live@drummedia.com.au each song, thus cleverly showcasing that he is no one trick pony. He left the crowd wanting more, which is pretty good going for an acoustic opening act.
forthcoming album and a highly questionable, yet wellreceived, cover of Limp Bizkit’s Break Stuff completed their set.
By contrast, Evil J & Saint Cecilia’s act seemed kind of two dimensional. The drum machine employed for the first couple of songs sounded rather amateurish, although this may have been intentional. The guitar based duo, however, had such amazing harmonies one could easily assume the girls were sisters, but if not sisters by blood, musically these two are certainly joined at the hip. Their songs ranged from psychedelic folk to country pop, but they sounded best while playing the country ballad that emphasised their vocals and harmonies. The crowd seemed to enjoy this one too.
The tour’s concept was showcasing a range of styles and from that perspective, on paper American pop/punkers The Wonder Years were a welcome addition. Reality was a little less kind – while energetic, their sickly sweet melodies were too inoffensive to resonate and the crowd noticeably thinned for them. Frontman Dan Campbell’s cringe-inducing banter didn’t help matters. A late addition, much to the delight of the numerous pit ninjas, fellow Americans Miss May I were also in the breakdown-ridden metalcore mould. Enthusiastic and clearly enjoying themselves, if also largely generic, they utilised the tried-and-true (although somewhat hackneyed by now) “wall of death” and elicited by far the most movement, as well as singalongs, thus far.
The Mad Bastards Trio is a collaboration of the home grown talents of two Australian acts who come from different sides of the country both geographically and culturally. Alex Lloyd is a boy from the city and the Pigram Brothers are Broome’s most well known indigenous musical exports. They have come together to produce a soundtrack for Australian film Mad Bastards and are touring on the back of this. The show was largely a sit down affair and featured Lloyd on acoustic guitar and the Pigram brothers on mandolin and guitar. It was a beautiful set with some standout songs, particularly Slow Train and Nothing Really Matters, but it was Lloyd’s stunning rendition of Hallelujah that drew rapturous applause from the audience. Francesca Palazzolo
PARKWAY DRIVE
MISS MAY I THE WONDER YEARS CONFESSION ELITE ELEMENT
WIN Entertainment Centre 22/05/11
Even with guitarist Luke Kilpatrick resigned to a wheelchair due to an alleged recent ankle injury, Parkway Drive still brought their trademark energy and exuberance. Opening with a crunching Boneyards and incorporating many of the stronger offerings from gold-selling latest disc Deep Blue (Sleepwalker, Karma, Deliver Me), the quintet was typically crowd-pleasing. It’s Hard To Speak Without A Tongue was accompanied by band members riding skateboards, frontman Winston McCall packing a grin wider than the Grand Canyon and an unidentified individual dressed in a shark suit crowdsurfing with the aid of a bodyboard. Romance Is Dead’s refrain of, “So cry me a fucking river, bitch!” remains as immature as ever, but was still afforded one of the loudest and most violent reactions of anything in their arsenal. The crowd didn’t require much prompting to do the band’s bidding, but to their credit they worked hard to earn the rapturous response and the encore of Unrest and Carrion ended proceedings in a wave of countless stage invaders and giant Parkway Drive beach balls. Another triumph for Byron Bay’s finest. Brendan Crabb
Opening the reshuffled Mix N’ Mash tour line-up, South Coast crew Elite Element played by far their biggest show yet and a sizeable crowd was on hand for their Underoath-esque metalcore. Both band and crowd enjoyed the warm-up, especially those with a penchant for moshing. The pit intensity kicked up several notches for Melbourne’s Confession. While their brand of hardcore was rather tedious, bodies flailed about everywhere and outspoken frontman Michael Crafter led his charges through their paces. Material from their
DAVE GRANEY & THE LURID YELLOW MIST
Notes 19/05/11
It’s a brave man who’ll open his show with a song that references various combos and songs from his own history. To then remove his jacket to reveal the souvenir ringer t-shirt from his unexpected King Of Pop victory back in the mid-‘90s only reinforced the thought. But ladies and gents, this is Dave Graney, so you kind of understand. And We Don’t Belong To Anybody, as that starting song said. This go-round of his latest aggregation, Dave Graney & The Lurid Yellow Mist, has him revisiting his own 20-year back catalogue. Thus, it was all guns blazing from the off. Rock N Roll Is Where I Hide, Feelin’ Kinda Sporty, Night Of The Wolverine – the latter so popular that one of the diners down front kept yelling for it all night. “Er, we’ve already played that one,” the man informed her. A few times. It’s also a band that, as Graney so succinctly puts it, ‘cooks’. Among them, the mostly unflappable
THE BAMBOOS
THE PSYDE PROJECTS PAPER PLANE PROJECT
to Sydney. Bands don’t mark these milestones as often as they should, so it was a great chance for newcomers to check out why The Bamboos are so highly rated and for the fans to celebrate a band still at the peak of their powers. Paper Plane Project opened with an impressive set that slinkily bounced its way through hip hop, Latin, electro and soul styles. They sounded futuristic and funky in a relaxed way, even when they were digging back into sounds that were popularised years earlier. At times they threatened to settle too comfortably into cafe beats, but managed to keep the sound tight enough and the grooves supple enough to deal out a very cool set. The Psyde Projects were another kettle of fish. They ditched the understated cool angle and rocked a solid set of party tunes that kept bringing to mind those magic years in the ‘80s where hip hop sounded fresh and uncomplicated. Mr Moonshine was solid on all manner of instruments while MCs ILResponce and D’Fro spat rapid fire rhymes that ranged from the disposable comic lines to some world class lyrical dexterity. The Bamboos then took the evening to another level that combined supreme musicianship, eminently danceable rhythms and a semi-detached cool that could have come across as aloof and cocky, but instead was humbly affable. For two hours the band segued seamlessly between tracks as if they were DJing their own songs. The instrumental numbers they opened with set them up as a young Melbournian take on James Brown’s The Famous Flames, before singer Kylie Auldist joined them and showed why she is so highly regarded with her infectious stage presence and a voice ranging from sweet serenade to bluesy holler. Being their birthday, they dug into all parts of their discography including covers of Kings Of Leon’s King Of The Rodeo and the funk classic Tighten Up. It isn’t often you see a band play with such precision and skill for a sustained period and though their set felt 20 minutes too long, they still had the dancefloor moving right to the end. The Bamboos showed they don’t intend easing up on the funk anytime soon. Chris Familton
Manning Bar 20/05/11
JOHN GRANT
Melbourne’s The Bamboos have been laying down the funk for a decade now and to celebrate they had a hometown birthday blow-out before bringing the party
Clare Moore. The king’s consort for 30 years, but it’s sometime overlooked that she’s actually a hell of a good drummer. He’s lucky to have her. We also were regaled with a reading from Graney’s new book, 1001 Australian Nights (“also available at the table by the door…”). We learned that – among other things – Sydney is “the gold tooth of the Pacific” and an all-fruit diet is “good for your internal economy”. This is a volume with all the answers. An interval was taken. The second half was more of the hits and near misses – Birds ‘N’ Goats, The Sheriff Of Hell. There was even a wardrobe change, with Graney channelling Lou Reed’s leather-panted gay biker look of the early ‘70s. Homage? Piss take? Don’t care. Occasional Elvis karate moves. Whoops and hollers with added asides: “I’m buying!” and, more puzzlingly, “What did I step in!?” And the final glories were a howling I’m Gonna Release Your Soul, before bassist Stu Thomas took the lead for run at Prince’s Sign O’ The Times that bubbled with real style. The end – You’re Just Too Hip Baby. If you didn’t know already. Ross Clelland
DAISY M TULLEY The Vanguard 20/05/11
The evening’s support act, Daisy M Tulley, is a lovely presence in search of a point of difference. It was bedroom folk and unless she ups the ante that’s where it will stay. The voice has an attractive tone but it stays medium, level, predictable – as do the tunes and as does the instrumental articulation. It’s like looking at a rocket on a launch pad – when do we take off? John Grant is a hirsute Sinatra for modern times. Hearing his gorgeous, languorous voice is like having syrup poured on your soul. His performance was essentially an intimate showcase for his 2010 album Queen Of Denmark. It’s not often that musical shows are so specifically album-centred. In time, these songs may evolve into other entities, at least in their live rendition, so it was a real treat to hear this complementary collection rendered collectively through a singular vision. This is a vision that is more than a little David Lynchian. As superficially (and sometimes intrinsically) romantic as the music sounds, it often seethes with discontent. This is discontent and disgust centred on John Grant’s self as much as anyone else. As much as self-pity is wallowed in, however, there is also a wry tongue stuck firmly in the cheek. Grant is the first to recognise the gallows humour in his inclination to go down the drama queen path. Piano and synthesiser were the primary sonic foils to The Voice, with Chris Pemberton and Grant swapping instruments at will. The lunar, guttural screeches and other leftfield effects of the synthesiser cut through the mood and added further dynamics to the songs’ spiralling beauty and power.
DAVE GRANEY & THE LURID YELLOW MIST @ NOTES. PIC: JOSH GROOM
singleFOCUS
The gravitas and authority inherent in the songs and Grant’s singing is really quite incredible. The voice is more consuming live than on the album. And even though the album was recorded using Midlake as ostensibly a ‘backing band’, the simplicity of the live show delivered, if anything, greater impact. Certainly, the self-deprecating humour came through loud and clear. All together, this made the music more human and deeply affecting than ever. So personal. So intimate. So believable. The melodic hooks seemed sharper and the songs’ blood, bone and gristle delivered greater insight into the pain that caused them and the resilience that allowed this pain to be faced and dealt with. Craig N Pearce
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CITY LIGHTS FADE What’s the title of your new EP? The title is Strikes Back, which in part is a reference to our love of movies, and also it feels like it’s a rebirth of this band since our last release back in 2009.
How many releases do you have now? This is currently our second independent release. Both produced by Chris Maguire.
How long did it take to write/record? The first song that was tracked way back in February 2010 was Doctor Doctor. The amount of time we all spent perfecting each song before locking it off as done was long and tedious. Just when you think a song is done either another melody is thought of, or another guitar part/drum part etc. An example of this is a song called Chasing – we spent the better part of six weeks on preproduction alone for this one song, then ten minutes before we were about to track vocals we changed the melody for the chorus, which also had to be re-written. We are notorious for doing massive overhauls on songs in the studio.
Was anything in particular inspiring you during the making? One thing that is inspirational that really had an effect on the overall outcome of this CD was made up of four factors. In no order they were the other guys in the band, our producer Chris Maguire, bringing out something original and not a recycled sound that compares you to other bands in our genre and just life in general.
What’s your favourite song on it? Turn Up The Stereo, mainly because we have a good friend of ours, Brett Islaub (The Mission In Motion), doing some guest vocals on it during the bridge.
Will you do anything differently next time? A lot of people will say time frame between releases, but there were certain factors involved that were out of our control that made up the reasons for taking a year to write and record this EP, but in saying that if you rush something there is always the “oh I wish I could have done something differently in this part” when you finish recording. With this there are none of those moments because everything we wanted to do on the record we did.
Will you be launching it? Friday – Oxford Art Factory
For more info see: facebook.com/citylightsfade twitter.com/citylightsfade myspace.com/citylightsfade
FLY IN Falcon down to Falcona Fridays this week for a hot mess of a lineup: Joyride, Hansom, Hobo, Starjumps and F.R.I.E.N.D DJ will all be taking the stage at Kit & Kaboodle from 8pm.
HERE COMES THE PARADE Jazz comes to Camelot Lounge on Sunday with The Cope Street Parade, bringing a swag of tunes and influences to the venue.
LESS THAN STRENGTH Newcastle Leagues will be holding an all ages concert this Friday, where all proceeds will head towards Less Than Strength, a non-profit organisation that helps to raise awareness about suicide and depression. With over eight bands including Torpedo Vegas, The Cavalcade and The Stellar Affect playing from 6pm, it’ll be a great night to come out and support.
NO CATS JUST FIDDLES The Crooked Fiddle Band is flitting up to Katoomba RSL this Saturday for an 8pm show this week. The selfconfessed “chainsaw folk vigilantes” will be supported by Steve & Aislinn Bevis. THE DRUM MEDIA 24 MAY 2011 • 69 •