22.02.17 Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Sydney / Free / Incorporating
Middle Kids
The Band To Watch In 2017 Film T2 Trainspotting
Tour The Jerry Cans
Release Methyl Ethel
Issue
177
1 Olympic Dr, Milsons Point
SUBLIME WITH ROME THURSDAY 9 MARCH
ADVENTURE TIME LIVE AN INTERACTIVE LIVE SHOW FEATURING THE ALL-STAR CAST OF THE HIT CARTOON NETWORK SERIES.
SATURDAY 11 MARCH
MEGA 90’S
2 UNLIMITED, TECHNOTRONIC, REAL McCOY AND DR. ALBAN JOIN TOGETHER FOR A NIGHT OF MEGA 90’S HITS.
SATURDAY 25 MARCH
For more info and tickets visit bigtopsydney.com or contact our Box Office - 1300 BIG TOP // facebook.com/bigtopsydney
2 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND TOUR 2017
TUESDAY 4TH APRIL ENMORE THEATRE, SYDNEY Tickets and information available at alterbridge.com | mjrpresents.com
New album The Last Hero out now!
$ $", , , , $, , *"% "% " ,
!, +, !! &,( & , ) ! +,& '! , ! # &#
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 3
4 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
FEB 24 CASTLECOMER BASEMENT
THU 23RD 8PM
BASEMENT
FRI 24TH 8PM
LEVEL ONE
FRI 24TH 10PM
“UNDERACHIEVER”
BASEMENT
PRESENTS EMO/PUNK SHOW WITH SUPPORT FROM “ELK LOCKER”, “ANTONIA AND THE LAZY SUSANS”, “MARINA MITCHELL BAND”
SAT 25TH 8PM
THE ELEMENTS OF TECH AND BASS AND RIDDIM PRESENTS
DJ GUV & HEDEX
SUPPORTED BY THIERRY D, INVICTUS, STRAFE, BRUXISM, POLAR, MC’S D-TECH MC, TUKKA D
LEVEL ONE
SAT 25TH 10PM
DROP ZONE PRESENTS:
BEYOND DARKNESS
FEAT: JTS, TECHNIKORE, VENDETTA 7, ROYALS, TONIQ, HAZE, OKY, BRKDWN, CYDUST, DANEJER, SHOCK WAV IN THE NIGHT OF UK HARDCORE, REVERSE BASS, CLASSIC UK, RAWSTYLE, DRUM N BASS, EUPHORIC HARDSTYLE, INDUSTRIAL
BASEMENT
SUN 26TH 5PM
BROUHAHA POGO PARTY #2
RESIDENT SUPPORT THE GYPSY SCHOLARS
PUNK SHOW WITH “NEW TRENDS”, “STRAIGHT TO A TOMB”, “OPERATION IBIS”, “LEGAL ALIEN”, “COLLISION TIME”, “ESS-EM” AND DJ’1 THE UNDERGROUND SATURDAYS PRESENTS:
LAUNCH PARTY: SESSION 1
DEEP PROGRESSIVE TECH WITH DJ’S MS.T, AND.E, RICKY SEE CHIDI
“TIME ON EARTH”
HEAVY ROCK SHOW SUPPORTED BY LEGENDARY “NOBODY’S FOOL”, “WEB CITY LIMITS”
COMING UP
Thu 2 March: 8pm Basement: “Slow Nomad” presents Alt Rock/Funk/Reggae Show with support from many friends; Fri 3 March: 8pm Basement: “Sounds Like Winter” presents Dark Rock Show with support from “Anonymity”, “Skull And Dagger”, “Flight To Dubai” and special guests and DJ’s; 10pm Level One: Drop Zone presents: Night of darkness and heavy Electronica feat: JTS, Technikore, Vendetta 7, Royals, Toniq, Haze, Oky, Brkdwn, Cydust, Danejer, Shock Wav in the night of Uk Hardcore, Reverse Bass, Classic UK, Rawstyle, Drum N Bass, Euphoric Hardstyle, Industrial; Sat 4 March: 1pm Basement: SlapDash Entertainment presents Afternoon Matinee with “Strawberry Fistacake” (Melb), “New Trends”, “The Hannigans” “Be Faced”; 8pm Basement: Alternathon 2 feat: “Melancholy Flowers”, “Elaskia”, “Hans Yolo”, “FireChild”, “Anais Paris”, “Worsley”; 10pm Level One: TBC; Sun 5 March: “Broken Hands” in Hard Rock Show supported by “Pharaohs Of The Farout”, “LXM”, “The Make Up” and many special guests
W I T H
S P E C I A L
G U E S T S
JAALA
( S O LO )
ELIZABETH HUGHES
F R O N T I E R TO U R I N G . C O M | J U L I A J A C K L I N . C O M | D O N ’ T L E T T H E K I D S W I N O U T N O W V I A L I B E R AT I O N
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 5
Lifestyle Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Alrighty Then
Sydney soul rockers Polish Club have announced that they’ll be releasing their debut album, Alright Already, on 31 Mar. Alongside the album, the rollicking duo have confirmed plans for a headline tour this May/June.
Polish Club
At Lahst
8
Allah-Lahs released their third album Calico Review last year and we still didn’t get a tour. That’s about to change though as the LA rockers have announced their debut east coast run this May.
The number of years it has been since Midnight Oil performed live after it was announced the band will embark on a world tour this year from April.
Northeast Party House
Beach Trip Locked in to play Groovin The Moo this year, Melburnian sextet Northeast Party House have announced a run of shows in support of their new single, Calypso Beach, in May and June. 6 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
e / Cultu Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Credits
Publisher Street Press Australia Pty Ltd
Teal Deal
Group Managing Editor Andrew Mast
In support of her brand new single, Private, Vera Blue has announced that she will kick off a national headline run this April with special guests Mammals and Plgrms.
National Editor – Magazines Mark Neilsen Arts & Culture Editor Maxim Boon
Gig Guide Justine Lynch gigs@themusic.com.au Contributing Editor Bryget Chrisfield
Vera Blue
Editorial Assistants Brynn Davies, Sam Wall
Allah-Lahs
Midnight Oil. Pic by Cole Bennetts.
Contributors Adam Wilding, Anthony Carew, Brendan Crabb, Carley Hall, Cate Summers, Chris Familton, Daniel Cribb, Chris Maric, Christopher H James, Cyclone, Daniel Cribb, Danielle O’Donohue, Dave Drayton, Dylan Stewart, Guido Farnell, Guy Davis, James d’Apice, Jonty Czuchwicki, Liz Guiffre, Mac McNaughton, Mark Hebblewhite, Matt MacMaster, Mitch Knox, Neil Griffiths, Mick Radojkovic, Rip Nicholson, Rod Whitfield, Ross Clelland, Sam Baran, Samuel J Fell, Sarah Petchell, Sean Capel, Sean Maroney, Steve Bell, Tanya Bonnie Rae, Tim Finney, Uppy Chatterjee Photographers Angela Padovan, Cole Bennetts, Clare Hawley, Jared Leibowitz, Josh Groom, Kane Hibberd, Pete Dovgan, Peter Sharp, Rohan Anderson
Longitude & Raditude
Advertising Dept Georgina Pengelly, Brad Edwards sales@themusic.com.au
Legendary rockers Midnight Oil have announced their first world tour in 15 years, over 50 gigs around the world as part of The Great Circle World Tour, which will return to Oz in October/November.
Art Dept Ben Nicol, Felicity Case-Mejia Admin & Accounts Ajaz Durrani, Meg Burnham, Emma Clarke accounts@themusic.com.au Slumberjack
Distro distro@themusic.com.au Subscriptions store@themusic.com.au Contact Us PO Box 2440 Strawberry Hills NSW 2012 Suite 42, 89-97 Jones St Ultimo Phone (02) 9331 7077 info@themusic.com.au www.themusic.com.au
Luca Brasi
— Sydney
Bras Tracks Tassie punk lads Luca Brasi are fresh off the Party In The Paddock festival and eager to announce a set of headline dates for themselves later on this year in June and July.
Jacked In support of their forthcoming EP, Fracture, Perth duo Slumberjack have announced an Australian headline tour slated for this May. The dance act will kick off in Brisbane, before stopping in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 7
Music / Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Surf’s Up
Winning The Tosca
This Saturday is the kick off of the Australian Open Of Surfing. The world’s best will converge at Manly Beach until 5 Mar to compete in surfing, skating and BMXing with live performances from The Jezabels, Hermitude and more.
Presented by Opera Australia, John Bell’s acclaimed production of Puccini’s romantic masterpiece, Tosca, transplants the action to WWII era Nazi-occupied Rome. Get your culture fix at the Sydney Opera House until 31 Mar.
Australian Open Of Surfing
Tosca
Secret Garden Festival
Garden Party Fancy dress forest party Secret Garden Festival kicks of this Friday/ Saturday. There’s a massive line-up including Urthboy and Bec Sandridge, the Secret Garden Olympics, 14 forest dance floors, pop-up arties and more.
Joel Creasey and Rhys Nicholson
[first day as surgeon] Whoa shit there’s a whole fuckin skeleton in here lol spooky @AndrewChamings
A Golden Gay Time The Mardi Gras Comedy Festival gets underway this week with a whole host of hilarity in store including Amy Schumer’s bestie Bridgett Everett and Joel Creasey & Rhys Nicholson’s GAYmes Night!
8 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
Arts / Li Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Here
Frontlash
Away
Sydney Theatre Company and Malthouse Theatre’s coproduction of Michael Gow’s Away has opened at Sydney Opera House. You can see the much-loved coming of age story up until 25 Mar.
Back In The Saddle
The Harold Park Hotel is back hosting live music outdoors again after working out its issues with the Council.
Keeping Sydney Open
Julia Jacklin
The crowd might have been smaller, but the message was no less important – the pressure needs to continue on lockouts.
A Little Longer
On the back of her critically acclaimed debut LP, Don’t Let The Kids Win, Julia Jacklin is set to perform her biggest headline shows to date this May with support from four-piece, Jaala.
Speaking of lockouts, venues geared towards live entertainment like World Bar and Stonewall have been granted slightly longer opening hours.
Lashes
Jack-Lin Action
Keep Sydney Open rally. Pic: Josh Groom
Backlash The Unclean
We cannot believe “clean coal” could be in line to receive funding from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Just another way the Government has lost its way if it thinks coal is in anyway clean.
A Long Wick kd lang
Lang Time Coming Grammy- and Juno-Award winning singer-songwriter kd lang has announced her return to our shores this year, in celebration of the 25th birthday of her iconic album, Ingenue. The Ingenue Redux tour starts July.
Even though it’s been out in the US and other places for nearly a couple of weeks now, we can’t quite fathom why we have to wait until May to see John Wick: Chapter 2 here.
DC Universe Films
We’re not sure why when they nail it in the TV shows, DC films can’t catch a trick with The Flash and now The Batman having director issues.
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 9
Music
Centre Stage Keening vocals, a crispy hook and lashings of slide steel guitar — Middle Kids have fine-tuned their formula for overnight lasting success. Hannah Joy shows Brynn Davies that there’s no middle child syndrome to see here.
L
ast Wednesday evening, Sydney darlings Middle Kids walked out onto the set of Conan after arriving in the US the night before, smashing out their sun-drenched hit single Edge Of Town for a global audience. Watching Hannah Joy wail and wiggle alongside husband Tim Fitz (playing that titillatingly subtle slide guitar) and drummer Harry Day, it’s hard to believe that a trio performing with such dexterity hadn’t played a single gig when the track dropped in May last year. Yup, not one. A week earlier, 26-year-old Joy laughs heartily when we’re (very) formally introduced over the phone. “There should be trumpets — ba ba ba ba-de-baaa,” she chortles. Their debut EP and a string of headline and festival shows now tucked snugly under their belt, Joy feels more comfortable talking to media than she did nine months ago. “When we first started doing press stuff we hadn’t actually
10 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
done that much,” she exclaims. “I mean, there’s more content now so there’s more to talk about, but I remember just feeling like every time we had interviews we didn’t have much to say. We’d only released one song, we’d only played one show, you know? It felt premature... It’s like, I probably shouldn’t do interviews, like, ‘Who are you to do an interview?’”
Self-depreciating humour aside, the trio have well and truly earned their place in the spotlight. Not many groups can lay claim to national airplay and sold out shows off the back of their first single. As well as buckets of triple j support, Edge Of Town was spun by none other than Sir Elton John on his Beats 1 radio show; the track has accumulated over 3.8 million Spotify streams at the time of writing. By mid-2016 the band were trotting through iconic US venues like Mercury Lounge in New York and The Echo in Los Angeles, had a run of shows in the UK and became a staple on the festival circuit back home. But it had to start somewhere. After Edge Of Town grew legs and hit the ground running, Joy, Fitz and Day realised that they were going to have to figure out a live set, fast. “That was definitely like, ‘Okaaay, so, we gotta pull something together!’” she grimaces. “Tim and I had been playing for a while together on my solo project and
Music Harry had played a little bit on that too, so we were quite familiar with each other’s musicality, but we were definitely scrambling to get a full set together!” Their first Middle Kids gig sold out The Oxford Circus in Darlinghurst in early July. “It was such a special, fun gig. We were like ‘wow’, so surprised it was sold out, the energy in the room was so good. I must say though, the capacity wasn’t huge, like 150 or something,” she shrugs. Fast forward a few months and they found themselves running amok on the stages of Fairgrounds, Volumes, Festival Of The Sun and more. “I feel like our music is good on a big stage like that. Historically we played in these small venues where the stages were tiny, so we were really squished. It was so awesome to be able to dance and move around because there was so much space. I could leap and lunge and crash into cymbals! “For things to move in a way it hadn’t before was quite exciting,” she continues, “because you definitely do just get used to doing your thing and having your family go, ‘You’re cool!’ and you’re like, ‘Thank you’ and that’s enough. But the energy that comes out of that is awesome, really positive and motivating.”
We’d only released one song, we’d only played one show, you know? It felt premature. Follow-up single Your Love dropped in August, proving Edge Of Town was no flash in the pan. They were the talk of BIGSOUND in September, and won FBi Radio’s Northern Lights competition (sending them to perform at the Iceland Airwaves Music Festival in Reykjavik) in the same month. “BIGSOUND was where we were able to connect with Jim [Pitt, Conan’s booker] for the first time and where we began the conversation about coming on the show, so it’s hard to imagine that happening so soon without the conference,” she acknowledges. Their uniformly exceptional six-track EP Middle Kids is a testament to Fitz’s inventive production and Joy’s dynamic lyricism. Engaging storytelling (and that damn fine slide guitar) lies at the heart of their musicality, with Joy stressing the importance of communicating a full narrative within the allocated time frame. “I feel like something that’s powerful about songs, about singing, is the chance to tell a story. And so I think lyrics in that way are really exciting because you have three-
and-a-half minutes to tell a story that helps shape a point of view,” she muses. “I don’t use my life story; I use a story that’s maybe a little more broad — important or relatable to people.” Keeping things personal would “feel too vulnerable, and also I don’t want to get too navel-gazey: ‘This is me, this is me.’ It’s not about me, it’s about bigger things, bigger stories. I am quite vulnerable in terms of my emotions as a performer, but I think that to be vulnerable is a really important part of being a musician in a way that makes sense to you.” Middle Kids was predominantly recorded in Fitz and Joy’s home with the exception of Day’s drums, recorded at Parliament Studios in Sydney. “We recorded nearly everything on the EP in the basement... Tim’s interface didn’t have enough channels for a talkback mic at the time so if Harry was recording in the basement he’d have to yell feedback down a laundry shoot from the control room upstairs,” she laughs. “We were making demos here and we really loved the feel of them — sometimes there’s just a little bit of magic and you don’t know what it is, you just know it feels good. So we decided to follow that and I think that for our first EP it’s kinda special to do that, to then grow from that place. But we’re already starting to work on the album and I think that we’ll record that a little differently, maybe more in the studio, and collaborate with a producer or something... We’re really interested to see what will happen when making our first album, just wanting to keep that but then also we do want to grow and feel like the sound is evolving, not getting stuck. It’ll be an interesting balancing act.” A few days after landing on US soil and the band are still on a high... quite literally. “America is a very big place so naturally there’s a lot more venues and a lot more artists. It’ll be amazing to be on the road traveling from town to town playing shows every night, which is a bit harder to do in Australia... We are so excited [to play with Cold War Kids]. Their first album is one of Tim’s favourite records so he’s losing his mind,” Joy laughs. “Conan was so fun and we still can’t believe we got that opportunity. We’d never done anything like that before so there was some anxious energy flying around backstage. Harry had a lot of fructose that day, so [he] was bouncing off the walls a bit!” Bon voyage kids!
What: Middle Kids (EMI) When & Where: 21 Apr, Oxford Art Factory
Lights, Camera, Action As well as signing to EMI Australia, Middle Kids have inked a deal with US label Domino, who took one look at their homemade video for Edge Of Town and suggested they do it a little more professionally, this time with Melbourne-based music video producer and director Josh Harris at the helm.
“We made that original one ourselves,” Joy smiles. “We just recently signed to Domino in America and they, we, thought we’d make another one that’s a bit more hi-fi for the American people.” Did they think the other one sucked? “Kind of,” she giggles, “but they were nice about it. We literally filmed that
on a little camera in our house, I was surprised about how well it turned out.” They’ve just dropped an accompanying clip to third single Middle Kids have inked a deal with US label Domino with Emile Frederick on directorial duties, filmed while gigging in
the UK. “We had a sound check in London, and then we had two hours before we were on stage, so we filmed it in that gap. Argh! I was kinda sweaty from the sound check and we just wore whatever we were wearing.”
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 11
Music
Gimme Shelter Genuine EDM wunderkinds Porter Robinson and Madeon have been circling each other for years, but Cyclone discovers that when the Shelter live tour wraps they’ll be heading their separate ways.
P
orter Robinson and Hugo “Madeon” Leclercq have formed a post-EDM supergroup. They’re touring a spectacular audiovisual live show behind their viral glitch-pop hit, Shelter. But fans should catch them in Australia this February - the Shelter experience is a one-off. Robinson, from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Leclercq, from Nantes, France, each began as kid bedroom producers - their career trajectories “shockingly similar”, Robinson recaps during our three-way phone call. “Hugo and I met online about 11 or ten years ago -
We are not making an album and we do not have more music together.
so that was way before either of us had any whisper of a music career. We were both on music production forums. We were the young guns doing it. So Hugo was 11 or 12, I was 14 or 15. In a way, we had a kind of rivalry.” Being underage, the pair independently created electronic music inspired by, not club culture, but video games and crossover acts like Daft Punk. As such, they’d bring fresh perspectives to the scene, culminating in high concept albums. In 2014, Robinson - Skrillex his patron early on - presented the dazzling Worlds. The next year, Leclercq aired Adventure. Both have collaborated with others - Robinson teaming with Zedd and Mat Zo, and Leclercq lending his production prowess to Lady Gaga and Coldplay. Though associated with the electro-house 12 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
sub-genre “complextro” (coined by Robinson), they’re now more interested in “songs”. “I’ve seen so many micro-genres come and go that the emergence of a new one doesn’t get me as excited as it once did,” Robinson remarks. “But songs are timeless.” Throughout, Robinson and Leclercq exchanged music and feedback. Their friendship has transcended music. “Hugo and I can talk endlessly and alienate everyone else in the room,” Robinson notes. In August they launched their first collab, Shelter - Robinson supervising its sublime animated film clip. Still, assembling a back-to-back show behind one single is daring. Says Leclercq, “When Porter and I started talking about collaborating, we really were focused on making a song. We didn’t think about a tour right away. [But] the more we talked, the more we revisited our discography, the idea for the show came to us.” “Right,” Robinson affirms. “It’s the two of us really revisiting our own discography - reinterpreting ourselves and reinterpreting one another. It’s brand-new. It consists of both [of] us on stage at the same time: playing live, singing, playing keys, triggering samples, [playing] drum pads - the whole works.” Since the initial leg of the Shelter Live Tour - encompassing 30-plus North American dates - the combo have tweaked the set. “It’s mostly nerdy stuff,” Leclercq says. They need to keep it stimulating for themselves. However, the duo are adamant that there won’t be an album. “What was attractive to us about this collaboration was that it was gonna be fleeting,” Leclercq explains. “It was gonna be one song, one tour - and then nothing more. So we are not making an album and we do not have more music together.” They’ll part following Coachella. Indeed, Robinson and Leclercq are inherently restive. They also value their own autonomy. “If we kept Shelter going for too long, then the ways that our tastes don’t fully overlap would become frustrating,” Leclercq says. Despite its ephemerality, Shelter is proving “beneficial” to the pals’ solo work, both already plotting new projects. They’re cagey about details. Yet Leclercq has progressed the most. Robinson recently revealed on Twit Twitter that his output slowed in 2015 due to “self-doubt and depression”. Today he’s positive. “I think most of my and Hugo’s most raw artistic ambitions are, to be honest, kind kinda being expressed outside of Shelter right now in the new music that we’re writing. I think that we’re both really rest restless and anxious and have these new ideas that we’re really, really amped up about - whereas Shelter we see as being more of, like, a homage to our pasts. Hugo and I have known each other for ten years - and we do see this tour as a way of looking back. But, in a way, we’ve almost saved some of the things that we really wanna express in the future - we’ve kept that out of this show so that they’ll arrive fully formed in a really solidified vision in the future. So we’re censoring ourselves a little bit with this show.”
When & Where: 25 Feb, Hordern Pavilion
ORLD FAMOU EW S TH
SHO WCASE
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 13
Music
Worse Than That Conor Oberst tells Hannah Story about seasonal depression, finding a benign cyst in his brain, and being a 37-year-old with roommates.
C
onor Oberst’s latest record, Ruminations, an album of demos released last October, was written and recorded over two days against the backdrop of a brutal winter in Omaha, Nebraska, Oberst’s hometown. A kind of “seasonal depression” affects the mood of the album: “It’s a real thing when your body’s used to sunlight and it’s deprived of it - it can mess with your physiology and stuff... I think it absolutely affects the way your mind works.” The album brings Oberst back “full circle” to a stripped-back writing and recording mode akin to his first records released as Bright Eyes when he was just a teenager. “I hadn’t made a record that was so truly solo,
Obviously we’re in a complete crisis over here with the new Trump America.
where it was just me playing everything, and in one take, like basically playing live, since I was a teenager, so it’s interesting that now I’m 37, I’m back to doing what I was doing when I was 14.” The ease of that twirl in direction stands as a testament to Oberst’s longevity as a musician, making music for over 20 years that appeals to people across generations. “I’m a person who’s trying to figure stuff out at whatever age I was. The songs I wrote when I was 19 sound like that. The songs I wrote when I was 26 sound like that to me, and now, whatever. I think that I was always writing as best I could from my perspective and my worldview at the time. “It’s been cool lately, I’ve noticed at shows that there is an even wider range of, like not elderly people, but like 14 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
people in their 60s that are into it, and teenagers... That makes me think that it’s not a fad or something, that it’s actually something people can keep with them for a long time.” In late 2015, before beginning work on Ruminations, Oberst cancelled the North American Desaparecidos tour, due to “laryngitis, anxiety and exhaustion”. But Oberst says that what he was suffering from when he was admitted to hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, was “actually even kind of worse than that”. A CAT scan and MRI had revealed an anomaly in his brain. Oberst made his way to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where a high school friend, who had become brain researcher and doctor at the Clinic, ran tests to uncover what was found to be a benign cyst. “At the Mayo Clinic they were basically like, ‘It could’ve been there your whole life.’ I guess they can tell when they look at it if it’s growing or mutating or whatever, and mine is the kind that isn’t problematic, so that was a happy end to the whole saga.” The anxiety of that experience, combined with a dose of the winter blues, is reflected in Ruminations, and on Salutations, a full-band re-imagining of those same demos, due out in March. “Obviously the record’s pretty dark, and I was in the midst of all that when I started writing the songs, so I got reflective in there, on top of the snow outside and all that. But happy days are here again, summer’s coming soon, it’s all good.” Oberst can look forward to catching a little of the tail-end of Australian summer when he plays at the Sydney Opera House for one night only at the end of February. He’ll then head back to his home in Omaha - the other is in Los Angeles - to the house he shares with his wife, Corina Figueroa Escamilla, and two friends, Miwi La Lupa and Roger Lewis (and a couple dogs). “Everyone’s a musician and everyone travels and does different things so people are in and out of the house... It’s a big enough house where it’s not like we’re living like we’re in college or something. I love ‘em all, we’re like a weird little family.” But it won’t be long before Oberst heads back on the road, partnering for his US tour with Plus 1, so that $1 from every ticket sale will help support Planned Parenthood. “Obviously we’re in a complete crisis over here with the new Trump America. It felt to me like Planned Parenthood, growing up, that was the place where you went. I remember going there as a teenager scared as shit, because ‘Oh no, I think I have an STD,’ or something. It’s the place that kids turn to, girls turn to when they need elp. “It’s so disgusting and criminal to me that they’re being targeted by the Republicans, [who are] trying to shut down as many of them as they can, and defund it and everything else. “At this point I feel like whatever you can do, even if it’s just a little gesture, if everybody does something hopefully it will have a cumulative effect on the situation.”
What: Salutations (Nonesuch/Warner) When & Where: 27 Feb, Sydney Opera House
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 15
Music
The Golden Zone Methyl Ethel mastermind Jake Webb talks recording kookaburras with “evil-sounding laughs”, striving for “that personal best” live performance and baffling Bowie lyrics with Bryget Chrisfield.
W
hen asked whether he had a clear vision of where he wanted his music to take him in the early stages of Methyl Ethel, the band’s mastermind Webb admits, “There’s still no clear vision; I just wanna serve the song, it’s no greater than that. They live in their own world, and I love making them, and that’s the golden zone.” His relationship with live performance “has its ups and downs”. “It can be great and it can be painful.” Initially, one of Webb’s “bucket list” items was “to play overseas”. Tick. “I basically review what I’ve been doing on a yearly basis and think, ‘Should I just bother
I think of that lyric from, I think it’s called Sweet Thing, on Diamond Dogs; he just randomly says ‘hamburgers’!”
anymore or not?’ So, yeah! That would’ve been one of the goals, so it’s nice to have achieved that.” His band was booked to play Primavera Sound in Barcelona last year “which was pretty fun”, Webb allows. “I dunno, I’m not really a festival lover... Now, I guess, I just want to play good shows; just build a good live show and, you know, we’re working on it. And, yeah! The technical side of live performance is, I guess, what I’m into at the moment. “We’ve come off a few years doing it as a threepiece and I think we really got to a point where we hit our stride, and we were a little bit - you sort of get to the freedom point when you can just feel it up there. And now we’ve come back and we thought, ‘Okay, that’s good. We sort of maxed-out as that and now we’ve 16 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
sort of added another person, and rebuilt some of the songs, and it’s just back to the grindstone and work on it until it hits that point again... I guess, just like a sport or something: you just wanna be getting to that personal best,” he laughs. “I just think there’s so many great artists out there and, you know, people who probably don’t get the opportunity that we do, so why not make the most of it while we’ve got it.” On whether he’s conscious of how songs will translate live while he’s in the composing and recording stages, Webb informs, “I’d rather use the studio as as much of an instrument as anything else and just, like, build the song into what it kind of needs to be. And then reverse-engineer it when it comes to trying to play it live, which is fun in and of itself - and a good challenge, too.” The discussion turns to how songs can keep growing, almost becoming their own individual entities through live performance, and Webb concurs, “Exactly. And I’m interested in, like, the creating of sounds themselves. So that means that you have to kind of figure out and maverick a way to produce it live then, I dunno, I guess that’s just part of the fun of it.” Webb often incorporates field recordings into his creation process. “It’s always good if I’m sort of feeling stuck for ideas to build some little ambient tracks,” he divulges. So what does he use to record found sounds? “I just use my iPhone, mostly... It’s pretty good having a little field recorder in your pocket 24/7,” Webb acknowledges. When asked what we can listen out for on Everything Is Forgotten, the frontman enlightens, “There’s some kookaburras in there somewhere. I was recording down at my parents’ house and I came home from the beach, and the kookaburras just had the most evilsounding laughs! Like, it sounded really quite evil. I had to put that in there. And I was alone, as well.” Wow, that must’ve been freaky! “It was a good freaky,” he chuckles. Listen out for these demonic-sounding terrestrial tree kingfishers on new album track Summer Moon. A lot of the lyrics on Everything Is Forgotten were “deciphered from stream of conscious vocal takes”, Webb enlightens. “A lot of the time I would just launch into things to kind of put a bit of a foundation, and a bed bedrock, into the song and then almost translate it,” c he continues. “Sometimes at least kind of the vowel sou sounds - obviously they sort of seem to be coming from som somewhere; they seem to fit best, yeah.” We discuss son by other artists where it seems jibberish has been songs left in, not replaced by actual lyrics and Webb laughingly offers, “I always think of that lyric from, I think it’s called Sweet Thing, track two [actually three] on Diamond Dogs; he just randomly says “hamburgers” at one point!”
What: Everything Is Forgotten (Dot Dash/ Remote Control) When & Where: 24 Feb, Newtown Social Club; 29 Apr, Groovin The Moo, Maitland; 7 May, Groovin The Moo, Canberra
DON'T MISS OUT ON TICKETS FOR OUR FINAL SHOWS! MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED...
. -
(:;
. -
ON SALE NOW VIA
WWW.NEWTOWNSOCIALCLUB.COM AND 1300 724 867 387 KING ST, NEWTOWN, 2042
(:; /(#.3
&)),-
' ."3& ." & 62/' 287
% .3 -. & 6(//,1* )$67
FRANKIE COSMOS USA
04/03
. -
(:;
#! ."#
MARGARET GLASPY USA - 07/03
./,#( , % - 8. 6(//,1* )$67
jKO=JN= KG;A=LQ .
., 0), " && 86$ 6(//,1* )$67
' ,! , . !& -*3 86$ 62/' 287
22/04
. -
WINDHAND/COUGH USA
05/04
(:;
USA
&/* $
-1 '* .) - " , 025( '' 0# " #( & ." ! (! 86$ )&% /% 86$ + )! .,/'* .
)-') - '# (#!".62/' 287
'3 -" ,% 62/' 287
. " (,3 1 !)(- $)((3 ,#.4 + ,/ 3 )). -" !,/(1 & 03 %()1& - 8. (#%%# "#&& 86$ 6(//,1* )$67 ." , ), )'* (3 86$ -., ( ) ) %- 86$ + ( & -- ))!# 86$ ,)&&#(! & %)/.- 6(//,1* )$67 ! , ." &# # , 7+( '521(6 0$7,1((
),- &
! , ." &# # , 7+( '521(6 62/' 287
21/< 6<'1(< 6+2:
'3 -" ,% 0$7,1(( 62/' 287
11/04
'3 -" ,% 62/' 287
17/04
. -
")&&3 .",)- 36(//,1* )$67
(:;
),#
, ' ( 86$
'3 / 6:('(1 ,&(/$1' - ( ,# ! 6(//,1* )$67
DORSAL FINS 24/03
BIG THIEF USA
01/03
)$5(:(// 1(:72:1 6& 6+2:
." '),,#-)(-
)-') - '# (#!".62/' 287
LUPA J
,# " , /." ,. 025(
.
,))% )&)/,- 6(//,1* )$67
NIKKI HILL
& 1)) 0$7,1(( 6(//,1* )$67
jKO=JN= KG;A=LQ .
GKDGO
, (%# )-')- 86$ 6(//,1* )$67
,/- .")'*-)( 0$7,1((
' ,! , . !& -*3 86$ 6(//,1* )$67 ,)% ( -.)( , ), - , 1 && F 1.)1( - -")1
ROLLING BLACKOUTS C.F.
-"#,.62/' 287 -.)(
")&&# -'#." 1 = 6(//,1* )$67
'* )* 62/' 287
(:;
."#(!- )
#'* ,# & ,) - 025( )-') - '# (#!".6(//,1* )$67 %3& &#)(" ,.6(//,1* )$67 .#$/ ( ,. & 6(//,1* )$67 ." &)/ - 62/' 287 # " ,. "#,)-"#' 1#( " ( )/!" 86$ 6(//,1* )$67 /*- & )1(- 6(//,1* )$67 >JGFL =F< DG9<=J
. 2#,#
. -
86$ 6(//,1* )$67
1#(-.)( -/,
#(-
-1 . , *- & )/.& 1-
6(//,1* )$67
HAPPY HOUR PINTS MON - FRI 5 TO 7PM II KITCHEN OPEN L ATE PLUS HEAPS MORE AT W W W.NEW TOWNSOCIALCLUB.COM
THE MUSIC â&#x20AC;¢ 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 â&#x20AC;¢ 17
Music
Reaching Into The Past It’s not often you hear an album sung in Inuktitut. Andrew Morrison from Canadian group The Jerry Cans tells Brynn Davies about evolving native traditions to encourage their children to embrace their ancestry.
A
shiver of Arctic wind carries the bark and howl of huskies through the speakers, a crisp crunch of snow underfoot melts away the summer heat from whatever stifling room you’re sitting in and replaces it with vast expanses of rolling tundra. “We wanted to really make an album that transports people from wherever they are to the Arctic and we did that in Intro - we wanted to find the coldest-sounding wind you can find, which is very challenging!” laughs Andrew Morrison. “Everyone in the band grew up in Iqaluit, Nunavutin, in the Arctic of Canada... It’s an Indigenous community,
He had a lot of rifles and it was like, ‘If you’re gonna date my daughter you’re gonna speak Inuktitut’.
the people where we live [were] formerly known as Eskimos, but we don’t use that term any more because it’s now considered a derogatory term... It’s a beautiful spot, there’s no trees, it’s all rolling hills and tundra and mountains. Usually they get three hours of light in the winter, 20 hours of darkness and in the summertime there’s 24 hours of light - so it’s quite a different world,” he enlightens. Canadian outfit The Jerry Cans are committed to preserving the language and culture of their northern roots, dispelling misrepresentations of native communities and modernising the Inuktitut tongue, traditional instruments and folk songs as a way to encourage the younger generation to embrace their 18 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
ancestry. “We wanted our daughters to communicate in their own language and be proud of speaking in their own language,” Morrison explains of the decision to embrace the Inuktitut dialect on their third record Inuusiq/Life. “For young people there’s a lot of pressure growing up in this global world, and we wanted to tell young people they should be proud of who they are, proud of knowing their ancestral language.” “I started to learn the language because Nancy [Mike, throat singer/accordionist]’s father couldn’t speak English. He had a lot of rifles and it was like, ‘If you’re gonna date my daughter you’re gonna speak Inuktitut.’ It was an extra level of motivation,” he laughs heartily. The Jerry Cans pass on his story in Tusaavit (Can You Hear?): “Nancy’s father was born out on the land before there was even a community. He was born in a snow house an igloo, a very iconic symbol of the north. So he lived his life out on the land and had to provide for his family. And similar to Australia, there was a system of government schools - they took children away and made them go to school and learn English and learn a trade - and it was very traumatic for a lot of families and communities. He was very much punished, he refused to go to school and he lived a very basic life. Sometimes it’s hard for young people to have any kind of understanding of what life was like back then. Sometimes I think that young people think the old ways have no value, but we wanted to switch that around and really honour the strength and endurance and ability to survive under really grave circumstances.” The group not only want to reinvigorate passion for their culture within young Indigenous fans, but also “demystify” the western idea of the north for a broader audience. “It’s hard, we like to talk about these issues but we also like to tell it in a way that shows the world that we’re doing something about it,” he impassions. “To me, mental health and suicide is one of the big ones for young people. Everyone in our band has lost family members or old friends to suicide and I think that’s just one example of an issue that’s really challenging for people. And violence; within relationships, families, within communities. And that’s what I wanted to remind my daughters; all these things that we need to focus on, to build on; I’m getting a bit emotional from it,” he confides, “Especially with the world now, the people in power - it’s dangerous. It’s an especially important time to rally and find each other and remind each other that we’re beautiful and strong no matter what.” Mike - the only Inuk member - is the featured throat singer on tracks such as Ukiuq - a tradition that, while “not formally outlawed, was very strongly discouraged”, Morrison explains. “It was seen as backwards, and Christianity really trumped tradition. But it’s gone through a very cool revitalisation over the last 20 to 25 years.”
What: Inuusiq (Aakuluk Music) When & Where: 17, 18 & 19 Mar, Blue Mountains Music Festival, Katoomba; 22 Mar, The Rails, Byron Bay
Eat / Drink Eat/Drink
Shhhhh...
IT’S A SECRET
Are you over fast food? It might be time to pimp your meal with an item from the fabled Secret Menu. We took our empty stomachs to Maccas to test drive some of the best burger hacks from Mickey D’s secret stash.
What’s the Secret Menu? These unofficial items are outlandish creations made from combos of different things found on the existing menu. Secret items have been dreamt up by fast food lovers across major chains, but McDonald’s has by far the biggest selection. You can’t order these burgers over the counter, so expect to do a little self-assembly.
Land, Sea And Air Burger A carnivore’s delight, this Franken-burger features beef, chicken and filet-O-Fish patties, stacked into one artery clogging beast. It’s a whistle-stop tour through the animal kingdom (in your mouth). What to Order: a regular cheeseburger, a Filet-O-Fish and a McChicken.
Verdict: I love wordplay as much as the next man, but despite the nifty, pun-elicious logic behind this burger’s name, it’s not quite as much fun to eat. The sticking point is the seafood element, which throws a jarring, fishy tang into the flavour combo that just doesn’t work.
McGangBang With a McChicken rudely shoved in between the patties of a McDouble, it’s not hard to work out how this saucy burger got its racy name. These meat-filled buns are Ooo La La. You know you want it.
What to order: a McDouble and a McChicken Verdict: Easily the most successful mashup from the secret selection. You get all the flavours of each burger, without the combination becoming too overwhelming. We can see this becoming a favourite of the drunk Maccas run at the end of a night out.
Big McChicken Who needs bread when you have deep fried chicken? This tribute to the coronary on a plate that is KFC’s Double Down, this monster is a Big Mac with the bread replaced by McChicken patties. What to order: three McChickens and a Big Mac Verdict: This is a real gut-buster and not dissimilar to eating a deep-fried breezeblock.
Construction is a little on the messy side, and it’s no mean feat fitting it in your gob, but once you’ve figured out how to eat the thing it’s a pretty good meal, although a food coma is a very likely side-effect.
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 19
Music
Milo Goes Down Under Legendary punk pioneers Descendents have returned with a new album and a renewed lust for life. Mark Hebblewhite cornered vocalist (and band mascot) Milo Aukerman to find out the latest.
“W
e always have a blast when we come to Australia - and in fact this will be our third time there since we started touring again. Australia was one of the first places we toured when we got together as a band again, and I remember that first time I actually lost my voice. Even on the second tour I was struggling a bit - this time around though I’m in much better shape. When I rehearse now I mimic the live situation - so I’m much better prepared and ready to go.” As Milo Aukerman alludes, for many years Descendents were an off and on proposition. Fast forward to 2017 and Descendents are firing on all cylinders. “I don’t
work as a research scientist anymore so I can concentrate on the band full-time,” explains Aukerman. “Also [drummer] Bill [Stevenson]’s health is much better than it was - so the roadblocks that were there for the band have pretty much gone. We still all work around things like having families, but now we can play a lot more shows and hopefully put out a new record in the next few years. Our fans deserve new music - and I should say that we’ve already started writing songs for a new record - so it’s really exciting.” With an extensive back catalogue behind them, putting a setlist together is always challenging for Descendents. But according to Aukerman the perfect recipe is a little bit of everything. “We like to play something from all the periods of the band going right back to 1981 and the Fat EP. Obviously we also have the new record out and we plan
20 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
The roadblocks that were there for the band have pretty much gone. We still all work around things like having families, but now we can play a lot more shows and hopefully put out a new record in the next few years. on playing several songs from that record - they’ve been going down really well over the last six months.” When the Descendents began in 1977 it was a fertile time for punk rock. Bands like Black Flag were tearing up the rule book with a raw and frightening brand of punk that quickly became known as ‘hardcore’. Descendents, however, delivered a high-intensity sound that relied on melody rather than distortion - and joy rather than anger. Aukerman credits a very unlikely source for this approach. “Both Bill and I were huge Beatles fans,” he reveals. “There was also a band that started around the time Black Flag did called The Last, who were doing a harder edged punk rock version of the Beatles. That really left a big impression on us because we loved the aggression of the punk movement but we also wanted to write melodic music.” Aukerman isn’t just ‘the singer’ of the band. He’s also the mascot, his bespectacled visage graces pretty much every Descendents record cover and a bucketload of band merchandise. How does Aukerman feel about being a punk rock visual icon? “It was never my plan to be the ‘face’ of the band,” laughs Aukerman. “We are very collegiate as a band but if anyone is really the band leader it’s Bill, not me. Actually, it was Bill’s idea to take the cartoon of me that a classmate of ours had drawn and put it on the Milo Goes To College album. We try to move away from that face whenever possible,” he laughs, “but when it comes down to it, it’s a cool, simple drawing that sticks in people’s head. I’m actually not an attention seeking person - I’m really shy - and that’s the irony of the whole situation.”
When & Where: 24 Feb, Enmore Theatre
Music
Divine Balancing Act
Holy Holy guitarist Oscar Dawson and Brynn Davies discuss paint, Paint, and the internal tug of war when pushing the boundaries of their second album.
W
e all thought that Holy Holy had hit the nail on the head with their expansive, shimmery wash of languid guitars, blended cymbals and lyrical landscapes on 2015’s When The Storms Would Come. Yet while we were singing the praises of their debut, guitarist Oscar Dawson was already itching for a change of pace. “I get bored easily,” he shrugs. “I didn’t want to make another record like the one that we had, and by the time we finished that first record - I was really proud of it - but I was wanting to try different sounds and move on.” Enter Paint: ten virile, sonorous compositions that wear the scrapes and grubby prints that come with finding the freedom to experiment. “[Paint] definitely feels more singular. Speaking for myself, it’s somewhat of a reaction to the first record. I don’t think that’s a bad thing; change is good! “In the boundaries of your imagination there’s nothing you can’t do. It’s about whether you let yourself do those things that define what you sound like. It’s more about your decisions rather than who you are in some ways. We’d come to these points where we’d have to decide amongst each other and sometimes we’d have to hustle a little bit about what we should sound like; is this too much, is it too far, is it not far
enough, is this us? And most of the time we decided to do it. “I don’t think that our music is for everyone, and it’s not all about us - our life, our dreams and hopes. Really it’s about how it’s experienced by other people as well. Music is a tool for communication, so I’ve never felt comfortable with the idea of ignoring what people have liked about us in the past. We’re conscious of that, but... you have to be true to where you’re going, too, and we didn’t want to make a carbon copy,” he asserts. “I’ve been crapping on about finding a balancing act, but it was a balancing act between big, broad brushstrokes and bold colours and then the subtleties, and in some ways we were more intricate, more specific and pedantic in some cases.” In keeping with the title, the boys commissioned Newcastle-based painter James Drinkwater for the cover art. Vibrant and chocked with colour, it inspired a collaboration between four local artists to visualise tracks from the panoramic record on canvas. “I’m so excited that we’ve been able to do this cross-disciplinary sorta thing,” Dawson enthuses of the Painting To Paint project. “I’ve always loved visual art, specifically painting, and I think sometimes it’s just simple stuff - hearing the texture of the guitar sounds and seeing how the texture of paint looks to that, and maybe that’s all it is, you know? Not some big overarching fucking concept behind the whole thing. And I’m not saying that I’m not a wanker, because I definitely am, I definitely do go down that path and I will wank on as much as anyone will allow me to, but I also know that sometimes it’s just simply seeing what the music inspires in the visuals.”
Dune Drinks
The brew-masters at Young Henrys are men (and women) of their word. They promised those brilliant Brissy boys, Dune Rats, that if their album went to #1 on the ARIA charts they’d let them loose in the brewery to cook up their very own special edition beer – and gosh darn it, that’s exactly what they did. And lo, it came to pass that Young Henrys created the Dunies Lager, a limited edition beer in honour of Dune Rats. Described as a “slightly hazy, summer smasher”, with a “full blown dank hop nose and flavour”, it’s been cooked up with a blend of Mosaic, Citra, El Dorado and Azacca hops. Get one down your neck ASAP people.
What: Paint (Wonderlick/Sony)
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 21
Film
One More Hit It’s been 21 years since the release of Trainspotting and the sequel, T2 Trainspotting is finally here. The film’s Oscarwinning director Danny Boyle tells Neil Griffiths how it took over two decades to get to this point.
“O
ne of the problems was there was never a reason to do it,” Boyle said of the two-decade gap between his Trainspotting films, during a promo visit to Sydney last week. “Without it, we’ll never manage to get [main cast, Ewen McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner] back again. As the 20 year anniversary loomed on the horizon a couple of years ago, we got back together. It’s a much more personal film then you might expect and that personal thing is obviously the aging process; as their lives change or not change, really.”
We didn’t really talk to each other in that kind of British way; you never get emotional and talk about things.
It seemed unlikely that a film centred around a group of heroin addicts living in Edinburgh would make a global impact, however Trainspotting did just that. Not only did it generate £48 million ($AU77 million) at the box office on a budget of just £1.5 million ($AU2.4 million), the black comedy drama was also listed in the top ten of the Top 100 British films by the British Film Institute. Needless to say, returning for a sequel was always going to be a daunting task. “It’s kind of weird because it’s a technical process,” the 60-year-old UK director said of bringing the cast and crew back after all this time. “There’s lots of make-up and costumes and everybody’s got photographs — as soon as you’ve done a scene, they take a photograph of you 22 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
and, of course, they’ve got the photos from the original. So everybody is looking at themselves 20 years ago. But they were brilliant. They really wanted to do it, I think. When you get back together again, you can’t get away with any bullshit because everybody knows where you came from. You have to get on with it and respectfully of the original and what it did for you. It was more pleasurable then it was excruciating.” In order to make T2 Trainspotting, it was no secret that Boyle and McGregor would need to be on the same page, after the pair fell out not long after the original film was released. The story goes that after working on three films together (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, A Life Less Ordinary), McGregor was promised, as ‘Danny Boyle’s actor’, to be cast as the lead in The Beach released in 2000, a role that would eventually be given to Leonardo DiCaprio. While both admit that the whole fall-out should never have gotten that far, Boyle was candid when asked about it. “It was my fault,” he said. “And we didn’t really talk to each other in that kind of British way; you never get emotional and talk about things.” In the lead-up to his eventual Oscar win for Slumdog Millionaire in 2008, Boyle attended an LA ceremony where he was to receive an award, which coincidentally enough, was to be presented by Ewan McGregor. “He’d given me this award and he made this speech at the beginning of it,” Boyle recalled. “It was so touching and I felt terrible about my own behavior. So we made up then, though not in any particular chummy way, just very British.” It didn’t take too long after that for Boyle to reach out to McGregor about a Trainspotting sequel. “I sent him the script and I said ‘Listen, we should do this.’ And he agreed because it was so good. And the four of them agreed and I knew they would because the film gives the room for them to matrix in their own experiences over that time. It becomes more than just playing a character in a story, it becomes about them as well in their own lives.” With the Academy Awards set for this Sunday (or Monday Australian time) it would be wrong to not ask an Oscar winner what their tip is, but Boyle handles it like a pro. “You’re not meant to say,” he laughs. “There are 6000 votes, because if you win one, you get a vote in the future ones. I’m not allowed to say what I’m voting for but I know what I’m voting for. I normally never vote for one that’s going to win, because I think it’s more interesting to mix it up and give a vote to something that won’t.”
What: T2 Trainspotting
MELBOURNE SKA ORCHESTRA’S
TOUR
featuring:
MELBOURNE SKA ORCHESTRA PROJECT COLLECTIVE SKA
DJ’s B Hopps Gonz Rudy Powell Wally DJ Tommy Gunn w/ DJ Greazer
SUN MAR th 5 THE FACTORY THEATRE
FOOD, DRINKS, SUN, SCOOTERS, A WHOLE LOTTA SKA AND SKAN KIN!
‘New Spirit’ out now
Fri 03 Mar Oxford Art Factory Sydney
Marrickville 4PM - 10PM
TICKETS AT MELBOURNESKAORCHESTRA.COM FACTORYTHEATRE.COM.AU
---pvtpvt.net
ALL BLUESFEST TOURING ARTISTS
ALSO APPEAR AT
BLUESFEST
VISIT BLUESFEST.COM.AU
: BOOKER T THE STAX REVUE BONNIE RAITT CORINNE BAILEY RAE GALLANT GREGORY PORTER JAKE SHIMABUKURO JOAN OSBORNE LAURA MVULA MUD MORGANFIELD NIKKI HILL PATTI SMITH AND HER BAND RHIANNON GIDDENS RICKIE LEE JONES ROY AYERS SNARKY PUPPY THE STRUMBELLAS PRES.
ALSO TOURING
“A sweaty, brass-fueled rave-up.” THE HURST REVIEW
NEWTOWN MON SOCIAL CLUB APR
10
tickets & info: 02 6685 8310 or www.bluesfesttouring.com.au
NEWTOWN WED SOCIAL CLUB APR
12
THE MON METRO APR
10
THE MANNING THU BAR APR
THE HIT OF BLUESFEST 2016 !!
2017 GRAMMY TM NOMINEES
METRO THU THEATRE APR
13
NEWTOWN WED SOCIAL CLUB APR
19
13
THE WED METRO APR
19
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 23
Music
Music As Medicine Thor-tful Flatmate
Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief lets Anthony Carew in on the secret to her deeply personal music: that she’s playing that music to survive.
It’s tough being a Thunder God’s puny human flatmate, but that’s life for Darryl, Thor’s long-suffering roomie. Our first encounter with poor ol’ Daz saw Thor Odison explaining why he’s taking some well-earned down time in Australia (and why he was conspicuously absent from the events featured in Captain America: Civil War). In the latest instalment, by Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi, Thor (played by Aussie mega-hunk Chris Hemsworth) tries to pay his rent with Asgardian loot and biceps the size of bloody coconuts. Come for the humour, but stay for the gun show. Pow Pow!
24 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
“I
’ve been recorded and performing my whole life,” says Adrianne Lenker. “But I always wanted to have a band, to just be in a band. And that took a while.” The 25-year-old songwriter started early: picking up a guitar at six (“in a motel room on the way from Minneapolis to Indianapolis, on a road trip with my dad”), writing songs at ten, issuing her first solo record, Stages Of The Sun, at 14. She finally found a band in 2013 after moving to New York, slowly attracting the other members of Big Thief to play around her. Their 2016 LP, Masterpiece, laces Lenker’s folky songs in noisy indie-rock squall, its taut set of 12 tunes a ‘debut’ a lifetime in the making. “We had the intention of making a record that felt like it was a complete work,” Lenker says. “These are the [songs] that fit together the best, [that] are all speaking from a similar place. And a lot of them are call and response to each other, almost different sides of the same song, like 12 pieces of one question. Interstate is a response to Real Love. Humans is a response to Paul.” The songs are united by their candour — “nothing at all in the record is fictional” — and by their use of proper names. There’s cuts called Lorraine, Paul and Randy, and there’s also a “Benny” and a “Liza” in the lyrics. How have these real-life humans
felt about ending up in Big Thief’s songs? “Hmm, I’m not sure,” Lenker considers, with a chuckle. “I don’t even know if they’ve heard. Actually, to be honest with you, I don’t know how any of them have reacted.” Since Masterpiece’s release, and the endless touring that’s come thereafter, Lenker has started to feel as if these songs are no longer just hers. “I’ve felt really warmed by all the people who’ve come up to me, or to the band, and shared their personal experiences of the record, because [those stories] bring more life into the songs. We’ve been playing these songs, over and over, for a year-and-a-half. Some of them have held their identity, but there’s others that’ve changed, and when we play them now, I feel that they’ve been shaped by other people, by the energy that audiences bring to them.” The endless tour that Big Thief are still in the middle of feels disorienting to Lenker. “There’s so many faces, so much decay and beauty and life, all of this stuff happening,” she says. “It’s too much... like this wave that’s washing over you.” But, playing music every night is, for her, equal parts living the dream and functional necessity. “It’s always been the way that I process things,” Lenker offers. “Sitting with my guitar every day is something that I feel like I need to do. It’s a method of survival. It’s not making music because I want to make music, or to make a career. It’s just the way I cope with life. It’s a medicine.”
When & Where: 1 Mar, Newtown Social Club
FREE
8PM
FRIDAYS VIBES AND STUFF
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 25
Theatre
Reality Hacked For his latest play, Tommy Murphy has found the fantastical in the factual. Maxim Boon discovers the visceral (literally) in Mark Colvin’s Kidney.
P
laywright Tommy Murphy’s characters, while dealing with struggles unique to themselves, are often of the everyman type. But Murphy’s most recent play, while no less intimately alert, is a surprising departure, exchanging the relatable for the peculiar. Mark Colvin’s Kidney tells the remarkable true story of MaryEllen Field, whom Murphy describes as “an utterly unique person, unlike anyone I’ve ever known.” The Australian businesswoman’s life was derailed by a scandal, which in turn set off a chain of events that eventually led to her donating a kidney to the gravely ill ABC Radio National anchor Mark Colvin.
The only thing you can do when the world feels morally corrupt is take charge of your own actions.
It’s a synopsis that might not immediately reveal itself as ripe for a stage adaptation, but despite its specificity, Murphy has characteristically sought out the most accessible entry points of this narrative in decoding it for the theatre. “One of the things that drew me to Mary-Ellen Field’s story is the question, would I do what she did? Probably not, but I hope the play poses that question to the audience. Would you do what Mary-Ellen did? And the way that she behaved and her choice of actions — were they the right ones? It’s really a story about morality,” Murphy shares. “There’s a lot about honesty too, so it feels like really good timing in our post-truth age to be telling a story about a woman who is trying to correct falsehoods. The play itself is
26 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
an expression of that, because it is a true story. So, at the heart of this production is a narrative about righting wrongs and the importance of integrity.” It’s also a story of juicy celebrity gossip and sleazy tabloid hackery. In 2005, when details of supermodel Elle Macpherson’s marital troubles found their way into the News Of The World, Mary-Ellen Field, Macpherson’s business advisor at the time, was accused of selling out her clients. At Macpherson’s inexplicable urging, Field was railroaded into checking into a rehab facility to tackle a drinking problem she didn’t have. It would destroy her reputation and cause her life to fall apart. Suspicions of her disloyalty were proven to be unfounded in 2010, when the revelations of the Leveson Inquiry showed phone hackers, on the payroll of the red-top publishers, had pillaged the voicemails of McPherson and many other notable public figures. Field would go on to testify at the Inquiry, but attempts to sue newspaper magnate Rupert Murdoch over the damage to her professional and personal life would prove fruitless. However, during this living nightmare Field was championed and supported by several journalists who shared her vitriol at the unscrupulous actions of the tabloid press. Among them was Mark Colvin, who at the time was on dialysis. Completely unsolicited and without ever having met the veteran ABC reporter, Field would make a gesture of astonishing altruism in offering Colvin one of her kidneys. This act of generosity is a stark foil, counterpointing the moral vacuum of the tabloid writers behind the phone hacking scandal, Murphy explains: “There are a lot of ethical puzzles in this story, and I think any stories that deal with journalism invite questions about how we judge right and wrong. A journalist’s daily job has to be anchored to their principles and a code of behaviour.” Murphy’s play, directed by his long-time collaborator David Berthold and starring Sarah Peirse as MaryEllen Field and John Howard as Mark Colvin, has also found a number of resonances with the zeitgeist politic of President Trump and the erosion of values once enshrined in the attitudes of our leaders. “What do we do when we start to feel that the entire world might be morally c corrupt? What do we do when structures we trusted cease c to be as they were, whether they be in the press or politics or even the decency of people around us day da to day? Mary-Ellen is faced with these issues issues,”” Mur Murphy observes. “She is extremely capable, a successful businesswoman with an incredibly impressive career, but she trusts all of those things and her place within the establishment as something she can rely on. But in fact, those things fail her, which begins this terrible sequence of events. But at the same time, we find these really surprising triumphs as she wrestles with those injustices. She discovers that the only thing you can do when the world feels morally bankrupt is take charge of your own actions. And that’s exactly what she does.”
What: Mark Colvin’s Kidney When & Where: 25 Feb — 2 Apr, Belvoir Street Theatre; 5 — 8 Apr, Riverside Theatre
Indie Indie
Alison Avron
B
ack in 2011 Alison Avron was trying to figure out a space to release her debut EP Wrong Notes & Anecdotes. Unsure of her ability to pack out an intimate venue, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She transformed her teaching studio into a makeshift venue: BYO, filled with school chairs and milk crates and able to seat 40 patrons. The Newsagency is proudly Sydney’s smallest venue, playing host to artists such as Ngaiire, Lanie Lane, Marlon Williams, Abby Dobson and more. Her new record Tiny Little Universe was recorded at Milk House Studios in New York with Philip Jimenez. “He is most known for producing ‘90s band, Wheatus. Thirteen-yearold Teenage Dirtbag-loving me was obviously very starstruck when I first met him,” she jokes. “Philip is a pretty inspiring guy to be around. His work ethic is crazy! I found being away from everyday life in Sydney helped a lot. I felt free to create and focus on the creative task at hand. It was also very inspiring being in New York during autumn.” “The whole reason for recording the album was to reflect my personal journey with grief, but also to make something my mum would have been really proud of. We tried not to make it depressing - it really has more of an uplifting theme of personal growth and love,” she explains.
When & Where: 3 Mar, Camelot Lounge
The
50
Power Edition ORDER NOW
ONLY $14.95
store.themusic.com.au
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 27
Theatre
Trump Vs Tank Man Sydney Theatre Company’s artistic director Kip Williams explores the politics of protest in his new production of Chimerica. He talks Trump, tanks and Tiananmen Square with Maxim Boon. ucy Kirkwood’s Chimerica was a hit on a scale rarely achieved by a new play when it took London by storm in 2013. Given this barnstorming track record - complete with an Evening Standard Award and Olivier Award for Best New Play - this text’s sparkling credentials alone would be enough to justify programming it. While its stature as a tried and true success was no doubt the original impetus for including it in STC’s 2017 season, the company’s newly installed Artistic Director, Kip Williams, has since found what he describes as “an extraordinary synchronicity in this play being staged at this moment in time.”
L
It’s the kind of storytelling where you can relish the multiple interpretations that can be taken away from it.
Chimerica is a study of personal quests set against the maelstrom of geopolitical tensions that sculpt cultural identities. American photojournalist, Joe Schofield, sets out to find the lone protester immortalised in one of the most powerful and iconic images of the 20th century, the so-called “Tank Man”, who on the morning of June 5, 1989, defiantly stood in front of four advancing tanks sent to clear protestors from Tiananmen Square. Schofield’s mission to seek out this anonymous rebel becomes the vehicle for a witty and poignant exploration of the competing differences and similarities between the two biggest superpowers in the world, and how that common ground is often overlooked. 28 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
In Chimerica, Williams has been struck by how explicitly its theme’s vibe with the politics of the zeitgeist. “This play was written over four years ago at a point in history where the word Brexit hadn’t even been dreamt up yet and the idea of Trump beating Clinton was a laughable absurdity. Everything that has transpired in the past six months would have been an impossible notion to the majority of people when Chimerica premiered, and yet this play is almost tailor-made for the times we’re currently living through. It really is uncanny,” Williams notes. “The politics of greed and the politics of self-interest, we’re acutely aware of how rife they are at the moment, and Kirkwood’s play lays those bare for us, not just in a geopolitical sense, but in the sense of the personal as well. It distils ideas and debates that we’re used to engaging with in the abstract and in the intellectual domain into something very deeply personal and emotional.” Kirkwood’s prescience may well be striking, but those seeking answers to the conundrum of our current political fracas aren’t likely to find anything definitive in Chimerica, Williams explains: “It’s the kind of storytelling where you can relish the multiple interpretations that can be taken away from it. In one way, there’s a clear lament for the loss of idealism and the complexities of what happens when someone is mythologised as a beacon of protest and resistance, like Tank Man. But Kirkwood goes further than that; she unravels the myth, demystifies the notion of making a god out of this individual, revealing him to be an everyday, ordinary person. In fact, the individual who wants to uncover Tank Man’s identity in an attempt to restore idealism to the public consciousness is actually someone who is one of the most morally compromised people in the play. So, there is a moral ambiguity in the end, that really is a question for the audience to take away and solve for themselves.” The tragicomedy of Trump’s scorched earth approach to democracy has commanded wall to wall coverage in the past several months. Indeed, with such a comprehensive saturation of Trumpian gaffs plastered online, on screen and in print, artists choosing to tap thos political resonances risk giving their audience those Trum fatigue. However, Williams believes the medium Trump th of theatre can unriddle the white noise of the alt right’s dog whistle fear mongering in a way the news media cann “The act of consuming theatre is one that is cannot. inna innately social. It’s something that you do with people who share similar views with you but also those who have a different opinion, so there’s a collective negotiation that occurs when you engage with the theatrical art form,” he suggests. “Ultimately I believe that any active storytelling is a political act, even down to See Spot Run - there’s a politics of gender in play in the role of the mother in that story. So no matter what story you’re telling, we cannot avoid that connection. But art reflects those ideas back at us in a way that reveals the human tragedy, the individual tragedy.
What: Chimerica When & Where: 28 Feb - 1 Apr, Roslyn Packer Theatre
COMING UP
PL AYLIST IT’S EASY. YOU GET THE DRINKS, WE’LL PICK THE TUNES, AND YOU’LL BE AT DINNER BY 8. One hour of inspirational music hand-picked by our musicians, and a chance to meet the Orchestra after the concert.
LEAH’S PLAYLIST
NICK’S PLAYLIST
SHEFALI’S PLAYLIST
Tue 7 Mar / 6.30pm
Tue 30 May / 6.30pm
Tue 8 Aug / 6.30pm
City Recital hall
City Recital hall
City Recital hall
TICKETS FROM $49*, OR GET ALL 3 FOR $102*
sydneysymphony.com/playlist
8215 4600 Mon–Fri 9am–5pm
TICKETS ALSO AVAILABLE AT: CITY RECITAL HALL 8256 2222^ Mon–Fri 9am–5pm
* Selected performances. Prices correct at time of publication and subject to change. Booking fees of $5-$8.95 may apply depending on method of booking. ^Additional fees may apply.
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 29
OPINION Opinion
iLoveMakonnen. Pic via Instagram
Trai ler Trash
X
Get It To g et her Hip Hop
T
he dust is now settling on iLoveMakonnen making a declaration of his sexuality: he’s gay. Perhaps With James one of the great joys of this announcement has been the lack of fanfare that’s come with it. We aren’t d’Apice drowning in think pieces and hot takes. Aside from Migos’ ugly homophobic misstep, for which seemingly heartfelt apologies have been forthcoming, the overwhelming response to the news has been a warm, welcoming shrug of the shoulders. There’s one view that suggests this is the path Frank Ocean has paved for us: that we can now live in a world and operate in a scene where sexuality has been rendered irrelevant. It’s another step towards the dream of the author’s (or artist’s) metaphorical “death”, leaving us to appreciate artworks themselves for what they are, rather than who made them. One of my earliest columns for this magzine’s predecessor was about homophobia in rap. My recollection of my point was: how did we let it come to this? It is the fault of us as listeners when we allow hatred to flourish. We had to do better. And maybe we have! It’s no small triumph to realise that what we all share means much more than what we don’t. In a world where we are sometimes distracted by what divides us, a shoulder shrug of unity has a big role to play.
Propagandhi
Wa ke The Dea d Punk And Hardcore With Sarah Petchell
W
e are living in tumultuous times. We’re at a time when it’s ok for a world leaders to hang up on one another because they’re tired. A world of “fake news” and “alternative facts”. It is scary and it gives me waves of anxiety. I take hope in the small acts of resistance though. Especially when they come from places and people I like, respect and admire, when they come from the broader
30 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
Halloween
music scenes of which I am a part. I take faith in the fact that in the wake of Trump’s Muslim ban (that wasn’t a band, but was a ban) the music industry came together through music hosting and vendor site, Bandcamp, to raise money for the American Civil Liberties Union on 3 Feb. For one day, the site donated 100% of its share of sales to the ACLU. And a number of punk and hardcore labels got behind this - which to me represents the ethics and ethos that our scene is built on. Labels like Epitaph; Deathwish, Inc; Fat Wreck; and Sub Pop. Collectively around $US200,000 was raised. But it wasn’t just the site, bands and labels that got behind this. Music fans did too, with the site reporting that they had experienced 550% more sales on that day than another typical Friday. Punk rock icons everywhere are speaking out against Trump and his policies - Henry Rollins, Billy Bragg, Propagandhi, Billie Joe Armstrong. Or the 30 Days, 30 Songs project from last year, which has now become 1000 Days, 1000 Songs. We must continue to resist and fight. It’s what we do best.
OPINION Opinion
Dives Into
W
hen it comes to Your Screens promiscuous teens running afoul of And Idiot a psycho with a sharpedged blade, you’re Boxes usually a Halloween With Guy person or a Friday The 13th person. Davis Or you’re a rational and compassionate human being who has no desire to see anyone shrieking in terror before they’re impaled to death, in which case you probably shouldn’t be reading this. (Please, though, do keep reading). If I was forced at knifepoint to make my decision, I’d go with the relatively elegant stalk-and-slash of Halloween’s Michael Myers over the brute-force trauma of Friday The 13th’s Jason Voorhees, which is why it warmed my heart recently to learn that while the latest effort to reboot ol’ mate Jason for the big screen had stalled out, Michael was gonna be resurrected with the help of two most unusual collaborators. It was reported the other week that longtime collaborators David Gordon Green and Danny McBride — who have worked together on projects as disparate as the lovely, lyrical George Washington, the raucous Pineapple Express and the TV series Eastbound And Down (one of the best comedies of the 21st century) — would be co-writing a new Halloween movie, one that would ignore most of the sequels that, in my opinion at least, tarnished the brand. “You know, it’s not a remake,” said McBride in a press statement. “It’s gonna continue the story of Michael Myers in a really grounded way. And for our mythology, we’re focusing mainly in the first two movies and what that sets up and then where the story can go from there.” Why am I excited about this? Well, when I think about the Halloween movies I really dig, which is definitely John Carpenter’s original and sorta kinda Rick Rosenthal’s sequel Halloween II, it’s the emphasis they place on location and character rather than homicidal mayhem. With the first Halloween in particular, we spend so much time walking or cruising the small town streets of Haddonfield with Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie and her friends prior to the sun going down and Michael starting his killing spree in earnest that it’s almost easy at times to forget you’ve signed up for a horror movie.
And Green and McBride have shown in their best work (not so much in Your Highness) that they’re very good detail men — they have a knack for giving seemingly mundane, everyday interactions an underlying substance, a becoming weirdness or a quiet beauty, both in the way it’s written on the page and the way it appears on the screen. McBride also stated that he and Green were “thrilled to step outside of our comedic collaborations and dive into a dark and vicious horror. Nobody will be laughing”. I appreciate the sentiment but at the same time I hope they don’t rev up the viciousness too much — that was Rob Zombie’s take when he rebooted Halloween, and Zombie’s admirable commitment to his grimy aesthetic aside Halloween and vicious are two great tastes that don’t really taste great together. But, hey, Carpenter has given this project his seal of approval! “I think you’re gonna dig it,” he said. “They blew me away. I might even do the music. Maybe. It could be kind of cool.” ‘Could be’ is good enough for me right now.
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 31
Album / E Album/EP Reviews
Album OF THE Week
Horrorshow Bardo State Elefant Traks
★★★★½
Horrorshow’s latest is a sophisticated, sexy, dance-inflected record. It’s tough to think of a less likely sentence! But with Bardo State, rapper Solo and beatsmith Adit have managed to explore new terrain. And it’s thrilling. The first three minutes of opener My Time give no hint of the surprise. Those minutes are a neatly conceived, tightly executed bunch of brags, not unlike what we’ve heard for a decade. Then, 180 or 190 seconds in the world caves in, the spaceship takes off, the curtain drops, and gritty reality gives way to a dreamscape. It’s a stunning moment that crowns an exceptional song. Astray is spacious, voluptuous, and properly sexy when Solo tells us “She leans in to me and says, ‘Don’t be afraid.’” Sex remains in the air later on Never Say Never. Eat The Cake is a funked-out dance jam. So many new tricks! That’s not to say the our hosts have forgotten anything: Non-Stop and Ceiling Fan show off Solo’s command of lower case “p” politics; he’s always breathed rare air on that score. If You Know What I Mean is a searing mission statement. Cherry Blossom is big and bouncy. Bardo State is saucier and more immediate than anything Horrorshow have shared with us before. This stuff is Old Dogs 2.0. James d’Apice
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
Holy Holy PAINT Wonderlick/Sony
★★★★
Flying Microtonal Banana Flightless/Remote Control
★★★½ 2016 was one long victory lap for King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard as Nonagon Infinity climbed to #2 in the ARIA charts and they headlined their own mini-fest around the country. But that victory lap meant that, unusually for a band so prolific, they released just one album in 2016. The sweet and simple formula of write a killer hook then repeat, repeat, repeat — which has reaped fine rewards in the past — is coming close to wearing a little thin here. That said, there are still plenty of new directions, such as the nightmarish Open Water and the unconventional lead single Rattlesnake, which pogos along to an electro-robotic pulse for the best part of eight minutes.
32 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
Technically it’s something of an experimental release as the guitars, basses, keyboards and harmonica have been modified to play “microtones” (ie, notes that are less than a semitone apart) and a blaring Turkish horn called a Zurna intermittently wails across a number of tracks. But despite the innovations, much of the album sounds exactly like the King Gizz we know. There doesn’t appear to be any anthems here that might dominate the Js the way Gamma Knife did, but the reassuring thing about King Gizzard is even when a new release is underwhelming, it’s more than likely there’ll be another one along in six months. Christopher H James
As a songwriter, Timothy Carroll has rarely put a foot wrong in his entire career. Whether focusing on his solo output or Holy Holy, Carroll has always been a meticulous craftsperson, his songs consistently as intelligently constructed as they are emotionally resonant. But this is something else. This is something quite special. Holy Holy’s 2015 debut album When The Storms Would Come felt largely like the vision of Carroll and Holy Holy co-founder Oscar Dawson. It was clean and gently textured songwriting lightly augmented by additional instrumentation. PAINT bears all the fingerprints of the pair’s backers — Graham Ritchie, Matt Redlich and Ryan Strathie — and it is so, so much better for it. (And, to be clear, their debut album was outstanding.)
PAINT is noisy, colourful and exploratory. Breathy melodies are gatecrashed by massive synths. Beautiful songs are built off wonky rhythms. Cumulatively, Holy Holy’s membership have cut their teeth with Dukes Of Windsor, Ball Park Music, Hungry Kids Of Hungary, Skinny Jean, Ainslie Wills and Emma Louise (and more). PAINT sees them unleash all of their creativity and pedigrees with one of the best songwriters in the country. It’s a gorgeous listen. Do not miss it. Matt O’Neill
EP Reviews Album/EP Reviews
Children Of Alice Suicide Silence
Dirty Projectors
Crystal Fairy
Children Of Alice
Suicide Silence
Dirty Projectors
Crystal Fairy
Warp/Inertia
Nuclear Blast
Domino/EMI
★★★½
★★½
★★★★
★★★★
Broadcast were one of those bands whose due credit only came after sudden tragedy. Children Of Alice is the debut release of sole surviving member James Cargill together with long-time Broadcast collaborators Roj Stevens and Julian House. Solely comprised of insular soundscapes awash with extraterrestrial sounds, eerie drones and hard to identify percussion, it could be the soundtrack to some long lost episode of The Twilight Zone as each track journeys indistinguishably into the next. It’s adventurous, but lacks the distinctive character of Broadcast’s timeless songs.
Extreme music devotees can be rather pedantic, but the fan entitlement which accompanied Suicide Silence’s singles was staggering. However, evaluating said tracks within the entire album’s scope further emphasises the jarring shift from deathcore mosh merchants to pursuing the modern hard rock/nu-metal nostalgia crowd. Such radical overhauling — proliferation of Deftones-aping clean vocals (which clearly still require refining) and gloomy ambience included — takes cojones. There are fleeting nods to their past, although diehards may revolt after hearing Conformity’s Slipknot-esque melancholy. Adjusting to Ross Robinson’s raw but underdone production proves demanding too. Overall results are wildly uneven, albeit oddly fascinating.
Fourteen years into their career, Dirty Projectors have released their one and only eponymous release. It is unpredictable, genre-defying, endlessly creative and, yet, brilliantly focused, a breakup album, rooted in personal and artistic rebirth. Accordingly, the opening track’s title, Keep Your Name, summons ideas of regeneration, divorce, marriage and the weight of the past all at once while the song itself loops a warped cover of the band’s own 2012 Impregnable Question. Dirty Projectors is obsessed with emotional and sonic ghosts and its glaring absence: Amber Coffman, David Longstreth’s lost love and the Projectors’ lost guitarist.
Everything about this collaboration between The Melvins’ Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Le Butcherettes’ main lady Teri Gender Bender screams “This was meant to be!” Recently, Le Butcherettes toured the US with The Melvins where an encore of Bikini Kill’s Rebel Girl with Teri Gender Bender on vocals was considered the highlight each night. Her over-thetop personality is a perfect complement to some of Buzz Osborne’s most muscular, instantly satisfying riffs in years, particularly on the low slung grooves of the title track and the bruising, howling Bent Teeth. We can only hope this isn’t a one-off.
Samantha Jonscher
Christopher H James
Christopher H James
Ipecac/[PIAS] Australia
Brendan Crabb
More Reviews Online Broads Vacancy
theMusic.com.au
Jeff Lang Alone In Bad Company
Listen to our This Week’s Releases playlist on
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 33
Live Re Live Reviews
Bec Sandridge @ Mountain Sounds. Pic: Peter Dovgan
Mountain Sounds Festival Mt Penang Gardens 18 Feb
DMA’S @ Mountain Sounds. Pic: Peter Dovgan
Dune Rats @ Mountain Sounds. Pic: Peter Dovgan
Hermitude @ Mountain Sounds. Pic: Peter Dovgan
Skegss @ Mountain Sounds. Pic: Peter Dovgan
Yellowcard @ Enmore Theatre. Pic: Clare Hawley
34 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
The day started off hot and steamy, with promising blue skies; contrasted to the hectic storms the parklands experienced the night before. People were sprawled out towards the front of the stage as Betty & Oswald started their groovy synth set — the first band to play the day as the festival cancelled the two opening acts on the Unicorn stage due to the effects of the terrible weather. Although they played quite a short set, the band managed to please the already multiplying crowd with their unique indie-pop. Bec Sandridge proved herself the ultimate star of the day, with her mesmerising stage performance and vocal talent. High Tide in particular cemented her as a force to be reckoned with. You’re A Fucking Joke had the crowd dancing along to its ear-catching guitar riffs and vocal rounds. It’s relatable and just, funny, and got everyone grooving/laughing/loving the vibes. Sandridge saved In The Fog, In The Flame for last, the song a flawless composition with its arresting highs and lows and catchy central melody. The mosh filled to the brim for Skegss as the trio kicked off with their track Fun. The tune encouraged and matched the vibrant electricity flowing through the crowd. Not one person seemed bored or down, even as the sky started to look sad and rainy. Eat It was a hit, and the crowd clearly enjoyed having a boogie to a song about eating all the food in the world. Skegss killed it, even in the rain. We’ve never seen a crowd go more crazy than this one did for Dune Rats. Something about their DIY garage rock is just irresistible! Despite genre stereotypes the band always manages to put
on a stellar show, and Mountain Sounds was no exception. The trio filled the stage with their cheeky antics and relatable tunes as they opened with Dalai Lama, Big Banana, Marijuana; a true banger. For Scott Green, the grounds erupted with a explosion of chants yet again with an even more intense mosh. Everyone seemed to have a limb or two in there. DMA’S, with their acoustic sounding grunge, shone brightly as the sky momentarily cleared. Their musicianship was flawless and they maintained the best quality of sound of the whole day. They kept the crowd pumping with their hits Step Up The Morphine and Lay Down. Hermitude hit the stage
Everyone seemed to have a limb or two in the mosh.
with their vibrating bass and booming electronica as the crowd danced into the falling darkness. With dynamic remixes and flowing interludes they managed to raise each and every heartbeat. One caveat, besides a Lion King cover their set was extremely similar to each and every other set they’ve played in the last year, which was a let down for loyal fans searching for something fresh from the outfit. Rufus was the perfect act to conclude the Festival; with their smooth frequencies and exciting yet beautiful melodies they seem universally appealing. Their stage presence was
eviews Live Reviews
glorious and effortless, all three of the boys pranced around showcasing their multifaceted talents. Each of them seems to have mastered multiple instruments and electronic beats, which they mesh with endless chemistry and a faultless visual facade. Cuts from their new album were exhaustively polished and impressive, although it was Desert Night (one of their early releases) that most stood out, as if the song has matured with them, becoming the most enchanting of them all. Sara Tamim
Yellowcard Enmore Theatre 17 Feb A seminal band for any pop punk fan, punters gathered at Enmore Theatre for the first of two farewell shows for Floridian act Yellowcard. The house music stops and we receive a cheeky recorded public service announcement from Yellowcard’s camp to use the “miracle that is the human eyeball” rather than “an LED rectangle” to watch the band tonight. “Let’s fucking rock,” the voice commands. YES SIR! The band make a ripper start into Believe — violinist Sean Mackin given the opening honours with that amazing violin line — and the banners reading 19972017 really hit us in the feels alongside the thought that this is the last time we’ll see these guys live. The mosh is frenzied already and we can tell it’s gonna be an epic show. The crowd goes mad for Mackin’s solos every time he’s at his mic stand, often cheekily poking out his tongue. We don’t recognise the drummer, but his beats are tight and we later find out it’s support band Like Torches’ Jimmy Brunkvist. Frontman Ryan Key looks suave in a denim jacket and black skinny jeans — ironically the same as this
scribe’s outfit tonight — and his voice sounds better than ever. Why are these guys quitting?! They’ve still got it! They’re amazing! It’s a night for the hits from across their discography so we hear Lights & Sounds, Way Away, Five Becomes Four, With You Around, Cut Me, Mick, Breathing and more, the crowd pumping their fists like it’s 2003 and they’re alone in their bedroom after school again. Key properly greets us a handful of songs in and goes on a long-winded explanation that even if we don’t know songs off their latest, and last, self-titled record, we should sing along anyway with any lyrics we see fit “so we lose our fucking voices tonight”. It’s a self-aware acknowledgement that many, if not most, of our crowd tonight are here to relive moments from Ocean Avenue or Lights & Sounds rather than their latest effort, but we’re on board. Mackin is the rock’n’rollest violinist we’ve ever seen (not that there are many), while Key exudes the qualities of a topclass frontman. Having slipped off his jacket to reveal tatted and toned arms, he now looks like your character on Guitar Hero when you hit Star Power mode. He chugs honey from the bottle between sets, left near the foot of Brunkvist’s drum kit. Light Up The Sky gets the full house clapping and moshing, while Sing For Me comes with a touching explanation from Key about the song being written for his late aunt Stephanie. Key is especially talkative tonight, gracefully thanking us countless times and sharing stories about songs, but with tonight being their last ever set and a two-hour one, it’s very welcome. Their newest tracks aren’t met with as much enthusiasm as the older ones, obviously, but this farewell tour is as much for the Yellowcard boys as it is for us and we reckon they deserve to play their final album’s songs
Yellowcard, thank you, and we’ll miss you. Though you may not grace our stages anymore, rest assured you’ll always find a way onto our stereos.
live. The second half of the show is definitely more focused on the older stuff and we can tell the mosh is a hot writhing mess from our bird’s eye view in the mezzanine. An acoustic Empty Apartment with Key and Mackin and well, us, because there isn’t a resting voice in the house, is absolutely incredible. We sing our lungs out to Only One and Ocean Avenue and they’re as emotional as you’d expect, with Key offering a lengthy and heartfelt thank you. “We’ve gotten to play shows on 6 out of 7 continents on this earth and our minds are fucking blown and our hearts are fucking full,” he says, fist on his heart, and all of a sudden it’s over. A raucous punk cover of The Sound Of Music’s So Long, Farewell literally plays them out. Yellowcard, thank you, and we’ll miss you. Though you may not grace our stages anymore, rest assured you’ll always find a way onto our stereos.
More Reviews Online theMusic.com.au/ music/live-reviews
Jet @ Taronga Zoo Ludovico Einaudi @ Sydney Opera House El Guincho @ Oxford Art Factory Jakubi @ Newtown Social Club Kishi Bashi @ Oxford Art Factory Neurosis @ Manning Bar Fractures @ Newtown Social Club
Uppy Chatterjee
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 35
Comedy / G The Guide
Wed 22
Masketta Fall
SOSUEME feat. Youngsta CPT: Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach
Hannah James: Foundry 616, Sydney The Flame Fields + Lese Majesty + This Way North: Frankie’s Pizza By The Slice, Sydney
The Lumineers IONIA + Slow Ships: Gasoline Pony, Marrickville
The Music Presents
The Groovemeisters: LazyBones Lounge, Marrickville
Mother’s Cake: 24 Feb, The Basement, Canberra
Rosa Maria: Leadbelly (formerly The Vanguard), Newtown
CW Stoneking & Nathaniel Rateliff: 7 Mar Enmore Theatre
Peter ‘Blackie’ Black + Forest Pooky: Midnight Special, Newtown
Holly Throsby: 9 Mar Clarendon Guest House Katoomba; 11 Mar Milton Theatre; 18 Mar Lizottes Newcastle; 19 Mar Newtown Social Club
Mark Travers: Orient Hotel, The Rocks
Twelve Foot Ninja: 9 Mar Uni Bar; 10 Mar Manning Bar; 11 Mar Cambridge Hotel
The Mandarin Band: Rock Lily, Pyrmont
4Elements Hip Hop Festival: 18 Mar, Bankstown Arts Centre
The Roots & Riddim Club with Errol Renaud Trio + DJ Dizar: Play Bar, Surry Hills
Moreland & Arbuckle + Kirsten Lee Morris: The Stag & Hunter Hotel, Mayfield
Thu 23
The Waifs: 1 Apr Enmore Theatre
Golden Years Since leaving their label and going independent, Masketta Fall have crowd-funded and self-produced debut LP Golden that’ll be on stage this Sunday arvo at The Lair.
Listening Room Open Mic with Bill Hunt: Garry Owen Hotel, Rozelle
Furnace & Fundamentals: The Soda Factory, Surry Hills
Brendan Gallagher & his SOBs: Gasoline Pony, Marrickville
Mark Lucas: The Temperance Society, Summer Hill
Peter Black + Forest Pooky: Grand Junction Hotel (The Junkyard), Maitland
The Underachievers + Elk Locker + Antonia & The Lazy Susans + Marina Mitchell Band: Valve Bar (Basement), Ultimo
Bayharbour: Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt Guy Sebastian: 5 & 6 Apr Oxford Art Factory Rhiannon Giddens: 8 Apr Factory Theatre Snarky Puppy: 10 Apr Enmore Theatre Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue: 10 Apr Metro Theatre
Stro Elliot + Milan + Krystel Diola + Mohi: Beresford Hotel (Upstairs), Surry Hills Beccy Cole + Libby O’Donovan: Brass Monkey, Cronulla Skinny Hobos + Cheshire Grimm + Rufflefeather + Shamaniac: Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst
Roy Ayers: 11 Apr The Basement Gregory Porter: 12 Apr Enmore Theatre
Castlecomer
Zack Martin + Paul B Mynor + Mysterious Universe: Harbour View Hotel, Dawes Point
The Rooster Davis Group: Leadbelly (formerly The Vanguard), Newtown
Laura Mvula: 12 Apr Metro Theatre
Blake Tailor: Manly Leagues Club (Menzies Lounge), Brookvale
Bluesfest: 13 – 17 Apr, Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm
Larger Than Lions: Marble Bar, Sydney
The Lumineers: 17 & 18 Apr Sydney Opera House
Moving Pictures: Mona Vale Hotel, Mona Vale
Gallant: 18 Apr Oxford Art Factory
The Gum Ball: 21 - 23 Apr, Dashville Jeff Lang: 13 May Hotel Gearin Katoomba; 18 May Lizottes Newcastle; 19 May Hardys Bay Club; 27 May The Basement; 16 Jun State Theatre Canberra Luca Brasi: 1 Jul Metro Theatre
Castlegoer Castlecomer have a killer new track in If I Could Be Like You and next month they’re headed to South By Southwest in Austin. Before they go though you can catch them at Coogee Bay Hotel on Friday.
Ricardo Steyer: Mr Falcon’s, Glebe Unity Floors + Sachet + Married Man: Newtown Social Club, Newtown Steve Tonge: Observer Hotel, The Rocks John Flanagan + Timothy James Bowen: Petersham Bowling Club, Petersham Los Pintar + Draggs + Pist Idiots: Rad Bar, Wollongong Rock With Laughter with Mikey Robins + Daniel Townes + Christina Van Look + Casey Talbot + Explosions In The Sky: Sydney Opera House (Concert Hall), Sydney
Bowie Unzipped feat. Jeff Duff: Camelot Lounge, Marrickville
Totally Unicorn: The Chippendale Hotel, Chippendale
Dr Kong & The Stem Cells: Camelot Lounge (Django Bar), Marrickville
Live & Originals feat. Monica Welander + Fleur Wilber + Lazy Byrd: The Louis (formerly Lewisham Hotel), Lewisham
Van Anh + Friends: Foundry 616, Sydney The Dead Riders + Marshall Okell: Frankie’s Pizza By The Slice, Sydney
36 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
Dirty Wolves
The Velvet Underground & Nico 50th Anniversary with Sean Simmons (The Spoils): Midnight Special, Newtown
Max Jury: 13 Apr The Basement
The Record Company: 19 Apr Newtown Social Club
Oliver Thorpe + Scordatura: Venue 505, Surry Hills
Simba Mushete & The Echoes of Africa Music: LazyBones Lounge, Marrickville
DJ Graham Mandroules + The Newports: The Newport, Newport
Howlin’ For What Thundering prog-metal act Dirty Wolves are hyping up to play alongside Red Sea, who’ve recently released their debut EP, this Friday at the Factory Floor. Don’t forget your dancing shoes and wolf masks, it’s gonna be a howler.
Fri 24 Suzi Quatro + QSP: Anita’s Theatre, Thirroul Mr Bill + Circuit Bent + Copycatt + Melt Unit + more: Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt Prints Familiar + Vacations + Satori Wild: Bank Hotel, Newtown
Gigs / Live The Guide
Flyying Colours
Psych Up Flyying Colours are locked in on the bill for the third installment of Sydney’s Psych Fest this Saturday at the Factory Floor. Joining the trip is a diverse line-up of local, interstate and international acts, including Mere Women and Carsick Cars.
The Marshall Okell Band: Grand Junction Hotel (The Junkyard), Maitland
Courtyard Sessions feat. Amber Rae Slade: Seymour Centre (Courtyard), Darlington
Sat 25
Galapagos Duck: LazyBones Lounge, Marrickville
Twilight At Taronga feat. Bjorn Again: Taronga Zoo, Mosman
Afternoon Show with Goma: Australian Institute of Music (AIM) (John Painter Hall), Surry Hills
Barry Leef Band + Peter Northcote: Leadbelly (formerly The Vanguard), Newtown
Mother’s Cake + AlithiA + Tundrel + Renegade Peacock: The Basement, Belconnen
AfterShock with Cruciform + Summonus + Illimitable Dolor + Dawn: Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt
Dean Michael Smith: Macarthur Tavern, Campbelltown
1977 - The Hits!: The Basement, Sydney
Sydney Comedy Club feat. Garry Who + Steve Hoskins + Mark Pitman: Big Top Sydney, Milsons Point
Vanessa Heinitz: The Bourbon, Potts Point
DJ Brenny B Side: Manly Wharf Hotel, Manly
Dragon + Mi-Sex: The Bridge Hotel, Rozelle
Nuclear Assault + Murder World + Hidden Intent: Manning Bar, Camperdown
Red Bull Sound Select feat. KLLO + Habits + Kimchi Princi: The Chippendale Hotel, Chippendale
Moving Pictures: Blue Cattle Dog Hotel, St Clair Lost Legends Showcase: Brass Monkey, Cronulla
Brown Sugar: Marble Bar, Sydney Fripps & Fripps + MVRKS + Ego Monkey + Souci Maq: Miranda Hotel, Miranda
Hidden Intent
Rob Moir: Mr Falcon’s, Glebe Methyl Ethel + Totally Mild + Felix Lush: Newtown Social Club, Newtown Michael Fryar + Jared Baca: Observer Hotel, The Rocks Reckless + Paul Winn: Orient Hotel, The Rocks
Sydney Comedy Club feat. Garry Who + Steve Hoskins + Mark Pitman: Big Top Sydney, Milsons Point
Flamin’ Beauties: Overlander Hotel, Cambridge Gardens
Winterbourne + Joe Mungovan: Brass Monkey, Cronulla
Rare Finds feat. Tia Gostelow + Mookhi + Blondebears: Oxford Art Factory (Gallery Bar), Darlinghurst
Big Red Fire Truck + Atomic Riot + Thin Air: Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst
Asta + Tees + Tashka: Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst
Secret Garden Festival 2017: Brownlow Hill Farm, Brownlow Hill
All Shook Up - Sydney’s 1950s & 60s Party: Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst (late)
Nuclear Intent
Regent Street Big Band: Petersham Bowling Club, Petersham
Adding to the ruckus that will surely be unleashed at Manning Bar on Friday are Adelaide metallers Hidden Intent, who’ll be reviving the sounds of ‘80s thrash during Nuclear Assault’s “first and last” Australian tour.
Capeside + Yours Alone + Jones The Cat: Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle West Bowie Unzipped feat. Jeff Duff: Camelot Lounge, Marrickville Project Collective Ska + Black Bird Hum: Camelot Lounge (Django Bar), Marrickville
Brasilian Journey with DJ Paulo +
Katy Steele
AJ Dyce: Campbelltown Catholic Club, Campbelltown
Greenlights Comedy feat. Justin Hamilton + Michael Hing + Susie Youssef + John Cruckshank + Tom Cashman + Rohan Ganju + more: The Gaelic Club (1st Floor), Surry Hills
Moving Pictures: Canterbury Hurlstone Park RSL, Canterbury The Cactus Channel + Ben Panucci + Broken Mountain: Captain Cook Hotel, Paddington
Sam Buckingham + Benjamin James Caldwell: The Newsagency, Marrickville
Ted Nash: Chatswood RSL, Chatswood
Mark Lucas + Lazy L: The Old Growler, Darlinghurst
Kayu: Club Condell Park, Bankstown Castlecomer: Coogee Bay Hotel (Selina’s), Coogee Michael Fryar: Crown Hotel, Sydney Descendents + Nursery Crimes: Enmore Theatre, Newtown Allstar: Entrance Leagues, Bateau Bay Red Sea + Dirty Wolves: Factory Theatre (Factory Floor), Marrickville
Steele Yourselves Firing up dance floors around the country, Katy Steele and her band are out on a 13-date tour in celebration of her debut album, Human. Newtown Social Club will host them on Saturday with Hazlett.
The Cassettes: Fortune of War Hotel, The Rocks Frances Madden: Foundry 616, Sydney Floyd Vincent: Garry Owen Hotel, Rozelle Queen Porter Stomp + Inspektor Gadje: Gasoline Pony, Marrickville
Geoff Davies: The Push, The Rocks Absolutely 80s feat. Brian Mannix + Scott Carne + Dale Ryder + Paul Gray + DJ Maynard: The X Studio, Potts Point The Edge Rock Show: Towradgi Beach Hotel (Sports Bar), Towradgi Katy Steele + Hazlett: Transit Bar, Canberra City DJ Guv + Hedex + Thierry De + Invictus + more: Valve Bar (Basement), Ultimo Light Entertainment + Kimono Drag Queen + Wawawow: Vic On The Park, Marrickville
Evan Klar: Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst Volumes Monthy feat. Anatole + Huntly + Marcus Whale + Mira Boru: Cake Wines Cellar Door, Redfern Mardi Grass Mambo with Mucho Mambo: Camelot Lounge, Marrickville Pape Mbaye + Chosani Afrique: Camelot Lounge (Django Bar), Marrickville Mark Crotti: Clovelly Hotel, Clovelly Vanessa Heinitz: Coogee Bay Hotel, Coogee The Dark Clouds + The Undermines + The Dry Spell: Dicey Riley’s Hotel, Wollongong Kid Ink + Donell Lewis + Kennyon Brown: Enmore Theatre, Newtown Nick Goder Duo: Entrance Leagues, Bateau Bay Sydney Psych Fest: Factory Theatre (Factory Floor), Marrickville
El Chino + Mark Crissy + Bateria 61: Play Bar, Surry Hills
James Heathwood: Fortune of War Hotel, The Rocks
Lady Red Duo + DJ Kitsch 78 + Soul Nights: Rock Lily, Pyrmont
Fluffy Boys: Garry Owen Hotel, Rozelle
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 37
Comedy / G The Guide
Los Romeos Oxidados: Gasoline Pony, Marrickville
Songs On Stage feat. Angus Murray: Woolpack Hotel, Redfern
Unity Floors
Alannah Russack + Trish Young: Golden Barley Hotel, Enmore
Cakes feat. Clueless + DJ Sports + Danny T: World Bar, Potts Point
This Way North: Grand Junction Hotel (The Junkyard), Maitland
Sun 26
Black Label: Granville Diggers, Granville
Afternoon Show with Satellite V: 4 Pines Public House, Newport
MMRS feat. Cover Bae’s + Flicker: Hermanns Bar, Darlington
Katy Steele + Hazlett: 48 Watt St, Newcastle
Suzi Quatro + QSP: Hope Estate Winery, Pokolbin
Bjorn Again: Anita’s Theatre, Thirroul
Porter Robinson + Madeon + Lido + Elk Road: Hordern Pavilion, Moore Park
You Can’t Kill The Riff feat. The Aussie Metal Kings + Twin City Riot + The MisMade: Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt
The Creases: Hudson Ballroom, Sydney Trench Records Club Night with Moonbase (FKA Moonbase Commander) + Herzeloyde + Tiber: Hudson Ballroom, Sydney Daze Parade + Slow Nomad: LazyBones Lounge, Marrickville Mitch Anderson Band + Peter Northcote: Leadbelly (formerly The Vanguard), Newtown
Moreland & Arbuckle + Kirsten Lee Morris: Brass Monkey, Cronulla Felix Da Housecat: Cafe Del Mar, Sydney
Whatta Unit Local two-piece Unity Floors are putting a hometown show for their Cost Of Living single tour. It’s on this Thursday down at Newtown Social Club with support from Sachet and Married Man.
Katy Steele + Hazlett: Newtown Social Club, Newtown
Moreland & Arbuckle + Claude Hay: The Basement, Sydney
Hits & Pieces: Oatley Hotel, Oatley
Never Ending 80s: The Basement, Belconnen
Travis Loughhead + Dean Michael Smith + Vanessa Heinitz: Observer Hotel, The Rocks
Bandoke: The Beach Hotel, Merewether
Songs On Stage feat. Lance Aligannis + The Cheatin’ Hearts: Orange Grove Hotel, Lilyfield The Urban Legends + Codju: Orient Hotel, The Rocks
Veni, Plini, Vici After the success of Plini’s 2016 release Handmade Cities the independent Sydney-based guitarist and composer is supporting instrumental hard-rockers, Animals As Leaders throughout their Australian tour. Next stop is Metro Theatre on Sunday.
Shadowboxer - The Angels Show: Overlander Hotel, Cambridge Gardens Awesome Tapes From Africa + Tim Sweeney + The Egyptian Lover: Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst The JP Project: Panania Hotel, Panania Rick Fensom: Peachtree Hotel, Penrith Rock The Bowlo with Who’s Your Daddy + Swine Fever + Rob & Marco Ianni: Petersham Bowling Club, Petersham Cypher Supremo VI feat. Frenzie + Nick Toth + DJ Benny Hinn: Play Bar, Surry Hills
Hollerin’ Sluggers: Narrabeen Sands, Narrabeen
38 • THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017
Jagwar Ma + Jack River + The Babe Rainbow: The Bucket List, Bondi Beach Dave Fest 2017 feat. Ripping Dylans + White Dog + Chalk Eaters + Twin Towns: The Gaelic Club (1st Floor), Surry Hills Lowdown Dirty Shame: The Merton Hotel, Rozelle DJ Phil Toke + Mike Champion + DJ Mike Dotch + The Specials feat. D.I.G: The Newport, Newport Emily C Smith + Matt Thomson + Joshua Heath: The Newsagency, Marrickville
Phil Slater + James McLean Band: Seymour Centre (Sound Lounge), Darlington The Transylvaniacs: Smiths Alternative, Canberra Warpaint: Sydney Opera House (Concert Hall), Sydney Twilight At Taronga feat. Bjorn Again: Taronga Zoo, Mosman
Songs On Stage feat. Russell Neal: Earlwood Hotel, Earlwood Andrew Godbold: Entrance Leagues, Bateau Bay James Heathwood: Fortune of War Hotel, The Rocks Sydney Psych Festival Closing Party feat. Dreamtime + The Black Heart Death Cult + Dead Radio + Wars: Frankie’s Pizza By The Slice, Sydney Aston Martinis: Garry Owen Hotel, Rozelle Gas Acoustica feat. Fabels + Simone East + Stewart Says + Glen & Glenda: Gasoline Pony, Marrickville Dan Saxby: Grand Junction Hotel (The Junkyard), Maitland
Bayharbour
Urban Guerillas: The Stag & Hunter Hotel, Mayfield Flaming Wrekage: The Vault, Broadmeadow Jack Billmann + Moaning Lisa + Sara Flint: UC Refectory, Bruce Brouhaha Pogo Party #2 feat. New Trends + Straight To A Tomb + Operation Ibis + Legal Aliens + more: Valve Bar (Basement), Ultimo Ann Vriend: Venue 505, Surry Hills Meza: Vic On The Park, Marrickville
Whispering Jackie + Christopher Rockin’ Robin + The Troubled Romantics: The Annandale Hotel, Annandale
Stormcellar: Catherine Hill Bay Pub, Catherine Hill Bay
PTSD: The Phoenix, Canberra
Asta + Thomas Macokatic + De’May: The Small Ballroom, Islington
Jack Carty: Rous Mill Hall, Rous Mill
MMG: Mr Falcon’s, Glebe
Dragon + Mi-Sex: The Bridge Hotel, Rozelle
Jimmy Mann: The Push, The Rocks
Michael Dimarco: Macarthur Tavern, Campbelltown
Soul Empire: Marble Bar, Sydney
Ted Nash Duo: The Bourbon, Potts Point
Flash 54 + Jay Parrino: Rock Lily, Pyrmont Raave Tapes + Pals: Lobrow Gallery & Bar, Canberra
AB The Thief + Sunday Service + Benasis: Manning Bar, Camperdown
The Spit Roasting Bibbers: The Belvedere Hotel, Sydney
Boo Seeka: Proud Mary’s, Erina
Peter Gabrielides: Rocks Brewing Company, Alexandria
DJ Oh? + Raye Antonelli: Manly Wharf Hotel, Manly
The Piano Diaries with Joanna Weinberg: Camelot Lounge, Marrickville Khayal Trio + Sayak Bhattacharya: Camelot Lounge (Django Bar), Marrickville
Tom Lee Richards + Kyle Taylor + Coast & Ocean: Live ‘n’ Lounging, Leumeah
Plini
Tall Black Guy: Cake Wines Cellar Door, Redfern
Bayharbour To celebrate dropping their debut LP Time Lapse, Bayharbour are doing an east coast album run. They’re bringing their tunes and their mates Diamond Construct to Bald Faced Stag, Thursday.
Gigs / Live The Guide
Jen Buxton: Hamilton Station Hotel, Islington
Kickstar: Oatley Hotel, Oatley
Ainsley Farrell + Brendon Moon + Slow Ships: Secret Garden Bar, Enmore
Ill Prepared: Kauri Foreshore Hotel, Glebe
James Brennan + The JP Project: Observer Hotel, The Rocks
Judy Bailey’s Jazz Connection: LazyBones Lounge, Marrickville
Outlier + U2 Elevation: Orient Hotel, The Rocks
Lazy Sunday Lunch with Beccy Cole: Lizottes Newcastle, Lambton
All Ages Matinee Show with Masketta Fall: Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst
DJ Richard Penny: The Deck, Milsons Point
Benj Axwell: Macarthur Tavern, Campbelltown
Aristophanes: Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst
The Lazy L Quartet: The Merton Hotel, Rozelle
DJ Alex Mac + DJ Graham M: Manly Wharf Hotel, Manly
The Dirty Earth + Arrowhead + Hurst + Bitch in the Green Room: Petersham Bowling Club, Petersham
Michael Fryar: The Mill Hotel, Milperra
Animals As Leaders + Plini + Nick Johnston: Metro Theatre, Sydney
Afternoon Show with The Gloomchasers + Tabetha Salmon: Petersham Bowling Club, Petersham
Masketta Fall: Metro Theatre (The Lair), Sydney
Disco Biscuits: The Beach Hotel, Merewether
Skunkhour + Sons Of The East + DJ Treble n Bass + DJ Cool Hand Luke + Thandi Phoenix: The Newport, Newport Mark Crotti: The Push, The Rocks This Way North + The 5 Lands Band: The Rhythm Hut, Gosford
This Way North
Kuren
Youngsta CPT + Jannah Beth + Vincent Segami: Since I Left You, Sydney
Finn + Friends: Town Hall Hotel, Newtown Summer Sessions feat. Jagwar Ma + Jack River + The Babe Rainbow: Towradgi Beach Hotel (Sports Bar), Towradgi Time On Earth + Nobody’s Fool + Web City Limits: Valve Bar (Basement), Ultimo
Mon 27 Eighth Blackbird: City Recital Hall, Sydney Frankie’s World Famous House Band: Frankie’s Pizza By The Slice, Sydney Troy Cassar-Daley: Halfway Creek Hall, Halfway Creek
The Kure Local gun producer Kuren, South African hip hop artist Youngsta CPT and Sydney word slinger Ontrei are taking over Beach Road Hotel for this week’s Wednesday night (free) Sosueme event.
Craig Stretton: Orient Hotel, The Rocks Conor Oberst: Sydney Opera House (Concert Hall), Sydney The Bootleg Sessions feat. Naked Scientist + The Treehouse Children + Wandering Ghosts + Zebra: The Phoenix, Canberra
Tue 28 Raw Comedy 2017: Comedy Store, Moore Park Open Mic Night with Champagne Jam: Dundas Sports Club, Dundas
North Stars
Mardi Gras Comedy Gala with Em Rusciano + Bob Downe + Dixie Longate + Panti Bliss + Bridget Everett + Hannah Gadsby + Tom Ballard + Axis of Awesome + Stephen K Amos + Shiralee Hood + Alice Fraser + Neel Kolhatkar + more: Enmore Theatre, Newtown
Melbourne drum and six-string two-piece This Way North have dropped a new single and they are bringing it to Sydney. Keep your Head Above Water at Frankie’s Pizza By The Slice, Wednesday.
Minds Alike: Garry Owen Hotel, Rozelle Elk Locker
Outskert: Mr Falcon’s, Glebe
Totally Unicorn + Hy-Test + Hoon: Rad Bar, Wollongong
Winston Surfshirt + Raave Tapes + The Sea Gypsies: North Wollongong Hotel, North Wollongong
James Stewart Keene: Rhythm Boat Cruises (King Street Wharf 6), Pyrmont
Lock It In
Troy T + Suite Az: Rock Lily, Pyrmont
Punk/emo outfit Elk Locker have hit 2017 running and they will be passing through Valve Bar on Thursday in support of Underachiever with Antonia & The Lazy Susans and Marina Mitchell Band.
M AD CDs Check out our Seasonal Specials at
m a d cds.com.au
q u otes@madcds.com.au
( 0 2 ) 95579622
PO Box 190 St Peters NSW 2044
Luke Yeoward: Golden Barley Hotel, Enmore Songs On Stage feat. Stuart Jammin + Jenny Hume: Kellys on King, Newtown The Locals: LazyBones Lounge, Marrickville Tennyson King + Adrian Ayre: LazyBones Lounge (Level 1), Marrickville Live & Originals feat. Girls With Knives + Mihka Chee + Tate Sheridan + Jeffrey Chan: Mr Falcon’s, Glebe Kye Brown: Orient Hotel, The Rocks
Since 1999
CDS - DVDs - Bluray Packaging - Posters
Songs On Stage feat. Russell Neal + Chris Brookes + Pauline Sparkle: Gladstone Hotel, Chippendale
Songs On Stage feat. Russell Neal + Kenneth D’Aran + Paul Ward: Kellys on King, Newtown
LANY + Pumarosa: Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst
Plait Ensemble: LazyBones Lounge, Marrickville John Maddox Duo: Mr Falcon’s, Glebe Musos Club Jam: Orange Grove Hotel, Lilyfield
Unit 10, 2 Bishop St, St Peters NSW 2044
THE MUSIC • 22ND FEBRUARY 2017 • 39
Holly Throsby • After a Time Includes What Do You Say? & Aeroplane features guests Mark Kozelek & Mick Turner
“A meandering stream of textures that conjure their own world of dappled light and boundless hope. + + + + ” – Rolling Stone “Simple and gorgeous. + + + +” – The Music “Shadowy...tender...understated...beautiful” –Stereogum
New Studio Album Out Now National Australian Tour during March www.hollythrosby.com
ALSO AVAILABLE... TY SEGALL
NADIA REID
JORDAN IRELAND
Ty Segall
Preservation
With Purple Orchestra