7:30 Friday Evening

The Getaway Plan - Requiem

2011-11-05T01:09:00.000-07:00

Single Move Along is very much commercial emo by numbers. Piano and vocals start just over four minutes of tension and angst that if written in the first half of last decade would have been good to very good.

"They've been carving your name out in stone" swoons frontman Matthew Wright at the opening of a song that has been written by better writers 6783 times before. The addition of backing strings do nothing to prove me wrong about the Melbourne lads. It's not that I don't want to like such easy to like music but, in 2011, it feels lazy, fraudulent and, well, boring.

Take a listen to the seventh track, S.T.A.R, and you will understand the relatively benign talents of a band that has played with the reasonable My Chemical Romance and The Used. Don't get me too wrong, Requiem shows The Getaway Plan understand what they're doing by coming back after essentially a three year hiatus, what it doesn't show is how good emo was when at its height.

At The Halfway Point

2011-06-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

Who'd have thought Thursday would dominate 2011 like Devolucion has.

It is an astonishing reply to anyone, me included, who had essentially written the Jersey band off. Initially all I could hear was Pornography era The Cure but as with all subtle records it slowly unfolds, rolls out, shows itself to be much more than a tribute disc. Empty Glass is oft on repeat, if for nothing more than that opening line: "I lost my wedding ring down the kitchen sink" and the sonic mood - it's all very un-Thursday I realise but now it has become totally Thursday.

Elsewhere John Darnielle is ever brilliant with the latest The Mountain Goats LP. I'm not a great lover of the DCFC but that can and most likely will change.

The TV on The Radio disc caught my attention early on but I haven't returned to it in the way I've kept going back to Devolucion. Radiohead LP was genuinely boring.

On the homeland front I remain bored. A new Blueline Medic LP seems as far away as it ever has been while the same nonsense keeps getting offered up by the latest D'opus and Roshambo or Angus and John Pyke. I am yet to dig out the Jebediah LP so will be doing that.

The Crystal Ball of 2011

2011-02-14T20:47:00.000-08:00

There are going to be mighty records released in 2011. Here's to hoping none of them are listed below, a surprise sure would be nice.

TV on The Radio - Nine Types of Light
Radiohead - The King of Limbs

There are going to be better than good albums also.
Thrice - As yet unnamed
British India - As yet unnamed
Enter Shikari - As yet unnamed

Artists I hope might bother me in 2011
The Jealous Sound
Pvt
Air
Periphery
Derek Webb
Pilot to Gunner
Brave Saint Saturn

Ollie Browne

2011-02-13T18:35:00.000-08:00

Where is Ollie Browne?

There's an anecdote of one of the lads from the likeable Melbourne outfit The Small Knives where he tells of noise coming from his shower one morning and wondering what it was.

It was just Ollie singing in the shower.

The angelic voice of Browne last appeared through the debut LP from Parallel Lions in late 2009. You are correct in pointing out it was not Art of Fighting and it had been some time since anything from the darlings of what clowns call slow-core but what is just as easily described as beautiful.

It would be easy to suggest Browne's main post with Art of Fighting has come to and given the lack of movement at camp AOF. But it's best to retain hope and believe it when Browne declares "none of this means aof is no longer, we promise".

Certainly the music of Art of Fighting is delicate and would take time to craft. How long do we wait? Tool fans routinely wait five years or thereabouts. It will be that since Runways next year. That's if you're not counting the score for the film Ten Empty, released in 2008.

It looks like I'm arguing myself out of the initial question. But still I wonder where is Ollie Browne?

Sufjan Stevens: Sydney Opera House 27.01.11

2011-01-29T22:19:00.000-08:00

I'll start simply. After 11 years and hundreds of gigs, festivals etc I have a new favourite gig of all time. Gone is Mercury Rev at the Enmore Theatre a decade ago.

Sufjan Stevens is unparalleled in the live arena. Opening with Seven Swans might seem odd giving he was touring Adz but it was brilliance on display. Stevens, banjo, lone light and a crowd holding its breath. "There was a fire in the yard ... I saw the sign in the sky, seven swans, seven swans."

NOISE and LIGHT

Stevens is dressed in disco motor leathers and the ten musicians/family members with him are beards and bowling alley dresses and then some sort of headware. I never knew Seven Swans was on Adz, always assumed it was on the album of the same name. Lyrically it still talks of the apocalypse but now it talks of the apocalypse coming loudly and with horns and drums, it is more obviously now a song of Revelation because of its noise.

Once he has you it is very difficult to escape Stevens whose magnetism grows through two hours of glorious noise, occasionally interrupted by well-timed three minute folk songs.

Welcome too is a chatty Stevens who talks of influences and past efforts. You can read about the influence of self-proclaimed prophet, astrologer and astronomer Royal Robertson or, as he preferred to be known until his death in 2003, “Libra Patriarch Prophet Lord Archbishop Apostle Visionary Mystic Psychic Saint Royal Robertson.” But until you both see and hear that influence it is impossible to understand with any strength. To resort to comparisons this is somewhere between Dark Side of the Moon, Kraftwerk, the Old Testament and science class.

On some listens Vesuvius is the centre of Adz and live it dominated the centre of two plus hours inside the acoustic wonderment of the House. The lyrical interplay between "Vesuvius" and the one less syllable of "Sufjan" feels even more clouded live, as if the two words are being sung in opposing places just to lock you in SPIN.

Of course the finale was always going to be a jammed out version of the already 25 minute Impossible Soul. It is testament to his song writing credentials that Sufjan starts so simply. One key and his voice. Imperceptibly come cymbals and two cheerleaders for the first rise. From there a guitar solo, a disco, choral backing and you have forgotten the first key and his voice is now layered, automated but captivating.
A female voice urges "don't be distracted" by what is going on, close your eyes.

Most of us writing about music like to keep it simple. To offer our logic driven opinions on drum solos and breakdowns. Sufjan Stevens steals logic and captivates the soul.

Video of the concert is available at http://play.sydneyoperahouse.com/index.php/Music/sufjan-stevens-live-exclusive-age-of-adz.html

The King is Dead

2011-01-03T20:40:00.000-08:00

Noise is being made over at http://www.decemberists.com ahead of the Oregon band's latest LP release, The King is Dead, on January 18.

The increasingly impressive caper of offering the album in an array of fashions (download, CD, vinyl) alongside merchandise (anything from an "exclusive" tee through to one-off polaroids of the band is the smart and growing answer to bit torrents etc al. Yes, I will pay for a well thought through package like this one:

DELUXE BOX EDITION $165

Limited edition of 2500 available exclusively on thedecemberists.com
A one-of-a-kind Polaroid photograph by Autumn de Wilde from the Impossible Project/Decemberists series
72 page hardcover book featuring over 250 unique Polaroid photographs by Autumn de Wilde and illustrations by Carson
Ellis
The King Is Dead CD
Pendarvia DVD – a 30 minute short film by Aaron Rose, documenting the making of the album
The King Is Dead on 180 gram white vinyl with special cover
Limited edition Giclée print illustrated by Carson Ellis
Digital album download code delivered on January 18
Instant download of live video of "Rise To Me" from Musicfest Northwest in Portland, Fall 2009
Instant download of "Down By The Water"
All presented in a linen wrapped, clamshell box with
foil-stamped cover

By any standard it's more than a decent deal and I'd pay $200. The Decemberists are brilliant, we all know that. They have the record that allows them to offer a package like this. The snippets of The King is Dead that have been finding their way online hint at something much mellower than the bombast of The Hazards of Love. National Public Radio in the US will be streaming the album (edit)

The King is Dead is available for those with the patience needed of a streaming listener. http://www.npr.org/2011/01/03/132436422/first-listen-the-decemberists-the-king-is-dead

Map of Tasmania - Amanda Palmer

2011-01-02T18:07:00.000-08:00

So the one-time Dresden Doll is set to tour Australia and New Zealand in March 2011 and is leading with her new single, Map of Tasmania. Available for download/stream over at http://music.amandapalmer.net/track/map-of-tasmania-feat-the-young-punx

For those beyond The Antipodes, the map of Tasmania is a reference to the vagina. Not only is it a lame lyrical turn of phrase but it's also one that, in 2011, is incredibly tired. It's not risque to talk about your cunt or even mildly amusing, it's just boring and does not mask poor song writing. Palmer sings, "they don't play the song on the radio, they don't show the tits on the radio". Correct. They probably won't play the song because Lady GaGa has this niche covered. They don't show anything on the radio so not showing Harper's tits on ABC Local Radio won't be anything to celebrate or complain about.

From a woman capable of much greater shows of genuine envelope pushing, this kind of crap is nothing but disappointing. I choose the word crap pointedly, not because I have no vocabulary. This is junk music of the kind that 30 years ago created a genuine pop star in Madonna. But now, it is a rag of a forgotten time. If Ms Palmer wants to shock and offend The West in 2011 she'd be better wearing a burqa while rapping of her self-confidence and telling us all she chose the clothing out of self respect.

Picture Window

2010-11-02T19:57:00.000-07:00

Ben Folds and Nick Hornby have now written an album together.

It happens to contain one of the better sad songs of the past decade.

Picture Window's immediate and obvious reference point is Brick, a song that's now 13years old. Where once the talk was the tale of abortion, now the character has moved inside the hospital.

Hornby's lyrics are what they are: "they checked into the hospital New Year's Eve". Or are they Hornby's lyrics, there are suggestions doing the rounds that this might more accurately be described as an adeptation of a Hornby story.
Folds has been playing the song live for a year, Youtube atests to it.

Unknown Pleasures

2010-06-13T22:19:00.000-07:00

Fresh exploration is still possible 31 years later.

It's possible to hear for the first time. But it is difficult. Where could that opening bass line of Disorder possibly come from if it's not from Hook? And it's best not to discuss hearing Curtis "for the first time".

What I can hear, which has no doubt been heard by many before, is the lethargic urgency of four men who understood time was running out. Listen to Day of The Lords in the moments before Curtis arrives. It might be slow, industrial and every adjective already used by better writers and thinkers but there is a shadow of light flitting under the dour. It runs quickly and lightly but it is there, even if for only two moments.
At 3:17 Curtis howls, Stephen Morris rises - I want to say these songs lead to moments but that's ridiculous, all music is headed for a moment. It just feels more so with Joy Division.

Candidate is so different to what has come before it. That legendary sparseness is in full-throttle from the silent first seconds and then that wonderfully under used fade-in technique. On a side note only Radiohead's Black Star uses it as well. Within the context of Unknown Pleasures, Candidate feels like it is covered by brilliance either side of it and only it's coming in under just over three minutes does that.

The first five seconds of Insight might be mistaken for Candidate as silence is silence but from there nothing could be further. The soundtrack of table top video games played in an abandoned warehouse at 3am with a man you know nothing of. Despite the table tennis being played behind him, Curtis remains focused and innately linked in behind Morris' percussion that starts in an easy 4/4 groove and grows ever more complex as the space slowly fills.

New Dawn Fades, in the digital age, seems less important than it is. In 1979 the song finished Side A and for that automatically matters. A thousand bands echo the song along an ever-growing line. It is songs like this that will be the ones that increasingly draw fresh ears to Unknown Pleasures.

At Night we Live

2010-06-04T21:24:00.000-07:00

In 1999 Far were my favourite band I'd never heard.

I wish I'd know the guttural honesty of Johna Matranga and his coterie - their riffage and emotional opulence was hidden in a world where the Internet was only a mellow cat on grandma's lap.

More than a decade after the ego-stroking bullshit of the School Certificate here is At Night We Live. I came to Matranga before I arrived at Far and the shock of the difference is only now surmountable. Onelinedrawing was confronting emo proven mostly by Matranga's wail and the weird electronic blips from his R2-D2.

Deafening couldn't start more ironically or with a greater cliche. But sometimes it's worth noting cliches only get that way for a reason. The tick and the tock followed by Matranga whispering "it's deafening" and then drums, guitars, whatever else is lying around locking in behind it - I don't care, I love it and always will.

The meat's further on.

The riffs of Dear Enemy might be from the latest White Stripes album if they went through a different pedal. But with a double kick, flaying percussion and Shaun Lopez threading through it all it is unmistakable, Far has returned and are just as good as they ever were.

Added on to the end for a slice of fun is the wonderful Ginuwine cover, Pony.

Fight song 16, 233,241 would have worked brilliantly in that lobby fight scene from The Matrix. "This is what we do" screams Matranga over a rhythmic beast riding with synths in the back. It's the kind of radio rock that never was, I wish it had of. How much more pure the airwaves would have been for a boy living not far enough from the outback.

The Ghost That Kept On Haunting is the slow, aching work of a band that knows it mines a narrow niche. It's a sign of what might be if Far bothered to do more, to break the rules and experiment. It is all that's needed. Snapping 1-2-1 high-hat and wall-of-slowly-building-sound with Matranga surely drowned by it all.
Synth crushes with rhythm and Lopez lets the riffs bleed for an age, envisaging some sort of post polar world where there is no weather or white - only a blue grey of some sort of trap.

The secret track is the old and wonderfully ridiculous cover of Ginuwine's Pony where Lopez effortlessly plays the tempest to Matranga's seduction. Some of Matranga's most startling work has been cover's. His work on No Ordinary Love with Deftones comes to mind.

Pony is a little nod to the history of a band that needed the lay-off for a thousand reasons but never really stopped.

Kings Upon The Main

2010-06-03T17:50:00.000-07:00

Thrice has delivered much over albums that came from the remnants of hardcore and have slowly wondered into electronica, ambience and general experimentation with all the genres mentioned. I don't like the term "post-hardcore", it doesn't mean anything because hardcore was short lived.

The four EPs of The Alchemy Index were not great but they did hold some great material. Kings Upon The Main is undiscovered brilliance.

It's Dustin Kensrue's earthy voice droning for wisdom and the gales of the ocean backed by three piano notes and distant, industrial percussion. Wind blows through the recording but only gently, as if the storm is elsewhere but visible. Songs like these can pass you by, unaware of their subtle grit.

The fact not much happens here makes the song so much better. The meditation of an almost drone.

Kele Okereke

2010-05-17T16:27:00.000-07:00

My man Alex says:

Hi,

Just because he has a solo song out doesn't mean it's any good. Coz
it's not. So tell everybody to stop playing it just because he's "kele
from bloc party".

That's all,

Thanks,

Alex

Diamond Eyes

2010-05-14T18:22:00.000-07:00

These initial thoughts:

It is a consensus record, this is a retelling of six past LPs in one effort.

The Deftones have not written their heaviest and weirdest songs here but it sounds like at least the opener and title track is one of their best.

Gone is any real sense of experimentation (I think a good thing as it reached its terminus with Team Sleep).

If one emotion rules it is sadness. That comes from the obvious place of bassist Chin Cheng's car accident and subsequent coma 18 months ago.

The replacing (filling in) of Cheng with former Quicksand boom man Sergio Vega does nothing to the enormous sound of a band that never really seemed like their nu-metal colleagues. Vega is faithful.

There are three iTunes bonus tracks - Do You Believe, Ghosts and Caress - they're all worthy. Ghosts in particular comes from my favourite Deftones place of slow and aching.

Groovin the Moo - Canberra

2010-05-09T18:03:00.000-07:00

Some things worth noting:

British India owned the day and are "the next big thing".
Silverchair played new songs and these two songs were dull.
The Slew played, by far, the most original and exciting set of the day to about 200 people.

IN DETAIL

With their third album release last week, the Melbourne quartet British India, have now reached the place their first songs promised. The crowd already knew the words to songs from Avalanche and the likes of Run the Red Light were greeted as some sort of coming of age anthems. This is the shape of Australian rock in 2010.
The British India set was in sharp contrast to that offered from Grinspoon. The meat and potatoes radio rock really has done its dash. The band looked tired and uninspired while frontman Phil Jamieson delivered very little of what he is capable in terms of hedonistic rock man showmanship.

Further on the whole thing of Aus rock. Let's go to the top and Silverchair. An hour in The Capital with the first band I ever saw was full of promise and it delivered early with the trio/quartet opening with Emotion Sickness. And from there it went downhill.
Songs from the very "of the moment" Dissociatives album are now appearing in the Silverchair set list. The liaison between Daniel Johns and Paul Mac was poorly thought out in the first place and now it smells more like Johns can't recognise his work from his doodling. The two new songs (16 and Machina) were boring. They lacked pop hooks and sounded like Bowie fighting Prince in a bowling alley -uninspiring crap.

If you were looking for inspiration it was, as usual with festivals, far from the guitars. Up the hill DJ Kid Koala had assembled his mates, known as The Slew, to deliver on all the word of (frothing at the) mouth by a few in the know. If you don't already know it's the rhythm section once know as two thirds of Wolfmother alongside Dynomite (sic) D and Kid Koala. As Koala said:

"We are from the future, you will understand us in 10 years."

It was electronic, throbbing and so, so heavy. No rapping, just guitars, drums and live beats that welded together in a completely organic but utterly terrifying melange.

The Slew win.

Not Afraid.

2010-04-30T17:15:00.000-07:00

Within ten seconds of Eminem's new single it is apparent he has returned to form.

Heligoland

2010-02-05T21:30:00.000-08:00

Near the end of Massive Attack's Heligoland, Saturday Come Slow, Damon Albarn is all but unidentifiable as he sings of a "white wall canvas", a place he can go to leave one last piece of himself before he says goodbye. It was possible to dismiss the voice of Parklife as smarmy at best and downright self-righteous at worst. Too precocious, too full of himself. Albarn has changed. Out of tune and scrapping his heart across sandpaper he becomes unimaginably hurt, aching and uber-slow.

It is a minimal, grey effort from a band unafraid by colours even if they are blue hues rather than vibrant rainbows. If this is still trip-hop then it is done differently in 2010, seven years on from the duo's last effort. Samples have utterly disappeared and have not been replaced by anything but air. There is, of course, drum loops and distant electronic flourishes.

And it's oddly beautiful but not Heligoland's highwater mark by any hearing. Maybe the point is early when TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe appears in the opener Pray For Rain. His incandescent and benevolent voice wonders through clouds of street percussion and darkly ominous piano. It truly is an obvious partnership, influenced as TV are by the 20 years of Massive Attack, even if it's not sonically obvious. That influence has also worked back a little. You can hear the Brooklyn band's peculiar approach to playing coming through.
At 4:22 this song has a moment of white light beauty. Adebimpe's voice is choral, the music gone from almost industrial cacophony to luscious, flowered field.

If all this sounds a little the same it's because 20 years ago Massive Attack invented it. It's not overly important to decide where Heligoland fits in a list of the band's five albums, only to realise and remember just how good the sound is.
It's difficult to think of much beyond Tricky and Portishead that matters in the genre although its influence has spread from the obvious noises of Radiohead through the metal of Nine Inch Nails and Deftones and unfortunately on to the dross of the 2010 charts.

At the mid-way point of Heligoland is Psyche. Martina Topley-Bird's appearance reminds ears she remains one of trip-hops finest vocal contributors. It is perhaps the densest moment in an album of ten songs. The nervous tick of something electronic plays against a paranoid riff and equally anxious bass line. Topley-Bird's voice seems to wrap around itself, chasing the music as it slowly builds to an unknown destination.

Paradise City is a spooky, hand clap led song accompanied by the voice of Hope Sandoval. Piano and slowly sweeping strings make the song and it is at its best without Sandoval's voice. That is not meant as a criticism rather a simple statement. The best moments in the song are toward the climax.

Heligoland is, firstly, a welcome return from a band that is needed on the sonic landscape. It offers so much more to digest than the vast majority of albums in 2010. This is not easy music by any stretch, there is warrant for repeated listens. To call these songs enjoyable would be wrong even though they are that. It's much better to just call them good.

The Jealous Sound

2010-02-02T00:17:00.000-08:00

About time, it's been too long and too difficult.
The Jealous Sound do matter.
I don't know how long What's Wrong is Everywhere has been on the band's MySpace but I know it's good to hear, to tap my left heal to.

In an age where every band must have a website or risk fan abandonment it's been seven years between KIll Them With Kindness and a second album. In 2008 there was an EP, only ever digital and barely mentioned. The Fold Out is enough to maintain the faith in this band that kept some semblance of sense behind that ugly label emo.

I should say something about this new song. The sound of the quartet remains largely intact but it has advanced. Sparser production is evident straight away. Blair Shehan probably went postal a couple of times since 2003 but it doesn't show. His tender timbre remains and the tone of the guitars hasn't been tampered with.

Welcome back.

Antony and the Johnsons

2010-01-31T18:34:00.000-08:00

When Beyonce cavorts in heels and not much else offering up "baby you got me" it does nothing but vaguely offend my olfactory senses. I'm not one of these that appreciates her "head-rush blast of joy" crap, her music bores me and makes me run far away from any thoughts I had for "appreciating" the "pop sensibilities" or whatever that nonsense is.

It all changed last night when Antony Hegarty gave Crazy in Love blue ache, true beauty and somehow a rare candour unseen in music of all kinds. It was only the beginning of a startlingly beautiful performance from a man still far from comfortable in his own skin.

When some prick requested Frankenstein as Hegarty settled in to the Sydney Opera House's gorgeous Steinway grand it only gave the beautiful girl-man more to work with.
"Hmmm, yes, I've been called Frankenstein once before."
He owned a crowd that wanted only to serve, only to applaud. It felt almost greedy to call for an encore, as if somehow it would take too much from Hegarty and the 41 classicially trained musicians playing with him, for him, around him.

Hegarty reached back to a time before his fame to I fell in Love With a Dead Boy and its awkward lyrics of highs and lows set against sombre strings and audience hushed as much by shock as by context.

His rambling intermissions on Murdoch, climate change, art and travel endear him to a crowd of grand parents, uni students, young professionals and Opera House season ticket holders. Hope There's Someone is perhaps the most empathetic song ever written - it sits near Finn's Fall at Your Feet. Hegarty crawled inside the black mass of Steinway and hammered at the strings from in there, too frightened to come out but too frightened at the thought of not playing, off not getting rid of something quite ghastly.

Kiss My Name was perhaps a minor moment of homogeneity, it's easy enough when you're dealing with a voice so readily identifiable but less forgivable when there are 41 strings and drums and horns behind you to differentiate. But the criticism is intended to be ever so light, it mattered little on such a glorious night.

Missing were Her Eyes are Underneath the Ground and Epilepsy is Dancing, both wonderful and fragile and two of the strongest on The Crying Light. But again, it's hard to complain or work to find fault amidst so much magic, an unending stream of beauty.

Some of the Places I Know

2010-01-28T16:03:00.000-08:00

For every moment Gyroscope make you think they might go on to something they provide an equally astonishingly annoying piece of junk best left in the landfill bin. Certainly this quartet can write a chunky, indie radio friendly rock song (see: Doctor, Doctor, Snakeskin) but they're yet to fulfill the generous predictions made by many in Australian press. Some of the Places I know is the first single from the Perth quartet's fourth LP, Cohesion.

You can hear producer Gil Norton clearly. The rock has made way for smoother sounds, the guitars are crisp instead of dirty, singer and guitarist Dan Sanders reaches for melodies amongst the layers of his own voice, the percussion does nothing more than play backing, there is no solo and the bass plods at the back.

It's not particularly catchy as pop or rock or pop rock. It sounds dull and maybe five years late. This was fun around Bleed American, even more than fun but what it is now is derivative, incidental and lacking in heart. Sanders asks "is it obvious I ain't got no rhythm?" Lack of rhythm ain't the problem Dan. It is, so unfortunately, lack of chops. It just seems Gyroscope can't quite get there when it comes to the actual writing of the song.

End Times

2010-01-26T01:10:00.000-08:00

These 14 mostly short songs mark Mark Oliver Everett's eighth album under the Eels moniker.

E is more defiantly desperate this time, as if it is the only option and he will not go anywhere but down. The press release from Shock rejects the idea it is Eels first "break-up record", pointing back to the 93 Everett LP Broken Toy Shop.

The first effort, The Beginning, is sparse, sombre alt-country with just a lightly strummed acoustic and E's rustic voice talking of how "everything was beautiful and free in the beginning". It's the language of a luckless couple entwined not anymore by love but by habit. "Didn't have nowhere to go, didn't matter that the night was getting cold".

It's countered by Gone Man that's oddly reminiscent of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club when they slow down but maintain the grind. Lyrically E's no happier, pondering "how much longer for this Earth" and find his comfort "in a dying world".

At this point it's clear End Times is what it is, there will be no relent. It puts it beyond a mere break-up album. It sits next to Beck's Seachange. Adjectives likes haunting and beautiful come to the fore but miss the mark.

These songs are honest.

And for that they are very rare and worthy of much admiration. He gets comparison to Springsteen, to the better Oberst work.

Mansions of Los Feliz is an Americana treasure filled with the story of the United States as it stands in 2010. "It's a pretty bad place out there" and E's living on "the edge of my mind". Just like elsewhere there is his voice and a guitar accompanied by the odd strum of a bass. There is no percussion, no call for harmonies or vocal trickery and it's all over in two minutes forty nine.

He finds room for reflection on the piano driven A line in the Dirt with talk of pissing in the yard but soon "things aren't funny" and neither are the minor chords and downcast high hat. It's the finest song amongst a collection of beauties. Gentle horns ache behind a voice marked by the agony of finality.

Given it's only January this is definitely a contender for the album of the year.

Teargarden by Kaleidyscope

2010-01-18T15:58:00.000-08:00

A new 44 song project from the Smashing Pumpkins brings too much to mind.

People ask why? I think those people gave up too easy. Corgan most certainly lost his "self-delete" button years ago, the poetry book comes to mind.

But what's to say he's not capable of something grand in 2010? I'm not overly excited by Teargarden, unless I sit and contemplate the latest free song, A Song for a Son is almost understated by Pumpkins standards - a distinct lack of strings in a ballad is a good place for a Corgan ballad to start.
"This is a song for a son, this is a song for a sailor, the best I ever had, he sailed without a map."

It's different, quieter, calmer, somehow more refined.

What might be almost as interesting as the music is how these songs are released. Are we going to download a song a week for much of the year? Another Pumpkins double or even triple album would never sell, there's just not enough belief anymore.

That last sentence risks putting all of this in the land of Smashing Pumpkins eulogy. Let me clarify: there is a whole heap to criticise but that's not as much fun as remembering Tonight, Tonight.

Tiger Saw and Castanets

2009-12-19T19:41:00.000-08:00

The songs of Ray Raposa mean so much more when you hear them too loud in a small lounge filled with dope smokers and summer innuendo.

On disc it's all often too dense, too much to comprehend beyond that voice and some instruments trying to reach you. Alone, with no drums, no harmonica Raposa becomes more emotionally credible.
The other night at a suburban cafe he played some of his songs and it doesn't particularly matter which ones I heard. He writes like Johnny Cash, only some things interest him - Raposa isn't a man of cars or politics. He'd much prefer to talk of ache and occurrence.

Listen to On Beginning for both.
"Dreams of something unending ... be straight with me, I'll be straight, straight with you."
His voice rolls over the gentlest of electronic swirls and a guitar so purposely gothic it could want you to know nothing else.
It matters that he shares his all-over sun burn after arriving in Australia a week before, it matters that he asks someone, anyone if they happen to have a guitar strap in their pocket. And then he plays without one, and without shoes.

The whole too loud thing is completely necessary. Each syllable of the very good lyrics pierce, each rough riding riff becomes a sort of wild horse coming onward, not something you want to dodge or control - a moment to just be attacked and stampeded by the unexpected noises.

Castanets is a request taking vendor but offers only "you motherfucker" in response to the one coming from the back, seems it's too difficult with only a guitar and four pedals to choose from.

A little before this a little band from Maine made me smile. Tiger Saw are quietly extraordinary. 100 plus members in a decade have said hello and goodbye. A book and a long discography come from it. If you can do more than nominate who exactly was playing the other night please let me know.
The songs at the moment are gentle, joyous and anthemic. Moments of singalong, times of almost silence and little crescendos.

Yeah, We're in a Band.

2009-12-14T00:10:00.000-08:00

A 2009 Longlist

2009-12-13T22:43:00.000-08:00

Here is some albums to consider for a list of the finest in 2009.

WILCO - Wilco
YEAH YEAH YEAHS - Its Blitz
THE ANTLERS - Hospice
PARALLEL LIONS - Holding Patterns
THE MOUNTAIN GOATS - The Life of the World to Come
MUSE - The Resistance
MEWITHOUTYOU - It's all crazy! It's all false! It's all a dream! It's alright!
ENTER SHIKARI - Common Dreads
ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS - The Crying Light
CASTANETS - Texas Rose, The Thaw and The Beasts
AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD - Century of Self
SUFJAN STEVENS - BQE
THRICE - Beggars
THEM CROOKED VULTURES - Them Crooked Vultures
BENJAMIN GIBBARD AND JAY FARRAR - One Fast Move Or I'm Gone
THE DECEMBERISTS - The Hazards of Love

It's understandable, they come from Adelaide

2009-12-12T18:04:00.000-08:00

Coerce: a raw punk quartet from the South Australian capital, Adelaide.

Press release says something about Refused and At the Drive-In, should also mention lots about The Nation Blue but widely assumed critics no nothing so we won't mention colleagues.
Trance, Viper, Dance provides a roughshod introduction and yeah, you can hear yourself a whole bunch of ATDI, Cedric style screaming, some gang vocals and a rhythm section a little too in lock step.

The dude who sings (information is hard to come by) shreds successfully but it's the bands guitarist that makes this debut interesting. There are different tones from song-to-song and there's a willingness to adventure into more than just black and white. Different shades permeate songs like the dark title track, Silver Tongued Life Licker.

The 45 odd minutes here is best described as a ride on The Ghost Train at Luna Park followed by four and three quarter pots at the Espy. It's fun, rowdy, sometimes edging towards chaos and mostly good times.

Memories

2009-09-30T03:46:00.000-07:00

I got to listening to favourite, old, music tonight.

I will always waste endless hours defending The Juliana Theory from all allegations of boy bandishness, egotism and all other criticism of a mighty band.

I had to reorder a copy of Understand This is a Dream, 10 years after its release, and when I unwrapped it the first song I clicked to was the euphoric Duane Joseph with it's demand to "tell your mum you need the day off". It's naive, it's cynical, heart breaking and ultimately this was the best definition of emo in the late 90s.

And onward I pushed through the, what seems now, mushy and very Chris Carrabba sounding August in Bethany. A teenage tune of the finest angst which astute readers will notice is inspiration for more than this sentence. Right now, living on death row, it is beautiful. Singer Brett Detar's oh's and woo's become resplendent in the lightly strummed minor chords and when he pines "don't go" I begin to cry. I don't want to go. I'm quite happy just here, in my study at my grandfather's desk, headphones on, wife upstairs, books neatly stacked to my right, blinds down to keep the cold out.

Now onwards to the silly pop-punk of Musicbox Superhero. It's classic genre blending with Sunny Day Real Estate and Green Day heard in equal measure and, of course, Detar wading his way to the front. That point leads to the man and his ego. Sure he has one, seemingly larger than most in a similar position. But the problem was he knew how good he was and was mainly wondering why TJT never quite "made it". It finishes quietly, a moment of note for those critiquing the tracklisting.

That finish matters because of what comes next. Show me the Money hints at what is to come in the opening percussion missive before saddling up for a joyous major chord gallop through the meadows. It's a stupid song bordering on senseless but it doesn't hurt an album that only runs to 42 and a bit minutes.

For Evangeline positioned the band beyond pop-punk. Underplayed and under appreciated, it was a gorgeous, melodious portrait that worked as more than a mere introduction to Constellation. It wonders like someone gazing at shoes as it fades in until Neil Hebrank punches through and out. "The deepest embraces creation" mumbles Detar as Hebrank rumbles behind him, the others seem to be there but only in soul. The guitar feels as if it is strummed by a man worried of his fate, it repeats and repeats as if there were merit in it. "In one night you made me your own, in one hour you gave me away". It introduces the second act, Fiedler and Momper awake and back Detar into a corner he has to fight to come out of. And fight he does.

And now they tell us of plans to formalise the farewell. Two last gigs for those who weren't on the Autobahn in Germany when this beauty collapsed. They will play Emotion is Dead from start to finish, then some. It's 51 minutes, the gig will be 101 minutes fired by adrenaline and tears.

Seven Forty Seven might be the weak spot, if such a thing exists more than a decade on from trying to understand the dream. "Won't you come and take a holiday with me, I've asked you twice before.
"Please say yes, please say yes, please say yes.
"Won't you come with me, there's things to see."
If it's a weak spot it's not in the lyrics and by the crescendo at two minutes and 17 seconds any signs of flimsy work are forgotten.

"You're the bud before the flower unfurls into full bloom." It all rests on that word unfurl, a transitive verb of astronomical power. The Closest Thing is Detar coming on strong but I've always read it spiritually, "your star, it seems to shine above the rest ... the closest thing to perfect in a Hollywood suburb". I didn't understand that he could be talking about anything but God, anything but an almighty. It's worth taking note of Chad Alan's understated ways here. He bubbles to the fore when he needs to, falls behind for the most but no so far he is distant. And go back to the start: "the deepest embraces creation. If you were rude and shallow of reading you might declare it some sort of anti-abortion anthem. With its talk of being given away to The Angels and the hands you'll never hold. It is so very much more. It ends with those rarest of things, a justified fade out.

PS We'll Call you When we Get There is perhaps oddly placed unless you listen to the lyrics. It's an up-tempo pop-punk song that might just have well opened the album but it would have been ridiculous to have a song that uses that wonderful hardcore "gang vocal" to say we will "go".

Now for the pointer of things to come.
Constellation is the finale even if the newly issued vinyl gives us one more song not heard before. Looking at the time, well over six minutes, it stands out before the reversing cascade that is the intro.

Cancer

2009-07-15T21:20:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the no show for months.

I have been diagnosed with cancer. It appears it is in both my brain and my spine.

I have struggled to listen to music lately although the new Decoder Ring album had me excited, just a little. I really want to listen to Emotion is Dead but I can't find it in my collection.

I hope you're travelling well.

A Justification

2008-12-11T23:51:00.001-08:00

So much of Dear Science's brilliance hangs on a single song.

Family Tree guts me. Listen to Adebimpe the first time that faltering, flickering piano falls out of the mix. How many layers are there? One syllable behind himself with each layer, it sounds so insecure, so vulnerable. It sounds genuine. Maybe he was reluctant about such a seemingly personal, wrenching song appearing on a plastic disc so many would buy, so many would "identify with". How did he force himself to sing the words in front of friends in a studio, let alone live.

That it sticks out like dogs balls on an album so obviously filled with funk, soul and jazz grooves makes it even better, even more bald. And beyond the centrepiece there is almost too much to digest.

I initially thought there was plenty to support the idea that Golden Age was the obvious core of Dear Science. Don't get me wrong, it's a brilliant song and here's why.

A) Lyrics like this: "Some light being pulled you up from night's part/said, clap your hands of you think your soul is free/and the silence was astounding."

B) It's a dance song that makes you dance. In a time when so much dance music does nothing more than bore the shit of you this music revitalises, it captivates the heart, the mind and the feet.

Folk of theory and prediction like the idea of being able to see around the corner. That is what TV on the Radio does so well. They seemingly capture tomorrow's zeitgeist.

A List

2008-12-11T23:30:00.000-08:00

Ten albums, in order, from 2008.

10: Fucked Up - THE CHEMISTRY OF COMMON LIFE

9: Hercules and Love Affair - HERCULES AND LOVE AFFAIR

8: Willard Grant Conspiracy - PILGRIM ROAD

7: The Mountain Goats - HERETIC PRIDE

6: Death Cab for Cutie - NARROW STAIRS

5: No Age - NOUNS

4: The Hold Steady - STAY POSITIVE

3: Portishead - THIRD

2: Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu - GURRUMUL

1: TV on the Radio - DEAR SCIENCE

Day & Age

2008-11-19T02:33:00.000-08:00

I always wondered how The Killers were so instantly brilliant. Brandon Flowers seemed to be born at his zenith, as if it was a constant state of evangelical fever that owned him. There was no early indie-EP, just a blaze of promotion and pop - as if manufactured at Island HQ.

It's unfair using a word like manufactured when Flowers is so interesting a rock star. Last time he sighted Springsteen for the black and white, fuzzed guitar of Hot Fuss, this time, on Day & Age it's surely The Pet Shop Boys - who for too long have been ignored by indie-scensters who've already gone through the Beach Boys, Depeche Mode and Fugazi.

The opener, Losing Touch, should be a single but won't be. Horns backed by thumping rhythm let Flowers begin with "console me in my darkest hours". It's safe to say his lyrics have rarely made any sense at all but it doesn't matter overly. Lennon and McCartney wrote some truly nonsense words, good pop has never relied on the lyrics but on the hook.

While we're talking hooks it's obvious to consider the lead single - Human. It's cracking radio pop that even manages to apparently reference Hunter S Thompson with it's refrain "are we human or are we dancer". And its bridge is perhaps the most obvious Pet Shop Boys reference across 10 tracks. There's plenty of air in the mix thanks to producer Stuart Price and that allows the psuedo-spiritual Flowers to fill the song.

Elsewhere A Dustland Fairytale shows off a classic Elton John piano ballad resplendent with an actual story - supposedly about Flowers' parents.

I dig The Killers because they're pop, because they're rock and most importantly because they're led by a charismatic rock star who makes it all matter even when it so clearly doesn't.

The Contenders - A List of 2008 albums

2008-11-18T02:17:00.001-08:00

A long-list ahead of the short-list.

Portishead - Third
The Black Keys - Attack and Release
Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs
No Age - Nouns
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu - Gurrumul
Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair
Nine Inch Nails - The Slip
The Dodos - Visiter
Opeth - Watershed
The Donkeys - Living on the Other Side
TV on the Radio - Dear Science
Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
Willard Grant Conspiracy - Pilgrim Road
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
The Lucksmiths - First Frost
Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst
Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer
The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride
You am I - Dilletantes
Augie March - Watch Me Disappear
Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life
The Hold Steady - Stay Positive
Danielson - Trying Hartz

Steve Earle - Live

2008-11-17T03:25:00.001-08:00

Usually I hear an album, love for it is rarely instant. I usually spin it once while wandering aimlessly between the kitchen and my study - the music is in the lounge room.

Four weeks before seeing Earle a friend gave me a copy of his Washington Square Serenade and a bunch of songs tacked on the end of the disc. I ignored it for three weeks then decided I'd best get familiar. It appeared a solid folk-rock album with a dash of country and funk in the catchy and seemingly mindless Satellite Radio.

I heard the LP again on the roadtrip to the gig, set between live Neil Young bootlegs and a dodgy bluegrass compilation. But it didn't register as anything glorious.

Earle walked on to the Enmore Theatre's stage about 9:30. Just a guitar and his greying beard to keep company. And he unleashed a phenomenal canon of songs that ranged from the now spiritual yelp of Satellite Radio to the fever of Transcendental Blues. It's rare for me to be won over by a live performance but Earle was and is undeniable. He is the rare singer-songwriter that plays alone. Too many seeming solo artists seem afraid to play on their own. Maybe they're afraid the songs won't stack up, maybe they know the songs are shit and need the protection of instruments. Earle knows his songs stack up. Part of that comes from playing for decades but it also arrives out of hard work - in every song the 30 songs that didn't make it can be heard.

Pilgrim Road

2008-08-10T20:15:00.000-07:00

The difficulty in leading a 16 piece band is touring.

Robert Fisher of Willard Grant Conspiracy has put up some dates for an Australian tour in late September. The problem it's a solo tour and so much of what makes Pilgrim Road such an astonishing album is the subtle, powerful orchestration. Listen to Vespers' finale or the gentle, awkward squeeze box in The Pugilist and you find hushed rewards.

But I shouldn't complain, Fisher's voice is worth the ticket price alone. As all the magazine critics have already pointed out, Pilgrim Road is the genre's best this year. What frustrates me is the lazy and wrong comparisons to Nick Cave. Fisher's roots lie in a very different place, deep in the heart of the bare-floor boards and picket fences of the South.

Cave seems to owe his influences to things beyond music - most obviously literature. His journey from punk savant to gothic grandeur has been so long and pockmarked by throwback (Grinderman) that it seems to my youthful eyes that Cave's only musical influence is his own artistic journey.

Uncut got it right by declaring Pilgrim Road the Americana album of the month. It's there in the plucked strings of The Great Deceiver and in the softly warbling voice of Iona Macdonald when she backs and then gently pushes past Fisher's baritone.

Certainly Pilgrim Road's ten tracks and 40 minutes have caught me off guard and vulnerable, I'll admit I wanted to fall for it as soon as I read the first glowing review. And so I will take the album inside and now defend it whenever necessary. But even if I hadn't decided to like it before hearing it I dare think Pilgrim Road would be incredibly hard to push away. Just when a moment in a song threatens to drag, to remind you of another song, Fisher allows in a single instrument or voice - crafting a new and entirely honest experience.

Controller

2008-08-06T00:20:00.001-07:00

I came home from Pathology Lab No 2 today and decided it was time to get some work done on the slowly rising pile marked "to review with mild cynicism".

Unfortunately it's just not easy being cynical about Misery Signals. Produced as they are by my university bucket bong buddy Devin Townsend, this third album from the Canucks is pretty fuckin' awesome. And I'd be cheating myself if I didn't admit part of my love was a pure sugar kick from hearing decent metalcore for the first time since Norma Jean's Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child way back in War on Terror Year 2. Not that there's much in common between these two albums. Where Norma Jean wanted to stretch themselves and the listener Misery Signals goes in something of a different way by sticking intently to short sharp bursts.

Coma is a shimmering bit of wonder. Somehow the Townsend production only touches the guitars, leaving screamer Karl Schubach to himself. It makes me feel a bit better about a genre ready to die. I buy-in to the genre, the sub-culture and all of it because of the initial approach, yeah the fashion, yeah sometimes the sound but ultimately because I was always a bit player when it came to my obsessive hardcore and heavy metal buddies. It's the music I'd play if I could play.

Controller isn't the album I'd write but it is a fine riposte to much of the shit pedaled as somehow decent or even "groundbreaking", "massively heavy" and "brutal". And A Certain Death reminds me of the best band I never got obsessive about, Katatonia.

Overboard and Down

2008-07-31T05:31:00.000-07:00

One day I'd been out buying a shovel and a pH testing kit and I heard The President's Dead on the radio. Rapid fire narrative, cheap trick emotions, it has no right to work. But as with most of what Okkervil River offers it works wonderfully.

I only bought the song tonight, tracked it down after months of fitful searches. $10 for a song, well five songs but I was only buying it with certainty for the opening cut. The four others are fine but not as immediate as President with its imagining of Kennedy's head buckling as "black dressed agents" move fast to a dead man. Not that the song is necessarily about Jack, it's more about the phrase "the President's dead' and what happens on the day it's first stuttered and by day's end typed in 72 point print. Will Sheff sings the words forcefully, there is no disbelief in his repetition or his story when he talks about "lying in bed with my girlfriend" until he heard "three words they said, like three shots to my head, the President's dead".

It gives thought as well, in the context of now, to that Obama factoid of his secret service detail being the largest of any nominee.

The first time I heard the song it seemed so much longer than it's 2:42 minutes. Hearing good songs for the first time is always a chance to slow the space time continuum, to catch breath and always to go to another place. To remove myself from the worry of having spent too much on my steel shovel, to ignore the fucking idiot refusing to use indicators when changing lanes on the Parkway, to smile.

Live From a Shark Cage

2008-07-29T18:35:00.000-07:00

Papa M’s Live From a Shark Cage is playing at the other end of the house.
I’m lying in bed listening to the beeping of a blood pressure monitor, waiting for the spearing pain to start so I can note it on a chart for the doctor.
Earlier today the X-ray beams of The CT scanner punched through my head, the whiring medical machine dissecting a brain in pain.

I’ve been listening to old music lately. Not for sentimentality and not because there is nothing that inspires in 2008. Simply because it’s worth returning, worth re-comprehending why certain songs make me feel. Much music nowadays makes me feel nothing. When I’m in the gym the confected rage of my youth doesn’t boil over during 104 point whatever’s ad free 50, anyhow I have a soft spot for Coldplay. When my girlfriend surfs through the four commercial radio stations here it pisses me off because I can’t hear a full song, not because all the songs I hear are shit.

So when a song does prick the emotional conscience it does it in a tremendous way. Pajo’s Crowd of One did it to me after coming home this morning. It’s buzzing angst was most likely nailed as pre-millennial tension originally, for me it worked just as well in feeding my “there’s no need to worry anxiousnees”. Confused, telephoned voices blip in and out while Pajo mumbles with his guitar.

Then there's the first voice: "we're calling to give you the day for the test, can you give us a call at 75-803-90 and we'll let you know the day".

Calenture

2008-07-25T20:13:00.000-07:00

The latest in a growing list of reissues for The Triffids, it was obvious that Calenture, more than any other of the West Australian band's works, would benefit immensely from box-setting, remastering, glossing up.

Bury Me Deep In Love somehow appears thicker, if possible more enveloping and Kelly's Blues is wilder, more forlorn.

But 21 years on what remains is Dave McComb's songwriting. I've been partial to Unmade Love for a little while now. McComb's ability to walk between esoteric and poetic is singular and what initially drew me in. It's only one thing that keeps me listening. Listen again to this song and hear the occasional caterwauling in the background, the reverb on McComb's voice and the distant organ aching. All this works against the screwed tight drumming with McComb: "I'm not getting any stronger, just let me sleep a little longer" telling us his destiny.

It's a welcome delight to see The Panics and others willingly embracing a legacy of literature and song and making music that is peculiar to the land of the Nullarbor and the Earth's most isolated capital.