The Music (Melbourne) Issue #167 by TheMusic.com.au

30.11.16 Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture

Melbourne / Free / Incorporating

ELL X1 Y TOUR: B N HONE W O R B T: HOT EARTH N CABARE O N A M TALLEST E H T : R TOU

G N I G N I TO P BR O H P I H Y T E N L L A AVA V E H T D BEYON

Issue

167

2 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 â&#x20AC;¢ 3

4 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

Wesley Anne Bar, Restaurant, Etc.

Wednesday 30 November

THE EDINBURGH CASTLE

HOTEL

--------------------------------------------------------

TRIVIA w/Sparx,

FREE

7.30pm, Band Room

MON

R O O & W I N E - $ 1 4 .9 9

TUE

SPONSORED BY HAWKERS.

Friday 2 December ------------------------------------------------------------

Roo & Wine $14.99

12 BURGER NIGHT

BEER GARDEN FREE

W E E K LY

681 SYDNEY RD. BRUNSWICK, (03)9386 7580 WWW.EDINBURGHCASTLE.NET.AU

TUESDAYS

2 FOR1 PIZZAS! DINE IN ONLY

THURSDAYS MONDAY

ROO & WINE 14 MONDAY MONDAY MONDAY

.99

CRAFT BEER & PIZZA $15 (SMALL PIZZA AND BEER OF THE WEEK)

BURGERS 12 $

TUESDAY

$ T PIE NIGH 12

EDNESD

C THUR 1 DE 6.30p PUGSLEY Front Bar D BUZZAR DUO m,

WITH ADAM DUFFY

FRI 2 DEC

LIVE MUSIC EVERY WEEK

H ES FR OR F

8 ‘8 SU

S ER CK

RMA 12 PA NIGHT

BEER

PUB + BINGO TREV & SPARX O'CLOCK from 6pm

from 5.30pm

SAT 3 DEC

ALEXIS NICOLE 6.30pm, Front Bar

FREE

MON TO THU FRI TO SUN CHARLESWESTONHOTEL@GMAIL.COM 3PM - LATE NOON - LATE OR GIVE US A BELL ON 9380 8777

LIVE MUSIC WEEKLY WEDNESDAY 30 NOV

CHEESEY WEDNESDAY LIP SYNC BATTLE

7.30PM / FREE / FRONT BAR

THURSDAY 1 DEC

TRIVIA

7PM / FREE / FRONT BAR

FRIDAY 2 DEC

DAVID BRAMBLE 7PM / FREE / FRONT BAR SATURDAY 3 DEC

VANDERLAY 7 / FREE / FRONT BAR PM

SUNDAY 4 DEC

HEARING PAINT (SOLO) 5 / FREE / FRONT BAR PM

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 5

6 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

ART S CENTRE MELBOURNE PRESENT S

WHITE CLOUD:

TIM FINN

BY TIM FINN AND KEN DUNCUM WITH FILM BY SUE HEALEY

A MUSING MEDITATIVE PERFORMANCE ABOUT FAMILY, IDENTIT Y AND HOME.

13 – 15 JANUARY ART S CENTRE MELBOURNE, FAIRFAX S TUDIO BOOK NOW ART S CENTRE MELBOURNE THE TH THE E MUS M MUSI MUSIC USIC U IC 3 30 30TH 0TH HN NOVEMBER OVEM VEM VE E BE EM BER ER R 20 201 2016 016 16 • 7

Music / Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture

Xx Xx

For a regular hit of news sign up to our daily newsletter at theMusic.com.au

Mary J Blige

All Hail Mary Described as the queen of hip hop soul, Mary J Blige has announced a couple of April sideshows in Sydney and Melbourne in addition to her Bluesfest appearance.

Spiderbait

586,000

The overnight numbers for the ARIA Awards, the highest amount of viewers for the telecast in six years.

8 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

How Do You Like Them Big Apples? After re-emerging for a recent run of A Day On The Green shows, Spiderbait will now head out on the road again under their own steam in March and April. This time around they’ll be playing their 1996 album Ivy And The Big Apples in its entirety.

Arts / Li Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture

Credits

Publisher Street Press Australia Pty Ltd

Making A Difference

KLP from last year’s #MMAD4U day

Group Managing Editor Andrew Mast

Musicians Making A Difference launches its #MMAD4U campaign 2 Dec. The charity urges users to post the hashtag and show people that there’s someone out there who believes in them. Backers include Alison Wonderland, KLP and more.

Tony Joe White

National Editor – Magazines Mark Neilsen Editor Bryget Chrisfield

Arts & Culture Editor Maxim Boon

Gig Guide Justine Lynch gigs@themusic.com.au Editorial Assistants Brynn Davies, Sam Wall Senior Contributor Jeff Jenkins

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

Foxy Tony The Swamp Fox, aka blues icon Tony Joe White, is expanding his visit to Australia. Already on the bill for Bluesfest, he has expanded his itinerary to include shows around the country in April.

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

Ya Mum

The Pinheads

In what is sure to be a crazy tour, raucous rockers The Pinheads and Drunk Mums are teaming up for a primarily east coast run in January.

— Melbourne

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 9

Music / Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture

How’s The Atmosphere, Brother?

US hip hop trailblazers Brother Ali and Atmosphere will hit Australian stages together in February in March as they arrive for a national tour.

Brother Ali

Getting Foggy Climb Every Mountain Returning for the first time in five years, The Mountain Goats have decided that they should see more folks beyond Bluesfest in April, so will now do some sideshows across the nation.

The Mountain Goats

Having just released her EP In The Fog, Bec Sandridge has announced a national headline run of shows in amongst her festival appearances and choice supports to the likes of Highasakite and The Rubens.

Triple Zac

Sir Rosevelt

10 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

You already had the opportunity to catch Zac Brown play twice at Bluesfest with the Zac Brown Band, but he just can’t get enough as it’s also been announced that he will add a third Bluesfest performance, this time with his new band Sir Rosevelt on Easter Saturday in their only Australian performance.

Arts / Li Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture

> )RUPHUO\ 7KH +L )L %DU @

Art Attack

Falls Fest Arts

The Falls Fest 2016 Arts program is chocka-block with wild, weird and wonderful acts, from circus spectaculars to hungover yoga. Highlights include Whose Line Is It Anyway improv whiz kid Tom Walker, flip out groves from the Funky Moves Crew and avant garde cabaret from Dr. Professor Neal Portenza.

)5, '(&

6+2&.21( 6$7 '(&

5$,6(' ),67 681 '(&

(0(5*(1=$ ),1$/ :(' '(&

Bec Sandridge

&+$,5/,)7 6$7 '(&

$17, )/$*

Bali police say Schoolie was found with paracetamol. But heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a total wuss; it was Nurofen Plus. @arozenbachs

6$7 '(&

%,'(6+, 7$$/ 0$ 6$7 '(&

1<( 6(9(17((1 $*$,1 '2 7+( '$%

6$7 )(%

1*+705( 86$

)5, )(%

7+5$6+ %/$67 *5,1' )(67 6$7 )(%

7+( $33,&( %527+(56 '580 :$56 :(' )(%

18&/($5 $66$8/7 Krept & Konan

Time To Play Dirty Underground UK Grime duo Krept & Konan have announced shows in Sydney and Melbourne, starting off 2017 in Oz with the early January gigs.

7+8 )(% 62/' 287

<(//2:&$5'

)5, )(% 62/' 287

<(//2:&$5' 6$7 )(%

%$%< $1,0$/6 6$7 0$5

1$7+$1 &$57(5 ,5(

7,; ,1)2

0$ ; :$776 &20 $8

6:$16721 67 0(/%2851(

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 â&#x20AC;˘ 11

Music / Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture

Get Buzzed

Because humans have destroyed so much of the Merri Creek grasslands, The Blue Banded Bee is struggling in its important role in the long-term survival of many wildflowers. To help the bee and ensure the vitality of the grasslands, the Northcote Social Club is hosting a fundraiser on Saturday featuring Jen Cloher, Courtney Barnett, The Orbweavers and Steph Hughes (Dick Diver)

Jen Cloher And Courtney Barnett

Jerry Stand Up Hailing from Canada’s frozen far north, The Jerry Cans fuse a unique mix of InukRtut alt-country, throat singing and reggae. In addition to various festival appearances over March, they are also performing their own headline shows.

The Jerry Cans

5 The amount of ARIAs Flume took home at the awards ceremony, bringing his complete haul for 2016 to eight.

Get Together One of Australia’s most exciting boutique musical theatre producers, Vic Theatre Company, are hosting their first mini-season at Fortyfivedownstairs, including the world pemiere of The Gathering, which explores what happens when old mates have a few too many passion pops at a reunion. On. until 11 Dec.

The Gathering

12 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

Arts / Li Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture

BAR

“A Drum, a drum!”

Melbourne Theatre Company have given one of the headline shows of next year’s season some serious Hollywood clout. Aussie action film heartthrob Jai Courtney will play the title role in MTC’s 2017 production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

WED 30 NOVEMBER

BOOGIE NIGHTS INDIE FILM SCREENING

Jai Courtney

More Land For Yar Buck Kansas blues roots rock trio Moreland & Arbuckle have announced their debut Australian tour, taking in a bunch of East Coast dates and a headline spot at the inaugural Holler Roots Music Festival in Melbourne.

(NO OPEN MIC TONIGHT) SEE THE WORK OF THE LATEST INDIE FILM MAKERS THU 1ST DECEMBER

STEVE PERRY’S BIG HOUSE FRI 2ND DECEMBER

GUILTY AS CHARGED CASH SAT 3RD DECEMBER

HOLY DIVER ACE OF SPADES ASAULT AND BATTERY Moreland & Arbuckle

SUN 4TH DECEMBER

CHASING ALICE DEAD PHARAOHS theMusic.com.au: breaking news, up-to-the-minute reviews and streaming new releases

AFTER WORK HAPPY HOUR FROM 5PM

$5 DRINKS WED, THURS & FRI 160 HODDLE ST ABBOTSFORD

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 13

Music

chestra Jennifer One-woman DJ or e about e chats to Cyclon “TOKiMONSTA” Le k and tity, Anderson .Paa en id n ow r he g in assert boundaries. collapsing genre

OKiMONSTA (aka Jennifer Lee) has long advanced avant electronic hip hop. Today, with that sound now mainstream, the Californian is seeking new challenges. But, first, she’ll return to Australia over New Year’s Eve to play live at Beyond The Valley. Lee, her family Korean-American, grew up in Torrance — an attractive bayside town with a significant Asian community (and once home to Quentin Tarantino). Bored, she couldn’t wait to leave for Los Angeles. Ironically, Vince Staples, a Long Beach native, recently told The Fader that he aspired to have kids in Torrance. The Norf Norf rapper explained, “I’ve never met anyone from Torrance who didn’t have their head on straight.” Lee is amused to hear this. “That’s so funny!,” she responds. “I had no idea — that’s actually really cool. I’m gonna keep that in mind... Well, Torrance is a great suburb and it is very safe — and it

14 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

is kinda boring. So, essentially, if I want to have children and raise them in a place that’s in Southern California, [and] that’s not in the city, then I could go back there as well. But, when you’re a young kid in high school and you wanna experience culture and all these things, [Torrance] itself is not that exciting.” Lee learnt piano in childhood but, like her peers, gravitated to hip hop. She embraced the music’s abstract forms — trip hop and illbient — and began messing around with the FruityLoops computer program while studying business at college. Lee emerged as an instrumental auteur, her geeky alias TOKiMONSTA inspired by anime (“Toki” is Korean for rabbit). She became a (post-)DJ. Inevitably, Lee was associated with LA’s neo-IDM — or glitch hop — movement, its figurehead Flying Lotus, Brainfeeder boss. Lee’s breakthrough year was 2010. She was selected for the Red Bull Music Academy in London (the edition’s other alumni include Katy B, Lunice and Aussies Sui Zhen and Andras Fox). And, having befriended FlyLo, Lee released her debut album, Midnight Menu, through Brainfeeder. “At that time, I was like, Cool, Brainfeeder album — these are my people.” In 2016 Lee’s bio still heralds her as “the first female to join Flying Lotus’ crew/label Brainfeeder”. However, she’s achieved so much more. Keen to assert her own identity, Lee subsequently took up an offer from Ultra, the EDM mega-co, issuing Half Shadows. She recruited MNDR for the Santigold-ish lead single Go With It. Yet Half Shadows also featured the staunchly underground Kool Keith. The Ultra deal was a pragmatic, and strategic, decision. EDM represents an entry point, Lee says. “If it takes someone listening to Calvin Harris to find my music, that’s fine.” In 2014 Lee launched an imprint, Young Art, with the minialbum Desiderium. This year she followed it with FOVERE — her most vocal-heavy project with such guests as Anderson .Paak, The Drums’ frontman Jonny Pierce and Gavin Turek (a wonky disco diva and member of Mayer Hawthorne’s Tuxedo). Paak blazes on Put

Music

It Down — a bass banger. Lee maintains that, if she’s recording more with rappers and singers, it’s simply because they’re amenable to it. She hasn’t abandoned instrumental music. Besides, Lee considers any voice “an instrument”. “I think in the future, for me in my career, I would like to do more producing for other artists, but also make sure that with my next release I have a sizeable amount of instrumental work — so that I never forget that that’s something that I also enjoy making.” Lee has known Paak, his mother born in South Korea, for years — describing him as “genuinely just a friend”. The MC/singer/drummer blessed Lee’s Desiderium single Realla before officially shedding his original handle Breezy Lovejoy. Since then, he’s generated huge buzz — contributing to Dr Dre’s Compton and securing a contract with Aftermath. “I think that it’s about time that people understood his talent,” Lee extols. “Everything that he’s getting right now is so well deserved. He’s been making music for such a long time, [he] was such a hungry artist, and definitely was always down for collabs and work with other people... But he is incredible to work with. It’s a lot of fun, but he’s also just so — it’s really hard

The music itself hasn’t changed too much, but then now everyone who was only used to listening to the small scope of indie electronic or hip hop music, their horizons have broadened.

to explain, but I’ve worked with a lot of artists now at this point and you can’t really match his level of creativeness and his quickness. I mean, he can come up with these amazing songs so quickly. There’s been sessions where we’ve been able to put together two songs within a span of six to eight hours. He’s pretty incredible — and a very good performer.” Indeed, the pair have hit the stage at Coachella. Lee characterises her electronic hip hop as inherently “very left” — and “niche”. Nonetheless, she foreshadowed the experimentation — and hybridisation — that underpins urban genres like cloud rap and illwave, plus modish pop. The boundaries between hip hop, R&B, electronica and indie have collapsed. “This kind of music has become more accessible. The music itself hasn’t changed too much, but then now everyone who was only used to listening to the small scope of indie electronic or hip hop music, their horizons have broadened... With the way that pop music is now, ‘pop’ just means it’s

distributed and everyone has access to it very easily... I guess music right now is a little saturated, that’s the only issue, but that just means everyone has a chance now.” And, for Lee, it gets wonkier. A couple of years ago there was (possibly premature) talk of her producing Kelly Rowland, the underrated Destiny’s Child vocalist. Then, in July, Lee accompanied the ‘80s New Wave group Duran Duran, and Nile Rodgers’ Chic, on a North American run. (She even remixed Duran Duran’s Last Night In The City off Paper Gods.) “I was incredibly surprised myself that I was being offered to open on this tour,” Lee reveals. “It turns out that John Taylor — bassist and founding member of Duran Duran — likes my music! I thought that was pretty cool.” She had several exchanges with the band — and Rodgers. “It was a lot of fun. Whenever I saw Nile, I would always tell him how cool he is — like, even casually walking past him in the hall, I would say, ‘Man, you’re so cool,’ then he’d chuckle. He’d come on stage when I performed just to vibe next to me. The Duran guys are all awesome and have their own personalities. I was able to play keyboard for them in Philadelphia and had lots of great music convos with them.” Lee has an established relationship with the Australian scene, touring consistently. She recast Elizabeth Rose’s Sensibility. In fact, Lee is familiar with many an Antipodean ‘It’ dance acts, citing names like Ta-ku. “The last time I saw Flume, he shared a lot of Australian music with me,” she adds casually. Lee notes that leftfield music here has transcended its traditional confines. “I like the way that Australia accepts music,” she says. “Whenever I go there, I feel like there’s an appreciation. No one looks at my music like it’s strange, because everyone at a baseline level is very much open to anything.”

When & Where: 31 Dec, Beyond The Valley, Lardner

THE A TO Z’ ‘A L OF COO This summer’s Beyond The Valley — the New Year’s camping fest in Lardner Park — reps an ‘A to Z’ of cool with curated homegrown and international acts across indie, dance and hip hop. The big draw is Chance The Rapper, performing his inaugural Australian show. The Chicago MC has had a huge year — cameoing on Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo (TLOP) and dropping the gospel hop mixtape Coloring Book. Jennifer “TOKiMONSTA” Lee will be catching old friends on the bill. “I’m excited to see how much everyone’s sets have changed — ‘cause, someone like Hudson Mohawke, I’ve known him for a long time, I’ve seen him play a bunch of times, but every time he comes with something different.” In 2016 HudMo teamed with Anohni for the Mercury-nominated HOPELESSNESS. And, as one of Yeezy’s in-house producers, he’s credited on TLOP — including the controversial Famous. Lee will also check out Carl Craig — Detroit techno’s designated ‘Second Wave’ heir. “He’s a great DJ!” Curiously, like Lee, Craig has worked with Duran Duran — if indirectly. He sampled The Reflex on his ‘90s track Free Your Mind (Future) as Piece. Lee’s live set is akin to a onewoman DJ orchestra. She summarises it as “immersive”, emphasising her crowdinteraction. “I think together we can create a shared experience that’s really deep and musical and educational and interesting, but also just fun and light-hearted and not taken too seriously.”

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 15

Caberet

Sweet Satire Co-creators of the side-splitting social satire Hot Brown Honey, Lisa Fa’alafi and Kim ‘Busty Beatz’ Bowers, are using their hip hop burlesque fusion to challenge colonial injustice. Maxim Boon gets in on the joke.

s valid and necessary as it may be, looking a grim colonial past in the eye is never a comfortable experience. Around the world, a litany of enduring consequences for many first nation communities is a shameful reminder that much of our contemporary society is built on stolen land; ours is a culture forged in the violent crucible of empire building. Given the injustice and pain of this history, a hip hop-meets-burlesque comedy revue might not immediately spring to mind as an apt vehicle, but for Lisa Fa’alafi, director of the brassy, brazen and brilliantly brash Hot Brown Honey, using comedy to

Hot Brown Honey

We want to decolonise the world, one stage at a time

explore such a difficult subject matter was a no-brainer. “If there’s one thing that has been abundantly clear while we’ve been touring this show, it’s that you can break down barriers if you can laugh with someone. People don’t like being talked at, but something that connects us all, across cultural boundaries, is laughter, and in this show you don’t just laugh, you cackle. It’s a way of processing the oppression that we’ve all dealt with, but it’s also an expression of the joy of life.” It’s evidently a winning formula. Since premiering last year, Hot Brown Honey has had audiences and critics alike rolling in the aisles, during sell-out seasons at the Edinburgh Festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Sydney Opera House, Adelaide Fringe Festival 16 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

and Brisbane Festival. Starring six first nation women of Australian, South African, Tongan and Samoan descent, its irreverent send-ups of ethnic stereotypes defiantly wrestle with a range of the pop-culture tropes around women of colour, via a disarmingly fearless brand of ‘ohno-they-di’int’ humour. Co-creator, Musical Director and stalwart of Australia’s hip hop scene, Kim ‘Busty Beatz’ Bowers, believes the familiarity of the show’s urban music parodies is key to it’s success. “It’s a core principle of our manifesto: there is open access to what we do,” she notes. “There’s actually a very close proximity to the ethic of hip hop and the idea of indigenous reconciliation, when it comes to hearing voices from a marginalised group and bringing those voices to the fore. Obviously things have evolved a fair bit over the years — we’re in 2016 and a lot of that original hip hop ethic has been mixed up with capitalism and materialism and bunch of other stuff. But at its heart, it’s still about the radical process of putting your voice out there. In this day and age, where people try so hard to conform and fit in, the most radical process of all is just being brave enough to be yourself and expose the truth of yourself. That’s why making comparisons between those stereotypes and our experiences as women of colour is such a powerful way for us to use our voices.” If hip hop has offered a means of challenging racial caricatures, then burlesque has offered the ‘Honeys’ a way of confronting the sexualisation of women of colour as exotic trophies. Using the body as a pathway to empowerment is a well-established precedent, Fa’alafi says. “We’ve stepped in the footsteps of so many amazing women before us, for instance, the incredible poet and playwright Maya Angelou. One of her first jobs was as a burlesque dancer, and there are a number of extraordinary women of colour who also used burlesque to empower themselves. Their stories aren’t always that visible, but we’ve found them, we’ve seen that we come from a history of these women, making fun of the barriers and limitations theyy faced in their lives.” Of course, beneath the fun, games, grooves and beat beats is a serious message, and it’s one that Fa’alafi feels is be becoming ever more relevant given the rise of antiinclu inclusive fear mongering in global politics. “We have an ama amazing time, but this show is actually about change in the w world and what we can bring to that change, because chan change is coming — the revolution is coming! There’s such a po powerful sense of urgency in the world at the moment,” she observes. “So I am humbled, but not surprised by the positive reception the show has had. So many people — not just first nationers, but all kinds of people — are ready and want this change, and want to be advocates for these stories. You can feel it in the air, in the way global politics has become so frightening. But there are cultural shifts already underway — people want to feel able to speak out, and in our small way, this show allows us to do that. We want to decolonise the world, one stage at a time.”

What: Hot Brown Honey When & Where: 6 — 11 Dec, Arts Centre Melbourne

ON SALE NOW VIA

WWW.CORNERHOTEL.COM AND 1300 724 867

57 SWAN ST, RICHMOND, 3121 30/11 - MANSIONAIR SELLING FAST 01/12 - THE PEEP TEMPEL SELLING FAST 02/12 - BOOTLEG RASCAL SELLING FAST 03/12 - PROGFEST 2016 ft. - SELLING FAST

20/01 -

STICK TO YOUR GUNS USA

+ KNOCKED LOOSE USA

21/01 - SURESHAKER’S ‘SHAKE ‘N’

BAKE 2017’ TOUR CALIGULA’S HORSE, CIRCLES, 22/01 - THE FRONT BOTTOMS USA - SELLING FAST WE LOST THE SEA + HEAPS MORE! 25/01 - MR CARMACK USA 06/12 - THE TRIFFIDS SELLING FAST 27/01 - TOURIST UK - SELLING FAST 07/12 - THE TRIFFIDS SOLD OUT 01/02 - CLAMS CASINO USA SWEDEN 08/12 DUNGEN 04/02 -‘ BOB MARLEY BIRTHDAY BASH 09/12 - BADBADNOTGOOD CAN - SOLD OUT 2017’ FT. YT UK 10/12 - KATATONIA SWEDEN - SOLD OUT 11/02 - HANDS LIKE HOUSES SOLD OUT 11/12 - UNWRITTEN LAW USA - SOLD OUT 12/12 - BADBADNOTGOOD CAN - SELLING FAST 12/02 - HANDS LIKE HOUSES SELLING FAST 14/12 - JOSH PYKE + BOB EVANS SELLING FAST 17/02 - JAKUBI 16/12 - JOSH PYKE + BOB EVANS SOLD OUT 24/02 - BABY ANIMALS SOLD OUT 17/12 - CRAIG ROBINSON USA 25/02 - YELLOWCARD USA - SOLD OUT 18/12 - DAN & AL XMAS SHOW 03/03 - SPIDERBAIT 22/12 - DUBIOZA KOLEKTIV 05/03 - H2O USA BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA 08/03 - THUNDER UK 23/12 - ‘XMAS EVEN’ FT. EVEN 26/12 -‘BOXING DAY BLUES’ FT. 11/03 - TEENAGE FANCLUB UK - SELLING FAST GEOFF ACHISON & CHRIS WILSON 13/03 - TEENAGE FANCLUB UK - SOLD OUT ‘NEW YEARS PARTY HOUSE’ ft. 31/12 18/03 - MARDUK SWEDEN + GORGUTS NORTHEAST PARTY HOUSE + MGLA POLAND 03/01 - JME UK 04/01 - HIGHASAKITE NORWAY - SELLING FAST 25/03 - WEDNESDAY 13 USA 06/01 - ALUNAGEORGE SELLING FAST 08/04 - THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA USA 07/01 - TWELVE FOOT NINJA + BEING AS AN OCEAN USA 10/01 - HALESTORM USA - SELLING FAST 11/04 - RHIANNON GIDDENS USA + DEVILSKIN NZ 12/04 - THE MOUNTAIN GOATS USA 12/01 - HALF MOON RUN CAN - SELLING FAST 17/04 - GALLANT USA SELLING FAST ‘METAL FOR MELBOURNE’ ft. 14/01 18/04 - MICHAEL KIWANUKA UK - SELLING FAST HOBB’S ANGEL OF DEATH, 23/04 - BLACK STONE CHERRY USA ION DRIVE + HEAPS MORE! PLUS HEAPS MORE AT WWW.CORNERHOTEL .COM

SPIDERBAIT

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS

03/03

USA - 12/04

JME

RHIANNON GIDDENS

UK 03/01

USA - 11/04

JAKUBI

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

17/02

USA - 08/04

SELLING FAST

MICHAEL KIWANUKA

THE TRIFFIDS 06/12

UK - 18/04

ON SALE NOW VIA

WWW.NORTHCOTESOCIALCLUB.COM AND 1300 724 867 301 HIGH ST, NORTHCOTE, 3070

THE BATS NZ 28/01

THE LIMIÑANAS FR A NCE 17/01

3 0 / 1 1 - JULIEN

BAKER USA - SOLD OUT

02/12 - VULGARGRAD 2 SETS 03/ 12 - BLUE

FT. JEN

BANDED BEE FUNDRAISER SOLD OUT CLOHER, COURTNEY BARNETT + MORE

03/12 - DIESEL SOLO 04/12 - THE

BIG THIEF

LULUC

THE RECORD COMPANY

TREVOR HALL

USA 28/02

USA - 20/04

11/02

USA 11/04

SELLING FAST

TROPHY EYES 19/02

WHITE LUNG CA N 25/01

WILSON PICKERS MATINEE BAKER USA - SOLD OUT 07/ 12 - THE BASICS PRESENT ‘THE SONGROOM’ 09/12 - DALLAS FRASCA 1 0 / 1 2 - MAKE THEM SUFFER 1 1 / 1 2 - AKALA UK - SELLING FAST 1 2 / 1 2 -‘MNM’ ft. HARMONY BRYNE + MORE 14/ 12 - THE BASICS PRESENT ‘THE SONGROOM’ 1 5/ 1 2 - DARREN HANLON XMAS SHOW - SELLING FAST 1 6/ 12 - POLISH CLUB SELLING FAST 1 7/ 1 2 - CAMP COPE SOLD OUT 1 8 / 1 2 - ROBYN HITCHCOCK UK - MATINEE + EMMA SWIFT SYD 21 / 12 - THE BASICS PRESENT ‘THE SONGROOM’ 23/12 - REUBEN STONE 28/12 - THE BASICS PRESENT ‘THE SONGROOM’ 04/01 - SHURA UK - SOLD OUT 05/01 - WALLIS BIRD IRELAND 06/12 - JULIEN

07/01 - RY

X SELLING FAST LOST THE SEA 1 7/ 0 1 - THE LIMIÑANAS FRANCE 20/01 - WEYES BLOOD USA 2 1 / 0 1 - KERRYN FIELDS & LITTLE WISE 1 4/ 0 1 - WE

MIDSUMMA PREMIERE - MATINEE

2 1 / 0 1 - RUINS

+ KING LUNG CAN 28/01 - THE BATS NZ 29/01 - NOTHING USA 1 1 / 0 2 - LULUC 18/02 - TROPHY EYES SOLD OUT 19/02 - TROPHY EYES SELLING FAST 28/02- BIG THIEF USA 08/03 - MARGARET GLASPY USA 1 1 / 0 3 - KATY STEELE 16/03 - DORI FREEMAN USA 01/04 - BEC SANDRIDGE 1 1 / 0 4 - TREVOR HALL USA 13/04 - TURIN BRAKES UK - SELLING FAST 16/04 - THE STRUMBELLAS CAN 20/04- THE RECORD COMPANY USA 25/01 - WHITE

PLUS HE A PS MORE AT W W W.NORTHCOTESOCIA LCLUB.COM THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 17

Music

Summer Fest Essentials

Get Back Up Again

The festival season is upon us, so don’t slum it in the old tent that’s been gathering mould in the shed all year. The good folks at Camp Pineapple have all the must-have kit to make sure your festival experience is one to remember.

Big Cactus Tent This isn’t just one good looking home away from home, it’s made for quick easy assembly and at just $99 it’s a bloody bargain to boot.

Back in the saddle after Danny Widdicombe overcame leukaemia for the third time, The Wilson Pickers have reconvened to celebrate the simple joy of making music together says Sime Nugent to Chris Familton.

Pineapple Express Stubby Holders Keep your drink cool while looking pretty damn cool with this trio of exclusively designed stubby holders for just $14.95.

The Maroon Monster Beanie Keep your Festival hair under control with funky and functional headgear. Keeps you warm, keeps you trendy, and at just $19.95, keeps you flush. 18 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

n 2012 The Wilson Pickers were still on a roll, touring and thrilling festival audiences on the back of their two ARIA award-nominated albums Land Of The Powerful Owl and Shake It Down. Then the momentum was tragically derailed by the news of yet another leukaemia diagnosis for Danny Widdicombe. “He went straight in to a protracted period of treatment and recovery. All of us went off and did different things for a few years,” explains Sime Nugent. “Ben Salter always has multiple projects on the go, Andrew Morris continued working with Bernard Fanning,” and Nugent continued his successful work with Sweet Jean. As Nugent picks up the story in 2015 he recalls “last year we started playing some shows again and the love amongst the Pickers has been as much about friendship as it has about music, so it was really great to come back together. We started planning for a February recording at Andrew’s church in Billinudgel, NSW where he’s got a recording studio (Church Farm Studios). We all live in different states so we sent some demos around over the summer and then

got into the church on a Monday, hit the ground running on the Tuesday and by the end of the week we had more than the ten songs recorded and pruned them back to the new album.” The ease in which You Can’t Catch Fish From A Train came together is in keeping with the musical ethos the five members share and the collective trust they have in each other as songwriters and players. “We’ve always trusted our instincts in the Pickers and not tried to fit into anyone else’s mould. What that does is secure our voice as individual players, I think. We’ve tried to keep those individual voices as part of the band rather than blend them together like a bluegrass band would bleed their harmonies. That’s why we distance ourselves from calling this a bluegrass recording, even though there are bluegrass instruments. We all go off and write other music in other projects and I think when it comes to The Wilson Pickers we trust the instincts of the others and what they all bring to the group. I think that really comes through on this record,” stresses Nugent. As for the name of the album, Nugent laughs and describes an exchange of emails with Morris. “Andrew wrote me an email saying he was interested in buying a boat. I wrote back and said I liked trains. He replied and said, ‘You can’t catch fish from a train’ and I replied and said, ‘There’s our album title’. The Wilson Pickers is a pretty dubious band name so we may as well have a dubious album title too!”

What: You Can’t Catch Fish From A Train (ABC/ Universal) When & Where: 2 Dec, Basement Discs; 3 Dec, Caravan Music Club; 4 Dec, Northcote Social Club

fri 2/12

thurs 2/2

BELL X1

TARRUS RILEY

(IRELAND )

(JAMAICA)

BOXING DAY! Mon 26/12 fri 9/12

MINISTRY OF SOUND REUNION TOUR

BARONESS

THE ANNUAL 2001-2004, FEAT. JOHN COURSE & MARK DYNAMIX thur 15/12

HELP WILL FLIP THE BIRD TO 2016 All ages event 2pm to 6pm

SAT 31/12

DJ’S

fri 23/12

SUNSHINE’S MIDNIGHT MASS ALL NIGHTER PRINCE PUBLIC BAR NOW AN OZTIX RETAILER

free live entertainment every week!

30 / 11

FREE

ENTR Y

MATT & ALEX ‘5 R AV E S IN 5 DAYS’

Thick as Theives presents

NYE W/ CARL CRAIG & BOOG$ THUR 5/1

YACHT CLUB

@PRINCEBANDROOM

BOOKA SHADE

JUST ANNOUNCED!

KID INK

WED 25/1

REFUSED S

JUST ANNOUNCED!

FRI 7/7

29 FITZROY STREET, ST KILDA

#THEPRINCEBANDROOM

INFO - PHONE 9536 1168

fridays

saturdays

FREE POOL $3 POTS BOAGS $5 BASIC SPIRITS $5BBQ WINGS

BARELY STANDING

BENFER RHODES

ALL FRIDAYS IN DECEMBER

JUST ANNOUNCED!

TINIE TEMPAH

w/special guest SICK OF IT ALL + HIGH TENSION /THEPRINCEBANDROOM

JUST ANNOUNCED!

THURS 23/2

FRI 6/1

OU TUES 24/1 OLD

TUES 21/2

MORELAND & ARBUCKLE

HUDSON MOHAWKE

tight ass Tuesdays

* ALL FROM 6PM ONWARDS

TIGER ARMY w/special guest Fireballs and Pat Copocci

Thick as Theives presents

fri 16/12

ŭ UIF SFUVSO PG ŭ

FRI 17/2

saturdays late

sundays

PLAYING YOUR FAVE TUNES UNTIL LATE!

ELWOOD BLUES CLUB

'3&& &/53: ŭ 1"35: 6/5*- -"5&

every sunday!

P.P.B DJ’S

SATURDAYS IN DECEMBER

03 / 01

28 / 0 2

20 / 03

CATFISH SOL AND THE D OU T BOTTLEMEN UK

ANIMALS AS LEADERS USA

MEGA 90s ft. 2 UNLIMITED, TECHNOTRONIC, REAL McCOY & DR. ALBAN SELL

ING

05/ 12

0 4 / 01

03 / 03

21 / 03

THE SOL D OU T USED USA

SOL AND THE CATFISH D OU T BOTTLEMEN UK

ATMOSPHERE + BROTHER ALI USA

TAKING BACK SUNDAY + ACCEPTANCE

06/ 12

0 5 / 01

SOL THE D OU T USED USA

07/ 1 2

SELL

ING

FAST

2 5 / 01

SELL

ING

SELL FAST

FAST

0 6 / 01

SELL

ING

B*WITCHED SOL D

KILLSWITCH ENGAGE + FALLUJAH

+ ATOMIC KITTEN

ING

‘KANDY CARNIVAL’

THE NAKED AND FAMOUS

11 / 1 2

11 / 01

SOL

PEACHES D OU T CAN

ING

12 /02

D OU ZIGGY T ALBERTS

UNDEROATH

2 9/ 01

13/02

SOL

PEACHES CAN

FAST

D OU T

USA

03 / 0 2

SELL

ING

FAST

ING

19/ 0 4

CORINNE BAILEY RAE UK

17/ 0 2

14 / 03

YOUNG FRANCO 21 / 01

FUTURISTIC

ZIGGY ALBERTS

FAST

ING

USA

FAST

MESHUGGAH

HARTS

USA

SWEDEN

ING

23/ 12

2 2 / 01

LEVELS VS WAH WAH

ZIGGY ALBERTS

FAST

20 / 0 4

SELL

ING

FAST

ST PAUL AND THE BROKEN BONES USA

07/ 0 2 SOL

19/ 0 2

SELL

ING

FAST

15 / 03

SELL

ING

FAST

OPETH

DESCENDENTS

MESHUGGAH

SWEDEN

USA

SWEDEN

D OU T

Mixed Age - alcohol free - matinee

SELL

12 /04

1 2 / 03

05/02

PERIPHERY

FAST

15 / 0 2

USA

20 / 01

FAST

NAHKO & MEDICINE FOR THE PEOPLE

THE DAMNED UK

UV BOI

ING

SUBLIME WITH ROME USA

UNDEROATH FAST

SELL

0 8 / 03

SOL BLISS N D OU T ESO

18 / 1 2

USA

11 / 0 4

OKEAN ELZY UKR

ING

SHAPESHIFTER TROMBONE SHORTY USA

USA

JAGWAR MA

FAST

07/ 03

EVERY TIME I DIE + LETLIVE USA

SELL

ING

KILLSWITCH SOL D OU T ENGAGE + FALLUJAH

SELL FAST

SELL

USA

SELL FAST

0 8 / 01

SELL

27/ 01 SOL

FAST

USA

07/ 0 4

SELL FAST

MODERN BASEBALL USA SELL

FAST

0 5 / 03

UK ING

ING

10 / 0 2 IRE OUT

USA

0 9/ 1 2

SELL

WWW.170RUSSELL.COM TYCHO

DENMA RK

SHEILA E. USA

13/ 12

ON SALE NOW VIA

08/02

20 / 0 2 SOL

OPETH

DESCENDENTS

SWEDEN

USA

D OU T

12 /05

SELL

ING

FAST

LIVING COLOUR USA SELL

ING

19/ 03

24 / 0 5

TAKING BACK SOL D OU SUNDAY T + ACCEPTANCE

DEV IN TOWNSEND PROJECT

USA

CAN

FAST

170 RUSSELL ST, MELBOURNE, 3000

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 19

Music

Hard-Knock Life Brynn Davies discusses “how fucked the world is” with Bell X1’s Paul Noonan.

aul Noonan’s soft Irish lilt crackles over the phone, surprisingly chipper considering it’s 10pm his time. “We’re kinda coming into winter time. Not only are we at opposite ends of the day, we’re experiencing different seasons too,” he shivers. Among Ireland’s biggest exports, Bell X1 are proud to represent their “little rock” on the global stage. “We’re a tiny little country that sort of sends a lot of people around the world... In the ‘80s Ireland was pretty poor, grim, repressed. I think we’ve come a long way in our identity. For such a small country we probably do punch above our weight,” he laughs. Known for their eclectic commingling of genres and style, the band’s 16-year career has driven them through

...we meet people who would vote for Trump, get a feel of that anger and resentment and racist white supremacy.

the ups and downs of seven albums, culminating in their 2016 release, Arms. “This was probably the most difficult record we’ve made. Because the last one [2013’s Chop Chop] was so easy I think we were probably due for a real difficult seventh album syndrome that went along for a couple of years,” he chuckles. “The band has always jumped around stylistically and we’re very hard to pin down. We don’t do that to be awkward, it’s just we love a lot of kinds of music and I suppose it’s how we roll. But we’re a hard act to sell, I can see that!” After 2000’s debut release Neither Am I - produced by Crowded House bass player Nick Seymour - the band steadily gathered a loyal live following “playing a couple of hundred shows a year”. By the time their 20 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

second record Music In Mouth was released in 2003 they had signed with Island Records UK, but severed the partnership in early 2007. “At the time we were very frustrated, we felt [Island] didn’t really give a shit about outside of Ireland and the UK. We felt like we were chomping at the bit to get to America for quite a while, and being on a big label we needed to sell a lot more records in Ireland and the UK before they would take that a lot more seriously. We didn’t want to be part of a big machine anymore,” he explains of the decision. They formed their own independent label - BellyUp Records and have toured the States relentlessly ever since. 2009’s release of Blue Lights On The Runway saw the first incarnation of the live band as a three-piece following the departure of guitarist Brian Crosby in October 2008, playing his final show with the group at Lebanon’s Panorama Festival (the Flock tour finale). Arms is gentler than Bell X1’s prior records - elegantly melancholy, reflecting the determination, optimism and bittersweet musings of a band finding wisdom in the next stages of their lives and careers. Noonan cites The Big Lebowski (“When stuff goes to shit for the main characters they go, ‘Fuck it! Let’s just go bowling’”) and contemplates “the notion that life is some of the good luck and the bad luck that we encounter and there’s nothing we can do about it”. In tracks like Arms opener Fail Again, Fail Better Arms, this manifesto is embraced, giving the album a “crazy unhinged feel”. “Thematically, the notion of Arms comes from a few things. The main one, I think, is sort of: as the world feels like it’s becoming a harsher, scarier, less compassionate place we need to feel the embrace of those around us and to offer that embrace. That sounds maybe like a little twee thing to say, but given what happened a couple of days ago it feels all the more so,” he explains during our conversation, which took place mere days after the election of Trump. “You’d hope the pendulum would swing back in four years’ time or it wont be as bad as we think it’s going to be or there will be some mitigating forces in there, but it’s so fuckin’ fu dark,” he urges. “We tour a lot in the States and I guess gues by virtue of it all we meet people who would vote for Trump, Tr get a feel of that anger and resentment and racist white supremacy that seems to drive a lot of that... [ [Arms track] Sons & Daughters in some ways speaks to our ou worst nightmares, or at least the things that we share - how fucked the world is and what we’re leaving our children. “To counter what I’ve just said, statistically people have never had it so good - we live longer, we have more comfortable lives, terrorism was actually more so in the ‘80s than it is now, but the world has moved on and the amount of information and stimulus we get; there’s just so much noise now and we feel quite oppressed like that - I certainly do. The amount of conflicting information that seems to be flying around, it’s very unsettling, there’s a modern - the mood is one of unease, I feel.”

What: Arms (BellyUp Records) When & Where: 2 Dec, Prince Bandroom

www.themillhouse.com.au

WEEKDAY HAPPY HOUR 3.00PM - 7.00PM $12 JUGS and FREE TAPAS WED 30 NOV

BOROKY (SINGLE LAUNCH) ALEX CAMERON

Live music at the Mill House every Wednesday from 6pm

8.30PM

THU 1 DEC

$12 burgers all night

SWAMP (SINGLE LAUNCH) SPLENDIDID HUGH FUCHSEN 8.30PM

FRI 2 DEC

GLITORIS (EP LAUNCH)

Book a booth! /TheMillhousemelbourne @TheMillhousemelbourne (03) 9662 4002

info@themillhouse.com.au

THE FOOTBALL CLUB HI NEW LOW MISS MISS 8.30PM

SAT 3 DEC

BAREFOOT SPACEMEN

BIRDHOUSE, DOZEYS HURLIN’ UP LIMBS 8.30PM

JARED PRICE 2.00PM / UPSTAIRS

SUGARFOOT RAMBLERS 5.00PM / DOWNSTAIRS

SUN 4 DEC THE BRAZILIAN NIGHT #3

BAIÃO DE TRÊS WOMBATUQUE 8.00PM

MON 5 DEC

SCREEN SECT 7.00PM

TUE 6 DEC

MAKE IT UP CLUB 8.30PM 317 BRUNSWICK STREET FITZROY PH: 03 9415 9601 BAROPEN.COM.AU BOOKINGS: BOBB@BAROPEN.COM.AU

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 21

Music

Frontlash Stars Hollow Leads, We Follow Netflix dished up six hours of new Gilmore Girls on the weekend and we soaked up every second of it (well, except for the boring bits in the Summer ep). Here’s hoping for more next year. Oh yeah... Go #teamjess!

Revenge Of The Progs

Friday Night Fuck Loving this year’s MPavilion (they even supply blankets), but it’s gonna be hard to top last Friday’s double bill of RVG and Spike Fuck. We definitely give a Fuck.

Lashes Material Gain

London’s celebrated Fabric nightclub is reopening after agreeing to some licensing tweaks!

Fake Police Car

Backlash Police Check

“Perth Woman Stopped By Police After Turning Her Hyundai Into Fake Cop Car.” We admire her battler innovation, but the driver was unlicensed and the car was unregistered as well as unroadworthy so we had better not condone that kinda behaviour, hey?

Phone It In

Karaoke apps. Do we really need to hear tone deaf randoms singing on the fly?

Thunder Down Under Thunderstorm asthma. Coughing now makes us scared.

22 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

Progressive rock has flirted with chart-bothering success previously, but has it become, dare we say it, cool again? Caligula’s Horse vocalist Jim Grey and Brendan Crabb discuss Jethro Tull.

aligula’s Horse frontman Jim Grey is understandably exultant. Firstly, the Brisbane prog-rockers are set to road-test new material. Their next record remains in its embryonic stages, but attendees at upcoming headlining shows may just get an earful of a new opus; a four-part, 16-minute behemoth entitled Graves. Said shows will also introduce and assimilate new drummer Josh Griffin into the ranks. “He’s definitely changed the way that Sam [Vallen, guitars] and I are approaching parts, because we know he’s got a certain set of skills,” Grey enthuses. However, the clincher may be landing the support slot that any self-respecting, forward-thinking act would pawn their Marillion LPs to secure: opening for Swedish maestros Opeth on their 2017 Australian run.”We played with Opeth, I think last time they were out, but it was just the one show in Brisbane. We were all stoked, one of those bucket-list shows that you always hope you get to play,” the singer laughs. “The fact that we now get to tour the country with them on Sorceress, which has done so well as an album, and go to New Zealand with them as well. It’s our first shows in New Zealand too. Totally stoked, man.”

Opeth’s broad following seemingly belies their boundary-free, non-conventional approach to songwriting, and they have perhaps instilled among wider audiences that it’s permissible — almost trendy — to embrace progressive music nowadays. “Prog’s been cool since forever, brah,” Grey jokes. “If you look back in the past, bands like Jethro Tull and Emerson, Lake & Palmer and stuff like that, those bands were massive. They were in the pop scene, just doing their thing&#133; But there are bands [today] that have crossed genres enough that there’s crossover appeal between them. If you look at a band like Karnivool, they’ve got massive crossover appeal between fans that are into prog or alt-rock, or even pop-rock fans love Karnivool. “I think Opeth is sort of doing that thing now, they’ve developed their sound and Mikael [Akerfeldt] is so confident in himself and what he wants for his project, and the way that he writes he doesn’t cave to people’s desires. So they’ve just got this unique sound that’s coming out, and I think that’s what people are attracted to. We don’t keep the idea of what people want to hear in our head necessarily. There’s definitely a core Caligula’s Horse sound and we do that but, at the same time, we want to write the music that reflects us and that we’re proud of.” The quintet possess other lofty ambitions; namely, a return to Europe midnext year. The aforementioned Jethro Tull will even headline a festival they’re playing in Barcelona, Be Prog! My Friend. “Hopefully that’s the start of something for us. We’re going to go over and play a bunch of shows. [That festival’s] another one of those that’s bucket-list stuff.”

When & Where: 3 Dec, Progfest, Corner Hotel

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 â&#x20AC;¢ 23

Music

Slow But Steady

Oh hey, Frosé! Chicago post-rock veterans Tortoise waited seven years between albums, but percussionist Dan Bitney tells Steve Bell that their inherent weirdness allows them to do as they please. Forget Pimms, frozen Margaritas and craft ciders - this summer the drink you should be sipping is a Frosé. “A what now?” I hear you cry. It’s essentially a Rosé slushee (or if you want to be fancy about it, a sort of wine sorbet), and before you raise an eyebrow, it’s already caused an ice cold craze in New York City. Setting the trend in Melbourne is Mr Miyagi and Yukie’s Sanck Bar on Chapel Street, who are already serving it on tap. But be prepared for a bunch more bars to jump on this refreshing bandwagon as the weather heats up.

24 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

or a while it seemed that the fertile career of Chicago post-rockers Tortoise might be gradually winding down, with years having passed without new music and its members spread far and wide (and many immersed in other projects). But when Chicago’s department of Cultural Affairs And Special Events commissioned them to write a collaborative suite it sparked a new rush of music, resulting eventually in their seventh studio album, The Catastrophist. “We’re part of the creative music community and the jazz community in Chicago as well as the rock community and the people from the city’s cultural department just wanted us to play with a handful of people from that community,” recalls percussionist Dan Bitney. “So we wrote what was a suite — just a concert really of new material — and it wasn’t as edited and some of it wasn’t as thought out, but it was fun and a good experiment to do. “We’d never worked like that — we’d always made these records and then learned how to play them on tour — so it was a great experiment and it gave us the base of the material, but we still really had to make it sound like us when we were working in the

studio. It was really just a little bit of a leg-up for starting a new record.” Two of The Catastrophist’s songs feature prominent vocals, a notable change for the predominantly instrumental act. “There was initially an idea of having a big vocal record but we really didn’t get as many responses from people as we were hoping,” Bitney admits. “But I love both pieces: Rock On [featuring US Maple’s Todd Rittman] is probably the weirdest one just because it’s a [David Essex] cover, but we only play that one [live] in Chicago really with [Rittman]. The other one [Yonder Blue featuring Yo La Tengo’s Georgia Hubley] is in our set as an instrumental, and it’s super fun too just because it reminds me of old R&B.” And Bitney has a fascinating theory explaining Tortoise’s longevity. “I hesitate to say it’s a democracy but it’s pretty close — it’s not like there’s a leader. [John] McEntire handles a lot of the engineering and recording and stuff, but there isn’t like the wanker frontman getting mad at somebody for being weird,” he chuckles. “Also I think that it’s just the arc of our career — we were just weirdos making weird music and then people liked it, so it wasn’t contrived in any way. If we were trying to be big we would sound like Nirvana, but instead we were, like, ‘Let’s put vibraphone with two drums and two bass players!’ That’s what I’d say: not having a frontman and always just doing what we wanted, and we were lucky that people liked it because it’s weird music. It’s strange music.”

When & Where: 8 Dec, The Croxton

Patti Smith and her band perform

PRES.

ANDREW BIRD BOOKER T THE STAX REVUE GREGORY PORTER JAKE SHIMABUKURO JOAN OSBORNE LAURA MVULA THE LUMINEERS THE RECORD COMPANY RICKIE LEE JONES THE STRUMBELLAS TREVOR HALL TURIN BRAKES

170 RU S S ELL W EDN ESDAY 19 A PR IL

Horses Sun April 16 * FEW TICKETS Mon April 17 * SELLING FAST Hamer Hall Tue April 18 * JUST ANNOUNCED State Theatre

“Giddens explores the frontiers of Americana.”

170 TUE RUSSELL APR

THE GUARDIAN

THE TUE CORNER APR

170 WED RUSSELL APR IN ASSOCIATION WITH

MILES DAVIS PROPERTIES LLC PRESENT

corner hotel monday 17 april “He’s a truly outrageous performer … it makes you breathless just to watch him.” INDEPENDENT.CO.UK

HAMER HALL MONDAY APRIL 10

170 THU RUSSELL APR

FEATURING MILES DAVIS’ ALUMNI*

PERFORMING HIS ELECTRIC REPERTOIRE & MORE

DARRYL JONES* CHRISTIAN SCOTT BLACKBYRD MCKNIGHT* ROBERT IRVING III* ANTOINE RONEY* MUNYUNGO JACKSON* DEBASISH CHAUDHAURI VINCE WILBURN, JR.* JOHN BEASLEY* DJ LOGIC

HAMER SAT HALL APR

tickets & info from 02 6685 8310 or go to www.bluesfesttouring.com.au THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 25

Indie Indie

Arakeye

ising from the ashes of ChaosRadio and spending a solid three years tweaking their debut full-length record, Arakeye have never been more ready to drop ATMOSFEARS. “The current state of society always offers a multitude of topics of discussion when developing songs to compile for an album,” explains Jason Fullwood. “We like to encourage people to challenge their perceptions through our music. Mainly issues relating to truth, acceptance, elitism, environmental and social issues such as depression and suicide.”

From mellow rock ballads to hard rock and atmospheric electronica, the record follows an overall motivation: “Waking up from the social slavery of mass media manipulation and being the best human being that you can possibly be, flaws and all. Not adhering to social commentary and to question everything, because we feel a lot of this world is fake and outcomes preplanned,” says Fullwood. Though roughly half of the album’s tracks have been rejuvenated from their original state — “Tracks like Singularity, Catatonic and Violent Seed have been around for a while,” — there has been much experimentation to prepare for the final recording with Mathew Robins at Coloursound Recording Studio. “We’ve played many of the songs on our album in a live setting, it can help to iron out any doubts before you record them on CD forever.”

Rat Ta’Mango

Have You Heard Answered by: Paris Clark-Proud When did you start making music and why? We starting making music in high school and then evolved through the addition of other band members over time. We make music because we love it. Sum up your musical sound in four words? Garage, funk, blues, rock.

When & Where: 2 Dec, The Reverence Hotel

If you could only listen to one album forevermore, what would it be and why? Bridge Of Sighs by Robin Trower. It’s just a ripper of an album, it’s been my favourite since I was nine years old. Greatest rock’n’roll moment of your career to date? Every show we play.

Neighbourhood Youth

hen Neighbourhood Youth hit the studio for their second EP, it required a total shake-up to get the new songs together. “I think we were just enjoying changing our sound,” singer and guitarist John Philip muses, “we used to make sure everything was gridded perfectly, and we’d do 1,000 takes to make sure there weren’t any mistakes. But we’re making music that’s more dynamic and lively now, and the imperfections tend to just add character to the songs, so we leave them in.” The self-titled EP, which The Music streamed exclusively earlier this year, tracks an important evolution in the band’s sound. Take, for example, the track Atlantic, which

26 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

according to Philip “displays a lot more maturity in our songwriting and our recording style. It’s much grittier, but still musically interesting and I think the song builds well throughout.” It’s no surprise that the EP spans new ground for Neighbourhood Youth, considering “some of these songs are up to two years old because the EP was recorded over a two-year period.” Philip states, “We don’t really have the capacity to spend three weeks straight recording, which is why it took a long time to finish this EP.” Thanks, as well, can go to the band’s rigorous gigging schedule, as Philip claims, “If we play a song a lot live without booting it then it’s probably going on the next record.” With new music always on the way, Neighbourhood Youth are ready for whatever recording woes may come up. “We book studio time in and whether it’s working or not we have to do something. So far we’ve been lucky in the sense that we end up happy with the recordings in the end.”

When & Where: 2 Dec, The Workers Club

Why should people come and see your band? We’re here to play our arses off and have a good ol’ time. When and where for your next gig? 1 Dec, The Brunswick Hotel. Website link for more info? facebook.com/ events/1102541123115125

Music

True Colours

Flyying Colours vocalist Brodie J Brummer tells Jonty Czuchwicki the point of live shows is to leave some room for instinct.

lyying Colours may well have recorded the indie-psych rock album of the year. Their debut LP Mindfulness is full of nostalgic guitar melodies and dual vocal harmonies that come together to create something that is utterly gentle and beautiful. “I think you would be hard-pressed to find a few artists that can say they are 100 percent happy with something they put out, or maybe not,” considers vocalist Brodie J Brummer. “I’m happy that we finished and I’m happy with how it sounds. I think it’s one of those things where you’ve got to have a point at which you stop you know?” says Brummer, admitting to maybe three or four things from the mixing end that he would go back and alter. “With that said, if I made those changes I probably still wouldn’t want them to be there, you know what I mean? It’s just a few of the tracks, some really small things where a few of the snares were half a decibel too loud.” For someone whose methods are so precise, Brummer’s entry point on the record was extremely broad. “The pool that I was referencing from was rather large and kind of diverse, so it didn’t come out sounding exactly like anything. The idea was for it to be an organic record, and sound a lot just like our band and us four as players, which

is what I think it sounds like so I was really stoked on that... It’s just nice to have inspiration there and to listen to something and get your head back in the game in terms of where you might want a certain sound like a drum sound to go or what you might want to do with the guitar and where you want it to sit.” Flyying Colours recently had the chance to road-test the results at minifest Wintersteady in Adelaide. “It’s actually kind of scary because we don’t really practise, so it was really interesting to walk out and be like, ‘Okay we’re going to play a shitload of new stuff. Do we actually know how to play the new stuff, or not?’ It’s fun to see if we do or we don’t in real time. There’s a comfortability where we feel it out and we always manage to do it. I’m in a band with some super talented musicians so if anyone’s going to fuck up it’s probably going to be me. We always know and we always feel a section where we know we can do whatever we want and get back to the main part of the song. There’s a few tunes where we haven’t gone ‘yeah this part will go for that long’ and that’s the best part about seeing a band live rather than listening to the album, it doesn’t have all those exact same changes the entire way through the set; there’s things that are the same but there’s things that are different as well.

What: Mindfulness (Island/Universal) When & Where: 2 Dec, Howler; 28 Jan, Laneway Festival, Footscray Community Arts Centre

ARIAs Best Bits

Peking Duk @ ARIA Awards Red Carpet. Pic: Angela Padovan

Through our stonking hangovers, here’s what we remember as some of the most memorable moments from the ARIA Awards: Crowded House’s Hall Of Fame Induction: From the band’s cracking version of Distant Sun to Flight Of The Conchords’ hilarious intro, it all delivered. Calling Out: Flume called out the NSW lockout laws, Sia’s award was accepted by a marriage equality activist and Troye Sivan encouraged fellow young LGBTQI musicians – there was passion behind this year’s acceptance speeches. Duk Dogs: Peking Duk walked the ARIAs red carpet accompanied by sausage dogs wearing bow ties. Do we really need to highlight how awesome this was? Propping Up The Bar: Violent Soho nearly missed collecting the Best Group award as they were at the bar having beers. Montaigne’s Movements: Montaigne went off script when she couldn’t find an exact quote and started talking about thrones, bottoms and ejecting loads. What a champ. The Voice: Farnesy brought the house down with an epic rendition of You’re The Voice, with a huge bagpipe ensemble to boot.

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 27

Music

Tall Stories Dark Days In America during the recent Presidential election, Kristian Matsson attended a marquee event that quickly became memorable for all the wrong reasons. “I was actually at Hillary [Clinton]’s event on election night, the night it all turned around,” he recalls. “It was pretty dark. Friends back home were texting me, going, ‘Come home! Don’t be in America anymore, don’t bother with those people.’ But I feel that we’re doing the same thing [in Sweden] — we have a racist party in the Parliament, and [Sweden Democrat leader] Jimmie Akesson is probably going to be Prime Minister next year so it’s very dark and very bothering here too. “I actually started on election night thinking about my own music and what I’m doing. I write music all the time but I feel like I shouldn’t be whining about break-ups and divorces right now, there are bigger things happening. Although I’m not dark when I think about all the people out there — playing 150 shows since last summer has been so amazing, there are so many great people out there and you have to remember that. We just have to do something to help spread love

28 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

Swedish singer-songwriter Kristian Matsson tells Steve Bell that even being The Tallest Man On Earth is no fun without friends to share the heights with.

or years now Kristian Matsson — under the guise of The Tallest Man On Earth — has been concocting riveting music using primarily just his voice and an acoustic guitar, so it surprised many when his intensely personal fourth album Dark Bird Is Home (2015) arrived rife with synth loops, strings and prominent backing vocals. He explains that this move away from sparsity was more by accident than design. “I didn’t really have a plan,” Matsson reflects. “I’d just come out of a divorce and I ran straight into the studio and let things just happen. It came from the heart — I didn’t treat it like a career move or anything like that, I just needed to make music so I went in there and just did it. It needed to come out in that way, and it’s how it ended up and I’m happy for that.” Matsson even censored himself at some junctures for being too personal. “At one point I realised that I was writing stuff that was not what I should be singing about in public — it just got too graphic of my personal life,” he admits. “I don’t think I need to do that, because it’s a pretty common thing to sing about on a record and I had friends at the time who were also going through separations and stuff like

that, so I erased the really super personal stuff.” Matsson attests that this creative process was helpful, but perhaps not in the way he was expecting. “It was helpful that it took up time,” he laughs. “It diverted me from thinking about it, though I don’t think that songs heal. I talked about this with my ex-wife [Amanda Bergman] because we’re still great friends and she’s one of the best artists I know, and she agreed that the songs don’t really help to heal, they’re not really therapeutic in that way. “But for sure it’s great to just get it out of you — that’s what I’ve been doing since I was a teenager and I had anxieties and weird energy that I needed to steer towards music and creating things, and when I did that the energy turned into good energy. In that sense it makes good use of that pent-up energy that arrives during times of turmoil to channel that into making music.” And with Matsson now touring with a full band he can’t wait to revisit Australia, particularly the Sydney Opera House. “I was so excited after the show last time but there was no one there to celebrate it with,” he smiles. “In the green room there’s a panoramic window where you can look out over the Harbour Bridge and there’s a massive Steinway piano but I was in there by myself! To go there with the guys so I don’t have to high five myself in the mirror is going to be great.”

When & Where: 30 Nov & 1 Dec, Melbourne Recital Centre

Film

Do Look Back New documentary Supersonic studies the astronomic rise of UK rockers Oasis, and the man who discovered them — Creation Records label head Alan McGee — tells Steve Bell how the same factors driving their massive success eventually helped usher their downfall.

ew rock documentary Supersonic is a fascinating in-depth look at the incredible ascension of Britpop icons Oasis, following them from their formation in 1991 through to their legendary zeitgeist-tapping gigs at Knebworth in 1996, when a staggering 5% of all Britons applied for tickets to the two shows. Directed by Mat Whitecross, the film offers a riveting look inside the inner sanctum of Oasis and how the differing world views and approaches amid this sudden mind-blowing success — particularly between the Gallagher brothers, Noel and Liam — manifested in acrimony (and occasional violence), eventually tearing the band asunder. Oasis’ record label boss Alan McGee — who ran indie behemoth Creation Records, also home at the time to acts like Primal Scream and My Bloody Valentine — plays a major role in both the band narrative and the documentary, and he believes that for the most part Supersonic is an accurate representation of what transpired during these crazy times. “As much as you can view anything 20 years later it felt like it rang quite true,” he reflects. “The times were crazier than that, but at the end of the day what can you really say to show that properly? It just was what it was. It was crazy times the ‘90s, and they were crazier than what they could show in the film but I think they captured the spirit. It’s a very good film.” McGee famously discovered a then fledgling Oasis at a Glasgow gig where they were opening for one of his bands 18 Wheeler, signing them on the spot. “It was a complete fluke to be honest,” he smiles. “Glasgow had just been named ‘European City of Culture’, and to even mention Glasgow in the same sentence as culture is a joke — Glasgow is one of the most un-cultural cities in the fucking world! Being in Glasgow was like being in Poland, only with more rain. But I just happened to be there, and because it was a ‘city of culture’ the pubs were

Noel and Liam’s relationship I think it started as comedy, and then it became reality when they became big.

open 24 hours a day and the bands would go on late — instead of going on at half-past-eight the bands would go on at ten — and so I saw the first band and at that was Oasis: it was just luck that I saw them. “Of course nobody saw what happened next coming — nobody knew they were going to be that big. In a way, it went too big. Creation was well-positioned, being a big indie, but it went way beyond that really fast. When it got to Sheffield Arena in early ‘95 it was already getting really fucking big then and that wasn’t even half of it yet.” Supersonic paints a picture of McGee if not cultivating then at least revelling in the ‘bad boy’ image that quickly attached to the band. “I didn’t really have any option other than to embrace it — what was I going to do?” he laughs. “They didn’t need any encouragement. But to be fair I was worse behaved at that point than what they were anyway, right up until the point when I got sober.” McGee tells that while he often witnessed the fractious nature of the Gallaghers’ relationship firsthand, it was fortunately usually at arm’s length. “It was probably more difficult for the manager, I was just the record label and had signed them for the records,” he laughs. “It was probably tougher for Marcus [Russell] — he was fucking incredible. Maybe Marcus is the unsung hero of the film to be honest. But with Noel and Liam’s relationship I think it started as comedy, and then it became reality when they became big. But I honestly thought the antagonism started as comedy, playing up the media and everything.” Yet Supersonic also highlights via in-depth interviews with the brothers (naturally recorded separately) as well as their family members and bandmates — transposed over largely unseen archival footage from the time — how this intense relationship and sibling rivalry was also an integral part of the band’s musical and interpersonal chemistry. Sadly it’s also the reason that McGee believes there will never be a full-blown Oasis reunion. “They’ll never get back together because of Noel — Noel will never go back to Oasis,” he states emphatically. “Liam might I think reform Oasis in a few years’ time without Noel, just because he’d be keen to play to ten thousand people a night singing Oasis songs — I could see that happening — but I can’t see Noel re-joining Liam and it being Oasis. I just can’t see it happening.”

What: Supersonic (Madman Entertainment) THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 29

Eat / Drink Eat/Drink

South Korea Get hands-on with your traditional Korean BBQ experience at Hwaro (Bourke St, CBD), and enjoy melt-in-themouth flavours of delicately charcoal-grilled meats, or try vibrant, spicy, smoky and mouthwatering eats good enough to share at G2 Korean

Germany BBQ (Elizabeth St, CBD). KFC (Korean Fried Chicken) is blowing up at the moment, and Da Rin (Bourke St, CBD) is definitely a gold standard for those looking to sample this East-West fusion.

Sprawl you can eat

Mexico Sample authentic Mexican cooking with a modern twist at the renowned Mamasita (Collins St, CBD), where you can also find an extensive selection of artisanal Agave spirits. Try top notch tequila and tapas at Mi Corazon (Lygon St, Brunswick East), with its colourful atmosphere and sharing plates, it’s a great place to fiesta with friends. For the quintessential 30 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

Deutschland knows beer. Fact. And at The Hophaus (Southgate Ave, CBD) you’ll find a year round trip to Oktoberfest, complete with a range of bratwurst to soak up the suds. The Munich Brauhaus (South Wharf) pays homage to the hearty German carnivores and their passion for pork. Schnitzels, sausages, pork belly and pork knuckles are all to die for, with matched

beers. The city’s oldest German eatery, Hofbräuhaus (Market Ln, CBD), has been serving up German delights since 1968. You’ll get generous portions of traditional cuisine lining your belly for the extensive selection of Bavarian beer.

Breakfast in Guadalajara, lunch in Seoul, perhaps some cocktails in Paris followed by dinner in Berlin? That might sound like an ambitious number of passport stamps for one day’s dining, but in Melbourne you can have the world on a plate without ever having to set foot in an airport. Check out these international flavours right on your doorstep.

France Mexican dining experience, head to Los Hermanos (Victoria St, Brunswick), modeled on a traditional taqueria you can pick up a range of fresh tacos for just $5 a piece.

The traditional rich flavours of French food have had a sleek makeover at Ôter (Flinders Ln, CBD), introducing Japanese culinary techniques. At boutique bistro and wine bar, Hell Of The North (Greeves St, Fitzroy), you can find a four-course banquet of divine French specialities, complete with matched wines. If there’s one meal the French know inside and out,

it’s breakfast, and at modern patisserie Lune Croissanterie (Smith St, Collingwood) you can find all the traditional baked delights to give your morning some ‘Ooh, la la!’

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 â&#x20AC;¢ 31

Music

Take A Bow Sheila E tells Cyclone about how her persistent love of music carried her through the loss of friend and muse, Prince.

ince the loss of her kindred spirit Prince in April, Sheila Escovedo (aka Sheila E.) has carried on his legacy, constantly performing. For the grieving drummer, percussionist and singer, it’s about healing. “It helps a lot,” Escovedo says. “Performing for me is my life. I love doing it. It’s very hard and challenging — it takes a lot. But the fans showing up — they’re so supportive and loving, and that makes us wanna keep doing it... I’m so grateful. That keeps me going, for sure.” The Californian icon has just arrived in Prince’s Minneapolis hometown to publicise her Purple Philanthropy Sheila E. Benefit Concert. Come December, Escovedo will play her first Australian shows in six years around Meredith — shows that she assures will be energetic and emotional.

Performing for me is my life. I love doing it. It’s very hard and challenging — it takes a lot. But the fans showing up... that makes us wanna keep doing it.

Prince is widely praised for his patronage of nowmythic female music-makers — think Wendy & Lisa at the heart of his classic band The Revolution. But, while Escovedo is often described as one of Prince’s ‘proteges’, the drummer was “a somebody” when in 1978 she introduced herself to him backstage in San Carlos. “He was excited about meeting me, as I was meeting him,” Escovedo laughs. “He had mentioned to me he was following my career and was really excited to meet me.” The Oakland native hailed from a richly musical family, her father the Latin percussionist Pete Escovedo, and she was gigging in childhood. Astonishingly, Sheila provided percussion for Michael Jackson’s Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough. She even played with Marvin Gaye. 32 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

However, Prince orchestrated Escovedo’s transformation from musician to artiste — and the birth of ‘Sheila E.’ After Escovedo sang on Erotic City — the cult flip to Let’s Go Crazy — Prince composed material for her 1984 debut, The Glamorous Life, through Warner. Still, Escovedo took charge. She chose the single. “I fought the record company to release Glamorous Life first and they fought me to say, ‘No, it’s gonna be Belle Of St Mark’ — and I won!” Escovedo cut a trilogy of albums under Prince’s auspices, developing her own poly-genre — of Latin, jazz, soul, R&B, funk and nu-wave. What’s more, the pop divette starred in the hip hop movie Krush Groove. But, deciding to concentrate on musicianship, Escovedo then became Prince’s band leader for the Sign O’ The Times tour. In 2014 Escovedo published her autobiography, The Beat Of My Own Drum — approaching it as a testimonial. “I wanted to write it many, many years ago.” She shed light on her not-so-glamourous experiences. Shockingly, Escovedo recounted how at five she was sexually abused by a neighbour. Yet she also divulged two epic loves. As a teen, Escovedo was romanced by Carlos Santana, unaware that he was married. Later, she and Prince were private lovers. He spontaneously proposed to her on a European stage during the anthem Purple Rain in 1987. Alas, their partnership ended amid the strain of touring. Escovedo struggled with injuries sustained from her athletic performance. And, being “spiritual”, she felt increasingly uncomfortable about Prince’s creative direction (and playaristic tendencies). Preparing the memoir, Escovedo discovered that perspectives shift. “It was hard to take myself back to that place wherever it was — 20 years ago or 30 years ago — and really be honest about how I felt back then,” she reveals. Escovedo recognised, too, her subjectivity. Nevertheless, she wouldn’t change her life. “I don’t regret anything. I mean, there are things, yes, I probably could have done better and differently — absolutely. But I don’t regret it because that process of things that I’ve done — good, bad, indifferent — has made me the person that I am now. If I had to go through all that [again], wow — if someone told me I had to, I wouldn’t want to. But, if I had to do it again, I would — ‘cause I would not change anything right now.” From the ‘90s on, Escovedo has balanced her career as a solo act and elite muso — notably joining Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. She jammed on Beyonce’s Neptunesstamped Work It Out. Meanwhile, her friendship with Prince endured. He contributed to her 2013 album Icon. Unwittingly, today Escovedo has emerged as Prince’s media advocate. She crowned a credible BET Awards tribute. Somehow Escovedo has found studio time lately. On Prince’s passing, she suspended “a dance record” ready for release. Instead Escovedo channelled that grief into new songs inspired by her old confidant — including the ballad Girl Meets Boy. “As a writer, you write what you feel and what’s on your heart,” she says. Escovedo will now present a double-set, again entitled Girl Meets Boy, dedicated to Prince — and their bond. “The ‘Girl’ side of the album is the dance music and the ‘Boy’ part is funk or things about Prince and stuff like that — the music’s a little bit different.” As always.

When & Where: 7 Dec, 170 Russell; 9 Dec, Meredith Music Festival, Supernatural Amphitheatre

PRESENTING PARTNER

MEDIA PARTNER

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 â&#x20AC;¢ 33

In Focus Senegambian Jazz Band Pic: Jeff Valledor

It’s beginning to look a lot like Xmas, with parties filling up the iCal. Cancel everything on 3 Dec, because Brisbane-turned-Melbourne label Bedroom Suck are taking over two stages at The Curtin for their very own annual festive bash. The band line-up boasts awesome acts such as Terrible Truths, Treehouse, Senegambian Jazz Band (pictured) and Jarrow, but we’re particularly excited by the prospect of The Bedroom Suck Carollers (feat Adam Curley, Sarah Chadwick and Summer Flake). We’re already warming up our pipes to sing along with Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You and hope this official request is duly noted.

34 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

Music

Up The Mountain

Chairlift have come a long way since being in that Apple commercial, singer Caroline Polachek tells Cyclone.

hairlift have won influential fans in the likes of Beyonce and Solange Knowles. Still, while the quirky synthpop combo have street cred, they don’t mind being called “cheesy”. Indeed, the New Yorkers recently joked on Twitter about a journo who asked them, “Are you afraid of your music ever becoming cheesy?” Duh. But is frontwoman Caroline Polachek really so chill? “Well, I guess it depends on what your definition of ‘cheesy’ is,” she says. “I think it’s definitely sentimental. We don’t practise a lot of restraint... I don’t really take those labels to heart and, at the same time, I’m not particularly offended by people reading things as cheesy.” Chairlift — its core Polachek and fellow producer/instrumentalist/’80s boffin Patrick Wimberly — broke out with Bruises, a song off 2008’s debut Does You Inspire You that was licensed for an Apple ad. Four years later, they released Something — sanguinely ahead of a Laneway run. In January, Chairlift unleashed Moth — their poppiest, and most expansive album to date. This time they didn’t purposely replicate genre tropes. “It was really just quite emotionally-driven,” Polachek notes. Nevertheless, the single Ch-Ching (co-produced by Rhye’s Robin Hannibal) has a flicker of Wimberly’s beloved go-go. “We really just had our ears open and were kinda inspired by the energy and the melting pot of New York City.” Chairlift

have now ensured that Moth is the centrepiece of their live show — next stop Australia. “This record’s definitely more uptempo and full-bodied than anything we’ve done before and it really is a huge pleasure to sing it on stage,” Polachek enthuses. Chairlift’s members have ventured out — both now DJ. “I really like singing over DJ sets,” Polachek says. The songstress has collaborated with such buzz acts as Blood Orange. In 2014 she presented a solo project, Arcadia, as Ramona Lisa on Terrible Records. Meanwhile, Wimberly has played drums for Terrible alumni Solange — and he was involved in A Seat At The Table. But the big ‘OMG’ moment came when Polachek contributed No Angel to Beyonce’s selftitled album. Today she reveals that No Angel originated as an early, experimental outtake from Arcadia. “Patrick and I went into the studio to write songs specifically for Beyonce — but precisely because they were written for her, with her in mind, she wasn’t interested. I mean, Beyonce’s an incredible curator. She has a really sharp ear — and then an incredible sense of combining things that no one would guess would work really well together. But I think she really wanted that self-titled record to be very different than anything she’d done before. We’re obviously huge fans of her old work — and we may have imitated her previous sound too closely for her to be interested in [the songs]. She ended up taking a song that I had made on my own that I had just added to the folder before submitting it. So it was quite surreal because people were saying, like, ‘Oh, Caroline is writing for pop artists right now,’ but actually I had zero experience writing for pop artists. Zero!”

All good things must come to an end but we’re here to protect you from the FOMO. Catch these must-see shows before they close this week.

Blaque Showgirls Nakkiah Lui’s searing satire based on the ‘90s sexploitation cult film Showgirls, is as funny as it is damning about Aboriginal inequality. When & Where: until 4 Dec, Malthouse Theatre Blaque Showgirls

Burning Doors The Free Theatre of Belarus’ collaboration with Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina takes aim at the violent regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin. When & Where: until 3 Dec, Arts Centre Melbourne

What’s Yours Is Mine Catch the third production of this year’s Poppy Seed Theatre Festival, a three-week celebration of cutting edge new theatre. When & Where: until 3 Dec, Butterfly Club

When & Where: 7 Dec, Max Watt’s

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 35

OPINION Opinion

Statue

End Of Year Releases Cutters Records have just announced the forthcoming Statue EP, Monument. The duo of drummers from Melbourne bands World’s End Press and NO ZU have formed world house beat team Statue. It started as a studio project, but now they are venturing out as a DJ team. It’s been a year since the last EP, Built, was released. The organic approach to percussion and instrumentation created a unique sound within electronic dance music and shifted their live performance into the DJ booth. I recently received the Monument EP promo, containing four dedicated dancefloor numbers. The percussive dance journey continues with each jam, each six to nine minutes in duration, ensuring you are fully immersed in the beat-down. Tagged on the end is the Monument Moscoman Remix, something you could easily yoga to. The NLV Records team are making sure the Australian summer gets the anthems it wants with the release of Lewis CanCut’s latest

Business Music When Your Club Needs A Boss With Paz

EP, Indoor Rainforest. The earlier single Say OK with Tigarah was a clear style shift into the songwriting that is familiar to the PC pop world. Body Querty and Ice Cream & Asphalt (feat. Hatsune Miku) introduce us to the forthcoming EP. The soundscape delves into kwaito synths and quirky 125 BPM dance eccentrics, elaborating on the tribal and tropical feature of LCC production. And just in: After the success of Daniel Haaksman’s 2016 album African Fabrics, the Man Recordings team supply us with Francis Bebey — Sunny Crypt (Daniel Haaksman Edit). Bebey delivered the original pre-programmed drum patterns and various African instruments on Sunny Crypt back in 1982 and in 2016 Haaksman takes it to the dancefloor, accentuating the flutes and building deep kicks.

Hannah Peel

A Tribe Called Quest (Q-Tip & Jarobi White)

O G F l ava s Urban And R&B

ow will hip hop respond News With to the Trump era? Expect to Cyclone hear more ‘woke’ music — like A Tribe Called Quest’s US #1 double album We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, their first outing since 1998’s ‘farewell’ The Love Movement. A Tribe Called Quest promote solidarity in the single We The People..., which alludes to Trump’s hate rhetoric against various minorities. The New York trio — (now deceased) MC Phife Dawg, polymath Q-Tip and DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad — pioneered jazz hop with poetic, conscious and Afrocentric lyrics. They reunited in the noughties for occasional 36 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

performances. But, after commemorating the 25th anniversary of 1990’s debut People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm, the group hit Q-Tip’s studio. Pathos surrounds We Got It..., as Phife passed in March — although he features heavily on the album and chose its oblique title. Those honorary “Tribesmen” show — Jarobi White, Consequence and a charged Busta Rhymes. Guests include Andre 3000 (the casio-electro Kids...) plus A Tribe Called Quest inheritors Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar. Super-fan Elton John(!) plays piano and Jack White plays guitar. Q-Tip handles the beats — Muhammad preoccupied with scoring Luke Cage, a web television series created for Netflix. He eschews the textures and minimalism of The Love Movement for layers and maximalism, producing retro-future boom-bap with some wonky R&B (cue: Q-Tip’s flossy 1999 solo debut, Amplified). Unusually, The Space Program considers the impact of climate change on the black community. But, anticipating a Democratic election victory, Q-Tip refers to a female President. Ironically, The Donald is not a Trump joint but a festive tribute to — and with — Phife.

Dance Moves

n this particular moment of late capitalism and With Tim Finney pending apocalypse, when every conceivable experimental impulse within popular music has its own niche market, what defines ambition and risk-taking? Increasingly, I suspect that ambition means courting the risk of falling between two stools, striking for a space in between niches or for which an audience is yet to coalesce. With every sonic extremity now mapped out, this typically means the crossing of streams within the predefined realm of the possible, and the

New Currents

OPINION Opinion

mixing of impulses and qualities that aren’t meant to go together. Most of my favourite current music sounds ungainly or off-putting on paper, each description requiring an addendum of “...but much better than that description implies”. Irish musician Hannah Peel flirts with disaster by binding together pop music songwriting and post-electronic experimentalism through overwrought earnestness. Her second album (and first in five years), Awake But Always Dreaming, is — get this — a concept album about her grandmother’s struggle with dementia. Opening with the relatively sunny, straightahead post-Chvrches electro-pop of All That Matters, the album quickly descends into shadowy depths of studied abstraction that recall nothing so much as Kate Bush’s mid-’80s concept suite about drowning, The Ninth Wave. As with Bush’s song cycle, a lot of ground is covered by Peel: Invisible City is a stirring piano ballad about being lost in old memory; Octavia an instrumental blur of cello and fuzz; the title track an electronic found-sound mise en scene through which Peel’s small voice wanders like a frightened child; Foreverest veers from eerie electroballadry to an interlude that sounds like a machine malfunctioning, which then gradually coalesces into a pounding schaffel epic worthy of techno producers like Mikkel Metal. The narrative thread pulling all this together and lending it coherence — Peel’s attempt to get inside her grandmother’s fracturing mind — can threaten to make Awake But Always Dreaming slightly on-thenose: that sense that here is someone trying to say something important. It can be a bit like political theatre. But Peel’s earnestness, her lack of ironic distancing from her own subject matter, is also precisely the quality that renders this music so compelling. US R&B singer Dawn Richard — once part of Diddy’s Dirty Money ensemble — has spent the last five years ploughing a similar furrow of over-earnest experimentalism, combining and purifying two of R&B’s most attractive qualities — its capacity for unabashed emotionalism and its fascination with modern sonics — to the point where you wonder whether it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. Well, yes and no: Richards’ previous albums Goldenheart and Blackheart can be heavy weather, by turns restlessly experimental and epically self-regarding, populated with sonic curios that turn into chest-beating anthems and back again. I love them and I find them exhausting.

Dawn’s new album Redemption is described as the third in this trilogy of albums and, while it adopts broadly similar themes and approaches, of the three it seems the most user-friendly, offering a bevy of larger-than-life dance-pop tunes (Love Under Lights, Black Crimes, Renegades and Voices) that maintain Dawn’s key fixations — snapping trap beats, emotive trance chords, odd samplestuff interludes — but combine them in more straightforwardly pleasing incarnations without any air of compromise. Elsewhere, as usual, Dawn’s gaze wanders, indulging in both electric guitar and horn solos on LA, getting guttural and mysterious on Hey Nikki, and concocting one of her most lovely ballads on The Louvre. Dawn is quickly amassing a body of work to rival any artist in R&B, and it’s defined by the singular and bloodyminded nature of her vision: a life quest not just to fall between two stools, but to fall between as many stools as possible.

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 37

Album / E Album/EP Reviews

The Rolling Stones

Blue & Lonesome Universal

★★★★½

Album OF THE Week

Recorded in just over three days at Mark Knopfler’s British Grove Studios last December, this collection of blues covers were played live (nope, no overdubs). Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Woods were joined in the studio by longstanding live touring members Darryl Jones (bass) and Chuck Leavell (keyboards). Eric Clapton, who just happened to be mixing in the same studio complex, popped in to guest on a couple of tracks (Everybody Knows About My Good Thing and I Can’t Quit You Baby). Salivating yet? Opener Just Your Fool starts abruptly; almost as if we opened a soundproof door from the outside and discovered The Stones, midsession, inside; they’ve got the blues and that’s alright by us. Really, Charlie Watts? Sometimes he just shows off with those sparkling, dynamic cymbal flourishes and thunderous drum rolls (all the while without breaking a sweat, we bet). And we can actually visualise Keith Richards’ shit-eating grin at all times. During All Of Your Love’s piano solo, we dare you try not to pull an appreciative stank face while your head nods along (it’s actually physically impossible). Jagger embodies closer I Can’t Quit You Baby: “WEEEEEELLLLL I can’t quit you baby/But I’m gonna have to put you down for a while.” Clapton’s delicately forlorn guitar contributions match Jagger’s despairing delivery. Faint applause and “Yeah, boys!” signal the band’s satisfaction. We’re powerless to the synergy of The Stones. Bryget Chrisfield

John Legend

Peter Doherty

Darkness And Light

Hamburg Demonstrations

Sony

★★★½ John Legend’s first album in three years, Darkness And Light delivers timeless deep soul vibes, burning a flame of love, peace and happiness that flickers in the winds of these troubled times. The anthemic single Love Me Now bursts with a joyous optimism that puts a modern pop spin on Legend’s natural tendency towards soulful sincerity. Uber R&B producer Blake Mills, known for his work with Alabama Shakes, prevents Legend from indulging in the usual tropes of the genre to produce a timeless yet distinctly contemporary soul sound. Mills’ involvement with this album explains why the very wonderful Brittany Howard has ended up shrieking on the backing vocals of the title track and so capably takes over sneaking in a very sultry verse. Featuring Miguel,

38 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

BMG/Liberator

★★★

Overload reflects on modern love that moves at a fast pace. Kamasi Washington deals his trademarked saxophone solo which is wondrously abstract addition to the mix. Right By You is dedicated to his daughter Luna, reflecting a father’s concern for the future of his child, tempered by a message of love that he will always be there for her, strung out across a quirky string arrangement. Legend succeeds when the songs don’t emulate current pop convention, shaking up his penchant for old school soul and taking us to familiar yet surprising new places. Guido Farnell

Seven years since his Grace/ Wastelands album, Peter Doherty has re-grouped and come back with an interesting second solo album. Opener Kolly Kibber showcases the cheerful, playful side of Doherty, with soothing vocals and upbeat piano as female guest vocalists give the song an angelic twist. His vocals are slightly croaky and imperfect throughout, giving the album a raw feel, especially in strippedback tracks like Down For The Outing where the guitars pack a punch. Hell To Pay At The Gates Of Heaven is based on the Paris attacks of 2015 with its meaningful but catchy lyrics gliding through the topic with his raw vocals. Doherty pays tribute to Amy Winehouse in Flags From The Old Regime, with its

heartfelt lyrics that delve deeper than other songs on the album. Throughout the album Doherty’s emotions are left on his sleeve as he opens up with no regrets. As the guitars ring out, I Don’t Love Anyone (But You’re Not Just Anyone) is the shining star among the tracks with its perfect lyrics, beautiful, mellow beat accompanied by violins as Doherty turns the mood even sadder. A Spy In The House Of Love and She Is Far have killer guitars. The album itself is very calm while at times also a little depressing as Doherty’s stripped-back songs emerging as slow and heartfelt rather than upbeat and happy. Aneta Grulichova

EP Reviews Album/EP Reviews

Kate MillerHeidke

Hideous Towns

The Best Of: Act One

Lost And Lonesome

Disquiet Living

Sony

The Last Shadow Puppets

Nicole Millar

The Dream Synopsis

EMI

Communication

Domino/EMI

★★★★

★★★½

★★★★

This wide-ranging introduction and overview to Kate MillerHeidke’s idiosyncratic work, features her classically-trained operatic trill colliding with some social conscience and wit to make chamber pop unlike much else. Across two discs, there’s the stuff to make you think a bit, including Caught In The Crowd, and the new You’ve Underestimated Me, Dude, as well as wistfully emotional works such as Drama, the quite towering Last Day On Earth, and the happily absurd I’m Growing A Beard Downstairs For Christmas. If that’s not enough, there’s a bunch of live renditions and selections from her opera project, The Rabbits. You could say she’s been busy, but you can still expect an Act Two.

Characterised by rippling layers of Cure-esque guitars and distant, reverb-heavy vocals, Disquiet Living is superficially rooted in the more independent side of 1980s rock styles. But, there’s something else at work within the album. Whether it’s the stretched-flat vocals, the quietly propulsive drumming or something else entirely, Hideous Towns’ debut album feels particularly Australian. There’s just something about the record that speaks of sunbaked suburbia and plainspoken menace; hallucinogenic nostalgia and unforgiving environments. Whatever it is, it makes for a remarkably surreal and affecting listen.

The Dream Synopsis EP, recorded live, kicks off with Alex Turner stating: “And we are rolling,” before a guitar melody and background violins colour the contemplative bass line on opener Aviation. Les Cactus is a raucous and upbeat ‘70s style rock tune with French lyrics and Totally Wired is a bass driven corker that draws on old school punk rock. This Is Your Life cements Zach Dawes’ importance in the outfit while final tracks, Is This What You Wanted and The Dream Synopsis, change the tone to slow and quirky rock ballads full of sentimentality. This one’s worth checking out.

On her new EP, Sydneysider Nicole Millar hits it out of the park with opener No Bad Vibes, with its chatty-lyrical hooks and dance-electro beats that ease into soft synths, while One Thing becomes a slow groove. Both Signals and Pixelated lean more towards a Flume sound with their futuristic synths, swelling with energy as Millar’s crisp vocals weave through the beat. Love Like I Never pushes a repetitive yet tantalising electro before Better (Nicole Millar x Sweater Beats feat. Imad Royal) steps the whole EP up a notch with its robotic dance vibes and soothing vocals.

Jonty Czuchwicki

Aneta Grulichova

Matt O’Neill

Ross Clelland

More Reviews Online Trivium Ember To Inferno: Ab Initio

theMusic.com.au

Cold Chisel The Live Tapes Vol 3 – Live At The Manly Vale Hotel

Listen to our This Week’s Releases playlist on

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 39

Live Re Live Reviews

Killing Heidi @ Queenscliff Music Festival. Pic: Lucinda Goodwin

Queenscliff Music Festival 25 Nov Friday

Paul Kelly @ Queenscliff Music Festival. Pic: Lucinda Goodwin

Drums Of War @ Queenscliff Music Festival. Pic: Lucinda Goodwin

Peter Garrett & The Alter Egos @ Queenscliff Music Festival. Pic: Lucinda Goodwin

Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals @ Queenscliff Music Festival. Pic: Lucinda Goodwin

40 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

Alice Ivy @ Queenscliff Music Festival. Pic: Lucinda Goodwin

This year Queenscliff Music Festival celebrate their 20th year and the 2016 event sold out about a month ago. Over on Hippos Stage, the wonderful Kylie Auldist covers Cold Chisel’s Saturday Night. She really is a soul diamond. The brass section adds sass and a trumpet solo takes us there. Auldist performs a touching tribute to recently deceased legend Sharon Jones. We speak to a fair few people who have made the trek to Queenscliff specifically to see Killing Heidi. “We’d be here anyway as punters even if we weren’t playing,” the radiant Ella Hooper gushes when they take to Lighthouse Stage. They all look so happy up there. Hooper sports an age-appropriate rock’n’roll look. Not many could get away with that bright blue eye shadow, either. Hooper intros a “deep cut”, Real People (“There’s no shame in being sad”) and it rules. Killing Heidi’s music doesn’t sound dated at all. They play Kettle, before which Hooper reminds us she was just 13 years old when she wrote this song. After triple j added it to rotation, she adds, “It was like a 13-year-old kid’s wet dream!” Their bassist is also a beautiful violinist. At Queenscliff, you do sometimes have to intervene if you spot little kiddies fighting: “He’s tryina push me!” A little one down front dobs on her brother. “Thank you for being our first,” Hooper praises — sounds like there will be a full comeback tour!? — and then Mascara’s lyrics “Just wearing black won’t take care of that” remind us of our emo pasts. Killing Heidi have lost nothing and really do sound incredible as is perfectly demonstrated during their smash hit and closer, Weir. Are lots of people suffering from colds and sharing Portaloos

for moral support or are punters snorting lines? We head towards The Pavilion for Alice Ivy (Annika Schmarsel to her parents) but are stopped at the door and told we must drain our drinks since this is a dry area. We scull. Then we get to admire what Schmarsel brings, which is something totally unique and somehow effortlessly marries current with retro. She thanks her parents for letting her stay at their place. This young lady, raised on the Victorian surf coast, is certainly going places. The tent is heaving to welcome Ash Grunwald to Lighthouse Stage. His cover of Crazy by Gnarls Barkley is everything! The whoops and hollers throughout the crowd speak volumes. Grunwald takes his denim jacket off, but the pork pie hat remains on at all times. We’re not quite ready to call it a night so head into Queenscliff Brewhouse where a lively dancefloor cut moves to party classics such as JT’s Rock Your Body. There’s nothing quite like a coastal local going loco, which we witness on many occasions across the weekend. Although we could kick in for a couple more hours yet, it’s only night one so we head over to the homewardbound McHarry’s shuttle bus. Saturday All aboard the 11am QMF Express, Carriage B, for William Crighton! A previous passenger left their knitting on a seat, which we move to the side after asking whether it belongs to a member of the band. Crighton has brought four muso mates along and they start off with Priest before the train has peeled away from the station. There’s a touch of Roy Orbison to his vocal. We switch to Carriage A at Lakers Siding. Reuben Stone jokes he’s gonna play 20 minutes of Meat Loaf covers. He loops his sounds, supplying beatboxing drum beats and even plays trombone! (It’s a bit early for this instrument at 11.30am, however.) There’s a

eviews Live Reviews

reggae flavour to Stone’s music; he probably grew up on a diet of Fat Freddy’s Drop. His mum’s over from New Zealand and Stone puts her to work as merch lady. Props to him for changing a guitar string while the train’s in motion. Back inside the festival site, Sweethearts perform This Land Is Your Land as a tribute to Sharon Jones on Hippos Stage. A Hawaiian shirt-wearing super-fan bolts down the front for some dad dancing toward the end of their set, which lures a couple of others to their feet. He then tries to copy the backing vocalists’ chorey. They close with a smashing version of What A Man. On Glaneuse Stage, Jordie Lane commences solo with Better Not Go Outside, before his bandmates The Sleepers arrive onstage, join in and beefup the tail end of this song’s arrangement. What a voice! Lane explains they’ve spent the last three-and-a-half years in the States, embroiled in the relentless political campaigns, and then America Won’t You Make My Dreams Come True follows. Clare Reynolds has a delightful voice as well. Lane’s band is also capable of belting out barnstorming brilliance. His harmonica playing to open Black Diamond is mega-impressive. The hordes tramp over to Lighthouse Stage for Peter Garrett & The Alter Egos (his incredible backing band features Abbe May and Martin Rotsey on guitar, Mark Wilson on bass, Peter Luscombe on drums and Rosa Morgan on keys). A punter walking into the tent clocks Garrett up onstage and observes, “He looks like Michael Klim”. A few classic Australian tracks are included to pay tribute to some Aussie music legends taken too soon: Ego Is Not A Dirty Word by Skyhooks (RIP Shirley Strachan); Back To The Wall by Divinyls (RIP Chrissy Amphlett). May shines on guitar during the Divinyls cover. We all just wanna hear Oils material, though —

let’s face it. Garrett introduces two of his daughters to the stage and they supply backing vocals. Garrett gives a shoutout to the Recognise crew and then we get our wish: Midnight Oil’s Don’t Wanna Be The One! And Garrett really comes alive. Pleasingly, Garrett still dances like he’s getting an electric shock through the floorboards and is a riveting frontman. There’s an encore and we score yet another Oils song: The Dead Heart, during which we all have a blast singing along

Pleasingly, Garrett still dances like he’s getting an electric shock. with the “doo-doo-doo-doo” parts. Keep on praying for that Oils reunion tour, people! It’ll be mighty! We take a boogie break guided by Vince Peach’s stellar soul selections (who could resist Stevie Wonder’s Superstition?). It’s a loose vibe in Ozone Lounge and there’s dancing on tables. Those unaware that Paul Kelly recently released an anthology of funeral songs (Death’s Dateless Night) probably found the reverent atmosphere of their Lighthouse Stage set somewhat of a surprise. We hear shouts for “How To Make Gravy!” and there’s an overall restless vibe. Kelly’s vocal, so steeped in character, rings out clearly through the evening air. Sunday Salt Lounge is a very civilised music venue, filled with comfy couches and chairs, and their Poet’s Dream cocktail, resplendent with fairy floss garnish, does the trick at 11am. Gabriella Cohen confesses she

just woke up and strums gently, aware there may be sore heads among us: “Is the guitar too loud for you guys?” Back in the festival site, a large crowd assembles to watch Steve Poltz perform his comedic, storytelling toons on Hippos Stage. The Queenscliff massive sure do love singalongs! Poltz admits QMF was on his bucket list. The back story to his closer, I Want All My Friends To Be Happy, is incredibly touching; he tells us wrote this song after a friend lost his battle with brain cancer. Poltz calls strong men and women down to the front so he can crowd-surf and loops this song so that it keeps playing while he does so. All of the feels, especially when the crowd’s called upon to help him tell cancer to, “FUCK OFF!” On Lighthouse Stage, Ben Harper open with Oppression, which is percussion-heavy goodness thanks to Leon Mobley. “Thank you,” Harper acknowledges. A female neighbour in the crowd replies, “No, thank YOU!” It’s all good vibes, no one can rock a pioneer hat quite like Harper and Diamonds On The Inside follows. “Thank you for the sign,” Harper gestures toward a front row fan, adding, “Signs are the coolest thing.” He takes a seat, switches to slide guitar and all clap along. Bassist Juan Nelson is a delight, his funky bass solo turns into a riff-off with Harper on slide and the results are hilarious. Excuse Me Mr is heartfelt and Harper loses himself in this song. Harper is genetically blessed, uncontested, and he oozes positivity. What’s not to love? What stands out about Queenscliff Music Festival, year after year, is the captive audiences across all venues inside the festival site and beyond. It’s a gathering for music worshippers; those among us who simply couldn’t survive without it.

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

The Used @ 170 Russell TLC @ Palais Theatre Garbage @ Regent Theatre Tiny Little Houses @ Howler R&B Fridays Live @ HIsense Arena Rodriguez @ The Plenary Ne Obliviscaris @ 170 Russell Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals @ Sidney Myer Music Bowl Gizzfest @ Coburg Velodrome Garbage @ Rochford Wines The Smith Street Band @ Corner Hotel Missy Higgins @ The Plenary The Cannanes @ The Tote Birds Of Tokyo @ The Croxton

Bryget Chrisfield

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 41

Arts Reviews Arts Reviews

every ridiculous consequence of pot smoking — from rape, to cannibalism, to hocking your baby for drug money — is given the OTT song and dance treatment the original practically begs for. To be honest, this stage adaptation is relatively middlerank musically speaking, but with its outrageously hokey tropes, that mock the sentimental cheesiness of musicals as much as the hyperbole of the film, it finds a comic sweet spot that gives a director carte blanche to go full throttle in almost every regard. Stephen Wheat, director of the Melbourne premiere production of Reefer Madness: The Musical, does exactly that: pushing the zany, cartoonish, squeakyclean moralising turned monstrous fall from grace to the point of B-Movie horror. Just watching these performances is exhausting, and rightly so. To reach its full potential, the momentum and energy of a staging must be unanimously lurid from curtain up to curtain call, and it’s a great credit to this RL Productions cast that their commitment to these eye-straining caricatures is as total as this. As the romantic leads, preppy sweethearts Jimmy Harper and Mary Lane, Ben Adams and Grace O’Donnell-Clancy are superbly cast. Adams delivers a particularly impressive turn, maintaining a consistent intensity throughout while switching the focus of the performance from wideeyed innocence to feral addiction. As the agitating headteacher, James Cutler offers a side-splitting comic performance, as does Rosa McCarty as the woefully hooked yet conscience-stricken pot den madam Mae. The ensemble plays a major role in this production’s success, delivering pin-sharp footwork to Yvette Lee’s punchy choreography, as well as some impressive supporting roles. Some technical issues with head mics, and one or two lapses in vocal consistency took off a little of the shine from the opening night performance, but it’s otherwise hard to fault these weed freaks — they’re smokin’.

Reefer Madness: The Musical

The Founder

Reefer Madness: The Musical Theatre Chapel Off Chapel to 4 Dec

★★★★ In 1930s America, conservative hysteria knew no bounds, case in point being the unhinged fear mongering of anti-marijuana propaganda film Reefer Madness. In the eight decades since the film’s release, its self-satirising sensationalism has seen it become a cult classic and (perhaps unsurprisingly) a musical, by Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney, debuting off-Broadway in 1998 before receiving an all-star TV adaptation in 2005. Revelling in the high-camp, mega-kitsch absurdity of its source material,

Maxim Boon

42 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

The Founder Film In Cinemas Now

★★★★ Everybody loves a good rags-to-riches story, right? These days, however, success stories tend to expose a little more of the dark side of making it big. The Founder, the story of a traveling salesman who slowly but surely transformed a California burger joint called McDonald’s into a global fast-food empire, tries to play it both ways, paying tribute to its central character’s tenacity while acknowledging his scheming ways. And for the most part, this involving biopic pulls it off, topping its juicy American-dream narrative with a bracing dash of cynical sauce. Pivotal to its success is Michael Keaton, playing to acting strengths old and new in a role that boldly navigates the grey area where ingratiating, irritating and cold-blooded intersect. It’s the 1950s, and Keaton’s Ray Kroc is peddling milkshake machines to middle-America restaurants with little success. Everything turns around when a small hamburger stand run by brothers Dick and Mac McDonald (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch) place an order for eight of Ray’s machines. Curious to get a glimpse of a thriving business close up, Ray drives to California to get the lowdown on the brothers’ strategy, which covers everything from their self-designed ‘Speedy System’ to their strict ideas on quality control. It’s the latter that has kept the brothers from expanding from one outlet to many, but Ray has a plan to take them nationwide. It’s an arrangement that works out well, but as the venture becomes more successful, the more Ray feels he deserves. While The Founder may not explicitly indict Ray for his more callous methods, it gives every indication that his success is built on a shaky foundation. The marvelous work of Offerman and Lynch as men whose work eithic differs dramatically from that of their business partner illustrates where the movie’s sympathies truly lie, but Keaton’s uncompromising performance makes Ray more than simply the villain of the piece. Guy Davis

OPINION Opinion

Howzat!

Local Music By Jeff Jenkins Is Anybody There? Adult Contemporary doesn’t have to mean bland. Peter Farnan’s Pesky Bones album is a middle-aged record containing adult themes. Pete is a driving force behind Boom Crash Opera, who have always been a joyfully perverse, left-of-centre stadium rock band. When it comes to edgy pop, Pete is a master craftsman. With 12 tracks and 12 singers, the Pesky Bones project is like a crazy compilation. But with Pete having written all the tunes, there’s a strange sense of cohesion, even if it’s quite a trip, from the electro pop of My Radiance, sung by Ali Barter, to the classic pop of Get Me To A Church, featuring Tim Rogers. And they’re just the opening tracks. “With my big-selling records in the distant past, no industry push behind me, no budget and no distinctive singing voice, I decided to make an album that explored what it felt like to be my age, in this place and time,” Pete explained in a revealing piece he penned for the Daily Review. “There was no tidy ending. I just kept going. There’s a lot to be said for just keeping going.” Now That

Our Babies Have Grown sounds like classic Paul Kelly, a moving meditation on what happens when you grow old and your kids move out. “They’re gone, no goodbyes,” Paul sings. “We’re left here to die.” It’s delivered in a delightfully dreamy duet with Rebecca Barnard, who pops up later with the darker and more direct The Children, a rather more disturbing take on the same theme. Sean Kelly’s Flying Blind sounds like a long-lost Models song, Dan Tobias delivers the pop-rock gem Intuition, while Pete injects a subtle onionskin reference into Sarah Ward’s Beyond Love. “We bump into mirrors and face up to our looks,” Pete reflects. “But I’m not admitting defeat.” Indeed. There’s life in these bones yet. “The end is coming,” Pete says. “Let’s make our pesky bones dance.”

Pete Farnan

Alyce In Wonderland Pete Farnan regularly pops up in Alyce Platt’s band, The Fish Shop Collective. The extraordinarily talented Alyce is doing a special Christmas show at The Flying Saucer Club on Sunday afternoon. The Life Of Brian Happy birthday to Brian Cadd, who turned 70 on 29 Nov. Brian joined his first big group, The Groop, 50 years ago, and he’s just released his first album in 11 years, Bulletproof. It’s a cracker. Hot Line “The end is upon us” - Pesky Bones, I’m Not A Believer.

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 43

Comedy / G The Guide

Wed 30

Bad//Dreems

Five Raves In Five Days feat. DJ Sets Matt & Alex + Bec Sandridge + Client Liaison + Gretta Ray + Illy + Japanese Wallpaper + Olympia: 170 Russell, Melbourne Bohjass: 303, Northcote

Golden Age Of Ballooning

Boroky + Alex Cameron + Secret Artist: Bar Open, Fitzroy Freya Josephine Hollick + Skyscraper Stan: Bella Union, Carlton South

The Music Presents Bell X1: 2 Dec The Prince Golden Age Of Ballooning: 8 Dec The Old Bar; 9 Dec Mynt Werribee The Avalanches: 3 & 4 Jan Melbourne Town Hall Highasakite: 4 Jan Corner Hotel Parcels: 4 Jan The Gasometer Hotel Grouplove: 6 Jan Melbourne Town Hall Twelve Foot Ninja: 7 Jan Corner Hotel; 2 Feb Commercial Hotel; 3 Feb Chelsea Heights Hotel; 4 Feb Villiage Green Hotel NAO: 25 Jan Howler CW Stoneking & Nathaniel Rateliff: 9 Mar Seaworks Williamstown The Jerry Cans: 15 Mar, Northcote Social Club; 16 Mar, Sooki Lounge Roy Ayers: 9 Apr The Croxton Rhiannon Giddens: 11 Apr Corner Hotel Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue: 11 April 170 Russell

Muddy’s Blues Roulette with Julian James: Catfish, Fitzroy The Troggs + Thee Gravy Train Four + Animal Hands: Cherry Bar, Melbourne Steve Hughes: Comic’s Lounge, North Melbourne Mansionair + PLGRMS: Corner Hotel, Richmond

Sleeps And Bounds

Off The Leash + Simon Phillips: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy

From The Living End to Avalanches, Bad//Dreems are picking up some of the best support act slots around. Now they’re headlining their own gig at Howler, this Saturday with guests The Grenadiers.

Tanzer + Empat Lima + Spike Fuck + Callan: Grace Darling Hotel (Basement), Collingwood Silver Delay + Culte + Desertions + Pearl Bay: Grace Darling Hotel (Band Room), Collingwood

Andy Phillips + The Catalyst Rock: Seaford Hotel, Seaford

The Ruby Rogers Experience: Grumpy’s Green, Fitzroy

Open Mic Night: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick

Lomond Acoustica feat. Accidental Bedfellows + James Hickey + Rocky & the Two Bob Millionaires: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East

Wine, Whiskey, Women feat. Jenny Biddle: The Drunken Poet, West Melbourne

The Tallest Man on Earth: Melbourne Recital Centre (Elisabeth Murdoch Hall), Southbank

The Girlatones + The Luke Brennan Trip + Forever Son: The Old Bar, Fitzroy

Steve Hughes: Comic’s Lounge, North Melbourne The Peep Tempel + Cable Ties + Amyl: Corner Hotel, Richmond Blue Moon feat. Great Places + Rhysics + Plebs + Weatherboards: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy Rock-A-Bye Baby Music Sessions feat. Bashka: Fitzroy Town Hall, Fitzroy

Sneaky Sundays with Various DJs: The Prince (Band Room), St Kilda

Gallant: 17 Apr, Corner Hotel

Chinchilla + Mr Stitcher + Kat O & The Collectables + Excuse For an Exit: The Tote (Upstairs), Collingwood

The Lumineers: 19 Apr Arts Centre Melbourne The Record Company: 20 Apr Northcote Social Club

ShockOne

On Diamond + Las Mar + Mario Moles + Maria Moles & Adam Halliwell + Edie Centric: The Tote (Band Room), Collingwood Slum Sociable

Slum ‘N’ Bass This Thursday catch local electro-pairing Slum Sociable as they tear up Howler with some fresh new tracks. Mossy is on board for support, cementing the guarantee for a massive night of tunes.

Julien Baker + Emma Russack + Slowly Slowly: Northcote Social Club, Northcote

Still Mess + Eyesores + Tony Dork: The Tote (Front Bar), Collingwood Morbidly O’Beat + Lady Oscar + Alex Elbery & The Strangers: The Workers Club, Fitzroy Latreenagers + Dogood + Slow Job + Congratulations Everybody: Yarra Hotel, Abbotsford

Thu 01 Kickin The B at 303 feat.Cookin’ On 3 Burners: 303, Northcote Swamp + Splendidid + Hugh Fuchsen & The Sauce Sauce Sauce: Bar Open, Fitzroy Hip Hop Karaoke - Ladies Night: Boney, Melbourne The Troggs: Caravan Music Club, Oakleigh

Emma Anglesey: Open Studio, Northcote

Adam Hoss Ayres DJs: Catfish, Fitzroy

Charles Jenkins: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick

Mitch Power: Charles Weston Hotel (Front Bar), Brunswick

Large No 12s: Royal Oak Hotel, Fitzroy North

44 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

Wouldn’t Mama Be Proud #1 with Baby Poor + River Blue + Pembo: The Gasometer Hotel (Upstairs), Collingwood

Soul In The Basement with The Sweethearts + DJ Vince Peach + Pierre Baroni: Cherry Bar, Melbourne

Electric Avenue. Perth drum ‘n’ bass megastar ShockOne is bringing the beats to Max Watt’s this Friday for his national In This Lighttour. Support comes from Vengeance.

Wallflower + Head Wreck + Au Dre + Eli Cash: Grace Darling Hotel (Band Room), Collingwood Human Face + Coda Chroma + The Here Heres: Grace Darling Hotel (Basement), Collingwood The Sunny Cowgirls: Hallam Hotel, Hallam

Gigs / Live The Guide

Allysha Joy

The Aardvark Sessions: Thornbury Theatre, Thornbury

David Bramble: Compass Pizza Bar, Brunswick East

Vulgargrad + The Number 19s: Northcote Social Club, Northcote

Zoe Fox Duo: Wesley Anne (Front Bar), Northcote

Bootleg Rascal + Venus Court: Corner Hotel, Richmond

2Cellos: Palais Theatre, St Kilda

Crafty Anne + Not The Usual Crowd: Whole Lotta Love, Brunswick East

Hit Songs in Harmony with Bobby & The Pins: Darebin Arts & Entertainment Centre, Preston

Sub Tropical Thunder + Burning Diary + Wars: Yarra Hotel, Abbotsford

Fri 02 Joy To The World This Sunday sees the beginning of Allysha Joy’s weekly residency at Wesley Anne. Joy promises an eclectic mix of original tunes, R&B classics and surprises thrown in as well. Josh Rennie-Hynes: Harvester Moon Cafe, Bellarine

Dallas Frasca: Baha Tacos, Rye Glitoris + Hi New Low + Miss Miss: Bar Open, Fitzroy In Store with The Wilson Pickers: Basement Discs (12.45pm), Melbourne Hideous Towns: Bella Union, Carlton South

Andy Phillips: Laika Bar, St Kilda

Lossless: Boney, Melbourne

JLS & Co: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East

Late Show with Miss Honey Dijon + Brooke Powers + Merve: Boney, Melbourne The Screamin’ Honkies: Catfish (Front Bar), Fitzroy

Steve Perry Big House: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford

James Reyne + Boom Crash Opera: Chelsea Heights Hotel, Aspendale Gardens

Venus II: Northcote Social Club, Northcote

Knock Off Drinks with Chris Wilson: Cherry Bar (5.15pm), Melbourne

Evan Klar + Osaka: Penny Black, Brunswick Tom West: Some Velvet Morning, Clifton Hill

25th anniversary celebration for Pearl Jam’s ‘Ten’ with Various Artists: Cherry Bar, Melbourne

Cookin’ On 3 Burners

Dallas Frasca + Devil Electric + The Controllers: Sooki Lounge, Belgrave

Mouth Tooth + Sarah Mary Chadwick + Sweet Whirl: The Toff In Town, Melbourne Midnight Express with DJ Prequel & Edd Fisher: The Toff In Town (Carriage Room), Melbourne Gold Member: The Workers Club, Fitzroy Amber Isles + Velvet Bow + Zuma: The Workers Club Geelong, Geelong

Twinpines: Ding Dong Lounge, Melbourne DJ Ernie Dee + The Bean Project: Edinburgh Castle Hotel (Beer Garden), Brunswick Funeral Moon + Wardaemonic + Graveir + Mar Mortuum + Hellspit: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy

Lou Davies + The Bickies + Donald Dank & The Naughty Boys + Jules Sheldon: Grace Darling Hotel (Band Room), Collingwood

Frida + Fan Girl: The Curtin, Carlton

The Monotremes + Theme Team: The Old Bar, Fitzroy

After an extensive tour throughout the US and Netherlands, Bootleg Rascal are hitting Corner Hotel with a little taste of their upcoming release. It all goes down this Friday and things are bound to get messy.

Josh Rennie-Hynes: Goldmines Hotel (Bill Roys Blues Bar), Bendigo

Rat Ta’Mango + A Gazillion Angry Mexicans + Long Holiday + The Black Alleys: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick

Heart Beach + Mares + Shiny Coin + Jealous Husband: The Gasometer Hotel (Upstairs), Collingwood

Leg It

Diesel + Mike Elrington: Flying Saucer Club, Elsternwick

The Pro-Tools + Skinpin + The Fckups + The Polygamists + Me-Graines: The Bendigo, Collingwood

Our Golden Friend’s 1st Birthday Party feat. Totally Mild + Jess Ribeiro + Gabriella Cohen + Ferla + Jade Imagine + Poppongene + DJ Babyshakes: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood

Bootleg Rascal

All Ages Show with Alex Lahey + Bec Sandridge + The Beths: Arts Centre Melbourne, Melbourne

Thirsty Merc: Black Swan Hotel, Bendigo

Southwest Louisiana + Craig Woodward & Friends: Open Studio, Northcote

La Dance Macabre with Brunswick Massive: Rainbow Hotel, Fitzroy

Speedball + Blind Man Death Stare + Sweet Gold + Bombs Are Falling + Japan For: 303, Northcote

Slum Sociable + Mossy: Howler, Brunswick

The Tallest Man on Earth: Melbourne Recital Centre (Elisabeth Murdoch Hall), Southbank

Allan Smithy: Penny Black, Brunswick

Gas Mark 303 Cookin’ On 3 Burners have been tearing up the local and international scene in recent past. Now they’re returning to their roots with an intimate gig at Bar 303 this Thursday for a night of deep-cut grooves.

Hannibal Buress: Hamer Hall, Melbourne Flyying Colours + Demon Parade + Hollow Everdaze + Parading + Lorikeet: Howler, Brunswick The Troggs: Karova Lounge, Ballarat Greg Dodd & The Hoodoo Men + Max Teakle & his Honky-Tonky Friends: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East ShockOne + Vegeance + Light Force + more: Max Watt’s, Melbourne Guilty As Charged + Cash: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford

1am Slot feat. Bench Press: Cherry Bar (Jenni Bar), Melbourne

Randomer: My Aeon, Brunswick

Steve Hughes: Comic’s Lounge, North Melbourne

Friday Nights at NGV feat. Dappled Cities: National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Southbank

The Spoils + Rich Davies: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick Arakeye + The Soulenikoes + Lung + Battlesick + Phoenix Day: Reverence Hotel, Footscray Josh Wink: Royal Melbourne Hotel, Melbourne Sun God Replica: Sooki Lounge, Belgrave The Stray Hens: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick Leadfinger + Wrong Turn: Tago Mago, Thornbury Mindsnare + Born Free + Level + Join The Amish: The Bendigo, Collingwood The Spitting Swallows + Fight The Sun + Mild Manic + Shewolf: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick White Fence + Mild High Club + Boulevards + Dinner: The Croxton, Thornbury Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever + Suss Cunts + Tim Richmond + Doona Waves: The Curtin, Carlton Luke Austen: The Drunken Poet, West Melbourne DIET. + Cosmos + TNHW: The Gasometer Hotel (Upstairs), Collingwood The Vibrajets + The Ghostriders: The Gem, Collingwood Zeahorse + Jackson Reid Briggs & The Heaters + Lost Talk + Angry Mules + Burning Diary: The Old Bar, Fitzroy

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 45

Comedy / G The Guide

Empat Lima + Bitch Diesel: The Post Office Hotel, Coburg

Snatch + Stoned To Death + Diploma + Zeebuglo + Lord Justin and his One Man Band: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick

Bell X1 + Mike Peters: The Prince, St Kilda

Bedroom Suck Records Xmas Party feat. Terrible Truths + Dag + Evelyn Ida Morris + Treehouse + Lehmann B Smith + Jarrow + Waterfall Person + Sui Zhen + more: The Curtin, Carlton

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 (Toff Ballroom), Melbourne

Homesick Rays Mild Bunch + Stephen Kennedy: The Drunken Poet, West Melbourne

The Dacios + East Brunswick All Girls Choir + Claws & Organs + Killer Birds: The Tote (Band Room), Collingwood

Zeahorse: The Eastern, Ballarat East Whiskey Houston + Mr Weir + Hysteric: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood

Paper Thin + Self Talk + The Flying So High-O’s + Mount Defiance: The Tote (Upstairs), Collingwood Neighbourhood Youth + Horace Bones + Plebs: The Workers Club, Fitzroy Abbe May: The Workers Club Geelong, Geelong Shadowqueen + Roses for Jack + Enter Archadia + The Cigarellos: Whole Lotta Love, Brunswick East Pastiche + Jaala + Hollow Everdaze: Yarra Hotel, Abbotsford

Amber Isles: The Golden Vine, Bendigo

Gold Standard

Alexis Nicole: Charles Weston Hotel (Front Bar), Brunswick Vanderlay: Compass Pizza Bar, Brunswick East

Birds Of A Feather Howler Bar is heating up this week, with Lorikeet hitting up the support slot for Flyying Colours. Catch them this Friday along with fellow supports Hollow Everdaze, Lorikeet, Parading and The Demon Parade.

Sat 03 Bohjass: 303, Northcote At Last: The Etta James Story with Vika Bull: Athenaeum Theatre, Melbourne

Progfest 2016 feat. Caligula’s Horse + Circles + We Lost The Sea + Chaos Divine + Alithia + Orsome Welles + Transience + Dyssidia + more + Bear The Mammoth + Figures + Qlayeface + Enlight: Corner Hotel, Richmond Fulton Street + Melting Pot + Beautiful Beasts + Desdemona & The Liars: Ding Dong Lounge, Melbourne The Hold Steady Tribute Party with All We Need + Big League + The Suicide Tuesdays + Dead City Lights + JMS Harrison + Jo Neugebauer + Luke Seymoup + Lewis Nixon + Tim Hampshire + Jerome Knappett + Vicuna Coat: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy Tell No Tales feat. Ricardo Villalobos + Pan-Pot + Audion + Agents of Time + Nastia + more: Flemington Racecourse (The Nursery), Flemington Bad//Dreems + Grenadiers + James Moloney & The Mad Dog Harrisons: Howler, Brunswick The Jim Cuomo Trio: Jambo Bar & Cafe, Footscray

Gold Member: Baha Tacos, Rye

Michael Meeking & The Lost Souls: Labour In Vain, Fitzroy

Barefoot Spaceman + Birdhouse + Dozeys + Hurlin’ Up Limbs: Bar Open, Fitzroy

Greg Champion & The Useful Members Of Society: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East

The Troggs: Barwon Club, South Geelong

Leadfinger + The Vibrajets: Lyrebird Lounge, Ripponlea

Soul-A-Go-Go feat. Vince Peach + Miss Goldie + Manchild + DJ Emma Peel + Ritchie 1250 + Rigidy Rourke & The Love Dogs: Bella Union, Carlton South Circoloco Melbourne Day Party with Seth Troxler + Ben UFO: Brown Alley, Melbourne The Wilson Pickers: Caravan Music Club, Oakleigh

46 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016

Ysk Lightspeed Chamber: The Post Office Hotel, Coburg

Local record label Our Golden Friend is celebrating their first birthday with a huge night of tunes this Thursday at Gasometer Hotel. Totally Mild, Gabriella Cohen, Jess Ribeiro and plenty more will join he festivities. Merchant + Tombsealer + Contaminated + Oligarch: Catfish (Upstairs), Fitzroy

Lorikeet

Beloved Elk + Geryon + Various Asses + Spike Fuck + Dogood + DJ Nature Girl: The Old Bar, Fitzroy

Gabriella Cohen

Broads: Major Tom’s, Kyneton Raised Fist + Arteries + Southpaw + The Patient: Max Watt’s, Melbourne The Oz Rock Experience + Peter Rowsthorn: Memo Music Hall, St Kilda

Holy Diver (Ronnie James Dio Tribute) + Ace of Spades (The Motorhead Tribute) + Assault & Battery: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford

In The Carriage with Inkwell + UMT TRK: The Toff In Town (Carriage Room), Melbourne Slow Dancer + Georgie McMahon: The Toff In Town, Melbourne The House deFrost with Andee Frost: The Toff In Town (Toff Ballroom), Melbourne Lost Animal + Lalic + Hot Action: The Tote (Band Room), Collingwood

Diesel: Northcote Social Club, Northcote

Jurassic Nark + Wrong Turn + Hot Piss: The Tote (Front Bar), Collingwood

Blue Banded Bee Fundraiser with Jen Cloher + Courtney Barnett + The Orbweavers + Steph Hughes: Northcote Social Club, Northcote

Junior Fiction + Girlatones + The Beths + 19th Century Strongmen: The Tote (Upstairs), Collingwood

The Chopps: Open Studio, Northcote

Jack River + Brightness + Severa: The Workers Club, Fitzroy

Slumberhaze: Penny Black, Brunswick The New Savages: Rainbow Hotel, Fitzroy Heinous Crimes + Murphy + Khan: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick The Moonee Valley Drifters: Retreat Hotel (Front Bar), Brunswick

Annual Christmas Spectacular with The Rebelles + Helena Plazzer: Thornbury Theatre, Thornbury Glovv + V + Waterfall Person + Bitumen: Vanity Lair, Brunswick Greg Steps: Wesley Anne (Front Bar), Northcote

Conation + Harmony + Dead + Join The Amish + Protection: Reverence Hotel, Footscray River Rockfest 2016 with The Black Sorrows + Chocolate Starfish + Thirsty Merc + Pseudo Echo + Code 5: Riverside Park, Swan Hill Gaille: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick Hanksaw: Surabaya Johnny’s, St Kilda Dead City Ruins: The B.East, Brunswick East Mojo Roadshow with The Ugly Kings + Hobo Magic + Transvaal Diamond Syndicate + Owen Campbell + Grim Rhythm + Two Headed Dog + The Attention Seekers: The Bendigo, Collingwood Nevermind The Warp’d Tour feat. Topnovil + The Wrath + The Bob Gordons + The Duvtons + Wolfpack + The Resignators + The Way We Were + K-Mart Warriors + Admiral Ackbar + The Pro-Tools + Udder Ubductees + The Flangipanis + The Balls + Vadge Dagger + For Pluto + The Beggars’ Way + Von Stache + Punch The Clown + Blindspot + Brodown + SLOJ + Being Jane Lane + Long Holiday + The Crunt Burgers + King Kongo + Liquor

Gretta Ray

Rayving Gretta Ray is once again teaming up with triple j and a stack of others local acts as they farewell breakfast hosts Matt and Alex. 5 Raves In 5 Days hits 170 Russell this Wednesday.

Gigs / Live The Guide

Iconic Vivisect + The Seaford Monster + Grudge + Strict Vincent + Cordell: Whole Lotta Love, Brunswick East These New South Whales: Yah Yah’s, Fitzroy

Jeffers Limit + Howlite + Pregnancy + FigrHed Beats: Yarra Hotel, Abbotsford

Sun 04

Mick Daley’s Corporate Raiders: Labour In Vain, Fitzroy Dan Warners’ RRR BBQ Band: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East

Mega Light Beaut with Autosea + Oscar Key Sung + DJ Galo + Honey Smack + DJ J’Nett + Salvador Darling + more: The Toff In Town, Melbourne

Blues BBQ with The New Savages: Lucky Coq, Prahran

The Sunday Set with DJ Andyblack + Mr Weir: The Toff In Town (Carriage Room), Melbourne

Emergenza The Final: Max Watt’s, Melbourne

Down The Rabbit Hole with Nigel Last: The Toff In Town (Carriage Room), Melbourne

Russell Morris + Mike Rudd + Mick Pealing + Stylus: Memo Music Hall, St Kilda

Tezat + AK’s Bone Patrol: 303, Northcote

Chasing Alice + The Dead Pharoahs: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford

Sunday Six Pack with Phantom Panda Power Wizard Master Smasher + A Gazillion Angry Mexicans + El Colosso + Molly Dooker + She Beast + Kaku + more: The Tote (Band Room), Collingwood

Brazillian Night with Wombatuque + Baiao de Tres: Bar Open, Fitzroy

The Wilson Pickers + Miss Eileen & King Lear: Northcote Social Club, Northcote

Planet Slayer + Phlo + Parsnip: The Tote (Front Bar), Collingwood

Rhythm Section with Bradley Zero + Chaos In The CBD + Prequel + Various DJs: Boney, Melbourne

Byzantine Blue + Tania Bosak + Hello Tut Tut: Open Studio, Northcote

The Post + Saint Henry + Dave Stevens + The Badlands: The Tote (Upstairs), Collingwood

Afternoon Show with Darebin Songwriters Guild: 303, Northcote

Geoff Achison : The Westernport Hotel, Phillip Island

Forever Son

Matinee Show with Spencer Street Soul + Groove Taxi + Strong Dose: The Workers Club, Fitzroy

Glitoris

Sparkle Sparkle Bar Open will click into overdrive the all-girl electricity of Glitoris launch The Disgrace EP this Friday. Special guests at this show will include The Football Club, High New Low and Miss Miss.

Allysha Joy: Wesley Anne (Front Bar), Northcote

The Brunny Comedy Night with Various Artists: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick

Afternoon Show with Beastly Bird + Ward Hancock & the Bastard Sons + Jungle Fusion: Whole Lotta Love, Brunswick East

Broadway Unplugged Christmas Edition with Gillian Cosgriff: The Toff In Town, Melbourne

Jo Neugebauer + Ruby Markwell + Yukumbabe: Whole Lotta Love, Brunswick East

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

The Legacy of Jessie Younan feat. Various Artists: Yarra Hotel, Abbotsford

Keggin + Puffer + Third Earth: The Workers Club, Fitzroy

Tue 06 The Used - ‘In Love And Death’ in full with The Used + Storm The Sky + Corpus: 170 Russell, Melbourne

Tone Deffs

Klub MUK: 303, Northcote

Lo Fi poppers The Girlatones are launching their debut EP with a huge showcasing at The Old Bar this Wednesday. Special guests will include support acts Luke Brennan Trip and Forever Son.

Uncomfortable Sciences + Lachlan Mitchell + more: Boney (Downstairs), Melbourne Gold Member

Mental As Anything: Caravan Music Club, Oakleigh

Greg Dodd & The Hoodoo Men: Rainbow Hotel, Fitzroy

Loco Hombres: Catfish (Front Bar), Fitzroy

Field, See & Mason: Royal Oak Hotel, Fitzroy North

The Slugg + Lonefree + Sordid Ordeal: Cherry Bar, Melbourne

Thirsty Merc: Sooki Lounge, Belgrave

Steve Hughes: Comic’s Lounge, North Melbourne Hearing Paint: Compass Pizza Bar, Brunswick East DJ Let Them Eat Baklava: Edinburgh Castle Hotel (Beer Garden), Brunswick Mickey Cooper + Maritime: Edinburgh Gardens (Community Room), Fitzroy North Momentum feat. Core-Tet: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy Alyce Platt & The Fish Shop Collective: Flying Saucer Club, Elsternwick Afternoon Show with Albrecht La’Brooy + Sweet Whirl + OK EG + Shoko + DJ Udmo: Grace Darling Hotel (Band Room), Collingwood

The Furbelows: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick The New Orleans Funk Factory feat. The Horns of Leroy: The B.East, Brunswick East Tinsley Waterhouse Band: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick Cosmic Rain + Waterline + Beware Black Holes: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick James Hickey + Tracey Hogue + David Burke: The Drunken Poet, West Melbourne Pine Forest Tea Party with Lady Grey: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood Secret Acts + The Girl Fridas + Miss Miss: The Old Bar, Fitzroy Danika Smith: The Post Office Hotel, Coburg

Non-Members Welcome

The Resignators + Sweettime: Cherry Bar, Melbourne Born Sandy Devotional 30th Anniversary with The Triffids + JP Shilo + Chris Abrahams + Steve Miller Band: Corner Hotel, Richmond

Fresh off the heels of touring with Sticky Fingers, Gold Member show no signs of slowing down as they head out on a nationwide tour of their own. It all starts off at Workers Club this Thursday.

Horace Bones + Dumb Dog: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy

Mon 05

An Evening in the Tower of Song with Henry Wagons: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick

The Used - ‘Self-Titled’ in full with The Used + Storm The Sky + Corpus: 170 Russell, Melbourne

Cultjuice + The Lemurs + The 3012 + Sarah Alilech: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick

The Monday Bone Machine feat. T-Rek: Boney, Melbourne Anthony Young & The Next Man Dead: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy

Tom Tom Tuesday feat. Milk Teddy + Ciggie Witch + Monnone Alone + Lucy Roleff + more: Howler, Brunswick Irish Session: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East Julien Baker + Camp Cope: Northcote Social Club, Northcote

Lying Weasel + Cracodile + Team Love: The Old Bar, Fitzroy Carriage 252 feat. Patrick Stokes: The Toff In Town (Carriage Room), Melbourne Japandroids + Good Boy: The Tote (Band Room), Collingwood

THE MUSIC 30TH NOVEMBER 2016 • 47

From day one, you’ll start creating in world-class facilities, on the latest software and equipment, under the guidance of expert teachers – because at SAE, we believe to be job ready, you need to know the job.

ENROL TODAY sae.edu.au INFO NIGHT . MELBOURNE CAMPUS . THURS 15 DEC 6:00PM - 8:00PM. 48 • THE MUSIC • 30TH NOVEMBER 2016