05.10.16 Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Issue
159
Melbourne / Free / Incorporating
THE ESSENTIAL PICKS OF THE FESTIVAL
SHINING BIRD Black Opal
THE OCEAN PARTY Restless
Four years in the making. Mixed by Russell Webster & Tim Whitten (Go Betweens). Includes “Helluva Lot” & “Rivermouth”. Launch Nov 11 at The Gasometer.
Sixth album in six years. Including “Back Bar”. Touring nationally. Epic reviews! 4/5 -The Music, 4.5/5 -Beat, 4/5 -BMA, 4/5 -Ripe
HEART BEACH Kiss Your Face Tasmania scuzz pop trio. Album out Nov 11. Launch Dec 1 at The Gasometer.
2 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
JULIEN BAKER Sprained Ankle “Sad songs that whisper & howl”- NY Times Playing 29 & 30 Nov at Northcote Social.
BIG THIEF Masterpiece “Twinkles gorgeously”- Pitchfork Including “Paul”. Touring early 2017.
Secret Sounds Presents
The 24th Annual Music & Arts Festival
lorne vic 28 DEC t u 29 lDEC do o s DEC 30 31 DEC
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CHILDISH GAMBINO (NO SIDESHOWS) • LONDON GRAMMAR (NO SIDESHOWS) • THE AVALANCHES VIOLENT SOHO • MATT CORBY • ALISON WONDERLAND • CATFISH AND THE BOTTLEMEN FAT FREDDY’S DROP • TA-KU • THE RUBENS • THE JEZABELS • BALL PARK MUSIC • GROUPLOVE BERNARD FANNING • JAMIE T • BROODS • TKAY MAIDZA • GRANDMASTER FLASH • ILLY • MØ HOT DUB TIME MACHINE • DMA’S • ALUNAGEORGE • BOOKA SHADE • CLIENT LIAISON • VALLIS ALPS PARQUET COURTS • CITY CALM DOWN • MODERN BASEBALL • L D R U • TIRED LION • REMI • RY X MARLON WILLIAMS • LEMAITRE • SHURA • PLUS MORE ACTS TO BE ANNOUNCED MARION BAY • ALL AGES
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THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 3
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4 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
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THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 5
Credits Publisher Street Press Australia Pty Ltd Group Managing Editor Andrew Mast National Editor – Magazines Mark Neilsen Editor Bryget Chrisfield Arts & Culture Editor Maxim Boon Gig Guide Justine Lynch gigs@themusic.com.au
Music Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Call Me
The Calling have unveiled plans to head to Down Under in November for their debut Australian tour, 15 years after their debut single, Wherever You Will Go, blew up the charts worldwide.
The Calling
Editorial Assistants Brynn Davies, Sam Wall Senior Contributor Jeff Jenkins
Carlos Santana
Contributors Bradley Armstrong, Annelise Ball, Paul Barbieri, Sophie Blackhall-Cain, Emma Breheny, Sean Capel, Luke Carter, Anthony Carew, Uppy Chatterjee, Daniel Cribb, Cyclone, Guy Davis, Dave Drayton, Guido Farnell, Tim Finney, Bob Baker Fish, Cameron Grace, Neil Griffiths, Kate Kingsmill, Tim Kroenert, Pete Laurie, Chris Maric, Fred Negro, Danielle O’Donohue, Obliveus, Paz, Sarah Petchell, Michael Preberg, Paul Ransom, Dylan Stewart Senior Photographer Kane Hibberd Photographers Andrew Briscoe, Cole Bennetts, Jay Hynes, Lucinda Goodwin Advertising Dept Leigh Treweek, Antony Attridge, Braden Draper, Brad Summers sales@themusic.com.au Art Dept Ben Nicol Felicity Case-Mejia vic.art@themusic.com.au Admin & Accounts Loretta Zoppos, Ajaz Durrani, Meg Burnham, Emma Clarke 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 Street Fitzroy Vic 3057 Locked Bag 2001 Clifton Hill VIC 3068
Your ‘Los After just announcing some more Mary J Blige-level heavies, Byron Bay Bluesfest have welcomed legendary guitarist Carlos Santana and iconic US rockers The Doobie Brothers aboard its 2017 line-up, and they’re still not done yet. Jackass
— Melbourne
Jackass 4D It’s been awhile since we’ve seen the Jackass boys together but Aussie fans are getting a nostaglic dose of everyone’s favourite group of idiots, as four of the cast members embark on a national tour next month. 6 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
c / Arts / Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Got Wood?
Melburnian rock outfit Kingswood are capping 2016 in big’n’boisterous style with a national run of metro and regional shows that will take across five states, including to some venues they’ve not visited in several years, this November.
Kingswood
Nouvelle Vague
Frenching in The Park So Frenchy So Chic In The Park is back for its sixth year this January. It’s a day that’s all about friends, food, wine and, of course, music - with performances from Deluxe, The Liminanas and more.
6,250 Frantic
The Caesar Of Cinema This November ACMI and Palace cinemas are presenting a touring film season called ROMAN: 10 X Polanski. It will featuring ten key films selected from Franco-Polish director Roman Polanski’s groundbreaking filmography.
The amount in English pounds (about A$10,500 for us) that a ceramic pigshaped statue of Ed Sheeran sold for at a charity auction in the UK.
THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 7
Lifestyle Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Welcome To The Show
Eric Andre
Eric Andre has been perplexing and provoking audiences with the late night cult hit The Eric Andre Show since 2012 and now he has announced his debut Australian stand-up shows this December.
Cash In The Bank
Melbourne singer-songwriter Josh Cashman has released Wishful Imagery, the new single from his upcoming EP. To celebrate he’s launching the track with shows this October, as well as joining Tash Sultana on her tour.
Band Of Skulls
Tiger Army
Rollin’ Bones Off the back of their Disconnect Festival slot in WA, British indie rockers Band Of Skulls have unveiled a run of headline shows for their fourth record, By Default in November. John Course & Mark Dynamix
Sound As A Pound November through to January Ministry of Sound OGs John Course and Mark Dynamix are hitting the road for the Ministry of Sound Reunion Tour: The Annual 2001-2004, with heaps of local supports. 8 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
Josh Cashman
e / Cultu Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Tiny Little Houses
Houses Always Wins
> )RUPHUO\ 7KH +L )L %DU @
Melbourne quartet Tiny Little Houses are having an absolute cracker of a year with their second EP out Friday, a new music video last week and their first ever national tour of Australia in November/December.
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Tiger Army, one of the best acts to come out of the Californian punk scene 20 years ago, will hit Australian shore, after not touring around these parts for a long eight years, this coming February.
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Weapons Of Choice Vancouverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Shawn â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The Harpoonistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Hall and Matthew â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The Axe Murdererâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Rogers are headed to Australian shores this November with their mouth-harps, foot stomps and telecasters to embark on their maiden Australian tour.
MILLION
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This many US Dollars (and possibly more) have reportedly been spent on Netflixâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s upcoming series on Queen Elizabeth II, The Crown.
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THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 â&#x20AC;˘ 9
Music / Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Gold
I Dream Of Genie
Meredith’s sibling festival Golden Plains have announced that their 11th iteration next March will be truly magical, featuring one of our most beloved songwriters Neil Finn, playing under a full moon no less.
It has been announced that the runaway Broadway hit, Disney’s Aladdin, will be coming to Melbourne. It’s run at Her Majesty’s Theatre begins in April 2017 and will carry through to June.
Neil Finn
The Red Detachment Of Women
Eastern Promise Asia TOPA, a new festival coming to ACM in February and March, celebrates contemporary Asia through a diverse range of artforms and performances, such as National Ballet Of China’s The Red Detachment Of Women. Flinders Street Station
Sometimes I think “this country deserves better” but then remember half the time I use a public toilet there’s already poop floating in it. @shutupmikeginn 10 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
High-Fi It’s official, Victoria is running out in front as Australia’s tech leader. Bendigo and Ballarat have been receiving free Wi-Fi since December, and last week the country’s largest and fastest free Wi-Fi network launched in Melbourne’s CBD.
Arts / Li Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Aladdin
Beginning Of The Ends
BAR
The Ends
Supple Fox has joined forces with Shaun Gladwell, The Huxleys and Gabi Barton to bring about The Ends, a three-week long living arts installation melding art, music and performance on the banks of the Yarra River.
WED 5 OCTOBER
OPEN MIC
Show The Boogie Man What You’ve got! Followed by at 9.30
Elliphant
DZIA THE ROCK N ROLL PANTOMIME THU 6 OCTOBER
JESS PARKER JESS HARRIS FRI 7 OCTOBER
ACE OF SPADES HOLY DIVER TRIUMPH OF STEEL SAT 8 OCTOBER
DRIVE TIME COMMUTE DISASTER UNCLE GEEZER HEADLOPPER THE MENACE (SA) ZEN ROBOTIC SARAH EIDA SUN 9 OCTOBER
Sing City
Where and when? For more gig details go to theMusic.com.au
Melbourne Music Week have announced their full November program. For their seventh and biggest run yet, they’ve included performers from Swedish avant-hip hop sensation Elliphant to New Zealand hard rockers Shihad.
JAZZ FLUTESPACE MAN JADE ALICE AFTER WORK HAPPY HOUR FROM 5PM
$5 DRINKS WED, THURS & FRI 160 HODDLE ST ABBOTSFORD
THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 11
Melbourne Festival
AN OTHER EDEN Back to Back Theatre artistic director Bruce Gladwin tells Maxim Boon about “otherness”, the politics of humanity and why it’s ok to be audacious. To read the full interview head to theMusic. com.au
I
t’s estimated that more than 100 million people worldwide tuned into the face-off between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump at the first American presidential debate. There’s a very good reason why so many people from every corner of the globe have such a vested interest in the U.S. election: when a candidate with views as divisive and discriminating as Donald Trump’s makes a bid to become a world leader, it says something deeply troubling about the politics of humanity. Speaking to Bruce Gladwin, artistic director of Back to Back Theatre, it’s just a few hours after this historic debate and the resonances this event share with his company’s particular brand of performance feels significant. Most of the actors in the Back to Back ensemble live with perceived intellectual disabilities and so their work is innately underpinned by a politicised commentary on the perception of those considered “different” by society. It’s little wonder that the question of how world figureheads promote tolerance and integration is close to this company’s heart. “I feel it’s a responsibility of artists to show leadership by defining what humanity is,” Gladwin explains as we discuss the presence of the political in Back to Back’s shows. “Artists have to be advocates for ‘otherness’. Back to Back’s work aims to open people up to these ideas through storytelling that has a strangeness to it. It can be intriguing and delightful but also embarrassing or awkward or shameful. We try to avoid being explicitly didactic: I’m far more interested in the way a bewildering dream can shift a person’s perspective and make them question.” This layered, often playful yet thought-provoking style is deliberately tilted towards challenging existing stereotypes of the disabled, Gladwin says. “I remember the first time I saw the company as an audience member. I was struck by the irony that this was a company featuring actors with intellectual disabilities and yet the work was so intellectually stimulating. The fact that the common associations with the word “disabled” were the polar opposite of my experience really excited me. These phenomenal actors have important and
fascinating viewpoints on the world, not just on disability.” In 2012, Back to Back’s Helpmann Award-winning play Ganesh Versus The Third Reich wrestled with a whimsical yet confronting study of the Nazi’s admiration for eugenics. The company’s latest piece, Lady Eats Apple, has swapped the geo-political for the metaphysical. It is a meditation on creation mythology, touching on the relationship between disability and spirituality and the function of social hierarchies. Gladwin’s approach to theatre-making is thoroughly collaborative. Partly, this is a necessity to allow Back to Back’s actors to contribute in ways in which they feel safe and comfortable: “What’s crucial is that we find a way of working together that isn’t necessarily selfreflective or intrusive.” An example of this in Lady Eats Apple comes at a moment when a forbidden romance is revealed. “One of the actors involved has difficulty with
It’s a responsibility of artists to show leadership by defining what humanity is. Artists have to be advocates for otherness.
memory and retaining her lines, so we’ve embroidered her words all over her scene partner’s costume. The result is incredibly beautiful, as they read off each other’s clothes. So, something that comes from a process of finding a working methodology can lead you to something completely extraordinary and powerful.” This new production will be staged in an experimental inflatable theatre that will fill the auditorium of the Hamer Hall. For Gladwin, creating a subversive stage is part and parcel of working with such a subversive company. “Making work on such a large scale is a comment on power in its own right. There’s an aspect of us pushing ourselves, asking, ‘Can we pull this off?’ Even the narrative is epic in scale; it starts at the beginning of time and ends in the present day, which is just about the biggest journey you could chart. It’s a bit audacious, but showing that we can play large spaces and venues where traditional theatre takes place puts us alongside those other organisations and institutions. It gives our voice credibility.”
What: Lady Eats Apple When & Where: 8 — 12 Oct, Melbourne Festival, Hamer Hall
EDITOR’S PICKS Arts and Culture Editor Maxim Boon selects his must-see shows from this year’s program.
FREE EVENTS
Melbourne Festival
DANCE
LES TAMBOURS DE FEU
VERTICAL INFLUENCES
Ever wondered what would happen if you strapped a bunch of fireworks to a percussion ensemble? Well, wonder no more. Basque-based pyro-freaks Deabru Beltzak deliver a literally high octane spectacle where beats rock and sparks fly.
If you think figure skating is all sequins, spandex and fake tan, this show might change your mind. Canadian ice dancers La Patin Libre carve up the ice with their adrenaline-pumping athleticism and the results are breathtaking.
When & Where: 6 - 8 Oct, Federation Square, 8.30pm
When & Where: 15 - 22 Oct, O’Brien Group Arena
HAIRCUTS BY CHILDREN
THE DARK CHORUS
There’s very little blather to navigate with this surreally uplifting event: it does exactly what it says on the tin. Sit down and let a ten-year-old give you a trim and in addition to a smart new do you’ll also get an insight into the power of empowering youth.
Lucy Guerin is one of Australia’s finest choreographers. This world premiere performance, exploring the interplay between light and shadow, is a must-see opportunity to experience the achingly poetic movement of her dance.
When & Where: 15 & 16 and 22 & 23 Oct, Stonnington Salon, CBD Salon
When & Where: 6 - 12 Oct, Meat Market
THEATRE
MUSIC
THE ECHO OF THE SHADOW
LA BELLE ET LA BETE
Immersive productions are on the bleeding edge of contemporary theatre practice and Spanish company Teatro De Los Sentidos are among the most experienced pioneers. Just one person at a time can enter this labyrinthine dreamscape making each individual experience utterly bespoke.
The American master of minimalism, Philip Glass, is celebrated for his film scores including The Truman Show and The Hours. Performing with his talented ensemble, hear his response to Jean Cocteau’s 1946 screen adaptation of a tale as old as time: Beauty And The Beast.
When & Where: 6 - 23 Oct, ACMI
When & Where: 7 & 8 Oct, Melbourne Recital Centre
THE MONEY
DAVID BOWIE: NOTHING HAS CHANGED
Part game show, part social experiment, British theatre-makers Kaleider are giving their audiences a tonne of cash. There’s just one catch: the decision on how to spend it must be unanimous. This show pitting altruism against personal gain has been a hit worldwide.
The world was left reeling earlier this year when the visionary pop-savant David Bowie passed away. There have been tributes aplenty to this Star Man’s genius, but this epic orchestral celebration by the MSO is on a scale fitting Bowie’s titanic legacy.
When & Where: 6 - 23 Oct, Prahran Town Hall & Parliament of Victoria & Footscray Townhall
When & Where: 15 - 17 Oct, Hamer Hall
THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 13
Arts
“Still Fucking Here Motherfuckers” The outspoken art dealer behind the Art Of Banksy exhibition, Steve Lazarides, has a thing or two to say about his tense relationship with the graffiti artist. He tells Maxim Boon about his years working with the superstar street art savant. To read the full interview head to theMusic.com.au
M
ost artists would consider a major showcase of their work a great honour. Then again, most artists aren’t Banksy, the British street art megastar who, despite the fact his true identity remains a mystery, could very well claim the title of the world’s most famous living artist. “He would never do an exhibition like this,” says Steve Lazarides, street art champion,
We worked together, hand in glove, for so many years, but we kind of fell out. Not in a bad way, but not in a good way either
successful gallerist and curator of The Art Of Banksy show, coming to Melbourne later this month. “He’d fucking hate that anyone, not just me, would even consider doing a retrospective, and ironically, so do a lot of his fans. I have been totally eviscerated by haters in Australia since we announced this exhibition, and that’s because he’s owned by the general public. He’s their boy done good; in their eyes, he can do no wrong.” When they arrive in Melbourne, the collection of Banksy’s currently winging their way to a pop-up gallery space at The Paddock behind Federation Square will be the largest assembly of the street artist’s work ever exhibited in Australia. The prestige of exhibiting such a substantial crop of Banksys — including some of the 14 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
artist’s most iconic designs such as Girl With Balloon — is undeniably gold plated, but transplanting these guerrilla artworks from the street to a gallery is considered sacrilege by some. Lazarides is, however, uniquely qualified to mount this landmark retrospective. The British art dealer and agent may now be counted among the world’s most influential authorities on street art, but two decades ago he sold Banksy’s early efforts from the boot of his car. Did he know in those early days that his artist mate would become famous on a scale comparable to Hollywood A-listers? “I had no fucking idea what so ever,” Lazarides candidly reveals. He became Banksy’s first agent, but the pair parted ways eight years ago after a more than 12 years working together. They no longer speak. “Our partnership ran its course. We worked together, hand in glove, for so many years, but we kind of fell out. Not in a bad way, but not in a good way either,” he explains. “We just found it difficult to be around each other. It was like, “Do you know what, the colour of your trainers is pissing me off today.” We had to go be our own people; I didn’t want my whole career to be a footnote in his history.” Banksy wasn’t the first artist to spray stencils, nor was he the first to traffic in a politically charged message. And yet, his brand of caustic, irreverent satire has connected with more people than any street artist before him. The secret of this success, Lazarides believes, is the direct simplicity of Banksy’s work. “When we got started it was a highly political time — it was the late ‘90s; the UK was in the middle of a recession; there was the war in Iraq. Banksy’s girlfriend always described his politics as being like a bloody sixth-former’s [year 12 student’s]. She was spot on. He managed to put a very simplistic message on what were very complex situations and this really resonated with the public.” Banksy’s anti-establishment politics might be his most explicit contribution to the art world, but Lazarides also credits him with transforming the public perception of urban artists. In typically outspoken fashion, he believes today’s street art community are overly complacent about the freedoms they now enjoy. “These kids don’t realise that he earned them the right to make art on the street. Even as recently as 15 years ago people were getting busted, people were getting beaten up. Nowadays, graffiti isn’t anti-establishment; street artists are the vanguard for gentrification.” Banksy fever may have captured the public imagination, but Lazarides’ decision to stage the Art Of Banksy exhibition isn’t merely about capitalising on the artist’s popularity. “He has been largely ignored by the art establishment,” he claims. “They don’t like him because he’s popularist. They’ve said over and over, time and again, ‘It’s not going to last.’ Well, it’s 20 years later and we’re still fucking here motherfuckers.”
What: The Art Of Banksy When & Where: 7 Oct 2016 - 22 Jan 2017, The Paddock, Federation Square
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TV
Unravelled Orange Is The New Black actress Yael Stone tells Guy Davis about the real “shock” in dredging up the past for SBS’ new drama, documentary and multimedia experience Deep Water.
“I
t’s about wading into the deep water of the past so we can understand what’s going on now, and in the future.” You have to give Australian actor Yael Stone her due respect. Not only does she provide a neat precis of what the upcoming SBS multimedia event Deep Water is about, she deftly manages to slip the very title of it in there as well. Not that marketing is on the mind of the acclaimed Orange Is The New Black star; her work on stage and screen, and the way she conducts herself away from the audience or the camera, gives every indication that
...by pulling the thread, she exposes some much larger issues about the policing that went on in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
straightforward sincerity is her style. Primarily based in the US, Stone returned to Australia this year to take a lead role in the four-part crime drama Deep Water, which is only one section of an overall multimedia ‘experience’ that also includes a 90-minute documentary and a sizeable online component, all working in conjunction to reveal the harrowing truth behind a spate of hate crimes, including murder, against gay men throughout the 1980s and ‘90s. The documentary Deep Water - The Real Story will feature police investigators, crime victims and relatives of the men murdered as it presents the facts and tries to shed light on aspects of the case that remain hidden, while the interactive hub Deep Water - Online 16 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
Investigations provides a wealth of additional material related to the crimes. For many viewers, however, the likely entry point to this story will be the miniseries. It has a strong supporting cast that includes William McInnes, Wentworth’s Danielle Cormack, Craig McLachlan and Stone’s husband Dan Spielman, with Stone and Noah Taylor taking the lead roles as police detectives Tori Lustigman and Nick Manning, whose investigation into a brutal murder in Bondi takes an even darker turn when connections to a string of unexplained deaths and disappearances from decades earlier start to appear. “Basically we have a present-day homicide, and Tori starts to see links to an even greater problem,” says Stone, speaking on the second-last day of Deep Water’s 32-day shoot. “She starts pulling the thread, and the thread leads all the way back into some cold cases labelled as suicide or misadventure. And by pulling the thread, she exposes some much larger issues about the policing that went on in the late 1980s and early 1990s in New South Wales.” While the miniseries is fictionalised, it uses actual events as its point of origin, something Stone calls a “real shock to the system”. “It’s something most Sydneysiders may not know about but probably should know about,” she says. “And the quality of the victimhood is something we have to ask about. When the victimhood is couched in a community that was viewed as ‘lesser than’ at the time, it’s not valued in the same way as what you might call a mainstream victim. What we’re looking at in this story is a comparison between the treatment of the people who perpetrate the crimes, who were given a second chance when the authorities looked the other way way, and the victims who were interrogated as if they had com committed crimes themselves.” As Lustigman and Manning delve deeper into the case, they find that some of the initial suspects hold little-to-no guilt for what they consider immature indi indiscretions, others are haunted by their involvement in w what Stone calls “a terrifying picture of packmen mentality violence”. Even more disquieting for Stone’s sec second-generation cop, though, is the seeming com complicity shown by previous generations of police offi officers in keeping these cases cold. “There are two maj major conflicts driving Tori here, and they’re personal and professional,” says Stone. “Tori wanted to do things the right way, and she finds it very confronting when she learns about the old-school way. She doesn’t accept the status quo; she doesn’t accept the stories she’s been told. And then there’s the battle of looking within the force you work with - asking greater questions about that is deeply uncomfortable if you want to keep your job.” It’s clear that Stone’s sympathies lie with the victims of these crimes; people disregarded or failed by a system designed to provide them justice. “I had no idea that this had gone on,” she says of the crimes depicted in Deep Water. “So it’s important that this story comes to light.”
What: Deep Water When & Where: 8.30pm Wednesdays on SBS
THUR 6/10
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THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 â&#x20AC;¢ 17
Music
Frontlash
Oral Health
Woof Woof! The Doggies went and did it! You bloody beauty! No dry eyes.
Hot Diggety Dog Okay, so pet dress-ups ain’t for everybody, but a hot dog for your dachshund? Best.
Biggy Big-Ups
Lashes
Yeah, yeah, we admit we have been obsessed with Biggpop’s Insta for a while (Iggy Pop’s cockatoo), but the post where Iggy’s singing to said cockie through a Muppet Iggy? Brand new heights. Bird Is The Word
Backlash Ice Ice Baby
So Sunnyboys are no longer due to a reduction in consumer demand. Quick! Go buy some Zooper Doopers before these face extinction also!
Taxing Trump
We’ve tried not to give Trump dramas too much oxygen. But as things in the US swing from insane to BATSHIT CRAZEBALLS, it’s hard not to fear who might be in the White House next year.
Archer Balled It’s been announced that TV’s sexiest spy is set to end his career. Archer will be over after three more limited seasons. Sploosh!
18 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
Teeth & Tongue’s Jess Cornelius didn’t wanna admit to Rookie magazine that she was “really drunk” at 11am, she tells Bryget Chrisfield.
“I
t’s always a bit of a weird thing with Teeth & Tongue,” Jess Cornelius muses, “’cause people are always like, ‘Is it solo or is it a band?’ And, you know, there’s press photos with the band and there’s press photos of just me and it’s just a really strange situation; it’s kind of ever-evolving.” Sitting in an airy Brunswick cafe, Cornelius wears a snug-looking houndstooth jacket and cradles a cup of chai tea (with soy) in her hands. There’s a hair elastic around her right wrist. “We did just recently replace the keyboardist-slash-backing singer,” Cornelius adds, before clarifying that Teeth & Tongue have been a four-piece for two years now. “Damian [Sullivan] the bass player’s been playing with us for three years and Marc [Regueiro-McKelvie]’s been playing with me since 2011 so, you know, it’s essentially longer than that for a lot of the members.” For Teeth & Tongue’s latest Give Up On Your Health album, Cornelius acknowledges, “The band were incredible, they were a much bigger part of the arrangement process than they ever have been before... They had a huge influence, I think, on the way the album sounds.” Before Cornelius took the songs to the band, she “had a bit of a songwriting workshop thing going on with Laura Jean”. “We met when we were both studying writing together... we both did the RMIT Professional Writing & Editing course,” she explains. The pair would “bring each other songs” since
Jean was “writing at the same time”. On songwriting, Cornelius observes, “You’re the only one who can fix it, but someone else can help you identify that a part’s not working.” After being accepted for a NES Artist Residency, Cornelius spent some time in Iceland hoping to work up some material for her latest album. “It didn’t necessarily produce the kinds of songs that I wanted to be doing for the next record, so it was interesting,” she admits. Although Cornelius “didn’t have all [her] normal resources”, she did “get access to the church... so there was all these, like, really bad piano ballads that came out,” she laughs. The motivation behind securing a residency for Cornelius was to see what would happen if she focused entirely on music “for two months”, although her initial urge was “to go somewhere warm”. “I was like, ‘I wanna go to Turkey or something and sit by the Mediterranean Sea and write songs’.” Dianne is a standout album track, and Cornelius commends, “Laura actually had a big part [in] that, she helped me with that one”. This song’s music video sees the band dancing around crazily in a bedroom and Cornelius confesses, “I felt really weird talking about it in interviews. I did this kinda interview with Rookie magazine in the US when they premiered the video... They were asking all about it and I think I ended up saying something like we’d had heaps of sugar, ‘cause I didn’t wanna say that I was really drunk. It was, like, 11 o’clock and I was wasted - I wasn’t wasted, but I had [to] be all jumping around. I was like, ‘I can’t say that’.” So does Cornelius ordinarily eat Fruit Loops straight from the box as depicted in said video? “Sometimes,” she chuckles.
What: Give Up On Your Health (Dot Dash/Remote Control) When & Where: 9 Oct, Howler
WEEKDAY HAPPY HOUR 3.00PM - 7.00PM $12 JUGS and FREE TAPAS WED 5 OCT
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THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 19
Indie Indie
Amarillo
“W
e wrote a lot of the songs when we were touring in the Northern Territory and WA. It’s amazing up there, it feels foreign but quintessentially Australian at the same time. A thread running through some of the songs was that sense of distance and isolation we felt up there.” Nick O’Mara is explaining the creative process that went in to Amarillo’s first fulllength release Eyes Still Fixed. He and Jac Tonks worked closely with producer and engineer Shane O’Mara to create their lush folk-pop colouring. “Recording to me is about capturing a moment that happened. My favourite
Kenta Hayashi
J
apanese singer-songwriter and loop pedal ninja Kasper Skou of Kenta Hayashi is currently touring the world: “22 countries so far!” he laughs. The one man band has dived head first into the music industry with indie booking agent, promoter and distributor Kaper Soup Records, which brings Japanese artists into the Australian market, and played in Four Minutes Til Midnight. “I love the part of the scene where the genres and cultures are very mixed. I saw some unique bands in the scene. I’d love to discover more!” says Skou. Skou’s live show “is like a spiritual meeting and tuning,” he says. “When I play, I try to open the hearts of the audience, tune and take off to the
20 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
songs are like that. Listen to The Stones play Gimme Shelter live — they can’t even play that song again. That event happened once, only once, the day they recorded it. Lightening in a bottle.” Maybe it was knowing they only had one shot to capture a particular essence that drove their almost telepathic connection when it came to the sounds and flavours they wanted threaded throughout their tracks. “Driving in to record the title track, I said to Jac, ‘I want that Ry Cooder Sister Morphine sound,’” explains O’Mara. “[I was] setting up my gear and Shane said, ‘Go for that Cooder sound on Sister Morphine.’ [The were] many moments like that. Simpatico.”
When & Where: 8 Oct, Bella Union
Good Counsel
Have You Heard Answered by: Mitchell Crum When did you start making music and why? 2015. We just couldn’t help ourselves. We are greedy. Sum up your musical sound in four words? Alternative indie-rock. If you could only listen to one album forevermore, what would it be and why? The Panics — Cruel Guards, because its the best Aussie album of all time. Jae Laffer is a machine. Greatest rock’n’roll moment of your career to date? Supporting Big Scary in Sydney in front of 700+ people.
musical adventure together. I’m sure you will feel good after my set! Plus I use 444 HZ instead of 440 HZ, you know.” When asked what inspires his writing, Skou replies, “Every moment in my life [inspires me]. However, any new things keep me fresh, like going to new places, meeting new people, discovering and listening to new music and art. Also writing songs and playing shows as well.”
When & Where: 14 Oct, Bar Open
Why should people come and see your band? Because we are touring and we love Melbourne. When and where for your next gig? 9 Oct, The Brunswick Hotel. Website link for more info? goodcounselband.com
THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 â&#x20AC;¢ 21
Music
House Fire
RIP Hollywood Logan Bell talks to Brynn Davies about the two men that drive Katchafire Bob Marley and his father. The Golden Age of Television seems to have heralded the Fucking Awful Age of Cinema. We’ve got Stranger Things on Netflix, and Suicide Squad in the theatres. It’s enough to make you give up on the entire medium of film and cancel your Hoyts Rewards Membership – free popcorn does not make up for Zoolander 2. Here are a few of the Hollywood horrors defiling a silver screen near you soon.
Fruit Ninja Yes, the app. Vinson Films are turning it into a movie. How you turn a game that involves slicing exotic fruits quickly with your thumb into a movie is anyone’s guess.
Britney Blonde highlights will be hitting big screens in 2017 in this Britney Spears/ Justin Timerlake Lifetime biopic. Maybe Justney were getting fed up of Brangelina getting all the headlines?
Tetris Not one, but three Tetris-based films are on the horizon. An entire sci-fi trilogy dedicated to one of the most archaic games in existence. 22 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
W
hen Logan Bell answers the phone we can hear someone madly strumming an acoustic guitar in the background. “Dad’s playing a bit!” he laughs, and yells over his shoulder: “I’m doing an interview in Australia at the moment Dad, she can hear you!” The Bell family live in Hamilton, New Zealand, where Katchafire formed in 2000 between Logan, his brother Jordan and their Dad — Grenville Bell. “The mainstay is that the family has been there since the start — [Dad] pretty much moved out of home away from Mum and the comforts of home to live in an apartment where we could pretty much jam and make noise ‘til all hours of the evening,” he laughs. “We owe a lot to him... I can remember band practices when I was around eight or nine, and then that kinda stopped — I think Mum knocked it on the head because it probably wasn’t bringing in enough money!” Little did she know that the small Bob Marley tribute band would, by 2016, become one of New Zealand’s most prolific reggae supergroups. The now eight-piece all-Maori collective taps into the mentality that drives Maori culture’s strong identification with reggae and ska music. “Maori as Indigenous can identify a lot with reggae’s messages. I think it’s really geared towards Maori and identifies the struggle that other Indigenous have been through as well,” Bell explains.
“We’re pretty Bob Marley-centric here... I definitely think he was part of a lot of people’s inspiration — their rock, their support system, there’s no one else talking about what they were going through in those times, and still present today.” While a lot of Katchafire’s music is joyous — at times adhering to “authentic” reggae and at others pushing the boundaries of the genre — it’s a style that goes hand in hand with a socio-political or religious undercurrent. Bell reminisces on 2006’s Frisk Me Down — a track written during an arrest. “Being oppressed, being a Maori growing up was tough, you know? I was out with some friends and I got arrested for breaching a liquor ban I didn’t even know there... I walked out of a club with a bottle and I was arrested about 50 meters down the road, and I was with a mate — my pakeha [white] mate — and he was drinking as well and he didn’t get arrested. I spent a night in the cells... It pissed me off, raw motivation.” Their latest offering Burn It Down brings the good vibes in spades, recorded by Stephen Rev Maxwell from Jamaica while the band were spread over the globe. “That’s the challenge of recording while trying to play 120 dates a year,” Bell chuckles. “Our families have to share us with the rest of the world.” And what’s his dad up to these days? “He has earned his right to hang up the boots — he’s retired — and now Mum gets to have him home all to herself while we go off all ‘round the world. But he’s still very much the chief of the band.”
When & Where: 7 Oct, The Plaza; 8 Oct, Chelsea Heights Hotel; 9 Oct, Prince Bandroom
Music
Average Joe
“People think if I wear sunglasses on-stage I’m arrogant.” Brendan Crabb ventures into the world of guitar virtuoso Joe Bonamassa.
J
oe Bonamassa’s career is one of perpetual motion; the American bluesrock axeman/singer/songwriter prolific in the studio and seemingly perennially on the road. Beginning his live career aged 12 opening for B.B. King, he’s also a bucket list type, with further goals soon to be realised. “This year we’ll have the honour of doing the Sydney Opera House and Carnegie Hall,” he enthuses. Bonamassa’s slick shades-and-suit on-stage aesthetic opposes his off-stage demeanour. It’s a unique dichotomy; the guitarist has professed to having no desire to be a rock star. “I always see that as the other guy. The other guy comes out at 7.30, plays from eight to 10.15, then I reassemble the nerd and that’s the other 22 hours. That’s an extension of my personality, but that’s not who I am all the time. “You see some people that are in the public and operate... They are legitimate rock stars, but they go to the market for dishwashing detergent, and they’re dressed for the gig. That’s not me. You’ll never see me sitting at The Ivy, hoping somebody takes my picture. Often I’ll be at McDonald’s and in the corner where nobody can notice me. I don’t crave that attention; as a matter of fact I don’t really enjoy it, off the stage. Yeah it’s an ego stroke, but it’s like, for what? That’s not why I got into this thing. I got into this thing
because I love to play guitar and love being around music.” Based on the live persona though, fans may have misconceptions about what Bonamassa would be like if they encountered him in the street. “Hundred per cent. People think if I wear sunglasses on-stage I’m arrogant. No, I’m actually really light sensitive. If you had two 40,000-watt spotlights pointed at your face the whole night, you’d wear sunglasses too,” he laughs. “The whole suit thing was inspired by looking at old photos of Muddy Waters from the ‘60s. Those guys were dressed, were tailored and they wanted to portray this image of success and affluence, because they’d worked their way out of the cotton fields of Mississippi. I’ve derived all that stuff from my influences of the old blues guys... I decided 10 years ago it was in my vested interest to probably dress better than the audience that was coming to see me. Out of respect to them, because I’ve actually put some effort into my show.” Among his many projects will include restarting star-studded Black Country Communion. Reports suggested a falling out between Bonamassa and Glenn Hughes previously meant the band being shelved indefinitely. “We’re scheduled to record in January,” Bonamassa details. “It was just a misunderstanding that got spun up. At this point it’s all water under the bridge because we’ve always maintained friendship. It was never like, ‘Fuck you, Glenn’, ‘Fuck you, Joe’ or ‘Fuck you, Jason [Bonham, drums]’... Time heals all wounds and I think we have one great rock album in us. We have one more great album, we have one definitive Black Country Communion record that we haven’t made. And it’ll probably be the last one. Ultimately it’s something that is unfinished business in my mind.”
Good Times, Doggy Style
How do you make a music festival better? Add dogs, obviously! Dogapalooza is Melbourne’s first dog-friendly music fest. Headlined by Thelma Plu, The Little Stevies, Leah Flanagan and Sam Lohs – plus a super-secret, superspecial guest – this is a chance to hear some awesome tunes, while surrounded by god damn dogs, bro! Head to Richmond’s Burnley Park on 9 Oct, it’s going to be the Shih-tzu.
When & Where: 5 Oct, Palais Theatre
THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 23
Music
Lucifer Songs Here’s a wrap of who’s just announced a new release:
Honeyblood
Tycho announced a surprise album Epoch (Inertia), which is out now digitally, but if you have a hankering for physical product, that won’t be available until closer to when they hit town for Laneway, with a 20 Jan release date. 21 Oct sees the release of Everything Is My Family ([PIAS]), the new album from Crystal Fighters, described by the band themselves as “more dancefloor, more psychedelic, more tropical, more rave, more sunshine, more pretty much everything” than anything they have done before. Glasgow two-piece Honeyblood release their second album Babes Never Die (FatCat/Cooking Vinyl) this 4 Nov. Glam rockers Steel Panther release their new album Lower The Bar (Kobalt/Inertia) on 24 Feb. Also known for his work with The Libertines and Babyshambles, Peter Doherty delivers his second solo album Hamburg Demonstrations (BMG/ Liberator) on 2 Dec. Already on his way here in December, Frank Carter has announced a new album from his combo The Rattlesnakes will follow 27 Jan, titled Modern Ruin (International Death Cult/Kobalt). NZ born, Gold Coast-based The Koi Boys will release their debut album Meant To Be (Universal), featuring nine covers and three originals. In the lead up to an Australian tour in early 2017, Simple Minds release a new album called Simple Minds Acoustic (Caroline) which features, yep, you guessed it, acoustic reinterpretations of their back catalogue. 24 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
Enjoy being overpowered by waves psychedelic doom? Well, Italian maestros Ufomammut have you covered. Mark Hebblewhite asked main man Urlo what we can expect on the band’s first Australian tour. ven though The Music is subjected to the world’s worst ever phone line and vocalist/bassist Urlo’s thick Italian accent, there’s no doubting how excited the venerable trio are to be visiting our shores. “We’ve always been fans of Monolord but have never played with them so that’s going to be great,” says Urlo about his upcoming Swedish tour mates. “And of course coming to Australia for the first time in our band’s history is amazing. Fans there have wanted us to come for a long time, and I love Australian bands like Buffalo - to finally get down there is a dream come true for this band.” Ufomammut have not only been around since 1999 they’ve also managed to keep the same line-up - no mean feat in an age where band members come and go with great regularity. How have the trio done it? “Well, we’re just too old to fight with each other I think,” laughs Urlo. “We’ve always got on very well because this band is a democracy. We decide on what we want to do together and where we want our music to go. For example, we decide on set lists together. When we come to Australia we’re going to focus on our last album - Ecate - and
E
of course play some of the older stuff on top of it because many people in Australia would not have had the chance to hear these songs before.” Italy’s metal scene has always been small by European standards. While the country does boast some very diverse acts - Rhapsody, Death SS and Lacuna Coil all come to mind the scene remains dwarfed by their northern cousins in Germany, France and Scandinavia. The Music wonders whether Italy’s staunch Catholicism has hindered the local scene’s development? “No I don’t think it’s really an issue,” says Urlo. “I mean - sure the Vatican is in Italy, and the country has a reputation for being religious. But really I think Italy is the same as many other countries where people go to church on Sundays but don’t [let] religion run their everyday lives. I think the bigger problem for metal in Italy is that pop music and dance music is very strong.” “The commercial styles of music rule everything here - you hear it from every car window, from houses as you pass. But of course that doesn’t really matter in the end. The underground scene here is very strong and there are many diverse metal bands in Italy that don’t sound like each other. I mean compare Ufomammut to say Rhapsody - we are completely different to them.” “I’m not complaining about metal being pretty underground in Italy - that’s the way it is. The scene we do have is very creative and has a lot of talented people in it who are really dedicated to what they do. I’ll always take that over having a larger scene just for the sake of it.”
When & Where: 8 Oct, Max Watt’s
Indie Indie
Werewolves Of Melbourne
As A Rival
Adam Kasper. We released a video clip and are just completing an 11-date east coast tour. What was inspiring you during the song’s writing and recording? Musically, punk rock. Lyrically, I was looking back at what we had achieved as a band and I wasn’t satisfied. It’s about capturing the urgency of making goals reality, ignoring the roadblocks along the way.
Single Focus
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ock your doors next full moon kiddywinks, Werewolves Of Melbourne are on the loose. Manager, lead vocalist and guitarist Zevon Hiltz describes them as “rhythm and blues-mixed, ‘70sinspired rock, laced with the funk of today”. They’ve been playing and howling around Melbourne since 2015 and Hiltz adds, “[Werewolves Of Melbourne are] a formidable force through the blues, R&B and rock’n’roll scene,” His personal career highlight for Werewolves Of Melbourne was “having a full house at the band’s last Labour In Vain gig” and Hiltz claims “the crowd were howling in the track Never Over Till The Werewolves Are Howling”. Their lives shows provide “a look into the blues that has passed and moulded alongside the funk and soul machine of today. If you like howling, dancing, singing and forgetting about everything else in your world, you should come see us!” he laughs. The band are putting the finishing touches on their forthcoming album, with a single and video clip set to drop this December. In the meantime, they’re playing gigs in bars and pubs around the city and avoiding moonlight. They’re Melbourne-based and Hiltz extols, “The scene is strong! Great venues to play, studio spaces and an awesome array of musicians to choose from. Melbourne is one of the best places to be a musician.”
Answered by: Pete Cerni
When & Where: 7 Oct, Forester’s Hall
Sum up your musical sound in four words? ‘90s indie middle-aged angst.
Single title? Obsolete What’s the song about? A punk-infused anthem; fighting the reality of ageing and fear of irrelevance that comes with it. How long did it take to write/record? It is a part of an album that took a year to write and four months to record. Is this track from a forthcoming release/ existing release? Released as part of our album, By Design. Recorded by Tom Read (Bodyjar). Mixed by Grammy Award winner
ManCave Clan
We’ll like this song if we like... Punk rock. Catchy hooks. Great songs. Determination. Whiskey. But most importantly... RIFFS. Do you play it differently live? Our drummer adds little fills here and there, otherwise it is as is, yet louder. Better. What you want out of a live performance. When and where is your launch/ next gig? 8 Oct, Ding Dong Lounge. Website link for more info? tickets.oztix.com. au/?Event=66191
We explore what it’s like to be weird, a creep or an asshole. Oh, and we can be funny too! When and where for your next gig? 18 Oct, The Brunswick Hotel. Website link for more info? facebook.com/mancave.man. clan
Have You Heard When did you start making music and why? When my mother brought home a cassette by Air Supply. I thought, “Anyone could do better than this crap!”
If you could only listen to one album forevermore, what would it be and why? Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Rust Never Sleeps. Greatest rock’n’roll moment of your career to date? Falling over on stage. Why should people come and see your band?
THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 25
Music
SUMMER
Off The Wagon
Little Creatures Dog Days
SUDS Summer is on the horizon and a cold beer goes down best after a day spent in the surf. But with so much choice, your bare feet are going to end up stuck to the freezer floor of your local bottlo while you decide. We’ve done the hard work for you –just chill, sip, chill, repeat.
Little Creatures – Dog Days Named after the brightest star in the summer sky, this crisp, hoppy brew is the perfect salve for sunburn or board rash.
Young Henry — Heilala Vanilla Witbier This wheat craft beer fuses Tongan vanilla with hints of orange peel and coriander. Plus, it comes in the biggest stubby you’ve ever seen – a 2L ‘growler’.
Finch’s Beer Co — Sungasm The name of this Belgian Pale Ale says it all – Sungasm has tropical written all over it — a hazy, golden hue with a hefty white head and a tingly aroma of mango.
Mountain Goat – Steam Ale A certified organic ale for those wanting to stay au naturel, Mountain Goat have added a slap of wheat malt in the grist make-up and ferment it cool.
26 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
LA rockers L7 took subversion and anger mainstream in the mid-’90s, but Donita Sparks tells Steve Bell that plenty of laughs were had along the way.
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A all-female punk group L7’s name originated as a slang ‘50s term for someone who was “square”, an epithet which could not have been further from the truth for the firebrand rockers. Forming in the mid-’80s, they toiled in relative obscurity for years before being swept into the mainstream by the grunge-inspired alt-rock tidal wave of the early ‘90s, where their fierce music and uncompromising attitude delighted and alienated people in equal measure. Now after a 15-year hiatus they’ve returned refreshed as a live force, not just playing to followers from back in the day but also to new generations of younger fans who’ve been embracing both the band’s music and its underlying message. “Some of the feminism that came out of the grunge movement was a really cool thing, and I think that young people really want to see a piece of that history because it was kind of important,” vocalist/guitarist Donita Sparks reflects. “I actually think that it’s one of the overlooked legacies of the grunge era, how many women were playing and how for a brief moment it kind of killed misogyny for a little while in rock’n’roll.” Given that L7 actually predated grunge by years they probably partly inspired that
attitude themselves. “I think so,” Sparks agrees. “We were touring before we were famous and it seemed like every time we would go into a town again there would be a girl band that had started up because they’d seen us the last time we went through town. I definitely saw it growing, more and more women playing as we’d go around the country back in the day. “And we were art-punk rockers that got embraced by the metal scene as well, so we kinda that this weird anomaly where we started from the art-punk scene and then the hardcore punk rockers liked us and then the metal people liked us, so we were kinda crossing boundaries that way too. “It was fun to infiltrate the masses and not just stay underground. It was fun to get on TV and get into teenagers’ living rooms in the suburbs. It was, like, ‘What is this weird rock band?’ Just like every cool rock band did before us, it was how we all saw some bands for the first time — when you’re at a young age and you’re sitting there with your parents in the living room and it’s, like, ‘Oh my God, what is this?’ and your parents are bitching about it but you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I fucking love this!’” L7’s music also contained an inherent humour which further helped their appeal. “We’re pretty funny gals, believe it or not,” Sparks laughs. “It’s weird: some people like us because they think we’re funny and embrace absurdity and get it, while other fans just think we’re like this fierce, pissedoff rock band. And we’re both! It’s fun to be both, and it’s fun to be misunderstood by a lot of people too. I think years ago I would get very frustrated that we were misunderstood, but now I think it’s really funny.”
When & Where: 11 & 12 Oct, 170 Russell
Collisions
Indigenous Australians have the longest unbroken cultural lineage in the world, so it’s poetic that this history, dating back more than 40 millennia, can now be explored using technology on the cutting edge. Artist Lynette Wallworth has created an immersive virtual reality experience that allows a viewer to learn in extraordinary detail the story of Martu tribesman Nyarri Morgan. His first contact with European settlers came when he witnessed an atomic bomb test in the South Australian desert during 1950s. This moving and astonishing interactive art work examines how this event forever altered the Martu’s stewardship of their ancestral lands. Collisions is part of the Melbourne Festival, at ACMI until Jan 15 2017.
THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 27
Melbourne Festival
FLUID LANGUAGE Chanteuse Camille O’Sullivan and Paul Kelly had very different approaches to converting Ireland’s greatest poets to song for Ancient Rain, but, as she tells Anthony Carew, the poems had the final say.
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n honour of the 100-year celebrations of the Irish Republic, Culture Ireland recruited Camille O’Sullivan — the chanteuse who’s found fame for her dark cabaret takes on Nick Cave, Jacques Brel and Radiohead — and Paul Kelly, the wry Melburnian storyteller and Australian icon — to collaborate for the Dublin festival. “We met at Paul’s house, he made us lunch; it was very surreal, being made lunch by Paul Kelly,” recounts O’Sullivan. “We just said ‘What’s your favourite Irish poem? What’s your favourite Irish literature?’” The result is Ancient Rain, in which O’Sullivan, Kelly and Feargal Murray set Irish verse to song. There’s poems by WB Yeats — “[His work] may be 100 years old, but Yeats is very alive and well to the people of Ireland” — Eavan Boland, Seamus Heaney, Paul Meehan and Patrick Kavanagh, and even an acted-out passage from Joyce. After premiering in Dublin, Ancient Rain will arrive for a run at the Melbourne Festival. “Poems hold a mirror up to yourself, both personally and as a people,” says O’Sullivan. “[This is] a collection of poems that have great melancholy, dark Irish themes: love, death, mother, father, lover, loss, return. Most Irish poems are bleak, you can’t ignore it. But, I’m a great lover of Nick Cave’s music, and that can be quite bleak too. Like any good theatre it’s thought-provoking stuff.” O’Sullivan and Kelly have both set poems to music before: O’Sullivan turning Shakespeare’s The Rape Of Lucrece into a full theatre show of songs; Kelly adapting Shakespeare, too, for Seven Sonnets & A Song, and Yeats, Tennyson, Dickinson, Slessor and others for Conversations With Ghosts. Yet despite their experience, collaborating didn’t come easily as the pair had to reconcile their distinctly different approaches. “I’m quite an intense person emotionally, so I like things to be cool, then [when] it explodes there’s a real moment of surprise,” O’Sullivan offers. “Paul likes it to be as straightforward as possible: this is the lyric, this is how it is. I like things to change as they go, he likes a direct, clear route. He would laugh sometimes at my passionate, dramatic, emotional reactions... It became very clear that we were two very different kind of people, but we both have a love of the lyric, and of telling stories through song. I was brought up on Kurt Weill and 28 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
Jacques Brel, he’s more Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, but it’s very similar: long, seven-minute, narrative storytelling. But our voices work well [together], and we knew something good would come out of the two of us teaching each other how we’d approach things.” The poems, O’Sullivan thinks, inevitably had the final say: the words suggesting melodies, pace, delivery, adding music a process of building on the feelings already there. “You can multiply the emotion by setting a poem to music,” she says, “and sometimes you can soften the starkness of words, make bleak poems no longer seem so bleak. They can be sad, but with a sense of hope.” When & Where: 9 & 16 Oct, Melbourne Festival, The Toff In Town; 12 — 15 Oct, Ancient Rain, Melbourne Festival, Playhouse Theatre
THERE GOES GRAVITY Les 7 doigts de la main invited three outside choreographers into their universe to create Triptyque and Samuel Tetreault tells Bryget Chrisfield that, in the final piece, they levitate. Triptyque. Pic: Alexandre Galliez
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hen asked where he is right now, Samuel Tetreault (Les 7 doigts de la co-founder/artistic director/performer) replies, “I am in Montreal right now in my training studio, stretching”. Now that he’s aged “in the late 30s”, Tetreault chuckles, “the body shows some sign of — tiredness, let’s say”. “If you wanna still do it then it’s a matter of training more intelligently, I think. And, for sure — maintaining shape I realised is the most important thing, ‘cause your brain and your muscle memory, they know how to do things, but if you’re not exactly fit then that’s when you get injured.” As well as performing in all three pieces of the Triptyque triple bill that the company are bringing to Melbourne Festival (Australian exclusive), Tetreault is one of the seven co-founders of Les 7 doigts de la main (translation: The Seven Fingers Of The Hand). And he
Melbourne Festival
acknowledges Triptyque is “pretty different to everything we have done before”. “We’ve always been creating circus that involves dancing and movement research, but never to that point where the idea was to really venture into the world of some other choreographer’s creative universe,” he elaborates on inviting three outside choreographers into the studio to create Triptyque. “The first piece is a duo between me and a dancer who was not a circus performer to begin with, and that’s been choreographed by Marie Chouinard,” Tetreault informs, of Anne & Samuel. The three pieces are tied together by an overall theme: gravity, which Tetreault identifies is “a force that pulls us downwards... that is essential to any of the circus disciplines, but then it’s so essential to the art of dancing”. Before working with Tetreault and the other dancer Anne & Samuel was created on, Chouinard wished to see some videos of the pair improvising and, according to Tetreault, crutches were then introduced as a means for “altering the way that the human body can work”. “I also wanted the whole Triptyque to be a sort of progression,” Tetreault shares, from Anne & Samuel (which is “more rooted to the contemporary”) to gradually incorporating “a wider variety of circus disciplines” throughout the other two pieces. Although the middle piece — Variations 9.81 (“a quintet of five hand balancers choreographed by Victor Quijada”) — incorporates “a lot of choreographic work”, Tetreault reveals, “It’s still very acrobatic and it’s only circus performers that could perform that piece”. “And then the third piece, Nocturne, is more anchored in the circus world,” he tells of Marcos Morau’s work. “For the first time, in the third piece, there’s an aerial element. So that’s kind of a final progression in the investigation of gravity where you can eventually emancipate yourself and fly and be suspended and, yeah! Levitate,” he enthuses. Triptyque audience members who feel more at home watching contemporary dance will be taken into “the universe that they’re not so used to” once circus elements are introduced, Tetreault promises. “And same with the circus audience.” What: Triptyque When & Where: 6 — 9 Oct, Playhouse, Arts Centre
THE COMMON TOUCH Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall has spent his career celebrating the working classes on screen and stage. He tells Maxim Boon why his loveable rogues are so universally inspiring.
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hen playwright Lee Hall penned his international megahit Billy Elliot, he gave birth to a new dramatic archetype: the creative rags to riches story. It’s a narrative trope that he has repeatedly returned to, including in his stage play Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, which follows six working class school girls from Scotland who are also sublimely talented singers. For Hall, his fascination with these characters is all about writing from the heart. “It’s very autobiographical,” he shares. “I came from a working class community, in a very industrialised and poor area of the North East of England and certainly when I was growing up the thought that anyone from there could be an artist was frankly preposterous. I had always dreamt of being a writer and working in the theatre and in film, but it seemed to be a great surprise to everyone else when they discovered this, even though to me it was the most natural desire in the world.” A survey by Empire Cinemas published earlier this week ranked Billy Elliot as the third most inspiring film character of all time, coming in just behind Eddie Redmayne’s performance as astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and Julia Roberts’ portrayal of American legal clerk and environmental activist Erin Brockovich. Hall’s tale of a boy from a poor mining community in the North East of England, who defies his family and community in a quest to become a ballet dancer, has melted hearts and
jerked tears from people all over the globe, despite its very specific cultural context. “I think the reason people identify so strongly with Billy is because the feeling of being an outsider in your own life or in your own community is strangely universal. You might not be working class or Northern and your ambitions might not be artistic, but I think everybody has felt like they don’t belong at some point,” Hall explains. “I’ve been drawn to these characters because of a very personal and specific emotional experience that’s unique to me, but when you take that experience and make it into art, whether that’s on a stage or a screen, it suddenly becomes very accessible and universal in its message. It speaks to our desire to be individuals and the struggles we face when we try to be ourselves.” Adapted from Alan Warner’s book The Sopranos, Hall was attracted to the characters in Our Ladies Of Perpetual Succour, for much the same reasons. “The kinds of women we meet in this play are often really vilified. They’re painted as feckless; they get pregnant; they’re the bane of society, leeching off the state with handouts and benefits. We treat them like animals, but I grew up with people like this and the stereotype is hugely misrepresentative. These people are very individual and full of fun, intelligence and humanity,” Hall says. “I wanted to celebrate their culture and creativity. We don’t dilute things — there’s a lot of talk about sex and it’s very uncouth and rude — they knock the wind out of you with what they say, it’s that explicit. But we really didn’t want this to be represented as something prurient. We’re showing these circumstances from their side, through the eyes of these girls. We’re reclaiming their story.”
What: Our Ladies Of Perpetual Succour When & Where: 6 — 22 Oct, Melbourne Festival, Arts Centre Melbourne THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 29
Melbourne Festival
THE WORLD ON STAGE Ballet Flamenco Pic: Santana de Yeoes
FROM VEGAS TO WALES
International festivals offer the chance to sample exotic cultures on our Down Under doorstep. Check out these imported wonders at the Melbourne Festival.
CHINA
Two Dogs This high energy, freewheeling double act follows the story of a pair of country canines hitting the road for the big city. Performers Liu Xiaoye and Han Pengyi have racked up more than 1000 performances of this joyous show world-wide. When & Where: 6 – 9 Oct, Malthouse Theatre
SPAIN Voces
Experience the fire and passion of Flamenco from one of Andalucía’s finest dance companies. Led by legendary dancer Sara Baras, this show is a gloriously fierce celebration of the Mediterranean spirit. When & Where: 21 – 23 Oct, Hamer Hall
FRANCE
Les Triplettes De Belleville Featuring a kidnapped Tour de France cyclist, the winding streets of gay Paris, and three ageing sirens modelled on Edith Piaf, this charming animated film could hardly be more French. Hear composer Benoit Charest’s score performed live. When & Where: 14 & 16 Oct, Melbourne Recital Centre
30 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
From Riverdance in Las Vegas to performing with Elton John and Pnau, Gwenno Saunders has finally gone back to her Welsh roots, she tells Kate Kingsmill.
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wenno Saunders is used to occupying an extremely niche place in the world. She was brought up speaking Welsh and Cornish — two of the oldest and uncommonly spoken languages in the UK. “My dad (Cornish poet Tim Saunders) did Celtic studies at university, my mum (singer and activist Lyn Mererid) did Welsh, and they were both quite passionate about Welsh and Cornish cultures, and Celtic cultures in general,” she explains. As a teenager, Saunders remembers “really loving really tacky R&B, and it was pure rebellion against this sort of earnest, folky-driven culture that my parents were really passionate about.” Saunders became an accomplished Irish dancer — even becoming part of the Riverdance troupe in Las Vegas, and later went on to be a member of manufactured British indie-pop girl group, The Pipettes, “because it was the most English thing that I could find and that was really interesting to me.” After The Pipettes dissolved she did a stint as synth player for Pnau, even flying to Australia for one memorable gig alongside Elton John. Moving back to her hometown of Cardiff saw her begin to work on her own material. Back in Wales, and looking for inspiration, she “re-discovered lots of my own culture that I hadn’t been been aware of,
due to probably my own ignorance and not having access to everything, in particular with music and literature. It was really about trying to do something that I felt challenging and that I was unfamiliar with.” There was a lot to draw on in Welsh culture, “because it’s a really interesting language. And I also needed to confront what my parents had given me, which was very particular. I think that you naturally want to rebel against it but actually I almost felt like you confront it and then you can own it as well. It’s making peace with who you are and what you’ve been given.” Approaching the album Y Dydd Olaf with the decision to sing in Welsh, Saunders says, “I wasn’t sure how the words were going to fit with the music and things like that.” But it wasn’t just a creative decision, it was by default a political one. “I think historically, Welsh language music has been political by its nature, you know? And so that really fed into it, because I think with minority cultures they’re fighting to survive and so that fed into it quite naturally, then. There was a point for it to be political because actually it was about a voice just wanting to keep on existing, political in itself.” The end result is a visionary exploration of synth-pop soundscapes, blended with field Welsh field recordings, and with Saunders’ evocative, breathy vocals conveying much depth and meaning despite the language barrier. The album was released on her producer and husband Rhys Edwards’ Peski record label in October 2014. Saunders did a UK tour supporting Gruff Rhys, the album won the Welsh Music Prize, and Heavenly Recordings snapped it up, re-releasing it in July 2015, exposing it to a much wider audience. As a live experience, the material, she says is “an open-ended conversation, trying to create some atmosphere, a lot of electronics on tables and things.”
When & Where: 11 Oct, Melbourne Festival, The Toff In Town
Eat / Drink Eat/Drink
FESTIVAL FEASTS
Chocolate Buddah
Keeping fed at the Fest needn’t mean grabbing a sorry-looking sanger on the hop. Melbourne Festival have partnered with some of the city’s finest eateries and bars giving ticket holders some exclusive deals. Whether you’re looking for a light bite or a hearty meal, there’s a range of handy options close to all major performing hubs.
San Telmo
EARLY EVENING REFUEL Chocolate Buddha FEDERATION SQUARE
This Japanese communal dining room offers quick, convenient eating without scrimping on the quality. They’ll be laying on a Melbourne Festival Dinner Tray for just $35, offering a hearty bento including dessert.
Loop Roof
23 MEYERS PLACE With its exotic foliage, this rooftop garden pairs great city views with a whimsical aesthetic. Diner favourites like beef brisket sliders with deep fried pickles and a pot of beer can be picked up for less than $25.
PRE-SHOW SPLASH OUT Maha
Om Nom
21 BOND STREET Pairing opulent decor and aromatic food, a trip to Maha is a feast for all the senses. Chef Shane Delia has created a wonderful inventive menu fusing Mediterranean cuisine with Middle Eastern thinking. A two-course pre-show meal is available for $55 per head.
San Telmo
14 MEYERS PLACE A must for any discerning carnivores out there, this Argentinian grill offers some superb cuts charred to perfection on a traditional parrilla. A set asado menu is available for $60 per head to give you a whistle-stop taste tour of Argentina, including wine.
QUICK PITSTOP Arbory
Om Nom
1 FLINDERS WALK
187 FLINDERS LANE
This outdoor bar and eatery on the banks of the Yarra is a perfect place to drop in for a swift bite in between shows at the Southbank venues. Ticket holders can pick up Chef Nick Bennett’s New England Lobster Roll with a beer or glass of wine for just $25.
Housed at the Adelphi Hotel, the name of this patisserie isn’t dissimilar to the sounds you’ll be making while you chomp through one of their beautifully crafted desserts. Ticket holders get a 15% discount on their bill during the Festival.
THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 31
Album / E Album/EP Reviews
Album OF THE Week
D.D Dumbo Utopia Defeated Liberation
★★★★½
There seems to be a lot of tinkering that still occurs in the Victorian Goldfields. While Jimmy Snaggletooth and his mining buddies from the 1850s might have long since perished amid the rough landscapes that surround Castlemaine, Oliver Perry — aka D.D Dumbo — is picking up the slack. The tinkering that appears at the start of Walrus, the opening track of Utopia Defeated, drives its eccentric and kinetic sound. Recorded in London yet delivered with an undeniable antipodean exuberance, Perry worked for months with producer/engineer Fabian Prynn to capture the many layers that goes into a D.D Dumbo song. While his voice occasionally veers into the territory of Ezra Koenig, Chet Faker or even Sting, such as on lead single Satan, it at all times remains captivating. What’s more, he is not afraid to take risks on the record, with a resultant highlight being the acoustic, City & Colouresque Toxic City. Still, even in slower moments, there are glimmers of colour that appear. Oboe phrases, lines of chimes and even a recorder that makes an appearance on Brother, show that Perry is not content to deliver a straight-up pop record; the tinkering must continue until it’s fully complete. And although the ethereal percussion of King Franco Picasso steers him too close to the sun, it’s a small criticism against an otherwise excellent debut album. Look for more tinkerers making their way to the town they call North Northcote. Dylan Stewart
Green Day
Paul Kelly & Charlie Owen
Revolution Radio Warner
Death’s Dateless Night
★★½ If 2004’s American Idiot was Green Day’s first great album since Dookie ten years prior, the punk rock stalwarts have failed to repeat that success timeline. 21st Century Breakdown matched American Idiot for ambition, if not execution; more recently the trilogy of ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tre! was, by Billie Joe Armstrong’s own admission, unfocused, and “prolific for the sake of it”. By contrast Revolution Radio is solid and concise, but proves that sometimes you really can’t teach an old rock dog new tricks. There is a certain irony in a trio of 40-somethings releasing an album whose title spruiks ‘revolution’, especially in a genre that historically has been the realm of youthful cynicism and exuberance. Armstrong says the album seeks to grapple with the culture of violence in the US,
32 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
Gawdaggie/Universal
★★★★
with blunderbuss single Bang Bang — “Daddy’s little psycho and Mummy’s little soldier” — providing the most strident treatment of the pandemic of mass shootings. The album plays to band’s strengths: Still Breathing merges an affective pop melody to ecstatic punk-rock energy; as a hook, “Too scared to dream, but too dumb to die” (Too Dumb To Die) is vintage jokey-cynical Green Day; while the unsettling Troubled Times sees Armstrong at his prophetic best. On the whole though, it’s pretty paint-by-numbers. Anyone hoping for a late-career classic is bound to be disappointed. Tim Kroenert
Somewhat strangely, Australian rock veterans Paul Kelly and Charlie Owen had never made an album together until now. But a shared bereavement found them conceiving the union en route to a funeral and ultimately recording a clutch of songs that they’d played at funerals over the years to pay their respects to passed friends. It’s a sombre affair without being mired in sadness, Kelly’s expressive voice perfect in this construct and offset seamlessly by Owen’s symbiotic sensitivity on guitar, synth, lap steel, dobro and piano. Townes Van Zandt’s To Live Is To Fly soars, while Leonard Cohen’s Bird On The Wire drips with gravitas and Cole Porter’s Don’t Fence Me In tugs heartstrings with its wide-skied simplicity - sweet vocals from
Kelly’s daughters Maddy and Memphis adding a welcome feminine touch, as they do on the beautiful rendering of The Beatles’ classic Let It Be. Kelly’s own Nukkanya proves short but sweet, while old jazz-blues standard Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor (recorded by Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch among countless others) also shines in its stark minimalism. The collection closes with Hank Williams’ Angel Of Death, which hammers home the solemnity of the collection and ties it all together wonderfully. A beautiful way to contemplate our inevitable demise. Steve Bell
EP Reviews Album/EP Reviews
Thigh Master
Kate Tempest
Kaiser Chiefs
The Panics
Early Times
Let Them Eat Chaos
Stay Together
Hole In Your Pocket
Coolin’ By Sound
Fiction/Caroline
Fiction/Caroline
Dew Process/Universal
★★★½
★★★★
★★★½
★★★★
After a pair of tantalising EPs and a smattering of singles, Early Times feels a little overdue, but strangely immediate. While it teeters on the fringes of shoegaze and dolewave, like an old tourist commercial for Queensland as directed by the disillusioned and destitute, it is at its best exploring rocky terrain. The vocals are slightly more washed than a pair of boyfriend jeans and often operate like an underlying beat rather than an accompaniment, leaving the guitars to take the narrative lead. But what shines through is surprisingly canny, intimately droll, and some of the most quintessentially Brisbane sounds on offer.
British performance poet Kate Tempest’s extremely knotty 2014 debut album Everybody Down was a rewarding listen. Its follow-up is simultaneously neater, more expansive and even more rewarding. Equally conceptual as her lauded debut, Let Them Eat Chaos nevertheless finds Tempest and main collaborator Dan Carey working with greater subtlety — Carey content to step back and let Tempest’s words carry the rhythm on epic cuts like Europe Is Lost; Tempest leaning into the eerie musicality on melody-driven material like Pictures On A Screen. A rich, dynamic album from an exceptional artist.
For rock bands chasing relevance, a dance album can be a good idea on paper and a disaster in practice. Kaiser Chiefs’ partnership with production team Xenomania (Girls Aloud, Sugababes) has paid dividends. The trademark larrikin spirit is present, but Stay Together draws deeply from the well of ‘80s and ‘90s pop for a sound that is both retro and utterly contemporary. Single Parachute offered the first glimpse of this new direction, which hits its apex on centrepiece Press Rewind, whose darkly funky instrumentals and “it feels like we went back in time” catchcry epitomise the way the band is looking back to move forward.
There are many contradictions in The Panics’ fifth album, but somehow they work. Allowing for a five-year hiatus, they’ve settled back into a comfortable intricacy and intimacy — the sound still so identifiably theirs. As a band who exchanged coasts a decade ago, there’s glances back through the heat haze recalling growing up in Perth’s scrubby suburbia, even if viewed through memory and distance. They look outward and inward — Jae Laffer’s individual warble is emotional whether musing if a relationship is Not Apart, Not Together or pondering the global warming debate through a personal prism in Weatherman. The Panics still make records that seep into you.
Matt O’Neill
Nic Addenbrooke
Tim Kroenert
Ross Clelland
More Reviews Online Placebo A Place For Us To Dream
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The Wytches All Your Happy Life
Holy Serpent Temples
THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 33
Album / E Album/EP Reviews
Meshuggah
Julia Jacklin
Goat
Alter Bridge
The Violent Sleep of Reason
Don’t Let The Kids Win
Requiem
The Last Hero
Rocket
Napalm/Rocket
Nuclear Blast
Liberation
★★★★
★★★★
★★★½
★★★★
Extreme metal trends can shift quickly; media darlings one day can be relegated to the scrapheap the next. These eightstring guitar-wielding Swedes may spawn fads but, nearly 30 years in, they continue to shape and tweak their polyrhythmic attack with tunnel vision. Ivory Tower’s slow-burn sludge and Monstrocity’s titanic riffs are highlights, but suggesting the whole affair is sledgehammer-heavy and dense would be akin to claiming 2 Broke Girls contains a few terrible jokes about stereotypes. Utilising entirely live takes aired via real amps and speakers breathes a modicum of humanity into an act renowned for such machine-like precision, too. Another triumph.
Don’t Let The Kids Win brings the cosiness, warmth and suburban intimacy of Jacklin’s creamy voice and knee-high socks to the studio. On this debut LP, the blue mountains local shows off her debt to Angel Olsen’s dark Americana and Fiona Apple’s lithe storytelling — the result is equal parts lovely and disquieting. These are stories about “getting older”, as she sings on the eponymous final track, but this is an album about loss and the tricks of memory. Everything from Jackin’s consciously retro guitar to her doo-wop rhythms are designed to play tricks on the mind.
Goat — the interview-shy band from Arctic Sweden — avoid the mistake of trying to repeat the crackling riffs and orgiastic pagan fun of their debut, as they did on the lukewarm Commune. Opening with a flute riff and chirping birds, Requiem is an album of transcendental folkie jams with no sign of electricity until track four. Some might miss Goat’s earlier wildness, but longer jams like Psychedelic Lover and Goatband uncover something within their collective psyche that makes Requiem a worthwhile exploration of another side to this mysterious collective.
With each record Alter Bridge edge fractionally closer from critical darling/festival midcard status to globe-conquering hard rock juggernaut. Aided by a taut rhythm section, the partnership of turbo-tonsilled Myles Kennedy and Mark Tremonti’s monstrous riffage has more chemistry than a periodic table on their fifth LP. The pair also trade sterling leads effortlessly. Island Of Fools and The Other Side’s metallic crunch faintly echo Tremonti’s recent solo affairs; Poison In Your Veins and Crows On A Wire bristle with incisive hooks. My Champion errs too far into twee territory, but Kennedy soars with such gusto some will embrace it. Executed with characteristic self-assurance and melodic sensibility.
Christopher H James
Samantha Jonscher
Brendan Crabb
Brendan Crabb
More Reviews Online The Growlers City Club
34 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
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THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 â&#x20AC;¢ 35
OPINION Opinion
O G F l ava s
Usher
T
oday, following a quiet revolution, future R&B rivals thenot-unrelated trap as urban music’s dominant sound. And, more than the waywardly arty Frank Ocean, The Weeknd (aka Abel Tesfaye) is its commercial exemplar. Even Britney Spears, that pop cipher, coUrban And R&B News opts the Canadian’s aesthetic on Glory. Ironically, Tesfaye worked with With Cyclone Spears’ original hitmaker Max Martin on Can’t Feel My Face. Now Usher Raymond IV, ‘90s R&B survivor, has repositioned himself as avant-soul on Hard II Love (HIIL) — his much-delayed, and reconfigured, eighth album. Raymond has no reserves about embracing trends — previously going crunk, then EDM. Indeed, he has the voice, and instincts, to adapt. Still, Let Me, with PartyNextDoor’s input, is a Weeknd rip. Raymond — who premiered at 14 with the presumptuous single Call Me A Mack — analyses male indiscretion on HIIL, playing out a psychological drama of contrition and intractability. It opens with Need U — unexpectedly produced by Brit Paul Epworth (Adele), it’s like Michael Jackson’s neo-soul Butterflies, but Sha Sha Kimbo
Business Music
W
hen your club needs a boss I FaceTimed LA producer Sha Sha Kimbo (Nature Tones/Cyber Sonic LA), to talk When Your Club about some of the recording, production and inspiration for Needs A Boss her recent track di Prima. It’s a With Paz peak-time track full of dancehall snares, techno clicks and amping bird calls. It features on CyberSonicLA Vol 001, a selection from artists that feature at SSK and compadre Swelta’s LA club night. The club pressure is 21st century, and is a measure to SSK’s UK mentor, jungle/ drum’n’bass legend L Double. SSK’s production workflow is methodical and di Prima started by forming ten tracks, then slowly working it down to the final one.
36 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
Current production: “... right now I have been using my MacBook, Ableton... I’ve been using Massive a little bit, as always, Battery... For hardware I have been using the Roland Gaia [SH-01] a lot lately. I go to the Redbull music studio in Los Angeles and the engineer that I work with there is amazing... him and I will sit before the session and I will play him some music, and he already knows what it is, and then he’ll pull out some synthesisers for me to experiment with, and that’s the one that’s my favourite [Roland Gaia SH-01].” It’s cathartic to know di Prima was dreamed up on an inspiring journey to San Francisco’s woodlands. The son’gs title is a reference to the San Fran, beatnik-era poet Diane di Prima. “I know when I make something, I want to make it so I can spin it... I prefer to play bangers mostly, just superheavy sounds, but I am not always booked for those slots. So di Prima was like my way of making like a mini banger.”
illwaved. Yet, shrewdly, Raymond keeps things street. The single No Limit is a trap ‘banger’ featuring the ubiquitously lit Young Thug that, in referencing Master P’s once notoriously gaudy stable, extols consumerism. Crash, solely an Australian mega-hit, is Climax-mode hyper-balladry. HIIL’s apotheosis is Tell Me — an atmospheric boudoir jam. Meanwhile, Tesfaye is reinventing himself, uniting with Daft Punk for his new postBalearic single Starboy. He’s showing up Ocean, too. Only a year on from Beauty Behind The Madness, Tesfaye has announced his third album, also entitled Starboy, for November — conventionally confirming details in a press release rather than circulating digital red herrings.
Young Thug
Dance Moves New Currents
I
t’s tempting to suggest that With Tim Finney young rap duo Rae Sremmurd have something to prove with their second album SremmLife 2. Dismissed by many as a tattoo-flashing Kris Kross for the postAutoTune generation, surely their second album is their opportunity to get serious, to upend our expectations with something truly impressive and ambitious. Well, yes and no. Firstly, whatever Rae Sremmurd needed to prove was amply achieved by their debut, whose only real crime was being consistently hooky and fun-filled. Moreover, I’m not persuaded that members Swae Lee and Slim
NION OPINION Opinion
Jxmmi particularly want to prove anything, other than that they offer the best party ever. This doesn’t mean, however, that their second album doesn’t offer a fascinating series of twists on their lean-soaked, pop-trap sound. Where SremmLife was a pretty consistent trip, SremmLife 2 feels sharply bisected between relatively straight-ahead club tracks (Shake It Fast, Set The Roof) and flights of psychedelic fancy. On Look Alive, the smooth Now That I Know and (especially) the trippy Black Beatles, the duo’s combination of amusing meme-cluttered internet generating rhymes, alternately rowdy and yearning singsong choruses and almost ethereal post-trap backing tracks (usually courtesy of Mike Will Made It) achieve a sense of disorienting weightlessness, as if the duo are unsure whether they’re in the middle of a party or a dream. My favourite track is Just Like Us, an unexpectedly empathetic story of a party girl with whose millennial fervour the duo identify, combining shimmering synth gloops with emo-pop vocal melodies worthy of Paramore. Joining Rae Sremmurd in unexpected bouts of tenderness is Young Thug, whose latest eponymous mixtape is as good as the ‘proper’ debut album we’ll probably never get. Jeffery doesn’t dramatically switch up Young Thug’s style or introduce any specific new tricks relative to past efforts like Barter 6, but from its fabulous cover art inwards it’s probably the rapper’s most inventive, colourful and sheerly enjoyable effort. Stylistically, it’s all over the place, as reflected by Thug’s conceit of naming nearly every track after an idol or inspiration that the arrangements typically reference in ways ranging from obvious to oblique. Wyclef Jean rides a lazy reggae bounce, perfect for Thug’s sing-song refrains that already owe something to Jamaican singjays; Future Swag offers Blade Runner tension, ticking hi-hats and doublespeed rapping; the swirling RiRi verges on R&B, though its bass is as thick as a continental shelf. Thug’s voice is the star, though, and even when the songs trend dark (such as on the creeping Swizz Beatz or the menacing Harambe, where Thug equates himself — and perhaps black America — with the doomed gorilla), there’s an undercurrent of giddiness to the performances here, as if he can’t quite suppress the flush of pleasure that comes from putting on such a wild show. Sometimes
the giddiness boils over: on RiRi, Thug slips into dog whines as he implores, “If you want it bae, you gotta earn it/ You gotta ur-ur-urur-ur-ur-earn it”. To those unfamiliar with Thug’s schtick, this will seem ridiculous; a new low in rap’s sub-literate goofing around. To those already inside the tent, it’s a sparkling, dazzling hook delivered with Thug’s trademark, paradoxically precise sloppiness. Best of all is Kanye West. Again, it’s impossible to describe without making it sound like a mess or a joke, but it’s one of the most accomplished and captivating pieces of pop music to emerge in 2016.
It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
And we know everyone.
On sale now. Go to store. themusic.com.au to get your copy today.
THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 37
Live Re Live Reviews
Richi Sambora & Orianthi @ Margaret Court Arena. Pic: Jaz Meadows
Orianthi, Richie Sambora, Sarah McLeod
Margaret Court Arena 27 Sep
Tash Sultana @ Corner Hotel. Pic: Jaz Meadows
Hey Violet @ Margaret Court Arena. Pic: Lucinda Goodwin
5 Seconds Of Summer @ Margaret Court Arena. Pic: Lucinda Goodwin
5 Seconds Of Summer @ Margaret Court Arena. Pic: Lucinda Goodwin
5 Seconds Of Summer @ Margaret Court Arena. Pic: Lucinda Goodwin
38 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
Sarah McLeod of Superjesus fame strums solo on stage, exercising that extraordinary voice and lung capacity via ridiculously sustained notes. A segment of Summertime weaves its way through one of her songs and McLeod wears all black everything with inked upper arms on full display. She seems genuinely pleased with our reception, admits it’s been fun and lets us know she’ll be around for free meet and greets by a specified door following her set. (We can’t resist a walk-by and there’s an excited line of approximately 20 selfie/ thrill seekers.) In vast contrast, Richie Sambora & Orianthi VIP meet and greets cost a whopping $350! Let’s hope these major investors score major hangs with tonight’s headliners and that this is the reason why the pair takes the stage so incredibly late. Someone in the stands hollers, “Hurry up, we wanna go home!’ out of sheer frustration during the unnecessarily lengthy intermission. Fortunately, GA is seated this evening or else tired old legs would’ve packed it in. We take a smoke break to kill some time and, of course, suddenly hear live noise, butt out and race inside. Jeez, it’s pretty early in the set for Livin’ On A Prayer! SUCH a fun sing/ screech-along song — “OhOH! Livin’ on a pra-yer” — but it immediately feels like karaoke with a sick live band for backing. Sambora’s voice isn’t crash hot and we’re unsure why they didn’t fork out for a couple of primo backing singers. After a couple more songs, a punter sidesteps his way along our row and yells stageward, “See ya
later, Richie, this is BULLSHIT!” As he strides purposefully up the stairs toward the exit, said disgruntled dude turns to look over his shoulder and hurls a final insult, “Ya clown!” There are whispers around us of Sambora’s backstage tanties, hence the late start. He carries on about how long their flight was to get here, implying we need to try harder as audience members, and is definitely in a mood. The pair wear coordinated black leather outfits, Orianthi flashing some leg in thighhigh boots. Her waist-length blonde tresses gleam under
See ya later, Richie, this is BULLSHIT! the stage lights and she really is the embodiment of rock’n’roll. The inclusion of Michael Jackson’s Black Or White reminds us how Orianthi was rightfully thrust under the spotlight. The guitar chops on display are insane. Orianthi’s delicate playing during her own song How Do You Sleep? is emotive perfection. She can also certainly carry a tune. But something about this whole set-up is flawed. Whether Sambora’s sulking affected the entire show or this is always how it is, we’re unsure. But one thing we are sure of is that Sambora and Orianthi would’ve been better off sticking to the guitar, on which they are, undeniably, world class virtuosos. Bryget Chrisfield
eviews Live Reviews
Tash Sultana, Lyall Moloney Corner Hotel 28 Sep
A fun game to play when listening to beatboxing artists with drum machines is to try and guess whether the beat of the song is from the machine or from the mouth and tonight this game proves to be difficult. Clad in a hoodie, felt hat and black skin-tight jeans, selfdescribed “sweaty, bald, white dude” Lyall Moloney rocks the stage as well as the boundaries of genre. His vocals make you think modern indie-folk, his guitar brings up disco and reggae every now and then and occasionally, with the help of Mr Junior, they throw down some bars — all on top of a trap beat from his drum machine (or is it his mouth?). And just when you think he can’t do much more, out of nowhere comes a harmonica. Yes, a harmonica. It’s a refreshing sound to hear and fits surprisingly well with his occasional shriek — you know, the one that carries such raw emotion? Moloney makes everyone feel some feelings and somehow also makes us dance. If Moloney’s assortment
She’s the rockstar of loop artists. of instruments amazed you, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Tash Sultana takes to the stage with such a confident-yet-cheery expression — as you would if you were playing the first of three sold out Melbourne shows. Sultana reflects on how, just a year ago, she was an opening act, but now she’s the rockstar of loop artists. With
no less than three guitars, an array of effect pedals, a synth, a drum machine, a panpipe and a melodica — that little keyboard that you blow into to produce a sound — Sultana shows that she can not only play them all, but also work with them all. Sultana’s songs show her journey over her years, with dedications to people from, as she says, “That motherfucker who told me I breached the sound limit at Bourke Street Mall,” to her grandfather who recently passed away and never got to hear a song she wrote for him. When she plays that song, Harvest Love, there are more than a few teary eyes. Going into hits like Notion and Jungle, there are more than a few dancers and when Sultana busts out those ripper guitar solos, there are more than a few people in awe. Combine all of this with the energy and intimacy she performs with and you have Tash Sultana, Queen of loop and global star. Samuel Connor
5 Seconds of Summer, Hey Violet Margaret Court Arena 29 Sep Hey Violet’s lead singer sports bubblegum-coloured hair and bounces around the stage as the group cover Don’t Let Me Down by The Chainsmokers. The brutally honest lyrics in Fuqboi strike a chord since, undoubtedly, dealing with a “fuckboi” is a relatable situation to a stadium full of teenage girls. “I’d rather cut off my tongue/than let you kiss me with yours,” vocalist Rena Lovelis chimes, feeding an eclectic energy into the audience. Piercing screams gradually turn into a crackling drone in our ears as 5 Seconds Of Summer step on stage. There’s definitely a reason why people tell you
The band give us many reasons why they shouldn’t be mistaken for just four pretty faces.
not to mess with this type of fandom; the sheer scale of admiration from this crowd is bewildering. It’s abundantly clear, even before the opening song Hey Everybody! starts, that these four 20-something boys from Sydney reign supreme. At one point, guitarist Michael Clifford only has to clear his throat, after staring at the audience for two minutes, to make the stadium erupt. Frequently mistaken as a boy band, the quartet solidifies their pop-punk status in an open stage set-up with scattered amps and a raised drum kit platform. Throughout the concert, the boys aren’t flashy, neither do they bust out dance moves, but their blue-eyed rockstar charm captivates the entire arena. Of course, the band give us many reasons why they shouldn’t be mistaken for just four pretty faces — each member proving themselves as a skilled instrumentalist and singer. Luke Hemmings and Clifford shred it out in a couple of guitar solo battles, while drummer Ashton Irwin persistently keeps tunes tight, flicking off beads of sweat in all directions. The groovy rhythm guitar in Girls Talk Boys emphasises the counterbeat of the bass ripped out by Calum Hood, as the whole band collectively shift between vocal phrases of falsetto and (occasionally harmonised) belted out chorus chants.
Hemmings and Clifford also take turns on a rustic, white piano as they alternate offering stripped-back segments of chosen songs, providing a nice contrast to their overall high energy delivery. We can all sense the drawing end of their set, as the band’s more popular hits start to emerge. They smash out Amnesia, What I Like About You and She’s Kinda Hot before closing with their breakthrough hit She Looks So Perfect. Lillie Siegenthaler
Oh Mercy The Workers Club 30 Sep RVG ride a wave of New York punk and UK goth as a swarm of Friday nighters hit The Workers Club for tonight’s Rolling Stone Live Lodge instalment. Frontwoman Romy Vager is a towering silhouette of fast fingers and raw emotion — expertly hitting the guitar with Robert Smith levels of nonchalance. Vager’s aloofness could be mistaken for disinterest or even moody boredom, but her demeanour slots in perfectly with the likes of Patti Smith and Rowland S Howard. Heart Paste encapsulates the overall sound of RGV perfectly, as the band go above and beyond the call of duty for a pub gig support act. And so begins the special edition line-up of Oh Mercy. Indeed it is very special, as lead singer Alex Gow has brought along the Jamaican bobsled team of alt-Aus royalty. Opening solo with Lady Eucalyptus, Gow slowly welcomes a seemingly endless list of new faces. With a plentiful scattering of new Oh Mercy tracks, Saskwatch’s Liam McGorry, Ceci Dowling of Hoy and even Robert McComb of The Triffids fame make an appearance. Someone in the crowd quips that tonight is really more like “Alex Gow THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 39
Live Re Live Reviews
More Reviews Online theMusic.com.au/ music/live-reviews
and friends” than an Oh Mercy gig. This sentiment is proven wholly appropriate when Gow leaves the stage to mingle in the audience with mates, while The Panics frontman Jae Laffer takes to the stage. “I consider it a birthday present to me,” says Gow, as Laffer premieres a new song by The Panics for the crowd. The punters attempt to sing Happy Birthday — it doesn’t go well. The round robin of ubertalent continues when Olivia Bartley (aka Olympia) is welcomed with riotous applause. The duo are a perfect pairing: Bartley’s soulful crooning with Gow’s twangy swagger is
inspired. Both have a masterful command of their instrument and, in Let Me Be Him, this connection is proven tenfold. Gow finally welcomes his Oh Mercy understudies with an explosion of musicality and audience delight. McGorry, Dowling and McComb are all on board, plus local legend Laura Jean is at the bassist’s helm. Without You is an absolute treat for fans, but Gow proves that tonight, more than anything, is about having a good time with your mates. The totally unique sense of camaraderie and unadulterated enjoyment is utterly contagious. It is something that so many try
Harts @ Corner Hotel A.B. Original @ The Workers Club Kllo @ The Gasometer Hotel
Oh Mercy @ The Workers Club. Pic: Yana Amur
40 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
to fabricate and pull out of thin air, but never succeed. Gow and co have rediscovered the lost art of a pub gig get-together. Here’s hoping they’re not the only ones. “Alex Gow has brought along the Jamaican bobsled team of alt-Aus royalty.” Joe Dolan
Arts Reviews Arts Reviews
Amanda Knox
The
Magnificent Seven Film In cinemas
★★★½
Amanda Knox Film Streaming now on Netflix
★★★★ A quirky, kooky girl, young and pretty but a bit inexperienced in the ways of the world, in the first flush of a relationship but otherwise alone in a foreign country far from her family and friends, the support network where she would normally find solace and guidance. This seems to be the truth of Amanda Knox, the young American student who in 2007 became the prime suspect in the brutal murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher in the Italian town of Perugia. However, this is far from the picture that existed of Knox for more than eight years as the world came to know her as a deadly, sexually rapacious and emotionally inert femme fatale. The success of Making A Murderer has revealed a massive enthusiasm for true crime programming and Netflix’s documentary into Amanda Knox’s conviction one of the most high-profile miscarriages of justices of recent years - once again reveals the systemic abuses which can lead to wrongful imprisonment. Even more illuminating is this documentary’s look at the media feeding frenzy that saw Knox demonised with such unfounded hyperbole that it convinced the public this ordinary girl was a sex crazed, drug-fuelled harpy who orchestrated Kercher’s death to satisfy her lust for violence. Journalist Nick Pisa, who authored many of the most outrageous tabloid stories about Knox, comes across as flippant and incredulous, claiming that corroborating sources and fact checking would have lost him precious scoops. In fact, it lost Amanda Knox eight years of her life. Shots of Knox smiling, kissing her boyfriend and generally not appearing all that upset were carefully edited for maximum vilification. Without objectivity, it seems likely anyone could be framed to look guilty and it’s a just irony that Piza comes across in this documentary more unflatteringly than he probably intended.
Magnificent is perhaps too complimentary a term to describe The Magnificent Seven, a remake of the much-loved 1960 western starring Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen (itself an adaptation of Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic Seven Samurai). But neither could you call this new version mediocre — it’s too capably made and entertainingly performed for that. So let’s split the difference and use another M-word: moderately entertaining. The story of this Magnificent Seven is essentially the same as the original’s but with a few 21st century updates. The main difference is the multicultural make-up of the title team. For one thing, Denzel Washington
The Magnificent Seven
is leading the charge as bounty hunter Sam Chisholm, who is drawn to defend the people of Rose Creek from ruthless bandits, partly because it’s the right thing to do and partly for more personal reasons. “I’ve been offered a lot for my work, but never everything,” he says when he’s approached by desperate widow Emma Cullen (feisty Haley Bennett), whose husband was gunned down by cold-blooded robber baron Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard, looking and acting like greed has corroded his soul). But Chisholm can’t take on Bogue and his army of hired goons alone, so en route to Rose Creek he assembles six comrades to stand by his side. First to sign up is Faraday (Chris Pratt), quick on the draw and quicker with a quip. Then there’s the wonderfully named Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), a sharpshooter haunted by his Civil War bloodshed, and his partner Billy Rocks (Korean superstar Byung-Hun Lee), a whiz with knives. Bearish mountain man Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio), “Texican” outlaw Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier), a Native American archer, round out the septet. It’s a bit of an issue that these seven magnificent men don’t make their motivations for joining the fight all that clear. The movie makes up for it somewhat with some good-natured in-fighting among the gang, quickly and smartly creating a believable camaraderie between these guys. Despite a few modern trappings, The Magnificent Seven remains very much an old school western, one that will appeal to fans of straight-shooting and slightly tongue-incheek macho swagger. Guy Davis
Maxim Boon
THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 41
OPINION Opinion
Howzat!
Local Music By Jeff Jenkins Picture This Howzat! was thinking recently about the great lost art of rock photography. Everyone with an iPhone thinks they’re a photographer these days. But there’s more to taking pictures than just point and shoot. Greg Noakes is one of the great rock photographers, a true artist. “A lot of photographers took pictures of myself and Men At Work in the beginning,” Colin Hay recalls. “Greg Noakes is the only one I can remember.” And Cold Chisel’s Don Walker adds: “Greg took all our photos for a few years.” He shot the iconic covers of You’re Thirteen, You’re Beautiful & You’re Mine, Breakfast At Sweethearts and East. Greg’s pictorial journey started in Newcastle, aged 12, when he won a Polaroid Land Camera on the TV show Pick A Box. In the ‘70s, he worked for Spunky magazine and TV Week, and freelanced for Juke, using the pseudonym “Drew”. Now, Greg has gathered his pictures in a book, Famous People Who Have Met Me . It’s packed with dynamic shots, with a distinct sense of humour and surprises that bring the subjects to life. There are striking images of The Church,
42 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
The Sports, Models, Michael Hutchence, Hunters & Collectors, Dragon, Skyhooks, Joe Camilleri, Doc Neeson and many others. The book celebrates a more innocent and naive time, when bands weren’t surrounded by minders and didn’t worry so much about image. And there was no such thing as photoshop. Not that you could describe AC/ DC as innocent. Greg recounts a 1977 encounter when he met the band at the Royal Standard Hotel in West Melbourne. A few hours later, they ventured to a nearby lane for a series of shots before returning to the pub. When Bon Scott eventually stumbled onto William Street - into peak hour traffic - a driver blared his horn. Bon responded by baring his bum. Greg is still taking pictures. As the great American photographer Annie Leibovitz says, “One doesn’t stop seeing.
Men At Work. Pic: Greg Noakes, 2011 One doesn’t stop framing. It doesn’t turn off and on. It’s on all the time.” But unfortunately, Greg rarely ventures into the rock world these days - most of his work is as a stills photographer in TV and film.
Going Overboard Deborah Conway and Willy Zygier’s Arts Centre gig was brilliant. Willy delivered some seriously funky riffs in their take on Do-ReMi’s Man Overboard. How ‘bout a dance remix? It’d work.
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Comedy / G The Guide
Wed 05
Beyond Contempt
Big Scary + Dreller: 170 Russell, Melbourne Fight Club + Theo Carbo Band: 303, Northcote
Cybernetix + Duvateen + High Body: Bar Open, Fitzroy Emma Louise
The Music Presents Emma Louise: 7 Oct The Workers Club Geelong; 8 Oct Corner Hotel Drapht: 14 Oct 170 Russell Lisa Mitchell: 14 Oct Howler Kylie Auldist: 31 Oct Max Watt’s; 4 Nov Suttons House of Music Ballarat; 17 Nov Sooki Lounge Belgrave Taasha Coates & The Melancholy Sweethearts: 12 Nov Northcote Social Club A Day On The Green: 12 & 13 Nov Mt Duneed Estate Drysdale
Ball Park Music + The Creases + Sahara Beck: Barwon Club, South Geelong Rob Snarski + Anna Cordell: Bella Union, Carlton South Black Mountain + Miles Brown + Medicine Voice: Corner Hotel, Richmond Diamonds Of Neptune + Gods + Twisted Willows: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy Dzia: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford The Coathangers + Suss Cunts + Crop Top + Pappy: Northcote Social Club, Northcote Joe Bonamassa: Palais Theatre, St Kilda Doc Halibut: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick Andy Phillips + The Catalyst Rock: Seaford Hotel, Seaford
Dan Sultan: 13 Nov 170 Russell
Open Mic Night: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick
Ben Lee: 18 Nov Caravan Music Club Oakleigh
The Bombay Royale: The Curtin, Carlton
Ne Obliviscaris: 25 Nov 170 Russell
The Saints + Andy Kentler: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood
The Calling: 25 Nov Max Watt’s Bell X1: 2 Dec The Prince Caligula’s Horse: 3 Dec Corner Hotel The Avalanches: 3 Jan Melbourne Town Hall Grouplove: 6 Jan Melbourne Town Hall
Marianne Digs + Sam Reiher + The September Gurls + Julian McKenzie: The Old Bar, Fitzroy Jarrow + The Beegles + Frances Fox: The Tote (Front Bar), Collingwood
Captain Apples
Snarky Puppy: 8 Apr Melbourne Recital Centre
Bless You The Brunswick Hotel is pushing live tunes all day Saturday for Snivints-Fest. There are 14 bands on the line-up including Beyond Contempt, Udder Ubductees, Australian Kingswood Factory and Three Quarter Beast.
Thu 06
Shining Bird: The Eastern, Ballarat East
Creeks + Tripmonks + Fifth Friend + Ten Dollar$: Bar Open, Fitzroy
The Saints + Terry: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood
Ball Park Music + The Creases + Sahara Beck: Barwon Club, South Geelong
Felicity Cripps + Open Swimmer: The Gasometer Hotel (Upstairs), Collingwood
Girl Friday: Charles Weston Hotel (Front Bar), Brunswick
The Wax Eaters + Cut The Kite String + The Devours: The Old Bar, Fitzroy
Ladyhawke + Twin Fires: Corner Hotel, Richmond
Ogo Poggo + Biscotti: The
T.K. Reeve: Edinburgh Castle Hotel (Front Bar), Brunswick
Big Scary
Blue Moon #4 feat. Poolhouse + Kwasi + Dex + Dos Boy + Peezo: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy
The Lumineers: 19 Apr Arts Centre Melbourne
Alex Lahey + Frida + Oliphant Wright: Karova Lounge, Ballarat The Delta Riggs: Kay St, Traralgon Andy & Aaron: Laika Bar, St Kilda
Them Apples Captain Apples are releasing their long-awaited debut album, with support from the superb Amarina Waters and Alice Williams. You can catch the eight-piece modern folk-waltz troupe at Wesley Anne on Friday.
Fast Eddy Boyle Band: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East Hume Blues Club feat. Ivor Simpson Kennedy + Shake Shack Boogie Band + DJ Baz Maxwell: Musicland, Fawkner Melody Pool + Peter Bibby + Angie McMahon: Northcote Social Club, Northcote Disco Volante feat. Gav Whitehouse + James Winter + Post Percy + more: Onesixone, Prahran
Scare Campaign Crowd favourites Big Scary will be hitting 170 Russell on Wednesday to share their third album Animal. For the show, the Melbourne duo will play as a five-piece and be supported by Dreller.
Sam Newton + Gretta Ziller: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick The Burning Roaches + Rhysics + Keggin: The Tote (Band Room), Collingwood Rolling Stone Live Lodge - Guitar Masterclass feat. Ashley Naylor + Alexander Laska: The Workers Club, Fitzroy
Grand Element + Cyclone Diablo + Follow No Rules + Daniel Jeary: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick DMA’s + Bad//Dreems: The Croxton, Thornbury Chastity Belt + Batpiss + Lalic: The Curtin, Carlton
44 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
Post Office Hotel, Coburg Enslaved: The Prince, St Kilda Melbourne Festival feat. Kaurna Cronin + Ben Whiting + Rowena Wise: The Toff In Town, Melbourne
Gigs / Live The Guide
Blue Eyes Cry: Catfish (Front Bar), Fitzroy
Kingfisha
Knock Off Drinks with Chris Wilson: Cherry Bar (5.15pm), Melbourne
Midnight Alibi + Darcee Fox + Katana Cartel: Cherry Bar, Melbourne
Akmal: Commercial Hotel, South Morang Steph Brett: Compass Pizza Bar, Brunswick East
On Offer Brisbane dub and reggae crew Kingfisha have returned with their second album, Offered It Up. They’re playing the new cuts at Northcote Social Club on Saturday with support acts Kooyeh and Dub Princess. Midnight Express with DJ Prequel & Edd Fisher: The Toff In Town (Carriage Room), Melbourne Lean Dreams feat. Manic Pixie + Big Boss + Sofie Roze: The Toff In Town, Melbourne Belgrado + Miss Destiny + Spotting + UBIK: The Tote (Band Room), Collingwood Cardinels + The Cities + Soul + The Orphans: The Tote (Upstairs), Collingwood Brooke Taylor + Delsinki Records: The Westernport Hotel, Phillip Island Rolling Stone Live Lodge feat. Ella Hooper & Her New Magic Band + Ben Salter: The Workers Club, Fitzroy Rich Davies + Ayleen O’Hanlon: Tramway Hotel, North Fitzroy
Bela Chase + Moodie: Long Play, Fitzroy North
The Vibrajets + The Here Heres: Lyrebird Lounge, Ripponlea
Boom Crash Opera + Busy Kingdom: Memo Music Hall, St Kilda Ace of Spades + Holy Diver + Triumph Of Steel: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford
Big Scary + Dreller + Braille Face: Corner Hotel, Richmond
The Belligerents + Wild Honey + The Neighbourhood Youth: Northcote Social Club, Northcote
Ben Wright Smith: Ding Dong Lounge, Melbourne
In Store with Kit Convict & Thee
Louie & The Pride: Edinburgh Castle Hotel (Front Bar), Brunswick
Sam Newton: Goldmines Hotel (Billyroy’s Blues Bar), Bendigo Good Boy + Smoke Rings + Jarrow: Grace Darling Hotel, Collingwood The Screaming Jets: Hallam Hotel, Hallam Kinky Friedman: Harvester Moon Cafe, Bellarine Northeast Party House + Polish Club + Twinsy: Karova Lounge, Ballarat PSY + Minimal: Kay St, Traralgon
Friday’s Child Girl Friday, aka Tracey Hogue, was brought up on Billie, Ella, Fred and Ginger. Armed with a mellow voice and electric uke, she’ll play blues, jazz and delightfully titled parlour songs at Charles Weston, Thursday.
Melody Pool
Twin Fires + Winter Moon: Penny Black, Brunswick Marshall Okell & The Pride: Pistol Pete’s Food n Blues, Geelong
Ball Park Music + The Creases + Sahara Beck: 170 Russell, Melbourne
241 Who doesn’t love a double headliner? At Northcote Social Club this Thursday dark old soul Melody Pool and blue balladeer Peter Bibby are sharing the marquee as part of their joint national tour.
Chris Wilson + Shane O’Mara: Caravan Music Club, Oakleigh
Damien Leith: Lighthouse Theatre, Warrnambool Jeremy Hanleys’ Honk-A-Tonk + Max Teakle & Honky-Tonky Friends: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East
Outdoors + Maureen: The Gasometer Hotel (Upstairs), Collingwood The Delta Riggs: The Grand Hotel, Mornington Grim Rhythm + Green Tin + Electric Mud + Lizard Queen: The Old Bar, Fitzroy Arj Barker: The Palms at Crown, Southbank
La Dance Macabre with Brunswick Massive: Rainbow Hotel, Fitzroy
Mares + Pansey: The Post Office Hotel, Coburg
Pup: Reverence Hotel, Footscray
Escape The Fate + Dream On Dreamer + Danger! Earthquake! + Apollo On Fire: The Prince, St Kilda
Revolver Fridays with Discourse + Various DJs: Revolver Upstairs, Prahran Soul Sacrifice - A Tribute To Santana: Satellite Lounge, Wheelers Hill Alleged Associates + Zerafina Zara: Smokehouse 101, Maribyrnong Alex Lahey: Sooki Lounge, Belgrave
Global Safari with+Eddie Mac: Belleville, Melbourne Tribute to Prince with fDeluxe: Bird’s Basement, Melbourne
Way Dynamic + Dianas + The Great
Intergalactic Space Jams feat. Micro Jackson + Various DJs: Gin Lane, Belgrave
Fri 07
Terrasur + Wombatuque: Bella Union, Carlton South
The Saints + Mike Noga: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood
The Heartache State + Draught Dodgers: Flying Saucer Club, Elsternwick
Tania Bosak + Friends: Open Studio, Northcote
In Store with Geoff Achison: Basement Discs (12.45pm), Melbourne
Wilson & White: The Drunken Poet, West Melbourne
Grandhour + Degrees Of Separation + Eat The Damn Orange: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy
Astral Skulls + The Only Boys + Hi-Tec Emotions + Avoid: Yarra Hotel, Abbotsford
Belgrado: Bar Open, Fitzroy
Chastity Belt + Loose Tooth + Baby Blue: The Curtin, Carlton
Girl Friday
Terrible Two: Off The Hip, Melbourne
Melody Pool + Peter Bibby: Baha Tacos, Rye
DMA’s + Bad//Dreems: The Croxton, Thornbury
DJ Ernie Dee: Edinburgh Castle Hotel (Beer Garden), Brunswick
David Bramble: Wesley Anne (Front Bar), Northcote
Melina Twyman + Bateau + Nina Gallagher + Tasmin Cantwell: 303, Northcote
Mojo Pin + Breaking Kebabs + The Sweets + Guy Perkins: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick
The Delvenes + Squid Ink + Man City Sirens + The Fluffs: Tago Mago, Thornbury Greeves: The B.East, Brunswick East Logic Defies Logic + The Scoundrels + Vadge Dagger + The Balls: The Bendigo, Collingwood
Melbourne Festival feat. Cate Le Bon + Ella Thompson: The Toff In Town, Melbourne Sleazy Listening with Arks + Richard Kelly + Hysteric + K. Hoop: The Toff In Town (Carriage Room), Melbourne Poprocks At The Toff with Dr Phil Smith: The Toff In Town, Melbourne Exek + The UV Race + Bent + The Shifters: The Tote (Band Room), Collingwood Honest Crooks + Overlord + Scourge + Capital Enemy + Cast Down: The Tote (Upstairs), Collingwood
THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 45
Comedy / G The Guide
Rolling Stone Live Lodge: The Future is Now feat. Luke Million + Lastlings + Nico Ghost + Sarah Connor: The Workers Club, Fitzroy
The Belafontes + Lorikeet + Wild Meadows + Furlong: The Old Bar, Fitzroy
Crepes
Arj Barker: The Palms at Crown, Southbank
Emma Louise + Fractures + Gretta Ray: The Workers Club Geelong, Geelong
Invisible Threads + Levitating Churches: The Post Office Hotel, Coburg
Kingfisha: Torquay Hotel, Torquay
Phil Para: The Prince (Public Bar), St Kilda
The Bean Project: Wesley Anne (Front Bar), Northcote
Melbourne Festival feat. James Kenyon + Brendan Welch: The Toff In Town, Melbourne
Antwon: Yah Yah’s, Fitzroy 2AM Slot with Belgrado: Yah Yah’s, Fitzroy
In The Carriage with DJ JNett: The Toff In Town, Melbourne
Holy Moses Heartache + Big League + Gretta Ziller: Yarra Hotel, Abbotsford
The House deFrost with Andee Frost: The Toff In Town (Ballroom), Melbourne
Sat 08 Mayday Parade + The Early November: Arrow On Swanston (All Ages), Carlton
Crepes
Melody Pool + Peter Bibby: Baby Black Cafe, Bacchus Marsh
Crepes are capping off a massive 2016, seeing off guitarist Sam Cooper (until December) and previewing some new material at Bar Open on Saturday. Emma Russack, Pure Moods and Environments will be there too.
Ocean Alley: Baha Tacos, Rye Crepes + Emma Russack + Pure Moods + Environments: Bar Open, Fitzroy
Ten Thousand + All The Animals + Bear The Mammoth: Cherry Bar, Melbourne Mitchell Paxton Ward: Compass Pizza Bar, Brunswick East Emma Louise + Fractures + Gretta Ray: Corner Hotel, Richmond As a Rival + Under The Cut + Gladstone + Cardinels: Ding Dong Lounge, Melbourne Miles Brown
Black & Tan Miles Brown, gothic thereminist of electronic rock band The Night Terrors, will be supporting Canadian psyche rockers Black Mountain at Corner Hotel on Wednesday night along with Sydney’s Medicine Voice.
The Mane Event feat. The Black Sorrows + Chris Russell’s Chicken Walk + more: Barwon Club, South Geelong Amarillo + Ayleen O’Hanlon + Rich Davies + Anthony Atkinson & The Running Mates: Bella Union, Carlton South Tribute to Prince with fDeluxe: Bird’s Basement, Melbourne Chris Wilson + Shane O’Mara: Caravan Music Club, Oakleigh Steve Boyd’s Rum Reverie: Catfish (Front Bar), Fitzroy
The Knave: Edinburgh Castle Hotel (Beer Garden), Brunswick Blister Festival #2 feat. Dreadnaught + Mason + Envenomed: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy Renee Geyer + Abbey Stone: Flying Saucer Club, Elsternwick The Screaming Jets: Gateway Hotel, Corio Kit Convict & Thee Terrible Two: Gin Lane, Belgrave Joe Mungovan + Reilly Fitzalan: Grace Darling Hotel, Collingwood Pacific Blues Union: Hotel Shamrock (Gold Dust Lounge), Bendigo Teeth & Tongue + Gabriella Cohen + Time For Dreams: Howler, Brunswick Tetrahedra + DemiSeventy + Laneous + Dj Big Rig: Hugs & Kisses, Melbourne Harts + The Hunted Crows: Karova Lounge, Ballarat The Blown Cones: Labour In Vain, Fitzroy Waz E James Band: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East Loop Lounge with DJ Tropical Breeze: Loop, Melbourne
Allysha Joy: Charles Weston Hotel (Front Bar), Brunswick
Ufomammut + Monolord + YLVA + Merchant + Bonnie Mercer: Max Watt’s, Melbourne
Katchafire: Chelsea Heights Hotel, Aspendale Gardens
Kinky Friedman + Nelson + Little Jewford + Mickey Raphael: Memo Music Hall, St Kilda
46 • THE MUSIC • 5TH OCTOBER 2016
Drive Time Commute + Disasters + Uncle Geezer + Headlopper + The Menace + Zen Robotic + Sarah Eida: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford Kingfisha + Kooyeh + Dub Princess: Northcote Social Club, Northcote Jackie Bornstein: Open Studio, Northcote Marshall Okell & The Pride: Rainbow Hotel, Fitzroy Pandora’s feat. Kirsty Webeck: Reverence Hotel, Footscray Ellie Goulding + Years & Years + Asta: Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne Logistics + Royalston: Rubix The Venue, Brunswick The Badloves: Satellite Lounge, Wheelers Hill JMS Harrison: Some Velvet Morning, Clifton Hill
Heavy & Hammered II feat. Cosmic Psychos + Aya Aya + A Basket Of Mammoths + Black Jesus + Black Rheno + Degrees Of Separation + Derailment + Diploid + Don Fernando + Grindhouse + In Malice’s Wake + Mutton + Mystic Eyes + Order of the Oblique + Palace Of The King + Peeping Tom + Powerline Sneakers + The Seminal Rats + Sunslave + TTTDC + Wildeornes + Zombie Motors Wrecking Yard: The Tote, Collingwood The Delta Riggs: The Westernport Hotel, Phillip Island Rolling Stone Live Lodge: Future Spa 20th Anniversary Show with The Fauves + The Favourite Game: The Workers Club, Fitzroy Rolling Stone Live Lodge - Afternoon Delight feat. Draught Dodgers + The Casanovas + Kit Warhurst: The Workers Club, Fitzroy Crooked Space: The Workers Club Geelong, Geelong 60th Birthday in concert with John St. Peeters: Thornbury Theatre, Thornbury Davies West + Mitch Power + The Scrims: Wesley Anne (Band Room), Northcote Selki: Wesley Anne (Front Bar), Northcote Northeast Party House: Wrangler Studios, West Footscray
Rat & Co
Them Rumblin’ Bones: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick Kairo: The B.East, Brunswick East Disco Puppets + The Braves + Big Volcano + Terror Nullius + The Devours: The Bendigo, Collingwood Snivints Fest feat. Blue Balls + Udder Ubductees + Australian Kingswood Factory + Stoned To Death + Jerkbeast + Wing Attack Plan R + Sexgrimes + Maniaxe + Three Quarter Beast + The Balls + Beyond Contempt + The Fckups + Vulture Culture + The Nuremberg Code: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick New Lease feat. Bent + Dag + No Sister + Symbolic Order: The Curtin, Carlton Moosejaw Rifle Club + Brian Hogan: The Drunken Poet, West Melbourne Alex Lahey + Soft Corporate + Frida: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood
I Hear A Rat Rat & Co, along with some special guests, are performing at The Workers Club this Sunday as part of the venue’s Rolling Stone Live Lodge series. The ambientelectronic three-piece are testing songs from their upcoming full-length.
Gigs / Live The Guide
2AM Slot with Telegram: Yah Yah’s, Fitzroy Localles + Smoke Rings + Crossfire Hurricane: Yah Yah’s, Fitzroy
The Vacant Lot + Red Red Krovvy + The Shifters + Whipper: Yarra Hotel, Abbotsford
Melbourne Polytechnic Fundraiser feat. Vacant Image + Crooked Space + All We Need + more: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy The Belfast Cowboys feat. Joe Creighton + Gallie + Andy White: Flying Saucer Club, Elsternwick
Seesaw + Pure Moods + Saint Sauna: The Old Bar, Fitzroy
Slim Pickens + Girlatones: The Post Office Hotel, Coburg
Katchafire: The Prince, St Kilda
Akmal: York on Lilydale, Mt Evelyn
Andy Phillips & The Cadillac Walk: Goldmines Hotel, Bendigo
Elwood Blues Club All Stars: The Prince (Public Bar), St Kilda
Sun 09
Ocean Alley + Tommy Castles + Young Monks: Howler, Brunswick
Camille O’Sullivan: The Toff In Town, Melbourne
Mayday Parade + The Early November + Harbours: 170 Russell, Melbourne
Matt Dwyer & Magnatones: Labour In Vain, Fitzroy
Renelophus + High Nights + Atomic Cockroach: Bar Open, Fitzroy
Invisible Threads + Asset Stripper + Overtime + Attacked By Seagulls: The Tote (Band Room), Collingwood
Devil Goat Family Band: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East
Mane Event feat. The Black Sorrows + Chris Russell’s Chicken Walk: Barwon Club, South Geelong
The Levellers + Round Mountain Girls: Max Watt’s, Melbourne
Tribute to Prince with fDeluxe:
Jazz Flute Space Man + Jade Alice: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford
Jarrow
Primo + Red Red Krovvy: The Tote (Front Bar), Collingwood Reilly Fitzalan + Joe Mungovan: The Westernport Hotel, Phillip Island Rolling Stone Live Lodge - Afternoon Delight feat. Rat & Co + Corin + Gonzo Jones: The Workers Club, Fitzroy Rolling Stone Live Lodge feat. Kasey Chambers + Grizzlee Train: The Workers Club, Fitzroy
B-retta Steph Brett has been playing around Melbourne for nearly ten years and is returning to the cosy stage at Compass Pizza on Friday to play her original songs and favourite covers on classical guitar.
The Bowers: Tramway Hotel, North Fitzroy
Liam O’Leary + Zoltan Fesco: Open Studio, Northcote
Celia Church: Wesley Anne (Front Bar), Northcote
Funny at The Brunny Comedy Show: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick
Afternoon Show with Freya Josephine Hollick + Friends: Yarra Hotel, Abbotsford
Call It In with Instant Peterson + Dylan Michel: The Toff In Town, Melbourne
Mon 10
Tue 11
Melbourne Polytechnic Recitals: 303, Northcote
L7: 170 Russell, Melbourne
Monique Araujo + Dada Ono + Given Names: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy
Dream Team Jarrow have dropped stellar album 2003 Dream and to celebrate they are playing The Tote every Wednesday in October. This week they will be joined by The Beegles and Francis Fox.
Steph Brett
Renelophus
Make It Up Club feat. No Wave + Ogopogo: Bar Open, Fitzroy The Slugg + Sordid Ordeal: Cherry Bar, Melbourne Frnkiero & The Patience + Walter Schreifels: Corner Hotel, Richmond Uncle Bobby + Hemm + Ocdantar: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy No Sister + Plaster of Paris + UBIK + Dogood: Howler, Brunswick
Alesa Lajana + Paul Reid + Nick Costello: Open Studio, Northcote
Irish Session: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East
Dogapalooza feat. Thelma Plum + The Little Stevies + Sam Lohs + more: Burnley Park (10am), Richmond
Greg Walsh: Pera, Brighton
Symphony X: Max Watt’s, Melbourne
Melody Pool + Peter Bibby: Caravan Music Club, Oakleigh
Shadowboard: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick
Bird’s Basement, Melbourne
Tom Dockray: Catfish (Front Bar), Fitzroy Cherry Blues with Phil Para Band + Fast Eddy Boyle Band: Cherry Bar (2pm), Melbourne
Jules Boult: Rainbow Hotel, Fitzroy
Geoff Achison : Royal Oak Hotel, Fitzroy North The Thin White Ukes: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick
Lake Element + Geo + Heavy Heads: Cherry Bar, Melbourne
Good Counsel + Universal Outcasts + Bear Kick + Southbound Snake Charmers: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick
Peny Bohan: Compass Pizza Bar, Brunswick East
Sascha Klave + The Hornets: The Drunken Poet, West Melbourne
DJ Luck & MC Neat + The Artful Dodger + Cup & String: Corner Hotel, Richmond
Digging for Berry Street with Tram Cops + Tuc + Hemm + Will Povey + Kodachrome + Back Burners: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood Afternoon Show with The Paul Kidney Experience + BBQ Hague: The Old Bar, Fitzroy
Rock You Renelophus are launching a new video clip for their track A Rock For You at Bar Open this Sunday. High Nights and Atomic Cockroach are billed to support the alt-funk reggae revivalists.
Monday Night Mass feat. Laura Jean + Gabriella Cohen + Avoid: Northcote Social Club, Northcote
Wet Weather Play + Zuzu: Open Studio, Northcote Brunswick Discovery: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick Lakyn: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood The Girl Fridas + Deadbeat Club + Slow Job + KT Spit + Piss Factory + Hayley Couper: The Old Bar, Fitzroy Melbourne Festival feat. Gwenno + Totally Mild: The Toff In Town, Melbourne Carriage 252 feat. Logo: The Toff In Town, Melbourne Roller One + Ned Wellyn: Tramway Hotel, North Fitzroy
The Breakfast Club with JMCEE + Steph Yeah + Various DJs: Onesixone, Prahran
THE MUSIC 5TH OCTOBER 2016 • 47
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