All posts tagged 2012

  • October 5, 2012

    The Weekend Australian album reviews, September 2012: The Presets, We All Want To, Sugar Army

    Three album reviews for The Weekend Australian, published in September. The first is a feature review of 490 words; the other two are regular 260-worders.

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    The Presets – Pacifica

    Four years between albums is plenty of time for younger competitors to snatch the crown from Australia’s electronic music kings.

    The Presets’ top spot was earned after 2008’s Apocalypso, which spawned multi-platinum sales, ARIA awards and one world-conquering single in ‘My People’.

    Now in their mid-30s, Sydney-based Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes have exchanged nightclubs for parenthood. One may assume they’ve lost touch with the culture that spawned this synth-and-drums duo and their stunning 2005 debut, Beams.

    All doubts are vanquished within the first few bars of the first single, ‘Youth in Trouble’. The six-minute track is built on an insistent bass pattern, on top of which Hamilton – in typical piss-taking vocal style – parodies the media-led hand-wringing on behalf of Australian parents.

    “Up out all night in bright-lit wonderland . . . With a music taste abominable / Man, I’m worried sick for youth in trouble.” The layered irony is wonderful: moments later, the track fills with the kind of electronic noise and subterranean bass that’d piss off parents when played loud. As it should be.

    This track is a departure from the clear, concise vocal hooks that have characterised the Presets’ past hits. It’s a perfect album opener because Pacifica bears little resemblance to their previous two releases. These 10 tracks are more electronica than dance music; to use an obvious party-drug analogy, it’s more 5am comedown than 1am peak. At first, Pacifica‘s incongruity is a tough pill to swallow.

    The lack of obvious singles is troubling — the sea-shanty-like ‘Ghosts’ is the most accessible track here — as is the apparent dearth of vocal and melodic hooks. This jars with popular understanding of who the Presets are, and what they represent. It takes me about six listens to accept this record for what it is, not what it could have been if they had continued to follow their own songwriting formula. Impatient, dismissive fans will miss out on the Presets’ most accomplished and mature album yet.

    Pacifica sees the pair bower-birding from a wide range of aural sources: shades of dance titans Underworld and Sonicanimation are occasionally detectable, as well as more modern electronic acts such as Crystal Castles and the Knife.

    The latter influence is particularly strong in track seven, ‘Adults Only’, which sees Hamilton pitch-shifting his vocals to a deep tone, as if trying to obscure his identity. This song is the album’s emotional and artistic peak; a punishing acid-house pastiche led by stuttering, hornet-swarm synths.

    Inspired by John Birmingham’s Leviathan, Hamilton’s dark lyrics take in Sydney’s murderous past and uncertain future: “Children don’t you know that we’re living in a city that’s built on bones?” he sings in the chorus; later, he mentions frail old ladies dying afraid and alone while surrounded by yuppies, small bars and coke.

    Ultimately, Pacifica is the sound of two men who understand Australian pop culture better than anyone. ‘Zeitgeist’ is a dirty word, but there’s no doubt the Presets have produced a record that sounds simultaneously of-the-moment and futuristic. The crown remains intact.

    LABEL: Modular/UMA
    RATING: 4 stars

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    We All Want To – Come Up Invisible

    This is a messy album in the best way possible. The music created by Brisbane four-piece We All Want To swings back and forth between charming indie pop and rock with jagged edges.

    Led by a pair of singer-guitarists in Tim Steward – who also fronted 90s-era Brisbane noise-pop act Screamfeeder — and Skye Staniford, the interplay between the two is the chief highlight here. Both are accomplished writers with a knack for clever wordplay and memorable melodies.

    They opt for some artistic decisions that simply wouldn’t work in less capable hands – like opening the album with a sprawling, seven-minute track that features an off-key recorder solo — yet these four pull off such curiosities with style. The band’s self-titled debut, released in 2010, was a solid set containing a pair of stand-outs in ‘Japan’ and ‘Back to the Car’.

    It’s a similar story here: special mentions belong to Steward’s compelling, life-spanning narrative in ‘Where Sleeping Ends’; and ‘Shine’ by Staniford, which begins with subdued instrumentation and ends with a whirlwind of beautiful harmonies. There are no ongoing lyrical themes to speak of, nor is there much sense of cohesion between these 11 tracks, but these absences don’t matter: there’s not a weak track here. This collection is accomplished, unpretentious and unassuming.

    We All Want To is no spring chicken. Steward has been playing live for more than two decades and this is the 11th album he has been involved in. Come Up Invisible is a nod to the virtues of banking on earned musical wisdom and experience.

    LABEL: Plus One Records
    RATING: 3 ½ stars

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    Sugar Army – Summertime Heavy

    Through change comes artistic progress. On its second album, Perth-based rock act Sugar Army has streamlined the sound out of necessity: the band’s bassist joined fellow Perth group Birds of Tokyo, reducing the quartet to a trio.

    Yet this departure has helped to hone Summertime Heavy into a set of compact, driving rock songs. Sugar Army’s 2009 debut, The Parallels Amongst Ourselves, was memorable but a touch overlong; half the tracks were great, the others less so.

    Here, the band has scaled back the atmospheric production in favour of muscular songwriting, and the results are impressive. Sugar Army’s sound evokes Los Angeles act Silversun Pickups in that the guitar phrasing, bass lines and drumbeats are all independently interesting.

    This clever musical interplay, coupled with Patrick Mclaughlin’s distinctive voice, ensures they’re a near-perfect unit. Mclaughlin has a unique turn of phrase, too: “Once the mind’s made up / Nothing comes in, and nobody gets out”, he sings in ‘Small Town Charm’, which nails the realities of some regional mentalities.

    In standout album closer ‘Brazen Young’ he continues his fascination with female-led narratives first noted on their debut. These are lean, well-written songs delivered forcefully and urgently.

    The band is versatile, too: the title track is built around a pretty acoustic guitar progression and a chanted motif (“Summertime heavy is taking its toll”), while the appearance of a wood block in ‘Hearts Content’ is both unexpected and welcome. As the Go-Betweens’ Robert Forster has said, the three-piece band is the purest form of rock ‘n’ roll expression. That holds true here.

    LABEL: Permanent Records
    RATING: 3 ½ stars

    No Comments / Music Criticism, Published Writing /

  • August 8, 2012

    Freelance journalism presentation at Walkley MediaPass student industry day, August 2012

    I was invited by the Walkley Foundation to speak at the Brisbane leg of their annual MediaPass student industry days, which are held at capital cities across Australia. The brief was thus:

    Surviving and Thriving as a Freelancer

    Find out how to pitch a story, network and negotiate contracts. Featuring:
    [from left to right, below]

    Before an audience of around 40 final-year journalism students at the Brisbane Powerhouse, we each gave a five minute presentation and then fielded questions from the audience for the remaining half-hour. I spoke on the topic of ‘twelve points for all beginner freelancers to keep in mind’.

    My presentation is embedded below. Click here to watch on YouTube. (Apologies for the footage being off-centre.) I’ve also included the text of my talk underneath.

    Twelve points for all beginner freelancers to keep in mind

    1. Freelancing, at its heart, is really just hustling. It’s learning how to support yourself through persistence, energy and ingenuity. That’s all. Learn how to hustle and you’re set. The only problem is that it takes years to learn how to hustle consistently.

    2.When you start freelancing, the learning curve is steep. You’re fighting against the world; fighting to be heard, fighting to get your name recognised, fighting to get paid. You probably won’t make enough money to pay your rent in the first year, which is why you should do other work on the side until you’re ready to freelance full-time.

    3. But eventually – perhaps years later – it becomes less of a fight. You learn to glide through the world rather than struggling against it. You see things differently, with wiser eyes. You can dip in and out of conversations, projects, and work relationships with much less friction, because there’s much less to lose. You have less to prove, because you’ve already proven yourself to some extent.

    4. There’s a lot to be said for starting slow, though, and at the bottom. For example, I wrote for street press, essentially without being paid, for nearly two years before I decided that writing and journalism was what I really wanted to do. From there, it was a slow process of me working out how to get paid for what I really wanted to do.

    5. Find your gap in the market, but be patient. After doing freelance journalism for a few years, I eventually realised that my gap is to read between the lines and write about what others aren’t. That’s when I’m happiest. That’s not to say that all of my writing consists of that kind of work. I’d say less than half of my income comes from writing those kinds of investigative feature stories. It’s worth pointing out that I only had this realisation in the last 12 months, too.

    6. I definitely didn’t know my gap in the market when I started freelancing. In fact I had very little idea of what I was doing when I started freelancing. I just did it. I followed my interests, and my instincts, and kept knocking on doors. Some opened, some remained closed. When I started freelancing, music journalism was the only kind I did. Gradually, other interests took hold, and now music is one of many topics that I write about. I’d likely never have found these other interests, or that I could write about them, unless I’d started with music, though. So don’t be afraid to specialise early. You never know where your career will lead if you just keep at it.

    7. Hunger can’t be learned, only encouraged. You, and you alone, must be hungry enough to want to succeed. This is an inbuilt character trait, I believe – you can’t be taught to be hungry. You’ve got to be serious, and dedicate yourself to your work, if you want to succeed at freelancing.

    8. Your professional reputation is everything. Guard it with your life. Act with integrity at all times. Don’t do things in private that you wouldn’t be comfortable with, if it became public.

    9. Make a list of the best practitioners in your field; your favourites. Consume their work over and over. Work out why you like them and what they do that appeals to you. Then think about how you can put an original spin on their approach, or their approaches. It’ll take you a while to find your style and voice in any creative medium – writing, photography, comedy, illustrations. Don’t rush it. I’m not even sure if you can rush it, anyway. It’s a process that can’t be short-cut.

    10. Surround yourself with allies. Not necessarily other freelancers. Not necessarily people working in the same field as you. But you should start building up a support network, and regularly keep in touch with as many of those people as you can, because some of your best work will arise from one-off meetings or incidental friendships. Allies are important because freelancing is generally a solitary activity. Everyone needs to communicate with others at some stage. Best to start early.

    11. Be wary of anyone who glamourises the so-called “freelance lifestyle”. Most of freelancing is incredibly mundane. Seriously. Most of my days are spent alone at the computer. Some weeks I don’t even leave the house during my workdays. But there are definitely occasional glimmers of awesomeness that remind you why you’re doing this, and why you love it. Don’t get me wrong, freelancing is great, but to a certain extent it’s a job just like any other. There will be days when you won’t want to do any work. However, if you can push yourself to work even on those shitty days, you’ll eventually be a great freelancer.

    12. Don’t talk so much online. Just do good work, make meaningful connections, and be pleasant to everyone you meet behind the scenes. Try not to buy too much into meaningless talk-fests on Twitter and Facebook. Ultimately, you are the only person standing between success and failure. While you’re tweeting away your workdays, your freelance competition is quietly beating you. Don’t give them the chance.

    Elsewhere: I participated in the freelance panel at the Walkley Foundation’s last MediaPass student day in September 2011, too. Footage and text here.

    1 Comment / Public Speaking, Writing /

  • August 7, 2012

    Rolling Stone album review: Die! Die! Die! – ‘Harmony’, August 2012

    An album review for Rolling Stone, published in the September 2012 issue.

    Die! Die! Die! – Harmony 
    (Inertia)

    Kiwis hone their brand of noise-punk to a sharp edge

    Since forming in 2003, this Dunedin noise-punk trio has gone from strength to strength. Their last album, Form – released in 2010 on Flying Nun Records – was a muscular mix of rock aggression and pop smarts. Die! Die! Die!’s fourth LP, Harmony, is another leap forward, and their finest work yet. The formula is simple – guitar, bass, drums and vocals – yet these three continue to make thrilling new breakthroughs. Their career represents an ongoing tug-of-war between noise and melody, and on Harmony they excel once again: a pair of slower, melancholy tracks contrasts well against the gripping flurry and bluster of the remaining eight songs. Highly recommended.

    Key tracks: “Erase Waves”, “Seasons Revenge”

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    Elsewhere: an interview with Die! Die! Die! singer/guitarist Andrew Wilson for The Vine in 2010

    Elsewhere: a review of Die! Die! Die!’s 2010 album, Form, for The Vine 

    No Comments / Music Criticism, Published Writing /

  • August 7, 2012

    The Weekend Australian album review: Dappled Cities – ‘Lake Air’, August 2012

    An album review for The Weekend Australian, published on August 11.

    Dappled Cities – Lake Air

    Four albums into a career that blossomed with the release of second LP Granddance in 2006, Sydney quintet Dappled Cities here present their most accomplished collection. Granddance brought the band into the national consciousness via a string of outstanding singles; Lake Air is a complete work, one so good it deserves to take Dappled Cities much further.

    This is indie pop at its best: an extension of the songwriting heard on 2009’s Zounds, yet twice as remarkable in every way. Dappled Cities opt for a lean 10 tracks, 42 minutes’ worth, and not a moment is wasted. The first six tracks – bookended by singles ‘Run with the Wind’ and ‘Born at the Right Time’ – are of such a high quality that the remaining four sound merely good in comparison.

    Lake Air is the sound of a band at the peak of its creative powers. Instrumentally, lyrically and melodically, this album is one of the best you’ll hear all year. There are many moments of pure pop joy, yet these are tempered by a subtlety and nuance that eludes many of their peers.

    The title track is masterful: underscored by a chorus wherein dual vocalists Tim Derricourt and Dave Rennick sing in uncharacteristically low tones. Both of them usually prefer higher registers. It’s the best single song they’ve recorded. Penultimate track ‘Waves’ is a sparse piano-and-vocals affair that sticks out like a sore thumb yet also acts as a contrasting reminder that Lake Air is, at its heart, a stunning set of songs. It’s an inspired release from one of Australia’s best pop bands. They’re only getting better.

    LABEL: Hub/Inertia
    RATING: 4 ½ stars

    No Comments / Music Criticism, Published Writing /

  • August 3, 2012

    The Vine travel story: ‘A look inside Tavarua Island Resort, Fiji’, July 2012

    A travel story for The Vine. Excerpt below; click the photo for a link to the full article.

    A look inside Tavarua Island Resort, Fiji

    Is it possible to inhale too much fresh air? Visitors to the heart-shaped island of Tavarua are better placed than most to address that question. Located six nautical miles off the western side of Fiji mainland Viti Levu, the island is surrounded by stunning ocean vistas; like fire-gazing, there’s something primal about staring out at waves breaking upon a coral reef. It’s the sort of endlessly appealing visual stimulus that washes away the daily minutiae of anxieties and responsibilities. One’s mindset shifts readily into ignorant bliss. Once you’re here, there seem very few good reasons to leave.

    Tavarua Island Resort is exclusive: the presence of 38 adult guests mean that its 16 beach huts – in Fijian, known as ‘bures’ – are full, though there’s usually a handful of children bumping up the numbers. All of the huts are within 20 steps of the sand, and feature two double beds (and one single), air conditioning, a front balcony, and hot showers. They’re comfortable and cosy, yet outside of sleeping hours, you probably won’t be spending much time here.

    The island’s main attraction is its waves: more specifically, ‘Cloudbreak’, which is said to be one of the finest left-hand breaks in the world. My partner and I view it from a safe distance one afternoon, while a few brave souls tear into the muscular waterwall. At low tide, it breaks right onto a razor-sharp coral reef. To non-surfers like ourselves, it seems the very definition of madness to attempt to master such an awesome force. Yet this is the central appeal of wave riding, of course: to attempt the improbable, in the hope of emerging with glory and life intact.

    For the surf-averse among us, the island presents a wealth of attractions. The snorkelling on offer is truly extraordinary; a sight which must be seen to be believed. The sheer variety of colour, movement and species that can be witnessed within a couple of metres of Tavarua’s surrounding reef had us returning on a daily basis. Kayaking, stand-up paddle-boarding and fishing are popular, too. The latter involves heading out past Cloudbreak in a boat skippered by an island staffer and trolling back and forth in the deep water, through flocks of diving sea birds, while lures trail a hundred metres behind the boat. It’s certainly the least interactive form of fishing I’ve ever partaken in – ‘set it and forget it’, indeed – yet this method landed us two impressive tuna in our hour on the water: one skipjack, and one 16-pound yellow-fin.

    All meals are served buffet-style from a central restaurant which overlooks a gorgeous swimming pool and, out on the edge of the reef, a surf break aptly named ‘Restaurants’. This is the island’s common area, and with no other culinary options on offer, you’d be foolish to miss the thrice-daily meals. Herein lies our one and only gripe: this monopoly on our stomachs breeds laziness in the catering staff, as we must eat what they produce. All of the meals we ate were serviceable, but none were remarkable. The finest thing I ate on Tavarua was fresh yellow-fin sashimi: a dish which requires no further kitchen preparation than skilled slicing. It’s obvious that the restaurant holds no five-star ambitions, yet we occasionally found ourselves eating only because the alternative was to starve. And in such an idyllic locale, that’d be a true tragedy.

    For the full story, visit The Vine. Above photo credit: Andrew McMillen.

    No Comments / Published Writing, Travel Writing /

  • August 3, 2012

    The Weekend Australian album review: Jonathan Boulet – ‘We Keep The Beat…’, July 2012

    An album review for The Weekend Australian published on July 21.

    Jonathan Boulet – We Keep the Beat, Found the Sound, See the Need, Start the Heart

    The young man at the heart of this band has been worth watching since he emerged in late 2009. Jonathan Boulet’s self-titled, self-recorded, self-produced debut was bursting at the seams with ideas (he played all the instruments and sang, too.) Boulet’s songwriting didn’t always hit the mark, but he certainly showed promise.

    His other band, Parades – wherein Boulet plays drums – released one of 2010’s finest pop albums in Foreign Tapes. Now three years wiser, Boulet has enlisted four friends to fill out the band full time for album No 2, and the result is a much stronger collection of songs. In fact, barring the forgettable eight-minute a cappella closer ‘Cent Voix’, there’s not a bad song.

    Drums and multi-tracked vocal harmonies are central in the mix. Around these two elements, Boulet and co intersperse glockenspiel, flute, marimba, guitars, handclaps and (probably) more. Lyrically, there’s little of note: he seems to consider words far less important than melody.

    It is pop music, though, and with We Keep the Beat Boulet proves himself as a versatile leader of the genre. None of it feels forced. Each track bears a distinctive style and instrumentation, yet the album fits together snugly. This release has fun written all over it, from the ridiculously over-long album title (how many times do you think his label asked him to reconsider?) to the music itself.

    The band’s vitality is contagious: one imagines these choruses exploding with energy in a live setting, auxiliary percussion and multi-part harmonies filling the room (or festival tent).

    LABEL: Modular
    RATING: 3 ½ stars

    No Comments / Music Criticism, Published Writing /

  • June 29, 2012

    The Weekend Australian album reviews, June 2012: Silversun Pickups, Joe McKee, Def Wish Cast, Rainman

    Four album reviews for The Weekend Australian, all published in June 2012.

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    Silversun Pickups – Neck Of The Woods

    Where many rock bands fail, Silversun Pickups succeed: through effective use of space, volume, melody and harmony, this Los Angeles quartet conjures unique emotions within the listener that make the timeworn combination of guitars, bass, drums and vocals seem fresh.

    The dream pop and shoegaze elements of their sound are most notable in Brian Aubert’s swirling vocals and the waves of distorted guitars that appear in each of these 11 tracks, yet Chris Guanlao’s drumming deserves special mention.

    Coming up with original and compelling rock drumbeats is equally as hard as the task that lyricists face in search of themes and melodies, yet both Guanlao and Aubert come up trumps on Neck of the Woods.

    Perhaps the most striking aspect of Silversun Pickups, though, is that the quality of their output is improving as they age. This album, their third, follows a good 2006 debut in Carnavas and a stronger follow-up in 2009’s Swoon.

    This is remarkable when you consider how many rock bands sprint out of the blocks with a remarkable debut and watch their credibility and fan base wane with each subsequent release.

    Not these four: they’re versatile enough to do high-BPM, hard-edged tracks such as ‘Mean Spirits’, right after an elegant slow-burner such as ‘Here We Are (Chancer)’, and clever enough to lace both performance styles with drama and a sense of urgency.

    It’s quite a talent that they exhibit. Credit songwriting and production, the latter courtesy of U2 and R.E.M. associate Jacknife Lee, in equal parts.

    Label: Warner
    Rating: 4 stars

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    Joe McKee – Burning Boy

    These 10 sparsely adorned songs represent a significant shift for Perth-based songwriter Joe McKee, who fronted the West Australian quartet Snowman for eight years until their amicable split in 2011.

    Snowman were among the darkest, scariest acts to lurk at the fringes of Australian indie rock: though they crisscrossed the nation dozens of times, garnered occasional Triple J airplay and toured as part of the biggest festivals, their gloomy, confronting style ensured many chose to overlook their three (excellent) albums.

    Burning Boy, McKee’s solo debut, is a much gentler affair. His deep voice, surprisingly, is front and centre: McKee favoured higher-pitched shrieks and yells on most Snowman tracks. It’s a nice change.

    Stylistically, Burning Boy bears similarities to Adalita Srsen’s debut album, Adalita, released last year: Srsen, too, chose to step away from the noise and bluster of her rock band Magic Dirt, and the result was a beautiful collection of songs that featured little more than voice and six-string. Here, McKee opts to linger over syllables in that hypnotising baritone, while finger-picked guitar and atmospheric string arrangements drift in and out of focus.

    These are delicate songs of introspection, marked by occasional bursts of energy: bass, drums and an electric guitar interject toward the end of ‘An Open Mine’, while pulsing standout ‘A Double Life’ could well be a Snowman b-side.

    McKee’s noted fondness for looped vocal motifs appear in ‘Golden Guilt’; his command of clever wordplay is best exemplified in album opener ‘Lunar Sea’ (“Am I sinking deeper / Down into the lunacy?”). An absorbing and accomplished debut.

    Label: Dot Dash/Remote Control
    Rating: 4 stars

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    Def Wish Cast – Evolution Machine

    What we now take for granted once existed only on the fringes of popular music.

    Australian hip-hop has enjoyed a healthy ascent in the past two decades, and a Sydney crew named Def Wish Cast was instrumental in establishing the art form locally with its 1993 debut album, Knights of the Underground Table.

    Almost 20 years later it returns with third LP Evolution Machine. A lot has changed within the genre: hip-hop acts now jostle with rock and pop bands for festival headline slots.

    The stakes are higher; tastes more discerning. Evolution Machine is a good album, but given the popularity of this sound nowadays it’s much tougher to impress the listener. Def Wish Cast — comprising three MCs in Die C, Sereck and Def Wish, plus DJ Murda One — has enlisted a wide range of producers, but the result is an uneven mix.

    Evolution Machine comprises 11 tracks (plus two short interstitials) and almost as many producers, including acclaimed names such as Plutonic Lab, Katalyst and M-Phazes. The Resin Dogs-produced first single ‘Dun Proppa’ is pure fire; so too ‘I Can’t Believe It’, a loving ode to the genre built on the album’s best beat.

    The three MCs exhibit strong wordplay and distinctive voices, particularly Def Wish, whose rapid-fire lyricism is a consistent highlight.

    There’s a wealth of ideas here, and many of them work, but the lack of cohesion gives the impression that these tracks were assembled in disparate home studios. Though the hip-hop crown has been usurped by younger peers, Evolution Machine is a fine addition to Def Wish Cast’s too-short discography.

    Rating: 3 stars
    Label: Creative Vibes

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    Rainman – Bigger Pictures

    Too often, young Australian rappers fall into the same lyrical pitfall: with little life experience to speak of, they instead take the dubious advice of “write what you know” too literally by couching their artistry in recording alcohol and drug-fuelled tales ad nauseam.

    On his second album, Brisbane MC Rainman – real name Ray Bourne – treads a fine line between making those mistakes and breaking new narrative ground.

    ‘Big Night’ is a by-the-numbers take on the aforementioned hedonistic tropes; ‘The Valley’ is centred on the Queensland capital’s nightclub district (“A happy home that you might find violence in/ You might find your future wife in the Night Owl line”).

    Yet, to his credit, Rainman uses ironic distance and sober observation in the latter track rather than glamorising the suburb and its characters.

    It’s a refreshing change and a sign of Bourne’s maturity. His vocal delivery is eerily similar to that of his one-time mentor Urthboy, of Sydney band the Herd. As with that MC, Rainman’s calm, measured tones work well in both chorus and verse.

    The beats on Bigger Pictures‘ 15 tracks are uniformly excellent: credits are split between seven producers, including the MC himself.

    Bourne is superlative when writing about weightier matters: on penultimate track ‘Too Much’ he snipes at his generation’s indifference to the ills of mass media (“They keep it simple so that we can remember/ A little grab that sounds like an ad/ But don’t get apathetic, motherf . . ker, get mad”); in ‘The Bigger Picture’, his introspective narrative ends an impressive album on a high note.

    LABEL: Born Fresh/Obese
    RATING: 4 stars

    No Comments / Music Criticism, Published Writing /

  • May 29, 2012

    Mess+Noise Storytellers interview: Shihad – ‘Deb’s Night Out’ and ‘Home Again’, May 2012

    An interview for the Mess+Noise ‘Storytellers’ series. Excerpt below.

    Storytellers: Shihad’s Jon Toogood

    As part of our occasional Storytellers series and to coincide with the release of a new career-spanning documentary, ANDREW MCMILLEN talks to Shihad’s Jon Toogood about two tracks from their back catalogue: an unheralded gem from the mid-1990s and the most popular song they’ve written to date.

    Shihad, one of New Zealand’s longest-running bands, have enjoyed a healthy career marked by experimentation. Now based in Melbourne, they’ve moved from industrial metal (1993 debut Churn) to include elements of pop and electronica (1996’s Shihad, 2008’s Beautiful Machine) while maintaining a central obsession with guitar-heavy rock music, as best exemplified on 1999’s The General Electric.

    I met with singer Jon Toogood [pictured above, far right] upstairs at Brisbane venue Black Bear Lodge – he was in town playing shows with new outfit The Adults – to discuss two Shihad songs in-depth: ‘Deb’s Night Out’ from 1995’s nine-song Killjoy; and ‘Home Again’, the first track from the self-titled album that followed a year later. Much has been written about how much energy Toogood exhibits when fronting Shihad on stage, and the same remains true when he’s engaged in conversation.

    ‘Deb’s Night Out’

    Andrew: I want to start with ‘Deb’s Night Out’. This song sticks out like a bit of a sore thumb, not only on that record but across your whole catalogue.

    Jon: Musically, it was very, very heavily influenced by Skeptics, who we were listening to a lot at the time. They’re a New Zealand Flying Nun band, who were quite different again from the Flying Nun crew in the fact that they weren’t using guitars. It was a lot of sample-based shit, a lot of keyboards. They used Euphonics, or E-Sonics … Some fucking early sampler. They just sounded fucking unusual but they also had this edge … [that was] quite majestic, melodically. Hard to explain. Really beautiful, but really weird.

    Anyway, we were listening to them a lot at that point. Phil [Knight, guitarist] wrote the loop the whole song’s based around, that thing that starts the whole song. That’s Phil on a sampler doing that. When he played it to me I was like, “Whoa, it’s really beautiful.” Then we wrote a bass line and then it was like, “Wow, that’s cool,” and then I just wrote a little poem over the top which was about a friend of my ex-wife’s who was a heroin addict. She came around to our house one night, in Wellington. At that point our daughter was one-year-old. She was asleep in the bedroom and her friend came around and was asking for money. We sort of chilled her out and then we ended up playing games, like Monopoly, but she was cheating. She also tried to steal some money so I actually said, “You – get the fuck out!” And it was pissing down with rain. So that’s where that song began.

    It’s a pretty relaxed instrumental, paired with lyrics that describe a dark tale of a relationship dissolving.

    It’s a song about disappointment, and a friend, really. She was more a friend of my ex-wife’s rather than mine. Oh, it was just the classic junkie thing. She was high; just never trust a junkie, really. She didn’t do anything to dispel that myth, or that cliche. She lived up to it. It was like, “Oh, that’s really disappointing”. I was a bit younger, so I learned, “Right, that’s actually how that drug works.” It was one of my earlier experiences with it. It was before Gerald [Dwyer], our manager, ended up dying of a morphine overdose.

    I didn’t know that.

    That happened after Killjoy [1995] and before the fish album [Shihad, 1996], which is probably a reason why the fish album is all over the place. Our heads were all over the place because we’d lost our manager.

    Was that in New Zealand?

    It was at the Big Day Out in Auckland. He managed us and another band called Head Like A Hole and we both had really blinding sets. We had seen him in the day; he was backstage and he’d rubbed his nose raw … because when he was on heroin, he’d scratch … The last thing I remember, it was really tragic, us all going [at the BDO], “You look a fucking mess, man. Get the fuck out of here! What the fuck are you doing?” He’s like, “There’s nothing wrong with me.” He went back to the hotel between our sets: we were on the main stage earlier, and Head Like A Hole were on the third stage later. He went back and had a hit, and it was really strong and he died. There was no one there at the hotel to help wake him up. By the time we’d got back to the hotel, someone knocked on his door, and then got it open, and he was dead on the floor. We thought it might have just happened, or something like that. But, yeah, he’d been dead for hours.

    Did you know that he had a problem like that?

    We knew that he used recreationally. But he had cleaned himself up for a while, and I think that’s what fucking killed him. Because he’d cleaned himself up for a while and then got some really pure morphine and basically decided to hit up what he used to do when he was using it more regularly – which kills a lot of people, anyway. There was no one there go to, “Hey, wake up.”

    So, ‘Deb’s Night Out’; how soon after that night did you write that song?

    Pretty much straight away, the day after. It was like – bam. [Guitarist] Phil [Knight] had given me that bit of music … It sounded like the feeling that I had, sort of bittersweet. Just sad, you know? And it was good timing. “Here you go Jon, I’ve got this music.” Great … We recorded it at York Street [Studios, Auckland], and we’d wanted it to be a loop rather than a live drum track. At that stage, as well, the studio was still new to us so everything was recorded to a two-inch tape. Before we were using ProTools properly, we went, “Oh fuck it, we’ll just cut a loop of Tom [Larkin] drumming.” So we actually cut it, had the splice going and we had to hold a drum stick in place [so that it could loop continuously] because there was only a small bit of tape. That’s why it’s got this weird skip in it, because it’s not quite perfect.

    That’s another cute thing I remember about that track. I remember laying down those keyboards right at the end, because it was always just one loop. I thought after that last line, “Pray for the rain/To wash you far away”, it needed to “rain”, musically. That’s the most Skeptics-y part, that whole [sings descending chord progression aloud]. It’s that sort of anthemic thing that the Skeptics did, but with keyboards.

    Did you ever see Deb again?

    Actually, I probably did see her once or twice, but nothing too deep. She probably was a little bit scared of me once we kicked her out.

    Does she know you wrote a song about her?

    I don’t care! [Laughs] I don’t even know if she’s still alive.

    At what point did you show your partner the song?

    At what point did I show my ex-wife? I remember her being around while we were recording it in Auckland. She would have known what it was about. [Pause] I’m always a bit cagey with lyrics, even with the people who are close to me – even with guys in the band. They’re real personal and I was always real … I don’t want people to not like them, so I keep them to myself until the very moment where I can’t hide them anymore, because we’re releasing the fucking record. Which is probably why I’m so fucking overly sensitive to bad reviews! [Laughs] Because I live in denial all the time! [Laughs] I am getting better at it. I am getting better at going, “Oh, fuck it. I’ve been doing it 22 years, this is the idea I’ve got, boom.” But around that, I was, what, 26 when I wrote that? Still very, very uptight.

    For the full interview, including questions about the classic Shihad track ‘Home Again’, visit Mess+Noise.

    Speaking with Jon about these tracks in September 2011 was a huge thrill for me, as I’ve long loved Shihad; my overall Last.FM charts show that I’ve listened to that band more than any other since I joined Last.FM in October 2004.

    The music video for ‘Deb’s Night Out‘ is embedded below.

    No Comments / Music Journalism, Published Writing /

  • April 27, 2012

    The Weekend Australian book review: ‘Jacked: The Unauthorised Behind-the-Scenes Story of Grand Theft Auto’ by David Kushner, April 2012

    A book review for The Weekend Australian, published on April 14 2012. The review appears below in its entirety.

    Grand Theft Auto’s makers are rock stars in a world of geeks
    by Andrew McMillen

    Jacked: The Unauthorised Behind-the-Scenes Story of Grand Theft Auto
    By David Kushner
    HarperCollins, 368pp, $29.99

    ‘GRAND Theft Auto revolutionised an industry, defined one generation, and pissed off another, transforming a medium long thought of as kids’ stuff into something culturally relevant, darkly funny, and wildly free,” David Kushner writes in his second video game-themed book.

    His first was Masters of Doom in 2003, which looked at Nazi and demon-shooting games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake.

    Here, Kushner focuses on the GTA series, which casts players “at the centre of their own criminal universe”, to quote the game’s Scottish creator, Sam Houser. Since its 1997 debut, GTA has courted controversy by allowing players to do whatever they please. Originally set in an urban environment viewed from above, the concept moved into three dimensions in 2001 with the release of GTA III on the Sony PlayStation 2. This proved to be the franchise’s breakthrough: from a camera positioned a few metres over the shoulder of the player-controlled character, gamers could follow the laws of the game world – which mirrored real life – if they so pleased.

    Nobody did that for more than a few moments, though, because breaking the law was much more enjoyable: stealing vehicles, running down pedestrians, firing weapons into crowds of people, leading the police on elaborate cross-country car chases after gunning down officers in cold blood. The series has sold more than 130 million copies worldwide; four GTA games have been banned or censored in Australia at some point.

    All the things you’d never do in real life, GTA made possible. Kushner describes it as a “brilliantly open world to explore”, where unlike other, comparatively plain video games, “there was no high score to hit or princess to be saved”. Jacked – a title that refers to the in-game ability to carjack – charts the evolution of the team behind the initial game through to their rebranding as Rockstar Games, which is one of the most respected names in the industry. It also examines the shockwaves that GTA’s law-defying gameplay sent through Western culture.

    “It’s hard to understand those who came of age at the turn of the millennium without understanding GTA,” Kushner writes.

    I was nine when I played the first game and 16 when I bought GTA: San Andreas on release in 2004. I’ve invested thousands of hours into exploring intricately detailed virtual re-creations of Miami, Las Vegas, New York and Los Angeles. It’s evident that Kushner, too, is a big fan, despite his preference for a dispassionate, omnipresent style of narrative nonfiction.

    Though the author has spoken at length with seemingly everyone who had anything to do with the games, many of his book’s significant scenes are exaggerated for dramatic purposes. Although they took place in reality, Kushner’s poetic licence is occasionally jarring.

    In this example, Kushner writes from the perspective of a Miami attorney named Jack Thompson, who became one of GTA’s most strident critics and opponents (before being disbarred for professional misconduct):

    “Thompson examined the video game box in his hand. The cover was broken into frames like a comic book — flaming cars, a girl in a pink bikini, a black guy with a big gold chain and a gun. He eyed the tiny little logo in the bottom-right corner, the yellow square with the letter R and the star. Rockstar Games? Get ready to be Jacked.”

    The narrative doesn’t benefit from these attempted flights of fancy, nor do we need Kushner’s frequent, tacky reminders that the members of the development team at Rockstar were, in fact, rock stars in an industry established by geeks. “Part of what we’re trying to get away from is the lone, girlfriendless, pizza-ordering fat guy in the basement,” GTA’s marketing director says at one point.

    Yet Rockstar Games is portrayed as a company full of narcissistic, arrogant wankers. Houser modelled the company on his favourite music label, Def Jam Records. He sold T-shirts and stickers bearing the studio’s name. His employees exhibited behaviour somewhere between extreme devotion and cult-like worship: they wore branded tracksuits and military jackets at industry trade shows; they’d shave their heads during “crunch” time in the lead-up to a game’s release.

    When it came to the media, “ego trumped economics”: the PR team would abuse publications for awarding GTA games anything less than perfect scores, and threaten to pull ads.

    These insights into Rockstar’s inner workings are the highlights of a strong, if flawed, tale about this generation’s most influential video game series. Kushner’s well-researched book will appeal to gamers and those looking to understand how gaming came of age after being dragged kicking and screaming, with the release of each subsequent Rockstar game.

    Andrew McMillen is a Brisbane-based freelance journalist.

    No Comments / Literary Criticism, Published Writing /

  • April 27, 2012

    The Australian story: ‘Jay & Silent Bob: Comic duo gets serious, for laughs’, April 2012

    A story for The Australian’s arts sections, which ran on April 12 2012. The full story appears below.

    Comic duo gets serious, for laughs
    by Andrew McMillen

    The first time cinemagoers laid their eyes on Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith was in Clerks, a 1994 feature film that depicted a day in the working lives of two frustrated store clerks stuck in dead-end jobs.

    Mewes and Smith played the bit-part characters of Jay and Silent Bob, respectively [pictured above; Smith on the left]. Their introduction occurs seven minutes into the film, when Mewes — a tall, wiry youngster — takes up his regular post outside a convenience store (where Smith, then 24, worked as a clerk during the day). Jay drains a beercan, spits out its contents, then announces, “I need some tits and ass, yeah!” He does a little dance, then adds, “I feel good today, Silent Bob!” before expressing in detail his desire to copulate “with anything that moves”.

    All the while, his stocky, mute friend in a trenchcoat puffs on a cigarette, barely acknowledging the string of explicit and provocative statements that Jay directs at passers-by. It remains a compelling introduction to two of modern American cinema’s most enduring — and unlikely — comedic characters.

    Written, directed, produced and edited by Smith, Clerks never appeared on more than 50 screens at one time during its theatre run in the US. Rated R for “extensive use of extremely explicit sex-related dialogue”, the film seemed doomed to a niche audience at best. Yet word-of-mouth marketing prevailed and it grossed more than $US3 million for distributor Miramax Films.

    Not bad for a project made on a shoestring budget.

    Clerks became a cult favourite that led to a string of popular comedies directed by Smith: Mallrats in 1995, Chasing Amy in 1997, Dogma in 1999 and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back in 2001. The two characters last appeared on screen together in 2006’s Clerks II.

    This month Mewes and Smith will tour a live show in Australia for the first time, under the name Jay and Silent Bob Get Old.

    Mewes, now 37, casts his mind back to his late teens, when Smith — four years older — began working on Clerks. “Back then, it was just me and him,” Mewes says. “We’d wake up and work our nine-to-five jobs at the convenience store and the video store. He told me he was writing a script and was going to go to film school. It wasn’t that I doubted him; it was like, ‘Oh cool, you’re going to school.’ I didn’t think anything about it. I was just like, ‘I’m going to go to work tomorrow, you have fun.’ ”

    Smith’s hard work evidently paid off, and he brought his new friend along for the ride: one that took the wealthy writer-director to the heights of owning a home in the Hollywood Hills with his wife and daughter, and Mewes to the depths of addiction to heroin and, later, the painkiller OxyContin.

    In a 10-part series published on his blog in 2006, entitled Me and My Shadow, Smith described at length the roller-coaster ride of Mewes’s addiction and his numerous attempts at rehabiliation. Using his flair as a writer and eye for detail, Smith wrote of Mewes’s “first taste of heroin courtesy of a girl whose name he doesn’t remember, on a jungle gym in a park lit by the Canadian moon”. Later republished in the 2007 book My Boring-Ass Life, Smith’s tale remains moving, even for those with little interest in his films.

    Mewes has never read Me and My Shadow in full. “I’ve read sections of it,” he says. “It sort of upsets me a bit to read it. I’ve never been able to sit through and read it from beginning to end.” The Australian tour, Get Old, born from a successful podcast of the same name, has its roots in Mewes’s addictions, too.

    Six years sober, he relapsed in 2009 on painkillers after a dental procedure. “When people go into surgery, you try not to take pain medicine if you’ve (been) addicted to pain medicine (in the past),” he says. “But if you are going to take it, you should talk to some people; a sponsor, friends, and you have to see them every day, (to) be accountable for what’s going on. I didn’t have any of that going on at the time. There was no one I had to be accountable to.”

    When Mewes told Smith of his desire to record a regular podcast before a live audience, his friend encouraged him to speak about his experiences with addiction. According to Smith, “it’s much easier to fight a dragon if everyone can see it, and it’ll remind you about where you don’t want to be ever again.” The live shows became a kind of therapy for the actor.

    “Talking about everything has been very helpful for me,” Mewes says. An unexpected outcome eventuated, too: group therapy. “I’ve had people come up to me after shows and be like, ‘Hey man, I’m six months sober today and it’s seriously because of you because when I was sick and I was getting off the painkillers, I wanted to go use but then I’d listen to three of your podcasts in a row and it would inspire me not to go get high again.’ That’s very flattering and awesome. It’s just a bonus to what I thought (the podcast) would be about.”

    Jay and Silent Bob Get Old has no real structure: it’s just two friends who happen to be famous speaking about whatever comes to mind. The show was first hosted at a 45-seat venue in Los Angeles, which sold out five weeks in a row. On upgrading to the 230-seat Jon Lovitz Comedy Club in Universal City, the pair continued to fill the venue each week. They booked bigger shows in capital cities across the US, and their Australian tour — consisting of theatres that hold 1000 to 2000 people — has mostly sold out.

    “That we can get 2000 people who want to come listen to me and Kevin sit down and talk and tell some of our stories is pretty amazing,” Mewes says, laughing.

    When asked whether he’s concerned about sharing too much, Mewes replies: “No, not really. Not when I hear stuff like (former addicts thanking me).

    “Sometimes I think I over-share about me and my wife, and my wife might be at the show and afterwards she’ll get a little embarrassed or upset with me.”

    This is unsurprising, given that both men discuss the topic of sex — both in the past and with their wives — frequently during the stage show. “That’s about it. There hasn’t really been any backlash.”

    Despite the gravity of discussing Mewes’s former demons, there’s much more light than shade at play in Get Old. After all, most people are there to laugh with their film idols rather than mull over life lessons.

    “My goal is to entertain everybody,” Mewes says. “I hope they have a really good time. And of course people are paying money. I want them to be like, ‘Oh man, we went out last night, and we saw Jay and Bob. I’m glad I did that on my Friday night, instead of going out to the bar or to the movies.”‘

    Jay and Silent Bob Get Old is in Adelaide on April 18 and 28; Brisbane, April 19; Sydney, April 20 and 23; Melbourne, April 26.

    No Comments / Feature Journalism, Published Writing /
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