Francisco, so you’re lucky to catch me!” In San Francisco, partnered with the city’s symphony, she will perform In Descent, thematically concerned with the concept of sinking, drowning, and deteriorating. “There’s a sort of water theme that’s running through everything. There’s an aquatic through line of

sorts. But fairytales, they keep coming back to me, they slap me in the face like a cold fish, really.” Andersen’s tale is well known, but Meow Meow has been constructing her own reading of the fable, where the splitting of the mermaid’s tail and the cutting of her tongue reflect a female castration that permeates the myth of perfect love. “I like to use the Little Mermaid as a springboard, to continue the diving metaphor, into the whole history of sirens and sea maidens being either good or bad forces, whose beautiful song was either to protect ships from wild winds and rocks, or [lure] men to their death. “I think it’s a very real dilemma as a traveling showgirl – can you have love and can you have a career? Not that it’s that simple, but there’s resonances of course. Do you have to lose yourself entirely to make yourself presentable for modern love, or is that all a myth? And if you do that and you lose your agency do you lose the thing that actually made you interesting? What is abandoned and what is set free? What is liberating and what is constricting? What’s bondage by choice? And of course, modern love, and how we are saturated by it, but what’s real, and does it matter?” Joining Meow Meow on the diving board are people like Kate Miller-Heidke, Amanda Palmer and Megan Washington, all of whom have contributed songs to the production. “They’re all women who know me well and are very different songwriters, but that makes it interesting as well because you’ve got your friends writing songs for you with their various takes on where we’re going with the mermaid, the siren, the dilemmas of being a female performer and all the power and the fret that’s within the voice. We’re all women of the sea; we’re all travellers.”

What: Meow Meow’s Little Mermaid When & Where: 28 Jan – 14 Feb, Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse Theatre THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 15


Music

Frontlash A Dog’s Life

The Mark Of Crane

Our new favourite Insty: Tom Hardy Holding Dogs. The captions are also always excellent.

Sweet Peaks Sugar Mountain. Can’t wait ‘til the next one.

Blooming Marvellous

Lashes

Iggy Pop. Josh Homme. Gardenia. 18 March can’t come soon enough.

We Heart Jiggy

Backlash Loonie Tunes

The Luna Park ad. What the fuck are they singing about?

Lip Service

Peel off lip tint. Do you peel it off before you pash?

Duly Noted

People who leave notes under windscreen wipers during school holidays claiming you can’t park across school crossings. Actually, just people who leave nasty notes under windscreen wipers full stop.

16 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

Melbourne rockers Dallas Crane are back with a new album, and frontman Dave Larkin tells Steve Bell that it’s fun being them again.

M

elbourne-bred guitar band Dallas Crane left a big mark on the national scene in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, the four-piece priding themselves on their fierce live show and backing that up with an equally unrelenting work ethic. After an exhaustive decade on the road (during which they released four long-players) they went on hiatus around 2006, reappearing sporadically — like when The Who asked them on the road in 2009 — but they seemed done and dusted as a recording entity. Then in 2014 a slightly rejigged version of the band began working on a new album and last year saw the release of Scoundrels, an album as surprising for its strength after the extended absence as much as its very existence. The band, it seems, felt that there was unfinished business to attend to. “Where we left it with [2006 album] Factory Girls and I guess the way we stepped away from [the band] the first time, Pete [Satchell — guitar/vocals] and I just felt — without going into any boring details — that it could have been better and we didn’t want that to be the last thing we did,” reflects frontman Dave Larkin. “We were both still writing actively with our other projects, and we just thought, ‘You know, nothing’s really going to have as good a chance at getting out there unless we do

it under the Dallas Crane name,’ so we decided to see if we had anything left just to put a new finish on it, I guess. Finish on a bit more of our own terms. “Back then we were coming out through Alberts and Sony and there were so many people signing off on everything we did, and it kinda got a bit crap, to be honest. We were losing the fun bit of being in a band so we just had to clean out the possums in the roof and just get back to what’s important.” Scoundrels finds Dallas Crane stretching out, developing their aesthetic without abandoning what made them so good in the first place. “We wanted to evolve the band’s sound, but we’ve never been about sitting down and trying to get on triple j or anything like that,” Larkin laughs. “Essentially we’re a guitar band and that’s the shit we love the most, and with Pete and I coming back to the band from different places, songs were coming from different places than we were used to with old Dallas Crane. “When we were doing the band last time we were one of the few rock’n’roll bands, but now we’re really a bit of a niche genre and we should really just be happy and exploit being a rock’n’roll band — just go for it! Five-minute solos? No worries! We didn’t cut much down, a lot of the songs we just tracked and kept jamming — most of the lengthier songs are there because we were just having a good time. We were just a little bit more free with it, it was good.”

What: Scoundrels (Nylon Sounds/Rocket) When & Where: 29 Jan, The Grand Hotel, Mornington; 5 Feb, Karova Lounge, Ballarat; 19 Feb, The Westernport Hotel; 20 Feb, Corner Hotel


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THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 17


Film

Finding Room To Grow Irish director Lenny Abrahamson follows up existential music comedy Frank with the gut-wrenching captive drama Room. He talks to Brendan Telford about finding heart in horrid circumstance.

T

he 2010 novel Room by Irish-Canadian author Emma Donoghue was a global dramatic hit that focused on terrifying subject matter - the lives of a mother and her child, imprisoned in a room in small-town America by a nameless man for many years without anyone knowing. What’s more, the boy was born in captivity, and knows nothing of the outside world. Such a harrowing foundation is dealt with deftly and with emotional nous to create a story that is more about the bonds between mother and son than it is about the situation they found themselves in. It is a

These are two people who have been penned away and have now come out into the world and you have to do that justice

difficult balancing act - a sensationalist trivialisation of a horrific real-world ordeal on the one hand, and emotional mawkishness on the other - yet director Lenny Abrahamson (What Richard Did, Frank) has managed to find that equilibrium. “When I read the book, I had a boy who was around four at the time and so I was thinking a lot about kids what it means to parent them,” Abrahamson explains. “It’s a double experience because it can bring you back to your own childhood. I thought what Emma did was so fascinating and clever, to make this about the functional aspects of the situation rather than the dysfunctional, and it says a lot about the capacity of children to make, from the most limited environments, the full range of childhood once they have a solid relationship in 18 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

the middle of that. I think it was a combination of the excitement of what had been achieved in the novel, the emotional effect it had on me, and then that feeling that it would be a real challenge to make a film work of this novel.” The spectre of the Josef Fritzl case of 2008, and other real-world case like it, looms large over Room, yet Abrahamson is quick to point out that the story runs far deeper than any source material. “The Fritzl case definitely inspired Room, but in the sense that Emma became fascinated by the image of the youngest boy, a kid that had never been out of this place and what it would be like to re-enter the world, and there are a whole series of metaphors from such a story that adheres to all childhoods and parenting. We all, if we’re lucky, live in a bubble that is parentally created to protect us from the darker aspects of the world and yet that bubble isn’t impermeable, and as you get a bit older the shadows start to call, and how parents negotiate that path for their children.” Donoghue adapted the screenplay from her own novel, and Abrahamson worked closely with her to bring some of his own concerns to the screen. “With Emma, we reconfigured the second half. In the novel the mother (played by the striking Brie Larson) is a projection; we see her through Jack (newcomer Jacob Tremblay), but she isn’t really never built up as a character. So we also intensified her relationship with her own mother to make it really about two parent/child relationships. Also realising that the second half of the novel is like a long coda to this room and the escape, which takes up nearly two-thirds of the novel, as we are out and inside the outside world nearly halfway. This is a proper adaptation where I really wanted to be faithful to the things in the novel that I found most moving.” Nevertheless there were various pitfalls that Abrahamson was careful to avoid, such as trivialising or “overegging” the events to the point of melodrama. “With Room I felt we should keep it a very delicate and unobtrusive approach, so that the inflection you are giving things does not announce itself, and an audience can feel a process of discovery and that they can be moved to discover,” Abrahamson states. “I wanted to disappear in the film, and also make the second half of the film more subtle. So rather than show the boy’s first experience of a shopping mall, [we] concentrate on the relationship of these two people and make that the focus of the film rigorously from the beginning of the film to the end, so that you feel that the escape is going to be the conclusion of the problem and then you realise that this relationship, this thing you now care for a hell of a lot, is being pulled. These are two people who have been penned away and have now come out into the world, and you have to do that justice where the escape scene is this incredibly tense thing. You need to have a valve though. One reviewer said he gave me a pass with the scene with the dog because he felt with such an emotional film a moment of schmaltz was acceptable. I think I did alright.”

What: Room In cinemas 28 Jan


Music

The Threat Is Real Megadeth founder Dave Mustaine speaks to Mark Hebblewhite about melody, media sensationalism and the international turmoil that powered new album Dystopia’s creation.

D

ave Mustaine has been described as something of a prickly interviewee but when The Music reaches him the legendary frontman and thrash metal shredder is relaxed and jovial. He even goes out of his way to thank Australia for their loyalty to his band over the years, and wax lyrical about his love of Moreton Bay bugs, which he tries to consume in as large amounts as possible on visits to our shores. The conversation turns more earnest however when Mustaine reveals his mindset behind the bleak lyrical approach to Dystopia. Where past Megadeth albums have dealt in the apocalyptic, Dystopia, particularly on tracks like Post American World, embraces the realities of an uncertain age. “Well right now we’re seeing a real shift in the nature of what it means to be a ‘world power’,” he offers. “Things are changing dramatically at the moment. For example, I don’t remember any time during my lifetime that the Middle East has been on fire in the way it is now. I’ve seen ten presidents come and go during my lifetime and I really wonder what’s going to happen next, particularly what role America will play in world politics. It’s fascinating but also scary.” Musically, Mustaine delivers up a set of mainly midtempo riffs as opposed to the all-out thrashers of his early years. What hasn’t changed though is his ear for compelling melodies. “I do love to thrash out but there are more important things. As a kid I was exposed to stuff like Motown and that really taught me the importance of melody in song writing. We had success with records like Countdown To Extinction and Youthanasia that had that melody —

I’ve seen ten presidents come and go during my lifetime and I really wonder what’s going to happen next, particularly what role America will play in world politics.

basically the approach worked — and you can’t help but go back to that winning formula when you sit down to write.” Of course it wouldn’t be an interview with Dave Mustaine unless some form of controversy reared its head. Recently the ginger-haired one caused a bit of flap when he told a journalist that his long-time partner in crime Dave Ellefson shouldn’t be considered a founding member of Megadeth despite the fact he played on the band’s debut LP. But according to Mustaine it’s just another example of the media sensationalism that has dogged his entire career. “There’s a couple of different ways to look at how the media, particularly on the internet, operates,” he says. “Some of these websites just demean our genre as a whole by constantly going after people who have a profile in the music world. Other sites of course are looking for actual stories but just get it wrong sometimes. If you look at that particular story in context it’s not really a big deal. It’s only if you don’t consider the wider context that it becomes a big deal. I can tell you now that Dave Ellefson doesn’t give a shit: why would he — he’s the bass player in Megadeth and he’s the best bass player we’ve ever had. Dave and I both know the deal — we made an agreement a long time ago that we can count on each other. If there’s anything we ever need to say to each other we just do it because we don’t want to be reading things secondhand in the press — that’s just gutless.”

What: Dystopia (T-Boy Records/Universal)

THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 19


Tickets available via the venue websites or 1300 724 867

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20 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

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THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 21


Education

Glenn Frey Has Left Hotel California

SAE Open Day Ahead of SAE’s Open Day, we catch up with three of the guests who will be there dispensing advice: musician and media personality Ella Hooper, pro surfer Mark Mathews and filmmaker Macario De Souza.

Glenn Frey Ella Hooper

Eagles founding member and guitarist Glenn Frey has passed away at the age of 67, days after the announcement of David Bowie’s death. Frey had won six Grammy Awards in his five-decade career and been inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1998, having penned a slew of The Eagles’ most well loved songs and sung on tracks like Take It Easy, New Kid In Town and Tequila Sunrise. The Hotel California rockers wrote on their official website that Frey “fought a courageous battle for the past several weeks but, sadly, succumbed to complications from rheumatoid arthritis, acute ulcerative colitis and pneumonia”. “The Frey family would like to thank everyone who joined Glenn to fight this fight and hoped and prayed for his recovery.” “Words can neither describe our sorrow, nor our love and respect for all that he has given to us, his family, the music community & millions of fans worldwide. We hope you have pink champagne on ice waiting for you, Glenn.

How did you manage to turn your creative passion into a career? Ella Hooper: Big dreaming, brain scheming, hard working and getting-back-up-whenyou-fall-downing! Firstly I shared my music, through entering triple j’s Unearthed competition, and turned that radio play bit by bit into a career. Mark Mathews: I spent time learning from other professional surfers to give myself a road map on what I needed to do. Macario De Souza: Through years of consistent creative output, diving in the deep end and learning on the job, and a few breaks helped opened some doors.

Mark Mathews

Macario De Souza

Every career has ups and downs — how do you get through the rough patches? EH: A strong sense of self! MM: Focus on the ‘why’. MDS: Remaining patient and positive. What advice would you give someone currently looking to enter the same area you are in? EH: Find what it is that YOU can offer that no one else can. Go inwards to find something unique. MM: Weigh up the risks versus the rewards. MDS: Get to know your tools so you have a good understanding of how all areas of your field work. Start a website/page, constantly put out work and build your brand. The work will soon follow. If you could go back in time and give yourself some advice, what would it be? EH: Do what you first wanted to do, trust that first instinct and follow it. MM: Failure is a huge part of success. MDS: Ask more questions and test yourself in different environments, not just within your own circles. What will you be speaking about at the SAE Open Day? EH: Ups and downs and the weird bits in between. I don’t think you learn as much from the good times as the challenging ones. MM: Dealing with fear, failure and stress as a professional big wave surfer. MDS: How I went from my tertiary education and into the TV/film/music industry. I want to push the idea of starting early and being a jack of all trades.

To read the whole story, head to theMusic.com.au. When & Where: 30 Jan, SAE Melbourne Campus

22 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016


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WWW.THETOTEHOTEL.COM THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 23


Five Tips For The Injured Abroad

Travel

Five Days In A Thai Hospital

1.

Find a western hospital. It is impossible to communicate the inns and outs of your boo boo if the nurse doesn’t speak English. And if you eat the food in a local hospital, you will get food poisoning, and you will die.

So, I’m in Thailand and I get little cut on my right foot (yes, mum, I slipped down some stairs. No, it wasn’t at a Full Moon party). No biggie — slap on some Betadine and a BandAid, right? Wrong. Oh, so wrong. That tiny, weenie, insignificant little scratch expanded from something resembling a paper cut to a gaping hole that slowly filled with custard-like pus and turned my foot purple. Something about the microscopic coral polyps in the sand that got in it, the nurse said. They’re growing inside my cut, apparently. Gross.

2.

Do not go on Facebook to stalk your mates who have moved on to another island. Yes, they’re having a marvellous time. No, you’re not really missed. Build a bridge and get over it.

3.

Do make friends with the others in your ward. Share stories; learn about each other’s culture, politics, beliefs, language. Attempt to learn said language and watch them giggle.

4.

Be a baby if you want to be. Call your mum. Cuddle the heck out of the teddy bear we know you smuggled in your backpack. Become adopted by a nurse who will give you head scratches when you go in for daily ‘cleaning’.

IV drips are annoying to shower with, especially if your injured body part is plastic wrapped. But they are fabulous for drying out your washing. Once a backpacker, always a backpacker.

10mm W by 8.3mm D The food is amazeballs — fresh watermelon shakes, chicken pad Thai, even a brie and prosciutto baguette! I am going to get fat in hospital. I made friends with Sofie and Sarah, the two Dutch girls in the bed next to me, and met the other poor souls in my ward. We’re all in the same boat, so we’re making the most of it by sharing stories about our home countries. I’m also learning how to swear in Dutch, German, French and Irish (yes, it’s different). The latter I’m learning from the highly inappropriate but uproariously funny head of the hospital, who visits us every morning with his beautiful Thai wife and offers to give us sponge baths.

Day Four: Cut — Day One: Cut — 15mm W by 10mm D So much pain. It turns out that I need to have a minor operation every day. By minor, I mean lying awake on a metal table as a nurse uses a scalpel to gouge out the pus and molten flesh from inside and around my wound. Dr Nui is lovely — she played me Thai pop music to try and distract me, and gave me a concoction of pain and sleeping injections directly into my IV... Zzzzz.

Day Two: Cut — 12mm W by 9.6mm D

5.

Day Three: Cut —

Dear Diary. Mood, apathetic. My friends have moved on to Koh Tao for snorkelling, and I’m stuck in blue scrubs. I also sleep up to five times per day from the pain medication, which is provided frequently and in high doses. It’s fun before I pass out. Mum called — she said something along the lines of “Only you”. The boyfriend also called, it made me home sick. *Cue string quartet*

9mm W by 7.7mm D I am so sick of these ‘operations’. One by one we are taken from our beds and put into wheel chairs, parading by our inmates with the sobriety of one walking the Green Mile. We look at each other with both sympathy and fear — we could be next. Those who have passed through the ordeal lay in a drugged stupor, sometimes giggling hysterically if they knock their dressing. Be brave, Brynn, be brave.

Day Five: Cut — 8.6mm W by 7mm D I have been given a pink boot. It’s plastic, with Velcro toggles. I am to wear it in the shower, change the dressings twice daily and have been given a lifetime supply of disinfectant, gauze and tweezers. I have loaded up my backpack, complete with letters from Sofie, Sarah and Dr Nui. The hospital is even dropping me at the ferry to Koh Tao. A lot of good I’m going to be at a snorkelling destination! Brynn Davies

24 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016


Music

After The Jump

Leftfield remixed Bowie’s Jump They Say. Neil Barnes chuckles as he recalls putting “a big acid line on it” before proudly announcing that “it came out really well”. By Bryget Chrisfield.

A

fter Leftfield last toured our shores, they released Tourism (recorded live in Australia at Future Music Festival 2011). We were at their Palace Theatre sideshow and can attest that, when Afro-Left was dropped, punters resembled broken windmills dancing. Neil Barnes is now the sole remaining member of Leftfield after he parted ways with Paul Daley in 2000. Barnes put out a new Leftfield album, Alternative Light Source, last year. Leftfield’s previous studio album, Rhythm And Stealth, hit shelves in 1999. “It’s a whole new world out there now in terms of technology,” Barnes marvels of the different equipment he utilised this time around, particularly the evolution of sound cards. “But we did use computers quite early on,” he clarifies. Despite these advances in technology, Barnes opines, “The process of making a record, in one way, is exactly the same; it’s a matter of coming up with the right ideas, you know?” Before Leftfield, when Barnes was in his “early 20s”, he DJed at The Wag club in London and it was all about spinning vinyl. “I still love vinyl, I still buy it,” he says. We discuss limited-edition vinyl releases and Barnes agrees this can be a great source of revenue since artists “don’t get much on Spotify”. Unfortunately, pressing vinyl is “the slowest process” and Barnes despairs, “I mean, in the UK it takes months and months

because all the pressing plants are full”. On the use of CDJs (even USB sticks) and the impact they’ve had on the art of DJing, Barnes shares, “It’s hard to DJ now without actually going down those routes, ‘cause a lot of places don’t have decks anymore.” When asked how he feels about band members DJing at their own afterparties, Barnes chuckles, “There’s enough DJs out there, that’s for certain. There’s not enough clubs to fill ‘em.” Leftfield’s distinctive remixes always take the original song on a completely unexpected detour and there’s no better time to Google their reworkings of David Bowie’s Jump They Say. “That was a fantastic experience doing those,” Barnes recalls. He then laments, “We didn’t meet David, unfortunately.” The Leftfield remix even scored its own harrowing, Bowie-starring music video. “There was talk about us doing some other Bowie [remixes], but we moved away from doing remixing and concentrated on Leftfield after that so we didn’t go back to doing any more,” Barnes shares. On Bowie’s recent passing, Barnes offers, “For a lot of people it feels as big as Lennon dying, really.” Barnes posted a moving Bowie tribute on Leftfield’s Facebook page deeming their work on Jump They Say “the pinnacle of our remix career”. “It was a great moment for us to have done work on one of his records,” Barnes continues, “and it was a wonderful experience; you know, listening to the song and taking out a lot of the elements off the record to do the remix of it. And just hearing the strings that we put on that were really beautiful and reminded me of the album Low and lots of albums like that — very Germanic, very interesting sounds.” Because this was so long ago, Barnes admits, “It’s difficult to analyse”. “We put a big acid line on it,” he laughs, “but it was a remix so there you go. And it came out really well.”

Jezabels Tour Cancellation

The Jezabels

In a shocking announcement, The Jezabels have cancelled their national tour in support of new album Synthia including their appearance at Mountain Sounds Festival and European and US tour dates. In a recent turn of events, keyboardist Heather Shannon has revealed that she must remain in Sydney to undergo treatment for ovarian cancer. The band have decided against touring without Shannon, who was diagnosed with “a unique type of ovarian cancer” three years ago. Speaking personally Shannon said, “Up until now, I have preferred to not let this diagnosis get in the way of getting on with life. I feel a deep frustration at this new roadblock, as I now have to take a step back and undergo treatment. “The band means so much to me, and cancelling the tour has been a very sad decision. I am hopeful that in the near future we will be back on the road again playing music we love. This album means so much to us, and we were so looking forward to sharing it live with everyone.” To read the whole story, head to theMusic.com.au.

When & Where: 21 Feb, Secret Valley Festival, Yarra Valley Estate THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 25


CryBaby

In Focus John Waters

CryBaby

After Dark

If you’re yet to see Johnny Depp in Cry-Baby (he plays the lead role), you really oughta catch it on the big screen. And here’s your chance, because there’s a special fundraiser screening of this cult John Waters flick on 5 Feb at Gasworks Arts Park as part of the 2016 Midsumma program. We’ve been told the person with the best ‘flamboyant hair flip’ gets a prize, so get practising! And don’t forget to look out for Iggy Pop as Belvedere (Cry Baby’s grandmother’s boyf). Grab your tix from gasworks.org.au now.

Hairspray

Hairspray

26 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016


Indie Indie

Lazeritis

Minton’s Playhouse Sessions

Luna Grand

Credits

Publisher Street Press Australia Pty Ltd Group Managing Editor Andrew Mast National Editor – Magazines Mark Neilsen Editor Bryget Chrisfield Arts Editor Hannah Story Eat/Drink Editor Stephanie Liew Gig Guide Justine Lynch gigs@themusic.com.au

EP Focus:

Have You Been To:

Single Focus:

Answered by: Amy Pettifer

Answered by: Hania Glapa

Answered by: Laura Stitt

Senior Contributor Jeff Jenkins

EP title? Aubergine Dreams EP

Why should punters visit you? Minton’s Playhouse Sessions are 1940s jazz jam and be-bop style sessions that pay homage to the greats. The B East celebrate them once a month along with some of Melbourne’s best jazz musicians.

Single title? Chase The World

Contributors Annelise Ball, Sarah Barratt, Sophie Blackhall-Cain, Emma Breheny, Sean Capel, Luke Carter, Anthony Carew, Uppy Chatterjee, Oliver Coleman, Darren Collins, Daniel Cribb, Cyclone, Guy Davis, Dave Drayton, Simon Eales, Guido Farnell, Tim Finney, Bob Baker Fish, Cameron Grace, Neil Griffiths, Brendan Hitchens, Kate Kingsmill, Pete Laurie, Chris Maric, Baz McAlister, Samson McDougall, Ben Meyer, Fred Negro, Danielle O’Donohue, Obliveus, Sarah Petchell, Michael Prebeg, Paul Ransom, Ali Schnabel, Dylan Stewart, Simone Ubaldi, Genevieve Wood, Evan Young, Matthew Ziccone

How many releases do you have now? We released our first single Gender Studies in May 2015, but this is our first EP. Yay! Was anything in particular inspiring you during the making? The music scene can be a bit of a man’s world, so we wanted to write about the female experience with a bit of cheek, and challenge some popular misconceptions. What’s your favourite song on it? Very Berry Milkshake — it doesn’t make a lot of sense but it makes us laugh and feel badass. We’ll like this EP if we like... When your mates just give it a red hot Aussie go. When and where is your launch/ next gig? We’re launching the EP at the Evelyn Hotel on 29 Jan with King Choonga, The Tiny Giants and Tiprats. It’s $10 entry and our 7” will be available for $10. Website link for more info? lazertits.bandcamp.com

What’s the history of the event? Many performers are freshfaced musical geniuses along with seasoned professionals. Sessions are lead by Aleister James and Rob Simone. Any advice for first timers who want to visit the event? Gigs are always free at The B East and Minton’s is sponsored by Jameson, keeping everyone in cheap whiskey all night. Come down, or even get on the stage yourself! Do you have any plans for the event in the future? Yes. When and where for your next event? Minton’s runs on the last Thursday of each month from 8pm at The B East. Website link for more info? facebook.com/thebeastburgers

What’s the song about? Finding that person you know you’re going to spend the rest of your days chasing this big, old, crazy world with. How long did it take to write/ record? This was a quick one… Sometimes songs can take months to write but this one kind of literally ejected straight out of us at full throttle. Is this track from a forthcoming release/existing release? Chase The World was released on iTunes 13 Jan 2016. What was inspiring you during the song’s writing and recording? All the good stuff in life: love, music, family, listening, learning. We’ll like this song if we like... We think you’ll like this song if you like soulful music that moves you in someway. Do you play it differently live? We’ll be playing this song for the first time on our Chase The World tour, which kicks off in Adelaide and Melbourne on 4 & 5 Feb. When and where is your launch/ next gig? 5 Feb, Shebeen Bandroom. Website link for more info? lunagrand.com

Editorial Assistant Brynn Davies, Sam Wall

Interns Dylan Van Der Riet, Hannah Blackburn, Lillie Siegenthaler, Brad Summers, Samuel Wall, Xavier Fennell Senior Photographer Kane Hibberd Photographers Andrew Briscoe, Dina El-Hakim, Holly Engelhardt, Jay Hynes Advertising Dept Leigh Treweek, Tim Wessling, Zoë Ryan sales@themusic.com.au Art Dept Ben Nicol Felicity Case-Mejia vic.art@themusic.com.au Admin & Accounts Loretta Zoppos, Niall McCabe, Bella Bi, Ajaz Durrani accounts@themusic.com.au Distro distro@themusic.com.au Subscriptions store.themusic.com.au Contact Us Tel 03 9421 4499 Fax 03 9421 1011 info@themusic.com.au www.themusic.com.au Level 1, 221 Kerr St, Fitzroy VIC 3065 Locked Bag 2001, Clifton Hill VIC 3068

— Melbourne

THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 27


Music

Good Feeling Violent Femmes are an institution all over the world, but bassist Brian Ritchie tells Steve Bell that it’s time they stopped living in the past.

I

t’s been 32 years since Milwaukee alt-rock legends Violent Femmes burst into Australian consciousness with their lauded self-titled debut album - a sleeper hit that contained a slew of angst-ridden songs like Blister In The Sun, Kiss Off and Add It Up that quickly became embedded in our national psyche. Now, following a lengthy hiatus due to perennial internal disputes, they’re back to tour the country with Hoodoo Gurus, Sunnyboys, Died Pretty and Ratcat for the A Day On The Green franchise.

The other thing that would be good would be to become creative again... not to have people looking at the Wikipedia page and going, ‘Oh, their last record was released 25 years ago.’

What’s really exciting about these impending shows is that earlier this year they released the Happy New Year EP for Record Store Day - their first substantial collection of new music since 2000’s Freak Magnett - meaning that we’re going to hear new tunes from them live for the first time in aeons. “It was unexpected because the band split up obviously for about seven years, but even before that we hadn’t released anything for maybe another 10 years or whatever, so I thought - and probably the public would have had reason to think, and maybe even Gordon (Gano - frontman/songwriter) thought - that we would never do anything again,” concedes bassist Brian Ritchie. “So I guess it was just an interesting turn of events that we did that, and now we’ve followed that up. We went into the studio on our last American tour, which was just a few months ago, and we recorded a whole new LP. That will 28 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

be out by the time we do these gigs, so we’ll be working around that.” Happy New Year had a very live feel, and Ritchie explains that the new album will be following suit. “We’ve made all kinds of different records over the years, but the best ones are the ones that sound like the band sounds live,” he tells. “So we just decided to skip all of the bullshit and just go into the studio and play live. We played with no separation, all in the same room, and there’s select overdubs here and there, if we needed to add something or correct something, but basically it’s live.” Ritchie, who these days lives in Tasmania and (amongst other pursuits) has been instrumental in the success of the esteemed Mona Foma festival, admits that it’s great having new material in the Femme’s set after all this time, even just for their own sanity. “Originally we reformed to play Coachella Festival and it was just going to be that one-off thing,” he explains, “but we had one fun with that and said, ‘Okay, do we want to keep this going?’ At that point then I thought, ‘Well, okay if we’re going to accomplish a few things then one of them would be to try and keep things amicable - which we’ve never been able to do, so if we could do that it would be nice - and the other thing that would be good would be to become creative again, just in order not to have people looking at the Wikipedia page and going, ‘Oh, their last record was released 25 years ago’ or something like that. “It’s embarrassing because we’re very creative people - I’m working on festivals and working on museum stuff and all kinds of different music - and it’s ridiculous to have the thing we’re most known for be stagnant. So it’s good to throw a stone into that pond and watch what the ripples might be.” Has the runaway success of their debut album become something of a millstone, given that everything the Femmes have done since is held up against it? “I think this happens to every band, even if you think about The Rolling Stones they have Start Me Up at sporting events and then maybe they’ve got Satisfaction - the longer a band sticks around the more reduced their profile becomes - it’s like they’re trying to turn everybody into a one-hit wonder,” Ritchie ponders. “It’s not reasonable, but it’s a fact. But it also doesn’t change [the fact that] we have all sorts of wonderful songs. “The same could be said about Lou Reed. Lou really only had one hit, Walk On The Wild Side, and then he had a couple of other songs like Sweet Jane that are classics, but they weren’t hits. How many great songs did he write? About a million. How many great songs did Jonathan Richman write? He didn’t even have one hit, unless you count Roadrunner, r which was more of a classic. But he had so many songs that should have been hits. It’s just the way it goes so I don’t dwell upon it.”

When & Where: 12 Mar, A Day On The Green, Rochford Wines, Yarra Valley; 13 Mar, Golden Plains, Meredith; 17 & 18 Mar, Corner Hotel


THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 29


Eat / Eat/Drink

Our Eat/Drink Editor Stephanie Liew visited the USA for the first time and ate some food and took some pics in LA, SF and NYC. You can find more at themusic.com.au/culture/eat/drink and @did.u.eat on the ‘Gram.

Jang Ga Ne (LA): A cute “mom and pop” restaurant in Koreatown. I’m used to Korean restaurants in Australia serving up about three plates of banchan (small complimentary side dishes) but they gave us nine — all delicious! Order the pork bulgogi and the excellent beef short rib soup (galbitang). Kinjo Kinjo Brooklyn (NYC): Fusion bar and restaurant. Great vibe for hangs or dates. Get the kimchi fried rice with pork belly, miso eggplant, and the gluten-free Korean fried chicken wings with ginger soy glaze and chipotle molasses. Their excellent cocktail menu items are mostly based on sake, shochu, and Japanese whiskies.

Asian

In-N-Out Burger

Burgers

Momofuku Noodle Bar (NYC): I don’t know if this lives up to the hype but if you don’t mind the price tag it’s worth going here for the brisket bun. The Momofuku Ramen isn’t traditional, but a meaty (yet not heavy/ greasy) broth and excellent noodles make it overall an enjoyable experience.

In-N-Out (LA): This was the first meal I had when I landed and man, was it satisfying. It feels fresh but junky at the same time? The fries are nothing special though (not even the animal fries). Love the yellow peppers. Umami Burger (LA): Pretty dang good gourmet burgers with a twist, but fairly pricey. The sweet potato fries with four kinds of dipping sauce are a must. Oh, and the cheese-filled giant tater tots. Finish with an ice cream sandwich. Shake Shack (NYC): Dry and flavourless. Doesn’t hold a candle to In-N-Out!

Seafood

Luke’s Lobster

30 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

Lobster rolls (NYC): I had two — one from Littleneck Outpost, which had more substantial lobster bits. The other was from chain Luke’s Lobster — whatever they flavour the lobster with was addictive as hell. Splash Cafe (Pismo Beach): Apparently one of the best clam chowders (served in a bread bowl) in Cali. Admittedly, I hadn’t tried clam chowder before, but it was incredible. The creaminess, the texture, the chew of the clams! The crusty, chowder-soaked bread! Sotto Mare (SF): Great mussels and pasta, and a homey, bustling vibe. Tried the chowder here and it was good but came nowhere near Splash Cafe’s.


/ Drink Eat/Drink

Miriam Restaurant

Breakfast/brunch Nick’s Cafe (LA): Popular spot for eggs and ham/bacon (plus sides) and biscuits and gravy. Cool retro diner look. Huge portions. Patra Burgers on Sunset (LA): Not to be confused with Patra’s Charbroiled Burgers. Who knew a breakfast burrito of scrambled eggs, bacon, hash brown, gooey cheese and hot sauce could taste like this?

Mexican

Miriam Restaurant (LA): Happening brunch spot. We ordered the shakshuka (served with hummus), the Israeli Breakfast and the Mediterranean Crispy Dough with spicy harissa and shredded tomatoes (so good I was thinking about it for days afterwards).

Doughnuts (NYC): Only tried from Sweets two places; a shit effort on my behalf. Dough, which I saw all over the place, offered big, cheap, bready doughnuts that didn’t have too much glaze — the dulce de leche and the lemon poppyseed were highlights. Then there was Doughnut Plant, which reminded me of Melbourne’s Shortstop: cream-filled cashew and orange blossom doughseed, I will never forget you. Rice To Riches (NYC): Like an ice cream shop, but with rice pudding. So much rice pudding. And really daggy/borderline offensive ‘joke’ signs all over

the place (??). The pudding itself was nice... for about five spoonfuls until you get sick of it. Tartine Bakery (SF): Famous little bakery. Lines out the door. Fell in love with their Morning Bun and frangipani croissant.

Guelaguetza

Guelaguetza (LA): Known for their mole sauce. Extensive menu of Oaxacan fare. Familyfriendly environment. Warning: you think you’re ordering a regular cocktail and then they bring out a glass the size of your head. Tacombi (NYC): Unless you’re really into the idea of being served out of a VW bus, inside a garage-looking space, give this one a miss. Not the worst but totally forgettable.

Misc American Fette Sau (NYC): Barbecued meats by the pound. The St Louis style pork ribs just fell apart and the smoky brisket induced delighted groans, but the hero was perhaps the burnt end baked beans. Great spot for American whisky, too. Sweet Chick (NYC): Flawless fried chicken (super juicy, super crunchy) on a waffle of your choice (I chose mushroom and rosemary), served with three(!) flavours of whipped butter (honey lemon, berry and herb) and hot (both spice and temperature) honey. Finish with the pumpkin pie. Bergen Bagels (NYC): Americans do bagels better. They’re bigger and softer and the choice of toppings is outrageous.

Pizza

Roberta’s

Tartine Bakery

Roberta’s (NYC): A long wait for this place was pretty worth it once we had a taste of their threecheese pizza, the Cheesus Christ, with a side of honey that cut through it all perfectly.

Sweet Chick

THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 31


Music

A Farewell To The Beards

In The Moment

The Beards have announced their break-up and farewell tour, penning an open letter to their fans, citing reasons for their disbanding and a heartfelt goodbye to those who stuck around for the ride. The band write: “Being a novelty band (and we’re not afraid to admit it), we faced an uphill battle from the start in many respects – we’ve had precious little radio play over the journey, the majority of festivals didn’t want to know about us, and most self-respecting music fans would screw up their nose at the idea, at least until they saw us live. And so to win people over, we toured. Then we toured more. Then we toured again, until people began to take notice. That’s the reality we faced, as do many young bands that start out with nothing but a glint in their eye and a station wagon that they borrowed from their drummer’s dad. “We all know bands and musos who would give their left nut to have the career that we’ve had and we’re exceedingly lucky that from the start, there were enough of you – fans, other bands, managers, booking agents – that believed in us and believed in what we were trying to do.” To read the whole story, head to theMusic.com.au.

32 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

On rehab, Albert Hammond Jr confesses to Bryget Chrisfield, “Sometimes I laugh at the triumph of it.”

“I

am about as ‘on the road’ as you can get,” Albert Hammond Jr explains. “We’re in a van in the middle of nowhere. We played Portland last night and we’re driving to Twin Falls, Idaho.” Hammond Jr’s stunning Momentary Masters set is dedicated to a late friend of his named Sarah Jones. “We just shared things for two weeks and then she died and I kept on goin’,” Hammond Jr shares. Her memory also lives on through his lyrical content. “There’s a line in that song Touché that’s in quotes, it’s from one of her poems: ‘I forgave you long before I met you for the things that you were bound to do’. “I dedicated the record wishing that I could’ve hung out with her and had a long conversation with her about it like we did before,” he laments. Hammond Jr admits his friend’s death made him “really pissed off” at the time. “When she died I was just like, ‘You left me with all these assholes,’” he laughs. “I could really be myself around her, which is really nice.” Hammond Jr then recites an inspirational quote: “I forget where I found it, but it said, ‘One day whether you are 14, 28 or 65 you will stumble upon someone who will start a fire in you that cannot die. However, the saddest most awful truth that you will ever come to find is they are not always with whom we spend our lives,’ and I was just like, ‘Oh, yes, that’s awesome,’ haha, it’s a key thing.”

He’s been in and out of rehab and when told we’re sorry to hear that, Hammond Jr reassures, “Oh no, it was great!” On his recovery timeline, Hammond Jr reveals, “I started at 25 and I went to, like, a little outpatients thing and then you sort of start and stop, but it’s not a big deal. And then at 27 or something like that I stopped [for] another little bit ‘cause just, like, I’d had enough. And then eventually you always get to the point where something happens and it gets you to stop for a bit, but then you go back. But it’s like a broken record in your head, um, and, yeah! And then I guess that last time I’d really just gotten to the point where I wasn’t even gettin’ high so much as I was just destroying myself; I wasn’t functioning or really doing anything. “I mean, it was what I ended up needing. I obviously got to the point where I couldn’t help myself without that extreme form, but it was all self-inflicted. Sometimes I laugh at the triumph of it, because, you know, ah, it’s just funny... As dark as those times were and how much emotion was felt, it really was fun to kinda have that time to do that. Maybe ‘fun’ is the wrong word.” His lyrical content feels deeply personal on this latest release and Hammond Jr certainly is a deep thinker. “When I try to figure stuff out, I think I got it and then it changes in my mind... Sometimes it feels silly when you say it out loud and it means so much inside your head.”

When & Where: 21 Feb, Corner Hotel


Music

Giveaways

Fighting Illness

Fat White Family have stopped coughing up blood on tour and are looking squarely into the future. Lias Saoudi and Saul Adamczewski tell Sam Wall about their new band.

“W

e’re just in Palm Springs, poolside,” says Fat White Family frontman Lias Saoudi. “We’re taking it easy man, we’re detoxing,” adds guitarist Saul Adamczewski. “Yeah, then retoxing, then detoxing again,” finishes Saoudi. The last time they were camped by the water — filming the clip for single Whitest Boy On The Beach from their second LP, Songs For Our Mothers — wasn’t nearly so relaxing, with the amiable pair suffering terrible weather, among other things. “I don’t remember that,” says Adamczewski. Saoudi is quick to disagree: “I remember it vividly. I was being beaten by Saul, who is you, in the middle of winter with an oxen’s tongue, on the most brutal hangover I’ve had all year maybe, and I had to keep going to the toilet and being sick between takes, and then I was taken out into the sea, alone on a raft, and I was needlessly buried alive in the sand on a freezing cold November morning.” “Oh. See I was ah, I was very close to death,” quips Adamczewski. “Yeah at that point Saul was nearly dead, so filming was a treasure,” Saoudi finishes. They laugh, but it’s not hyperbole — health problems have plagued the band in their brief but debauched run. Adamczewski abruptly left the band mid-tour last year for health reasons and the band were previously forced to pull out of a European tour with The Black Lips when Saoudi started coughing up blood.

“There’s a lot of illness in the band,” says Saudi. “Physical and mental — often at the same time. We’ve had a few bouts of pneumonia.” “Severe addiction,” Adamczewski interjects, before Saoudi: “Severe addiction, some surgery, some more surgery, total nervous breakdowns, manic depression. But yeah, it’s been a great time all round!” Listening to the LP — both ominous and feverish, a hypnotic, skin-crawling effort — it’s easy to see how they’ve channeled their tribulations. “The album was basically at the height of...” Adamczewski begins. “Of our problems,” suggests Saoudi. “Yeah, right in the thick of all the shittest things that had happened to us,” Adamczewski continues. “You know... And I mean, simultaneously the best things happening to us too.” Saoudi explains, “It’s like all the things we sort of had as our most optimistic kind of fantasies — we transcended there but found ourselves more in the middle of our pain than ever. So that was kind of troubling to say the least.” Still, they seem optimistic that the future will be a little less life-threatening, in part due to the new line-up taking a markedly different psychic direction to the old guard. Saoudi sniffs, “We’ve got rid of those guys now.” “We’ve been in the process of purging all the bad energy,” says Adamczewski. “We just want to get rid of the bad within ourselves. So you know, the forces of good within these people that have joined the band — they’re really peaceful, lovely, kind, gentle people.” “Yeah they’re really into the music, not just for the party or any of that shit you know what I mean?” Saudi says. “So we got rid of a couple of punks and replaced ‘em with some nice guys,” says Adamczewski, the two cackling gleefully at the unlikeliness of it all. “We’re coming out, into the light.”

Here’s just some of what you can win with The Music this week. Head to themusic.com.au/win to enter.

Room

Room Tickets

Straight Outta Compton

Straight Outta Compton DVDs

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs Tickets

What: Songs For Our Mothers (Without Consent/ [PIAS] Australia)

THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 33


OPINION Opinion

David Bowie

O G F l ava s

he UK’s Daily Star tabloid has reported that Kanye West — who last year proclaimed himself “the greatest living rock star on the planet” — is plotting a David Bowie covers album. Yeezy paid tribute to the late Brit innovator on Twitter, pointedly lauding him as “fearless”. Wilder, some are theorising that Bowie prophesied West’s succeeding him, ‘K West’ appearing on the sleeve of 1972’s The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust... Nevertheless, there’s a petition to halt the rap rebel’s impending “sacrilege”. Ironically, Bowie’s transformer pal Lou Reed commended Yeezus... Mainstream commentators often dismiss Bowie’s interest in, and influence on, R&B and hip hop. In 1975 the Starman unveiled a Philly soul classic, Young Americans — alienating his glam-rock fanbase. (Luther Vandross sang backing vocals!) Bowie dubbed the LP ‘plastic soul’, acknowledging his co-option. Yet he transcended

T

Urban And R&B News With Cyclone

Mike Steva

Business Music When Your Club

B

usiness Music gets Needs A Boss the scoop on local favourites With Paz and what to expect in 2016. Mike Steva and his Who Am I remix album features reworks from Osunlade, Louie Vega, Seven Davis Jr, Atjazz and an EP mid-year. Max Crumbs has a split beat tape of raw instrumentals with Eons One (Bay Area grind/hardcore legend). It’s coming out on Ormolycka Records plus a 34 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

new Brain Children 12” and a compilation of electronic/dancey/drum-heavy beats. Cumbia Cosmonauts will launch the Mexico Remixes EP as a tribute to their Mexican tour of one year ago. Remixers include: The Ghost, Sonido Satanas, Yelram Selectah, HNRY, Bumb-Ay and Malacopa Bros. Broadway Sounds explores boogie on the new single Exclusive Love/Digital Influence and should be out by Feb/March. Lewis CanCut follows up his single on NLV with an EP towards mid-year. Len Leise has a Lingua Franca remix 12” dropping 1 Mar containing a special LL dub. He also has a remix for Aficionado due mid-year. Look out for a repress of LL001 and another edits release for LL002. Unsoundbwoy has a couple of singles with Yaw Faso to release and a dub tune on Oz label Little Rascal, and some work with Jamaican MC Melloquence, and possibly some work with Pupilos do Kuduro. Inkswel’s UNITY 4 UTOPIA is due for release in Feb on BBE records. Lojack has a Milwaukee Banks remix near completion and has an EP in the pipeline. The collab with Mitsunami — Ember — has just sprung up on his SoundCloud.

America’s racial barriers, even performing on Soul Train. Later, post-disco backlash, Bowie approached Chic’s Nile Rodgers to co-produce Let’s Dance — a commercial funk-pop opus that transgressively critiqued hyperconsumerism. Puff Daddy’s Been Around The World sampled the Let’s Dance single. Puff subsequently re-cut Bowie’s This Is Not America with the legend himself for 2001’s Training Day soundtrack, renaming it American Dream. Bowie’s rock fans hated it. According to producer Tony Visconti, Bowie’s avantjazz meta-taph Blackstar — now, wonderfully, his first US #1 album — was inspired by Kendrick Lamar’s expansive To Pimp A Butterfly. Blackstar’s existential theme is rare in pop, but not hip hop — especially gangsta (or emo) rap. And, by using that ‘?’ emoji for its title, Bowie has subverted Drake’s hashtagable ‘YOLO’ — You Only Live Once. Bicep

Dance Moves

I

ntuitively, in 2015 the reign of “deep house” as the With Tim Finney organising force of dance music felt like it was coming to an end: replaced in the charts by tropical house, and fading as a stated unifying principle amongst more discerning types. But what has replaced it? It’s not clear. Check what critic types were buzzing about last year and it’s a largely typical mixture of classicist techno, house and disco. There’s no

New Currents


OPINION Opinion

big new thing, or even big new old thing, clearly presenting itself as a new focal point for a discourse that more than ever before feels in a holding pattern. If I can discern any potential silver lining out of all of this, it’s that the current lack of certainty at least seems to favour a certain kind of dancefloor-friendly eccentricity, the very familiarity of all of “our” reference points increasing the general desire for tunes that at least play with their parameters. If we’re going to live through a zombie period of disavowed deep house revivalism, then at least let’s have more tracks that tread the edges of both the sound’s populism and its experimentalism, rather than occupying a stodgy high ground of New Jersey traditionalism. It’s perhaps in this context that Belfast duo Bicep have slowly risen to the top of the middlebrow pile, recently being crowned Star Of The Year by Mixmag. Cognoscenti will sniff at this point, but I think Mixmag capture something real with this accolade: Bicep are at the very least first among equals in terms of figuring out how to survive and flourish in the deep house zombie landscape. In listening to their work, I’m reminded of Deep Dish’s classic remix of De’Lacey’s Hideaway, whose sweet vocal refrain obscures the monomaniacal muscularity of its endless bumping groove. The secret of Hideaway is that there is literally nothing in between these two extremes: the tune is just steroid-assisted muscle spangled with party glitter. Bicep, from the name on down, completely leverage themselves to capturing this vibe, and frequently their tracks get high on the camp masculinity of endless summer bromances from some point in the early ‘90s when the drugs were good enough to let you lower your guard. Maybe my favourite example of this is their 2014 collaboration with Hammer, I Believe, whose overbearing snare propulsion and eerie diva wails imagine 1993 house dancefloors as a kind of lost fantasy land both mindless and consciousness-raising (see also their hot-off-the-press new joint effort Dahlia for some serious piano-vamping dancefloor escapism). The duo’s big 2015 hit Just inverts this approach, its looped breakbeats and spiralling synth lines less house-approaching-drug-noise than drug-noiseapproaching-house. If it still resembles a 1993 Junior Boy’s Own classic, this is more in its cheesy sense of grandeur than any specific sonic similarity. I can see why Just has become such an anthem, but I prefer the flipside tune Celeste, whose fluid bongo percussion, spacious piano chords and echoing new age background vocals gesture towards a kind of mind-altering “seriousness” that inevitably feels slightly arch. The tune is gorgeous enough that it pushes past this, becoming yet another example of that moment when you realise that you are basically dancing enthusiastically to Deep Forest but really don’t care. What I enjoy in Bicep, then, is precisely their impatience with smallness, their willingness to spend all their goodwill chips on overblown tunes that will see them forgotten by 2017 but beloved for a small moment now when the best we can ask for is visions of the past drawn larger and more oddly than before. It doesn’t sound like the future, but it’ll do for the present.

TEN DOLLAR MEALS

Lunch and Dinner 7 Days Beef Burger & Chips $10 Chicken Burger & Chips $10 Chilli Con Carne $10 Arancini Balls & Salad $10 Tuna Patties & Salad $10 Lambs Fry and Bacon $10 Hot Roast Roll of the day $10 Pie of the Day $10 Pizza of the Day $10 Curry of the day $10 Pints of Guinness and Carlton $8.40 all the time Happy Hour Thursday 6.30-7.30 Friday Night Social Club Draw and Raffle Free Live Music Sundays 4-7pm This Week: Monica Weightman and The Mind Readers Free Bar snacks 6pm week nights Rib Eye steak 300g with chips and salad or mash and veg with a sauce $25 all the time

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THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 35


Album / E Album/EP Reviews

Sia

This Is Acting Inertia

★★★½

Album OF THE Week

It’s hard to imagine Adelaide singer-songwriter Sia Furler sounding any bigger than she does on her seventh studio album, This Is Acting. A simple scan of some song names from the tracklist will suffice for adjectives describing her current artistic status: Alive, Bird Set Free, Unstoppable. It’s the type of music you might put on while you complete the last items on your bucket list. American producer Jesse Shatkin and longtime collaborator Greg Kurstin have continued to refine her stadium-ready sound to the point where each song sounds like it could be the encore for an arena show. Verses and consonants are afterthoughts as Sia powers through a seemingly endless scroll of bridges and choruses, with the steady beats of midpoint songs like Cheap Thrills and Reaper providing a welcome respite from the onslaught. Things get weirder during the second half of the album. Footprints retreads the same hackneyed sentiment as a Leona Lewis track, and Sweet Design is a disorientating hip hop banger that sounds like it was inspired by Sisqo’s Thong Song. Broken Glass and Space Between remind everyone this is a Sia record just before things end, with the singer delivering the closest thing to a ballad she’s written in a while. It’s an emotional rollercoaster, which is nothing less than what you would expect from the superstar at this stage. Roshan Clerke

Dream Theater

Bloc Party

The Astonishing

Hymns

Roadrunner

Infectious Music/Create Control

★★★½ Casual Dream Theater fans look away, because The Astonishing may seem an impenetrable proposition. To the newcomer, this set — a fantasy concept suite exceeding two hours — could also be an exercise in prog-metal masochism. For the dedicated this occasionally laboured effort will likely resonate. Muscular Moment Of Betrayal, for instance, effectively flirts with their heavier side. But overall it’s somewhat less focused on hefty guitar crunch and instead ramps up the considerable drama, a quality they’ve long possessed a flair for. An orchestra and choirs enhance grandiosity. Standalone cuts boasting memorable, cinematic melodies — A Better Life, A Life Left Behind or Losing Faythe — prove tailor-made for James LaBrie’s vocal gravitas, which those not enamoured

36 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

by the narrative can embrace. However, diehards will surely immerse themselves in the lyrics and artwork, seeking clues to unlocking hidden nuances. Detractors often sneer at the virtuosic quintet’s music for allegedly being devoid of soul. The story’s motifs, such as robotics assuming many jobs formerly completed by humans, and that as technology advances what would eventuate if music wasn’t made by people, could therefore be viewed as thoughtprovoking or pretentious. Often The Astonishing’s themes and overall presentation represent a little of both. Brendan Crabb

Kele Okereke has been making great music under his own name for the last few years, so why he continues to resurrect the seizing near-corpse of Bloc Party is inexplicable. Now reduced to half the original members, the band’s latest effort is either exasperatingly dull or frustratingly close to being something good, depending on how you take it. There are moments that spark a tap of the foot, or perhaps a little dance — see Only He Can Heal Me or opening track The Love Within. Okereke’s voice is still fantastically charismatic, always tinged with a hint of desperate hope. His metaphors are as literal as can be; see the baptismal allusions in the country-tinged The Good News. Fortress is an equally dull semibass dance tune, and with no peaks or troughs, there’s nothing

to drive it. The truly terrible opening line of “This fennel tea you brought for me does its magic discreetly” from Into The Earth leaves one wondering whether Okereke was aiming for philosophical, because it comes off banal — like most of the songs here. Truth is, there are plenty of bands doing this music better right now, and Bloc Party sound tired. Diehard Bloc Party fans are probably thrilled that Okereke keeps trundling on with the band, but anyone else will question why he hasn’t let it lie and moved fully into the solo career he is clearly destined to flourish in. Sevana Ohandjanian


EP Reviews Album/EP Reviews

Charlie Puth

Your Friend

St Lucia

Wet

Nine Track Mind

Gumption

Matter

Don’t You

Atlantic/Warner

Domino/EMI

Sony

Columbia/Sony

★★½

★★★

★★★½

★★★½

Instead of taking what works so well for him and simply rolling with it, Charlie Puth goes full teen idol here on his first album. Most people would know 24-year-old Charlie Puth as the centrepiece of Wiz Khalifa’s See You Again, a moving tribute to the late Paul Walker. Puth’s chorus, which he wrote himself, ended up overshadowing Khalifa’s verses, and the song rendered him an overnight success. However, Puth’s boyish falsetto is actually quite accomplished. But hearing it used to convey lyrics about “making out” in the back of a limousine, it becomes clear just how young his target audience is. Stay tuned for his Bieber moves.

Your Friend’s debut album is an intriguing combination of found sounds and languid songwriting by the Kansasbased Taryn Miller. Sounding at times like a less caffeinated Tune-Yards, there is a meditative quality that can wash over you and feel sluggish (Desired Things) with the droning and buzzing effects becoming overpowering. There are moments of bubbling brooks or a lighter, airy mood like on Gumption, with the lyricas-mantra “How will I know?”. Album closer Who Will I Be In the Morning? is a gorgeous, crisp offering that shows Your Friend is an interesting new voice and sound creator who could lead us on a unique journey.

South African-born Brooklynbased electro poster child St Lucia wears his love for ‘80s bombast proudly on his sleeve in this humble offering. Matter picks up where 2013’s When The Night left off with bright and bold synth ditties and the brassy pipes of brainchild Jean-Philip Grobler. Joyous opener Do You Remember? wouldn’t be out of place at the end credits of a John Hughes rom-com, whereas Home stands far better on its two feet with a multi-tracked vocal and a wall of electro buzzes and snappy drum machine beats. Single Dancing On Glass has the same glossy lines but they back off to let Grobler’s chops shine.

Brooklyn-based band Wet have kept a modest-to-low profile since they recorded and released their first EP in 2014. While that may seem like a relatively long time to wait before following things up with an album, the songs that carry over from their initial self-titled release sound just as stunning and relevant. It’s a testament to lead singer Kelly Zutrau’s songwriting that the new tracks here are nearly indistinguishable from the older ones, featuring the same stripped-back pop sensibilities and warm tenderness that drew attention to her band in the first place. Don’t You is a quietly assured effort, making for a remarkably consistent debut.

John Papadopoulos

Tara Johnston

Carley Hall

Roshan Clerke

More Reviews Online Promise & The Monster Feed The Fire

theMusic.com.au

Conrad Keely Original Machines

Listen to our This Week’s Releases playlist on

THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 37


Album / E Album/EP Reviews

The Night Beats

Money

Nevermen

Who Sold My Generation

Suicide Songs

Nevermen

Bella Union/Cooperative

Lex/ADA

Heavenly Recordings/[PIAS] Australia

Sal Kimber & The Rollin’ Wheel Southern Light Vitamin Records

★★★½

★★★½

★★½

★★★½

The psychedelic distortion of Night Beats evokes, as always, a ‘60s nostalgia in their latest instalment Who Sold My Generation, with hazy reverb, filthy rhythms and spiralling guitars that would go well with a side of Napalm and cheers of youthful revolution. Celebration #1 features a spoken word sample and frenzied guitar that could play over a montage of Vietnam War Super 8 footage. Grunge and sonic experimentation run rife all over the minimal production, with live instruments recorded as if from a distance, proving that there’s still room in our hearts for good old-fashioned instruments. Strange, outer-world guitar zips combined with jazz piano juxtaposes the album’s release as an MP3, pulling the listener into a hallucinogenic aural space situated somewhere between 1965 and 2016.

Money’s second album Suicide Songs is a lesson in not judging a book (or record) by its cover. The title itself and accompanying cover art — depicting a bare chested Jamie Lee with a knife posed above his head — lend to the (initially true) misconception that the album is overwhelmingly morose. The first few tracks I Am The Lord and I’m Not Here confirm suspicions, but then the tracks start to feel comforting in their melancholy. Night Came evokes a certain Radiohead indulgence in raw sentiment, with Lee’s breaking falsetto adding to the poetry of You Look Like A Sad Painting On Both Sides Of The Sky, steering the album into a beautiful catharsis and away from the exercise in self pity that it could have been. Lee’s gaping mouth on the cover, after finishing the album, now looks to be open in blissful calm instead of pain or lachrymose.

The long-gestating project from Nevermen, a supergroup comprising TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, Doseone and Faith No More’s Mike Patton, is a sonically diverse, inherently bizarre exploration of everything from hip hop beats to psych rhythms and vocal ticks and tricks. So it’s everything you’d expect from a project involving Mike Patton, basically. Each member’s particular style comes through in its own way, whether it’s the thundering intensity of Dark Ear or the meditative clicks in Tough Towns. Nevermen is a surprisingly introspective record lyrically, but overall it’s a scattered collection of songs. It’s a curiosity, but by no means a classic.

Sal Kimber has taken the expansive, soulful route through country and pop music on her new album. With a strong backing band sparkling and shimmering with keyboards and some fine guitar playing it is certainly a warm, breezy and welcoming record that steers clear of the Nashville clichés and instead rides the more commercial currents of Fleetwood Mac and even yacht rock. Stay with us though; even though the pop aspect does become a touch too saccharine at times, there are enough catchy and soulful high points such as Stumble In The Dark and Come A Knockin’ to make this a strong release for Kimber and co.

Brynn Davies

Brynn Davies

38 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

Sevana Ohandjanian

Chris Familton


Feb 5 @ shebeen melb, vic tix at www.lunagrand.com

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THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 39


Live Re Live Reviews

Royal Headache @ Sugar Mountain. Pic: Clinton Hatfield

City Calm Down @ Sugar Mountain. Pic: Clinton Hatfield

Sampa The Great @ Sugar Mountain. Pic: Clinton Hatfield

Courtney Barnett @ Sugar Mountain. Pic: Clinton Hatfield

Le1f @ Sugar Mountain. Pic: Clinton Hatfield

Hot Chip @ Sugar Mountain. Pic: Clinton Hatfield

40 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

Sugar Mountain Victorian College Of The Arts 23 Jan

Some outfit adjustments need to be made to incorporate waterproof jackets when we wake up and notice, with much annoyance, that it’s raining. By the time we arrive at the site, however, the sky is no longer crying. Queuing isn’t excessive and we’re on track for Car Park stage at 12.30pm. Sampa The Great (Sampa Tembo on her passport) is exactly that. Her flow is so natural it’s just like a conversation (albeit a one-sided one). Tembo’s backing band (three on BVs) bring it and the funky guitar shines almost as brightly as this stage’s metallic gold backdrop that shimmers in the breeze. One suggestion to make this live experience truly world class: the backing vocalists could get together and work out some go-to unison moves, The Public Opinion Afro Orchestra-style, ‘cause at times the trio looks a bit lost up there. Tembo raps about themes that make you reflect while you sway and says it herself within one track: “I was born to be great.” True dat. While we watch City Calm Down, a bloke wanders past, shrugs his shoulders in reaction to the music, which obviously doesn’t resonate with him, and then he and his mate wander off in search of something to excite their ears. Dodds Street stage’s proscenium arch is decorated with pool noodles that, bunched together, resemble white sea anemone foliage — which is awesome, but also calls to mind a shrub comprising extra-long pencil dicks. They sound tight, but it could be a bit early in the day for City Calm Down and they swelter up there in matching long-sleeved shirts that could be black (but look navy in the sun) and black jeans — who’s

their clothing sponsor? When you hear people chatting in the audience, the band clearly have a problem. Then we start checking out nearby festival fashion and find a definite contender: a long-sleeved, leopard-print onesie with standup collar that looks roasting! On further inspection ol’ mate has teamed his ensemble with brown suede ankle boots and a pair of starshaped sunnies in glittery silver hue that also somehow manage to channel snowflakes. Having also scrawled a gold lightning bolt on his chest, it’s fair to say he’s won Sugar Mountain. But all this looking around obviously means we’re not engaged by what’s on stage and make a break for Car Park. Kate Tempest brings her freshest flow via rhymes so fast our ears get whiplash. When is she sneaking breaths? There’s zero punter chatter. Circles is sheer brilliance and she rhymes “gu’a” with “nu’a” — so brilliantly Souf Lundan. Tempest exhales forcefully after this song; she’s definitely tested that lung capacity. Obviously chuffed by the turnout, Tempest introduces her best mate on drums and sister on keys/samples. They all embrace and take a moment up there. Tempest closes with a lengthy, political a cappella. “Nothing you can buy will ever make you whole, including my album,” she spits and we take her thought-provoking words with us throughout the day. There’s nothing throwaway about what she does, Tempest is a true artist. Standing sidestage, she’s still visible to passersby who shout out their thanks and approval. Tempest places her fist on heart in gratitude. A beautiful pink mosaic bust with fountain flowing from its mouth pulls our focus and many take photos of it while we pause to admire. Another crack at the Wrangler denim exchange sees a pair of skinny Lee flairs that were never gonna


eviews Live Reviews

fit successfully exchanged for a high-waisted stretch denim skirt — win! There’s not much product left, so Salvation Army’s youth network will definitely reap the benefits of our castoffs. Roland Tings lures practically the entire festival’s population to Car Park stage. His bouncy tunes such as Coming Up For Air (which sounds exactly like its title) are appreciated by dancing bodies (and we ache for his self-titled album), but it’s way more comfortable dancing at Boiler Room where there’s plenty of space to pull unlimited shapes to the tunes of Laila Sakini. We search for Guest Bar and ask several security guards for its location while looking at a map, but to no avail. “I feel like looking at some art,” a nearby punter tells her friend and we decide to check out Intwo Pieces, the contemporary dance and film installation by Yahna Fookes x Martha Zakarya in Gallery One. Dancer Kelsey Smith demonstrates masterful control and poise, the articulation through her feet is extraordinary. It’s also awesome to see Adalita seated on the floor admiring this performance. So Royal Headache changed timeslot due to “personal reasons for one of the artists”. That’s a bit annoying when you’ve already written your schedule out. Better rush over to Dodds Street stage then. En route we see groups of revellers sitting on the ground, applying glitter to each others’ faces with varying degrees of success. Frontman Shogun (whose mum even calls him that, word has it), tells us his dad is present. It’s wonderfully shambolic with an unhinged edge, but all assembled aren’t entirely captivated. At one point Shogun turns around and makes a gesture that looks like he’s instructing his bandmates to quieten down their playing. He mumbles some self-deprecating

stuff under his breath between songs, but that’s probably just Shogun doing him. The band would’ve better suited their later scheduling and we pity anyone who missed the memo, timing their arrival just in time for Royal Headache’s original 5.15pm scheduling and therefore experiencing a different kind of royal headache. We grab another Bacardi cocktail, a Storm Chaser this time, and prioritise getting a good posi for Le1f. And he’s fierce in every way, whipping

Le1f strips down to his striped undies then tries to scale the proscenium arch. that topknot of fluoro-orangetipped braids back and forth. “I’m not gay, but he’s a sexy man,” is an overheard call. When two male dancers enter to rip into some insane unison chorey, we don’t feel like we can dance anymore so just stand back and admire. Never before have we seen such impressive, perfectly in sync backing dancers. Could they rival Beyonce’s Les Twins? We’d pay top dollar to see that battle. Le1f strips down to his striped undies then tries to scale the proscenium arch. Wut destroys us. “...Wut is up? Wut is wut?” The answer is Le1f. Just fabulosity in all of its glorious shades. On Dodds Street stage, Total Giovanni look like Devo from a distance in their matching white hats (maybe they’re premiering their White Night costumes given the band were added to the evening’s live music line-up?) “If you haven’t started dancing then I suggest you start,” frontman Vincent D (born Vachel

Spirason) coaxes and he does have a point: their tunes deserve our motion. A festival highlight occurs when we clock Barry Morgan just wandering around out of character, as a punter (well, as much as that’s possible with his luscious, Bee Geesesque locks). Another beau of the ball we spy sports a vibrant aquamarine printed shirt with black mesh panel in the back. This is not the focal point of his outfit, however; a dangling lemon (the actual fruit) earring really ties his look together. Back in Car Park, Kelela admires the vibe from the stage: “I think Le1f set it up for me real high.” The Canadian tuxedo-wearing Washington, DC singer-songwriter who tweeted for weed while in Sydney a coupla days back (“Sydney!! Im [sic] keepin it mad classy in your city tonight...where da weed at??!! [greenery emoticons]”) then proves a bit of a downer so we head over to Boiler Room for the one-and-only Tim Sweeney. He’s all it. Sweeney reminds us why we prioritised DJs over live bands for some ‘lost’ years throughout the ‘90s. His track selection is on-point and the transitions, seamless; songs roll one into the next without our ears recognising where one finishes and the next begins. And then he plays Bowie’s Fame, which really takes us there. “Oh yeah, he’s good Tim,” is the understatement of the year as spoken in the Portaloo line. Okay, time to consult the schedule. WHAAAAAAaaaat!? We’ve completely missed Courtney Barnett!! DAMN you, monsieur Sweeney (kind of)! Talk about a life fail. We’re not sure we’ll ever recover from this. Let’s set up in front of Dodds Street right now so we don’t miss Dirty Three. Initially, we deemed this weird scheduling within the context of everything else on offer at Sugar Mountain, but boy were we wrong. The

Warren Ellis-led instrumental outfit deliver and turn out to be exactly what we we need right now. It’s strange how sometimes music sans lyrics digs deeper emotionally and dancing to it becomes therapy. Ellis definitely needs to play the absinthe fairy on the silver screen at some point; his wild, untamed locks and svelte frame beneath tailored suit and trademark ostentatious shirt prove an unbeatable combination. And his fiddle playing? It’s matchless, but lord have mercy on those strings. When Hot Chip toured without Joe Goddard for Splendour in 2010 (he was about to become a dad), this scribe hightailed it outta the Mix Up tent in a huff. But he’s here this time and it’s ace to see him up there dancing like a munted jellyfish. One never can tire of seeing this outfit live and they really do go to every effort to successfully recreate each nuance. Second song One Life Stand gets us busting moves we hope we’ll never have to watch back. We’re pretty much ready to do whatever they say via song as soon as Night And Day drops. They’re all sporting lab coat-inspired attire up there. Strobes totally take us there during Flutes. All the songs are interconnected, flowing one directly into the next, and when Over And Over sneaks in we’re anything but, “Laaaaaaaaid baaaaaack”. Hot Chip are so composed up there, but the unexpected drop in this track propels us, fast-tracked, to our respective happy places and all previous daily highlights disappear from memory. Need You Now plus Ready For The Floor equals complete devastation on the D-floor. At times you’d swear you were listening to Alexis Taylor’s recorded vocals — he just sounds so identical live — and kettle drums finish us off. While we might not adore Hot Chip’s

THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 41


Live Re Live Reviews

Born To Run cover, it sure is fun to sing along with at an outdoor festival among likeminded souls. And then they segue into LCD Soundsystem’s All My Friends for a bit and we’re positively exulted. Bryget Chrisfield

More Reviews Online theMusic.com.au/ music/live-reviews

Courtney Barnett @ Palais Theatre Jenny Hval @ National Gallery of Victoria The 1975 @ Festival Hall Joanna Newsom @ Hamer Hall Thee Oh Sees @ Howler

Dam Funk, Niche, The Operatives, Crown Ruler Roxanne Parlour 22 Jan Tonight’s show is structured as a club environment with the stage being populated by a standalone set of decks and each of the acts seamlessly flowing into one another. The audience during the opening acts favour getting more beer or checking out other local venues. Crown Ruler delivers a nice set but it sounds a little like Dam Funk. The Operatives do almost exactly the same and Niche almost certainly does a set like Dam. It is this lack of variation that turns people off and though stylistically it is in line with how things happen within the genre for everyone here to see the headliner, it fails to translate into anything more than some guys DJing some modernised funk. Coming on at about 1am, Dam Funk (aka Damon Riddick) slinks his way onto the stage while Niche continues to play and the room begins to fill up with both people and jazz cigarette smoke. A couple of microphones and a synth are added to accommodate Riddick but nothing really changes

WED 27TH JAN 7:30PM

42 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH & DON’T LOOK NOW

...it’s a bit of a letdown. In saying that, no one here really cares as Riddick is treated like a god coming off stage.

stage-wise and unfortunately the same occurs with the sound, which is tinny and high end to the point of literally hurting your ears, with none of the low-end smoothness of Funk coming through. Riddick’s set seems to be a mixture of him behind the decks

keyboard noodling. At times his set really works, with the classic hip hop drum sounds, spiralling keytar solos and that bow bow bow ‘80s synth bass taking you to the neon lights of Vice City. Other times, namely when Riddick attempts to sing (single We Continue being a prime example) the atmosphere feels a little lost as Riddick’s vocals are a combination of inaudible and out of tune. What this show needed was most certainly a different venue and a little more structure to it — the way this sideshow stands it’s a bit of a letdown. In saying that, no one here really cares as Riddick is treated like a god coming off stage at around 3am and everyone had a good getdown to some modernised funk. Brad Armstrong

Roland Tings @ Sugar Mountain. Pic: Clinton Hatfield

mixing and him doing renditions of his own tracks, letting a backing track play and coming out to sing with the odd bit of

THE TERMINATOR & ROBOCOP

THU 28TH JAN 7:30PM

APOCALYPSE NOW: REDUX FRI 29TH JAN 7:30PM


Arts Reviews Arts Reviews

Ladies In Black. Pic: Rob Maccoll

Sugar Mountain Arts Visual Art Victorian College Of The Arts, 23 Jan

★★★★

Ladies In Black Theatre The Sumner, Southbank Theatre to 27 Feb

★★★★ At the tail end of the ‘50s, young Lisa (Sarah Morrison) gets a Christmas casual job at Ladies Cocktail Frocks in the Goodes department store. She becomes somewhat swept up in the lives of her coworkers, the ladies in black, all the while awaiting her final exam scores and sighing after another life very different from her current one. Ladies In Black doesn’t take itself too seriously, poking self-aware fun at casual Aussie xenophobia these are the tales of middle-class white Australia after all - and featuring wonderfully catchy songs by Tim Finn titled He’s A Bastard (which garners roars and applause from the audience) and A Nice Australian Girl. There’s some terrific, light-hearted misandry in there, too, among the glimpses of womanhood and feminism in the ‘50s. The script and performers (all excellent actors and strong vocalists) deftly balance comedic timing and snarky quips with nuanced emotion - one minute your throat will begin to swell, the next you’re hooting with laughter. The live onstage band doesn’t miss a beat, and Gabriela Tylesova’s rotating set is an absolute joy to watch in motion - scenes, stage props and actors entering and exiting with a whirl. Heartwarming, funny, and charmingly Australian, this surefire crowd-pleaser (which received a standing ovation on opening night) is a marvellous way to kick off the new theatre year. Stephanie Liew

Greeting us at the Dodds St Stage was the work of SIBLING; what looked like floppy foam rollers (wilted giant fads lollies?), some with shiny cellophane wrapped around the ends, lined the stage the whole way around. Angie Pai’s piece, a backdrop of reflective golden squares under one of her distinctive line motifs in bold black, decorated the back of the Car Park Stage; its glint and glamour complemented performances by Empress Of, Le1f, Kelela and others. Ash Keating once again painted the car park wall, the candycoloured splashes of bright pink, purple, magenta, yellow and white producing an endorphinboosting effect. Nic Hamilton’s LED light animations danced in sync with the punters at the BACARDI x Boiler Room Stage — suitably trippy and tech-forward. Near the galleries, SM Art

SIBLING. Pic: Ryan Wheatley

Prize winner Carla Milentis’ sculpture could be found: a pink mosaic fountain statue that provided intrigue, visual appeal and an object to hang around in the outdoor space. In Gallery 1, Nonotak’s mirror sculpture entranced — numerous small mirror tiles were programmed to tilt in patterns, like some kind of robotic tic dance, causing reflections of light to bounce all around the ceiling. Unfortunately Nonotak’s warehouse installation was closed all day due to unforeseen circumstance. Daniel Askill’s slow-motion videos of nude men and women being showered with or running through a curtain of water also proved to be mesmerising, the chiaroscuro of bare bodies against darkness and the spreading droplets creating almost a glitter globe/lava lamp effect. And Yahna Fookes x Martha Zakarya’s work — two adjacent screens, one showing a contemporary dancer moving against a white backdrop, and the other showing close-ups of the same dancer’s body and clothing in various poses — was a captivating experiment in movement, space and texture. Gallery 2 featured the photographic collaboration between Prue Stent, Honey Long and Clare Longley — all pale pink and extreme close-ups of women’s bodies and body parts, complete with a pale pink waterbed in the middle of the room. A comment about the female body, censorship and feminism, it is simultaneously pretty and soft, yet discomfiting. It’s provocative for sure — there’s a clit and nipples, rolls of flesh and beads of sweat — but whether the photos are seen as portraying a sexualised or natural state depends on the individual eye. Stephanie Liew

THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 43


Comedy / G The Guide

Wed 27

Lulu & The Paige-Turners

The Squeezebox Trio + Tolka: Bar Open, Fitzroy

Sonic Expedition feat. Tom Showtime + Tim Wigg + Special Guests: Belleville, Melbourne

Rhiannon Giddens: 23 Mar Corner Hotel

Mellow-Dias-Thump with Clever Austin + more: Boney, Melbourne CL Pleasure + Drongo + Kakariko: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy

The Music Presents Shamir: 4 Feb Howler Moses Gunn Collective: 27 Feb Northcote Social Club Ruby Boots: 10 Mar Northcote Social Club Port Fairy Folk Festival: 11 – 14 Mar Port Fairy A Day On The Green ft Hoodoo Gurus: 12 Mar Rochford Wines Yarra Valley Steve Earle & The Dukes: 18 & 19 Mar Melbourne Recital Centre Rhiannon Giddens: 23 Mar Corner Hotel The Residents: 23 Mar The Croxton St Paul & The Broken Bones: 24 Mar Corner Hotel Bluesfest: 24 – 28 Mar Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm Nahko & Medicine For The People: 27 Mar Corner Hotel

Pillow Pro + Karli White + Golden Syrup: Grace Darling Hotel, Collingwood Australian Open feat. Jakubi: Melbourne Park, Melbourne Michael Hurley + Darren Hanlon: Northcote Social Club, Northcote Woodlock + Emilee South: Queen Victoria Market (Queen Street Stage), Melbourne

A Real Paige-Turner

The Wild Comforts: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick

Lulu & The Paige-Turners are set to keep the summer vibes alive with their performance at Wesley Anne on Saturday. Think sounds made for dancing at sunset among the trees. Jade Ulani to support.

Girlpool + Summer Flake + more: Reverence Hotel, Footscray Banjo Jackson: Some Velvet Morning, Clifton Hill Gerry O’Beirne + Kavisha Mazzella: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick Wine, Whiskey, Women feat. Tracey Hogue + Kate Mulqueen: The Drunken Poet, West Melbourne A Gazillion Angry Mexicans + Two Headed Dog + Don Fernando: The Old Bar, Fitzroy The Gooses + Aarti + Cosmic Buffalo: The Tote, Collingwood

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats: 30 Mar 170 Russell

Papa G & The Starcats + Sex On Toast DJs: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy

Fri 29

John Butler Trio: Geelong Performing Arts Centre, Geelong

The Fondue Set + Queen Beaver + The Ukulele Ladies + Anna Tirotta: 303, Northcote

The Tiny Giants + IV League + The Dare Ohhs: Grace Darling Hotel, Collingwood

Sharrow + Sentia + Terrestrials + Medicine Dog: Bar Open, Fitzroy

Yuxx & The Gang + Schnapps + Emilia + Hugh Duet: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford

The Selecter: 25 Mar Corner Hotel The Blind Boys Of Alabama: 1 Apr Melbourne Recital Centre

Lou Barlow + The Outdoor Type: Northcote Social Club, Northcote Ghost Towns Of The Midwest

Jackie Bornstein + Annemarie Sharry + Craig Fermanis: Open Studio, Northcote

Homeward Bound

Low Rent + the Gunbarrel Straights: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick

Ghost Towns Of The Midwest are set to celebrate the release of their sophomore EP, six-track effort Home, at Sooki Lounge on Saturday with Skyscraper Stan & The Commission Flats supporting.

Brendan Lloyd + Tom Redwood: The Drunken Poet, West Melbourne The Dead Heir + The Shabbab + Masco Sound System + Gabriella Cohen: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood Human Rites: The Old Bar, Fitzroy Nicholas Conners + Dan Southward: The Post Office Hotel, Coburg Jaimi Faulkner + Derrin Nauendorf: The Toff In Town, Melbourne

We, Tigers + Plastic + Pink Harvest: The Workers Club, Fitzroy

Bodies + FNND + Egypt Lies + Wet Kiss + Terminal Infant + Spike Fuck: The Tote (Upstairs), Collingwood

Thu 28

The Franklin Electric: The Workers Club, Fitzroy

Hi New Low + Arrester + Alex Dean: Bar Open, Fitzroy

44 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

Goldentone Thursdays: Yah Yah’s, Fitzroy

Australian Open feat. Alpine: Melbourne Park, Melbourne

Allen Stone: 31 Mar Corner Hotel

Caligula’s Horse: 8 Apr Ding Dong Lounge

The Hip Joint with Bee Ampersand + Oliver Francis + Francois + Yve Gold + Mose: Boney, Melbourne

Goose & The 64, 50s + The Moody Spooks + Rat Renior + The T-Shirt People: Whole Lotta Love, Brunswick East

Benny James & The Blue Flames: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East

Lukas Nelson & Promise Of The Real: 30 Mar Howler

Brian Wilson: 3 Apr Palais Theatre

Informatics + Andras Fox: Belleville, Melbourne

Davy Simony: Wesley Anne (Front Bar), Northcote

Ninoosh

Synth Babe Ninoosh is headed to Brunswick Street Gallery on Friday with her debut EP, Town Of Two Hundred, released on her fledging label Synth Babe Records, a label championing women and LGBTQI communities rocking synth sounds.

Eat The Beat feat. Eddie Mac + DJ Ayna: Belleville, Melbourne Good Manners feat. Charles Murdoch + Hoodlem: Boney, Melbourne Jukebox Racket: Catfish (Front Bar), Fitzroy


OPINION Opinion

Howzat!

Local Music By Jeff Jenkins THE CARNIVAL IS NEVER OVER The Seekers are a unique story in Australian music. The first Australian band to top the UK charts (I’ll Never Find Another You in 1965) and have #1 in the US (Georgy Girl topped the Cashbox charts in 1967), they’re now being celebrated in the musical Georgy Girl, at Her Majesty’s Theatre, and a wonderful new book, The Seekers, an “Enseeklopedia” written by Graham Simpson and Christopher Patrick ($49.95, Melbourne Books). No one knows more about one Australian band than Graham. As Bruce Woodley says, “Graham Simpson knows more about The Seekers than we know about ourselves.” The book is packed with rare photos, artwork, charts, newspaper clippings and fun facts. For example, A World Of Our Own was originally called Downhearted Blues until Judith Durham demanded a happier song; the band did 43 takes of The Wreck Of The Old 97 before deciding to use the first take (“The Seekers learned an instructive lesson that day: if at first you do succeed... leave it as it is!”); and the Bee Gees initially wanted them to record

Massachusetts, but their manager knocked it back and The Seekers didn’t record the song until 2003. The musical and book also documents Bruce Woodley’s writing relationship with Paul Simon. They wrote Red Rubber Ball, a smash hit for American band The Cyrkle, and Simon & Garfunkel recorded Cloudy, but Bruce and Paul fell out and Bruce’s credit was omitted. Seemingly written out of Seekers history is Louisa Wisseling, who did two albums with the band in the ‘70s and sang Sparrow Song, which hit #2 in Australia. Julie Anthony and Karen Knowles’ stints fronting The Seekers are also not acknowledged. As the musical’s narrator points out, trying to tell the tale of 50 years is like squeezing into a pair of tight jeans — some things disappear while other things pop up unexpectedly.

The Seekers in 1967 at Myer Music Bowl

DOUBLE ACT Who are the two greatest Australian singers of the ‘70s who didn’t record enough albums? We say Colleen Hewett and Doug Parkinson. The good news is they’re doing their first show together, at The Palms At Crown on Saturday. Fun fact: Colleen and Doug appeared together in the 1990 miniseries Shadows Of The Heart, with Jason Donovan. HOT LINE “I will believe all the lies that you say” — Catherine Traicos, New York City Prayer.

THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 45


Comedy / G The Guide

Rebetiko: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick

Gena Rose Bruce

The New Savages: Reverence Hotel (Front Bar), Footscray

Thick As Thieves & Revolver Fridays present Kidnap Kid + Brian Fantana + more: Revolver Upstairs, Prahran Magic Bones + Ali E + Mild Manic: Shebeen Bandroom, Melbourne Electric Wallpaper + Tremelo Please + Brent McMullen: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick

Rose Residency

Models + Huxton Creepers: The Croxton, Thornbury

Hugh McGinlay: Charles Weston Hotel (Front Bar), Brunswick

D. Lethbridge Three: The Post Office Hotel, Coburg

Horace Bones + Going Swimming + From Oslo + Fierce Mild: Cherry Bar, Melbourne

You Beauty + The Ocean Party + Free Time: The Tote, Collingwood

Fat Cousin Skinny: Compass Pizza Bar, Brunswick East

Centre & The South: The Westernport Hotel, Phillip Island

Holy Holy + Olympia + The Franklin Electric: Corner Hotel, Richmond

Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird + Tully On Tully + Alex Lahey: The Workers Club, Fitzroy

DJ Dustin McClean: Edinburgh Castle Hotel (Beer Garden), Brunswick Lazer Tits + King Choonga + Tip Rats: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy Soul Sacrifice - A Tribute To Santana: Flying Saucer Club, Elsternwick Jimmy Carr: Geelong Performing Arts Centre (Costa Hall), Geelong

Steve Lucas: Mr Boogie Man Bar (5pm), Abbotsford Friday Nights at NGV feat. Luluc: National Gallery of Victoria, Southbank Felix Riebl + Roscoe James Irwin + Gena Rose Bruce: Northcote Social Club, Northcote The Band Who Knew Too Much: Open Studio, Northcote La Dance Macabre with+Brunswick Massive: Rainbow Hotel, Fitzroy

46 • THE MUSIC • 27TH JANUARY 2016

Michaela Lee: Charles Weston Hotel (Front Bar), Brunswick

Bang feat. Sentinel + DREGG + Blklst: Royal Melbourne Hotel, Melbourne

Holy Holy

Mightiest Of Guns + Eaten By Dogs: The Old Bar, Fitzroy

Irish Mythen: Wesley Anne (Band Room), Northcote

Sat 30 Slow Grind Fever with Richie 1250 + Mohair Slim + Pierre Baroni + Miss Monica: Bar Open, Fitzroy

Bob Crain

Blessed Following the success and praise of their recent Euro tour, Holy Holy are embarking on a home turf national tour, stopping in at Corner Hotel this Friday with guests Olympia and The Franklin Electric.

Palace Of The King + Tequila Mockingbyrd + Angels of Gung Ho: Cherry Bar, Melbourne Led Zeppelin ‘Physical Graffiti’ 40th Anniversary Celebration with Ashley Naylor + more: Corner Hotel, Richmond DJ Ernie Dee + Tin Lion: Edinburgh Castle Hotel (Beer Garden), Brunswick

James Ohhh + Vinten + Alex Springs: Shebeen Bandroom, Melbourne MSO + Jeff Mills + Derrick May: Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne Yodelay Records Launch feat. The Spaces + Shirazz + Jed Rowe: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick Amaru Tribe: The B.East, Brunswick East

Disentomb + Valiance + Iconoclast + Blind Oracle: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy

GL + Alta + Queen Magic: The Curtin, Carlton

Reverend Funk & The Horns Of Salvation: Flying Saucer Club, Elsternwick

Duncan Phillips & The Long Stand: The Drunken Poet, West Melbourne

Ben Whiting + Mango Retreat + Olly Friend + Bill Golding: Grace Darling Hotel, Collingwood

The Blow Waves + Tanzer + Karen From Finance + Hip Hop Hoe + Pluto Savage: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood

Less Than Stoic

Ron S Peno & The Superstitions: Labour In Vain, Fitzroy

Filling up the slots for Taste Of Indie Collective’s – Songwriter Sessions at The Prince Public Bar’s this Tuesday are Mark ‘Phisha’ Fisher, Rick Hart and Bob Crane, telling stories, singing songs and having a laugh.

Tim Scanlan + Toshi Bodram + Accidental Bedfellows: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East

Laser Brains + Bad Vision + Wolfpack + As a Rival + Grave Street Blues: The Old Bar, Fitzroy

Jah Prayzah & The 3rd Generation: Max Watt’s, Melbourne

EXP + Mr Pitiful + Metal Daze: Mr Boogie Man Bar (7.30pm), Abbotsford

The Late Show feat. Ransom + Mat Cant + Paz + Various DJs: Revolver Upstairs, Prahran

Dallas Crane + Special Guests: The Grand Hotel, Mornington

The Prayerbabies: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East

Zoo Twilights 2016 feat. Far From Folsom feat. Tex Perkins & The Tennessee Four: Melbourne Zoo, Parkville

Chapel Summer Sessions with Woodlock: Chapel Off Chapel, Prahran

Den Hanrahan: The Drunken Poet, West Melbourne

Louise Love + Simona Castricum + Astral Skulls + Infra Ghosts: Grace Darling Hotel, Collingwood

Australian Open feat. The Bombay Royale: Melbourne Park, Melbourne

Evil Twin: Catfish, Fitzroy

Busy Kingdom + The Birdshit Brothers + Slim Belly Brown + DJ Tropical Breeze: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick

North City: The B.East, Brunswick East

Melbourne wave-maker Gena Rose Bruce is finishing off her Friday night residency at Wesley Anne on Friday. If you didn’t catch the other shows, get to this one.

Ezra Lee & The Havoc Band: Dogs Bar, St Kilda

+ Rambl + Chico G + Paul Jager + CC:Disco! + more: Boney, Melbourne

Australian Open feat. British India: Melbourne Park, Melbourne Zoo Twilights 2016 feat. The Waifs + Ruby Boots: Melbourne Zoo, Parkville Selling Time + Amiko + Cardinia + Deadfall: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford Pony Face + Howl At The Moon + The Number 19s: Northcote Social Club, Northcote

Dead City Ruins: Barwon Club, South Geelong

Peter O’Shea + The Sea Gypsies + Whiskey Bliss + 8 Foot Felix: Open Studio, Northcote

Resident Romp feat. Myles Mac

Harry Coulson’s Raindogs: Rainbow Hotel, Fitzroy

Jess Locke + Zzzounds: The Old Bar, Fitzroy Champagne Internet + Phil Para: The Prince (Public Bar/6pm), St Kilda Claudia Jones + DJ Jack-Sun: The Toff In Town, Melbourne IT Records 2nd Birthday Bash feat. Miles Brown + Taipan Tiger Girls + more: The Tote, Collingwood Figure + Transience + Lung + Enlight: The Workers Club, Fitzroy Paulie Bignell & The Thornbury Two + Bell Street Delays: Union Hotel, Brunswick New Estate + The Happy Lonesome:


Gigs / Live The Guide

Monday Night Mass feat. Chook Race + The Shifters + The Curse + Qwerty: Northcote Social Club, Northcote

Victoria Hotel, Brunswick

Lulu & The Paige-Turners + Jade Ulani: Wesley Anne, Northcote

Drive Live with Taipan Tiger Girls + Friendships + Mollusc: PBS, Collingwood

Arcane Saints + Shewolf + Lazarus Mode + Tragic Earth + Versus Fate: Whole Lotta Love, Brunswick East

Aidan ‘Jazzy’ Jones + The Bakers Digest: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick

Batpiss + Holy Serpent + Tankerville: Yah Yah’s, Fitzroy

Call It In with Instant Peterson + Dylan Michel: The Toff In Town (Carriage Room), Melbourne

Sun 31

The Martel Corporation + Sleepy Dreamers + Frank Society: The Workers Club, Fitzroy

Samara Williams + Jess Heiser + Melody Moon + Thea Lang: Bar Open, Fitzroy

Tue 02

Pugsley Buzzard: Catfish (Front Bar), Fitzroy Cherry Blues with Kerri Simpson + Bag O’ Nails + DJ Max Crawdaddy: Cherry Bar (2pm), Melbourne Bossa Brunswick: Edinburgh Castle Hotel (Beer Garden), Brunswick Piknic Electronik + Secret Cinema + more: Federation Square (The Paddock), Melbourne

Louise Love

Mesa Cosa: Cherry Bar, Melbourne

Tantric Love

Diana Krall + Melbourne Symphony Orchestra: Hamer Hall, Melbourne

Louise Love is setting out to tear up Grace Darling Hotel as part of her tour celebrating the release of her Tantric Shuffle EP, supported by Simona Castricum and Astral Skulls this Friday.

Drive Live with The Drones + Deaf Wish + Deep Heat: PBS, Collingwood

Comfort 35 + Resistance/Restraint feat. Asps + Cheap Present + Karli White + Sow Discord + Egypt Lies + more: Howler, Brunswick

All Day Fritz + Nolte Bros Novelty Six + Dr Crask & His Swingin’ Elixir Band: Open Studio, Northcote

Summer Sunset Series feat. Nussy: Jardin Tan, South Yarra

Cookin On 3 Burners + Stella Angelico + DJ Soul Loco + Cat & Clint + DJ Adalita: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick

Guilty Simpson + Katalyst: Laundry Bar, Fitzroy

Tailor Birds: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick Crepes + Sleep Decade + Zig Zag + Mallee Songs: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood

Nick Offerman: Hamer Hall, Melbourne

The Bakersfield Glee Club: Labour In Vain, Fitzroy

Make It Up Club: Bar Open, Fitzroy

Monday Bone Machine feat. T-Rek + Knave Knixx: Boney (9pm), Melbourne

Taste Of Indie Collective: The Prince (Public Bar), St Kilda

Cherry Jam: Cherry Bar, Melbourne

Mandek Penha + Fascinator + Au Dre: The Workers Club, Fitzroy

Diana Krall: Hamer Hall, Melbourne

Lincoln Le Fevre: Reverence Hotel (Front Bar), Footscray Monica Weightman + The Mind Readers: Royal Oak Hotel, Fitzroy North

Ken Maher & Tony Hargreaves + Greg Champion & The Useful Members Of Society: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East

Sleep D + Mosman Howieson + Albrecht La’Brooy + Cale Sexton: Shadow Electric, Abbotsford

Australian Open feat. James Reyne: Melbourne Park, Melbourne

Funk Buddies: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick

The Dead Pharoahs + Ace Bricklaying +

Mandy Connell + Jump Devils: The Drunken Poet, West Melbourne Camp Cope + The Hard Aches + Steph Hughes: The Old Bar, Fitzroy Joy 94.9 Gay Pride March Party: The Prince, St Kilda Dan Brodie: The Standard Hotel, Fitzroy Masco Sound System + Geo + Ruby: The Tote, Collingwood

Magic Bones

Tom West + Liv Cartledge: The Workers Club, Fitzroy Lost Ragas: Union Hotel, Brunswick

Roll The Bones Magic Bones and their high energy rock and pop will hit up Shebeen Bandroom this Friday night. Kicking off 2016 with just as much fun as last year. Supported by Ali E.

Tony J King’s Hoodoo Suitcase: Victoria Hotel, Brunswick Natalie Hayden: Wesley Anne (Front Bar), Northcote Anthony Rea & The Charm Offensive + Ali Hughes: Whole Lotta Love, Brunswick East Open Mike Sunday: Yah Yah’s (6.30pm), Fitzroy

Mon 01 Lot 56 + Krispy & the Coastal Grooves: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford

303 Jam: 303, Northcote Rebetiko: Belleville, Melbourne

THE MUSIC 27TH JANUARY 2016 • 47


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