October Issue | 2019
Melbourne | Free
T H E F E S T I VA L I S S U E Hello, Ali Barter is your new summer soundtrack The must-see acts of the festival season
Don’t get shirty: A guide to buying festival merch
The world-class shows of MIAF 2019
22 March 2020 – Plenary, MCEC mso.com.au THE MUSIC
•
J U LY
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
FINAL FRIDAY OF EVERY MONTH FRIED FOOD AND PSYCH BANDS ROLL UP, MUNCH IN, ROCK OUT
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
OUT OCT 25
TOURING WFEITBH2020 ALICE COOPER airbournerock.com
LP / CD / DIGITAL
OUT OCT 18 LP / CD / DIGITAL THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
officialrefused.com
SINCE 1986
AUSTRALIA’S LARGEST STREET POSTER NETWORK
1300MYPOSTER
www.rockposters.com.au
MELBOURNE 226 NORMANBY AVE, THORNBURY VIC 3071 03 9416 9966
SYDNEY 13-15 BUCKLEY STREET, MARRICKVILLE NSW 2204 02 9519 2002
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
Aussie Artists | Rock n Roll Psychedelic | Garage | RnB The Doors The Kinks David Bowie Julia Jacklin Captain Beefheart Amyl & The Sniffers
The Sonics Cream Hatchie Dick Diver The Remains Ultimate Spinach
+ many more...
ben@wahwahrecords.com.au Mon – Sun: 11am - 7pm
196 Smith St Collingwood
wahwahrecords.com.au
www.nyeonthehill.com.au
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
NO GEOGRAPHY LIVE 2019
E R T S U J S T E K C I T NEW WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
0 9 . 9 6 $ M O R F D E S A E EL FRO NTI ERTO U R I N G .CO M C H EM I C ALB ROTH ERS .CO M N O G EOG R APH Y O UT N OW THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
IMAGE BY CALLO ALBANESE. SHOW DIRECTION BY SMITH & LYALL
TUESDAY 05 NOVEMBER MELBOURNE ARENA
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
AN UNFORGETTABLE EVENING WITH TWO COMEDY LEGENDS!
FRI DAY 15 NOVE M B E R M E LBOU RN E ARE NA STAR OF BLACK BOOKS
★★★★ “HIGH-OCTANE RIFFS FROM IRISH MASTER OF GRUMPINESS… SPELLBINDING”
★★★★
EVENING STANDARD
“ P U T S I M P L Y, N I N A C O N T I I S A G E N I U S ” THE MIRROR
T H U 31 O C T AT H E N A E U M T H E AT R E
FROM 2 NOV HAMER HALL
Beth g Ste i n l ell
AS SEEN ON NETFLIX’S COMEDIANS OF THE WORLD
(With Her A USTR A LMom I A N In T OThe U R Crowd) 2 019
SAT 2 NOV
THU 31 OCT ATHENAEUM THEATRE 2
ATHENAEUM THEATRE 2
BOOK AT ABPRESENTS.COM.AU THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
PANELS
NETWORKING
PERFORMANCE
Victorian Music Development Office at Melbourne International Games Week 2019 | Oct 5 – 13 +MORE This is AR enabled! Download the Eyejack app to see it come to life.
vmdo.com.au/games THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
SECRET SOUNDS PRESENTS THE 27TH ANNUAL MUSIC & ARTS FESTIVAL
HALSEY (ONLY AUS SHOWS) • VAMPIRE WEEKEND • DISCLOSURE PEKING DUK • OF MONSTERS AND MEN • PNAU • LEWIS CAPALDI • MILKY CHANCE JOHN FARNHAM • BANKS (ONLY AUS SHOWS) • DOPE LEMON • VERA BLUE YUNGBLUD • G FLIP • CROOKED COLOURS • PARCELS • THELMA PLUM • #1 DADS WAAX • BAKER BOY • PSYCHEDELIC PORN CRUMPETS • AMYL & THE SNIFFERS THE JAPANESE HOUSE • PINK SWEAT$ • CXLOE • TOTTY AND IN ADDITION PLEASE WELCOME
PLAYBOI CARTI • MONTAIGNE • HOLY HOLY • WAVE RACER BAD//DREEMS • B WISE • A. SWAYZE & THE GHOSTS ADRIAN EAGLE • TEEN JESUS AND THE JEAN TEASERS WHAT SO NOT • THE JUNGLE GIANTS • LIME CORDIALE • KWAME THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
Australia’s Newest Podcast Network
Listen On THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
UPCOMING TOURS THE VERY BEST OF G RIN U O T T NEX H! NT MO
NEWCASTLE // SYDNEY // MELBOURNE
SYDNEY + MELBOURNE JAN 2020
SYDNEY MELBOURNE JANUARY 2020 FEB 2020
MELBOURNE SYDNEY
BENDIGO | SYDNEY M A K I N G
H E R
L O N G - AWA I T E D A U S T R A L I A N
R E T U R N
with special guest
alex lahey
TOURING APRIL 2020
SYDNEY MELBOURNE HOBART H E M U AT S I C CHUGGENTERTAINMENT.COM • OCTOBER TICKETS ON SALETNOW
M A R C H
2 0 2 0
Credits Publisher Handshake Media Pty Ltd Group Managing Editor Andrew Mast National Editor – Magazines Mark Neilsen Senior Editor Sam Wall Editors Daniel Cribb, Neil Griffiths
Festival greetings
Assistant Editor/Social Media Co-Ordinator Jessica Dale
T
he festival season is upon us. I know this because I’ve already attended my first festival sideshow for the spring/summer period. US rapper Leikeli47’s show was a rammed and sweaty sell out. The masked performer was the perfect festival season opener; she preached inclusivity and focussed a lot of attention on the punters who make these shows possible. Fans joined her on stage as she took the time to highlight their outfits and dancing skills. By the time the show climaxed with her two biggest hits (Girl Blunt and Money), she was being drowned out by audience singalongs. We are officially ready for the festival fun-run and its accompanying sideshow marathon. And this month we are here to help you ready yourself. We feature our pick of local acts that we think are festival-ready, those who are primed to make you thankful to be outside dancing like you’re not getting sunburnt. We also take a peek behind the festival curtain and talk to some of Australia’s leading promoters about the pleasure and pain of serving us up quality music events on an annual basis. Plus, we’ve thrown in tips for getting the most out of your merch-purchasing dollar and we take a look beyond the local acts making the festival circuit tick and appreciate some of the other global communities being represented in Australia this season.
Editorial Assistant Lauren Baxter Arts Editor Hannah Story Gig Guide Henry Gibson gigs@themusic.com.au Senior Contributors Steve Bell, Bryget Chrisfield, Cyclone, Jeff Jenkins Contributors Emily Blackburn, Melissa Borg, Joel Burrows, Anthony Carew, Roshan Clerke, Shaun Colnan, Brendan Crabb, Guy Davis, Joe Dolan, Joseph Earp, Chris Familton, Guido Farnell, Donald Finlayson, Liz Giuffre, Carley Hall, Tobias Handke, Mark Hebblewhite, Samuel Leighton Dore, Keira Leonard, Joel Lohman, Alannah Maher, Sean Maroney, Taylor Marshall, Anne Marie Peard, Michael Prebeg, Mick Radojkovic, Stephen A Russell, Michaela Vaughan, Rod Whitfield Senior Photographers Cole Bennetts, Kane Hibberd
This issue also marks some changes to a few regular features within our pages. Last month we featured the final appearance of columnist Maxim Boon who had previously served as an editor at The Music. After he bid farewell to our Melbourne office, Boon had continued to pen two reader-favourite columns. Boon’s long-running adventure-seeking column Shit We Did will now be driven by editorial team member Sam Wall who takes over the reins this month with a tale about skin health and close encounters with surgical scalpels. If you flick to our back page you’ll find that we have retired our longrunning The Final Thought column and introduced a couple of new regulars. By popular demand (seriously, so many people have harassed and harangued for this across the years) we have introduced a trivia challenge which this month challenges your brain to recall various festival memories (cue lots of jokes along the lines of, “Hey, if you can remember a festival, were you really there?!”). And, we also welcome contributions from cartoonists. This space will be curated by Chris Neill, publisher of music-themed comic anthology Meet Me In The Pit, and this month features the work of Evie Hilliar.
Photographers Rohan Anderson, Andrew Briscoe, Stephen Booth, Pete Dovgan, Simone Fisher, Lucinda Goodwin, Josh Groom, Clare Hawley, Bianca Holderness, Jay Hynes, Dave Kan, Hayden Nixon, Angela Padovan, Markus Ravik, Bobby Rein, Barry Shipplock, Terry Soo Advertising Leigh Treweek, Antony Attridge, Brad Edwards, Jacob Bourke sales@themusic.com.au Art Dept Felicity Case-Mejia print@themusic.com.au Admin & Accounts accounts@themusic.com.au Distro distro@themusic.com.au Subscriptions store.themusic.com.au Contact Us Mailing address PO Box 87 Surry Hills NSW 2010
Happy reading.
Melbourne Ph: 03 9081 9600 26 Napoleon Street Collingwood Vic 3066 Sydney Ph: 02 9331 7077 Level 2, 230 Crown St Darlinghurst NSW 2010
Andrew Mast Managing Editor
Brisbane Ph: 07 3252 9666 info@themusic.com.au www.theMusic.com.au
THE MUSIC
•
20
•
T H E S TA R T
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
Our contributors
This month
27
Shit we did: Skin check Guest editorial: Fuzzy Operations Event Director and Australian Festival Association board member Adelle Robinson
28
The Festival Issue
entury F ox
City & Colour
44
Album reviews
46
The big picture: Peter Rosetzky
Tones & I From sleeping on a mattress in a van to global chart topper
captures the humour of the mundane, as
The Arts 30
The best arts of the month
31
50
Film & TV reviews
52
Beth Stelling
53
32
34
36
Alasdair Belling Alasdair is a writer, musician and cricket podcaster, hell-bent on a career with no income. When not desperately looking for a power source, you can find him in cafes boldly
MIAF From revisiting an all-star theatre collaboration to 50-dancer epic Colossus
Pic
Buying merch Your guide to obtaining that black T-shirt and more
and digital illustrator. Her relatable work
of bagels.
o
Anatomy of a festival Just how do promoters make them happen?
Evie Hilliar is a Sydney-based comic artist
Also, one time she drew beagles in the shape
: Ma
Pic:
Peter Dovga
n
Must-see acts: here are our picks of this year’s festival season
42
well as the crushing isolation of modern life.
rk Gambin
Ali Barter
Hans Zimmer His fave film music moments
0th C
25
c: 2
This month’s best binge watching
Evie Hilliar
Pi
20
Editor’s letter
ordering strong soy mochas. Oh, and you can definitely call him Al.
54
Your Town An overview of the choicest festivals this season
58
Your gigs
62
Adelle Robinson Adelle Robinson is the Event Director of
38
Fuzzy Operations, which produces Listen
Howzat! Michael Hutchence’s great “lost” album
Out, Field Day and Harbourlife. Adelle is also
64
38
Montaigne
39
This month’s local highlights
66
Around the world in eight festivals
40
Summer beers
68
Holy Holy
41
The end
70
•
22
•
T H E S TA R T
tralian Festival Association (AFA), a newly formed peak body representing Australian festivals.
Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird
THE MUSIC
a founding committee member of the Aus-
THE 44TH THE THE 44TH 44TH
WITH
ARCHIE ROACH PAUL GRABOWSKY & SALLY DASTEY H H BENNY WALKER H THE BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA (USA) H H CÒIG (CAN) H C.W. STONEKING H DAN SULTAN H H THE EAST POINTERS (CAN) H EMILY WURRAMARA H H FARA (SCOT) H GINA WILLIAMS & GUY GHOUSE H H GRACE PETRIE (ENG) H JOHN McCUTCHEON (USA) H H KIERAN KANE & RAYNA GELLERT (USA) H THE LANGAN BAND (SCOT) H H MÃMÃ MIHIRANGI & THE MÃREIKURA (NZ) H THE MAES H H NEIL MURRAY H RHIANNON GIDDENS (USA) H RUBY GILL H H PATTY GRIFFIN (USA) H SIBUSILE XABA (SA) H H THE SMALL GLORIES (CAN) H SUSAN O’NEILL - SON (IRL) H H STARTIJENN (FRA) H THIS WAY NORTH H WILLIAM CRIGHTON H H YE VAGABONDS (IRL) H YOLANDA BROWN (UK) H YID! H & MANY MORE H
EARLY BIRD & 2 DAY TICKETS ON SALE NOW www.portfairyfolkfestival.com THE MUSIC
PFFF2020_FullPage_ TheMusic_Sept19.indd 1
•
OCTOBER
24/9/19 10:30 am
Got a quarter?
Metallica
Luigi’s Mansion 2
Regurgitator
Aussie legends Regurgitator are celebrating hitting a quarter-century with a massive tour with Shonen Knife and The Fauves. The Gurg are set to play a whopping 21 shows starting this 4 Oct.
Thrill ‘em all Metallica have cancelled their tour, but you can still see S&M² in cinemas around the country this 9 Oct. It was filmed at Metallica and San Francisco Symphony’s September shows commemorating the 20th anniversary of their initial collaboration, S&M.
Liaise-y days
Third-person hoover
Dapper lads Client Liaison are back on the road this month with their recent single, The Real Thing. The Melbourne duo, who signed a global publishing deal with BMG earlier this year, start the run in Vic on 17 Oct.
Client Liaison. Pic: Giulia McGauran
Josh Thomas
Our favourite cowardly hero is back with a spooky new adventure in Luigi’s Mansion 3. Help Luigi rescue his friends from the evil King Boo with new tools and abilities at your disposal. This Nintendo exclusive is out 31 Oct.
Joshin’ Aussie actor and comedian Josh Thomas is returning home for his first live tour since 2013, when his hit TV series Please Like Me debuted on the ABC. His new show Whoopsie Daisy kicks off in NSW on 25 Oct.
THE MUSIC
•
24
•
T H E S TA R T
Stream dreams
Return to Sampa Dropping just last month, Australian singer-songwriter and rapper Sampa The Great’s debut full-length is already being called a work of genius. Don’t miss your chance to see it live when The Return tour starts this 3 Oct.
This month’s best binge watching Big Mouth, Season 3
Big Mouth is back and being a teenager is still the worst. The show’s first two seasons were widely acclaimed for their funny, empathetic and upfront (often to the point of confronting) depiction of puberty, following the journey of middle schoolers Missy (Jenny Slate), Nick (Nick Kroll) and Andrew (John Mulaney), and their rampant hormone monsters.
Streams from 4 Oct on Netflix
Sampa The Great
Rhythm + Flow
Rap giants Cardi B, Chance The Rapper,
Or be squere
and TI are searching Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta and Chicago for the next hip hop phenomenon in this new music competition
After her debut album Dawn Of The Dark made waves last year, Tori Forsythe is back with a cracker new single and dates this month in support. Catch Forsyth around the country on her Be Here run from 18 Oct.
show. It’s the first Netflix has made and it looks like they’ve gone all out. In the immortal words of Cardi B, “It’s gonna be litty like a fucking titty.”
Streams from 9 Oct on Netflix
Watchmen
Based 34 years after Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal graphic novel and Zack Snyder’s adaption, Watchmen is less a sequel and more a whole new story told in the universe established by the original. It follows
Tori Forsyth
a war taking place between The Seventh
THE MUSIC
•
25
•
T H E S TA R T
Cavalry, a faceless guerrilla group inspired by series fave Rorschach, and the police force of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Streams from 21 Oct on Foxtel Now
Podcast of the month: Nice Try! — Utopian
Zombieland: Double Tap
Nice Try
Explore some of the world’s most fascinating attempts at utopian societies in the first season of history podcast Nice Try!. Join host Avery Trufelman as she delves into humanity’s perpetual search for the perfect place.
Harry histories
Love tap
Debbie Harry
Zombieland: Double Tap is the long-awaited sequel to 2009 horror-comedy Zombieland. Starring Woody Harrelson, Jessie Eisenberg and Emma Stone, a group of survivors in post-apocalyptic America embark on a series of hilarious zombie adventures, while attempting to maintain their makeshift family. In cinemas 17 Oct.
Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry’s new book Face It is out 1 Oct. As well as interviews conducted by journalist Sylvie Simmons, the memoir includes the Rock & Roll Hall Of Famer’s first-person essays on her iconic life and output.
Suit up
Dominic Fike
Starting with an appearance at Caloundra Music Festival on 7 Oct, Sunshine Coast singer-songwriter Sahara Beck is playing shows up and down the east coast this month for her extremely fresh EP, Queen Of Hearts.
Fike club Saharah Beck
Dominic Fike is making his debut Down Under this month. After a quick stop in NZ, the songwriter, rapper and DIY artist will perform in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne from 10 Oct.
THE MUSIC
•
26
•
T H E S TA R T
Sh*t we did With Sam Wall
**Sips tea** RuPaul and Michelle Visage are taking the show on the road to find the UK’s next drag superstar. Graham Norton, Alan Carr and a rotating cast of celebrity judges will help them decide who sashays and who shantays when RuPaul’s Drag Race UK streams from 4 Oct on Stan.
Skin check If Australia’s good at two things it’s leadership spills and melanoma. About 33.6 out of every 100,000 were diagnosed with the cancer in 2018. That’s thankfully a dip from the 49 per 100,000 we saw a few years ago, but still, the only other country throwing up those kind of numbers are our NZ neighbours. It’s a sneaky little bastard as well. UV rays don’t really pay much mind to, say, denim, so melanoma is known to pop up even where the sun don’t shine. It can become life-threatening in just six weeks, and the smallest fatal melanoma on record, that I could find, was 6mm by 2mm. Which is nothing. Worst case scenario, you’ve got a month and a half to find an errant freckle on your inner thigh. It’s also one of the most common cancers in young
RuPaul’s Drag Race UK
people, who can be famously ‘whatevs’ about these kind of things. The thing is, melanoma is almost always curable if addressed in the early stages, before it’s spread to other, less easily reached parts of the body. Like your lungs. Or your bones. With that in mind, and with the sunny season incoming, it’s high time I got my moles checked.
The verdict
To sea what they could sea Seaside are touring Joyride, their latest single and the first track from their upcoming debut album. The Byron Bay indie-rockers play seven shows around the country starting 25 Oct in VIC.
Goddamn. I had to get two high-risk suckers cut out. A decent sized mole in the middle of my back and one on the back of my knee. The leg one was tiny, but that is a tender, bendy area. The last place you want people poking scalpels and stitches is your joint meat. Honestly though, what hurt more was my doctor’s response to a dark, raised dot on my hip. I expressed concern since it itches from time to time, often a sign that something is rotten in the state of skin mark. After close inspection with one of those little magnifying eyepieces, she nonchalantly informed me the mole was benign and my jeans are too tight. Then asked if I moisturise. Cheers, Doc. When do we get to the part where you stab me in the back? To be fair, a couple of literal and emotional jabs and my peace of mind is through the roof. My (pasty) family has a long history of sun-based skin concerns and I knew I had a few moles around the place - though after an appraisal and mole map I realised I’d underestimated just how many (reeeow). But my biopsy is back and my skin is cancer-free. There are more fun reasons to be naked in front of strangers, sure.
Seaside
But considering how easily avoided skin cancers can be with a quick look-over you’d be an arse not to go and get checked.
THE MUSIC
•
27
•
T H E S TA R T
“Closing festivals will not stop people from taking drugs” Despite clear evidence to the contrary, drug deaths are still being laid at the door of Australia’s music festivals. Fuzzy Operations Event Director and founding Australian Festival Association board member Adelle Robinson looks at how we got here, and what we need do now.
T
broader community. Unfortunately, such measures are still the exception to policy, and viewed as giving a ‘green light to drug taking’. This is far from the truth: pill testing is an education and harm reduction strategy which acknowledges that some people will choose to take drugs and that we can choose to help save their lives despite them taking actions of which we may disapprove. In the ‘80s and ‘90s Australia pioneered the needle exchange program, while other countries focussed on increasing punishment for drug users. No country succeeded in stopping its citizens from taking drugs, but Australia’s visionary policy saved many thousands of lives. I hope that we can learn this important history lesson and be equally courageous in our pursuit of saving the lives of people who take other kinds of drugs. Among much struggle and disappointment, there have also been a few encouraging wins for our industry and the music lovers of our state: NSW Health released updated guidelines that mandate best practice for medical providers and service levels at music festivals. Further harm reduction strategies and education campaigns are also being advocated by NSW Health. The music industry firmly supports the new version of these guidelines and welcomes increased oversight of our events by NSW Health. Another positive but underreported recommendation towards reducing the harms of drug use came from the Premier’s expert panel: since January this year, police at some NSW music festivals have trialled issuing Criminal Infringement Notices rather than Court Attendance Notices for people caught with small amounts of MDMA (resulting in a fine instead of a criminal record). Anecdotal evidence suggests that many festival overdoses occur not despite, but precisely due to visible police presence at festival entry points, prompting some attendees to take all their drugs before entry to prevent being caught, rather than moderating their use over the course of the day. We believe that this de-escalation of legal confrontation with festival attendees is a positive step in the direction of the prevention of overdose deaths, and we applaud all such initiatives. With spring upon us, another festival season is about to begin. Regulatory uncertainties and financial difficulties for promoters abound; the music festival licence is still in place at the time of writing and costs for operating festivals, especially in NSW, are continually increasing. Charges for user-pays police in NSW are two to three times that of other states. Furthermore, at the time of writing, we are still awaiting the recommendations of the coronial inquest. We are also awaiting the outcome of a parliamentary vote over music festival regulations. We are unsure whether the Criminal Infringement Notice for MDMA will be rolled out across NSW. The outcomes of all of these matters will determine the viability of our industry in times to come. On the plus side, the music festival industry has never been so united: we have never had such access to stakeholders, all largely as a result of advocacy by the Australian Festival Association. Our industry finally has a seat at the table when it comes to the creation of policy around matters that affect us all, and we are proud of our contribution to the legislative process. Drug use is a complex social practice, beyond the scope of this article. What is certain is that people aren’t taking drugs because they attend music festivals, and that closing festivals will not stop people from taking drugs. The people of NSW, the parents, and families of festival attendees, our industry, our culture, our visitors from around the world, and of course, festival lovers themselves deserve better, smarter, more humane governance on this issue. Our actions as leaders in this industry and policy stakeholders must focus on implementing sane, rational strategies that privilege the ultimate priority of human life above the pursuit of ideological and political aims. At the same time, we must protect what is left of our vibrant and exciting music culture by supporting and improving music festivals across NSW and beyond. It is my hope and aspiration that all stakeholders in this situation endeavour to understand how we can keep our patrons safe, without destroying a vital aspect of the culture of our state.
welve months ago, two tragic drug-related deaths occurred at the Defqon 1 Festival in Sydney, unleashing a stream of sensational media articles around deaths at NSW music festivals. Desperate to be seen as ‘sending the right message’ and needing to publicly blame somebody for these tragedies, the NSW government went into a spasm to release policy that would appease the media critics. In reality, attempts at controlling the behaviour of festival attendees through increased police presence, arrests and sniffer dogs had been steadily growing for years. Unfortunately, none of these strategies had any impact on the sad fact that people were still dying at festivals. An expert panel was convened by the NSW Premier, tasked with providing recommendations on how to make music festivals safer. The panel was given just four weeks and comprised the Police Commissioner, the Chief Medical Officer and the Chair of the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority — nobody from any sector of the music or festival industries was consulted or asked to contribute to the report. At this point, it was obvious that there would be major ramifications for the industry at large. MusicNSW penned an open letter to the Premier demanding consultation with our industry. The industry came together and over 60 representatives signed the letter. As a result, two promoters and MusicNSW were invited to a consultation session with the expert panel. It was a small win but an example of how a united industry can make itself heard. Around the same time, the Australian Festival Association was formed as the peak body for music festivals in Australia. Five promoters who regularly compete for artists, venues, tickets and customers put their differences aside to advocate for their sector. Jessica Ducrou and Danny Rogers had previously discussed the need for a peak body representing the festival industry, but the Defqon 1 deaths accelerated discussions and the AFA was born. The Premier’s expert panel released their report after only four weeks, in October 2018, with most of the recommendations focused on creating a new ‘music festival’ licence, applying to all future NSW music festivals. The public saw events being cancelled across NSW and came out in force to protest another threat to live music: the Don’t Kill Live Music Rally attracted over 10,000 people in Hyde Park, protesting the proposed licence. Less than five years after the lockout laws turned inner Sydney into a ghost town after dark, history was repeating itself: culture and entertainment were again being used as a scapegoat for the harms of drug abuse. The Music Industry Alliance was formed, uniting several industry groups: Australian Festival Association, Live Performance Australia, MusicNSW, APRA AMCOS, and the Live Music Office. The Alliance played a critical role in standing up for an industry that wasn’t being taken seriously. In February 2019 the NSW government bowed to industry demands and reduced the scope of the music festival licence to cover only 14 festivals, deemed to be ‘high risk’ events. It was a damaging and divisive tactic but showed that the government was now on the back foot — an example of what can happen when an industry works together. During this time, despite greater oversight from all stakeholders and all the increases in police activity, people were still dying at festivals. The Premier announced a coronial inquest into the deaths with the hearing scheduled to finish at the end of September 2019. The Australian Festival Association sought representation in the inquest, which was welcomed by those assisting the process. It is clear the industry has shown proactivity and a willingness to contribute to these issues and will continue to advocate for rational, evidencebased strategies that can help us keep our patrons safe. Pill testing and drug checking has been a hot issue since well before the deaths at Defqon 1. After much government resistance, another pill testing trial was granted permission to operate at the Groovin The Moo festival in the ACT in April this year. All harm reduction measures, for which the Australian Festival Association advocates tirelessly, aim to help festival attendees make safer choices and reduce the harmful impacts of drug use on them and the
“The people of NSW... deserve better, smarter, more humane governance on this issue.”
THE MUSIC
•
28
•
GUEST EDITORIAL
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
The best policy
Pic: Kane Hibberd
Ali Barter is just being honest. She knows she likes horror movies, blood and extreme things. Liz Giuffre discovers how talking about the fucked up things in life makes the Melbourne artist feel free. Cover photo by Lindsey Byrnes.
M
elbourne indie artist Ali Barter is putting her best
need to be cooler or darker or smokier or whatever — I can see
foot forward with album number two, Hello, I’m
how useful it is,” she says. “But I think that, obviously my voice
Doing My Best. Following up her 2017 debut, A Suit-
is my voice. It doesn’t matter how dirty everything else is, my
able Girl, Barter continues to unapologetically play music from
voice is still going to sound like a bell, like a bloody choir girl.”
her unique perspective. While that might mean its, at times,
hesitation. “[The style] is very much me. I wanted it to be more
With this record, Barter just wanted to get in and get it
unusual subject matter for indie-pop, she always speaks from
graphic but we’ve toned it down a lot so we didn’t have to
done. “I wanted it to be simpler, sonically simpler,” she explains.
a place of experience.
have an age restriction on it and stuff like that. So yeah, I guess
“We had three recording sessions at Head Gap and we tracked
“Everything I’m singing about is true, so I’m just being
in this record in general, the lyrical content is a lot more raw
everything. I didn’t want to have 15 guitars, I wanted to have
honest, and I think it’s important that we talk about this stuff,
and extreme I guess. And I wanted to match that in my video
one guitar, one drum track, wanted to just sing the vocal lines
because for me, I’ve experienced intense shame around addic-
clips. I’m an extreme personality. And I think in the last record
five times then just pick one. I wanted just [to] make things sim-
tion, eating issues, and in my experience, the more I talked
I wasn’t giving myself fully because I was on a path to working
pler and not chip away at things for ages. The writing process
about it, the more I shared it, the more freedom I get from it. So
out how to express myself, whereas on this one I was like, ‘Nup.’
was actually longer, I probably started writing in the middle of
if someone tells me that they’ve done something really fucked
I like horror movies, I like blood, I like being super honest, and
2017 and probably started [recording] in October in 2018... So
up or really terrible, if I have this little deep, dark secret inside
so that’s why it’s the way it is.”
I guess it was more that I wanted it to be less produced, and
me that makes me feel like I’m the only one who’s ever felt like
think less about it. It was, ‘Let’s book three days and go in and
that, then I feel less alone,” Barter says.
do the songs we have and then figure it out.’”
Single Ur A Piece Of Shit is immediately catchy, complete
While Barter is still happy to live in the alternative scene,
with some satisfying swears that will get any bathroom mirror
her ultimate aim is, of course, to find as many listeners as pos-
or front-row singer going. If you dig a bit deeper though, the song is a heavy listen. “The song is basically about, and dedicated to, my friends; the women I’ve gone through life from my teens until now [with], and all our problems growing up. We still have problems now and we’re in our 30s,” Barter explains.
“”I am quite graphic! I swear a lot, I’m an oversharer.”
sible. “I’ve started thinking about the next record, and it’s going to be more pop,” she says enthusiastically. “I did the first record, and then I wanted to swing back and go more raw [with this one], and now I’m ready to go full pop. So that’s the thing. And I think as any artist refines their idea the more immediate it
Talking about the film clip, which sees Barter assume sev-
becomes to the audience, and more accessible. So I’m clear
eral personas who each, quite strikingly, meet their end, she
on what I’m saying and how I’m saying it, and so people can be
says she was inspired by the film Heathers. “I was inspired by
like, ‘Right, I get it.’ So that’s my goal always, making it as clear
that visually, but I was also thinking about how there’s all these
Like her debut album and its single Girlie Bits, with Hello,
aspects to our personality and we’re often trying to fix them or
I’m Doing My Best, Barter plays on the contrast between her
whatever. So I thought it would be a cool idea to play all these
quite lovely-sounding vocals and the depths she can explore in
extreme aspects of a personality and then kill them all.”
both her lyrics and musicality. Initially ill at ease with the con-
The film clip is both poppy and quite graphic at times —
trast, now it’s something she happily owns. “I’m way more ok
almost shocking if you’re not paying attention and expecting
with me and my sound and I love it now. But you know, it’s a
just a standard sing-and-play-along piece. That was deliber-
universal struggle for a human to be ok with themselves and
ate on Barter’s part. “I am quite graphic! I swear a lot, I’m an
my voice is just one aspect of that. But yes, now I’m proud of it
oversharer, I’m very into extreme things,” she says without
and how my vocal training helps me, rather than feeling like I
THE MUSIC
•
30
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
as possible and refining my idea and hopefully people understand it.”
Hello, I’m Doing My Best (Inertia) is out this month. Ali Barter tours from 25 Oct,including Kyneton Music Festival on 26 Oct and This That on 9 Nov.
Spacey Jane
Your new favourite festival acts
You can’t get much more buzzy than Freo’s Spacey Jane. Selling out show after show with their fuzzy garage-pop, the four-piece are set to shred their way through Yours & Owls and
Half the fun of heading to festivals is being completely blown away by something new - and there are plenty of killer artists on this year’s bills that will do the trick. Here are five local artists set to light up festival season’s stages.
Laneway and probably sell out a few more shows as well.
Yours Truly They’ve already signed to UNFD this year and the rest of 2019 is shaping up to be a big one for Sydney’s Yours Truly. Their positive pop punk is sure to make waves come December when Good Things Festival rolls round. Meet you in the mosh?
Approachable Members Of Your Local Community People get seriously into Approachable Members Of Your Local Community’s live show. It’s a little like being caught up in a mob, except everyone’s brought good vibes and high fives
Pic: Jordan Munns
instead of torches and pitchforks. Bigger mobs = bigger moods.
Stevan
Sophiegrophy
Listening to Stevan you can be in one of two camps.
There is a growing wave
Maybe you’re down with the
in Australian hip hop and
laid-back groove of Timee
Sophiegrophy is set to come
or maybe you can’t get past
crashing down on crowds this
LNT’s indie-rock feels. We’re
festival season. The electronic
straddling the line here - a
hip hop artist has big, big
little column A, a little col-
hooks and sets at Grass Is
umn B - and reckon you’ll be
Greener and Festival X are
too after seeing him at Fair-
going to snag her a whole new
grounds this festive season.
level of fandom.
THE MUSIC
•
31
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Anatomy of a festival What does it take to throw one of the country’s biggest parties? Sam Wall finds out from Secret Sounds CEO Jessica Ducrou, Love Police Records founder Brian Taranto, and Bluesfest director Peter Noble.
Booking
W
hen everything comes together and you find yourself dancing in a crowd of like-minded thousands while one of your favourite acts tears up the stage,
maybe with a bit of pyro for flavour, the feeling is ineffable. Just the scale of it can make the experience profound, like you’ve been absorbed into a vast, fleeting collective consciousness. There’s nothing else quite like it. But what does it take to make that moment happen? Where would you even start?
W
Location
hatever else an event offers, at the end of the day the biggest drawcard is the line-up. The bands are the ticket, particularly if you’ve got
headliners like Childish Gambino or Iggy Pop, and putting together a solid bill takes time — at least a full year. Ducrou says that as Splendour has grown booking has
W
hen sourcing locations for festivals, “They need to be spaces that suit the vibe you are trying to create,” says Taranto, “at least initially.”
“Once a festival gathers its own momentum, the peo-
ple pretty much show you how they want the space to work, so long as you pay attention.”
gone from a six-month process to where they are “now
Noble’s advice is if you get the chance, lock it down.
booking year-round, sometimes even scheduling artists for
After taking “about three years to get all the approvals
the following year’s event”, something echoed by Noble.
through”, Noble purchased Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm, Blues-
If you have these kinds of questions, Jessica Ducrou, Peter
When we reach Noble he’s actually in New York “book-
Noble and Brian Taranto are the people to ask. As the co-CEO
ing talent”. As a possible hint for future line-ups, he calls
“It’s turned out to be the best thing we ever did. And
of Secret Sounds, Ducrou is behind some of Australia’s largest
Brandi Carlile’s Madison Square Garden performance “one
we have just spent ten million dollars redeveloping the site.
events, including Splendour In The Grass, Spin Off Adelaide,
of the best shows I’ve ever seen ever, in my life!”
fest’s longstanding home, in 2007.
“We had to forgo profit to do so. But it was a ten-year
Falls Festival and Download. Noble has helmed Bluesfest
“It takes me over year to book Bluesfest,” he tells The
goal to get the site to a certain point, which that site is at
for decades, the event becoming a calendar staple since its
Music. “I’m booking [2021] now. Even a little bit of ‘22, I
now. It still doesn’t mean it doesn’t need money spent on
1990 inception. As well as founding and running Love Police
still haven’t finished 2020. If you wanna get the right lot of
it every year, but we have built a dedicated event site and
Records, Taranto organises hip, Tallarook camper Boogie Fest
headliners, and for Bluesfest it is a five-day festival, with two
those are rare on the ground in Australia.
and one-day Americana party Out On The Weekend, two very
headliner stages, pumping out headliners every day [you
different but equally well-curated boutique festivals.
have to do that].”
So, where do we start?
scale festivals than SITG, Falls or Bluesfest, catering to more
This year SITG and Falls also secured a permanent NSW
specific demographics, but Taranto still calls booking a “365
home at North Byron Parklands, a process that took close
days a year” job, although it seems like a labour of love.
to nine years to be approved by the state’s planning system.
Both Boogie and Out On The Weekend are smaller
“Both festivals are a bit of a selfish indulgence,” says Taranto, “crossed with some commercial reality to make
“Putting on a festival is not necessarily something that is for the faint-hearted.” – Peter Noble
“I think having a site is a neverending investment, but it’s still a great one. Because that’s guaranteeing your future.”
The site is also undergoing a $42 million development to grow the capacity to 50,000 punters per day.
sure someone buys tickets. I’m a music fan, I’m a lifestyle
“In the very first instance you need enough space to
festival fan, and I think there are enough people with similar
present the event,” advises Ducrou. “Then you need to con-
tastes to me that will hopefully buy into the experience to
sider your surrounding neighbours.
make it all work.”
“How many people will you potentially inconvenience.
That’s still not to imply that the process is a picnic.
How will your audience access the venue? Is there a pub-
“International competition is fierce,” says Ducrou, “par-
lic transport system nearby? If not, can you provide a car-
ticularly as the US festival market has developed over the
park and bus system? What is the capacity of the local
last decade. Confirming our headliners is always so varied,
road network? How supportive are your local stakehold-
sometimes agents are very clear they want [to] play our fes-
ers like the council and the police and what is required to
tivals, other times we are paying well beyond their worth
secure approval?”
because our options are limited.”
THE MUSIC
•
32
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Falls Festival Byron Bay. Pic: Dave Kan
Marketing
G
etting the word out is key, and cutting through the chatter when there is so much competition can be difficult. Even events with 20 or nearly 30 years’ his-
Funding
T
Legalities
o highlight the possible cost (and risks), in 2013 Soundwave founder and promoter AJ Maddah responded to a tweet asking about that year’s expenditure with: “Off
F
estivals have a lot of moving parts and each state has its own legislation around each of them. The Victorian code of practice for running safer
tory need to be smart about where and how they spend
the top of my head artist budget was $26M, production was
music festivals details at least 21 different bodies and
their marketing budget.
around $7M, sites around $10M, travel $4.6M.”
authorities that should be contacted in preparation for a
“It changes all the time,” says Ducrou. “Certainly right
Two years later the touring event would fold, the compa-
festival, from the local government authority to cleaning
now a combination of digital and traditional marketing is
ny reported to have owed around 186 creditors something in
companies. The larger the event, the more people to con-
critical to an event’s success. A good publicist is key and
the region of $26 million.
tact, applications to lodge, and lead time required.
always keeping abreast of the various technologies on how
From performers down to waste disposal, festival outlay
Falls attracts thousands across four states, SITG’s capac-
best to find your audience. We never rest on our laurels or
seems endless, and as Ducrou says, “To host an event, you
ity is growing to 50,000, and Bluesfest sees turnouts up to
previous success, we don’t take our history for granted.”
need to be able to cover any potential loss.
and over 100,000 people. Without proper planning and
Taranto says the best thing you can do to promote
“It’s an expensive and high risk proposition with small
yourself and your event is to keep your promises. “Be a good
margins, I’m not sure many other industries would see the
festival and deliver what you say you are going to do,” he
value, sometimes I don’t,” she says.
duty of care, things could catastrophically. It sounds like a minefield to navigate. “Where do you start!?” asks Ducrou. “Firstly, patron and
says. “Then grow and work your mailing list and socials and
So where do you find the funding for events on that scale?
staff safety is our foremost concern while trying to pres-
spend your limited marketing budget wisely. After a num-
Is it a reasonable expectation to be able to cover some of that
ent a compelling and relevant event. Each state has its
ber of years, word of mouth is strong but people are so busy
set-up with sponsors or grants?
own approval process, each venue has its individual chal-
they still need to be reminded.”
“It’s a tough way to make a living,” says Decrou. “As a
lenges you must respond to. With every decision we make
It also doesn’t hurt to have a hook. The most impor-
commercial business we have never received financial sup-
we are mindful of our obligations and put rigour and pro-
tant thing, according to Noble, “is to be able to book
port from government stakeholders but it would make a
cess around how we operate. We learn from every show
the headline”.
huge difference if it were offered. Commercial rights or spon-
and always do our best to improve our performance. It’s
sorship often make the difference between losing money
exhausting but very satisfying when you get it right.
“You’ve got to be able to book them every single year and announce them far enough out that people will start to make plans to come to your event, versus somebody else’s. So what we announced a month ago, Dave Matthews Band
or covering costs.”
The list of legislative requirements “as long as your arm
Boogie has never been supplemented, says Taranto, instead being funded by himself and three friends.
and more”, says Noble. “We have to comply with everything; comply with the
and Patti [Smith] and people like that, literally eight months
“We have had some minimal sponsorship for Out On The
police, with the council, the requirements, traffic manage-
out from our event — we’re announcing the talent so that
Weekend in the first two years, just because we could and it
ment, all those things to put on an event. You have to com-
people make the decision which event they are going to
was easy enough to obtain. Hobson’s Bay Council has given
ply with giving the Responsible Service of Alcohol. We need
come to over the summer. And we’re in the mix. We’re the
us a small grant each year for Out On The Weekend. If the pro-
to have a field hospital, which we’ve had for ten years, so
last event of the season but we’re one of the first events
cess for any of it was difficult or involved us doing things we
that if there’s an emergency we can deal with it. There’s so
to announce.
didn’t want to do, we wouldn’t do it.”
much to do and it’s not cheap. And so, the biggest chal-
“And it just has to be like that, if you want to be successful you’ve gotta be able to be in front, and as much as marketing is important, socials marketing is now getting 90% of marketing.”
Noble however adds that for independent promoters, sponsors can be hard to come by.
“Putting on a festival is not necessarily something that
“The landscape has changed,” says Noble. “There might have been more sponsors around four or five years ago. Nowadays, the monolithic companies, the AEGs and the Live Nations, they’re able to do world sponsorship deals. Then there might be, you know, the major phone companies or banks or whoever it may be, airlines, and then they’re able to filter that down through their network of events.”
THE MUSIC
•
33
•
lenge for new events is just how to do all that.
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
is for the faint-hearted.”
Hey, you in the black T-shirt! Self-confessed merch addict Bryget Chrisfield shares some tips on how to snap up sought-after merch items without sacrificing your spot in the mosh, and what to do with your beloved old band tees once the armpit regions get crusty. denim vest or jacket for a killer, one-of-akind look. Remember that many venues require all bags larger than 30cm x 30cm to be cloaked before entry these days so come prepared with an empty tote bag, folded up inside your small bag, to carry your merch purchases in (or, even better, buy a new tote from the merch desk as an extra souvenir). When buying vinyl at the merch desk, be sure to ask whether it’s possible to collect your purchase post-show (but don’t forget
N
to pick it up on your way out — set an alert
you could be bolting towards that coveted
on your phone for ten minutes after the
front-and-centre position against the bar-
show’s scheduled finishing time, maybe?).
rier in GA. Better still, make your purchases
At festivals, always be mindful that
to see them (you might even get pointed
from the outside merch stands while your
each individual band’s merch is typically
at from the stage if you clamber up on your
buddy minds your spot in the queue before
only sold on the same day that they’re
mate’s shoulders to show off the tee during
the venue doors open.
scheduled to play. Set an alert on your
their set!) and you’ll also be a magnet for ow that music is basically free, it’s
valuable time pondering selections when
other fans of your fave band.
If you make your purchases pre-show,
phone and prioritise any merch purchases
there will obviously be more options and
as soon as you arrive on the festival site each
our duty as fans to invest in the
If a T-shirt isn’t in the budget, spend
sizes to choose from, but if they don’t have
day to avoid disappointment (stock is often
longevity of bands’ careers by buy-
your hard-earned cash on sticker sets,
your favourite T-shirt design in your size
pretty limited).
ing their merch. The ultimate memorabilia,
badges, patches or a stubbie holder. Look-
just buy it anyway! You can always cut it up
And it goes without saying but don’t
your merch purchase will act as proof of
buy dodgy, cheap, bootleg merch from
attendance and, if it’s a band T-shirt with
unauthorised sellers lurking near venues
tour dates on the back, it’ll also serve as a
post-show. Ever. True fans never do that.
reminder of precisely when the best gig/ festival ever went down. Wearing a band T-shirt is the ultimate demonstration of your allegiance and will also invite the right kinda people into your orbit while repelling haters. Have you ever busted a chat with a random who was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of your favourite band? If it’s a merch tee from a specific tour that you attended and have fond memories of,
“How much of a dealbreaker is it when you’re admiring a hot stranger’s face only to glance down and notice they obviously have poor taste ‘cause they’re sporting a really shit band’s tee!?”
even better! And the same goes for festival T-shirts, which are potential conversation starters, where you can compare favourite bands/festival moments with other punt-
ing at any of these down the track will also
and customise it later, DIY-style. There are
ers. How much of a dealbreaker is it when
cause blissful gig memories to come flood-
oodles of YouTube tutorials to explore as
you’re admiring a hot stranger’s face only
ing back.
well (google: “How to cut band tees”), but
to glance down and notice they obviously
There’s something special about actu-
maybe practise on a couple of dodgy old
have poor taste ‘cause they’re sporting a
ally buying your merch at the festival/gig
T-shirts before you cut into your beloved
really shit band’s tee!? Your choice of merch
you attend rather than ordering it online,
new band tee. Failing that, you could also
speaks volumes.
which is kind of cheating. If we’re talking
cut out the design to sew on the back of a
Is it cool to wear current merch at a
multi-year world tours by massively famous
band’s show? Not really — it’s far cooler
international bands, check out their website
to wear a tee from an earlier tour so that
to see what styles are available in advance
fans/the band (if you’re lucky enough to
— where possible — so that you don’t waste
be clocked from the stage) can tell you’re not just jumping on the bandwagon. What about at festivals? Sure thing. The band in question will know you’re there specifically
THE MUSIC
•
34
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Hot tip: if your favourite band T-shirt gets crusty around the armpit region, from excess wear and general deodorant damage, don’t throw it out! Take a leaf out of Dave Grohl’s mum’s book and upcycle them, immortalising them as cushion covers. Alternatively, there are online tutorials that show you how to stretch your old band tees over poster board and, voila, instant wall art.
Subscribe now To our daily newsletter. For up-to-the-minute industry news Subscribe at:
theMusic.com.au
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
THE MUSIC
•
36
•
THE BIG PICTURE
Peter Rosetzky As part of Melbourne International Arts Festival, contemporary dance piece Overture expresses “the unrequited and the unattainable”. We ask photographer Peter Rosetzky how he caught the rhythm of the performance on camera. You’re primarily a fashion photographer and creative director, what drew you to Overture? I was approached by Jo Lloyd, the choreographer of Overture, and was immediately interested in the project as I’d been broadening the scope of my work over the last year or two, so dance photography seemed like a good fit, a natural sort of adaptation of the fashion work I was used to. How do you capture the essence of a movement-based form like dance? Dancers are so spatially and physically aware that in one sense the shots are already there. As a photographer I had to try and get into the rhythm of the performance, anticipate the folding and unfolding of any particular sequence and try to understand where it was all going, the intention. Dance scenes move and change very quickly so I had to be quite supple and intuitive in my approach. Do you find there is much overlap in the two mediums? Absolutely, there’s a lot of overlap between fashion and dance photography. Both involve the human form and spirit, organic movements and a dialogue through self-expression. The lighting used can also overlap in its construction, although there is definitely more freedom in lighting for dance than in commercial fashion photography. In fashion, generally one is lighting to make the particular garment or fabric look its best, and often that comes at the expense of a certain level of creativity that one might like to bring to the shoot. With dance, it’s all about the dialogue, mood, form and energy.
Overture. Pic: Peter Rosetzky
How do the themes of Overture — ideas around obsession and who our heroes are — come through in your shots? Firstly, I would say the lighting. I tried to give the shots a sense of lustre, using a backlight that wrapped around the figures, which also had the effect of stripping away any sense of background or environment, pushing the focus only onto the form of the dancers with few distractions. It’s a technique one might see used in some perfume ads where the model is presented as some kind of idealised hero or heroine. Also, the shot selections, distilling the moments down, searching for the epic or grand, without giving away too much from within the performance itself. The rest of course came from the dance and the dancers.
THE MUSIC
•
37
•
THE BIG PICTURE
Overture also explores questions around human connection — how does photography as a medium connect people? As human beings, we immediately connect to the medium of photography. It’s a snapshot of reality frozen in time. Even though we know the level of image manipulation that goes on these days, the eye, the brain, wants to believe, more so than with a painting or illustration for instance. Perhaps more specifically, in this era of phone cameras, constant internet connectivity, Instagram, etc, photography and the sharing of photos has become a daily part of many people’s communication and interaction, often replacing verbal or written dialogues.
Overture plays from 2 Oct at Arts House.
prepare by focusing on me and being happy,” she says. At the time of print, the 19-year-old
More than a mouthful
artist’s smash hit Dance Monkey retained pole position on the ARIA Singles Chart for a ninth consecutive week, equaling the record — also held by Justice Crew (Que Sera) — for longest stint at the top of the chart by an Australian act. Of Dance Monkey’s continued chart domination,
Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird frontman Lachlan Rose tells Alasdair Belling that, thanks to the support of the wider industry, the future no longer looks “like this big, shining, distant dream”.
Watson marvels, “I honestly thought that when it reached ten on the ARIA Chart it would decline. I never thought this would happen!” Dance Monkey is the first homegrown chart-topper of 2019 and has also peaked at #1 in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland (so far). In February 2019, Watson uploaded her debut single Johnny Run Away to triple j Unearthed. Within 12 hours, the song was added to triple j. During her live shows, Watson likes to tell a story about how
her
co-manager
David
Morgan
(Lemon Tree Music) warned her to prepare herself for the possibility that Dance Monkey may not perform as well as Johnny Run Away (which
Dancing to her own tune When Bryget Chrisfield checks in with Tones & I, aka Toni Watson, they discuss dealing with cyberbullies, masterminding silent protests and just how much Watson’s life has changed in a single year Feature pic by Umbrella Creative.
peaked at #12 on the ARIA Singles Chart and is certified double Platinum). “I love to call him out during my set and he has a good laugh about it,” she says. busk, Watson lived in her white 1981 Mazda E2000 van while
to the library and reading and writing kids’ books. It’s a nice balance.”
On top of her showcases at BIGSOUND 2019, Watson also
Rose is juggling that new artistic pursuit with touring
masterminded a silent protest in Brisbane’s Brunswick Street
and promotion obligations, following the release of LP, New
Mall. When asked how she brought her creative vision to life,
Romancer. Meshing synth-pop with rock, indie and jazz
Watson explains, “I hired amazing young actors to stand in the
influences, New Romancer, is distinctly atmospheric. As
middle of the mall two hours before my performance. I want-
Rose explains, the record is designed to conjure a very spe-
ed to make it a peaceful protest that also made people feel
cific place.
uncomfortable viewing it.” These young actors — clad head to toe in The Kids Are Coming merch and all wearing ghoulish makeup — brandished banners emblazoned with slogans such as “Can You See Us?” and “No One Wants To Listen To The Kids”, delivering Tones & I’s message loud and clear without uttering a single word. At Tones & I’s first BIGSOUND showcase at Famous Nightclub, Watson shared a comment from some random bloke online, claiming she seems like “a pissed-off chick that hates bullies”. “I’m not a pissed-off chick,” Watson laughs before stressing, “but I do hate bullies... Like anyone in the public eye, I’ve been bullied online. There has been two occasions where I have reached out to a bully online and told them, ‘Hey, I’m not sure what you are going through, but you don’t need to say
In both of these instances, Watson says the cyberbullies apologised after admitting they didn’t realise she would
shows at Corner Hotel last month,
actually see their comments. Watson advises victims of bully-
Toni Watson, the genius behind the
ing “to surround [themselves] with good people and respond with love”.
pare for her AFL Grand Final performance.
Another memorable moment from the aforementioned
She probably would have laughed if some-
showcase saw Watson gifting her own The Kids Are Com-
one told her a year ago she’d be performing
ing-themed trainers to a fan who caught her attention, ask-
at the MCG. “I couldn’t get tickets to the AFL
ing whether he could have her kicks. After she handed them
Grand Final last year so this a different expe-
over, Watson concluded her set in socked feet. Did she have to
rience one year later,” she says.
walk back to the hotel wearing just socks? Watson chuckles, “I
Monkey and the title track from her debut
randomly had some shoes backstage that some of the actors didn’t end up wearing.”
EP The Kids Are Coming, as part of the AFL Grand Final’s all-Australian pre-game entertainment, which also featured Paul Kelly, Dean Lewis, John Williamson, Conrad Sewell and (of course) Mike Brady. So how did she prepare herself to perform in front of the MCG’s 100,000-strong crowd (plus the game’s large television audience)? “I
the time between records. I just got into the habit of going
big so I slept diagonally,” she says.
ollowing Tones & I’s three sold-out
Watson performed two songs, Dance
“I’m attempting to write junior fiction at the moment in
honing her craft. “I slept on a foam mattress that was not very
love’... I don’t think they realised I’m a real person.”
moniker, stayed put in Melbourne to pre-
in Tony’s Brand New Firebird’s frontman Lachlan Rose begins. “I’m about to go into Melbourne Writers Festival.
After chucking in her retail job to move to Byron Bay and
things like that. I am a real person and I wish you nothing but
F
“I
’m actually just sitting outside the State Library,” Cous-
Tones & I is on tour now, including Land Of Plenty on 2 Nov, Spilt Milk from 23 Nov and Laneway Festival from 1 Feb.
THE MUSIC
•
38
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
“I wanted it to feel like a night-time
Going into the process, Cerro had no preconceptions
record that was inviting you into this intimate
about what the album would be.
bar. That’s the best way I can describe it,” he
“I don’t think that is something anyone can ever really
says. “I’d always struggled with encapsulating
plan. I think when you do set a plan everything goes haywire
an LP or EP with an aesthetic, but with this
anyway. I had zero plans and I felt bad that I didn’t have a plan
one I could really clearly see this kind of dark
or that like I couldn’t achieve the lofty dreams I had for mak-
smoky jazz bar with a neon sign.
ing music.”
“I’d ask myself, ‘Does this song sound like
Cerro also recognises that part of her felt pressure to make
it could belong in this bar that I’ve created?’”
something that people would like.
There’s a cinematic flavour to New Romancer,
with
a
scope
akin
to
“As I learned a bit more about myself and about the ten-
the
dencies I have to people-please, I was like, ‘You know what, this
soundtrack of a Baz Luhrmann scene.
is my thing.’ If I’m happy with this, then I’m happy with all of it,
“[The idea] came from Blade Runner,
and that’s kind of where I’m atnow.”
the score and the film. and also lots of old
The story of the album is intertwined with Cerro’s own
romantic films from the ‘50s and the ‘60s,”
path to understanding herself and overcoming the effects
he reveals. “All these things were floating
of burnout, a process aided by therapy and other actions
around in this storm, and the image of the
of self-care.
bar revealed itself.”
“I just became a shell of myself,” Cerro says, noting that,
Jazz bars often come with a healthy
as an athlete — Cerro was a semi-professional soccer player
dose of the blues — as do the songs on
before she decided to pursue a career in music — she suddenly
New Romancer.
couldn’t exercise at all.
“Our producer, Matt Neighbour, who’s
“I was looking straight into the void basically to figure out
worked with The Avalanches helped with
how to fix that or how to get through it as well, when I also
that... They do a similar thing with their string
felt really alone. You know, not entirely, I have some amaz-
arrangements where there is this sheen of
ing friends on board and family, but I felt very isolated with-
class, but underneath it all things were really
in myself.”
dark and twisted.”
These struggles became the fodder for her songs, the
New Romancer drops barely a year after
singer describing her songwriting MO as distilling “the stuff in
the band’s debut record Electric Brown — an
my life that happened and I’m emotional about”.
impressive feat given the ambitious arrange-
“I was coming to this critical awareness of all the ways in
ments on the album.
which I was neurotic and flawed,” Cerro begins. “I’d reached
But, for Rose, even a few months is a long
the awareness, but I couldn’t figure out how to re-engineer my
time to work on something. “These songs
brain, which is like one of the hardest possible things we can
have taken several months to make which is
be tasked with for ourselves.
still a long time. You do realise that you get to
Good for something
a point where you have to be ok with something’s rawness.” “It has a pretty concentrated theme here,” he says. “It felt like the songs were just pouring out, and at the time they didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but then I would look back and think, ‘Oh wow, that was actu-
Art-pop singer-songwriter Montaigne, aka Jess Cerro, talks to Hannah Story about finding the strength to overcome burnout and write her second album, Complex. Feature pic by Johnny Nicolaidis.
ally really poignant.’” In May, Cousin Tony’s Brand
New
Firebird
per-
formed at The Great Escape festival and conference in Brighton, England. “The best thing about conferences is that you can see the industry in front of you like an organism,” says Rose. “It’s all online these days and it just seems infinitely vast, but at events like
“I was constantly drawn to people who were emotionally unavailable, and was dealing with like a few hairy relationships, you know, romantic or otherwise. “There was that people-pleasing thing of never feeling like I am enough, and that I need to be funner or smarter or better at music or make a certain kind of music to be successful or whatever.” The project of self-improvement, of growth, is an ongoing one for Cerro. She’s grateful to have the time and resources to be able to meaningfully engage with her inner world. The alternative is an “unhealthy dose of nihilism”. “Being on the other side of the scale, for me, that sort of threatens to annihilate all the good work I do. It’s just like a very unhealthy dose of nihilism, where occasionally I will come to this point in my life where I’m just like, ‘But it’s all pointless.’ I’m doing all this quote-unquote, ‘good work’ to quote-unquote ‘make myself a better person’, but at the end of the day, what’s the fucking point? “Sometimes I literally go into a depressive spiral and I’m like, ‘Wow, everything’s meaningless...’ It’s like someone hits a red button in my brain, then my brain’s like, ‘There’s no point in
The Great Escape, you can
you writing music, there’s no point in you doing this job, there’s
literally see it there in front
no point in you doing anything, why do you keep doing it?’
of you. “We went over there [... and then] we realised, ‘Oh, we belong here,’ and you realise that you’re ready for that experience. It made the future seem like not this big, shining, distant dream.”
New Romancer (Double Drummer) is out now. Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird tour from 11 Oct, including Loch Hart Festival on 16 Nov.
“I’m good at reining that in though [and] checking myself
T
before I wreck myself basically. And my friends are also really supportive and awesome.” hree years on from the release of her ARIA-winning
Cerro’s great strength is in the power of her voice — she
debut Glorious Heights, 24-year-old art-pop wun-
uses it to express yearning, or to reach out and connect with a
derkind, Montaigne, aka Jess Cerro, has returned
listener. Her hyper-articulate lyrics, ruminating on sadness, selfdoubt, and desire, are set to crunching pop beats, a style she
with Complex. After working only with Tony Buchen on her first album,
describes as “pop survival”.
Complex sees Cerro collaborating with a stack of new pro-
As individuals, Cerro says, in the face of a looming sense
ducers, as well as Buchen, including TV On The Radio’s Dave
of nihilism, we have to imbue our lives with meaning — to find
Sitek and Papa Vs Pretty’s Thomas Rawle. Their influence
something to live for.
has allowed Cerro to explore different facets of her sound,
“For me, it’s joy and all those like buoyant human emotions and awe and sublimeness and stuff — that’s the shit I live
all on one record. That’s not to say the record sounds disjointed. Her collaborators helped push Montaigne’s theatrical-pop further
for,” Cerro says. “I think there is a very sweet spot of sublime in the juxtaposition between dark and light.”
than it’s gone before. “I think my voice is stronger,” Cerro says. “I think my songwriting is stronger. I think the melodies are probably as strong — I still think that the melodies in Glorious Heights are pretty good. “I think the production’s a little clearer, a little more
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
lucid and a little more confident in this one. I think Glorious Heights is confident, but this one has virtuosity that matches that level of confidence. It’s like earned confidence.”
THE MUSIC
•
39
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Complex (Wonderlick) is out now. Montaigne tours from 1 Nov, including Falls Festival from 30 Dec.
Around the world in eight festival acts There was a time when Australian music festival bills were all about US, UK and, of course, homegrown performers, but today’s events are credibly international. Here are eight acts from around the globe to catch this season. By Cyclone.
Nano Stern
Of Monsters & Men
Buffy Sainte-Marie
Ego Lemos
Playing at: Mullum Music Festival, Queen-
Playing at: Falls Festival
Playing at: Bluesfest
Playing at: Port Fairy Folk Festival
Sounds like: Mythic and euphoric alt-
Sounds like: Resonant folk-rock songs of
Sounds like: Headnodding folk ‘n’ roots with
From: Iceland
From: Canada
From: Timor-Leste (East Timor)
Fun fact: Iceland’s Beer Day (Bjúrdagur) on 1
Fun fact: One of Canada’s oldest known
Fun fact: Timor-Leste’s national football
ment UFO investigations agency
of seven decades’ prohibition
Ontario, is believed to be over 500 years old
regained independence
Shonen Knife
Claptone
Sibusile Xaba
Armin van Buuren
Playing at: The Lost Lands
Playing at: Beyond The Valley, Wildlands,
Playing at: Mullum Music Festival
Playing at: FestivalX
Sounds like: Spiritual, expressive and rhyth-
Sounds like: Hands-in-the-air stadium trance
scliff Music Festival,
Sounds like: Vibrant Latin American folk that bursts into high-energy rock From: Chile Fun fact: Chile (openly) has its own govern-
Sounds like: Cult pop-punk emitting playfulness and riffs galore From: Japan Fun Fact: Mount Fuji is one of Japan’s 110 active volcanoes, last erupting in 1707
rock anthems
First Nations’ resistance and survival
Mar was created in 1989 to celebrate the end
sugar maple trees, the Comfort Maple in
Field Day
Sounds like: Deep, groovy tech-house with
mic folk, blues and jazz with virtuoso guitar
disco glamour
From: South Africa
From: Germany
Fun fact: South Africa has 11 official languag-
Fun fact: Germany has as many as 25,000
es, with isiZulu (Zulu) the most commonly
castles (some now just sites)
THE MUSIC
•
spoken at home
40
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
delicate acoustic guitar and sonorous vocals
team joined FIFA in 2005, three years after it
From: The Netherlands Fun fact: The Netherlands has an estimated 1.3 bicycles per person
Divine chaos The tyranny of distance has become the norm for Holy Holy. But singer Timothy Carroll tells Carley Hall their trans-city set-up helped them take the reins as producers on their latest album.
“W
e’re a bit of a crazy band in some ways — our
with previous recordings. There were a few moments where
Carroll and Dawson set parameters for themselves
drummer lives in Hobart, I live in Launceston,
it was a bit scary in terms of us maybe not being on track.
as producers on this new album. One way they were able
Oscar’s in Melbourne and our bass player’s
And then the last couple of sessions we made a lot of prog-
to achieve the blend of their usual searing melodies, rich
ress and it all came together — so I do feel a lot of relief.
instrumental textures and joy spliced with melancholy was
in Sydney, so it can be a logistical mindfuck to get every-
“Holy Holy often do this thing where we commit to
to experiment with writing songs with drums at their core,
Such is the current state of play for Holy Holy, accord-
a release date before we’ve even written or recorded the
and letting the layers unfold around them; the other was to
ing to singer Timothy Carroll. Embracing their long-distance
album. I guess because we feel like we have to do that —
reach out to collaborators. Japanese Wallpaper, Ainslie Wills
relationship has always been a necessity for the trans-city
we’ve all got busy lives. If we waited until we finished an
and Ali Barter put their stamp on a number of tracks, which
duo, but Carroll’s not complaining.
album, the cycles would blow out and it would just be
Carroll said was key not only to the album’s aesthetic but
too long. But that means that pressure to make it happen
also to making the process fun.
thing happening.”
“I actually love the kind of the freedom of this modern life — working at home, or the airport, in a tour van, whatever
is there.
“Oscar and I are really on the same page a lot of the time
hours I want to work. When I sit down at my laptop with a
“And now right before it’s due out, I’m just trying to keep
about what we want to do, which is great. But we kind of
coffee and I’m planning gigs, organising music festivals, lis-
my head down and not think about it too much. I am really
wanted to step away from the drums/bass/guitar aesthetic
tening to bands, I am like ‘Man, I never would have dreamed
proud of the album and I feel like for a lot of us, progressing
a bit and experiment and find interesting ways to compose
that this is possible to do as a job.’”
the sound and style is essential to keeping the project inter-
songs,” Carroll explains. “Holy Holy has lots of strengths but
From his Launceston home, Carroll is musing about the
esting and exciting for us. And I feel like we’ve achieved that.”
I always find it’s nice to reach out to others who have the
changes that have shaped Holy Holy. Since catching ears
For their latest, My Own Pool Of Light, Carroll and Daw-
with the edge in their indie-rock on 2014 EP The Pacific,
son maintained the intimate storytelling they’re known
“I guess taking the producer out of the mix by producing
Carroll and Dawson expanded their soundscapes for debut
for, and added a dash of the forthright and conversational,
it ourselves we were keen to collaborate in another way. Now
When The Storms Would Come in 2015, then polished the
which Carroll puts down to “being largely at the mercy of
it’s out of my hands to see what people think about it.”
guitar/drum/bass set-up with extra keys and catchy singles
chance” during this songwriting period.
on Paint in 2017.
“I don’t often go into those writing sessions with some-
Along the way, Carroll and guitarist Oscar Dawson kept
thing on my mind, but [my daughter] Frida had been on my
at their respective side hustles — starting music festivals and
mind a lot,” he explains. “I have a son and a daughter. My son
producing for big-name artists. Thus, it seems perfectly logi-
was repeating things that made me think that we had made
cal that the pair decided to take the reins on album number
more progress than that!
three, rather than rely solely on past producer and current touring band member Matt Redlich.
strength where you’re weakest.
Holy Holy are on tour now, including The Lost Lands on 3 Nov and Falls Festival from 29 Dec.
“I showed him a band on YouTube called [Vivian Girls], and they’re all females. And he goes ‘They’re all girls.’ And
“We self-produced this album so it was all on us,” Carroll
I’m like, ‘Yeah, girls are good musicians, good singers, good
offers. “We were open to trying different things and chang-
at guitar.’ And he said ‘Yeah, but not as good as boys.’ It was
ing the way we wrote and recorded quite a lot compared
slightly troubling, but we’ll get there.”
“It can be a logistical mindfuck to get everything happening.”
THE MUSIC
•
41
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
Zimmer frame by frame
Gladiator “I kept saying to Ridley [Scott], ‘You’re a poet, you’re an artist, and right now it’s just titled Gladiator, straight into battle, and there’s no female soul in this movie’... Pietro [Scalia], our editor, had a Dead Can Dance CD, and said, ‘What about Lisa Gerrard?’... I phoned her up: ‘Would you be interested in working with us on this Gladiator movie?’ And she said, ‘Who’s in it?’ ‘Russell Crowe.’ And she said, ‘I can’t possibly do that, I can’t’... We sent the film to Melbourne and she phoned us back: ‘Yeah, I’ll do it’... I forgot all about her turning us down, and then a few years later I said to her, ‘Why did you turn us down?’ ‘Do you know that film The Insider?’ She just thought that it was inappropriate that every time you saw Russell Crowe on the screen that year, you heard Lisa Gerrard sing, and she was just trying to protect Russell.”
Prolific composer Hans Zimmer’s career is dizzying at a glance. After helping shape some of the most successful and iconic films of all time, it’s not surprising he’s accrued a wealth of stories and inside goss. Ahead of his upcoming tour, Zimmer reminisces with Daniel Cribb.
The Dark Knight “Oh, you’re going down in box office numbers, I can tell. I loved the Joker; I loved Heath [Ledger]. One of the things that have been really important for me on these tours is, in a way, wherever I go, to keep Heath’s memory alive. He was such an integral part of everything at that moment in time, and it was such a tragedy.”
Mission: Impossible 2 “Walking across the Fox lot [in Sydney] at 6 o’clock in the morning with a fully formed tune in my head going, ‘I am going to get this tune done by the time any office opens’, and I suddenly remembered that I knew the guys at Trackdown Studios and I phoned them and said, ‘Quick, I’ve got to record something!’ By the time I got to the meeting with Tom Cruise and John Woo, I had a rough theme. I always find it really inspiring being down in Australia — it’s a place where you can get ideas.”
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
Inception “When Chris [Nolan] talked to me about it, we went and sat down on a beach and he was telling me about his new idea for a movie. I thought it was actually really simple; it was a time travel movie with dreams, and I thought, ‘Oh that’s really clever — he’s figured out how to do time travel because you do it in dreams all the time.’ And I like this idea of shared dreaming which happens in the cinema. “I just sat down and started writing away and had a lot of fun. Chris had written in this crazy lowbrow stuff that was a story point in the movie and then it got appropriated by every trailer house in the world and they just started shoving that stuff as a sort of segue between shots and it became a little annoying after that. Especially because, you go, ‘Don’t you guys realise, for us, it a story point; for you, it’s just a special effect.’”
The Lion King “I’m old enough that I actually got to work on the original and the remake of The Lion King. It was originally written for my, at the time, six-year-old daughter. It was a really hot ticket for the premiere this time around, and Disney had sent me all these tickets and I sent them all back except for two, and I just took my daughter on a daddy-daughter date. Disney was quite astonished that somebody would actually send those tickets [back] — people were actually killing each other over those tickets.” Hans Zimmer tours from 3 Oct.
THE MUSIC
•
42
•
MUSIC
RYE IS THE GOSPEL T H E G O S P E LW H I S K E Y. C O M
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
Dallas Green’s lonely hearts club band Scientists say we are living in the loneliest era of human civilisation. Dallas Green, aka City & Colour, tells Lauren Baxter why his “pill for loneliness” will always be music.
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
T
o be lonely is to be human. It is an essential part of the human condition. It breaks hearts and writes songs. It brings people together as we seek connection. It also elevates our risk of cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline and metastatic cancer. It weakens the immune system. It can cause neurodegenerative disease and research suggests situational loneliness can permanently change our brain structures and processes. Classified as a public health problem, the next epidemic even, scientists are looking for a pill to cure it. Watching the news earlier in the year, Dallas Green — aka the Canadian singer-songwriter who records his solo project (he’s also in post-hardcore band Alexisonfire) under the moniker City & Colour — was stopped in his tracks. “I just thought, ‘Wow,’” he tells us down the phone. “Obviously we try to make a pill for everything these days — anxiety, depression, weight loss, all this stuff — but it just sort of struck me like, ‘Fuck, I can’t believe we’re living in a world where we are so alone that we’re trying to create a pill to get rid of it.’ I started doing more research on it and saw that the studies show we’re living in the loneliest era in the history of human civilisation.” To be alone is not the same as being lonely; it is a neutral disposition. “Somebody gave me shit the other day when I was doing an interview,” Green laughs. “She was like, ‘How can you call the record A Pill For Loneliness and then the first line of the record be, “I’d rather walk alone”?’ I was like, ‘Well sorry, there’s a difference between being lonely and being alone.’” For Green, his “pill” for loneliness has always been music: “Music has always been this thing that I could look to whether it’s writing or listening to it, and I think that there’s a lot of people that would agree with me and feel the same way.” Research suggests psychotherapy is more effective than medication for a host of psychological disorders. For Green too, music is more than a pill to swallow and he describes writing as “a sort of therapy session”. It is the reason he records under the City & Colour name, needing to separate himself from the music. “Just because of the nature of the songs and what I’m usually writing about, it’s a moment where I feel like I need to get that off my chest or out of my own head. I hope that it can go out to the world and then maybe it’s not mine anymore for a minute.
THE MUSIC
•
“I always say to people when they say nice things to me about my songs helping them, I kinda always respond and say, ‘Well it helps me first,’ and that’s the point. I don’t know if everyone approaches music that way but when I was young, I found that not only do I enjoy writing and singing, but it was also a way for me to talk myself through some things. The separation comes from, like, not wanting to be stuck in that mood all the time. People will always dismiss me as a sad person. And I’m like, ‘I’m not.’ I’m a normal human being like everybody else. I have good days and bad days, and when I have good days, I don’t necessarily think about writing a song about that.” The album, his sixth and first since 2015, is described in the press release as being a lot of dark songs wrapped in beautiful sounds, something Green affirms is an “apt description”: “I always sort of write melancholic type songs. It’s what I do to get myself out of those moods [but] I always try to make it a little bit hopeful. And I always try to make the songs somewhat ‘pretty’ sounding to be a juxtaposition of what I’m singing about.” It’s “pretty” of course but also the most expansive we’ve heard Green sound in solo form. “It’s definitely the most, for lack of a better word, epic sounding record I’ve ever made,” he says. “I mean, I love music like that and I’m always interested in trying something a little bit different than what I’ve done. But I still wanted to sound like me.” Wandering is a motif that comes up again and again in Green’s songwriting but he tells us “Canada will always be [his] home”. “Whenever I come back home after a long tour, or even a short trip, if I’m not in Canada, I feel it. As soon as I get back across the border, I just feel it. You feel home. And I’m very happy about that. I’m very lucky to feel that way about where I’m from. But you have to want to wander in order to survive this style of living... Being on the road, it’s a difficult way to live. I feel like it’s also home in the same way.” After living in Nashville, returning home to Toronto meant Green was able to reunite with Alexisonfire and release the band’s first music in nearly a decade. They had initially broken up because “creatively [Green] wanted to go explore another side of [his] musical brain”. “It was great to be back playing with each other and actually working on new material. I don’t know if any of us thought we would ever do that again,” he admits. A period apart also saw each member bringing new experiences into the studio. “The last time we were in the studio together was about ten years ago. I think between myself and Wade [MacNeil], and Jordan [Hastings] our drummer, we’ve been in the studio non-stop since doing other projects. So it was cool to go back in after ten years of having more experience on that side of things as well.” Green just flew across the world to play an exclusive show as part of Brisbane Festival. “Anybody that knows me knows that I would jump at any chance to go to Australia,” he laughs. True to his word, he’ll be back in April next year.
“Fuck, I can’t believe we’re living in a world where we are so alone that we’re trying to create a pill to get rid of it.”
A Pill For Loneliness (Still/Dine Alone) is out this month. City & Colour tours from 15 Apr.
44
•
MUSIC
The new home of music is opening right here in Hobart. It’s where you can sit in on a scoring session for a media production, discover how acoustics are used as an instrument in composing, or explore what the latest technology can do for your music – then take what you’ve learnt out into Tassie’s thriving festivals and creative scene. There’s never been a better time or place to realise your creative potential than right now at the University of Tasmania.
Apply now to study music in 2020. 1300 363 864 | utas.edu.au Design by Liminal Architecture with WOHA and Arup. Renders by Doug and Wolf. CRICOS Provider Code: 00586B THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
Album Reviews
There’s an undeniable intimacy to this collaboration between Jen Cloher, Mia Dyson and Liz Stringer. The powerhouse singer-songwriters released an EP and toured extensively under the Dyson Stringer Cloher moniker in 2013, before splitting off to conquer their own corners of the local and international indie music scenes. Now they’ve finally reunited for a full-length album and they bring the listener right into the room with them — you can virtually smell the beer and see the artists’ stage-lit faces as they reveal themselves to the eager crowd. It’s quite a show. The trenchant, Cloher-led rocker Falling Clouds frames the album as a manifesto for women and gender non-conforming artists too often relegated to a supporting role: “Nothing against Paul or Nick, but if you want to be remembered then you better have a dick.” Such gendered iconoclasm broils along in the background and comes to a head later on in the album with the equally resounding Be Alone, a boot-stomping statement about self-actualisation, where to be alone is a gesture of power rather than passivity or failure. Not that the album is entirely didactic or chest-beating. On the contrary. Dyson Stringer Cloher’s ten tracks happily plumb an array of modes and moods. There’s an energy to the album that seems to have absorbed the entire oeuvre of women-led rock music. With My Hands delivers its chunky guitar riff and rimshot-driven chorus with a swagger worthy of The Runaways; it is tailor-made to get audiences jumping. Elsewhere Believer is stadium-sized rock that winks at The Jezabels.
Dyson Stringer Cloher
Dyson Stringer Cloher Milk! Records / Remote Control
HHHH
The arrangements and musicianship are as solid as the songwriting is memorable — from the tightly wound beats and dialogical guitar section that steer future road trip anthem The Other Side down its sombre highway, to the brushed snare and picked guitar that bring colour and texture to the bitingly confessional Young Girls. All of which provides a perfect setting for the three-pronged vocal onslaught, the contrast and complementarity of the singers’ voices helping to ensure that this collaboration is as aurally rich as any. Lest you fear that Dyson Stringer Cloher are taking themselves too seriously, for a change of pace there’s, well, Too Seriously — a tongue-in-cheek gospel-country romp delivered with alternating lead vocals and honky-tonk flair, and more than a little Wilburys-esque goofiness. It’s a moment to both celebrate and lampoon this whole supergroup business, albeit coupled with a little obligatory hard-bitten wisdom about rising above life’s more bruising knocks. Be Alone’s pounding drums and haze of fuzz guitar bring things to a rousing climax ahead of the album’s stunning benediction, Can I Borrow Your Eyes. Sung largely a cappella, aside from a wafer-thin bed of synth, the closing track finds the singers’ voices blended in perfect three-part harmonies, their contrasting styles united into a singular vision. It sums the album up nicely, and leaves the listener to slip back into the world warmed by the knowledge that these are three artists who’ll be remembered, together and alone. Tim Kroenert
Ali Barter
BABYMETAL
Bec Sandridge
The Menzingers
Inertia
Babymetal Records / Cooking Vinyl
Independent
Epitaph
HHHH
HHH
Hello, I’m Doing My Best
HHH½
Metal Galaxy
Try + Save Me
HHH½
Hello Exile
We’re back in the ‘90s for Barter’s second offering, driving with the windows down in Kat Stratford’s 1963 Dodge Dart, not giving a damn about our reputation, and screaming out the lyrics to Ur A Piece Of Shit. Next we’re in our big sister’s bedroom, “smoking cigarettes and eating ice cream” listening on as she tells us her History Of Boys. We sneak out past curfew to meet our crush at a party while Backseat plays. This Girl soundtracks our walk into the school formal. Hello, I’m Doing My Best is so much more than a ‘90s throwback though. It’s relatable, intelligent songwriting that sees Barter at her best.
Allow yourself to embrace the sheer unadulterated fun of BABYMETAL Even minus former member Yuimetal, their J-pop/metal hybrid, now on its third album, remains slicker than snot on a doorknob. They’ve seemingly sought a more international flavour here and Metal Galaxy does a fair job of distilling various metallic styles into its own potent attack, the Kami Band’s well-honed backing aiding the cause. Is BABYMETAL’s music and accompanying narrative here to stay? Only the Fox God knows for certain, but despite some shortcomings, Metal Galaxy should continue their world-conquering momentum.
Bec Sandridge has been kicking around with her Kate Bush-meets-Karen O vibe for a few years, but only now do we finally have a debut LP to wrap our ears around. The longer format allows the singer to tease out her big, stark and playful ‘80s-style pop and heightens the girl crush factor to 11. There’s so many bombastic piano stompers in Try + Save Me, it’s hard to know where to start. I’ll Never Want A BF is just perfect pop, a bold statement from an equally bold artist, and it sets the bar for the rest of the album. Still, there are some subtle moments that aren’t drenched in sound. But not many — it’s big and hard not to love.
The Menzingers new album, Hello Exile, is jam-packed with 12 intimate pop-punk hits. Although most of the songs follow a similar four-chord progression and don’t immediately strike as anything outstanding, the simplicity of the music provides the perfect backdrop for beautifully written lyrics. Look to Last To Know for an example of some of The Menzingers’ best writing. Each song is its own story, reflecting on a variety of topics, from youth and love to alcohol and even politics. While none of these are new concepts, Hello Exile delivers a fresh and well-crafted take on common tropes.
Lauren Baxter
Brendan Crabb
Carley Hall
Katie Livingston
THE MUSIC
•
46
•
ALBUM REVIEWS
For more album reviews, go to www.theMusic.com.au
Emma Russack & Lachlan Denton Take The Reigns
Lacuna Coil
Refused
We Lost The Sea
Century Media / Sony
Spinefarm / Caroline
Bird’s Robe
Black Anima
War Music
Triumph & Disaster
Osborne Again Music / Spunk
HHHH
HHH½
Take The Reigns, the third album from songwriters Emma Russack and Lachlan Denton, is quietly concerned with one of life’s most difficult tasks: surrendering control. Over ten songs on this concise and unassuming record, the pair sing about letting themselves be vulnerable, as they attempt to exercise self-care by reaching out to others after tumultuous periods in their lives. While the arrangements are often simple, one can hear the source of Russack and Denton’s strength reflected; there’s a sense of cohesion and togetherness.
Prior to 2016’s Delirium, Lacuna Coil’s recent albums had often been so middling, pedestrian even, they could almost have been called off for lack of interest from anybody bar the most devoted fans. However, that record seemed to reinvigorate all concerned. Now, Black Anima channels personal anguish, using the group’s recognisable blend of gothic melodrama and pop sensibilities. More than 20 years on from their debut, Lacuna Coil’s place in the modern metal pantheon remains assured by adding records like this to the canon.
War Music solidifies Refused’s return, but it’s a more refined and compact take on the modern rock album. Trimmed of any excess, it rips and roars across ten songs in 35 minutes. There’s little diversion into synth interludes or overly prog workouts. Instead, it keeps things locked tightly around precise and knotty guitar riffs and a rhythm section that still kicks and drives. With Refused, it’s about the sound — that hurricane of distortion and militant rhythms, where primal physicality and intelligent application combine to create the band’s intoxicating noise.
Let’s establish something loud and clear: We Lost The Sea are never going to repeat the sounds or scope of previous album Departure Songs — and they shouldn’t try. Their celebrated third LP came out of tragedy (vocalist Chris Torpy passed away in 2013), resulting in a beautifully cathartic record. This time around, on their highly anticipated follow-up Triumph & Disaster, the band have gone into the studio with a far sharper sense of focus and the final result sounds more collected and consistent. Equal parts tender and turbulent, this is indeed a triumphant follow-up.
Roshan Clerke
Brendan Crabb
Chris Familton
Alasdair Belling
Danny Brown
Youth Group
Underground Lovers
The Darkness
Warp / Inertia
Ivy League
Rubber Records
Cooking Vinyl
HHH
HHHH
HHH½
Danny Brown’s previous album, the abrasive and depressing Atrocity Exhibition, will most likely go down as ‘The Big One’ in his discography. So now, with the deep end all mapped out, it seems like the logical thing to do would be to try and capture the other end of his spectrum: Danny Brown, the clown. His latest release mostly succeeds at that goal. It’s funny as hell, with a varied tempo of moods and atmospheres thanks to producer Q-Tip’s colourful beats. If you’re a fan of Brown, it’s most definitely a worthy new addition. To everyone else though it will probably only serve as a fun gateway.
Written in an abandoned laundromat in Huddersfield, the adopted UK home of lead singer Dr Toby Martin, what were supposed to be new songs for another solo album morphed into the band’s latest record. Having spent a limited time recording the ten tracks, the record doesn’t sound rushed, quite the opposite in fact. Anyone who played in a band, moved on and lived their life but never lost the love of it will be able to relate to this album on some level, and there is a simple freedom at the album’s core. Worth a listen for music fans wondering what happens when bands grow up, move away and find their way back home.
Underground Lovers are back with their tenth studio album and they’ve again produced a strong album. This time around they’ve ushered electronic explorations back into the fold, placing the album close to the work they produced on Cold Feeling at the end of the ‘90s. By the time we reach the conclusion of the epic nine-minute closer there’s a sense of post-rollercoaster exhilaration in the wake of the album’s propulsive peaks and floating valleys. The song takes off into the stratosphere on an interstellar space-rock mission. A Left Turn is another sonic gem from one of Australia’s psychedelic finest.
Easter is cancelled, and in its place The Darkness have released a new concept album, featuring ten catchy rock songs you’ve almost heard before. Each track is addictively familiar. But don’t be fooled, the tracks frequently shift gear. With brief but powerful guitar solos and Justin Hawkins’ signature falsetto, Easter Is Cancelled is a high energy salute to everything rock. And while at a first glance it comes off as a bit cliche, maybe that’s the point. Not known for taking anything seriously, least of all themselves, this new album proves this more than ever.
Donald Finlayson
Adam Wilding
Chris Familton
Katie Livingston
HHH½
uknowhatimsayin¿
HHH½
Australian Halloween
THE MUSIC
A Left Turn
•
47
•
ALBUM REVIEWS
HHHH
Easter Is Cancelled
Want more news, reviews and interviews? Head to the new look theMusic.com.au
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
Thigh Gap Shortlisted for London’s Platform Presents Playwright’s Prize 2019, Thigh Gap by Melbourne-based writer Jamaica Zuanetti sets about unpicking our cultural obsession with having a ‘thigh gap’. In a world of flashy lipstick ads, wellness trends and dating apps, young women are constantly self-examining and comparing ourselves to each other, but in pursuit of what? Independent theatre company La Mama presents the premiere of Thigh Gap, directed by Alice Darling, and starring Veronica Thomas and Lauren Mass. Thigh Gap is an absurd comedy that tells the story of two such women sharing an apartment in 2019, and on the way examines how we adhere to and reinforce repressive beauty ideals in a hyper-capitalist hellscape.
Thigh Gap plays from 30 Oct at La Mama Courthouse.
Pic: Darren Gill
The best of The Arts in October
1.
1.
MQFF eXtra Ten feature films screen at MQFF eXtra ahead of March’s Melbourne Queer Film Festival, including queer teen drama Giant Little Ones, pictured, closing night film Portrait Of A Lady On Fire and Benjamin, written and directed by Simon Amstell. From 4 Oct at Cinema Nova
2.
Escape to the Yarra Valley to enjoy classic and modern opera: from a 21st century retelling of Monteverdi’s Poppea, a story of power and sex, to Verdi’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, to the Aussie premiere of Jonathan Dove and Alasdair Middleton’s The Enchanted Pig.
3.
2.
Yarra Valley Opera Festival
From 18 Oct at Olinda Yarra, Yering
3.
National Theatre Live: Fleabag Writer and actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge reprises her role in the original stage play of Fleabag, the inspiration for the provocative BBC series of the same name. Originally premiering at Edinburgh Fringe in 2013, this year’s London remount will be beamed into cinemas around Australia. Pic by Joan Marcus. In selected cinemas from 11 Oct
4.
Monster Fest Monster Fest presents a program of horror features in October, including Tony D’Aquino’s The Furies, pictured, which turns Richard Connell’s 1924 adventure short story, The Most Dangerous Game, into a slasher flick, and Keola Racela’s teen horrorcomedy Porno.
4.
From 10 Oct at Cinema Nova
5.
Evil Dead In Concert Celebrate the wickedest day of the year, Halloween, by watching the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra perform their newly reimagined score to ‘80s Sam Raimi cult classic, The Evil Dead, with composer Joe LoDuca himself on the keys. 31 Oct at Palais Theatre
5.
6.
6.
WWE LIVE World Wrestling Entertainment prowrestlers, including Roman Reigns, WWE Champion Kofi Kingston, pictured, Charlotte Flair, SmackDown Women’s Champion Bayley and Aussie Buddy Murphy show down in the ring this month. Expect curb stomps, beat downs and roundhouse kicks. 23 Oct at Rod Laver Arena
THE MUSIC
•
50
•
ON IN OCTOBER
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
Film & TV Total Control
HHHH Airs from 13 Oct on ABC
Reviewed by Guy Davis
D
eborah Mailman has been such a compelling and appealing part of the Australian acting landscape for so long that it beggars belief that the six-part ABC political drama, Total Control, marks the first time she has been front and centre in a lead role on television. What’s not surprising is the conviction, complexity and zeal Mailman brings to her portrayal of Alex Irving, thrust into the public eye after her courageous stand against an active shooter and recruited by Prime Minister Rachel Anderson (Rachel Griffiths, combining elements of Julia Gillard and Julie Bishop to create a steely depiction of power and pragmatism) as her government’s newest senator. Total Control bristles with fury over injustices, inequalities and indignities in Australian society — particularly towards its First Peoples — and so does Alex, who is justifiably cynical and skeptical when it comes to the Prime Minister’s offer. (Up until recently, the miniseries was titled Black Bitch, leaving little doubt about its in-your-face tone.)
She agrees with her left-leaning brother that the government is looking for a “pet Aborigine” to appear inclusive and woke, but she’s wise enough to recognise that even a token position among the powerbrokers will enable her to accomplish more than she ever did in her few years on the council of her impoverished Far North Queensland community. She’s also savvy enough to realise politics is a cutthroat game where no one can be trusted, especially the well-fed white men seemingly making up the majority of Canberra’s population, but she’s dismayed to discover the extent to which those in control will go — and who they will use — to keep their grip on power. What distinguishes this series is how bold and confrontational an approach it takes to the problems faced by its characters, and the solutions that may be required. Combine that with strong acting, polished production values and sturdy plotting, and Total Control makes for bracing, enthralling viewing.
Joker
HHH½ In cinemas 3 Oct
Reviewed by Anthony Carew
A
fter Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight provided one of this century’s greatest big studio movie performances, Joaquin Phoenix now delivers another in Joker. Beyond his Oscar-ready radical weight loss, Phoenix manages to expertly embody the complexities of Arthur Fleck — sufferer of pathological laughter, sociopathy and social disenfranchisement — in gesture and expression. Set in Gotham City in 1981 — clearly modelled on late ‘70s New York City — Joker is an anti-heroising portrait of toxic male entitlement and rage, with painful real-life resonances when its angry, mentally unstable, alienated white male is disastrously handed a handgun. Joker is about how a cruel, uncaring society — a nightmare of wealth disparity and amoral late period capitalism, where social services are cut and vast crowds fall through cracks — can breed a monster. “What do you get,” Phoenix asks, “when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash?”
THE MUSIC
•
52
•
REVIEWS
In its study of a disenfranchised outsider seeking violent retribution against a toxic society, Joker intentionally resembles Taxi Driver. Robert De Niro is cast here as a late-night talkshow host, making for a King Of Comedy homage too. Martin Scorsese was brought on as initial producer, and serves as obvious inspiration for director Todd Phillips (Road Trip, Old School). While the debt is obvious, especially in the ironic juxtaposition of feelgood golden oldie hits with grim imagery, Phillips succeeds in creating a singular tone, even as his film is as contradictory as its leading man. Joker is at once grand entertainment, smart psychological study, and off-the-wall riff on bubblegum intellectual property. Is this a warning on alienated male rage? Or an unintentional commemoration of it? And is its radical reimagining of the possibilities of a comic book movie cause for celebration? Or a sure sign that studios/audiences will only welcome cinematic provocations if there’s in-built superhero brand recognition?
Killer instinct If you’re a fan of American comedy, chances are Beth Stelling has worked on something you love. She tells Joe Dolan about writing for Judd Apatow and gaining the self-confidence to see herself as a “real” comic.
U
S stand-up Beth Stelling is one of the busiest and most in-demand comics around. From filming her own Netflix special to writing on critically acclaimed films and TV programmes, like Good Boys and Sarah Silverman’s I Love You America, all the way to co-hosting a podcast with her own mother, We Called Your Mom, Stelling is the secret weapon of Hollywood comedy. “I still remember my first meeting in LA,” she laughs of her transition into screenwriting. “I had gotten an offer for Just For Laughs in Montreal about eight years ago, and they said, ‘We love your stand-up! What else do you do?’ And at that time in my life it was just like, ‘Oh, I do what you saw? That’s it...’ The negative side of it all, I guess, is that it’s hard for those people to monetise that kind of thing, which is a pessimistic way of looking at it. At the same time, though, they don’t see dollars when they see a new comedian they’ve just discovered. “I had to learn to write from scratch really. I read loads of books about it, and I realised that if I can write my own standup, I can write jokes for other people and TV and stuff. Since I’ve started writing, there’s a stability in that versus the sort of piecemeal existence of stand-up. So now I find myself really straddling the two.” Stelling’s first foray into TV writing came when she was handpicked for Pete Holmes’ HBO series Crashing, executiveproduced by comedy royalty Judd Apatow. Stelling says writing for a show about struggling comedians was the perfect way to learn about TV writing. Having Crashing be my first writing job was great because it eased me into the world of writing through stand-up,” she says. “It was very familiar to me, and Judd knew that and Pete knew that. I’m really grateful for that job because before that I didn’t necessarily think of myself as a writer, even though that might sound a bit silly. Sometimes you have people come up to you after a stand-up show and ask, ‘Do you have writers?’ and it’s like, ‘This is an open mic, do I look like I can afford writers?’” Stelling admits that writing jokes for other comedians was often an odd experience. “I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t times where I thought of a joke or a bit and thought, ‘I’m gonna keep that for me.’ But as you go on, you realise that you sort of have to think of yourself as an infi-
“This is going to sound cheesy as hell, but it totally has to come from you and your own self-confidence.”
nite well. Otherwise, when you get these writing blocks or you don’t have any new material, you think that you’ll never write anything ever again. Then, of course, the new jokes do happen and it’s the best feeling in the world. Writing for other comics, you realise too that it’s not ‘you’ and you can give those things away. It’s a different muscle, and forming jokes in someone else’s voice can be very difficult, but I also think that you gravitate towards writing for particular people for a reason.
THE MUSIC
•
“With writing for Crashing, you realise the balance between pulling from your own life and filtering it in a certain way or from a particular experience — maybe you had a really weird booker or you played at a crappy club — once you bring that to the room you realise we all have had the same experience. Obviously things vary between different comics and different genders, but we’ve all played the same cities and these same clubs, so really there’s more in common than maybe you
53
•
COMEDY
first thought. In a way, it’s a very singular experience, but you don’t get to see other comics headlining when you’re out headlining yourself. You don’t necessarily think of that.” Along with an impressive portfolio, these opportunities have given Stelling a renewed confidence in herself and her craft. “I hadn’t even called myself a comic for the first couple of years, because I felt you have to earn that, you know? For years I suffered from the notion of, ‘Am I real yet?’ Even after doing something like Conan for the first time, I was like, ‘Okay, now I’m gonna be real.’ The truth of it, though, is that there are always going to be pull-downs and setbacks, and this is going to sound cheesy as hell, but it totally has to come from you and your own selfconfidence. I think I have gained confidence over the years, and seeing my work next to people I idolise and think are total legends, that’s really boosted it.” Stelling tours to Australia this month, her Sydney date part of Just For Laughs. She admits she finds it hard to pass up writing gigs in order to focus on her stand-up. “This will be nothing that’s aired on TV before, but I run into this roadblock often: it’s hard for me to say no to writing gigs because I came out here — like a lot of people — with, you know, ‘hopes and dreams,’” she laughs. “I tend to get snagged into writing jobs a lot, and that can put a halt on the stand-up in a way. I’m in the [writers’] room from 10 to 7, and it’s hard to gather that energy to go up and do stand-up at night. That halts my progress, I guess, as I prepare to go and headline overseas, but I’ll have a fair bit of time to get it back up off its feet. An hour is a long time to talk to people, so I want to have it as ready as possible.”
Beth Stelling tours from 29 Oct.
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
W
The band’s back together
ho’s Afraid Of The Working
explains, Australia is “very different culturally
Class? first graced the Victorian
from 20 years ago”.
Trades Hall stage in May 1998.
“It’s such a privilege to be amongst such
The work from Melbourne Workers Theatre
really, really passionate theatre makers,” Saluja
brought together four of the most important
says. “There is a lot of heart. It really warms my
Australian playwrights of our time — Andrew
heart to see this play, which talks about really
Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves and
big ideas — massive politically ideas — but at
Christos Tsiolkas — and composer Irine Vela,
the end of the day you feel something. I think
to explore Australia in the 1990s. The play
that’s why we watch theatre, it’s because
became a seminal theatrical work and a
we want to feel something when we come
standout in the Australian theatre canon.
out of here. It makes quite a big statement.
Now, 21 years later, the same team are reuniting to take stock of the issues fac-
Saluja applauds the director for her abili-
changed and stayed the same, for Anthem, as
ty to command a room and join so many voic-
part of Melbourne International Arts Festival.
es together. “There wouldn’t be a lot of direc-
The idea of encapsulating the Australian zeit-
tors in this country who’d be able to bring five
geist is no easy feat, but with such playwriting
such prolific writers together and still be able
heavyweights as Bovell, Cornelius, Reeves and
to tell an overarching story. It’s hard when
Tsiolkas, director Susie Dee insists that we are
there are so many voices in the room. Dee
in good hands.
has brought everyone together and it’s a mas-
political heads,” she says. “It’s going to be a
•
54
•
credits
the
collaborative
envi-
to be entertaining, it’s going to be challeng-
to have an open room. We have a really
ing. It’ll be epic. It’s a work about our times:
great ensemble.” She explains that open dialogue was encouraged during the development pro-
Dee and Sahil Saluja, who plays Loki in
cess, where everyone, not just writers and
Anthem, describe the play as a a work with
director, was permitted to voice their opin-
great ambition, that makes big statements
ions. “We are trying to have a very robust and
about what being an Australian means. “This
a quite transparent room where can really talk
work is trying to tackle the bigger picture
about these issues. People have been quite
about this country,” Dee says. “The big ques-
honest about having difficulty with this char-
tions were being asked: ‘What is Australia?
acter or this political ideal.”
Who are we as an Australian society?’”
The cast is similarly impressive, featur-
Anthem addresses different questions
ing well-known names like Maude Davey
to Who’s Afraid Of The Working Class? — this
and Eryn Jean Norvill, as part of a diverse and
time around class, Indigenous cultural poli-
multi-generational cast. When Sahill got the
tics, and cultural identity — because, as Dee
brief from his agent, “the first few lines were
group dynamics, and humans as herd animals. “Colossus looks at both the good and bad of those dynamics,” Lake offers. “On the one hand you have the exquisite patterning and geometric synthesis — real beauty created because of Choreographer Stephanie Lake talks to Anthony the mass — with all of these bodCarew about reviving her 50-dancer epic, Colossus, for ies working together to create a more beautiful whole. CoopMelbourne International Arts Festival. eration, symbiosis, a multitude of bodies working as one — it is a beautiful thing. “On the other hand, we see the ugliness of human rowing up between rural Canada and bucolic behaviour. The ways that the herd can isolate and target Launceston, Stephanie Lake always felt close to one of its own. How quickly the mob can turn on one pernature. In choreographing her dance piece Colosson and the energy gets ugly and aggressive. Big groups of sus, she drew heavily on natural phenomena. “Growing people can bring out the best and worst of human nature. up on the Canadian prairies,” Lake explains, “I loved so We can organise, unify, galvanise, rally. But we can also much to watch the flocks of birds in the big skies — the riot, bully and turn nasty. I wanted both of those things seemingly effortless changes of direction and shifting to appear in the work. There’s a whole section of intricate leadership. It’s spectacular to watch. By using those formarching in Colossus — is it a symbol of strength in nummations as impetus in Colossus, I’m trying to say we hubers? Solidarity? Or is it a menacing symbol of militarisamans are part of nature, despite our disastrous desire to tion, oppression? I like that duality in the work.” dominate and destroy it.” Lake worked with dancers from VCA and Transit Colossus is a work choreographed for a huge troupe as part of a “monumental team effort” to devise Colossus, of 50 dancers. It had long been Lake’s dream to make a the logistics of the production necessitating a “hyperwork on such a scale. “I’ve [always] loved working with preparedness” that left little room for improvisation big numbers of dancers,” Lake says. “The intensity and or whimsy. Coming together with contributions from dynamism of huge groups of dancers, moving and breathRobin Fox (sound design), Bosco Shaw (lighting design), ing together, is incredibly satisfying and exciting.” and Harriet Oxley (costume design), the piece premiered In Colossus, movements ripple through the group, at Melbourne Fringe in 2018. Lake describes its openand dancers move both in and out of sync. It’s a visualing night as a moment of “euphoric relief”, the standing ly arresting work on a grand scale. But, with its evocaovation bringing her to tears. “I was just so overwhelmed tion of the movement of animals — the murmuration of with happiness that we’d pulled it off and that these birds, the flow of schools of fish — it pokes at notions of
THE MUSIC
Dee
ronment in the rehearsal room: “It’s great
themes are potent and relevant.”
G
sive effort.”
very important work. It’s provocative, it’s going
contemporary, right here, right now. The
“We’re all in it together”
faces in the audience.”
ing Australia today and to look at what has
“They are all robust writers with great
Director Susie Dee and actor Sahil Saluja talk to Felicity Pickering about revisiting an all-star collaboration 21 years later, and reflecting on a changed Australia.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are startled
young dancers were getting a response like that from a full house at the Arts Centre,” she recounts. It was merely the first grand response that Colossus received. After a short, 60-second promo video for the performance was posted online — “literally my first time putting a video on our Stephanie Lake Company FB page,” Lake offers — it soon took on an online life of its own. “Overnight it was getting shared thousands of times all over the world. We’re now at 3.5 million views. So the work is having this whole other ‘virtual’ life aside from its physical, live version.” Given all the work that went into its maiden performance, Lake never “in [her] wildest dreams” expected to stage it again, but its physical incarnation will return for the Melbourne International Arts Festival, and Lake foresees it “hav[ing] a long life with big shows happening here in Australia and around the world”. The reason Colossus strikes a chord with audiences, she thinks, is both its roots in the natural world, and the spectacle — and raw humanity — of having 50 people on stage. “There isn’t as much of a separation between audience and performers as I’ve experienced in other shows,”
M E L B O U R N E I N T E R N AT I O N A L A R T S F E S T I V A L
A rollicking rock’n’roll rollercoaster
about who was writing this and how Who’s Afraid Of The Working Class? is like a cult play”. “When I saw the writers on this play, it was an actual dream,” he says. “They are legends of Australian theatre. To just be in a room with them and listen to them talk about anything is interesting.” The play consists of several interwoven vignettes all set
Cora Bissett was 17 when she answered an ad in the local paper looking for a singer. She talks to Felicity Pickering about transforming that time of her life into a piece of theatre.
on a series of trains and platforms. Susie explains, “There are key characters, but there are three big scenes in the work, where the 12 actors have to work as an ensemble. It’s a collection of voice. It’s like a long poem. It’s quite poetic, it’s quite rhythmic.” Using the theatrical link of a train, Anthem is able to focus
A
on a large range of stories, a cross-section of Australian soci-
fter an award-winning, sold-out Edinburgh Fringe run, and dates at Soho Theatre in London, Cora Bissett’s What Girls Are Made Of is heading to Melbourne International Arts Festival this October. The show, an “autobiographical piece of gig theatre”, chronicles the incredible life of Bissett. When Bissett was 17 she was no “normal” teenager. The student from Glenrothes in east-central Scotland joined the band Darlingheart after responding to an ad in the local paper looking for a singer. After only ten or so gigs, the band were signed by Fontana, who offered a five-album deal for £90,000. It was a huge shock to Bissett, who was still very much a small-town teenager — it was a “massive contract, a massive amount of money” to her. Her mother signed the contract as Bissett was too young: “I understand now that she must have been terrified, and not known what she was signing me up to.” The band went on to tour with Blur and Radiohead. She chronicled this period of time in her diary, which served as the inspiration for What Girls Are Made Of. Now a mother herself, and around the same age as her mother was at the time, Bissett can appreciate the huge decision it was: “I really appreciate how much trust, and blind faith she had to have, because she had to let me go and do my thing. She couldn’t stand in the way. I really appreciate my parents enormously now. I really see what they had to do, to let me go and explore this option, even though it went horribly wrong.” And it did go horribly wrong — the record company dropped Darlingheart and the band landed in debt. Fame, as it often does, left her high and dry. Not even 20, Bissett had to pick herself up, redefine herself and reassemble her life. In the following years, Bissett dealt with major life hurdles, such as a miscarriage, and the painful loss of her father to dementia — both of which she represents on stage. The loss of her father, who was always quietly supportive of her, to dementia, led Bissett to “grow up in a whole different way”. There was a point when he couldn’t even recognise her. She explains that it was darkly comic at times: “He mistook me for Dolly Parton.” Bissett has found that many people come up to her after watching, keen to share their own stories of overcoming similar issues — from their own search for meaning to miscarriage or losing someone to dementia. It is these personal but universal battles that she finds audience members connect with. “The whole play is about stepping back from your life,” Bissett explains. “I’m in my 40s now. I’m able to just step back
ety. Sahill says the stories can be at times deeply sad, and deeply funny. His character, Loki, in particular, is dealing with some big issues. It was a story that was close to his heart. Loki’s storyline explores the 7-Eleven wage fraud scandal from 2015, where it was exposed that the convenience store was underpaying foreign workers and doctoring payroll records, threatening deportation if workers spoke up. It’s an Australian migrant story that Sahill is proud to portray. “My version of this character, he’s come to Australia for a few years. He’s worked at 7-Eleven and he hasn’t got his money, and what happens after? When do you decide enough is enough? When do you actually decide? And I think in real life I don’t think we are never able to come to that conclusion. But in a play, in a story, you can live that dream. It was like giving Loki, the character, his voice, and being like, ‘Fuck, I’m going to do it for him,’ because there are so many of us here, who have gone through the same thing.” The play is sure to be a riveting statement about Australia today. Like Who’s Afraid Of The Working Class? before it, could we see Anthem on a future high school syllabus? Dee laughs, “I hope so, of course.”
Anthem plays from 1 Oct at Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne.
she muses. “The show is quite a communal, involving experience because there is a density of people on stage mirrored by a density of people watching. It feels like we’re all in it together.”
Colossus plays from 3 Oct at Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne.
THE MUSIC
•
55
•
M E L B O U R N E I N T E R N AT I O N A L A R T S F E S T I V A L
with a bird’s-eye view, and look at the trajectory of it and go, ‘That’s where I started, and here’s where I am. What have I done in between? What has mattered? And what will I pass on to my girl or to the next generation?’ I think that’s what people reflect on. I think they think about their lives.” The tone of the show, while self-reflective at times, doesn’t take itself too seriously. “It’s all about the highs and lows of shooting for your dreams, and things not panning out how you thought they were going to, and how you turn it around.” Bissett narrates through the technique of direct address. Her band, all musical actors, play the various characters in her story — the record company, dodgy managers and her mum and dad. Weaved throughout are high impact songs played by the live band. “It’s full-on rock sound, just as it would be at a gig, but in between that you are telling a story and you’re linking all these bits, so each song has a really specific meaning and job to do.” The show ends with an all-female roll call of artists that have inspired her. Bissett credits women as her musical inspiration: “It was women. It was powerful, idiosyncratic, interesting, just creative genius women that were really reaching out to me. It was the Patti Smiths. It was Bjürk, Tori Amos. It was Kim Deal and the Pixies. It was Dolly Parton. It was people from all these different eras. Janis Joplin. They were the ones who spoke to me. “Those were the ones who make you think, ‘I could do that. I could get up. I could grab a microphone and sing in a rock band.’ It wasn’t watching a bloke on a stage that made me think that. It’s homage to all the extraordinary, brilliant, creative, women artists of all time really.”
What Girls Are Made Of plays from 3 Oct at The Famous Spiegeltent.
An Australian Hip Hop Documentary @burngently
#burngently
MSuI s ATpO rB i lE R T HTEh eM U Ci c • • O C
Pictured top row (L-R): Bethany Feik (The Vovos), Steph Brett (Empat Lima), Emma Lucia Galante Le Cornu (The Vovos) Bottom row: Ada Duffy (The Vovos), Ruby Ayliffe (The Vovos), Sooji Kim (Empat Lima). Pic: Theresa Harrison.
Darebin Music Feast Eight days, 85 events, 20 venues — Darebin City Council is going big for this year’s celebration of the community’s music, arts and culture. Running from 20 — 27 Oct, the event has something for everyone, from an Elite Masquerade Ball to Swamplands’ Music Video Comp. Our top pick is Green Noise, a night for passionate Melbourne bands looking to raise awareness for environmental issues. Get down to Thornbury Theatre on 27 Oct for garagepop beats from local legends Empat Lima, new indie-rock kids on the block The Vovos, Elizabeth and her velveteen, Twin Peaks-tweaked romance pop, and fuzzy ‘90s dreamer Jade Imagine.
Festival guide
Tyler, The Creator
It’s that time of year - there are more festivals going on than you can shake a doof stick at. We wouldn’t want you to spend the summer in a constant state of paralysed FOMO, so we’ve made a list of the finest events of the season.
Beyond The Valley From 28 Dec to the early hours of New Year’s Day, there’s only going to be one place to be. That place is Lardner Park for Beyond The Valley, where you will
be in the extremely fine company of RÜFÜS DU SOL, Tyler, The Creator, Cub
Halsey
Sport and more.
Falls Festival Another year, another line-up we’d happily Falls for — the multi-state event has locked in the likes of Halsey (in
her only Aus appearances), Vampire Weekend, Playboi Carti and Tash Sultana. 28 — 31 Dec, put it in your dia-
A Day To Remember
Dyson Stringer Cloher. Pic: Giulia McGauran
ries and we’ll see you in Lorne.
The Lost Lands
Good Things
There aren’t many events that nail the balance between being genuinely famiThe fine folks behind Good Things clearly don’t believe in the terrible twos — the touring festival’s second run
ly-friendly and a killer music festival. Apart from Shonen Knife, Dyson Stringer
30-strong line-up at Flemington Racecourse this 6 Dec.
straight-up Gurg. Get you a fest that can do both.
is even bigger than last year’s incredible line-up. Parkway Drive and A Day To Remember will top a nearly
THE MUSIC
•
58
•
Cloher and Gomez, Lost Lands has both Regurgitator’s Pogogo Show and
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Queenscliff Music Festival If anyone’s ever had a bad time at QMF, we’ve yet to hear about it. The town just opens up and welcomes the world in. Plus the line-ups are huge — and that’s not including the comedy or kids programs. This 22 — 24 Nov they’ve got everyone from Missy Higgins to Tim Finn.
Brewers Feast You know an event’s worth going to when the beer list is as long as the line-up. With sippables from the best brewers and food vendors providing ballast, get yourself down to Abbotsford Convent on 1 — 2 Feb.
Happy Wanderer Hidden among the trees of Missy Higgins. Pic: Cybele Malinowski
Yin Barun, on a sustainable site in north-east Victoria, it doesn’t get much more idyllic than Happy Wanderer. Head along 1 — 4 Nov and take a dip in the lake, enjoy the daily yoga, or just plonk Ruby Gill
yourself down in the grass
Loch Hart Music Festival Jayden Bath Festival Director
with headliners Ro and
Ruby Gill.
What makes your event
Festivals are no longer about the one ‘must-
security, medical and fire teams who are
see’ artist at a mega-festival with 20,000
embedded into the festival. They go beyond
Our inaugural festival was a hit because
others. They’ve grown to be an all-immersive
just doing their roles at the festival — they are
those who attended made it a hit. Loch Hart
weekend away with your mates.
friendly and they love being there. Ensuring
stand out from other festivals?
our staff are approachable is essential to
started from hosting huge house parties, and that’s the vibe of the festival — everyone
What do you think will be some of your
[creating] a safe space.
ing festival?
Do you think governments have a place
this year is truly so exciting with Didirri, Alice
NSW recently?
guaranteed highlights from your upcom-
is a mate. Plus, being on the Great Ocean Road with an amphitheatre overlooking the ocean is pretty unique.
Alpine! Hooley dooley, what a band! The bill
What’s improved for your next event?
Ivy, Genesis Owusu, Moaning Lisa — it’s way
in regulating festivals as has happened in Events need regulation, and the safety of
The huge addition this year is a comedy
bigger than we anticipated. Our comedy
attendees is paramount. However, the NSW
hour! We are focusing on expanding the
hour, morning yoga, food vendors and local
Government have gone beyond regulation
festival while keeping an intimate vibe. We
craft beers. Watching the sunset over the
by implementing draconian laws, essentially
ocean is always epic.
quashing the artist, and the creative role
are excited to add to the
festivals play in our society. We are extremely
festival site this year with
What’s the best way for up-and-coming
some new infrastructure,
artists to see their name on your bill?
amping up production and lights, and we may have
think will suit the bill. We take pride in book-
visiting Sunday.
ing amazing live performers, regardless of stats or the number of plays an artist has.
How is the festival land-
Playing shows and getting your name out
scape changing?
there is vital.
We’re still new to the scene,
How do you go about ensuring
but it’s evident there is a rise
your festival is a safe space?
in the number of boutique
We have an amazing relationship with our
music festivals, such as ours!
•
with our local council and police.
We are always on the lookout for artists we
some four-legged friends
THE MUSIC
thankful to have an excellent relationship
59
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Loch Hart Music Festival takes place from 15 Nov.
Loch Hart Music Festival In case you needed another excuse to head up the Great Ocean Road this summer, Loch Hart Music Festival is setting up in Princetown for its second year from 15 — 17 Nov. Flaunting the region’s natural beauty, as well as a line-up stacked with acts
like Didirri, Alice Ivy and
Cry Club, there’s no better
Cry Club. Pic: Giulia McGauran
reason for a road trip.
Port Fairy Folk Festival Are there four better days to be a Victorian music lover? The mainstay festival turns 44 Odette
this 6 Mar and bands are rolling in from all ‘round the country and all over the world to take part. We’re especially keen to see Emily Wurramara and get around leg-
NYE On The Hill
endary gospel outfit The Blind Boys Of
On The Hill. Running from 30 Dec — 1 Jan, the Gippy festival will do a little bet-
ter than Auld Lang Syne, with The Living End, Trophy Eyes, Odette and more ringing in 2020.
Queenscliff Music Festival
Alabama. Preach!
Emily Wurramara
Want to feel like you’re on top of the world this New Year’s Eve? Spend it at NYE
What makes your event stand out from
in a paddock on the side of a hill now. It’s
ers that naturally create a safe space. QMF is
those little things again, they’re far more
all about good music, in a beautiful location,
The simple answer is Queenscliff. We’re all
important than years gone by.
with great people. We don’t tolerate dick-
other festivals?
heads either.
about the beautiful coastal town where the
What do you think will be some of your
festival is held. We’re in beautiful parkland right in the middle of town, right beside the town in cafes, bars and halls.
One of the great things about Queenscliff
NSW recently?
in regulating festivals as has happened in Yes, and absolutely not. It’s a very complex
anyone you ask at the festival. Some will say
thing. I think it’s important that there aren’t
I’d like to think this is the best kids/fam-
The Cat Empire or Hiatus Kaiyote or Missy
just some very general regulations — what
ily program we’ve ever had at QMF. We’ve
Higgins, but some will say new exciting acts
might make some sense for a bush doof with
got Justine Clarke! We’re always improving
like Fools or Stevie Jean or Brekky Boy.
a long history of issues does not make sense for a folk festival with none. All events are dif-
though, tweaking things here and there. It’s absolutely the little things
What’s the best way for up-and-coming
ferent with different people, different issues,
Simple answer: be fucking awesome. Plus
NSW though!
artists to see their name on your bill?
that make a huge difference at events. We’re also moving to reusable plates/bowls/
things like: be nice people, work with nice
cutlery/cups.
people, apply or contact us at the right time, music, video, etc), and don’t annoy us about
scape changing?
it too much.
It’s always changing from
How do you go about ensuring your festival
a customer point of view —
is a safe space?
what’s important to them changes constantly. They
One of the most appealing things about
want more than just some
QMF is that we’re a very family-friendly event,
good bands, on a big stage,
with a broad cross-generation of music lov-
THE MUSIC
•
etc, etc. Thank God we’re not Queenscliff in
have all your shit together (live show, website,
How is the festival land-
Pic: Lisa Kenny
Do you think governments have a place
is this answer will absolutely be different for
What’s improved for your next event?
Andrew Orvis Festival Director
guaranteed highlights from your upcoming festival?
beach, and the festival extends throughout
60
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Queenscliff Music Festival takes place from 22 Nov.
OFFICIAL LISTEN OUT AFTERPARTY FEAT. YOUNG FRANCO
DOJA CAT (USA) MOTOR ENTER THE JUNGLE
27 SEPTEMBER
2 OCTOBER 4 OCTOBER 5 OCTOBER
DAY RAVE 2PM TO 11PM
SHAKERFAKER
12 OCTOBER
“DEFINITELY MAYBE” 25TH YEAR ANNIVERSARY
CONSTRUCTION ROCKS! CLASSIC ALBUMS BAND PRESENTS
ROCK RIOT!!! FEAT. FULL ALBUM LIVE
24 OCTOBER
25 OCTOBER
PERFORMANCES OF “DEF LEPPARD - HYSTERIA”, “BON JOVI - SLIPPERY WHEN WET” & “GUNS ‘N’ ROSES APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION”ANNIVERSARY
NO SCRUBS 90’S & 00’S PARTY
26 OCTOBER
PRINCE BANDROOM 27 FITZROY ST, ST KILDA
REGURGITATOR
QUARTER POUNDER - 25 YEARS OF BEING CONSUMED! W/ SPECIAL GUESTS SHONEN KNIFE(JPN) & THE FAUVES
KATCHAFIRE (NZ) DON’T CHANGE ULTIMATE INXS SOLARDO (U.K/SOLA) GARY ÓG (IRE) - 25 YEARS ON THE ROAD NIRVANA TRIBUTE (U.K)
2 NOVEMBER 3 NOVEMBER
16 NOVEMBER
6 DECEMBER
14 DECEMBER
THE WORLD’S NUMBER 1. NIRVANA TRIBUTE!
THE 2 JOHNNIES PODCAST - LIVE (IRE) THE QUIREBOYS (UK) JOHN 5 & THE CREATURES (USA) BOOK
THE MUSIC
1 NOVEMBER
•
PRINCEBANDROOM.COM.AU
OCTOBER
INSTA
17 JANUARY
22 FEBRUARY
16 APRIL
@PRINCEBANDROOM
For the latest live reviews go to theMusic.com.au
“He asks us to close our eyes and dance the fucking house down.” – Michael Prebeg
Troye Sivan @ Margaret Court Arena. Photos by Joshua Braybrook.
Live your best live and let loose -
this was the message Troye Sivan brought to Margaret Court Arena and no one has ever led so thor-
Crossfaith
oughly by example.
The Amity Affliction @ Melbourne Arena. Photos by Jaz Meadows.
“Amity don’t do things by halves.”
The Amity Affliction opened with with fire exploding from the stage and still managed to ramp up
– Emily Blackburn
the energy through the night. Shoutout to Japa-
nese legends Crossfaith for their epic, flag-waving support set.
The 1975 @ Margaret Court Arena. Photo by Andrew Briscoe.
“Fans jump, friends hug, girls whip their hair all around– it’s just utter carnage.” – Emily Blackburn
Folks go ham for The 1975. They
might be the only band to mistake
Melbourne for Sydney on stage and get away with it. The people love them that much.
THE MUSIC
•
62
•
REVIEWS
/ThePostOfficeHotel
W H AT ’ S O N I N O
C
T
O
B
E
@poh3058 @poh3058
R
229-231 Sydney Road Coburg VIC 3058
thepostofficehotel.com.au
THU
03 THU
10 THU
17 THU
24 THU
31
HEMLOCK LADDER Wet Kiss
JEDDA COSTA Maya Hodge // Bumpy
EFFIGY JEAN
SODA EVES
BURNING ROSE RECORDS
FRI
04 FRI
11 FRI
18 FRI
25 FRI
01
WAY SHIT
SAT
05
No Trauma
SAT
LAYLA & TOMBEAU
12 SAT
19
SOPHOMORE
SAT
26
LIFE STRIKE
SAT
02
OGOPOGO
ADORE
SUN
Rouge Wavs
06 SUN
TTTDC
TWISTEES
BROOKLYN 86
SUN
REBECCA BARNARD
GRUPS
SUN
27
DAN LETHBRIDGE & SHANE O’MARA
COPPERHEAD BRASS BAND
SUN
ROB SNARSKI RESIDENCY
03
WITH NEIL GRIFFITHS
LISTEN ON
•
13 20
THE GREEN ROOM
THE MUSIC
LISA MILLER & SHANE O’MARA
OCTOBER
HOWZAT! Local music by Jeff Jenkins
Maxed out The story of Michael Hutchence’s great lost album
One year ago
The Ocean Party’s drummer Zac
Denton dies, aged 24, after being
admitted to hospital suffering from a migraine. Five years ago
Pioneering Australian music journalist Ed Nimmervoll dies, aged 67, after battling a brain tumour. Ten years ago
The Temper Trap’s Sweet Disposition
hits the UK Top 10, peaking at six.
Vanessa Amorosi scores her fifth Top 10 single and first number one, with This Is Who I Am debuting on top. 20 years ago
Richard Clapton and Jimmy
Little are inducted into the ARIA Hall Of Fame.
60 years ago
Col Joye’s Oh Yeah Uh Huh becomes
the first local rock song to go to number one.
Johnny O’Keefe flies to the US for his first American tour.
Hot album
: fe
lic
it y
Ca
se-
Me
ji a
I still think it’s a pity this album wasn’t the followup to Kick. X, while a solid record, is the sound of a great band treading water. If they’d delivered the Max Q album instead, they would have become U2 — a massive stadium band with massive cred. The Max Q album is edgy but commercial. And it’s the sound of Michael Hutchence reenergised, with some of the greatest vocal performances of his career. Hutchence obviously needed to make the Max Q album for himself, but imagine if he’d been able to convince the rest of INXS to make a new album with Ollie Olsen producing? As it was, Hutchence’s main INXS collaborator, Andrew Farriss, didn’t even find out about the Max Q album until he was watching MTV on Channel Nine on a Friday night. While in the kitchen, one of Andrew’s mates yelled, “Hey, new INXS single!” Andrew raced into the lounge room to find Michael singing in front of a bunch of guys he’d never seen before. The failure of the Max Q album created a rift in Hutchence’s relationship with INXS manager Chris Murphy. In his autobiography, Murphy wrote: “As an agent I had seen over and over and over again, the biggest destruction of a band, if you look at the history of most bands, is not when they lose popularity but when their singer says, ‘I’m going to do a solo album.’” INXS’ official autobiography stated: “If Max Q had been a huge commercial success, it might have spelled the end of INXS. Chris Murphy knew this, and though he helped Michael market the album, he didn’t quite give it his all.” Little River Band’s Graeham Goble and Beeb Birtles were similarly disappointed when they felt that LRB’s manager Glenn Wheatley failed to promote their duo album, The Last Romance, released in 1980 at the height of LRB’s fame. Murphy did, however, negotiate a significant record deal for Max Q with Sony in Australia, and the label even produced a special one-off TV commercial, which ran during a single episode of Hey Hey It’s Saturday (this was the end of ‘80s, the final days of massive marketing budgets). Sadly, Max Q never played live and they never made another record. Their only album is not available on Spotify, iTunes or Bandcamp. The rights to the record remain mired in the mess that is Michael Hutchence’s estate. Despite Ollie Olsen’s best intentions, there is no 30th anniversary edition. Hopefully one day soon the record will be reissued and receive the attention it deserves. Pic
T
owards the end of INXS’ 16-month Kick world tour, Michael Hutchence was burnt out. One of the consequences — he cut his hair. “When he chopped his flowing, butterscotch-streaked hair into a blunt butch cut this past spring, people seemed even more confused and upset than when Bush was elected President,” American magazine Spin said. When one INXS band member saw the haircut, he turned to his partner and said, “That’s it, cut up the credit cards, we’re done.” “It was part of my personal therapy,” Hutchence told Howzat! at the start of 1990. “I wanted to re-create, to reinvent myself. And I did.” “Sometimes you gotta take a chance on yourself” — Max Q, Sometimes 1989 was the first year that INXS didn’t tour or release a record since they started i n 1977. Instead, Michael Hutchence rediscovered himself in Melbourne, teaming up with Ian “Ollie” Olsen, who he met while working on the Richard Lowenstein movie Dogs In Space. “Not until the long-awaited ‘Nick Cave And Kylie Minogue Sing The Carpenters Songbook’ is finally released will a more unlikely pairing of Australians have recorded together”, Spin wrote. But the two clicked. And with the help of some other Melbourne musicians, including the peerless bass player Bill McDonald and Gus Till (The Ears, Beargarden) on keys, they delivered the selftitled Max Q album, which was released 30 years ago this month. “All I’d done for 13 years was INXS, so Max Q was important to me,” Hutchence told Howzat! But the Max Q album failed to sell like an INXS record, peaking at number 13 in Australia, 69 in the UK and 182 in the US. Hutchence didn’t do any interviews to promote the record until five months after it was released. “It was a real soft sell,” he explained. “I wanted it to come out on its own merits.” Hutchence said he didn’t regret refusing to put his name on the cover. “Maybe it would have sold more,” he mused at the start of 1990. “But it wouldn’t have been right.” He did admit, however, he was a little dubious about the name. He didn’t discover until a month after the project was named that it was in honour of Ollie’s deaf Blue Heeler — “a mad, frothing-at-the-mouth, barking, biting, table-chewing dog”, according to Hutchence. Thirty years on, is the Max Q album a curio or classic?
Milestones and memories
THE MUSIC
•
64
•
YOUR TOWN
The Fragments — Transporter
The Fragments is a great name for a band that takes elements from everywhere — including Sonic Youth, The Cure, Pixies and Interpol — to create intoxicating indie-rock. Indeed, these Sydney guys perhaps deserve a grander name than The Fragments because their sound is lavish and exciting. This new compilation is aptly titled as it takes you to another place. Sadly, The Fragments broke up in 2005. But look out for a new solo album from singer/guitarist Piers Twomey.
DIRECT FROM SEATTLE - USA bar & live music venue
303 high street northcote
on in october T H U R S D AY 3 R D O C T KICKIN THE B AT 303’ THURSDAY HAMMOND SESSIONS:RAMBAL
S U N D AY 1 3 T H O C T JASPER BRADLEY + GUS + HOT WATSON
F R I D AY 2 5 T H O C T TALLAWAH HI-FI + HIGHER REGION SOUND SYSTEM
T U E S D AY 1 5 T H O C T JOYING + GUESTS
S A T U R D AY 2 6 T H O C T SHIPWRECKED
W E D N E S D AY 1 6 T H O C T JULIEN WILSON QUARTET + GUESTS
S A T U R D AY 2 6 T H O C T HOMEBASS
7PM
8PM DOORS, $10
F R I D AY 4 T H O C T ALL HOURS + IN DECEPTION + BEYOND CONTEMPT + MECHA MECHA 8PM, $10
7:30PM
8:30PM, DONATION
S A T U R D AY 5 T H O C T GENERACION SUICIDA (USA) + PARANOIAS + GELD + THE SNAKES + HACKER
T H U R S D AY 1 7 T H O C T HOLOPEAK + DRAGONFRUIT + WOLFA
8PM, $20
7PM, DONATION
S U N D AY 6 T H O C T DAREBIN SONGWRITERS GUILD 3:30PM, FREE
S U N D AY 6 T H O C T MPRESS KANDANCE + FLAMES EYE (JAMAICA)
F R I D AY 1 8 T H O C T DON’T TEXT YOUR EX + WAY SHIT + MARINA MITCHELL + OH DAISY 8PM, $10
7:30PM
M O N D AY 7 T H O C T 303 YARRA BANKS JAM NIGHT 8PM, FREE
T U E S D AY 8 T H O C T CHRIS BIENIEK TRIO
S U N D AY 2 0 T H O C T THE MAMAS + ZOE FOX + LO-RES + THE CLOTHESLINES + DJ’S 4:30PM, FREE
M O N D AY 2 1 S T O C T 303 YARRA BANKS JAM NIGHT
7:30PM
8PM, FREE
W E D N E S D AY 9 T H O C T JULIEN WILSON QUARTET + GUESTS
T U E S D AY 2 2 N D O C T JOE GUITON & FRIENDS
8:30PM, DONATION
8PM
T H U R S D AY 1 0 T H O C T SCRUFFAMUDDA + UNGUS UNGUS UNGUS + THOMMY DEE + ROLES
W E D N E S D AY 2 3 R D O C T JULIEN WILSON QUARTET + GUESTS 8PM, DONATION
7PM, $10
F R I D AY 1 1 T H O C T RANDA SOUL KINGDOM + CHELSEA WILSON 8:30PM, $10
S A T U R D AY 1 2 T H O C T CHOOSING SIDES + THE FIOR + DANITCHY
T H U R S D AY 2 4 T H O C T KICKIN THE B AT 303’ THURSDAY HAMMOND SESSIONS: WEREWOLVES OF MELBOURNE
8PM, $10
5:30PM, $10
8PM, $10
S U N D AY 2 7 T H O C T AMY BODOSSIAN 3PM, $10
S U N D AY 2 7 T H O C T BOHJASS + GLORY B + TOM FRYER BAND + BELINDA WOODS LO-RES + MICK POWER BAND + BEN CHRISTENSON BAND 5PM, $10/$5
M O N D AY 2 8 T H O C T MELBOURNE POLYTECHNIC MUSIC 7PM, FREE
T U E S D AY 2 9 T H O C T SMILING POLITELY COMEDY 7:30PM, DONATION
W E D N E S D AY 3 0 T H O C T MUK HALLOWEEN SPECIAL 7:30PM, DONATION
T H U R S D AY 3 1 S T O C T JUSTICE YELDHAM + UMBILICAL TENTACLE + OCCULT BLOOD + UBOA + MORE 6PM, $10
Fri 6 DEc
S A T U R D AY 2 N D N O V TALLAWAH HI-FI 8PM, $10
170 Russell
8PM DOORS, $10
www.MoShTix.coM.AU
8PM
303 net au
SAT 7 DEc
YaRRaville live www.Trybooking.coM
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE SONG
$150,000 cash and prizes Judges Include Coldplay • Dua Lipa • Tom Waits Bastille • Fleet Foxes • Kevin Gates The Script • Kaskade • Tayna Tucker Avery Lipman (Founder/Pres., Republic Records) Sylvia Rhone (Chairwoman/CEO, Epic Records) and many more
Past Winners Gotye • Vance Joy • Kimbra Kasey Chambers • Amy Shark • Dean Lewis Missy Higgins • Flight Facilities • and many more
POOKIE GOOD LUCK OMEN
HEARD INSTINCT COLLECTIVE MZRIZK 7.30PM SAT 19 OCT MELBA SPIEGELTENT
Enter Your Songs www.songwritingcompetition.com
multiculturalarts.com.au
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
This month’s highlights Eight ways to Sunday
Being Jane Lane. Pic: Tracie Tee
The Mavis’s
Being Jane Lane are heading south with their debut album Savage Sunday. The Brissie punks launch it at Globe Alley with support from Stabbitha & The Knifey Wifeys, Dirty Juice Boy, Charlie Rebel and Varsity Cheerleader on 19 Oct.
Sibilant siblings The Thomases, aka Beki Colada and Matt Doll of ‘90s new wave pop sensation The Mavis’s, are playing a rare show at The Espy with support from Byron St John. Neck a few Pink Pills with them this 18 Oct.
Experimental electronicpop artist Sui Zhen is heading to Howler on 13 Oct to launch her new album Losing, Linda with a band made up of members of Real Love, Sleep Decade and NO ZU - who may or may not be wearing Sui Zhen masks on the night.
Puttin’ the ‘fun’ in function They sold out their original St Anger album launch without Metallica suing them so Private Function are putting on a second night this 25 Oct at the The Evelyn. Support from Vintage Crop, Zombeaches and CAKEFIGHT.
The Minus touch
Outstanding
The Good Minus
Prog-pop outfit The Good Minus are launching their self-titled debut album at Wesley Anne with Anna Cordell supporting. If three-piece harmonies and Grizzly Bear vibes are your jam, head down this 11 Oct.
L-FRESH The LION came roaring back onto the scene with Alchemy earlier in the year and now he’s backing it up with Born To Stand Out. The Sydney artist is stopping by Grace Darling Hotel with the new track on 12 Oct.
Summer Flake
L-FRESH The LION. Pic: Cole Bennetts
‘Tis the season Local faves Summer Flake are launching their latest collection of dreamy, heartsick tunes, Seasons Change, with a show at The Tote. Catch guitar wizard Steph Crase and co this 18 Oct.
The Mavis’s
Private Function
Have you seen her?
THE MUSIC
•
66
•
YOUR TOWN
THE VINTERA™ SERIES VINTAGE ST YLE FOR THE MODERN ERA.
PROUDLY SUPPORTING ARTISTS AT BIGSOUND 2019
MORE THAN AUSTRALIA’S MOST ICONIC RECORDING STUDIOS EVENTS – RECORDING – MIXING – MASTERING – 301 ACADEMY find out more at studios301.com THE GOODS – LET’S ROLL VIDEO SHOOT Photo Credit: MERCHANT
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
On the tin You can’t beat a cold beer in the hot sun – it’s one of life’s simple pleasures. Of course everything’s a little heightened in a festival setting, and that includes the satisfaction of cracking a fresh tin — especially if it’s full of one of these top-notch brews.
Mountain Goat: Summer Ale
Gage Road: Atomic Beer Project IPA
Mountain Goat’s evergreen Summer Ale was straight-up custom made for outdoor activities. The Melbourne brewers
Gage Road’s Atomic Pale Ale has been pleasing palates for
have nailed the delicate line between crisp and flavoursome
ten years, and now the brew’s taking on a new life. The team
— each sip gives you notes of passionfruit and melon without
have decided to expand with Atomic Beer Project, a new
leaving you feeling like you’ve just necked a fruit salad, making
range exploring the potential of hop-driven ales, and we’re
it supremely sesh-able. Shout-out to the real GOAT.
reaping the benefits. The Atomic IPA’s balance of citrus hops, caramel malt and a clean edge of bitterness make for a flavour explosion.
Moon Dog: Old Mate
Gage Road Atomic Beer Project Pale Ale
Most BYO fests come with the proviso that punters don’t bring glass onto the site. While totally reasonable, in previous years this has meant the country’s events have suffered
Actually, now that we’ve brought up the Atomic OG we might
a disappointing lack of Old Mate, which was only available
have to talk about it at length. There’s a reason Gage Road
to the general public in stubs. Those days are over. The
have launched a whole new brewing arm inspired by the
crisp, citrusy pale ale comes in cans now, and Old Mate’s
beverage – it’s bloody tasty. Unfortunately, it still only comes
coming to the party.
in stubbs and on tap, but keep your eye out for the classic USstyle pale ale at your savvier events.
Panhead: Quickchange XPA
Young Henrys: Stayer Mid
Don’t be a pinhead, snag yourself a Panhead, specifically the
Dubbed “a gentle beer for gentle people”, Young Henrys
outfit’s Quickchange XPA. The award-winning beer’s smooth
Stayer is a keeper. The mid-strength bev is the latest from
malt base is combined with a trio of hops that add a unique
Newtown favourites Young Henrys and it comes in at a polite
tropical kick, and at 4.6% they hit the spot without pummel-
3.5% without sacrificing taste, so you can enjoy a day out on
ling your liver. It’s become a staple of the Aussie sunny sea-
the cans and still remember seeing the headliners when it’s
sons, even if it does actually come from our NZ neighbours.
time to crawl into your tent.
THE MUSIC
•
68
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
the best and the worst of the month’s zeitgeist
The lashes Front
Back
The Masked Singer
Pic via Mehreen Faruqi’s Twitter
Pic via Josh Cole’s Twitter
Pic via Boris Johnson’s Twitter
Pic via Julian Castro’s Twitter
Pic by Ross Halfin
Hidden talents
Choice
Solid gold
What a Johnson
How dare you?
St Health
The Masked Singer is amaz-
After 119 years abortion has
Phoebe Waller-Bridge
If “there are a lot of people
Nobel Prize-nominated
Not going to lie, it’s pretty
ing. But it currently has a
been decriminalised in the
deservedly cleaned up at
who want to frustrate
activist Greta Thunberg
disappointing that the
rating of 4/10 on IMDB? Just
state of New South Wales,
the Emmys last month and
Brexit”, like, enough that you
inspired 7.6 million people
Metallica/Slipknot tour has
goes to show the incredible
meaning women will no
the photo of the director,
need to suspend parlia-
to mobilise for the Global
been postponed. Hats off to
lack of support for the arts in
longer have to prove “seri-
writer and actor enjoying
ment to try and make your
Climate Strike and some
James Hetfield for recognis-
this country. A giant spider
ous danger to their life, or
a cocktail and a dart in
will supersede that of the
daft old bastards would still
ing he needed help though,
turned Britney’s Toxic into
physical or mental health” to
the company of her many
democracy you’re supposed
rather call her a silly girl than
and to the people around
a Bond theme. There were
safely make decisions about
awards is what we all want
to serve, then maybe it’s
listen to a word she
him for supporting
back-up dancers in hazmat
their own bodies.
to be when we grow up.
time to think about
has to say.
the decision.
canning Brexit.
1.
Which band took the stage at Lollapalooza naked and gagged in ‘93 to protest censorship?
2. How many years was Fyre Festival founder Billy McFarland sentenced to prison for? 3. What did your ticket include at the first Glastonbury festival in 1970?
Cartoon by Evie Hilliar. Curated by Chris Neill
4. Who was the first Australian hip hop act to play Big Day Out? 5. What was the name of the Brisbane festival which ran from 1989 to 2003, and featured acts like Linkin Park and Oasis? 6. Which band is known for letting other musicians dance in animal costumes on stage at Big Day Out in 2004?
THE MUSIC
•
70
•
THE END
Test your festival knowledge. 7. What now-defunct Australian festival was scheduled to have Neutral Milk Hotel headline in 2013? 8. What was the 1974 Australian festival where audiences booed a then-unknown UK band Queen for being late on stage? 9. Which artist posthumously appeared on stage Coachella in 2012? 10. Which Australian festival brand was retired after a final fling in 2012 featuring Robyn, Justice, Flume, Alison Wonderland and Charli XCX on the bill?
Answers:
The Quiz
1. Rage Against The Machine 2. 6 3. Free milk 4. Sound Unlimited Posse, 1992 5. Livid 6. Flaming Lips 7. Harvest 8. Sunbury 9. Tupac Shakur 10. Parklife.
suits. 4/10? Shame.
THE MUSIC
•
J U LY
THE MUSIC
•
J U LY