October Issue | 2019
Sydney | Free
T H E F E S T I VA L I S S U E Tones & I leads the must-see acts of the summer season Festival guide: find your perfect summer party
Anatomy of a festival: The inner workings of your fave day out
Don’t get shirty: A guide to buying festival merch
ON SALE NOW
MORE ARTISTS TO BE ANNOUNCED!
2ND SHOW ADDED DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND 7PM & 9.30PM
2019 SMOS
DR CO
SUN 17 NOV
FIRST STATE SUPER THEATRE
29–31 OCT
SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE TUE 26 NOV STATE THEATRE
RANDY FELTFACE NINA CONTI
SUN 3 NOV
STUDIO, SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE
28–30 OCT
Beth Beth Steel lli ng Ste ellli ng STUDIO, SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE
HOSTED BY
DAVE HUGHES SAT 2 NOV
SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE
SPECIAL GUEST JUDITH LUCY! AS SEEN ON NETFLIX’S COMEDIANS OF THE WORLD
(With Her Mom In The Crowd)
(With Her Mom In The Crowd)
FRI 1 NOV
SEYMOUR CENTRE
WED 30 OCT
FACTORY THEATRE
FRI 1 NOV
THE COMEDY STORE *terms and conditions apply
SEE MORE COMEDY WITH THE JUST FOR LAUGHS FESTIVAL PASS *
Hosted by
NICK CODY
31 OCT – 2 NOV STUDIO, SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE
FEATURING AN AMAZING LINEUP OF DIFFERENT INTERNATIONAL AND LOCAL COMEDIANS EACH SHOW!
BOOK AT JUSTFORLAUGHS.SYDNEY THE MUSIC
•
J U LY
#jflsydney
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
OUT OCT 25
TOURING WFEITBH2020 ALICE COOPER airbournerock.com
LP / CD / DIGITAL
OUT OCT 18 LP / CD / DIGITAL THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
officialrefused.com
SINCE 1986
AUSTRALIA’S LARGEST STREET POSTER NETWORK
1300MYPOSTER
www.rockposters.com.au
MELBOURNE 226 NORMANBY AVE, THORNBURY VIC 3071 03 9416 9966
SYDNEY 13-15 BUCKLEY STREET, MARRICKVILLE NSW 2204 02 9519 2002
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
SECRET SOUNDS PRESENTS THE 27TH ANNUAL MUSIC & ARTS FESTIVAL
HALSEY (ONLY AUS SHOWS) • VAMPIRE WEEKEND • DISCLOSURE PEKING DUK • OF MONSTERS AND MEN • PNAU • LEWIS CAPALDI • MILKY CHANCE JOHN FARNHAM • BANKS (ONLY AUS SHOWS) • DOPE LEMON • VERA BLUE YUNGBLUD • G FLIP • CROOKED COLOURS • PARCELS • THELMA PLUM • #1 DADS WAAX • BAKER BOY • PSYCHEDELIC PORN CRUMPETS • AMYL & THE SNIFFERS THE JAPANESE HOUSE • PINK SWEAT$ • CXLOE • TOTTY AND IN ADDITION PLEASE WELCOME
PLAYBOI CARTI • MONTAIGNE • HOLY HOLY • WAVE RACER BAD//DREEMS • B WISE • A. SWAYZE & THE GHOSTS ADRIAN EAGLE • TEEN JESUS AND THE JEAN TEASERS TASH SULTANA • THUNDAMENTALS • COSMO’S MIDNIGHT • CONCRETE SURFERS THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
NO GEOGRAPHY LIVE 2019
WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
FRO NTI ERTO U R I N G .CO M C H EM I C ALB ROTH ERS .CO M N O G EOG R APH Y O UT N OW THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
IMAGE BY CALLO ALBANESE. SHOW DIRECTION BY SMITH & LYALL
9
SAT 02 NOV THE DOME, SYDNEY SHOWGROUND
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
Credits Publisher Handshake Media Pty Ltd Group Managing Editor Andrew Mast National Editor – Magazines Mark Neilsen Senior Editor Sam Wall Editors Daniel Cribb, Neil Griffiths
Festival greetings
Assistant Editor/Social Media Co-Ordinator Jessica Dale
T
he festival season is upon us. I know this because I’ve already attended my first festival sideshow for the spring/summer period. US rapper Leikeli47’s show was a rammed and sweaty sell out. The masked performer was the perfect festival season opener; she preached inclusivity and focussed a lot of attention on the punters who make these shows possible. Fans joined her on stage as she took the time to highlight their outfits and dancing skills. By the time the show climaxed with her two biggest hits (Girl Blunt and Money), she was being drowned out by audience singalongs. We are officially ready for the festival fun-run and its accompanying sideshow marathon. And this month we are here to help you ready yourself. We feature our pick of local acts that we think are festival-ready, those who are primed to make you thankful to be outside dancing like you’re not getting sunburnt. We also take a peek behind the festival curtain and talk to some of Australia’s leading promoters about the pleasure and pain of serving us up quality music events on an annual basis. Plus, we’ve thrown in tips for getting the most out of your merch-purchasing dollar and we take a look beyond the local acts making the festival circuit tick and appreciate some of the other global communities being represented in Australia this season.
Editorial Assistant Lauren Baxter Arts Editor Hannah Story Gig Guide Henry Gibson gigs@themusic.com.au Senior Contributors Steve Bell, Bryget Chrisfield, Cyclone, Jeff Jenkins Contributors Emily Blackburn, Melissa Borg, Joel Burrows, Anthony Carew, Roshan Clerke, Shaun Colnan, Brendan Crabb, Guy Davis, Joe Dolan, Joseph Earp, Chris Familton, Guido Farnell, Donald Finlayson, Liz Giuffre, Carley Hall, Tobias Handke, Mark Hebblewhite, Samuel Leighton Dore, Keira Leonard, Joel Lohman, Alannah Maher, Sean Maroney, Taylor Marshall, Anne Marie Peard, Michael Prebeg, Mick Radojkovic, Stephen A Russell, Michaela Vaughan, Rod Whitfield Senior Photographers Cole Bennetts, Kane Hibberd
This issue also marks some changes to a few regular features within our pages. Last month we featured the final appearance of columnist Maxim Boon who had previously served as an editor at The Music. After he bid farewell to our Melbourne office, Boon had continued to pen two reader-favourite columns. Boon’s long-running adventure-seeking column Shit We Did will now be driven by editorial team member Sam Wall who takes over the reins this month with a tale about skin health and close encounters with surgical scalpels. If you flick to our back page you’ll find that we have retired our longrunning The Final Thought column and introduced a couple of new regulars. By popular demand (seriously, so many people have harassed and harangued for this across the years) we have introduced a trivia challenge which this month challenges your brain to recall various festival memories (cue lots of jokes along the lines of, “Hey, if you can remember a festival, were you really there?!”). And, we also welcome contributions from cartoonists. This space will be curated by Chris Neill, publisher of music-themed comic anthology Meet Me In The Pit, and this month features the work of Evie Hilliar.
Photographers Rohan Anderson, Andrew Briscoe, Stephen Booth, Pete Dovgan, Simone Fisher, Lucinda Goodwin, Josh Groom, Clare Hawley, Bianca Holderness, Jay Hynes, Dave Kan, Hayden Nixon, Angela Padovan, Markus Ravik, Bobby Rein, Barry Shipplock, Terry Soo Advertising Leigh Treweek, Antony Attridge, Brad Edwards, Jacob Bourke sales@themusic.com.au Art Dept Felicity Case-Mejia print@themusic.com.au Admin & Accounts accounts@themusic.com.au Distro distro@themusic.com.au Subscriptions store.themusic.com.au Contact Us Mailing address PO Box 87 Surry Hills NSW 2010
Happy reading.
Melbourne Ph: 03 9081 9600 26 Napoleon Street Collingwood Vic 3066 Sydney Ph: 02 9331 7077 Level 2, 230 Crown St Darlinghurst NSW 2010
Andrew Mast Managing Editor
Brisbane Ph: 07 3252 9666 info@themusic.com.au www.theMusic.com.au
THE MUSIC
•
16
•
T H E S TA R T
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
Our contributors
This month
23
Shit we did: Skin check Guest editorial: Fuzzy Operations Event Director and Australian Festival Association board member Adelle Robinson
24
The Festival Issue Tones & I Must-see acts: here are our picks of this year’s festival season
entury F ox
City & Colour
41
Album reviews
42
The Arts 26
The best arts of the month
27
46
Film & TV reviews
48
28
caster, hell-bent on a career with no income.
Much Ado About Nothing
ate William .P
ic: K
Okenyo is sceptical of Shakespeare
When not desperately looking for a power
49
34 35
Holy Holy
36
Beth Stelling
37
source, you can find him in cafes boldly ordering strong soy mochas. Oh, and you can definitely call him Al.
50
Your Town Festival picks An overview of the choicest festivals this season
Mo r c h e e b a
32
Alasdair Belling Alasdair is a writer, musician and cricket pod-
yo
n Peter Dovga
Pic:
30
Montaigne
Ruel From quitting school to seeing his idol at a grocery store
captures the humour of the mundane, as
of bagels.
en
Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird, Ali Barter
and digital illustrator. Her relatable work
Also, one time she drew beagles in the shape
Fangirls
Buying merch Your guide to obtaining that black T-shirt and more
Evie Hilliar is a Sydney-based comic artist
Ok
Anatomy of a festival Just how do promoters make them happen?
40
well as the crushing isolation of modern life.
s
Around the world in eight festivals
Hans Zimmer His fave film music moments
0th C
21
c: 2
This month’s best binge watching
Evie Hilliar
Pi
16
Editor’s letter
54
Adelle Robinson Adelle Robinson is the Event Director of Fuzzy Operations, which produces Listen Out, Field Day and Harbourlife. Adelle is also
60
a founding committee member of the Aus-
This month’s local highlights
62
lian festivals.
Summer beers
64
The end
66
Your gigs
38 THE MUSIC
•
18
•
T H E S TA R T
tralian Festival Association (AFA), a newly formed peak body representing Austra-
TRIPLE J, SAND EVENTS, PRETTY RAD STORE, THE MUSIC, HAPPY MAG, FOCUS PRESENTS
GHOULS & UNICORNS EDITION
THUR 12TH FRI 13TH SAT 14TH DEC 2019 PORT MACQUARIE
METHYL ETHEL BRIGGS JULIA JACKLIN TROPHY EYES LIME CORDIALE BAKER BOY
AMYL & THE SNIFFERS TIRED LION GOOD DOOGS I KNOW LEOPARD GENESIS OWUSU MILAN RING ARNO FARAJI NATHAN BALL (UK) JEFFE TASMAN KEITH STEVIE JEAN FRITZ BAKERS EDDY SURF TRASH VOIID JOHNNY HUNTER GEORGIA JUNE THE BUOYS GARAGE SALE UNEARTHED SPOT W WW WW W.. F FO OT TS SU UN N .. C CO OM M
BYO OVER 18’s - 2 & 3 NIGHT GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS
TICKETS ON SALE FROM 10AM ON THE 9TH OF AUGUST WWW.FOTSUN.COM INCLUDING FREE CAMPING START AT $239. THURSDAY NIGHT FUNHOUSE, SILENT BEATS AND FOOD TRUCKS / BEACH ACCESS / HOT SHOWERS / CABINS / “GLAMP VILLAGE”/ CAMP WITH CAR / RESORT POOL / RESERVED POWERED SITES / PLUS NEW VIP UPGRADE!
Cristian Campano Design.
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
Got a quarter?
Metallica
Luigi’s Mansion 2
Regurgitator
Aussie legends Regurgitator are celebrating hitting a quarter-century with a massive tour with Shonen Knife and The Fauves. The Gurg are set to play a whopping 21 shows starting this 4 Oct.
Thrill ‘em all Metallica have cancelled their tour, but you can still see S&M² in cinemas around the country this 9 Oct. It was filmed at Metallica and San Francisco Symphony’s September shows commemorating the 20th anniversary of their initial collaboration, S&M.
Liaise-y days
Third-person hoover
Dapper lads Client Liaison are back on the road this month with their recent single, The Real Thing. The Melbourne duo, who signed a global publishing deal with BMG earlier this year, start the run in Vic on 17 Oct.
Client Liaison. Pic: Giulia McGauran
Josh Thomas
Our favourite cowardly hero is back with a spooky new adventure in Luigi’s Mansion 3. Help Luigi rescue his friends from the evil King Boo with new tools and abilities at your disposal. This Nintendo exclusive is out 31 Oct.
Joshin’ Aussie actor and comedian Josh Thomas is returning home for his first live tour since 2013, when his hit TV series Please Like Me debuted on the ABC. His new show Whoopsie Daisy kicks off in NSW on 25 Oct.
THE MUSIC
•
20
•
T H E S TA R T
Stream dreams
Return to Sampa Dropping just last month, Australian singer-songwriter and rapper Sampa The Great’s debut full-length is already being called a work of genius. Don’t miss your chance to see it live when The Return tour starts this 3 Oct.
This month’s best binge watching Big Mouth, Season 3
Big Mouth is back and being a teenager is still the worst. The show’s first two seasons were widely acclaimed for their funny, empathetic and upfront (often to the point of confronting) depiction of puberty, following the journey of middle schoolers Missy (Jenny Slate), Nick (Nick Kroll) and Andrew (John Mulaney), and their rampant hormone monsters.
Streams from 4 Oct on Netflix
Sampa The Great
Rhythm + Flow
Rap giants Cardi B, Chance The Rapper,
Or be squere
and TI are searching Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta and Chicago for the next hip hop phenomenon in this new music competition
After her debut album Dawn Of The Dark made waves last year, Tori Forsythe is back with a cracker new single and dates this month in support. Catch Forsyth around the country on her Be Here run from 18 Oct.
show. It’s the first Netflix has made and it looks like they’ve gone all out. In the immortal words of Cardi B, “It’s gonna be litty like a fucking titty.”
Streams from 9 Oct on Netflix
Watchmen
Based 34 years after Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal graphic novel and Zack Snyder’s adaption, Watchmen is less a sequel and more a whole new story told in the universe established by the original. It follows
Tori Forsyth
a war taking place between The Seventh
THE MUSIC
•
21
•
T H E S TA R T
Cavalry, a faceless guerrilla group inspired by series fave Rorschach, and the police force of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Streams from 21 Oct on Foxtel Now
Podcast of the month: Nice Try! — Utopian
Zombieland: Double Tap
Nice Try
Explore some of the world’s most fascinating attempts at utopian societies in the first season of history podcast Nice Try!. Join host Avery Trufelman as she delves into humanity’s perpetual search for the perfect place.
Harry histories
Love tap
Debbie Harry
Zombieland: Double Tap is the long-awaited sequel to 2009 horror-comedy Zombieland. Starring Woody Harrelson, Jessie Eisenberg and Emma Stone, a group of survivors in post-apocalyptic America embark on a series of hilarious zombie adventures, while attempting to maintain their makeshift family. In cinemas 17 Oct.
Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry’s new book Face It is out 1 Oct. As well as interviews conducted by journalist Sylvie Simmons, the memoir includes the Rock & Roll Hall Of Famer’s first-person essays on her iconic life and output.
Suit up
Dominic Fike
Starting with an appearance at Caloundra Music Festival on 7 Oct, Sunshine Coast singer-songwriter Sahara Beck is playing shows up and down the east coast this month for her extremely fresh EP, Queen Of Hearts.
Fike club Saharah Beck
Dominic Fike is making his debut Down Under this month. After a quick stop in NZ, the songwriter, rapper and DIY artist will perform in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne from 10 Oct.
THE MUSIC
•
22
•
T H E S TA R T
Sh*t we did With Sam Wall
**Sips tea** RuPaul and Michelle Visage are taking the show on the road to find the UK’s next drag superstar. Graham Norton, Alan Carr and a rotating cast of celebrity judges will help them decide who sashays and who shantays when RuPaul’s Drag Race UK streams from 4 Oct on Stan.
Skin check If Australia’s good at two things it’s leadership spills and melanoma. About 33.6 out of every 100,000 were diagnosed with the cancer in 2018. That’s thankfully a dip from the 49 per 100,000 we saw a few years ago, but still, the only other country throwing up those kind of numbers are our NZ neighbours. It’s a sneaky little bastard as well. UV rays don’t really pay much mind to, say, denim, so melanoma is known to pop up even where the sun don’t shine. It can become life-threatening in just six weeks, and the smallest fatal melanoma on record, that I could find, was 6mm by 2mm. Which is nothing. Worst case scenario, you’ve got a month and a half to find an errant freckle on your inner thigh. It’s also one of the most common cancers in young
RuPaul’s Drag Race UK
people, who can be famously ‘whatevs’ about these kind of things. The thing is, melanoma is almost always curable if addressed in the early stages, before it’s spread to other, less easily reached parts of the body. Like your lungs. Or your bones. With that in mind, and with the sunny season incoming, it’s high time I got my moles checked.
The verdict
To sea what they could sea Seaside are touring Joyride, their latest single and the first track from their upcoming debut album. The Byron Bay indie-rockers play seven shows around the country starting 25 Oct in VIC.
Goddamn. I had to get two high-risk suckers cut out. A decent sized mole in the middle of my back and one on the back of my knee. The leg one was tiny, but that is a tender, bendy area. The last place you want people poking scalpels and stitches is your joint meat. Honestly though, what hurt more was my doctor’s response to a dark, raised dot on my hip. I expressed concern since it itches from time to time, often a sign that something is rotten in the state of skin mark. After close inspection with one of those little magnifying eyepieces, she nonchalantly informed me the mole was benign and my jeans are too tight. Then asked if I moisturise. Cheers, Doc. When do we get to the part where you stab me in the back? To be fair, a couple of literal and emotional jabs and my peace of mind is through the roof. My (pasty) family has a long history of sun-based skin concerns and I knew I had a few moles around the place - though after an appraisal and mole map I realised I’d underestimated just how many (reeeow). But my biopsy is back and my skin is cancer-free. There are more fun reasons to be naked in front of strangers, sure.
Seaside
But considering how easily avoided skin cancers can be with a quick look-over you’d be an arse not to go and get checked.
THE MUSIC
•
23
•
T H E S TA R T
“Closing festivals will not stop people from taking drugs” Despite clear evidence to the contrary, drug deaths are still being laid at the door of Australia’s music festivals. Fuzzy Operations Event Director and founding Australian Festival Association board member Adelle Robinson looks at how we got here, and what we need do now.
T
broader community. Unfortunately, such measures are still the exception to policy, and viewed as giving a ‘green light to drug taking’. This is far from the truth: pill testing is an education and harm reduction strategy which acknowledges that some people will choose to take drugs and that we can choose to help save their lives despite them taking actions of which we may disapprove. In the ‘80s and ‘90s Australia pioneered the needle exchange program, while other countries focussed on increasing punishment for drug users. No country succeeded in stopping its citizens from taking drugs, but Australia’s visionary policy saved many thousands of lives. I hope that we can learn this important history lesson and be equally courageous in our pursuit of saving the lives of people who take other kinds of drugs. Among much struggle and disappointment, there have also been a few encouraging wins for our industry and the music lovers of our state: NSW Health released updated guidelines that mandate best practice for medical providers and service levels at music festivals. Further harm reduction strategies and education campaigns are also being advocated by NSW Health. The music industry firmly supports the new version of these guidelines and welcomes increased oversight of our events by NSW Health. Another positive but underreported recommendation towards reducing the harms of drug use came from the Premier’s expert panel: since January this year, police at some NSW music festivals have trialled issuing Criminal Infringement Notices rather than Court Attendance Notices for people caught with small amounts of MDMA (resulting in a fine instead of a criminal record). Anecdotal evidence suggests that many festival overdoses occur not despite, but precisely due to visible police presence at festival entry points, prompting some attendees to take all their drugs before entry to prevent being caught, rather than moderating their use over the course of the day. We believe that this de-escalation of legal confrontation with festival attendees is a positive step in the direction of the prevention of overdose deaths, and we applaud all such initiatives. With spring upon us, another festival season is about to begin. Regulatory uncertainties and financial difficulties for promoters abound; the music festival licence is still in place at the time of writing and costs for operating festivals, especially in NSW, are continually increasing. Charges for user-pays police in NSW are two to three times that of other states. Furthermore, at the time of writing, we are still awaiting the recommendations of the coronial inquest. We are also awaiting the outcome of a parliamentary vote over music festival regulations. We are unsure whether the Criminal Infringement Notice for MDMA will be rolled out across NSW. The outcomes of all of these matters will determine the viability of our industry in times to come. On the plus side, the music festival industry has never been so united: we have never had such access to stakeholders, all largely as a result of advocacy by the Australian Festival Association. Our industry finally has a seat at the table when it comes to the creation of policy around matters that affect us all, and we are proud of our contribution to the legislative process. Drug use is a complex social practice, beyond the scope of this article. What is certain is that people aren’t taking drugs because they attend music festivals, and that closing festivals will not stop people from taking drugs. The people of NSW, the parents, and families of festival attendees, our industry, our culture, our visitors from around the world, and of course, festival lovers themselves deserve better, smarter, more humane governance on this issue. Our actions as leaders in this industry and policy stakeholders must focus on implementing sane, rational strategies that privilege the ultimate priority of human life above the pursuit of ideological and political aims. At the same time, we must protect what is left of our vibrant and exciting music culture by supporting and improving music festivals across NSW and beyond. It is my hope and aspiration that all stakeholders in this situation endeavour to understand how we can keep our patrons safe, without destroying a vital aspect of the culture of our state.
welve months ago, two tragic drug-related deaths occurred at the Defqon 1 Festival in Sydney, unleashing a stream of sensational media articles around deaths at NSW music festivals. Desperate to be seen as ‘sending the right message’ and needing to publicly blame somebody for these tragedies, the NSW government went into a spasm to release policy that would appease the media critics. In reality, attempts at controlling the behaviour of festival attendees through increased police presence, arrests and sniffer dogs had been steadily growing for years. Unfortunately, none of these strategies had any impact on the sad fact that people were still dying at festivals. An expert panel was convened by the NSW Premier, tasked with providing recommendations on how to make music festivals safer. The panel was given just four weeks and comprised the Police Commissioner, the Chief Medical Officer and the Chair of the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority — nobody from any sector of the music or festival industries was consulted or asked to contribute to the report. At this point, it was obvious that there would be major ramifications for the industry at large. MusicNSW penned an open letter to the Premier demanding consultation with our industry. The industry came together and over 60 representatives signed the letter. As a result, two promoters and MusicNSW were invited to a consultation session with the expert panel. It was a small win but an example of how a united industry can make itself heard. Around the same time, the Australian Festival Association was formed as the peak body for music festivals in Australia. Five promoters who regularly compete for artists, venues, tickets and customers put their differences aside to advocate for their sector. Jessica Ducrou and Danny Rogers had previously discussed the need for a peak body representing the festival industry, but the Defqon 1 deaths accelerated discussions and the AFA was born. The Premier’s expert panel released their report after only four weeks, in October 2018, with most of the recommendations focused on creating a new ‘music festival’ licence, applying to all future NSW music festivals. The public saw events being cancelled across NSW and came out in force to protest another threat to live music: the Don’t Kill Live Music Rally attracted over 10,000 people in Hyde Park, protesting the proposed licence. Less than five years after the lockout laws turned inner Sydney into a ghost town after dark, history was repeating itself: culture and entertainment were again being used as a scapegoat for the harms of drug abuse. The Music Industry Alliance was formed, uniting several industry groups: Australian Festival Association, Live Performance Australia, MusicNSW, APRA AMCOS, and the Live Music Office. The Alliance played a critical role in standing up for an industry that wasn’t being taken seriously. In February 2019 the NSW government bowed to industry demands and reduced the scope of the music festival licence to cover only 14 festivals, deemed to be ‘high risk’ events. It was a damaging and divisive tactic but showed that the government was now on the back foot — an example of what can happen when an industry works together. During this time, despite greater oversight from all stakeholders and all the increases in police activity, people were still dying at festivals. The Premier announced a coronial inquest into the deaths with the hearing scheduled to finish at the end of September 2019. The Australian Festival Association sought representation in the inquest, which was welcomed by those assisting the process. It is clear the industry has shown proactivity and a willingness to contribute to these issues and will continue to advocate for rational, evidencebased strategies that can help us keep our patrons safe. Pill testing and drug checking has been a hot issue since well before the deaths at Defqon 1. After much government resistance, another pill testing trial was granted permission to operate at the Groovin The Moo festival in the ACT in April this year. All harm reduction measures, for which the Australian Festival Association advocates tirelessly, aim to help festival attendees make safer choices and reduce the harmful impacts of drug use on them and the
“The people of NSW... deserve better, smarter, more humane governance on this issue.”
THE MUSIC
•
24
•
GUEST EDITORIAL
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
Dancing to her own tune When Bryget Chrisfield checks in with Tones & I, aka Toni Watson, they discuss dealing with cyberbullies, masterminding silent protests and just how much Watson’s life has changed in a single year. Cover pic by Giulia McGauran. Feature pic by Umbrella Creative.
I wanted to make it a peaceful protest that also made people feel uncomfortable viewing it.” These young actors — clad head to toe ing her craft. “I slept on a foam mattress
in The Kids Are Coming merch and all wear-
that was not very big so I slept diagonally,”
ing ghoulish makeup — brandished banners
she says.
emblazoned with slogans such as “Can You
The most she made busking on a sin-
See Us?” and “No One Wants To Listen To The
gle day, Watson says was “enough to eat,
Kids”, delivering Tones & I’s message loud and
put fuel in my car and be happy. Life’s not
clear without uttering a single word.
about money”.
F
ollowing Tones & I’s three sold-out
At Tones & I’s first BIGSOUND show-
It was actually during her very first
case at Famous Nightclub, Watson shared a
Dance Monkey is the first homegrown
Byron Bay busking stint that another of her
comment from some random bloke online,
chart-topper of 2019 and has also peaked
co-managers, Jackson Walkden-Brown (Art-
claiming she seems like “a pissed-off chick
at #1 in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland,
ists Only founder/owner), handed Watson
that hates bullies”. “I’m not a pissed-off chick,”
France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand,
his business card and suggested she should
Watson laughs before stressing, “but I do
Norway, Sweden and Switzerland (so far).
give him a call. “I thought he was bullshit-
hate bullies... Like anyone in the public eye,
shows at Corner Hotel last month, Toni
In February 2019, Watson uploaded her
ting me like most people that say, ‘I know a
I’ve been bullied online. There has been two
Watson, the genius behind the moni-
debut single Johnny Run Away to triple j
guy that knows a guy that met a guy, blah
occasions where I have reached out to a bully
ker, stayed put in Melbourne to prepare for
Unearthed. Within 12 hours, the song was
blah,’” she recalls. “I didn’t take him seriously
online and told them, ‘Hey, I’m not sure what
her AFL Grand Final performance. She prob-
added to triple j. During her live shows, Wat-
at all.”
you are going through, but you don’t need to
ably would have laughed if someone told her
say things like that. I am a real person and I
a year ago she’d be performing at the MCG. “I
wish you nothing but love’... I don’t think they
couldn’t get tickets to the AFL Grand Final last
realised I’m a real person.” In both of these instances, Watson says
year so this a different experience one year
the cyberbullies apologised after admitting
later,” she says. Watson performed two songs, Dance
“I’m not a pissed-off chick, but I do hate bullies.”
Monkey and the title track from her debut EP The Kids Are Coming, as part of the AFL Grand Final’s
all-Australian
pre-game
entertain-
ment, which also featured Paul Kelly, Dean
they didn’t realise she would actually see their comments. Watson advises victims of bullying “to surround [themselves] with good people and respond with love”. Another memorable moment from the
Lewis, John Williamson, Conrad Sewell and
aforementioned showcase saw Watson gift-
(of course) Mike Brady. So how did she pre-
ing her own The Kids Are Coming-themed
pare herself to perform in front of the MCG’s
trainers to a fan who caught her attention,
100,000-strong crowd (plus the game’s large
asking whether he could have her kicks. After she handed them over, Watson concluded
television audience)? “I prepare by focusing on son likes to tell a story about how her co-
Given that Watson was more accus-
her set in socked feet. Did she have to walk
At the time of print, the 19-year-old art-
manager David Morgan (Lemon Tree Music)
tomed to performing in small spaces while
back to the hotel wearing just socks? Wat-
ist’s smash hit Dance Monkey retained pole
warned her to prepare herself for the possi-
busking, she had to learn how to move
son chuckles, “I randomly had some shoes
position on the ARIA Singles Chart for a ninth
bility that Dance Monkey may not perform
around the stage. “I still can’t dance, but I
backstage that some of the actors didn’t end
consecutive week, equaling the record — also
as well as Johnny Run Away (which peaked
have a good time,” she says.
up wearing.”
held by Justice Crew (Que Sera) — for lon-
at #12 on the ARIA Singles Chart and is cer-
On top of her showcases at BIGSOUND
gest stint at the top of the chart by an Aus-
tified double Platinum). “I love to call him
2019, Watson also masterminded a silent
tralian act. Of Dance Monkey’s continued
out during my set and he has a good laugh
protest in Brisbane’s Brunswick Street Mall.
chart domination, Watson marvels, “I honestly
about it,” she says.
When asked how she brought her creative
me and being happy,” she says.
thought that when it reached ten on the ARIA
After chucking in her retail job to move
vision to life, Watson explains, “I hired amaz-
Chart it would decline. I never thought this
to Byron Bay and busk, Watson lived in her
ing young actors to stand in the middle of
would happen!”
white 1981 Mazda E2000 van while hon-
the mall two hours before my performance.
THE MUSIC
•
26
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Tones & I is on tour now, including Land Of Plenty on 2 Nov, Spilt Milk from 23 Nov and Laneway Festival from 1 Feb.
Spacey Jane
Your new favourite festival acts
You can’t get much more buzzy than Freo’s Spacey Jane. Selling out show after show with their fuzzy garage-pop, the four-piece are set to shred their way through Yours & Owls and
Half the fun of heading to festivals is being completely blown away by something new - and there are plenty of killer artists on this year’s bills that will do the trick. Here are five local artists set to light up festival season’s stages.
Laneway and probably sell out a few more shows as well.
Yours Truly They’ve already signed to UNFD this year and the rest of 2019 is shaping up to be a big one for Sydney’s Yours Truly. Their positive pop punk is sure to make waves come December when Good Things Festival rolls round. Meet you in the mosh?
Approachable Members Of Your Local Community People get seriously into Approachable Members Of Your Local Community’s live show. It’s a little like being caught up in a mob, except everyone’s brought good vibes and high fives
Pic: Jordan Munns
instead of torches and pitchforks. Bigger mobs = bigger moods.
Stevan
Sophiegrophy
Listening to Stevan you can be in one of two camps.
There is a growing wave
Maybe you’re down with the
in Australian hip hop and
laid-back groove of Timee
Sophiegrophy is set to come
or maybe you can’t get past
crashing down on crowds this
LNT’s indie-rock feels. We’re
festival season. The electronic
straddling the line here - a
hip hop artist has big, big
little column A, a little col-
hooks and sets at Grass Is
umn B - and reckon you’ll be
Greener and Festival X are
too after seeing him at Fair-
going to snag her a whole new
grounds this festive season.
level of fandom.
THE MUSIC
•
27
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Around the world in eight festival acts There was a time when Australian music festival bills were all about US, UK and, of course, homegrown performers, but today’s events are credibly international. Here are eight acts from around the globe to catch this season. By Cyclone.
Nano Stern
Of Monsters & Men
Buffy Sainte-Marie
Ego Lemos
Playing at: Mullum Music Festival, Queen-
Playing at: Falls Festival
Playing at: Bluesfest
Playing at: Port Fairy Folk Festival
Sounds like: Mythic and euphoric alt-
Sounds like: Resonant folk-rock songs of
Sounds like: Headnodding folk ‘n’ roots with
From: Iceland
From: Canada
From: Timor-Leste (East Timor)
Fun fact: Iceland’s Beer Day (Bjúrdagur) on 1
Fun fact: One of Canada’s oldest known
Fun fact: Timor-Leste’s national football
ment UFO investigations agency
of seven decades’ prohibition
Ontario, is believed to be over 500 years old
regained independence
Shonen Knife
Claptone
Sibusile Xaba
Armin van Buuren
Playing at: The Lost Lands
Playing at: Beyond The Valley, Wildlands,
Playing at: Mullum Music Festival
Playing at: FestivalX
Sounds like: Spiritual, expressive and rhyth-
Sounds like: Hands-in-the-air stadium trance
scliff Music Festival,
Sounds like: Vibrant Latin American folk that bursts into high-energy rock From: Chile Fun fact: Chile (openly) has its own govern-
Sounds like: Cult pop-punk emitting playfulness and riffs galore From: Japan Fun Fact: Mount Fuji is one of Japan’s 110 active volcanoes, last erupting in 1707
rock anthems
First Nations’ resistance and survival
Mar was created in 1989 to celebrate the end
sugar maple trees, the Comfort Maple in
Field Day
Sounds like: Deep, groovy tech-house with
mic folk, blues and jazz with virtuoso guitar
disco glamour
From: South Africa
From: Germany
Fun fact: South Africa has 11 official languag-
Fun fact: Germany has as many as 25,000
es, with isiZulu (Zulu) the most commonly
castles (some now just sites)
THE MUSIC
•
spoken at home
28
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
delicate acoustic guitar and sonorous vocals
team joined FIFA in 2005, three years after it
From: The Netherlands Fun fact: The Netherlands has an estimated 1.3 bicycles per person
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
Anatomy of a festival What does it take to throw one of the country’s biggest parties? Sam Wall finds out from Secret Sounds CEO Jessica Ducrou, Love Police Records founder Brian Taranto, and Bluesfest director Peter Noble.
Booking
W
hen everything comes together and you find yourself dancing in a crowd of like-minded thousands while one of your favourite acts tears up the stage,
maybe with a bit of pyro for flavour, the feeling is ineffable. Just the scale of it can make the experience profound, like you’ve been absorbed into a vast, fleeting collective consciousness. There’s nothing else quite like it. But what does it take to make that moment happen? Where would you even start?
W
Location
hatever else an event offers, at the end of the day the biggest drawcard is the line-up. The bands are the ticket, particularly if you’ve got
headliners like Childish Gambino or Iggy Pop, and putting together a solid bill takes time — at least a full year. Ducrou says that as Splendour has grown booking has
W
hen sourcing locations for festivals, “They need to be spaces that suit the vibe you are trying to create,” says Taranto, “at least initially.”
“Once a festival gathers its own momentum, the peo-
ple pretty much show you how they want the space to work, so long as you pay attention.”
gone from a six-month process to where they are “now
Noble’s advice is if you get the chance, lock it down.
booking year-round, sometimes even scheduling artists for
After taking “about three years to get all the approvals
the following year’s event”, something echoed by Noble.
through”, Noble purchased Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm, Blues-
If you have these kinds of questions, Jessica Ducrou, Peter
When we reach Noble he’s actually in New York “book-
Noble and Brian Taranto are the people to ask. As the co-CEO
ing talent”. As a possible hint for future line-ups, he calls
“It’s turned out to be the best thing we ever did. And
of Secret Sounds, Ducrou is behind some of Australia’s largest
Brandi Carlile’s Madison Square Garden performance “one
we have just spent ten million dollars redeveloping the site.
events, including Splendour In The Grass, Spin Off Adelaide,
of the best shows I’ve ever seen ever, in my life!”
fest’s longstanding home, in 2007.
“We had to forgo profit to do so. But it was a ten-year
Falls Festival and Download. Noble has helmed Bluesfest
“It takes me over year to book Bluesfest,” he tells The
goal to get the site to a certain point, which that site is at
for decades, the event becoming a calendar staple since its
Music. “I’m booking [2021] now. Even a little bit of ‘22, I
now. It still doesn’t mean it doesn’t need money spent on
1990 inception. As well as founding and running Love Police
still haven’t finished 2020. If you wanna get the right lot of
it every year, but we have built a dedicated event site and
Records, Taranto organises hip, Tallarook camper Boogie Fest
headliners, and for Bluesfest it is a five-day festival, with two
those are rare on the ground in Australia.
and one-day Americana party Out On The Weekend, two very
headliner stages, pumping out headliners every day [you
different but equally well-curated boutique festivals.
have to do that].”
So, where do we start?
scale festivals than SITG, Falls or Bluesfest, catering to more
This year SITG and Falls also secured a permanent NSW
specific demographics, but Taranto still calls booking a “365
home at North Byron Parklands, a process that took close
days a year” job, although it seems like a labour of love.
to nine years to be approved by the state’s planning system.
Both Boogie and Out On The Weekend are smaller
“Both festivals are a bit of a selfish indulgence,” says Taranto, “crossed with some commercial reality to make
“Putting on a festival is not necessarily something that is for the faint-hearted.” – Peter Noble
“I think having a site is a neverending investment, but it’s still a great one. Because that’s guaranteeing your future.”
The site is also undergoing a $42 million development to grow the capacity to 50,000 punters per day.
sure someone buys tickets. I’m a music fan, I’m a lifestyle
“In the very first instance you need enough space to
festival fan, and I think there are enough people with similar
present the event,” advises Ducrou. “Then you need to con-
tastes to me that will hopefully buy into the experience to
sider your surrounding neighbours.
make it all work.”
“How many people will you potentially inconvenience.
That’s still not to imply that the process is a picnic.
How will your audience access the venue? Is there a pub-
“International competition is fierce,” says Ducrou, “par-
lic transport system nearby? If not, can you provide a car-
ticularly as the US festival market has developed over the
park and bus system? What is the capacity of the local
last decade. Confirming our headliners is always so varied,
road network? How supportive are your local stakehold-
sometimes agents are very clear they want [to] play our fes-
ers like the council and the police and what is required to
tivals, other times we are paying well beyond their worth
secure approval?”
because our options are limited.”
THE MUSIC
•
30
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Falls Festival Byron Bay. Pic: Dave Kan
Marketing
G
etting the word out is key, and cutting through the chatter when there is so much competition can be difficult. Even events with 20 or nearly 30 years’ his-
Funding
T
Legalities
o highlight the possible cost (and risks), in 2013 Soundwave founder and promoter AJ Maddah responded to a tweet asking about that year’s expenditure with: “Off
F
estivals have a lot of moving parts and each state has its own legislation around each of them. The Victorian code of practice for running safer
tory need to be smart about where and how they spend
the top of my head artist budget was $26M, production was
music festivals details at least 21 different bodies and
their marketing budget.
around $7M, sites around $10M, travel $4.6M.”
authorities that should be contacted in preparation for a
“It changes all the time,” says Ducrou. “Certainly right
Two years later the touring event would fold, the compa-
festival, from the local government authority to cleaning
now a combination of digital and traditional marketing is
ny reported to have owed around 186 creditors something in
companies. The larger the event, the more people to con-
critical to an event’s success. A good publicist is key and
the region of $26 million.
tact, applications to lodge, and lead time required.
always keeping abreast of the various technologies on how
From performers down to waste disposal, festival outlay
Falls attracts thousands across four states, SITG’s capac-
best to find your audience. We never rest on our laurels or
seems endless, and as Ducrou says, “To host an event, you
ity is growing to 50,000, and Bluesfest sees turnouts up to
previous success, we don’t take our history for granted.”
need to be able to cover any potential loss.
and over 100,000 people. Without proper planning and
Taranto says the best thing you can do to promote
“It’s an expensive and high risk proposition with small
yourself and your event is to keep your promises. “Be a good
margins, I’m not sure many other industries would see the
festival and deliver what you say you are going to do,” he
value, sometimes I don’t,” she says.
duty of care, things could catastrophically. It sounds like a minefield to navigate. “Where do you start!?” asks Ducrou. “Firstly, patron and
says. “Then grow and work your mailing list and socials and
So where do you find the funding for events on that scale?
staff safety is our foremost concern while trying to pres-
spend your limited marketing budget wisely. After a num-
Is it a reasonable expectation to be able to cover some of that
ent a compelling and relevant event. Each state has its
ber of years, word of mouth is strong but people are so busy
set-up with sponsors or grants?
own approval process, each venue has its individual chal-
they still need to be reminded.”
“It’s a tough way to make a living,” says Decrou. “As a
lenges you must respond to. With every decision we make
It also doesn’t hurt to have a hook. The most impor-
commercial business we have never received financial sup-
we are mindful of our obligations and put rigour and pro-
tant thing, according to Noble, “is to be able to book
port from government stakeholders but it would make a
cess around how we operate. We learn from every show
the headline”.
huge difference if it were offered. Commercial rights or spon-
and always do our best to improve our performance. It’s
sorship often make the difference between losing money
exhausting but very satisfying when you get it right.
“You’ve got to be able to book them every single year and announce them far enough out that people will start to make plans to come to your event, versus somebody else’s. So what we announced a month ago, Dave Matthews Band
or covering costs.”
The list of legislative requirements “as long as your arm
Boogie has never been supplemented, says Taranto, instead being funded by himself and three friends.
and more”, says Noble. “We have to comply with everything; comply with the
and Patti [Smith] and people like that, literally eight months
“We have had some minimal sponsorship for Out On The
police, with the council, the requirements, traffic manage-
out from our event — we’re announcing the talent so that
Weekend in the first two years, just because we could and it
ment, all those things to put on an event. You have to com-
people make the decision which event they are going to
was easy enough to obtain. Hobson’s Bay Council has given
ply with giving the Responsible Service of Alcohol. We need
come to over the summer. And we’re in the mix. We’re the
us a small grant each year for Out On The Weekend. If the pro-
to have a field hospital, which we’ve had for ten years, so
last event of the season but we’re one of the first events
cess for any of it was difficult or involved us doing things we
that if there’s an emergency we can deal with it. There’s so
to announce.
didn’t want to do, we wouldn’t do it.”
much to do and it’s not cheap. And so, the biggest chal-
“And it just has to be like that, if you want to be successful you’ve gotta be able to be in front, and as much as marketing is important, socials marketing is now getting 90% of marketing.”
Noble however adds that for independent promoters, sponsors can be hard to come by.
“Putting on a festival is not necessarily something that
“The landscape has changed,” says Noble. “There might have been more sponsors around four or five years ago. Nowadays, the monolithic companies, the AEGs and the Live Nations, they’re able to do world sponsorship deals. Then there might be, you know, the major phone companies or banks or whoever it may be, airlines, and then they’re able to filter that down through their network of events.”
THE MUSIC
•
31
•
lenge for new events is just how to do all that.
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
is for the faint-hearted.”
Hey, you in the black T-shirt! Self-confessed merch addict Bryget Chrisfield shares some tips on how to snap up sought-after merch items without sacrificing your spot in the mosh, and what to do with your beloved old band tees once the armpit regions get crusty. denim vest or jacket for a killer, one-of-akind look. Remember that many venues require all bags larger than 30cm x 30cm to be cloaked before entry these days so come prepared with an empty tote bag, folded up inside your small bag, to carry your merch purchases in (or, even better, buy a new tote from the merch desk as an extra souvenir). When buying vinyl at the merch desk, be sure to ask whether it’s possible to collect your purchase post-show (but don’t forget
N
to pick it up on your way out — set an alert
you could be bolting towards that coveted
on your phone for ten minutes after the
front-and-centre position against the bar-
show’s scheduled finishing time, maybe?).
rier in GA. Better still, make your purchases
At festivals, always be mindful that
to see them (you might even get pointed
from the outside merch stands while your
each individual band’s merch is typically
at from the stage if you clamber up on your
buddy minds your spot in the queue before
only sold on the same day that they’re
mate’s shoulders to show off the tee during
the venue doors open.
scheduled to play. Set an alert on your
their set!) and you’ll also be a magnet for ow that music is basically free, it’s
valuable time pondering selections when
other fans of your fave band.
If you make your purchases pre-show,
phone and prioritise any merch purchases
there will obviously be more options and
as soon as you arrive on the festival site each
our duty as fans to invest in the
If a T-shirt isn’t in the budget, spend
sizes to choose from, but if they don’t have
day to avoid disappointment (stock is often
longevity of bands’ careers by buy-
your hard-earned cash on sticker sets,
your favourite T-shirt design in your size
pretty limited).
ing their merch. The ultimate memorabilia,
badges, patches or a stubbie holder. Look-
just buy it anyway! You can always cut it up
And it goes without saying but don’t
your merch purchase will act as proof of
buy dodgy, cheap, bootleg merch from
attendance and, if it’s a band T-shirt with
unauthorised sellers lurking near venues
tour dates on the back, it’ll also serve as a
post-show. Ever. True fans never do that.
reminder of precisely when the best gig/ festival ever went down. Wearing a band T-shirt is the ultimate demonstration of your allegiance and will also invite the right kinda people into your orbit while repelling haters. Have you ever busted a chat with a random who was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of your favourite band? If it’s a merch tee from a specific tour that you attended and have fond memories of,
“How much of a dealbreaker is it when you’re admiring a hot stranger’s face only to glance down and notice they obviously have poor taste ‘cause they’re sporting a really shit band’s tee!?”
even better! And the same goes for festival T-shirts, which are potential conversation starters, where you can compare favourite bands/festival moments with other punt-
ing at any of these down the track will also
and customise it later, DIY-style. There are
ers. How much of a dealbreaker is it when
cause blissful gig memories to come flood-
oodles of YouTube tutorials to explore as
you’re admiring a hot stranger’s face only
ing back.
well (google: “How to cut band tees”), but
to glance down and notice they obviously
There’s something special about actu-
maybe practise on a couple of dodgy old
have poor taste ‘cause they’re sporting a
ally buying your merch at the festival/gig
T-shirts before you cut into your beloved
really shit band’s tee!? Your choice of merch
you attend rather than ordering it online,
new band tee. Failing that, you could also
speaks volumes.
which is kind of cheating. If we’re talking
cut out the design to sew on the back of a
Is it cool to wear current merch at a
multi-year world tours by massively famous
band’s show? Not really — it’s far cooler
international bands, check out their website
to wear a tee from an earlier tour so that
to see what styles are available in advance
fans/the band (if you’re lucky enough to
— where possible — so that you don’t waste
be clocked from the stage) can tell you’re not just jumping on the bandwagon. What about at festivals? Sure thing. The band in question will know you’re there specifically
THE MUSIC
•
32
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Hot tip: if your favourite band T-shirt gets crusty around the armpit region, from excess wear and general deodorant damage, don’t throw it out! Take a leaf out of Dave Grohl’s mum’s book and upcycle them, immortalising them as cushion covers. Alternatively, there are online tutorials that show you how to stretch your old band tees over poster board and, voila, instant wall art.
1 DAY TIX FROM $129
THE GOLD COAST’S BRAND NEW TWO DAY MUSIC EVENT! SATURDAY 30 NOVEMBER
LOGIC
DEAN LEWIS
ALICE IVY • CUB SPORT • GENESIS OWUSU TKAY MAIDZA • WAAX MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED
SUNDAY 1 DECEMBER
TRAVIS SCOTT JUICE WRLD CARLY RAE JEPSEN CHVRCHES
KAIIT • KIAN • KWAME • SAINT LANE SAMPA THE GREAT
SATURDAY 30 NOVEMBER
SUNDAY 1 DECEMBER
METRICON STADIUM On sale now at Ticketek.com.au PAYMENT OPTIONS NOW AVAILABLE
SandTunesMusicFestival.com
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
More than a mouthful Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird frontman Lachlan Rose tells Alasdair Belling that, thanks to the support of the wider industry, the future no longer looks “like this big, shining, distant dream”.
The best policy Ali Barter is just being honest. She knows she likes horror movies, blood and extreme things. Liz Giuffre discovers how talking about the fucked up things in life makes the Melbourne artist feel free. Feature pic by Kane Hibberd.
“I
’m actually just sitting outside the State Library,” Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird’s frontman Lachlan Rose begins. “I’m about to go into Melbourne Writers Festival.
“I’m attempting to write junior fiction at the moment in
the time between records. I just got into the habit of going
M
to the library and reading and writing kids’ books. It’s a nice balance.”
elbourne indie artist Ali Barter is
didn’t have to have an age restriction on it and stuff like that...
Rose is juggling that new artistic pursuit with touring
putting her best foot forward with
The lyrical content is a lot more raw and extreme. And I want-
and promotion obligations, following the release of LP, New Romancer. Meshing synth-pop with rock, indie and jazz
album number two, Hello, I’m
ed to match that in my video clips. I’m an extreme personality.
Doing My Best. Following up her 2017 debut,
I think in the last record I wasn’t giving myself fully because I
influences, New Romancer, is distinctly atmospheric. As
A Suitable Girl, Barter continues to unapolo-
was on a path to working out how to express myself, whereas
Rose explains, the record is designed to conjure a very spe-
getically play music from her unique per-
on this one I was like, ‘Nup.’ I like horror movies, I like blood, I
cific place.
spective. While that might mean its, at times,
like being super honest, and so that’s why it’s the way it is.”
unusual subject matter for indie-pop, she always speaks from a place of experience.
Barter plays on the contrast between her quite lovelysounding vocals and the depths she can explore in both her
“Everything I’m singing about is true, so
lyrics and musicality. Initially ill at ease with the contrast, now
I’m just being honest, and I think it’s impor-
it’s something she happily owns. “I’m way more ok with me
tant that we talk about this stuff, because for
and my sound and I love it now. But you know, it’s a universal
me, I’ve experienced intense shame around
struggle for a human to be ok with themselves and my voice
addiction, eating issues, and in my experi-
is just one aspect of that. But yes, now I’m proud of it and how
ence, the more I talked about it, the more I
my vocal training helps me, rather than feeling like I need to be
shared it, the more freedom I get from it. So
cooler or darker or smokier or whatever — I can see how useful
if someone tells me that they’ve done some-
it is,” she says. “But I think that, obviously my voice is my voice.
thing really fucked up or really terrible, if I have
It doesn’t matter how dirty everything else is, my voice is still
this little deep, dark secret inside me that
going to sound like a bell, like a bloody choir girl.”
makes me feel like I’m the only one who’s ever
With this record, Barter just wanted to get it done. “I want-
felt like that, then I feel less alone,” Barter says.
ed it to be simpler, sonically simpler,” she explains. “We had
Single Ur A Piece Of Shit is immediately
three recording sessions at Head Gap and we tracked every-
catchy, complete with some satisfying swears
thing... I wanted just [to] make things simpler and not chip
that will get any bathroom mirror or front-row
away at things for ages. The writing process was actually lon-
singer going. If you dig a bit deeper though,
ger, I probably started writing in the middle of 2017 and prob-
the song is a heavy listen. “The song is basi-
ably started [recording] in October in 2018... So it was more that
cally about, and dedicated to, my friends; the
I wanted it to be less produced, and think less about it.”
women I’ve gone through life from my teens
While Barter is still happy to live in the alternative scene,
until now [with], and all our problems growing
her ultimate aim is to find as many listeners as possible. “I’ve
up. We still have problems now and we’re in
started thinking about the next record, and it’s going to be
our 30s,” Barter explains.
more pop,” she says enthusiastically. “I did the first record, and
She was inspired by the film Heathers for
then I wanted to swing back and go more raw and now I’m
the film clip. “I was also thinking about how
ready to go full pop... I think as any artist refines their idea the
there’s all these aspects to our personality
more immediate it becomes to the audience, and more acces-
and we’re often trying to fix them or whatever.
sible. So I’m clear on what I’m saying and how I’m saying it, and
So I thought it would be a cool idea to play
so people can be like, ‘Right, I get it.’”
all these extreme aspects of a personality and then kill them all.” The film clip is both poppy and quite graphic at times. “I am quite graphic! I swear a lot, I’m an oversharer, I’m very into extreme things,” she says without hesitation. “[The style] is very much me. I wanted it to be more graphic but we’ve toned it down a lot so we
Hello, I’m Doing My Best (Inertia) is out this month. Ali Barter tours from 25 Oct,including Kyneton Music Festival on 26 Oct and This That on 9 Nov.
THE MUSIC
•
34
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
“I wanted it to feel like a night-time
Going into the process, Cerro had no preconceptions
record that was inviting you into this intimate
about what the album would be.
bar. That’s the best way I can describe it,” he
“I don’t think that is something anyone can ever really
says. “I’d always struggled with encapsulating
plan. I think when you do set a plan everything goes haywire
an LP or EP with an aesthetic, but with this
anyway. I had zero plans and I felt bad that I didn’t have a plan
one I could really clearly see this kind of dark
or that like I couldn’t achieve the lofty dreams I had for mak-
smoky jazz bar with a neon sign.
ing music.”
“I’d ask myself, ‘Does this song sound like
Cerro also recognises that part of her felt pressure to make
it could belong in this bar that I’ve created?’”
something that people would like.
There’s a cinematic flavour to New Romancer,
with
a
scope
akin
to
“As I learned a bit more about myself and about the ten-
the
dencies I have to people-please, I was like, ‘You know what, this
soundtrack of a Baz Luhrmann scene.
is my thing.’ If I’m happy with this, then I’m happy with all of it,
“[The idea] came from Blade Runner,
and that’s kind of where I’m atnow.”
the score and the film. and also lots of old
The story of the album is intertwined with Cerro’s own
romantic films from the ‘50s and the ‘60s,”
path to understanding herself and overcoming the effects
he reveals. “All these things were floating
of burnout, a process aided by therapy and other actions
around in this storm, and the image of the
of self-care.
bar revealed itself.”
“I just became a shell of myself,” Cerro says, noting that,
Jazz bars often come with a healthy
as an athlete — Cerro was a semi-professional soccer player
dose of the blues — as do the songs on
before she decided to pursue a career in music — she suddenly
New Romancer.
couldn’t exercise at all.
“Our producer, Matt Neighbour, who’s
“I was looking straight into the void basically to figure out
worked with The Avalanches helped with
how to fix that or how to get through it as well, when I also
that... They do a similar thing with their string
felt really alone. You know, not entirely, I have some amaz-
arrangements where there is this sheen of
ing friends on board and family, but I felt very isolated with-
class, but underneath it all things were really
in myself.”
dark and twisted.”
These struggles became the fodder for her songs, the
New Romancer drops barely a year after
singer describing her songwriting MO as distilling “the stuff in
the band’s debut record Electric Brown — an
my life that happened and I’m emotional about”.
impressive feat given the ambitious arrange-
“I was coming to this critical awareness of all the ways in
ments on the album.
which I was neurotic and flawed,” Cerro begins. “I’d reached
But, for Rose, even a few months is a long
the awareness, but I couldn’t figure out how to re-engineer my
time to work on something. “These songs
brain, which is like one of the hardest possible things we can
have taken several months to make which is
be tasked with for ourselves.
still a long time. You do realise that you get to
Good for something
a point where you have to be ok with something’s rawness.” “It has a pretty concentrated theme here,” he says. “It felt like the songs were just pouring out, and at the time they didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but then I would look back and think, ‘Oh wow, that was actu-
Art-pop singer-songwriter Montaigne, aka Jess Cerro, talks to Hannah Story about finding the strength to overcome burnout and write her second album, Complex. Feature pic by Johnny Nicolaidis.
ally really poignant.’” In May, Cousin Tony’s Brand
New
Firebird
per-
formed at The Great Escape festival and conference in Brighton, England. “The best thing about conferences is that you can see the industry in front of you like an organism,” says Rose. “It’s all online these days and it just seems infinitely vast, but at events like
“I was constantly drawn to people who were emotionally unavailable, and was dealing with like a few hairy relationships, you know, romantic or otherwise. “There was that people-pleasing thing of never feeling like I am enough, and that I need to be funner or smarter or better at music or make a certain kind of music to be successful or whatever.” The project of self-improvement, of growth, is an ongoing one for Cerro. She’s grateful to have the time and resources to be able to meaningfully engage with her inner world. The alternative is an “unhealthy dose of nihilism”. “Being on the other side of the scale, for me, that sort of threatens to annihilate all the good work I do. It’s just like a very unhealthy dose of nihilism, where occasionally I will come to this point in my life where I’m just like, ‘But it’s all pointless.’ I’m doing all this quote-unquote, ‘good work’ to quote-unquote ‘make myself a better person’, but at the end of the day, what’s the fucking point? “Sometimes I literally go into a depressive spiral and I’m like, ‘Wow, everything’s meaningless...’ It’s like someone hits a red button in my brain, then my brain’s like, ‘There’s no point in
The Great Escape, you can
you writing music, there’s no point in you doing this job, there’s
literally see it there in front
no point in you doing anything, why do you keep doing it?’
of you. “We went over there [... and then] we realised, ‘Oh, we belong here,’ and you realise that you’re ready for that experience. It made the future seem like not this big, shining, distant dream.”
New Romancer (Double Drummer) is out now. Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird tour from 11 Oct, including Loch Hart Festival on 16 Nov.
“I’m good at reining that in though [and] checking myself
T
before I wreck myself basically. And my friends are also really supportive and awesome.” hree years on from the release of her ARIA-winning
Cerro’s great strength is in the power of her voice — she
debut Glorious Heights, 24-year-old art-pop wun-
uses it to express yearning, or to reach out and connect with a
derkind, Montaigne, aka Jess Cerro, has returned
listener. Her hyper-articulate lyrics, ruminating on sadness, selfdoubt, and desire, are set to crunching pop beats, a style she
with Complex. After working only with Tony Buchen on her first album,
describes as “pop survival”.
Complex sees Cerro collaborating with a stack of new pro-
As individuals, Cerro says, in the face of a looming sense
ducers, as well as Buchen, including TV On The Radio’s Dave
of nihilism, we have to imbue our lives with meaning — to find
Sitek and Papa Vs Pretty’s Thomas Rawle. Their influence
something to live for.
has allowed Cerro to explore different facets of her sound,
“For me, it’s joy and all those like buoyant human emotions and awe and sublimeness and stuff — that’s the shit I live
all on one record. That’s not to say the record sounds disjointed. Her collaborators helped push Montaigne’s theatrical-pop further
for,” Cerro says. “I think there is a very sweet spot of sublime in the juxtaposition between dark and light.”
than it’s gone before. “I think my voice is stronger,” Cerro says. “I think my songwriting is stronger. I think the melodies are probably as strong — I still think that the melodies in Glorious Heights are pretty good. “I think the production’s a little clearer, a little more
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
lucid and a little more confident in this one. I think Glorious Heights is confident, but this one has virtuosity that matches that level of confidence. It’s like earned confidence.”
THE MUSIC
•
35
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Complex (Wonderlick) is out now. Montaigne tours from 1 Nov, including Falls Festival from 30 Dec.
Divine chaos The tyranny of distance has become the norm for Holy Holy. But singer Timothy Carroll tells Carley Hall their trans-city set-up helped them take the reins as producers on their latest album.
“W
e’re a bit of a crazy band in some ways — our
with previous recordings. There were a few moments where
Carroll and Dawson set parameters for themselves
drummer lives in Hobart, I live in Launceston,
it was a bit scary in terms of us maybe not being on track.
as producers on this new album. One way they were able
Oscar’s in Melbourne and our bass player’s
And then the last couple of sessions we made a lot of prog-
to achieve the blend of their usual searing melodies, rich
ress and it all came together — so I do feel a lot of relief.
instrumental textures and joy spliced with melancholy was
in Sydney, so it can be a logistical mindfuck to get every-
“Holy Holy often do this thing where we commit to
to experiment with writing songs with drums at their core,
Such is the current state of play for Holy Holy, accord-
a release date before we’ve even written or recorded the
and letting the layers unfold around them; the other was to
ing to singer Timothy Carroll. Embracing their long-distance
album. I guess because we feel like we have to do that —
reach out to collaborators. Japanese Wallpaper, Ainslie Wills
relationship has always been a necessity for the trans-city
we’ve all got busy lives. If we waited until we finished an
and Ali Barter put their stamp on a number of tracks, which
duo, but Carroll’s not complaining.
album, the cycles would blow out and it would just be
Carroll said was key not only to the album’s aesthetic but
too long. But that means that pressure to make it happen
also to making the process fun.
thing happening.”
“I actually love the kind of the freedom of this modern life — working at home, or the airport, in a tour van, whatever
is there.
“Oscar and I are really on the same page a lot of the time
hours I want to work. When I sit down at my laptop with a
“And now right before it’s due out, I’m just trying to keep
about what we want to do, which is great. But we kind of
coffee and I’m planning gigs, organising music festivals, lis-
my head down and not think about it too much. I am really
wanted to step away from the drums/bass/guitar aesthetic
tening to bands, I am like ‘Man, I never would have dreamed
proud of the album and I feel like for a lot of us, progressing
a bit and experiment and find interesting ways to compose
that this is possible to do as a job.’”
the sound and style is essential to keeping the project inter-
songs,” Carroll explains. “Holy Holy has lots of strengths but
From his Launceston home, Carroll is musing about the
esting and exciting for us. And I feel like we’ve achieved that.”
I always find it’s nice to reach out to others who have the
changes that have shaped Holy Holy. Since catching ears
For their latest, My Own Pool Of Light, Carroll and Daw-
with the edge in their indie-rock on 2014 EP The Pacific,
son maintained the intimate storytelling they’re known
“I guess taking the producer out of the mix by producing
Carroll and Dawson expanded their soundscapes for debut
for, and added a dash of the forthright and conversational,
it ourselves we were keen to collaborate in another way. Now
When The Storms Would Come in 2015, then polished the
which Carroll puts down to “being largely at the mercy of
it’s out of my hands to see what people think about it.”
guitar/drum/bass set-up with extra keys and catchy singles
chance” during this songwriting period.
on Paint in 2017.
“I don’t often go into those writing sessions with some-
Along the way, Carroll and guitarist Oscar Dawson kept
thing on my mind, but [my daughter] Frida had been on my
at their respective side hustles — starting music festivals and
mind a lot,” he explains. “I have a son and a daughter. My son
producing for big-name artists. Thus, it seems perfectly logi-
was repeating things that made me think that we had made
cal that the pair decided to take the reins on album number
more progress than that!
three, rather than rely solely on past producer and current touring band member Matt Redlich.
strength where you’re weakest.
Holy Holy are on tour now, including The Lost Lands on 3 Nov and Falls Festival from 29 Dec.
“I showed him a band on YouTube called [Vivian Girls], and they’re all females. And he goes ‘They’re all girls.’ And
“We self-produced this album so it was all on us,” Carroll
I’m like, ‘Yeah, girls are good musicians, good singers, good
offers. “We were open to trying different things and chang-
at guitar.’ And he said ‘Yeah, but not as good as boys.’ It was
ing the way we wrote and recorded quite a lot compared
slightly troubling, but we’ll get there.”
“It can be a logistical mindfuck to get everything happening.”
THE MUSIC
•
36
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
R
uel van Dijk could be one of the hardest-working teens in Australia, consistently recording, touring and promoting music globally. Fortunately, the pressure is off academically. This year the Sydney pop-soul
prodigy, 16, quit school — for now. “I was doing school all of last year, Year Ten,” van Dijk explains. “It was pret-
ty tough — you know, travelling and also doing exams an hour before shows and stuff like that. That got really hard, just ‘cause I could never focus on one thing. It was difficult. So I decided this year I should try to do homeschooling, [but] it wasn’t working out again. It was just too hard ‘cause I was travelling so much. I didn’t have time to do the work that was required. I had a big chat with my family, with my manager, and we just said, ‘Well, we’ll put it on hold until we really properly get some time off.’” Mentored by veteran Aussie producer M-Phazes, van Dijk made his official debut in 2017 with the single Don’t Tell Me, attracting a cross-generational fanbase. He’s since had many career highlights. Last November, van Dijk joined the Californian festival Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival, his music hero, Tyler, The Creator, its curator. Coincidentally, he bumped into Tyler at a Los Angeles grocery store prior to his performance. “So, when he’s my biggest idol, and I’ve loved everything he’s done, it was definitely a bit of a shock to just see him sitting down outside Whole Foods!” van Dijk gushes. “I went up to him and said, ‘Hi, I’m playing your festival and thanks for putting me on.’” Today, van Dijk wonders what Tyler, The Creator initially thought of him, being that, as a stan, he was “probably” sporting Golf Wang clothing. “Maybe he did think I was stalking him. I do look like just an average Tyler fan.” Still, van Dijk peeked at his idol’s food haul. “He was having a very healthy salad, so that was cool.” The singer-songwriter has just released a new EP, Free Time, the sequel to 2018’s Ready.That same year, his single Dazed & Confused won him the ARIA Award for Breakthrough Artist. Singles Painkiller, Face To Face and Real Thing all epitomise his modish take on R&B classicism. “I’m really, really excited for this project. I think it’s pretty different to the stuff I recently put out, like Ready that I put out last year. It’s matured a lot. So that’s how it’s kind of gonna stand out — in my opinion, obviously! I’m really excited. I just like the songs a lot more, because they feel like they’re coming from me more than ever. My creative direction is a lot clearer this time, so I really knew what I wanted.” Van Dijk’s lyrics on Free Time resonate deeply with him. “Probably the most personal song on it is either Hard Sometimes or [the opener] Don’t Cry. Those are by far the most real songs — and all the stories that I tell in those songs are coming straight from me and all my life experiences.” Van Dijk does intend to deliver an album eventually. “I feel like [if] I have nine to 12 really great songs, and [songs] that I really wanna put out, yeah, I’ll put out an album. But I’ve never really got to that point where I’ve had that. Like, I’ve written over 30, 40 songs for this project. But I just feel like I wanna have at least nine to 12 that are really great and really special to me. So we’re definitely gonna aim — or I’m definitely gonna aim — to do that next year.” Of late, van Dijk has ventured into the realm of collabs (notably, the US post-rapper GoldLink bounced on a remix of Ready’s Not Thinkin’ Bout You). Van Dijk sings on Hilltop Hoods’ The Great Expanse LP and, unusually, SG Lewis’ electro banger Flames, Ruel actually accompanying the Brit dance muso at Coachella. Incredibly, van Dijk is sitting on a duet with Khalid. “When I was touring with him [in 2017], we just went to the studio one day and we wrote something. It’s pretty cool. I don’t know if it’ll ever see the light of day. It’s not finished yet — like, it’s only, I reckon, a verse — but I wanna get back in the studio with him and write something even better. We can beat it. But it’s still cool.” This month, van Dijk is embarking on an Australian headline run, followed by international dates. “I’m back [home] in December and gonna have Christmas and a little bit of a break. And then next year I’ll start writing again.” Van Dijk has long included buzz covers in his setlists, and he’s continuing the tradition. “I like to have a different cover each tour. Like the first tour, I did a Billie Eilish bellyache cover and then she got huge and then everyone started doing them,” he laughs. “I’m like, ‘Ok, I’m gonna do another one.’ So I did Call
Everybody wants to Ruel the world
Out My Name by The Weeknd last tour. I’m thinking of doing a Frank Ocean cover this tour, but we’ll see what happens.”
Free Time (Sony) is out now. Ruel is on tour now, including Yours & Owls Festival on 5 Oct and Laneway Festival from 1 Feb.
Sixteen-year-old singer-songwriter Ruel tells Cyclone about bumping into his idol, Tyler, The Creator, at Whole Foods, and how he’s in no hurry to drop a debut album.
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
THE MUSIC
•
37
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Killer instinct If you’re a fan of American comedy, chances are Beth Stelling has worked on something you love. She tells Joe Dolan about writing for Judd Apatow and gaining the self-confidence to see herself as a “real” comic.
U
S stand-up Beth Stelling is one of the busiest and most in-demand comics around. From filming her own Netflix special to writing on critically acclaimed films and TV programmes, like Good Boys and Sarah Silverman’s I Love You America, all the way to co-hosting a podcast with her own mother, We Called Your Mom, Stelling is the secret weapon of Hollywood comedy. “I still remember my first meeting in LA,” she laughs of her transition into screenwriting. “I had gotten an offer for Just For Laughs in Montreal about eight years ago, and they said, ‘We love your stand-up! What else do you do?’ And at that time in my life it was just like, ‘Oh, I do what you saw? That’s it...’ The negative side of it all, I guess, is that it’s hard for those people to monetise that kind of thing, which is a pessimistic way of looking at it. At the same time, though, they don’t see dollars when they see a new comedian they’ve just discovered. “I had to learn to write from scratch really. I read loads of books about it, and I realised that if I can write my own standup, I can write jokes for other people and TV and stuff. Since I’ve started writing, there’s a stability in that versus the sort of piecemeal existence of stand-up. So now I find myself really straddling the two.” Stelling’s first foray into TV writing came when she was handpicked for Pete Holmes’ HBO series Crashing, executiveproduced by comedy royalty Judd Apatow. Stelling says writing for a show about struggling comedians was the perfect way to learn about TV writing. Having Crashing be my first writing job was great because it eased me into the world of writing through stand-up,” she says. “It was very familiar to me, and Judd knew that and Pete knew that. I’m really grateful for that job because before that I didn’t necessarily think of myself as a writer, even though that might sound a bit silly. Sometimes you have people come up to you after a stand-up show and ask, ‘Do you have writers?’ and it’s like, ‘This is an open mic, do I look like I can afford writers?’” Stelling admits that writing jokes for other comedians was often an odd experience. “I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t times where I thought of a joke or a bit and thought, ‘I’m gonna keep that for me.’ But as you go on, you realise that you sort of have to think of yourself as an infi-
“This is going to sound cheesy as hell, but it totally has to come from you and your own self-confidence.”
“With writing for Crashing, you realise the balance between pulling from your own life and filtering it in a certain way or from a particular experience — maybe you had a really weird booker or you played at a crappy club — once you bring that to the room you realise we all have had the same experience. Obviously things vary between different comics and different genders, but we’ve all played the same cities and these same clubs, so really there’s more in common than maybe you
nite well. Otherwise, when you get these writing blocks or you don’t have any new material, you think that you’ll never write anything ever again. Then, of course, the new jokes do happen and it’s the best feeling in the world. Writing for other comics, you realise too that it’s not ‘you’ and you can give those things away. It’s a different muscle, and forming jokes in someone else’s voice can be very difficult, but I also think that you gravitate towards writing for particular people for a reason.
THE MUSIC
•
38
•
JUST FOR LAUGHS
first thought. In a way, it’s a very singular experience, but you don’t get to see other comics headlining when you’re out headlining yourself. You don’t necessarily think of that.” Along with an impressive portfolio, these opportunities have given Stelling a renewed confidence in herself and her craft. “I hadn’t even called myself a comic for the first couple of years, because I felt you have to earn that, you know? For years I suffered from the notion of, ‘Am I real yet?’ Even after doing something like Conan for the first time, I was like, ‘Okay, now I’m gonna be real.’ The truth of it, though, is that there are always going to be pull-downs and setbacks, and this is going to sound cheesy as hell, but it totally has to come from you and your own selfconfidence. I think I have gained confidence over the years, and seeing my work next to people I idolise and think are total legends, that’s really boosted it.” Stelling tours to Australia this month, her Sydney date part of Just For Laughs. She admits she finds it hard to pass up writing gigs in order to focus on her stand-up. “This will be nothing that’s aired on TV before, but I run into this roadblock often: it’s hard for me to say no to writing gigs because I came out here — like a lot of people — with, you know, ‘hopes and dreams,’” she laughs. “I tend to get snagged into writing jobs a lot, and that can put a halt on the stand-up in a way. I’m in the [writers’] room from 10 to 7, and it’s hard to gather that energy to go up and do stand-up at night. That halts my progress, I guess, as I prepare to go and headline overseas, but I’ll have a fair bit of time to get it back up off its feet. An hour is a long time to talk to people, so I want to have it as ready as possible.”
Beth Stelling tours from 29 Oct.
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
UPCOMING TOURS THE VERY BEST OF ING R U TO XT NE H! NT MO
NEWCASTLE // SYDNEY // MELBOURNE
SYDNEY + MELBOURNE JAN 2020
SYDNEY MELBOURNE JANUARY 2020 FEB 2020
MELBOURNE SYDNEY
BENDIGO | SYDNEY M A K I N G
H E R
L O N G - AWA I T E D A U S T R A L I A N
R E T U R N
with special guest
alex lahey
TOURING APRIL 2020
SYDNEY MELBOURNE HOBART
TICKETS ON SALE TNOW H E M UAT S I C CHUGGENTERTAINMENT.COM • OCTOBER
M A R C H
2 0 2 0
Zimmer frame by frame
Gladiator “I kept saying to Ridley [Scott], ‘You’re a poet, you’re an artist, and right now it’s just titled Gladiator, straight into battle, and there’s no female soul in this movie’... Pietro [Scalia], our editor, had a Dead Can Dance CD, and said, ‘What about Lisa Gerrard?’... I phoned her up: ‘Would you be interested in working with us on this Gladiator movie?’ And she said, ‘Who’s in it?’ ‘Russell Crowe.’ And she said, ‘I can’t possibly do that, I can’t’... We sent the film to Melbourne and she phoned us back: ‘Yeah, I’ll do it’... I forgot all about her turning us down, and then a few years later I said to her, ‘Why did you turn us down?’ ‘Do you know that film The Insider?’ She just thought that it was inappropriate that every time you saw Russell Crowe on the screen that year, you heard Lisa Gerrard sing, and she was just trying to protect Russell.”
Prolific composer Hans Zimmer’s career is dizzying at a glance. After helping shape some of the most successful and iconic films of all time, it’s not surprising he’s accrued a wealth of stories and inside goss. Ahead of his upcoming tour, Zimmer reminisces with Daniel Cribb.
The Dark Knight “Oh, you’re going down in box office numbers, I can tell. I loved the Joker; I loved Heath [Ledger]. One of the things that have been really important for me on these tours is, in a way, wherever I go, to keep Heath’s memory alive. He was such an integral part of everything at that moment in time, and it was such a tragedy.”
Mission: Impossible 2 “Walking across the Fox lot [in Sydney] at 6 o’clock in the morning with a fully formed tune in my head going, ‘I am going to get this tune done by the time any office opens’, and I suddenly remembered that I knew the guys at Trackdown Studios and I phoned them and said, ‘Quick, I’ve got to record something!’ By the time I got to the meeting with Tom Cruise and John Woo, I had a rough theme. I always find it really inspiring being down in Australia — it’s a place where you can get ideas.”
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
Inception “When Chris [Nolan] talked to me about it, we went and sat down on a beach and he was telling me about his new idea for a movie. I thought it was actually really simple; it was a time travel movie with dreams, and I thought, ‘Oh that’s really clever — he’s figured out how to do time travel because you do it in dreams all the time.’ And I like this idea of shared dreaming which happens in the cinema. “I just sat down and started writing away and had a lot of fun. Chris had written in this crazy lowbrow stuff that was a story point in the movie and then it got appropriated by every trailer house in the world and they just started shoving that stuff as a sort of segue between shots and it became a little annoying after that. Especially because, you go, ‘Don’t you guys realise, for us, it a story point; for you, it’s just a special effect.’”
The Lion King “I’m old enough that I actually got to work on the original and the remake of The Lion King. It was originally written for my, at the time, six-year-old daughter. It was a really hot ticket for the premiere this time around, and Disney had sent me all these tickets and I sent them all back except for two, and I just took my daughter on a daddy-daughter date. Disney was quite astonished that somebody would actually send those tickets [back] — people were actually killing each other over those tickets.” Hans Zimmer tours from 3 Oct.
THE MUSIC
•
40
•
MUSIC
Dallas Green’s lonely hearts club band Scientists say we are living in the loneliest era of human civilisation. Dallas Green, aka City & Colour, tells Lauren Baxter why his “pill for loneliness” will always be music.
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
T
o be lonely is to be human. It is an essential part of the human condition. It breaks hearts and writes songs. It brings people together as we seek connection. It also elevates our risk of cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline and metastatic cancer. It weakens the immune system. It can cause neurodegenerative disease and research suggests situational loneliness can permanently change our brain structures and processes. Classified as a public health problem, the next epidemic even, scientists are looking for a pill to cure it. Watching the news earlier in the year, Dallas Green — aka the Canadian singer-songwriter who records his solo project (he’s also in post-hardcore band Alexisonfire) under the moniker City & Colour — was stopped in his tracks. “I just thought, ‘Wow,’” he tells us down the phone. “Obviously we try to make a pill for everything these days — anxiety, depression, weight loss, all this stuff — but it just sort of struck me like, ‘Fuck, I can’t believe we’re living in a world where we are so alone that we’re trying to create a pill to get rid of it.’ I started doing more research on it and saw that the studies show we’re living in the loneliest era in the history of human civilisation.” To be alone is not the same as being lonely; it is a neutral disposition. “Somebody gave me shit the other day when I was doing an interview,” Green laughs. “She was like, ‘How can you call the record A Pill For Loneliness and then the first line of the record be, “I’d rather walk alone”?’ I was like, ‘Well sorry, there’s a difference between being lonely and being alone.’” For Green, his “pill” for loneliness has always been music: “Music has always been this thing that I could look to whether it’s writing or listening to it, and I think that there’s a lot of people that would agree with me and feel the same way.” Research suggests psychotherapy is more effective than medication for a host of psychological disorders. For Green too, music is more than a pill to swallow and he describes writing as “a sort of therapy session”. It is the reason he records under the City & Colour name, needing to separate himself from the music. “Just because of the nature of the songs and what I’m usually writing about, it’s a moment where I feel like I need to get that off my chest or out of my own head. I hope that it can go out to the world and then maybe it’s not mine anymore for a minute.
THE MUSIC
•
“I always say to people when they say nice things to me about my songs helping them, I kinda always respond and say, ‘Well it helps me first,’ and that’s the point. I don’t know if everyone approaches music that way but when I was young, I found that not only do I enjoy writing and singing, but it was also a way for me to talk myself through some things. The separation comes from, like, not wanting to be stuck in that mood all the time. People will always dismiss me as a sad person. And I’m like, ‘I’m not.’ I’m a normal human being like everybody else. I have good days and bad days, and when I have good days, I don’t necessarily think about writing a song about that.” The album, his sixth and first since 2015, is described in the press release as being a lot of dark songs wrapped in beautiful sounds, something Green affirms is an “apt description”: “I always sort of write melancholic type songs. It’s what I do to get myself out of those moods [but] I always try to make it a little bit hopeful. And I always try to make the songs somewhat ‘pretty’ sounding to be a juxtaposition of what I’m singing about.” It’s “pretty” of course but also the most expansive we’ve heard Green sound in solo form. “It’s definitely the most, for lack of a better word, epic sounding record I’ve ever made,” he says. “I mean, I love music like that and I’m always interested in trying something a little bit different than what I’ve done. But I still wanted to sound like me.” Wandering is a motif that comes up again and again in Green’s songwriting but he tells us “Canada will always be [his] home”. “Whenever I come back home after a long tour, or even a short trip, if I’m not in Canada, I feel it. As soon as I get back across the border, I just feel it. You feel home. And I’m very happy about that. I’m very lucky to feel that way about where I’m from. But you have to want to wander in order to survive this style of living... Being on the road, it’s a difficult way to live. I feel like it’s also home in the same way.” After living in Nashville, returning home to Toronto meant Green was able to reunite with Alexisonfire and release the band’s first music in nearly a decade. They had initially broken up because “creatively [Green] wanted to go explore another side of [his] musical brain”. “It was great to be back playing with each other and actually working on new material. I don’t know if any of us thought we would ever do that again,” he admits. A period apart also saw each member bringing new experiences into the studio. “The last time we were in the studio together was about ten years ago. I think between myself and Wade [MacNeil], and Jordan [Hastings] our drummer, we’ve been in the studio non-stop since doing other projects. So it was cool to go back in after ten years of having more experience on that side of things as well.” Green just flew across the world to play an exclusive show as part of Brisbane Festival. “Anybody that knows me knows that I would jump at any chance to go to Australia,” he laughs. True to his word, he’ll be back in April next year.
“Fuck, I can’t believe we’re living in a world where we are so alone that we’re trying to create a pill to get rid of it.”
A Pill For Loneliness (Still/Dine Alone) is out this month. City & Colour tours from 15 Apr.
41
•
MUSIC
Album Reviews
There’s an undeniable intimacy to this collaboration between Jen Cloher, Mia Dyson and Liz Stringer. The powerhouse singer-songwriters released an EP and toured extensively under the Dyson Stringer Cloher moniker in 2013, before splitting off to conquer their own corners of the local and international indie music scenes. Now they’ve finally reunited for a full-length album and they bring the listener right into the room with them — you can virtually smell the beer and see the artists’ stage-lit faces as they reveal themselves to the eager crowd. It’s quite a show. The trenchant, Cloher-led rocker Falling Clouds frames the album as a manifesto for women and gender non-conforming artists too often relegated to a supporting role: “Nothing against Paul or Nick, but if you want to be remembered then you better have a dick.” Such gendered iconoclasm broils along in the background and comes to a head later on in the album with the equally resounding Be Alone, a boot-stomping statement about self-actualisation, where to be alone is a gesture of power rather than passivity or failure. Not that the album is entirely didactic or chest-beating. On the contrary. Dyson Stringer Cloher’s ten tracks happily plumb an array of modes and moods. There’s an energy to the album that seems to have absorbed the entire oeuvre of women-led rock music. With My Hands delivers its chunky guitar riff and rimshot-driven chorus with a swagger worthy of The Runaways; it is tailor-made to get audiences jumping. Elsewhere Believer is stadium-sized rock that winks at The Jezabels.
Dyson Stringer Cloher
Dyson Stringer Cloher Milk! Records / Remote Control
HHHH
The arrangements and musicianship are as solid as the songwriting is memorable — from the tightly wound beats and dialogical guitar section that steer future road trip anthem The Other Side down its sombre highway, to the brushed snare and picked guitar that bring colour and texture to the bitingly confessional Young Girls. All of which provides a perfect setting for the three-pronged vocal onslaught, the contrast and complementarity of the singers’ voices helping to ensure that this collaboration is as aurally rich as any. Lest you fear that Dyson Stringer Cloher are taking themselves too seriously, for a change of pace there’s, well, Too Seriously — a tongue-in-cheek gospel-country romp delivered with alternating lead vocals and honky-tonk flair, and more than a little Wilburys-esque goofiness. It’s a moment to both celebrate and lampoon this whole supergroup business, albeit coupled with a little obligatory hard-bitten wisdom about rising above life’s more bruising knocks. Be Alone’s pounding drums and haze of fuzz guitar bring things to a rousing climax ahead of the album’s stunning benediction, Can I Borrow Your Eyes. Sung largely a cappella, aside from a wafer-thin bed of synth, the closing track finds the singers’ voices blended in perfect three-part harmonies, their contrasting styles united into a singular vision. It sums the album up nicely, and leaves the listener to slip back into the world warmed by the knowledge that these are three artists who’ll be remembered, together and alone. Tim Kroenert
Ali Barter
BABYMETAL
Bec Sandridge
The Menzingers
Inertia
Babymetal Records / Cooking Vinyl
Independent
Epitaph
HHHH
HHH
Hello, I’m Doing My Best
HHH½
Metal Galaxy
Try + Save Me
HHH½
Hello Exile
We’re back in the ‘90s for Barter’s second offering, driving with the windows down in Kat Stratford’s 1963 Dodge Dart, not giving a damn about our reputation, and screaming out the lyrics to Ur A Piece Of Shit. Next we’re in our big sister’s bedroom, “smoking cigarettes and eating ice cream” listening on as she tells us her History Of Boys. We sneak out past curfew to meet our crush at a party while Backseat plays. This Girl soundtracks our walk into the school formal. Hello, I’m Doing My Best is so much more than a ‘90s throwback though. It’s relatable, intelligent songwriting that sees Barter at her best.
Allow yourself to embrace the sheer unadulterated fun of BABYMETAL Even minus former member Yuimetal, their J-pop/metal hybrid, now on its third album, remains slicker than snot on a doorknob. They’ve seemingly sought a more international flavour here and Metal Galaxy does a fair job of distilling various metallic styles into its own potent attack, the Kami Band’s well-honed backing aiding the cause. Is BABYMETAL’s music and accompanying narrative here to stay? Only the Fox God knows for certain, but despite some shortcomings, Metal Galaxy should continue their world-conquering momentum.
Bec Sandridge has been kicking around with her Kate Bush-meets-Karen O vibe for a few years, but only now do we finally have a debut LP to wrap our ears around. The longer format allows the singer to tease out her big, stark and playful ‘80s-style pop and heightens the girl crush factor to 11. There’s so many bombastic piano stompers in Try + Save Me, it’s hard to know where to start. I’ll Never Want A BF is just perfect pop, a bold statement from an equally bold artist, and it sets the bar for the rest of the album. Still, there are some subtle moments that aren’t drenched in sound. But not many — it’s big and hard not to love.
The Menzingers new album, Hello Exile, is jam-packed with 12 intimate pop-punk hits. Although most of the songs follow a similar four-chord progression and don’t immediately strike as anything outstanding, the simplicity of the music provides the perfect backdrop for beautifully written lyrics. Look to Last To Know for an example of some of The Menzingers’ best writing. Each song is its own story, reflecting on a variety of topics, from youth and love to alcohol and even politics. While none of these are new concepts, Hello Exile delivers a fresh and well-crafted take on common tropes.
Lauren Baxter
Brendan Crabb
Carley Hall
Katie Livingston
THE MUSIC
•
42
•
ALBUM REVIEWS
For more album reviews, go to www.theMusic.com.au
Emma Russack & Lachlan Denton Take The Reigns
Lacuna Coil
Refused
We Lost The Sea
Century Media / Sony
Spinefarm / Caroline
Bird’s Robe
Black Anima
War Music
Triumph & Disaster
Osborne Again Music / Spunk
HHHH
HHH½
Take The Reigns, the third album from songwriters Emma Russack and Lachlan Denton, is quietly concerned with one of life’s most difficult tasks: surrendering control. Over ten songs on this concise and unassuming record, the pair sing about letting themselves be vulnerable, as they attempt to exercise self-care by reaching out to others after tumultuous periods in their lives. While the arrangements are often simple, one can hear the source of Russack and Denton’s strength reflected; there’s a sense of cohesion and togetherness.
Prior to 2016’s Delirium, Lacuna Coil’s recent albums had often been so middling, pedestrian even, they could almost have been called off for lack of interest from anybody bar the most devoted fans. However, that record seemed to reinvigorate all concerned. Now, Black Anima channels personal anguish, using the group’s recognisable blend of gothic melodrama and pop sensibilities. More than 20 years on from their debut, Lacuna Coil’s place in the modern metal pantheon remains assured by adding records like this to the canon.
War Music solidifies Refused’s return, but it’s a more refined and compact take on the modern rock album. Trimmed of any excess, it rips and roars across ten songs in 35 minutes. There’s little diversion into synth interludes or overly prog workouts. Instead, it keeps things locked tightly around precise and knotty guitar riffs and a rhythm section that still kicks and drives. With Refused, it’s about the sound — that hurricane of distortion and militant rhythms, where primal physicality and intelligent application combine to create the band’s intoxicating noise.
Let’s establish something loud and clear: We Lost The Sea are never going to repeat the sounds or scope of previous album Departure Songs — and they shouldn’t try. Their celebrated third LP came out of tragedy (vocalist Chris Torpy passed away in 2013), resulting in a beautifully cathartic record. This time around, on their highly anticipated follow-up Triumph & Disaster, the band have gone into the studio with a far sharper sense of focus and the final result sounds more collected and consistent. Equal parts tender and turbulent, this is indeed a triumphant follow-up.
Roshan Clerke
Brendan Crabb
Chris Familton
Alasdair Belling
Danny Brown
Youth Group
Underground Lovers
The Darkness
Warp / Inertia
Ivy League
Rubber Records
Cooking Vinyl
HHH
HHHH
HHH½
Danny Brown’s previous album, the abrasive and depressing Atrocity Exhibition, will most likely go down as ‘The Big One’ in his discography. So now, with the deep end all mapped out, it seems like the logical thing to do would be to try and capture the other end of his spectrum: Danny Brown, the clown. His latest release mostly succeeds at that goal. It’s funny as hell, with a varied tempo of moods and atmospheres thanks to producer Q-Tip’s colourful beats. If you’re a fan of Brown, it’s most definitely a worthy new addition. To everyone else though it will probably only serve as a fun gateway.
Written in an abandoned laundromat in Huddersfield, the adopted UK home of lead singer Dr Toby Martin, what were supposed to be new songs for another solo album morphed into the band’s latest record. Having spent a limited time recording the ten tracks, the record doesn’t sound rushed, quite the opposite in fact. Anyone who played in a band, moved on and lived their life but never lost the love of it will be able to relate to this album on some level, and there is a simple freedom at the album’s core. Worth a listen for music fans wondering what happens when bands grow up, move away and find their way back home.
Underground Lovers are back with their tenth studio album and they’ve again produced a strong album. This time around they’ve ushered electronic explorations back into the fold, placing the album close to the work they produced on Cold Feeling at the end of the ‘90s. By the time we reach the conclusion of the epic nine-minute closer there’s a sense of post-rollercoaster exhilaration in the wake of the album’s propulsive peaks and floating valleys. The song takes off into the stratosphere on an interstellar space-rock mission. A Left Turn is another sonic gem from one of Australia’s psychedelic finest.
Easter is cancelled, and in its place The Darkness have released a new concept album, featuring ten catchy rock songs you’ve almost heard before. Each track is addictively familiar. But don’t be fooled, the tracks frequently shift gear. With brief but powerful guitar solos and Justin Hawkins’ signature falsetto, Easter Is Cancelled is a high energy salute to everything rock. And while at a first glance it comes off as a bit cliche, maybe that’s the point. Not known for taking anything seriously, least of all themselves, this new album proves this more than ever.
Donald Finlayson
Adam Wilding
Chris Familton
Katie Livingston
HHH½
uknowhatimsayin¿
HHH½
Australian Halloween
THE MUSIC
A Left Turn
•
43
•
ALBUM REVIEWS
HHHH
Easter Is Cancelled
Australia’s Newest Podcast Network
Listen On THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
Liveworks Festival Of Experimental Art Liveworks Festival Of Experimental Art returns to Carriageworks this month for 11 days of boundary-pushing performances, installations, parties, workshops and conversations. The program features inventive works like Unbearable Darkness, pictured, by Singaporean artist Choy Ka Fai. The work is a cybernetic dance experiment, incorporating live dance, motion capture, a digital avatar, and even a spirit medium. Chicks On Speed combine electronic music with performance art and bespoke technology in I’ll Be Your Body Instrument, while Lauren Brincat creates Other Tempo, a large-scale work where celebrated women drummers, like Alyx Dennison and The Go-Betweens’ Lindy Morrison, play modified drum kits and create visual scores. The program also boasts provocative pieces from First Nations dancers and choreographers like Joel Bray and Vicki Van Hout, and from celebrated drag performer Betty Grumble.
Liveworks Festival Of Experimental Art runs from 17 Oct at Carriageworks.
The best of The Arts in October
1.
1.
Monster Fest Monster Fest presents a program of horror features in October, including Tony D’Aquino’s The Furies, pictured, which turns Richard Connell’s 1924 adventure short story, The Most Dangerous Game, into a slasher flick, and Keola Racela’s teen horrorcomedy Porno. From 31 Oct at Event Cinemas, George Street
2.
2.
Primavera 2019: Young Australian Artists MCA’s annual free exhibition of work from up-and-coming artists aged under 35, Primavera 2019: Young Australian Artists bumps into the harbour this month. This year’s artists include Lucina Lane, Untitled (Blossoming Like Flowers), pictured, Mitchel Cumming and Zoe Marni Robertson.
3.
From 11 Oct at Museum Of Contemporary Art
3.
Powerbomb Comedy Festival Every Saturday in October, with four shows a night, Powerbomb Comedy Festival is set to entertain, featuring some of Australia’s most exciting comics, from MICF Award winner Sam Campbell to Lauren Bonner, pictured, Dan Rath and Rosie Piper. From 5 Oct at Staves Brewery
4. 4.
Il Viaggio A Reims This Rossini opera – English translation: The Journey To Reims – fresh from its Australian premiere, is adapted by Damiano Michieletto to take place in a surreal world where master artworks from the likes of Frida Kahlo and Vincent Van Gogh come to life. From 24 October at Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House
5.
WWE LIVE World Wrestling Entertainment prowrestlers, including Roman Reigns, WWE Champion Kofi Kingston, pictured, Charlotte Flair, SmackDown Women’s Champion Bayley and Aussie Buddy Murphy showdown in the ring this month. Expect curb stomps, beat downs and roundhouse kicks. 21 Oct at Qudos Bank Arena
5.
6.
6.
Natives Go Wild Sydney Opera House hosts First Nations cabaret, Natives Go Wild, by Rhoda Roberts, and starring Waangenga Blanco, Mika Haka and Beau James, this month. The work pulls apart the historical fiction of “Greatest Showman” PT Barnum, all while celebrating the world’s First Peoples. From 22 Oct at Studio, Sydney Opera House
THE MUSIC
•
46
•
ON IN OCTOBER
22 OC T — 24 NOV
S YDNE Y OPERA HOUSE
BY WILL IAM SHAKESPEARE
DIREC TOR JAMES E VANS
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
Film & TV Total Control
HHHH Airs from 13 Oct on ABC
Reviewed by Guy Davis
D
eborah Mailman has been such a compelling and appealing part of the Australian acting landscape for so long that it beggars belief that the six-part ABC political drama, Total Control, marks the first time she has been front and centre in a lead role on television. What’s not surprising is the conviction, complexity and zeal Mailman brings to her portrayal of Alex Irving, thrust into the public eye after her courageous stand against an active shooter and recruited by Prime Minister Rachel Anderson (Rachel Griffiths, combining elements of Julia Gillard and Julie Bishop to create a steely depiction of power and pragmatism) as her government’s newest senator. Total Control bristles with fury over injustices, inequalities and indignities in Australian society — particularly towards its First Peoples — and so does Alex, who is justifiably cynical and skeptical when it comes to the Prime Minister’s offer. (Up until recently, the miniseries was titled Black Bitch, leaving little doubt about its in-your-face tone.)
She agrees with her left-leaning brother that the government is looking for a “pet Aborigine” to appear inclusive and woke, but she’s wise enough to recognise that even a token position among the powerbrokers will enable her to accomplish more than she ever did in her few years on the council of her impoverished Far North Queensland community. She’s also savvy enough to realise politics is a cutthroat game where no one can be trusted, especially the well-fed white men seemingly making up the majority of Canberra’s population, but she’s dismayed to discover the extent to which those in control will go — and who they will use — to keep their grip on power. What distinguishes this series is how bold and confrontational an approach it takes to the problems faced by its characters, and the solutions that may be required. Combine that with strong acting, polished production values and sturdy plotting, and Total Control makes for bracing, enthralling viewing.
Joker
HHH½ In cinemas 3 Oct
Reviewed by Anthony Carew
A
fter Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight provided one of this century’s greatest big studio movie performances, Joaquin Phoenix now delivers another in Joker. Beyond his Oscar-ready radical weight loss, Phoenix manages to expertly embody the complexities of Arthur Fleck — sufferer of pathological laughter, sociopathy and social disenfranchisement — in gesture and expression. Set in Gotham City in 1981 — clearly modelled on late ‘70s New York City — Joker is an anti-heroising portrait of toxic male entitlement and rage, with painful real-life resonances when its angry, mentally unstable, alienated white male is disastrously handed a handgun. Joker is about how a cruel, uncaring society — a nightmare of wealth disparity and amoral late period capitalism, where social services are cut and vast crowds fall through cracks — can breed a monster. “What do you get,” Phoenix asks, “when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash?”
THE MUSIC
•
48
•
REVIEWS
In its study of a disenfranchised outsider seeking violent retribution against a toxic society, Joker intentionally resembles Taxi Driver. Robert De Niro is cast here as a late-night talkshow host, making for a King Of Comedy homage too. Martin Scorsese was brought on as initial producer, and serves as obvious inspiration for director Todd Phillips (Road Trip, Old School). While the debt is obvious, especially in the ironic juxtaposition of feelgood golden oldie hits with grim imagery, Phillips succeeds in creating a singular tone, even as his film is as contradictory as its leading man. Joker is at once grand entertainment, smart psychological study, and off-the-wall riff on bubblegum intellectual property. Is this a warning on alienated male rage? Or an unintentional commemoration of it? And is its radical reimagining of the possibilities of a comic book movie cause for celebration? Or a sure sign that studios/audiences will only welcome cinematic provocations if there’s in-built superhero brand recognition?
still happening today with pretty much those same exact lines. We hear that in the media. You can’t actually shy away from that at all.” The question posted by Beatrice to Benedick is then whether or not he’s going to be complicit in the shitty behaviour of his toxic mates. Is he going to allow it to keep happening, or is he going to call his mates out? It’s another area that Okenyo notes men today find it difficult to come to terms with: “I don’t know why, but men find it really difficult to do, today, to not leave that pack mentality.” That problem, of truly making a story like the one told in Much Ado About Nothing — with characters like Hero, who is “slutshamed at her own wedding” — resonate with contemporary Australia, is another thing that drew Okenyo to the role. “I think that [Shakespeare’s] work is full of problems when you do it today, but they can be really incredible opportunities for creative problem-solving, because you can always flip things. It’s interesting — how do you make a young, contemporary woman like Hero relevant and also have a voice when she has no voice?” Still, there is a reason why Shakespeare remains so revered. Okenyo observes that the playwright is “exquisite” at “capturing humanity and what it is to love and hate and feel jealousy and sex and violence... Within this beautiful, strange poetry.” In May this year, Okenyo dropped a new single Buckle Up, the second since the release of her debut EP, The Wave, in May last year. The hip hop track bursts with a sense of joy, complete with a bright, flirty and emphatically queer video clip. “Girl, you know I’m always down for something, all you have to do is call my name/By the way, you’re cute as fuck, so if you’re down at the green light, go and buckle up,” Okenyo sings in the chorus. “Buckle Up I think is definitely an explosion of expression and fun,” Okenyo says. That flirtatious element, the joy of it, seems to go hand in hand with the silliness of Shakespeare’s comedies, like Much Ado About Nothing. It also feels like the musicality and wordplay of Shakespeare — which comes out in this play through the banter between Beatrice and Benedick — could be something that comes naturally to Okenyo, the artist: “I guess I understand wordplay from coming from a hip hop, rap background,” she acknowledges. We ask Okenyo how she juggles making work with a celebratory tone with the impulse to address darkness, as she does on single Hang Your Hat, which dropped in October last year and addresses the issue of casual racism in Australia. “It’s definitely not sustainable if you’re in that dark stuff all the time,” she begins. “Why I think it’s gonna be really great to do this play now is that it has so much joy and it is fun and funny and a bit stupid and
“Still, we’re dealing with toxic masculinity and unpacking those aspects of society today.”
THE MUSIC
•
there’s frivolity and all of that stuff. I think if we can really amp that up and make that a really enjoyable thing then the darker stuff will really stand out.” Okenyo says she’s in a different place now to where she was when she was working on The Wave, and that shift has becoming apparent in the type of songs she’s writing for her next record. She’s consciously giving herself the space to play around. “I want to still say a lot with my music but I want it to be this space where I can definitely not be intellectual. “I also realised that a lot of the stuff I do as an actor is pretty dark and it’s pretty emotionally taxing and even the act of doing a show eight times a week for seven weeks or whatever, that in itself is quite exhausting — thrilling but quite exhausting.” The timing, where she’s starting work on this production just a month after the release of the ebullient Buckle Up, Okenyo resolves is pretty uncanny. “Funny things happen, like the timing of things, and I feel like very ready to just play this character and have a lot of fun with it. “
Kind of a big deal Zindzi Okenyo speaks to Hannah Story about addressing modern concerns around toxic masculinity in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.
Much Ado About Nothing plays from 22 Oct at Playhouse, Sydney Opera House.
Pic: Pierre Toussaint
W
hen The Music speaks to Zindzi Okenyo, she’s just hopped off her bike at Sydney’s Bell Shakespeare for week two of rehearsals for their production of Much Ado About Nothing. The Kenyan-Australian actor and musician stars as the headstrong Beatrice, who refuses to acknowledge her feelings for Benedick, and even calls him out for the way he and his friends treat and speak about her cousin Hero. She’s basically the closest Shakespeare gets to writing a character who is outspokenly feminist. Okenyo really wanted to play Beatrice as she sees the character, played in the 1993 film adaptation by Emma Thompson, as a “contemporary voice in a world of men”: “She’s really fun and she’s really smart and witty and she really knows herself, which I think is a beautiful quality. “[Beatrice] seems like a very modern, contemporary feminist,” Okenyo says. “Her level of intellect, wit and ideas about the world and specifically how men behave, she often expresses them to people, especially men, and they almost understand her — but not quite. “Her big thing is that she can’t foresee being married or being with any man until men as a whole behave differently... Still, we’re dealing with toxic masculinity and unpacking those aspects of society today.” Okenyo is sceptical of the habit of holding Shakespeare up as an almost “holy” figure. “We just say he’s the best writer and he can do no wrong or whatever,” she notes. It’s hard to figure out whether Shakespeare meant for Beatrice to be a progressive figure or the subject of derision. “Sometimes you look back and go, ‘Wow, this does seem quite contemporary for the 1600s,’ but I don’t know whether he was that radical. “I don’t know if he was so conscious of it and so ahead of his time, because you’ve also got to take into account how the audience is reading the piece, and the audiences weren’t up for feminist dialogue — hence the reason why I think there’s not a lot of that stuff in there.” It’s important to Okenyo — and the creative team behind Bell’s Much Ado About Nothing — that their production addresses “the fact that the men behave abhorrently... Because audiences see that stuff now, because of the conversations that we’ve had, [and] even how much it’s evolved in the last five years.” Director James Evans reassured Okenyo when she came on board that the production was not going to “let these men off the hook”. “It’s all about this boy culture, boys will be boys, and that no one is accountable. The father of Hero very directly says — which is such a classic thing that gets said today around men who have assaulted women, raped women, sexually harassed women — he says something along the lines of, y’know, ‘This man wouldn’t lie, he wouldn’t lie, these are honourable men, they wouldn’t lie.’ “Those are the moments where I think, ‘Wow, that is actually extraordinary that it was written in the 1600s.’ Maybe it is extraordinary or it isn’t, but it’s definitely
49
•
T H E AT R E
Positive fandom Writer and actor Yve Blake chats to Hannah Story about just how hard it is being a teen girl.
W
hen Yve Blake met a 13-yearold girl who said, with full sincerity, that she was going to marry Harry Styles, at first, she couldn’t help but laugh. “I know you don’t think I’m serious, but I’m going to show you,” Blake recalls the girl saying. “I will be with him, because I love him so much that I would slit someone’s throat to be with him.” The ferocity and the high, almost operatic stakes of that young fan’s devotion stirred a “morbid curiosity” in writer and comedian Blake. From that fascination, which spurred her to research ‘fan girls’ obsessively for years, interviewing over 100 young fans, her next project formed, the new musical Fangirls, which premiered at Brisbane Festival last month. Fangirls tells the story of 14-year-old Edna (Blake), a diehard fan of the biggest boy band in the world, True Connection — and in particular its lead singer, her ‘soulmate’, Harry, played by The Voice’s Aydan Calafiore.
Through the musical, Blake wants to unpack how the world cringes at “young female enthusiasm”. “All my assumptions about fan girls were built on society-wide prejudices towards young women when they express enthusiasm,” Blake explains. “And what I realised is that the world looks very differently at a group of young boys screaming their lungs out at a football match then it does at a group of young fan girls screaming their lungs out at a Bieber concert.” As a society, we’ve long dismissed the passions of teen girls. Words like ‘vapid’ are used to describe young women and their interests, whether they’re into boy band BTS or fashion magazines or romance novels. And the way that teen girls may express that interest is often negated as ‘hysterical’. That logic — the distinction between highand lowbrow culture — hasn’t applied in the same way to the hobbies of straight men of the same age group. “I want to know why it is that we judge young women as crazy based on a definition of what’s reasonable which is shaped
“They know how to do something most of my adult friends have no idea how to do, and that’s love something without fear or apology.”
THE MUSIC
•
by what we think it’s reasonable for young men to do,” Blake poses. Young men in our society are socialised to conceal their feelings — to perform a kind of socially sanctioned masculinity — Blake notes, while women are encouraged to be super analytical, emotional and dramatic. “The stories that we largely tell young women about, with aspirational figures in them that they can relate to, involve high drama. This is an outdated reference, but it’s Twilight, where you fall in love with a vampire and they might kill you!” Blake exclaims. “If you’re a young woman and the world is telling you to fixate on love, then it makes sense if you’ve got a pop star singing about first love, they go, ‘Yes, this is exactly what I’m interested in and interested in imagining and exploring.’” So Blake herself is imagining and exploring that world of fan girls — but in a relatively highbrow space, the theatre with a capital T. To blend those two things together, she decided to create a show on “fan girls’ own terms” — it’s part pop concert, part grimy warehouse rave, part house of worship. “If I was going to write about teenage girls, then this show needed to feel like the best pop concert you’ve ever been to,” Blake says. “But I also wanted the show to express some of the ideas that people already have about fan girls, for example, that they’re scary, by containing this energy that was kind of a little bit dark and twisted. So there’s times when the show kind of feels like a scary, dirty warehouse rave. “But also I wanted to reflect the devotion and the worship that I was seeing from fan girls. And so there’s a sneaky girls’ choir in the show, and it kind of also sounds like the church of Harry Styles.” The aim is to effectively trick people into siding with the fan girls of the title. “[Fangirls] appears to kind of make fun of and satirise fan girls, only to smuggle them into your heart and make you see them in a way you didn’t know was possible.” Any digs at her subjects aren’t coming out of a place of maliciousness, but rather as a way to help potentially critical audiences come on board — people who may think they have “no shared ground” with fan girls. “I want like a 70-year-old man — my dad is a 70-year-old man — to be able to sit in the audience and blubber in tears at a 14-year-old girl singing about her experience, because I helped him figure out how it also applies to him.” Blake recalls lurking outside the stage door of Belvoir Downstairs in 2008 and asking the cast of Simon Stone’s Spring Awakening to sign a postcard from the show. That’s the closest she herself — now 26 — has ever come to a fan girl moment.
50
•
T H E AT R E
Still, much of what Blake has experienced in her own life, from living as a teen girl, has fed into the writing of Fangirls. “My experience of being a teenage girl and turning into an adult woman was to have the world suddenly give me a list of things that I needed to change or maintain in order to be beautiful, and therefore to be correct. I felt like the world was constantly telling me through a million messages that the true value I should be cultivating is my beauty. “I can completely understand why if you’re a 14-year-old girl grappling with that, if you find something that speaks to you, like lyrics that talk about a story you can connect with, I can completely understand why screaming your lungs out with ecstasy and joy is like such a deserved reprieve from the constant pressure that the world is putting you under. “I feel like we twist girls into these pretzels of insecurity by telling them how not to be. So I think it makes a lot of sense that girls wanna literally scream their puberty out to songs, because they’re really being put through it.” One way fan girl culture has been twisted is to talk about the extraordinary buying power of young women or the way bands beloved by teens can end up dominating the charts. But Blake’s idea of what gives these young women a “superpower” zeroes in on something larger than commercial interests. “They know how to do something most of my adult friends have no idea how to do, and that’s love something without fear or apology,” Blake says. Often the sensationalised representations of the way teen girls relate to each other centres on competitiveness and aggression, the ‘mean girls’ stereotype. But Blake’s experience speaking to those women doesn’t venture into that kind of toxic territory. “The majority of the fan girl behaviour I observed is actually just young women looking out for each other. And that’s kind of what the world needs more of, right?” It’s Blake’s hope that people come away from her musical reconsidering the kind of language they use to talk about young women loving things. She wants to dispel the idea of the ‘psycho’ or ‘insane’ or ‘scary’ fan girl and to replace it with something much more positive. “It would be fabulous if people saw this show. and they looked more generously at the image of a young woman screaming her lungs out and saw it for the powerful moment that it is.”
Fangirls plays from 12 Oct at Belvoir St Theatre.
The new home of music is opening right here in Hobart. It’s where you can sit in on a scoring session for a media production, discover how acoustics are used as an instrument in composing, or explore what the latest technology can do for your music – then take what you’ve learnt out into Tassie’s thriving festivals and creative scene. There’s never been a better time or place to realise your creative potential than right now at the University of Tasmania.
Apply now to study music in 2020. 1300 363 864 | utas.edu.au Design by Liminal Architecture with WOHA and Arup. Renders by Doug and Wolf. CRICOS Provider Code: 00586B THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE SONG
$150,000 cash and prizes
the main stage
n s · sa e b u R e ay · lime cord fia h T lld ats · eves kar iale
Judges Include
a he ch road · ra ydas yn t elk
Coldplay • Dua Lipa • Tom Waits Bastille • Fleet Foxes • Kevin Gates The Script • Kaskade • Tayna Tucker Avery Lipman (Founder/Pres., Republic Records) Sylvia Rhone (Chairwoman/CEO, Epic Records) and many more
the harvest stage
R · YAHTZEL E T L I K 99 · SIPPY · TORI LEVE LO’
T LUXE · KEYES T E D X E L
Past Winners Gotye • Vance Joy • Kimbra Kasey Chambers • Amy Shark • Dean Lewis Missy Higgins • Flight Facilities • and many more
SATURDAY 19TH OCTOBER 2019 HOPE ESTATE, HUNTER VALLEY
TICKETS AVAILABLE FROM MOSHTIX.COM.AU
Enter Your Songs www.songwritingcompetition.com
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
Genesis Owusu After recently releasing a double A-side single in Good Times and Simmer Down, Genesis Owusu is hitting the ground running this festival season. From performing at Yours & Owls Festival on 6 Oct through to Stonefest on 19 Oct and Festival Of The Sun from 12 Dec and various festivals interstate, you can catch his fusion of hip hop and R&B at a festival near you soon.
Festival guide
Pic: George Gittany
It’s that time of year - there are more festivals going on than you can shake a doof stick at. We wouldn’t want you to spend the summer in a constant state of paralysed FOMO, so we’ve made a list of the finest events of the season.
Parramatta Lanes Sometimes you want a festival that allows you to curl up in your own bed each night and Parramatta Lanes lets you do exactly that. Plus they’ve got an impressive selection of bands, producers and DJs hitting the streets of Par-
Halsey
ramatta over four jam-packed nights this 15-18 Oct.
Falls Festival Another year, another line-up we’d happily Falls for - the multi-state event has locked in the likes of Halsey (in her only Aus appearances), Vampire Weekend, Playboi Carti and Tash Sultana. 31 Dec-2 Jan, put it in your
Briggs
A Day To Remember
diaries and we’ll see you at North Byron Parklands.
Festival Of The Sun
Good Things
Surprise, surprise, FOTSUN once again features some of the country’s brightest The fine folks behind Good Things clearly don’t believe in the terrible twos - the touring festival’s second run is even bigger than last year’s incredible line-up. Parkway Drive and A Day To Remember will top a nearly 30-strong line-up at Centennial Park this 7 Dec.
THE MUSIC
•
54
•
stars - Methyl Ethel, Briggs, Julia Jacklin, Amyl & The Sniffers, the list goes
on. This year’s ‘Ghouls & Unicorns’-themed event runs 12-14 Dec at Port Macquarie Breakwall Tourist Park.
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Sibusile Xana. Pic: Harness Hamese
Mullum Music Festival In the township of Mullumbimby this 14-17 Nov, Nano Stern, Mojo Juju, Sibusile Xaba and tons
more will play the boutique Mullum Music Festival. With over 200 performances set to take
Tamworth Country Music Festival It’s touted as the largest music festival in the southern hemisphere for good
The War & Treaty
place, it really has something for everyone.
reason. If country music is your thing, Tamworth Country Music Festival is the
Bluesfest
Kelly, Kasey Chambers, Lee
Byron Bay Bluesfest is one of the biggest items on the Australian festival calendar, and they
ing the way 17-26 Jan, you’re
Band, Crowded House, Patti Smith, The War & Treaty and more are all already heading to
Kasey Chambers
promised land. With Paul
Kernaghan and more lead-
won’t lose that rep this 9-13 Apr. Even without their full line-up announced, Dave Matthews
in safe hands.
Festival Of The Sun
Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm in 2020.
What makes your event stand out from
a lot fail from this over the past ten years. At
crew-to-punter ratio due to our smaller size.
the end of the day, the punters should always
This means not only do we become mates
FOTSUN stands out as it’s a vibey BYO festival
come first.
with our punters, but we’re also quickly
other festivals?
accessible and a friendly face if something
that’s big enough to make new festival
What do you think will be some of your
friends, but small enough to have a com-
ing festival?
beach, where you can see some of Australia’s best new acts in an intimate, fun setting.
Our side stage and earlier slots present some epic emerging names, which is always
What’s improved for your next event?
Simon Luke Festival Director
a highlight. We’ve hosted very unknown
FOTSUN continues to evolve its art precinct
names in the past that are now well-known,
with some really exciting installations this
including Mallrat and Tash Sultana. FOTSUN
year that are interactive. We are also bring-
has young programmers out watching gigs
ing back our sustainability initiatives like
all over, keeping an eye out for new talent.
ECanOmy, as well as being
What’s the best way for up-and-coming
a completely plastic-free
artists to see their name on your bill?
festival with all food trucks only selling cans and serving
Just reach out to us and we can give advice,
on recyclable materials.
not just for FOTSUN, but also for plenty of indie groundbreaking festivals. Create con-
How is the festival land-
tent, tour as far and wide as you can, even if
scape changing?
the venues are small. Find good mentors in
There’s festivals driven by
the industry including other bands.
revenue rather than passion
How do you go about ensuring your festival
— they don’t stick around for
is a safe space?
the long-term. By fixating on revenue, you tend to lose
FOTSUN has led the way in medical and security trials for many years. We offer a high
the experience and I’ve seen
THE MUSIC
•
isn’t right.
guaranteed highlights from your upcom-
munity feel. It’s a special place, right on the
55
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Festival Of The Sun takes place from 12 Dec.
Scene & Heard We all want to be seen and heard, it’s part of the human condition. So why not be seen and heard at Scene & Heard Festival?! It’ll be heading down the east coast, stopping at Wickham
Park in Newcastle this 10 Nov, with The Dandy Warhols, Wolfmother, Sneaky Sound System
Hussy Hicks
and more in tow.
Wingham Akoostic Music Festival The heritage town of Wingham is the perfect location for this delightful, family-friendly festival. Head to the picturesque Manning Valley this 18-20 Oct to see acts like Diesel, Hussy Hicks,
Hat, Fitz & Cara and more.
Yours & Owls What’s mine is yours, and yours is ours? Well we might not have much to offer but Yours & Owls have plenty Sneaky Sound System
to share in Wollongong this 5-6 Oct. Head to Stuart Park Amy Shark
for sets from big names
including Amy Shark,
Courtney Barnett, Ruel and Golden Features.
Mullum Music Festival Glenn Wright Festival Director
What makes your event stand out from
What do you think will be some of your
Do you think governments have a place
We are small; we are in a small town (Mul-
ing festival?
NSW recently?
other festivals?
guaranteed highlights from your upcom-
lumbimby); we are unpretentious. Affordable
Nana Stern (Chile), Will & The People (UK)
in regulating festivals as has happened in Yes, but they need to be careful not [to] put
prices, [lots of] toilets, dancefloors and chairs,
and Joe Pug (US). Also the piano bar, with
all events in the same bag. It’s ridiculous to
and drinks at normal everyday club prices
random guests, is always a favourite. Mojo
compare all events together. It’s just dumb
make our event stand out. Punters can get
Juju is amazing and Husky’s Gideon [Preiss]
to think an event that attracts 12-year-olds
up close and personal with the performers
and Husky [Gawenda] are also organising
and 70-year-olds has the same challenges as
as there are no VIP areas. The music is always
a late-night club each night of the festival,
a targeted youth event. They just don’t. The
good too!
something a little special.
amount of antisocial behaviour is reduced
What’s improved for your next event?
What’s the best way for up-and-coming
what we do. Always fun and always a good
Practise, practise, practice... ha ha. I’d say the
dramatically by the style of event organisers choose to put on.
artists to see their name on your bill?
Nothing really. 12 years in and we just do mix of diverse performers.
Youth Mentorship program is good if you’re
Always special and never
under 20 years of age. Applications now
boring. Kind of like a big
open. If you’re older, then I think just get out
party in every venue in a
there and gig, and apply each year.
small town. How is the festival land-
How do you go about ensuring your festival
Not really changing. All
We attempt to program a diverse event, with
Pic: Evan Malcolm
scape changing?
is a safe space?
the good events continue
music from all over the world and all sorts of
and all the average ones
people and all sorts of performers. No biases
struggle. There seems to
of age, sex or anything else. We put up some
be more smaller ones, but
decor. People are happy with pretty decor.
its cyclical.
Be inclusive and put up some bunting.
THE MUSIC
•
56
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
Mullum Music Festival takes place from 14 Nov.
An Australian Hip Hop Documentary @burngently
#burngently
hE e MU uS s Ii C c TH
•
A O pCrT iOlB E R
This That Newy knows how to party, as anyone that’s ever been to This That will attest. Catch the likes of San Mei, Haiku Hands, and Alex Lahey in Wickham Park this 9 Nov,
then check out their interactive (and provocative) tech/ art component, The Other, if
Alice Ivy
Haiku Hands
you’re game.
NYE In The Park This New Year’s Eve, there’s only going to be one place to be. That place is Victoria Park for NYE In The Park, where you’ll finish the year in the extremely fine
The Rubens. Pic: Ali Lander-Shindler
company of Hermitude, Girl Talk, Crooked Colours, Alice Ivy and more.
FKA Festival Dance it up down in the Hunter Valley this 19 Oct at FKA Festival. This year the event’s line-up is so stacked they’ve had to set up a second stage, with 15
bands including The Rubens, SAFIA, Lime Cordiale and The Chats all heading for Hope Estate.
THE MUSIC
•
58
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
MEGA MARKETS KOMBIS & CLASSICS ALL DAY LIVE MUSIC STREET FOOD & BAR KIDS ENTERTAINMENT CARNIVAL RIDES AEROBATICS DISPLAY FIREWORKS
OBBFAdvert1.indd 1
12/09/2019 7:26:49 AM
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
For the latest live reviews go to theMusic.com.au
James Morrison @ Enmore Theatre. Photo by Milly Mead.
UK singer-songwriter James Morrison hit Aussie shores mixing up songs off his most recent album You’re Stronger Than You Know
with fan faves such as You Give Me Something and Wonderful World.
“Morrison’s voice lived up to the hype and every song he sang was immaculate.” – Cate Summers
Kate Miller-Heidke @ Sydney Opera House. Photos by Peter Dovgan.
Kate Miller-Heidke kicked off a
stripped-back tour in style in the
majestic surrounds of the Sydney Opera House.
Miss June @ Lansdowne Hotel. Photos by Munya Chawora.
Having only just released their debut album Bad
Luck Party a few days before the show, Miss June played their only Australian show on a world tour right here in Sydney in the intimate surrounds of the Lansdowne.
“The small confines of the venue made them sound even bigger as the four-piece hit the stage and wasted no time getting sweaty.” – Mick Radojkovic
THE MUSIC
•
60
•
REVIEWS
“The way her voice was showcased on the night – without the accompaniment of full musical arrangements – was spectacular.” – Alasdair Belling
THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
This month’s highlights Outstanding Ain’t no party like preteen party
L-FRESH The LION came roaring back onto the scene with Alchemy earlier in the year and now he’s backing it up with Born To Stand Out. The local artist is stopping by Factory Theatre with the new track on 11 Oct. Katchafire
Can you believe it? Oxford Art Factory is turning 12 years old. They’re throwing a big old party in honour of the occasion with sets from Harvey Sutherland, CLYPSO, Mildlife, First Beige and heaps more, and if you RSVP, entry is free.
L-FRESH The LION. Pic: Cole Bennetts
What’s the Katch? Beloved NZ outfit Katchafire are back on Aussie soil this month with a fat stack of shows. The tour swings into Sydney on 25 Oct where they’ll play The Metro Theatre.
Shine on
Crocodylus
Break out the paisley, annual Pink Floyd celebration The Great Gig In The Sky is returning to Dee Why RSL this 12 Oct. It’s also touring to several rural venues, with an all-star eight-piece band and guest vocalists including Hugh Wilson and Frank Lakoudis.
Hugh Wilson
Northern Beaches garage rockers Crocodylus are out touring with their new EP, Enjoy, with a stop slated for Marrickville Bowling Club on 11 Oct. Israeli Chicks, Pistol Peaches and local outfit The Brights are supporting.
Prost!
Hall grown up Megan Washington has curated a hell of an evening for We Are 20 this 30 Oct. The event celebrates City Recital Hall’s 20th birthday and will see the ARIA-award winner collaborate with Electric Fields, Luke Howard and Topology.
Megan Washington
The Bennies. Pic: Ian Laidlaw
Ocsober? No, thanks. Not when Oktoberwest is taking over Sydney’s Inner West this 12 Oct. Head to Factory Theatre for a raft of the best locally brewed beers and a stacked line-up including The Bennies, The Buoys and Shogun & The Sheets.
CLYPSO
Croc-idyllic
THE MUSIC
•
62
•
YOUR TOWN
A ROCK 'N' ROLL GIG 7 D AY S M I D D AY T I L L L AT E
1 4 4 G L E N AY R AV BONDI BEACH
W W W. B O N D I T O N Y S B U R G E R J O I N T. C O M THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
On the tin You can’t beat a cold beer in the hot sun – it’s one of life’s simple pleasures. Of course everything’s a little heightened in a festival setting, and that includes the satisfaction of cracking a fresh tin — especially if it’s full of one of these top-notch brews.
Mountain Goat: Summer Ale
Gage Road: Atomic Beer Project IPA
Mountain Goat’s evergreen Summer Ale was straight-up custom made for outdoor activities. The Melbourne brewers
Gage Road’s Atomic Pale Ale has been pleasing palates for
have nailed the delicate line between crisp and flavoursome
ten years, and now the brew’s taking on a new life. The team
— each sip gives you notes of passionfruit and melon without
have decided to expand with Atomic Beer Project, a new
leaving you feeling like you’ve just necked a fruit salad, making
range exploring the potential of hop-driven ales, and we’re
it supremely sesh-able. Shout-out to the real GOAT.
reaping the benefits. The Atomic IPA’s balance of citrus hops, caramel malt and a clean edge of bitterness make for a flavour explosion.
Moon Dog: Old Mate
Gage Road Atomic Beer Project Pale Ale
Most BYO fests come with the proviso that punters don’t bring glass onto the site. While totally reasonable, in previous years this has meant the country’s events have suffered
Actually, now that we’ve brought up the Atomic OG we might
a disappointing lack of Old Mate, which was only available
have to talk about it at length. There’s a reason Gage Road
to the general public in stubs. Those days are over. The
have launched a whole new brewing arm inspired by the
crisp, citrusy pale ale comes in cans now, and Old Mate’s
beverage – it’s bloody tasty. Unfortunately, it still only comes
coming to the party.
in stubbs and on tap, but keep your eye out for the classic USstyle pale ale at your savvier events.
Panhead: Quickchange XPA
Young Henrys: Stayer Mid
Don’t be a pinhead, snag yourself a Panhead, specifically the
Dubbed “a gentle beer for gentle people”, Young Henrys
outfit’s Quickchange XPA. The award-winning beer’s smooth
Stayer is a keeper. The mid-strength bev is the latest from
malt base is combined with a trio of hops that add a unique
Newtown favourites Young Henrys and it comes in at a polite
tropical kick, and at 4.6% they hit the spot without pummel-
3.5% without sacrificing taste, so you can enjoy a day out on
ling your liver. It’s become a staple of the Aussie sunny sea-
the cans and still remember seeing the headliners when it’s
sons, even if it does actually come from our NZ neighbours.
time to crawl into your tent.
THE MUSIC
•
64
•
F E ST I VA L I S S U E
PPSSHHHH!
THE SOUND OF SUMMER @goatbeer goatbeer.com.au
Drink Responsibly. THE MUSIC
•
OCTOBER
the best and the worst of the month’s zeitgeist
The lashes Front
Back
The Masked Singer
Pic via Mehreen Faruqi’s Twitter
Pic via Josh Cole’s Twitter
Pic via Boris Johnson’s Twitter
Pic via Julian Castro’s Twitter
Pic by Ross Halfin
Hidden talents
Choice
Solid gold
What a Johnson
How dare you?
St Health
The Masked Singer is amaz-
After 119 years abortion has
Phoebe Waller-Bridge
If “there are a lot of people
Nobel Prize-nominated
Not going to lie, it’s pretty
ing. But it currently has a
been decriminalised in the
deservedly cleaned up at
who want to frustrate
activist Greta Thunberg
disappointing that the
rating of 4/10 on IMDB? Just
state of New South Wales,
the Emmys last month and
Brexit”, like, enough that you
inspired 7.6 million people
Metallica/Slipknot tour has
goes to show the incredible
meaning women will no
the photo of the director,
need to suspend parlia-
to mobilise for the Global
been postponed. Hats off to
lack of support for the arts in
longer have to prove “seri-
writer and actor enjoying
ment to try and make your
Climate Strike and some
James Hetfield for recognis-
this country. A giant spider
ous danger to their life, or
a cocktail and a dart in
will supersede that of the
daft old bastards would still
ing he needed help though,
turned Britney’s Toxic into
physical or mental health” to
the company of her many
democracy you’re supposed
rather call her a silly girl than
and to the people around
a Bond theme. There were
safely make decisions about
awards is what we all want
to serve, then maybe it’s
listen to a word she
him for supporting
back-up dancers in hazmat
their own bodies.
to be when we grow up.
time to think about
has to say.
the decision.
canning Brexit.
1.
Which band took the stage at Lollapalooza naked and gagged in ‘93 to protest censorship?
2. How many years was Fyre Festival founder Billy McFarland sentenced to prison for? 3. What did your ticket include at the first Glastonbury festival in 1970?
Cartoon by Evie Hilliar. Curated by Chris Neill
4. Who was the first Australian hip hop act to play Big Day Out? 5. What was the name of the Brisbane festival which ran from 1989 to 2003, and featured acts like Linkin Park and Oasis? 6. Which band is known for letting other musicians dance in animal costumes on stage at Big Day Out in 2004?
THE MUSIC
•
66
•
THE END
Test your festival knowledge. 7. What now-defunct Australian festival was scheduled to have Neutral Milk Hotel headline in 2013? 8. What was the 1974 Australian festival where audiences booed a then-unknown UK band Queen for being late on stage? 9. Which artist posthumously appeared on stage Coachella in 2012? 10. Which Australian festival brand was retired after a final fling in 2012 featuring Robyn, Justice, Flume, Alison Wonderland and Charli XCX on the bill?
Answers:
The Quiz
1. Rage Against The Machine 2. 6 3. Free milk 4. Sound Unlimited Posse, 1992 5. Livid 6. Flaming Lips 7. Harvest 8. Sunbury 9. Tupac Shakur 10. Parklife.
suits. 4/10? Shame.
FANGIRLS 12 OCT — 10 NOV Book, music and lyrics by Yve Blake Director Paige Rattray
DON’T MISS THE AUSTRALIAN MUSICAL EVENT OF THE YEAR! F EAT U R I N G AY DAN
18 0 2 E IC O V E H T M O FR
HHHHH LIMELI GHT
HHHHH
THE COURIER-MAIL
Vocal Arranger/Music Director Alice Chance, Music Producer/Sound Design David Muratore, Dramaturg Jonathan Ware. A co-production with Belvoir, Queensland Theatre and Brisbane Festival, in association with Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP). Fangirls was originally commissioned and developed by ATYP, with the support of Global Creatures. Supported by The Group.
THE MUSIC
•
J U LY
THE MUSIC
•
J U LY