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2 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 3
themusic 23RD JUL 2014
WHAT NEW ALBUMS ARE DROPPING THIS WEEK? FIND OUT WITH OUR LATEST RELEASE LIST
#048
INSIDE FEATURES
ONLY ON THEMUSIC. COM.AU.
Foster The People Spierig Brothers on Predestination Kitty Green on Ukraine Is Not A Brothel sleepmakeswaves Pennywise Old Crow Medicine Show The 1975 Jesse Armstrong on Babylon Nicola Gunn on Green Screen Obits Kamandi Nick Mulvey Joyce Manor Steve O
REVIEWS
LORDE @ FESTIVAL HALL. PIC: KANE HIBBERD
review
“THE SONGS SOMEHOW SUCCEED IN BEING SIMULTANEOUSLY PROPULSIVE AND MESMERIC. THIS IS SHOULDER-POPPING MUSIC, BUT LORDE CONVULSES TO IT.” BRYGET CHRISFIELD REVIEWS LORDE (P32)
GET UP TO DATE WITH ALL THE LOCAL CHART HAPPENINGS ONLY ON THEMUSIC.COM.AU.
Album: Jenny Lewis Live: The White Album Concert Arts: Motion Of Light ...and more
THE GUIDE Cover: Lowtide Eat/drink: Superfoods Frontlash/Backlash
WE CONTINUE OUR TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE WITH SOMETHING FOR KATE AS THEY CELEBRATE THEIR REISSUES READ MORE ON THEMUSIC.COM.AU.
feature
“WE REALISED A COUPLE OF WEEKS INTO THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS THAT IT WAS THE MOST FOOLISH ENDEAVOUR ANYONE COULD EMBARK ON.” NICOLA GUNN ON THEATRE PERFORMANCE GREEN SCREEN (P27)
Indie News/Q&As
“THOSE HUGE FESTIVALS ARE LIKE GOING TO THE MALL... IT’S A SPECTACLE, IT’S ROMAN, IT’S THE DEATH OF MUSIC.”
Opinion Gig Guide
feature 4 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
NICOLA GUNN AND GWEN HOLMBERG-GILCHRIST PIC: HOLLY ENGELHARDT
SOHRAB HABIBION OF OBITS (P23)
THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 5
CREDITS PUBLISHER
Street Press Australia Pty Ltd
GROUP MANAGING EDITOR Andrew Mast
EDITOR Bryget Chrisfield
ARTS AND CULTURE EDITOR Cassandra Fumi
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Stephanie Liew
GIG GUIDE Justine Lynch vic.giguide@themusic.com.au
SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR Jeff Jenkins
CONTRIBUTORS Steve Bell, Emma Breheny, Luke Carter, Anthony Carew, Oliver Coleman, Rebecca Cook, Cyclone, Guy Davis, Simon Eales, Guido Farnell, Tim Finney, Bob Baker Fish, Cameron Grace, Andrew Hazel, Brendan Hitchens, Kate Kingsmill, Baz McAlister, Samson McDougall, Tony McMahon, Fred Negro, Matt O’Neill, Josh Ramselaar, Paul Ransom, Dylan Stewart, Stephanie Tell, Simone Ubaldi, Glenn Waller, Matthew Ziccone
THIS WEEK THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK • 23 JULY - 29 JULY 2014
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INTERNS Dina Amin, Matt Feltham
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Status is a new theatre production exploring the phenomenon of HIV in 2014. Containing real life stories of HIV stigma, the raw performance is a culmination of interviews with positive men and women, friends, lovers, family, medical professionals and carers. Directed by the award-winning Cameron Menzies (Opera Australia, Malthouse), Status, part of the 2014 International AIDS Conference, is opening tonight at the Arts Centre.
In a win for Australian audiences The Comedy Channel will premiere the critically acclaimed new comedy series Broad City, for once in the same year as it was released in the US. Created by stars Llana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson and produced by Amy Poehler (who makes a sneaky appearance in the trailer) it’s kicking all kinds of arse overseas. Showing at 8.30pm Wednesday nights from Wednesday.
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MELBOURNE
To help celebrate Melbourne International Film Festival, we have five double passes to an exclusive screening of the documentary about iconic Brit pop band Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets on 1 Aug at Forum Theatre. The film follows the band and enigmatic frontman Jarvis Cocker, exploring the impact of their music on their hometown of Sheffield and their pursuit of fame. To enter, head to theMusic.com.au.
win
THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 7
national news news@themusic.com.au COURTNEY BARNETT
ZAHRA NEWMAN
HELP(MANN) IS ON THE WAY
OUT OF THE GARDEN
Two of Australia’s most unique and talented emerging songwriters will partner up when world-beating everywoman Courtney Barnett headlines a national tour with D.D Dumbo supporting. Proudly presented by The Music, the tour makes its way to Fly By Night, Perth, 26 Sep; Corner Hotel, Melbourne, 4 Oct; Oxford Art Factory, Sydney, 10 Oct; and The Zoo, Brisbane, 11 Oct. Settle in with the Melbourne songwriter and experience wandering storytelling at its finest – tickets go on sale Monday.
FROM DUSK ‘TIL DAWN
Plenty of peeps will be stoked to hear that Allday is taking his debut album Startup Cult out on the road for an extensive national tour later this year. A top three entry into the ARIA Album Chart has solidified the rep of the Adelaide-bred MC, and you can hear all his new classic and old gems when he plays 3 Oct, The Zoo, Brisbane; 4 Oct, The Lab, Brisbane (under-18); 10 Oct, Metro Theatre, Sydney (all ages); 11 Oct, Zierholz, Canberra (under-18 afternoon; 18+ evening); 15 Oct, YMCA HQ, Perth (all ages); 16 Oct, Prince Of Wales, Bunbury; 17 Oct, Amplifier Bar, Perth; and 24 Oct (18+) & 28 Oct (under-18), Corner Hotel, Melbourne.
GIVE ME 5
Having very recently pulled off two soldout appearances at the renowned Wembley Arena in London, the ascendant adolescents of 5 Seconds Of Summer will kick off their very first headline arena tour of Australia and New Zealand – titled the Rock Out With Your Socks Out tour – next year, so you’ve got plenty of time to get your dance moves ready. They head to Allphones Arena, Sydney, 20 Jun; Brisbane Entertainment Centre, 23 Jun; Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, 25 Jun; Perth Arena, 29 Jun.
TALKING OUR LANGUAGE
LA-based punk act Say Anything have once again changed their game, with their latest record Hebrews ditching guitars for more traditional string sections. They have managed, however, to keep the passion and vitriol that we’ve come to expect from Max Bemis and the troops, and will let those worlds collide gloriously when they take to Aussie stages later this year. The band perform with special guests on 15 Oct, Amplifier Bar, Perth; 17 Oct, Corner Hotel, Melbourne; 18 Oct, Manning Bar, Sydney; and 19 Oct, The Hi-Fi, Brisbane.
BUILD IT UP TO BREAK IT DOWN
Having spent the majority of 2014 thus far on the road, with an early domestic tour spliced between visits to the UK and US, Canberra melodic post-hardcore gang Hands Like Houses will continue promoting their 2013 Rise Records release Unimagine with more Aussie headline shows. Catch them 13 Sep, Ding Dong Lounge, Melbourne; 14 Sep, Wrangler Studios, Melbourne (all ages); 19 Sep, Crowbar, Brisbane; 20 Sep, The Small Ballroom, Newcastle; 21 Sep, Bald Faced Stag, Sydney (all ages); 27 Sep, ANU Bar, Canberra; 1 Oct, YMCA HQ, Perth (all ages); and 2 Oct, Amplifier Bar, Perth.
“SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE REALLY BORING RACE THAT NO ONE CARES ABOUT.” WE AGREE @LUKID – STUFF THE TORTOISE! 8 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
Nominations for the Helpmann Awards have been announced this week, with musicians, comedians and theatre performers in the running including Tame Impala, Flume, Ronny Chieng, Sam Simmons, Cate Blanchett and Zahra Newman (pictured), while productions like Tom E Lewis and Michael Kantor’s The Shadow King and Belvoir’s Angels In America are also in the running for gongs. The 14th Annual Helpmann Awards take place at Capitol Theatre, Sydney, 18 Aug, and will air on Arena at 9.30pm that night.
ALL HANDS ON DECK
Following up their latest charming tracks Sneakers and Ramona, Brisbane rock’n’roll party monsters Velociraptor will unveil their debut fell-length record next month, with the gang loading into the van (vans) soon after to debut the album tracks across the country with shouty, awesome garage types Bloods. Catch the tour 21 & 22 Aug, Northcote Social Club, Melbourne; 29 Aug, The Brightside, Brisbane; 30 Aug, Coolangatta Hotel, Gold Coast; 6 Sep, Causeway Bar, Perth; and 7 Sep, Newport Hotel, Fremantle (Bloods not appearing in WA).
SEEKAE
BIGGEST BIGSOUND EVER?
That’s how it’s shaping up with the conference adding another 40 acts to the bill, including globally renowned ARIA Hall Of Fame legends The Church, Sydney electronic wizards Seekae (pictured) and formidable prog-metal West Aussies Voyager. In addition, the likes of Pond’s Nick Albrook, The Funkoars, Pierce Brothers, Hayden James, Art Of Sleeping and Canuck group July Talk will all be appearing in the Fortitude Valley Entertainment Precinct, 10 & 11 Sep. To view the full 140-strong artist line-up and get tickets, visit the BIGSOUND website.
THURSDAY 24TH JULY
BRONI 6:00PM FREE THE GUILTS 8:00PM BETH AND THE BRAVE & ZOË FOX 8:00PM $5
WED 23/7
MELBOURNE UKULELE KOLLECTIVE BEGINNER’S CLASS
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8:00PM $10
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SUN 27/7
DJ CRISPI
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SUNDAY 27TH JULY
LETTERS TO YOU HUGH MCGINLAY AND THE RECESSIVE GENES SIMON PHILLIPS
3:00PM $5
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TUESDAY 29TH JULY
SINFUL PLEASURES
7:30PM WESLEY ANNE BAND ROOM | $20 WITH MEAL $12 ON THE DOOR | BURLESQUE
WINTER SPECIAL 2 for 1 on selected mains, all day mondayw OPEN FOR LUNCH MIDDAYS FRIDAY SATURDAY AND SUNDAY bookings: 9482 1333
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THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 9
local news vic.news@themusic.com.au THE WAR ON DRUGS
THE WAR ON MEREDITH TIED TOGETHER. PIC: KRISTYNA HESS
TIED TO HISTORY
The erotic woman has always held an important role throughout history: goddesses such as Aphrodite and Venus and historical figures like Mata Hari and Catherine The Great. Performers delve into their stories of mystery, seduction and power in this unique collaboration as the audience freely walks about in a gallery-style arena immersing themselves in stories of dance, performance art, installations, film, photography and soundscapes. Tied Together Still - The Living Museum Of Erotic Women runs from 30 Jul – 3 Aug at Donkey Wheel House.
HOT AND STEAMY
Recent Hype Machine chart toppers Indian Summer will drop some sweet beats nationwide over the coming months, with plenty of new tunes and a stage show that has quickly seen the Melbourne duo burst out of the scene-driven bubble to forge their own path. After playing Splendour In The Grass on Friday, the lads hit The Bottom End, 6 Sep.
REVIEWING 101
The Needle Drop, or, as his mum knows him, Anthony Fantano, will share his humbling music knowledge and reviewing techniques with East Coast audiences while in the country for BIGSOUND. The live multimedia presentation will cover how context impacts taste, indie commodification and more. Get inside the internet’s premier music nerd’s head with the next STEP (Society of Tastemakers & Elegant People) on 14 Sep, The Toff In Town.
STRUM A DIFFERENT TUNE
Like your Americana? Fancy a day on the water? Then sign up for Out On The Weekend, a brand new river-cruising festival featuring the likes of Justin Townes Earle, Henry Wagons, Ryan Bingham, Robert Ellis, Lindi Ortega, Nikki Lane, Raised By Eagles and more. It’s going down on 18 Oct, with early bird tickets on sale this Friday.
EXTRA CLIFFNOTES
Just in case you need more reasons to head along to the no-fuss, all-fun Queenscliff Music Festival on 28 - 30 Nov, a slew of extra line-up additions – including but not limited to Dan Sultan, Husky, Dyson Stringer Cloher, The Delta Riggs and Tkay Maidza – have just been added to the already tempting line-up (The Church, The Bombay Royale, DD Dumbo etc). Head to qmf.net.au to secure your tickets now.
IF YOU ARE AN INSTRUCTOR IN A FITNESS CLASS AND I’M HOLDING A POSITION AND YOU COME AND CORRECT IT, YOU CAN GO FUCK YOURSELF. @ABBIJACOBSON GOES TO THE GYM. 10 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
Meredith Music Festival, 12 – 14 Dec at Meredith Supernatural Amphitheatre, has revealed its first artist for 2014 to be Philadelphian natives The War On Drugs. The Meredith ticket ballot is now open; enter by 9.47pm on 11 Aug. The War On Drugs have also already announced their national sideshows and will hit The Hi-Fi, 11 Dec.
WELCOME NARDA SHANLEY
St Martins, the youth arts centre based in South Yarra, has announced its new Executive Director & Co-CEO, Narda Shanley, who’ll bring across her wide experience in theatre, education and early childhood development. Australia’s first youth arts centre, the not-for-profit organisation has been a key provider of artist-lead drama experiences for children and young people since 1980.
IN LIMBO
Beloved British comedian Bill Bailey returns Down Under for a run of headline performances of new live show Limboland, which hits Hamer Hall, 5 Oct. Bailey endeared himself primarily through his work on the darkly comic Black Books and 40-minute serve of knowledge-cocaine that is QI.
BOY OH BOY
Get jacked with one of our legendary party dons, Danny T. The Sydney rascal brings new tunes and his trademark flair to glasswalled booths coast to coast. Get up with the skills of one of Australian dance music’s favourite sons when T-dog promotes new record Take Me 8 Aug, Can’t Say, Platform 1.
RAISE THE CUP OF LIFE
Thanks to his two-year stint on The Voice, Ricky Martin has reasserted himself as our favourite Latino lothario, and he’ll be shaking his bon-bon for screaming arenas when he plays around Australia next year. Catch the One World Tour on 2 May, Rod Laver Arena.
DEEP HOUSE FROM THE SEVENTH KINGDOM
Expect Westerosian party vibes when the nerdiest of dancefloor dreams come true at the Rave Of Thrones tour, featuring Game Of Thrones’ gentle giant-cum-in-house DJ, Kristian Nairn (Hodor). Every show will be GOT fancy dress (by king’s or bouncer’s decree). The Rave Of Thrones tour hits The Prince on 4 Sep.
51 BRUNSWICK STREET, FITZROY (CNR GERTRUDE) PH 03 9415 6558 I WWW.THEWORKERSCLUB.COM.AU
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THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 11
local news vic.news@themusic.com.au BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB
JOHN DIGWEED
DIGGIN’ DANCE
Brit producer, promoter, DJ radio host and boss of the Bedrock label, John Digweed is heading to Aus. The mainstay of the ‘90s acid house scene, he hits The Prince on 14 Nov.
NO GLOSS
Catch rap collective La Coka Nostra when they land in Australia next month. Having released four mixtapes and two EPs, the reckless Slaine, Danny Boy, DJ Eclipse and Ill Bill are ready to bring raw wit and beats to The Prince, 26 Aug.
MORE MULVEY
Portico Quartet’s Nick Mulvey has added a headline slot to his run of dates supporting Ben Howard on his Splendour sideshow. The fingerpickin’ acoustic muso plays The Toff In Town, 29 Jul, armed with UK Top Ten debut, First Mind.
UNBREAKABLE
Before they join Taking Back Sunday and The Used on that very massive sold-out tour this Aug, heavy rockers Breakaway’s new single gets out on the airwaves, fittingly titled Invincible. Catch them at Wrangler Studios on 27 Jul.
RIDE MY BICYCLE
Beloved UK party-starters Bombay Bicycle Club return Down Under in September to (somewhat belatedly) celebrate their February album, So Long, See You Tomorrow. BBC’s scheduled appearances will be limited to just three East Coast shows, including Forum Theatre, 25 Sep.
MAC & MEG
Meg Mac, a 23-year-old Melbourne singer, releases her debut EP MEGMAC on 12 Sep and will celebrate with intimate sets across the country. The EP includes single Roll Up Your Sleeves, an earworm accompanied by a monochrome one-shot music video. Catch her 13 Sep, Northcote Social Club.
SPLENDOUR UPDATES
Splendour In The Grass has announced several last-minute line-up changes following news that the previously booked Two Door Cinema Club are no longer able to make the trip. They’ve also announced the addition of cult UK dance-indie-math-pop stalwarts Foals. The timetable shift means that the Dallas Green-centric City & Colour will step into the headline slot on 26 Jul. Following the latter’s cancellation, Mt Warning will be filling in for Wild Feathers.
I WORK OUT LIKE FRANK UNDERWOOD.
HOUSE OF CARDS FITNESS WITH TOBY SCHMITZ [@FALLOFASPARROW] PRONG
THREE-PRONGED TOUR
Prog-metal trio Prong are coming to Aus for the first time in November. That’s right, in 28 years they’ve never come Down Under, but, finally, with new album Ruining Lives in hand they’re making the big trip, 21 Nov, The Hi-Fi.
WATT GOES SOLO
Melbourne singer-songwriter Alex Watts will bring members of Oh Mercy, Saskwatch, Hello Morning and Eagle & The Worm as bandmates to his debut EP launch at Cherry Bar, 15 Aug.
FEELING DANGEROUS
Rick Dangerous & the Silkie Bantams’ debut EP consists of five tracks of unadulterated brilliance. Get down and dirty when the pioneers of the “thrustcore revolution” play 303 Bar, 22 Aug. 12 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
EXTRA CHAPTERS
American Authors have announced that multiplatinum US songwriter Andy Grammer will make the journey out here, while young locals Masketta Fall will open the 20 Sep show at The Prince. For Melody Pool and Marlon Williams’ Harvester Moon date, 15 Aug, support comes from Josh Rennie-Hynes.
THANK YOU MAN
Shameless party boy Bam Bam wants you to experience The Good Life, so he’s returning to the road to showcase the tight hip hop of his latest EP, from which three singles have already been pulled. The Melbourne lad hits the mic at Evelyn Hotel, 4 Oct.
WINTER GLOW
The fresh, inaugural GLOW Winter Arts Festival showcases talent from the communities of Prahran, Malvern, Armadale, Toorak and South Yarra. The 11-day fest includes a Cabaret series and a Flicks N Feasts movie program, from 14 - 24 Aug across multiple venues.
CEEBS
Co-founder of art collective My Hollow Drum, Dublab resident DJ, skate rat, artist and producer, Teebs is a man of many skills. Ever since first wowing the industry with his debut Adour, up until the present plus his latest Estara and its complementary art exhibition Ante Vos, he’s been hitting the decks and collecting fans. He plays Howler, 1 Aug.
BANDS REVISITED
If you’re stressing about missing out on seeing Bob Dylan when he visits next month, then don’t – the living legend will be playing an additional show in Melbourne, 21 Aug, Palais Theatre. The Dwarves have also added a second date to their tour, playing 16 Oct, Barwon Club, Geelong. You Me At Six and Tonight Alive have added an 8 Sep show to their run at the The Hi-Fi. Also, Kilter is having so much fun on his Shades EP tour that he’s added another show, 11 Sep, Northcote Social Club.
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THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 13
music
DANCING ON HIS OWN A village in Tanzania offered up more truth for Mark Foster than the Grammy Awards ever could. Foster The People’s creative linchpin tells Benny Doyle why authenticity is everything.
B
oth connected and disconnected from 2011 debut Torches, the 2014 follow-up record from Foster The People, Supermodel, is everything you’d expect from an act that can balance sadness and joyous better than most. Great pop music – the stuff that staunchly holds integrity in a superficial world – has long been delivered by an educated voice, and chief songwriter Mark Foster has managed to speak from both sides of the fence once more, while leading an evolution both instrumentally and thematically.
moving to California from Cleveland, Ohio as an 18-yearold dreamer, and he was as shocked as anyone when singles such as Pumped Up Kicks and Helena Beat gained massive traction on every continent, allowing Foster The People – Foster the multiinstrumentalist, Jacob ‘Cubbie’ Fink (bass) and Mark Pontius (drums) – to ditch their day jobs and crisscross the world. “After that [success] I travelled to some pretty remote places to be alone and really tried to process my thoughts,” he recalls.
assign any value to now. For me it was a reappropriation of my priorities. It was lifechanging for me; it shifted my focus a bit.” But although the frontman and multiinstrumentalist has mentioned in the press that he was at times angry when writing Supermodel, he doesn’t necessarily think it embodies that mood. “If there’s anger throughout the record...” he trails off. “I think [it’s] a beautiful record, I don’t think it’s inherently an angry record, maybe melancholy at times – but there are moments of anger, and they probably come from really just a frustration at injustice.” Supermodel started at pace in 2012 when Foster and acclaimed British musician, songwriter, producer (and Oscar winner!) Paul Epworth came together once more in Essaouira on the Moroccan coast. Epworth made his name during the mid-‘00s working with UK angular rock acts like Bloc Party, The Futureheads and Maxïmo Park, however, in recent years the 39-year-old has become something of a pop golden boy, helping artists like Adele, John Legend, Florence & The Machine and Coldplay craft many of their biggest hits.
“I’VE ALWAYS USED MY INSTINCT AS A MICROCOSM FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD, SO IF I’M DANCING AROUND THE ROOM OR IF I’VE GOT TEARS IN MY EYES, I KNOW SOMEBODY ELSE IS GOING TO FEEL THAT TOO.”
“I feel like it’s the first album we’ve made as a band; Torches to me was just a collection of songs,” says Foster. “There’s something about having a short period of time to express yourself, and almost create a time stamp of what was going on with thoughts and creatively and philosophically, and that’s what it felt like making this record – it was the first time I’d ever written a body of work in a period of less than a year. In terms of the continuity on the record and the concepts, it really captures the essence of what I was going through as a person and where we were as a band.” Although their music suggests a party band at work, Foster The People take their position on the global stage completely seriously. The catchiness of their tunes can be traced back to Foster’s inherent songwriting ability, which saw him working as a commercial jingle writer prior to the band breaking through. However, like the full-length that preceded it, there is nothing novel about Supermodel, a record that again gives the listener so much more to consume than the standard candy-coated cookie-cutter pop currently rotting the charts. Looking backwards to how he moved forwards, Foster is quick to admit that the response to Torches was above and beyond his wildest expectations. The record was a goal that he’d been chasing since 14 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
“I tried to reflect on the two worlds, the world I was just in, playing in a band at the Grammys, in front of a bunch of A-list celebrities, and then going to a remote village in Tanzania and watching people pull buckets of water out of a mud hole filled with parasites, just to try and get a clean glass of water.” Those polar opposite situations dictated the content of this new record, triggering a lot of questions in Foster’s mind. “It also redesigned things that maybe I’d assigned a certain amount of value to before that I don’t
Having previously worked together on Torches, co-writing a number of tracks including the infectious Call It What You Want, Foster and Epworth immediately found cohesion once more, and when they came together in solitude on the African continent the two men were quick to feed off each other’s ideas again, barely standing still for seven straight days, a stretch that formed the aesthetic and tone of Supermodels. “It was a pretty special week; I don’t think I’ve ever had that type of creative output in consecutive days ever before,” smiles Foster. “For whatever reason things were just flowing.” And although it’s the guitar work that perhaps makes the biggest instrumental statement on Supermodels, with tracks like Ask Yourself and A Beginner’s Guide To Destroying The Moon benefitting greatly from the additional muscle and solo flair provided, Foster admits that he’s always been drawn to Epworth because he’s a drummer first and foremost. “That’s the instrument that I’m the weakest on, and he’s a really creative drummer, the way he approaches percussion and drums is really creative, and that’s how I start most of my songs, over a beat; but then he plays a little bit of everything else as well. But we just had fun [in Morocco] – there was
SERIOUS FUN Like many great pop auteurs before him, Mark Foster has the innate ability to marry biting social commentary with shiny, glamorous sounds, and does so without losing the edge of either side. Most people who’ve danced along to Pumped Up Kicks would be oblivious to the fact that the character in the track, Robert, is planning a mass shooting in the schoolyard. On more recent single, Best Friend, Foster turns a tale about high-octane drug use into this climactic celebration, the track bursting with upbeat harmonies and big band, sermon sounds. Foster The People’s songs recall the conscious pop of the ‘80s, a decade when Morrissey from The Smiths made vegetarian choices mainstream and raged about the fractured political state of England, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne waxed lyrically about the state of the world as he saw it – all superficiality and glamorous excess, meanwhile dancefloor-centred duo Pet Shop Boys were dropping references to Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin on top of their pompous party anthems. When Foster responded to The Music querying him about a quote taken by NME that mentioned he thought Supermodel was an “angry” record, he was quick to straighten out the claim. But passion in pop music – it’s far from a bad thing.
no judgement. And Paul’s a walking encyclopaedia when it comes to music, the history of music, so he’ll kind of guide things in a way that comes from a wealth of musical history, which is great because it’s the opposite of how I work. I’m very visceral in my expression, I kinda purge when I play music; I work very fast and jump from instrument to instrument. I kind of Jackson Pollock songs, and will stand back and look at the canvas and decide whether it’s good or not later, but in the moment I’m like a whirlwind and he’s a little bit more calculated.” As fruitful as that Moroccan sojourn was though, after that initial burst of life Foster was still without any finished songs when he arrived back home in Los Angeles to regroup with his bandmates. He knew, however, that he had to continue following those creative rabbit trails, and fast, which led to the trio cutting tracks locally in Malibu and Hollywood before eventually finishing off the album at Epworth’s Wolf Tone Studios in London. Tapping into the excitement and spontaneity that comes from a room full of instruments and a head crammed with ideas, Foster says that a lot of the album was written in that adventurous spirit. And although he admits to feeling the pressure of time and expectation – “that now we were a known band and people were going
to be listening” – he learned how to navigate those vibes to find a result more positive. “There were points when it helped me and points when it was more of an ominous thing in the room,” he explains. “I spent a lot of my time and energy on this record just doing my best to keep the pressure outside of the creative process, to be able to write from an authentic place. “One thing that I learned about writing – if I’m writing for myself, I’m writing out of a place of loving what I’m doing, then the song will be authentic, and it doesn’t matter what they sound like or what style they’re in, they’ll resonate with me. And I’ve always used my instinct as a microcosm for the rest of the world, so if I’m dancing around the room or if I’ve got tears in my eyes, I know somebody else is going to feel that too. If I was to go into a studio and try and write another Torches, I think you’d be able to smell the unauthenticity from a mile away, and you’d use the CD as a coaster or a Frisbee.” WHEN & WHERE: 27 Jul, Splendour In The Grass, North Byron Parklands; 28 Jul, Palais Theatre THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 15
than what Rock Me, Mama was to become Wagon Wheel, so it was a much tougher assignment. But he originally wrote me to say, ‘Hey, thanks for cutting it’ or ‘Congratulations’ – it’s a lot of radio play to have a number one record. [Dylan staple] Lay Lady Lay was never a number one record, if you can believe it. “It was a lot different [than with Wagon Wheel], because it was sent to me by Bob, with a little bit of instruction and a little bit of back and forth – as I completed the song he’d chime in. He said to cut a verse, and to play the fiddle and not the harmonica, and he told me where he wanted the chorus to come in – it was really exciting, I can’t even tell you the feeling that sweeps over me to think about having this collaboration. Before it was sort of like having a collaboration with a ghost, and now it’s more like the ghost was in the room – but still very much a ghost.” Secor attests that it was an odd sensation watching from afar as Rucker took Wagon Wheel into the heart of the country mainstream.
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GHOST IN THE ROOM The great folk tradition of songs being passed down the line is alive and well. Old Crow Medicine Show frontman Ketch Secor tells Steve Bell about the great rush of joy from collaborating with one’s hero, even from a distance.
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he relationship that Nashville-based string band Old Crow Medicine Show have shared with songwriting legend Bob Dylan over the years has been as convoluted as it is reverential. Old Crow frontman Ketch Secor is a long-time Dylan disciple – he famously once spent four straight years listening to nothing but Bob – and when many years ago he got his hands on a demo known as Rock Me, Mama, an unreleased track from a bootleg of outtakes from the 1973 Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid soundtrack, he played the song incessantly in his live sets. Even though it had changed substantially, he sought permission to release the song – now known as Wagon Wheel – as a co-write on Old Crow’s major label debut O.C.M.S. (2004), discovering in the process that Dylan credited the line “Rock me, Mama” – still integral to Wagon Wheel’s chorus – to blues legend Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, who in all likelihood got it from a Big Bill Broonzy recording. Once Wagon Wheel hit the public domain it immediately took off, becoming far more than Old Crow’s signature tune and calling card. Covered over the years by everyone from Against Me! to Mumford & Sons, when former Hootie & The Blowfish frontman Darius Rucker cut a version in 2013 it went through the stratosphere, notching up over 30 million YouTube views and going platinum in the USA, winning Rucker a Grammy and hitting the top of the Billboard US Country Airplay charts in the process. That’s when Dylan fortuitously entered the picture once more, gifting Old Crow another unreleased track, Sweet Amarillo, which is now lead single from their excellent ninth album, Remedy. “It’s just an amazing turn of events to come full circle with a song,” Secor marvels. “The metaphor I’ve been thinking of lately is that it’s like I put a message into a bottle and it floated down [Nashville’s] Cumberland
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River to the Gulf Of Mexico and down all the way around Argentina and up to Malibu where it washed up on the beach, and Bob Dylan just happened to be out jogging that day and found it. Although in this case he put a message back in the bottle – a new one – and sent it my way and I received it. We’ve just had an elaborate and highly unlikely communication. In this world of instant communication it’s so rare that there be something like this – you can be up to the minute with anybody but you never really connect, and this is a connection without ever having spoken. “It came on the heels of having the number one record. Bob doesn’t get that every day, so when Darius hit number one with Wagon Wheel Bob sent the song Sweet Amarillo – or the fragment really, because it was much more of a fragment
“You know, it was strange – it is strange,” he smiles. “It’s still going on and it’s strange for me every time I hear it. But it’s a wonderful kind of strange – I can’t argue with it and I’m proud of it. Darius Rucker has been at the music game for 35 years, so he knows how to hustle, and I’m just really glad [that it was him] out of all the people in country music. I’m not really in mainstream country, and I’m not there because I play by a different set of rules, but of all of the mainstream country artists who could have cut it Darius would be my pick, man. I couldn’t
“I’M NOT REALLY IN MAINSTREAM COUNTRY, AND I’M NOT THERE BECAUSE I PLAY BY A DIFFERENT SET OF RULES.” have picked a more appropriate voice – somebody seasoned, and somebody with his style and his swagger. And somebody black in country, c’mon!” And with Old Crow Medicine Show continually fighting to retain the authenticity of traditional country music and instrumentation, it’s completely apt that they’re integral to this fascinating evolution. “It’s all part of the process, and that’s what’s so special to me about Sweet Amarillo,” Secor reflects. “I kind of took Rock Me, Mama and stuffed it under my coat sleeve, but now Bob has invited us to the table – Bob has said, ‘Let me participate in this folk music process with you, let’s do it together.’ That’s something that I didn’t know he was into, and I love it. Really we’re all just under the big umbrella of Bob Dylan – we’re just basking in his glorious shadow. We’re all just passing along down the line the gift that we learned from Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie and so many other old boys.” WHAT: Remedy (ATO/[PIAS] Australia)
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that I knew were really fun and a little bit more carefree than some of our later stuff – I always wanted to put it out so I’m glad that we got to do it.” Lindberg explains that these songs weren’t released back in the day not because of quality issues, but because the band’s aesthetics had evolved so quickly. “I think to be totally honest we started out playing backyard parties and just doing it for fun, and the songs came out really quickly. So we had this batch of songs, then we wrote some of the songs which became the first record and that’s when Epitaph took notice of the band and we signed a record deal – that’s when it became a little more serious. We were trying to write bigger songs, but I think these represent a simpler side to the band when we weren’t doing it ‘for real’,” he chuckles. “There’s no better way of putting it. I think that was the main motivation of putting this stuff out, reminding ourselves what was important about the band, and especially that the original vibe that Jason started with the band was all about PMA [positive mental attitude].
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ALL MY TROUBLES A few years ago the tight-knit Pennywise family was rocked by the departure of frontman Jim Lindberg, but now he’s returned to the fold he tells Steve Bell about re-exploring the band’s fun roots to ensure they have a future.
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alifornian skatepunks Pennywise were at the vanguard of the ‘90s post-hardcore punk revival, forging a strong career on the back of propulsive and catchy music, a tireless work ethic and their ubiquitous presence in the surf, skate and snowboard videos which were so popular at the time. Yet despite building up a sizable following all over the globe they never quite followed their peers such as Green Day, Bad Religion and The Offspring into the mainstream, held back in part by an idealistic bent which manifested in internal band conflict, and also by the alcohol-related suicide in 1996 of founding bassist and songwriter Jason Thirsk. Nonetheless Pennywise persevered and retained their cult status in the punk community, until in 2010 frontman Jim Lindberg left the group citing fatigue and was unceremoniously replaced by Zoli Teglas of Ignite. This union culminated in 2010 album All Or Nothing but was split asunder when Teglas suffered a serious back injury, leaving the door ajar for Lindberg to rejoin the band he’d started more than 25 years earlier. Their first release since the reconciliation is a compilation entitled Yesterdays, which includes some early Thirsk compositions (dating back to before their eponymous 1991 debut) as well as some offcuts from around the time of 1997’s Full Circle – it’s a batch of songs chosen by design to remind both the band and their fans of what Pennywise stood for as a fledgling outfit back before their troubles balancing art and commerce began. “It’s a fun record, and that’s really important,” Lindberg reflects. “It’s got some of that youthful spirit – these are songs that we wrote a long time ago, and which kinda represent our band when it first started out, so I think 20 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
that vibe is throughout the record and people are going to be stoked on it. “I think with me coming back to the band after some time out it was important for us to reconnect with why we started and the roots of the band. It seemed to have kind of gone astray towards the end there, which is a common thing to happen to bands when they’ve been doing it for as long as we had – around 20 years – and it’s hard not to get in a rut where you’re just doing album and then tour, album and then tour and not repeating yourselves. I definitely think that if we were to just jump back into trying to write new songs it would have been confusing for Pennywise fans in 2014, so it was really a way for us to reconnect with these old songs and the original spirit of the band. We always had this batch of songs
“The first wave of punk rock was very nihilistic and all about anarchy and smash the state type of stuff and very sarcastic, and then in the late ‘80s the bands that survived that first wave like Minor Threat and Dag Nasty were trying to write more positive songs and that’s what Jason our original songwriter – who wrote most of the lyrics – was about. That’s what I loved about the band; I’d just finished college and had read a lot of philosophers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau – very positive thinkers about making the most of your life and enjoying what you have – and there’s a song on this record called Thanksgiving which was one of my favourite songs when we first started out. The chorus is, ‘Think about
“WE’VE ALL SAID THAT WE ONLY WANT TO DO THIS WHEN IT’S FUN.” all that you have, not about what you can’t get,’ and it was that vibe of the music that really drew me to the band. “I think with age and experience you tend to lose that somewhat, when you start having to pay taxes and the politics of the world start invading your life outlook and various things happen, it’s hard not to become jaded with the world and the way it is, but I think this record represents where we started which was trying to be positive about things.” Is Lindberg confident that this will resonate in the music that Pennywise write next? “I know it will,” he states emphatically, “because I think we’re unwilling to go back to any song or music or situation where we’re not all totally feeling it and totally stoked on it because that’s not a fun place to be and we’ve all said that we only want to do this when it’s fun. Right now it’s fun again, so that’s what works.” WHAT: Yesterdays (Epitaph/Warner)
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and I think a combination of getting to meet one of our biggest influences, 65daysofstatic, on tour last year and learning about what they do, and Alex’s own growth in his programming – as you do when you’re kind of dedicated to something – enabled more experimentation and focus with how those sounds work in our songs. And also just the kind of music we were writing lended itself to more of that. It’s more upbeat, and so songs like Something Like Avalanches just really suit bringing that stuff in and making it more of a focus, because you can develop all sorts of interesting beats and clicks, and that’s something that bands like 65daysofstatic are so good at, driving songs along rapidly with those elements. That was a really fun side to this writing. “Looking forward to the future, I think we’re definitely going to bring in more instruments. We have some plans to bring some more keys and synths in to the songwriting, whenever the next songwriting phase might be. At the end of the day, though, we’re a bunch of dudes who grew up listening to heavy metal and grunge, and we hope we can kind of keep that element there and just kind of experiment around the edges a bit.”
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As well as the effort that went into constructing an album that met their own expectations and goals, sleepmakeswaves concurrently decided that going with major label distribution was not what they wanted. Sticking with longtime label Bird’s Robe, the band started a Pozible campaign for Love Of Cartogrophy.
SLEEP WHEN THEY’RE DEAD After raising funds through their fanbase and raising the roof onstage, post-rock outfit sleepmakeswaves have raised the bar with their second album. Otto WicksGreen tells Cam Findlay why they were primed for it.
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“So we were really frantically doing that, and then we got this invitation to tour with Dead Letter Circus and Karnivool on the Polymorphism tour, which came right in the middle of our rehearsals. So we couldn’t turn that down, because who the hell would turn that down?” Obviously, Wicks-Green is right. The Polymorphism tour breathed new life into the sometimes maligned world of Australian heavy rock, with a perfect lineup and shows that sold out within minutes. It put Karnivool back on the critically regarded map, reminded everyone of how much power Dead Letter Circus are willing to convey on stage, and finally let audiences outside the diehard sleepmakeswaves’ fanbase know that these humble guys could put on one of the best live shows you can pay money for in this country.
Said new album Love Of Cartogrophy has just been released, and it’s deep, loud, eclectic and impactful, carrying with it an intense sense of cohesion that has become a sleepmakeswaves trademark. Extending on some themes from …And So We Destroyed Everything, but throwing more out the door at the same time, the sophomore effort sees the band opting to leave their comfort zone a little more. The first track from the album, Something Like Avalanches, was picked up by none other than Richard Kingsmill on 2014, and let everyone know that the electronic side of sleepmakeswaves, always there but under the drive of guitars, was going to be a stronger element this time around.
“We jumped on that, played these awesome shows with these awesome dudes, headed back for more frantic rehearsals,” Wicks-Green continues. “And then recording, which was awesome, and then touring Europe, then it was prep for the album launch, and now we’re on tour for the album.”
“The electronic element has always been a big part of the band,” Wicks-Green says. “Alex [Wilson, bass] is the real driver behind that,
o it’s been a really busy start to 2014,” sleepmakeswaves’ bespectacled guitarist Otto Wicks-Green shares without an ounce of irony. While the whole ‘hard-working band’ motif can get a bit cliché, the Sydney four-piece mean it when they say it’s been busy. “We started the year sort of getting all of our songwriting finalised and all of our performing chops up to speed, because we were heading into the studio with full knowledge that we were working towards creating a really live-sounding album. And so we needed to get our performances really really solid, because no one wanted to be the one that, really close to the end of a perfect take, makes that mistake that sets the whole thing back to the start.
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“Crowdfunding you have to be very careful with, because you never want to come across as being cavalier or flippant with your fan’s hard-earned money,” he says, “so we thought really carefully about whether or not we wanted to go down this route. But we knew we wanted to make the absolute best album we could
“WE GOT TO MAKE THE RECORD OF OUR DREAMS IN THE WAY WE WANTED.” make, because we think three years is enough time to be ready for that. We had some really big ambitions for it, and by ourselves we were able to scrabble up about half of what we needed. So we knew we needed to do something different. “I think the way the music industry is going, crowdfunding platforms are going to be more and more important as record sales become less of a source of revenue,” Wicks-Green continues. “Especially in the indie scene, it’s just an amazing vehicle, because it includes so many aspects of making a record. There’s something special about bands directly reaching the people who want to support them. You know, reaching out and going, ‘Hey, here’s our plan, here’s some cool rewards, and here’s where you can help us out if you want to.’ And then we exceeded the target, which was amazing. We got to make the record of our dreams in the way we wanted. You can’t ask more than that. We just hope people love it as much as we do now.” WHAT: Love Of Cartography (Bird’s Robe) WHEN & WHERE: 1 Aug, Corner Hotel
ON THE OUTER
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Obits guitarist Sohrab Habibion tells Anthony Carew that living through the “very direct” racism his parents battled “cemented [his] love of the outsider, anyone who feels like they don’t belong in mainstream culture”.
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rooklyn garage-rockers Obits are arriving in Australia amidst the wave of Splendour tourists, but they’re not playing the festival. In fact, their two trips here haven’t involved any outdoor performances: a rarity in this era during which most overseas acts build tours around festival dates. If Obits’ raucous LPs – 2009’s I Blame You, 2011’s Moody, Standard And Poor and 2013’s Bed And Bugs – sound like the work of a band who’d much prefer playing dive bars, that’s because they are. “If we were the kind of band who just did the festival circuit, I don’t think we’d be happy,” says guitarist Sohrab Habibion. “Those huge festivals are like going to the mall: they’re these vast, corporate, sponsored spaces that try and please everyone but end up pleasing no one. It’s a spectacle, it’s Roman, it’s the death of music. For me, music is an intensely personal experience, and it’s best savoured that way. A sweaty room with 200 people, in which everyone can share in it, that’s what speaks to me.” If Habibion talks of rock’n’roll with reverence, it’s because he still remembers how it saved him from an unhappy childhood. Born in the US to an Iranian father and an American mother, Habibion’s early years were split between New York and Iran, before the 1979 Iranian revolution lead them to permanently settle in Washington, DC. With the Iranian hostage crisis spanning the next two years, they were dark days for the family. “The racism was very direct: my dad had a PhD in economics and he couldn’t get a job – he literally had to work selling carpets,” Habibion explains. “My mom wasn’t even an Iranian, but she’d taken my father’s name, so even she encountered this blatant prejudice. I remember seeing T-shirts with Mickey Mouse on them, flipping the bird, saying, ‘Fuck Iran’. It was a hostile climate, and it definitely cemented my love of the outsider, anyone who feels like they don’t belong in mainstream culture.” In 1980s DC, this naturally lead Habibion to the city’s staunch hardcore scene. “You didn’t have to be anything to be a part of it,” Habibion remembers, “you could just be who you were. It was such a welcoming environment for me, at a time when nowhere else was welcoming. And the bands from DC at the time were great: their lyrics were interesting and thoughtful and provocative, and there was
a passion for both local and global politics.” At first, Habibion – a student of clarinet and saxophone – was just a fan, but that changed when his mother won a guitar at a school auction. “That instrument had such a direct connection to the music I was
But fate intervened when old friend Rick Froberg – one-time frontman of infamous post-hardcore outfit Drive Like Jehu – moved to New York. The pair started playing music together in 2006. “When I met my now-wife, I wasn’t making music at all and she thought it was something from my past,” Habibion says, of that lengthy between-bands break. “Then, when me and Rick started to play together, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I think we’re gonna get a practice-space together and start a band.’ She was totally surprised; She thought we had just been hanging out and drinking beer.”
“I REMEMBER SEEING T-SHIRTS WITH MICKEY MOUSE ON THEM, FLIPPING THE BIRD, SAYING, ‘FUCK IRAN’.” listening to,” he says. “I liked Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw well enough, but there was no clarinet in a Minor Threat song.” After tapping into the “primal expression” of playing in a (nowforgotten) teenage hardcore band, Habibion founded the posthardcore outfit Edsel in 1988, serving as songwriter for five LPs issued through the early-to-mid-’90s. After the band “trailed away”, Habibion stopped playing in bands all together.
Froberg and Habibion had, truthfully, formed Obits as a kind of social club; it took them ’til 2008 to play their first live show. But given the pair’s past bands, that first show was bootlegged and uploaded, and Obits immediately found both a following and a record label. “We didn’t have any ambitions when we started, we just played together twice a week because it was fun,” Habibion says. “Everything we’ve done – that we have three albums on Sub Pop, that we’re getting to go to Australia for a second time – has been a total thrill. We all relish it, because we’re not taking any of this for granted. Getting to travel places, meet people, play shows in other countries – we have fun doing what we do. It’s not a lucrative endeavour, so we really and truly live for the people involved, and the satisfaction of our own indulgences. There’s a lot of bands out there, we feel lucky that people give a shit.” WHEN & WHERE: 1 Aug, Barwon Club; 2 Aug, Reverence Hotel THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 23
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FATE OR FANCY With their film kicking off the 2014 Melbourne International Film Festival, the Spierig Brothers are playing things close to their chests, though Anthony Carew gets them to open up a little.
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ike wary internet commentators, the filmmaking Spierig brothers are on high Spoiler Alert, wanting to ensure all those on their way to Opening Night are coming innocence intact. And, in their case, it’s not wild paranoia. Predestination is a prime piece of chin-scratchin’ sci-fi, whose closed world of ‘temporal agents’ feels like it both expands (in the scope of its ideas) and shrinks (in its claustrophobia) as it goes along, its intersecting timelines crisscrossing more intricately, its timetravel paradoxes getting ever more tangled. “I could answer your question,” considers Michael Spierig, pausing mid-interview, turning to his identical twin brother before proceeding. “But Peter, can we really answer this question without revealing too much?
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debut feature, 2003’s Undead. A “labour-oflove made with a lot of help – and a lot of favours – from friends and family,” the film was a wild genre picture predating the current billion-dollar zombieentertainment industry. “At the time, there were no zombie films being made!” says Michael. “We had such a love of that genre – from
a vampire movie set in a doomed, post-apocalyptic future. Predestination may be based on a short story, All You Zombies, by sci-fi icon Robert A Heinlein, but it represents an ambitious departure for the Spierigs. “Predestination is less of a pure genre film, more something that spans different genres,” Michael explains. “It’s definitely a science fiction film, there’s no question of that. There’s certainly thriller aspects to it, as well. But at the same time it’s also a period film, and it’s, as much as anything, a drama, one exploring these characters. It’s fun to cross genres, to cross multiple time periods, to cross all these ideas. “It’s rare that you find a story so complex, so rich with paradoxes and wild ideas, so challenging to the norms of narrative structure,” marvels Michael of Predestination’s paradox-riddled tale. “Heinlein was one of the true greats of that early heyday of science fiction writing; [Isaac] Asimov and Arthur C Clarke and Heinlein were really the guys back then. But Hollywood, for whatever reason, has never really tapped into him, in the way that, say, Philip K. Dick has been so often adapted.” Though shot in Melbourne, the Docklands interiors are used to portray Cleveland and New York at various points in the 20th century. Rather than taking Heinlein’s
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ETHAN HAWKE IN PREDESTINATION
“IT’S RARE THAT YOOU FINDD A STOORYY SO COMPLLEX.” What do we do here? Like, if someone who hasn’t seen the film reads this, it’ll ruin the film, won’t it?” Starring Ethan Hawke, Noah Taylor and Sarah Snook (“People haven’t even begun to see what she’s capable of,” enthuses Peter, regarding his leading lady), the film was shot at Docklands Studios. Melbourne isn’t quite the Spierigs’ hometown, though. The 38-year-olds had an itinerent childhood: born in Germany, they lived in Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra as kids, spent an adolescent stint in New Jersey and finally returned to Brisbane. Throughout, the pair were VCR obsessives, watching the iconic genre pictures synonymous with the ‘80s dreaming of making their own films: “We grew up on Star Wars,” Michael says, “and loving the same movies helped us not hate each other.” After graduating from the Queensland College of Art, they cut their teeth directing ads, their four years in the commercial world taking them from novices to seasoned pros. They used the cash they made to bankroll their ambitions: investing “every cent [we]’d ever made from commercials” into financing their 24 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
[George A.] Romero and Sam Raimi – that we said, ‘Hey, let’s make one!’ Of course, by the time we’d actually finished it, there were like ten of them coming out. But we looked at people like Raimi and Peter Jackson, how they’d got their start working in low budget genres. With a zombie movie, you don’t have to spend millions of dollars getting movie stars, the genre itself is the movie star.” Their second film, 2009’s Daybreakers, was another genre work,
original tale deep into the 21st century, the Spierigs chose to preserve the 1959 original’s timeline. “It was really fun to create what we thought [Heinlein’s] vision of the ‘60s or the ‘80s of the future would look like,” says Peter. “Those periods, from the ‘40s through to the ‘90s, are all so distinct, so visually interesting, so I loved being able to stay true to the original story and create these visions of an imagined future as an alternate past.” With Opening Night imminent, the brothers are excited but wary. “That’s where we are at the moment,” says Peter, “weighing up what we can and can’t say before Opening Night. We’re so honoured to be screening it MIFF, who showed Undead a decade ago. We think it’s a good film for a festival: it’s really for people who like to go to the movies and be challenged, to have to think, to see something that isn’t your standard story.” Predestination opens MIFF, 31 Jul, Hamer Hall & releases nationally in cinemas 28 Aug
PATRIARCHY PROTEST Kitty Green explores the inner workings of the FEMEN phenomenon with Anthony Carew.
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n 2011, Ukrainian-Australian filmmaker Kitty Green was visiting relatives in Kiev when she stumbled upon her first-ever FEMEN protest. The infamous feminist group – who practice a performance-art-ish form of ‘topless’ protest – were in a fountain, bodies painted in slogans, crowd gathering around them. “I had my DSLR [camera] with me, and started shooting the protest, and it was really beautiful footage, and I was full of adrenaline, and the police were grabbing them and throwing them into the van, and they were screaming,” the 29-year-old recounts. “I’d never experienced anything like it, and I was instantly hooked.”
UKRAINE IS NOT A BROTHEL
Green sent FEMEN the footage, asked if they were interesting in making a documentary – “they were so contradictory, so bizarre, yet also really beautiful and easy to make look cinematic – they were a perfect subject” – and soon found her entire life changing. “I spent 14 months living with them; there were six of us in a two-bedroom apartment. We became like a family. I became their videographer. I spent a year with them documenting every protest, and started making this film.” Ukraine Is Not A Brothel is a non-fiction chronicle of the life and times of the women of FEMEN, an “honest
portrayal of what their experiences of being in this movement were actually like.” The result is a film that is part go-go ‘girl power’ feminism, part sobering portrayal of the realities of how society treats young women taking their clothes off. Eventually, Green discovered that FEMEN’s ‘consultant’ Viktor Syvatski functions as its self-appointed svengali, the collective’s founding father finding the blondest, most beautiful girls – as confessed “marketing strategy” – then keeping them on a short leash.
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“I started out making a film about a feminist movement, then came to discover, slowly, that [FEMEN] was being run in a way that wasn’t exactly feminist,” Green explains. “This discovery was very disturbing, in some ways. Discovering just how dark these contradictions were, just how strange and corrupt the organisation was, that became my fascination.” This marked shift raises questions about complicity and compromise, adding layers of complexity and contradiction. For Green, it was a “disheartening” revelation but one which – along with her eventual on-camera conversation with Syvatski – proved rewarding. “It undoubtedly made for a better film. A movement protesting against patriarchy having a patriarch at the helm: it was one of those stories you could only come across by accident... There are secrets in there that they would rather I’d not revealed, but at the same time they understand that this is their past, their story. And it’s a story that, hopefully, other women can learn from.” Ukraine Is Not A Brothel screens Fri 1 Aug, 9.30pm, Hoyts & Thu 7 Aug, 9pm, Hoyts
BEHIND THE BEAT
festival
Coppers are just people like us, naughty and nice, and Jesse Armstrong is showing us that side, he tells Anthony Carew.
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abylon is a new British police show that... wait, keep reading! There’s nary an honest bobby on the beat nor a sprightly geriatric solving murders in picture-postcard English villages. Instead, it’s the latest screenwritten work for Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, the smart-arses behind Peep Show and Fresh Meat on the small-screen, and Chris Morris’s terrorist satire, Four Lions, on the big. Babylon’s movie-length pilot, which aired in the UK in February, has spent the year since touring film festivals. “There are so many police procedurals, cop shows, murder mystery shows, reality shows about police,” admits Armstrong, “but we knew that we didn’t want to make anything resembling your standard procedural. We thought about it like this: for most people, the main problems that you face at your job aren’t related to the actual work, [but] your relationship with your colleagues, the status of your personal life, the politics within the workplace. We felt like there was room to do something that hadn’t been done, because we didn’t care about trying to do a whodunit, or a whydunit, or a cop-show.” Babylon’s chief character isn’t actually a cop; instead it’s American social-media guru Brit Marling, brought in on big bucks to change the face of English police PR. Her appointment sends ripples through a cast that includes James Nesbitt, Daniel Kaluuya and Adam Deacon, and the pilot flips between on-thescene officers to those in the boardroom charged with disseminating information – or spinning a story – unto media and public. “There’s been a number of occasions
recently in London where videotaped police activities have sparked an intense reaction. We wanted to reference all the ways in which police are filmed: closed-circuit cameras film them, the public film them, TV crews film them. That kind of level of new interaction between police and lens has changed both the way we view them and the way they act.” It’s terrain that intersects with things Armstrong’s already written: from The Entire History Of You, his standout episode of Charlie Brooker’s technology-parable anthology, Black Mirror; to his recurring collaborations with Armando Iannucci on political satires The Thick Of It, In The Loop, and Veep. “I never want to submit to that heavy-
JAMES NESBITT AS RICHARD MILLER & BRIT MARLING AS LIZ GARVEY IN BABYLON
handed kind of satire, but I tend to think of everything I write as being a version of satire. I think of satire as simply being something that offers a commentary on that which you’re portraying. If you’re a good strategist, all portrayals should be a critique. You can’t, I don’t think, portray an organisation without mounting a critique of it. If you claim you’re not being critical, to me that’s like the people who claim they’re not political because they don’t vote. Either way, it’s a way of trying to support the status quo.“In the same way, those documentaries or reality shows where they claim to be ‘just following police around’, you’re definitely getting a strongly-coded message: the police are good people trying their best. That’s not false: often police are upstanding people, and they are doing an excellent job. But sometimes they’re not, and they’re not. And that deserves critique.” Babylon screens Fri 1 Aug, 9pm, ACMI & Sun 3 Aug, 9pm, ACMI THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 25
comedy
EVERGREEN JACKASS Tampon gags, acid-steered abseiling – you can expect absolutely anything from Steve-O, as Guy Davis discovers.
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teve-O needs tampons. The whirligig Jackass wildman-turned-stand-up comedian is performing a set in Kansas City but during his downtime he plans to take to the streets with “a social experiment that’s just fuckin’ tickling me – I want to procure some fake blood, put it on a tampon and when people recognise me and ask for an autograph or a photograph I’m gonna remark how the women on Kansas City are so wild, pull out my bloody tampon and pose for a picture twirling it around my finger. It’s gonna be a fuckin’ hoot”. This is the first thing Steve-O tells me, related with such enthusiasm and joie de vivre that it’s strangely endearing.
The man loves getting a reaction, and he’s been over-sharing, overexposing and putting himself in harm’s way for years to do so. Since the age of 15, when he realised “the only thing I really liked doing was making videos and acting like an arsehole,” he’s performed stunts and pranks, upping the ante more and more (“I’d take acid with my buddies and rappel down the sides of big buildings – it was amazing no one died.”) and realising that people were digging his antics. “I really felt like I was onto something,” he admits “It put wind in my sails.” Joining forces with the equally reckless Johnny Knoxville and the Jackass crew, Steve-O pushed himself and the
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boundaries of good taste to the limit, gaining fame and fortune as a result. But it began to take a self-destructive turn until, in 2008, he got clean and sober (and vegan, although he recently reintroduced “wild-caught” fish into his diet) and started cleaning up his act... well, sort of. Stand-up comedy is Steve-O’s thing these days. He’d been booked by a venue to perform some of his trademark self-harming stunts but on arriving realised he couldn’t think of anything crazier than a stand-up set. Pleased at the audience’s positive response, he spent the next few years honing his comic skills with the help of comedians like Dane Cook. There’s a bit of physical comedy to the Guilty As Charged tour he’s bringing to Australia this month (c’mon, he’s Steve-O; of course there’s gonna be), but, as he promises, “It’s a legit standup show – I would never insult anyone by doing a show where I just get onstage and talk about my life.” What he means is this performance isn’t simply a collection of Steve-O’s greatest hits but a “shocking, shameless, hilarious and rigorously honest” series of anecdotes and recollections that aims to appeal to veteran viewers of Jackass and younger fans who are just now getting to know Steve-O. “I’m shameless enough to admit everything – in detail – to a theatre full of people,” he laughs. “My art speaks to a fairly universal audience, in much the same way Jackass does. When it comes to that show and the people who like it, Matthew McConaughey in Dazed And Confused comes to mind: ‘I get older, they stay the same age.’ We stumbled onto something evergreen.” WHAT: Steve-O: Guilty As Charged WHEN & WHERE: 31 Jul, Athenaeum Theatre
PRESSURE RELEASE Choosing music over madness, UK singer-songwriter Nick Mulvey turned his back on a Mercury-nominated band to realise his own creative happiness, writes Michael Smith. On paper it looked like a huge risk, walking away from a successful, Mercury Prize-nominated band, Portico Quartet, on the verge of cutting its third album, but for Cambridge-born singer-songwriter Nick Mulvey there was never any question. “It eventually became something that I very much had to do,” he admits, on the phone from Paris having just done three nights supporting John Butler. “It didn’t even feel like a decision that I was making; it was like something, a runaway happening that I had to choose to go with and choose to author, rather than being led by it, because, after four or five years of being in Portico Quartet I really was branching off on a different tangent that was expressing itself in two key ways, the first of which was a desire to return to the guitar and return to singing and indeed return to songwriting and working with lyrics, because none of those things were part of my creativity in Portico, which was hugely satisfying for a couple of albums.” In Portico Quartet, Mulvey, who had put himself through a guitar school in Cuba and gone on to study ethnomusicology, had played a melodic percussion instrument called the hang drum. “By the fifth year of not playing the guitar and singing and songwriting, there was a lot of pressure building up inside me that really needed to go somewhere and indeed
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the very first song I wrote after leaving the band was one that made it to the album called Fever To The Form, and literally the first lines of that were, “So with the musical madness will live by one of the two”, and that’s kind of where I felt I was at, music being this music – the songs and everything that would then become First Mind, the album – or, if it wasn’t going to be that, it was going to be madness. Not necessarily section 27 schizophrenia but, you know, neurosis and unhappiness. The choice wasn’t quite as dramatic as it seemed at that point. “The other thing was then at the same time, the kind of inverse of that expression.
The boys in the band were really getting into a style of music and a whole lot of artists I wasn’t quite following, much more in the electronic route, which I love but wasn’t quite my calling as an artist at that moment. So this split was happening already and it was a question of owning it and altering it before we got into the studio with another advance from the label and got into a bit of a pickle where had to deliver some music but were not on the same page.” So in 2012, Mulvey totally cut himself off from anything to do with the music industry, let go of any expectations about what music might come, set up a writing room, played his guitar every day for six months and the songs began to come. The result was First Mind. WHAT: First Mind (Fiction/Caroline) WHEN & WHERE: 27 Jul, Splendour In The Grass, North Byron Parklands; 29 Jul, The Toff In Town; 30 Jul, Palais Theatre
REMAINING ALIVE Uninterested in retro gear fads or passing stylistic trends, Tyrone Frost wants Kamandi to be standing long after certain sounds die. He talks surviving in a sea of change with Benny Doyle. ased out of Christchurch these days, a location that offers a niche electronic and arts scene with pockets of people “doing some cool shit”, Kamandi stands as one of those few.
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and digging through records, that’s the shit that’s fascinated me,” he says of his beginnings.
Part of the new generation of bedroom producers whose leftfield beats are breaking bad from New Zealand’s globally lauded d’n’b scene, the former indie bass player turned his back on band politics a few years ago to chase the future sounds he was increasingly inspired by. “The LA beat scene – Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder [record label], lots of docos about how people go and find their samples
Through his sonic flirtations came a stronger interest in technology and machines, however he admits, “It’s quite easy to get pretentious about only using retro gear. It’s definitely sounds first – everything else is just cool spinoffs from that.” Kamandi – Tyrone Frost to his friends – is part of the Red Bull Studios crew, repping their Auckland locale while enjoying the benefits of world class facilities and equipment that otherwise would be out of his reach. “They’ve got a real eye and ear to the scene, a real finger on
the pulse with what’s actually good – it’s cool to be tied in with that,” Frost enthuses. “And the network that is made possible [via Red Bull], it’s with other musicians that I genuinely do and would want to work with.”
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Away from the energy buzz things have been kicking just as hard, with Frost teaming up with fellow Kiwi beatmaker Polo (stylised as Pxlx) on mesmeric, postchillwave seven-track As Above, So Below. Mainly put together over the internet due to the north/south island divide (Polo is based in Auckland), Frost calls the creative process “relaxed”, adding that the friends were “on the same level” during the collaboration. He’s eager to reshape that audio world for the club though when he jets to Oz for his first Australian show. “What I’m trying to do is bring that balance of shit people could listen to and appreciate on headphones, but mixed with the reality that it is in a club setting,” he says excitedly. “Hopefully people just go away thinking, ‘Fuck I had fun.’ Maybe look me up on the internet.” And by keeping that eclectic sonic nature, Frost hopes to maintain and develop Kamandi in the future, without losing the identity he built in the first place. “I never want to be someone who’s just riding a wave and has one banger,” he stresses. “I mean, I have songs that do better than other songs – that probably can’t be avoided – but my goal is to try and keep my sound evolving. Even without trying there’s going to be a Kamandi element [in my music] that people can and will start being able to pick, but I don’t want to be in a box and fade out when that sound dies.” WHAT: As Above, So Below (Independent) WHEN & WHERE: 31 Jul, Ferdydurke
WHAT IF…
theatre
A theatre piece to save the planet? Nicola Gunn admits to Danny Delahunty she might just have come up with one.
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icola Gunn is one of those artists who is so innately in touch with what her audience wants she finds it difficult to summarise her own work. However there’s no doubt the company she formed with Gwen Holmberg-Gilchrist in 2009 has had an enormous impact on how Melburnians conceptualise contemporary performance. Although ‘Sans Hotel’ has only a handful of shows to its name, as a company it’s quickly risen to prominence and reliability for the kind of work that presents theatre as an active, unpretentious, accessible and utterly engaging artform. Now Gunn and Holmberg-Gilcrhist are preparing their first ensemble piece, Green Screen, to be presented as part of MTC’s second Neon Festival of Independent Theatre. “It’s the first work that I’ve made with an ensemble cast,” Nicola explains. “Normally I make solo work, so it’s kind of a social experiment that has shaped this show in unexpected ways. I’m still interested in the same themes – in the fragility of human existence – and so we’re looking broadly at the impermanence of the planet and this really far-fetched theme of saving it and trying to solve the problems of the world.” Not the most humble of thematic aims to say the least, but Nicola is under no illusions that she’s bringing a clear solution to the world peace table, as she makes clear. “We realised a couple of weeks into the development process that it was the most foolish endeavour anyone
could embark on. It was very challenging, but when you start looking at how things interconnect and how the problems are just so entrenched and deep, it kind of makes your head explode, to the point where you feel helpless and completely ineffectual. So the work has become a little bit about that: the feeling of uselessness and being ineffectual to make change or take action. The premise is: what if a group of people were all in a room together because they had answered a call in a newspaper to protest the extinction of the human race? There is no leader, no one is taking responsibility and they’re not solving any problems, just protesting them.”
NICOLA GUNN AND GWEN HOLMBERG-GILCHRIST. PIC HOLLY ENGELHARDT
One thing is definitely clear – Green Screen is unlikely to be your average ‘well made play’ by any stretch. And if you’ve seen or heard of Nicola’s recent work, such as Hello My Name Is or the Melbourne Festival hit, In Spite Of Myself, this will come as no surprise. Sans Hotel has evolved into a contemporary performance-making machine that creates work that defines the artists’ own unique expression rather than what everyone else is doing, and as a result the shows they produce are entirely unlike anything their audience has seen before. “I want people to be awake to the wonderment of the world, to see everything glow again – whether that is an interaction with a stranger, or catching public transport… or carpet… but just to imbue things with a little bit of value, appreciation and gratitude.”
WHAT: Green Screen WHEN & WHERE: 24 Jul - 3 Aug, Neon Festival, MTC Lawler THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 27
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HUNGOVER NO MORE After years of masking his meanings, Joyce Manor vocalist Barry Johnson is finally speaking straight. He tells Kane Sutton about connecting with his heart (tattoo).
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n 2011, Joyce Manor released a self-titled debut and made an immediate impact within punk and emo circles with final track, Constant Headache, becoming a heaving, drunken shout-along live. Second record, 2012’s Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired, also became a lauded favourite. Fast-forward to six months ago and singer Barry Johnson and the band found themselves scratching their heads trying to figure out how they could illustrate their musical growth.
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“We wrote a handful of songs just after the second record came out. They were alright, but it didn’t seem like we’d grown a bunch; they just sounded like the same stuff we’d been making. Every time we had a break from tours we’d get together and try to collaborate on stuff, but we went through about a year where nothing we were making was blowing us away. There was no ‘Oh my god, I can’t wait to record this or show it to people.’ Then what happened was I’d written a skeleton of this song and I thought it was pretty good, and our guitar player Chase was like, ‘I wrote a riff,’ which was strange because he doesn’t usually
write riffs independently. So we decided to put them both together and it ended up being a pretty big moment; it was the boost we needed to realise that the next record had to sound as good as this song. That’s when I felt like our sound matured a bit. It was eerie just how well the parts came together.” Known for their cryptic lyrics, yelled and shouted, often at a fast pace, Joyce Manor’s new record Never Hungover Again sees Johnson attempt a different method, writing verses that adopt this idea of maturing artistically. “One thing I feel like I have achieved lyrically that I haven’t managed to do before is on Heart Tattoo; it’s only about one thing. It’s only about getting a heart tattoo, and I’ve never done that before. I tend to like stuff that’s more cryptic, or it’ll be straightforward and then I’ll replace words to make it sound more surreal or vague. So yeah, with Heart Tattoo, it was focused on one thing and it was more direct, and that’s a pretty new thing for me. We’re pushing ourselves and trying things we haven’t done before. There’d be no point in doing it otherwise.” The band is set to tour the US and Europe in support of their latest record, but they’re just as excited to get back home. “I was just getting over strep throat that last show we played in Perth. It was so funny; the few shows before that over on the east coast, I couldn’t sing, our guitar player had to sing for me. That was our first show where I could actually sing. We absolutely love it over there. The best show we’ve ever played was in Melbourne, so we have to get over there again. We can’t wait to get the show on the road.” WHAT: Never Hungover Again (Epitaph)
TIMELY SURPRISE There was a time when English pop-rockers The 1975 were total misfits in their hometown scene. Annabel Maclean chats with the now international chart-topping darlings’ frontman Matthew Healy about the unexpected side of success.
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very now and then a band gets really big, really quickly. Manchester-raised lads The 1975 are one of these bands. But, as Matthew Healy points out, the band’s journey to the top didn’t happen overnight and even after two years on the road, they’re still adjusting to their newfound lifestyle and fame. “Yesterday I was in Finland, I go to Portugal on Thursday and I’m in Glasgow today,” Healy begins. “It’s just been kind of relentless for 18 months. We went out on our first tour as The 1975 and we played to about 75, 100 people and that was in December 2012 and we’ve not really stopped since then. “It’s just been this kind of gradual progression and we’re trying to take everything in. We’ve realised that that has to be done a lot more retrospectively because at the time, I really don’t know what’s happening a lot of the time and it’s only months later that you realise that some of the things that you’ve been doing have been quite remarkable.” At the the end of the day Healy’s got a “job to do”. “When you walk out and you’re supporting The Rolling Stones, that is a fantastic idea which we were very, very proud of and excited about it but the reality of it was that we were walking out to 50,000 people with a job to do. People always talk about trying to take in the 28 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
moment but at that time that’s not your right. Your responsibility is to create the moment and then you can experience it retrospectively. A lot of the time I’m caught up in what I’m doing and then maybe an hour later or a day later I’m like ‘Fucking hell, that was mental.’” And it is mental, especially considering The 1975 have been together since they were young teenagers. “We were such an odd band. We cared a lot about our music but we seemed to not really care about the progression of our band whatsoever… One time we went on tour and we changed the name of our band
every night. We would be a band that every band in Manchester knew and had played with and had been supported by but had absolutely no fan base. We kind of existed outside the Manchester scene.” Now of course they have a huge fan base, The 1975 are heading Down Under. “It’s going to be amazing,” he reckons. “We love festivals. Our shows in Australia sold out in ten seconds or something insane so I’m just looking forward to them – I wouldn’t say more – but obviously there’s a lot of personal involvement in our shows. We’ve become really popular really quickly and a lot of these shows are the first time that people are seeing us live so it’s really important for us for it [solo shows] to be an actualisation of everything that they’re kind of wanted from the band. We just want people to be in the room with us and that’s what it’s about.”
WHEN & WHERE: 27 & 28 Jul, The Hi-Fi; 26 Jul, Splendour In The Grass
THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 29
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
★★★★½
album reviews
JENNY LEWIS
THE BLACK ANGELS
The Voyager Warner
“I been wearing all black since the day it started/As I stopped and looked back as my mind departed,” opens Jenny Lewis’ third solo album, and despite the dark content quoted, she delivers it with the golden freshness of dawn. As with most of Lewis’ back catalogue (with the exception of her Jenny & Johnny album), the focal point is her swoon-worthy voice, followed by her varied lyrics, followed by her arrangements and instrumental accompaniments. The vast majority of this record could have probably been released at any point of her career. Not that that’s a bad thing. In fact, by virtue of Lewis’ discography, the familiar sound of The Voyager makes it simply brilliant. Despite Lewis’ fiercely independent sound, her penchant for collaboration continues on this record, with Ryan Adams and Beck chipping in on production duties. There are
Clear Lake Forest Pod/Inertia
moments, like Late Bloomer – a tale of Parisienne love featuring gloriously simple lyrics like “Nancy came from Boston/She got in trouble very often” – that harbour alt-country tendencies, but more often than not the jangly pop guitars and unremarkable (yet utterly dependable) rhythm section recall pure indie-rock. Six years have passed since Lewis’ last solo album, and it’s been 15 years since her musical career took off, but The Voyager is as striking an album as she’s made. Let’s all hold hands and ask in our nicest voice for a tour please. Dylan Stewart
pre-eminent psychedelic rock band (Tame Impala might have a claim to the throne, but The Black Angels have a few more years under their belts). While it doesn’t stray far from their proven formula of organs, drone machines and washed-out vocals, it will hopefully once again show the also-rans how the genre should sound in the 21st Century. Really, the only detraction – and it is a mighty one – is that there just isn’t enough meat on the record to sink one’s teeth into. With only one of the seven tracks checking in at over four minutes (Linda’s Gone, 6:36), it’s finished before you know it. Dylan Stewart
Lowborn UNFD
Century Media/Universal
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★★★
ANBERLIN
Do You Wanna Start A War
Inking a Century Media deal for 2012’s inconsistent Sin And Bones, its follow–up is a more assured, versatile hard rock collection. This set spans pulsating, self–described “dance club heavy metal”, from the memorable Lights Go Out to the pounding title track, ballad Died With You and radio–rocker Unstoppable to a lovingly crafted take on ABBA’s SOS, surely destined to be a concert favourite. The closing prog epics of recent releases are absent though, and some may begrudge fleeting nods to heavier leanings (Witchery,
Pound for pound, Clear Lake Forest is as strong as any of the Austin band’s significant back catalogue. Hot on the heels of 2013’s full-length Indigo Meadow, it could easily be read as an extension of that album’s upbeat, sun-drenched sound – especially when contrasted against some of their earlier efforts, such as their brilliant 2004 debut, the darker Passover. Clear Lake Forest furthers The Black Angels’ legacy as the
FOZZY
“If Metallica and Journey had a bastard child, it would sound like Fozzy,” Chris Jericho once informed this reviewer. That’s about as apt a reference point as one could devise for an act once unfairly lambasted by cynics as a vanity project, but, stylistically, this accessible record goes beyond such headline–catching descriptors.
The “mini-album” is a strange creature. It can’t, by rights, justifiably take its place in a collection of full-length LPs, but there’s significantly more substance on it than on a traditional five-track EP. The equation of seven songs on The Black Angels’ Clear Lake Forest is no exception. It’s no entrée, but it’s certainly not a main course, so it’s hard to know how to feel once it’s all over.
★★★½ Scarecrow). WWE superstar Jericho is the mouthpiece, but this LP reinforces axeman Rich Ward’s (underrated rap/metallers Stuck Mojo) true ringmaster and linchpin status. That distinctive guitar tone, crunchy riffs and melodic nous underpin their approach, and his backing grunts on the likes of One Crazed Anarchist afford a welcome counterpoint. Fozzy’s affinity with multi–part vocal harmonies remains a key trademark, as does their infectious energy, best exhibited live, but palpable here too. Fozzy’s songwriting smarts ensure their overall outlook feels fresh enough to retain dedicated fans’ interest. Brendan Crabb
Anberlin aren’t beating around the bush on their final release, giving a grace of 40 seconds or so before launching headlong into that classic stadium poprock sound. Lowborn plays out more like a best of, with all the roaring guitars, ironclad rhythms and trademark vocal melodies that grabbed attention way back in 2007. Despite having been recorded with separate producers for each of the five members, the album sounds remarkably tight and cohesive – and the band keep things interesting sonically. Dark, gothic synth overtones refuse to let the mood settle on slower tracks Stranger Ways and Birds Of Prey, but it’s the bolder songs like Dissenter and We Are Destroyer that really shine. The energy of those more bombastic numbers keeps the rest of the record from ever feeling soft. The biggest issue with Lowborn, however, is its lyrical content.
★★★ Gone are the heartbreak-onyour-sleeve narratives and angsty ruminations on ex-partners; instead, the album focuses on more introspective themes of growing up and moving on. Given Lowborn is the band’s final record after a drawn-out split, this makes a lot of sense, and colours the songs as a selfeulogy to the end of Anberlin. It’s a more mature outlook, but the vocals often fail to penetrate in any meaningful way. There is no new ground to be trodden on Lowborn, but for fans there’s no better way to go out. Solid and intriguing from start to finish, the record perfectly caps off the band’s successful career. Bailey Lions
singles/ep reviews
★★½
★★½
★★★★
COPYRIGHT
MUTILATION PROCESS
SLEEP CYCLES
Move Over
Flesh Eaters
Hibernation
You Won’t Be The One
Defected Records
Independent
Firestarter Distribution
This thumping, two-track release is firmly grounded in ‘90s techno. It doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to recall this overplayed brand of pumping house. Repetitive beyond belief, the title track consists of soulless vocal samples and a few lacklustre, stop-start flourishes over flat beats. The shadier, horn-driven follow-up Submarine is the stronger of these two club jams. However, it still falls prey to similar levels of mindless monotony. Move Over is in no way an example of thoughtful, rhythmic or sonically interesting electronica. If anything, it’s forgettable – suitable for out-of-your-mind late nights and little else.
Horror Pain Gore Death Productions
MARKSMAN LLOYD Signifying a new direction and much larger sound for Marksman Lloyd and one that reeks of Macklemore (in the best way). Ironically, this could be the one!
BASEMENT JAXX Never Say Never Atlantic Jaxx Recordings Guest vocalist ETML brings a more melodic feel and subtle sound to the usually whacky Brit dance duo’s awesome new disco-house tune.
LYTS Kill Somebody Firestarter Distribution
Stephanie Tell
Stephanie Tell
Starter-pack drum loop, unimaginative synth and devoid of any vocal melody. Perhaps entitled after the frustration of lacking musical and lyrical complexity, this track may have paradoxically been the inspiration for itself.
LES THOMAS
Despite the band’s use of lighter, punk-rock drum patterns in the title track, this does little to alleviate the EP’s dominating muddiness that painfully deafens all melody. These two songs comprise menacing, staggered power chords and animalistic screamo vocals that sound as if their pair of singers are constantly on the verge of throwing up. Flesh Eaters will appeal to stringent fans of vintage death metal who’re up for a testosterone-fuelled, rage injection. Otherwise, it should induce in listeners that familiar eye-roll reserved for coming into contact with something so forcefully attempting toughness.
Stephanie Tell
MORE REVIEWS themusic.com.au/reviews/album ★★★½
★★★
DAN & AMY
NUSSY
Sometimes Life
Nussy
Unpaved Records
Independent
Independent
While somewhat appropriate that the Abbott Government’s budget would evoke the blues, Les Thomas misses the mark. Lyrically accurate (albeit predictably), yet the acoustic guitar and delivery severely lack enthusiasm and passion.
Despite the departure of Gwil Sainsbury, Alt-J continue to produce brilliance. Taking a slightly stripped-back approach, with a captivating slow build that highlights their signature soft, melodic vocals.
Kicking off with their timeless single/title track, this brothersister duo purvey a recognisable, acoustic sound that’s utterly comforting. Morphing into a subtly dramatic spate of triumphant guitar waves, the delicate, plucked guitar melody of Pretend conveys the mournfulness of traditional folk through an old world, almost medieval mode of songwriting. The track is an especially exploratory inclusion in an otherwise sincere, altcountry release. Matching a homey simplicity with sweet, longing harmonies, the warm vibe evoked by these Melbourne locals proves both whimsical and earthy. They play at Northcote Social Club on 6 Aug.
Non-indicative of her sound as a whole, Nussy’s Intro sees ambient, spacey beats slowly launch into something more frenetic and cluttered. Garbed in a sheen of superficiality, this EP sits in the ‘pop princess’ tradition. Single Dizzie is a heady dose of classic pop, offering a familiar structure of soulful verses bookended by sassy chorus. Her pixie-like vocals ring through pounding, ‘80sinspired percussion and upbeat synths. The most uplifting of these bright, electro soundscapes, soaring, sugary closer The Other Side would sound at home in a Disney film. She plays at The Workers Club on 31 Jul.
Matt Feltham
Stephanie Tell
Budget Reply (Hey Joe)
ALT-J Hunger Of The Pine Liberator Music/ Infectious Music
Although clearly inexpensively produced, this in no way detracts from Sleep Cycles’ charming release. This lo-fi, art-folk offering consists of distant thuds and dainty chime details that subtly carry these tinkering melodies. Max Holder’s interesting compositions evoke warm, vivid imagery, such as smoking inside and sleeping during daylight hours. Placid opener Cafe Waltz sets the scene with its soft marimba tones and Holder’s raw, lament-filled vocals. A few sound glitches, such as squeaky guitars, could be ironed out. But Hibernation is what it is – ghostly but not ominous, contemplative but light-hearted, vulnerably imperfect and personal.
Something For Kate – 20th Anniversary re-issues Robin Thicke – Paula Goatwhore – Constricting Rage Of The Merciless Taylor Henderson – Burnt Letters Amen Dunes – Love Xander Smith – Outside Lawrence English – Wilderness Of Mirrors
Stephanie Tell
THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 31
live reviews
LORDE
Festival Hall 15 Jul There’s “Lorde” chanting down front and that particular pitch of tween squealing usually heard during schoolyard bouts of ‘What’s The time, Mr Wolf?’ when Mr Wolf calls, “Dinner time!” The New Zealand songstress materialises solo, under a single spotlight and wears what resembles a white strapless bra over baggy black t-shirt and matching pants, which could double as pyjamas. Glory And Gore features the lyrics, “But victory’s contagious,” and it’s true – Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor is on a roll, career-wise. Lorde’s goth-friendly backdrop is based around a gilt frame cleft in three. She’s
devastating results in a licensed venue. She talks about “running from getting old” and then tells us this was the inspiration behind Ribs. Lyrics: “It feels so scary getting old” – at the ripe age of 17? Purlease! Royals, as expected, is all that. The giant chandelier that dangles above the onstage action looks spectacular to match how Lorde’s voice sounds. Retinaburning magenta flashing LEDs punctuate the beat throughout Team, which is a ridiculously assured song. Just when we think she’ll remain in her PJs all night, Lorde slips gold metallic drapery on and confetti canons detonate. This is when we notice there’s a Beyoncé fan positioned front and centre, directed her way. With those lush cascading curls it won’t be long before she’s starring in shampoo commercials, with no air brushing allowed
LORDE @ FESTIVAL HALL. PIC: KANE HIBBERD
backed by two, white-clad accompanyists – drummer and keyboard player/samples provider – and Tennis Court (“…And talk it up like yeah/[Yeah!]“) echoes gloriously throughout the hall. Lorde dedicates a song to Ben from Wellington, who she adds was one of her “first five fans”. Strangely, her speaking voice doesn’t contain any traces of kiwi. When Lorde is bookended by her own image, in crystal clarity inside fractured frame fragments, the effect is haunting. Lorde winds up one song by collapsing on the floor and refers to her fans as her “friends”. Her audience is comprised of motionless smartphone brandishers. There’s a patch of extended banter that makes us wish they’d strike up the band, Logies speech wrapup styleez. And a drinking game for every time Lorde says “Melbourne” would have 32 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
THE WHITE ALBUM CONCERT Hamer Hall 15 Jul Well dressed baby boomers dominate the crowd gathering in Hamer Hall’s multi-level foyers. The White Album Concert brings The Beatles’ seminal double album back to life 44 years post-release thanks to the talents of Tim Rogers, Chris Cheney, Phil Jamieson and Josh Pyke. Cheney’s punk-rock credentials blast the set open with Back In The U.S.S.R. and Glass Onion while Jamieson charms wearing a big bow tie and singing the wistful Dear Prudence. All take part in the
LORDE @ FESTIVAL HALL. PIC: KANE HIBBERD
(obviously). The songs somehow succeed in being simultaneously propulsive and mesmeric. This is shoulder-popping music, but Lorde convulses to it. Wandering up Dudley Street after the show, a dude is overheard telling his approximately sevenyear-old plus one of Lorde: “The dancing wasn’t as bad as people make it out to be.” The teen singer is a great, ‘be whoever you wanna be’-type role model for tweens. And her sincere message (posted on Frontier Touring’s Facebook page) to fans the following day, ensuring that “every handmade bracelet, every letter and sharkshaped bookmark”, she receives as gifts are treasured, just makes us love her more. David Byrne should most certainly collaborate with the young singer. She’s Emily The Strange come to life. Bryget Chrisfield
solo making huge amounts of awesome noise. Later, Cheney almost misses the start of Savoy Truffle but redeems himself by chucking Cadbury Favourites into the crowd. Two drummers keep perfect time as they bash their kits in mirror image during this rhythmic track. Avant-garde shit gets real with Revolution 9 – a track so trippy and multi-layered that musical director Rex Goh steps up to conduct. Gorgeous lullaby Good Night, greatly improved by the merciful absence of Ringo Starr’s vocals, sees all four artists on stage together to bid us farewell. Rogers whispers, “Goodnight,” and then, “let’s go fuck shit up” – a suggestion that’s probably not often heard on the Hamer Hall stage. A Day In The Life, an imposter track from Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, lets the rock
LORDE @ FESTIVAL HALL. PIC: KANE HIBBERD
crazy Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, with Pyke giving Cheney a blokey, footy-style tap on the bum before walking off once the job is done. Rogers takes on the early run of wacky, acid-trip tracks dressed in a fetching tweed suit. The timeless While My Guitar Gently Weeps then shifts the tone to moving, allencompassing intensity. Cheney fills in admirably for Eric Clapton for the compelling lead guitar solo and receives a massive response from the crowd. Pyke successfully maintains total coolness while singing the twee Martha My Dear, but perhaps shows his true feelings when tossing away the tambourine as he walks off. He later recovers by nailing the fingerpicking acoustic beauty of Blackbird. Helter Skelter is an early highlight from the second side, with two wailing guitarists, double drum kits and Cheney’s ripping guitar
orchestra loose with its signature instrumental rise to the top of the scales while triumphant octaves crash below. Random punters are hauled up on stage to join the fun during Revolution 1, forcing Jamieson to defend himself against an enthusiastic older lady who tries to pinch his mic. The White Album Concert is definitely the best aural acid trip through the swinging ‘60s you can score. Annelise Ball
SOMETHING FOR KATE Forum Theatre 18 Jul Old heads share knowing nods in Forum Theatre’s queue; they’ve been rocking the sticky carpets of Melbourne for decades. And tonight they reconvene again
live reviews for a very special occasion, Something For Kate’s 20th birthday. Rather than a support act, tonight’s show begins with a short film covering the band’s journey so far. Directed by local lad Callum Preston, it’s filled with archival footage, bootleg videos of early gigs, interviews and a shocking history of drummer Clint Hyndman’s hairstyles over the years. As the film ends, Something For Kate take to the stage and immediately rip into Picard’s Lament, one of their earliest tracks. From there, the trio – plus an extra pair of hands provided by John Hedigan – take their audience on a trail through their back catalogue, progressing chronologically through a collection of songs not instantly recognisable to those without intimate
change their outfits, Dempsey returns for a keyboard version of Back To You and then performs All The Things That Aren’t Good About Scientology on solo acoustic, before the band hit top gear on Star-Crossed Citizens, Déjà Vu and a ripsnorting rendition of Electricity. Finishing off with Like Bankrobbers and Working Against Me, this second set includes a lot more of the ‘hits’ – think Monsters and Twenty Years – but their appreciative crowd thankfully refrain from ruining the moment by waving their phones in the air (too much). As predictable as it might be, the two-song encore of Captain (Million Miles An Hour) and Pinstripe has the audience screaming along at the top of their collective lungs right until the last chord.
SOMETHING FOR KATE @ FORUM THEATRE. PIC: ANDREW BRISCOE
knowledge of the band. This set is for the SFK tragics: the folks who spent long nights in the late ‘90s breathing in Paul Dempsey’s lyrics, swooning over Steph Ashworth or marvelling at the might of Hyndman’s drumming. Traversing from Roll Credit to Survival Expert via Beautiful Sharks as well as Jerry Stand Up plus more, the band prove once again that despite the tender nature of much of their recorded music, on stage they are a very different beast. A minor slip-up during Max Planck shows they’re only human, taking Dempsey “back to 1995 playing at The Punters Club”. After a brief intermission to let the crowd grab a drink (or find a better vantage point), and during which the band
charm as we head down into the basement bandroom for what is starting to feel like an illicit meeting with some fine Melbourne bands. Dark Fair, a duo comprised of Ramona Moore and Eleanor Dunn, are already loudly rocking out. Their sound is lean but fierce as they put a contemporary spin on classic rock sounds. Just a little jagged around the edges, these girls come at the audience with an abundance of infectious energy. A few punters were probably expecting the noticeable amount of ladies milling around the bandroom to hop on stage and give us some choral action. But The East Brunswick All Girls Choir are not choristers, it’s a band and arguably one of the better bands Melbourne has spawned in recent years. The quartet deal a kind of late
SOMETHING FOR KATE @ FORUM THEATRE. PIC: ANDREW BRISCOE
There were always going to be songs that didn’t get played tonight (Three Dimensions and You Only Hide for starters), but tonight’s three-hour epic show offers many reasons why Something For Kate have lasted 20 years, and why they’ve probably got a few more still to come. Dylan Stewart
JEN CLOHER, EAST BRUNSWICK ALL GIRLS CHOIR, DARK FAIR Shebeen Bandroom 19 Jul This venue’s roughed-up shanty town vibes work their
‘90s, post-grunge sound that comes tempered with blues and country influences. The outfit plays it tight, dealing extended versions of tunes off their most recent album, Seven Drummers. Frontman Marcus Hobbs delivers his poetic lyrics with a certain passion. The loud thump and grinding distortion of Dirty Bird provides a satisfying climax to a thoroughly rewarding set. Its smartphone photo time as Jen Cloher hits the stage to acknowledge her fans. Cloher and her band delight as they quickly give us Mount Beauty and Toothless Tiger. Tonight’s setlist is comprised mainly of tunes from last year’s In Blood Memory set. She celebrates the release of her new single Stone Age Brain and includes the B-side, which is a classy cover of The Loved Ones’ Sad Dark Eyes. In between songs, Cloher acknowledges that she has
not been touring much lately because her guitarist Courtney Barnett had the cheek to release an internationally successful album that has resulted in demand for her to tour the world. It’s a quietly hilarious moment that has everyone giggling. Name In Lights is a ferocious workout, which breaks down into a riff that recalls Crimson And Clover. Numbers – a rather sweet duet between Cloher and Barnett – softens the mood ahead of the heartbreak of Hold My Hand that closes the show. These days there are a lot of girls with guitars pedalling their songwriting wares, but what distinguishes Cloher is that distinctively Aussie-rock sound she achieves so effortlessly. Guido Farnell
SOMETHING FOR KATE @ FORUM THEATRE. PIC: ANDREW BRISCOE
MORE REVIEWS themusic.com.au/reviews/live
THE BEARDS @ 170 RUSSELL. PIC: LOU LOU NUTT
The Beards @ 170 Russell Marlon Williams & Melody Pool @ Fitzroy Town Hall Teeth & Tongue @ National Gallery of Victoria Organic Audio @ La Di Da
THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 33
arts reviews
VILE
Theatre La Mama Courthouse to 27 Jul It was always going to be difficult to tell a tale of this intensity in such a tight space. Didem Caia’s Vile is certainly a test for the performers and, to some extent, the audience. Its emotive, sexual and sometimes violent narrative calls upon all the usual motifs (family, betrayal, secrecy, coming-of-age) to weave its dark psychological web and as such veers between utterly compelling and occasionally unconvincing. Told in two distinct sections, 1999 and 2009, Vile tracks high school sweethearts Melanie (Madeleine Ryan) and James (Darcy Kent) from their suburban origins to their city adulthood, but more importantly from devastation to redemption. However, it does so in a well executed nonlinear fashion that seriously heightens our curiosity and keeps us watching, despite the odd lapse into soap.
MY LIFE IN THE NUDE Burlesque
Fortyfivedownstairs to 27 Jul Maude Davey lets us snatch one last glimpse of her body, the one that’s caused wonder for the last 29 years. And not just the outline, nor flirting slivers – this is not striptease; this is life in the nude. Melbourne-made Davey begins full-monty and remains that way, save for occasional forays into costume and drag. Emphatically selling out the original season of this, her supposedly final show, at La Mama last year, Davey’s return to fortyfivedownstairs as part of the ENCORE program the two venues are running in collaboration is a success and delight. She couldn’t not be described as exponentially self-effacing and selfhonouring in the same breath, an intelligent conceptualist, a ‘cunning linguist’ (as they
MY LIFE IN THE NUDE. PIC: PONCH HAWKES
THE MOTION OF LIGHT IN WATER Theatre
Theatre Works to 27 Jul The Motion Of Light In Water is at once a touching biography, a politically charged discussion on compassion and humanity and a science fiction epic. It fuses the true story of writer Samuel Delany’s struggle for acceptance as a young black science fiction writer in the ‘60s with a stage adaptation of one of his major works. Both stories were simultaneously and impeccably told with such skill that I was thoroughly engaged every single moment. Elbow Room has been creating work in Melbourne for a while, but this is the first opportunity I’ve had to see them. What a mistake to take this long. One of the strongest of Melbourne’s independent performance companies, the creative team
THE MOTION OF LIGHT IN WATER. PIC: LACHLAN WOODS
LIVE WITH IT (WE ALL HAVE HIV) Dance
Arts House, Meat Market to 27 Jul An “independent affiliated event of the 20th International AIDS Conference”, Live With It walks the blurred line between soapbox and performance. Moreover, it attempts the tricky balancing of the plaintive outpourings of its “real life” participants with a carefully thought through aesthetic. Ostensibly, this is more seminar than show. The participants are people directly affected by HIV, from surviving siblings to former activists and those whose brush with the virus is more physical. As each story unfolds we’re ushered into an intimate mosaic of lived experience. In this, the often lurid spectre of AIDS/HIV is understood in purely human terms.
LIVE WITH IT [WE ALL HAVE HIV]
Ryan and Darcy are a well matched pair, by turns funny, infuriating and endearing. However, it’s Amanda McKay as Melanie’s secretive, slowburning mother who steals the show performance-wise with a beautifully nuanced, understated portrayal. For director Elizabeth Millington the challenge was to keep the pot from boiling over. Things could easily have turned ‘purple’ because, although Vile is cleverly structured and neatly tied up, it’s not exactly subtle. That said, it does keep you interested, delivering its twists right until the end.
say) and a quite remarkable physical presence. Her own ‘butoh-inflected’ performances of the early ‘90s, which she satirises, show through in her transportive embodiments and gestures. The audience get willingly involved in body dissolves, storytelling and the supporting vocals of hit Australian anthems (“no way, get fucked, fuck off ”). Some brilliant one-liners like “Isn’t a mouth horrible up close, the way it looks like an anus or cunt?” and a deep, dark cameo from Mistress Of The Night, Agent Cleave round out an affecting piece of cabaret certainly ‘worthy of our regard’.
headed by writer/director Marcel Dorney is definitely one that will be on my “see no matter what” list from now on. Yes, because of this play. I’m not a particular fan of sci-fi but loved every moment of this genre piece. Such finesse in design, style and content creation was married with an absolutely flawless script. Add to this one of the best ensemble casts I’ve seen in a long time engaging with a gentle yet in-depth exploration of cultural and personal struggles (struggles that are just as problematic in 2014 Melbourne as they were in 1960s USA) and you have my top theatre pick of 2014 so far.
Rather than an assemblage of case studies, Live With It bears all the hallmarks of artistic consideration. There’s a noticeable restraint and a level of contemplative slowness that allows the audience time to absorb. Indeed, the stage/audience barrier is broken on numerous occasions, as this event is also about reaching out, connecting the ‘idea’ of HIV with the reality of life on an individual, family scale.
Paul Ransom
Simon Eales
James Daniel
Paul Ransom
34 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
Although it’s a principally male representation, it’s a world containing joy and survival, not mere scare, imbued as it with a subtle delicacy of touch – a timely and probably unique window into the ordinary world of HIV.
THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 35
36 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
the guide
LOWTIDE Answered by: Gabriel Lewis How did you get your start? Musically, I started the violin when I was about five. I was obsessed with a sound I was hearing in music and wanted to be able to create it too. I picked up guitar when I was about 15. Sum up your musical sound in four words. Textured, cascading, delicate, soaring. If you could support any band in the world – past or present – who would it be? Slowdive. Handy that they’ve just reformed! You’re being sent into space, no iPod, you can bring one album – what would it be? Probably Pooma’s Persuader. Greatest rock’n’roll moment of your career to date? Sharing the stage with A Place To Bury Strangers at Corner Hotel. Why should people come and see your band? Because if you like music, you’ll most likely appreciate what we’re doing. When and where for your next gig? Our debut album launch at The Tote on 25 Jul. Website link for more info? Facebook.com/LowtideMelb
Pic: Darren Sylvester
THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 37
eat/drink
SUPERFOOD OR SUPER MARKETING? Matthew Feltham investigates. Illustrations Brendon Wellwood.
QUINOA VS OATMEAL
COCONUT WATER VS H2O
Quinoa is a seed that thinks it’s a grain. Heralded for its high protein, it in fact only contains two grams more protein per cup than regular oats, and 25% more calories. Oats also contain nutrient beta gluten, which helps regulate your appetite.
Need a super hydrating post-workout drink? You could fork out $5 for a tiny bottle of coconut water, or you could just turn on the tap and save yourself the added sugar and calories. If you’re sick of plain old tap juice, try adding some cucumber, lemon slices or mint leaves to shake things up.
AÇAÍ BERRY VS FRESH BERRIES
KOMBUCHA TEA VS BLACK/GREEN/ OOLONG
The Açaí berry, native to tropical South American regions, is touted as having up to four times more antioxidants than non-berry fruits. While that may be true, so do most berries grown here in Australia. Meaning you can save a bit of dosh and time spent searching for a supplier, and opt for fresh, locally grown berries instead of frozen imported Açaí.
Kombucha tea is black tea fermented with kombucha (a yeast), bacteria, and sugar. While it’s claimed to be a miracle detox and immunity booster, there is no scientific evidence to corroborate this. In contrast, there are a plethora of peer-reviewed studies indicating the health benefits of black, green and oolong teas.
SUPER SHOT? WHEATGRASS VS SPINACH If eating your vegetables is just too mainstream for you, then you may have tried doing wheatgrass shots. Despite the hype – and cost – wheatgrass is virtually identical to spinach in terms of nutritional value, except that because it’s juiced you’re actually missing out on all the fibre.
38 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
238 VICTORIA ST, NTH MELBOURNE 9329 2888
74-76 JOHNSTON ST, FITZROY 9417 4155
THEOLDBAR.COM.AU
THEPUBLICBAR.COM.AU Wednesday 23rd July
Wednesday 23rd July
DAVID QUIRK, OLIVER CLARK, TOMMY DASSALO, MATTHEW KLEIN, 8PM $5 NELLIE WHITE & DAVID TULK Thursday 24th July
GREG STEPS, FIGUREHEAD DORKUS MALORKUS
PUBLIC BAR COMEDY PICTURE PERFECT HYPERDRONES, GODS, THE ANNIE CROONERS
8:30PM $8
DARK ARTS IV:
VACUUM
8:30PM $7
Thursday 24th July
NIGHT WALKS
THE MAN WHO WASNʼT THERE, CABIN INN
8:30PM $8
Friday 25th July
RIVER OF SNAKES - LAUNCH SUN GOD REPLICA, CLAWS & ORGANS, THE GENERAL
Friday 25th July
8:30PM $10
Saturday 26th July
DEAD BOOMERS, SHORT FUTURES, MOOPIE, ILL WINDS, 8:30PM $10 BAKERS DELIGHT
FOXTROT
THE HARD ACHES, FOLEY!, GEORGIA MAQ
8:30PM $10
Sat Arvo:
Saturday 26th July
JESS LOCKE
FIERCE MILD
YOU & YOUR FRIENDS, THE ASTROS, ANTIQUO
GREG STEPS BAND
ISAAC DE HEER 8:30PM $8
Sunday 27th July
COOPERS & SAILOR JERRY PRESENT
SUNDAY SCHOOL:
ILL WINDS, SAFEWAY CAFE II, (FABULOUS DIAMONDS/REPAIRS), 4PM FREE X IN O, GLASS BRICKS
MOUNTAIN GOAT BEERSOAKED SUNDAYS:
WAYWARD BREED JUNK HORSES
I DO LIKE MONDAYS:
THE PRIMARY TANGRAMS, WET LIPS, CICADA(HORSE) $3 TINNIES / $15 JUGS CROTCHETY KNITWITS
Tuesday 29th July
VHS CLUB:
FACT HUNT TRIVIA 7:30PM FREE
8:30PM $8
Monday 28th July
Monday 28th July
KITCHEN OPEN • CHEAP BOOZE
3PM FREE
Sunday 27th July
GHOSTS OF THE CIVIL DEAD
8PM $6 6PM FREE 6PM FREE
Tuesday 29th July
CHEAP KRAKEN RUM NIGHT:
KITCHEN OPEN DINNER: 7 NIGHTS ʻSUNNY DISPOSITIONʼ LUNCH: FRI, SAT, SUN
GOLD CLASS, ACTS REVELATIONS, MUTTON
8PM $6
THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 39
the guide vic.live@themusic.com.au
ALBUM FOCUS
SINGLE FOCUS evolution – from purveyors of rickety, eccentric folk-noir to charismatic, party band de jour. What was inspiring you during the song’s writing and recording? We just wanted to capture our live sound... It’s a particularly joyous affair, so we were inspired by that feeling.
JUSTIN BERNASCONI Album title? Winter Pick Where did the title of your new album come from? Winter Pick is the title track of my album. The track is an instrumental acoustic guitar tune about winter which I wrote it in my dank Melbourne kitchen, dreaming of bright, snowy hedgerows and trees. How many releases do you have now? This is my debut solo album! But I’ve released three albums with my main band, The Stillsons. Was anything in particular inspiring you during the making? I was listening to John Fahey, Leo Kottke and some
classical guitarists. One guitar could sound like an orchestra! Their music transported me into a different world.
MANNY FOX
What’s your favourite song on it? I think I’m most proud of the title track Winter Pick. Very dark, intense piece of music.
What’s the song about? The song is addressed to a fella named Harry, an enigmatic character who is trying to make life work.
Will you do anything differently next time? No. I loved recording to analogue tape and would like to do that again. I’d like to think the next album will be as rewarding and fun!
How long did it take to write/ record? It took one day to record, though there was a particularly nerve-wracking moment when the saxophone fell off a bench, landing on the double bass... A friend nearby lent us his sax, crisis averted.
When and where is your launch/next gig? Thornbury Theatre, 3 Aug! Website link for more info? justinbernasconi.com
Answered by: Tristan Kelly Single title? Harry
Is this track from a forthcoming release/existing release? Harry is the A-side marking our musical
TASTE TEST
We’ll like this song if we like... Fun, party tunes with horns and backup vocals. Some bands we’re especially inspired by: The Budos Bands and Egypt 80. Do you play it differently live? Joe Hammond (legend) at Pots And Pans Studio and his masterfully layered production captures the infectious dancefloor energy that Manny Fox live shows are famous for. When and where is your launch/next gig? The matinee launch show is at Northcote Social Club, 27 Jul, with The Twoks and Sweets. Website link for more info? mannyfox.com.au
EP FOCUS
Songs The Lord Taught Us – The Cramps, that’s my idea of sexy. My favourite party album is… Ben: The Chronic – Dr Dre. Weed party!
RIVER OF SNAKES Answered by: Ben Wrecker and Raul Sanchez The best record I stole from my folks’ collection was… Ben: Full Moon Fever – Tom Petty. Stands up to this day. A personal fave. The f irst record I bought with my own money was… Raul: The Collection – The Sex Pistols. It had an indelible influence on me. The record I put on when I’m really miserable is… Ben: Songs For The French – Oxbow. One of the most haunting Oxbow releases. Incredible band. The record I put on when I bring someone home is… Raul: 40 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
The best album to comedown to is… Raul: Hungry Ghosts, I don’t come down that often but this album just settles me right down. The most surprising record in my collection is… Ben: Music From The Welsh Mountains 10”. One of my old man’s old ones. The last thing I bought/ downloaded was… Raul: Todo Roto – Wau Y Los Arrrghs!!! The best garage band in the world.
DAN & AMY Answered by: Dan Arnott EP title? Sometimes Life How many releases do you have now? We’ve released two singles before this EP, but this is our first collection of songs on one release.
When and where are your next gigs? We launch our debut album, Black Noise, at The Old Bar on 25 Jul.
Was anything in particular inspiring you during the making? We recorded it in a beautiful bluestone church in Footscray. The $2.80 banh mi was inspiring. We’re interested in Australia, its people and history, and ‘70s folk harmonies. Paul Kelly is always there as well.
Website link for more info? riverofsnakes.tumblr.com
What’s your favourite song on it? We’ve worked hard
The record I’m loving right now is… Ben: Any Ol Way - Tweak Bird. Killer, slower-paced, less heavy record than previous ones.
on them all, but we love Pretend for its complexity and Sometimes Life for its energy. We’ll like this EP if we like... Fleet Foxes, The Paper Kites, First Aid Kit, Paul Kelly, Simon & Garfunkel, etc. When and where is your launch/next gig? Northcote Social Club on 6 Aug with support from Jim Lawrie. Website link for more info? danandamyband.com.au
THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 41
the guide vic.live@themusic.com.au
FRONTLASH
LIVE THIS WEEK
BOWLED OVER
Brownie bowl sundaes. Eating ice-cream scooped into a bowl-shaped brownie and therefore having no dish to wash up after? Genius.
OLFACTORY REVELATION Whaddayamean the claim that smelling farts prevents cancer was unsubstantiated? Oh well, it was fun to think about while it lasted.
SAVAGE SUPPORT We love when fave OS legends acknowledge our (almost) local talent. Savages posted about their love for A Dead Forest Index (NZ) on their Facey!
PIC BY JESSIE WARREN
SPUN GOLD
NATURE’S BOUNTY
ENLIGHTENED
A fiercely passionate troubadour, Mary Webb (pictured) weaves blues, jazz and classical elements into her predominantly folk stylings. Experience her insightful, moving songwriting at The Drunken Poet on 23 Jul with Slim Dime (duo).
Award-winning electro-folk artist Rose Wintergreen (pictured) celebrates the release of her second single and clip from her forthcoming record Aurora. She launches This City at The Toff In Town on 23 Jul, joined by Sweets and AVIVAA.
Pop-up gallery Lights On | Lights Off showcases eight Melburnian artists, who’ll each adopt a Water Tank Way retail space. There they’ll deliver an energetic concoction of sculpture, painting, illustration, photography and music.
BLOODY MONDAY
GIDDY UP
FACES OF ROCK
The Old Bar is changing the way you start your week. I Do Like Mondays brings the rockin’ tunes of The Primary, Tangrams, Wet Lips and Cicada to the stage on 28 Jul, with drink specials that could make Garfield purr.
In their first hometown show since returning from touring abroad, Whitehorse are headed to The Tote on 24 Jul in support of their new LP Raised Into Darkness, with guests Pissbolt, Dead, and Headless Death.
Reverence Hotel presents a journey through the subgenres of rock on 25 Jul. Funky rockers Midnight Shift headline the evening, joined by poprock trio Since We Kissed, alt-rockers Chambers and indie-rock outfit Leez Lido.
MOON LANDING
GRINNERS
LEAPS AND BOUNDS
New project Sean McMahon & The Moonmen (pictured) draw on the countrified westcoast rock of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, as well as elements of British blues. The trio bring tons of grit, twang and swagger to Retreat Hotel on 24 Jul.
Before playing the 2014 Americana Festival, The Age Music Victoria Award winner Dan Waters is teaming up with Alt Country Album Of The Year winners Lachlan Bryan & The Wildes (pictured) on 24 Jul at Musicman Megastore.
Brisbane hardcore champs Bound For Ruin (pictured) are embarking on a national tour to celebrate the release of the final single From Victim To Villain, off their most recent album Oblivion. Bringing the noise to Bar 303 on 26 Jul.
HAVE A SQUIZ
GENDER BENDER
PHILOSOPHER’S TUNE
Harnessing the best of garagepunk and ‘60s-esque surf party music, The Once Overs are heading back to their old drinking ground at Retreat Hotel on 25 Jul for a rare but rowdy gig.
Thick As Thieves continues to bring amazing international acts to Revolver Upstairs with renowned unique UK house duo HIM_SELF_HER showcasing their melodic chemistry on 25 Jul.
Loop has put together another incredible line-up of beat alchemists for this edition of Unstable Lab on 26 Jul. Featuring tunes by Positive Thought, Tekxture, Smilk and many more, with trippy visual arts by VJ Lightsoulja.
SWEET BROS FROM ACROSS THE DITCH
BACKLASH LET’S GET PHYSICAL
Non-deodorant wearers participating in exercise classes. Please knock yourselves out with workout videos in the privacy of your own home. Kthnxby.
WOMEN OF THE CORN Dear lady wearing cornflake box on head in lieu of umbrella when caught in sudden downpour: we hope you didn’t waste those cornflakes!
THROUGH THE ROOF! The asshats who were caught on film destroying part of The Old Bar’s roof.
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the guide vic.live@themusic.com.au
LIVE THIS WEEK
DIG IN
TAKING FLIGHT
LUNAR LANDING
Despite having to dress as Freddo Frog to pay for studio time, The Sinking Teeth (pictured) recorded EP Salt & Stitches. Launching new single You Can’t Build A Bike Out Of Muffins on 25 Jul at The Barwon Club and 26 Jul at The Workers Club.
In support of the release of his debut solo album Wounded Bird, former Blackeyed Susans frontman Rob Snarski (pictured) is showcasing his tunes inspired by rejected and betrayed love at Spotted Mallard on 26 Jul.
Thanks to the generosity of her of fanbase, indie-folk artist Melody Moon (pictured) is celebrating the launch of her Pozible campaign-funded debut album Down To The Sea at Wesley Anne on 26 Jul.
PREMATURE HO-HO-HOS!
NEW MEDIA
GROUP EFFORT
It might not be snowing outside, but it’s cold enough to celebrate Christmas in July at The B.East on 26 Jul. with eggnog and honeyed bourbon & bacon drink specials, Christmas dinner served all day, and The Grandstands and Letdown’s on stage,
Rolling into Vinyl Bar for a massive serving of original indie-rock, on 26 Jul The Taste Of Indie Collective presents a smashing line-up: indie-rockers Vallée, far-out instrumental trio Chinese Handcuffs and Kill TV.
Aimed at giving kids in the community access to performing arts training, Artz Collective Annual Fundraiser takes place at Thornbury Theatre on 27 Jul, an exciting evening of cabaretstyle entertainment supporting students of the Artz Collective.
WHAT A CRACKER!
THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US
HOLY OF HOLIES
Drawing influences from the ‘80s and ‘90s thrash, hardcore, grind, and punk scenes, the highly acclaimed King Parrot (pictured) will share Ding Dong Lounge’s stage with some very special guests on 25 Jul.
To celebrate launch of debut album A Mad Distance, Mietta (pictured) is playing her biggest show yet. The accompanying band, backing vocalists, and ten-piece chamber orchestra are sure to bring the Spotted Mallard, to life on 24 Jul.
Indo-poppers Empat Lima and post-punk popsters Holy Lotus team up for the final night of the Gertrude Street Projection Festival with a free show at The Catfish on 27 Jul from 5pm in the front bar. And it’ll cost ya nix.
PIC BY ZO GAY
SPIRIT GUIDE
FRONTAL LOBE
SUBSEQUENT SECRETS
This weekend signals the second week of South Melbourne haunt, Star Hotel’s live music program. Local groovers Soul Safari will give punters a taste of their unique brand of modern soul on 25 Jul, while New Traveller will be hitting the stage on 26 Jul.
Punk-rockers Liberation Front are bringing their high energy, politically fuelled show down the east coast before hitting the studio. Catch them at 303 (Northcote) on 25 Jul and Reverence Hotel on 26 Jul along with gritty rockers Sparrows.
High energy funk-rock trio The Arcane Following peddle energetic drumbeats, driving bass lines, sweet guitar tones and intricate vocal melodies. Laundry on 24 Jul. They’re joined by locals Wire Bird, Alex Latham & Mariah Jayne and Tash Sultana.
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THIS WEEK’S RELEASES… ANBERLIN lowborn UNFD THE RAVEONETTES Pe’ahi Beat Dies/The Orchard TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS Hypnotic Eye Reprise/Warner MERE WOMEN Your Town Poison City Records THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 43
opinion HOWZAT! LOCAL MUSIC BY JEFF JENKINS ELECTRIC DREAMS I still believe in rock’n’roll. Don’t believe the hype that rock is dead. Just listen to Electric Mary’s new EP, which they have cheekily titled The Last Great Hope. “The title has two meanings,” singer Rusty Brown explains. “We got a review for our last album Electric Mary 3, and it concluded, ‘Are these guys the last great hope?’ We laughed and said, ‘That should be the name of our next record.’ Then I saw the artwork and the title made sense – at least to me.” The cover shows a scantily clad Mary Magdalene holding a Flying V guitar. “Religion and rock’n’roll are both seen as a dying breed. To me, the artwork is Mary handing us the guitar and saying, ‘Here, take this, I’m outta here, it’s up to you.’” Rock is in good hands. Opening track Sweet Mary C could be on a Faces greatest hits and Rusty’s vocal is as good as Rod Stewart’s in his prime.
44 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
Welcome To The Otherside’s energy will leave you exhausted. Nicotine is, appropriately, nasty and addictive. Already Gone introduces another weapon to Electric Mary’s arsenal, showcasing the sterling Hammond playing of guest Lachy Doley. And the final cut is a killer new version of So Cruel, a track originally on the band’s 2011 EP, Long Time Coming. Not surprisingly, Electric Mary are exciting old rock fans. SEN’s Mark Fine has called them “the best rock outfit in Australia”. Both Finey and celebrity lawyer/radio personality Stephen J Peak were spotted at Electric Mary’s recent show at The Espy (speaking of outfits, it was hard to miss Peaky, who was wearing white pants and an orange shirt). But can Electric Mary win over the youngsters? “Maybe they don’t know they love it,” Rusty smiles. “But it’s in their DNA and, when they taste it, they’ll say, ‘That’s interesting, I like that.’” Rusty, however, might
ELECTRIC MARY
have to spend less time listening to Deep Purple and adapt to the modern music world. Recently, a fan was chatting to him about Spotify. “I’ve heard of that,” Rusty said. “What does that do?” When the fan informed him that Spotify was a streaming service, Rusty replied, “Cool, are Electric Mary songs on there?” He had no idea that Let Me Out had been played more than 234,000 times. Electric Mary launch The Last Great Hope at Corner Hotel, 25 Jul. The band is then heading to Europe for more than 20 shows in the UK, Spain and France, including Hard Rock Hell VIII in Wales. “Playing live is my thing,” Rusty says. “It’s the instant buzz – if we do a good show,
I’ll have a big smile for days.” See Electric Mary and you realise they aren’t reinventing any wheels. But they are keeping the rock rolling. The dream is alive. Hail Mary. HIP HIP The Fauves played their first gig 26 years ago today (23 Jul), at the Mt Eliza Football Club. Singer Andrew Cox recalls: “There was no rider, we were underpaid and no one got laid. It was a microcosm of an entire career.” HOT LINE “How many times have I called out your name?” – Electric Mary, Already Gone.
RES THE DJS THE GIGS THE PRODUCERS TH REMIXES THE ARTISTS THE FESTIVALS THE GR LBUMS THEMUSIC.COM.AU THE TOURS THE F THE INDUSTRY THE LOCALS THE BLOGS THE S THE GIGS THE PRODUCERS THE CLUBS THE TISTS THE FESTIVALS THE GROUPIES THE ALB THE FANS THE BANDS THE INDUSTRY THE LO ANDS THE INDUSTRY THE LOCALS THE BLOG THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 45
opinion OG FLAVAS
ADAMANTIUM WOLF
WAKE THE DEAD
URBAN AND R&B NEWS WITH CYCLONE
METAL, HARDCORE AND PUNK WITH LOCHLAN WATT
PUNK AND HARDCORE WITH SARAH PETCHELL
Sia Furler is a hit whisperer… The kooky soul-pop diva from Adelaide has journeyed far. She originally fronted ‘90s acid jazz band Crisp, then aired successively low-key solo albums – 2001’s cult Healing Is Difficult entailing the signature Drink To Get Drunk. She also worked extensively with UK chill-out combo Zero 7. It was exciting when Christina Aguilera sought Furler’s input for her (admittedly ill-fated) electro foray, Bionic. Furler has since become ubiquitous as both a writer and a guest singer, gracing David Guetta’s Titanium and Flo Rida’s Wild Ones – records that helped to popularise EDM with urban listeners. Furler sang on Eminem’s Beautiful Pain and co-penned Rihanna’s Diamonds and Beyoncé’s Pretty Hurts. Now Furler has unveiled her biggest LP yet – the ballad-heavy 1000 Forms Of Fear. Though it couldn’t be more commercial, the LP masquerades as a vanity project. Increasingly ambivalent about ‘fame’, Furler has rejected traditional publicity, concealing her face (hence the paper bag). The sleeve simply shows a glossy wig replica of her blonde bob. Furler out-sings her clients, and the lyrics are darkly personal, but musically it’s indistinct. Furler has reconnected with Grammywinning producer Greg Kurstin (Lily Allen) – capable but boring. The most interesting, and anomalous, number is the ‘80s reggae-rock Hostage. Diplo assists with Elastic Heart, a song that, first appearing on a Hunger Games soundtrack, recalls Loose-era Nelly Furtado. But, while Chandelier comes close, there’s nothing as stellar as Diamonds. Is Furler too generous with her own tunes? @therealcyclone
SIA
46 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
VOYAGER
You may have read a column of mine last year that examined the lack of live heavy music at Brisbane-held industry conference BIGSOUND. The 2013 event contained no metal bands at all, with a token amount of prog-rock and punk in the form of Breaking Orbit and Clowns. Perhaps my feelings are mainly due to my position in the industry, where I am often surrounded by those who marginalise heavy music, possibly for fear of losing listeners. Yet given the government funding the event receives, and the ever-rising popularity, ARIA charting and financial successes of heavy music, I found the lack of encouragement a little insulting, especially given that it is an event that insists on presenting a heavy music panel as part of its conferences. Eighty acts made up the first live announcement this year, and again, save for Melbourne 420 punks The Bennies, there wasn’t much within the metal/punk spectrum. However, the second announcement just came through last week, and reading it brought a smile to my face. I am not claiming responsibility for this turn of events – my opinions were shared by many others involved in the business of heavy music – and I am well aware that, rather than inviting them, BIGSOUND generally requires bands to apply to play. By publicly airing my perplexed frustration with the situation last year, as opposed to playing it safe and quiet with the industry-fellating path most band and label managers seem to take, I probably shot a lot of my own potential opportunities in the foot also. Nonetheless, the situation has improved remarkably.
Here’s the list: Melbourne grindcore extremists A Million Dead Birds Laughing, Perth prog metallers Voyager, Brisbane metalcore band Bound For Ruin, Adelaide hardcore group Life Pilot, Sunny Coast industrial act DARKC3LL, Toowoomba metalcore group My Friend The Betrayer, Brisbane alt. metallers Like Thieves, Sydney post-rockers Meniscus, Brisbane stoner band Shellfin and Melbourne heaviesToehider. There may well be one or two more emerging heavy acts in there whose names I failed to recognise, but as you can see, this is a pretty diverse list. The fact that there is a grindcore band playing BIGSOUND alone is a little mind blowing. I’m not exactly sure what opportunities the bigger business types that the event attracts will want to throw at A Million Dead Birds Laughing, but at least they’ll be visible to that side of the industry. Whether or not it works in their favour, at least it’s a start, and the list overall represents much more than just a token inclusion or two. Whether or not these bands will all be lumped together in their own showcase or spread out throughout the festival is yet to be seen. In addition to the usual suspects such as The Zoo, The Rev, Ric’s, Alhambra Lounge, Coniston Lane, Oh Hello!, Black Bear Lodge and The Press Club, performances will also be scheduled at two newly opened Brisbane venues – the metal/punk/hardcore-catering and Destroy All Lines-owned venue The Brightside, as well as punk-rock haven The Underdog. Those interested in finding out more about the event can head to the event website.
Last week the punk world said goodbye to one of its godfathers, Tommy Ramone, who passed away aged 65 following complications from treatment for bile duct cancer. Tommy was the last of the original members of The Ramones and drummed on their first three albums. He was originally supposed to be the band’s manager, and following recording Ramones, Leave Home and Rocket To Russia, he quit as their drummer but continued as a producer and songwriter at various points in their career. Despite how much fun we make at times of the commercialisation of The Ramones and their ubiquitous logo, much of what we know and love about punk would not exist without this band. They paved the way for the American wave of punk and have influenced multiple generations of bands since. This influence was cemented by their induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2002. So it’s with sadness that the music world says farewell to Tommy ‘Thomas Erdelyi’ Ramone. With his passing it seems like a golden age has ended. With The Ramones the path was established and, at least as far as punk is concerned, I doubt whether that will ever happen again. But it isn’t just the punk world which The Ramones influenced. Tributes have flowed in from Motorhead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Deborah Harry, Slash and Garbage, as well as the usual punk suspects. And if you haven’t already, it’s not too late to get into The Ramones. Go grab any of those three records and go Blitzkrieg Bop. wakethedead@themusic.com.au
THE RAMONES
opinion TEENAGE HATE
TRAILER TRASH
BUSINESS MUSIC
ROCKIN’ AND ROLLIN’ OUT OF CONTROLLIN’ WITH TIM SCOTT
DIVES INTO YOUR SCREENS AND IDIOT BOXES WITH GUY DAVIS
WHEN YOUR CLUB NEEDS A BOSS WITH PAZ
GIORGIO MURDERER
Having released records on cassette, CD-R and digital formats, local punky shoegaze outfit Halt Ever’s latest Body Limits is out on 10” vinyl. New tracks such as Growing Pains and Caught see them melding the dark and tense indie rock of Tampa, Florida’s Merchandise with the louder rock of local acts such as White Walls and Gold Class. Halt Ever launch the record this Saturday at The Curtin. The hilariously named Buck Biloxi & The Fucks have been making waves in US punk circles for a few years now. Based down in New Orleans, Buck & The Fucks belt out stripped-back yob-punk that has garnered a cult following through releases on the Total Punk, Holotrash and Pelican Pow Wow labels. Buck has a new project – the synthheavy and just as awesomely named Giorgio Murderer – who have just dropped the Primitive World EP on Goner. It’s sloppy, it’s loose, it’s insane and most of all it’s fun. Two of the best punk labels in the US, Kartoga Works and Video Disease, have just co-released the debut 7” for young Austin, Texas degenerates Glue. After a well received demo that saw them busting out fast and angry USHC that also drew on some UK influence, the fourpiece shred four songs in quick succession on the new record. While their influences may be clearly written on their sleeves/ torn t-shirts (Negative Approach, Saccharine Trust, Agnostic Front) they execute it all well and along with younger bands, like Institute and Blotter, prove that Austin has one of the best punk scenes in the US at the moment.
Despite evidence to the contrary, aficionados of B-movies can actually be a pretty discerning bunch. Speaking for myself, I know that while I’m a sucker for bloodsuckers and other such creatures of the night, I’m not completely satisfied by any old piece of monster-mash junk that makes its way onto my hard drive by mysterious means. I want trash, sure, but I want trash with a little panache, something that has a personality. And I recently found a trove of it from a most unexpected source. I’d first started reading Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s trilogy of Strain novels – The Strain, The Fall and The Night Eternal – out of excitement, but around the midpoint of the second book that excitement had transformed into a sense of obligation. I didn’t hate the duo’s era-spanning vampiric epic, but somewhere along the way it lost the breathless momentum it had established out of the gate. And when it came to the genre, I found myself preferring the Joe Pitt casebooks by Charlie Huston (seriously, these are tight, and well worth a read) or Justin Cronin’s The Passage and its follow-up, The Twelve – Huston’s stories had a feverish, gritty and pulpy energy, while Cronin’s work had sweep and elegance. In a perfect world, the Strain novels would have hit the sweet spot between these two styles. But something was missing. It wasn’t grimy enough to be disreputable fun, nor was it crafted well enough to get snooty about. So when a pay-TV adaptation was announced, well, I can’t say I was turning cartwheels at the news, especially when it seemed we’d probably have another Walking Dead situation on our hands.
(Now there’s a show that has issues with finding the right tone. Not to mention being just plain fuckin’ dull more often than not, flesheating zombies notwithstanding.) So you can imagine my delight when the first episode of The Strain, premiering July 30 on pay-TV station Fox8, turned out to have the ideal combination of elements and approaches. Is it a good TV show in the way that, say, True Detective or Mad Men is? Not really, no – some of the dialogue is a little on-the-nose and some of the performances a little too obvious or stilted for that. But is it an effective TV show? Does it meet the needs of anyone looking for heightened thrills and chills delivered oh so slightly tongue-in-cheek? Hell yes it does. (And, yes, I know the market for that kind of thing may be small, but please us and we’re yours forever.) What do you need to know about The Strain? Oh, just that evil Euro-vampires – and we’re talking grotesque hell-beasts here, not suave douches in evening wear – are finally making their play for world domination, with the help of craven or callow human familiars, and only a handful of heroes stand in their way. They’re led by bad-arse biologist Dr Ephraim Goodweather, and Midnight In Paris star Corey Stoll, decked out in a truly heroic hairpiece, admirably plays him as something of an alpha-male arsehole – believe me, it’s good. The whole thing worked for me, to be honest, and it’s not because The Strain tried to elevate the genre or anything. It just knew what it wanted to accomplish, and it paid proper respect to its B-grade roots.
THE STRAIN
TKAY MAIDZA
BOTTOM BILLING Congratulations to our local duo Swick and Lewis CanCut. Their butt-grind anthem Dat A Freak, which started as a collaboration with Diplo and TT (the artist), has now been endorsed by one of the most famous derrières: J-Lo aka Jenny From The Block aka Jennifer Lopez. Lopez was given a bunch of tracks by Diplo and apparently her kids turnt up when they heard the, “Big Booty!” catchcry of the original production. The Oz duo are a great force, with a string of club-style releases on the best labels around the world. The most recent track Arm Up is a neighbourly collaboration with SA rapasaurus Tkay Maidza and was quickly picked up by Upper Cuts. This week Swick previewed his USB Club Trax EP on club label Main Course. It’s four tracks of Pioneer-slaying madness that each DJ will fire up their rekordbox cue points to jam out. Table tennis grabs are merged among PBJ-style kicks and horn stabs. Track title themes such as Full Court and Super Gold Tennis makes this EP lean towards the replacement for Nick Kyrgios’ warm-ups instead of the dreaded Drake love ballads. I think some have slept on the ID labels release Internet Dreams by Swick and Douster. Amusing it was (Yoda voice) is the DL for the package, done via the Internet Dreamsdedicated website, with RJ-D2 droid noises and sc-fi backgrounds. Get ready to go ‘90s as your options can only be obtained with DOSstyle commands (iPad kids are scratching their heads). THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 47
the guide vic.gigguide@themusic.com.au
THE MUSIC PRESENTS Sky Ferreira: 23 Jul The Prince
Emperors: 2 Aug Grace Darling Hotel
Tune-Yards: 24 Jul Howler
Kingswood: 29 Aug Howler; 17 Oct Karova Lounge Ballarat
Grouplove: 25 Jul 170 Russell
Skaters: 26 Jul Corner Hotel
Ball Park Music: 4 Oct, Forum Theatre; 8 Karova Lounge Ballarat; 11 Wool Exchange Geelong
Foster The People: 28 Jul Palais Theatre
Gorguts: 14 Nov Northcote Social Club
Jungle: 29 Jul Corner Hotel
Thy Art Is Murder: 13 Dec The Hi-Fi; 14 Community Centre Ringwood
Metronomy, Circa Waves: 25 Jul Forum Theatre
Sleepmakeswaves: 1 Aug Corner Hotel
GIG OF THE WEEK BURIED IN VERONA: 26 JUL EVELYN HOTEL
Ferdydurke 2nd Birthday: 2 Aug Ferdydurke
WED 23
Kris Wanders & Company + Tim Pledger’s Sandwich Jesus + Hunter Lee: 303, Northcote Cathouse Canary + Plastic Spaceman + Georgia Spain + A Winter Flock of Minors: Bar Open, Fitzroy
Open Mic Night + Various Artists: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick Wine, Whiskey, Women feat. Slim Dime + Mary Webb: The Drunken Poet, Melbourne Collage + Various Artists: The Espy (Front Bar), St Kilda
Open Mic Night + Various Artists: Elsternwick Hotel, Elwood
Beaten Bodies: The Bridge Hotel, Castlemaine
Duoux + Colourwaves + Lanks + Stax Osset: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy
Lunaire + Bayou + Chinese Handcuffs + Mudhaven: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick
Lily Allen + Allday: Festival Hall (All Ages) , West Melbourne Third Earth + Honey Badgers + King Puppy & The Carnivore: Grace Darling Hotel (Basement), Collingwood
Jeff Duff + John Montesante Quintet: The Commune, East Melbourne
Ausmuteants + The Stevens + Orb: Boney, Melbourne
Pretty City + Empra + The Kiids + Tequila Mockingbyrd: The Espy (Front Bar), St Kilda
Melbourne Folk Club feat. The Yearlings + Tracy McNeil + Dan Parsons: Bella Union, Carlton South
Lucy Wilson: The Pinnacle, Fitzroy North
Tune-Yards + DD Dumbo: Howler, Brunswick
Flyying Colours: The Golden Vine, Bendigo
Sky Ferreira + Eves: The Prince, St Kilda
MVP - Weekly Hip Hop Party + Resident DJs: Boney, Melbourne
Julian Wilson + Tom Lee + Mark Lockett: La Niche Cafe, Fitzroy
Public Bar Comedy + Various Artists: The Public Bar, North Melbourne
The Man Who Wasn’t There + Cabin Inn + Night Walks: The Old Bar, Fitzroy
Dizzy’s Big Band + Peter Hearne: Dizzy’s Jazz Club, Richmond Mrs Smith’s Trivia: Edinburgh Castle Hotel, Brunswick Melbourne Ukulele Kollective: Edinburgh Castle Hotel (6pm), Brunswick Shady Lane feat. Dear Plastic + Peta & The Wolves + Super Magic Hats: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy Swooping Duck + Anti-Kirkis: Hugs & Kisses, Melbourne 4Tress + Low Rent: Laundry Bar, Fitzroy Melbourne Art Song Collective: Melbourne Recital Centre, Southbank Trivia: Morwell Hotel, Morwell Open Mic Night + Various Artists: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford Open Mic Night + Various Artists: Musicland (MainStage), Fawkner Amarillo + Jemma & The Clifton Hillbillies: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick The Acoustic Sessions + Various Artists: Revolver Upstairs, Prahran Revolver Wednesdays + Dan San: Revolver Upstairs, Prahran
Trivia: The Sporting Club, Brunswick Rose Wintergreen + Sweets + Avivaa: The Toff In Town, Melbourne Space Junk + Muscle Beach + Lefty: The Tote, Collingwood Young Liberals + Meter Men + Gene Hell: The Tote (Upstairs), Collingwood Dorsal Fins + Department + Grolette DJs: The Workers Club, Fitzroy
Joshua Seymour: Labour In Vain, Fitzroy The Arcane Following + The Wire + Alex Latham + Mariah Jayne + Tash Sultana: Laundry Bar, Fitzroy Acacia Quartet: Melbourne Recital Centre (Salon), Southbank Local Yarra Rhythm + Various Artists: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford Kiss The Vyper: Musicland (MainStage), Fawkner The Acid + Guests: Northcote Social Club, Northcote
The Pass Outs + Warbirds: Yah Yah’s, Fitzroy
Jen de Ness : Paris Cat Jazz Club, Melbourne
Laura Jean: Yarra Hotel, Abbotsford
Patrick Wilson & The Bare River Queens + Sean McMahon & The Moon Men + Claire Birchall & The Phantom Hitchhickers: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick
THU 24
The Randy Anderson + Crookshank: 303, Northcote Eliza Band + Chook Race + Snowy Nasdaq: Bar Open, Fitzroy The Cactus Channel + Marginal FM: Boney, Melbourne Jello with Silentjay + Versaj: Boney (Downstairs), Melbourne Soul In The Basement + Kingston Crown: Cherry Bar, Melbourne Next + Trainwreck + Eyes Of The Sleepers + Evolution Of Self + I Exalt: Colonial Hotel, Melbourne
The Midnight Sol + Tristen Bird + Low Rent + Vera Nights: Reverence Hotel, Footscray Plugged In Thursdays with Doktor + The Sand Dollars + Sunborne: Revolver Upstairs, Prahran
Big Smoke: The Pinnacle, Fitzroy North Van Walker: The Post Office Hotel, Coburg Kelis + Jones Jnr: The Prince, St Kilda Picture Perfect + Hyperdrones + Gods + The Annie Crooners: The Public Bar, North Melbourne Nath Valvo’s Comedy Gang Bang + Fiona O’Loughlin + Khaled Khalafalla + Kate McLennan + Michael Williams: The Toff In Town, Melbourne Whitehorse + Pissbolt + Dead + Headless Death: The Tote, Collingwood Tom Lyngcoln + Simon J Karis + Band of Eunuch: The Tote (Upstairs), Collingwood The Letdowns + The Indian Skies + Death In Brunswick + Surfing In Hawaii: The Workers Club, Fitzroy Anna’s Go-Go Academy: Victoria Hotel (6.30pm), Brunswick Chocolate Starfish: Wellers, Kangaroo Ground
Rolling Stones “Goats Head Soup” 40th Anniversary Show with Nick Barker + Shane O’Mara + Ashley Davies + more: Caravan Music Club, Oakleigh Karaoke: Chelsea Heights Hotel, Chelsea Heights Spencer P Jones: Cherry Bar (arvo), Melbourne My Echo + Special Guests + DJ Lucy Arundel: Cherry Bar, Melbourne Trivia: Commercial Hotel, Werribee Electric Mary + Massive + My Left Boot: Corner Hotel, Richmond Bayside Over 28s + Stand And Deliver: Daveys Hotel, Frankston King Parrot + Desecrator + Horse Hunter + Cryptic Abyss: Ding Dong Lounge, Melbourne Kerberos + Diana Clark: Dizzy’s Jazz Club, Richmond Lagerphones: Edinburgh Castle Hotel (6pm), Brunswick DJ Ferg: Edinburgh Castle Hotel (8pm), Brunswick Friday Wine Down + Various Artists: Elsternwick Hotel, Elwood Buried In Verona + Antagonist A.D + Stories + Left For Wolves + Removalist: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy
3181 Thursdays + Hans DC + North Pollard + DJ Will Cummings + Jesse Young + Various DJs: Revolver Upstairs, Prahran
The Guilts + Beth & The Brave + Zoe Fox: Wesley Anne (Band Room), Northcote Broni: Wesley Anne (Front Bar / 6pm), Northcote
Twisted Pistol + Fifth Friend + Bad Uncle + Greenthief + Zutroy: First Floor, Fitzroy
Ideal World: Some Velvet Morning, Clifton Hill
Kingswood + Palace Of The King: Yah Yah’s, Fitzroy
Grand Wazoo + Jeff Duff: Flying Saucer Club, Elsternwick
Jacinta Le + Aaron Jessop + Rosie Hilder: Some Velvet Morning, Clifton Hill
Karaoke: Commercial Hotel, Werribee
Mietta: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick
Trivia: Cornish Arms, Brunswick
Glen Musto + Lars Wallin: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick
Marek Podstawek + Friends: Dizzy’s Jazz Club, Richmond
Music for Pleasure - Schubert + Sally Clarke: St Johns Southgate, Southbank
FRI 25
Grouplove + Mikhael Paskalev: 170 Russell, Melbourne
1000S OF GIGS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS. FOR MORE HEAD TO THEMUSIC.COM.AU 48 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
The Sinking Teeth: Barwon Club, South Geelong The Yearlings: Basement Discs (In-Store / 12.45pm), Melbourne
Ray Danes + Tobias Hengeveld: Grace Darling Hotel (Band Room), Collingwood
Two Headed Dog + Stone Revival + The Ugly Kings: Cherry Bar, Melbourne
La Cumbria feat. De La Calle + Funkalleros: Bar Open, Fitzroy
Gallie: The Drunken Poet, Melbourne
Lights Of Berlin: The Espy, St Kilda
Trivia: Bayswater Hotel, Bayswater
The Tearaways + Sparrows + Liberation Front + Rise Of The Rat + All We Need: 303, Northcote
Metronomy + Circa Waves: Forum Theatre, Melbourne Munro Melano + Baychimo + Matt Kelly: Grace Darling Hotel (Band Room), Collingwood
THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 49
the guide vic.gigguide@themusic.com.au The Shifters + Exek + Schlager Music: Grace Darling Hotel (Basement), Collingwood Mahler 1 + MSO: Hamer Hall, Melbourne The Glammarays: Hares & Hyenas, Fitzroy Tune-Yards + DD Dumbo: Howler, Brunswick Mac’s Over 28s Fridays + DJ Rohan: Mac’s Hotel, Melton Dale Winters Duo: Melbourne Public, South Wharf Chris Stout + Catriona McKay: Melbourne Recital Centre (Salon), Southbank Mockingbird + The Kornilov Affair: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford Einsteins Toyboys: Musicland (MainStage), Fawkner
The Controllers + Room With A View + We Disappear: The Middle Ferntree Gully Hotel, Ferntree Gully
Foxtrot + The Hard Aches + Foley! + DJ Dan Lewis: The Old Bar, Fitzroy
The Harlots: The Post Office Hotel, Coburg
High School Disco with Tim Campbell: The Palms, Southbank
Phantogram + Mas Ysa: The Prince, St Kilda Vacuum + Dead Boomers + Short Future + Moopie + Ill Winds + The Bakers Digest: The Public Bar, North Melbourne
Lowtide + White Walls + Summer Flake + Bloodhounds On My Trail: The Tote, Collingwood
The Bluebottles: Reverence Hotel, Footscray Midnight Shifter + Leez Lido + Chambers + Since We Kissed: Reverence Hotel (Band Room), Footscray Him_Self_Her: Revolver Upstairs, Prahran Revolver Fridays & Suck Music + Mike Callander + Lewie Day + Katie Drover + Various DJs: Revolver Upstairs (Back Bar), Prahran Flyying Colours: Shebeen Bandroom, Melbourne
Palm Springs + The Backstabbers + Cool Sounds: The Tote (Upstairs), Collingwood Magic Mountain Band + War Pigs + Goodbye Enemy Airship: The Workers Club, Fitzroy Ella’s High + Bright Light Empire + Seattle Fix: Victoria Hotel, Brunswick Patrick Roberts: Wellers, Kangaroo Ground The Wild Comforts: Wesley Anne (Front Bar / 6pm), Northcote Amber Isles + Sibling + Tom Lee Richards: Wesley Anne (Band Room), Northcote Cass Eager & The Velvet Ropes + Claude Hay & The Gentle Enemies + more: Winter Blues Festival, Echuca
Canary + Tobias Selkirk: Some Velvet Morning, Clifton Hill
Redcoats + Child + Fuck The Fitzroy Doom Scene: Yah Yah’s (8pm), Fitzroy
Cold Chisel Tribute Show: Somerville Hotel, Somerville
Sly Faulkner: Yah Yah’s (6pm), Fitzroy
Rooster + Mick Trembath: The Bridge Hotel, Castlemaine Diana’s Bow + Old Etiquettes + The Divine Fluxus + Drew Harrison: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick Traditional Irish Music Session with Dan Bourke & Friends: The Drunken Poet (6pm), Melbourne David Cosma: The Drunken Poet (8.30pm), Melbourne Date Night At The Museum + Guests: The Espy, St Kilda
SAT 26
MILK + Madrigals: 303 (4pm), Northcote
Bound For Ruin + Bloodwolves + Hope In Hell: 303, Northcote Sagamore: Bar Open, Fitzroy King Parrot + The Kremlings + Athena’s Wake + Toxicon + Solis: Barwon Club, South Geelong
Thrashed: The Espy, St Kilda
The Green Day Show + American Idiot: Burvale Hotel, Nunawading
Twenty Two Hundred + Smokin Mirrors: The Espy, St Kilda
Grand Wazoo + Jeff Duff: Caravan Music Club, Oakleigh
Young Maverick + Chase City + Lewes + Busy Kingdom: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood
HQ Over 28s + DJ Chris G: Chelsea Heights Hotel, Chelsea Heights
Pelican + Special Guests: The Hi-Fi, Melbourne
Black Leather Blues + The Pass Outs + The Keiths: Cherry Bar, Melbourne
Various Artists: The Irish Times, Melbourne Abbie Cardwell & The Chicano Rockers + Tijuana Peanut + DJ Jumpin’ Josh: The Luwow, Fitzroy The Yearlings: The Main Bar, Bakery Hill
Jess Locke + Isaac De Heer: The Old Bar (Arvo), Fitzroy
Goatpiss Gasoline: The Pinnacle, Fitzroy North
The Moonee Valley Drifters: Pascoe Vale RSL, Pascoe Vale
Ohms + The Once Overs + DJ Shaky Memorial: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick
Mietta: The Main Bar, Bakery Hill
The McClymonts + Adam Eckersley Band: The Palms, Southbank
The Orbweavers: National Gallery of Victoria, Southbank
Past To Present: Precinct Hotel, Richmond
The Jukebox Rackets + DJ Barbera Blaze + The Gogo Goddesses: The Luwow, Fitzroy
River of Snakes + Sun God Replica + Claws & Organs + The General + DJ Ali E: The Old Bar, Fitzroy
DJ Dr Ludwig: The Sporting Club, Brunswick
Buried In Verona + Antagonist A.D + Stories + Exposures + I Exalt + Deadpoets: Phoenix Youth Centre (All Ages), Footscray
Mensrea Debut + Repairs + Asylum Sisters: The Liberty Social, Melbourne
Skaters + Darlia: Corner Hotel, Richmond Various Artists: Cornish Arms, Brunswick Who Said What: Cramers Hotel, Preston
COLOUR BOMB: 26 JUL SHEBEEN BANDROOM
A Tribute To ElvisL Rapid City ‘77 with Tony Franks + Moreland City Band: Dallas Brooks Centre, East Melbourne Musikunst - Trans-Position + Various Artists: Edinburgh Castle Hotel, Brunswick Buried In Verona + Antagonist A.D + Stories + Left For Wolves + Removalist: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy Superflu: Fake Chow, Geelong
Liberation Front + Sparrows + The Workinghorse Irons + Strathmore + Take Your Own: Reverence Hotel (Front Bar), Footscray The Late Show + NGUZUNGUZU: Revolver Upstairs, Prahran Bang feat. + The Kujo Kings + Cambridge + Spook The Banshee: Royal Melbourne Hotel, Melbourne
Sneaky Sound System: GH Hotel, St Kilda
Colour Bomb + Covers + Hoy: Shebeen Bandroom, Melbourne
Tam Vantage + Grand Prismatic + Holy Lotus: Grace Darling Hotel (Band Room), Collingwood
Dirt Land: Some Velvet Morning, Clifton Hill
The Yearlings: Harvester Moon Cafe, Bellarine Chrome Sparks + Rat & Co: Howler, Brunswick Mick Daley & The Corporate Raiders: Labour In Vain, Fitzroy Pressure Drop: Laundry Bar, Fitzroy Therapy Saturdays + Havana Brown: Level 3 at Crown, Southbank Ruby Dee & The Snakehandlers + Guests: Lucky 13 Garage, Moorabbin
Rob Snarski with The Wounded Birds + JP Shilo + Ladies Of The Shotgun Wedding: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick Close Encounters of the Thrash Kind 2 + Shitripper + Black Jesus + Counter Attack + Party Vibez + Atomic Death Squad + Terror Strike + Ironhawk + Wet Pensioner + Bombs Over Brunswick: The Bendigo, Collingwood Lachlan Bryan & The Wildes + Dan Waters + The Weeping Willows: The Bridge Hotel, Castlemaine
Papa Chango: The Post Office Hotel, Coburg Kim Salmon & The Surrealists + Bitter Sweet Kicks: The Prince, St Kilda Fierce Mild + You and Your Friends + The Astros + Antiqua: The Public Bar, North Melbourne DJ Fergus: The Sporting Club, Brunswick Dave Graney + The Glammarays: The Toff In Town, Melbourne The House deFrost with + Andee Frost: The Toff In Town, Melbourne The Rocketeers + The Girl Fridas’ + Wiley Red Fox: The Tote (Upstairs), Collingwood Arbrynth + Okera + Claret Ash + Nous: The Tote (Band Room), Collingwood Premium Fantasy + The Shifters: The Tote (Front Bar / 4pm), Collingwood The Sinking Teeth + Have/Hold + A Gazillion Angry Mexicans: The Workers Club, Fitzroy Cisco Ceasar: Union Hotel, Brunswick Raised By Eagles: Union Hotel, Brunswick Old Timey Music Jam with Craig Westward: Victoria Hotel (5pm), Brunswick The Marlenes + Andre & The Giant Mantra + Biddlewood: Victoria Hotel (9pm), Brunswick
Tommy’s + Scat + DJ Craig Williams: Matthew Flinders Hotel, Chadstone
Catgut Mary + The Australian Kingswood Factory + The Jacks + Muscle Mary: The Brunswick Hotel (9pm), Brunswick
Jason Singh + DJ Scott Thompson: Melbourne Public, South Wharf
Klara Zubonja + Alison Thorn: The Brunswick Hotel (5pm), Brunswick
American Songbook Festival: The Songs of Peggy Lee feat. Janet Seidel Trio: Melbourne Recital Centre (3pm), Southbank
The McClymonts + Adam Eckersley Band: The Capital, Bendigo Performing Arts Centre, Bendigo
Blue Grassy Knoll: Melbourne Recital Centre (Elisabeth Murdoch Hall), Southbank
Halt Ever + Bad Family + The World At A Glance + Worm Crown: The Curtin, Carlton
John Fox + Two By Two + Quincy the Rabbit: Mr Boogie Man Bar, Abbotsford
Claude Hay & The Gentle Enemies: Winter Blues Festival, Echuca
Lagoon Hill Zydeco: The Drunken Poet, Melbourne
Cass Eager & The Velvet Ropes + Nik’s Sunago: Winter Blues Festival (3pm), Echuca
Yolke + Big Yawn: Northcote Social Club, Northcote Mr Palmer Band: Precinct Hotel, Richmond Harry Coulson’s Raindogs: Rainbow Hotel, Fitzroy Chris Pickering + Tobias Hengeveld + Plymouth Reverends + DJ Jeff Leppard: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick Corrosion of Conformity + Caged Grave + Wolf Pack: Reverence Hotel, Footscray
Phil Para Band + The Hellhounds: The Espy (Front Bar), St Kilda Krakatau + Superstar + Free Choice Duo: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood Decade of Viper Recordings feat. Matrix & Futurebound + Brookes Brothers + The Prototypes + Rockwell + MC Felon + Ekko & Sidetrack + Fendi: The Hi-Fi, Melbourne Various Artists: The Irish Times, Melbourne
1000S OF GIGS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS. FOR MORE HEAD TO THEMUSIC.COM.AU 50 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
The Harmaniax: The Pinnacle, Fitzroy North
Taste Of Indie Collective feat. Kill TV + Chinese Handcuffs + Vallee: Vinyl Lounge, Moonee Ponds Melody Moon + Guests: Wesley Anne (Band Room), Northcote Greens Dairy Angel Ensemble: Wesley Anne (Front Bar / 6pm), Northcote
King Parrot + Involuntary Convulsion + Horse Hunter + Solis: Wrangler Studios (All Ages / Afternoon), West Footscray Pierce Brothers + Jack Stirling + Millington: Yah Yah’s (2pm), Fitzroy Pierce Brothers + Jack Stirling + Millington: Yah Yah’s (8pm), Fitzroy Yarraville Laughs feat. Jimeoin + Bob Franklin: Yarraville Club, Yarraville
THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 51
the guide vic.gigguide@themusic.com.au
SUN 27
MON 28
African Drumming + Various Artists: 303, Northcote
30/70 + The Do Ya Thangs + Pataphysics: 303 (3.30pm), Northcote
Cherry Jam: Cherry Bar, Melbourne
Benny & The Dukes + Guests: Bar of Bengal (Kindred Studios) (Bar of Bengal / 4pm), Yarraville
Future Islands + Guests: Corner Hotel, Richmond
Rasta Unity: Bar Open, Fitzroy
Open Mic Night + Various Artists: Cornish Arms, Brunswick
Flyying Colours: Beav’s Bar, Geelong Julian Wilson + Philip Rex + Mark Lockett: Bennetts Lane, Melbourne
OHMS: 25 JUL, RETREAT HOTEL
Cam & The Ambrose: Big Mouth (6.30pm), St Kilda The Clip Clop Club: Caravan Music Club (3pm), Oakleigh Shannon Bourne: Cherry Bar, Melbourne Picture Perfect + The Hunted Crows + Monster Jeans: Cherry Bar, Melbourne Trivia: Cornish Arms, Brunswick Various Artists: Cornish Arms, Brunswick Pork Chop Party: Eastern Station Hotel, Ballarat DJ Crispi: Edinburgh Castle Hotel (5pm), Brunswick Grim Fawkner + Sunday Chairs + Hailey Calvert + Mon Shelford: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy Yakini + The Gaza Stripper: Grace Darling Hotel (Band Room), Collingwood Min Wage Wage Show + Old Mate + Body Horror + School Damage: Grace Darling Hotel (Basement), Collingwood King Parrot + Eyes Wide Open + The Arbiter + Bury Me In Autumn: Karova Lounge, Ballarat Cherrywood: Labour In Vain, Fitzroy Tim Rizzoli: Melbourne Public (2pm), South Wharf Maria Christina Cleary: Melbourne Recital Centre (Salon), Southbank
The JVG Guitar Method + Lisa Miller + Shane O’Mara: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick Lincoln Le Fevre + Ben David + Tom Lanyon: Reverence Hotel, Footscray Revolver Sundays + Boogs + Spacey Space + T-Rek + Various DJs: Revolver Upstairs, Prahran Passionate Pianists with David Soo: Ruby’s Music Room (2pm), Melbourne Passionate Pianists with Bob Sedergreen + Allan Zavod: Ruby’s Music Room (6pm), Melbourne Clive J Mann + Slim Dime: Some Velvet Morning, Clifton Hill The Band Who Knew Too Much: Spotted Mallard (4.30pm), Brunswick Itchy Scabs: The Bridge Hotel (4pm), Castlemaine Wounded Pig + Diploid + Crossed + Liquor Snatch + Cynical Fuckwit + Rust in Piss: The Brunswick Hotel (7pm), Brunswick The Rolling Perpetual Groove Show + Mirando + more: The Curtin, Carlton Mick Hart: The Drunken Poet (4pm), Melbourne
Sunday School with Ill Winds + Safeway Cafe + X in O + Glass Bricks: The Public Bar (4pm), North Melbourne Alyson Murray + Lady Oscar + Maeflower: The Toff In Town, Melbourne Christmas in July feat Scott & Charlene’s Wedding + Johnny & The Johnny Johnnies + Steve Miller Band + Early Woman + Moon Ritual: The Tote (2pm), Collingwood Luke Legs & The Midnight Specials + Phoebe & Schina: The Workers Club, Fitzroy ARTZ CABARET: Artz Collective Annual Fundraiser + Various Artists: Thornbury Theatre, Thornbury Brett Marshall: Union Hotel (Arvo), Brunswick The Glorious North: Union Hotel, Brunswick Brendan Forward: Victoria Hotel (5pm), Brunswick Letters To You: Wesley Anne (Band Room / 3pm), Northcote Hugh McGinlay & The Recessive Genes: Wesley Anne (Front Bar / 6pm), Northcote Simon Phillips: Wesley Anne (Band Room / 8pm), Northcote The McClymonts + Adam Eckersley Band: West Gippsland Arts Centre, Warragul
Never Say Farewell + Melbourne Chamber Orchestra: Melbourne Recital Centre, Southbank
Ryan Oliver: The Drunken Poet (6.30pm), Melbourne
Noir + The Night Sky + 12fu: Mr Boogie Man Bar (4pm), Abbotsford
Dale Ryder Band + Stand And Deliver: The Espy (Front Bar), St Kilda
Claude Hay & The Gentle Enemies: Winter Blues Festival (American Courtyard / 4pm), Echuca
Jam At Musicland Sundays + Various Artists: Musicland (MainStage), Fawkner
Stevie & The Sleepers + Sunday Chairs: The Gasometer Hotel (4.30pm), Collingwood
Cass Eager & The Velvet Ropes : Winter Blues Festival (11am), Echuca
Manny Fox + The Twoks + Sweets: Northcote Social Club (1.30pm), Northcote
The 1975 + Special Guests: The Hi-Fi (All Ages / 1pm), Melbourne
Breakaway + Cambridge + Our Past Days + Danger Earthquake: Wrangler Studios, West Footscray
Easy Now Allstars: Penny Black, Brunswick
Wayward Breed + Junk Horses: The Old Bar, Fitzroy
Sam Vandenberg: Precinct Hotel, Richmond
The Shuffle Club: The Pinnacle, Fitzroy North
Ha Ha’s @ Yah Yah’s feat. Adam Rozenbachs + Khaled Khalafalla + Tom Seigert + Kate McLennan: Yah Yah’s, Fitzroy
Charlie Lane + Sara Jane: Rainbow Hotel (4pm), Fitzroy
4pm + The Glammarays: The Post Office Hotel, Coburg
Skyscraper Stan & The Commission Flats : Yarra Hotel (5pm), Abbotsford
Sacré C?ur Senior School Music Concert + Various Artists: Melbourne Recital Centre (Elisabeth Murdoch Hall), Southbank Read To Me Tuesday + Dave Evans + Steph Francis: Open Studio, Northcote
Trivia: Elsternwick Hotel (Sports Bar), Elwood
Les Thomas + Rich Davies & His Acoustic Band: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick
Yum Yum Cult + My Problem Child + Orlando Furious + Children: Evelyn Hotel, Fitzroy
Never Cheer Before You Know Who’s Winning: Revolver Upstairs, Prahran
The Head & The Heart + Mosman Alder: Howler, Brunswick
Fresh Industry Showcases: Revolver Upstairs, Prahran
Kapsberger & the Mysterious Man + Continuo Collective: Melbourne Recital Centre, Southbank
Comedy Lockdown + Various Artists: Royal Melbourne Hotel, Melbourne Piano Karaoke: Some Velvet Morning, Clifton Hill
Foster The People + Gang Of Youths: Palais Theatre, St Kilda
Trivia: Spotted Mallard, Brunswick
Shelley Segal + Guests: Paynesville Wine Bar, Paynesville
Trivia: The B.East, Brunswick East
Paul WIlliamson’s Hammond Combo: Rainbow Hotel, Fitzroy
Discovery Night feat. The Pitys + The Tetsuians + Holyoake: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick
Dear Monday + Christian Andrew + Vladdy + Catherine Sietkiewics + A Man Called Son: Retreat Hotel, Brunswick The Daryl McKenzie Jazz Orchestra + Belinda Parsons + Andrew Murray: The Apartment, Melbourne Passionate Tongues Poetry + Michael Reynolds: The Brunswick Hotel, Brunswick Monday’s Covered + Various Artists: The Espy (Front Bar), St Kilda Rock & Pop Culture Trivia with Jess McGuire & George H: The Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood The 1975 + Special Guests: The Hi-Fi, Melbourne Blood Sharks: The Old Bar, Fitzroy DJ Street Spot: The Workers Club, Fitzroy
TUE 29
Guitarscapes + Bare Toes Into Soil: 303, Northcote The Underhanded + Albrus: Cherry Bar, Melbourne Jungle + Guests: Corner Hotel, Richmond Julian Driscoll Quintet: Dizzy’s Jazz Club, Richmond Celtic/Folk Session + Various Artists: Lomond Hotel, Brunswick East Morning Melodies + Col Perkins: Manningham Hotel & Club, Bulleen
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52 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
The Armed Man + The Consort of Melbourne: Melbourne Recital Centre (Salon), Southbank
Trivia: The Drunken Poet, Melbourne Brightside Live Music Showcase + Various Artists: The Espy (Front Bar), St Kilda Rowena Wise: The Gasometer Hotel (Front Bar), Collingwood Elisa Bryant ‘Face Scanners’ Exhibition + Whitewash + Mutton + Gold Class: The Old Bar, Fitzroy Wild Beasts + Jesse Davidson + Fractures: The Prince, St Kilda Trivia: The Public Bar, North Melbourne Nick Mulvey + Special Guests: The Toff In Town, Melbourne Ruby Tuesday feat. Habits + Fortunes + Urban Problems: The Workers Club, Fitzroy Sinful Pleasures (Burlesque): Wesley Anne (Band Room) , Northcote BYO Vinyl Night + Various DJs: Yarra Lounge, Yarraville
THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014 • 53
54 • THE MUSIC • 23RD JULY 2014
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