the music (melbourne) issue #113

Melbourne / Free / Incorporating

04.11.15

Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture

Issue

113

Sarah Blasko warns us she’s not always nice

Whisky Tastings

Music VictoriaHall Of Fame

Mini Mansions

2 • THE MUSIC • 4TH NOVEMBER 2015

THE MUSIC 4TH NOVEMBER 2015 • 3

THE MUSIC 4TH NOVEMBER 2015 • 5THE MUSIC 4TH NOVEMBER 2015 • 5

Music / Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture


You Won It

Only weeks ago he released his sixth album The Documentary 2, and The Game has now

announced he’ll be travelling to Australia in early 2016 for a headlining tour. The US

rapper will be hitting up Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Adelaide, late Feb.

Gone Tropfest

Tropfest Australia has announced the venues for the world’s largest short film festival. They include the main event at Sydney’s Centennial Parklands, as well as Moonlight Cinemas across the nation such as Melbourne’s Royal Botanical Gardens.

The Game

Australian Craft Beer Awards

Tropfest

Feral Flavours

The West Coast’s Feral Brewing Co took home the top gongs at this year’s

Australian Craft Beer Awards for Cryermalt Champion Australian Craft Beer and Champion Wheat Beer with

their Watermelon Warhead.

Arts / LifMusic / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture


Bully’s Mates

Local supports have been announced for Bully’s national tour here in December. Alongside special guests Rolling Blackouts, it’ll be Flowertruck opening in Sydney, Darts in Melbourne and Tempura Nights in Brisbane.

Gather Your Frenz

Melbourne punk rock band, Frenzal Rhomb, are hitting up the east coast’s rural towns

to give the locals a taste of their Friendless Summer Tour. Starting 17 Dec, they’ll be

making their way north, with Clowns their support act the whole way.

Hear That Sound(wave)

After month’s of drip-feed announces, the full line-up for Soundwave 2016 has officially dropped and it is to be headlined by Disturbed, The Prodigy, Public Enemy and more.

The number of AC/DC gigs

everyone should attend in their

lifetime

Bully

Frenzal Rhomb

Disturbed

1

Music /

Bye Belly

Time Off/The Music Queensland’s editor for the past eight years, Steve Bell, is moving on from the mag to open up a record shop. Mitch Knox will take over as QLD editor, and for all editorial enquiries, hit up National Editor Mark Neilsen.



Breakin’ Harts

To celebrate the release of single All Rise (Play It Cool), Harts has announced he’ll be

trekking through the east coast from mid-Jan, and if that wasn’t enough, he’s also

mentioned he’s got a brand-spanking new album to be released early 2016 too.

Feel So Alive

Sydney pop-rock-punk workhorses Tonight Alive have announced their third studio

album, Limitless, is only a few months away (with the first taste of new material just

dropped), and they’ll be doing a national tour from mid-Jan.

This Is Her

Freshly announced for Bluesfest, Melissa Etheridge has added extra dates onto her This Is M.E. tour, named after her recent album release. Aside from the festival, you can catch her in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth in March.

Tonight Alive

NgaiireMelissa Etheridge

Harts

Arts / Lif THURSDAY 5 NOVEMBER

FINAL SHOW/SINGLE LAUNCH

LUNA DEVILLE D. D DUMBO

FRANK SOCIETY$2.50 POTS OF DRAUGHT

$5 VODKA

FRIDAY 6 NOVEMBER

CHAMPAGNE INTERNET

DJS ALL NIGHTFREE ENTRY

SATURDAY 7 NOVEMBER7” LAUNCH

UP UP AWAY ANOTHER BATCH

ZOL BALINT

SUNDAY 8 NOVEMBERALBUM LAUNCH

KAURNA CRONIN BEN WHITING

ZOE RYAN

MONDAY 9 NOVEMBERRESIDENCY

JAZZ PARTY LIVE JAZZ + JAZZ DJS ALL NIGHT

FREE ENTRY!$10 JUGS OF DRAUGHT

TUESDAY 10 NOVEMBERRESIDENCY/EP LAUNCH

NAFASI TIARYN

ANOTHER BATCH$10 JUGS OF DRAUGHT

WEDNESDAY 11 NOVEMBERRESIDENCY

STELLAFAUNA RACHEL BY THE STREAM

COUSIN TONY’S BRAND NEW FIREBIRD

COMING UPTIX AVAILABLE THRU OZTIX:

RUTS DC – UK (NOV 14) *SELLING FAST*JACKSON FIREBIRD – ALBUM LAUNCH

(NOV 21)TRINITY ROOTS – NZ (NOV 27) *SOLD OUT*

NEVER SHOUT NEVER – USA (DEC 5 + 6) *SELLING FAST*

EVEN – ROOFTOP SHOW (DEC 20)STRAY FROM THE PATH – USA (JAN 14 + 17)

*SELLING FAST*VOYAGER/LEPROUS – NORWAY (FEB 6)HEEMS (EX DAS RACIST) – USA (FEB 20)

*SELLING FAST*



AACTA Stars

The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) has announced the nominees for categories including the coveted Best Film award. The list features The Dressmaker, Holding The Man, Mad Max: Fury Road, and more. The awards will be presented at The Star on 30 Nov and 9 Dec.

At Last

Having not graced our shores for what will be nearly three years, Thee Oh Sees will

be coming to Australia in Jan, bringing with them a limited edition deluxe vinyl of

Mutilator Defeated At Last.

Big Time PDAs

APRA have announced 35 finalists for their Professional

Development Awards, with Ngaiire, Ruby Boots and

L-FRESH The LION, to name a few, up for the prize.

Thee Oh Seas

Mad Max: Fury Road

LifestyleMusic / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture


It’s Friday, Friday

Friday Nights At NGV is back again Dec – Apr. To accompany the exhibition Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei, acts such as The Apartments, Bertie Blackman and Jenny Hval and more will be perfroming on Friday nights.

All Chiller

NZ jangle pop band The Chills have announced the release of Silver Bullets,

which will be their first full album in 20 years. Everyone knows good things come to those

who wait, and they’ve announced they’ll be playing two shows in Jan.

Those Scoundrels

Dallas Crane have announced their long awaited rousing new album, Scoundrels. Following its release on 27 Nov, the band will perform at Barwon Club, Geelong and Lorne Hotel in Dec, and Ballarat Beer Festival in Jan.

The Chills

Dallas Crane

Jenny Hval

Deep Soulful Sweats. Pic: Sarah Walker

le / CultuMusic / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture


Freshhhh

The Tasmanian Breath Of Fresh Air Festival (BOFA) offers food and drink tours around Tassie, like Behind The Bubbles, which exhibits sparkling wineries, or Taste Of The Tamar Valley, which is a series of gourmet cooking classes, and many more.

Don’t Miss Missy

Aussie gem Missy Higgins is hitting the road early 2016, and we’ve caught word she won’t be travelling alone. Paul Dempsey will support Higgins, and they’ll start their voyage in mid-Feb.

Riding The Wave

Next Wave festival in May next year will include 37 world premiere works. They’ve announced participating artists working in performance, dance, visual art, video, and sound art, including Deep Soulful Sweats and Rani P Collaborations. The program will be announced March.

Missy Higgins

Our tip for the number of times you’ll get to see AC/DC after this

current tour

0

Music /



Faceys

Next month, Face The Music will be taking over Melbourne, with some huge new speakers and artists just added to the

conference. Alexander Gow (Oh Mercy), DD Dumbo, Ali Barter and more will be playing

live sets over the weekend.

PFFF Pt 3

Port Fairy Folk Festival always delivers the goods, and they’ve just revealed a few gems like Kate Miller-Heidke, Ash Grunwald and Robert Forster in their third announcement.

Such A Susan

Melbourne techno-pop artist Sui Zhen will be celebrating

the launch of her new LP, Secretly

Susan, with a pair of launch shows

in Melbourne and Sydney this month

with supports Zone Out and Sanpo Disco.

Jump In

Philly-based punk rock two-piece Girlpool have announced Aussie shows in Jan, on top of their appearance at Sydney Festival, and will be dot to dotting up and down the east coast in early 2016.

Down The Laneway

Just a Laneway Festival sideshows update for you. Battles, Grimes and Vince Staples have announced shows; while Beach House, Purity Ring, Chvrches and The Internet have added extra shows.

Ali Barter

Battles

Grimes

Sui Zhen

Girlpool

Arts / Li



Cherry Piccin’

Sam Shmith is a NYC-based, Aussie photo artist, and he will

be exhibiting Cherry Springs this Nov in Melbourne’s ARC ONE

Gallery. This series sees Smith photographing the night sky in

Cherry Park, Pennsylvania .

All New High

Gideon Bensen of The Preatures has thrown a curveball with the announcement of a new

solo project. He’s released his debut single, All New Low, and will be showing it off at gigs in

Melbourne and Sydney mid-Feb.

Mills, May, MSO

Techno heavyweights, Jeff Mills and Derrick May, will be performing a one-off concert at Sidney Myer Music Bowl on 30 Jan, with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. It’s set to be a thrilling fusion.

If you had seen only land turtles and then someone told you about sea turtles you would be like, “don’t be ridiculous”It’d be like, “So you’re saying they have flippers, not feet? Lol ok sure,” hey, @shutupmikeginn?

Sam Shmith

Kate Miller Heidke

Gideon Benson

Derrick May


“It just felt right to make a pop record,” says Sarah Blasko. She recently previewed her new album Eternal Return at Sydney Opera House, and the wave of excitement from the interweb

was impressive, if not still firmly focused on Blasko so far. References to her being ‘captivating’ and ‘serenading the room’ abounded (and no doubt, she did both), but on the record this new offering has a distinctly different touch.

“There were certain grand aims in the album in that I wanted to make it really tight, but on the other hand it was just a really natural thing,” she continues of he process. “I think writing with other people was a chance to really focus on melody again and not be just alone

writing in a room. So the key to the whole thing was really just that we would get together and have fun and have there be no pressure on the writing. And I think having no pressure meant that we were able to create more stuff

than when you’re intensely trying too hard in the process.”The ‘other writers’ included hidden gems of the indie music

world, Blasko’s regular bandmates Ben Fletcher and David Hunt. The social writing process resulted in a sound is still driven by Blasko’s vocal, but is grounded in a different way. “That’s the great thing about songwriting,” she explains. “On one hand it’s a release and something that’s really personal to you, and on the other hand it’s playful and heightened and fiction, and I like the fact that as soon as you start

writing about something it becomes fictionalised to a degree because things get accentuated. It’s like, ‘I didn’t feel that, did I?’ and it all changes as you create the song. It is about my life, but then of course you’re always trying to relate, not in the sense of ‘what do people want’, because you can’t ever know how other people are going to perceive it, but you want to resonate.”

The unifying factor in the album is a collection on love gained rather than lost or eluded. It’s a big call, as pop

songs, particularly positive love songs, can be particularly slippy creatures. The album does give listener a chance to get their ciggie lighter out for a big ballad (skip to Say What You Want), but Blasko’s take is contemporary, too. Her track I Wanna Be Your Man is unashamedly political given the obvious gender switch, something that Hoodoo Guru and Aus music legend Dave Faulkner noted particularly in his PR piece for the album. “It’s easy for a woman to feel marginalised in the male-dominated world of the music industry,” Faulkner wrote.

“I was actually trying not to make a statement, but it kind of scared me because it did feel like a statement song. But it was just being honest, and it happened.” Blasko says.

The song is not necessarily about gender, but about knowing when to reveal a variety of emotions. “You know, I’ve had a few times where I’ve written songs and I’ve felt like I’ve wanted to shy away from putting certain things on the record. So on As Day Follows Night there’s a song called Is My Baby Yours, which one of my friends always jokingly says is about teenaged pregnancy, which it isn’t,” she laughs. “But it scared me because it’s a very honest song, it is what it is and there’s nothing to hide behind. I Wanna Be Your Man is the same, it scared me in so far as it takes a lot of guts to be that outright and direct, and there’s always a fear of just sounding like that angry person, which is really annoying.”

Blasko’s new song challenges the idea of what getting to be a man is in the music industry, something that much of the industry takes for granted (for obvious reasons). The song doesn’t talk down her position as a woman in the field, but marks out that it’s still a relatively marginal experience. “We [as women] should be allowed to be angry sometimes,” she says of the song’s inspiration. “And at the time that song and its point was really relevant to how I was feeling. When I was making this album, and a lot of other things that I do in my career, I’m often surrounded by men. The song’s more about my own character than anything else — sometimes I joke about my personality and I’m nice, nice, nice, and then all of a sudden NOT NICE,” she shouts with a smile, “and it’s because you’re trying to make people comfortable and then you just reach this point of exhaustion or whatever it is, but you just kind of snap. I feel that the song represents a little bit of how that feels. I wouldn’t say all the time, but there’s been times certainly over my working life where there have been moments, and lyrics in the song, when you relate to a man and it feels they’re relating to you with the baggage of their relationship to their mother and their

Eternal Flame

Sarah Blasko’s been around the musical block enough now to know how things roll. Eternal Return is album number five, and it’s a synth-driven joy. She speaks to Liz Giuffre.

Sometimes I joke about my personality and I’m nice, nice, nice, and then all of a sudden NOT NICE.

Sarah Blasko Sydney Opera House Pic: Peter Dovgan

Music


What:Eternal Return (EMI)

Beyond the relatively new collaborative writing approach, Blasko was also keen to explore a different sound for her songs. While she’s always been a songwriter partial to keys, this one takes on synth sounds with great energy. Children of 1980s morning music television will be particularly happy with this take, but she’s careful to emphasise that it wasn’t necessarily meant to be a retro record. “I didn’t set out to make something that was totally ‘80s, so I get a bit nervous when people say ‘it’s an ‘80s album’ because really, it’s not, it’s not!” Blasko giggles (and also slightly pleads). “The keyboards are the nostalgic element that links the sound to the ‘70s and ‘80s, because those keyboards were essentially built in that time. But the appeal for me was more the classic love songs are from the ‘70s and ‘80s, and that classic love album structure was really important to me. Even down to the simple headshot on the cover art, it was about that classic structure with strong melody and a direct lyrical approach.”

relationship to their partner, and it’s like such a weird position to find yourself in. I’m sure men find that with women too, of course, but it does feel like a real man’s world or boys’ club at times.”

Trainspotters will notice references back and forwards to old Blasko work and the older popular culture canon. Fans of old school showbiz will note in particular the mid album track Maybe This Time, which she shamelessly admits to having stolen the idea (and song title) from the musical Cabaret. “I think a lot of great pop music has a bit of humour and a bit of lightness of touch and I love those elements in that song [also called Maybe This Time]. The lyrics are classic, something like, ‘Maybe this time I won’t be a loser ... like the last time and the time before’, and I love that it’s talking about the current happiness but also the failure of the past. I think with my music in the past, I think the failures have certainly been there. As Day Follows Night is essentially a heartbreak record, so my love failures have been very written about before and informed me now.”

Popping OutThe music industry tends to freak out when a woman says they ‘want to make a pop record’. So, as the freak-out launches for Sarah Blasko’s new very poppy, boppy and not-very-much-at-all depressed album, Eternal Return, here are some other musos who’ve dived into the mainstream end of pop:

Sia

Her early peek came with the stunning Breathe Me, a track used to bring home one of the greatest television finales of all time in Six Feet Under. Various media types wanted more sad songs from the singer-songwriter. Instead, she moved to LA, and now writes mainly for other people, peppering it all with mystery appearances on TV, not showing her face, but still acing the Billboard charts.

Taylor Swift

Before she got ready to Shake It Off in the most poppiest of pop songs ever to pop out, teenaged Tay Tay went to Nashville to make her country music fortune. The country music clans loved her approach and youthful crossover potential, not realising that she’d completely jump one day, leaving her banjo, fiddle and Americana twang to eat dust.

Lana Del Rey

Once Lizzy Grant, Lana Del Rey made a conscious effort to create a personae that would let her go from Video Games to Music To Watch Boys To. Danceable and provoking, she skips from lounge to jazz to the mainstream with ease. Watch reviewers contort themselves trying to put those sounds into words.

Lashes Backlash

Frontlash

#SorryNotSorry

Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine is standing by his decision to sack a guitar tech after a show in Aus a fortnight ago. He then said the guy’s work was “just not acceptable”. He now says: “I wish I didn’t say it the way I said it, but I’m not going to apologise.”

It’s A No From... Well, Everyone

Hands up, who’s surprised that Simon Cowell’s DJ-themed talent show - which Fatboy Slim described as a “terrible idea” – has already been given the arse? No, us neither.

Film Terror

Another week of new release films flopping in the US. Those movies are bombing so hard they should be sent to fight ISIS.

The Band Before Time

Finland. Power-metal band. Dinosaur-themed. For children. Hevisaurus. Google. Now.

Dead On

The Walking Dead is currently the most watched TV drama in the US – that’s a big deal for a cable show. No wonder they renewed it for S7. And, TWD author Robert Kirk’s new show Preacher is about to land - latest trailer dropped this week.

20/20 Eurovision

Adelaide’s Germain Sisters have entered a song into the Swiss competition to represent that country in the next Eurovision. Anyone can vote for it online.

Hevisaurus


In a city with so much art to see, it’s rare — maybe counter intuitive — for shows taking actual artistic risks to appear.

What if they are so obscure people won’t understand? Must a show be translatable? Experimental theatre says ‘no’, emphatically. It wants to give you an opportunity to perceive in a different way. Veteran UK-born theatre-maker Brian Lipson’s new solo work, Edmund. The Beginning, is shaping up as a piece that does just this. Difficult to categorise and inseparable from himself, Lipson says, the show is a piece of distorted biography about split personas, history, imagination, and literature, among other things.

“Edmund doesn’t appear, but we do hear his voice,” Lipson explains of the name in the show’s title. “He was William Shakespeare’s brother and was 15 years younger. It’s a bit of a furphy, really, but he’s someone I’m really interested in. For some reason or other there is not one Shakespeare biographer who really delves into this relationship. I honestly don’t know why.” The intrigue surrounding this mysterious figure was, as the title slyly suggests, a beginning for this project.

The character of Edmund in Shakespeare’s play, King Lear, is the archetypal evil brother: a bastard son hell-

bent on taking the power he wasn’t born with. For Lipson, this link by name between the playwright’s brother and one of his most famous characters is theatrical gold. “Shakespeare had to have chosen that name consciously, it was his brother and he was being mean to him. The terrible thing is that a year or two after King Lear was written, Edmund had a bastard son of his own who was also called Edmund, who died when he

was 18 months old and was registered in the parish records as a ‘base bastard’.”

“What interests me is how all this would have affected Shakespeare’s imagination, rather than trying to find out who Edmund was,” Lipson says. Intriguing digressions like this fill our conversation, with Lipson less intent on coming to a point than carefully articulating the characters and ideas his work illuminates.

In there, prominent among the 15 or so characters he plays, is Brian Lipson himself. “These other characters enter me and then leave,” he says. “There is one who is kind of like a doppelganger of me, but he’s also a real person who is not Brian Lipson. I won’t say who, I don’t want to spoil it.”

The character Brian Lipson doesn’t just facilitate and narrate, Lipson says. He’s heavily implicated in the show’s themes. As in the confessional mode of American poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes’ personal expression, Lipson looks to “tread that line of embarrassment” and create something that is sometimes “so frank you want to look away... I have to feel that what I’m giving out is genuine and not just there in order to get a response,” he confides.

Exploring Shakespeare’s Brother

A large part of building Brian Lipson’s new play was learning about William Shakespeare’s younger brother, as Simon Eales discovers.

What:Edmund. The BeginningWhen & Where: 10 — 22 Nov, North Melbourne Town Hall, Arts House

Theatre

Publisher Street Press Australia Pty Ltd

Group Managing Editor Andrew Mast

National Editor – Magazines Mark Neilsen

EditorBryget Chrisfield

Arts Editor Hannah Story

Eat/Drink EditorStephanie Liew

Gig Guide Justine [email protected]

Senior ContributorJeff Jenkins

ContributorsAnnelise Ball, Sarah Barratt, Sophie Blackhall-Cain, Emma Breheny, Sean Capel, Luke Carter, Anthony Carew, Oliver Coleman, Daniel Cribb, Cyclone, Guy Davis, Dave Drayton, Simon Eales, Guido Farnell, Tim Finney, Bob Baker Fish, Cameron Grace, Neil Griffiths, Brendan Hitchens, Kate Kingsmill, Baz McAlister, Samson McDougall, Tony McMahon, Ben Meyer, Fred Negro, Danielle O’Donohue, Josh Ramselaar, Paul Ransom, Ali Schnabel, Michael Smith, Dylan Stewart, Kane Sutton, Simone Ubaldi, Genevieve Wood, Evan Young, Matthew Ziccone

InternsDylan Van Der Riet, Hannah Blackburn, Elizabeth Watt, Lillie Siegenthaler, Brad Summers, Samuel Wall, Xavier Fennell, Emma Dempsey

Senior PhotographerKane Hibberd

PhotographersAndrew Briscoe, Dina El-Hakim, Holly Engelhardt, Jay Hynes

Advertising DeptLeigh Treweek, Tim Wessling, Zoë Ryan [email protected]

Art DeptBen Nicol Felicity [email protected]

Admin & AccountsLoretta Zoppos, Niall McCabe, Bella Bi,

Ajaz [email protected]

[email protected]

Subscriptionsstore.themusic.com.au

Contact UsTel 03 9421 4499Fax 03 9421 [email protected]

Level 1, 221 Kerr St,Fitzroy VIC 3065

Locked Bag 2001,Clifton Hill VIC 3068

—Melbourne

Credits


As the resident crate-digger in local neo-soul/funk outfit Up Up Away, Lachlan Stuckey spends a lot of time

in obscure record stores. Record shopping in Hungary, he says, is awesome. “A lot of it is kind of untouched and there’s lots of dusty little shops that are just crammed full of jazz records from the ‘50s and ‘60s that have been there for so long.

“We went to this crazy record store in this little apartment building; it was really just like a broom closet, it wasn’t even really a real room. But the dude must have had like 10- or 20,000 records in there. There were records just stacked ten piles deep that we couldn’t even get to and there was only like, two people that could walk into the store at once.”

Back home in Melbourne, guitarist Stuckey and his band enjoy the enthusiastic support of soul/funk exponent, Northside Records main man, Triple R DJ and fellow wax obsessee, Chris Gill.

“Guys like Chris and DJ Manchild and those guys who have always supported the band, we’ve had so many conversations with them and their encyclopaedic knowledge of records is just gobsmacking. Dudes that know where everything came from and can see the link between every style of music that’s happened in the last five decades. I think those guys put most of their effort into

DJing but to apply that to making your own music would be a super, super interesting thing.”

The band originally got together, says Stuckey, “Because our singer, Elle [Young], put the word out that she wanted to start a band doing some covers to try and make some cash just doing soul funk covers at gigs.” That idea lasted for just one rehearsal. “We all got along really well and we’re all into similar stuff

and we started jamming and decided that we didn’t want to play covers and that we could make better use of our quote unquote musical fusion, just to make our own music.”

The wedding circuit’s loss is the pub circuit’s gain. Up Up Away released an EP early last year and did a residency at Evelyn Hotel, which is “kind of like a second home” to the band, says Stuckey. They’ll be back there again to launch their new 7” Swells. At the time, Saskwatch and Hiatus Kaiyote were the band’s main local inspirations. “They were the ones that inspired us to take a look at soul music in our own kind of way, I suppose,” says Stuckey. But with a whole lot of different musical inspirations, the Up Up Away sound is constantly evolving.

“When we first started it was really just about raw soul funk, just ‘60s/’70s funk music. And since then it’s changed a lot. I think we were just young kids at the time how were really affected by the James Brown and the Otis Redding and the Marvin Gaye that we were hearing, that we were digging up, but since then it’s definitely gone in a more hip hop direction in a pretty subtle way. Just kind of using hip hop sounding grooves without presenting them as hip hop songs. We spend a lot of time listening to ‘70s African music and so I think we’re going to try and work that stuff into the next set that we’ll put together.”

Never Too Much Fusion

Up Up Away’s Lachlan Stuckey talks to Kate Kingsmill about records and drawing inspiration out of everything from Marvin Gaye to African music.

What:Swells (Independent)When & Where: 7 Nov Evelyn Hotel

Music


317 BRUNSWICK STREET FITZROYPH: 03 9415 9601 BAROPEN.COM.AU

BOOKINGS: [email protected]

WWW.THETOTEHOTEL.COM

71 JOHNSTON ST. COLLINGWOOD . 03 9419 5320TOTE OPEN: WED - SUN, 4 ‘TIL LATE

BAND BOOKINGS: [email protected]

DAILY HAPPY HOUR 5.30PM - 7.30PM

$10 JUGS + $5 COOPERS STUBBIES

WED 4 NOV

MATT BUSH & CLAUDINE AVERYSTARA JANELUKE McDONALD8.30PM

THU 5 NOV

SONKETAP RUNNING WATERMARC DEAZ8.30PM

FRI 6 NOV

CLOSET STRAIGHTS(SINGLE LAUNCH)

ROLLING BLACKOUTSTULALAHGINA ROSE BRUCE8.30PM

SAT 7 NOV

CACARTUBONEWOMANALANNA CASSIDY9.00PM

SUN 8 NOV

SEMI FICTIONTHE ELECTRIC ILEONARDWICHITA8.30PM

TUE 10 NOV

MAKE IT UP CLUB8.30PM


roots in the 1970s. The songs on our previous album were written really quickly and designed to be performed by a four-piece band and cut live in the studio. With this one we had some bigger arrangements in mind. I listen to a lot of Van Morrison, Ray Charles and others so I have loftier ideas than keeping it strictly country music. As a band we’re quite diverse in what we listen to. I’m the most into Americana stuff, our bass player is a rock guy, our new guitarist is across a lot of different music and our drummer is a jazz guy so there were a lot of different influences on this collaborative record.” Bryan enthuses.

Fun aside, there is a greater focus on dark and personally heartfelt subject matter on The Mountain. To pinpoint how that came to be, Bryan casts his mind back to his high school years and how Tom Waits was responsible for shaping his songwriting style.

“I first got into music because of Tom Waits. I had an English teacher who gave me a cassette with all of Bone Machine and some early years Tom Waits. I couldn’t reconcile how the same artist could do both those things but I found them just as interesting as each other. I found that you could write songs that weren’t just personal love songs, you could write about characters and I was determined that I wouldn’t write from my own point of view too much. It’s only been recently that I’ve been able to write more from my own perspective and put my own experiences in the songs. This album is definitely the first time that I’ve made it really personal,” confesses Bryan.

Though country music in Australia is dominated by the commercial world of pop country and exhausted cliches, there has been a recent groundswell of activity and popularity in the alt-country genre. Bryan holds a fairly unique position by being involved in both scenes and though many are drawn to one or the other Bryan finds value in all areas of the genre.

“My take is that I want good music to have as much of an audience as it can. It’s a large market for mainstream country music but my experience is that an audience likes the music that is brought to them. If you go to regional towns and play and do a good show then they don’t really mind whether you sound like Lee Kernaghan or Emma Swift, they’re just receptive to music. I like that a lot of the musicians in the mainstream scene are very, very good but I also dislike the focus on the watering down of the music. I think in the alt-country world you can also only judge the artist based on their performance and the songs. I do spend time in both scenes and there’s a lot of good music coming out of both but I do get more excited about the Americana scene, just because it is more aligned with the music that got me into country music. There is a bit of a divide between the two scenes but I don’t think it’s really coming from the musicians themselves. In Australia people like Catherine Britt and Harmony James are pushing the boundary between the two scenes and my main thing is to not be too prejudiced either way.”

What:The Mountain (ABC/Universal)When & Where:5 Nov, Caravan Music Club

Lachlan Bryan’s new album The Mountain is a noticeable shift in both sound and the way he approaches the subject matter of his songs. A

regular visitor to the USA, Bryan has soaked up the influences and musical culture of the South and with the combined input of his band they’ve added a new depth and stylistic range to their music. With the album now released, Bryan is excited about people hearing and hopefully enjoying it.

“We didn’t finish it that long ago so it’s not really a case of finishing a record and having months and

months to wait, building up the suspense of getting tired of waiting. It’s still pretty new to me so I feel happy about it and ready for it to come out. When you make your first album you tend to play all your songs for ages and then you record them. Somewhere along the line the cycle switches and so with this one we’ve not had much of a chance to play them live other than me playing them at a few songwriter nights.”

The increased input from The Wildes in the writing and arranging of the new album has made for a more diverse collection of songs and though a conscious decision was made to widen the boundaries it was still a very natural process.

“It came out pretty organically. You’re always a product of what you’re listening to. I keep going back to the same artists and much of what I listen to has its

The Best Of Both WorldsAs he prepares to take his new album out on the road with his band The Wildes, Lachlan Bryan shares with Chris Familton his views on the commercial and alt-country music scenes.

I do spend time in both scenes and there’s a lot of good music coming

out of both but I do get more excited about the Americana scene.

Music


SUNBURY FESTIVAL

This year marks the tenth year of The Age Music Victoria Awards (formerly The Age EG Awards). As part of the celebrations, a voting panel comprising former inductees, musicians and

music professionals were given the responsibility of selecting ten worthy representatives from Victoria’s illustrious musical heritage for induction into 2015’s The Age Music Victoria Hall Of Fame. And they decided to shine the spotlight on AC/DC, Bill Armstrong, The Thunderbirds, John Farnham, Olivia Newton-John, Palais Theatre, Archie

Roach, Stan Rofe, The Seekers and Sunbury Festival.Sunbury Festival was founded by John Fowler and Jim McKay,

both GTV9 employees, who came together as Odessa Promotions, which organised and promoted these events.

“Television is always a team effort and, of course, we transferred that into running a festival,” Fowler

explains. “We had lots of very capable people, professional people, from accountants and

lawyers and all those sort of people that you don’t realise [are required] at an event.”

Although often likened to its legendary Stateside festival cousin, Woodstock, Sunbury Festival is also widely acknowledged for ushering out the hippie era in this country

and heralding in the pub rock scene. The festival is also regarded as the

forerunner to Big Day Out since it was held across the Australia Day long weekend during its four-year reign (1972 - 1975). Fowler stresses that Sunbury certainly focused on

“Australian music for Australians” and its first year featured an all-

Australian line-up.Queen were famously heckled and

booed at Sunbury in 1974, which makes a little

more sense when you consider the festival’s patriotic origins and Australia Day focus. Does Fowler think the Sunbury massive’s unwelcoming reception had to do with Queen’s postcodes? “Yeah,” Fowler hesitates before sharing details as to why international bands were booked for Sunbury after the inaugural festival: “That was a suggestion by the agency that was handling some of the bookings and we were advised that we would be wise to have an international act at the time, just to give it a bit of a draw card. And that’s exactly what we did.”

When asked whether Sunbury Festival organisers encountered any unexpected red tape leading into the first event, Fowler offers, “The CFA [Country Fire Association] at the time - not the local branch, but the main CFA - they were very, very concerned about fire problems in the area... They caused us a lot of trouble; they took out ads in the paper and so on at the time warning people not to go.” Thankfully, the Sunbury organisers “had gathered” a management team who specialised in negotiation, these issues were quickly resolved and Sunbury was greenlit.

“Our first year was the highlight from the point of view of how everybody reacted and so on,” Fowler recalls. Although the festival wasn’t due to open for Friday night entertainment in 1972, he remembers the talent took to the stage anyhow: “Billy Thorpe couldn’t wait to get on the stage; it was all quite incredible... And all the bands got up and jammed ‘til about three o’clock in the morning.”

It’s not just the first Sunbury Festival that’s historically relevant and Fowler opines, “The amazing thing was that a lot of people grew out of that festival.” A relatively unknown Molly Meldrum compered the first Sunbury Festival and was there as a reporter for Go Set, so his interviews were captured on film by a documentary crew. Some of this footage captures Meldrum enquiring of a completely naked female (side note: Meldrum was allegedly straight at the time), “What sort of made you sort of just get up and shed your clothes like this?” Then Paul Hogan compered Sunbury in 1973. “Paul was very good, but he was very, very nervous,” Fowler illuminates.

If it wasn’t their type of music, they’d certainly let you know it.

Music Victoria Awards

Hall f Fame

John Fowler

Ahead of the Music Victoria Hall Of Fame awards, we continue our look at the inductees as Bryget Chrisfield talks to Sunbury Festival founder John Fowler and Michael Smith talks to The Thunderbirds’ Peter Robinson.

THE THUNDERBIRDS

“As far as I knew we were kind of the only rock’n’roll band in Melbourne,” The Thunderbirds’ Peter Robinson

contends. And when you look at their story, he may well be right.

Nineteen-year-old drummer Harold Frith had a vision. It was 1957, rock’n’roll had arrived in Australia a couple of years before courtesy a tune recorded by Bill Haley & His Comets titled Rock Around The Clock, and though he was a jazz fan, Frith thought it was too exciting to ignore. He was going to put together a rock’n’roll band, and they were

going to be called The Thunderbirds. The first line-up Frith had put together in September the year before had lasted four months. This time Frith was determined to find the right players.

“I took 13 lessons off a guy who was in the Victorian Symphony Orchestra, and on my way

back from lessons, on the train with my double bass, I bumped into Harold Frith, who said, ‘I see you’re a bass player. I’m looking for a bass player. I’m in a rock band,’ and I said, ‘What’s

that?’ and he said, ‘Come to rehearsal and we’ll show you,’” Robinson chuckles. “So that’s how

the rot set in!”Laurie Bell was the only member of the first

line-up to rejoin Frith in what would become the classic Thunderbirds line-up. Frith literally headhunted 16-year-old Scottish immigrant, singer Bill Owens, from one of the few other bands tentatively playing rock’n’roll in Melbourne, The Autocrats, and recruited pianist Murray Robertson; singer, guitarist and baritone saxophonist Colin Cook; and another 16-year-old, tenor saxophonist and flautist Graeme Lyall.

“As far as mainstream teenage rock’n’roll that was on the radio,” Robinson points out, “we were the only band who actually did all that stuff - we used to do all the Top 40 songs, which other bands didn’t really do. We were the first band to actually do all the main halls.”

The Thunderbirds had scored a residency in an upstairs dance hall above a skating rink called Earl’s Court that could hold up to 1000 kids. “When we started off we had about 100 kids or something, and then the next week we had about 400 and the next week we couldn’t get in!”

With the arrival of Beatlemania however, for all their popularity and the fact that youngsters like Normie Rowe and Marcia Jones were guesting with them, The Thunderbirds saw the writing on the wall and parted ways in 1965.

In 1983, Greg Lynch of Stagedoor Productions got Billy Owens out of retirement and brought the W&G line-up of The Thunderbirds back together for a show dubbed Rockin’ At The Arcadia. It would be a dozen years before the band reunited once more.

Frith, Robinson, Bell and Robertson reunited once more in May 2007 for a 50th anniversary Thunderbirds tour with a new album, The Thunderbirds In The 21st Century, which they launched at Rainbow Hotel in Melbourne. Essentially a reissue of the 1997 Canetoad album a previously “lost” cut from 1958, Bell Boogie, and three new tracks were added.


Michael Gudinski’s Mushroom Records is another Sunbury success story and the label’s first album release was Sunbury 1973 - The Great Australian Rock Festival (a three-disc set of live recordings from the 1973 festival). Fowler admits the ongoing legacy Sunbury has left behind gives him a sense of pride and confirms, “[Gudinski] certainly produced a record and I think that’s where the name, Mushroom Records, came from.”

An Aussie rock’n’roller that Fowler believes was propelled back into public favour after his Sunbury Festival appearance is Johnny O’Keeffe: “He made a big comeback from Sunbury. He actually got booed when they announced him and he walked out on stage, but within two or three minutes he had them absolutely jumping.” It sounds like Sunbury attendees tended to be enthusiastic with their booing. Fowler chuckles, “Oh, you got sections of the crowd that, you know, if it wasn’t their type of music, they’d certainly let you know it.”

Legend has it, Skyhooks were booed off the Sunbury stage in 1974, after which singer Steve Hill left the band and was replaced by the charismatic Graeme “Shirley” Strachan. The band returned to perform at the festival the following year and their set was regarded by many as a highlight. “It sounds as though you probably know more about that side of it than we do,” Fowler laughs.

When & Where: 20 Nov, The Age Music Victoria Awards Hall Of Fame Concert, Palais Theatre

AC/DC

The Young brothers may have been born in Glasglow and AC/DC conceived in Sydney, but Melbourne was arguably the band’s global launching pad. There’s a lot of history between the city and the riff-heavy rockers. It was there they met manager Michael Browning and started playing gigs at Festival Hall and now defunct The Hard Rock Café, including one show in ’75 where vocalist Bon Scott allegedly swung into the crowd from a rope and they refused to give him back. The iconic bagpipe laden clip for It’s A Long Way To The Top was filmed in a flatbed truck rolling down Swanston St. ‘Rosie’ from Whole Lotta Rosie was allegedly their neighbour from when they lived in Landsowne Road in East St Kilda. Browning has even mentioned how apparently St Kilda City Council were thinking of putting an AC/DC plaque up where the house was.

Their time in Melbourne saw their first international release and a contract with Atlantic Records. Now 40 years on and they’ve sold more than 200 million albums worldwide, entered the Rock and Roll Fall of Fame, and had Corporation Lane renamed in their honour, so it seems apt that they be inducted into the Music Victoria Hall Of Fame.

The Thunderbirds

AC/DC on Swanston Street in the video for It’s A Long Way To The Top

Hendrix House At His London Home

Hendrix In The House

Coming off the recent announcement Jimi Hendrix’s former London home is to be permanently open to the public from February 2016 – for the past two years it has been renovated to its original state, and is next door to where composer Handel lived in the 1700s – here are three more musical homes worth a geez if you want to have a sneaky peak into the medicine cabinets of some other rock royalty.

Elvis has left the building, but his home Graceland has actually won awards as a musical tourist attraction in the US. You can stay in the Graceland Hotel, buy his personal items at auction, have your wedding in the grounds and even attend themed events such as ‘Christmas With The King’. A little cringe-worthy if you’re a musical purist, but it sounds like it would be interesting to see the toilet he died on.

Can’t buy me love, but can buy me a two for one tour of the Beatles childhood homes in Liverpool. ‘Mendips’ and 20 Forthlin Rd are the old time haunts of young John Lennon and Sir Paul McCartney. You can stand in the spot where they composed I Saw Her Standing There, together!

Louis Armstrong is one of the great jazz legends unlike any of today’s superstars, he was known for simple tastes. His modest house in an ordinary Queens neighbourhood is apparently one of the best preserved vintage fit-outs you will ever see. You half expect to see Don Draper walk through the door any minute.

LOU

IS A

RMST

RON

GTH

E BE

ATLE

SEL

VU

S


Mini Mansions’ founding member Michael Shuman, best known for his basswork in Queens Of The

Stone Age, has been writing new music and exploring the idea of losing oneself. With a tour supporting Tame Impala on the horizon, Shuman’s creative work is persisting and ongoing. We catch up with the multi-instrumentalist as he relaxes at his home in San Fernando Valley, trying to do ‘real life stuff’. “I try to be a real person. I feel like you get lost when you’ve been on the road. Also, I can’t really stop playing music so usually it’s me sitting on the couch with an acoustic guitar in my hand, whether I’m watching TV, or cleaning... all that shit!” Delving a little deeper into this loss of social identity, Shuman’s outlook is confounding. “It’s happened to me and it’s happened to a lot of people where relationships, whether they are romantic or just friendships, get lost... it’s kind of the way it is: you leave town, and most people — your friends — assume that you’re gone. They get used to that. They get used to you just coming around and not really being a part of everyone’s life.”

Mini Mansions also requires a whole different mentality to perform. “I think the main thing for me is having to play drums

and sing. With Mini Mansions it’s like... I like to be very sober and focused because to do what I have to do is not easy. It’s all of your limbs, and your vocals, and trying to engage the crowd. It’s all of that stuff at once. It’s tough. I really feel for Phil Collins and what he went through.” Shuman is determined, though. “I’m not looking to fuck it up!”

Mini Mansions have been creating some game

changing clips for their songs, one of which Alex Turner even appears in. More songs from this year’s album The Great Pretenders have film clips than not. “Almost every one of them has been with a different person, a different director. Some are friends, some are people that came to us with ideas, some are people that we saw on YouTube and they did shorts. We liked them and we reached out to them. We like working with all these different people and creating all different types of images from different people’s minds!” Shuman tells us that an upcoming music video is the Mini Mansions take on Raging Bull. “It’s boxing themed and I definitely get the shit beat out of me!”

Mini Mansions will be touring Australia with good friends Tame Impala in November. “We already did a tour with them in the States which I think was our favourite tour to date. GUM, which is Jay [Watson, of Tame Imapala]’s band, are supporting our headline shows so there will be a lot of spontaneity.”

As for Queens Of The Stone Age, Shuman says this: “I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone that we’re starting the process of what the next phase will be for us. But as for who’s dating who we’re all pretty much dating each other!”

Trying Not To Get Lost

Jonty Czuchwicki talks to Mini Mansions’ Michael Shuman about the transition between bands and the importance of not getting lost in the process.

When & Where:8 Nov, Ding Dong Lounge

Music

Eat /


Eat/Drink

Whether you’re a whisky connoisseur or new to the whisky game, you can defi nitely learn from a good ol’ tasting. Words by Sam Wall. Illustration by Brendon Wellwood.

Whisky & Alement —

270 Russell St, Melbourne

With nearly 500 bottles to choose from, Whisky & Alement have the fever. They have a calendar packed with tasting events spanning samplings of rare and unusual malts, whisky and cheese pairings, and tasting evenings with an array of international master distillers.

Eau De Vie —

1 Malthouse Ln, Melbourne

Ask anyone in Melbourne where to get a drop of your favourite spirit and they’ll likely point you at the stylish Eau De Vie. Their dedicated whisky room has an awe-inspiring collection and every Tuesday they hold Whisky & Cheese Night. Drop in and choose five cheese tasters and one of the knowledgeable staff will match your pick with five whisky tastings. Enquire about their Whisky Club, as well as tastings and cocktail classes.

WhiskyTastings

Cure Bar & Eatery —

164 Rathdowne St,

Melbourne

Book one of their tastings and take the opportunity to sample a few items off Cure Bar’s impressive whisky list, including some rare drops. The experience includes shared antipasto as well as discussion on different styles and regions so you know what you’re drinking.

Whisky Live

Whisky Live is a massive international whisky tasting event taking place from London to Tokyo and just about everywhere in-between. More importantly it visits Australia once a year to tickle taste buds in several major cities. Their mission statement is to make learning about whisky stimulating and fun, and while the product likely does most of the work for them they also have range of food and entertainment to sweeten the pot.

/ Drink


Eat/Drink

Overdosa

Hot Spot

Julie Goodwin —

Homemade Takeaway

Have you ever tried to make the signature Pad Thai from your favourite takeaway joint and found it was missing a certain something? Or maybe you were experimenting with lamb shank pie, or prawn and pumpkin pizza, with results that didn’t quite melt in your mouth?

Battle Of The Pans

This November, Ms Collins is celebrating The Age Good Food Month by hosting the most heated kitchen battle in Melbourne. Come and witness the intensity as two passionate chefs come together to battle it out, each representing one of the city’s most reputable food venues: Huxtable and Ms Collins.

Pan Asian expert Daniel Wilson, who was awarded a coveted Chef Hat in The Age Good Food Guide 2014, will be repping Huxtable. His opponent from Ms Collins will be Daniel Poyner, a master in contemporary Aussie cuisine with 15 years of experience in renowned restaurants across Melbourne and London.

Tickets for the 10 Nov event will include six meals — two mains and one dessert per chef, plus matching wines. Come along and place your vote to determine who will win this year’s Battle Of The Pans!

Bookings via Ms Collins.

Hank Marvin Markets

If you love the idea of an outdoor market but hate claustrophobic crowds, long queues, overpriced food from predictable vendors, and no sitting space, then you should probably go visit Hank Marvin Markets, because they have none of those things.

There’s plenty of green grass to spread out on, the atmosphere is bustling but never crowded, you won’t be waiting a silly amount of time between ordering your (reasonably priced) food and receiving it, and the stalls featured at the market rotate every Saturday. Plus, there’s always heaps of cute dogs and babies around, if you’re into that.

There’s a diverse array of street food (kimchi fries, banh mi, toasties, snags, dumplings, burgers, fried chicken, bagels and lots more), patisserie and dessert stalls, coffee carts, a bar, and also fresh and artisan produce stalls.

The Hank Marvin Markets are on at Alma Park every Saturday, 9am — 3pm.

Follow their Instagram @hankmarvinmarkets to keep up to date with the changing line-ups.

Read ‘Em

& Eat

If so, then rejoice. Julie Goodwin, bestseller and winner of Masterchef Australia 2009, is

back with her fourth book, Homemade Takeaway,

a cookbook that shows you how to add that little je ne sais quoi to your home cooking.

With over 150 beautifully illustrated

recipes Goodwin reveals a cheaper, healthier and even quicker way to enjoy your guilty pleasures. Covering meals from local bakeries and corner stores to Thai and Indian cuisine, Homemade Takeaway is the essential guide to creating comfort food from scratch in the comfort of your own home.


IndieIndie

Suiciety

EP Focus

Answered by: Adam Cooper

EP title? Crawling Machine Edition

How many releases do you have now? We have four releases, Deeper Vision, Primrose Path, Cell and now Crawling Machine Edition.

Was anything in particular inspiring you during the making? Just life, the world around us. What we love, hate, feelings on a page. Political climate. We were also reading a lot of Carlos Castaneda at the time if I remember correctly.

What’s your favourite song on it? Personally I love Toma Esto Es... It still gives me goosebumps.

We’ll like this EP if we like... Rollins Band, Soundgarden, Tumbleweed, Faith No More.

When and where is your launch/next gig? 6 Nov, Musicman Megastore, Bendigo; 13 Nov, The Eastern, Ballarat; 28 Nov, Barwon Club, Geelong; 4 Dec, San Remo Hotel, San Remo.

Website link for more info? facebook.com/suicietyoz

Swim Season

Ep Focus

EP title? Cascades

How many releases do you have now? Single: The Throne. Single: Hide & Seek. Single: Soldiers. EP: Cascades.

Was anything in particular inspiring you during the making? The Wombats’ melodies, The 1975’s guitar riffs, ‘80s synths and anything with groove!

What’s your favourite song on it? We all have our favourites!! It’s completely segregated, but Soldiers was agreed upon for the first single at least.

We’ll like this EP if we like... Bad Pony – Limbo. The Wombats – Glitterbug. RAC – Strangers. St Lucia – When The Night. The 1975 – The 1975.

When and where is your launch/next gig? Cascades EP Launch, 6 Nov, The Gasometer Hotel with Residual (single launch) and Alex Lahey.

Website link for more info? swimseasonband.com

Busy Kingdom

Gettin’ Comfy

Answered by: Michael Etherington

What is it about the venue that makes you want to a run of shows there? We’ve had many a beer and seen many a band at the Brunny. Having played there in the past, we reckon it has the atmosphere of a good Melbourne pub where you can see bands.

Same set every week or mixing it up? We will be throwing a few curveballs in there. We’re currently working with Lindsay Gravina who is gonna be producing some new tunes with us, so we’re keen to test out some newbies!

Any special guests going to make an appearance during your tenure? We have a variety of bands along for the month so every week will be a different line-up. Our mates Fear Of Flying will be with us each week though, so that will be rad!

Favourite position at the venue when you’re not on stage? Circling the pool table or at the bar drinking Guinness.

When are you in residence? The Brunswick Hotel, every Thursday in November. Four bands each night from 8pm. Be there or be square.

Website link for more info? busykingdom.com

Kaurna Cronin

Album Focus

Album title? Glass Fool

Where did the title of your new album come from? I guess the title somehow stemmed from the feeling of vulnerability I felt from sharing the topics of these songs while also inspired by the glass mosaic artwork which was created for the cover art.

How long did it take to write/record? The writings are a collection from over two years, chosen as the songs I felt best worked cohesively as an album. Two weeks of pre-production and the album was tracked and mixed over two weeks.

Was anything in particular inspiring you during the making? My last two records I have recorded in Byron Bay as I’ve always loved the easygoing environment at the industrial estate, being so close to the ocean and surrounded by other magnificent creatives.

What’s your favourite song on it? Lay Your Letters Down and The Kind Of Woman I Need.

Will you do anything differently next time? I would have loved to extend some of the themes with further tracks but we were quite limited with time so had to leave it at ten for the album.

When and where is your launch/next gig? The album launch is at Evelyn Hotel on 8 Nov with support from Ben Whiting & Band and Zoe Ryan.

Website link for more info? facebook.com/kaurnacronin


“I didn’t know that though till we were halfway fi nished it,” a still somewhat bemused Ron Sexsmith admits of the

“happiest” album he’s yet produced, Carousel One. “But it wasn’t until halfway through the sessions that I realised, looking at the list that was on the wall at the studio, ‘Wow, none of these seem like downers, really,’” he chuckles. “’They’re all pretty outgoing or something.’ So that was a nice surprise, especially after my last record [2013’s Forever Endeavour], which was a lot more introspective. I mean I never really know why songs turn out the way they do. The one before that [2011’s Long Player Late Bloomer] was more uptempo but was kind of grumpier lyrically. This album, there’s more humour on it and I don’t really know why but I’m happy about it.

“The songs were sort of written in two different batches actually. Half the songs were written while I was waiting for Forever Endeavour to come out, and then the other half were written while I was touring that record around. I also had a few different producers that were gonna do the album originally that for whatever reason fell through. I had the hardest time trying to fi nd

a producer, so by the time Jim Scott came around I had about 30 songs. Then it was just a matter of which ones feel sort of like a record.”

Introduced to Sexsmith by mutual friend Kevin Hearn from Barenaked Ladies, the Valencia, California-based Jim Scott is probably best known for his work with Wilco, but his CV includes albums for the Stones, Ryan Bingham, the Dixie Chicks and even Crowded House and

Missy Higgins.Performing at folk festival songwriters

circles inspired Carousel One’s Getaway Car.“That’s a true story, that line, so it was

kind of fun to throw that into a song,” he chuckles. “I’m not a fan of these sorts of things. In fact I have a hard time getting gigs at folk festivals ‘cause they always insist that you do these songwriters circles and I don’t really enjoy them, and I was doing one this time at Niagara Falls that was so bad and my wife was in the audience and she could just see that I was not enjoying it, and so she went into the dressing room and gathered all our things, put them in the car and had the engine running for when it was all over so we could just run out the back door and take off. They wanted me to come out later and sing this fi nale with everybody, so that line was just sort of about the kind of psychic thing that happens when you’ve been with someone long enough, where they can read your mind from across the room.”

Happy Accident

Other songwriters, like Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello, reckon he’s the business. For his 14th album, Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith accidentally cut his happiest yet. He chats with Michael Smith.

When & Where:27 Nov, Caravan Music Club; 28 Nov, Northcote Social Club; 29 Nov, Queenscliff Music Festival

Music

Stupid SportsStupid SportsPeople are all trying to get fit for summer. We find the silliest ways in which to get that #beachbod/#summerlook.

Trampolines are lots of fun. Of course, until you break your arm when it gets stuck between the metal springs and bar. But with the new child/adult proof spring-less models there is no reason not to revisit that old childhood frienemy and get jumping. It’s an Olympic sport for a reason; trampolining is great cardio, works your core and your legs and let’s face it – who doesn’t want to master a backflip? And as Todd Flanders once noted on The Simpsons, each leap on the spring-loaded canvas “brings us closer to God”. Amen.

Beach volleyball is so last summer. Handless volleyball is the latest craze (according to the fitstagram people from Bondi). It uses a soccer ball instead of the traditional volleyball and requires players to kick and headbutt the ball over the net. YouTube it for some ab-crunching belly laugh bloopers.

*Plays Harry Potter theme song* Quidditch isn’t just for witches and wizards, you too can look like an idiot and play the game with a broom between your legs. It’s the magical (see mutant) love child of volleyball, baseball and basketball, with a human in a morph suit playing the golden stitch. If your team is good enough you can even go to the international Quidditch World Cup!

CB On CBS

CB From The Greenroom

CB Performing On CBS

Outside CBS Studios

The Music’s Bryget Chrisfield went over to New York and managed to be backstage in The Green Room of the CBS Television Network as Courtney Barnett filmed a live performance at CBS This Morning. Here are a few snaps of what ensued and for the full article, head to theMusic.com.au.


On the surface, Drowning Horse’s second album Sheltering Sky is a monster, and one of the heaviest

records you’ll hear this year. Get over the sheer surprise of the album’s force, however, and you’ll find it to be complex, refined, and an evolution from their debut, while still maintaining those elements of dread, rust and an uneasy sense of dark sparsity. After realising he has a fan on the line Wills sounds thrilled, and fair enough — Sheltering Sky is an album that took a long time to craft. “I think when we started writing this, I mean, it was ages [ago], the start of 2012, we kind of sat down and thought about what we want this record to be... Obviously the first record we did was a straight-up doom metal record, it was super heavy and really raw and in your face. With this record, we really wanted to push ourselves. We wanted to play around with riffs and song structures and we really wanted to create a record that was a cohesive album from start to finish. That meant not just writing the heaviest, loudest thing we could; it meant letting some of the songs breathe a bit — making sure it ebbed and flowed.”

Eight songs all up, Sheltering Sky spans over an hour, the shortest track clocking in at just under five minutes, while the longest ends just shy of 18. With long, sprawling riffs playing a big part in the style of music performed on this album, it begs the question: how do you know when to stop? “That’s something we’re quite mindful of when we write these songs, because we do have a tendency to write pretty

long songs... We had to be really hard on ourselves and go, look, this is a 15-minute song, and we really want to add this bit to it which sounds sick, but it doesn’t really fit within the context of the song or what’s happening on the record... I think, especially playing doom metal, you have a tendency to let riffs go on way longer than they should, and although some of our songs are pushing 15, 16, 17 minutes, we don’t want it to be too much of a drain to listen to.”

And that in itself is why listeners around the world are latching onto this record, building the hype before it has even hit the shelves — there’s an exciting element to it, despite its somewhat grim nature. “We wanted to be confident that there was enough going on and it was tight enough to warrant it being that long. It’s a long record, but the last thing you want to do is bore people, and bore yourself.” That extends to being on stage as well. “We knew we were writing a record that was probably going to be an hour long at least; every time we get up and play it we have to enjoy it, you don’t want to be playing a riff for ten minutes, and thinking about whether or not to get a kebab after the show.”

Heavy As Ever

It was as much about the ebbs and flows as it was about being heavy on Drowning Horse’s second record. Drummer James Wills chats to Kane Sutton.

What:Sheltering Sky (Art As Catharsis/FALSExIDOL Records)When & Where: 6 Nov, The Curtin; 7 Nov, The Tote

Music


Poppy Seed Festival is a new grassroots festival of theatre that showcases

work from emerging artists, individuals and companies over November and December.

The festival opens with Project: Hysteria by TBC Theatre, a work comprised of two of Tennessee Williams’ one-act plays, The Pretty Trap and Interior: Panic, 10 – 22 Nov.

From 17 – 29 Nov, The Butterfly Club hosts The Yellow Wave by 15 Minutes From Anywhere, a two-man adaptation of Major General Kenneth Mackay’s 1895 novel.

Man With A Plan present Gin Sister, a depiction of the female experience of alcohol, 25 Nov – 6 Dec, Trades Hall.

The One, which premiered in London last year, will cap off the program, 2 – 13 Dec, fortyfivedownstairs, focusing on the rules of modern love and lust, and featuring Emily Tomlins and Ben Prendergast.

In FocusPoppy SeedFestival

The first annual Poppy Seed Festival retakes place at The Butterfly Club, fortyfivedownstairs, and Trades Hall, 10 Nov – 13 Dec.

triple j Listening Lounge

13 Nov, 11.25am – 12.55pm, Arts Centre

You need to register for this event but it’s worth it if you’re a budding or emerging artist – the high level session will give you an insight into how the triple j team works. Up to 20 artists and their management will be able to pitch their music to and pick the brains of one of six key decisionmakers at triple j.

Our Picks Of Face The Music 2015

Keynote: Our Generation – The Music Industry’s New Leaders

13 Nov, 10.10 – 11.10am, Arts Centre

What are the essential steps to building a successful label/band/tour? That’s the big question Mardi Caught (Managing Director, Warner Music Australia), Jodie Regan (Director, Spinning Top) and Susan Heymann (General Manager, Touring, Chugg Entertainment) will address in this year’s opening keynote.

Morning Ritual With Alexander Gow

13 Nov, 9 – 9.45am, MPavilion

Get your morning started right with an early performance by Oh Mercy’s Alexander Gow at the aesthetically pleasing architecture and design hub MPavilion. Grab a brekkie pastry or muffin on the way, get your mate to save you a seat on the grass and go order some freshly brewed coffee from Three Thousand Thieves, who will be on caffeine duty, before settling in for some soothing wake-up tunes.


Duncan Trussell’s journey into comedy was a trip. A naturally funny and smart lad from North Carolina,

he moved to Los Angeles with some inheritance money that he “blew on raves and acid”, needed a job, and thought the legendary Comedy Store on Sunset would be a cool place to work.

He never had a yearning to be a stand-up. Sure, he was into comedy — “I was into Bill Cosby, prior to everyone understanding he was a rampaging, hell-flinging rapist, before he was tainted” — but never did it occur to him he could do what those guys were doing. But one of the perks of working in this “Hogwarts for comedians” was three minutes of stage time which his colleagues urged him not to waste.

“I tried it, I got off stage, and one of the waitresses was like, ‘I don’t know what I just saw, but it wasn’t stand-up,’” he says. “That’s the environment of the Comedy Store, a university that teaches through loving rejection, and that’s where I got the bug.”

Now, the LA-based comic has found a way to reach a global audience from his own home with his The Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast, where he indulges his interest in philosophy, spirituality and psychedelics and interviews diverse guests. He’s been called an “information DJ”, pulling out choice

cuts of obscure facts to share with fans.

“Prior to podcasting the only avenue to let people know you exist is getting a part on a TV show or a big comedy special or a spot on a late-night show,” he says. “It’s amazing to me that I managed to skip that step, it’s just glorious for a comedian like me. The filtration mechanism put in place by network television can really water down the

comedy they’re trying to put out there.”Trussell’s podcast metadata has also

shown him where pockets of ready-made audiences exist, and he’s put that to work for his debut Australian tour, starting this week. But in the process of doing 170-something episodes, he says he’s transformed.

“One of the problems with LSD distribution networks is the LSD starts warping the network itself and after a while, the LSD dealer just turns into someone who gives LSD away because they don’t want money anymore!” he says. “In the same way, with the podcast — you start off thinking, ‘Man, I’m going to be able to have conversations with some of the smartest or funniest people I can get to talk to me’ and then over the course of 170 conversations like that, you realise, ‘Shit, I’m changed. This has changed my outlook on the world, the way I live, and it’s certainly changed the way I perform on stage and the things I choose to talk about.’

“Timothy Leary said the internet was going to be this generation’s LSD and I see what he meant. What’s more psychedelic than being able to sit in a house with a witch or shaman, talk to them for an hour about ayahuasca ceremonies or communicating with the moon, and then pressing a button and sending that information to over 100,000 people around the world simultaneously?”

A Trippy Time

US comedian Duncan Trussell talks to Baz McAlister about one of the most powerful psychedelics available to the modern world: podcasting.

When & Where: 6 Nov, Athenaeum Theatre

Comedy

Breaking Down A Big Indie Release: The Ruben’s Hoops

14 Nov, 2.40 – 3.40pm, National Gallery Of Victoria

Moderator Dan Nevin (CEO, AIR) along with the team behind The Rubens’ second album Hoops – Chris Maund (Managing Director, Ivy League), Marihuzka Cornelius (Label Manager, Ivy League Records), Joel Connolly (Founder/Artist Manager, Umbrella) and Lauren Murray (Agent, WME) – will let the audience in on the strategy behind its success.

Our Picks Of Face The Music 2015

Keynote: JD Samson

14 Nov, 10.10 – 11.10am, Arts Centre

The US’s JD Samson (Men, Le Tigre) – notable and inspiring genderqueer performer/producer/activist – will deliver a keynote address that expands on her TEDx Talk, The Cost Of A Token. In the talk, she’ll explain why she’s come to accept being a ‘token’ genderqueer artist if it means she is able to create awareness and change people’s perceptions, and will also talk about her career in general.

Lunch With Ali Barter

13 Nov, 12.25 – 1.25pm, Testing Grounds

Continue the good vibes at lunchtime when Ali Barter plays at the Testing Grounds art garden. The Taco Truck and Beatbox Kitchen will be there providing some delicious sustenance to those who are in need of some dancin’ energy.


When Melbourne’s Cumbia Cosmonauts were booked to play the David Bowie Is program at the

Australian Centre for the Moving Image, band leader Moses Iten was perplexed. After all, they perform tropical bass — a postmodern composite of music from South America, the Caribbean and rave culture, with a kitsch sci-fi aesthetic. It’s not rock.

“At first I was like, How are we fitting into this?” Iten recalls. But he needn’t have worried. “It ended up being a really awesome gig, just because it was so unusual for people to experience that kind of music there — which is, like, heavy bass, really full-on dancing music; We had people doing cartwheels and stuff. It got really crazy!” Ziggy Stardust would dig Cumbia Cosmonauts’ “space bass”, as might Diplo. Today, Iten feels that his group have accidentally cornered a “niche” market — they’re “an avant-garde act that also makes a party happen”. Indeed, Cumbia Cosmonauts previously played the NGV.

The Switzerland-born Iten — likewise active as Saca la Mois DJ!! — developed Cumbia Cosmonauts with Thomas “Soup” Campbell, both fascinated by a new wave of the festive cumbia music that originated in Colombia. They dropped a mixtape through Melbourne’s Scattermusic label blog. Cumbia Cosmonauts soon courted a fanbase across Continental Europe. They released 2013’s

debut, Tropical Bass Station, on Berlin’s transgressively Latin Chusma Records. Late last year, Iten hit Mexico — home of cumbia sonidera — as a one-man sound system (albeit with VJ), assisted by crowdfunding. “I was really nervous initially, but I didn’t have any reason to be — people knew my music. They knew Cumbia Cosmonauts.” He’d do multiple shows over two months. Iten is now readying a tour doco — and

Cumbia Cosmonauts are issuing a set of remixes by Mexican producers via the local Cassette Blog, following their Cumbia Sampuesana EP.

While many AWME acts are seeking the attention of international promoters, Iten’s mission is to raise Cumbia Cosmonauts’ domestic profile. Happily, their music was recently used in a Mimco accessories campaign.

The ‘world music’ category has long been challenged as a colonialist construct. There’s renewed controversy since, as an Indigenous Australian artist, Gurrumul’s The Gospel Album won the ARIA for ‘Best World Music Album’. Iten believes that Cumbia Cosmonauts, as with the progressive “roots” fest AWME, is simultaneously celebrating, expanding and subverting notions of ‘world music’. “I think [‘world music’] is an outdated concept — if there was ever a place or a time for it from the beginning — but I wanna be positive and constructive about it. I remember having a conversation with [Melbourne] DJ Paz and his response was, ‘But everything’s world music! Of course, you’re world music.’ It’s just a weird category. But, for me, it’s always been my motivation as an artist to fight this category — or play with it. So it’s not ignoring it or being negative about it, but just playing with it.”

Taking On The World

Cumbia Cosmonauts are going to try not to worry about fitting in, as bandleader Moses Iten tells Cyclone.

When & Where: 14 Nov, AWME, Max Watt’s

Music

OPINION


Opinion

Fragmented Frequencies

Other Music

From The Other

Side With Bob

Baker Fish

A couple of weekends I attended a hardcore show. I was standing on the edges of the pit, behind two rows of guys, when someone in the pit did

a wall-to-wall run/barge thing. I ended up pushed into a wall — so hard in fact that my arm went dead — and hit in the boob. I ended up with a pinched nerve and a sprain in my shoulder. But I wasn’t mad. When you’re standing on the fringes of a pit, there is a certain element of risk you

take and getting hit, by accident, is a risk you take.The same cannot be said for Jonathan Vigil of The Ghost Inside who

allegedly was jumped at a show last weekend for a tweet where he basically said fighting at shows sucks!

It doesn’t matter whether that was the cause of why he got beat up or not, because what he says is true. Fighting does suck! As someone who regularly goes to shows, fighting at shows frightens me because I don’t want to get caught up in the fray, and it basically ruins the vibe of the night. It is yet again the actions of the few ruining something for the majority.

I have a professional career outside of hardcore. Shows are my place to have fun and hang out with friends when I’m not in my stressful job. I don’t want to go to get hurt on purpose, and I don’t want my boyfriend or my friends to get hurt either.

Just don’t do it.

Wake The Dead

jams. This ‘high priest of exorcism-rock’ was also the 1980 Sydney magician of the year. Yet Geoff Krozier & The Generator’s Tranceformer will be released in November on UK’s Finders Keepers.

Alan Lee is a vibraphonist who was active from the 1950s until the early ‘80s. He ran the gamut of musical styles, from model to jazz funk fusion to soul jazz, even chamber classical. His music was extraordinarily lyrical and he helmed his own ensembles, releasing a concept album to The Hobbit, with fellow vibraphonist John Sangster. A compilation, An Australian Jazz Anthology was released this month on UK’s Jazzman label.

Then there’s Australian singer Howard Eynon who will be reissuing So What If I’m Standing In Apricot Jam on UK’s Earth Recordings some 40 years later. Eynon was an actor who had small parts in The Man From Snowy River and Mad Max. Yet it’s his wacky psychedelic freak folk from his 1974 private press LP that continues to astound. None of these iconic records can find a release at home. I guess we should be grateful that our colonial masters find value in our cultural heritage.Australia is peculiar in that it loves home-grown

music right now, but ignores its past. Maybe it’s cultural cringe, but we’ll take a reissue of an

obscure Chicago deep funk private press over anything that grew here. Allow me to elaborate.

Geoff Krozier creates some of the strangest music you will ever hear. It’s shamanistic outsider spoken word with a broad Australian accent merged post prog synth

Punk And

Hardcore

With Sarah

Petchell

Trai ler TrashThe Ghost Inside

Redeemer

Howard Enyon

OPINION


Opinion

“What kind of

punishment will these neo-Nazis have?”

A man sits alone in a church,

beseeching the Almighty for a little understanding after his son ran afoul of a pack of bat-wielding hooligans who used the kid as a pinata. God isn’t picking up the phone, but that’s ok.. someone else is listening: an unshaven, brooding badass in a grubby hoodie who subsequently interrupts the aforementioned pack’s regularly scheduled gang-rape to suggest they change their ways. When the badass’s suggestion is met with hostility — “This fucking chimp is mine, bro!” yells one — our hero gets inventively brutal, making good use of pliers and broken bottles to transform the miscreants into fractured boneheaps who spend their last seconds of life pondering the identity of this dispenser of painful death.

Meet the Redeemer, star of the movie Redeemer! (Now available on DVD from your friends at Madman!) He travels through Chile from town to town, eternally on the lookout for any poor soul catching a beating from local ruffians. He then doles out a smackdown of his own, but not before offering the ruffians a shot at redemption (HENCE THE TITLE), which the ruffians invariably decline. Seems like your usual payback scenario, but Redeemer throws in a nasty wrinkle in the form of the Scorpion, an even badder-ass who trails the Redeemer and puts the big hurt on the person the Redeemer helped out. “Do you know what is the most horrible of all tortures?” he asks some poor schmo he’s about to burn at a stake. “The one that fucks with your brain.” Wow, the Scorpion is a dick. OR IS HE?

If you’ve seen, oh, any movie, you may have discerned that (a) these two have history, and (b) these two will eventually square off in a duel to the death. Before that climactic face-off, though, Redeemer efficiently and effectively goes through the motions, having its mysterious stranger saunter into a small town where an American import has set up shop as Chile’s first “decent drug lord”. (Said import is played by Noah Segan, a regular in Brick and Looper director Rian Johnson’s films, and he’s quite entertaining as a smarmy crim taken with the cool nicknames of the Chilean badasses. “I’m just Steve,” he gripes. “That’s not going

to work.”)Of course,

there’s the now-requisite guff about vengeance being a vicious circle, but Redeemer is primarily a vehicle for Marko Zaror, a tall drink of water who moves with a brawler’s swagger and a ballet dancer’s grace. (Like Van Damme doing the splits, Zaror has a sweet signature move: a horizontal pirouette that ends up with Zaror’s boot cracking someone’s skull.) Zaror has been doing the B-movie rounds for a while now — check him out as the preening villain in the enjoyable Undisputed 3: Redemption (wow, anyone see a pattern forming?) — but going by his form in Redeemer and other solo vehicles like Mirageman and Kiltro it’s only a matter of time before he goes up against Vin Diesel and/or The Rock in a Fast & Furious or something. In the meantime, enjoy Redeemer, which is just the ticket for those quiet evenings when you want to see a dickhead henchman get a giant hook jammed through the roof of his mouth till it pops out his eye socket.

Dives Into

Your Screens

And Idiot Boxes

With Guy Davis


Album / EAlbum/EP Reviews

Eternal Return is a portrait of the artist as a pop love songwriter, complete with the range of feels that one little word tries to capture. Opener I Am Ready draws a listener in while I Wanna Be Your Man is gender bending at its best. When she snarls, “I wanna be your...” and trails, well, it’s more than a little bit fabulous — Annie Lennox, David Bowie and Gaga would all be proud. Single I’d Be Lost is catchy as, while Maybe This Time claims victory from the jaws of relationship failure’s defeat. There’s something abstractly Peter Allen about this album too; maybe a love of melody and direct lyrics. It’s an attitude that doesn’t quite fit into one place but is somehow still really relatable (Only One with its glorious synth and happy declaration “I’m gonna show off my love” is perhaps what does it — just a musical expression of gentle but pure joy). Luxurious is a slow and direct ode to the right one (whoever they are), while Say What You Want has a bit more spark and, in a retro-styled record, could easily be the big hair and big crowd moment. Final track Without is a rare solo Blasko offering for this album, and the solo songwriting and delivery style brings home a clear rejection of too much time alone.

Her declaration, “If you have not love, you have nothing at all” is a direct piece of life advice from Aunty Sarah — dear listener, get your priorities straight!

Liz Giuffre

Let’s be clear: Tim Rogers is not going to write you Berlin Chair again. But let the musical and lyrical nods and winks of this band that now can just enjoy being wash over you a few times, and you’ll likely find the satisfaction you crave.

Conversely, Porridge And Hotsauce might be the most ‘You Am I-sounding’ album of their last few. The previous self-titled, and moreso the reflective moments of Dilettantes sometimes sounded like Rogers solo songs — as played by the band. Not necessarily a bad thing, but here in One Drink At A Time’s louche swing or the ‘70s chop of Buzz The Boss — as Rogers’ and Davey Lane’s guitars bump into and across each other — you’ll remember the scruffy swagger that made you love them in the first place.

In A Restless House is the anticipated debut album from new wave style band City Calm Down. The effort is a sonically calculated, varied and well produced release.

The band’s direction is concise and meditated, something most other bands cannot boast about their debut record. It’s a great picture of who the band are, as those who have seen City Calm Down on stage would know they are a formidable live band. In A Restless House captures the same emotions, and this is translated well on this release. Just take for instance the synth line in Border On Control, which comes in at just the right moment over the trundling bass line and unwavering drum beat. Catchy hooks are also within reach of the band, as one just needs to listen to Son to concur.

You Am IPorridge And HotsauceYou Am I Records

★★★½

City Calm DownIn A Restless HouseI Oh You

★★★½

Other voices are allowed cameos, but no-one can deliver a bittersweet bon mot like Beehive’s “As romantic as the first time I see you cry...” like Timmy in full wilted-flowers-on-the-doorstep mode, or as a sentimental organ note underpins the stumbling brass of Two Hands’ “...All that’s left from the plans I made”.

Ten albums in, You Am I will take your Good Advices, but then drop the clutch and take off in the direction they choose, over the bedrock of Andy Kent’s bass and Rusty Hopkinson’s simply fucking joyous drumming. Sure, keep loving getting lost in your Hourly Daily reissues — but know that You Am I have still got the goods.

Ross Clelland

The new wave sentiments of City Calm Down are unmissable, and certainly hammered home with tracks such as Rabbit Run. The double stroke high hat beat, rising synths and lazy guitar lines say it all, held together by the throaty vocal tones of Jack Bourke, who possesses a stark resemblance to Nick Cave and Ian Curtis. The ever present dithyrambic melancholy is one of the greatest strengths of the album, effortlessly tapping into the disenfranchised nature of youth in their 20s. Tracks such as Nowhere To Start even have an inkling of Radiohead infused within the sounds. There’s no doubt that in due time City Calm Down will achieve great things.

Jonty Czuchwicki

AlbumOF THEWeek

Sarah BlaskoEternal ReturnEMI

★★★★


Album / EAlbum/EP Reviews

Bill Ryder-JonesWest KirbyCounty PrimaryDomino/EMI

CustardCome Back,All Is ForgivenABC

BjorkVulnicura StringsPod

Darren MiddletonSplintersIndependent

★★★ ★★★★★★★★ ★★★½He sounds proper posh but Bill Ryder-Jones is one of UK music’s hardest workers.

A teenage guitarist with The Coral, Ryder-Jones left the band following anxiety issues and now has plenty of solo/film work up his sleeve. On West Kirby County Primary he’s produced a solo rocker that’s really good in parts but lacks in variety. The acoustic Tell Me You Don’t Love Me Watching is seriously sinister while Two To Birkenhead has a nice slacker rock vibe and Let’s Get Away From Here is a belting ballad. Satellites delivers big at the end, but the middle plodsa little.

Paul Barbieri

Brisbane’s arch funsters Custard return with their first album in 16 years (sixth overall) and deliver a lesson on comebacks.

All of their beloved traits remain — laidback music, wry lyrics and that overarching playfulness — yet the results seem timeless. From the lilting country opener Orchids In Water to the cruisy indie of We Are The Parents (Our Parents Warned Us About) and the catchy melodicism of Warren Rd and Rice & Beans it all seems like proto-Custard, only the reminiscing throughout 1990’s and Queensland University betray the passing of time at all. Welcome home.

Steve Bell

This reimagining of Vulnicura supported only by a 15-piece orchestra of strings and the amazingly quirky viola organista sees Bjork losing the electronics and going acoustic. Vulnicura succeeded as a break-up album that harnessed emotions that didn’t need lyrical abstraction and too many metaphors to more directly express exactly what she was feeling. The swoon-worthy shimmer and sheen of these arrangements supports this intimate and loving dissection of a relationship to sweetly dreamy effect. Mesmerising instrumental versions of Family and Black Lake are highlights, providing compelling immersive listening experiences that touchingly weave through bleak moments of sadness.

Guido Farnell

Taking his cues from other prominent local singer-songwriters of the past decade — think Carus Thompson, Angus Stone and Josh Pyke — Powderfinger guitarist Darren Middleton’s second album is a diverse offering. It won’t see his star shoot to any new heights, but it’s a solid record amplified by a number of guest appearances from the likes of Missy Higgins and Guy Pearce. Comparisons with Powderfinger’s back catalogue are inevitable, but rather than competing with the arsenal of that band’s iconic anthems, tracks like Our Road and Hold On indicate where much of Powderfinger’s success came from. For that, Splinters is worth a listen or two.

Dylan Stewart

EulogyEternal Worth

Jackson FirebirdShake The Breakdown

Beach HouseThank Your Lucky Stars

More Reviews Online theMusic.com.au

L i v e R e


Live Reviews

Neil DiamondRod Laver Arena27 OctSeveral things about the set-up of Rod Laver Arena immediately set the tone for the night’s show: the obviously lowered stage, additional rows of plastic chairs in lieu of a standing audience, the absence of any supporting acts or security - it was clear that those in attendance were unashamedly there for one thing: a seasoned pro with over four decades of patient and dedicated fans.

The crowd was filled to the brim with said long-time fans, whose tickets, seemingly bought with superannuation and life-insurance cheques, could have easily been not to a show but a pensioner’s convention, filling the arena with the kind of lack-of-fucks-given that could come from growing past superficial concerns and embracing nostalgic joy.

The enthusiasm of the 74-year-old veteran and his band of legendary session musicians, ranging from Elvis Presley’s drummer through to original members of the ‘Hot August Night’ line-up, was infectious, raising the audience to their feet as soon as the ever-charming star burst on to the stage for a rendition of The Monkee’s I’m A Believer.

There is no doubt that the showman has been at this long enough to know what to the offer his audience. Diamond’s newest material, from 2014’s Melody Road, was kept to minimum, with classics Crunchy Granola Suite and Sweet Caroline the show’s inevitable high-points, a fact displayed by both audience and performers alike. Impressive when not one hit was missed along the way.

The two-hour set was, in so many ways, a time capsule. Diamond’s sequined slacks, choreographed band and

distinctly vintage sound; things that were inescapably corny and nostalgic to anyone not of the era but the epitome of a show for those who were, felt new through their honest delivery. “I feel like I’m 26 again,” one punter was heard shouting; the

fans have aged so the show doesn’t have to.

Every aspect of the set was well-tested and inexplicably manicured, the limits of the old-school pro never rearing their head by the means of well-timed ballads or instrumental breaks when Diamond’s energy was running low. The septuagenarian could easily hold his own and deliver.

Entertaining but by no means revolutionary, yet exactly what was expected, the performers gave everything they had and the crowd returned it ten-fold. Not one person left with a trace of disappointment.

Dylan Van Der Riet

Chet Faker, Otologic, Silicon, Awesome Tapes From Africa, CleopoldSidney Myer Music Bowl30 OctThe Bowl on a sunny spring evening? You really can’t beat it. Cleopold brings sweet laidback vibes with a swaying groove. He’s on Chet Faker’s label, Detail Co, and there’s a melancholy tone to Cleopold’s voice that’s not dissimilar to this evening’s headline act. Love Like Mine is

Devin Townsend @ 170 Russell. Pic: Clinton Hatfield

Neil Diamond @ Rod Laver Arena. Pic: Marcus Byrne

Neil Diamond @ Rod Laver Arena. Pic: Marcus Byrne

Chet Faker @ Sidney Myer Music Bowl. Pic: Hamish Lawrence

Dan Kelly @ The Gasometer Hotel. Pic: Joshua Braybrook

Devin Townsend @ 170 Russell. Pic: Clinton Hatfield

The two-hour set was, in many ways, a time capsule.

e v i e w s


Live Reviews

a Miami Horror song featuring Cleopold and even a couple of burly security guards you’d more easily imagine punching the air while listening to AC/DC are witnessed grooving to this one. Live instrumentation is king, cowbell could never be a bad garnish and this act should’ve sat higher up in tonight’s line-up.

Ethnomusicologist Brian Shimkovitz brings his esteemed Awesome Tapes From Africa blog (which grew into a record label) to our ears and after a clunky, low-volume start (an unavoidable hitch when playing cassettes?) we process

undeniably danceable, samba-like bangers and ache to experience this in a club.

You can’t ignore Silicon. A DJ wanders over to the turntables on stage wearing all black (except for white trainers). Doesn’t sound so weird, right? Well, what about the sparkly black head covering and torches for eyes! There are vocals, but we can’t see where they’re coming from, so consider them pre-recorded. When the audience in front of us starts looking at a point beyond our heads, we turn around and see Silicon (aka New Zealand’s Kody

Neilson) meandering through the crowd. Then his DJ hops down to our level, takes a seat in the front row facing the stage and (hilariously) claps his decks. When said DJ follows a girl who’s looking for her seat, she turns around and gets the fright of her life much to the delight of the crowd. One of the DJ’s eyes/torches goes out then comes back on (sort of), only flashing. Neilson’s vocals are smothered in effects and it’s difficult to connect with him while he’s roaming around. God Emoji is glorious, but the duo’s antics are distracting and take away from Silicon’s music. You could never accuse them of being boring, but maybe the middle of their set should settle in and be restricted to the stage.

Otologic’s Tom Moore gets us prepped for the main event and does well to grab attention with some choice selections while everyone’s chatting or grabbing drinks. Then on bounds Chet Faker (aka Nick Murphy). Where’s the beard!? We almost don’t recognise him, but he’s looking great and we wonder whether his lookalikes among us will go home and reach for the razor. Murphy has some moves and certainly doesn’t need to hide behind consoles — who knew? Extraordinary musicality is demonstrated through every accent and rhythmically captivating hand gesture. Melt oozes in at song two and it’s an “O, O, Overdose” of endorphins. Four backing vocalists come out to join Murphy plus three-piece backing band. Murphy exudes onstage confidence these days.

And he totally wins the award for ‘Where the hell is that voice coming from?’ since his image doesn’t look a fraction as angelic as those pipes sound.

Murphy sits down to play keys on a way-back track. “I’m in a pretty good mood,” he admits. I’m Into You is breath taking (“Ah-De-De-De-De/Ah-De-De-De-De/De-De”) and Murphy’s pitch, effortless. His is a commanding presence up there even when solo onstage, shrouded by smoke. No Diggity gets us on our feet with Murphy admitting it’s the song that “started it all” for him. His band returns to the stage for 1998. Gold is dedicated to Melbourne while also being the lighting hue of choice on the cyclorama. Result! Drop The Game (that Flume collab) follows and we all try to channel Storyboard P (the exquisite Brooklyn dancer from the tracks’s accompanying music video). Simple cyc graphics and tracks of moving lights above the stage perfectly enhance, but never swamp, the action. Main set closer Cigarettes & Loneliness bends the vocal melody too much for this scribe’s liking.

Murphy returns to kick off the encore solo on keys and plays a new song he says he probably won’t release, but can’t promise that. It’s definitely crying out for release and what is he trying to say? Murphy has an ace stank face when he sings. Then on wanders a choir of nine plus two saxophonists for To Me. The penetrating dual sax appeal that opens closer Talk Is Cheap

ensures a lot of attendees will be getting laid tonight. These are aphrodisiac sounds. And to rapturous applause Murphy departs the stage with a skip in is step.

Bryget Chrisfield

Dan Kelly, Jess Ribeiro The Gasometer Hotel 31 Oct Jess Ribeiro warms up the crowd, the highlight of her set being Hurry Back To Love from the recently released LP, Kill It Yourself. Some of the chatter between songs is a bit repetitive including the bug bites, but luckily she has the killer songs to back up her act.

Dan Kelly, along with his band, who are dressed up as tennis stars and cyclists for Halloween, host a show that is filled with many laughs, and most importantly it has a vibe

Murphy has an ace stank face when he sings.

THE DISCREET CHARM

OF THE BOURGEOISIE PH

ANTO

M O

F LI

BERT

Y

THE CROW DARK CITY7:00PM

7.00PM

7.00PM

WED 4TH NOVTHU 5TH NOV

FRI 6TH NOV

A CLOCKWORK

ORANGE

FULL METAL JACKET

Kelly opens his solo singing with Gold Coast Man and allows a pre-recorded ‘Dan Kelly’ to sing a few notes while he ‘got a drink’.


own of its own that is almost flawless. Kelly performs a heartwarming selection of songs from his new LP Leisure Panic!, with a fusion of psychedelic music and playful yet intelligent lyrics.

There are plenty of flavours in the pop-like tunes. Along with the basic lighting, the stage is also decorated with tubes of neon lights, which give off a space-like feel, complementing the style of music.

Two backing vocalists help spur on the hilarity of the spoken words. The opening song, Baby Bonus, sets the mood and the open roof helps the acoustics flow through the room naturally, without taking away from the raw sounds created on stage.

When the harmonies leave for a break, Kelly opens his solo singing with Gold Coast Man and allows a pre-recorded ‘Dan Kelly’ to sing a few notes while he “got a drink”.

Taking photos as well, this reviewer is able to appreciate Kelly’s vastly unique atmosphere from all angles. This experience

More ReviewsOnline

theMusic.com.au/music/live-reviews

You Am I @ Barwon Club. Pic: Lucinda Goodwin

sounds equally as impressive standing up the front as it does upstairs towards the back. The band’s presence in the room is filling and consuming, like it could almost take off the roof.

Joshua Braybrook

LitIn stores

★★★★

Carrie Brownstein has long been considered something of a Renaissance woman — leading the vanguard of the politically-infused Riot Grrrl movement with Sleater-Kinney, then later writing and starring in much-loved TV sketch satire Portlandia — and she now proves a dab hand at prose with her memoir Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl (the title taken from Sleater-Kinney track Modern Girl). The book focuses on her music career, given insightful context through the lens of her Pacific Northwest childhood, school years and fledgling romantic steps.

After a comfortable (albeit slightly unorthodox) upbringing the rudderless Brownstein’s life blossoms amidst her first

Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl

Man Up

Man Up

discordant forays with Sleater-Kinney, the band providing much-needed clarity and purpose. Going against the grain introduced plenty of challenges as they fought for acceptance amidst the male-dominated hegemony they were railing against, and ultimately the most touching moments come as the internally dysfunctional band crumbles under the pressures of constant touring.

It’s an overwhelmingly endearing read which focuses on humanity rather than issues (without denouncing those causes’ importance). A fascinating insight.

Steve Bell

Hunger Makes

Me A Modern Girl

FilmIn cinemas 5 Nov

★★★★

Romantic comedy is a genre that changes and stays the same. It’s always about love, romance and relationships, but as time passes the way it happens morphs. Thus brings us to this year’s modern romantic comedy Man Up.

The film finds Nancy (Lake Bell) a 34-year-old Londoner who has all but given up on relationships and suffers social anxiety because of it. However, on a chance meeting of mistaken identity, she meets Jack (Simon Pegg) a 40-year-old

divorcee, and decides to seize the moment and pretend to be his blind date.This is charming stuff, which follows numerous romantic comedy tropes yet revitalises in a fresh way. The script is well assembled, framed wonderfully in a single evening with some excellent madcap comedy as well as a solid focus on relationships from young to old in the modern age.

The aspect that makes or breaks a romantic comedy is the leads. In Simon Pegg and Lake Bell, the lead roles are in talented hands. Pegg is naturally charming, genuine and funny and has excellent chemistry with Bell, who is a wonderfully layered, flawed and likeable. Moreover the support is a lot of fun, particularly Rory Kinnear’s incredibly creepy Sean, which is played with absolute relish. Man Up is a superbly funny, sweet and overall satisfying entertaining romantic comedy.

Sean Capel

Live/Arts ReviewsLive/Arts Reviews

Comedy / G


The Bon Ton Rhythms + Jesse Lawrence: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East

Sol3 Mio: Melbourne Recital Centre, Southbank

John Williams’ Double Shot Of Blues + Dr Malone + Southbound Snake Charmers: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford

Olly Friend: Shebeen Bandroom, Melbourne

Fanny Lumsden: Some Velvet Morning, Clifton Hill

Stephen Pigrim + Kerryn Tolhurst + Gavin Pigram: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick

Itchy Proboscis + DJ Mermaid: The B.East, Brunswick East

Wed 04 Crying Nut: 170 Russell, Melbourne

Matt Bush + Claudine Avery + Stara Jane + Luke McDonald: Bar Open, Fitzroy

Mellow-Dias-Thump + Billy Hoyle: Boney, Melbourne

Muddy’s Blues Roulette: Catfish, Fitzroy

Trivia: Charles Weston Hotel, Brunswick

Madre Monte + Oscar Jimenez + Katherine Gailer: Ding Dong Lounge, Melbourne

Mrs Smith’s Trivia: Edinburgh Castle Hotel (8pm), Brunswick

Stellafauna + Danika + Fieu: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy

Claire Hooper + Ben Knight + Trav Nash + Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall: GateKeeper Games, Fitzroy North

CL Pleasure + God Squad + Jimmy Chang: Grace Darling Hotel (Band Room), Collingwood

Open Mic Night: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford

Fleetwood Mac: Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne

Bel + Woodes + Alice Ivy: Shebeen Bandroom, Melbourne

Wine, Whiskey, Women feat. Tracey Hogue + Monique Shelford: The Drunken Poet, West Melbourne

Hannah Cameron + Canary + Sam Lawrence: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood

Jacky Winter + Extreme Wheeze +

Popolice: The Old Bar, Fitzroy

Worm Crown + Shit Sex + Tongue Numbers: The Tote (Band Room), Collingwood

Josh Cashman + Anna O: The Workers Club, Fitzroy

Plum Green + Jennifer Kingwell: Wesley Anne (Band Room), Northcote

Thu 05 Sonke + Tap Running Water + Marc Deaz: Bar Open, Fitzroy

Coco’s Lunch: Bella Union, Carlton South

Global Safari + Various Artists: Belleville, Melbourne

UV Boi + Mitsunami + Headstone: Can’t Say, Melbourne

Lachlan Bryan & The Wildes: Caravan Music Club, Oakleigh

Girl Friday: Charles Weston Hotel (Front Bar), Brunswick

The Sweethearts: Cherry Bar, Melbourne

Lee Kernaghan + The Wolfe Brothers + Christie Lamb: Eastbank Centre, Shepparton

Luna DeVille + DD Dumbo + Frank Society: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy

DJ School: Gin Lane, Belgrave

Bears + My Elephant Ride + Sun Bazel: Grace Darling Hotel (Band Room), Collingwood

Watchtower + Yachtburner: Grace Darling Hotel (Basement), Collingwood

Intone feat. Clan Analogue + Koshowko + Wonderfeel + City Frequencies + more: Grumpy’s Green, Fitzroy

Crepes + The Infants + Leisure Suite + Redspencer + Tourist Dollars + Zone Out: Howler, Brunswick

Van Walker + Shane Reilly: Labour In Vain, Fitzroy

The Guide

The Music PresentsMumford & Sons: 12 Nov Sidney Myer Music Bowl

Face The Music: 13 & 14 Nov Arts Centre Melbourne

The Rumjacks: 19 Nov The Bendigo; 20 Nov Barwon Club Geelong

The Preatures: 28 Nov The Deck Frankston & The Westernport Hotel Phillip Island; 29 Nov The College Lawn Prahran & Portsea Hotel

Mew: 3 Dec Max Watt’s

A Day On The Green ft Paul Kelly & Merri Soul Sessions: 6 Dec Rochford Wines Yarra Valley

Lachlan Bryan & The Wildes: 5 & 7 Nov Caravan Music Club

Bully: 10 Dec Howler

Father John Misty: 10 Dec Forum Theatre

BØRNS: 5 Jan Corner Hotel

Halsey: 6 Jan Forum Theatre

Elliphant: 7 Jan Howler

Oh Wonder: 7 Jan Northcote Social Club

Django Django: 8 Jan 170 Russell

Shamir: 4 Feb Howler

Port Fairy Folk Festival: 11 – 14 Mar Port Fairy

A Day On The Green ft Hoodoo Gurus: 12 Mar Rochford Wines Yarra Valley

Steve Earle & The Dukes: 18 & 19 Mar Melbourne Recital Centre

Rhiannon Giddens: 23 Mar Corner Hotel

St Paul & The Broken Bones: 24 Mar Corner Hotel

Bluesfest: 24 – 28 Mar Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm

Nahko & Medicine For The People: 27 Mar Corner Hotel

Allen Stone: 31 Mar Corner Hotel

The Selecter: 25 Mar Corner Hotel

Allen Stone

Crawl, Run, Walk

Mid-90s alternative-rock band Suiciety are touring the release of their EP, Crawling Machine Edition. They perform at Musicman Megastore, Bendigo, Friday; The Eastern, Ballarat, 13 Nov; and Geelong’s Barwon Club, 28 Nov.

Glass Cage Of Emotions

With grand storytelling, folk jams and a lyrical sincerity beyond his years, Kaurna Cronin’s unique folk blend and moving performances have been capturing audiences throughout Europe and Australia. He launches his album Glass Fool at Evelyn Hotel on Sunday.

Busy Bodies

In 2015 Busy Kingdom released their self-titled EP and played dozen of shows. To close out the year BK are in residency at The Brunswick Hotel every Thursday night in November. There’ll be killer supports and entry’s free.

Suiciety

Kaurna CroninBusy Kingdom

Gigs / Live


The Guide

Busy Kingdom: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick

The In The Out + The New Pollution + 100 Acre Woods: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood

Summer Flake + Lower Plenty + Sleepless Nights + Shame Brother: The Old Bar, Fitzroy

Hospital + Yell Lo + Grace Anderson: The Tote (Upstairs), Collingwood

The Lulu Raes + Brother James + Neon Queen: The Workers Club, Fitzroy

Alexandra Pye: Wesley Anne (Front Bar), Northcote

Fri 06 Northlane + August Burns Red + Like Moths To Flames + Buried In Verona + Ocean Grove: 170 Russell, Melbourne

Closet Straights + Rolling Blackouts + Tulalah + Gina Rose Bruce: Bar Open, Fitzroy

Capsize + DJ Klasik 1 + more: Boney, Melbourne

Melburn Decompression: Brown Alley, Melbourne

Beccy Cole: Caravan Music Club, Oakleigh

Tuka + B Wise + Left: Corner Hotel, Richmond

Champagne Internet: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy

Tali Sing + Junor + Evangeline + Belove: Grace Darling Hotel (Band Room), Collingwood

Richard In Your Mind: Karova Lounge, Ballarat

Sama-Sama: Loop, Melbourne

David Grimson + Joe Guiton + Nathan Brailey + Jo Neugebauer: Mr Boogie Man Bar (7.30pm), Abbotsford

Suiciety + Mammoth Mammoth + Worm Crown: Musicman Megastore, Bendigo

Underground Lovers: National Gallery of Victoria, Southbank

Montaigne + Sophie Lowe + JP Klipspringer: Northcote Social Club, Northcote

Fleetwood Mac: Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne

Joy. + Owen Rabbit + Joe Mungovan: Shebeen Bandroom, Melbourne

Jamgrass Launch Party with The Scrimshaw Four + more: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick

Drowning Horse + Gentlemen + Whitehorse + Scab Eater + Mutton: The Curtin, Carlton

Sarah Carroll + The Wilson Boys: The Drunken Poet, West Melbourne

Swim Season + Alex Lahey: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood

Skyscraper Stan & The Commission Flats + Van Walker: The Old Bar, Fitzroy

Back To The Future with Melbourne Symphony Orchestra: The Plenary, South Wharf

Dan Lethbridge & The Handsome Bastards: The Post Office Hotel, Coburg

Midnight Woolf + Pronto + Bad Vision + Swim Team + The Scouts: The Tote (Upstairs), Collingwood

Captives + Slowly Slowly + Super Best Friends + The Wrath: The Workers Club, Fitzroy

Hannah Cameron + Canary: The Workers Club Geelong, Geelong

CW Stoneking + Peter Bibby: Thornbury Theatre, Thornbury

Dallas Frasca: Torquay Hotel, Torquay

Naughty By Nature: Trak Lounge Bar, Toorak

Lee Kernaghan + The Wolfe Brothers + Christie Lamb: Ulumbarra Theatre, Bendigo

The Slipdixies: Wesley Anne (Front Bar), Northcote

Sat 07 Northlane + August Burns Red + Like Moths To Flames + Buried In Verona + Ocean Grove: Arrow On Swanston (Under 18s/12.30pm), Carlton

Cacartu + Bonewoman + Alanna Cassidy: Bar Open, Fitzroy

Lost Weekend feat. Fantastic Man: Boney, Melbourne

The Great Concert feat. Perch Creek + The Willie Wagtails + Rebellious Bird + Van Badham + Bev Killick + more: Brunswick Town Hall, Brunswick

Jamgrass Music Festival feat. Harts + Tinpan Orange + Mustered Courage + Richard In Your Mind + Quarry Mountain Dead Rats + more: Bundoora Park, Bundoora

Mr Alford: Charles Weston Hotel (Front Bar), Brunswick

CW Stoneking + Peter Bibby: Corner Hotel, Richmond

Joseph Paola & The Strains: Edinburgh Castle Hotel (Beer Garden), Brunswick

Up Up Away + Another Batch + Zol Balint: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy

They Might Be Giants: Forum Theatre, Melbourne

Santanna + Aura + Vinten: Grace Darling Hotel (Basement), Collingwood

The Murlocs + Orb + Good Morning + Mezko: Howler, Brunswick

Modern Hypnosis: Loop, Melbourne

A Day On The Green with Fleetwood Mac + Angus & Julia Stone + Stonefield: Mt Duneed Estate (formerly The Hill Winery), Drysdale

Lime Cordiale: Northcote Social Club(Under 18s/1pm), Northcote

Lime Cordiale: Northcote Social Club, Northcote

Fats Wah Wah: Rainbow Hotel, Fitzroy

Area 7 + Mister Coffee + The Ramshackle Army + Foley!: Reverence Hotel (Band Room), Footscray

Tired Breeds + Foxtrot + Tigers + Dilettantes + Laser Brains: Reverence Hotel (Front Bar), Footscray

Tame Impala + Mini Mansions + Koi Child: Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne

Holy Moses Heartache: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick

That Gold Street Sound: The B.East, Brunswick East

The Wrath: The Bendigo, Collingwood

Waz E James: The Drunken Poet, West Melbourne

Rocket Science + Empat Lima + Steve Miller Band: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood

Jess Locke: The Old Bar, Fitzroy

Lee Kernaghan + The Wolfe Brothers + Christie Lamb: The Palms at Crown, Southbank

Back To The Future with Melbourne Symphony Orchestra: The Plenary (2pm), South Wharf

Back To The Future with Melbourne Symphony Orchestra: The Plenary (8pm), South Wharf

Ron S Peno: The Post Office Hotel, Coburg

Space Bong + Drowning Horse + Extinct Exist + Contaminated + Tombsealer: The Tote (Band Room), Collingwood

Papa Pilko & The Bin Rats + La Bastard + Max Savage & The False Idols + Joshua Seymour: The Workers Club, Fitzroy

Lovejoy + DIET + Super X: The Workers Club, Fitzroy

Small Town Tunes

A combination of sass, country, and honesty, Fanny Lumsden & The Thrillseekers are going on tour for Lumsden’s debut album Small Town Big Shot. She’ll be making a pit stop at Some Velvet Morning this Thursday.

Summer In Spring

Summer Flake is gracing The Old Bar for her EP launch for Time Rolls By. She’ll be joined by Lower Plenty, Sleepless Nights and Shame Brothers this Thursday night.

Life, Death And The Rest

After a roll of big events, like playing Splendour In The Grass and releasing Life Death Time Eternal, Tuka is hitting up the nation with a tour, and playing Corner Hotel this Friday night with B-Wise and Left.

Fanny Lumsden

Tuka

Summer Flake

OPINION


Opinion

Howzat!Local Music By Jeff Jenkins

THE LAST GREAT ROCK STARWhat makes a rock god? You need swagger and style. Mystery and menace and some fire. You’re charming. And you’re unpredictable. Whatever the necessary ingredients, rock gods are in short supply in 2015. Come to think of it, Australia hasn’t produced many rock gods. The list would include Johnny O’Keefe, Stevie Wright, Jim Keays, Billy Thorpe, Bon Scott, Barnesy, Chrissy Amphlett, Nick Cave, Michael Hutchence, Adalita and Tex Perkins. And then there’s Tim Rogers. The You Am I frontman sits comfortably among them (or uncomfortably - a true rock god is never comfortable). As Tim said recently, when defending Adam Goodes: “There are those who sit near the fire and complain of its heat, others warm in it.” When Howzat! checked out You Am I’s terrific new album, Porridge & Hotsauce (out 6 Nov), we thought, “Thank God for Tim Rogers.” When we’re crying out for a rock star, he is the last man standing. Tim is the Paul Keating of rock stars, the street-smart suburban brawler with a vocabulary an academic would envy. And we’ve never had a rock star

as versatile. From MTC to the MCG, he’s been a star of stage and screen. So it was no surprise when he appeared as a David Jones ambassador. On a good night, You Am I are great; on a bad night, they’re a train wreck. Which is exactly what you want in a rock’n’roll band. Howzat! has never actually written much about You Am I. They always got plenty of praise and we didn’t need to join in the chorus. But the new album is so damn good, we had to say something. Porridge & Hotsauce has everything you love about You Am I, from wild rockers to sensitive songs and something in between, all fizzing with wonderful nervous energy. And one song, Daemons, is as real and as revealing as any rock song can be. Tim sings about his daemons, stating: “If I don’t let ‘em in, maybe they won’t come back again.” Long may he rock.

TURNING WATER INTO VINEGAR Water is a recurring motif on Skipping Girl Vinegar’s third album, The Great Wave. It’s both a healer and a harbinger of danger. “I have a deep love and fear of the ocean with its ever-changing moods,” singer Mark Lang explains. “And the title felt like it captured the journey we have been on and the environment that helped shape it so much.” As part of AWME, SGV are playing at the Arts Centre on 12 Nov.

HOT LINE “We need to slow and listen to the ocean more” - Skipping Girl Vinegar, Weary World.

Tim Rogers

Gigs / Live


The Guide

Suzannah Espie + The Yearlings: Thornbury Theatre, Thornbury

The Peptides: Victoria Hotel, Brunswick

Grain Of Truth: Wesley Anne (Band Room), Northcote

Sun 08 Northlane + August Burns Red + Like Moths To Flames + Buried In Verona + Ocean Grove: 170 Russell, Melbourne

Semi Fiction + The Electric I + Leonard Wichita: Bar Open, Fitzroy

Columbia Sound with Funkalleros + DJ Charlie Bucket + Mohair Slim +

Manchild: Belleville, Melbourne

Space Bong + Hordes Of The Black Cross + Eskhaton + Slothferatu: Catfish, Fitzroy

Mini Mansions + Gum: Ding Dong Lounge, Melbourne

Kaurna Cronin + Ben Whiting + Zoe Ryan: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy

Ryan Downey + The Finks + Sagamore: Grace Darling Hotel (Band Room), Collingwood

Edd Fisher + Louis McCoy + Bryce Lawrence + Adrian Bell + Shedbug: Howler (Garden), Brunswick

Summer Sunset Series feat. Mell Hall: Jardin Tan, South Yarra

Paulie Bignell & The Thornbury Two: Labour In Vain, Fitzroy

misstuesday: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford

Friday Nights at NGV feat. Jack Ladder & The Dreamlanders: National Gallery of Victoria, Southbank

Dave Graney & The Mistly + Palm Springs: Northcote Social Club, Northcote

The Flaming Lips: Palais Theatre, St Kilda

Roy El Kei + Kris Akner + Sorceress + Ruby Slippers: Railway Hotel, Brunswick

Georgia Maq: Reverence Hotel (Front Bar), Footscray

Sunday Bloody Sunday with DJ Top Heavy: The B.East, Brunswick East

Mitch Grainger + Swiss Army Wives: The Drunken Poet, West Melbourne

Big Smoke + The Sugarcanes + Julia Jacklin: The Old Bar, Fitzroy

Matt Walker & The Lost Ragas: The Post Office Hotel, Coburg

Loose Tooth + Rolling Blackouts + Swim Team: The Tote (Front Bar), Collingwood

Adam Martin + Swim Season + Travis McCarthy: The Workers Club, Fitzroy

Mon 09

Secret Society Assembly: Belleville, Melbourne

Cherry Jam: Cherry Bar, Melbourne

Jazz Party with Jazz Party Band: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy

Matt Corby: Forum Theatre, Melbourne

Stephen Fry: Hamer Hall, Melbourne

Drohtnung + Haraam + Complete: The Old Bar, Fitzroy

Arbes + Barcelos + Mim Cygler: The Workers Club, Fitzroy

Tue 10 Lyndal Barry + Teneha Greco + Madeline Hance + Julia De Matteis: 303, Northcote

Make It Up Club: Bar Open, Fitzroy

Catfish Comedy with Nazeem Hussain: Catfish, Fitzroy

Them Bruins + The Duvtons + Saint Henry: Cherry Bar, Melbourne

NAFASI + Tiaryn + Another Batch: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy

Stephen Fry: Hamer Hall, Melbourne

My Elephant Ride + Arbes + Jimmy Chang + RVG + DJ Oritone: Howler, Brunswick

Neil Murray + Matt Walker: Montrose Town Centre, Montrose

Florence & The Machine: Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne

Krista Polvere: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood

NAFASI + Tiaryn + Another Batch: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood

Tankerville + Gonzo + Junk Horses: The Old Bar, Fitzroy

Taste of Indie Tuesday: Aspiring Songwriters Night: The Prince (Public Bar), St Kilda

Also Dragons + Trash Fairys + Rat Hammock: The Public Bar, Melbourne

Mcrobin + Imogen Pemberton + JP Klipspringer: The Workers Club, Fitzroy

Clips For Days

On her Clip My Wings national tour, Montaigne is swinging through Melbourne at Northcote Social Club, with guests Sophie Lowe and JP Klipspringer, this Friday night.

Bin Beats

Papa Pilko & The Bin Rats are coming back to Melbourne, performing with La Bastard, Max Savage & The False Idols and Joshua Seymour at The Workers Club this Saturday, and we hear they won’t be south again for a while.

Happy Happy Joy

To celebrate her recently dropped debut EP Ode, JOY. will be playing at Shebeen Bandroom this Friday night, alongside Owen Rabbit and Joe Mungovan.

JOY.

Montaigne

Papa Pilko & The Bin Rats


Backstage

Jack The Bear Magnet Studios

Backstage

Answered by: Tony “Jack the Bear” Mantz, Mastering Engineer, all-round sweetheart and occasional dog’s body at Deluxe Mastering, Brunswick

Phone: 0419 234 100

Tell us about what you do: I master music for artists covering all genres in my beautiful George Augspurger-designed room, while making a delicious coffee or beverage of your choice... I also

Backstage

Answered by: Matt Faisandier, owner/manager

Phone: 03 9041 6553

What kind of studio are you? We operate a rehearsal and recording facility with a focus on supporting the underground music scene. We offer generously sized rehearsal studios, a 32 i/o recording studio with a vastly reverberant live room, a dense concrete bunker, a

dispense awesome hugs to those that way inclined! I double up as a motivational speaker doing the rounds of colleges and schools where artistic/creative kinds attend in the hope I can inspire them to pursue their dreams.

Where does the magic happen? At my beautiful studio, Deluxe Mastering.

Why are you the person to go to? I like to think mastering is primarily a service business. I’m afraid I’m guilty of giving a genuine shit’n’fuck about my clients. As I often tell them: “Whether you like it or not or realise it or not I am now a surrogate member of your band/project.” I invest that heavily.

Anything else we should know? I am always happy to answer questions and be consulted when it comes your mixes without obligation to master with me.

Website for more info? jackthebear.com.au

dry vocal booth and a large green garden landscape which one might recharge in during breaks.

Tell us about the team... In essence we are down-to-earth musicians and fiends of the big drum sound and ‘the avant garde’ as an umbrella concept. Between us we have over 35 years experience in the music industry!

Who’s been through your space? Some of our recent clients include Diamonds Of Neptune, High Tension, Mesa Cosa, Miso, Mutton, Papa Chango, Storm The Sky, Sewercide, Sex On Toast.

What else do you offer? We also operate a workshop servicing tube amplifiers and setting up electric guitars. In parallel with Melbourne Music Week we are offering our day sessions on a pay-as-you-feel basis (for the period 16 - 20 Nov).

Website for more info: magnetmelbourne.com.au

the music (melbourne) issue #113

Documents