26.08.15 Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Issue
100
Brisbane / Free / Incorporating
Brisbane Festival 2015
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MUSIC
EAT
Cactus Channel
Australian Buffalo Wing Festival
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inside
MUSIC
COMEDY
Noosa Jazz Festival
Joe Mande
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THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 3
JONSON STREET BYRONBAY FRI 28 AUG
IMMIGRANT UNION, SUNROSE, THE DELICATES SAT 29 AUG
UPSKIRTS, TWIN HAUS, SHADY BLISS FRI 4 SEPT
SEA LEGS SAT 5 SEPT
VERNAS KEEP SUN 6 SEPT
COSMIC PSYCHOS FRI 11 SEPT
GRENADIERS SAT 12 SEPT
MAR HAZE FRI 18 SEPT
LYALL MOLONEY SAT 19 SEPT
OCEAN ALLEY SAT 26 SEPT
THE GARDEN, WAX WITCHES THU 1 OCT
THE JUNGLE GIANTS SAT 2 OCT
THE SMITH STREET BAND SAT 3 OCT
DRUNK MUMS TICKETS AVAILABLE ONLINE WWW.THENORTHERN.COM.AU
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Music Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Goin’ To Sea Sea Sea
Australia’s first ever electronic cruise-ship festival, Sea ‘N Beats, has added a whole bunch more fun to its already party-packed line up. Peking Duk, Allday, Tkay Maidza and more join the sea-bound party 5–8 Mar. Presented by The Music.
Sea ‘N’ Beats Mini Suite
Lagging Back
Lagwagon
Californian punk rockers Lagwagon are returning to Australia for a string of club shows this November following an appearance at this year’s Soundwave Festival. Featuring support from fellow US rockers The Flatliners and Wollongong crew Mixtape For The Drive.
Megan Mullally & Nick Offerman
Recreational Activity On-set-worst-couple and real-life-best-couple Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally have announced, to the unanimous screeches of Australian sitcom lovers, that they’ll be heading down under for the Summer Of 69: No Apostrophe national comedy tour in Jan next year. 8 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
c / Arts / Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Second Wave
Dead Letter Circus
Following the announcement that the first act confirmed for next year’s Soundwave is Bullet For My Valentine, the second act one the line-up has now been revealed to be Dead Letter Circus.
Bully
Bully For You
Bluesfest Returns
Nashville natives Bully have revealed three headline dates in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to coincide with their slot at Meredith. The tour is proudly presented by The Music and will feature special guests Rolling Blackout.
The Amity Affliction
With Boomerang Bluesfest has now announced they will be joining forces with Indigenous event Boomerang Festival in 2016. This will include an interactive event that showcases important Indigenous art and culture.
Remember Affliction
Bluesfest
Tour rumours have been confirmed that The Amity Affliction and A Day To Remember will be the headline drawcards of the so-called Big Ass Tour, which will be happening in December.
THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 9
Lifestyle Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Parisian Life
Gay Paris
Rabid rock’n’rollers Gay Paris once again summon Satan through their newest record – aptly titled, Ladies And Gentlemen: May We Present To You The Dark Arts. They’ll take it around the country, starting the tour in late Sep.
See The
Ainslie Wills
Constellations 2013 AMP and Melbourne Music Prize nominee Ainslie Wills is launching her latest single, Constellations, from her forthcoming EP, Oh The Gold, at east coast shows in Oct with her fivepiece band.
Straight Outta The Ground Megadeth
Straight Outta Compton smashed it to the top opening weekend in the US for a musical biopic. Here’s the top five grossing US openings (in $US): 1. Straight Outta Compton (2015): Opening Weekend
$60,200,180
4. Ray (2004):
$20,039,730 5. Jersey Boys (2014):
To The Deth Fresh out of the studio where they have been working on their forthcoming 15th studio album, I Worship Chaos, legendary US thrash act Megadeth have announced they will be heading back to Australia this October for four headline shows.
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2. Walk The Line (2005):
$22,347,341 3. Notorious (2009):
$20,497,596
$13,319,371
e / Cultu Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Triple Whammy
Woodlock
Melbourne folk rock trio Woodlock have announced a triple whammy: a new single, EP and national tour. Come October, the band will be hitting up Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Canberra and some lucky regional spots.
Tame Impala
Bit Tame Australia’s favourite psychedelic exports Tame Impala have announced they’ll be heading to outdoor amphitheatre stages around the nation this November, off the back of the acclaimed Currents record they released last month.
135,000
$
The amount APRA AMCOS’ $1 million Music Grants program expands by with a series of new art music initiatives.
theMusic.com.au: breaking news, up-to-the-minute reviews and streaming new releases
THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 11
yle / Cul Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Meredith Sideys
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats, Jessica Pratt, Julia Holter, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Shellac have all announced east coast sideshows alongside their appearances at Meredith Music Festival.
Jessica Pratt
Bigger Sound
Evelyn Morris
Melbourne rockers The Basics have announced a run of national and regional dates in support of their latest album, The Age Of Entitlement, for this October. The tour kicks off 10 Oct at Elsewhere Festival in Maitland.
The final round of speaker announcements for BIGSOUND has added Kim Moyes, Evelyn Morris, Ben Salter, KLP and more to the list of industry experts headed to the Brisbane music conference. The latest announcement puts the total number of speakers to up over the 100 mark.
Face The
Ruth Daniel
Bare Basics
Sherpa
Music 2015 Taking over Arts Centre Melbourne again this year (13 & 14 Nov), Face The Music has announced their first speaker lineup. It includes JD Samson (Le Tigre, MEN), Manchester based music activist Ruth Daniel, Nick O’Byrne (Look Out Kid), and many more.
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Ahoy! Sydney Film Festival and Princess Cruises join forces to bring you The Traveling Film Festival in Feb 2016. Ticket holders will cruise the coast of New Zealand on The Diamond Princess while enjoying the best in contemporary film, including Sherpa.
lture
Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
They Got Pinned
The Pinheads are making themselves known in a big way, announcing their signing with 123 Agency, as well as unveiling their first-ever headline tour dates of the east coast in late Sep to coincide with their debut EP.
321 BRUNSWICK STREET MALL FORTITUDE VALLEY
WED 26TH AUG
The Pinheads
The Basics
ELLIE JANE AND THE FORCES OF DESTINY (9:30PM) THE ROSEBERYS (8:30PM) THU 27TH AUG
The best password security question I’ve ever encountered: What is your grandmother’s favourite dessert? That’s next level security, @ben_ morling. Except one of your parents might know the answer.
STUDENT NIGHT: THE DICKERSONS (10:30PM) SLACKSMITHS (9:30PM) FRI 28TH AUG
MERMAID AVENUE (10:00PM) CODY JONES & THE LOST COMPANY (9:00PM) SAT 29TH AUG
TEA (10:00PM) SOCIETY BUCK DEAN & THE GREEN LIPS (9:00PM) SUN 30TH AUG
HEROICTALES (9:30PM) GUEST (8:30PM)
Bigsound Live Bakery Lane
MON 31ST AUG
WIN
FRAGELLE URVE (9:30PM) ELLIE JANE (8:30PM) TUE 1ST AUG
Win a double pass to BIGSOUND Live, where you can check out any of the gigs on offer at BIGSOUND. For more info, head to theMusic.com.au.
SAINT AVIATE (9:30PM) GUEST (8:30PM) FREE LIVE MUSIC & INDIE DJS
WANT TO PLAY? EMAIL BOOKINGS@RICSBAR.COM.AU
WWW.RICSBAR.COM.AU THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 13
Music / Music / Arts / Lifestyle / Culture
Hops And Vines Fest
Shake off winter and welcome spring with Shafston Hotel’s Hops And Vines Festival on 5 Sep, showcasing the top local boutique wineries and breweries, plus awesome food and killer entertainment. Head to theMusic.com.au/ win to enter the draw for a double pass.
Hops And Vines Fest
Noosa Jazz Festival
Father John Misty
Noosa Jazz Food
Misty Eyed
As part of the Noosa Jazz Festival, you can dine right in the middle of Hasting Street, Noosa Heads. Tasting On Hastings on 4 Sep features a solid list of participating restaurants, and tickets are $85.
Americana singer-songwriter Father John Misty has announced a run of national dates to accompany his appearance at Meredith this December. Proudly presented by The Music, the run kicks off in Queensland on 6 Dec. Sleeping With Sirens
Sirens Calling Florida post-hardcore fivepiece Sleeping With Sirens have revealed their plans to head our way next month, as part of their ongoing celebration of their fourth studio album, Madness. They stop by Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth from mid-September. 14 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
Arts / Li Brisbane Fest Food
Brisbane Festival kicks off 5 Sep with three weeks of independent music, theatre, dance, and of course, food. There’ll be three major food events/areas: more than two tents, four bars, ten boutique food trucks and several food and art collaborations.
Fear & Delight
FOTSUN Festival Of The Sun has announced their first lineup. It includes Illy, Jebediah, Thundamentals, Alpine, Bad// Dreems, Ecca Vandal and more. After an interactive art showcase on 10 Dec, live music kicks off 11 Dec and ends 12 Dec.
Ecca Vandal
Green Days
A Day On The Green
Legend Paul Kelly will bring his Merri Soul Sessions to A Day On The Green this November and December. Stellar supports include American singersongwriter Lucinda Williams, Aussie country staple Kasey Chambers and the prolific Marlon Williams.
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Festival
Where Is MY T Mind?
The stated aim of this year’s Brisbane Festival is to “blow your minds”. Steve Bell flicks through the stylistically diverse 2015 program and reckons that they’re gonna have a bloody good crack. Cover image by Frank & Mimi. he Brisbane Festival has been an integral part of our city’s cultural calendar for nearly two decades now. Kicking off in 1996 (having evolved from the long-running Warana Festival), it was originally a biennial event until 2009 when it merged with River Festival to become an annual celebration of contemporary music, theatre, dance, comedy, opera, circus and also larger public events such as Sunsuper Riverfire. It’s about celebrating community and cultural diversity - featuring artists from disparate fields, countries and walks of life - all converging to add their own thread to Brisbane’s rich cultural tapestry.
Stretching over three full weeks in September, the 2015 program involves 70 different productions and over 400 performances held all around our fair city - including the new Fantastical Festival Village, Arcadia, at South Bank’s Cultural Forecourt - and covering pretty much every type of artistic expression imaginable. There’s literally something for just about everyone at Brisbane Festival, and here are just a few of our highlights from the wonderful 2015 selection:
Treasury Heritage Hotel Exterior
FLEXN (QPAC,
Treasury Lights
23-26 Sep)
(Treasury Heritage Hotel, 18-26 Sep)
‘Flex’ is the globe’s hottest new dance form and FLEXN examines civil unrest in the USA following recent controversial rulings in Ferguson and NYC. The politically motivated street dance production uses this post-modern form of expression to get to the crux of these inherently human dilemmas.
Existing city infrastructure can make an incredible artistic canvas and over nine nights during the festival the facade of The Treasury Hotel will be transformed into a glowing, shimmering work of art, as a team of artists and technicians combine in this celebration of large-scale projection. Megan Washington
FLEXN
Megan Washington (The Spiegeltent, 5 & 20 Sep) It’s been years now since Brisbane’s Megan Washington spread her wings and became a national concern. The prodigal singersongwriter has been on the road plugging her new album There There - co-written with Sia and Adele collaborator Sam Dixon - and returns home to rock the gorgeous environs of The Spiegeltent. 16 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
Taking Responsibility Adam Goodes throws an invisible spear as Rachael Maza prepares to once again stage the story of Indigenous people speaking and standing out, as Dave Drayton reports.
“W
LOCAL PRIDE In 2015 Brisbane Festival has procured the indubitable talents of Brisbane ‘visual identifiers’ Frank & Mimi to design and produce the distinctive hand-painted signage that will be helping patrons navigate and enjoy the festivities. The brainchild of Rick Hayward (who has a signwriting background) and his partner Emily Devers (who has a Degree in Fine Arts). together they combine to express the traditions of their trade in a contemporary style that’s distinctive, fresh and colourful. “We were pretty humbled and even honoured to be approached by Brisbane Festival,” Hayward admits, “it’s definitely one of the biggest organisations that’s approached us for work – to date anyway.” “Good on them for choosing local [artists], but that should be standard,” Devers reflects. “That’s the path they should take every year from here on in, especially because the Brisbane creative community is so vibrant and so connected that opportunities like this offer really great support for them. “I’m really looking forward to meeting a whole new batch of creatives that we haven’t crossed paths with before, because we’re going to be installing a few artworks and part-time installations onsite in the lead-up to the festival. We’ve been enjoying testing out some techniques we haven’t used before and honing in on some things that we really care about.”
orking in theatre,” Rachael Maza begins, “I feel incredibly optimistic about this country. It’s why I continue to work in the arts, when I feel like I’m right at the coalface of an inclusive and positive conversation about our country and its history. As an artist it’s all about what the work is saying; otherwise I couldn’t be bothered. I’d rather lay bricks than make theatre that says nothing. It has to be great art, but it has to have something to say.” It’s clear why Maza is the perfect fit for her role as Artistic Director of Ilbijerri Theatre Company, Australia’s leading and longest-running Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander theatre company. In 2011 Ilbijerri joined forces with Belvoir and version 1.0 to create a collaborative documentary theatre work about the death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee on Palm Island in 2004. The resulting work, Beautiful One Day, continues to tour and resonate with the complex issue of contemporary race relations. “To be honest we didn’t actually think this play would go beyond those first couple of shows in Sydney and Melbourne, then one thing led to another, we got invited to London and it became very evident that this was important.” The production went to London’s Southbank Centre as part of the Origins Festival Of First Nations, and in coming weeks will “return to country” with the first performances in Palm Island, and a run as part of the Brisbane Festival. “There’s been DVDs of the play circling around and there were a group of almost 40 community members, elders and people involved in the production that were flown down to Sydney and saw the opening show, and obviously we’ve got three Palm Islanders in the play and there’s no way they’d do a show they weren’t happy with... That was part of the negotiation of the work; it was always about what was the story that you fellas are ready to tell, or want to tell. These shows feel to me like our most important audience.” At one point in Beautiful One Day they quote the prosecution of Lex Wotton, a twotime councillor on the Palm Island Aboriginal
Shire Council when Domadgee died, for his participation in riots: “You are a leader in your community, but in some ways that makes you more guilty.” Maza paraphrases, citing the similarity of the language currently being used to admonish Adam Goodes. “Because you stood up as a leader in your community, it’s just outrageous. We’ll acknowledge that you’re a leader, but it’s not ok to speak up and stand up for your community? You know, it’s like: you’re good if you keep quiet and stay in your place and don’t disrupt the status quo. “The point of these discussions is not pointing fingers at anyone. We are all enmeshed in the complexity and without a doubt there is a sense of people feeling overwhelmed and I don’t know how we’re ever going to change it because it is complex. All of us as individuals, as adults, there comes a point where you go ‘Ok, I’ll take responsibility for my own part in it.’ That feeling of being overwhelmed, or that it’s too hard, that’s what we’ve got to break through as a country.”
Rachael Maza. Pic: Heidrun Lohr
What: Beautiful One Day When & Where: 23 - 26 Sep, Brisbane Festival, Cremorne Theatre, QPAC THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 17
Festival
Kiasmos (The Spiegeltent, 25 Sep)
Kiasmos
Jeremy Neale
Icelandic experimental minimalists Kiasmos wowed punters who saw their Brisbane Festival debut in 2013, and since then they’ve released their eponymous debut album (2014) and the Looped EP (2015) so will undoubtedly have plenty more tricks up their sleeves.
4ZZZ Flashback: 40 Years
The Female Gaze (various
Of Independent Radio
locales and dates)
(The Spiegeltent, 20 Sep)
The Female Gaze is a celebration of female filmmakers. The eclectic showcase is curated by Kiki Fung, who explains that “if the male gaze often objectifies women as desirable creatures or stereotypes, the female gaze positions them as viewers and centres of meaning”. The Female Gaze
Pussy Power Is it possible to make a funny rape joke? Adrienne Truscott tells Hannah Story that it is.
“I
’ve done a whole show about it,” says New York performance artist and comedian Adrienne Truscott on the subject of her one-woman show, Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy And Little Else!. Following a successful run at MICF last year, the show comes to Brisbane Festival in 2015. “But that doesn’t mean that I think any joke about rape is funny. I think none of my jokes are about the act itself being something funny. It’s more like satire about how we talk about it, make laws about it, and people who think
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women’s outfits are responsible for rape. It’s a big debate in comedy: what you can joke about and what you can’t. I’m a firm believer that you can joke about anything, but I think there’s a way to make comedy provocative and progressive, and not just be shocking because you’re just trying to get away with saying something shocking so you look like a badass even when you’re not. Which is what I feel like a lot of comics have done with that material.” That kind of material, that places the victim or the act of rape itself as the punchline (see Daniel Tosh et al) is not something that Truscott is interested in. “I think there are times when people are making jokes that are really gross and irresponsible and not funny enough in the potentially traumatising territory that they’re treading in. But I know there’s a lot of comics who just like to say to someone like me, ‘Shut up, you can joke about whatever you want.’ None of my jokes make the victims of that particular act as the punchline: to
4ZZZ Flashback charts the history of Australia’s first community FM broadcaster 4ZZZ and the role it’s played in fostering Brisbane’s fertile music scene. Featuring performances from Ed Kuepper, The Ups & Downs, Screamfeeder and Jeremy Neale, plus discussions with special guests.
me that’s gross. I know there’s comics out there that think that’s fine. Most of those comics tend to be dudes making that joke to a room full of dudes and I don’t find that particularly witty or particularly edgy.” At the same time however, Truscott insists she is “not somebody who believes in censorship”. “I think any culture has to be careful about when it starts to say, ‘You can’t do that, it’s going to offend somebody.’ It’s a fine line between freedom of speech and then trespassing on someone’s actual rights and freedoms... I think in comedy in general you’ve got to be able to have free speech and that hopefully there’s enough good material in the world to provide something in opposition to really bad, lazy, hurtful material.” Truscott performs the entire show “not wearing pants, but wearing shoes and a jacket”, a move she describes as hilarious and stupid, but that also has a powerful effect. “There are ways to be naked and physical in a live room that can still be really interesting and provocative and hilarious.”
What: Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy And Little Else! When & Where: 8 – 12 Sep, Brisbane Festival, Theatre Republic
THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 19
Music
Frontlash Cheats Never Prosper
Mistaken Identity
Lashes
It’s pretty hilarious that hackers infiltrated the Ashley Madison database and unleashed the cheaters’ details; there is something inherently evil about that organisation and all that fill its coffers...
Bring It On We’re just about at the start of another Brisbane Festival - this year’s aim is to “blow our minds” and with the talent they’ve accrued in every field of the arts it’s a pretty good bet they will!
Happy Tragedy We finally got our mitts on the new Titus Andronicus triple-vinyl rock opera The Most Lamentable Tragedy, and it’s neither lamentable nor tragic! Please, please won’t someone bring this amazing band to Australia? Titus Andronicus
Backlash Pick A Side So who do you mentally barrack for when an annoying paparazzi gets a spray from mad old Mel Gibson? If a known idiot pokes a crazy old rabid dog and gets bitten that’s just life...
Off The Grid So who didn’t predict that Jarryd Hayne would smash it for the 49ers and get such a cult following so quickly? And here we were just laughing that he wouldn’t be playing Origin...
Back From The (Deadwood) So it’s super cool that there’s talk from HBO of a Deadwood film to finally give closure to the series that stopped so abruptly in 2006, but why the fuck did they wait so long? So, so dumb... 20 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
Tim Wheatley tells Michael Smith he feels “like a bit of a phony, as an Australian, playing Americana”.
A
round this time last year, LA-based Melbourne singer-songwriter Tim Wheatley released his first solo record, an EP titled Crooked Saint, in The House Of Blues on Sunset Boulevard. The lead track, Burning The Midnight Oil, had been lifted from an album he’d recorded before moving to LA but then had remixed in the US by Niko Bolas, whose credits include Neil Young and Johnny Cash. The plan was to follow the EP with the album. A year on and that album, Cast Of Yesterday, is finally being released, but in not quite the same form as when it left Australia. “We’d decided to make this record ourselves and basically we hit every brick wall that you possibly could hit and some more,” Wheatley admits, on the line from LA. “The move to America as well sort of put us backwards, which is why I released the Crooked Saint EP last year, so it could keep me working at least over here. So that served its purpose and d’you know what? Even after months of lugging this hard-drive around with the entire album and bits and pieces on it, we literally only got it together two nights before the scheduled release. Just like my packing for our trip back to Australia!” Having essentially written the album over two years and recording it with producer Paul McKercher, Wheatley decided to take the whole album to Bolas to remix.
“A few months before were mixed it, I was looking at the 20 songs that we’d recorded and I started to get worried. And of course I had a big artillery of new songs that I wanted to put on that I thought were potentially good for the record. But then we were listening to the record and the continuity of all those early songs sounded a hell of a lot better and made for a much more cohesive record. “So I took it to Nick at Capitol Records and said, ‘Will you help me piece this thing together? - I don’t know where I’m at’; I had no game plan.” There might be plenty of American references in his songs, whether to writers like Hemingway or places like New York, but there are just as many Australian references, and Wheatley delivers it all in a very obviously Australian accent. “Everyone here seems determined to ‘brand’ my music,” he laughs. “I’ve even heard people referring to it as Americana, and I feel weird with that genre looming around because I feel like a bit of a phony, as an Australian, playing Americana. I’m sticking with ‘folk’ at the moment. It’s singersongwriter. I toured with Ryan Bingham last year, who’s a bit of an icon of Americana over here now, so I suppose they started associating the name with that as well didn’t make my life any easier, but that’s alright,” he chuckles.
What: Cast Of Yesterday (Sony) When & Where: 27 & 28 Aug, Gympie Music Muster; 29 Aug, The Triffid
Music
On Impulse Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis sits down with Hannah Story in a hotel bar in Sydney to talk about getting older, and trying not to overthink it.
Y
annis Philippakis is fresh off the plane from the UK. He’s spent the afternoon on King Street in Newtown, wandering the record and clothes shops. It’s a street he remembers fondly from a visit to Australia at the tailend of the lyric-writing process for their third record, 2013’s Holy Fire. “I think I pretty much sat in the exact same spot today. I was in the sun and I was having a coffee and I was like, ‘This is exactly where I sat when I was writing lyrics to Moon.’”
You have to refresh and also be bored.
It’s now the early evening, and over the course of our chat, he orders an espresso martini “to try and wake up”. He fidgets in his seat, saying that he doesn’t think this is their darkest or heaviest record, that unpacking his lyrics cheapens them, and that the records on high rotation during the creation of their fourth full-length What Went Down had no effect on what came out the other side. He says that bands subconsciously absorb the context of the time in which they’re creating, and that sense of mood seeps into the music. “Really good records are ones that are really connected to something wider, and what’s going on at the time. But that’s not necessarily musical references, I don’t think. It could be anything, it could just be a feeling, or something generational. You have to have your attennae open to what’s going on and you absorb some things. I don’t think you can be in control of it, it’s probably something that you’re not even aware of as it’s happening.” The 29-year-old admits that the lyrics on their new
record are at times preoccupied by a sense that he is getting older. “The sense of invincibility that you have when you’re younger has worn off a bit. When we were younger you have this kind of cocky energy where nothing can take you out and I think that I’m increasingly, not necessarily my own life, but being more aware of things not being permanent and being interested in the melancholy of that - I quite like stuff that’s bittersweet.” His interest in the bittersweet, and in the flawed, has come through in the production of What Went Down. The band decided to write a lot quicker this time, heading into the studio soon after they finished touring Holy Fire. “I think music’s become too perfect. There’s too many possibilities to perfect everything, particularly in the studio. I think there’s a lack of charm in a lot of modern records. I don’t know, we were interested in the idea of keeping in certain imperfections. You think that you’re making stuff better the more you work on it, and you iron things out, but actually, that’s a trade-off, but what you lose when you do that is that freshness that you have when you first write something. I think on this record we were definitely more interested in capturing the first expression. Philippakis says that aside from that focus on capturing the first impressions of songs that they didn’t consciously approach the record differently to their earlie ear lierr work. wo or “I think we just wanted to write intuitively earlier and just just w write better songs than we felt like we’d written before bef ore,, and ore an nd capture the live energy, but also have a before, lot of diversity dive di ve er on the record so that it wasn’t just one colour col our,, one on ne shade through the whole thing. We wanted colour, the ere to b be diversity within the album itself. We’ve just there gotten got ten be et at [not overthinking] over time. Part of it e better com mes from ffrrro being a bit more confident and not being comes so insecure about things, which means that it’s just less prone to analysis. We just don’t talk about stuff as much. Things are more unsaid now. We understand intuitively what we wanna do.” Philippakis says that he is not the type of songwriter who writes every day. “I need a break from writing after writing a record... I wouldn’t know what to write about right now, because I’ve put everything into this record, and it’s taken me about a year to do it. I need a break, I think it’s only healthy. You have to refresh and also be bored. I want to get to that point where I’m itching to write a song again, rather than it just being something that I do every day.” Instead he’s focused on playing shows, including a string of headline sets at Falls Festival this summer. “Playing in Australia is always fun. The crowds are awesome, we feel a lot of love here... We did Laneway a few years ago and that had a really nice atmosphere, when you’re travelling around with other bands, it’s quite rare that you do that, and it’s fun, it feels like a sort of debauched and deranged school trip where there’s no teachers.”
What: What Went Down (Warner) When & Where: 31 Dec – 3 Jan, Falls Festival, North Byron Parklands THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 21
Comedy
Releases
This Week’s Releases
Not An Internet Personality
Last Dinosaurs Wellness Dew Process/Universal
Soilwork The Ride Majestic Nuclear Blast/Caroline
Yo La Tengo Stuff Like That There Matador/Remote Control
Foals What Went Down Warner
22 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
Joe Mande is a stand-up comic, a writer on such hit shows as Parks And Recreation and Kroll Show, and the author of the iconic (and equally ironic) book Look At This Fucking Hipster, but don’t you dare call him an “internet personality”. Upasana Chatterjee finds out why.
“S
ee, I hate “internet personality” [that was] Chelsea [Peretti], and then the ‘Twitter rascal” thing is Pete Holmes. I didn’t have a Wikipedia page and then I did Pete Holmes’ podcast and he told his listeners to make a Wikipedia page for me and describe me as a “Twitter rascal” and an “internet personality”, all these things that I can’t stand. That whole Wikipedia page is all my friends making me crazy. “The reason I don’t wanna be called an internet personality is, like, I’ve been doing stand-up for ten years and I feel like it diminishes all this actual work I put into being a comedian because anyone can write ‘comedian’ in their Twitter bio and suddenly, they’re a comedian. That said, I put myself in this position so I know what I’ve done to myself!” The self-deprecating Mande has a razor-sharp sense of humour. He’s graced the stages of Conan and Late Night With Seth Meyers, recently wrapped up writing for Parks And Recreation’s Aziz Ansari on his
own Netflix show, Master Of None, and somewhere in the middle managed to release a tonguein-cheek comedy mixtape called Bitchface featuring Amy Poehler - it’s a wonder Mande has time for anything else at all. “I’m either very busy or just playing Xbox all day, you know what I mean? At the moment I’m on hiatus from my writing work, so I’m in a real Xbox phase at the moment,” Mande chuckles. “You’re talking to someone with real selfloathing so... It’s funny, when you have a writing job with Parks And Rec, you’re there long hours and you don’t get to do as much stand-up. When I’m writing I kind of wanna do stand-up and when I’m doing stand-up for too long I wanna get back to a writing job.” Parks And Recreation recently wrapped its seventh and final season; Mande served as a writer on its last three seasons. “When I was there I was like, ‘This is the best job I’m ever gonna have.’ I think on most TV shows, the actors don’t really interact with the writers at all, and at Parks, they’re constantly interacting with us and treated us like human beings on the set and asked us for jokes and stuff; it didn’t really feel like there was any kind of separation or hierarchy.” Parks also brought forth the comedic gem that is Chris Pratt, ie. human labrador Andy Dwyer. “I wrote an episode [Bailout, Season 5, Episode 16] which I was on set for and it took place inside an adult film store. We spent a good week in the writer’s room just coming up with hundreds of fake porn titles, it was so fun and so ridiculous. When we got on set, Chris Pratt managed to come up with 15 off the top of his head that were better than any of the ones an entire room of comedy writers could come up with.”
When & Where: 6 Sep, Sit Down Comedy Club
THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 23
Music
Sunny Side Up The wonderful Noosa Jazz Festival is upon us once again, and here are just a handful of reasons why you should head north to the party;
Singing In Tongues
Location, Location, Location Jazz is all about relaxing and giving in to the music, and what better place to relax into jazz than amidst one of Queensland’s most beautiful locales, Noosa? Mission Statement The festival crew have their own ‘The Noosa Jazz Manifesto’ and it’s all about singing, dancing and living in the moment – talk about going above and beyond when thinking of punters’ happiness! Jazz River Cruises Forget Apocalypse Now, river cruises can be a fun and relaxing excursion – especially with added jazz! Have long been one of NJF’s premier attractions. Big Names Naturally each year NJF pulls some of the biggest names in the game to grace their stages – this year we’re talking Emma Pask, Wendy Matthews, Darren Percival and Colleen Hewett (to name but a few). Tastings On Hastings On the Friday of each NJF they block off Noosa’s main drag so you can eat (and drink) in the street, sampling the culinary delights from the fine restaurant of your choice. Exquisite!
Noosa Jazz Festival runs from 3-6 Sep, head to noosjazz.com.au for full details and ticketing.
24 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
When Ricky Martin heard her sing on The Voice, he was impressed enough to invite her to record with him. Rather than wait for the call, jazz chanteuse Emma Pask has cut her own Latin American album, as she tells Michael Smith.
“T
hat was a fantastic experience,” singer Emma Pask admits of her shot at The Voice a few years ago, “and Ricky was amazingly supportive and the idea of recording with him was obviously exciting, but he’s always so busy and I’d been thinking about doing an album of Latin music for a long time because I’ve always loved it, so I guess the seed was sown then.” Pask is talking about her new album, Cosita Divina, which she’ll be showcasing at the Noosa Jazz Festival and later at Sydney’s Art & About festival. “And I’m married to a South American too - we got married in Noosa a couple of years ago, which makes the place even more special. So I’ve recorded an album inspired by Latin American music and I sing in English, Spanish and Portuguese, which was quite a challenge but I gave it my best shot,” Pask giggles. “Anyone who speaks Spanish or Portuguese will probably think it’s terrible but I tried my best and of course my husband helped me and I have a couple of friends who were a great help.” Long before The Voice, Pask had the extraordinary good luck to be discovered,
as a 16-year-old, by jazz maestro James Morrison. He immediately invited her to perform with his band and that association has seen Pask tour the world and record six albums with him. “I was just a schoolgirl and I had no idea you could actually make music a career,” she admits. “My parents are English, so I grew up with all that great music of the ‘60s and ‘70s, but they loved Frank Sinatra. But I never imagined I’d become a jazz singer.” While Cosita Divina is predominantly Pask’s take on some classic Latin American songs, the album includes a couple of original tunes, including the title track. “It’s a phrase that roughly translates to... You know when you see a cute kid and you take them by the cheeks and tell them how cute they are? It’s sort of that only I’m taking my husband’s face in my hands and telling him how divine he is, I suppose. “I’ve only really been writing songs the last couple of years. I had a couple on the Christmas album I did with Universal [2013’s Season Of My Heart] and I love cowriting that’s my favourite thing to do - so I’m really happy I’ve been able to include a couple of my own songs on the new album. And I’m back to being an independent artist. We parted amicably but I don’t think Universal were really ready for a new album where I’m a working musician and I’m always looking to move forward, so I was ready. So this record really is my baby!”
What: Cosita Divina (Independent) When & Where: 4 & 5 Sep, Noosa Jazz Festival, Noosa Lions Park, Noosa Heads
THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 25
Buffalo Wi Eat/Drink
Wing lovers, prepare your bodies. The Buffalo Wing Festival is happening across Brisbane from 2 – 5 Sep. Ahead of the delicious event, we chatted to Festival Director Bill Vanderent.
Where did you get the idea to dedicate a whole festival to buffalo wings? Where a lot of ideas are created: over a beer and wings with some friends! I figured there were plenty of other festivals around for beer, cider, food and wine, and figured why not have a Buffalo Wing Festival too? After a bit of looking around and seeing that no one else had done it in Australia, I figured, why not!? Did you just call all the vendors up and ask if they wanted to be included? How did that go down? Some of them I already knew and pitched the idea to them. They were well keen and came on board pretty quickly. Some I approached directly whose wings I loved, and once word got out, vendors started approaching us. Do you remember how you felt the first time you discovered buffalo wings? I do indeed. It was at Hooters in San Francisco, and despite what could be classed as distracting décor, the thing that stuck in my mind was just how great the tangy, buttery flavour was. And the more 26 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
beers I had, the more wings I wanted! Win-win! Like a match made in heaven. Since then if they’re on the menu of wherever I’m going, I have a hard time picking anything else. Why are buffalo wings better than other kinds of wings? What’s your personal favourite way to eat buffalo wings? The flavours you get in a buffalo wing are surprisingly complex and varied. Some have a lot of heat, some are very buttery, some dust their wings for a crunchy coating, some fry their wings without a coating. You can get into very heated discussions about how buffalo wings should be, but at the end of the day, if the taste and texture are there then why argue! Not only that, there’s so many variants of wings too. Sweet BBQ flavours, super hot chilli versions, even wings smothered in American gooey cheese! This festival isn’t just about the “buffalo” flavour, but celebrates all of the unique creations these chefs come up with to complement their menus. My favourite? I’m a dusted-wing kinda guy, so it’s got a nice crunchy coating. I like my wings spicy, but not too spicy, and served with a nice chunky blue cheese dressing. Heat from the wings, cooled off by the dressing. Rinse and repeat! Give us a bit of a rundown on what we can expect at the festival. We’ve got 21 vendors across four regions, and the festival runs for four days. We’ve split it up into regions over a number of days so it gives people a chance to drive around and try as many of the different styles of wings as they can from places outside of the CBD. Each of the vendors are putting on taster deals like six wings and a beer for $10, so you can try just a few and move
onto the next place. There’s also more substantial $15 and $20 deals if there’s a few of you. The general idea behind the festival is to grab a few wings and a drink, enjoy, then try more at the next venue. Wings, drinks and walking with friends: kind of like a tasty pub crawl! For the Friday at Southbank/ West End, we’ve been fortunate enough to have a lot of vendors within walking distance or a short bus/cab/Uber to each other. Same goes for the Saturday event as well. On the Saturday night, we’ll be having a wrap-up event at the Yardbird Valley, where we’ll have a chicken wing eating competition, we’ll announce the winner of an awesome first prize provided by Brisbane Bandits to one lucky People’s Choice Awards voter, more giveaways, and of course heaps of wings!
For more information and a list of participating vendors, visit buffalowing.com.au.
ing Festival Eat/Drink
KING OF THE WINGS
TWELVE BOAR
ered by: Dylan Pires (owner) Answered
Answered by: Rick (director)
ss: Food truck (roving location) Address:
Address: 70/90 Middle St, Cleveland
ot are your wings? Give a rating out of 5 (5 being hottest). How hot
How hot are your wings? Give a rating out of 5 (5 being hottest). Mild Stupid Hot
What drink(s) go best with your wings? Green Beacon Beer. Tell us why your wings are special. We’ve spent years researching flavours and have come up with six original recipes, all unique and super tasty! Our wings were recently voted in the Top 3 in Brisbane by the Courier Mail.
What drink(s) go best with your wings? Mild wings go well with lager beers. They clear the palate and gives you the wonderful flavour of buffalo all over again. Tell us why your wings are special. Our wings are the most identical to the ‘original’ buffalo wings and are near exactly how you get ‘buffalo’ wings in the USA. American secrets are applied to our cooking technique to offer the best wings around, creating an instant addiction.
The History Of The
Buffalo Wing Words: Dylan Van Der Riet. Pic: Jason Lam.
1964
was a year that forever changed the landscape of modern culture. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. received his Nobel Peace Prize and Beatlemania swept across the wider USA, Buffalo Wing-mania was taking over the blue-collar town of Buffalo, New York, changing American cuisine forever. The exact origins of the iconic chicken variation is still debated by historians to
this day, but there are some things that we do know. The dish was first prepared by Buffalo local Teressa Bellissimo in the Italian restaurant/bar owned and operated by her family. Bellissimo is said to have quickly whipped up the deep-fried wings to serve to with hot sauce in an act of quick-witted inventiveness following a botched butcher’s delivery that left her with an excess of otherwise useless chicken wings. Bellissimo’s son tells a relatively less dramatic tale, saying his mother put the dish together as a cheap hors d’oeuvres to serve to late night drinkers at the bar. Regardless of their true origins, the wings were an immediate success. By 1977 the appetiser had become so popular across the city that Buffalo’s mayor declared 29 July ‘Chicken Wing Day’. It wasn’t until 1982 that Buffalo first escaped the confines of upstate New York, when the first major Buffalo Wing chain restaurant, Buffalo Wild Wings, spread interstate. The dish’s popularity exploded nationally as Buffalo was thrust into the spotlight when the city’s NFL team the Buffalo Bills appeared in four consecutive Super Bowls from 1991 to 1994. Buffalo Wings are now served internationally as a staple of American cuisine and remain as popular as ever in the United States and abroad. THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 27
Buffalo Wi Eat/Drink
ARCHIVE BEER BOUTIQUE
YARDBIRD
Answered by: Matt (function sales and social media)
Answered by: Luke L urnell (owner) Purnell
oundary St, West End Address: 100 Boundary
Address: 6/24 Martin Street, Fortitude Valley and 1/208 Given Terrace, Paddin Paddington
ur wings? Give a rating out of 5 (5 being hottest). How hot are your
gs? Give a rating out of 5 (5 being hottest). How hot are your wings? Buffalo wings What drink(s) go best with your wings? Stone & Wood Pacific Ale, Batlow Cloudy Cider. Pirate Life IIPA – if you’re game! Tell us why your wings are special. Our wings our special because we use a handmade from scratch sauce, made with love by our head chef Duncan. We also use fully jointed wings, which means when we say six wings we mean whole wings!
Death Sentence Wings
What drink(s) go best with your wings? 4 Pines Pale Ale, Monteith’s Golden Ale, or a Jack Daniel’s. Tell us why your wings are special. Because they’re the freshest, the best, well priced, and they make you look cool!
BUFFALO BAR
MIGHTY MIGHTY
Answered by: Adam am Herbert (head chef)
Answered by:: Josh Jos sh Inglis (head chef)
ary Street, Brisbane Address: 169 Mary
op 6/7 6//7 100 McLachlan Street, Fortitude Valley Address: Sho Shop
How hot are yourr wings? Give a rating out of 5 (5 being hottest). Hell Bound Chipotle & Garlic Salt Original Buffalo Wings
y r wings? Give a rating out of 5 (5 being hottest). How hot are your Sriracha Honey & Garlic Holy Rollers
What drink(s) go best with your wings? To balance the serious kick from our Hell Bound wings, we recommend Brother Thelonious Belgian Wheat Beer. Scrimshaw Pilsner is the perfect partner to our Chipotle & Garlic Salt wings. For our Original Buffalo Wings, we recommend a sweeter brew, and you can’t go past ACME Pale Ale. Tell us why your wings are special. Following in the (delicious) footsteps of Anchor Bar (Buffalo, NY), the birthplace of the original recipe, our Original Buffalo wings are the closest replica of this famed classic. Slathered with Frank’s Red Hot, cayenne pepper and vinegar, our Original Buffalo’s are tangy, spicy, buttery and perfectly paired with American brew.
28 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
What drink(s) go best with your wings? To balance the serious chilli hit from our Holy Roller wings, we recommend a bold and powerful ale such as the Founders Dirty Bastard (Scotch Ale). Samuel Adams Boston Lager offers a full, rich flavour that is perfectly paired with our Sriracha Honey & Garlic wings. Tell us why your wings are special. Our Korean-inspired Sriracha Honey & Garlic wings are slow cooked, crisp-fried in flour, then tossed in our sriracha honey sauce, giving the wings an unbelievable crunch that perfectly balances the sticky-sweetness of the sauce. Complete with a little chilli kick, these punchy wings will have you coming back for more.
ing Festival Eat/Drink
SOUTHERN ATTITUDE
THE PLOUGH INN STEAKHOUSE
Answered wered by: Nicole Cottrell
Answe Answered d by: Jessica Walmsley (function & marketing manager)
ess: 2/189 Oxford Street Bulimba Address:
Addres Address:: Southbank Parklands, Brisbane
How hot are your wings? Give a rating out of 5 (5 being hottest). alo Wings Buffalo
How ho hot are your wings? Give a rating out of 5 (5 being hottest). Buffalo Wings Honey Wings
What drink(s) go best with your wings? It’s a toss-up between our Bourbon Peach Punch Jar, Jazzed Up Ginger Lynchburg or a American Pale Ale...
What drink(s) go best with your wings? Pint of Matilda Bay Lazy Yak or Fat Yak.
Tell us why your wings are special. The best wings in the world are from Buffalo New York and we have worked hard to meet the authentic standards of Buffalonians. Our wings are lightly tossed in a secret coating, perfectly fried and tossed in a delicious sauce ensuring every bite is infused with an addictive Buffalo flavour.
Tell us why your wings are special. With our wings always seasoned in-house with house-made sauces it guarantees freshness and quality!
THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 29
Indie Indie
SCGS Big Band
Berardi/Foran/Karlen
Therein
Moses Gunn Collective
Have You Heard
Have You Heard
EP Focus
Album Focus
Answered by: Brendan Scully
Answered by: Rafael Karlen
EP title? Nobelium
Answered by: Lewis Stephenson
When did you start making music and why? SCGS has had a big band as part of its Instrumental Music Program for 15 years, and was started due to student interest.
When did you start making music and why? I started making music in my early teens. It is an age when everyone gets absorbed by something and I’m glad that it was music. I really liked that I could do my own thing.
How many releases do you have now? We released Nobelium in 2013, followed by three singles which now appear on the reissue available for pre-order at thereinmusic.bandcamp.com.
Album title? Mercy Mountain
Sum up your musical sound in four words? Funky, swinging, toetapping fun. If you could support any band in the world - past or present - who would it be? Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band. If you could only listen to one album forevermore, what would it be and why? Kin by Pat Metheny. Greatest rock’n’roll moment of your career to date? The students playing at Noosa Jazz in 2014. Why should people come and see your band? For entertainment, student support, and encourage the development of both music performance and in particular jazz music, in this generation. When and where for your next gig? Caloundra Music Festival, 5 Oct, 11am, Surf Stage.
Sum up your musical sound in four words? Pretty, melodic, tasty, colourful. If you could support any band in the world - past or present - who would it be? The John Coltrane Quartet. It would be amazing to hear the intensity and depth of that group. If you could only listen to one album forevermore, what would it be and why? Bach: The Goldberg Variations performed by Glenn Gould. There is so much in each variation and Glenn Gould brings out and describes so many directions in his interpretation. Greatest rock’n’roll moment of your career to date? Every time that I get to perform with wonderful musicians to an attentive and engaged crowd. Everything else slips away and I feel that life makes sense and that I’m where I need to be. Why should people come and see your band? They will get to see a very open and sympathetic trio of excellent musicians explore very charged and melodic material. When and where for your next gig? The next gig is at the Noosa Jazz Festival at 4pm, 4 Sep on the Main Stage. Website link for more info? bfkmusic.com
30 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
Was anything in particular inspiring you during the making? Nobelium was more the result of hard work, dedication and stubborn persistence rather than being inspired by a particular thing. But if you twisted our boobs, it would be arm. Fuck! What’s your favourite song on it? Introspect. It’s an oddball of a song, but very badass. Shred guitars, fat drummer and four bars of reggae. We’ll like this EP if we like… Shred guitars, fat drummers and four bars of reggae. Also Frank Zappa, Opeth, Death, Dream Theater, King Crimson, Mastodon, BTBAM, beer, cheese on toast, and Dave. When and where is your launch/ next gig? Friday 9 Oct at The Zoo along with Weightless In Orbit, Indica and Kodiak Empire. Tickets available from the bands, and Oztix. Doors at 7.30pm. DRINKS SPECIALS. Website link for more info? facebook.com/ events/1651696958380823
Where did the title of your new album come from? We named it after where we recorded the album, after deciding against calling it “The Wobble Goggle Mountain Boys”. How many releases do you have now? Two EPs; this is our first LP. How long did it take to write/ record? We wrote the songs over about a year, then it took about a week to record. Was anything in particular inspiring you during the making? The space we recorded in definitely contributed a lot. What’s your favourite song on it? It’s probably between Desdamona and Sleepwalking. Will you do anything differently next time? Probably not, the whole process was great. When and where is your launch/ next gig? 28 Aug, The Brightside; 29 Aug, Solbar. Website link for more info? facebook.com/ mosesgunncollective
THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 31
Music
Dark Escape Vocalist Greg Puciato tells Jonty Czuchwicki one of his sideprojects, The Black Queen, was about finding a counterbalance to The Dillinger Escape Plan.
E
xtreme metal band The Dillinger Escape Plan have a hotly anticipated East Coast tour coming up. “Personally I would love to go to Perth and I would love to go to Adelaide,” says vocalist Greg Puciato “I don’t really know why we’re not. Let everyone know that I wish we were going!” That reality is not as funny as Dillinger’s infamous ‘99 tour with Mr Bungle. Puciato was not in the band at time, but he reported that “someone threw a garbage can at Ben [Weinemann] while he was on stage”. The Dillinger Escape Plan have also been writing for the follow-up to One Of Us Is The Killer. “Three months ago we didn’t have any songs and now we’ve got maybe five, like, five pretty-closeto-done songs so I think we’re looking at NovemberDecember to record if we stay on this page.” As for the content of the record, Puciato reports that “right now we have these four or five songs that are all really, really fast or aggressive, more what people think when they hear Dillinger Escape Plan, those kind of songs. It’s really hard to tell because that vibe is really natural right now. If we get to ten [songs] and that’s how they all come out then that’s how the album will be!” Puciato’s side-project Killer Be Killed would love to return to Australia, although a new record seems more likely than touring as the only upcoming time off is in January 2016. Puciato is also excited to talk about The Black Queen, a project that has been under wraps since 2011. “It just kind of came from necessity. The last Dillinger record was a little intense for me, even the melodic songs were a purging of negativity for me and I had to have
Even the melodic songs were a purging of negativity for me.
32 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
some kind of counterbalance to it.” This comes as no surprise, as the released material shows The Black Queen is a departure from Dillinger material. “I had a lot of melodic stuff lying around in Dillinger that wasn’t the same vibe and then once I met Josh [Eustis] we became really fast friends and had a lot of the same ideas. We’ve lived together for the past three years and it’s really crazy to me that people are only just finding out about it because behind the scenes we’ve had the name, the name of the album, a bunch of the songs - they’ve all been around for years!” Puciato recently made a guest vocal performance, and a new friendship, with Lamb Of God’s Randy Blythe. Puciato and Blythe had been fans of each other’s work for years, so when mutual connection producer Josh Wilbur, who helmed both Sturm Und Drang and the Killer Be Killed debut, called him up it was a no brainer. “I went down to the studio and we knocked it out in about 45 minutes. Randy and I ended up becoming really good friends! We text each other literally every other day now and we have a lot of the same ideas about wanting to do things that are different than what we’re known for. Just our artistic trajectory in general, doing a lot of photography and the both of us disappearing from social media, we had a lot of stuff to talk about.”
When & Where: 30 Aug, Max Watt’s
Music
Hot Lunch Jam
The Cactus Channel “were too unco to play sport so [they’d] just jam every day” during lunchtime at high school, bassist Henry Jenkins tells Bryget Chrisfield.
A
fter securing his bicycle outside a café in an inner-city Melbourne suburb, The Cactus Channel’s bassist Henry Jenkins pulls up a pew across the table. He’s en route to work “in a record store in the city”, which he proudly admits stocks his ten-piece funk orchestra’s releases. The band formed at Princes Hill Secondary College thanks to its “kickass [music] department” and when asked if their music teacher is chuffed with The Cactus Channel’s continued success, Jenkins chuckles, “I hope so. There are heaps of good bands that came out [of Princes Hill Secondary College] before us. Some of the guys ended up in Eagle & The Worm - oh, no! There’s so many bands, I forget. Um, most of the guys in Sex On Toast, yeah.” The Cactus Channel took shape utilising the school’s many music rooms during lunchtimes and Jenkins confesses, “We were too unco to play sport so we’d just jam every day.” Because they were jamming in their own free time, the band enjoyed the freedom to explore music on their own terms as opposed to being told how and when to play. “It was just, like, ‘Go for it!’” Jenkins stresses. On whether they released material while still in school, Jenkins clarifies, “The first 45 [single, Pepper Snake] was put out when we were 16 and then the second single [Emanuel
Ciccolini] and first album [Haptics] was [when we were] in Year 12, so [we were] kinda like 17, 18 or whatever. And then we got to uni and shit slowed down.” All band members are now aged between 21 and 22 and Jenkins describes how they’ve changed up their songwriting sessions. “In high school, it was very much - we’d kinda write with, like, all ten people in the room and so I s’pose we’ve had to rethink the writing process a little bit now that that’s kind of impossible to organise. So the writing process changed just a little bit! Sometimes there will just be four people there, sometimes there’ll be two people there, but we figured it out so we can still be productive; it took us a while to figure that out.” Jenkins initially picked up a bass guitar in high school after hearing I Want You Back by The Jackson 5. “It was just that line from that song,” he explains, “and I could never figure out who it was by. But then I found out and now I forget his name [pauses]. Um, oh, Wilton Felder! Great name. And he’s a sax player and he just played bass on this track; yeah, he’s a bullshit dude! Anyway, I heard that [bassline] and I was like, ‘Dad, what is that thing?’ And he goes, ‘It’s the bass guitar’.” (For those who don’t already know, Jenkins is the son of Charles Jenkins.) We discuss pre-internet music composition, when musicians often had to rely on posting cassette tapes via snail mail when exchanging songwriting ideas/ demos. Jenkins grew up with no concept “of an internet-less [existence]”. “Like, I have memories of dial-up and my dad kind of being like, ‘Take it easy on the internet’,” he adds.
Reasons You Need A BIGSOUND Live Pass So Many Great Venues It’s your only chance to get one magical wristband which for two consecutive nights lets you into 15 different venues - including some stages exclusive to BIGSOUND - all chockers with great bands and artists strutting their stuff.
Choose Your Own Adventure You will never again get the opportunity to choose your own two-night schedule from amongst 150 great Australian (and a few international) bands. Literally choose your own adventure!
Relive the ‘90s It’s your only chance each year to get a feel for the ‘90s when the Valley and surrounds was dominated by music fans.
Pic: Stephen Booth
Check out themusic.com.au to win a double pass.
What: Cobaw/Fool’s Gold 7” (Hope Street Recordings) When & Where: 3 Sep, Jet Black Cat Music (in-store); 4 Sep, The Motor Room; 5 Sep, Verrierdale Hall
THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 33
Music
SAD BASTARD STUFF •
Josh Tillman (aka Father John Misty) had a super-strict religious upbringing, raised in a Baptist church and attending a Pentecostal Messianic Jewish school where no “secular music” was allowed and his sense of humour was deemed “satanic”.
•
In his 20s he released a string of solo singer-songwriter albums, which have been described as “profoundly miserable” (although he prefers “sad bastard stuff”). Titles included Long May You Run, J. Tillman and Cancer And Delirium.
•
He drummed in Seattle indie outfit Fleet Foxes for four years despite having no interest in playing drums (he was dating frontman Robin Pecknold’s sister when asked to join). He left at their commercial peak.
•
Before rebirthing as Father John Misty he took a drug-fuelled road journey of enlightenment, eventually finding himself hallucinating naked in a massive oak tree overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur. As you do.
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For the second phase of his solo career he created the Father John Misty persona – a debaucherous, ego-driven character that allows him to build a mythology and “explore notions of persona and truth” (ie. speak a lot of shit in interviews).
34 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
High Places
Brisbane’s Blank Realm may have been heavily feted of late, but Daniel Spencer tells Steve Bell that they’ll just keep on doing whatever the hell they want.
T
he heady brews concocted by Brisbane outfit Blank Realm have recently lifted the quartet to a whole new level of global recognition, their increasingly accessible brand of psych-tinged rock really touching a nerve on recent releases Go Easy (2012) and Grassed Inn (2014). Years of toil suddenly manifested into Glastonbury and Meredith slots, AMP and Queensland Music Award nominations, and basically a whole new level of recognition for the hard-working band. Of late they’ve been ensconced in Brisbane’s The Plutonium studio - their first experience in such an environment - and the result of their labour is the gorgeously eclectic Illegals In Heaven. “It’s the first time that I’ve been totally happy with a record that we came up with,” admits vocalist/drummer Daniel Spencer. “The others I’ve been pretty happy with, but this time I feel like it’s exactly what I wanted it to be when I thought about it beforehand, which hasn’t really happened before. We just wanted [to try] all of the different styles that are on there, with punk and rock songs as well as the ballads and some of the more noisy things - we wanted to tie it all together into this suite. We didn’t know how we were going to do that when we went into the
studio but when we finished it all kinda made sense, which is a nice feeling.” Given their recent victories did the process seem different with the added weight of expectation? “Not really, I think we’re always just going to do whatever we want to do,” Spencer reflects, “which is kind of good and bad. We’re already working on the next [album], and I think it’s going to be pretty different. I feel like this one is the culmination of a trilogy of records, which started with Go Easy and then Grassed Inn and now this, and it feels like this is actually as far as we can go with that sound. I definitely see it as a continuation of that, but [Illegals In Heaven] feels like the best version of that sound that we can do, so I don’t know what the next one’s going to be except pretty different.” Spencer explains that besides using the studio, hiring a producer (Brisbane sound guru Lawrence English helmed the album) also impacted Illegals In Heaven’s sound. “It made us think more about our ideas because we knew that we were going to be working with Lawrence,” he continues. “He had a lot of good ideas and could tell us which songs were not working when we probably didn’t realise ourselves. And also Tim [Morrissey] from The John Steel Singers was the engineer and he was really helpful in the same way, telling us what worked and what didn’t. It was good to have those collaborative voices in the studio as well helping out - when it’s just us in the room I’m
What: Illegals In Heaven (Bedroom Suck Records) When & Where: 5 Sep, The Foundry
Film
Not A Hobby
She’s the writer of Juno, Young Adult, and now Ricki And The Flash, which stars Meryl Streep in leather pants. Brook Busey-Maurio aka Diablo Cody tells Hannah Story it’s her mission to write femaledriven stories.
“I
t’s my mission. It’s really important to me to write female-driven stories and I hope to continue to do it, and I don’t see that ending anytime soon.” It’s not just female-driven stories that are 37-year-old Diablo Cody’s focus. Cody, aka Brook Busey-Maurio, has written characters that have been described as “unlikeable”, or “unsympathetic”, a descriptor that only seems to apply to women. She says she feels she has a “responsibility to write those characters”. “I occasionally think I’m not capable of doing anything else - I try to write sympathetic characters who are mature and sensible and they inevitably morph into these immature, messed-up, negative people. I think it’s just more interesting, y’know... It should be the norm [to write dysfunctional female characters], and I think it is becoming more common... I’ve seen some incredible performances in the last couple of years in really complicated roles, and I think things are changing. I hope.” Busey-Maurio is warm and chatty on the phone; she makes you feel at ease, and is surprisingly coy about her talents, reluctant to give advice due to her own odd career
trajectory, its ups and downs - from stripper/blogger/ journalist to full-time screenwriter; and from Academy Award winner for her first film Juno, to the writer/ director of Paradise: a film starring Russell Brand that’s (deservedly) vanished into obscurity. She’s the type of writer who puts pieces of herself into her films. “I feel like writing is the most vulnerable thing that I can do. Any time I have a movie come out I’m embarrassed, because it is so personal, and I am putting my own emotions out there every time... It’s scary every single time, it’s like publishing your diary in a way.“ Busey-Maurio’s latest, Ricki And The Flash, directed by Jonathan Demme, stars Meryl Streep as a failed LA musician with delusions of grandeur who returns to Indiana to support her grieving daughter (played by Streep’s actual daughter, Mamie Gummer). Busey-Maurio explains how she related to this character, even though she does not yet have adult children. “I do know what it’s like to regret decisions that you’ve made, and I know what it’s like to feel anxiety about what kind of mother you are... I was projecting my own anxiety on this movie, I was thinking about the future, and I was wondering if I’ll regret the fact that I’ve spent so much time writing movies and producing movies and following my dream, when I do have small children, and there are days where it’s really difficult to figure out that balance between work and life... Chances are I’m going to screw something up - I’m going to have some regrets, and I’m grappling with what those regrets might be, so that was how this story came about.”
What: Ricki And The Flash In cinemas 27 Aug
Three YouTube Shows We’d Rather See On TV If we’re going to commit to this whole scenario of just straight-up watching internet compilation shows on TV, surely we can do a bit better than plain old cats and dogs…
Bedroom Idol Considering that most of the pop idol shows’ initial audiences only get sucked in by the promise of watching delusional people’s dreams self-immolate spectacularly on national TV, wouldn’t we be better served to just cut out the middle man and run a bunch of YouTube clips of people audibly skullfucking popular songs into oblivion in their bedrooms?
Tool Time In the 1990s, sitcom Home Improvement made millions of people laugh with its weekly tales of Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor, his assistant Al, and their DIY show. The point is that maybe we should revive Home Improvement but only using videos of people accidentally injuring themselves with power tools, in a hilarious effort to encourage them to seek out the professional services of a handyman, because holy shit there are some horrific videos on the internet of people gravely wounding themselves just because they wouldn’t call a freaking gardener.
The 10-Hour Video Hour You may not have noticed this, but YouTube has something of a predilection for videos that are 10 hours long, usually of the same melody or song or short video repeated over and over. One of the most infamous involves a nightmarish version of 4 Non Blondes’ anthemic 1993 hit What’s Up (aka the “HEYEAYEA SONG” in YouTube titling) laid over footage from the old He-Man cartoon, but that’s seriously a drop in a frighteningly massive ocean of videos that last almost half a day, repeating the same three minute block until your eyes shrivel and fall out from sadness. No worse than Foxtel or ABC News 24 then, really. THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 35
In Focus Avaberée Pic: Terry Soo
Names: Aimee, Genevieve, Irena Roles: We all sing and play electronic thangs. How long have you been together? We started jamming together in 2008/9 but I guess we decided to take it more seriously in the last three years. How did you all meet? Irena and Gen grew up together and we met Aimee in high school. You’re on tour in the van – which band or artist is going to keep the most people happy if we throw them on the stereo? The Smiths are always a crowd pleaser but we really break down to The Corrs. Would you rather be a busted broke-but-revered Hank Williams figure or some kind of Metallica monster? We’d rather be busted and broke but doing what we love. Which Brisbane bands before you have been an inspiration (musically or otherwise)? George, Emma Louise, Airling – basically any Brisbane band that is pushing the boundaries and doing great things both here and overseas. What part do you think Brisbane plays in the music you make? The easy going atmosphere of Brisbane definitely shows through our cruisy electronic sounds. What’s in the pipeline for the band in the short term? We are just about to head on a 10 date tour in release of our In Your Arms I Found My Secrets EP and then straight back to Brisbane for BIGSOUND. Avaberée play The Triffid on 27 Aug, Byron Bay Brewery on 29 Aug, Footstomp Pre-BIGSOUND Party @ The Triffid on 8 Sep, BIGSOUND (The Brightside Outdoor Stage) on 9 Sep and Currumbin Creek Tavern, Gold Coast on 11 Sep.
36 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
Music
Swamp City
Session guy to the stars he’s performed and recorded with everyone from Joe Bonamassa to Divinyls, Renee Geyer to Blues Brothers’ Steve Cropper - keyboards wizard Clayton Doley always wanted to cut a “New Orleans” album. He tells Michael Smith he thinks he’s finally good enough.
“I
was on tour with Harry Manx in Canada,” keyboards player Clayton Doley explains the journey that he took to record his latest album, Bayou Billabong, “and the record had been in the back of my mind for a long time and I just happened to be in that part of the world and saw this opening in Harry’s schedule there were two weeks off where I thought I should probably try and make this happen, jump on this opportunity and go down to New Orleans, call up the guys, see if they’re around, find a studio and make it all happen.” Luckily, “the guys” - past and present members of Jon Cleary’s band, The Absolute Monster Gentlemen - were around and became the album’s rhythm section. They got the record down in a day. “And actually that night the drummer told me about this horn section that he was gonna go play with and so I went down, saw his gig and it ended up being Corey Henry from Galactic, so I basically booked him on the spot, said, ‘Can you come in tomorrow
and do a horn session?’ Then I had to go back on tour and didn’t really touch it for months after that, but I sort of knew I had something good.” Back home in Sydney, he decided it would be nice to get the three singers - Mahalia Barnes, Jade MacRae and Juanita Tippins who had performed with him and his brother Lachlan in The Hands as The Clay-Tones and featured on his 2004 Live And Breathe album, back together for the record. For all the nodding to the jazz/blues/ funk gumbo that is New Orleans music, the album title - Bayou Billabong - makes it clear this is an Australian album. “It’s sort of inevitable of course but when you write songs you just write about your own experiences, and my experiences are always Australian experiences pretty much. Hopefully it’s got the best elements of the Australian [music] and the music I’ve been a student of my whole life, all the New Orleans and American blues. “I feel like this is my best work. I’ve loved the New Orleans piano style and all that for so long - and this is the first time that I’ve done it - I feel like this is really almost like I’ve come full circle ‘cause I started listening to that when I was first learning to play Professor Longhair and James Booker and those sorts of guys, Jon Cleary as well, and now I feel I was ready and good enough to do it and put it down on a recording. So I feel I’ve come full circle and this is the album I was meant to make, if that makes sense. I had to go through a few experiences and doing a few gigs in New Orleans probably helped.”
What: Bayou Billabong (Independent) What: 4 & 6 Sep, Noosa Jazz Festival, Noosa Lions Park, Noosa Heads
Wine & Song
Lucinda Williams Shiraz 1978
A robust dry wine, Shiraz carries “distinctly spicy notes”, and “ages gracefully into a velvety wine of pure elegance, perfect for entertaining”. It also has a “powerful heavy finish”, just like when Lucinda goes into country-rock mode.
A DAY ON THE GREEN
Marlon Williams Mosette 2008
This earthy wine is “best enjoyed young” so entirely appropriate for the relative newcomer on the line-up. A wine that’s light in body with a “cool clean taste”, they don’t come much cooler (and presumably cleaner) than upcoming roots prodigy Marlon.
A DAY ON THE GREEN
THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 37
Music
More Reasons You Need A BIGSOUND Live Pass
Pedal To The Metal
Hanging with the Bigwigs The conference delegates (ie music industry experts from all over the world) all get amongst the action (as do the bands on their nights off) so you just never know who you’ll meet at the bar!
You’ll be Ahead of The Curve You’ll trump all your mates by seeing the next crop of Aussie super-stars way before anyone else in your clique.
Less Than A Buck Per Show At $75 per two-night pass (or $45 per night) if you played your cards right (and took a lot of speed) you could glimpse all 150 bands for just 50 cents per band (disclaimer: may not actually be possible, but it’s still incredible value).
Check out themusic.com.au to win a double pass.
38 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
Guitarist/vocalist Oliver Ackermann of A Place To Bury Strangers tells Brendan Crabb his band find comfort in discomfort.
“I
’ve been more and more into younger bands,” Oliver Ackermann of A Place To Bury Strangers observes. “I really like tonnes of old music of course, but there’s something that’s completely new and refreshing when you’re seeing something unlike anything you’ve ever heard or seen before. Some of these bands are really making something cool happen and I think there’s a bunch of underground bands that are doing that kind of stuff. “Obviously there’s people rehashing some sort of old ideas, but the stuff which excites me the most is something [whereby] you’re just completely surprised and floored by something that’s new. Hopefully that’s what everybody’s kind of searching for. [However], I’m not really excited about a band who is just as wacky and weird as possible, just for the sake of it. It has to have some sort of direction.” It’s the innate belief there are perpetually fresh phrasings and interpretations of long-held notions to be uncovered, or a new energy that can breathe life into convention that helps spur on the Brooklynfounded outfit. Their psychedelic-infused, shoegazing rock can also be inextricably linked with the outfit’s other ventures, namely effect pedal company Death By Audio and the associated, now defunct DIY venue/artists’ workspace.
When he takes The Music’s call, Ackermann’s been working on pedal designs. “I get to just do whatever I want,” he marvels, “make crazy stuff and people want to buy it. But it’s been a long time coming. We built it from the ground up... Playing in the band and all sorts of stuff, at least we get to do what we love to do, so it’s not bad work. Both of those things sort of feed off of each other and help each other out. I still get the opportunity to do both, but there’s definitely times when I don’t have any time to build effects pedals ‘cause the band is really busy. But that helps and is fun, to be a change of pace.” The band’s uncompromising reputation for sheer eardrum-punishing volume when performing live precedes them, which must be troublesome to maintain on a nightly basis. The frontman admits there’s often “resistance between venues and shows”. “That’s what’s exciting,” he continues. “If you feel, like, worn down and messed up or something, that’s what strives you; pushes you to go further and keep things exciting. I guess when things sort of get to be comfortable is when it’s, like, you get bored of it or something. So we try to just keep it as non-comfortable as much as possible.” Was performing at near-deafening decibel levels an early objective? “Not really, it was really just creating music to be what we just liked to listen to. I guess I just played in a lot of loud bands and at some point discovered that was what I really loved. I loved to hear the sound of crazy, loud bass and tonnes of feedback. It wasn’t necessarily such a goal [so] much as a taste that was just enjoyable. So you run with it and go with those things, and as time goes on I guess you like things even crazier and more insane.”
When & Where: 6 Sep, Crowbar
THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 39
Album / E Album/EP Reviews
Foals
What Went Down Warner
★★★★½
Album OF THE Week
When did you discover Foals? When they were fragile and craving, circa Antidotes? Lost and emotional on Total Life Forever, or did Holy Fire’s medicated highs keep the black dog at bay? If none of the above, perhaps you’re waiting for What Went Down, on which all those simmering, seething growls and insecurities get unleashed. The opening and title track is the inevitable cathartic release, an unstoppable inferno of emotion that will either recast your view of the band altogether or simply make you concerned as to what’s wrong. Producer James Ford (Simian Mobile Disco) boldly thrusts it up front where it can’t be shied away from instead of tucking it away at the end. If it doesn’t totally scare off those who simply wanted another bouncy My Number, Snake Oil’s screaming, intense glam-fuzz stomp (tipping the hat to Kasabian) at the midway point will finish the job properly while the slight Afrobeat-like familiarity of Albatross and the twinkly Birch Tree provide masterfully orchestrated balance so it’s not all teardrops and counselling sessions. Yannis Philippakis’ vocals remain inimitable and glorious, often leaping from soulful falsetto to wrought devastation at the turn of a heel but - ye gods! - do his and Jimmy Smith’s guitars occupy their instrumental roles almost as backing vocals in themselves. As A Knife In The Ocean closes, you feel wrecked, like after the most chaotic sex that has left several prized possessions in pieces on the floor. It’s exactly what you didn’t realise you needed Foals to deliver. Mac McNaughton
The Paper Kites
Last Dinosaurs
Twelvefour
Wellness
Wonderlick/Sony
Dew Process
★★★★
★★★★
Without meaning to make any broad or sweeping generalisations, most of the ideas that come to us early in the morning aren’t our finest. They’re a special brand of logic that only reveals itself once the sun has been down for a few hours and usually involve experiments in the kitchen with food groups that should never be mixed. Thankfully, Melbourne indie folk-rockers The Paper Kites seem to have at least a little more clarity during these moments, which they wisely chose to use writing their second album. Dedicating two months to reversing his sleep patterns, frontman Sam Bentley delved into a form of songwriting rich with descriptions of the nighttime darkness. twelve four is a concept album based around the idea that an artist’s creative peak is between midnight and when the street sweepers call it quits. The glowing album cover and moody track names like Electric
After three years touring the world, the Sunshine State’s indie pop rock four-piece are back with a slew of summer anthems. Enlisting topnotch producer Scott Horscroft (Silverchair, The Presets, Empire Of The Sun), Last Dinosaurs’ second album journeys to a tropical soundscape soaked in their signature shimmering guitar riffs and melancholic vocals. Bursting with shiny pop hooks, Wellness is a cascade of infectious indie pop gushing with personal stories about life, love, and everything in between. Overflowing with feels, lead single Evie is coated in Sean Caskey’s crooning about starryeyed optimism and hopeless love which washes the dance-worthy synths in melancholy. Drifting into a dreamier soundscape, title track Wellness rains heartache on the slow beat as it floats you to cloud nine. Falling down the rabbit hole, Matrix-inspired single Apollo
40 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
Indigo reflect this nocturnal theme, but the warm instrumentation transcends any particular time of day. I’m Lying To You Cause I’m Lost and Woke Up From A Dream drive along to alternative-country rhythms and feature harmonica flourishes, while Christina Lacy’s harmonies illuminate the wheeling Revelator Eyes like headlights. Bentley sounds similar to Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold on quieter tracks like the sparse A Silent Cause, creating hushed moments of intimacy. The band reintroduce their trademark gentle and propulsive melodies whenever the record seems to be slipping into a sleepy atmosphere, making for a gorgeous listening experience. Roshan Clerke
explodes with disco grooves and feel good vibes as its lyrics explore what it’s like leading a double life. Stream surges with emotion as Caskey’s achy vocals drench the effervescent guitar riffs, before Zero’s soaring drum beat rockets you into one final introspective orbit. Searching for meaning among the stars and back on solid ground, Wellness is waist-deep in introspection. Weaving these thoughts on life and love between their explosive guitar lines and dancefloor grooves, their latest tracks are both meaningful and fun. Whether it catapults you into self-discovery or summertime, Last Dinosaurs’ second album will leave a lasting impression either way. Cara Oliveri
EP Reviews Album/EP Reviews
Best Friends
Nile
Silicon
Hot. Reckless. Totally Insane
What Should Not Be Unearthed
Personal Computer
Smack Face Records
Nuclear Blast
★★★½
★★★½
★★★½
★★★½
Sheffield rabblerousers Best Friends launch into a scuzzedout record that straddles the lo-fi punk stylings that came out of London a few years ago (such as Nosebleeds) with more propulsive aggression, both in terms of brutish instrumentation and the energetic howls of Lewis Sharman. Fake Spit and Shred Til You’re Dead are brim full of garage growl and giddy abandon. Holy Mountain is no less propulsive yet with its slower build-up and breezy bridge plays as their attempt at a pop song.
Critics always points to Nile’s Egyptological obsession as the element that sets them apart from the death metal herd. Thing is that’s only part of the reason why the South Carolinian outfit continues to tower above the competition. Quite simply they write material that’s constantly engaging and memorable. Sure they can blast with the best of them as Liber Stellae - Rubaeae proves, but it’s complex epics like In The Name of Amun and the title track where the band continues to shine. Barring the duff Ithyphallic Nile have never put a foot wrong.
New Zealand wunderkind Kody Nielson has returned under the moniker Silicon to release an out of this world debut album. Reprogramming soul, funk and disco, Personal Computer time travels to a futuristic electronic soundscape and traps you in its mainframe. Jarring the signal with its gigabyte-sized synths and digital disco beat, debut single God Emoji is the album’s high-five emoji moment. Burning Sugar reboots Nielson’s funk-infused sensibilities while Cellphone, I Can See Paradise and Love Peace upload human emotions to the machine-like electronica. Far-out tunes that’ll hold you captive.
Bluesy contemporary rockers The Snowdroppers’ third record is a guitar-based affair, with careful attention directed towards riffs, melodies, catchy hooks and of course massive vocals. This record is full of the upbeat fun you’d expect from them and the production qualities are slick. From the emotive bridge noodling in Everybody’s Losing My Mind to the fast-paced R’n’R of I Don’t Think I Want You To Come Over Tonight there’s adequate evidence that three records in The Snowdroppers have lost none of their contagious style or flair. Just take Devil Child for instance; it’s a banger!
Brendan Telford
Mark Hebblewhite
Weird World
The Snowdroppers Business FOUR | FOUR/ABC
Cara Oliveri
Jonty Czuchwicki
More Reviews Online Le Pie Secrets
theMusic.com.au
Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
Stories The Youth To Become
THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 41
Album / E Album/EP Reviews
Motorhead
Beach House
Yo La Tengo
K-OS
Bad Magic
Depression Cherry
Stuff Like That There
ADA
Mistletone
Matador
Can’t Fly Without Gravity Dine Alone
★★★½
★★★★
★★★★
★★½
Now on their 22nd studio album, Motorhead bring us Bad Magic, 13 tracks of euphemisms in stories of drinking, fighting and sex, all punched into a soundtrack of roaring guitar drivers. Motorhead have far from broken new ground, but while their formula stays the same the tracks have sharpened significantly from recent records. Keeping producer Cameron Webb at the helm and letting the band step back into ballbusting double kick thrash style with gruff blues bass and the unmistakable Lemmy Kilmister vocal has birthed an album that Motorhead and metal fans alike will lap up.
After a three-year wait another brilliant Beach House album materialises out of the ether. With a record sleeve clad in red velvet the exception, Depression Cherry doesn’t boast any radical new directions, though they aren’t afraid to expand into more abstract territory - and while the press release states it’s a simpler sound, this isn’t entirely true. While instrumentation has been stripped back a bit, songs that have simple, deeply embedded melodies are given room to bend and warp and decay in beautiful anti-Lynchian soundscapes. Not as cinematic and accessible as Bloom, it’s a much stranger, much stronger record.
Nobody would ever expect the Canadian MC’s sixth long-player to be a drudge of listless hip hop tropes and, yes, k-os has once again delivered something which, in scientific terms, is akin to another chapter in the quest to find a new colour. Crazy diversions continue to be his modus operandi to distance himself from his more egocentric, bombastic contemporaries, and there are unexpected genre twists aplenty (punk, soul and flamenco all get a look-in). Can’t Fly... is perhaps too untethered for its own good. Technically impressive, sure. But you’ll remember the turbulent bits more than the smooth sailing.
Mark Beresford
Matt MacMaster
Conceptually revisiting 1990’s fan-revered Fakebook - which comprised leftfield covers, reworkings of Yo La Tengo’s own tracks and a few new originals - this collection again showcases the trio’s adroit knack at reinterpretation, a skill few bother to master let alone glorify. Of the covers, Georgia Hubley’s breathy readings of Hank Williams’ I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry and The Cure’s Friday I’m In Love shine brightest (although the lesser-known covers routinely work wonderfully), while the reimagining of Deeper Into Movies and new track Awhileaway rule their own material. Gorgeous.
Mac McNaughton
Steve Bell
More Reviews Online Various When Sharpies Ruled – A Vicious Selection
42 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
theMusic.com.au
Nattali Rize & Notis New Era Frequency EP
Gin Wigmore Blood To Bone
ORDER
NOW STORE.THEMUSIC.COM.AU
THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 43
Live Re Live Reviews
Dune Rats, Palms, Major Leagues, Orphans Orphans, Banff The Foundry 20 Aug
...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead @ The Triffid. Pic: Stephen Booth
Chelsea Grin @ The Brightside. Pic: Claudia Ciapocha
Dune Rats @ The Foundry. Pic: Markus Ravik
...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead @ The Triffid. Pic: Stephen Booth
Hiatus Kaiyote @ Woolly Mammoth. Pic: Bobby Rein
44 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
The spirit of community hangs heavy in the air at the freshly reopened Foundry tonight, early arrivals to tonight’s industrycentric relaunch festivities treated to a surprise set in the Foundry Records shopfront from local singer-songwriter Benjamin Forbes, aka Banff. He treats the mingling crowd to an appropriately stripped back set of dreamy, easy listening tunes that mostly provide the backing to the excitable audience’s conversations. Regardless, he puts on a sublime performance. Upstairs is where the real party starts, though, with Brissybred Major Leagues breaking into their set with an airy, laidback tune before giving way to sunnier vibes, all upbeat jangle and lilting guitar. It’s a tight showing from the stalwart four-piece, though they fight against the still unsettled attention of the arriving crowd. In everyone’s defence, though, those food trays are kind of impossible to ignore. Lots of people are very focused on the fried chicken wings, and if Major Leagues were down here in the audience right now, they would understand. It’s less of a problem for local supergroup Orphans Orphans, who - affably aided by the ragged charm and beguiling mullet of frontman Spencer White (also of Morning Harvey) - ensnare the front section of the room with ease, the experienced five-piece drawing on their considerable pedigree to keep the retro-soaked rock coming. The quality of their tracks, especially highlights such as What’s A Boy S’posed To Do, give rise to the question: how do these people manage all these bands? Sole fly-ins Palms may stand
out a little as being the only act tonight hailing from south of the border, but they’re not treated with anything approaching contempt by the now well sated, wholly enthusiastic audience. The nominal outsiders in the room utilise the social and alcoholic lubrication to their
The Foundry has victoriously made its statement of intent here tonight. fullest advantage, pulling us in with a raft of sassy guitar licks, driven percussion and craftily melodically and rhythmically balanced bass, truly hitting their stride on tight – but not too tight – standouts such as the uplifting, danceable Love. Come back any time, Palms. Following a short technical delay with a guitar amp – which may explain the recurrent feedback issues tonight’s players have been suffering – local larrikins Dune Rats get their substance-fuelled set under way, tipping their hats to their manager, who made the flight back from Bali to be here for them tonight, despite a bout of diarrhea and having recently ingested “two big lines of cocaine”. The trio launch into a relentless, abrasive stream of don’t-give-a-fuck rambunctiousness, the room an appreciatively heaving mass through Dr Dr, Dalai Lama Big Banana Marijuana, Superman, Red Light Green Light and everything in between. Consider the ceremonial champagne bottle well and truly smashed in this re-christening - and the contents vociferously lapped up. Triple j
eviews Live Reviews
host Dom Alessio takes over DJing duties to entertain the hangers-on, but The Foundry has victoriously made its statement of intent here tonight, and it’s an exciting one at that. Mitch Knox
...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, The Red Paintings, Solkyri The Triffid 15 Aug Sydney quartet Solkyri open proceedings tonight, their passionate brand of instrumental post-rock filling the venue’s confines with ease as the crowd starts to filter in. All four members switch seemlessly between caressing and punishing their instruments and treat each soaring song like a journey to navigate and survive, and it’s quite fascinating to watch their commitment as the music clearly courses through their very being. They finish with current single Yes, I’m Breathing which finds the three guitarists contorting and writhing in complete abandon. Next up are prodigal artrockers The Red Paintings, the former locals now ensconced overseas but still receiving a strong welcome from their old stomping ground. They’ve clearly shed neither their theatrical bent nor artistic pretensions, the stage resplendent with artists adorning human canvasses and strange affectations like a hamster wheel upon one of the amps, all augmented by strangely costumed forest nymphs scurrying through the crowd. Focused frontman Trash Mc Sweeney is as bombastic as ever as they pound through a string of intense art-rock productions such as It Is As It Was, The Fall Of Rome and
Wasps, violinist Alix Kol in particular nicely fleshing out the pristine, sculpted sound as they end with a flurry of well received tracks including The Streets Fell Into My Window, I’ll Sell You Suicide and old fave The Revolution Is Never Coming. Finally the four members of Texan ensemble ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead enter the fray to INXS’ Never Tear You Apart, bassist Autry Fulbright II pulling shapes with a conspicuous unlit cigarette as they start with an instrumental flourish before pounding into Will You Smile Again? which builds to an epic crescendo. Co-frontmen Conrad Keely and Jason Reece hammer their guitars and take turns spitting artful bile into their respective
another burst of their trademark visceral intensity, Worlds Apart sounding massive before it all builds into a maelstrom which finds Reece absolutely pummelling the drum kit like his life depends on it. At the conclusion of the ferocious barrage the band all file into the darkness, just Keely remaining on stage noodling away in silhouette before he’s suddenly gone too, leaving a cutting edge to the enveloping silence. Steve Bell
Chelsea Grin, Boris The Blade, Bayharbour, Graves, Consider Me Heartless The Brightside 22 Aug
Still a force to be reckoned with... delivering well oiled precision mayhem with panache microphones, vocally uniting for the bombastic Heart In The Hand Of The Matter before Reece swaps positions with drummer Jamie Miller, who takes guitar/vocal reins for new track Lie Without A Liar. Early number Mistakes & Regrets has lost none of its punch, nor has key single Another Morning Stoner. They’re still a force to be reckoned with in the live realm, delivering well oiled precision mayhem with panache, and they complete a powerful set with another classic run of tunes featuring Relative Ways, Caterwaul and A Perfect Teenhood. ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead finish with
The beers are cold, tattoos are on show and there are piercings stretched to the point you could lob your empty bottles through them. Let’s get heavy. Consider Me Heartless open the night to a devout few, though the audience sticks to the edges of the room making the whole scene resemble an awkward high school disco. Flying the flag for Brisbane is local metalcore outfit Bayharbour. Channelling the sounds of Confession and August Burns Red with some melodic guitar hooks and a bountiful buffet of breakdowns, they get some limbs swinging in the pit as the crowd starts to grow. By turning their tuning pegs down, Graves turn the heavy dial up. The crew from Wollongong kick off the droptuned theme of the whole night with Meshuggah-esque tones and a rhythm section sure to snap a few necks. Boris The Blade quickly make their presence known as the crowd are instructed to “get the fuck away from the bar
and up the front!” - to which the packed crowd mostly obliges. These guys are as heavy as Kyle Sandilands’ sense of selfworth, the guttural vocals and constant drum fills producing a sound similar to fellow Aussie deathcore legends Thy Art Is Murder, and a crowd just as deadly. Utah deathcore giants Chelsea Grin straight away command the stage. These guys are pure brutality, comprising of demonic vocals, a barrage of down-tuned
These guys are pure brutality. distortion and so much bass that people’s view of the brown note being merely a myth is getting challenged. The slippery blood/beer/ spit concoction under foot in combination with people who look like they’re fighting invisible ninjas is making for a real show of survivalism as bodies slip over, faces get hit and every few seconds somebody is limping out of the mess of limbs (yours truly only managing to sustain impressive bruises, thanks for asking). As the set rolls on, one open-string, double-kickladen ditty turns into another which then flows into another and if you aren’t kept alert by the utter fear of your physical wellbeing, one could find themselves on the verge of boredom. There isn’t exactly anything new or revolutionary in terms of songwriting going on here, which is fine if you just want to take on invisible Jackie Chan; just don’t expect to get mesmerised by what you’re hearing. Nonetheless, by set’s end everybody’s drenched and damaged, but satisfied. Tom Peasley
THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 45
Live Re Live Reviews
Hiatus Kaiyote, Vulture St Tape Gang, Jaala Woolly Mammoth 23 Aug
More Reviews Online theMusic.com.au/ music/live-reviews
First up, and for something completely different, tonight finds local trio Vulture Street Tape Gang opening proceedings. As the crowd become increasingly eager to get groovin’, they are pleasantly surprised to hear the improvised hip hop tunes of the ‘gang’ spilling through the doors of the Mammoth Mane Stage room. This leads to a plethora of neck jives and surprised expressions, as well as every song being described as a ‘classic’ by singer Lane McHypeman himself. Second on the bill for the
evening are quartet JAALA. Hailing from Melbourne, JAALA showcase their very own brand of what they describe as ‘experimental bedroom punk’, complete with erratic time signatures and prog-rock like transitions. Lead singer Cosima Jaala truly encapsulates her band’s charisma, showing off her dynamic range along with her ability to play her guitar flawlessly. Hiatus Kiayote finally grace the stage, welcomed by an almighty roar from the crowd. The Melbourne outfit open up with the gut-shattering synth sound of Choose Your Weapon. The set soon becomes a flourish of tunes from both albums, including crowd favourites Jekyll and
Mobius Streak. Singer and guitarist, Nai Palm, grabs the attention of fans with her impervious vocal melodies, and is so often without fault during the set. The remaining members, Paul Bender, Simon Mavin and Perrin Moss also exhibit their musical talents, creating sounds and moods that make it almost impossible to stand still. A special mention should also be made to backing vocalists for the evening, who accentuate the band’s soulful vibe throughout the performance. To say the least, it is obvious why Hiatus Kiayote was nominated for a Grammy last year for Best R&B performance. Georgia Corpe
ARTS REVIEWS Arts Reviews
Holding The Man Film In cinemas 27 Aug
★★★½ While attending an all-boys high school in 1970s Melbourne, Tim Conigrave (Ryan Corr) and John Caleo (Craig Stott) fall in love. Holding The Man follows their 15-year relationship, covering hardship and discrimination, jealousy and fidelity, family tension, changing societal attitudes, and death. Director Neil Armfield (Candy) brings searing emotion to this film adaption of Timothy Conigrave’s 1995 memoir. Nothing ever feels overblown,
Holding The Man
46 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
the leading actors understated, letting the story speak for itself. The Australian setting, in all its muted hues, reminds the viewer this all occurred in our recent history - the timing of the film’s release coinciding with the government’s refusal to legalise same-sex marriage, leaving us trailing behind the US. It’s foremost a story of love. The personal, as always, is the political, and it is the intensely personal insight into Conigrave’s lived experiences that makes Holding The Man’s messages all the more powerful, and its conclusion all the more devastating. Stephanie Liew
The Gift
Film In cinemas 27 Aug
★★★★ Making his feature directorial debut, Joel Edgerton shows remarkable assurance behind the camera, generating tension and dread. Edgerton takes the material in unexpected directions, shifting the audience’s perceptions with fluidity and creating something more discomforting and disturbing than the usual psychodrama. Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall) have relocated to Los Angeles, near where Simon grew up, to put
The Gift
past traumas behind them. But a chance meeting with the awkward but friendly Gordo (Edgerton), who attended high school with Simon, casts a shadow over their new life. Simon and Gordo have a history, one that Simon claims to barely remember. Gordo remembers, though, and the past comes back to haunt Simon and Robyn. Edgerton’s work in front of the camera is as accomplished as his work behind it - his Gordo is both pitiable and unnerving. And Bateman and Hall are just as good, both actors skilfully revealing the many facets of their characters. Guy Davis
THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 47
Comedy / G The Guide
Wed 26
The Cactus Channel. Pic: Eden Meure
Mary Handsome + Little Aztec + Trapped Admirals: Black Bear Lodge, Fortitude Valley
Elis Forever - A Tribute by Coisa Linda: Brisbane Jazz Club, Kangaroo Point
Bad//Dreems
Dubarray: Kamel Bar (KB’s), Noosa Heads Ellie James & The Forces of Destiny: Ric’s Bar, Fortitude Valley
The Music Presents Oh Mercy: Woolly Mammoth 4 Sep
Loosen Up Wednesdays: Royal Exchange Hotel, Toowong
The Cactus Channel: Motor Room 4 Sep
Doom Mountain + Future Haunts + Electric Zebra: Sonny’s House of Blues, Brisbane
Brisbane Festival 2015: Brisbane 5-26 Sep
Jessica Sarah: The Bearded Lady, West End
An Evening With Kevin Smith: The Tivoli 19 Sep
Urban Sounds: The Beer Garden, Surfers Paradise
Red Deer Festival: Mt Samson 3 Oct
Weird & Beard 2 feat. Electric Beardaloo: The Milk Factory Kitchen & Bar, South Brisbane
Bad//Dreems: Woolly Mammoth 16 Oct, Miami Shark Bar 17 Oct Laura Marling: The Tivoli 21 Oct The Phoenix Foundation: Woolly Mammoth 23 Oct
Judy’s Place feat. Pat Tierney + Dana Hassall + Hayley Marsten: University of Queensland (Red Room), St Lucia
Mumford & Sons: Brisbane Riverstage 7 Nov A Day On The Green – Paul Kelly: Sirromet Winery 29 Nov Mew: Max Watt’s 4 Dec Bluesfest 2016: Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm 24-28 Mar The Drones. Pic: Angela Padovan
Hearing Drones The Drones play The Triffid on 29 Aug, celebrating the ten-year anniversary of their seminal record Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Float By. Supported by Batpiss.
Thu 27 Gympie Music Muster feat. Adam Brand + Mary Chapin Carpenter + Troy CassarDaley + Amber Lawrence + Ian Moss + Catherine Britt + Luke O’Shea + Ross Wilson + Morgan Evans + Tift Merritt + Wagons + Mental As Anything + Jasmine Rae + Drew McAlister + Caitlyn Shadbolt + Travis Collins + Frankie J Holden & Wilbur Wilde + Troy Kemp + Mason Rack Band + Ashleigh Dallas + Chelsea Basham + Kaylens Rain + Kevin Bennett + Davidson Brothers + James Blundell + Keith Potger + The Hillbilly Goats + Matt Cornell + Chase The Sun + Jody Direen + The Muster Poets + Deep Creek Road + Kevin Borich + Mustered Courage + Peter Denahy + Allan Caswell + Rusty
48 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
Gig Of The Week Ten-piece The Cactus Channel are churning along the east coast playing shows in support of their new vinyl release, titled Cobaw. See them when they come by Jet Black Cat Music, 3 Sep and The Motor Room, 4 Sep. & The Ayers Rockettes + Shaun Kirk + Victoria Avenue + Sheppard + Adam Eckersley Band + The Bushwackers + Felicity Urquhart + Travis List + Chad Morgan + The Soorleys + Pixie Jenkins + Dean Perrett + Blue Eyes Cry + Lawrie & Shelley Minson + Round Mountain Girls + The Bobkatz + Mick Lindsay + Darren Jack + Melinda Schneider + Kristy Cox + Jetty Road + The Mercurys + Jenny Queen + Mickey Pye + Matt Stillert + more: Amamoor State Forest Park, Amamoor Creek
Irish Pub, Airlie Beach Julia Morris: QPAC Concert Hall, South Brisbane The Dickersons + Slacksmiths: Ric’s Bar, Fortitude Valley Phil & Trudy Edgeley: Solbar (Lounge Bar), Maroochydore The Bear Hunt + Hey Lady! + The Halls + Love Like Hate: The Bearded Lady, West End
Open Mic Night: Bay Central Tavern, Urraween Cowboy Bob & His World of Smut + Diamond Dave + Sabrina Lawrie: Beetle Bar, Brisbane
Magic Bones
Sports Fan + The Bassethounds + Mazer: Black Bear Lodge, Fortitude Valley Jan Preston’s Boogie Circus: Brisbane Jazz Club, Kangaroo Point Brew Jams: Burleigh Brewing, Burleigh Heads Impy Idol - Grand Final: Imperial Hotel, Beenleigh Rohan Somasekaran + Paula Girvan: JMI Live, Bowen Hills Jam Night: Koala Tavern, Capalaba Immigrant Union: Lefty’s Old Time Music Hall, Brisbane
Dem Bones Melburnians Magic Bones have a new single, Danger I Am, and they’re heading up the Hume to deliver it and more 28 Aug at the newly relaunched The Foundry.
Hot Steaming Pod with Various Artists: Lock ‘n’ Load Bistro, West End Des Reid: Loving Hut, Mount Gravatt 112: Max Watt’s (formerly The Hi-Fi Brisbane), West End Mooncoin + Alan Kelly Trio: Noosa Reef Hotel (Flanagan’s), Noosa Heads Claude Hay: Paddy’s Shenanigans
Fresh Thursday: The Beer Garden, Surfers Paradise Self Defense Family + Kiri + Clever + Deafcult: The Brightside, Fortitude Valley Ecca Vandal + WAAX: The Foundry, Fortitude Valley
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Open Mic Night: The Four Mile Creek Hotel, Strathpine
Beavis + Anonymous Heroes + Tim Wheatley: The Triffid, Newstead
SAFIA. Pic: Rohan Anderson
The Soorleys: The Milk Factory Kitchen & Bar, South Brisbane
Regurgitator + Godswounds + Mystery School: The Zoo, Fortitude Valley
Avaberee + Mid Ayr + Capre + Clea: The Triffid, Newstead
The Lazy Valentines: Victory Hotel, Brisbane
Regurgitator + Godswounds + Mystery School: The Zoo, Fortitude Valley
Passport to Airlie Beach - Battle of the Bands 2015: Villa Noosa Hotel, Noosaville
Jamie Lawson + Harry Hookey: Woolly Mammoth, Fortitude Valley
Upskirts: Woolly Mammoth, Fortitude Valley
The Angels: Woombye Pub, Woombye
Juice with DJ J-Tok + DJ Blitz: Wynnum Tavern, Wynnum West
Fri 28
Sat 29
The Angels: Acacia Ridge Hotel, Acacia Ridge
Gympie Music Muster: Amamoor State Forest Park, Amamoor Creek
Gympie Music Muster: Amamoor State Forest Park, Amamoor Creek
SAFIA Word
Opus Of A Machine + The Strangers + Rise Overrun + Ages Of Earth: Beetle Bar, Brisbane
SAFIA are playing a couple of shows at Woolly Mammoth on 2 & 3 Sep to be exact. Boo Seeka will be on support duty at both shows.
Nova & The Experience: Black Bear Lodge, Fortitude Valley
Oh Mercy
Hotel, Brisbane Crooked Face + Mouthguard + Povarotti + Kombi Killers + Kitten Mittens + Dan Simmons: Chardons Corner Hotel (The Back Room), Annerley DJ Robbie Rob: Club Tavern, Caboolture BNS + Styli$$h: Deception Bay Tavern (Public Bar), Deception Bay Jessie Morris Band: Eat Street Markets, Hamilton
Mercy Me Oh Mercy is bringing their classic pop sound to Woolly Mammoth, 4 Sep. The national We Talk About Love album tour is the first for the new bandmates, with Oh Mercy now featuring keys, viola, bass and an occasional second guitarist.
Tom Foolery: Breakfast Creek Hotel, Albion Lee Kernaghan: Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Boondall Dan Bolton: Brisbane Jazz Club, Kangaroo Point Doris Day - So Much More Than The Girl Next Door with Melinda Schneider: Broncos Leagues Club, Red Hill Fridays Classics RNB Gold feat. DJ Chrispi + Marty James + BennyK: Captain Cook Tavern, Kippa-Ring Loa: Cardigan Bar, Sandgate Self Defense Family: Caxton
50 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
The Angels: Beach House Hotel, Scarness
Anthony B + House of Shem: Max Watt’s (formerly The Hi-Fi Brisbane), West End Flynn Effect + Vervet Thirst + Enter Reality + Her Affinity: New Globe Theatre, Fortitude Valley Booster Trio: Newmarket Hotel, Newmarket Sons of Zion + JSQZE + DJ J-Tok: Parkwood Tavern, Parkwood
Hellyeah: Eatons Hill Hotel, Eatons Hill
Shifa’ Al Musiqa (Healing Music): Queensland Multicultural Centre (QMC), Kangaroo Point
DJ Panda + Dru K: Forest Lake Tavern (Sports Bar), Forest Lake
Mermaid Avenue + Cody Jones & the Lost Company: Ric’s Bar, Fortitude Valley
The Rehbein Brothers: Greaser Bar, Brisbane
Phil Barlow & The Wolf: Royal Mail Hotel, Goodna
Danny Widdicombe: Habitat Restaurant & Bar, South Brisbane
Ayla + Machine Age + Dear WIllow: Solbar, Maroochydore
Kaoss Vs Control + Sound of Truth + Tooth and Bone + Turtle Dog: Johnny Brown’s, Fortitude Valley
Mitch King: Solbar (Lounge Bar), Maroochydore
Gold FM Live feat. 1927 + Pseudo Echo + Sharon O’Neill + Eurogliders + The Chantoozies + Mi-Sex + Swanee + Dragon + GANGgajang + Kings of The Sun: Jupiters (Jupiters Theatre), Broadbeach
Dana Gehrman + Cameron Milford: Statler & Waldorf, Brisbane mnttaB + Wolf Shield + Corporate Vibes + Spirit Bunny + Yaws: The Bearded Lady, West End
The Cornermen: Lock ‘n’ Load Bistro, West End
The Moses Gunn Collective + Black Zeros + Donny Love: The Brightside, Fortitude Valley
Seductive Soul: Logan Diggers Club, Logan Central
Magic Bones + Upskirts: The Foundry, Fortitude Valley
Logan City Hip Hop Collective feat. L-FRESH The LION + Eazy Company + MC Triks + Icey Clique + Aygeemelody: Logan Entertainment Centre, Logan Central
The Outland Brothers + Brad Kennedy + Bart Thrupp + Lucy Taylor: The Loft, Surfers Paradise
Maleny Music Festival 2015 feat. Jack & The Giant Killers + The Company + Bek Jean Stewart + John Malcolm + Yamini + The Barleyshakes + Rob Longstaff + Cloudstreet + All Strings Attached + more: Maleny Showgrounds, Maleny
Quintessential Doll + Frolik + Nathan Morrison: The Milk Factory Kitchen & Bar, South Brisbane CC The Cat: The Motor Room, West End James Reyne: The Tivoli, Fortitude Valley Triffid Blues feat. Mojo Webb + Jimi
The Drafts + Interalia + Zelita + Micropsia: Beetle Bar, Brisbane 4th Birthday Party feat. Hey Geronimo + WAAX + Born Joy Dead + Machine Age + Denpasar: Black Bear Lodge, Fortitude Valley The Green Sinatras: Breakfast Creek Hotel, Albion James Whiting Quintet: Brisbane Jazz Club, Kangaroo Point Shredfest feat. End Us + Nescient + Wisdoms Realm + Magnertron + The Cilikis + Symbolic Weapon + Elkenwood + Demonfire + more: Chardons Corner Hotel (The Back Room) , Annerley
Upskirts
Skirting Around Sydney psych lords Upskirts are bringing their Barely Moving tour to QLD, following the release of their EP. The band’s mix of heavier sludge rock and lighter indie-pop will blare out on 28 Aug at Woolly Mammoth and Sunday at Broadbeach Tavern.
The Dillon James Band + The Wet Fish: Eat Street Markets, Hamilton 97.3FM High School Reunion feat. Dragon + Eurogliders + 1927 + GANGgajang + Mi-Sex + Swanee + Wendy Matthews + Sharon O’Neill
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+ The Chantoozies + Kings of The Sun: Eatons Hill Hotel, Eatons Hill
Weird & Beard 2 feat. For Richer or Moorer: The Milk Factory Kitchen & Bar, South Brisbane
Jasmine Rae
Trainspotters feat. Have/Hold + Hound + Stone Hearts + Deafcult: Grand Central Hotel, Brisbane
Triffid Roots feat. Robbie Miller + Deena: The Triffid, Newstead
Little Billy: Greaser Bar, Brisbane
Mon 31
Return of the Joint Effort 2015 feat. Hoodoo Gurus + Hits + FAT + Mick Medew & The Mesmerisers + The Skeletones + Goldstool: Hamilton Hotel, Hamilton
Naturally 7: City Hall, Brisbane Christchurch Youth Choir: St John’s Cathedral, Brisbane
Jabba + Locky: Irish Murphy’s, Brisbane
DJ Graham Fisher: Story Bridge Hotel (Shelter Bar), Kangaroo Point
Benefit Concert for Gaza feat. +The Firedrakes + Phil Monsour + Al Zayton: Kurilpa Hall, West End Wandering Eyes: Lock ‘n’ Load Bistro, West End Silk: Logan Diggers Club, Logan Central Maleny Music Festival 2015: Maleny Showgrounds, Maleny Motion City Soundtrack + Satellites + Double Lined Minority: Max Watt’s (formerly The Hi-Fi Brisbane), West End
Tue 01 Mark Sheils: Samford Valley Hotel, Samford Village
It’s A Must(er) Australia’s largest charity festival the Gympie Music Muster is happening on 27 Aug at Amamoor State Forest Park, with a stellar cast of international headliners including Sheppard, Jasmine Rae, Mental As Anything and Adam Brand
Wed 02
Hydromedusa + Dreamtime + Last Chaos + Woodboot + Thorax: The Bearded Lady, West End
Safia + Boo Seeka: Woolly Mammoth, Fortitude Valley
CC The Cat: Miami Marketta, Miami
Immigrant Union
A Good Union
50 Lions + Shackles + The Burden + The Struggle: The Brightside, Fortitude Valley
Irish Sessions with Ger Fennelly: Mick O’Malley’s, Brisbane Darren Jack Band + Raku O’Gaia: Royal Mail Hotel, Goodna The Moses Gunn Collective + Immigrant Union + Black Zeros: Solbar, Maroochydore Bart Thrupp: Solbar (Lounge Bar), Maroochydore Mic Travers Duo: Springwood Hotel, Springwood Aquila Young + Amela: Statler & Waldorf, Brisbane
52 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
Mike Frost & The Icemen: Brisbane Jazz Club, Kangaroo Point Sounds of Sunday feat. Upskirts: Broadbeach Tavern, Broadbeach
Doris Day - So Much More Than The Girl Next Door with Melinda Schneider: The Events Centre, Caloundra
Triplickit: Dublin Docks Tavern (2pm), Biggera Waters
Murder On The Dance Floor feat. DJ Black Amex: The Foundry, Fortitude Valley
The Good Ol’ Boys: Eat Street Markets, Hamilton
Ultra Material + Barge With An Antenna On It + more: The Milk Factory Kitchen & Bar, South Brisbane
Jabba + Mark Butler + Mick McHugh: Irish Murphy’s, Brisbane
James Reyne: The Tivoli, Fortitude Valley
The Melbourne based alt-country psych collective Immigrant Union are taking their highly praised second album Any way on a national tour, which comes to Lefty’s Old Time Music Hall on 27 Aug and Solbar, Maroochydore on 29 Aug.
Club (9.30am), Kangaroo Point
The Drones + Batpiss: The Triffid, Newstead Tim Wheatley: The Triffid (2pm), Newstead Reud Mood + Thundergods of the Multiverse + Quazi-Smith + Mess Mess: The Zoo, Fortitude Valley Caillin Malley + Acoustic Moose + DJ Mikey: Victory Hotel (Beer Garden) , Brisbane Spoonbill + Circuit Bent : Woolly Mammoth, Fortitude Valley
Sun 30 Gympie Music Muster: Amamoor State Forest Park, Amamoor Creek
Jimmy Griffin: The Bearded Lady, West End
Thu 03 Jazz Singers Jam Night: Brisbane Jazz Club, Kangaroo Point The Wet Fish: Brooklyn Standard, Brisbane
Regurgitator
The Outland Brothers: Junk Bar, Ashgrove Cory Carlyon: Kamel Bar (KB’s), Noosa Heads Maleny Music Festival 2015: Maleny Showgrounds, Maleny The Dillinger Escape Plan + Caligula’s Horse: Max Watt’s (formerly The Hi-Fi Brisbane), West End Irish Sessions with Ger Fennelly: Mick O’Malley’s, Brisbane Sasta: Mick O’Malley’s, Brisbane Blues Jam with Mark D’s Big 3: Morrison Hotel, Woolloongabba The Frazer Goodman Band: Royal Mail Hotel, Goodna
The ‘Gurge Since forming in late 1993, Regurgitator are adding to their 800+ live forays with their Cheap Imitations tour. Performing back to back shows on 27 & 28 Aug at The Zoo, they will be joined by special guests Godswounds and Mystery School.
Playskool + Sally Skelton: Solbar (Lounge Bar), Maroochydore
Passport to Airlie Beach - Battle of the Bands 2015: Balaclava Hotel, Earlville
Michael David Thomas + Alex Bell + Amela + Matt Hetherington + MTC Cronin: The Bearded Lady, West End
Mustered Courage: Black Bear Lodge, Fortitude Valley
Hannah Cameron: The End, West End
Rob Hackwood Duo: Breakfast Creek Hotel, Albion
The Delta Crows + Jenny Wynter: The Milk Factory Kitchen & Bar, South Brisbane
Ingrid James Quartet: Brisbane Jazz
White Lodge + Makeout Creek + Starclub: Sonny’s House of Blues, Brisbane
The Cactus Channel: Jet Black Cat Music, West End Peter Loveday: Junk Bar, Ashgrove Blood, Sweat & Tears: Mackay Entertainment Centre, Mackay Noosa Jazz Festival 2015 feat. Emma Pask + Darren Percival + Todd Hardy
Gigs / Live The Guide
Nova & The Experience
Alan Boyle: Habitat Restaurant & Bar, South Brisbane Soul Cutz: Logan Diggers Club, Logan Central
Plenty Of Experience After unveiling their latest single Whole Body, indie-pop quartet Nova and The Experience are hitting up Black Bear Lodge on Friday as part of their 15-show east coast tour.
Oh Mercy + Rolls Bayce + Machine Age: Woolly Mammoth, Fortitude Valley
SAT 05
Paces: Rattle Snake Motel, Coolangatta Imagine Dragons + British India: Riverstage, Brisbane
Ella Fence: Lucky Duck Cafe & Bar, Highgate Hill
Sea Legs: Black Bear Lodge, Fortitude Valley
Transvaal Diamond Syndicate + The Ruckus + Lepers & Crooks: Royal Mail Hotel, Goodna
Noosa Jazz Festival 2015: Noosa Lions Park, Noosa Heads
Two Way Street: Breakfast Creek Hotel, Albion
DJ Tim Helmy: Solbar (Lounge Bar), Maroochydore
Lunchtime Live with The Phoncurves: QPAC (Melbourne Street Green), South Brisbane
Aaron Jansz Quintet: Brisbane Jazz Club, Kangaroo Point
Old School Hip Hop Throwdown: Solbar, Maroochydore
Psychoibis + Friends With The Enemy + Being Jane Lane + The
Brisbane Festival presents Megan Washington: Spiegeltent, South Bank
Bakosfield Honky Tonkin’ Band: Royal Mail Hotel, Goodna Transvaal Diamond Syndicate + Lepers & Crooks: Solbar (Main Stage), Maroochydore
James Reyne
Brodie Graham: Solbar (Lounge Bar), Maroochydore Wandering Eyes + Electrik Lemonade + Drop Legs: Soundlounge, Currumbin
+ Anita Spring + Berardi, Foran, Karlen + Jan Preston + Clayton Doley + The Lachy Doley Group + more: Noosa Lions Park, Noosa Heads D At Sea + Millie Tizzard: Solbar, Maroochydore Full Flower Moon Band + Flamingo Jones & The Coconut Yah Yah Boys: The Bearded Lady, West End We Set Signals + Take To The Skies + The Lost Knights + Glory Days: The Brightside, Fortitude Valley Hailey Calvert + Tim Moore + Blair Jackson: The Milk Factory Kitchen & Bar, South Brisbane
Die Rude + Kingston Stompers + Spook Hill: The Bearded Lady, West End Dad Rock Covers Night with The Ron Swansons + Serene: The Brightside, Fortitude Valley The Story So Far + Man Overboard + Apart From This + Relentless: The Lab (all ages), Brisbane Luna Sands + The Halls + The Common Deers: The Milk Factory Kitchen & Bar, South Brisbane The Cactus Channel: The Motor Room, West End
Rock For Refugees feat. Scattered People + Peach Happening + Mother Kirk: The Zoo, Fortitude Valley Safia + Boo Seeka: Woolly Mammoth, Fortitude Valley
Tom Foolery: Breakfast Creek Hotel, Albion Karen Anderson & Some Sinners: Brisbane Jazz Club, Kangaroo Point Moondog Blues: Cardigan Bar, Sandgate Valvetrain + Wornaway + Stone Fox + Dirty Brew + Dead End Kings + The Molotov: Chardons Corner Hotel (The Back Room), Annerley Whoretopsy + Down Royale + Kyzer Soze + Irukandji: Crowbar, Fortitude Valley Passport to Airlie Beach - Battle of the Bands 2015+Various Artists: Dalrymple Hotel, Garbutt Blood, Sweat & Tears: Eatons Hill Hotel, Eatons Hill
James Reyne has taken to the road with his latest tour ALL THE HITS: Solo, Crawl & More, playing back to back shows at The Tivoli on Friday and Saturday. His music has become synonymous with the laid back culture of Australian summers since 1978.
Way We Were + Nikolaine Martin: Chardons Corner Hotel, Annerley
Fri 04 Jouk Mistrow + These Guys + Doom Mountain: Black Bear Lodge, Fortitude Valley
Make It Reyne
Tyler Oakley: City Hall, Brisbane WAAX
Happy Birthday BBL! Black Bear Lodge is celebrating its foruth birthday on 29 Aug night, with a stellar line-up featuring Hey Geronimo, WAAX and Born Joy Dead just to name a few. Oh, and there’ll be lolly bags and some special alcoholic spiders!
Passport to Airlie Beach - Battle of the Bands 2015: Glenmore Tavern, Norman Gardens Trainspotters feat. Lowtide + Barge With An Antenna On It + Forevr: Grand Central Hotel, Brisbane 80s Nightclub Reunion: Hamilton Hotel, Hamilton Musique: Logan Diggers Club, Logan Central The Story So Far + Man Overboard + Apart From This + Relentless: Max Watt’s (formerly The Hi-Fi Brisbane), West End Passport to Airlie Beach - Battle of the Bands 2015: Miami Tavern (Shark Bar), Miami
D At Sea + Millie Tizzard: The Triffid, Newstead Tumbleweed + Heavy Roller + Sacred Shrines: The Zoo, Fortitude Valley
Noosa Jazz Festival 2015: Noosa Lions Park, Noosa Heads Smokin’ Joe Mekhael: Noosa Reef Hotel, Noosa Heads
Elizabeth Rose: TBC Club (The Bowler Club), Fortitude Valley The Good Foot feat. Kerbside Collection + Kate Mackie + Blunted Stylus + DJ Paprika: The Bearded Lady, West End King Parrot + Spitfireliar + Malakyte: The Brightside, Fortitude Valley Blank Realm + Nite Fields + 100%: The Foundry, Fortitude Valley Bart B More: The Met, Fortitude Valley Scott Bradlee & His Post Modern Jukebox: The Tivoli, Fortitude Valley The Whitlams: The Triffid, Newstead Jay Cee + Mantis + Blaq Carrie: The Zoo, Fortitude Valley The Cactus Channel: Verrierdale Hall, Verrierdale
Sun 06 Forty Thieves: Black Bear Lodge, Fortitude Valley James Johnston: Breakfast
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Back Alley Cats + Ben Cummiskey: Solbar (Lounge Bar), Maroochydore
Renee Fleming: QPAC Concert Hall, South Brisbane
The Fun Addicts + Pick It Up: Sonny’s House of Blues, Brisbane
Smackdown Comedy: The Milk Factory Kitchen & Bar, South Brisbane
Brisbane Festival presents Fox Capture Plan: Spiegeltent, South Bank
CC The Cat
Cat Got Ya Tongue Australian dynamic roots act CC The Cat will be bringing their booty shaking, eye poppin’, drum and bass heavy reggae-funk-soul explosion to The Motor Room on 28 Aug and Miami Marketta on 29 Aug.
Creek Hotel, Albion
Scott Bradlee & His Post Modern Jukebox: The Arts Centre Gold Coast, Surfers Paradise Folk Off! feat. The Bell Divers + Gerald Keaney + The Songs of Tom Smith: The Milk Factory Kitchen & Bar, South Brisbane Triffid Roots feat. Eddie Boyd & The Phatapillars + Jackie Marshall: The Triffid, Newstead
Mon 07 The Round: Black Bear Lodge, Fortitude Valley
Tue 08 Rice Is Nice vs Spunk Pre-Bigsound Party feat. The Ocean Party + Shining Bird + Angie + Gold Class + Darts + Us The Band + Donny Benet + Aldous Harding: Black Bear Lodge, Fortitude Valley
Secret Headliner + Tired Lion + Skegss + Rolls Bayce + Pearls + HOWQUA + Porches + DJ Black Amex: The Brightside, Fortitude Valley Dot Dash Pre-Bigsound Party feat. Pearls + Jeremy Neale + Methyl Ethel + Sunbeam Sound Machine + Milwaukee Banks + Sui Zhen: The Elephant Hotel, Fortitude Valley
The Night Before BIGSOUND feat. Katy Steele + I Know Leopard + Ayla
Bigsound Pre-Party feat. Cosmic Psychos + High Tension + Super Best Friends + Born Lion: Crowbar, Fortitude Valley Mark Sheils: Samford Valley Hotel, Samford Village Brisbane Festival presents Charlie Lim: Spiegeltent, South Bank
L-FRESH The LION
An Evening with Fiona Joy + Sherry Finzer: Brisbane Jazz Club, Kangaroo Point
Claude Hay
Oh Hay There After joining forces with Ryan Van Gennip and Jon Howell earlier in 2015, roots-rock artist Claude Hay is touring in preparation for the upcoming debut album from Claude Hay & The Gentle Enemies, hitting Paddy’s Shenanigans Irish Pub on 27 Aug.
A Place To Bury Strangers + Flyying Colours + Dreamtime: Crowbar, Fortitude Valley Sunday Sessions with Relish: Dublin Docks Tavern, Biggera Waters Topology + The Kransky Sisters: Empire Theatre, Toowoomba Noosa Jazz Festival 2015: Noosa Lions Park, Noosa Heads
+ WAAX + Lanks + Machine Age + more: The Foundry, Fortitude Valley
Don Walker & The Suave Fucks + Karl S Williams: Old Museum, Fortitude Valley Sounds on Sunday with Tyrone Noonan: Redland Bay Hotel, Redland Bay
Feeling Fresh
The Wet Fish: River Quay, South Brisbane
A free event celebrating Logan City’s creativity and local talent, Logan City Hip Hop Collective will be headlined by L-FRESH The LION and joined by a cast of powerful local acts. The night kicks off on 28 Aug at 5pm at Logan Entertainment Centre.
Joe Mande: Sit Down Comedy Club, Paddington
54 • THE MUSIC • 26TH AUGUST 2015
First Night Fever - Pre BIGSOUND Party with Baskervillain + Twin Haus + Cheap Fakes + Ash Grunwald + Sahara Beck + Eden Mulholland + The Durries + Avaberee + Karl S Williams + Tom West + Garrett Kato: The Triffid (Live Room/Beer Garden), Newstead
THE MUSIC 26TH AUGUST 2015 • 55