28.09.16 Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Sydney / Free / Incorporating
Tour: The Brothers Comatose Tour: All Our Exes Live In Texas Tour: Bleached
Issue
158
Secret Sounds Presents
The 24th Annual Music & Arts Festival
marion bay
byron bay
29 DEC 30 DEC 31 DEC
ou 31lDEC d so JAN 01 02 JAN
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CHILDISH GAMBINO (NO SIDESHOWS) • LONDON GRAMMAR (NO SIDESHOWS) • THE AVALANCHES VIOLENT SOHO • MATT CORBY • ALISON WONDERLAND • CATFISH AND THE BOTTLEMEN FAT FREDDY’S DROP • TA-KU • THE RUBENS • THE JEZABELS • BALL PARK MUSIC • GROUPLOVE BERNARD FANNING • JAMIE T • BROODS • TKAY MAIDZA • GRANDMASTER FLASH • ILLY • MØ HOT DUB TIME MACHINE • DMA’S • ALUNAGEORGE • BOOKA SHADE • CLIENT LIAISON • VALLIS ALPS PARQUET COURTS • CITY CALM DOWN • MODERN BASEBALL • L D R U • TIRED LION • REMI • RY X MARLON WILLIAMS • LEMAITRE • SHURA • PLUS MORE ACTS TO BE ANNOUNCED MARION BAY • ALL AGES
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tickets on Sale now fallsfestival.com estival
2 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 3
Meet you in the forest
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM SYDNEY THEATRE COMPANY AND COMMONWEALTH BANK PRESENT
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
SYDNEYTHEATRE.COM.AU 9250 1777 SYDNEYOPERAHOUSE.COM 9250 7777
UNTIL 22 OCT SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE DIRECTOR
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NATE EDMONDSON
Photo Cybele Malinowski
4 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
WITH
PAULA ARUNDELL MATTHEW BACKER ROB COLLINS HONEY DEBELLE EMMA HARVIE
JAY JAMES-MOODY BRANDON MCCLELLAND JOSH MCCONVILLE ROBERT MENZIES SUSAN PRIOR
ROSE RILEY RAHEL ROMAHN BRUCE SPENCE
“IT’S AT ONCE ANARCHIC AND TIGHTLY CONTROLLED: MESMERISING, FUNNY, GORY, SEXY, CONFRONTING” ++++ Time Out Sydney
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SATURDAY 1 OCTOBER 8PM
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The Home of Live Music Since 1973 BASEMENT
WED 28TH 8PM
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THU 29TH 8PM
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FRI 30TH 9PM
SYDNEY METAL MEETUP PRESENTS:
RUM AND ALE V
ALL THINGS METAL! BEST METAL MID WEEK MEET UP!
LEVEL ONE
FRI 30TH 10PM
BASEMENT
SAT 1ST 8PM
MUTILATE PRESENTS
HCD
FEAT: SPLINTER CELL (SA), TOON & RAZIEL, IVOR, MISTORTION, SC@R, SCATTERLIE, ASSAILANT, LOCKJAW
FREEFORM ONLY LAUNCH
FREEFORM/FREEFORM HARDCORE/ FINNRG EVENT FEAT: HAZE, SKOOB, HERETIC, INOXIA, FOCUS
“DASTEDLY”
ROCK SHOW SUPPORTED BY “MATT GOLD”, “PASCOE”, “BALKO” AND MANY MORE
LGS PRESENTS:
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SUN 2ND 3PM
COMING UP
CRYSTALLINE ENTERTAINMENT PRESENTS:
“DEADSPACE”
MASSIVE BLACKENED SHOW SUPPORTED BY “ADAMS EXUL”, “TAMERLAN EMPIRE”, “GREYTOMB”, “NECROSTALGIA
“DURRY”
PUNK SHOW SUPPORTED BY “SKINPIN”, “STONE AGE”, “UNCANNY DECOY”, “FIT BIRD”, “CURB CRAWL” AND SPECIAL GUESTS
Thu 6 Oct: 8pm Basement: Rock Show with “Vomvellis” supported by “Masta Gravity” and many more; Fri 7 Oct: 8pm Basement: Cooked Frames presents “Trouble In Paradise” EP Launch, Indie Rock Show supported by: “Valen”, “Crooked Frames”, “The Seven Elvins”, “Magic Beans Merchants”; 10pm Level One: Time To Track and Sound Something presents All Night Long with Andrew Wowk, Bass Music Free Party supported by Athlon and featuring extended performance by one of Sydney’s favourites Andrew Wowk aka the Birthday Boy; Sat 8 Oct: 2pm Basement: Josh Arentz production presents: Sydney Punk Rock Fest feat: “The Decline”, “Laura Mardon”, “Local Resident Failure”, “Tim Hampshire”, “Batfoot!”, “Yvette Vials”, “Wasters”, “Josh Arentz”, “51 Percent”, “A-Rock Newman”, “KANG”, “Whiskey Jeff”, “Colytons”, “Jono Read”, “Angus And Julia Stoned”, “Raised As Wolves”; Level One: The Elements Of Trance presents Psy/Prog/Uplifitng/Trance with Dj’s Thomas Knight, Xan Muller, Thierry, Terabyte, Capitol E; Sun 9 Oct: 6pm Basement: Nopatience Records presents: Dark postpone/Darkwave Show of the year with “Belgrado” (Spain), supported by “Death Church”, “Muscle Memory” , “Morte Lenta”, “La Suffocated”
TUESDAY 15 NOVEMBER SATURDAY 8 JUNE
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THIS WILL BE AN EVENING PACKED FULL OF YOUR FAVOURITE HITS BY THE TROGGS. EXPECT TO BE TAKEN BACK TO YOUR TEENAGE YEARS IN WHAT COULD BE YOUR LAST CHANCE TO SEE ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST LEGENDARY ROCK BANDS LIVE. AND WE GUARANTEE YOU, EVERYTHING WILL MOST CERTAINLY BE GROOVY… COME AND GET WILD WITH THE TROGGS!
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CUMBIAMUFFIN AND FRIENDS
FRI 30 SEPT
THE MARVIN GAYE EXPERIENCE
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THE MARVIN GAYE EXPERIENCE
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THE MONDAY JAM
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NO REGRETS
THU 06 OCT
BIG MAMA’S HOUSE OF BLUES AND BURLESQUE
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2ND SHOW ADDED!
THE EDITH PIAF STORY
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 5
Lifestyle Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Chairflipped
Indie electro-pop maestros Chairlift have confirmed a run of Australian tour dates for this December. The two Brooklyn natives will make their way Down Under with their third LP Moth.
Chairlift
Nicole Millar
Millar’s Flight Sydney electro-pop singer Nicole Millar has detailed an expansive headline tour this October, taking in a bunch of summer festivals as well as shows along the east coast with her Tremble EP and upcoming single Signals.
Ben Lee
Wallis Bird
Summer Migration
Where and when? For more gig details go to theMusic.com.au 6 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
Off the back of her new album Home, Wallis Bird is heading Down Under for her first Australian tour in December and January. As well as her headline shows, Bird is also playing a series of festivals.
Han Solo
e / Cultu Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Credits
Together Again
Publisher Street Press Australia Pty Ltd
Acclaimed Aussie troubadours Josh Pyke and Bob Evans will once again join forces for a national run, celebrating the ten-year anniversary of their firstever tour together this November and December.
Group Managing Editor Andrew Mast
Josh Pyke and Bob Evans
National Editor – Magazines Mark Neilsen Arts & Culture Editor Maxim Boon
Gig Guide Justine Lynch gigs@themusic.com.au Editorial Assistants Brynn Davies, Sam Wall
gLee After just releasing The Enemy Within from upcoming 11th studio album, Freedom, Love & The Recuperation Of The Human Mind, Ben Lee has announced he’ll be heading out on a national tour in November.
Contributors Adam Wilding, Anthony Carew, Brendan Crabb, Cameron Cooper, Carley Hall, Cate Summers, Chris Familton, Daniel Cribb, Chris Maric, Christopher H James, Cyclone, Daniel Cribb, Danielle O’Donohue, Dave Drayton, Deborah Jackson, Dylan Stewart, Eliza Berlage, Guido Farnell, Guy Davis, James d’Apice, Jonty Czuchwicki, Liz Guiffre, Mac McNaughton, Mark Beresford, Mark Hebblewhite, Matt MacMaster, Mitch Knox, Neil Griffiths, Paul Ransom, Mick Radojkovic, Peter Laurie, Rip Nicholson, Ross Clelland, Sam Baran, Samuel J Fell, Sarah Petchell, Sean Capel, Sean Maroney, Steve Bell, Tanya Bonnie Rae, Tim Finney, Tyler McLoughlan, Uppy Chatterjee, Xavier Rubetzki Noonan Photographers Angela Padovan, Cole Bennetts, Clare Hawley, Jared Leibowitz, Josh Groom, Kane Hibberd, Pete Dovgan, Peter Sharp, Rohan Anderson Advertising Dept Georgina Pengelly, Sammy BladesMoore sales@themusic.com.au Art Dept Felicity Case-Mejia, Ben Nicol Admin & Accounts Ajaz Durrani, Meg Burnham, Emma Clarke accounts@themusic.com.au
Star Wars pop-up
2
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channel on Foxtel Rogue One is out in December so it’s time to marathon the entire Star Wars catalogue again. Foxtel are making it easy, screening all seven films between 30 Sep and 3 Oct on their Star Wars pop-up channel.
The number of years a 1.5m tall Velociraptor statue was missing after being stolen from Queensland’s Big Pineapple Festival, only to turn up last week at nearby Mount Coolum.
Sydney
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 7
Music / Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Mary J Blige
Much oBliged Bluesfest’s second line-up announcement is massive, adding Grammy-winning artists Mary J Blige and Corinne Bailey Rae as well as Michael Kiwanuka, Nahko & Medicine For The People, Gallant and The Suffers to the lists.
Needs More Dog
theMusic.com.au: breaking news, up-to-the-minute reviews and streaming new releases
Little Creatures have revealed their second seasonal release. Dog Days Summer Beer is available for a limited time from October. We’ve had a sneaky pretaste and trust us, it’s definitely the pick of bevs to beat the heat.
Dog Days Summer Beer
8 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
Arts / Li Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
The Falcon Has Landed
Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children
Tim Burton’s latest film, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, hits theatres this Thursday. Starring Eva Green, Asa Butterfield and Samuel L Jackson the film follows the adventures of weird kid Jacob.
Here’s a wrap of who’s just announced a new release: Cub Sport
Second Heat Beloved Brisbane indie-pop crew Cub Sport have only just wrapped a national tour in support of their excellent debut album, This Is Our Vice, but they’ve just announced they’re going ‘round again in November/December .
Daily reminder that everyone around you is going through some type of struggle and you should find out what it is and use it against them. @UNTRESOR
Madama Butterfly
The Weekend – Starboy
Ben Lee’s mouthful of a new album Freedom, Love & The Recuperation Of The Human Mind (ABC Music) will be set free on 21 Oct. Featuring songs co-written with Rufus Wainwright, The Killers’ Brandon Flowers, Ed Sheeran and more, Robbie Williams returns 4 Nov with his new album Heavy Entertainment Show (Columbia/Sony). The follow up to last year’s Grammy Award-winning Beauty Behind The Madness, The Weeknd is back 25 Nov with new album Starboy (XO/Republic/Universal). It’s been eight years between drinks for Pez, as his new album Don’t Look Down (EMI) is set to drop 4 Nov. Brace yourself – Birds Of Tokyo release their new album Brace (EMI) on 4 Nov. British psych-rock band Syd Arthur will release their new longplayer Apricity (Communion/Caroline) on 21 Oct. Nicolas Jaar’s new album Sirens (Other People) will be released digitally 30 Sep, to be followed 14 Oct by physical versions.
Song & Dance Palace Opera & Ballet have announced their new season, carrying them through 2016 and into the new year. There’s plenty to see, from Paris Opera Ballet’s Swan Lake to Royal Opera’s Madama Butterfly. THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 9
Music / Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Working Vacation
Flyying Colours
Flyying Colours have revealed the video for Long Holiday from their debut LP Mindfulness and announced a national album tour to go with it. The indie-psyche shoegazers head out in November.
For all gig and event details check out theMusic.com.au.
Sydney Architecture Festival
Joyride
24 Candles
Square Talk Sydney Architecture Festival has announced four architectural tours this October including Hot To Cool In The City. The tours focus on sustainability, art gallery architecture and influential buildings in Chippendale.
Beach Road Hotel has been around for 24 years this Wednesday (we’re so proud) and to celebrate they’re throwing a massive ‘90s party, with performances and DJ sets from the likes of Joyride and The Ocean Party.
Nelly
3 The number of shows Bring Me The Horizon had to cancel on their Australian tour after frontman Oli Sykes succumbed to a viral throat infection.
Grammar Revision If you don’t feel like heading to a ‘90s/2000s R&B extravaganza later this year, Atlanta hip hop icon Nelly has announced a few November headline shows so you can get Hot In Herre.
10 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
Arts / Li Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Frontlash
Aussie #1s Again
The Appice Brothers
Sticks & Stones
The Appice Brothers, drummers Carmine and Vinny, have ripped skins for everyone from Black Sabbath to Rod Stewart. Now they’ve joined forces and announced they’re bringing their Drum Wars tour to Oz in February.
Only a week after there was a new record for the number of local album chart toppers in a year, this run has been extended again. Yes it was an Anthony Callea covers album, but still another Aussie #1 nonetheless.
Beers Of Stone & Wood
Patti Smith
Violent Soho have teamed up with Stone & Wood Brewing to create a new brew: The East Coast Crusher. If it’s anywhere near as good as their music it wil be a fine drop indeed.
Footy!
Violent Soho
Lashes
No matter what your code, there were some amazing games to set up the grand finals this weekend in both NRL and AFL.
Backlash
Double Patti
Terry Jones
Considering the response when Bluesfest guest Patti Smith announced sideshow dates earlier this week, it’s not surprising the music icon has had to add two additional shows in April to meet demand.
Absolutely heartbreaking news that one of the lynchpins of Monty Python, Terry Jones, has been diagnosed with dementia – and it’s a rare form that affects his ability to communicate, which is tragic for such a sharp comedy mind.
The Great British Bake Off EB Gaming Expo
Game Day This Friday, Saturday and Sunday is EB Expo 2016. It’s your chance to play unreleased content, check out the cosplay competition and, for the first time, compete in E-Sports Alley for a heap of prizes.
After announcing it will move to Channel 4 from the BBC and consequently losing hosts Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc, now judge Mary Berry will no longer be with the program either, leaving it a shadow of its former self. Remember how Top Gear went with new hosts?
Off The Cliff It’s official – Cliff Williams has finished up with AC/DC, with a poignant video his swansong. It leaves the band with Angus Young as the only long term member.
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 11
Music
Civil Engineering It’s taken Bernard Fanning a while to get his head around what he wants from his post-Powderfinger career, but he tells Steve Bell that new solo album Civil Dusk is a massive step in the right direction.
I
t’s been a strange journey for singer-songwriter Bernard Fanning in the last few years as he navigates the opening stages of his still-fledgling solo career. Stepping out of the huge shadow cast by Powderfinger — the Brisbane behemoth he fronted for almost two decades and who pulled up stumps in 2010 while still at the peak of their considerable powers — hasn’t been a straightforward proposition, and nor should it be. Trying to find your own way after being synonymous with such a well-established outfit for so long is a massive double-edged sword: on one hand, the extant familiarity and awareness gives a huge head start on someone starting out from scratch. On the other, there comes a certain burden of expectation as to how you’re going to proceed. Add to that the fact that continually ploughing the same furrow can also breed contempt and as an artist you’re effectively being pulled two ways at once. Even Fanning’s hyper-successful debut solo foray Tea & Sympathy — released back in 2005 during a Powderfinger hiatus — in a way exacerbates this dilemma. That album won multiple ARIAs and went five times Platinum, but it also took a path away from the Powderfinger rock sound that many assumed he would follow automatically when that band finally called it a day. Instead he branched out with 2013’s Departures, a more rock-based affair, albeit one based upon electronic beats and loops that Fanning constructed himself. Now, with his third solo album Civil Dusk, Fanning has in effect split the difference. The album features all organic instrumentation in the vein of Tea & Sympathy, but also meets the rock quota with up-tempo tracks that wouldn’t have sounded out of place coming from his alma mater. “There’s this weird combination when you’re writing — and this happened all the way through Powderfinger as well — where the record you’re making is kind of a stepping stone to the next one, and at the same time it’s like a stop sign before the next one, like, ‘Okay, don’t do that again’,” the singer contemplates. “So there’s things that do inform it and things that don’t — I definitely wanted to go back to writing songs on guitar or piano all the way through, that were complete so that I could play them by myself and it felt like a good song. “Which was not the case for Departures, where I was more than happy to have other things happening, just little stuff like sounds coming in and out and using all the technology at my disposal. But this time I definitely wanted to go back to the more traditional way of writing
12 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
— just write a song all the way through that you can play. So there’s a bit of both there in terms of responding to Departures and then kicking further along. “The thing is that Departures was really different from Tea & Sympathy obviously — and that was intentional — and I was really happy for this to be really different from Departures, more back towards what Tea & Sympathy was like. It’s not as ‘back porch’ as that and not as toe-tapping: I was really happy to have pop elbowing in on country songs on that record, while this is probably a little bit more folky. It’s folk and rock, with not as much country influence in there. “But by no stretch am I a country songwriter anyway, and I wouldn’t want to pretend for a moment that I am. For me it’s no different — it doesn’t really matter what genre it is, just whether it’s a good song or not. I’m just not very good at writing a disco song.”
What does stand out throughout Civil Dusk is the personal nature of the lyrics and narratives — many of which detail break-ups and hardships — although Fanning is quick to assure that this doesn’t relate back to his own happily married state. “It sounds really personal I guess, but most of the time actually I’m talking about things that I’ve witnessed more than really personal experience,” he reflects. “Of course whatever you experience informs what you’re going to write about and how you see other situations, but the idea of the thing was based on looking at the consequences of the decisions that you make and how they impact, not just immediately but over decades. Which you can only do when you’re an old coot like me I
The thing was based on looking at the consequences of the decisions that you make and how they impact, not just immediately but over decades.
guess — I couldn’t have written this record 20 years ago, because I wouldn’t have had the experience to do it. But I guess the personal side of it is very much about that kind of battle you have about little decisions and whether if they’re benefitting you — or the people around you like your family — that they have to harm other people, then how hard it is to make those decisions. “That makes it seems really fucking heavy, but the tone of the album isn’t like that and that’s intentional — I love doing that with music. I’ve always tended to write fairly depressing stuff lyrically, but fairly poppy music really in terms of the progressions and how things sound. And they’re quite melodic as well, really whistle-able melodies. I kinda can’t get away from that no matter how hard I try, although it’s not a terrible disease to have I guess as a songwriter so you just work with what you’ve got. But I’ve always really liked that idea of being able to kind of — without trying to sound too academic about it — juxtapose the lyric against the music, and just having that darkness in what’s being said but that lightness in what’s actually played.” And the next piece in this fascinating puzzle isn’t far away, a companion album Brutal Dawn due to follow Civil Dusk early next year. Although even Fanning’s not yet sure exactly how the two pieces are going to interact. “I’ve written a fair bit towards it so far but I haven’t completed the idea yet, but part of the reason for not completing it yet is to have a little break now and then reassess what I want to say with the last lot of songs that make up the one piece,” he tells. “For me anyway, when I’m in the middle of writing I don’t really listen to a lot of other music and I don’t even read that much a lot of the time, except for newspapers and that sort of stuff. I kinda find it hard to let other stuff in — it’s kinda like before and after that I’m able to look at it and then bring other influences in and make decisions about what it all means.”
Dusk ‘Til Dawn With Civil Dusk’s follow-up Brutal Dawn on the horizon, Bernard Fanning has no qualms about releasing two albums in quick succession at a time when some are questioning the format’s continued viability. “It’s not fucking Use Your Illusion I & 2,” Fanning laughs, referencing Guns N’ Roses’ ill-fated 1991 dual release foray. “There’s such a big emphasis these days on going back to that ‘60s approach where it’s all just about one song, and Nick [DiDia — producer] and I are like those two belligerent grumpy old guys in The Muppets sitting up in the stalls refusing to let go of the idea of the album, going, ‘Fuck it, instead of just making one let’s make two!’” He’s even of the belief that releasing the two albums as a pair will help shine some light on what’s come before. “I guess Departures was a little bit like that, me trying to do something that didn’t sound like I was in Powderfinger, and I think the demos of that album sounded a lot more like that than the record ended up being, but that’s alright that’s just how it works. I still think it’s a really good record, and it may actually make more sense after these two come out.”
What: Civil Dusk (Dew Process/Universal) When & Where: 21 Oct, Civic Theatre, Newcastle; 22 & 23 Oct, State Theatre; 2 Jan, Falls Festival, North Byron Parklands
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 13
Music
Not A ‘Little Band’ Overgrown grommets Zach Stephenson and Billy Fleming of coastal duo Hockey Dad dry off in the sauna while talking shit with Brynn Davies.
B
elieve it or not, the chilled surf-rock issuing forth from Illawarra duo Hockey Dad has been labelled ‘punk’ while touring overseas. “We played like this hardcore punk venue [in Germany]. And this hardcore punk band opened up for us,” explains Stephenson. “They think we’re punk over there, it’s so weird!” interjects Fleming. “Like, surf-punk band. I dunno. Singing about chicks is like, heaps anxty, I dunno. It was a fun show, we did it in San Diego too.” “Oh yeah, we played with these fucking crazy punk bands, real brutal, it was scary,” says Stephenson, quite seriously. “I didn’t even want to play, I was like ‘this is going to be so shit,” adds Fleming. “They were super heavy
and this was like, going to be like the biggest 180 right now. You get to play a bit harder, you always like turn a bit of distortion up on the amp at those shows.” Stephenson and Fleming practically epitomise ‘The Aussie Coastie’ - arguing about where to get the best chicken schnitty: a bowlo or an RSL, nabbing a surf at every chance they get, and employing jargon unique the true blue Aussie battler: ‘heaps sick’, ‘fully’, ‘sloshy’ and so on. The band’s inception is even a classic - Stephenson and Fleming both wanted to play guitar. Fleming had learned a few bits and bobs on the drums at school, and Stephenson and another mate “had already shotty-d guitar... so I got stuck on drums,” laments a forlorn Fleming. You just gotta love ‘em. 14 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
I think all people see is like a gimmicky kid band as well. I dunno, I thought people thought of us like that at the start, like ‘oh they’re good, for kids’. There’s not a whiff of pretension anywhere in the enclosed space of The Music’s office sauna that’s doubling as an interview room while torrential rain hammers the usual tables outside. But this lack of ego isn’t something they always observe in other groups. “You do see a few bands trottin’ around like they’re sick. At festivals you see it heaps ay. Just cocky little goers,” laughs Fleming. “But they’re actually shit” Stephenson jokes, trying to think of an example without naming names. “Tell the story!” Fleming eggs. Stephenson gives in. “It was at Party In The Paddock, just heaps of people going like ‘so how’s your little band?’ That’s the biggest one, I love that, that’s such a good one.” “Argh,” groans Fleming. “Little band.” “The only thing that helped us in the start was just being mates with everyone. And then you slowly find mates everywhere, and they’re like ‘oh we got a show here, we got a fezzy here’,” explains Fleming. He’s referring to the way Hockey Dad got over the hump of being ‘those kids that play in a band’ while under the age of 18. “I kinda copped it for ages too, because in an earlier band I was 13 trying to play in pubs, so it was pretty skitz, I just copped that for ages. Just from the venues... we’d play the set and have to leave straight away. We just played harder to get people to notice us.” Stephenson adds “I think all people see is like a gimmicky kid band as well. I dunno, I thought people thought of us like that at the start, like ‘oh they’re good, for kids’. But now we’re older, I don’t think we get seen like that anymore.”
What: Boronia (Farmer & The Owl/Inertia) When & Where: 1 Oct, Yours & Owls Festival, Wollongong; 1 Oct, Yours & Owls Mini Festival, Waves, Towradgi; 6 Oct, Oxford Art Factory
COMEDIANS AGAINST HUMANITY
COMEDY CENTRAL
INSERT VENUE
FRI 30 SEP
DENIZ TEK + THE DARK CLOUDS
BLACK MOUNTAIN
+ THE UNDERMINES
FRI 7 OCT
MON 3 OCT
SAT 1 OCT, 7PM
FT. LE PIE + CODA CONDUCT + MORE!
GARY MOORE REMEMBERED
SAT 8 OCT
THE NATION BLUE + MERE WOMEN + BURLAP
FT. KEVIN BORICH
SAT 15 OCT
HADAL MAW + SUMERU + YANOMAMO + HOME BURIAL
FRI 21 OCT
DANIEL MUGGLETON
THU 6 OCT
FRI 14 OCT
+ MORE!
COMEDIA EN ESPAÑOL
+ THE LAURELS + MEDICINE VOICE
SAD GRRRLS FEST 2016
BAD FESTIVAL BIG WHITE + DISPOSSESSED
FRI 30 SEP, 7PM
LEVELLERS Č
LET ME FINISH
FRI 7 OCT, 7PM
(UK)
YIANNI AGISILAOU
FRI 7 OCT
ON SALE NOW!
JOSH PYKE & BOB EVANS
THE SIMPSONS TAUGHT ME EVERYTHING I KNOW
SAT 8 OCT, 7:15PM
FRI 9 DEC
MATT OKINE
FUSEBOX THEATRE
FACES THE MUSICAL TUE 11 - SUN 23 OCT
ON SALE NOW!
DZ DEATHRAYS THU 15 DEC
ON SALE NOW!
POLE EVOLUTION aRATCAT HORRORSHOW aHAYES CARLL (USA) THE AMY WINEHOUSE SHOW BURIED IN VERONA aBAD MANNERS
14 OCT, 7PM & 15 OCT, 7:15PM
PETULANT FRENZY PLAY ZAPPA FRI 16 DEC
ORLD FAMOU EW S TH
SHOWCASE
THE WORLD FAMOUS COMEDY STORE SHOWCASE
20 OCT - 12 NOV, 8:45PM WWW.COMEDYSTORE.COM.AU THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 15
Theatre
Burying Our Hate Sport For Jove’s artistic director Damien Ryan tells Maxim Boon why his new adaptation of Antigone has found new meaning in the age of terror.
I
n the early hours of April 19 2013, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed during a bloody shootout with police at the climax of one of the most intense manhunts in modern American history. Four days earlier, the previously unremarkable and anonymous 26-year-old, along with his younger brother Dzhokhar, had planted two improvised bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and maiming 264 others. After the blast, as the dust settled and the screams began to ring out across Boston’s Copley Square, Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been forever changed from an average citizen into a mortal enemy of the State. Gnarled by radicalised Islam, his act of terrorism vilified him not
The ferocity of her certainty is like she’s wearing a psychological suicide vest.
only in life but also in death. Across America, officials from over 120 burial sites refused to allow his body to be buried in their jurisdictions. The argument became a matter of patriotism; this grave could become glorified, a shrine for others seeking to inflict similar atrocities against the American dream. A simple burial was now tantamount, in the eyes of many, to an act of treason. For Damien Ryan, the artistic director of Sydney-based theatre company Sport For Jove, this recent event shares a striking synergy with a story dating back millennia. In a narrative originating in Greek antiquity, Antigone is denied the right to honour her dead brother. Stricken by grief, she chooses to defy the reigning authority, even though to do so makes her an outcast. For Ryan, the similarities
16 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
between this story and Tsarnaev’s illuminates a facet of this Classical text that has become powerfully relevant in the age of terror. “War used to be a symmetrical thing. Troops lined up against each other; there were rules of engagement. Now, war has become asymmetrical instead of armies, there are individuals. War can come from a beachfront in Nice or a Lindt Cafe and that raises the temperature of our fear to point that it becomes hatred,” Ryan observes. “A terrorist becomes the focal point of that hate, so the question of what we do with the bodies of terrorists becomes about what we do with our anger: do we bury it or do we leave it rotting in the sun?” For his contemporary reboot of Antigone, Ryan has refocused the storytelling, losing the ancient royal dynasty at the heart of the original play. Instead of two warring kings, the story now deals with two diametric ideologies, similar to the polarities of Western democracy and radical Islamic jihad. “In our version, Antigone’s brother has joined ISIS, like so many Australian boys who we have discussed while making this piece, who have left Australia and travelled on boats all the way to Syria to fight against their own country. Talking about these young men in the rehearsal room has made this narrative extremely topical. It’s faithful to the source material but also a modern appropriation of this idea: what do we do with the bodies of those we hate?” Viewing this story through the lens of modern terrorism has muddied the often clear-cut morality of Antigone. Over the centuries, as society has evolved, some of this play’s implicit cultural symbolism has given way to a hokey “good versus evil” mentality, positioning the titular heroine as a brave crusader railing against a tyrant. Antigone has become a totem of trailblazing feminism and righteous loyalty, prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice in the service of her cause. Ryan’s account takes a more complicated tack. “Creon [the King who refuses to bury Antigone’s brother] is often painted as the villain and Antigone is a Joan of Arc-type figure. I felt it was important both these characters were both right and wrong, because there can be no tragedy unless both parties have legitimate ethical claims to their beliefs,” Ryan shares. “A Classical ethic audience, which would have been full of soldiers and audi those who understood the ramifications, would have thos heard Creon’s words very differently and understood the hear symbolism of what it means to leave a body rotting on the sym ground. When Creon speaks about the need for order and grou discipline after a horrific war, they would have understood disc the significance of these strong, unambiguous gestures of nation building.”Reimagining Antigone as someone radicalised by grief aligns this usually noble figure with far less endearing motivations. Double-hinging this character poses a challenging question to the audience: should we ever empathise with fundamentalists? “There are moments when she repels us with the intensity of her extremism. She knows the path she treads is dangerous and yet she walks towards her doom with her eyes wide open,” Ryan notes. “The ferocity of her certainty is like she’s wearing a psychological suicide vest.”
What: Antigone When & Where: 6 Oct - 12 Nov, Seymour Centre
RICHIE SAMBORA + ORIANTHI
MICHAEL FRANTI
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SYMPHONY X • FRNKIERO ANDTHE PATIENCE. LACUNA COIL • L7 • FALLING IN REVERSE • REGURGITATOR SLANDER • OZOMATLI • THE DELTA RIGGS • STEVEN WILSON EMMALOUISE • FURNACE AND THE FUNDAMENTALS TKAY MAIDZA • DOPE LEMON • LIVERPOOL FC Q&A
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 17
Music
“We probably didn’t shower at all, we went straight to the pub after [filming] I think,” he admits, not at all sheepish. “We spend enough time travelling around in a van being gross, that’s not the half of it.” As pungent as they might be on the road and in front of the camera, they’ve earned the right to avoid general cleanliness. The Melbourne six-piece have barely taken any time between smashing out six LPs in seven years on top of their own individual projects. Restless is their sixth instalment, but “there’s a massive backlog of songs, the [seventh] record is done after this one.” Their Speedy Gonzales attitude can be attributed to the fact that “I think everyone knows when to leave something, when to kinda go ‘yep, that’s done’. I guess the thing with most bands who don’t get out a lot of material, I think it’s fiddling... For us, our albums are like a snapshot in time... as soon as people stretch records out over five years, it’s a different thing.” Between relentless touring and DIY recording, Lachlan and his brother Zac (drums) play in an outfit called Ciggie Witch with Liam Halliwell (guitar), who also performs under his solo project Snowy Nasdaq and with Emma Russack and Totally Mild, Curtis Wakeling (guitar) sprouts tunes through his project Velcro, Jordan Thompson does “some stuff under his own name” as does Zac, Mark Rogers (bass) has “a hip hop project under Crowman, which is a part gag - I don’t know, no one knows if that’s a gag or not”, and Denton himself occasionally performs under his own name. Phew! No wonder showering gets put on the back-burner.
The Great Unwashed
Sia Songs On screen
Australian-born singer-songwriter Sia has been tapped to compose original songs for Vox Lux, an upcoming feature-length drama about a pop star, played by The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo actress Rooney Mara, navigating the 21st century music industry. Set over 15 years beginning in 1999, the Brady Corbet-directed feature follows Mara’s character, Celeste, as she climbs her way up the celebrity ladder and engages with the major cultural tentpoles of the post-2000 era.
18 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
The Ocean Party are so busy making music that they don’t have time to shower, even after being covered in Vaseline and various creams. Lachlan Denton justifies their indifference to hygiene to Brynn Davies.
T
he Ocean Party are a bunch of hygieneless young men. “I guess I would say that it’s not an unusual occurrence for us to not shower for a week or two while we’re away on the road,” reveals guitarist Lachlan Denton.”[It’s] not a good smell - six guys in a stuffy van who haven’t showered for two weeks. We can’t notice, but I’m sure everyone else can.” This off-putting revelation comes off the back of his explanation (we needed one) of their Back Bar video clip - PSA, avoid eating before sitting down for a gander at this clip. It features band members singing in various states of undress, spliced with unnerving close ups of indecipherable body parts covered in equally indecipherable glop. We spy an armpit, a neck muscle - also known as the sternocleidomastoid - tummy rolls... the rest? Dunno. “I think there was some Vaseline in there and a bunch of moisturisers all things like that,” Denton laughs. “I was drunk one night and the whole [idea came from] just talking about really intense close ups of body parts so that there was a bit of mystery about what exactly you were looking at. And then Matt [Cribb, director] brought along a bunch of creams and it just went from there.” Did that clip finally warrant a decent scrub in the tub?
What: Restless [Spunk Records] When & Where: 28 Sep, Beach Road Hotel; 29 Sep, The Phoenix, Canberra; 30 Sep, Petersham Bowling Club; 13 Oct, Frank’s Wild Years, Thirroul
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Music
Growing Pains The Coathangers’ Stephanie Luke tells Anthony Carew that their discography functions like a chronological timeline, from elementary school to their “grown-up” record Nosebleed Weekend.
S
tephanie Luke has a confession to make. The drummer/vocalist for Atlanta punks The Coathangers, when on the band’s first tour of Australia in January 2015, developed an addiction to Vegemite. “No, like, seriously,” Luke says, from on a midtour pitstop in a place really called Truckee, California. “I’m hooked on it. I love it, honestly.” The trio — Luke, bassist/vocalist Meredith Franco, guitarist/vocalist Julia Kugel — are returning (“there’s no way in the world we ever thought we’d get to tour Australia once, let alone do it again; that’s insane!”) in
support of their fifth LP, Nosebleed Weekend. Working with producer Nic Jodoin, the record found their garage scuzz given some polish. “We definitely try to move forward on each record,” says Luke, “but we don’t just want to all of a sudden sound like some overproduced electronic bullshit band because that’s what’s in right now. We definitely wanna stay true to who we are, but we’ve gotten better at songwriting, at playing our instruments. So we should make a record that sounds better.” Like the band’s prior albums — 2007’s self-titled debut, 2009’s Scramble, 2011’s Larceny & Old Lace, 2014’s Suck My Shirt — it functions, Luke says, as a “snapshot in time. The first one is like elementary school. 20 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
We don’t just want to all of a sudden sound like some overproduced electronic bullshit band because that’s what’s in right now. We definitely wanna stay true to who we are. Then the second is middle school, then high school, then college.” By that analogy, that makes Nosebleed Weekend their adult, all-grown-up record, right? “Oh, god, yes!” Luke laughs. “We have grown up, become more responsible and mature in the way we treat each other. We’re basically all sisters. I went to high school with Julia. I was friends with Meredith before the band started. If something does happen on tour, we just give it a minute, talk it over, then on to the next day. Going through life playing music, it helps you handle things a little bit better. It’s a cathartic outlet. So, anything I’m going through, bad or good, I can put it into a song, into the music, into the live show.” Over their decade together, the three Coathangers have seen more of the world than they ever hoped, and answered endless questions about their gender as they’ve gone. “In certain parts of the world, like when we played in Serbia, or in Japan, it was considered weird that we were all female,” says Luke. “We get asked about that less these days, but I never know how to answer those questions. We have a bunch of friends who are in bands that’re all dudes, and they go through the same shit that we go through, the same ups and downs. So, it’s hard to know how different your experience actually is being in an all-female band.” “To us,” Luke continues, “feminism just means equality. Everyone should just be treated the same. There should be no difference between people. We’re happy being chicks, playing in a band. And if we’re inspiring young girls [to pick up instruments], that’s huge, but it’s not something that we ever set out to do. We never dreamed that could even happen.”
When & Where: 2 Oct, Yours & Owls Festival, Wollongong; 6 Oct, Newtown Social Club
FRI 30 SEPTEMBER 7pm CODA CONDUCT
THE KHANZ
VS MS
ALL AGES | $15
this is a drug and alcohol free event
CASULA POWERHOUSE ARTS CENTRE 1 Powerhouse Road, Casula 9824 1121 | www.casulapowerhouse.com
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 â&#x20AC;¢ 21
Music
Boy Band Crush Hannah Crofts tells Liz Giuffre that her band All Our Exes Live In Texas are grateful to Courtney Barnett for paving the way and also admits they miss Backstreet Boys “every day”.
T
his time last year All Our Exes Live In Texas played Small World Festival, taking the stage after an AC/ DC cover band. Hannah Crofts of All Our Exes Live In Texas recalls a punter describing their sound and style as being “like a spongecake after a bag full of drugs”. Take that, iTunes genre categories! Don’t be deceived, though, the awesome lady foursome are not all sugar. All Our Exes Live In Texas have such a smooth effect because they are also wicked, hilarious and damn fine musicians. Taking the murder ballad genre back from Nick Cave and co for new single The Devil’s Part from debut album When We
What’s Howie D thinking right now and is he thinking of me? Because I’m thinking of him. the energy and our personalities will really come through, but we’re really proud of what’s down musically on this record too.” Crofts’ modesty about the band’s process of learning their craft is endearing, but far from an uncommon story in popular music. Artists like Paul Kelly still admit, decades into their careers, to learning more as they go. What makes All Our Exes Live In Texas particularly interesting is their scope and breadth of musical style and influences. While sounding indie-folk on the surface (think the McGarrigle sisters times two), their indie-rock and contemporary pop influence is not far away, either. Crofts praises Courtney Barnett, who she says “has paved the way for everybody, she’s so good”. As part of their journey to debut album status, All Our Exes Live In Texas also supported ‘90s bubblegum greats, Backstreet Boys. “We miss them, we miss them every day. What’s Howie D thinking right now and is he thinking of me? Because I’m thinking of him,” laughs Crofts. On how they secured this support slot, Crofts says, “We just got an email from the promoter, and we had emailed them and told them that we’d love to do it... and we do that for all tours, actually. When we saw Taylor Swift we’re saying to our booking agent, ‘Please put us forward [for support], singing with Tay Tay would be sick’.” While All Our Exes Live In Texas are more than worthy headliners in their own right, their willingness to be unlikely-but-awesome supports does open up new possibilities. Have they contacted the Guns N’ Roses crew to offer a little sonic spongecake for their 2017 tour? “That’s awesome, Exes and Guns N’ Roses - it’s a good combo!” Crofts swoons. Are you reading this, Axl?
When & Where: 1 Oct, Beyond Festival, Canberra; 9 Oct, Metropole Hotel, Katoomba; 12 Oct, Lizotte’s, Newcastle; 13 Oct, Oxford Art Factory Fall, the group has finally got their firecracker essence down in long form. “When we started this band, we picked up our instruments - well, we bought instruments and we learned how to play them for the band. Because we didn’t expect it, as a band, to keep going,” begins Hannah Crofts, vocals and ukulele. “Singing, we all went to university and did that so we were all really on top of that, but instrument-wise... we compensated a bit for our playing with our banter, having a really good time on stage. And then over the last three years we’ve all had heaps of lessons in our instruments - and writing a lot specifically for them and together - so for us this record is something we’re really musically proud of. Hopefully 22 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
Music
Mushrooms & Worms Jennifer Clavin believes that we need to embrace life’s dark side. She shares with Brynn Davies stories from a troubled past and explains that a mushroom trip and Jesus freaks unearthed Bleached’s second LP title Welcome The Worms.
I
f there’s one thing we learn from punk-ass American gals Bleached, it’s that life is shit, so you’d better figure out a way to enjoy it. As killer as that motto sounds, it’s been a hard lesson to learn for Jennifer Clavin who, along with sister Jessie and bassist Micayla Grace, is heading Down Under for the first time at the end of September. It’s been a torrid time for the musicians during the writing of their second album Welcome The Worms, whose apocalyptic title couldn’t have been a better fit for the harsh realty Clavin is coming to terms with. “I was drinking a lot, partying a lot, not taking care of myself; kind of like being masochistic I guess, is a word that would describe it,” she confides. “Putting myself in really unhealthy relationships - one in particular, the last one I was in was just so unhealthy but I just kept allowing myself to be in it. At times I’d have moments of clarity... but then I’d come back to LA and I’d self-medicate by drinking and taking drugs again and it wasn’t until after writing the full record that I finally have a grasp on my life... I really let myself go down a dark hole, but I think it was all a lesson,” she says with a smile. “Feeling [trapped in a relationship], it’s crazy. It just becomes such a big part of who you are, the relationship and the unhealthy part of it, and you kind of crave that pain in a way because it’s something that you’re feeling, so you get used to that feeling.” The album is flooded with dark themes juxtaposing vibrant pop-punk colouring, dirty heat broken up by jagged rock edges and mixed in with an air of sarcasm and defiance. Clavin poured her heart into the lyrics with
I’d come back to LA and I’d self medicate by drinking and taking drugs again and it wasn’t until after writing the full record that I finally have a grasp on my life.
brutal honesty, and the title had to be perfect. “Nothing was hitting me... It was 9am in the morning and my friends and I had been doing [mushrooms] all night, like, we kept taking more. Then... this freaky religious couple was handing out a homemade booklet and it was a bunch of cut and pasted words, and one of them said ‘welcome the worms’. When I saw that I was like ‘oh my god, this sums up the album to me so much’,” she gushes. “Because I felt like so many of the lyrics were dark but also trying to see the light side of life or the beautiful side of life and how it’s kinda a package, the good and the bad. If it was all good, we’d be super bored. And I felt like Welcome The Worms was saying that - bring it on, bring on the dark side of life because we can take it... I feel like I’m in a position where I have a voice to say something, so I want to use it, you know? And I feel like lyric writing is a perfect opportunity to say something important.”
What: Welcome The Worms (Dead Oceans/Inertia) When & Where: 1 Oct, Newtown Social Club; 2 Oct, Yours & Owls Festival, Wollongong
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 23
Music
Average Joe
The Future On Two Wheels
Hovding Bike Helmet
It may be a low-tech way to get around, but there’s no reason the humble bike can’t be on the cutting edge. Here are the top 21st century cycling accessories taking biking into the future.
“People think if I wear sunglasses on-stage I’m arrogant.” Brendan Crabb ventures into the world of guitar virtuoso Joe Bonamassa.
Hovding Airbag Airbags have been saving lives in cars for years, but Swedish engineers have adapted the principal for cyclists. Inflating in less than half a second, it also has a “black-box” recorder to collect impact data. At around $440AUD, high tech safety doesn’t come cheap.
Bike Balls This cheeky solution to cycle safety is the dog’s bollocks in our opinion. This illuminated scrotum bobs and jiggles while you ride to catch the attention of drivers, while probably also bringing a smile to their faces.
FlyKly’s Smart Light This pedal-powered bike light also doubles as a phone charger. You can mount your phone on a handy handlebar dock, so you can use GPS on the move while topping up the juice on your device as you go.
24 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
J
oe Bonamassa’s career is one of perpetual motion; the American bluesrock axeman/singer/songwriter prolific in the studio and seemingly perennially on the road. Beginning his live career aged 12 opening for B.B. King, he’s also a bucket list type, with further goals soon to be realised. “This year we’ll have the honour of doing the Sydney Opera House and Carnegie Hall,” he enthuses. Bonamassa’s slick shades-and-suit on-stage aesthetic opposes his off-stage demeanour. It’s a unique dichotomy; the guitarist has professed to having no desire to be a rock star. “I always see that as the other guy. The other guy comes out at 7.30, plays from eight to 10.15, then I reassemble the nerd and that’s the other 22 hours. That’s an extension of my personality, but that’s not who I am all the time. “You see some people that are in the public and operate... They are legitimate rock stars, but they go to the market for dishwashing detergent, and they’re dressed for the gig. That’s not me. You’ll never see me sitting at The Ivy, hoping somebody takes my picture. Often I’ll be at McDonald’s and in the corner where nobody can notice me. I don’t crave that attention; as a matter of fact I don’t really enjoy it, off the stage. Yeah it’s an ego stroke, but it’s like, for what? That’s not why I
got into this thing. I got into this thing because I love to play guitar and love being around music.” Based on the live persona though, fans may have misconceptions about what Bonamassa would be like if they encountered him in the street. “Hundred per cent. People think if I wear sunglasses on-stage I’m arrogant. No, I’m actually really light sensitive. If you had two 40,000-watt spotlights pointed at your face the whole night, you’d wear sunglasses too,” he laughs. “The whole suit thing was inspired by looking at old photos of Muddy Waters from the ‘60s. Those guys were dressed, were tailored and they wanted to portray this image of success and affluence, because they’d worked their way out of the cotton fields of Mississippi. I’ve derived all that stuff from my influences of the old blues guys... I decided ten years ago it was in my vested interest to probably dress better than the audience that was coming to see me. Out of respect to them, because I’ve actually put some effort into my show.” Among his many projects will include restarting star-studded Black Country Communion. Reports suggested a falling out between Bonamassa and Glenn Hughes previously meant the band being shelved indefinitely. “We’re scheduled to record in January,” Bonamassa details. “It was just a misunderstanding that got spun up. At this point it’s all water under the bridge because we’ve always maintained friendship. It was never like, ‘Fuck you, Glenn’, ‘Fuck you, Joe’ or ‘Fuck you, Jason [Bonham, drums]’... Time heals all wounds and I think we have one great rock album in us. We have one more great album, we have one definitive Black Country Communion record that we haven’t made. And it’ll probably be the last one. Ultimately it’s something that is unfinished business in my mind.”
When & Where: 30 Sep, Sydney Opera House
PSYCHO
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THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 25
Music
Wide Awake The Brothers Comatose are constantly on the road, visiting interesting places and mixing lifestyles. Chris Familton caught up with singer/guitarist Ben Morrison ahead of their appearance at Dashville Skyline Festival.
T
hey might have a name that sounds like a narcotic-glazed psych rock or dark folk group, but The Brothers Comatose are quite the opposite. They’re a string quintet who trade in upbeat country, folk and bluegrass. It’s old-timey with a contemporary feel as founding member Ben Morrison explains. “We never wanted to be the band wearing suspenders and vests. It felt inauthentic and we were all in rock bands growing up, listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers, hip hop and stuff. We just accidentally happened upon the instruments we play and so we just
formed around those and sing the same things we did in rock bands. We’ve never ploughed a field in our lives so we can’t write about that. We just dress on stage in what we normally wear, we just represent ourselves and be authentic about it.” The band have a knack for finding different places to play and ways to get there. Recently they curated the second year of their Sierra Nevada festival Comatopia, journeyed to Alaska for the first time and are currently planning a tour via horse-back. “Alaska was amazing. So few bands go there. It’s a long plane flight so the people that live there are really appreciative of music. They were shaking our hands and thanking us. They love string bands up there too so we 26 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
We’ve never ploughed a field in our lives so we can’t write about that. We just dress on stage in what we normally wear, we just represent ourselves and be authentic about it. fit right in. We did Salmonfest and one other show and then took vacation going fishing and things. We’ve got some crazy shit ahead of Australia. We’re doing a horse tour - riding to gigs and filming a mini-movie on the way. We finish that and then fly straight to Australia so hopefully after the shows we’ll get to hang out and see a few things there too,” enthuses Morrison. With their most recent album City Painted Gold released back in March, the band are already writing for the next one and continuing to explore the more collective approach to writing and arranging that began on that album. “It gave a different flavour, adding different blood into the songwriting. We spent longer in the studio too so could take more time to work on ideas when we were in there. We’re already working on the songs for the next album and everyone is contributing again which is cool.” “You can’t take things too seriously or shit gets weird,” laughs Morrison. A part-time musical hobby has now become a full-time job for the band, but they still value their shared experiences of fun and adventure. “That’s what has made it work for the eight years we’ve been a band. If we’re not touring we’re rehearsing, working on clips, practicing vocals. It has become a job and some days it feels like that but the shows never ever feel like that. Playing shows is the big payoff.” And that band name? It refers to Ben’s brother Alex, whose eyes roll into the back of his head when he plays banjo. “We weren’t sure about it at first but there are a lot of weird band names out there so we just stuck with it.”
When & Where: 29 Sep, Django Bar; 30 Sep, Rad Bar, Wollongong; 1 Oct, Dashville Skyline Festival, Lower Belford; 2 Oct Stag & Hunter, Newcastle
Pic: Starz
Ash vs The Evil Dead
The hell spawn slaying, wisecracking, chainsaw wielding Ash Williams, played by Bruce Campbell (pictured), is back for more gore splattered hijinks in the second series of the cult comedy-horror saga’s recent TV revival. The show has been a massive surprise hit for Stan, attracting legions of new fans while delivering everything die-hard aficionados wanted from the first TV outing for the Evil Dead franchise. With his ragtag crew of misfit sidekicks by his side, Ash is ready to kick more demonic arse and hell’s nastiest bastards don’t stand a chance. Ash vs Evil Dead premieres 3 Oct on Stan
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 27
Eat / Drink Eat/Drink
The Powder Keg
So you’ve woken up with a bucket by your bed and each and every blood vessel in your eyes is screaming for your attention. Don’t stress, we’ve all been there. What you need is some comfort food, a lot of vitamins and a little hair of the dog. Lucky for you, we know where you can get all three in one easy, sippable swoop. Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Bloody Marys.
Bloody Mary’s Bloody Hell
Bloody Mary’s Cancun “Michelada”
The Powder Keg have skewed heavily to the meat and spice crowd with their Bloody Mary. They start with a Horseradish root vodka then they blend it with their steaksmoked mary mix and BBQ bitters. Like The Norfolk, they serve the lot in a recycled can, but TPK’s is topped with house-made beef jerky, maple-infused bacon, cherry tomatoes & beef jerky straw. Hey, If sucking boozy juice through dehydrated meat is wrong, we don’t want to be right. Where: 7 Kellett Street Potts Point
Bloody Mary’s Caesar
Bloody Mary’s
The Norfolk
Mary’s
Bloody Mary’s have said themselves that “the name says it all”. We would like to humbly disagree. They make the kind of cocktails that could make even their American influences blush. Items like the Bloody Hell: chili-infused vodka served with celery, shrimp, slider and buffalo wing, and the Porky Pig: a bourbon infused bacon Bloody Mary with onion rings and bacon. And we say ‘served with’, but that doesn’t quite paint the right picture. All the ingredients (even the full slider) are balanced delicately atop your mason jar, something like Carmen Miranda if she’d gone in for mixed meats instead of fruit. Where: 332 Victoria Street Darlinghurst
The Norfolk is where you want to be if you need a chill, old school pub and a solid cocktail list. They have a massive beer garden that’s open to all, including the pooch, and they are clearly Whitlam fans since they even turfed the pokies a while back. The clincher though is their Bloody Marys, all of which are served in darling, recycled soup cans. The Bloody Norf is your classic but delicious Mary mix, while the Bloody Chimichurri is exactly what it says it is, mixing in the Argentinean sauce for a unique take on the tried-and-true cocktail. Their Bloody BBQ adds bourbon, Antica and smokey BBQ sauce for those really looking to chase off the Sunday sads. Where: 305 Cleveland Street Redfern
Mary’s garnishes may seem more reserved than some of the others on this list, but just because you don’t need a zoning permit to put them together doesn’t make them drab. Melted over the top of your Bloody Mary is a slice of cheese, on top of which goes a piece of house-cured bacon and a cocktail onion, creating a delicious hangover-killing seal. It’s like a cheese and bacon toastie but they turfed the bread, which is boring, and replaced it with Mary’s house mix — hot sauce, their personal blend of spices, tomato juice and passata, all the good stuff. Where: 6 Mary Street Newtown
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Music
Get Back Up Again
Back in the saddle after Danny Widdicombe overcame leukaemia for the third time, The Wilson Pickers have reconvened to celebrate the simple joy of making music together says Sime Nugent to Chris Familton.
I
n 2012 The Wilson Pickers were still on a roll, touring and thrilling festival audiences on the back of their two ARIA award-nominated albums Land Of The Powerful Owl and Shake It Down. Then the momentum was tragically derailed by the news of yet another leukaemia diagnosis for Danny Widdicombe. “He went straight in to a protracted period of treatment and recovery. All of us went off and did different things for a few years,” explains Sime Nugent. “Ben Salter always has multiple projects on the go, Andrew Morris continued working with Bernard Fanning,” and Nugent continued his successful work with Sweet Jean. As Nugent picks up the story in 2015 he recalls “last year we started playing some shows again and the love amongst the Pickers has been as much about friendship as it has about music, so it was really great to come back together. We started planning for a February recording at Andrew’s church in Billinudgel, NSW where he’s got a recording studio (Church Farm Studios). We all live in different states so we sent some demos around over the summer and then
got into the church on a Monday, hit the ground running on the Tuesday and by the end of the week we had more than the ten songs recorded and pruned them back to the new album.” The ease in which You Can’t Catch Fish From A Train came together is in keeping with the musical ethos the five members share and the collective trust they have in each other as songwriters
and players. “We’ve always trusted our instincts in the Pickers and not tried to fit into anyone else’s mould. What that does is secure our voice as individual players, I think. We’ve tried to keep those individual voices as part of the band rather than blend them together like a bluegrass band would bleed their harmonies. That’s why we distance ourselves from calling this a bluegrass recording, even though there are bluegrass instruments. We all go off and write other music in other projects and I think when it comes to The Wilson Pickers we trust the instincts of the others and what they all bring to the group. I think that really comes through on this record,” stresses Nugent. As for the name of the album, Nugent laughs and describes an exchange of emails with Morris. “Andrew wrote me an email saying he was interested in buying a boat. I wrote back and said I liked trains. He replied and said, ‘You can’t catch fish from a train’ and I replied and said, ‘There’s our album title’. The Wilson Pickers is a pretty dubious band name so we may as well have a dubious album title too!”
Dining out at Dashville
Opie Funk pic via Opie Funk Catering Facebook
The Dashville Skyline Festival kicks off this weekend with three days chock full of music and good times celebrating the best Americana throwback this side of the equator. And of course, if there’s one thing America knows how to do well, it’s eat, so there’s plenty of top notch Yank chow on offer too. Perfect Brisket at the MEET restaurant The famous Nighthawk Diner Caffeine courtesy of Sprocket Coffee Roasters Spice things up at Opie Funk Tex Mexican Authentic Italian slices at Rustic Pizza
What: You Can’t Catch Fish From A Train (ABC/ Universal) When & Where: 30 Sep, LazyBones Lounge; 1 Oct, Dashville Skyline; 18-20 Nov, Mullum Music Festival, Mullumbimby
Milkbar, lolly shop and bakery at The General Forage
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 29
Indie Indie
Alison Ferrier
Jen Mize
On Notice
Have You Heard
Have You Heard
Have You Been To
When did you start making music and why? I started off in a duo called The Wayward Fancies about ten years ago with Julianne Negri. We both loved old-time country and singing harmonies. We tried to write in that style too.
When did you start making music and why? Music has been ingrained in my life since a very young age. My dad was a big music lover and my mom had me playing Suzuki violin at the age of three.
Answered by: Sanja Vukelja, Marketing Officer
Sum up your musical sound in four words? Alt-countrified gorgeousness, sort of. If you could only listen to one album forevermore, what would it be and why? Boomer’s Story by Ry Cooder from 1972 is Americana at its very best and the production simply could not be beaten. It always makes me feel good when I listen to it. Greatest rock’n’roll moment of your career to date? I once asked Tony Joe White for a glass of wine from his bottle (the Queenscliff Festival bar was shut). He replied, “I seen you walking ‘round like a black panther.” And yes, I did get my glass filled. Why should people come and see your band? I’ll be playing a ‘70s Hondo II Japanese electric guitar! Is there much else to do on a Wednesday night? When and where for your next gig? 5 Oct, Gasoline Pony; 8 Oct, Grand Junction Hotel Website link for more info? alisonferrier.com
Sum up your musical sound in four words? Americana from the source. If you could only listen to one album forevermore, what would it be and why? Tom Petty’s masterpiece Wildflowers — it may be the perfect album. Greatest rock’n’roll moment of your career to date? The Last Waltz tribute at The Triffid in Brisbane last year, singing Emmylou’s part in Evangeline with Danny Widdicombe & The Good Ol’ Boys, The Wilson Pickers and Troy Cassar-Daley playing with. Surreal. Why should people come and see your band? I’d like to think my Native American roots and eclectic musical upbringing offer an experience worth watching for all tastes. When and where for your next gig? 2 Oct, Dashville Skyline; Warnings & Wisdom album tour October/November. Check website for details. Website link for more info? jenmize.com
The Event: On Notice with Coda Conduct, The Khanz & VS MS Why should punters visit you? Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre is a vibrant arts centre in South West Sydney where ideas, artforms and philosophies fuse - from music, visual arts, theatre and much more. What’s the history of the event? On Notice is Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre’s inaugural music event showcasing new music from the Sydney suburbs. Any advice for first timers who want to visit the event? Enter address: 1 Powerhouse Road, Casula in Google Maps. Train: disembark at Casula Station, we are right out front! Who’s performing this time around? All-ages gig featuring Coda Conduct, The Khanz and VS MS. Do you have any plans for the event in the future? We would love to grow the music scene through our programming as we have our exhibitions program, public programs and theatre program. Supporting local music and musicians. When and where for your next event? Being a multi-disciplinary arts centre we have loads. Check out our website to see what’s on next! Website link for more info? casulapowerhouse.com
30 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
Music
Right Angles
Black Mountain keyboardist Jeremy Schmidt tells Steve Bell that while many hard rock bands look to the past for inspiration, no one fucks with the formula like the Vancouver stalwarts.
I
t’s been seven years since Vancouver hard rockers Black Mountain made the long trip Down Under, but they return armed with their epic fourth album IV, a collection which signifies a return to the free-flowing majesty of their formative work. “We definitely wanted to make a record that had a bit more of the sprawling dynamics that are unique to the band I suppose, but probably more in evidence on the first two records [2005’s Black Mountain and 2008’s In The Future],” reflects keyboardist Jeremy Schmidt. “I think we wanted to get back to that a little bit. Beyond that though I think we wanted to experiment and be fairly collaborative with the process, but we didn’t really have any preconceived notion of what it should be or otherwise, we just kinda got on with it.” None of which should imply that the more pop-structured third album Wilderness Heart doesn’t hold a worthy place in the band’s canon. “No, we love that record, I just think that the process of making it was a little dogmatic or something, less open-ended and a little less adventurous... although adventurous is probably the wrong word
because sonically there’s a lot going on on that record and I don’t think it’s so different, really. It’s very much a Black Mountain record, but I feel that there’s something about the spirit of the first two records and the new one that’s maybe a little more in tune with our sort of ID,” Schmidt chuckles. Looking to the past to fuel their old school heavy riffage is something that Black Mountain happily cop to. “I’d say most of our touchstones lay in the past, in terms of things we emulate or gravitate towards or are just part of our DNA really,” Schmidt ponders. “I listen to some contemporary music, but for the most part my view goes backwards — my gaze is cast backwards constantly. But it’s not so conscious. I do hear bands who’ve replicated a certain pastiche of some past kind of thing, and it ends up being pretty unfulfilling. It might be exciting to hear as a novelty for a bit, but there isn’t much to keep you going back to it. “Whereas I think maybe our combination of things is a little more perverse or something, there’s odd combinations of things that say mix something like Blue Oyster Cult with some kinda krautrock thing — for us that keeps it interesting. I mean we don’t consciously ever do anything like that, it just sort of ends up being that way because of the make-up of the band and the way we all kind of hear everything backwards to how another member of the band might hear it. We’re always poised at a slightly different angle.”
When & Where: 2 Oct, Yours & Owls Festival, Wollongong; 3 Oct, Factory Theatre
Killer Telly Amanda Knox
True crime is becoming the biggest entertainment trend around at present. Here are the real life thrillers not to miss.
Amanda Knox: Believe Her Hot on the heels of the surprise documentary hit Making A Murderer, a new documentary about the infamous death of British student Meredith Kercher, featuring the acquitted prime suspect of the killing Amanda Knox, premieres on Netflix this week.
Phoebe’s Fall Media empire Fairfax have jumped on the true crime bandwagon with a sixpart podcast series in the same vein as the hugely popular Serial. It examines the brutal killing of 24-year-old Pheobe Handsjuk in Melbourne in 2010. The first episode reached #1 in the iTunes chart last week.
Deep Water This new SBS series is taking the true crime model to new levels of meta. Via multiple platforms including a drama series starring Yael Stone (Orange Is The New Black), a documentary and an online investigation, it will explore a string of more than 80 murders of young gay men in Sydney’s eastern suburbs in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 31
Music
Real Mature There ain’t nothing like a ‘Hamdog’
Perth man Mark Murray had a dream: a cross between a hamburger and hotdog. Now the industrious foodie has managed to patent the concept, which he’s imaginatively dubbed the Hamdog. He’s not the first crazy cook to dream up an unlikely mashup. Here are our favourite Frankenfoods:
The Cronut A cross between a doughnut and croissant, this dessert genius was cooked up by New York City pastry chef Dominique Ansel.
Ramen Burger Another delicious invention from NYC, Keizo Shimamoto swapped boring ol’ burger buns for slabs of ramen noodles.
Pizza Cake We love pizza. We also love cake. Bringing these two vital food groups together is a thing of beauty that we want at every birthday, wedding day and every other day ending in a Y.
32 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
Dane Pulvirenti of pantsdown-prog-rockers Osaka Punch talks to Brynn Davies about doing The Ekka on acid, playing drums with black dildos and the band’s legal battle with Kidney Thieves. Oh, and he tells lots of dick and fart jokes.
T
here are not enough dick and fart jokes in metal. Or music, for that matter. “The layman look of [metal bands] is like ‘ooh look they’re worshiping Satan’, even worse they could be worshiping Jesus, ooh,” jokes Dane Pulvirenti, who is hands down the funniest bloke you’ll ever meet air drumming with black dildos on the side of the road. No metaphor — he can be seen in Osaka Punch’s clip for Stonk madly drumming/gyrating with rubber phalluses in public. “Whenever we run out of an idea it’s like ‘just put a dildo in there, or some reference to a dick, and that should save the day’. So I’m out there playing with dildos in the street at 8.30 in the morning on a Monday, it was literally the worst time to ever see someone waving dildos in your face... I seriously died doing that.” Their motivations behind every clip usually involve one or more band members “doing something extremely fucking compromising to his ego and the sanity of the people around him,” like filming Jack Muzak on acid at Brisbane’s Ekka festival. Pulvirenti remembers that Muzak had an “extreme empathetic moment” with the farm animals: “He was like ‘NO, we shouldn’t eat them, we
need to let them go’.” The uber-cool performing-toyour-feet stance and chainsaws/ satanic props in the metal world have a new rival — literal pants-down comedy. “I heard of Totally Unicorn because of that fucking amazing press photo. The whole pants down thing, doing the standard metalcore thing but with the mangina thing. I fucking loved that... There’s too many gimps now, it is something that’s coming up now; everyone’s over the extravagance,” explains Pulvirenti, mentioning the band were “dick and fart joke curators” before they were musicians. Before Osaka Punch was Osaka Punch, they were The Kidney Thieves. But so was another band in America. “We didn’t know. We were just about to drop our album and triple j had picked up a track of ours and it was looking really good, and [Kidneythieves] basically sent an email saying, ‘Well, we can go and do the trademark war with you, and we’ll win because we’re with a label and we’ve got a lot more money that we can draw on and you guys will just get crushed.’ And to me that was like, ‘We should keep the name. Let’s get in as much trouble as possible.’ Basically, given the amount of money, time and effort we’d put in up to that point, we just didn’t have the energy or the finances to combat that kind of thing.” So, they did what all good-natured diplomatic musicians do and held a vote over new band names. Out of the hat came Bob Gnarly, Sugar Daddy Long Legs, Tokyo Crab Farmers... you get the gist. Pulvirenti points out that he voted against Osaka Punch in favour of Beast Infection. “We’re going with stupid right? That’s pretty stupid... We had to change from the greatest name in the world to a name that’s okay.”
What: Death Monster Super Squad (Birds Robe /MGM) When & Where: 28 Sep, Frankie’s Pizza By The Slice; 1 Oct, Town Hall Hotel, Newtown
Music
Maintaining Their Cool
There’s no resting on their laurels for ‘60s garage progenitors The Sonics, and founding saxophonist Rob Lind tells Steve Bell that their high energy aesthetic is a state of mind.
N
orthwest garage-rock pioneers The Sonics never made much commercial headway during their initial stint in the ‘60s, but their uncompromising brand of three-chord rock’n’roll influenced generations of artists to follow, with everyone from Nirvana to The Stooges to The White Stripes to Bruce Springsteen citing them as a sonic touchstone. In 2007 they reunited for the Cavestomp garage festival in Brooklyn and have been thrilling new waves of fans with their vigorous live show and timeless tunes ever since. Then last year they upped the ante by releasing This Is The Sonics - their first album of new material in almost 50 years and the big surprise wasn’t that it happened, but how raw and vital these new songs and recordings sounded. “It’s a direct reflection on Jim Diamond who produced it,” offers founding saxophonist Rob Lind. “We’d never used a producer before so you get in the studio and everyone’s got their own idea and egos start happening, and people are saying, ‘I think we should do this’, ‘No, I think it would be better if we bring in a string section’. He’d done The White Stripes and he knew us
quite well, and he was recommended to us, and so he came up to Seattle a week before we were going to go into the studio, and we rehearsed every night and he came to the rehearsals with a legal pad and just took notes. “We put up something like 20 songs at the end of that and he said, ‘These are the ones we’re going to do, and these are the ones we’re not going to do’, and when we went in the studio his idea was - he verbalised it - ‘I don’t want to copy the old days, but I want to try to get the energy and the fire that you guys had on those first two albums back in the ‘60s’. So it was nice because we didn’t have to think, and he was always right! We played the songs on the album but he was the film director. “Although we always play with energy, no matter the age of the people in the band like me, we always play hard. So when we went in there it wasn’t like we were looking at each other going, ‘Okay guys, let’s play with energy!’ That’s just the way we do it, so that kind of came naturally.” And after years touring the old hits, Lind says it’s great to have new Sonics tunes in the repertoire again. “Actually, that’s why we did it,” he smiles. “I didn’t want to be an oldies but goodies band - I didn’t want to be a retro band, [adopts carny voice] ‘Here they are, The Sonics, playing the hits of the ‘60s!’ I didn’t want to do that. We’re always going to do Psycho and Strychnine and The Witch and Shot Down and Boss Hoss - those’ll always be in there - but now we have all of these songs off the new album and it’s so much fun having those in there too.”
TA L L Shin Godzilla
TA I L S Hollywood may have had a crack at the genre as recently as 2014, but it’s been more than a decade since an authentically Japanese Godzilla has swum up from the briny deep. Fans of the cult B-movies from the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s should be pumped for a new reboot, hitting Aussie cinema on 13 Oct, which will feature the tallest incarnation of the titular monster ever to stomp its way onto the silver screen.
When & Where: 30 Sep, Manning Bar; 1 Oct, Yours & Owls Festival, Wollongong
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 33
OPINION Opinion
Dance Moves
Get It To g et her Hip Hop
Kid Cudi
With James D’apice
K
anye’s social media presence makes it’s easy to forget that he is a collaborator, not an auteur. Kid Cudi has been one of Ye’s best musical buddies for the last decade. Groundbreaking 808s & Heartbreak could not have existed without him, and Yeezus would have been more brutal and less beautiful without Cudder. Last week Cudi tweeted, “Everyone thinks they’re soooo great. Talkin top 5 and be having 30 people write songs for them... My tweets apply to who they apply. Ye, Drake, whoever.” It’s obviously meant to be an insult, but is it? Has there ever been any doubt that Kanye relies on the creative people he has around him? Did anyone (aside from yours truly, the world’s most gullible columnist) believe Drizzy worked solo? This is the curious thing about Cudi speaking out: he is correct. The criticism has hit home but — crucially — it doesn’t matter. It’s a striking realisation. The idea of ‘authenticity’ has always been flimsy. It’s exposed as paper thin by Cudi’s criticism (and, last year, by Meek Mill’s attack on Drake for relying on ghostwriters) falling on our deliberately, knowingly deaf ears. It’s the image of solo Kanye, or the image of lonely Drake, that sticks with us, even if we know the image to be false. On the one hand, we can see this as music fans engaged in the ultimate meritocracy: we want the best songs and we don’t care how you get them to us. On the other hand, it feels like something (integrity? Innocence?) might have been lost along the way. Pic: Josh Groom
Wa ke The Dead Punk And Hardcore With Sarah Petchell
34 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
F
our years ago I moved from Sydney to Melbourne. In those four years I’ve made frequent visits back home and have seen huge changes to Sydney, and I’m not happy about them. They’re changes that make me thankful that I moved to a city that takes a huge amount of pride in its nighttime economy.
Young Thug
I am, of course, talking about the Sydney lockout laws. When I go back to Sydney now I see the difference. Kings Cross might be safer, but at what cost? I definitely do not feel as safe at 2am on King Street, Newtown as I did four years ago. Music venues have suffered greatly, with many closing. It’s impacted on restaurants’ ability to serve alcohol late at night with a meal. These are effects that are felt just as much if you’re a punk or hardcore fan as if you’re a “normie”. A report has been released that says the lockout laws should be relaxed, but there has been no commitment by the Baird government to adopt any of these changes. There are calls that the recommended relaxations in the laws do not go far enough. And while I understand the need to limit alcohol-related violence in cities across Australia, the question is: is the vibrancy of our cities’ night-time economies too great a price to pay? Alcohol-related violence is a much bigger problem than lockouts alone can handle, so for the sake of our music scene, governments should reconsider. After all, Melbourne dumped their laws within months of implementation.
OPINION Opinion
New Currents
I
t’s tempting to suggest that With Tim Finney young rap duo Rae Sremmurd have something to prove with their second album SremmLife 2. Dismissed by many as a tattooflashing Kris Kross for the post-AutoTune generation, surely their second album is their opportunity to get serious, to upend our expectations with something truly impressive and ambitious. Well, yes and no. Firstly, whatever Rae Sremmurd needed to prove was amply achieved by their debut, whose only real crime was being consistently hooky and fun-filled. Moreover, I’m not persuaded that members Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi particularly want to prove anything, other than that they offer the best party ever. This doesn’t mean, however, that their second album doesn’t offer a fascinating series of twists on their lean-soaked, pop-trap sound. Where SremmLife was a pretty consistent trip, SremmLife 2 feels sharply bisected between relatively straight-ahead club tracks (Shake It Fast, Set The Roof) and flights of psychedelic fancy. On Look Alive, the smooth Now That I Know and (especially) the trippy Black Beatles, the duo’s combination of amusing memecluttered internet generating rhymes, alternately rowdy and yearning sing-song choruses and almost ethereal post-trap backing tracks (usually courtesy of Mike Will Made It) achieve a sense of disorienting weightlessness, as if the duo are unsure whether they’re in the middle of a party or a dream. My favourite track is Just Like Us, an unexpectedly empathetic story of a party girl with whose millennial fervour the duo identify, combining shimmering synth gloops with emo-pop vocal melodies worthy of Paramore. Joining Rae Sremmurd in unexpected bouts of tenderness is Young Thug, whose latest eponymous mixtape is as good as the ‘proper’ debut album we’ll probably never get. Jeffery doesn’t dramatically switch up Young Thug’s style or introduce any specific new tricks relative to past efforts like Barter 6, but from its fabulous cover art inwards it’s probably the rapper’s most inventive, colourful and sheerly enjoyable effort. Stylistically, it’s all over the place, as reflected by Thug’s conceit of naming nearly every track after an idol or inspiration that the arrangements typically reference in ways ranging from obvious to oblique. Wyclef Jean rides a lazy reggae bounce, perfect for Thug’s sing-song refrains that already owe something to Jamaican singjays; Future Swag
offers Blade Runner tension, ticking hi-hats and doublespeed rapping; the swirling RiRi verges on R&B, though its bass is as thick as a continental shelf. Thug’s voice is the star, though, and even when the songs trend dark (such as on the creeping Swizz Beatz or the menacing Harambe, where Thug equates himself — and perhaps black America — with the doomed gorilla), there’s an undercurrent of giddiness to the performances here, as if he can’t quite suppress the flush of pleasure that comes from putting on such a wild show. Sometimes the giddiness boils over: on RiRi, Thug slips into dog whines as he implores, “If you want it bae, you gotta earn it/You gotta urur-ur-ur-ur-ur-earn it”. To those unfamiliar with Thug’s schtick, this will seem ridiculous; a new low in rap’s sub-literate goofing around. To those already inside the tent, it’s a sparkling, dazzling hook delivered with Thug’s trademark, paradoxically precise sloppiness. Best of all is Kanye West. Again, it’s impossible to describe without making it sound like a mess or a joke, but it’s one of the most accomplished and captivating pieces of pop music to emerge in 2016.
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 35
Album / E Album/EP Reviews
Bon Iver
22, A Million
Jagiaguwar/Inertia
★★★★
Album OF THE Week
The track list for 22, A Million is the stuff of nightmares if you’re in the phonetics or radio announcing games. There are song names like 666 ʇ (pronounced six six six upside down arrow), 21 M◊◊N WATER and more. And while the novelty, admittedly, does wear off, the angular and scattered titles accurately reflect the songs themselves. For an artist whose audience has been so enamoured by his voice and instrumental arrangements across his career, with 22, A Million Justin Vernon has thrown down the gauntlet. Gone are most of the lush layers of previous albums, replaced by auto-tune, glitchy beats and largely incomprehensible samples (including an uncredited Stevie Nicks sample on 10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄). 8 (circle) and 00000 Million are two exceptions, the former being the only fiveminute track that could easily sit on his previous two records, the latter pulled out of the Coldplay piano ballad playbook. For the majority of 22, A Million, though, this change in direction will be initially disconcerting. Whether fans react in the same divisive way as they did when Radiohead released Kid A or when Bob Dylan released Bringing It All Back Home remains to be seen. But this album — for better or worse — will challenge those listeners whose only relationship with Vernon is via Bon Iver to extricate the artist from the pigeonhole of a love song balladeer and recognise his undeniable artistic talent, removed from genre. Dylan Stewart
Slaves
Pixies
Take Control
Head Carrier
Virgin/EMI
Pixiesmusic/[PIAS] Australia
★★★★
★★★
Last year was big for Slaves, but instead of using their second term to enter the decadent expanse of a follow up production — smoothing out the dents and applying endless lacquer — they’ve honed in on the aggression of unheard facts as delivered by blunt instruments. Take Control feels like a step away from the light, their lo-fi grit augmented by something purposefully darker. Their adherence to a minimalist tool set feels thicker this time, hearty and distorted, like porridge with chunks of indignation and social injustice floating in it. The whole undertaking is candidly aggressive, brash and unapologetic, but they outright ask you to own it on the album open, Spit It Out, “What are you gonna do about it?” There are a few sidesteps
Pixies’ iconic singles are easily recognised, their early albums regularly canonised, but since reestablishing as an ongoing body culminating in 2014’s awkward Indie Cindy LP, the band’s regrowth seemed stunted. Here then is Frank Black, Joey Santiago and Dave Lovering trying to make peace with Kim Deal’s departure (causing turbulence that made Indie Cindy such an unsettling ride) and finding stability with new bassist Paz Lenchantin who finally jiggles into place like a slightly imperfectly sawn jigsaw piece. All I Think About Now’s very deliberate Where Is My Mind dopplegangery gives way to Lenchantin’s cooing vocals. Hear also the title track wherein Black defeatedly accepts he’s falling “down the drain again” before spitting out the two-word
36 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
from the fog; Consume Or Be Consumed, the Mike D feature, is fun (though it’s hard to gauge his presence through the rest of the production). Lies swings as far as it’s willing for the pop fences, synth-softened Steer Clear has Baxter Dury pleading for safe driving etiquette and even some skits thrown in — but more than any other piece, they feel like out of place vestiges from previous efforts. Fame seems to have grown on Slaves like a moss of conscience, as if knowing they were being listened to. They now want to make sure they are being heard. Good thing they’ve got something to say. Nic Addenbrooke
chorus like Satan sneezing from hay fever, then his throat cops an utter flogging on Baal’s Back in which he does his best Brian Johnson (note to AC/DC: Axl may sell tickets, but Frank could be really interesting). If the bigger picture is a patchwork of old tricks sewn together with refocussed enthusiasm, then Pixies 2016 are less loudQUIETloud and more ROUGHsweetROUGH. Head Carrier proves a reshaped Pixies can work even when they’re ripping their own records off. Might be time for some new tricks though. Mac McNaughton
EP Reviews Album/EP Reviews
friendships
Banks
Regina Spektor
Nullarbor 1988 – 1989
The Altar
Remember Us To Life
Harvest/EMI
Warner
Dot Dash/Remote Control
Drive-By Truckers American Band ATO/[PIAS] Australia
★★★
★★★
★★★★
★★★★
While Melbourne outfit friendships are a self-described audio-visual duo, there’s still lots to be had by just focusing on their sounds for a while. Like the album name suggests, their sounds roll around in an apparently cavernous space — definitely one for your best headphones or sound system rather than streaming and a crappy phone speaker. Pedal To The Metal sounds exactly as the name suggests — rolling, exciting, with just the right amount of edge — while the space in Keep Smiling At Me Like That And You’ll Be Picking Your Teeth Up Out Of The Gutter is positively, wonderfully, creepy.
The first offering from altR&B singer-songwriter Banks, Goddess, was drippy but monotonous. On her second album she has upped the ante. The Altar experiments with distance, rhythm and a rainbow of distortion effects — Banks enters the album far away and spends the rest of the tracks coming forward and backing off. The album is at its best on songs like Gemini Feed and Poltergeist when it uses this push and pull to create compelling tension that allows the rhythm speak for itself. But often the album’s aspirations for drama are distracting and miss the mark; they end up undermining Banks’ — and the rhythm’s — sincerity.
“What a strange world we live in...” Regina Spektor’s lyrical maturity and musicality are one of those rare diamonds in the coal mine. Spektor brings everything we’ve come to expect of her and more in her latest 14track work of pure brilliance. Her signature piano riffs hit you so hard in the face your head starts to spin. Opener Bleeding Heart begins with an upbeat groove as Spektor makes her way through themes concerning past loves, fame and the unfortunate state of the world today. Her quirky storytelling sets a catchy tune in Grand Hotel before she tackles more important world issues in The Trapper & The Furrier.
From Black Lives Matter to gun control, border issues and immigration, the conservative right wing and exposing the ignorance of a rose-coloured nostalgia for the good old days. Drive-By Truckers have exploited their Southern rock, ‘60s soul and country lament to make a record lyrically topical and musically timeless. American Band lets their passion, disbelief and anger explode through rocking riffs and soaring solos for the most part, which makes the quieter moments all the more effective. But this record is no downer. Even at their most frustrated and bewildered, the band’s unmistakeable belief in the power of rock’n’roll is ever present.
Liz Giuffre
Tash Loh
Samantha Jonscher
Pete Laurie
More Reviews Online Brain Tentacles Brain Tentacles
theMusic.com.au
Epica The Holographic Principles
Sampology Natural Selections
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 37
Album / E Album/EP Reviews
SURVIVE
Machinedrum
Opeth
Jenny Hval
RR7349
Human Energy
Sorceress
Blood Bitch
Relapse/Rocket
Ninja Tune/Inertia
Nuclear Blast
Sacred Bones/Rocket
★★★½
★★★½
★★½
★★★½
There’s no date yet for the second series of Stranger Things, but fans of the paranormal can still get their nerve-shredding kicks as the creators of the first series soundtrack once again team up with their S U R V I V E bandmates. As you’d expect from an outfit dubbed Texas’ Tangerine Dream, there’s no end of analog creepiness and deep, droning transmissions from some nightmarish future, notably on the prog-like Wardenclyffe and the deeply ominous Sorcerer, which may unsettle you enough to believe that Eleven is stepping through a tear in the space/time fabric behind you.
Machinedrum, aka Travis Stewart, emerges from the dark labyrinthine bowels of the grimy megapolis that featured on 2013’s Vapor City to take what feels like a holiday in Ibiza. In reality, Machinedrum has moved to Los Angeles and served us a full slice of Californian dreaming. The beats bounce providing instant dancefloor gratification as the dude gets his happy on. There are a lot of guest vocalists across the album including MeLo-X and Dawn Richard, who show us exactly why they are so in demand right now. The cosmic consciousness that drives this album feels like a bright ray of hope in these supposedly dark times.
Is the inspiration finally running out? While some fans expressed dissatisfaction with Opeth’s prog direction, a change of course was perhaps necessary given how completely they’d mastered the art of epic metal. But where top cuts from their last two prog-orientated albums felt like an adventure, much of Sorceress sounds insular, comfortable and safe. Chrysalis is a rare highlight as for seven minutes the band seems to wake up to themselves, but elsewhere Sorceress is a mismatch of overly floral, quiet passages and hard-boiled, hook-free intense sections. It’s their first false step in an otherwise exceptional career.
No one makes music anything like Jenny Hval’s. A cinematic combination of avant-garde and noise-pop, it’d be a sub-genre unto itself if anyone knew what to call it. Blood Bitch is a concept album revolving around the theme of blood — in particular menstruation — re-imagining it as a source of artistic and creative power. While not as revelatory as 2015’s Apocalypse, girl Hval once again proves her tireless resourcefulness, be it through the visceral heavy breathing of the title track or the unpredictable heavily processed vocal carnage of The Plague.
Guido Farnell
Christopher H James
Christopher H James
More Reviews Online Merchandise A Corpse Wired For Sound
38 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
Christopher H James
theMusic.com.au
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez El Bien y mal Nos Une
Listen to our This Week’s Releases playlist on
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 â&#x20AC;¢ 39
Live Re Live Reviews
City Calm Down @ Metro Theatre. Pic: Britt Andrews
Vera Blue, Lanks Oxford Art Factory 25 Sep
City Calm Down @ Metro Theatre. Pic: Britt Andrews
City Calm Down @ Metro Theatre. Pic: Britt Andrews
Yeo @ Newtown Social Club. Pic: Clare Hawley
Yeo @ Newtown Social Club. Pic: Clare Hawley
Yeo @ Newtown Social Club. Pic: Clare Hawley
40 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
Tour support Lanks warms up the floor. The Melbourne electroindie artist gets the crowd in the groove with his chirpy and textured electro-pop. The set includes a solo on his native instrument, the flute, but the real craft on show is his laptop work, which delivers tight production that loosens the hips. Lanks’ control and emotional centre sets the evening’s tone. Virtuosity isn’t always enough. Lucky for NSW songstress Vera Blue her impeccable vocal command comes with drama, invention and no shortage of emotional depth. It’s a month into a national tour that might be winding down, but Vera Blue (real name Celia Pavey)’s fans are doing anything but. Sunday marks a second sold out evening at Oxford Art Factory and her crowd can’t get enough. Pavey is interrupted numerous times by bursts of applause and adoration from the floor. And the praise is welldeserved, her voice is sublime: it is smooth and creamy, and Pavey never misses a note even as she effortlessly reaches dizzying heights on the stave. Sneak peeks of new material reveal an artist forging her own sound on the well-travelled road of electro-pop with that unstoppable voice. She pulls out a cover of Gorillaz’ Feel Good Inc that transforms the original’s funky escapism into jazzy dream-pop. Her cover of Jack Garratt’s Breathe Life (which she performed for triple j’s Like A Version) also makes an appearance — it brings out the tension in Garratt’s original as she adds even more effortless, dizzy expeditions up the octave. But the real highlight of the evening sees Pavey’s sister join her on stage for a cover of Bloom by The Paper
Pavey never misses a note even as she effortlessly reaches dizzying heights on the stave.
Kites. The pair share the same alabaster skin, red hair and angelic vocals and the smiles they exchange mid-song speak volumes. Samantha Jonscher
Yeo, Saatsuma, Take Your Time Newtown Social Club 22 Sep Take Your Time had a blissfully chilled vibe, enjoying their moment under the lights. The pair, dressed in black, boogied away to some heavy prerecorded beats and moaned and hummed into mics, their tunes reminiscent of The xx. The music and style of the band was simple, streamlined and laidback. Saatsuma brought a plethora of melodic tunes that filled Newtown Social Club with a warm feeling. The joyful rhythms mixed with angelic vocals and sky-high synths for a trance-invoking dance. Yeo made a splash in the big smoke’s pond with musical stylings and a charged encounter with the PA guy. Yeo and drummer moved from ‘80s-style anthems to deeper dancefloor bangers. He wielded a bevy of instruments and proved a talent on several synths, including a keytar, and the bass guitar. One particular keytar solo inspired “yew”s, “woo”s and schmoozy dance moves. The songs varied in
eviews Live Reviews
mood and tone with the band oscillating between romantic slower tunes and more upbeat stories about love and the joy of life. Yeo had a powerful soulsmeared voice and a diva attitude to match, ripping into the sound guy with a passive aggressive air. “The joys of being a predominantly electronic band,” the singer said after telling the sound guy to “not do that again”. His smooth timbre melded with the rhythm section: some pre-recorded, some live. At times the music moved to an electronic drone but also showed signs of pop sensibility and great Michael Jackson-esque melodies. He
A powerful soul-smeared voice and a diva attitude to match. also showcased his cocky, lover-boy demeanour. Great visuals were the cherry on top of this happy-go-lucky affair with flourishes of melting colour. “This is officially a SOLD OUT show,” the drummer said before the band dipped into their dancier tracks. “You know I’m pushing myself harder than I ever have before in this show,” said Yeo, almost condescendingly. “Because I’m having so much fun.” Yeo finished on a high note — quite literally — with Tina Turner’s ‘80s smash hit, What’s Love Got To Do With It, leaving an impression on a kooky and sympathetic crowd. Shaun Colnan
City Calm Down, Ali Barter, Middle Kids Metro Theatre 23 Sep
Middle Kids have been the talk of the town as of late and were here to kick off tonight’s proceedings with their twangy pop-rock. They tested some tracks with the audience who seemed to dig it, but Edge Of Town (aptly) hit the spot. Ali Barter drew a crowd; some already fans, some soon to be. Barter’s husky voice was the centrepiece of her and the band’s grungy pop, washing over the crowd as we grooved along to new and known tracks. She hashed out Girlie Bits, harking back to ‘90s guitar pop, and closed out her set with biting number Far Away. City Calm Down conjure up images of The Smiths and The Cure, but the fact that they were playing to a sold-out crowd implies they need no comparisons. The four-piece chose to kick off their show with moody lighting and a smoky haze, before kicking it into gear with Son - injecting some colour into the lighting. Jack Bourke’s voice and level of assuredness are what anchor the band as a mainstay in the moody-pop genre. His distinctive baritone is hard to ignore, drawing you into an introspective bubble as he sang Pleasure & Consequence and Border On Control. Up until In A Restless House, the title track of their epic second full-length, the crowd was rather subdued, but this and Your Fix set out to change that, proving an elated, toe-tapping end to the set. The crowd were disappointed when the band exited, but weren’t quite sure whether to call for an encore as the house music came on. But, much to our surprise, City Calm Down wandered back on stage to do a jubilant rendition of David
Bourke’s voice and level of assuredness are what anchor the band.
Bowie’s Let’s Dance to see us off in a danceable fashion. Melissa Borg
More Reviews Online theMusic.com.au/ music/live-reviews
Ana Popvic @ The Basement Holy Balm @ Newtown Social CLub
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 41
Arts Reviews Arts Reviews
Hidden Sydney
The
Drover’s Wife
Hidden Sydney: The Glittering Mile Theatre World Bar to 9 Oct
★★★★½ Set across the four floors of World Bar, Hidden Sydney: The Glittering Mile uncovers the stories of the eccentric (and ever so slightly seedy) characters who brought colour and swagger into Kings Cross during the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. In this immersive production — which allows the audience free range to roam — each room explores a slightly different narrative: from the star drag queen to the drug-dealing bartender and the infamous “sex witch” Roie, who performs a seance, beautifully choreographed by Lucas Jervies, while holding the hands of several members of the audience. This production takes close-quarter performance to the intimate extreme. The actors flawlessly remain in character for the entire duration of the show, with audience members mingle among the cast. Dialogue between the characters is highly entertaining, engaging and masterfully written. World Bar is truly transformed into a ‘70s Australian brothel and the personal stories of each of the characters are told with oomph, humour and historical accuracy. Audience members interacting in this immersive experience are often made to question their roles within the various scenarios. From the initial interaction with the club bouncer (comedian Ray Badran), to the last performance at the ‘Chevron Silver Spade’ with Rob Mills, this is one show that keeps its audience members completely engaged, alert and on their toes. It is also, of course, a show with an undercurrent of poignancy. The Kings Cross of yesteryear may have been a red-lit den of iniquity, but its vibrancy and character left an important mark on the culture of Sydney. Today, as lockout laws have slowly asphyxiated the once bustling night spot, Hidden Sydney is both an homage and a eulogy to Kings Cross. R.I.P. Tanya Bonnie Rae
42 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
Theartre Belvoir St Theatre to 16 Oct
★★★★½ If it’s true that a great play can be summed up in a single word, then for Leah Purcell’s new production, The Drover’s Wife it would be ‘endurance’. Those familiar with the Henry Lawson short story that Purcell takes as her inspiration for the play will recognise certain elements — a lone woman and a danger that threatens her children — but that is where the similarity ends. This is an important new work that examines Colonial Australia, not only through the eyes of a woman, but also via an Indigenous perspective. The production’s spare, sparse staging suits the material and its themes, adding to the atmosphere and calling to mind iconic paintings that
The Drover’s Wife
depict the hard life on the land; the isolation and the perils that arise unbidden. Indeed, the choice to make Yadaka, played by Mark Coles Smith, the hero of the piece, makes him a strong counterpoint to Molly Johnson, the titular character played by Purcell herself. The story doesn’t waste time on romanticism or sentimentality but instead shows us the importance of family and the difference we make when we seek to help each other instead of harm, although there is plenty of that too. Purcell and Coles Smith imbue their roles with depth and humanity, albeit flawed, and a realism the audience can’t help but respond to. While this is a tense drama, small moments of humour are well judged and skilfully placed. Newcomer Will McDonald takes the role of Danny, Johnson’s son, a boy on the verge of becoming a man — despite what his current lack of body hair would suggest to his absent father, Joe. This excellent young artist brings a compelling authenticity and energy to the stage. Perhaps it is because these three central characters are so beautifully developed, vital and alive, that other parts of this storytelling come across as caricaturish; a simply drawn pastiche of the values and views of the time. The work drew a lengthy standing ovation from the packed opening night house, showing that while sometimes we might feel like we’ve heard every story about this period in our nation’s past, new eyes and a challenging perspective remind us there is much out there just waiting to be found and savoured. Fiona Cameron
Festival Program Fri Sep 30th - Sun Oct 2nd 2016 Friday
Saturday
TOWNES HALL
THE PORCH
10.00am
Main Gates/Campground Open
2.00pm
Arena/Bar Opens
3.00pm 4.00pm
Irish Mythen
Jess Ribeiro
9.20pm
11.00pm 12:00am
12. 30pm
2.00pm
Jordie Lane William Crighton
Karl S. Williams Davey Craddock & The Spectacles
The Hello Morning Henry Wagons & The Only Children Bar/Arena Closed
Melody Pool Charles Jenkins The Wilson Pickers
4.30pm
Raised By Eagles
5:20pm
Sunset Super Round
6.40pm
The Eastern
7.30pm
Sunday
Magpie Diaries
2:50pm 3.40pm
10.10pm
Leah Flanagan
1.20pm
James Thomson & The Strange Pilgrims
8.30pm
10.50am
Jason Walker
11.40am
Frank Sultana & The Sinister Kids
6..50pm 7.40pm
9am 10am
Andy Golledge Band
THE PORCH
Main Gate Open Gleny Rae’s Honky Tonk Trio
William John Jr
5.00pm 6.00pm
TOWNES HALL 8am
Brian Cadd Skyscraper Stan & The Commission Flats
8.40pm
THE PORCH 8.00am
Main Gate Open
9.30pm
9.00am
The Mid North
10.25pm
10.20am
Tracy McNeil & The Goodlife
11.20am
The Brothers Comatose
12.30pm
FESTIVAL CLOSE
11.10pm 12:00am
The Brothers Comatose Spookyland Dashville Progress Society Bar/Arena Closed
~ SUNDAY WIND DOWN EXCLUSIVE ~ Extend the fun with the Sunday night wind down. Kicking off from 2pm, featuring local Dashville acts and other special guests including The Wayward Henrys, Mark Moldre, Jen Mize, as well as an open-air cinema for the kids, bar and food options available. See over page or website for more info. Limited capacity, bookings essential.
+ Kickback On-site Camping, + Songwriter Collabs & Tributes.
+ Classic Cars & Bikes + Americana Inspired Grub.
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 43
Comedy / G The Guide
Wed 28
Bec Sandridge
24th Birthday Party with Joyride (DJ Set) + Nicky Night Time + DJ Samrai + The Ocean Party + Mimi + DJ Sports + more: Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach The Beautiful Girls + Stay At Home Mum: Brass Monkey, Cronulla
Lisa Mitchell
The Music Presents Gregory Porter: 28 Sep The Basement Michael Franti & Spearhead: 29 Sep Metro Theatre
Osaka Punch + Lese Majesty: Frankie’s Pizza By The Slice, Sydney Japanese Jazz Jam: LazyBones Lounge (Level 2), Marrickville The Groovemeisters: LazyBones Lounge (Level 1), Marrickville
Drapht: 8 Oct Metro Theatre
Live & Local feat. My Friend Rupert + Ceilings + Field Run: Lizottes Newcastle, Lambton
Sad Grrls: 8 Oct Factory Theatre
Travis Scott: Metro Theatre, Sydney
Emma Louise: 13 Oct Street Theatre Canberra; 14 Oct Uni Bar Wollongong; 15 Oct Cambridge Hotel Newcastle; 4 Nov Metro Theatre
Adam Gorecki: Orient Hotel, The Rocks
Kylie Auldist: 13 Oct Beresford Hotel; 14 Oct Newport Arms Newport; 15 Oct Civic Centre Wagga Wagga; 16 Oct Canvas, Coffee & Providore Barham
The Roots & Riddim Club with Errol Renaud Trio: Play Bar, Surry Hills
Lisa Mitchell: 22 Oct Newtown Social Club Taasha Coates & The Melancholy Sweethearts: 28 Oct Heritage Hotel Bulli; 29 Oct Newtown Social Club; 30 Oct Lizottes Newcastle A Day On The Green: 5 Nov Bimbadgen Winery Rothbury Ben Lee: 10 & 11 Nov One Space HQ Mullum Music Festival: 17 - 20 Nov Mullumbimby
Into It. Over It. + Zzzounds: Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst
Angel Du$t + Primitive Blast + Easy Life + Broken: Rad Bar, Wollongong Louis Theroux: State Theatre, Sydney Gregory Porter: The Basement, Sydney Sam Newton: The Pier, Port Macquarie Songs On Stage feat. Bill Hunt + Elaska + Murder of Crows + Phil Marino + Tim Walker + Hue Williams + Simon Li + Richard Bevins + Pauline Sparkle: Town Hall Hotel, Balmain
Yours & Owlets The Yours & Owls under 18s mini-fest is lighting up Towradgi Beach Hotel on Saturday. Bec Sandridge, Hermitude, Hockey Dad, Nicole Millar, Pinheads, Skegss, The Vans – everyone is going to be there.
Anthony Charlton: Australian Arms Hotel, Penrith No Refunds: Bald Faced Stag (Front Bar), Leichhardt
Michigan Water: Mr Falcon’s, Glebe Totally Unicorn + Pagan + Bare Bones + Arteries: Newtown Social Club, Newtown Joe Echo Duo: Orient Hotel, The Rocks
Melody Pool + Peter Bibby: Brass Monkey, Cronulla Spring Comedy Carnival: Comedy Store, Moore Park
Lower Spectrum: Oxford Art Factory (Gallery Bar), Darlinghurst Sons Of The East: Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst
Rackett: Coogee Bay Hotel (Selina’s), Coogee Get Rocked Band: Coogee Diggers, Coogee
Katie Brianna
Caligula’s Horse: 19 Nov The Small Ballroom; 20 Nov Newtown Social Club
Chris Franklin: Crane Bar, Potts Point Angel Du$t + Primitive Blast: Drone, Newcastle
Dan Sultan: 19 Nov Manning Bar Richie Sambora + Orianthi + Sarah McLeod: Enmore Theatre, Newtown
Ne Obliviscaris: 1 Dec Manning Bar; 2 Dec Cambridge Hotel Newcastle West
Jacinta Laws: Fitzroy Hotel, Windsor Fairgrounds Festival: 2 & 3 Dec Berri Bell X1: 3 Dec Factory Theatre Grouplove: 3 Jan Enmore Theatre
Pick Bri
Black Label: Frankie’s Pizza By The Slice, Sydney
The Avalanches: 5 Jan Enmore Theatre Snarky Puppy: 10 Apr Enmore Theatre The Lumineers: 17 & 18 Apr Sydney Opera House
For fans of Americana without the American accents, NSW locals Katie Brianna and The Wilson Pickers will be bringing that exact sound to the doors of LazyBones Lounge on Friday.
Rum & Ale V feat. Various Artists: Valve Bar (Basement), Ultimo
Thu 29 Ball Park Music + The Creases + Sahara Beck: ANU Bar, Canberra
44 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
Cumbiamuffin
Energetic Zen Quartet: Foundry 616, Sydney
Tristan Alaba + Maira Cortez + DJ Logfire: Gasoline Pony, Marrickville Katherine Vavahea + Friends: LazyBones Lounge, Marrickville Bad Pony: Leadbelly (formerly The Vanguard), Newtown Josh Rennie-Hynes: Lizottes Newcastle, Lambton Cath & Him: Manly Leagues Club (Menzies Lounge), Brookvale Larger Than Lions: Marble Bar, Sydney Ella Carstein + Michael Dimarco + The Bottlers: Mercantile Hotel (Bucket Lounge), The Rocks Michael Franti & Spearhead: Metro Theatre, Sydney
Muffin But Love Cumbiamuffin are bringing the tropical sounds of Colombia to Australia, in a warming collaboration between Colombian and Australian artists. They’ll be rocking The Basement on Friday.
In Conversation with Gregory Porter: Play Bar, Surry Hills Cheez TV Party hosted by Ryan & Jade: Rad Bar, Wollongong Rock With Laughter feat. Yianni Agisilaou + Aaron Chen + Sam Campbell + Dave Jory: Rock Lily, Pyrmont
Gigs / Live The Guide
The Bear Hunt
Eggplant Jackson + Gavin Scott + Andrew Paskin: Captain Cook Hotel, Paddington Diskord + Baytek + Blanke + more: Chinese Laundry, Sydney
Black Tiger Sex Machine + Church: Coffs Harbour Hotel, Coffs Harbour Thunderstruck AC/DC Show: Colonial Hotel, Werrington Spring Comedy Carnival: Comedy Store, Moore Park
Bear Season
Comedians Against Humanity: Comedy Store (7pm), Moore Park
Brissy kids The Bear Hunt are pulling into Sydney as part of their Who Made You God? east coast single tour at Vic On The Park this Friday. Joining them on the night are Wasters.
Danny Marx Young: Coogee Diggers, Coogee
Hot Damn! - 10 Years of Hot Damn with Samuel Edward + The Cover Baes: Scary Canary, Sydney The Melting Caps + Angry Little Gods + Thunderfox: Slyfox, Enmore The Willie Wagtails: Smiths Alternative, Canberra A Weakened State: The Basement, Belconnen GRMM: The Chippendale Hotel, Chippendale The Ocean Party + Big White: The Phoenix, Canberra Dastedly + Balko + Pascoe + Matt Gold: Valve Bar (Basement), Ultimo
Dashville Skyline feat. Brian Cadd + Henry Wagons & The Only Children + Jordie Lane + The Brothers Comatose + The Wilson Pickers + Melody Pool + Raised By Eagles + The Hello Morning + Jess Ribeiro + Davey Craddock & The Spectacles + Karl S Williams + Skyscraper Stan & The Commission Flats + Irish Mythen + Andy Golledge + William Crighton + Spookyland + Charles Jenkins + The Eastern + James Thomson & the Strange Pilgrims + Tracy McNeil & The Good Life + Leah Flanagan + Frank Sultana & the Sinister Kids + Jason Walker + more: Dashville, Lower Belford
Beyond Festival feat. Megan Washington + Montaigne + Ms Murphy + more: Greenhills Centre, Stromlo
Reverend Horton Heat + Pat Capocci + Lucky Luke: Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst
Original Sin - INXS Show: Gymea Hotel, Gymea
Clever Little Secretaries: Penrith RSL (Castle Lounge), Penrith
Zefereli: Hotel Steyne (Moonshine Rum & Cider Bar), Manly
The Ocean Party + Big White: Petersham Bowling Club, Petersham
Joe Echo: Jacksons on George, Sydney
House Shoes: Play Bar, Surry Hills
Ausmuteants: Lacklustre HQ, O’Connor
Cath & Him: Quakers Inn, Quakers Hill
The Wilson Pickers + Katie Brianna: LazyBones Lounge, Marrickville
Sons Of The East + Billy Fox: Rad Bar, Wollongong
Skyscraper Stan & The Commission Flats: Leadbelly (formerly The Vanguard), Newtown
Salsa Kingz: Revesby Workers (Infinity Lounge), Revesby
Brians Famous Jazz & Chilli Crab Night with Out Of Abingdon: Lizottes Newcastle, Lambton
Luke Antony Duo + Black Diamond Hearts + DJ Kitsch 78: Rock Lily, Pyrmont Oneworld: Royal Hotel, Springwood
Big Scary
Deni Ute Muster 2016 feat. Keith Urban + James Reyne + Adam Brand & The Outlaws + John Williamson + Troy Cassar-Daley + Shannon Noll + Busby Marou + The Sunny Cowgirls + Catherine Britt + Christie Lamb + Deep Creek Road + James Blundell + Victoria Avenue + Missy Lancaster + Hayley Marsten + more: Deni Ute Muster, Deniliquin Ball Park Music + The Creases + Sahara Beck: Enmore Theatre, Newtown James Rietdijk: Fitzroy Hotel, Windsor
Fri 30
Scare Campaign Crowd favourites Big Scary will be hitting Metro Theatre on Saturday to share their third album Animal. For the night, the Melbourne duo have recruited Dreller, the mystery solo project of Thomas Rawle.
Feel Good Friday Jazz Session: 505, Surry Hills Angel Du$t + Primitive Blast: Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt Rockin’ for West Papua feat. Black Breaks + The Mismade + The Black Turtles + MC Thorn: Bank Hotel (Waywards), Newtown Yeezy Vs Yonce: Beach Road Hotel (The Valley), Bondi Beach Bellingen Turtlefest feat. Mark Seymour & the Undertow + Katie Noonan + The Snowdroppers + Bears With Guns + Abby Dobson + The Crooked Fiddle Band + Levingstone + more: Bellingen Showgrounds, Bellingen Chase The Sun: Brass Monkey, Cronulla Alex Lahey: Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst The Sonics + Straight Arrows: Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle West Totally Unicorn: Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle West Marsala: Camelot Lounge, Marrickville Lloyd G & The Ambassadors: Camelot Lounge (Django Bar), Marrickville
Stephanie Lea: Manly Leagues Club (Menzies Lounge), Brookvale Dastedly
DJ Somatik + DJ Tim Boffa: Manly Wharf Hotel, Manly
No Goodnicks
The Sonics + The Crusaders + The Pink Fits: Manning Bar, Camperdown
Five-piece rock outfit Dastedly have been shaking stages since the mid-’90s and you can see them play at Valve Bar on Thursday. They will be supported by Balko, Pascoe and Matt Gold.
Brown Sugar: Marble Bar, Sydney A$AP Ferg: Metro Theatre, Sydney
Michael Benebig & Carl Lockett Quartet: Foundry 616, Sydney
Joe Bonamassa: Sydney Opera House, Sydney Cumbiamuffin + Friends: The Basement, Sydney Battle of the Bands +Various Artists: The Beach Hotel, Merewether Skyscraper Stan & The Commission Flats: The Oxford Circus, Darlinghurst
Crossroads: Minto Mirage Hotel, Minto Abbalanche - The Australian ABBA Tribute Show: Mounties (Showroom), Mt Pritchard Paul Mason: Mr Falcon’s, Glebe
Sam Newton: Flow Bar, Old Bar
In The Mood: State Theatre, Sydney
Acid King + Isaiah Mitchell + Seedy Jeezus + Los Honbres Del Diablo: Newtown Social Club, Newtown
The Sinking Teeth + Super Best Friends + Revellers: The Phoenix, Canberra Moonbase Commander: The Small Ballroom, Islington Lepers & Crooks: The Small Ballroom, Islington Blake Tailor: Town Hall Hotel, Balmain
Reckless: Orient Hotel, The Rocks Cambo: Oriental Hotel, Springwood
Eric Grothe & The Gurus: Towradgi Beach Hotel (Sports Bar), Towradgi
THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 45
Comedy / G The Guide
HCD feat. Splinter Cell + Toon & Raziel + Ivor + Mistortion + Sc@r + more: Valve Bar (Basement), Ultimo
Gypsy & The Cat
Freeform Only Launce with Haze + DJ Skoob + MO: Valve Bar (Level One), Ultimo
Yours & Owls Under 18s Mini Festival with Hermitude + Bec Sandridge + Hockey Dad + James Crooks + Nicole Millar + Pinheads + Skegss + The Vanns: Towradgi Beach Hotel (Waves), Towradgi Squeezebox Boogaloo: Vic On The Park, Marrickville
The Bear Hunt + Wasters: Vic On The Park, Marrickville
Paul Sun + John Mackie: Well Connected Cafe, Glebe
Sat 01 Moussa Diakite + Wassado: 505, Surry Hills
SUN 02
Reverse Charges + Tralala Blip: Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt
James Muller: 505, Surry Hills Ausmuteants: Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt
The Radiators: Bateau Bay Hotel, Bateau Bay
Freak Flag + Donatachi: Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst
Pup: Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle West Irish Mythen + Cass Eager: Camelot Lounge, Marrickville Club (The Paragon Showroom), Belmore Vaudeville Smash + Papaya Tree: Captain Cook Hotel, Paddington Listen Out 2016 feat. Rufus + A$AP Ferg + Jauz + Stormzy + Travis Scott + Tchami + Baauer + Claptone + Gordon City + Yung Lean + Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals + LDRU + Cosmos Midnight + Ngaiire + Joy. + Tash Sultana + Willow Beats + Sui Zhen + more: Centennial Park, Centennial Park
Catastro-sea Virtual Islands is the latest release from indie-pop duo Gypsy & The Cat and the perfect chance to see this new material for yourself is coming up at Newtown Social Club, Sunday.
Mister Picnic + Mary Rapp + Dewey: Gasoline Pony, Marrickville
John Rowles: Revesby Workers (Whitlam Theatre), Revesby
Beyond Festival feat. Hey Geronimo + Sons Of The East: Greenhills Centre, Stromlo
Xparte: Revesby Workers (Infinity Lounge), Revesby
Frank Yamma + Charlie McMahon: Hotel Blue, Katoomba
Brown Sugar: Rock Lily, Pyrmont
Jed Zarb: Jamison Hotel, Penrith
DJ Koby Justice: Rooty Hill RSL (Fred Chubb Lounge), Rooty Hill
Moksi: King Street Hotel, Newcastle West
The Sinking Teeth: Lass O’Gowrie, Wickham
Neko Nation feat. Various DJs: Manning Bar, Camperdown
Bill Patrick + Masomenos + Gabby + Systrum + Mantra Collective + Marcotix + more: Factory Theatre, Marrickville Hetty Kate Quartet: Foundry 616, Sydney
Big Scary + Dreller: Metro Theatre, Sydney Five Coffees: Mr Falcon’s, Glebe Tweed Valley Country Roots Festival 2016 feat. Kasey Chambers + Tim Rogers + John Williamson + Tex Perkins & the Band of Gold + Vika & Linda Bull + Wes Carr + Bill Chambers + Hussy Hicks + Little Georgia + Harry Hookey + Eagle & The Wolf + Pigram Brothers + Grizzlee Train + more: Murwillumbah Showground, Murwillumbah
Retread: Oatley Hotel, Oatley Russell Neal: Orange Grove Hotel, Lilyfield Elevate + Jimmy Bear: Orient Hotel, The Rocks Chastity Belt + Big White + Shady Nasty: Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst Clive Hay: Penrith Panthers (Squires Terrace Bar), Penrith Matt Jones Band: Penrith RSL (Castle Lounge), Penrith
46 • THE MUSIC • 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016
Paces: Proud Marys, Erina
Yours & Owls Festival feat. Ball Park Music + COG + The Jezabels + The Sonics + Ladyhawke + Hockey Dad + Client Liaison + Sampa The Great + Kilter + Antwon + Remi + Stonefield + Thelma Plum + Tired Lion + Nicole Millar + KLP + Shining Bird + Tees + more: Stuart Park, North Wollongong
Josh Rennie-Hynes: LazyBones Lounge, Marrickville Van Larkins: LazyBones Lounge (Level 1), Marrickville Somatik + DJ Alex Mac: Manly Wharf Hotel, Manly
Soul Empire: Marble Bar, Sydney
Bleached + Wax Witches + Rackett: Newtown Social Club, Newtown
Dashville Skyline: Dashville, Lower Belford
Isotopes + Yanomamo + My Secret Circus + Deadspace: Frankie’s Pizza By The Slice, Sydney
Kilter: Rad Bar, Wollongong
Lepers & Crooks: Long Jetty Hotel, Long Jetty
Official Listen Out After Party feat. All Friends + Blackjack + Goldbrix + Bucknite + Fiktion + Supa Sprung + Dekadence + DJ Just 1 + King Lee + Mike Hyper: Chinese Laundry, Sydney
Safia + Running Touch + Set Mo: Enmore Theatre, Newtown
Paul Hayward & his Sidekicks: Gasoline Pony, Marrickville
Colton Jones & The Delta Revue: Leadbelly (formerly The Vanguard), Newtown
The Laurels, alongside Medicine Voice, are supporting Canadian rockers Black Mountain on their return to Australia after seven years absence. They’ll be bringing their psych-filled wonderland to Factory Theatre on Monday.
Dashville Skyline: Dashville, Lower Belford
Brad Johns: Plough & Harrow, Camden
Mister Ott: LazyBones Lounge, Marrickville
Saskatchewan
Abby Dobson: Camelot Lounge (Django Bar), Marrickville
King Curly + Acca-Pony Choir + Paul Hayward & his Sidekicks: Gasoline Pony, Marrickville
Harry Coulson: Janes Wollongong, North Wollongong The Laurels
Vaudevillia by Mic Conway’s National Junk Band: Camelot Lounge, Marrickville
The Marvin Gaye Experience: The Basement, Sydney David Christie + Waylon Scott: The Front Cafe & Gallery, Lyneham
Pagan
Vaudeville Smash: The Oxford Circus, Darlinghurst Dead Farmers: The Phoenix, Canberra The Belafontes + Imperial Broads + Matilda Abraham + Wolf Cola: The Record Crate, Glebe Planet of the 8’s + Family Dog + The Grounds + Ace Efalent: The Small Ballroom, Islington Rockin’ for West Papua feat. Once Remained + Skinpin + Steinbrenner + The Grounds: The Vault, Broadmeadow Bill Patrick + Masomenos + Systrum + Amhain + Mantra Collective + Marcotix + Venda + Tyson Brunn + Marley Sherman: The Zoo Project, Potts Point Osaka Punch: Town Hall Hotel, Newtown
Pagan Dream Punk practitioners Pagan have chucked out some Wine & Lace in the form of a new single and are supporting Totally Unicorn on their Dream Life tour. Get mesmerised at Newtown Social Club on Thursday.
Gigs / Live The Guide
Drag Fest 2016 feat. Adore Delano + Duo Raw + Detox + Tammie Brown + April Carrion: Max Watt’s, Moore Park
Sahara Beck
DJ DZ Deathrays: Vic On The Park, Marrickville
Pat Capocci
Mon 03
Apollo The Party feat. Various DJs: Metro Theatre, Sydney
Tweed Valley Country Roots Festival 2016: Murwillumbah Showground, Murwillumbah
Joe Harmony’s Trippy Hippy Band + Sarah Hoggard + more: Camelia Grove Hotel, Alexandria
Gypsy & The Cat: Newtown Social Club, Newtown
Black Mountain + The Laurels + Medicine Voice: Factory Theatre, Marrickville
Red Runners Duo: Oatley Hotel, Oatley
The Brothers Comatose: Flow Bar, Old Bar
Reckless + Lonesome Train: Orient Hotel, The Rocks
Regular Dreamers
Sonic Mayhem Orchestra: LazyBones Lounge, Marrickville
Rev Heads
Blake Tailor: Penrith Panthers (Squires Terrace Bar), Penrith
Sahara Beck and The Creases are helping out Ball Park Music with their album tour for Every Night The Same Dream. Catch up with these summery indie folkers at Enmore Theatre on Friday.
Jazz Hourigan: Metro Theatre (The Lair), Sydney
Rockabilly roots rocker Pat Capocci is back from the US of A with the one and only Reverend Horton Heat. You can catch them playing Oxford Art Factory on Friday night.
Set Mo
Ready Set Mo Sydney DJ duo Set Mo join eclectic electronic acts Safia and Running Touch on a national tour for Safia’s new album Internal. They’ll be slamming Enmore Theatre on Sunday.
Yours & Owls Festival feat. Hermitude + Black Mountain + The Living End + Pup + DMA’s + Bleached + Tkay Maidza + Skegss + Big Scary + The Coathangers + Vera Blue + Chastity Belt + Little May + Totally Unicorn + The Belligerents + The Hard Aches + Bec Sandridge + The Pinheads + Horror My Friend + Pagan + more: Stuart Park, North Wollongong
The Monday Jam: The Basement, Sydney
Tue 04 Jodie Michael Trio + Joel Jenkins Trio: Foundry 616, Sydney Rock n Roll Karaoke: Frankie’s Pizza By The Slice, Sydney
Songs On Stage feat. Stuart Jammin + more: Kellys on King, Newtown
Songs On Stage feat. Joe Klein + Murder of Crows + Chris Brookes + Pauline Sparkle: Gladstone Hotel, Dulwich Hill
That Red Head: LazyBones Lounge, Marrickville
5 Seconds of Summer + Hey Violet: Hordern Pavilion, Moore Park
Live & Originals feat. Jessey Napa + Wolfie + Katherine Vavahea: Mr Falcon’s, Glebe Pup + Oslow: Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst
The Marvin Gaye Experience: The Basement, Sydney Paces: The Grand Hotel, Wollongong Burlap + Plyers + Clever + Ear Ache + Agency: The Phoenix, Canberra The Bear Hunt + The Last Exposure + Ex Cassette: The Record Crate, Glebe Stonefield + Rackett + White Bleaches: The Small Ballroom, Islington
Pink Chevys: Penrith RSL (Castle Lounge), Penrith
The Brothers Comatose: The Stag & Hunter Hotel, Mayfield
Spenda C + Terace + Ian Munro: Proud Marys, Erina
Motorik + Bicep: UTS Underground, Ultimo
Spit Syndicate: Rock Lily, Pyrmont We Come Out At Night feat. Vices + Staunch + Undercast + Lifes III + Divinate + Honest Crooks + Mixtape For The Drive + Whatever Forever: Scary Canary, Sydney
Durry + Skinpin + Stone Age + Uncanny Decoy + more: Valve Bar (Basement/Afternoon), Ultimo
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THE MUSIC 28TH SEPTEMBER 2016 • 47
Sydney Dance Company
18â&#x20AC;&#x201C;29 October
U
N TA M Visual Design by Clemens Habicht Director of Flume, Bloc Party and Tame Impala film clips Book Now roslynpackertheatre.com.au #UntamedSDC
Vivid colour and wild physicality
E D Supported by Sydney Dance Company Commissioning Fund. Dancers: Josephine Weise and Todd Sutherland. Photo by Peter Greig.