Time Off Issue 1579

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LADYHAWKE

THE JEZABELS

ZOLA JESUS

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YOUNG GUNS DEF WISH CAST REGINA SPEKTOR DEAD LETTER CIRCUS

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GIVEAWAYS Get ready to immerse yourself in the opulent, exciting world of Australia’s leading lady detective The Hon: Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis), in the new drama series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. Phryne is a glamorous and thoroughly modern woman of the 1920s. Our lady sleuth sashays through the back lanes and jazz clubs of Melbourne, fighting injustice with her pearl handled pistol and her dagger sharp wit. Thanks to Roadshow Entertainment we have five copies to give away of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries: Series 1 Volume 1.

Born and Raised, the next album from Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter and musician John Mayer, is now in stores. It includes the first single, ‘Shadow Days’, which is currently available on itunes. Thanks to Sony Music we have five copies of the album up for grabs!

Eric Prydz stands alone in his ability to mix commercial success with underground notoriety. With his labels, Pryda and Mouseville he has been acknowledged by Beatport as one of their biggest selling artists of all time. Virgin Music recently released a three disc compilation album of his key productions under the Pryda guise, Eric Prydz presents Pryda and we have got four copies up for grabs!

One of the finest British rock acts to have enjoyed worldwide success over the last few decades, The Cult have just released Choice Of Weapon, the group’s first studio album in five years. Released in Australia on Cooking Vinyl via Shock Records, its ten tracks reveal the band at its rawest and most visceral, encapsulating cinematic visions and themes of love, revolt, and redemption. We have got five copies up for grabs!

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Sydney-raised, Melbourne-based artist Sui Zhen is the colourful personality of singer/songwriter and composer Becky Freeman. To celebrate the release of her beautiful debut album Two Seas and launch tour we have one prize pack to give away! It includes a Sui Zhen EP, a copy of the Two Seas album and one double pass to the album launch on Wednesday 6 June at Black Bear Lodge. Entrants must be 18+.

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ISSUE 1559

W E D N E S D AY 3 0 M AY 2 0 1 2

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FRONT ROW

Foreword Line – news, opinions, tours, Backlash, Frontlash She’s back! Find out why Missy Higgins has been so quiet of late The new Ladyhawke record sees the starlet unafraid... to sing about zombies The Jezabels are all geared up for their biggest tour yet We get inside the music of Zola Jesus Dead Letter Circus tell us some tales The Regina Spektor live record is bound to be a hit with her dedicated fanbase Def Wish Cast are proof that authenticity pays We’ll take Young Guns any way we can get them What the fuck is the deal with The Horrortones anyway? Everything is going to be alright, East 17 are here We find out what Elizabeth Rose has in store for us You can expect some serious energy from a Yung Warriors show On The Record has the latest, greatest and the not so greatest new musical releases Chris Yates spotlights the best (and worst) tracks for the week in Singled Out

8 12 13 14 15 16 16 18 18 20 20 22 22 24

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BACK TO TIME OFF! Get the drum on all the coolest happenings in local music last week, this week and beyond in Live 29 Dan Condon gets the dirt on the blues scene from the Roots Down 32 Lochlan Watt gives you brutal metal news in Adamantium Wolf 32 Adam Curley cuts sick with another musical pop culture rant in The Breakdown 32 Cyclone has the wide urban world covered with some OG Flavas 32 Go behind the music Behind The Lines 37 iFlog and you can too 42

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EDITORIAL Group Managing Editor: Andrew Mast Editor: Steve Bell Contributing Editor: Dan Condon Front Row Editor: Cassandra Fumi Intern: Sophia De Marco ADVERTISING Advertising Account Executives: James Tidswell, Jo Wallis DESIGN & LAYOUT Cover Design/Designer: Matt Davis ACCOUNTS & ADMINISTRATION Administration: Leanne Simpson Accounts: Marcus Treweek CONTRIBUTORS: Time Off: Ben Preece, Dan Condon, Craig Spann, Daniel Johnson, Chris Yates, Matt O’Neill, Adam Curley, Lochlan Watt, Roberta Maguire, Kenada Quinlan, Carlin Beattie, Tyler McLoughlan, Mitch Knox, Sam Hobson, Rachel Tinney, Tony McMahon, Benny Doyle, Lily Luscombe, Jake Sun, Sarah Petchell, Helen Stringer, Brendan Telford, Rip Nicholson, Cyclone, Amber McCormick, 6 • TIME OFF

Check out what’s happening This Week In Arts We take a look at Metro Arts’ Free Range Festival Emma Serjeant tells us about circus company Casus Learn all about La Boite Indie’s upcoming play, The Truth About Kookaburras Get a peak at Cultural Cringe and go through The Looking Glass

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TIME OFF • 7

FOREWORD LINE

NEWS FROM THE FRONT

IN BRIEF A new Channel Ten program, Ten Late News, promises to feature one local or international acoustic live music performance per week after it begins on Monday 5 June.

STILL FITTING IN

The initial line-ups for the Bastardfest shows happening all around country yet again this October and November have been announced with another quality smattering of some of the country’s most punishing heavy bands set to destroy stages everywhere. The Brisbane show, hitting The Hi-Fi on Saturday 13 October, will feature Astriaal, pictured, Fuck‌I’m Dead, Aversions Crown, King Parrot and Hellbringer and we believe this is just the first announcement of heavy as fuck goodness and that there’s plenty of exciting music still to be announced. The festival has gone from strength to strength over the past couple of years and is now one of the most highly-anticipated nights of music in the heavy metal calendar. You won’t see bands like this at any other festival, so make sure you don’t miss out on Bastardfest tickets when they go on sale Monday morning through Moshtix. Proudly presented by Street Press Australia.

COUNTING THE BEAT

Time to get those feet tapping because the legendary Count Basie Orchestra have announced a special Australian tour in October. Founded in the late-1930s by swing and jazz pioneer William “Count� Basie, they have maintained a huge following in the wake of the decline in swing music popularity in the ‘40s and ‘50s as well as Basie’s death in 1984. Over the years, they have collaborated with Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald. Their current ensemble includes saxophonist John Williams, trombonist Clarence Banks, bassist James Leary and vocalist Carmen Bradford, who has performed with Tony Bennett and the late James Brown. It will be an enriching night of fine music when they play the QPAC Concert Hall Thursday 11 October; tickets from the venue start at $109.90 and go up to $149.90.

Punk rock group Against Me! have played their first live show since vocalist Tom Gabel (now Laura Jane Grace) came out as transgender early this month, with a support set for The Cult in San Diego.

ONE SINGLE STONE

It feels a bit silly introducing you to Australian singer-songwriter Julia Stone; as one half of Angus & Julia Stone, she has deadset dominated Australian music charts and won a small truckload of awards (perhaps a van or station wagon’s worth) with their last album Down The Way. Anyway, while that project takes a little bit of time off, the two siblings are getting busy with solo careers and Julia has announced a solo tour that will no doubt be very welcome to their huge fanbase. Last week saw her release her debut solo album By The Horns, which is the first real solid evidence of her considerable talents away from her brother. It’s a record that sits quite nicely alongside her other work but one which retains its own identity. The tour, which comes after sold out shows in London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, America and Sydney in June, will see her perform at the Spiegeltent over two nights in Brisbane as part of the esteemed Brisbane festival; Wednesday 19 September and Thursday 20. We believe tickets will be on sale from Friday 15 June, we’ll let you know if that changes.

THE YOUNG AND THE MASTER

Two of the most formidable names in the world of modern underground hip hop are on their way to Australia on a massive double bill that will keep hip hop fans pinching themselves after the huge number of incredible bills that have hit our shores over the past couple of months. For many years Exile has been a big name in the game, at first unleashing albums with Emanon, then solo records, albums with Blu and more recently notching up production credits with the likes of G Unit, Jurassic 5, Aloe Blacc, Pharoahe Monch and heaps more. While Ex has been in the game for over 15 years, his touring companion Fashawn is just an up-and-comer, but what a talent! His debut record Boys Meets World has been hailed as a masterful piece of work, he’s toured with the best in the game since its release and Australia are going to go bananas for him, believe it. These two guns play Coniston Lane on Sunday 24 June.

I USED TO KNOW A GIRL‌

The ‘90s nostalgia-fest is back in full swing. The latest in a long list of bands making their return to Australian shores is Everclear, whose string of hits in the mid1990s including Santa Monica and Heroin Girl made them a mainstay on music video programs (this is pre-YouTube days, remember!) and their immortality was cemented with Local God, which featured in Baz Luhrmann’s 1997 smash hit film, Romeo + Juliet. Further hits in I Will Buy You A New Life, Father Of Mine and Wonderful followed before they seemingly disappeared from our airwaves amidst massive line-up changes. Hot off the back of a tour of the United States with Sugar Ray, Lit, Marcy Playground, and Gin Blossoms (if only that line-up was coming here!), Everclear will bring their summertime anthems to Australia to kick start our spring. They will play the Coolangatta Hotel Wednesday 10 October and The Hi-Fi Thursday 11. Tickets are on sale from Friday morning; OzTix will have you covered for the Cooly show while Moshtix is covering tickets for the Brisbane date.

FRIDAY JUNE 1ST

Melbourne’s Boy In A Box have signed to Four | Four records, an imprint of ABC Music. Producer William Orbit has told NME that Damon Albarn has pulled the pin on the new Blur album.

AUSTRALIA FEELS THE EARTH

Despite the indisputable heaviness of Seattle’s Earth, influence can be felt through all sorts of musical styles over the past couple of decades. They seem to have influenced as many bands as influence their unique and varied sound. Sprouting from the early-’90s Seattle grunge scene – Kurt Cobain was a fan and sang vocals on one of their early demos – the band’s first couple of records saw them fit in the same kind of vein as bands like Melvins, but as they developed they slowed things down, began to add elements of jazz and country music and developed into one of the most intriguing propositions in contemporary rock music. They formed in 1990 but have never been to Australia, which just makes it more exciting to hear that they will be playing shows in our country this September; stock up on earplugs and get ready to experience their heartfelt and haunting drone doom at The Zoo on Sunday 9 September.

Hipper than thou rapper/ performance artist M.I.A. has signed up with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation management, who also look after Mark Ronson, Santigold, The Ting Tings, Switch, Chase & Status and Rihanna among others. Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu was granted an Australia Council fellowship last week, as a part of the Fifth National Indigenous Arts Awards, held at the Sydney Opera House. He receives $90,000 to create a largescale music and surround multi-screen sensory installation that will allow audiences to “experience the land and community of the remote Elcho Island�. Melbourne band The Temper Trap have debuted at number one on this week’s ARIA Albums Chart with their self-titled follow-up to their breakthrough Conditions album.

SATURDAY JUNE 2ND

THE MAC IS BACK!

Having picked up two wins at the recent MusicOz Awards (Artist Of The Year, Best Video), Sydney hip hop artist Kid Mac must be feeling on top of the world right now – especially with his new album No Man’s Land being released at the beginning of this month. Its first single, She Goes Off, featuring Mickey ‘Jane Fonda’ Avalon, dropped in April and boasts a six-figure view count on YouTube – probably due to appearances from cameo whore Snoop Dogg, party whore Steve Aoki, and, er, Sarah McLeod – which is no mean feat in the saturated music video market these days. In anticipation of the release, Kid Mac’s announced an album tour, which will take in most major cities and a few regional locales. If you’re willing to get off YouTube for a couple of hours then you can catch the Mac in the flesh at Alhambra Lounge on Friday 13 July and The Northern, Byron Bay Saturday 14. Tickets are available through OzTix right now for $13.30.

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TIME OFF • 9

FOREWORD LINE

NEWS FROM THE FRONT

IN BRIEF MORE VOOL!

Due to popular demand, Karnivool have announced a second Brisbane date as a part of their big Melodias Frescas tour, which hits venues all over the country throughout July. The second Brisbane date has been announced to take place at The Hi-Fi on for Sunday 22 July, as their first scheduled show at The Tivoli is now all sold out. In fact their Melodias Frescas tour is almost completely sold out everywhere in the country and the band have noted that this will definitely be the last show added. Tickets are now available through Moshtix for $40 + bf; fellow rockers Redcoats and sleepmakeswaves get in on the action too, making it a night of nights for any self-respecting heavy rock fan.

THEY’VE STILL GOT IT

When Nick Barker & The Reptiles reformed to play the Community Cup down in Melbourne, it became very obvious very quickly that these guys still had what it takes to be one of those truly vital bar room rock’n’roll bands and it just didn’t feel right to continue without sharing this with the rest of the country. It is very exciting to hear that they’ve decided to make their way up to Queensland to play a few pubs and get everyone reacquainted with their unique and exciting brand of rock’n’roll that is bound to bring back plenty of memories for many of those who head along. Up here they play three shows, each of them with support from locals Black Mustang, dropping into the Racecourse Hotel, Booval on Friday 22 June, the Hinterland Hotel, Nerang on Saturday 23 and finishing the run up at the Tempo Hotel on Sunday 24.

AUDIENCE, PLEASE

Virtuosic Perth-based entertainer Tomás Ford is bringing his weird and wonderful live show to the rest of Australia, with his An Audience With Tomás Ford Tour set to hit cities all over the country over the next couple of months. His second album, which shares the same name as the tour, was released in March. The project was six years in the making for Ford, whose style has been described as a mix of dance, electro and cabaret. If you haven’t had a chance to see him live on previous visits to Brisbane then you really ought to make sure you witness this for yourself, he certainly knows how to entertain! You can witness the spectacle that is a Tomás Ford show by making sure you’re at the Beetle Bar on Friday 13 July. It should definitely be spooky.

ONE LAST MARK

For the very last time, Brisbane audiences are getting a chance to see one of the great legends of Australian punk rock as Steve Lucas returns to Brisbane with his latest incarnation of the legendary X to prove that there’s still a bit of life left in the man and his incredible music. This is going to be the farewell tour for Lucas who is the only remaining original member of the band after fellow founder Ian Rilen passed away back in 2006. Lucas’ guitar was always one of the most distinctive elements of the band’s hugely influential sound. The band released three incredible records during their glory days and you’ll get to see plenty of material from those records when they make their way to the Beetle Bar on Saturday 16 June with support from The Standing 8 Counts, Pussywhips and Substation. 10 • TIME OFF

Melbourne label Aztec Music, who were forced in receivership in March, has been bought by a consortium of ‘strategic’ investors led by Paul Dainty. They assume immediate control of Aztec’s assets, particularly the label’s catalogue.

BLOODY GOOD STUFF

Michael McDonald, former member of The Doobie Brothers and solo artist, has filed a law suit against the Warner Music Group as he claims that they didn’t pay him enough for online music sales. Tour promoters Gusto have announced that they will be postponing the forthcoming Australian tour by Sister Sledge featuring Kathy Sledge, which was set to take place in just a couple of weeks’ time. Credit Card refunds will be issued automatically; return to point of purchase for other sales. David Simon has announced on his blog that he’s finished filming the third season of Treme, the popular HBO series set in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They filmed 371 New Orleans musicians for the series. Something For Kate have headed to Dallas, Texas to commence work on their sixth studio album and first since 2006’s Desert Lights. It will be recorded by John Congleton. Brooklynites Yeasayer have announced they’ll be releasing their third album, Fragrant World, on Friday 17 August through Mute/Spunk /EMI.

HIT THE RUFUS

Perhaps the most successful of the enormously talented Wainwright stable of artists, Rufus Wainwright is returning for an Australian tour with his full band in September. This time around he is making the journey down to our part of the world to showcase his acclaimed new Mark Ronson-produced album Out Of The Game, which has been getting a lot of very positive publicity in the weeks since its release. The full band that he brings out on the road with him features a few up-and-coming artists who may seem a little familiar to you for one reason or another, one of them being recent visitor, folk-jazz-soul singer/songwriter Krystle Warren and another is Teddy Thompson, son of the great British musical pairing of Richard and Linda Thompson. As well as appearing in the band, both Warren and Thompson will also be alternating as the opening act for the national run of dates. When they hit Brisbane they will play a special show at the QPAC Concert Hall on Wednesday 12 September. You can get ticket through the venue’s box office from Tuesday 5 June at 9am.

TALENTED FEW

Scottish rock kings Billy Talent have announced that they are going to make a quick dash to Australia for three east coast dates this August and drop the first single from their eagerly-anticipated new record on us while they’re at it. Fans have been hungry for new Billy Talent material for quite some time now given their most recent record Billy Talent III was released almost three years ago. It has been a fair while since we last saw them on Australian soil as well, so the news of their return is very welcome indeed. While we still don’t have a release date for the new album, the new song, called Viking Death March, suggests that we shouldn’t have to wait too much longer – it’ll at the very least tide us over until they hit Australia and play The Hi-Fi on Thursday 9 August. Tickets are available from the venue and Moshtix as of Friday 1 June for $45.10 + bf.

Hardcore band Thick As Blood are ditching the shores of Miami and heading down under for their first official tour of Australia. The band will bring their raw lyrics and crushing riffs to the country this June, where they will be joined on stage by Newcastle outfit Taken By Force. Formed in 2004, the Florida natives have released two full-length albums and toured extensively, building up something of a cult following in the hardcore and metal scene. The band are currently working on a new EP, which they hope to release sometime in 2012. No doubt they’ll have plenty of material from that release ready to play for Australian audiences, though given it’s their first visit we’re hoping they’ll be willing to stretch back and play a wide selection of their material. We’ll have to wait and see when they drop by Expressive Grounds, Gold Coast Saturday 23 June (all ages afternoon show), Thriller later that night and Annand Steet Hall in Toowoomba for another all ages date on Sunday 24. Grab your tickets for the all ages dates shows through OzTix for $23.50. Stay tuned for more supports!

BONA’S BLUES

One of the most highly-regarded blues guitarists in the world today, Joe Bonamassa has clearly come to realise that Australian audiences are amongst the most fervent supporters of his kind of music going around as he today announces his return to Australia for the third time in under three years. This time the hard-touring American axe-slinger is out here in support of a brand new album, his tenth, Driving Towards The Daylight, which was released in the US just yesterday. The record sees him continuing the strict regime of releasing a new album every single year, true testament to the guitarist’s insane work ethic. Add to that the fact that he has just released a brand new live DVD and Blu-Ray called Joe Bonamassa: Beacon Theatre – Live From New York and it’s a very exciting time to be a Bonamassa fan. The live shows that he and his band have delivered over the past few years have been truly stunning so don’t miss them when they appear at the QPAC Concert Hall on Wednesday 3 October; grab your tickets through Qtix right now from $96.40 up to $106.40.

GREAT BARRIERS

British psychedelic rock band Reef have cancelled their upcoming Australian tour, indicating that have no plans to reschedule. In a statement today the band said the cancellation is due to “a bereavement in the Reef family.” As there are no plans to reschedule, ticket holders will get a refund at their point of purchase. The tour was meant to kick off this Friday night. The statement added, “The band would like to extend their apologies to anyone who has purchased a ticket and to

BACKLASH

FRONTLASH

So Campbell Newman is cutting any art-affiliated funding he can find, but plans to redevelop the government precinct in Brisbane and sell off the land so he can lease himself a flash new office? Isn’t that essentially what he slammed Bligh (remember her?) for doing for all that time?

“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” Zuckerberg and his gang strike again, selling Facebook shares at top dollar before the company was floated and the share price plummeted. Get burned? Serves yourself right for trying to get rich off intangibles, social media-related ones at that…

CH-CH-CHANGES

F-BOOK FARCE

ENOUGH ALREADY

CREAM – AGAIN

Can the whole sordid Craig Thompson affair just go away? It’s hard to work out who’s most at fault – the protagonist in denial or the grubby press all in a lather because the matter involves some hookers. It’s all just so fucking tedious…

Good on Prince for treating Brisbane to another “secret show” after his second main gig in town, this time going to the burbs and hitting Eatons Hill Hotel. He’s either really altruistic, or these shows are a cool way of making some play money, but who really cares?

FIRST DOWN How about the manager of Lingerie Football League getting on his high horse after his “sport” was labeled a “cheap, disgusting perv” by our Federal Sports Minister. It’s hot chicks playing grid iron in their underwear mate, just cop it on the chin and count your cash…

NEW VENUES? LINGERIE FOOTVALL - NOT A PERV

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Rumours getting stronger that a couple of Brisbane venues in close proximity to each other and with deeply spiritual connections which used to house live bands might be heading back into the world of live music once more quite soon – here’s hoping…

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Despite all of the hurdles Missy Higgins has returned to the fold armed with her eclectic third album, The Ol’ Razzle Dazzle.

Having spent a couple of years in the musical wilderness, Missy Higgins rediscovered the love of music that had been her constant companion since childhood. She tells Steve Bell about overcoming inner confusion and jumping back into the deep end. Photos by Kane Hibberd.

S

ometimes we have to be reminded that the old clichés about fame and money not necessarily bringing happiness really do ring true. A few years back young singer/songwriter Missy Higgins seemed to have the world at her feet; both of her first two albums – 2004 debut The Sound Of White and its 2007 followup On A Clear Night – had topped the Australian charts, and the latter was gaining solid traction in America. She was a beloved fixture on the live scene in Australia and increasingly abroad, and from an outsider’s perspective it really was difficult to fault her career trajectory. But inside the bubble – away from the public eye – things weren’t all wine and roses for the talented young musician. Sudden success and fame can be difficult to come to terms with for anyone, let alone someone barely into her 20s when it knocked at her door, and the seemingly grounded Higgins was suddenly finding it hard to reconcile the attention and accolades she was receiving, and questioning her own talent and ability to be this person that already meant so much to so many. When these doubts transferred into writer’s block whilst she was trying to pen songs for her third album it became clear that a break was needed to find perspective and reignite her passion for music, so that’s just what she did.

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With little or no fanfare Higgins retired from the public eye and decided to get on with her life, enrolling in an Indigenous Studies course at University Of Melbourne, indulging in a spot of acting (she appeared in the 2010 film adaption of musical Bran Nue Dae) and basically just reacquainting herself with life as a young 20-something in Australia. In time she began to remember what drove her towards writing and performing in the first place, the creative juices began flowing again, and eventually Higgins stepped back up to the plate, first diving back into writing and then decamping to Nashville with co-producer Butterfly Boucher to record what would ultimately become her third album, The Ol’ Razzle Dazzle. Missy Higgins is back and she couldn’t be happier, even as she recalls that dark period when she was questioning the viability of her role as a musical icon. “It was a conscious decision [to walk away from music], or eventually it became a conscious decision, but at the start I was really wanting to keep doing music, because it was all that I knew,” she reflects wistfully. “When I finished all of the touring for my second album, which was a lot of touring, I was in the States for a couple of years – I went straight into trying to write for this album, and it just really wasn’t working. The songs weren’t coming, and I was just overthinking every aspect of the song – I was way overthinking the lyrics, I just really didn’t know what to say. Eventually after about a year of that I had to face the reality that I couldn’t keep trying 12 • TIME OFF

forever – eventually I had to walk away from it and start trying to find some other purpose for my life. It was as though the decision was made for me, really.” Even with the decision being thrust upon the young songwriter, walking away from such a successful (and potentially lucrative) vocation wasn’t an easy task, but fortunately she had the unyielding support of her friends and family to get her through the confusion. “My family were definitely supportive – they could see how unhappy my writer’s block was making me, and I think they knew that if I just kept going the way I was going then I was just going to dig myself into an even deeper hole,” Higgins recalls. “They just want me to be happy really, and my dad said to me, ‘You’ve had two really successful albums – you’ve achieved more already than most people could hope to achieve in a lifetime – you can be excused for walking away from music, don’t feel bad about it’. But it was really hard for me, I didn’t really want to walk away from music, I just felt like I had no choice. “And a lot of my friends were supportive, although a few of them were kind of confused because to them it seemed like such a natural thing for me to do music – they’ve always seen me as the musician and the songwriter, and every part of my life has always pointed towards music and songwriting, and I don’t think that they could seriously imagine me doing anything else. I had to go away I think just to find out. “I’ve always been pretty hard on myself, I guess. Record sales have never equated to success for me, it’s always been more of a subjective, personal opinion – whether I’ve done the best that I can do. If I’m really proud of my album and of my work then that’s all I can hope for, but I think I’m one of those people where after I’ve finished anything I’m onto the next thing – I’m never dwelling on how successful it was, it’s always, ‘How can I make the next one better?’ That’s really great in a way because it pushes you to keep striving to make your music better, but on the other hand it can be quite a hard standard to live up to if you keep on saying that your next thing has to be better than anything else you’ve ever done before.” As well as this internal pressure that Higgins was placing on herself there was the insidious nature of the more tabloid-oriented music press, who seemed suddenly hellbent on delving into her private life and sexuality, an area of her life that Higgins had always kept close to her chest. “Yeah, I think that was part of the problem,” she ponders. “It was an accumulation of things I think – even when I was recording the second album I was pretty overwhelmed buy it all, and I kept saying to everyone, ‘After this album I’m going to take a break!’ Then that album ended up taking off in the States and I toured it for a year in Australia and two years over there, and that’s when all of the stuff about my private life was coming out too, so I just felt like the lines were really blurred between what was personal to me and what was public property – it was all just pretty confusing, and I think I just needed to get out of there.”

Fortunately for all involved, the time away from the limelight did indeed reignite her musical spark, as well as giving Higgins perspective on just what she wanted to do with her life. “Yeah, definitely,” she concurs. “I think basing myself in Melbourne for a couple of years was such a great idea, because I guess I felt secure again and I was around my family and my friends on a consistent basis. I was that person who could say, ‘Yes!’ to all the invitations all of a sudden! I’d always been the person missing out on birthdays and weddings and births, but now I feel that I’ve really put my roots down in Melbourne and I’ve got this really awesome group of friends, and I’m really close to my new little nephew and my family – it really helps to have that solid base to be able to go away and feel as though you’ve got something to come back to.” And while it was hard to walk away from music, Higgins didn’t find it hard returning to the fold in the slightest. “No, not at all! I was so excited about coming back,” she laughs. “I think in those few years off I really couldn’t find anything that made me as happy as music used to. I mourned the loss of music in my life, and I wanted to get rid of the fear inside of me about music, but for so long it wouldn’t go away so I didn’t have any choice. But when that finally lifted and I got inspired again I just got so excited – it was like being reunited with this old friend who’d run away all of a sudden. As soon as I got inspired again I wanted to write so many songs and I wanted to get playing – all of a sudden I was saying to my manager, ‘Can’t we organise a tour now?’ I’m really excited to get back on the road and to do it all again, I just feel like I’ve been rejuvenated.” Having questioned the role of music in her life and reaffirming that she’s indeed on the right track must have been an incredibly validating experience for Higgins. “Yeah, I think so,” she mulls. “I never want to do anything in life out of a sense of obligation, and everybody was telling me that, ‘This is what you’re meant to do! This is your path!’, but I just wasn’t feeling it myself. I guess I had to go away and discover that for myself, and walk down some different paths and realise what music really means to me. For all I know this could be my last album – although I don’t think so – but I’m never going to be one of those people who releases an album every two years, there’s definitely going to be big breaks because I love living the home life a bit too much. But I think I’ll always have music in my life because I really don’t know what else I’d do with myself – I love it too much.” WHO: Missy Higgins WHAT: The Ol’ Razzle Dazzle (Eleven/Universal) WHEN & WHERE: Wednesday 6 June, The Tivoli; Sunday 29 July, Splendour In The Grass

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“We had no agenda other than to make an interesting, creative, beautiful-sounding record,” she recalls. “I didn’t want it to sound like my other two – I wanted to move away from the acoustic, stripped-back folky sound of the last two records and just have a bit more fun with the instrumentation. We were really adventurous with different sounds and different textures. “All of my albums are quite diverse, but I think this is definitely the most all over the place. I just really enjoy writing in different ways and different styles, it just makes it way more interesting. I’ve definitely got so many different types of influences too – bluesy, rocky, electronic, jazz, classical piano – there’s all these different styles that make it on there, and I think that makes for a really interestingsounding album.” The Ol’ Razzle Dazzle is an intrinsically personal batch of songs – is there an overarching theme? “By far the most common theme is my relationship to music. Over the last few years music has been such an elusive... lover almost. It kept running away from me and then it would appear all of a sudden, but I never really knew how to get a hold of it. The only way I really knew how to get through my writer’s block was to really just write about music, and to write about all of the different emotions that I was feeling towards being a performer, and that feeling of confusion as to where the public side of my life ended and where the private side began. I guess that’s why it’s called The Ol’ Razzle Dazzle; it’s pretty ironic because I never really engaged in the razzle dazzle side of the industry – it just never really sat well with me – and I think that a lot of the songs definitely deal with that.”

CHASING DEMONS Nika Rosa Danilova performs under the foreboding guise of Zola Jesus, creating atmospheric and cathartic gothic pop. She speaks with Brendan Telford about battling expectations and herself.

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t has been a meteoric rise for Nika Rosa Danilova, otherwise known as Zola Jesus. The diminutive musician, having started singing opera from a young age, broke away to sculpt her own sonic space. She has since been hailed as a Gothic queen, drenched in distortion and baroque enchantment. Her magnetic voice is her main weapon, honed from classical training yet used in a completely beguiling fashion, a Siren of the Underworld. Conatus, whilst not a world away from her past releases, offers a starker, more emotional side to Zola Jesus than had been previously only hinted at. Danilova admits she felt it was time to let down any defences that she had left. “I definitely feel like Conatus, it laid me bare in comparison to Stridulum,” she laughs. “I felt I needed to make things more up front, I didn’t want to hide anything. Even before Stridulum I was coming from music that was completely lo-fi and the vocals were covered in reverb, so I was able to hide a lot. And you know, that isn’t a skill; you aren’t a skilful musician if you are hiding things. It isn’t very honest either, and so I just wanted to wipe that all away.” Conatus shows a new direction for Zola Jesus from the most basic level, with the cover art showing Danilova in white, wrapped in white gauze, with a white background. The album itself revels in high-end production, offering more lush compositions that complement her voice rather than mask it. Nevertheless, as with everything she has done in the past, such an approach has shone a light on the subject matter contained therein, which has remained darkly evocative and solemn. Conatus then remains an uneasy listen, as the stripping away of both musical and social barriers brings the focus to the dark world that the music inhabits. “I felt that with the last album that I was hiding a little bit, something that can be difficult to confront within you. In some ways Stridulum was even better produced, because I feel that it was very flat, which really worked. This time I wanted to feel like there were a lot of dimensions, and yet I don’t want my voice to sound good every single second. There is vulnerability in my voice, and although I’m afraid of that vulnerability because I’m such a perfectionist and from studying opera, it was important that I be

exposed, that that vulnerability was the clear thing that could be identified when listening to that record.” Danilova’s background in opera makes sense when hearing her incredible voice unleashed, yet it is a genre of singing that is inexorably bound by structure and discipline. Whilst this may seem incongruous to the end result, Danilova asserts the deeper machinations of her sound are deeply ingrained with stricture despite breaking out and discovering her own voice. “For me it’s hard to identify my voice versus what opera is because my voice was developed in those lessons. I was so young when I was studying opera, so it’s impossible to see the difference. Sometimes I feel like it destroys me in a way, like you are losing an asset. I was taking those lessons once a week, twice a week, practising every day, and it was during a time in my life when my body was changing and my voice was sensitive to my training, so my voice developed operatically because I was taking those lessons so much. When I’m singing now, I can’t erase that; it’s fully ingrained, for better or for worse.” Performances have certainly changed for Danilova also. When starting out as Zola Jesus in the live arena, she was a tour de force, working on her own terms. Proudly proclaiming that “I wrote these songs on my own, and I will play them on my own”, she ran riot with only a backing track as cover. It was an indelible image – this diminutive woman owning venues with only her voice. However, the performances were heightened by her approach to performing – restlessly stalking and pacing the stage, crouching down out of sight or climbing on fold backs, the actions of a caged animal. Danilova cringes at the memory, conceding “That was the only way I could perform. Singing and playing at the same time, I couldn’t emotionally handle that, there was too much stimulation for me that I couldn’t handle the anxiety. I could only handle doing one thing at a time. But even as I needed to occupy myself, I couldn’t handle the stage, I couldn’t handle being watched. Looking at the audience and not being a part of it was very hard for me for a long time. I was precious about my songs before, I felt that having a band would be detrimental. I think people expect me to

have this machine behind me, because I’m a small young girl, but that gave me a further sense of pride for doing it all on my own. However, the last tour I played like that (in 2010 supporting Xiu Xiu) was unhealthy for me, and I vowed never to do another tour like that again. I cannot get through a tour playing like that. It’s utterly draining.” That said, music will always be personal for Danilova, for better or for worse. “Music to me is personal, it’s an unravelling of the self. Every song is about exploring yourself or about human emotion. All the questions I have about who I am and why I’m here in the first place are wrapped up in what I do. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to work with a producer, to hand over a part of the musicmaking process, or to sit in the passenger seat and sing about something outside of me, but what would be the point? I admire the confessional tone, and to go in the other direction would be to make mindless pop music. There is nothing in that. Music is therapy, and if there is nothing therapeutic about what you are doing, why do it in the first place?” The evolution of Zola Jesus hasn’t been an easy experience, which has been continually exacerbated

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by growing exposure and a larger, more expectant audience. “I have always valued live music – I don’t like pre-recorded music. I think it’s cheap, even just pushing a button for a sampler is not what music is. You want to see the music take shape before you. It would be much easier if I didn’t have to battle my own demons. People talk about crumbling under the pressure of what others expect of them, but for me it’s what I expect from myself; that’s the biggest thing. A lot of my music I feel stunted by that hindrance. Then to get to the other people, outside myself, I have to either not care or get into overdrive. Having dealt with all that pent-up frustration, anxiety and confusion inside of me, it’s probably why I’m making music in the first place.” WHO: Zola Jesus WHAT: Conatus (Pod/Inertia) WHEN & WHERE: Friday June 1, Alhambra Lounge

TIME OFF • 13

ENDLESS TOURING Mentally preparing to tackle the long opens roads of America, The Jezabels are bunkered down in their London serviced apartment. Benny Doyle interrupts the morning of guitarist Samuel Lockwood to find out about their overseas adventures and their increasingly crammed pool room.

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he day might have only just begun in springtime London, but Samuel Lockwood is in a jovial mood. The reality that the 24-year-old Sydneysider is neither burnt out nor cynical is slightly disarming but also a welcome surprise. After all, the past 12 months for The Jezabels have been nothing short of meteoric. “As a band we’re in a really good place at the moment,” Lockwood states. “You just learn how to deal with each other. Earlier on you come to blows a bit on the road because everyone is stressed out, but you realise that you’re just tired, which is obviously why you’re having a fight, so we just don’t fight anymore.” The Jezabels haven’t so much snuck up on the Australian musical conscious as they have slowly wormed their way deep into its core, their tireless work ethic positioning them as one of the most popular and successful contemporary rock bands in the country. On the back of three wellreceived EPs, solid radio airplay and some bold, electrifying hooks, the quartet had positioned themselves perfectly for their debut album assault. Prisoner was released in September last year and, led by festival anthem Endless Summer, quickly shot up to second position in the charts. Since then the band have continued their usual cycle of relentless touring, however, the stages are getting bigger, the crowds more vocal. Their popularity has also seen them doing serious road time in both Europe and America, with the band playing iconic venues like London’s Electric Ballroom and the Bowery Ballroom in New York. The scale of these achievements isn’t lost on Lockwood. “To headline The Bowery Ballroom – I mean plenty of Australian bands have done it, but what can you really say about it?” he humbly reasons. “I learnt to play guitar in high school and wanted to maybe one day play in a band, then suddenly you’re headlining The Bowery Ballroom. It’s very hard to play overseas as an Australian band, so to get to that level where we are at, I’m so proud of us,” he continues. “I think it’s probably going to sell out, which is pretty cool. Everything is a rite of passage just to be in a band. You get more and more experience and I think the experience that I’ve had from touring in Europe and America, I’ve learnt so much from that.”

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It’s been six years of hard work for the fourpiece, but Lockwood ensures that it’s been an organic growth and development. “I think it’s come to its place where it should have been at,” he says. “We never pushed it in any particular direction, we just sort of randomly came together and it worked from the start, which was really fortunate. We never said what sort of music we wanted to play or who we wanted to be and I think that’s been one of the most positive things about us. We just kept playing and growing. It’s definitely a different beast but it’s still the same. We’ve just grown up from children to adults.”

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Since the release of Prisoner, the band has received a plethora of accolades. Peers, fans, critics; with their cinematic and provoking sound, The Jezabels have seemingly won over every ear that’s listening. “When I start thinking about it, it makes me all emotional,” Lockwood confesses, “but because we are independent all the independent awards just mean so much. We got a SMAC Award in Sydney, the FBi award for Best Live Act and that was just amazing, because it’s like peer reviews and stuff so it’s really nice to be recognised. Then you’ve got the Rolling Stone Album Of The Year, which is something incredible for the album and obviously we’re really proud of that, then when we got the AMP award, wow, I dunno. “When you look at the albums that we were up against, it was such a strong year for Australian releases,” Lockwood admits. “Kimbra, Boy & Bear, Gotye; all these massive records, then there were great smaller releases like Abbe May’s, from really good quality but not so popular artists. Because we were over here [in Europe] when we found out, it was in the middle of the night and I was waiting for a text from my manager. I heard my phone go off and I looked at it, but it was a little ambiguous, I think it just said, ‘Oh, that’s fucked!’ Something like that. So

I thought we didn’t win it but then when we found out, we couldn’t believe it – it was just like, ‘Oh my god!’” Listening to Prisoner, although it moves smoothly as a complete work, it’s obvious that The Jezabels, made up of Lockwood, Heather Shannon (keys), Nik Kaloper (drums) and Hayley Mary (vocals), are all approaching the music from a different stylistic position. It’s been critical to build the group’s distinct sound. We all write together so it’s always a collaboration and we’re all so different in what we write,” he says. “If you listen to what our first EP sounds like it’s like a fight between four different styles, but I think we have worked out a way to incorporate it better and it sounds more holistic [now]. “Collaborations always get really great creativity because it gets everyone’s different ideas and it synthesises it to come up with a better thing, I think. It’s such a process as well and it’s hard on your ego at times. Because you think you have the right idea for a part of a song and you think the others’ parts are going to suck, then you hear their idea and you go, ‘Wow, that’s better than what I was thinking’ – it’s so humbling.” The grandiose nature of the songs also makes it the perfect platform for Mary to unleash her powerful vocals, her energy and charisma on both record and

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stage capturing the hearts of music lovers looking for a little bit more of that. “No one wants to be emotional or actually say how they feel, but Hayley in her lyrics gets very personal and that’s something that I think maybe sets us apart – that we do try and make emotional music,” Lockwood acknowledges. “We want to make music that actually does mean something for someone. The music Heather and I write allows Hayley to explore those issues in her lyrics. You can’t write about your personal emotions if you don’t have music behind you that’s fitting.” But even with all this ongoing success, if you think the band are going to be resting on their laurels for a second, then think again. “We’re basically going to get as much out of this year as we can I think,” he says. “We’ve pencilled in dates until about September, but after that we’ve got another two months of going back to places where we think we should go back to. Just touring, touring, touring.” WHO: The Jezabels WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 7 June, Convention Centre

HAWKERS WELCOME Pip Brown, better known as Ladyhawke, talks to Chris Yates from her home in London about recording her new album, Anxiety, and says that not all her lyrics are quite as bleak as they may seem.

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lthough it has a crunchy sound, Anxiety feels somehow less organic than Ladyhawke’s self-titled 2008 debut, with a lot of treated sounds and programming. While Brown says she wasn’t trying to make an album that sounds electronic, when she starts to describe the process, the end result makes sense. “The way I went about doing the drums and guitar and everything was a lot more lo-fi and gritty than it was the first time around. For the drum sound, we got the shittiest drum kit in the room and put tea towels on the toms and snare. We set up all these really old ‘50s and ‘60s mics all around it and just recorded the drums for ages. All different drumbeats and fills, and then we used all those sounds for the whole album. All the sort of bloopy kind of electronic sounds were all done with a Korg K-Oscillator. All the guitars were played through a Sovtek Russian Big Muff, which is a vintage fuzz pedal. “I wanted to keep things interesting for myself, and the whole process that happened for the first record, I didn’t want that to happen again. I was really eager and excited to mess around with different sounds and different instruments. It just sort of happened that way. I wanted to make a record that was rocky but still pop. I can’t really put my finger on exactly what it was that I wanted, and I still can’t really describe the sound of the album.

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I WAS COMPARED TO CYNDI LAUPER ONCE, SOMEONE SAID I WAS ‘THE CYNDI LAUPER OF THE AMERICAN APPAREL GENERATION’. I THOUGHT THAT WAS SO FUNNY – IT’S SO NOT ME.”

“The first record was literally just demoing and all done with a real home studio budget. There was nothing fancy about it; it was just me putting stuff up onto MySpace. I had no record label and no management or anything, and people just started to get interested in it and then I had all these different producers from the UK and the US who wanted to work with me. It was really quite a daunting and confusing process for me because I wasn’t used to that world, and I was quite amazed and shocked that it happened and I wasn’t really prepared for what was going to happen. The best thing that came out of that process was it taught me so much about writing songs. I got to meet Pascal [Gabriel – co-writer and producer] and me and Pascal became really close friends. But yeah, I think working with I think five different producers, and working around between the five personalities, was a bit too much for me. It takes me a while to get comfortable with people, and I ended up doing half of the album with Pascal anyway. I just thought, when it came to do my second album, the first person that came to mind was Pascal because we’re such good friends. We’ve known each other for about five years and we hang out socially, so it just made sense. “I really felt like I had to prove myself with the first record,” she admits, “and people didn’t realise that I was a musician and that I can play all my instruments if I want, and I’ve got a good ear. I’m a songwriter as well and I can write my own melodies, and I guess a lot of the producers were people who produce pop stars and didn’t realise I could do all that sort of stuff. It felt like it took me a while to establish myself as that person. Pascal could see that and just got me straight away, and it’s a really creative environment when we work together. I mean, we butt heads – he’s the practical organised one, I’m sort of flitting around from one thing to the next, from idea to idea really quickly. He has the foresight to have ‘record’ on all the time. The way we work together is really cool – he has nothing to prove and he loves that I have unique ideas.” Despite the pop aesthetic of the album, a cursory listen to the lyrics proves there’s a lot more going on in these songs than your typical pop song. She says the contradictory nature of the lyrics was entirely on purpose. “I’ve always loved when you almost get led into a false sense of security with the music and you don’t realise what it’s about until you’re singing along and you realise how dark it is.” At this point, she starts getting a little bit personal. “I’ve always had really bad anxiety my whole life and I’ve never really been so personal or opened up so much with any music I’ve ever done before. I was worried at first that I might have opened up myself too much and would have to deal with questions about it, but then I decided that I just didn’t care. I have that anxiety and that’s the way it is and you’ve gotta be able to poke fun at yourself. It’s stupid, I hate the anxiety, and calling the album Anxiety was just my way of dealing with it.” While we’re talking about the heavy tone of the lyrics on the album, and Brown is underplaying it all thoroughly, let’s discuss the almost terrifying sense of paranoia that exists at the heart of the track Quick And The Dead. Is she using that song to deal with more emotional trauma as well? Er, not quite. “The funny thing about that song is it’s literally about zombies!” she laughs. “There’s no deeper meaning behind that song. I was just imagining that I was in the zombie apocalypse and I recognised someone I used to know who had turned into a zombie.” Brown as Ladyhawke falls victim to that female artist syndrome of being compared to every other female artist who has ever come along before her. She says that she never really understands where the comparisons are coming from, but there’s one that’s quite obvious which she says no one has ever made. “I really worship Joan Jett,” she says laughing. “I really wish that someone would make that comparison. She’s the closest out of anyone that I think I am like. It is really amusing, I was compared to Cyndi Lauper once - someone said I was ‘the Cyndi Lauper of the American Apparel generation’. I thought that was so funny – it’s so not me. I mean, Cyndi Lauper is incredible, but we’re polar opposites. If you’ve only heard my first album, and you’ve never met me or don’t know me, I guess people picture something in their head. I’ve always known that I don’t really fit into any of those boxes. I mean, I don’t even really fit into the whole gender thing. I’ve always dressed in quite an androgynous way and I’ve always been a bit of a tomboy really.” WHO: Ladyhawke WHAT: Anxiety (Modular/Universal) WHEN & WHERE: Saturday 28 July, Splendour In The Grass

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TIME OFF • 15

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME It’s been a year of learning for Brisbane rockers Dead Letter Circus – about the world, about themselves, about bromance, and learning that they’ll never be happier living anywhere else than right here. Vocalist Kim Benzie fills Mitch Knox in on their educational adventure.

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t’s a bittersweet homecoming for Dead Letter Circus. On the one hand, the Brisbane-bred alt/prog quintet has spent the majority of the last six months abroad in the United States touring with Texan prog-rockers Fair To Midland and are now returning the favour by bringing them along on their own headlining Sleepwalker tour in Australia, so it’s got to be good to be home. “Oh dude, it’s incredible,” frontman Kim Benzie enthuses. “Most of the shows are selling out. It’s really great to come back. We’ve been being the support band throughout America for three out of the last six months, so coming back home and feeling the home country love, it’s pretty amazing.” It should be especially good to be home because, as Benzie explains, touring in America is not for the faint-hearted. “So basically, we did August, November and March over there – two of them were with Fair To Midland, one was with Animals As Leaders. It’s just a taste of what realdeal touring is over there. It’s a 24/7 thing – there’s no days off. You play Mondays, y’know, you drive ten hours a day. You don’t have time to have those days where you feel run-down and tired; there’s no time out, it’s just go, go, go. It helps you take it to the next level. But it’s really good. It’s like entering in this massive machine where you get sucked in one end and spat out somewhere else.” So it’s an insane pursuit, then. “It’s amazing. It’s pretty incredible going there and having people know the words to your songs an 18-hour flight away. You’ve never played before in that city and you just go, ‘How the fuck do you guys know about this?’ It’s crazy. “I guess it’s just that you don’t really stay anywhere – you kind of live in the van, so you spend a lot more time staring out the window. It’s like a survival thing over there, you know? You get to the venue, try and find some food, load all your gear in, do the show, wait till everything’s packed up at the end of the night, drive five hours toward the next town, try and find a crappy motel, sleep for four hours and get up and do it all over again. But it’s awesome. After a while, when you’re that run-down

and tired but you’ve had to do it every day, you forget about the fact that you’re run-down and tired, and you become this crazy, base, animalistic human. It’s cool.” The realities of road-touring in the US acted as a catalyst in many ways for Benzie. It allowed him the headspace to write his contribution to the band’s as-yet-untitled second album, pushed back to allow them their overseas detour. But it also opened his eyes on other levels. “I think we’re really lucky to be Australian, after travelling,” he admits. “Our standard of living here is just phenomenally high – everything’s old and worn in America. All the roads are, like, the worst roads you’ve ever seen in Australia. That can go for hundreds of kilometres… all of the money’s obviously gone elsewhere… they’re really experiencing the worldwide recession, which we haven’t really felt that much here. You can really notice it. As far as music goes, there are amazing bands over there. Those hardships seem to be hitting some pretty amazing shredders. “It’s those moments when your character’s tested, and your soul’s a little bit crushed, and you need a sliver of hope, that’s when the human spirit rises up and does amazing things, and there’s a whole country of that going on over there. What I did notice about America is their international image… the actual people behind that, the people on the street, are fucking really nice people. They’re totally misrepresented. The whole arrogant American concept just doesn’t even exist over there. They’re the friendliest, warmest, most welcoming people that we’ve met on our travels.” Including, as it turns out, their touring mates both in the US and here at home, Fair To Midland. “Originally, we were looking for bands to tour with over there, and obviously we could bring bands here and put them in front of people, and somehow the CDs of each other ended up in each other’s hands, and we got a link saying, ‘Check this band out,’ and we were like, ‘Oh, man, we’ve already heard this band, they’re fucking awesome.’

“It’s actually borne the biggest bromance in the history of band bromances, I think. There’s probably gonna be some tears when the tour’s over.” When the tour’s over, the band will finally be able to properly concentrate on releasing their followup to their 2010 debut, This Is The Warning, and you can expect that it’ll be heavily influenced by their international experiences to date. “My tour of America basically saw my contribution to the album,” Benzie says. “Because we were the band before the headliner, the second we finished I’d be grabbing my laptop and a microphone and finding a dusty corner of the venue, anywhere I could find that was quiet enough for me to do some writing - that was me for like two hours after we played. Even at the hotel, I was in the convention room barricaded behind a bunch of tables just with my laptop at four o’clock in the morning trying to get some ideas out. It’s really interesting because when we wrote the first album, we wrote it from the comfort of being home, and now we’ve kind of been doing it under duress… there’s no kind of ‘nine hours of comfortably sitting there, sipping a latte, having a break, calling a friend,’ it’s just boom – let’s make this happen now. You’re super tired

and sometimes you don’t even feel like doing it but some of the most amazing stuff seems to come out.” But global realities, musical soulmates and creative energy aside, Benzie still finds his thoughts falling back home rather than to the States and is adamant that Brisbane shouldn’t prepare itself to lose Dead Letter Circus any time soon. “We’ll never relocate or anything like that, but as far as touring and your experience goes, for us, we like playing a lot, and in Australia you can only play a certain number of times a year. So now that we’ve done three tours of America we’ll probably do another one before the end of the year. We’ll go on a three-month tour, rather than a one-month tour, like you would in Australia. But yeah, man, Australia’s the best country. There’s nowhere I’ve been yet where I’ve gone, ‘I’d rather live here than live in Brisbane.’ We’re really lucky. It really is a lucky country.” WHO: Dead Letter Circus WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 31 May, Great Northern, Byron Bay; Friday 1 June, The Spotted Cow Toowoomba; Saturday 2, The Hi-Fi; Sunday 10, Kings Beach Tavern, Caloundra

THE GREATEST VIEW When Robert Townsend asks how she continues to come up with the ideas that make her music edgy and interesting, Regina Spektor illuminates. “It’s giving yourself permission to do whatever you want.”

“I

t was David Letterman,” Regina Spektor mentions when explaining that our telephone conversation is taking place directly after having finished playing a song on a TV show. “I’m always pretty nervous to be on TV and I’m very happy and relieved now that it’s done. It was really fun. Conan O’Brien was the guest and then, as I was walking out, Sacha Baron Cohen walked in.” From humble beginnings (she self-recorded 2002 album, Songs, in one day) the Russian-born, New York-based songstress is clearly mixing in high circles these days and is certainly in demand. With her sixth long-player, What We Saw From The Cheap Seats, hitting the stores, life is pretty hectic for Spektor right now. “Tomorrow, really early in the morning, I am playing VH1, then I’m doing National Public Radio in the afternoon. Then I’m flying to the UK to do some promotion there, then I’m coming back. Honestly, leading up to this [album release], I’m crazed with promotion!” While her conversations with this publication over the years have proven the classically-trained musician to be enrapturing company with a sweet New York accent that could melt hearts at 20 paces, the process of talking about herself is not something that sits easily. “For the most part I don’t mind interviews, except for when people are really aggressive. Sometimes interviewers say a bunch of stuff that sound like accusations and you have to defend your life, basically. Those ones I really don’t like. For the most part though, it’s not that I mind talking to people, it’s just unnatural to be answering that many questions about yourself. You really shouldn’t be talking about yourself that much!” And as she chats down the phone in a stolen moment between engagements, it’s clear that there are a lot more interviews on the horizon once ours is over. “The sheer quantity of it is surreal,” she laughs. “Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. If I have a press day, the way that I am in the morning and the way that I am in the evening are like two different people. I don’t take it for granted, though. I’m very grateful to have the record and my shows written about. It helps so much to get my music heard.” 16 • TIME OFF

Spektor’s new record is certainly worth hearing. A natural progression, it is a delightful mix of piano balladry, indie sensibilities with an occasionally poppy edge and her trademark experimentalism. At various points, she sings in an Italian accent, in French, gasps for air and makes drum beats with her mouth. Suffice to say, this is an artist that thinks outside the box. “It’s not so organised where I’ll, like, plot it out or something. It just kinda happens however it happens,” she says when talk turns to how she comes up with the ideas that make her music so edgy and interesting. “It’s giving yourself permission to do whatever you want.” What We Saw From The Cheap Seats was recorded over the course of a few weeks last year, yet Spektor, who has always been an incredibly prolific writer, actually came up with some of the tracks seven or eight years ago. “I just write songs when I write them. Then, when I’m making the record, I just naturally pick what is going to be on it. Let’s say I have dozens and dozens of songs, right? But I only make a record every few years. The record will only fit a certain amount of songs, and you don’t necessarily want to put on every single song that will fit, because that might not be the experience that you want for somebody: to listen to 75 minutes of music.” So, a few tunes, such as All The Rowboats, Patron Saint and Don’t Leave Me (Ne Me Quitte Pas) have had to patiently wait their turn before finally being recorded and released alongside compositions that were dreamt up more recently. “It’s just stream of consciousness, whatever feels right in that moment.” And there are still others that have been around for a while that didn’t make the cut this time round. “There were a bunch of older songs that wanted to be on it but, whenever I tried to play them, they didn’t feel exactly right.” With a career spanning over a decade, and with Spektor still delivering vibrant and challenging material, one wonders if this creative soul has aspirations to take on any differing projects in the future, or if the albums will keep on coming. “I think that people should do what they are inspired to do, you know? If I want to, I’ll write a story or an instrumental piece of music.

If someone ever asks me to score their films, I’ll do something fun like that. I’m not just a ‘songs only’ kind of person, but I also don’t think about plan B.” For now, it’s understandably all about plan A. With the release of the new record comes a busy schedule of touring across Europe and the UK, including a plethora of festival appearances. “I’m just excited to bring this music around the place and to play to people,” she says with an audible sense of joy in her voice. This begs the question, will she be returning to Australian shores anytime soon? “I really, really want to. I don’t know exactly when, because the world is so fucking big. It’s big and small at the same time.” The way in which she speaks of her previous trips to Australia suggests that she is indeed keen to return. Alongside last year’s Splendour In The Grass performance, she has fond memories of playing two nights at Sydney Opera House. On stage, she seemed slightly bewildered that someone had afforded her the opportunity to perform in such a grand venue. “It was the fucking Sydney Opera House,” she laughs.

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“It was kind of a big deal in my head. And it was also my very first time to play in the round. It’s a crazy experience. You want to play to everybody. I didn’t know which way to turn so that nobody felt shunned.” Describing her three visits to Australia as “magical”, she once again promises that she will tour this record over here at some point. “My desire to go back to Australia is giant, but it’s the most recent country outside of America where I played. I played Splendour In The Grass and I left in the middle of making this record. I have a European tour. I have an American tour. I haven’t played America properly for, like, three years.” She stops and then, as if feeling she needs to justify the fact that she is touring her own country before returning to ours, adds with an apologetic chuckle, “I was just there! I’m definitely coming but you’ll have to wait a little while.” WHO: Regina Spektor WHAT: What We Saw From The Cheap Seats (Sire/Warner)

TIME OFF • 17

DEF MAN WALKING

TAKING FLIGHT

MC Sereck convinces Chris Yates that the new Def Wish Cast record, Evolution Machine, is more than just another sporadic reunion record for the group – it’s the start of a whole new chapter in the ongoing saga of Australia’s hip hop originators.

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t’s been over six years since Def Wish Cast gave the Australian hip hop community a dose of the real shit with their Hydrofunk-released album, The Legacy Continues... Audiences across the country were treated to a double whammy of legendary hip hop recently and for most it was their first glimpse of material from the new album. “A few heads showed out,” MC Sereck, aka Paul Westgate, says modestly, playing down the overwhelming support that DWC received on their recent tour supporting one of the true icons of hip hop, KRS-One. There was as much love for the Australian group from a lifetime fanbase as there was for The Teacha himself. “We really enjoyed ourselves, we enjoyed the whole tour – I mean it was incredible. It was really uplifting. We needed it, the nice big crowds. We got to meet him a couple of times; at the publicity launch we did, we kinda hung out and had a few words. At the end he got to see the show and we met his wife and his son. KRS-One’s little thirteen year old daughter is a full Def Wish Cast fan. His wife was telling us, ‘My daughter just loves you guys.’ How’s that, hey?”

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He laughs retelling this story, but it was obvious from the shows that it’s not just the kids of hip hop royalty that are still excited by the group. It has inspired DWC to really head into this next part of their story with gusto. “The last record was 2006 and it’s just a different time for music now than it was then. It was long enough, and we knew that we needed to get our shit together now or we’d never get it together. It’s not like we disappeared. We were still hanging out

American sportspeople talk about the sophomore slump, while university students call it the second year blues. Vocalist Gustav Wood explains to Brendan Crabb why British rockers Young Guns were determined to avoid such dramas following up their hit debut. with everyone and still gigging and whatever, but for the music side of things, it’s such a promotional thing, with making a record and touring, there’s a lot of effort behind it. If you want to take this stuff seriously and push this internationally, it takes a whole team. It takes our manager Randy (Glazer) and our record label Creative Vibes and everyone to be on the same page. Luckily enough, there’s a friendship in all those areas as well, and those people have really put themselves out there for us. So that’s what makes it in the end.” Westgate says that the title of the album, Evolution Machine, represents the evolution of the band, and the evolution of hip hop itself, which he says go hand in hand. The new single, Forever, produced by Katalyst, is just one taste of a massive record that also features production from Brisbane veterans Resin Dogs, M-Phazes, original DWC beat-maker DJ Vame, New York City’s DJ JS1 from Rocksteady Crew and Westgate himself – and that’s just a shortlist of some of the names onboard. “We’re not having a long hiatus again like it’s been since 2006,” he says with steadfast seriousness. “We’re going full-on now, this is it. Every year from now there will be albums, there will be remixes dropping all the time. It’s involving the whole culture as well, the art and dancing, trying to bring everyone back around. This is just the start of us getting back into it and getting us back out there. It’s like where Rocky used to train in his old neighbourhood. We’re getting the eye of the tiger man,” he laughs. “The machine has relaunched and it’s starting now, and it’s going until the day we drop.” WHO: Def Wish Cast WHAT: Evolution Machine (Creative Vibes/MGM) WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 7 June, Mustang Bar; Friday 8, Runaway Bay Tavern, Gold Coast

F

ollowing the success of debut EP, Mirrors, in 2009 and first album, All Our Kings Are Dead, the following year, UK rockers Young Guns rapidly became critical darlings in their homeland, featuring on the cover of numerous high-profile publications. Significant festival appearances (Download, Reading, Leeds) and major supports (Bon Jovi, Lostprophets, Yellowcard) quickly fell their way. Then it came time for the contentious second album. As it turns out, however, the bulk of the expectation placed on them to deliver the goods via new record, Bones, was self-inflicted rather than stemming from antsy record execs calling for a radio single or dedicated fans analysing every minute detail online.

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“Well the cliché of the second album is definitely true. I’d say we had like all our lives to write our first record and about two months to write the second one,” frontman Gustav Wood laughs. “So there was an awful lot of late nights and a lot of pressure, but we’re very hard on ourselves, very critical and rarely happy with what we’re doing. We’re so used to kicking our own arse that we kind of always operate under an almost constant state of pressure. We’re always trying to be better and I think that’s a good thing. But it did mean that the second album was quite painful in a lot of ways. I think we knew that we wanted it to be better, but that was kind of all we knew. It took us a little while to focus in and lock down exactly how we wanted the record to sound, what we wanted to do with it and all that kind of stuff. “So the cliché is definitely true, and it did hurt, but the record that we’ve come out with is something that I’m really happy with and I think that a little bit of pain in the recording process is natural, necessary even. I would be worried if the recording process

was pain-free and easy – I would almost feel like it was a little bit slack in some ways. It should be a struggle, because it’s something important.” Bones was recorded at Karma Sound Studios in Thailand with producer and SikTh guitarist Dan Weller, who offered a key connection to their recorded past. “We had a good relationship with him already and we’ve done pretty much all of our recorded output to date with him,” Wood explains. “So there was an easy dynamic; he understands us, he knows how to get the best out of us, he knows when to babysit and when to crack the whip. With an album as important as this we really wanted that level of honesty and that existing relationship to be there, so we were happy to go with him really. One of the reasons we wanted go to Thailand was so we could remove ourselves from everything else that we were familiar with; from family, relationships, friends and just the environment. We wanted to go somewhere new so we could I suppose push ourselves to be a better, newer band. Having that one bit of history, having Dan aboard, was essential to that. “I think the first record is a good album. We were happy with it, (but) it’s definitely a first album. It’s the sound of us just chucking everything in and seeing what comes out. I think this new record, we were a little more focused with what we wanted to achieve. It’s just the sound of a band that is trying to spread their wings and write music that can appeal to everyone.” WHO: Young Guns WHAT: Bones (Liberator) WHEN & WHERE: Friday 1 June, Coolangatta Hotel; Saturday 2, The Hive (all ages) and Basement 243 (18+)

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TIME OFF • 19

ALRIGHT AGAIN

OH, THE HORROR!

They shot to stardom when the New Kids were still kids, kind of, and the Backstreet Boys were still boys before it all came tumbling down for British ‘90s pop sensations East 17 – but you’re never too old to start over, founding frontman Tony Mortimer tells Mitch Knox.

They started out their life as a simple party band, but inevitably The Horrortones have entered the recorded realm with a triple seven-inch boxset. Frontman Pete Collins tells Steve Bell about doing things for sheer fun and why they aren’t a fucking cover band.

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hey started out their career as a humble all-star Brisbane party band, but over time The Horrotones have become entrenched as a fixture on the Brisbane live scene, their soul-drenched covers and goodtime attitude enlivening many a bash over the last few years. As such it’s not surprising that they’ve decided to eventually release some music – a collection of great covers by acts such as Bob Seger, The Contours and The O’Jays (via The Dirtbombs) – and it’s not really even that shocking that they’ve decided to release them as a triple seven-inch boxset, for this is a band designed from the outset to take the road less travelled. “It was one of those things where we were going to do a triple-gatefold, and it was so hard to actually find an example of a triple-gatefold – they’re pretty much non-existent,” laughs frontman Pete Collins. “Tom at Rocking Horse had a Jesus Lizard triple-gatefold which was a promo from Sub Pop in the mid-‘90s, and we took it everywhere but basically no-one could work out what to do. The other idea was doing a boxset, because we wanted to do something different for our launch and being a bit of a soul band we wanted to stick to seveninches, so why not record three seven-inches and put them in a boxset? It’s an instant seven-inch collection!” Even though The Horrortones contain luminaries from such local stalwarts as Vegas Kings, Texas Tea, SixFtHick, The Sips and The Stress Of Leisure, to name but a few, according to Collins it was never really meant to be a recording concern. “No, it was always going to be a live band, but we never had anything to sell at shows and people were always asking for stuff, so we decided to a couple of seven-inches – which in turn turned into the boxset,” he continues. “But we recorded these songs nearly two years ago, so it’s not like it’s been at the forefront of our minds – we were never going

to be a band existing to put stuff out, but when we do we want it to be a bit different. We’re a live band at the end of the day. We want to be a party band, and some of the favourite party bands that you see live don’t cross over to listening at home because you don’t have that same energy and atmosphere, so we’d prefer to be known for our live shows. “It was originally started off as something that should and would mutate – one of the main concepts of The Horrortones was for it to be a band that never had a permanent member, similar to The Party Boys from the ‘80s. It’s great having that idea where anyone can be replaced for any show – there’s no set line-up, if someone has to miss then someone else can come in and do it.” Playing devil’s advocate for a second, an uneducated person might ask what the difference is between what The Horrotones are doing and those reviled cover bands that are the bane of every pub-goer’s existence. “We’re a party band – there’s a difference,” Collins says sternly. “I think a cover band plays music that everyone in the audience wants to hear, whereas we’re a band that plays music that we want to hear. A cover band also is a band that plays popular songs that the audience will recognise, but we like to play songs that people may not recognise but will still make them want to act as stupid as we do.” WHO: The Horrotones WHAT: Triple 7” Boxset (Mere Noise) WHEN & WHERE: Friday 1 June, Beetle Bar

“W

e had the end-of-career depression you go through, just after the ‘90s,” Mortimer explains. “We’d gone through that and then you start thinking, ‘Oh, what am I going to do with the rest of my life?’ “Then I got a call from Terry [Coldwell] to go back and go in the studio and I thought, ‘Here we go again, we’ve done this about 80 times. It hasn’t worked but we’ll do it anyway.’ Then it progressed. We just started writing a couple of songs and then spoke to some management companies, and all of them said, ‘Bo, don’t be stupid’, except one. Then they signed us and we went and spoke to some record companies that all said, ‘No, don’t be stupid’, except one. Here we are now, we’ve just signed a four-album deal… so I think we’re going to be dead before we get to the end of it. We’re really chuffed at the moment. We’re like little kids that have been given a new lease on life.” The rejuvenation of the band – now operating as a threesome comprised of Mortimer, Coldwell and John Hendy following the departures of Blair Dreelan and Brian “drugs are cool” Harvey – has culminated in the release of their recent LP Dark Light, a far cry from the days of It’s Alright, a single that shot to #1 in Australia for seven weeks in 1994. Mortimer says it all seems a new experience. “It’s different, but at the same time, because we appreciate the situation we’re in, we’re having the time of our lives, to be honest,” he says. “There’s no pressure, we’re relaxed. We, were lucky to get the opportunity in our 20s so, to get it twice we can’t moan about anything. Someone’s looking out for us. But we did come through a bit of a dark period at the end of the ‘90s.

slightly different. So we released it, and I think it’s been a bit of a slap in the face for some people; it’s not quite what they were expecting. But it’s where we are, and we’ve got the freedom to do what we want to do with this record company, which is great. It’s like the old days, like the old record company that gave the artists freedom to do what they want, and it’s sort of like, well, if the album don’t work, don’t worry; we’ll do another one.” But if you’re an existing fan planning on catching the trio when they hit the country for a national tour this month, rest assured that your vintage cravings will be satisfied, but also that Mortimer’s eye is focused firmly on the future. “We’re just going to sing some of the old songs and do our thing,” he laughs. “We’re going to do all, or most of, the old songs, and then we’re thinking, ‘Shall we chuck in a couple of new ones?’ It’s always really risky, because it could go really quiet at that point, and everyone’s going to go to the bar and order drinks, or they’re going to know the words and sing along… But it’s good, because we’re doing like a nostalgia thing, but because we’ve got a record deal we feel like we’re starting again. If it was just a nostalgia thing, and we had no record deal, it’d be really… sad. It’d be sad for us, I think.” WHO: East 17 WHAT: Dark Light (FOD Records)

“We’ve progressed to a different style of music. Over the years, we’ve changed. We’re doing something

WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 14 June, The Hi-Fi

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TIME OFF • 21

...BY ANY OTHER NAME

YUNG MCS Tjimba Possum Burns is one half of indigenous rap duo Yung Warriors. He talks to Chris Yates about the massively important role hip hop can have in the lives of young Indigenous Australians.

Sydney singer-songwriter Elizabeth Rose is about to blossom, and she tells Tony McMahon that she’s ready to take on the music game – thorns and all.

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alented electronic pop newcomer Elizabeth Rose turned many a head last year with the release of her debut track, Never Fear. She was named a Next Crop Artist by triple j and was invited to perform at Parklife, Harvest, Field Day and on support tours for Chairlift and Snakadaktal. This month sees the release of her follow-up track, Ready – merely a taste of what is to come from a soon-to-be-released EP – and Rose heading out on her first national tour. Given that forward motion seems to be the thing here, Time Off asks Rose if she released the song as quickly as she could in order to keep things moving, or did she want to take her time because she knew it was going to what she’d always be remembered for? Not surprisingly, Rose indicates that everything seems to have been happening very quickly for her lately. “With the single, I guess I did want to get it out there quickly because there was a momentum building with my music as I was playing at bigger festivals and supporting high profile acts even before I’d officially released anything,” she tells. ”I wrote Ready last year just after Parklife and was negotiating a few record deals to release it through a major, but time was against me. In the end I had to get the track out there independently through Inertia where I had final say over the release date. I’m lucky that I work well under pressure.” Given all this, excitement levels for the tour must be reasonably sky-level. Rose doesn’t disagree, and says she was lucky for the opportunity to build a bit of a fanbase. “I’ve never done a headline tour of my own before, so I’m very excited to say the least. Touring with Snakadaktal really helped me prepare for my tour; it also gave me lots of new fans as I played to a full house at every gig. The fact that people are asking me on Facebook to come back and play in their city is very reassuring. It’s a big relief to know that there will be people at my shows outside of my hometown Sydney.” When it comes to whether or not Ready is representative of what we’ll hear on the rest of the EP, Rose indicates that it is, but things aren’t all that simple.

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jimba and his brother D-Boy are making big waves as Yung Warriors, and are excited about bringing their music to audiences throughout Australia. Extensive touring, and the release of their new album Standing Strong is helping them do exactly that. The album is being released on Essendon AFL player Nathan Lovett-Murray’s label Payback.

“Production-wise – yes, the tracks all seem to have a dark side to them but with an element of pop still. I do get a bit experimental in them too, which is what I love about having the freedom to express yourself entirely through the sounds you choose to combine when producing a track. One of the tracks on the EP is one I worked on with UK producer Sinden. I got the chance to work with him late last year and we instantly clicked in the studio! I’m very excited to put this EP out. It’s been a long time coming.” For those who have heard Rose’s recorded work but never seen her live, she says that the main difference between the two experiences is that punters will witness someone keeping themselves sane on stage. “I play solo onstage where I have my laptop, keyboard and sampler set up – all the songs are adapted in some form or another for my live setting. I like to improvise through singing, samples and synth parts. Also I write new extended edits of my tracks for the live shows so they’re different from the recordings. I play the tracks so many times that it gets to the point where I need to change it up for my own sanity.” WHO: Elizabeth Rose WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 31 May, Alhambra Lounge; Friday 1 June, Elsewhere, Gold Coast

“Do you know hard it was to get a studio when we first wanted to record?” Tjimba asks rhetorically. “Especially in Melbourne, where it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Nathan approached me and said, ‘Man do you want to get this label together?’ and it just kind of happened out of that little idea. Yeah, Nathan has been a big help, we used to go to school together and he’s a brother for life, you know? He wanted to get some independent advice about music, and he’s clearly a business-minded dude and I know a lot about music so we were sort of teaching each other. Everything just sort of went from there about three years ago. It spins me out with Nathan – he does the business side of things and he plays football, and he’s always out in his community as well.” With family and community being such important parts of Indigenous Australian culture, it’s not surprising that Tjimba is well and truly aware of the impact that positive role models can have on the younger generation. He says it’s also nice to be acknowledged by his elders, even if it’s via the unconventional means of hip hop. “I come from a close-knit family with kinship values, and it’s always about respect,” he says. “We get a lot of elders coming up to us and going, ‘You know we don’t like hip hop, but we like what you’re saying and we can hear what you’re saying,’ and that makes you proud, having the elders come up to you like that – you know you’re doing something right. We do a lot of workshops and stuff for the young ones because they’re the next generation. When

Judith Wright Centre presents CIRCUS

KNEE DEEP Feats of daring and the fragile combine in the stunning premiere work from Brisbane circus company Casus

Sat 2 – Sat 9 June, 8pm Tickets from $18

Casus: SYC Studios, Sean Young

judithwrightcentre.com 07 3872 9000

FIND US:

22 • TIME OFF

The Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts is a Queensland Government initiative operated by Arts Queensland

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you get little kids coming up to you saying that you’re their hero – I just can’t explain the feeling.” Tjimba’s generation certainly didn’t have Indigenous Australians in hip hop to inspire them, although he still got into the music at a young age. “When I first heard Tupac I was in class,” he continues. “One of my boys brought it to me, I was still young as. Before that I was into NWA and that, but Tupac took it to the next level. Then I started to listen to where it really came from, like New York, learning about the producers and their sounds. But it all started with ‘Pac.” It must have been a real kick for the Yung Warriors when they were invited to collaborate with Tupac’s old crew Outlawz? “Oh definitely man, I felt like that was a sign,” he says excitedly. “They taught us a lot of things. They were doing a show at Sydney, and people didn’t come. They didn’t promote it properly. I got on the net and contacted them to see if they wanted to do a show in Melbourne and they were just up for it. We were spinning out that we actually got them to say yes! And what a privilege too, to learn stuff from those guys. It’s like, they would write something down, put the paper down, go straight in the booth and ‘boom boom’!” Tjimba laughs. “It’s their culture and it was just such a good experience being around them.” WHO: Yung Warriors WHAT: Standing Strong (Payback) WHEN & WHERE: Wednesday 30 May, Surfers Paradise Tavern; Thursday 31, Racehorse Hotel, Ipswich; Friday 1 June, The Zoo; Saturday 2, Club Tavern, Caboolture

TIME OFF • 23

SINGLED OUT WITH CHRIS YATES

ON THE RECORD

THE HORRORTONES Triple 7” Collection

Sony

Aerosmith only make music for blockbusters these days, which is fair enough. They did their time down on the coalface I guess. Legendary Child is such a throwback to the big riff era of the band, as opposed to the ballad hit-songwriter assisted I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing era. Tyler even paraphrases the lyrics from Walk This Way at one point, proving the band are looking backwards. The verse sections are basically a re-visited version of Sweet Emotion, and even the chorus is sung the same way as on that massive track. Even if they may be out of new ideas, at least they’re picking great points from their back catalogue to cannibalise – excuse me – pay homage to.

KING TUFF

Broken Hertz/Mute/EMI

Sub Pop/Inertia

Cold Specks is the nom de plume of singer/songwriter Al Spx, which is in itself a pseudonym. Yet the mystery goes deeper, for a name like Cold Specks derives a notion of idleness and glitch, a band for the darkwave generation. Instead what their debut I Predict A Graceful offers is a unique take on soul (already uniquely labelled as doom-soul), infused with a selftaught fragility that’s usually beat out of today’s pop divas by the time they start wearing sports bras.

Kyle Thomas – until now best known for playing with J Mascis in stoner metallers Witch and fronting Sub Pop LIVE labelmates Happy Birthday – has released his second album under the King Tuff moniker, following 2008’s Was Dead. It’s a foray into ‘glam-garage’ – fuzzy rock’n’roll with swathes of Marc Bolan bombast and eccentricity – the irresistible songs jam-packed with hooks and insidious melodies but deranged and scruffy enough to keep purveyors of outsider culture interested as well.

D

VD

In keeping with their aural curveballs, Liars deliver WIXIW (pronounced “wish you”), a meditation on how things become shrouded and difficult to interpret when taken out of their intended context – hence the strange spelling of the album title. WIXIW then offers ten songs that continually shift and slither in the darkness, impossible to pin down yet inexorably designed to linger long after they take their leave. Single No 1 Against The Rush (a telling title if ever there was one) is an immediate highlight, an incredible track deceptively full of sensual menace. These songs are largely electronic in design, offering the framework for incredibly measured, mood-sculpted compositions laying down dread and anxiety in liberal doses. There’s no pressure valve track here designed to startle the listener with a cathartic release of energetic aggression – everything is tempered and densely textured. From Octagon squeezing every ounce of malevolence from its pores to Annual Moon Words’ frantic yet unsettlingly abrupt end to the album, WIXIW is as seductively unnerving a listen as anything of Liars’ oeuvre – and just as devastatingly brilliant. Brendan Telford

King Tuff

Spx’s voice is strangely alluring as it wavers between a breathy murmur, a soulful croon and a broken quaver, sometimes in the same song, yet all delivered with a deliberate, glacial calm that washes over and invades the senses. Opening track The Mark is a strangely understated introduction, yet the onetwo punch of singles Heavy Hands (which mirrors Cat Power’s emotive control) and album highlight Winter Solstice launches us more readily into Spx’s doleful terrain. The instrumentation is relatively stark, relying on Spx’s spartan guitar playing for the most part, whilst occasionally being augmented by piano, percussion and string interludes. Things aren’t always plain sailing – whilst on their own most tracks, like the rousing Hector or cathartic Blank Maps, stand tall, there becomes a sense of familiarity when they stand side by side that dims their intensity. At times these songs roll through the smoke of dawn with a weariness that breaks the heart; at others it’s the tonal delivery from Spx that matters more than the story.

The feelgood fuzz of slacker paean Alone & Stoned VD melts deliciously into the incredibly incessant Keep

D

One of the greatest and most innovative bands of the last decade, Liars are never content to rest on their laurels – releasing five incredible albums since 2001, each a mutant evolution of the last. In fact the trio have fearlessly blazed their own purposefully indefinable trail in complete contrast to many of their contemporaries that swaggered out of their New York digs and onto the world stage. Their square-peg-in-a-round-hole approach to music has meant they continually defy expectations and divide audiences, although their beautifully cryptic 2010 album Sisterworld saw them garner more critical acclaim than ever before.

★★★★★

COLD SPECKS

I Predict A Graceful Expulsion

Mute/EMI

VD

Legendary Child

WIXIW

On Movin’, with its bouncing bassline and helium calland-response vocals. Indeed there are plenty of such random vocal performances, the songs all crazy and disjointed but somehow flowing together perfectly. It’s full of twists – the straight-up exuberant garage of Stranger gets psych-y towards the end before the folk troubadour ruminations of the handclap-happy Baby Don’t Break burst into a country jamboree, showcasing the diversity not just across the album but amongst individual tracks. The pastoral pop of Evergreen is the change of pace before the humble beginnings of Swamp Of Love burst into a rousing anthemic finale, and the vibrant bar-room stomp of closer Hit & Run is a catchyas-fuck reminder that Thomas has talent to burn.

D

AEROSMITH

LIVE

LIARS

D

A bunch of people from different Brisbane bands get together every now and then and play gigs as The Horrortones doing rock soul covers and generally just bringing the party. They don’t take things very seriously, so it’s great to see they have taken the time to put a bunch of these covers down in the studio. Considering their affiliation with Mere Noise Records, it makes sense that they’ve put it out on vinyl – the idea of a three-platter set of 7”s makes somewhat less sense but that’s obviously the point. The song selection is typical of what to expect from a gang who have a genuine love and passion for the origins of the guitar rock and blues that informs the other bands of everyone involved with The Horrortones. They play the tracks straight, with the contributors still having enough space to interject the classics with their own personality. Strictly a limited release, I wouldn’t be surprised if all the copies are gone before this goes to print so get in quick!

VD

Mere Noise

At any rate, Cold Specks is an anomaly on the popular music scene – rich in timbre and commitment, tangible and resolutely beautiful.

It’s all slightly confounding, but in a way that drags you back in rather than deters – every song is jammed full of ideas and an interesting excursion in its own right, even if they occasionally end up in odd places. King Tuff’s twisted bubblegum will no doubt soundtrack a heap of northern hemisphere summer binges, but it should keep a few of us warm during our southern winter as well.

★★★★

★★★★

Brendan Telford

Steve Bell

HEY GERONIMO Carbon Affair Independent

A great little tune from Brisbane’s Hey Geronimo, which is instantly infectious and immediately likeable. Although it’s a very slick recording, it doesn’t suffer from the production. Instead, the time in the studio has been spent layering lush vocals and different guitar lines, coming together in a satisfying swirl of good pop ideas that all support the simple lines of the melody, culminating in a hooky, friendly chorus. Obvious comparisons are not forthcoming, although it could be likened to the very beautiful and ambitious sounds of The Zombies circa-Odessey And Oracle, which seems to be popping up as a reference point for quite a few Brisbane bands of late. This is a very good thing.

TOBY MARTIN

Postcard From Surfers Ivy League

It’s been a while since we heard from Toby Martin, singer for the ace indie pop Youth Group, who put out a bunch of great underthe-radar stuff before having a massive hit with their cover of Forever Young. On the first track to surface from his impending solo album Love’s Shadow, Martin takes the role of literal storyteller, and it’s somewhat of a departure from his pop songwriting. Youth Group often had elements of shadowy darkness creep into their shiny pop, and Postcard From Surfers follows suit. With the very Australian narrative and Martin talk-singing most of the track, it seems he could have been influenced by Adam Gibson from The Aerial Maps, but with Martin’s unique perspective and delivery it becomes something else entirely.

LONE

SKY’HIGH

BEST COAST

R&S Records

Elefant Traks/Inertia

Popfrenzy/Universal

The coolest thing about underground electronic music circa-2012? ‘Underground’ is no longer a byword for ponderous noodlings aimed at the beard scratching brigade, with artists like Rustie and now R&S Records’ Lone proving bass music, future beat or whatever you want to call it can be married with stadium-sized ambition without losing its soul. So when The Animal Pattern drops rave stabs over a minimal 140bpm drum break and tribal percussion, it’s more likely to have chinstrokers scurrying towards the dancefloor rather than a bomb shelter.

Forever Sky’High bears all the hallmarks of a premature release. Saturated with charisma and exploding with ideas, Sky’High’s debut album nevertheless lacks the requisite craftsmanship and maturity to warrant too many listens. It’s a promising novelty.

Bethany Cosentino has been at great pains to tell us that she’s grown up of late; she doesn’t want to sing about weed and cats, she wants to sing about mature things. Maturity can be enriching, but also awfully boring, and Best Coast straddle that line all through their “difficult second album” The Only Place.

Galaxy Garden

The man behind the Lone moniker is Manchester-based Matt Cutler, and the bass-heavy brew he serves up here is brimming with ideas, melodies, emotion and meaning – this is electronica for the body, but with plenty to offer the mind as well. As A Child, one of two collaborations with Brooklyn production gun Machinedrum, even opens with the sound of meditative flute and bubbling brook before the relaxation spell is broken with an up-tempo drum pattern that drops into lush synthtopia before taking off again. Off the back of that, Lying In The Reeds recalls mid‘00s house classic Discopolis as it leaps between time signatures and deploys a Cantopop synth hook repurposed for good instead of cheesy, before Crystal Caverns 1991 engages the hyperdrive for an uplifting journey through the psychedelic cosmos via an early breakbeat jungle warehouse party. Even drifting atmospheric closer Spirals manages to make Anneka’s moderately poppy vocal sound somewhat otherworldly. Widescreen, technicolour, free-wheeling – they’re all descriptors which Galaxy Garden wears with unabashed pride. That Lone can make such an expressionist approach sound both cohesive and not the least bit self-indulgent confirms he’s a rare talent indeed. ★★★★½

24 • TIME OFF

Forever Sky’High

Kris Swales

This is not to suggest that Sky’High herself is a promising novelty. The Sydney MC is a brutally unique proposition within Australian hip hop. Her heavilyaccented flow is often quite raw and simplistic from a technique perspective – but her charisma and creativity is undeniable (Death Row’s “Nobody loves me/yeah I ain’t Raymond/Time is money/and the bitch ain’t paid yet” being but one of many sweet lines on the album). Her flair for hooks and choruses, meanwhile, is largely unmatched in Australian hip hop. The issue is that she hasn’t quite managed to focus her talents yet. Forever Sky’High ping-pongs between styles and ideas without developing any particular approach into a finished product. Producer P-Money does his best to lend a cohesive aesthetic to the album (and he’s to be commended for his efforts – rare is an album that can balance blistering grime rhythms with DJ Premier-style hip hop) but even he can’t disguise Sky’High’s shortcomings or slapdash songcraft. The MC, for example, excels on UK-inspired rhythms (Don Dada, Reign) but fall apart on more locally-flavoured joints (Let’s Just). It’s a blitzkrieg of a record – all ideas, all approaches, all at once – and, while that’s both impressive and bold, it doesn’t really grab the ear or the heart in the long-term. Her next album might, though. ★★★

themusic.com.au

Matt O’Neill

The Only Place

While Cosentino’s lyrics on their Crazy For You debut were far from profound, they weren’t trying to be and that relatable sense of naivety was endearing. Sadly here it seems as if she is trying to hit at something that’s got a little more gravitas, but she falls short. It seems harsh to pull apart Cosentino’s lyrics one by one and parade their awkwardness, but they’re incredibly ordinary for the majority of the record. There are a few moments where the simplicity works like it used to - When I Cry’s chirpily delivered “You seem to think you know everything/But you don’t know why I cry” is arresting and proves that her talent is still there - but when she croons lines like “If I sleep on the floor/Will it make you love me more?” you can’t help cringe a little. This record sounds beautiful though; weeks in Capitol Studios with Jon Brion in the producer’s chair will do that. Brion has given the songs a glorious sheen that pulls them well out of the lo-fi world but keeps their sparse aesthetic. Lyrics aside, the songs plod inoffensively; chiming guitars provide sweet melodic beds and there’s little reliance on rhythm. Sadly, that just makes the vocals more prevalent, and once again you’re wishing Cosentino wasn’t trying to grow up so fast. ★★★

Dan Condon

JOEY RAMONE

DAUGHN GIBSON

SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO

GUIDED BY VOICES

BMG/Liberator

Mistletone/Inertia

Wichita/Liberator

Guided By Voices Inc

The second posthumous release from Joey Ramone sees his legacy living on despite the initial difficulties between Joey’s brother Mickey Leigh and producer Daniel Rey, who played on a lot of the original recordings of these tracks.

Daughn Gibson started plying his trade as part of a stoner-metal trio, yet in solo form he rides a horse, albeit a forlorn, skeletal one. In monochrome. In a rustic steampunk Western desert. In a parallel universe.

When one half of Manchester indie quartet Simian broke away to form Simian Mobile Disco in 2005, no one knew what to expect. Needless to say no one was prepared when Jas Shaw and James Ford unleashed Attack Decay Sustain Release in 2007. After that big, wobbly distorted punch to the guts, the pair flipped the dirty tech on its head with Temporary Pleasure and enlisted a range of cracking vocalists such as Beth Ditto and Jamie Lidell to give the tracks a more accessible pop sheen. Now, with Unpatterns, Simian Mobile Disco find themselves at a crossroads, the album neither here nor there and sounding unrecognisably beige for it.

The second GBV album featuring the ‘classic’ Bee Thousand (1994) and Alien Lanes (1995) line-up to be released in less than a year proves Rob Pollard, Tobin Sprout and company are on a roll once again. Rather than just being an accompaniment to Let’s Go Eat The Factory, Class Clown... is a record of unexpected accomplishment. It’s beautifully weird, and weirdly beautiful, as all of Pollard’s best work is.

...Ya Know?

The songs have been completely rebuilt around the original vocal tracks, some dating back to the late‘80s. Unfortunately the anthemic Rock And Roll Is The Answer is marred by a metal finger-tapping guitar solo that seems unbelievably out of context, even taking into account the pledge to rock’n’roll that the song (repeatedly) makes. It’s amazing that the love song to New York City never made it onto a Ramones album. It’s a classic mid-late era Ramones fist pumper helped out by the E-Street Band’s Steven Van Zandt. I Couldn’t Sleep pays homage to the ‘60s pop Joey loved so much, as does Party Line, which has been dressed up with a production that echoes the Phil Spector production Joey often chased in the studio. Apparently originally intended as a duet with Debbie Harry, Holly Beth Vincent takes on the challenge nicely. There’s a real ‘50s influence on the very different version of Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight), one of the only tracks that has appeared in a different form previously. Not having the same amount of input from Joey as he did on the album he worked on up until his death, 2002’s Don’t Worry About Me, it’s hard to know how the late Ramone would really feel about this collection, but as a gift to the diehard fans, it’s surely something he would have wanted. ★★★

All Hell

Unpatterns

So is the reaction of his debut All Hell that it can’t be helped but to think that Gibson is fucking with us. Starting out with the low, brow-beaten country of Bad Guys, All Hell changes tack considerably from the heavily sampled and eloquent croon of In The Beginning. It is the distorting and elongation of the vocals on tracks such as Tiffany Lou that evokes darkwave terrain, a windswept number that wouldn’t be out of place scoring an attempt at a love story by David Lynch. Rain On A Highway seems disingenuous, like Johnny Cash recorded on a green screen. The Day You Were Born is Tom T Hall, slowed by 200%, on peyote. Nothing is at it seems – yet this is Gibson’s world, and he’ll be damned if he’ll construct something that’s easy to take part in. The scary thing is, All Hell is actually very good. Despite its scattered, disparate elements, Gibson infuses it with so much of his own personality that there are commonalities that exist that allow these tracks to hold sway, gelling together in a cohesive way that on paper is inconceivable. All Hell isn’t likely to take the world by storm, yet – just like compatriots King Dude and, to a lesser extent, Aussie Jack Ladder and his latest opus Hurtsville – he has painted a niche that is infinitely interesting despite its genre trappings. ★★★★

Brendan Telford

The aural equivalent of 50 minutes in the k-hole, I Waited For You immediately puts you quivering in the corner of the room, the track bleeding into Cerulean to create a dark and minimal opener that aptly sets the tone for the rest of the album. That’s not to say the record is without its dance-oriented moments, bouncy mid-album number, Interference, showing a bit more life, but it does so with polite refrain. For the most part, however, it is electronic wankery, indulgent and flat rhythms that encourage nothing more than the odd bit of chin stroking.

Class Clown Spots A UFO

The first two tracks are the kind of dark and shadowy heavy GBV numbers – ominous and serious with a smattering of absurdist lyricism. Immediately following we get the much welcome sweetness of Tobin Sprout on Forever Until It Breaks, complete with hefty production including sometimes atonal synth strings and maybe even a real cello. The title track is an upbeat band number informed by the memory of the great Elephant 6 bands via horns and a shiny outer layer – it’s as classic a pop song as any of the GBV masterpieces of yesteryear. Chain To The Moon is a one-minute shot of classic Pollard, a la Gold Heart Mountain Top and the like.

Unpatterns holds its moments of intrigue, but predominantly it’s a strange, foreign album. It seems like every time you try and pin down Jas Shaw and James Ford, they wriggle out from underneath your fingers. In the past, this has created some explosive results. Unfortunately this time, all it’s done is produce a record that feels alien and cold.

There’s many more magic pop moments, bathed in the otherworldly GBV production magic; Keep It In Motion has Pollard and Sprout doubling each other’s vocals on what could be one of their greatest ever collaborations. Sprout indulges his obsession with late-‘60s psyche folk on Starfire, and even as we approach the end of the record, moments of genius are all too frequent. Jon The Croc, Lost In Spaces and No Transmission all help to make Class Clown Spots A UFO yet another essential Guided By Voices album.

★★

★★★★½

Benny Doyle

Chris Yates

Chris Yates

themusic.com.au

TIME OFF • 25

F R O N T R O W @ T I M E O F F. C O M . A U

ARTS ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975)

THIS WEEK IN

WEDNESDAY 30 Australian Booty – Candy B (Bowers) is a writer, hip hop artist, social innovator, NIDA graduate, lyricist and social activist. Her dream is for the Australian stage to be a place where everyone feels comfortable, can see themselves reflected and is welcome. People of colour with booty’s are here and Candy wants to see them on Ramsay street. Opening night, Brisbane Powerhouse: Visy Theatre, 8pm until 10 June.

THURSDAY 31 Tetsuya Umeda – sound installations and performances from Japan’s Tetsuya Umeda. Created soundscapes using fans, motors, clocks, and other electric devices in complex sound spaces. A joint project with Room 40. IMA, Judith Wright Centre, 7pm.

FRIDAY 1 Bleeding Heart Retrospective – an exhibition of some artists that have contributed to this organization of social enterprise over the last four years. Artists involved include, Luke Darlington, Jessica Row, Carmela Ruffino, Brad Marsellos, Tricia King, Holly Leonardson, Ken Smith, Amy Commins, Emma Godfrey and James Alley. Opening night, Bleeding Heart, 5pm exhibiting until 7 June. Cross-Stitch: The Night Of The Dead Trees – curated by Sarah Winter, celebrating the surreal, beautiful and the magical of the smallest things that make it all worthwhile. With artists, Sandra Carluccio, Cameron Clark, Daniele Constance, Emily Devers, Julia Rose Lewis, Makeshift Dance Collective, Thomas Quirk & The Stitchery Collective. Part of FreeRange 2012, Opening night, 8pm until 2 June, !Metro Arts (Out the back). Edward Scissorhands & The Rocky Horror Picture Show – Tim Burton’s 1990 classic is screened to start the evening and followed by a special screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show the 1975 cult

GOOD EGGS

movie with Cards 4 Sorrow bringing the movie to life with a lip-synch floorshow. Go on we all remember The Time warp. Schonell Theatre, University of QLD, starting 6.30pm. Sommersault – Abbie Cornish is Heidi in this film about a young woman running from an unforgiveable act of sexual betrayal in her home. She seeks comfort, love, a bed, whatever, by bestowing her sexual favours on whoever seems to be in focus of her alcohol-hazed vision. Heidi is possibly the wrong person for Joe (Sam Worthington) to meet. The son of a local grazier, he is also troubled both sexually and emotionally but of course they do. A haunting tale of lost youth, Written and directed by Cate Shortland Part of the Contemporary Australia: Women in Film Series, Goma: Cinema A, 8pm & Sunday 1pm.

SATURDAY 2 MAYO Festival – experience one of the 25 workshops with artists such as exhibiting artist, Matt Dwyer in the darkroom. Make your own wearable head piece and even learn to dance Bollywood style. Aslo an abudnace of artisan market stalls, music and theatre performances. St Margaret’s Art Centre Terraces, 11am-7pm.

SUNDAY 3 Livewired – a free comedy program, warning Livewired is open to all ages but is recommended for people aged 15 years and older. Some concepts and language may offend. Brisbane Powerhouse, 6.30pm.

ONGOING Daydream Believers – a showcase of four artists who live in the thrall of the past. Explore the work of Jason Greig with his gothic monoprints of wraiths and necromancers, David Noonan with his thespian-themed tapestries, glass painter John Spiteri and sculptor Francis Upritchard. IMA Gallery until 9 June. G WIN SHO W NO

!Metro Arts’ Free-Range Program, now in its seventh year, is the creative development equivalent of boot-camp; a month-long intensive for independent performance makers to experiment in an environment that encourages risktaking and incubates, nurtures and grows ideas. Kicking off 2012’s proceedings is CROSSSTITCH, an opening event which gives an emerging director or curator the opportunity to curate a night. This year Brisbane theatre and performance maker – and one part of the much-lauded Escapists – Sarah Winter, has curated Night Of The Dead Trees. Night Of The Dead Trees, she explains, blurs the boundaries between visual art and performance; the artists involved each, as Winter says, have interesting relationships with audiences or space. “I’m really interested in poetics and visual art,” she says, “[And] in performing art which really has a conversation with the audience,” she continues, “It’s really visual and I wanted to create a real world. It’s a night [during which] we pay homage to everything that’s been before or could be. So creating a whole world for people; I want it to not feel like Metro, like you’ve gone somewhere else.” Winter, also a PhD student at QUT, explains that while she’s since cut her own niche in theatre-making, she started in more traditional N SOO ING M CO

Helen Stringer chats to theatre/performance maker Sarah Winter ahead of her involvement in Free-Range 2012 at !Metro Arts.

solidarity; online project ‘Letter To A Lover’ becomes tangible.

forms, but, she says, found, “I was different insomuch as I like performance and live art and interactive performance.” Winter continues, “I’m interested in creating beautiful, slightly surreal kind of environments where the audience really is the key to it. I really wanted, with CROSSSTITCH, to open it up and make it visual art meets performance.”

For the latter, Winter explains, people have been able to submit an anonymous letter to a lover, be they past, present, future, or imagined. “We’ve collated these [letters],” she says “And they’re going to decorate Night Of The Dead Trees. It’s homage to all of these people’s stories and memories and dreams. And that’s very much a part of making the audience feel like they’ve invested part of themselves and it’s a sharing. People are going to read their own letters in the context of all these other stories.”

To that end, Winter has brought together an eclectic group of artists, each of whom is contributing to filling the recesses of Metro with the surreal and the beautiful. The pieces are confessional and interactive; audiences are invited to share a secret and a shot of vodka in Robert Millett’s ‘Vodka And Truth’, in which the artist is blindfolded while he listens to confessions before downing hard liquor in

THEATRE

For Winter, this take on interactive theatre challenges and even disrupts the sometimes isolating modern tendency towards maintaining anonymity. “I think it

“It’s quite beautiful to watch people who may never have interacted before,” she continues, “It’s quite a beautiful thing that two strangers can come together, sit side by side and have an experience or create a new story. I find people are usually quite open and that beautiful relationships are forged.” WHAT: !Metro Arts’ Free-Range Program WHEN & WHERE: Opens Friday 1 June until Tuesday 28 June, !Metro Arts

REVIEW

BLIND DATE Powerhouse Theatre, Turbine Studio, 22/05/2012 The Powerhouse’s Turbine Studio makes for one hell of a realistic karaoke bar to set Ride On Theatre’s Blind Date in; the complimentary wine doesn’t hurt in building the illusion either. Anna (Bojana Novakovic) sits at the bar waiting for her RSVP.com-sourced date to arrive. Neither Anna, Novakovic, nor the audience know who is going to turn up on the night. Lucky for us it’s an infinitely endearing Eden Falk who, as Patrick, is relatively composed – compared, at least, to Anna, whose desperation to connect is palpable. The pair improvises from the start, with Tanya Goldberg

directing them as they go via text messages and the occasional phone call. Novakovic and Falk are both thoroughly believable and mostly likeable as two people trying and failing to find love, with the latter dealing better with Anna’s ice-breakers (including the hereto unknown herb version of ‘fuck, marry, kill’) and her drunken,

distinctly unsubtle advances better than some of the audience (an enthusiastic punter advised poor Pat make a hasty exit). Blind Date relies entirely on the skill of its performers and the two here are frankly wonderful. Blind Date never feels improvised but it does feel real, heartfelt and hugely entertaining, even if it did finish far too soon. Helen Stringer

THE NOOSA LONG WEEKEND IS COMING The Noosa long weekend is fast approaching. With three Australian and 11 Queensland Premiere events will form part of the 80 plus event program. Covering a broad spectrum of artistic disciplines such as theatre, literature, visual art, forums and dance. Bruce Beresford’s will also preview screening of his latest film ‘Peace, Love and Misunderstanding’ starring Jane Fonda. The 11th Noosa Longweekend Festival will be staged from Friday 15 to Sunday 24 June.

N SOO ING M CO

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interrupts that thing of, you sit on the bus, you stare forward and you don’t talk to anyone, or you get in an elevator and you don’t speak with anyone. I think works like this get people to remember that it’s just another human being with other stories as well.

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F R O N T R O W @ T I M E O F F. C O M . A U

YES NUDITY CLAUSE The Truth About Kookaburras sees playwright Sven Swanson tightening a few things up while keeping the nudity intact from the play’s original incarnation, to form “a much richer journey,� he tells Helen Stringer. When Brisbane-based playwright Sven Swenson’s The Truth About Kookaburras opened at MetroArts in 2009 three points recurred in reviews. First, it was very good; second, it was, at three hours, unusually long; and third, there was more than the regularly expected amount of male nudity. Swenson has spent the intervening years developing ...Kookaburras – a process which included an Arts Queensland funded workshop with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee – and the play is hitting La Boite in a tighter, slightly shorter but no less risky form.

C U LT U R A L

“As the play progresses we see the underneath and the insides of those characters‌I wanted a progression from what we first see – men behaving badly, the type of thing we expect – to progress over the three acts so that we actually see into these people, we don’t just see the circus‌we actually see into their lives and in some cases into their souls.â€?

Working with Albee was, says Swenson, “The most wonderful experiences I’ve ever had professionally‌he’d been a hero of mine from very early on‌ so I was very excited for him to cast an eye over my work. “[...Kookaburras] breaks a lot of rules,â€? he continues, “But I needn’t have been worried, he in fact told me that I hadn’t gone far enough with some of those choices, so he really emboldened me to write courageously.â€? ...Kookaburras follows an AFL team as they grapple with the morning-after, but it would be a mistake to simply treat the play as an indictment on men behaving badly set to a whodunit formula. Whilst those aspects are present, Swenson explains that, on a deeper level the play is casting a light on changing notions of masculinity and the struggle men face in

CRINGE

WITH MANDY MCALISTER You have to be careful sometimes quoting movies to your friends. In an attempt at hospitality I once quoted what I thought was a well known line from Shaun Of The Dead to a group of mates only to have one ask, “Did you just call us cunts?� Umm...yes...drink? Next time I’ll just stick to peanuts. Whether it’s prodding someone into taking directions by asking if they’ve never taken a shortcut before or posting your Facebook status as “Go round Mum’s. Get Liz back. Sort life out!� as a general mission statement of having a purposeful day, the filmmaking combo of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost are highly quotable. Fans of the trio will be be happy to hear that Wright recently set a September start date on filming the third in the Blood & Ice Cream trilogy, the first two being 2004’s Shaun Of The Dead and 2007’s Hot Fuzz. The third film will be called The World’s End and follows a group of five childhood friends who decide to relive an epic pub crawl 20 years after their first attempt to reach the fabled pub The World’s End. Nobody tells me nothin’ and all involved with the film are tight lipped on further details of the plot but it’s fair to say some sort of apocalypse is involved. The trilogy is also known as the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy (a twist on Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors Trilogy – all

films of which could have used a few more zombies). Shaun... featured a strawberry cornetto, which represents the film’s gore, Nick Frost’s character favoured original vanilla cornetto with its blue wrapper representing the fuzz of Hot Fuzz. Pegg told the BBC way back in 2008 that the final film would have a mintchoc cornetto but in the intervening four years its significance has not been made clear. My money’s on germs or martians. Alternatively they could take a page from M. Night Shyamalan’s book and make trees the origin of the plague as they were in his film The Happening. Perhaps I should have prefaced that with a spoiler alert but that movie should have been call Nothing Is Happening, and there’s no need for you to see it, ever. Frost and Pegg have dabbled in science fiction with 2011’s Paul but the only way those loveable Paullike aliens are going to cause an apocalypse is by exhaling so much weed smoke that humans stop doing their jobs. The World’s End will no doubt bring the noise with something a little more over the top if the trio are to bring the trilogy to a satisfactory close after starting with something as bloody as Shaun. The script, penned by Wright and Pegg is still in the draft stages and they have been known to tease fans with probable release dates before. So it’s still a best reckoning as to when the film will be released. I guess it’ll be ready when the little hand says it’s time to rock and roll.

reconciling those changes. “To bring a football club together,� he says, “With that iconic male ritual of the bucks’ party gave me a great canvass to paint that narrative on.� Swenson explains of the play’s conception, “I’d started to see that men were struggling with the sense of their own identity as men,� he continues, “I think for all the fantastic things that feminism has brought us what’s not being looked at is that men [have] had particular roles that they knew were their responsibility and within a fairly short space of time – historically speaking – those roles have been eroded, I think to society’s benefit. But then what replaces that? What do men do with what has become an unfashionable masculinity?� There is also plenty of men behaving badly, but, says Swenson,

The much talked about nudity, Swenson says, escapes gratuity because it serves that purpose: the men start physically naked but the real nudity happens when they become emotionally stripped. Nevertheless, a football team’s worth of naked men will no doubt still shock a few. “One of the things that Albee said to me was, ‘Never allow it to be done without the nudity’. “The nudity is such an important part of this piece: it’s naturalism, they are football players in a dressing shed I’m not interested in writing that into polite theatre that isn’t naturalistic. It’s also symbolic of‌the clothes that we wear.â€? “Some people last time said that the nudity didn’t need to go on for as long as it did,â€? he continues, “I couldn’t disagree more.â€? In fact, says Swenson, he considers this to be a “much less timid versionâ€? and, he says, “I think it’s a much richer journey.â€? WHAT: The Truth About Kookaburras WHEN & WHERE: Opening Wednesday 6 June, until 23 June, La Boite Indie

SUBMISSIONS FOR SHORT + SWEET CLOSING SOON Calling actors, directors and independent theatre companies, Short + Sweet one of the largest short play (ten minute) festivals in the world are closing submissions on 31 May. The Short + Sweet Queensland theatre season runs from 1 August to the 19 August at The Loft. For more info and to submit go to www.shortandsweet.org

THE LOOKING

GLASS

WITH HELEN STRINGER I used to matriculate with a quasi-goth with a penchant for body modification and Harry Potter porn. That’s right, Harry Potter porn. In fact said quasi-goth was a rather talented illustrator who was particularly fond of visual doubleentendres involving dear Hazza and his broom. This was around the time The Prisoner Of Azkaban was released, back in 2004, before Facebook, when young D-Rad was a mere 15 years old. Come to think of it I might be about to incriminate myself here when I confess that I wrote a few pieces of short fiction to accompany quasi-goth’s drawings. What can I say? The money was surprisingly good and I already knew the material. I’d like to say it was a past time which came to an abrupt stop when I realised I’d developed an inappropriate and possibly illegal crush on Daniel Radcliffe that urgently needed attention but I was, in fact, fired for my growing sentimentality. Is it really my fault if I thought other girls might also want to brush back Harry’s dark mop of hair with their trembling fingertips and gently kiss his magical scar whilst hovering in the moonlight over the Forbidden Forest, their supple young legs straddling Harry’s Firebolt? Jesus, I was only trying to inject a little bit of romance into the proceedings, and my love stories made for some very popular fanfiction. Suck that quasi-goth. Writing pornographic fan-fiction has since remained at the back of my mind as get rich quick scheme; a fall-back plan if I didn’t manage to write a Pulitzer-winning exposÊ on Tracy Grimshaw’s life-long struggle

SWINGING INTO ACTION

People say ‘We really got to know you and experience you throughout the show’. So we don’t mask ourselves. If I think something’s funny, I’ll smile. It’s all about feeling more like you’re performing in a family loungeroom.�

Coming off the back of a powerful first year, fledgling circus company Casus pitches camp on home turf at the Judith Wright Centre. Where Baz McAlister catches up with Emma Serjeant to chat about show Knee Deep. Casus was born in an unusual way. When friends and fellow Brisbane circus performers Jesse Scott, Lachlan McAulay, Natano Fa’anana and Emma Serjeant decided to come together and create a new company. So they could make precisely the kinds of shows they wanted to. Serjeant and Scott were both halfway around the globe, on tour with their previous company Circa. “The four of us knew we wanted to do this but we weren’t able to get in the same room, so over email, we started to research potential names, and do creative development, and apply for grants – that we didn’t get. It’s no surprise our first application for funding wasn’t successful! We had no idea what we were going to be doing, and only half an idea

The four performers have really found their feet as a company and jelled well, but Serjeant says the main challenge has been lack of time and money to just rehearse together. All four have to do day jobs – all of them teach circus. Serjeant is the head trainer at Circa, and also teaches that company’s young performance, Circa Zoo.

of a name. We threw words back and forth to each other on Facebook for three months before one stuck – Casus.� Casus, it turns out, is Latin – Serjeant defines it as meaning “a culmination of circumstances�, with ties to the phrase casus belli, Latin for an act of war. The four performers’ bold act of striking out on their own has culminated in some amazing circumstances – in their first year they’ve performed at Falls Festival and Adelaide Fringe, headlined the Catapult Festival in Bathurst and are off to Edinburgh next month. But first, the hometown crowds are waiting at the Judith Wright Centre to see Knee Deep. “The show’s created from a sense of fragility and the human form,� Serjeant says. “We let the audience

with demonic possession by age 25. Needless to say, I’ve been working on my own tome for some time, which is why I’m particularly pissed off about 50 Shades Of Grey, and the entire “mommy porn� phenomenon. For the two people who haven’t heard of self-confessed non-writer E L James and her barely legible paper-wasting spawn, 50 Shades... started life as Twilight fan fiction and is essentially a pornographic romp through James’ mid-life crisis. Apparently BDSM inspired fantasies are ubiquitously popular amongst middle-aged American women because this shit has been flying off the shelves like it’s covered in gold and dipped in honey. I don’t get it, but I’m starting to think I must have a deficiency or something which prevents me from enjoying excruciatingly bad writing which self-consciously attempts to titillate by awkwardly describing the carnal joys of getting tied up, gagged, spanked and penetrated. Also, I have a hatred of Twilight so deep-seeded it’s impossible for me to go anywhere near even a renamed Bella Swan or Edward Cullen without gagging. I’m devastated at having missed the boat on fan porn but I’m overjoyed because 50 Shades Of Grey has largely proven just how fucking awful Twilight really is. You know you’re doing something badly when atrociously-written, bondage-inspired pornographic fan fiction is less offensive and carries a weightier feminist message than your original cuddly vampireinfested abstinence parable. Ouch, Stephenie Meyer, that’s gotta hurt. But maybe you like that; after all you’re the right demographic.

pick up what they will from it, and they just create this entire story for themselves. We’re not hammering home a narrative; we’re not actors. I let the physicality speak for itself. When we started Casus we didn’t really know what our flavour was, but it’s become apparent that we let our own personalities into the show.

“Circa Zoo just did an eight-show run of performances in the Queen Street Mall, and that was my directorial debut, so that was terrifying,� she says. “I love teaching kids but love teaching adults, too – you get such a kick out of seeing someone who’s 45 climb a rope for the first time and go ‘Oh, I just did that’. Circus performers get that on a daily basis, that sense of achievement, but a lot of people don’t, they just plod along. So it’s great to see people achieve their goals.� WHAT: Casus WHEN & WHERE: Opening Saturday 2 June, until 9 June, Judith Wright Centre.

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beetle bar 350 upper roma st

28 • TIME OFF

sat 2 june

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$10

SLEEPWALKS Member answering/role:

What part do you think Brisbane plays in the music you make?

Kev – guitar and singing.

In terms of content or approach—probably very little. We like it here, though.

How long have you been together? Two-and-a-half years.

How did you all meet? Damian was working on a delta blues solo album. Dave and I joined on as hired guns. The project collapsed in a wreck of egoism and bitter frustration, but the chemistry was electric, so we soldiered on as a rock juggernaut.

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? We like a lot of the same stuff. Most recently I think Smog and Neil Young got the best reactions.

Would you rather be a busted broke-but-revered Hank Williams figure or some kind of Metallica monster? Somewhere in the middle. Willie Nelson comes to mind.

Which Brisbane bands before you have been an inspiration (musically or otherwise)? Custard were/are a great band and seem to be funny guys who enjoy what they did/do a lot. Dave is also a big Go-Betweens guy, not least because of the time saved using their bridge.

Is your band responsible for more make-outs or break-ups? Why? Neither. We have a 100 percent track record of relationship continuity during the band’s existence. I think I still make out with my girlfriend about the normal amount. I assume the same is true of the people that watch our shows.

What reality TV show would you enter as a band and why? Letters And Numbers – because it is a great show and we are wizards with scrabble and computational mathematics.

If your band had to play a team sport instead of being musicians which sport would it be and why would you be triumphant? Cricket – because I know absolutely everything there is to know about it and I am always correct and incisive in arguments relating to it. Dave and Damian are wonderfully gifted athletes and they would succeed at any sport.

What’s in the pipeline for the band in the short term? We are writing a second album. Hopefully that will go smoothly, then we’ll record it. Sleepwalks play The Waiting Room on Saturday 1 June. Photo by TERRY SOO.

TOUR GUIDE FEATURE TOUR

FUNKOARS

SATURDAY 2 JUNE, THE ZOO Aussie hip hop is in rude health at the moment – and just seeming to go from strength to strength – and one of the bands leading the vanguard is undoubtedly Adelaide veterans Funkoars, who are hitting town on their Being Vincent D’Onofrio tour. It’s their second nationwide trek supporting their acclaimed album The Quickening, and hip hop fans both young and old have been delighting in their mix of new material and old faves. You can catch them this Saturday night at The Zoo – with a top-notch array of support acts in the vein of K21, Mr Hill and Reflux – or, if that’s not a goer, the night before down at The Northern in Byron Bay. What are ya bloody well waitin’ for!?

TIME OFF PRESENTS DEAD LETTER CIRCUS: The Northern May 31, Spotted Cow Jun 1, The Hi-Fi Jun 2 YOUNG GUNS: The Hi-Fi Jun 1 GASOLINE INC: Tempo Hotel, Jun 1, Miami Shark Bar Jun 2 MISSY HIGGINS: The Tivoli Jun 6 BOY & BEAR: Coolangatta Hotel Jun 6, Beach Hotel Jun 7, The Tivoli Jun 8, Lake Kawana Community Centre Jun 9, Empire Theatre Jun 10 TRIAL KENNEDY: The Tempo Jun 8, Miami Tavern Jun 9 THE AUDREYS: SoundLounge Jun 21, Brisbane Powerhouse Jun 22 SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS: The Hi-Fi Jun 23 LONG PLAYER SESSIONS: Brisbane Powerhouse Jun 23, Jul 21 and Aug 18 FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS: Brisbane Entertainment Centre Jul 7 DEAD OF WINTER FESTIVAL: Jubilee Hotel Jul 14 XAVIER RUDD: Rumours Aug 29, The Tivoli Aug 30, LKCC Aug 31, Coolangatta Hotel Sep 1, Byron YAC Sep 2 JULIA STONE: Spiegeltent Sep 19and 20, Byron Community Centre Sep 21 BASTARDFEST: The Hi-Fi Oct 13

INTERNATIONAL

ANTI-FLAG: The Zoo May 30, Coolangatta Hotel May 31 ZOLA JESUS: Alhambra Jun 1 MARK KOZELEK: Black Bear Lodge Jun 7 THE BLACK SEEDS: The Northern Jun 7, The Hi-Fi Jun 8, Southport RSL Jun 9 SIMPLE PLAN, WE THE KINGS: Southport RSL Jun 8, Eatons Hill Hotel Jun 9, Caloundra RSL Jun 10 GHOSTFACE KILLAH, DOOM, CHINO XL: Arena Jun 8 SISTER SLEDGE: The Hi-Fi Jun 9 CHRIS LIEBING: Coniston Lane Jun 10 TRAIN: The Tivoli Jun 11 LADY GAGA: BEC Jun 13, 14, 16 BEE MASK: Judith Wright Centre Jun 14 EAST 17: The Hi-Fi Jun 14 SILVERSTEIN: The Zoo Jun 16 SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS: The Hi-Fi Jun 23 THICK AS BLOOD: Thriller Jun 23 FASHAWN, EXILE: Coniston Lane Jun 24 EDDIE SPAGHETTI: Beetle Bar Jun 28 MACABRE: Jubilee Hotel Jun 28 JAY BRANNAN: Old Museum Jun 29 CARRIE UNDERWOOD: BCEC Jun 30 GOATWHORE, IMPIETY: Beetle Bar Jul 5 30 • TIME OFF

SIMONE FELICE, JOSH RITTER: Old Museum Jul 5 CEREMONY: Basement Jul 6 FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS: Brisbane Entertainment Centre Jul 7 TERROR: YAC Jul 9, The Loft Jul 10, The Hi-Fi Jul 11 MELISSA ETHERIDGE: QPAC Jul 9, 10 THE TEA PARTY: The Tivoli Jul 7 ED SHEERAN: QPAC Jul 31 TIM BARRY: Sun Distortion Aug 3 MARK GARDENER: The Hi-Fi Aug 3 BILLY TALENT: The Hi-Fi Aug 9 NASUM: The Hi-Fi Aug 17 SLASH: Brisbane Riverstage Aug 23 PENNYWISE, THE MENZINGERS, SHARKS: Coolangatta Hotel Aug 23, Eatons Hill Hotel Aug 24 PITBULL, TAIO CRUZ: BEC Aug 29 PATRICK WOLF: The Tivoli Sep 7 EARTH: The Zoo Sep 9 RUFUS WAINWRIGHT: QPAC Sep 12 SUBHUMANS: Prince Of Wales Sep 13 HANSON: The Hi-Fi Sep 20 EIFFEL 65, N-TRANCE: The Hi-Fi Sep 21 WHEATUS: The Hi-Fi Sep 23 JOE BONAMASSA: QPAC Oct 3 STEEL PANTHER: Eatons Hill Hotel Oct 4 CANNIBAL CORPSE: The Hi-Fi Oct 8 EVERCLEAR: Coolangatta Hotel Oct 10, The Hi-Fi Oct 11 THE BLACK KEYS: BEC Oct 26 RADIOHEAD: BEC Nov 9 COLDPLAY: Suncorp Stadium Nov 21 GEORGE MICHAEL: BEC Nov 27

NATIONAL

LANIE LANE: Woombye Pub May 30, The Hi-Fi May 31 MATT MCHUGH: Black Bear Lodge May 30 DEAD LETTER CIRCUS: Great Northern May 31, Spotted Cow Jun 1, The Hi-Fi Jun 2, Kings Beach Tavern Jun 10 DEF FX: The Zoo May 31 MATT CORBY, ALPINE: The Tivoli Jun 1 THE FUNKOARS: Great Northern Jun 1, The Zoo Jun 2 MISSY HIGGINS: The Tivoli Jun 6 THE JEZABELS: Brisbane Convention Ctr Jun 7 FRENZAL RHOMB: Kings Beach Tavern Jun 8, Parkwood Tavern Jun 9 LISA MITCHELL: St John’s Cathedral Jun 8 TRIAL KENNEDY: Tempo Hotel Jun 8, Miami Tavern Jun 9 360: The Hi-Fi Jun 10 & 11 28 DAYS: Elephant & Wheelbarrow Jun 10 NED COLLETTE & WIREWALKER: Black Bear Lodge Jun 14 BURIED IN VERONA: Toowoomba Powerhouse Jun 15, Beenleigh PCYC Jun 16 X: Beetle Bar Jun 16 BLANCHE DUBOIS: Black Bear Lodge Jun 17

FLORENCE & THE MACHINE @ BRISBANE RIVERSTAGE PIC BY JOHN STUBBS

FLORENCE + THE MACHINE, BLOOD ORANGE

EMPERORS, DRAWN FROM BEES, COLUMBIA BUFFET

Watching the diverse and eager audience pour through the picturesque surrounds of the QUT grounds early tonight gives the hint that we are not here to simply witness a musical performance. In three hours, this thought will be more than validated.

The room is dead quiet when Columbia Buffet take to the stage, eerily so, and opener, The Girl That Ate The Flowers, noticeably fights against the lack of atmosphere, but quickly the four-piece find their groove and the set doesn’t look back for a moment. The band lost a member earlier in the year but you wouldn’t know. Daniel Rogan’s voice is intense and struck through with passion while the rest of the lads don’t miss a beat; locked in tight, they are wonderfully immersed within the music. Waiting Room and Atlas are both engaging and climatic, recalling the post-hardcore of Rival Schools but injecting it with some nice contained double kick, before new track, Winterfell, closes the set, providing an exciting taste of what’s in store for the future.

BRISBANE RIVERSTAGE: 26/05/12

For now, however, it’s to the hill to listen to the relatively unfamiliar sounds of Blood Orange. Besides a tight friendship with the headliner, Dev Hynes seems a strange choice for an opening act on this tour; there’s no grand theatrics, engaging banter or overstatement of any kind. Surrounded by various bits of sound generating and manipulating technology, the Brit simply delivers guitar-wailing pop that drifts off into the night air. It’s damn good, I’m Sorry We Lied especially pulsing; but Hynes is fighting an uphill battle, literally, to get anything back from the crowd. The venue continues to fill and fill, bodies ready to mimic every movement, mouth every word. As Florence + The Machine file onstage one by one, a roar slowly builds, the inevitable climatic eruption signalling the arrival of flame-haired enchantress Florence Welch. Only For The Night elegantly opens the set, the peaks of the song delivering early moments of epiphany for many, Welch spreading her wings wide as if she was striving to rise above the venue. The Phoenician-like backdrop, although simple in its design, changes throughout the night, shifting from human diagrams during Between Two Lungs to twinkling stars throughout Cosmic Love and shimmering stained glass windows that give those of us at the back glimpses of the joy covering the 25-year-old singer’s face. But the real focus tonight is on the magic being weaved beneath the structure. Additional percussion helps bulk out numbers like Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) and Heartlines, yet it never overpowers the softer elements of the band’s sound such as the gorgeous back-up vocals, the thoughtful guitar lines and the omnipresent harp. The eight-piece band are anything but mechanical, but it’s all about Flo. She moves with the grace of a movie starlet, her figure-hugging bodysuit showing the tone of an athlete. Far more animated and outward than she was during her Splendour visit of 2010, every eye in the venue follows her skipping and pirouetting, while her vocal delivery empowers as much as it entertains. Finishing with the rousing Shake It Out and Dog Days Are Over before climaxing with a two-song encore featuring Never Let Me Go and No Light, No Light, the collective devotees depart as cheerfully and humbly as they arrived. There’s vocalists, there’s performers and then there are icons. Backed by her tireless machine, tonight Florence Welch shows herself to be one of the most transcendent figures currently working the stage. Benny Doyle

themusic.com.au

BEETLE BAR: 24/05/12

Drawn From Bees might not have the dials turned up as loud as the bands they’re sharing the stage with tonight, but the four-piece still manage to deliver some refined rock’n’roll to bridge the evening. During Stand Against The Storm, frontman Dan James leaves the group’s trademark harmonies behind for some Black Francis-style ranting that seems to contradict the drifting country ode. Long Tooth Setting Sun offers a better reflection of the band playing cohesively and as a whole. Guitarist Raven Jones, meanwhile, has his human riff moments and it’s during this time that he gives up some of his most interesting playing. In fact, his high-end fret work on new single, The Ballad Of Running Bear, proves to be the highlight of the set, the bombastic finish really lifting the Bees experience as a whole. Unfortunately, the room is still barren when Emperors arrive. However, the quartet fill the space pretty quickly, the thick drone of opener, Witch, setting the tone for the rest of the evening; loud, impassioned and with all the fat trimmed. Drug Mule pushes the tempo up, and by the time Fight Me Back and the hipster-baiting Rebecca impact, the band are barrelling forward, tight and poised. Drummer Dane Knowles seems to get more and more aggressive with each song and it really kicks up the band as a whole, older cut, Favourite Colours, soaring, helped by the curling guitar line of Greg Sanders. Frontman Adam Livingston tries to rouse a reaction, but the only fire shown by the crowd is a dirty big C-bomb shouted out before Plastic Gun, with Be Ready When I Say Go emphatically finishing the punchy 50-minute set. It’s a real shame more punters didn’t pull their fingers out and make the effort to listen to Emperors tonight – the set they delivered deserved so much more adulation. Benny Doyle

GRAVEYARD TRAIN, THE GOOD SHIP, JACKALS

SONIC MASALA: SEAPLANE, TAPE/OFF, BOSS FIGHT, EL MOTEL

THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE, THE RAVEONETTES

Melbourne death-country outfit Graveyard Train are booked into a far bigger room than their usual Brisbane haunts tonight – with this in mind it’s not so much a surprise as a relief that a huge throng of people have turned out early to see Melbourne quartet Jackals go through their paces, and from the get-go it’s clear that this band is one to keep an eye on. They smash straight into a maelstrom of swampy rock’n’roll that’s intrinsically Australian – think The Birthday Party, The Scientists et al. – but immediately set apart because one of them is skronking on a huge fuck off clarinet, adding discord to the already dense atmosphere (he alternates between this and a strange homemade plank guitar for the rest of the set). No Heaven is an early standout but it’s all solid, frontman Alex Burt leading the way with his raspy, emotive voice and cocksure swagger. They enter dark country terrain a couple of times but it’s mainly primal rock that they deliver, and they finish a powerful and entertaining set with the driving dirge of VST.

Usually rain on a Friday night deters some from venturing out, however this is clearly not the case for this crowd. People clamber under the stairs for a dry place to smoke and catch up, and then, more importantly, they jam themselves inside The Waiting Room as tonight’s Sonic Masala line-up pulls out an eclectic doozie.

Upon entering The Hi-Fi it is fairly surprising to see a time sheet sans a local support slot. However The Ravonettes prove to be perfectly suited to the task of setting the stage for this fine evening. Although the Danes do take a few moments to really get into form, once they do they command an incredibly strong presence. Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo nail their dual-vocal harmonies throughout, whilst their infectious riffs and intermittent noise-scapes are complemented by a very solid live sound. More than a decade along they’ve evidently got things fine-tuned, but they hit their peaks by travelling back to their very beginnings with the remarkable Attack Of The Ghost Riders and a frighteningly heavy rendition of Bowels Of The Beast, both from debut 2002 EP, Whip It On, which are striking in their effect to say the least.

THE HI-FI: 25/05/12

Local deviates The Good Ship are about to release a new album and seem in high spirits as they kick off strongly tonight with recent single Seven Seas and old faves These Are A Few Of My Favourite Flings and rousing stomper Sea Monster. The large stage suits the ensemble as it gives them space to move around and relax into their ragged roles, their diverse instrumentation and period aesthetic as visually and aurally appealing as always. Jaunty new tune Ghost Ship moves onto deranged murder shanty Glory – their warped worldview seems to find characters either withering in the hull of some scurvy-ridden hulk or scouring dingy back alleys for sex during shore leave, a grubby vista indeed – and they finish their set with a version of the traditional Drunken Sailor that would make an inveterate seadog blush with its lyrics about doing nasty things with rusty dildos, but that’s all part of their naughty nautical allure. There’s a huge crowd now assembled and slobbering to see Graveyard Train launch their third album, Hollow, and as soon as the band’s taken up their instruments they’re into the deranged One Foot On The Grave, co-frontman Beau Skowron going ballistic as be belts out the new tune at the bemused audience. The banjo-driven A Tall Shadow brings a moment of familiarity to proceedings, before another new songs is aired in the form of The Sermon – which sounds creepily like Modest Mouse at their most addled – and it becomes clear that this crowd don’t care what they’re served up, they’re gonna dig it all. This is no ordinary country act – Adam Johansen smashes his hammer unrelentingly into the chain gripped firmly in his fist as Matt Andrews gives rhythm on his washboard, for starters – but it’s the strength of their songs and incredible Russian choir-like vocal harmonies that really set Graveyard Train apart, the band seeming like one multi-limbed beast with seven mouths but only one communal feral brain as they power through the creepily catchy Even Witches Like To Go Out Dancing. Guitarist Josh Crawley nabs vocal duties for Hollow highlight Life Is Elsewhere, main-man Nick Finch taking back the reins for the gorgeous Mary Melody before the crowd kick in with live singalong fave Bit By A Dog. The lyrical fare is heavy – all mayhem, monsters and morbidity – but the vibe is of cathartic release and celebration, Finch fitting in a massive sincere shout out to Brisbane in between final tunes Mummy and Boneyard, the gang closing as they began in a cloud of captivating camaraderie and effortless charisma. Skowron whips the crowd up to beg for an encore and we willingly oblige, Graveyard Train returning to the fray and belting out live standard All Will Be Gone and it’s shouted refrain of “You’re all going to die!”, like some sort of depraved morality play (mortality play?) – everyone eventually leaving happy in the knowledge that death isn’t something to be feared as long as you spend your time on earth in the company of bands and music this good as often as physically possible.

THE WAITING ROOM: 25/05/12

With rain delays seeming common, El Motel open the night to a slightly diminished crowd. The indie rock/ pop two-piece however don’t seem too fazed as they put on a good tight show to an appreciative audience. The drum kit has been digitised and guitars have grown keys for video game tribute band Boss Fight. The band, apart from being seemingly the happiest people in the world, are wildly technically proficient and loyal to the original tones of the tracks. It becomes a guessing game as the group take on the sounds of F-Zero, various Sonic themes and the best polka version of the Tetris theme around. It is odd, somewhat camp and a tad cliché, but somehow in the circumstances it is hard to deny that this band are the greatest that have ever lived. By the time locals Tape/Off take to the stage, the night has been dubbed a sell out. With Tiny Spider Cam Smith assuming bass duties, the group fly through their beloved catalogue to a clearly enthusiastic audience. While vocalist Nathan Pickels levels are a tad down, it is clear why it’s hard to hear them, with the volume of the musical output pushing the local limits. With their excellent set ending seemingly quickly, they close with Something That We Know to a well-deserved applause. Closing the night, Seaplane play to a slightly smaller, but nonetheless eager crowd. The threepiece dip their hands in various sonic pies as the set ranges from loud noise to spaced-out instrumental soundscapes. The slower material shows that in another dimension Seaplane is a word that rhymes with Pavement, which in the way it is delivered is by all means acceptable. It’s definitely a soirée when the power chord/’woo’ heavy Soirée gets an airing, clearly getting the warmest reception of the night. Despite encouragement to continue, the band wrap up the night and descend into the shadows.

THE HI-FI: 24/05/12

When The Brian Jonestown Massacre arrive on stage they are greeted by cries of fanaticism, which soon trail out as thick clouds of weed-smoke take their course. From left of stage mastermind Anton Newcombe directs the eight-piece band, with a nocturnal eagle’s eye and ear, through early numbers Vacuum Boots and Got My Eye on You. While there is much hype surrounding the infamy of their legacy, tonight the BJM seem intent on positioning the music in the limelight. The melancholy Anenome is so marvellous in its execution that they almost look sure to accomplish this feat with this one song alone; however, a two-hour plus assortment of quality songs with minimal gimmickry is offered up for good measure. A little material from latest album, Aufheben, is included but for the first part the selection ignores the last decade in favour of the latter ‘90s period. The odd song, like This Is Why You Love Me, doesn’t seem to come across as powerfully as others, yet it does work to add an extra element of dynamism and variation to the whole affair, and let’s face it, with a set this long that’s pretty important.

A simple night to sum up really, with both the crowd and the bands alike all having an overwhelmingly positive experience. Simple.

Not quite playing up to the stereotype of the crazed maniac that precedes his reputation, Newcombe seems in good spirits and even entertains on one occasion between songs with a satirical stab at Australia’s slow internet. The Hi-Fi stage lacks a certain sense of character that would better befit the personality of such a band, yet the sound accommodates them well, and when the epic closer, Straight Up And Down, reaches its mighty melodic climax, it’s all extremely rewarding. Another fitting tribute to the tradition of fine rock music indeed!

Bradley Armstrong

Jake Sun

TOUR GUIDE NEW EMPIRE: Black Bear Lodge Jun 20, The Loft Jun 21, Bon Amici Jun 22 KIRIN J CALLINAN: Black Bear Lodge Jun 21 THE BRIDE: Snitch Jun 21, Railway Hall Jun 23, Expressive Grounds Jun 24 DEEP SEA ARCADE: Cobra Kai Jun 21, Beach Hotel Jun 22 THE AUDREYS: SoundLounge Jun 21, Brisbane Powerhouse Jun 22, Woombye Pub Jun 23 HUGO RACE: X&Y Bar Jun 22, Bangalow Bowls Club Jun 23 MUSCLES: Oh Hello! Jun 22 INXS: Drift Inn Jun 24, Empire Theatre Jun 26, Twin Towns Jun 28, Eatons Hill Hotel Jun 30 THE BAMBOOS: The Northern Jun 28, Coolum Civic Centre Jun 29, The Hi-Fi Jun 30 KING CANNONS: Old Museum Jun 29 GUY SEBASTIAN: QPAC Jun 29, Jupiters Casino Jun 30 HEROES FOR HIRE: Basement Jun 29, The Loft Jul 1 HILLTOP HOODS: Eatons Hill Hotel Jun 29 SHANNON NOLL: Fitzy’s Loganholme Jun 29, Twin Towns Jun 30 WORLD’S END PRESS: Alhambra Jul 5 CHARGE GROUP: Beetle Bar Jul 6 50 YEARS OF DYLAN: QPAC Jul 7 BUSBY MAROU: Woombye Pub Jul 12, SoundLounge Jul 13, The Tivoli Jul 14, The Northern Jul 15 OVER-REACTOR: Spotted Cow Jul 13, Basement Jul 14 KARNIVOOL: The Northern Jul 19, The Tivoli Jul 20, Coolangatta Hotel Jul 21, The Hi-Fi Jul 22 TIM FREEDMAN: Old Museum Jul 21, SoundLounge Sep 21 HOUSE VS HURRICANE: Tempo Hotel Jul 26 TOMMY EMMANUEL: QPAC Aug 9 CHILDREN COLLIDE: Spotted Cow Aug 23, The Zoo Aug 24, The Northern Aug 26 BODYJAR: The Hi-Fi Aug 24 KATE MILLER-HEIDKE: The Hi-Fi Aug 25 XAVIER RUDD: Rumours Aug 29, The Tivoli Aug 30, Lake Kawana Community Centre Aug 31, Coolangatta Hotel Sep 1, YAC, Byron Bay Sep 2 JULIA STONE: Spiegeltent Sep 19, 20, Byron Bay Community Centre Sep 21 DAMIEN LEITH: QPAC Oct 5

FESTIVALS COOLY ROCKS ON: Coolangatta Jun 1 – 11 DEAD OF WINTER: Jubilee Hotel Jul 14 SPLENDOUR IN THE GRASS: Belongil Fields Jul 27 – 29 RED DEER FESTIVAL: Mt Samson Sep 1 BIGSOUND: Fortitude Valley Sep 12 - 14 BASTARDFEST: The Hi-Fi Oct 13 WHIPLASH: The Hi-Fi Oct 21 THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE @ THE HI-FI. PIC BY STEPHEN BOOTH

QUEENSLAND FESTIVAL OF BLUES: The Hi-Fi Nov 3

Tom Simpkin

themusic.com.au

TIME OFF • 31

ROOTS DOWN

OG FLAVAS

ADAMANTIUM WOLF

BLUES ‘N’ ROOTS WITH DAN CONDON ROOTSDOWN@TIMEOFF.COM.AU

URBAN AND R&B NEWS BY CYCLONE

METAL, HARDCORE AND PUNK WITH LOCHLAN WATT

NICKI MINAJ

JOE BONAMASSA Are there any harder working internationally renowned bluesmen than Joe Bonamassa right now? This guy just doesn’t stop and we just got word he will be back in Australian this October. This will mean he’s been here three times in under three years now. On top of that he keeps up a hectic international touring schedule and releases a new album every year. In fact just last week he released Driving Towards The Daylight, his 11th fulllength record, and not long before that he released a live DVD/Blu-Ray, Joe Bonamassa Live from New York Beacon Theatre. That’s not even beginning to mention his work with the supergroup Black Country Communion! Anyway, fact is Bonamassa is coming back and will be dropping by the QPAC Concert Hall on Wednesday 3 October. Tickets are already on sale and can be picked up through Qtix from $96.40 up to $106.40. Well, Prince has left the country after one of the most exciting tours I can ever recall happening in this country. I just loved the fact that he would command such a presence from the second the Welcome 2 Australia tour was announced to the moment he got on the plane to leave our shores and go back to his weirdo purple palace or wherever. I got to witness one of his infamous aftershow jams and it was literally the best show I have ever seen in my life (and I must have seen over a thousand by now). While the big gigs showcased him as a pop star, the party was all funk, all the time and that’s a very good thing in my books. I’m never going to recommend that people stop buying records, particularly blues records, but with the recent influx of online streaming services I feel it would be remiss of me not to at least address them and just how good they can be for music fans with all tastes, of all ages and with all levels of technical prowess. The reason I bring it up here is that it can often be a little difficult to get access to quality blues and roots music that’s not embraced by the mainstream and I think services like Rdio and Spotify are great, legal ways to try out new music in those genres before you make that big purchase from a band or label overseas. For example, I was sniffing around for the best Jerry Jeff Walker record to start my collection of his material. A quick search on Spotify brought up a whole heap of his records I could flick through for free (you have to listen to an ad every few songs). I decided I wanted to pick up 1970’s Bein’ Free, but was informed by the local record store it was out of print. So now I can still listen through the streaming service and keep my eye out for the record when I’m crate digging. It’s just another amazing technology is helping enrich our musical lives. Ad-supported Spotify is free if you’re just listening through your computer, while Rdio have a free trial and then charge about nine bucks a month (a couple of bucks more if you want to be able to listen through your phone) – I’ve used both and they’ve got their pros and cons, but try ‘em for yourself. I’ve only just found out that Michael “Iron Man” Burks passed away a couple of weeks ago on his way back to Arkansas after a big European tour. Iron Man was hardly a superstar, but he made some seriously great music and his guitar playing was pretty incredible. I strongly suggest hitting YouTube and looking up some of his live footage, the guy was monstrously big and a guitar looked like a little toy in his hands. He dominates the fretboard when he plays and it’s very cool to watch. Anyway, rest in peace Iron Man. 32 • TIME OFF

Nicki Minaj underwhelmed with her debut Australian tour. The ghetto-fab Barbie, accompanied by a ‘DJ’ and dance troupe, opened with the hardcore rap, Roman Holiday, but, for much of the show, played the urban dance diva – seemingly lip-synching. Minaj has virtually disowned Pink Friday, the setlist privileging the subpar ‘sequel’. Ultimately, Minaj’s problem is her lack of decent songs – even Starships is pedestrian Euro&B. Ms Minaj might study Donna Summer, born LaDonna Gaines, the original urban dance phenom, who died the other week following a private cancer battle. Summer was hailed ‘Queen of Disco’ but traversed dance, R’n’B and rock – and garnered hip hop cred. Today’s urban divas – Beyoncé, Rihanna and Lady GaGa, not to mention the seasoned Janet Jackson and Madonna – are indebted to her. Kelis’ ‘disco’ Fleshtone, home to David Guetta’s brilliant Acapella, was pure Summer. Here OG Flavas offers a guide to the Essential Donna Summer for your iPod... Famed for I Feel Love, Summer’s breakthrough was actually 1975’s Love To Love You Baby. The Boston native, a sometime backing singer, met Italian producer Giorgio Moroder and his Brit cohort Pete Bellotte in Munich, having travelled to Germany to perform in the musical, Hair. (She wed actor Helmuth Sommer, Anglicising her new surname.) The 17-minute Love..., with its orgasmic moaning, was risqué stuff for the church-raised Summer. The BBC – among others – banned it, to no avail. A born-again Summer later protested TLC’s sampling of Love... for I’m Good At Being Bad, though not Beyoncé’s Naughty Girl. I Feel Love totally eclipsed Love..., the futuristic song off 1977’s conceptual LP, I Remember Yesterday, the blueprint for contemporary electronic dance music. Moroder dispensed with disco’s traditional

instrumentation, harnessing the Moog. I Feel Love became a gay anthem and was a seminal influence on Detroit techno. Summer then enjoyed her first US #1 with an opulent rendition of MacArthur Park, a Jimmy Webb composition initially cut by Irish actor Richard Harris. The Wu-Tang Clan subverted it with The Second Coming, featuring a Summer-channelling Tekitha. Summer, who starred in the disco movie, Thank God It’s Friday, moved away from the genre with Hot Stuff – Bad Girls’ lead single. She scored a Grammy for her efforts – in a rock category. While she must have been conscious of the looming disco backlash, she had sung in a ‘60s rock band in New York. Regardless, Hot Stuff, an Australian #1, was less rock than bad-ars efunk. Summer’s Bad Girls-era image was of the glamorous hooker. Our ‘Good Girl Gone Bad’ RiRi wasn’t even born! GaGa kitsched-up the Hot Stuff funk/rock/dance formula for Born This Way. By the ‘80s Summer had left Casablanca Records for Geffen, presenting the oftforgotten New Wave rollerdisco classic, The Wanderer. Her new label insisted she abandon Moroder for different ‘happening’ producers. Luckily, they paired her with someone satisfactory – Quincy Jones, responsible for Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall. He guided Summer’s R’n’B Love Is In Control (Finger On The Trigger) and the epic State Of Independence (previously recorded by Vangelis with Yes’ Jon Anderson). Summer’s State... presaged Massive Attack’s dubby yet stately soul. Jackson sings in the choir. Next, Summer teamed with Michael Omartian – no household name – for the feminist anthem, She Works Hard For The Money, synth-rock that proved popular with the otherwise very ‘white’ MTV. OG’s final Summer pick? Why, it’s gotta be the neo hi-NRG This Time I Know It’s For Real. Summer attempted a late ‘80s comeback by working with Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman (AKA SAW), the UK hit machine behind not only Kylie Minogue’s pop success, but also the post-ska Bananarama. The diva’s final album was 2008’s Crayons on Sony’s ‘heritage artists’ imprint, Burgundy. Over three decades, Summer, a serial self-reinventor, released minimal dross. Even Unconditional Love, that peculiar collab with Brit reggae group Musical Youth (remember Pass The Dutchie?), still has a quirky ‘80s charm. Nicki, take note.

THE BREAKDOWN POP CULTURE THERAPY WITH ADAM CURLEY

LADYHAWKE England might still be dreaming of royal weddings and golden jubilees, but its bands are no longer trying to wake it up. All that late-noughties drugging, it seems, has left England’s bands in a Valium-induced coma. A roll call of the British bands currently dominating festivals and radio playlists drones like that of a high school’s afternoon detention: the same names in for doing the same things, the ones who are easy to catch, who’ve neither done anything serious enough to warrant expulsion nor clever enough to become folklore. Perhaps even that analogy is misplaced. There is, after all, the chance that a schoolyard troublemaker is having some fun between holding sessions. There’s little sign of that in Britain’s band scene. That even the NME this month couldn’t come up with a more exciting local name than The Cribs to lead their ‘Hot List’ for the 2012 summer says much. The magazine, and the rest of the UK press, was shouting that group’s name in 2005, and again during what was perhaps the group’s most interesting period with Johnny Marr as a member in 2009. There’s certainly no shame in celebrating a band on their fifth record, but there is shame in calling ‘hot’ on a band that has simply and cynically remade itself as Supergrass, complete with patriotic shaggy hairdos, as have The Cribs with their new single, Come On, Be A No One. Even more dire is the run of hometown entries in the current high-rotation playlist of London- and Manchester-based commercial ‘indie’ radio network XFM: a lacklustre new single from Maximo Park, one from Kaiser Chiefs, another from Arctic Monkeys. When Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller are making the freshest sounding local music on your station, you know something ain’t quite right.

One of the more obvious signs here that England’s bands have hit the snooze button came with the line-up announcement for this July’s Splendour In The Grass. The festival became known in the 2000s for pinning its yearly reputation to the backs of new British acts, from Doves in 2002 to Franz Ferdinand in 2004, Bloc Party in 2005, up to Friendly Fires in 2009. In recent years, the names have been repeating themselves. This year, two new English acts – Django Django and Michael Kiwanuka – are listed well below returning acts: Bloc Party, whose most vital year in history remains 2005, as well as The Kooks and Band Of Skulls, neither of whom have made major impressions here in recent times. Of course, the change in Splendour’s billing also likely has a lot to do with the climate of music festivals, with reliably bankable acts getting the most poster space. But the fact remains: the excitement that surrounded those emerging bands last decade cannot be mustered for any new pastie-eating musical troupe. It is not, however, the output of English acts that is the biggest sign of the imagination drought sweeping English bands. It’s most apparent in the new albums by foreign acts who have successfully courted ‘crossover’ British audiences with their last albums. New Zealand’s Ladyhawke has given much of her appealing scrappiness away on her second album, Anxiety (Universal). The album’s title refers to some interesting lyrical subject matter, but it also could be the reason the record sounds like a compromise: inspired by androgynous ‘80s synth-pop but left to be turned into a bland La Roux remake by a record company demanding a hit. Gossip, on the other hand, seemed to have learned that delivering a bet-each-way electro pop record – 2009’s Music For Men – doesn’t result in attention. The group’s fifth album, A Joyful Noise (Columbia/ Sony), finds passion in performance and in playing with new sounds, from reverb’d guitars to hard club beats. The problem is that the trio don’t seem to know which sound or genre is theirs, which means the songwriting rarely reaches beyond a malleable safe place and is often mismatched to the music. No, there’s no future in this vision for British music.

themusic.com.au

This year’s Poison City Weekender is set to be pretty damn huge. The three-day festival, split up across 14-16 September, will take place in Melbourne at The Tote, The Corner Hotel and The Liberty Hotel. New York post-hardcore group Rival Schools will headline, with Philadelphian group Restorations and New Zealand band The Outsiders also making the trek. Australian acts will include The Smith Street Band, A Death In The Family performing their last-ever show, Extortion, Luca Brasi, I Exist, Hoodlum Shouts, Paper Arms, Jamie Hay, Grim Fandango, Millhouse, Jen Buxton, Between The Devil & The Deep, with more to be announced. Poison City Records will also be releasing an Australian-only edition of the latest release from Philadelphians Restorations, a 7” simply titled A/B. Pre-orders are available now through poisoncityrecords.com. Thanks to Heathen Skulls, legendary Seattlebased doom/drone band Earth will make their first ever voyage to Australia in September. Formed in 1990, the band has been a major influence on Sunn O))) and released their latest album Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light II in February this year through Southern Lord Records. Catch them at The Zoo on Sunday 9 September. US thrash metal band Warbringer are coming to Australia for this first time this October. The band has released three full-length albums, with 2011’s Worlds Torn Asunder having seen a release through Century Media. They’ll play The Jubilee Hotel on Thursday 4 October with State Of Integrity, Eternal Rest and Malakyte. Tickets are on sale now through Moshtix and those curious can check the band out at warbringermusic.com. Legendary Sydney post-hardcore group Irrelevant are reforming for three shows with Bodyjar, One Dollar Short and For Amusement Only. The band existed for ten years and released two fulllengths through Resist Records. The bands will play The Hi-Fi in Brisbane on Friday 24 August, The Metro in Sydney on Saturday 25 and Bar On The Hill in Newcastle on Sunday 26. Miami hardcore band Thick As Blood will be heading to Australia in June, joined by Newcastle’s Taken By Force. They’ll play Expressive Grounds on the Gold Coast with Deciever, xStrength Through Purityx, I As One and Restrictions on 23 June, Thriller in Brisbane with The Daylight Curse and Ill Temper later that night, and the Annand Street Hall in Toowoomba the next day with Endworld, Never Lose Sight, Brazen, Dead Hand, Avenger and Lockjaw. Word on the street is that by the time you read this US post-rock/metal lords Russian Circles will have announced their next Australian tour for September. Adelaide punks Paper Arms are doing a co-headlining tour throughout June with New Zealand’s The Outsiders. The bands will play Basement 243 on Saturday 30 June. Sydney-based label Art As Catharsis has put together a compilation of Australian stoner, sludge, doom and drone called Drone From The Underside Of The Earth. It features 26 tracks from bands such as Space Bong, Hydromedusa, Looking Glass, In Trenches, No Anchor, Drowning Horse, Sons of The Ionian Sea, Summonus, DEAD, Futility, Clagg, Adrift For Days and more. Head to artascartharsis. bandcamp.com to download the free release. Melbourne’s most impressive progressive metal group Ne Obliviscaris have finally confirmed the Brisbane launch show for their long-anticipated debut album, Portal of I. Sunday 10 June (Queen’s Birthday eve) will see them perform at the Beetle Bar with support from Arcane, Before Nightfall and Acacia. Word is Brisbane drummer Nelson Barnes (The Schoenberg Automaton) will be filling in behind the kit.

GIGS OF THE WEEK:

Wednesday: Strike Anywhere, Anti-Flag, The Flatliners, Army Of Champions – The Zoo. Thursday: D At Sea, Road To Ransome, Ashes Of December, Millie Tizzard – X&Y. Friday: The Veil, Awaken Solace, Elysian, Therein – Monstrothic at Basement 243. Saturday: Tonight Alive, Totally Unicorn, Young Guns – The Hive/Basement 243. Closure, Little Mind, Timber Bones, Postblue – Runaway Bay Tavern.

GASOLINE INC

Q Music is a not for profit organisation supporting Queensland music, musicians and industry workers. This column will present you with information on grant and export opportunities, conferences and the general low-down on the state’s music industry.

PERFORM ON THE SONICBIDS STAGE AT BIGSOUND Sonicbids are looking for five artists to perform on their stage at BIGSOUND. One lucky artist selected will also receive travel assistance and a showcase slot at the prestigious CMJ Music Marathon in New York. Applications are free through the Sonicbids website and close 8 June, 2012.

CUSTOMER SERVICE POSITION AT OZTIX

Oztix is Australia’s largest independent ticketing company, and has been managing ticket sales for venues, corporate events and major festivals for almost ten years. An opportunity exists to join their team as a Customer Service Team Leader. For more information on the role and application details download the position description from the QMusic website. Applications close on Friday 8 June, 2012.

PLAY AT THE NATIONAL INDIGENOUSE MUSIC AWARDS In a partnership with triple j Unearthed, the National Indigenous Music Awards are looking for the best unsigned Indigenous act to play at the awards ceremony on 11 August. Winners of the competition will receive a performance spot at the NIMA event, a showcase spot at the iNTune showcase, access to the iNTune conference and all travel expenses paid for, from anywhere in Australia. To enter, upload your tracks onto triple j Unearthed before the closing date of 1 July.

WOODFORK FESTIVAL APPLICATIONS CLOSE FRIDAY The annual Woodford Folk Festival is a six-day event with a diverse program containing music from many genres as well as theatre, dance, arts & crafts and more. Expressions of interests from Artists and Presenters who are interested in performing at the 2012/2013 festival are due by 5pm Friday 1 June through their website.

CONTEMPORARY MUSIC TOURING PROGRAM

The Contemporary Music Touring Program helps emerging and established musicians take their music on tour to Australia’s regional and remote areas. The program provides assistance with touring costs such as transport, accommodation, insurance, production and marketing. Round 23 of the Contemporary Music Touring program closes Friday 1 June.

APPLICATIONS OPEN FOR THE SEED FUND

The Seed Fund supports emerging musicians, artists and arts workers via three grants including the popular Management Workshop. Applications are open until 9 July. Visit theseedfund.org for further info.

WANT TO KNOW MORE OR BECOME A QMUSIC MEMBER? For these stories, memberships and more, go to www.qmusic.com.au

GUNK

Hard rockers Gasoline Inc are releasing a second single, Shock, off their awesome new EP. Bassist Jason Millar and Tony McMahon bond over federal crime issues. “The EP is quite diverse,” says Millar of whether Shock is representative of the band’s sound. “We don’t like to repeat ourselves too much so we keep things fresh by challenging ourselves as songwriters. The first single off the EP was much heavier and riff-based than this one, which is a lot more lighthearted and fun. We’ve also got a big brooding acoustic-based song and a piano ballad on the EP. We just don’t want to fall into the trap of writing the same song over and over.” Naturally, the band are happy to be on the road supporting the new single, but Millar says it could have all ended with the group in the Big House. “We love being on the road and playing to new crowds every night, it’s where we belong. It’s kind of hard being stuck in a car with four other blokes for such long periods of time and sometimes tempers fly, but when we get to the next venue and start playing it’s so worth it. It’s our second time up to Brisbane and the Gold Coast and we absolutely love it up here, and we’ll keep coming back. We nearly got arrested in Canberra last week. A Federal Police Officer told us we violated three federal offences when we pulled up in front of Parliament House and took a quick snap. (You can see that pic on our Facebook page!)” Miller has mentioned above that Gasoline Inc love coming to Queensland, and it seems one reason is the awesome support they get here. “We’re really excited to be heading back up to Queensland and playing with some awesome bands like Winners Of The Tour De France, Dave’s Pawn Shop and Columbus.” WHAT: The Wanted One EP (Independent) WHEN & WHERE: Friday 1 June, Tempo Hotel; Saturday 2, Miami Shark Bar, Gold Coast

Alex Campbell and her Gunk gang are quickly becoming Brisbane’s riot grrrl flag bearers. Benny Doyle talks to her about the movement as an expression. “We all come from pretty political backgrounds,” she informs. “I got introduced to bands like Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney from my sister and I related to that music in a big way. I think that riot grrrl means a lot to us because we’ve all experienced the frustrations of feeling powerless in a patriarchal society and riot grrrl gives us the chance to have a voice to express our feelings about this when we might not have been able to in other areas of our lives.” For a young band without an official release, the three-piece are wasting no time making waves throughout the global community. Campbell discusses the European epicentres that the band hope to tackle in the future. “Some riot grrrl scenes are more prevalent and in the public eye,” she explains. “It’s pretty big in Berlin, and in Moscow it’s gained a lot of attention since the band Pussy Riot were arrested after a guerrilla performance protesting Russia’s corrupt government. It’s really inspiring to see women who are not afraid to speak up for their rights even in turbulent times. That’s true riot grrrl right there.” Forgoing university to study the art of riff, Campbell talks excitedly about a vinyl release later in the year. In the meantime, however, she simply puts fans on notice for a big start to the weekend. “We’ve also been working on some new songs which we hope to play at the gig,” she tells. “It’s gonna be fast and loud, [so] expect an assault on your eardrums, and maybe your previous ideas about women.” WHEN & WHERE: Friday 1 June, The Waiting Room

BE PREPARED

Local indie pop favourites Cub Scouts have just announced the Brisbane date for their first national headline tour Do You Hear. The band will travel around the country with shows on the Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and of course Brisbane: catch Cub Scouts at Alhambra Lounge on Thursday 7 June with support from Go Violets and Provita. Tickets are available through OzTix right now for $13.30.

DON’T STOP BELIEVING Gold Coast three-piece, Skinwalkers, have announced the release of their latest single, I Don’t Believe, which is set to drop on Friday 8 June, and is to be the first of three singles to be released this year. They’ll be jumping on tour with Frenzal Rhomb for their two shows in Queensland – you can find them at Kings Beach Tavern, Caloundra on Friday 8 June and Parkwood Tavern on the Gold Coast on Saturday 9.

PARTY WITH BATMAN We’ve always wanted to go to a house party at Val Kilmer’s house, but it just isn’t feasible for a number of different reasons. It makes us pretty glad then that a group of likeminded sons of guns have thrown together a club night by the name of Val Kilmer’s House Party to give us what we reckon could well be the next best thing. It will feature bands like Minus Nine, Oceanics, Boss Moxi and Monroe as well as the Val Kilmer DJs and drink specials, giveaways and all of that awesome stuff that makes a club night more than just a reason to drink heavily and avoid your miserable day-to-day existence. The Bowler Bar is the place to be when it goes down on Friday 8 June, don’t miss out!

ON THE TIME OFF STEREO Worship A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS I Predict A Graceful Expulsion COLD SPECKS Synthetica METRIC Casadeldisco Records 10 Year Anniversary VARIOUS Rhythm And Repose GLEN HANSARD Guided By Delight THE SEWERGROOVES Sparkle & Fade EVERCLEAR The Only Place BEST COAST Lil Band O’ Gold Plays Fats LIL BAND O’ GOLD Medicine Man THE BAMBOOS

4ZZZ NOW PLAYING 1. BURN BRIGHT MOSMAN ALDER 2. Sunshine State ED GUGLIELMINO 3. Darlin’ JEREMY NEALE 4. Gravel and Wine GIN WIGMORE 5. Words Are Circles INLAND SEA 6. Fuck It DUNE RATS 7. Boy EMMA LOUISE 8. Beasts of England RUNNING GUN SOUND 9. Bright People OCEANICS 10. The Warmest Place CATCALL

STILL SAILING

Indie-pop outfit Set Sail have announced a national tour to coincide with the release of their new EP Hey. The six-track offering is a collection of quirky and heartfelt songs to give fans just enough to be satisfied since their 2011 release The Riley Moore. It’s been less than smooth sailing for the band this year, with lead singer Brandon Hoogenboom being deported by Australian authorities for breaching his visa conditions. Thankfully for Brendon, the band and their fans, he was allowed back in the country (with a bit of help from some 8,500 defiant Facebook petitioners) to continue to make music. Hey will be released Friday 15 June. You can witness them performing plenty tracks from it live at the Black Bear Lodge on Thursday 5 July, Toowoomba’s Spotted Cow Friday 6 and Maroochydore’s Sol Bar on Saturday 7.

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TIME OFF • 33

MACE AND THE MOTOR

Rocking Toowoomba three-piece Mace and The Motor have scored the gig of a lifetime. Drummer Luke Anderson, bassist Mark Garland and frontman Mace McGregor tell Tony McMahon all about it. Selected from over 350 entrants for the coveted opening slot at triple j’s huge One Night Stand event, Mace and The Motor will be sharing the stage with some huge names: Matt Corby, Stonefield, 360 and The Temper Trap. Naturally, says McGregor, they’re more than a little bit excited. “It’s all pretty surreal. Excitement levels? Off the scale! Pretty much shitting bricks around the clock, to be honest.”

DAISIES PUSH UP

If you have a hankering to see local group Daisie May busting out some tunes, then you have two opportunities to satiate those cravings in the coming weeks, so listen up. This coming Thursday night you will have the rare chance to see them performing a particularly intimate acoustic show at The End in West End. The capacity of the bar, which is the talk of the town right now, is a mere 60 people, so you will need to get in nice and early to make sure you can be a part of the festivities. If you can’t make it to that show or you just can’t get enough, you’ll also have the chance to see the band when they get onstage at the Black Bear Lodge on Wednesday 13 June where they will be joined by The Gonzo Show and Anti-Thesis for an all out indie rock extravaganza that will make your midweek awesome. That show will set you back $10 on the door.

FOR FOLK’S SAKE

The Beetle Bar on Roma Street will be showcasing four local folk acts in a night of music bound to fill up your senses – for folk music lovers this is a night not to be missed. With each act having their own unique flavour, there’s wide enough variety to please every folk-loving audience member, no matter which way your love of folk music might happen to lean. The evening will take you from intimate and acoustic indie folk with singer/songwriter Emma White, to The Rusty Datsuns’ harmonious modern folk with a hint of bluegrass, to the country and blues inspired folk of Carrie and The Cut Snakes, to a Gypsy folk romp with Luna Junction. You can be a part of the festivities when they happen at the aforementioned venue from 8pm on Thursday 14 June; entry will cost you a mere ten dollars.

ANOTHER SUPPORT

The dudes from Nine Sons Of Dan simply cannot stop winning right now; they’ve been supporting just about every awesome band who comes through town and have been doing a little bit of touring of their own, getting out on the road for a six-week stint as a part of the Rock The Schools tour recently. The band are continuing on their merry way in the near future with a couple more killer support slots lined up; they will be heading up to North Queensland to join Simple Plan on a couple of dates up there and will return to Brisbane stages on Tuesday 18 September to support Yellowcard at The Tivoli. Don’t forget: you can also see them headlining at The Zoo on Thursday 19 July and Jupiters Casino Saturday 21.

ROCKIN’ THE SUBURBS

Nonstop Noyes Productions and Arties Music Max presents Mappin’ Out The ‘Burbs, an event aiming to showcase and support local musicians in a suburban venue. The Prince Of Wales Hotel located in Nundah will play host on Friday 15 June to bands The Local Residents, The Young Professionals, SuperKaleida, Windrest, Tundra and The 16th Century. Sponsored by local music store Arties Music Max at Strathpine, a guitar valued at $250 will be up for grabs – raffle tickets are a gold coin donation on the night of the show. Doors open at 7pm, entry is $15 on the door.

IN SUPPORT OF SILVER

Canadian post-hardcore band Silverstein return to Australia this June for the Rescue tour; this we have already told you a number of times. In case you’d forgotten, you can go and see Silverstein playing at The Zoo on Saturday 16 June, but now they’ve announced the special guests that will be joining them. You’ve no doubt already heard that Skyway picked up the national support, but you’ll also be treated to sets from The Dream, The Chase and Milestones on the night. Tickets are available from through OzTix and outlets right now for $29.60. 34 • TIME OFF

HAVE YOU HEARD

But supporting awesome acts is nothing new for these guys. Anderson tells a decidedly brain-mashing story of playing with the legendary Hard-Ons. “The Hard-Ons certainly did an incredibly loud set. The set up they had was unquestionably major overkill for the venue. I had the drums set up behind a wall of brain-rattling Ampeg goodness. It was definitely an ear-ringing experience like no other.” And McGregor seems to suggest that Tim Rogers likes a drink. “We were fortunate enough to support You Am I last year here in Toowoomba. being a fan/geek, I took a bunch of stuff (posters etc) for the YAI lads to sign. So after the third go at asking me what name to make the poster out to, a white wine-heavy Tim Rogers said, ‘Oh, you guys played tonight. Shit! How was your gig dude?’ Total rockstar.” So, what’s the record situation for Mace and The Motor? Garland says it’s a matter of getting things right first. “We’re working hard to get our sound right in our recordings as we like a live sound and it’s a challenge in itself to get down.” But, according to Anderson, we won’t have to wait too long.

THE PHONCURVES

“We now have plans to hit the studio to record a second EP with an album in the works for a summer release.”

How did you get together? Abbie Roberts (vocals/guitar): “We met while doing The Bachelor of Popular Music at the Queensland Conservatorium. We became really good friends, and it wasn’t ‘til our final year that we decided to play together.”

WHEN & WHERE: Saturday 2 June, triple j’s One Night Stand, Dalby

SUI ZHEN

Melbourne-via-Sydney songstress Sui Zhen, aka Becky Freeman, has released her stunning debut album, Two Seas. Tony McMahon talks tough. “I think the aim is always to get it out as quickly as possible,” says Zhen of the gestation period for Two Seas. “But ‘quickly’ can still take a couple of years. Since the 2007 EP I’ve been balancing dual creative paths both in music and video production. That coupled with seeking a label and eventually self-financing the release of Two Seas meant I had to be patient. I hope people are curious to where I will take them next! Currently I am exploring my next ‘sound’ which may depart from the folkier roots to fall somewhere between the Antenna-influenced garage-band pop demos I’ve been making, and live CAN-inspired jams with my band for the sophomore LP. I am ‘aiming’ to put it out this time next year – and so it goes.” Talking of new sounds, it seems Zhen also wants to become slightly harder. “I have an urge to start a new-wave/post-punk band with Jessie from Carry Nation. We’d probably swap drums, guitars and bass mid-song and let our fringes fall over our faces Muppetsstyle. Then maybe we’d meet some real tough sorts. I’d like to become a ‘tough sort’.” For those who’ve heard Zhen’s almost painfully beautiful recorded work but never seen her live, she says that the main difference between the two experiences is that the live show is something of a re-imagining of her music. “There’s more grit to the live show. The songs are reinterpreted as a three-piece band with a traditional bass, electric guitar and drums set-up. We add male backing vocals, double bass and some acoustic guitar to change up the texture and dynamic. I thrive in this format. It’s not too careful or delicate and you can hear the distant calling of my grunge-pop and kraut-rock influences.” WHAT: Two Seas (Independent) WHEN & WHERE: Wednesday 6 June, Black Bear Lodge

Sum up your musical sound in 4 words. “Encompassing, scrumptious, phat, dynamic.” If you could support any band in the world past or present – who would it be? “We’re loving Kimbra right now, so supporting her would be incredible. But any band in history… gosh, The Beatles would be pretty cool!” You’re being sent into space, you can’t take an iPod and there’s only room to bring one album – which would it be? “Ahh, I’ve been asked this question before, except that time I was stranded on a desert island. It’s really hard to say! The cop-out answer is a compilation album, but maybe David Bowie? Space Oddity, that seems pretty fitting.” Greatest rock’n’roll moment of your career to date? “Definitely supporting Passenger! We performed at The Hi-Fi in front of thousands of people, definitely the biggest crowd we’ve ever played to! It was great!” Why should people come and see your band? “Because we will fill you up with rainbows and butterflies!” The Phoncurves play Beetle Bar on Saturday 2 June.

OPENING THE PORTAL

SOAK UP THE CULTURE

Melbourne six-piece progressive, melodic and extreme metal band Ne Obliviscaris are Brisbane bound on the leg of an Australian national tour this June. With the release of their latest album Portal of I, Ne Obliviscaris are playing at the Beetle Bar on Sunday 10 June, joined by Arcane, Before Nightfall and Acacia. Doors open at 8pm, entry is $15 on the door.

The Zillmere Festival is back again this year, in fact it’s happening this weekend, hitting O’Callaghan Park on Saturday with all of the multicultural delights that it brings. Over 10,000 people will show up and enjoy the sights, sounds and smells from all across the world that are celebrated on this one massive day each and every year. The music is once again covered by a diverse range of world music acts this year, including Sasta, pictured, Karma Crew, Izalco, Walisuma, Rivercity Steel Band, Illusion Crew, FRESH, The Company, Wathai Buddharam Sunday School, Zillmere Jam Group and Classik Nawu. It all kicks off at 11am and entry is completely free and open to everyone!

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Prince of Wales Hotel Friday 1st June

ALERT THE PHAROAH (cd Launch) The Fun Team Ray Sinclair & the Tactics Ryan Dingle Saturday 2nd

THE FREDFREAKIN' FREDTACULAR FREDFEST (Fred's one year anniversary gig)

The Fred Band Jim Rockfords Daniel Kuhle (Ironside) Legions of Mary Rocky Outcrop 1154 Sandgate Rd, Nundah, Queensland, 4012

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LE PARTY SOUL WITH DJ REDBEARD FROM 8PM FEATURING YOU IN REVERSE (10.30PM) + GALAPOGOS (9.30PM)

THURSDAY 31 MAY

LITTLE JODY (10.30PM) + LET’S JUMP SHIP (9.30PM) + DJ VALDIS FROM 8PM

FRIDAY 1 JUNE

DOWNSTAIRS: TRASH QUEEN (9PM) + JUNKYARD DIAMONDS (8PM) + DJ VALDIS UPSTAIRS: DJ STREX 8PM - 5AM

SATURDAY 2 JUNE

DOWNSTAIRS: GOREFIELD (9PM) + HOBO MAGIC (8PM) + DJ VALDIS UPSTAIRS: DJ CUTTS 8PM - 5AM

SUNDAY 3RD JUNE

EXPOSED #4 7PM – SCOTTIE REHBEIN , 7.30PM - JAMIE-LEE FOX, 8PM - LUNA JUNCTION, 8.30PM - MINUS NINE + BLIND LEMON FROM 9:30PM, MONDAY 4 JUNE - THE DOSES (9:30PM) + YOUNG GRIFFO (8:30PM)

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DISPARITY (9:30PM) + JAKE BAIGENT (8:30PM)

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TIME OFF • 35

WED 30 Acoustic Guitar Specacular, Nick Charles, Michael Fix, Andrea Valeri Majestic Theatre Pomona Anti-Flag, Strike Anywhere, The Flatliners The Zoo Brett Allen, Apollo Flex Shooters Nightclub Destiny’s Plan Nambour Rsl Dj K-Rasta Jupiters Theatre - Broadbeach Ingrid James Trio, John Reeves Limes Hotel James Johnson Victory Hotel Lanie Lane, The Rubens, Steve Smyth Woombye Hotel Mal Wood The Bowery Mark Bono Elephant & Wheelbarrow Mark Sheils Royal GeoRge Mat Stokes Southport Rsl Mat McHugh Black Bear Lodge Me And Jodie Lee Maroochydore Rsl Perry O Gympie Rsl Peta Townsville Rsl Pete Smith, Mark Z Regatta Hotel, Toowong Steve & Mitch Mick O’malley’s The Beach Boyz Caloundra Rsl The Brodie Graham Band, Josiah Guest The Tempo Hotel The Gold Coast Rockers Broadbeach Bowls Club Tyson & Rob Fiddlers Green Venus Envy Royal Exchange Hotel Yung Warriors Surfers Paradise Tavern

THU 31 Adele And Glenn Black Bear Lodge Anti-Flag, Strike Anywhere, The Flatliners Coolangatta Hotel Az Kerwin Elephant & Wheelbarrow Ballad Boy Loving Hut Brett Allen, Apollo Flex, Dj K-Otic, Dj Dezastar, Bluffsta, Eakut, Dj Owe, Mc Fortafy, Dj Masta K Shooters Nightclub Cobra Kai Club:, Expatriate Oh Hello! Cool 2 Cool, Terry Scott Caloundra Rsl D At Sea, Road To Ransome, Ashes Of December, Millie Tizzard Duo X & Y Bar Dan England Tewantin Noosa RSL Dave Ritter Logan Diggers Club Dead Letter Circus, Fair To Midland, Twelve Foot Ninja Great Northern Hotel Byron Bay DeF FX The Zoo Elizabeth Rose Alhambra Lounge

36 • TIME OFF

High Noon Brothers Ipswich I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Satellites The Bowery James Johnson Royal Exchange Hotel Jonno Zilber, Tom Richardson Sol Bar, Maroochydore Lanie Lane The Hi-Fi Mace Fibber Magee’s, Toowoomba Marty Hurst Caloundra Bowls Club Mat Stokes Southport Rsl Matt Corby The Tivoli Pauline Maudy, 3 Miles From Texas West End Pugsley Buzzard, Bob Malone Brisbane Jazz Club Red Light Runners, Lord Rufus, Cherry Dove, Black Cactus, Blind Dog DOnnie The Music Kafe Rhys Bynon, Sammy Owens, Spacie Elsewhere Roy Morris, Chi Chi Maroochydore Rsl Russells, Sharny, Steve & Helen, Jmi Student Ensembles Turnaround Jazz Club Steve Cummins Club Helensvale Tetsuya Umeda Institute Of Modern Art The Root Note, Cbd Dub Project The Loft Chevron Island Thrash Surfers Paradise Tim Griffin, No Right Turn The Tempo Hotel Tyson Faulkner Broadbeach Tavern Venus Envy Victory Hotel Vita, Dj Climate Fitzy’s Loganholme Yung Warriors Racehorse Hotel ZookeeperS Southport Sharks

FRI 01 Acoustic Guitar Spectacular, Nick Charles, Michael Fix, Andrea Valeri Ipswich Civic Hall After Fives Club, Dj Millions, Dj Ridgid Hips Black Bear Lodge Alone With Wolves, Arcade Made, Royales X & Y Bar And Oh!, Spacie La La Land Andee-J The Brewery Aysoarsome Fridats, Paul Bell, Mark Z Regatta Hotel, Toowong Big Boyz Cbx Blind Dog Donnie The Music Kafe Brett Allen, Apollo Flex, Dj K-OTic Shooters Nightclub Dan England Titanium Bar Daniel Champagne Soundlounge Currumbin Darren Sigesmund And The Strands Sextet Brisbane Jazz Club

Dead Letter Circus, Fair To Midland, Twelve Foot Ninja Spotted Cow Dj Jd7 Mon Komo Dj Pickles The Heritage - Rockhampton Dynamic Duo Fibber Magee’s, Toowoomba Elizabeth Rose Elsewhere Gasoline Inc., Ramjet The Tempo Hotel Gunk, Kitchens Floor, Sleepwalks, Fallopian, Tiny Migrants The Waiting Room Hemi Kingi Duo, The Gabba The Morrison Hotel Ingrid James, Julian Jones Duo Hotel Urban Israel Cruz, The Twins The Met James Johnson Burleigh Heads Hotel Jonno Zilber, Tom Richardson Royal Mail Hotel Goodna Just Been Tasered Rocky Glen Hotel Local Licks, Tall Poppy Stadium Bar & Grill Lock & Load, Locky Mick O’malley’s Louis Laroche Oh Hello! Matt Corby The Tivoli Matthew Barker, Jabba Elephant & Wheelbarrow Mojo Webb Locknload West End Monstrothic, Alpine Fault, The Veil, Awaken Solace, Elysian, Therein BAsement 243 Nick & Liesl Upfront Club Maleny No Pressue Beachcomber International Resort - Coolangatta Out Of Abingdon Diana Plaza Hotel Pat Mahony Bowler Bar Paul Atkins, The Local Residents Chalk Hotel Pear & The Awkward Orchestra Brisbane Powerhouse Turbine Platform Powerplay Nudgee Beach Hotel Quarry Mountain Dead Rats The Joynt Rock At The Jock Jockey Club Hotel Gympie Sandra Beynon, Sean Mullen J’s Restaurant & Bar - Toowong Scott Dean Cannon Hill Tavern Soul Reference, Diamond Rose, Soul SImple, Calling For A Hero The Loft Chevron Island Starkillers Platinum Nightclub The Darren J Ray Band Coolum Bowls Club The Jimmy’s Wharf Tavern Tim Freedman The Venue Tonight Alive, Young Guns Coolangatta Hotel Twiggy Berserker Tavern Venus Envy Hinterland Hotel

ALEX BELL

Yung Warriors The Zoo Zoe Keating Clarendon Guest House Zola Jesus Alhambra Lounge

K21

SAT 02 Acoustic Guitar Spectacular The Basement Been Tasered Rocky Glen Hotel Brisbane Contemporary Jazz Orchestra Brisbane Jazz Club Cam Butler, The Scrapes Jugglers Artspace - Brisbane Dagsville Titanium Bar Dave Ritter Fibber Magee’s, Toowoomba Dead Letter Circus, Fair To Midland, Twelve Foot Ninja The Hi-Fi Deon Powter Hamilton Hotel DJ Indie Andy Parkwood Tavern DJ Owe, Stevie Z, Dj Dezastar, Louldmouth Len Shooters Nightclub Funkoars The Zoo Ingrid James, Julian Jones The Lido Café Restaurant Jimmy Z Presents, 4-Play, Dj Dce Fitzy’s Loganholme Joel Turner, Rocklea Revival Kookaburra Park - Rocklea Jonno Zilber, Tom Richardson Eumundi Markets Lee Griffin, Triple B, Wasabi The Tempo Hotel Mark Sheils Belvedere Hotel Mc Bossy, Paul Bell, Marky Mark Z, Scotty R, Dj Tom Walker Regatta Hotel, Toowong Moomoopapa Locknload West End Nicky Convine Hotel La Planet Brisbane Powerhouse Turbine Platform Quarry Mountain Dead Rats, Rattlehand SoundLounge Currumbin Recharge Beats Cbx Red Couch Cleveland Sands Hotel Replay Fitzy’s Waterford Rhubarb & Family Watkins, Misson X Elephant & Wheelbarrow Rhys Bynon La La Land Richard Ofsofski Kenmore Tavern Saturday Jazz Era Bistro Sonic Soul Mon Komo Stephanie Pickett, The Cassingles, Dillion James & The ToneBakers The Music Kafe The Darren J Ray Band Redlands Sporting Club The Decoys Chalk Hotel The Medicine Show Black Bear Lodge The Temper Trap, 360, Stonefield, Matt Corby Dalby Showgrounds

Taking the more positive route with their new EP, Alex Bell shade the balance of life. Benny Doyle discusses the process with Simon Munro. Launched in a few weeks, Petals is the exciting new EP from Brisbane quartet Alex Bell. Recalling musicians such as M. Ward and Fleet Foxes, the tracks are drenched in revelry; the themes across the release taking cues from one of life’s most consuming pleasures. “It sounds corny, but Petals is basically about the joy of being in love, and the intense moments you experience when you’re in love with someone,” Munro confesses. “When you really look forward to seeing someone, when you get little sparks from them each day, and when you know you’re a better person because you’re with them. This EP is almost the complete opposite of our first album No Lightning which was quite dark. We originally had plans to do a double album that played on this contrast, but we decided to hold off on Petals until we had just the right mix of songs.” With an aim to create atmospheric pop songs, the band learnt many valuable lessons from their first release and tried to roll that into Petals. This led them to a recording space far from the ordinary. “We wanted to record in a place with its own sound, rather than in a studio,” Munro explains, “so we adopted a little shack in Mt Mee that had a great natural, churchy reverb, and somehow we managed to convince the engineers to build a makeshift recording studio there. They certainly decked it out too; the second bedroom became a control room and the porch became a workshop. It definitely would have been a lot less fun had we gone the studio route.” WHAT: Petals (Independent) WHEN & WHERE: Saturday 2 June, Beetle Bar

The Vernons, Karl S. Williams, Tari Peterson The Loft Chevron Island Tim Freedman Tank Arts Centre, Cairns Tonight Alive, Totally Unicorn Basement 243 Tonight Alive, Totally Unicorn, Young Guns The Hive (day) Venus Envy Coolangatta Hotel Winter Just Came, Bbjs Bowler Bar Yung Warriors Club Tavern, Caboolture Zillmere Multicultural Festival O’callaghan Park, Zillmere

SUN 03 Acoustic Guitar Spectacular, Nick Charles, Michael Fix, Andrea Valeri Petrie Pioneer Village Brisbane Amber & Co., Bubble Boys Elephant & Wheelbarrow Brazen, Locky, Booter Chalk Hotel B-Syde, C.B.D The Music Kafe

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Dan England Lost City Daniel Champagne Harvest Café, Newrybah Daniel Webber, Discrow La La Land Darren Scott, Afrodisa Mon Komo Felicity Lawless Locknload West End Geoff Rayner Southern Hotel Toowoomba James Johnson Victory Hotel Jump Jive And Wail Brisbane Jazz Club Live Spark, Innes And Present Company, The Quarry Mountain Dead Rats Brisbane Powerhouse Turbine Platform Levon Vincent White Rhino Low Fi Avo Sessions The Cavern Bar & Café Murray Brown, Brett Allen, Craig Obey, Apollo Flex Shooters Nightclub Owie, Chris Ramsay Fibber Magee’s, Toowoomba

Ironically, Single Minded Civilian, K21’s debut, shows an artist full of thought. Benny Doyle chats with Adrian Musso-Gonzalez, the rapper behind the rhyme. “The album was made over four years and was recorded in my own studio The Greenhouse,” the 18-year-old begins, discussing his assured new long-player. “Recording, producing and featuring for artists such as Hilltop Hoods, Funkoars and Tommy Illfigga has given me important experience regarding the creative side [of making records]. Working closely with such talented people has motivated me more on my own releases.” Another inimitable product of the city of churches, K21 has an assured crisp flow that maintains the quality control in the ‘Laide, the album mixing streets with soul and smooth melodies. “There’s a similar vibe that travels across the album and many hours were spent on each song individually to try and achieve a seamless play through,” he explains. “With different beats ranging from dangerous to [even] more dangerous, each track has its own sound, although throughout the record the raps are straight-up verse kicking for the most part.” With a variety of producers working on the record, individual touches pepper the release. However, it’s done so with an underlying consistency, the works tying within each other to create a formidable debut for an artist so young. “I was looking for beats that suited the style of my own production on the album, and being already inspired by Sesta, Trials, Vampts and Mdusu’s work just made the music more exciting to make. All of the aforementioned producers consistently make great beats and getting their touch on the album definitely strengthened the sound of the LP as a whole.” WHAT: Single Minded Civilian (Greenhouse) WHEN & WHERE: Friday 1 June, The Northern, Byron Bay; Saturday 2, The Zoo

Quarry Mountain Dead Rats Powerhouse Theatre - Brisbane Stewart Fairhurst, Venus Envy Royal Exchange Hotel Suicide Swans, Mexico City, Phil Usher Black Bear Lodge Vaughan Ney Robina Tavern

MON 04 Darkest Hour Basement 243 Funky Monkey Jam The Music Kafe Indie Rock Escalate, Immerse, Dark Lab, Ammunitions, Reagent The Tempo Hotel Mark Sheils Elephant & Wheelbarrow

Mark Sheils Samford Valley Hotel Raw Connection Broadbeach Bowls Club

TUE 05 Ciderhouse, Mark Cryle And The Redeemers The Bug Kye Cole The Music Kafe Mark Bono Elephant & Wheelbarrow

BEHIND THE LINES FOLK EXPLOSION

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

WITH MICHAEL SMITH

A LITTLE MARSHALL GRUNT

It’s 50 years ago this year that the first Marshall amplifiers trundled out of the back room of Jim Marshall’s drum shop in London, the prototype put together by himself, his shop repairman Ken Bran and an EMI technician, Dudley Craven. To celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary, Marshall has released the first two of a series of five limited edition one-watt head and combo pairings each of which pays homage to one of the five decades Marshall has been in business. The JTM-1H head and JTM-1C combo featuring a 10” Celestion speaker pay homage to the tone and aesthetics of the classic 1960s Marshall, while the JMP-1H head and JMP-1C combo tips the cap at the 1970s. Due out in June are the 1980s JCM-1 pairing.

THE MARK OPITZ APP

Legendary Australian engineer/producer and Sydney Studios 301 collaborator Mark Opitz, whose credits read like the who’s who of ‘80s Australian rock and beyond with names like AC/ DC, The Angels, Cold Chisel, Hoodoo Gurus, Australian Crawl and Noiseworks among many, has released a “guide to recording” iPhone/iPad app. Essentially a vast compilation of his experience and techniques in the studio over the last 30 years, the app covers everything from analogue to the latest digital and software innovations, and includes a supplementary mastering section with cameos from 301’s mastering engineers Steve Smart and Leon Zervos. The app is available to purchase for just $10.49 from iTunes via the 301 website.

SOUND BYTES

American blues rocker Joe Bonamassa recorded his new solo album, Driving Towards The Daylight, with producer Kevin Shirley and on one track, the Robert Johnson classic, Stones In My Passway, plays a 1966 double-neck Gibson EDS-275. Connecticut hardcore metal five-piece Hatebreed are currently in the studio self-producing their next album with co-producers Josh Wilbur (Lamb of God, Avenged Sevenfold) and Chris “Zeuss” Harris (All That Remains, Shadows Fall). The second album, Do Things, from Animal Collective discovery, the Taylor, Mississippi-based Dent May, was recorded in sessions split between his bedroom and a small rural cabin in nearby Oxford. UK electro-pop duo La Roux took themselves off to a converted barn in Devon to record their as-yet-untitled second album, producing it themselves, and apparently it’s replete with the sounds of vintage synth the Roland Jupiter-8. The Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan recorded his debut solo album, Mid-Air, at his home and in a studio in hometown Glasgow, Scotland called Gorbals Sound. The new album, Here, from Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros was recorded in ‘The Ed Shed”, a studio in Ojai, California, which the band leased, with Alex Ebert producing. Probably best known as guest fiddle player and vocalist with The Decembrists, Sara Watkins recorded her new album, Sun Midnight Sun, with producer Blake Mills (Band Of Horses, Lucinda Williams, Jenny Lewis). German thrash metal band Tankard are currently recording in Studio 23 in Frankfurt with producer Michael Mainx (Disbelief, D-A-D). btl@streetpress.com.au

One hundred years after the birth of folk legend Woody Guthrie, Billy Bragg tells Steve Bell about how he and Wilco brought Guthrie’s unfinished songs to life.

W

hen Billy Bragg and Wilco first released the Mermaid Avenue compilation back in 1998 it was a complete revelation. Granted access to the song archives of American folk legend Woody Guthrie by his daughter Nora, they were given free rein to put music to any of the thousands of unrecorded songs and song fragments that Guthrie had left behind when he passed away in 1967. The results seemed to distil the disparate strengths of the three parties involved into one resolute whole. When, in 2000, a second compendium, Mermaid Avenue Vol. II, was released and proved equally strong, it seemed incredible that so many well-formed songs had emerged from the same sessions. But now – to celebrate the centennial year of Woody Guthrie’s birth – a definitive boxset, Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions, has been released and, as well as the first two volumes and, on DVD, the Man In The Sand documentary (1999), which chronicles the sessions, it contains Mermaid Avenue Vol. III, featuring a staggering 17 further songs. That so many songs were recorded at once seems remarkable; that they’re all so routinely good is nothing short of extraordinary.

“We had such a great time doing Mermaid Avenue. We were commissioned to do one album and we actually recorded nearly fifty songs,” Bragg remembers. “The majority of the songs that Woody Guthrie recorded in his own lifetime represent less than ten per cent of the songs that he actually wrote and the rest of the ninety per cent are in the archive that Nora had in New York – literally thousands of songs. We did our best to try and be the first people to go in there and try to collaborate with Woody and breathe some life into those songs. “Initially Nora sent me photocopies of some songs to convince me that it was something worth doing, but eventually I went to the archive and chose the songs, with her guidance. She steered us to songs that aren’t the sort of songs that people would expect Woody to sing, which is how I ended up choosing songs like Ingrid Bergman, which talks about making love to the Swedish film star on the slopes of an Italian volcano, or My Flying Saucer where he’s hitching a ride on a flying saucer. Nora’s remit to me and to Wilco was to challenge people’s ideas about Woody Guthrie rather than reinforce them.” Ultimately Bragg’s decision to invite the thenburgeoning Wilco to the party paid handsome dividends. “Nora had some ideas of artists – mainly American folk artists – that she thought would be great on the record. Her vision was a different artist for every song, but my concern was that it would sound like a tribute record and Woody would actually get lost – it would be too crowded, the lyrics wouldn’t come through. I felt that the only way to rebuild it was to have a solid band that acted as a bedrock on which we could erect the songs anew and best display them. So I said to Nora, ‘Look, you can choose the songs, you can choose the sleeve,

you can choose the title (which she did), but trust me and let me make the record.’ And she did.” At certain points during Man In The Sand it seems like the Bragg and Wilco camps were in conflict over elements of the project, but Bragg is quick to dispel any thoughts of insurrection. “While we were in the studio we saw eye to eye all the time. It was only when we subsequently left the studio that things got a bit out of kilter. It was all over who would produce the tracks – the agreement that we had was that whoever wrote the track would produce it. I thought that was fair and Jeff [Tweedy] and Jay [Bennett] thought that was fair. But when they went back to Chicago, they asked if they could produce some of the tracks that I wrote and I had to say, ‘Look, that’s not the deal we made guys.’ “The problem was fundamentally that neither me or Jeff had ever made a record where somebody

themusic.com.au

else had a say in the production. I think the key thing right at the end is where Jay says that all bands go through this in the mixing – they fall out with each other before they come back together. And the proof in the pudding is that for Vol. II there weren’t enough Wilco tracks. Because I’d been doing it for nine months longer than them I had more material. They could have said to me, ‘Bill, we really enjoyed that but we’ll leave it at that – why don’t you just put out a Billy Bragg one?’ but they didn’t. They took the trouble and expense of going back into the studio and recording an extra four songs. They were great songs as well, songs which I feel changed the nature of Vol. II. That’s how committed they were to the project and us working together.” Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions out now through Warner

TIME OFF • 37

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