Vale Andrew McMillan, Darwin-based journalist and author: 1957-2012
Darwin-based journalist and author Andrew McMillan [pictured below] died yesterday, January 28 2012, aged 54. I received word via a text message from Andrew Stafford just after I went to bed, around midnight. I wrote back, “Holy shit. Thanks.” Then I lay awake for the next hour, cursing myself. I was to meet him in Darwin, six days later.
I first became aware of the eerie reality that I was following in the footsteps of my near-namesake soon after my work was nationally published. Looking at my email history, the first mention of his name is in a note from Australian writer Clinton Walker on August 12, 2009.
andrew,
this is so funny because only lately been in touch w my old friend from bris old rock writer andrew mcmillan, you must be aware of your precedence, and a fine one it is too [...] i had a look ata bit of your stuff and really enjoyed it and wanted to say goodonya and keepitup. clinton walker
In February 2010, I was emailed by the international label manager/A&R at Shock Records, David Laing.
hey Andrew,
I assume you’re the same AM who used to write for RAM? If yes, first of all, thanks for all the great writing that was hugely influential on me in my teenage years fromthe 100th issue of RAM (my first) onwards… also, I’m responsible for a few releases that you may have an interest in if you care at all for the styles of music you used to write about – including a couple of compilations called Do The Pop! that trace the incluence of the Saints and primarily Radio Birdman into the local real rock’n'roll scene in ’80s, and also some reissued from the Hitmen – and I’d love to send you copies if you’re interested in seeing them…
Thanks and regards
dave
Then in May 2010, in an email conversation with Brisbane writer Andrew Stafford:
By the way, are you aware of yet another rock-writing Andrew, your namesake in fact, Andrew McMillan? Slightly different spelling – but Andrew, along with Clint Walker, was one of the original rock journos in this town, and arguably the most original. Started Suicide Alley (later Pulp) fanzine with Clint – the first rock fanzine in the country – and later wrote Strict Rules, his fantastic account of Midnight Oil’s tour through Aboriginal communities in 1986, leading to the Diesel and Dust album. A fascinating man and a great writer, well worth your checking out. – AS
Then in November 2010, in an email conversation with Australian singer Carol Lloyd of the band Railroad Gin:
It may freak you out to know that in the 70’s, Railroad Gin were often reported on by a guy who wrote for Rolling Stone, Juke etc. who was called Andrew McMillan….! He’s now a novelist based in Darwin..saw him when I did a panel thing with Noel Mengel at last year’s Brisbane Writers Festival.
I wrote back, “By the way, I am aware of Andrew McMillan! We’ve not met yet, but I’m sure it’ll happen eventually.”
The sad reality is that this will never happen, now.
In recent months – having reached a point in my writing career where I felt up to the challenge – I became more interested in exploring the concept of meeting this man, this well-known writer with whom I share more than a few parallels. I knew that he was ill, first with bowel cancer, and now with liver cancer. On November 25, 2011, I emailed him for the first time:
Hi Andrew,
I don’t believe we’ve ever emailed, but I’ve certainly been aware of you for a few years now as we have almost exactly the same name. I’ve been mistaken for you many times! More on me at the web address in my signature..
How are you? Last I heard was that you were in a poor state following the removal of a bowel tumor – I think this is the last thing I read about you, just over a year ago. Judging by your Facebook page, seems you’re doing much better now. I caught your recent interview on the MusicNT website, too. Good stuff.
I wanted to ask a favour. I’d like to visit you at your home in the new year, and interview you extensively. I think it’d be an interesting idea for a young journalist like myself to talk about writing and life with an older bloke who almost shares the same name with me.
Is this a possibility? Is this something you’d be interested in? Or should I bugger off?
Happy to chat anytime mate. My number below.
He replied the next day:
Hi Andrew,
Tickled to hear from you. The first I heard of you was via a flurry of emails from fans who read a piece in the The Australian and wondered what the fuck had happened to my style. I was bewildered. Then in 2009 when I was due to appear at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival I found myself on the bill of a Queensland music festival with old mate Christie Eliezer etc talking about music journalism. A strange call, given I’d rarely concentrated on music writing since about 1985. I accepted the invitation but got no response. Obviously they had the ‘en’ in mind.
I get emails occasionally congratulating me on reviews of records I’ve never heard. And calls from people seeking contact details for band managers I’m supposed to be best mates with. I plead ignorance; they, no doubt, hold my ignorance against you.
That said, I’m intrigued by the concept of a music journo called Andrew McMillen coming out of Brisbane. I was first published in 1975 and got out of there in 1977. Never looked back.
I’m now dealing with liver cancer and all kinds of shit, so my time appears to be short, hence forming a band The Rattling Mudguards and having much fun on the way out.
I trust your transcriptions are accurate so I’d be happy to entertain you in Darwin in January.
Cheers,
Andrew McMillan.
* Patron, Life Member: Northern Territory Writers’ Centre
* Acting Chief Of Staff (1991-2011): DARWIN’S 4TH ESTATE
www.myspace.com/darwins4thestate
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ryZ36Ts0Gg&feature=email
* President For Life: Darwin Foreign Correspondents’ Association
* Founder: John Jenkins Society (est. Hotel Darwin, 1989)
www.andrewmcmillan.com.au
The Christmas period passed. I finished reading Andrew Stafford’s copy of Strict Rules: The Blackfella-Whitefella Tour, Andrew’s account of the 1986 tour of remote Aboriginal communities shared by the Australian rock groups Midnight Oil and Warumpi Band.
(To further confuse matters, a handwritten note on the book’s first page reads, “To Andrew – welcome to Strict Rules. Best wishes, Andrew McMillan.” It’s for Stafford, not me, but plenty of people thought otherwise when I showed them.)
It’s an excellent read; profound, beautiful, and heartbreaking, by turns. You can read an excerpt on Midnight Oil’s website. Drummer Rob Hirst wrote the foreword for a re-released version of the book in 2008; it was first published in 1988, the year I was born.
McMillan captures the feel of the Australian desert better than any writer I’ve read. For the first half of the book, he refers to himself in the third person, as “the hitch-hiker”. (The book is dedicated to Andrew’s mother, father, and “the people who pick up hitch-hikers.”) It’s a cracking read, and the pace never wavers as he explores the logistics behind the tour, the nightly performances to mostly-bewildered locals, the history of the land, and the people who live there. After I finished, all I could think was: I wish I read this sooner.
On January 2, I emailed Andrew to arrange my Darwin visit.
Hi Andrew – happy new year. How are you?
I want to check with you re timing for my planned excursion to Darwin. Are there any particular days or weeks that we should avoid? My January is filling up pretty fast so it might be best to look at early-mid Feb. What do you think?
He replied the same day:
At this stage my diary is free for 2012, apart from putting the finishing touches to an anthology (selected works 1976-2011) and the live album my new band The Rattling Mudguards recorded in October with Don Walker on piano and the Loose Screws on backing vocals.
Apart from that, everything else is dictated by my health. I’m fairly confident, despite the prognosis, that I’ll still be around in February and look forward to meeting you then.
I asked him whether I could stay at his home, and about the exact nature of his prognosis. On January 3, he told me:
You’re welcome to camp here unless I’m in need of a full-time carer by then. Hopefully that won’t be the case.
The prognosis? They got it wrong last year when they said I wouldn’t make through the footy season. The latest, a month ago, gave me three months max. I aim to beat that. I’ve got a few things to finish off yet.
On January 16, after getting caught up in the day-to-day minutiae of freelance journalism for a couple of weeks, I emailed Andrew after working out my ideal travel dates.
Hey Andrew,
How are you? A quick note to let you know that I’m intending to fly to Darwin on Thursday February 2. Not sure how long I intend to stay yet; up to a week is my best estimate at the moment. I just wanted to check that this date is OK before booking flights.
The next day, Andrew said:
Feb 2 sounds good. If we run into problems, friends within the neighbourhood and without have offered to put you up for a few nights.
I’ve attached an old RAM story from 1981 I’ve dug up for my anthology. I transcribed it a few nights ago. Would you mind proof-reading it for words that are obviously out of place? I figure it’ll be a neat exercise for you, giving you a clean sense of how I was writing 30 years ago and how we move on.
I was honoured to proof-read his old work, about an Australian band named Matt Finish. The same day, January 17, I replied:
Flights are booked for Friday Feb 3, returning Wed Feb 8. Arriving around midday on the Friday. I’m seeing (and reviewing) Roger Waters do The Wall on Feb 1 and didn’t fancy the early flight on the 2nd. So 3rd it is.
A good read on Matt Finish. Had never heard of them. I’ve attached a doc with a couple of comments down the right side, but no changes to the main text. Just a few small things that I noticed.
I was chatting to Jim White of Dirty Three today for a story I’m writing. He asked whether I was you. He remembers your writing from RAM.
Do keep sending through some stuff to read ahead of my visit. I finished Strict Rules a couple weeks back (borrowed Andrew Stafford’s copy) and loved it.
That was the last I heard from Andrew. On January 24, I followed up my last email and asked, “Is everything OK – or as OK can be, given your situation?” Four days later, he died.
I feel foolish for having not ventured north earlier, for not having appreciated the urgency of his situation. Upon receiving that text message last night, I felt immediately that this mistake will be one of my biggest regrets.
I have no idea how our meeting would have unfolded. I was looking for inspiration, for insight; I wanted to learn about writing from a man who has written his whole life. It saddens me that we only ever exchanged a few casual emails. I was looking forward to days of conversation, of introspection, of self-analysis, of advice, of inspiration.
Vale Andrew McMillan. I hardly knew you. I wish I did.
Written by Brisbane-based journalist Andrew McMillen, January 29 2012.
Above photo credits, respectively: Bob Gosford, Glenn Campbell, Bob Gosford.
Update, January 30: ABC News NT have uploaded a fine video tribute to Andrew on their YouTube channel. It runs for two and a half minutes and can be viewed below.
Rolling Stone story: ‘The Discovery Channel: triple j’s power over Australian music’, January 2012
A feature story published in the January 2012 issue of Rolling Stone Australia, under the ‘National Affairs’ banner.
Click the below image for a closer look, or read the article text underneath.
National Affairs: The Discovery Channel
Is triple j’s power over Australian music being used for good, or evil?by Andrew McMillen. Illustration by Andrea Innocent
In many ways, triple j studios – located on the third level of the cavernous ABC building on Harris Street, in inner Sydney – also functions as the central nervous system of the Australian music industry. On any given day, hundreds of thousands of listeners across the country are tuned in. Label owners, promoters, publicists and musicians follow the station with relentless fascination, as its playlist and musical preferences can literally make, delay, or break careers in the notoriously fickle music business.
For decades, since the national broadcaster’s inception in August 1980, triple j has continued to grow: in terms of staff numbers, audience popularity and, as a direct result, cultural influence. With great power comes great responsibility. As triple j continues to slowly evolve into a gangly octopus whose arms now extend far beyond its initial radio habitat into print media, significant online networking, year-round event promotion, and – with the October launch of a standalone Unearthed station – digital radio, it’s worth taking a magnifying glass to the station’s many activities to examine whether their great power is being used for good or evil.
Two senses are immediately pricked entering triple j studios: the eyes are met with bloody red walls contrasting against innocuous whites, and the ears latch onto the sounds of triple j being piped through the station’s corridors, while Zan Rowe broadcasts her morning show live to air just a few metres away. Station manager Chris Scaddan strolls past their huge music library to his corner office. His coffee table is stacked with months’ worth of printed music media: street press, monthlies, international imports. A recent issue of triple j magazine sits conspicuously atop the pile.
He turns down the live broadcast to a quiet gurgle as he considers a question: how would he describe triple j to someone who’d never heard it before?
“It’s uniquely Australian,” Scaddan says. “We’re about new music; mainly, new Australian music. We’re targeted at 18-24 year-olds, so we’re here for young Australians. We play diverse styles of music; we’re independent and non-commercial, which is important. At this point, we’re a brand that reaches across quite a few different platforms. We’re our audience as much as anything, as well. We’re really in touch with our listeners, and we hope that what we’re doing is reflecting and inspiring what they want, and what they want to listen to, and what they want to know about.”
Eight minutes into the interview, in response to a question about whether triple j’s support is crucial to the success of Australian bands on a national scale, he cites a recently discovered statistic that he’s clearly very proud of: in October 2011, the station posted audience figures of 1.5 million in the five capital cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide).
“At the moment, we’ve got as many people listening as we ever have. But are we crucial to a band’s success? I don’t think so,” Scaddan says. “Certainly we’re a national broadcaster, and we’ve got a really strong audience. I wouldn’t say it’s crucial to whether you make it or don’t. There are so many different ways that you can find a career or an audience through the Australian music industry. There’s so many examples of bands who may not have been played by triple j who are doing just fine.”
“Just fine” is a relative term, of course. For every Art Vs Science, Boy & Bear or Washington playing to thousands-strong crowds on the national stage, there are dozens – perhaps hundreds – of acts across Australia who enjoy strong support within their hometowns or capital cities, but struggle to make the jump to national notoriety without the nod from triple j. Does Scaddan find that bands get pissed off when they get told, ‘thanks, but no thanks’ in response to their latest release?
“That does happen,” he replies. “That’s the nature of the business we’re all in. Just like artists who are pitching for articles in Rolling Stone and don’t get a mention get pissed off, and can’t understand it sometimes. It is really, really difficult. We’re always looking to try and find a really good balance of genres, of locations – nationwide, so we’re not just picking bands from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane all the time.”
“It’s difficult, and sometimes bands who want to get triple j airplay might not crack it on the playlist. That doesn’t mean they’re still not getting played in other ways on the station. They tune in and they’re not getting played as often as Gotye, or Florence + The Machine, and they think they should be. You just hope they can understand that there’s a limit to how much music can fit on the station and make it work.”
Such programming decisions lie not with Scaddan, nor with music director Richard Kingsmill, but with the entire triple j staff. When Kingsmill is questioned – in jest – about whether he’s the most powerful man in Australian music, he practically explodes in exasperation from a couch positioned nearby the station’s carefully stacked CD collection.
“It is not anywhere near the truth. It is just such a misconception to think this place isn’t a team of people,” Kingsmill says. “I have said this time and time again, and if people still think that I sit there and basically call all the shots, they are wrong. I can’t say it enough. This station is built on teamwork. It always has been. If you’ve got a bad framework, or teamwork vibe happening in this place, it shows on the other end of the radio. When we all work together, we get the results. It’s as simple as that.”
++
What happens when your band wins the musical equivalent of the lottery, the triple j Unearthed slot to open the main stage of Splendour In The Grass? In 2011, the competition was won by Brisbane indie pop band Millions. Twenty-two-year-old drummer James Wright is being a little humble by equating the contest to a lottery: those rely on luck alone, not songwriting talent.
Still, it’s curious to hear Wright honestly state Millions’ intentions upon forming in December 2010. “The entire objective of the band was using triple j to get where we want to go,” he says. A four-piece comprised of members from three Brisbane bands you’ve never heard of, Millions realised during their initial rehearsals that their sound might appeal to the national broadcaster.
“There was the fleeting chance that, if we maybe more deliberately went towards the triple j sort of sound, in terms of being more accessible than our previous bands, then we might have a shot at actually doing some good, and getting played,” Wright says. “We didn’t exactly have high aspirations for it, but we were really happy with the two songs we’d written [at the time].”
He says that Millions are “the exact opposite” of their previous bands, in that their path was “extremely thought through, to the point of calculating exactly how many shows it would take us to get where we wanted to go, and to who we should play these shows with and why we should do them and where we should play them.” The Splendour 2011 slot was unexpected for the band, and “pretty much blew everyone’s mind” according to Wright, but not unsurprising given their ambitions.
Stephen Green is well acquainted with this kind of mindset among artists. Since beginning as a radio “plugger” – a guy who pitches new music to stations across the country – he now runs his own publicity consulting business, SGC Media.
“The problem of triple j being so dominant is that it artistically skews what some bands are coming out with,” he says. “If you’ve got the opportunity to do the song that’s in your head that’s not very ‘triple j’, or you tweak it somewhat and make it sound like bands that are getting airplay… I think a lot of bands are going down [the second] path a little more.”
“The tracks that I think work least are the ones that the band have gone, ‘right, we’ve got to get on triple j’, and they’ve tried to write a ‘triple j song’,” Green adds. “If it just happened like that, then – great. But I think too many bands push down that path. Being generic so that you sound like every other band is not usually the way to stand out and have a particularly successful career.”
When Green works on publicity with Australian artists, he never plans a campaign assuming that the act will get triple j airplay. “If you do that, you’re setting yourself up for a big disappointment,” he says. “I don’t think you can make assumptions that anybody’s going to play anything.” So what happens when triple j rejects the song or record you’re pitching them? “Well, you kick the wall, the client gets shitty and says, ‘you didn’t rep it properly’. You break up, and that’s the end of that!” he laughs, clearly joking.
Like Green, Megan Reeder Hope places a high value on including triple j in her marketing plans. As general manager at Secret Service Public Relations, Reeder Hope works regularly with the Brisbane-based record label Dew Process, whose roster includes Mumford & Sons, The Grates and Seeker Lover Keeper. “triple j is essential,” she says. “It’s probably the crux of my plans of how we work at Dew Process.”
“That’s not to say that we don’t value the rest of the media: community radio is really important, as is commercial radio when you get to a certain point,” Reeder Hope says. “But I think triple j is that centrepiece that needs to be in place to be able to do all of the other ones, as well. From our perspective, triple j has a high level of integrity. They really do things in a way that’s uncompromising of their own editorial policy, while still always putting the music first. It really is all about the music for them. They support artists, and they support them throughout their careers.”
Back at the station’s Sydney studios, music director Richard Kingsmill is clearly proud of the station’s success, and unapologetic to its critics. “If anyone’s got any complaints and arguments against us, or thinks that we’re in some ways trying to monopolise the Australian industry….” He pauses. “You get damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If we sat back and went, ‘Well, we shouldn’t monopolise the Australian music industry, we should sit in this corner and do our little job and not try to do anything,’ we’d get criticised for being negligent and not proactive. If you’re proactive, then you tread on toes a little bit, I guess, but we’re not meaning to tread on toes.”
“It’s not supposed to be 100 per cent,” Kingsmill continues. “No one can be 100 per cent, and no one should expect triple j to be 100%. We do what we do to the best of our abilities, and we try as hard as we possibly can, with the best of intentions. But at the end of the day, we’re all humans. So we’ll take chances and we’ll take risks, and sure, we’ll piss people off, but we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t think there was a section of the community out there who was actually enjoying it.”
Further reading and discussion:
- “Triple J Unearthed and the Great Monopolisation of Australian Music“, published on Polaroids of Androids on 19 October; coincidentally, six days after I pitched the above story to Rolling Stone.
- A conversation with Richard Kingsmill, triple j Music Director. The full transcript of our 13 minute conversation, which was quoted in the above story. Published on Collapse Board, January 12 2012
The Australian album review: The Necks – ‘Mindset’, November 2011
An album review for The Australian, reproduced below in its entirety.
On their 16th album, this Sydney-based trio opt for two 21-minute long tracks rather than the singular instrumental piece that characterises most of their past releases.
The opener, Rum Jungle, is a claustrophobic jam laced with menacing bass notes, jarring piano chords and insistent cymbal-tapping.
It’s a consuming piece of work; from the initial five-minute mess of noise emerges some flighty piano progressions and, later, a fiercely strummed electric guitar – a rarity among the Necks’ overarching modus operandi, which is best captured in the title of their 1998 live album, Piano Bass Drums.
Rum Jungle is thematically similar to their previous release, 2009′s Silverwater, in that its sustained creepiness invokes a sense in the listener of being constantly on edge.
Track two, Daylights, marks a distinct shift in mood; its gentle, noir-like atmosphere is a breath of fresh air. Its gradual uncoiling has more in common with the soothing perpetual motion of their 2003 release Drive By, which won the trio an ARIA for best jazz album.
This contrast between light and shade works well, and the absence of a narrator invites listeners to fill in the gaps themselves. Mindset is a fine addition to one of the most consistent catalogues in contemporary Australian music.
LABEL: Fuse
RATING: 3 ½ stars
This review was originally published in The Weekend Australian Review on November 26. It’s my first album review for the paper. For more on The Necks, visit their website.
The Vine interview: David Roads of Airbourne, June 2011
An interview with Airbourne for The Vine. Excerpt below.
Airbourne are a rock and roll band from Warrnambool, Victoria. On face value, it appears that they like loud guitars, open chords, beefy drums, headbanging, and climbing scaffolding at festivals. They write songs with titles like ‘Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast’; ‘Blonde, Bad and Beautiful’; and ‘Cheap Wine & Cheaper Women’. At times, they sound a lot like AC/DC; which is to say, all of the time they sound a lot like AC/DC.
Their website URL claims ‘Airbourne rock’. The cover of their most recent album, No Guts. No Glory. (yes, the punctuation is compulsory), features an artful drawing of the four band members looking very rock ‘n’ roll amid evocative “rock” symbolism. Which, to their credit, tells you exactly what Airbourne are all about before you even hear a distorted G chord.
Witness: a smoke-belching industrial factory, including masculine workers exiting the gates, fists aloft; a doe-eyed woman in a bikini drinking a martini while covered in cash, empty shot glasses by her side; some young rockers/punks hoisting a skull-adorned flag on the edge of a cliff; and, best of all, a semi-trailer busting through a wooden barrier while being pursued by two helicopters and a light aircraft. The semi-trailer is driven by Lemmy – of Motorhead fame, who also appeared in their video for ‘Runnin’ Wild’ – but that’s not even the weirdest part of the album cover; which essentially a combination of everything that any teenaged male has ever mindlessly doodled in the margins of his high school notepads. No; the weirdest thing is that Lemmy’s semi is inexplicably pursuing a mini tornado. Yes.
All of which makes them a very easy target for ‘serious music fans’—which, if I’m being honest, I probably consider myself to be. Meaning I’ve never paid much attention to Airbourne. The closest I’ve come is seeing them at festivals, watching from a hundred metres back with a smirk on my face, not really paying them attention or respecting them in any way whatsoever. Yet they’re probably among the most recognisable Australian bands at an international level—they’re signed to Roadrunner Records and are frequent festival bookings in both Europe and the United States. Yes, although there is a fair bit of cultural cringe attached to Airbourne, it’s tough to deny that they’re good at what they do. And strangely, I couldn’t help but develop a newfound respect for Airbourne after chatting to guitarist David Roads (above, far right) for the first time, here now on TheVine.
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What does an average day look like for you, when you’re not out on tour?
We’re very busy lately. We’re currently working on album number three. So at the moment we’re just kind of based in Melbourne and we’re rehearsing a lot. With the tour coming up next week, we’re starting to rehearse a lot more because we’re going back and [getting] the old stuff ready for the tour.
What gets you out of bed each morning? What do you look forward to when you first wake up?
Well lately, a sunny day! [laughs] The weather’s been so crappy here down in Melbourne. But, you know, we’re focused on what we’re doing at the moment with the album—I want to get in there and just make a rockin’ album. I guess our head’s in that at the moment, but [we'll be] back around Christmas time. And we just got back from tour. We’re trying to have a bit of a break. We still did Big Day Out and stuff, but we’re kind of still in ‘work mode’.
Do you view music as a job?
Yeah, we’re full-time with the band. If we’re not off the road, we’re on the road, touring. And when we release new albums, we go overseas for the majority of the year. Last year we were over there for 10 months touring for No Guts. No Glory.
If music is a job for you, what’s the most stressful part?
You can call it a job. It’s our living but it’s not really…I guess job’s a bad choice of word. It’s a lifestyle for us. As musicians, we love playing rock and roll, we love touring as a rock band. There’s nothing real stressful. There’s a lot of fun involved. It’s like, if you love what you do, you’re living the dream, I guess. We have a lot of fun when on tour and all that kind of stuff.
I guess sometimes it can get a bit stressful when you’re on the road. Sometimes when you’re sick of touring you can get sick with the flu, or a bad cold. That gets pretty hard, because the show goes on. You get up and have got to play that night. That can be about as stressful as it can get, really, I guess. But when you’re making an album it’s a bit stressful, because you’re still writing an album that’s going out to the world. You get in there and just do the best job that you can.
For the full interview, visit The Vine. The music video for their song ‘Bottom Of The Well‘ is embedded below.
The Vine interview: Rohin Jones of The Middle East, 2011
An interview for The Vine. Excerpt below.
A sense of mystery has shrouded The Middle East’s musical career to this point. What we do know is that the indie-folk collective formed in Townsville, Queensland in around 2005, after the members found themselves constantly playing in each others’ bands. Core songwriters Rohin Jones and Jordan Ireland were drawn together out of a mutual desire to better themselves as writers; they assembled a team of collaborators around them to record their self-released debut, The Recordings of The Middle East, in 2008.
Though containing eight songs and running to 52 minutes, the band soon shied away from calling it their debut album. After releasing those eight tracks locally, the band amicably parted ways due to Ireland traveling to Europe. In the meantime, word escaped Townsville that The Middle East were worth hearing. Their debut landed on a desk at Spunk Records and – after the track ‘Blood’ was added to a Spunk singles comp, was deemed worthy of a 2009 re-release under the Spunk banner. After Ireland returned home, it seemed like a good decision to get the band back together.
Three songs were cut from the initial album for the EP, which (confusingly) retained the same name. But one, in particular, would reach ears across the world. A slow-burner in both musical nature and popularity, ‘Blood‘ (and its ethereal, fingerpicked cousin in ‘The Darkest Side’), soon attracted the ears of the nations broadcasters and wider music industry. Fans started flocking and soon ‘Blood’ was being heard on films, American television shows and TV commercials for European banks; it also polled at #64 in the triple j Hottest 100 of 2009. The Middle East then spent the majority of 2009 and 2010 touring Australia and the wider world, playing at the SXSW festival and picking up shows with the likes of Grizzly Bear, Mumford & Sons, and Doves. Despite their relative ubiquity among indie-folk circles, still little was known about the band.
April 2011 sees the release of their proper debut album, I Want That You Are Always Happy. Containing 13 new songs, it’s the sound of a young band pushing the boundaries of what they want their music to represent, as well as exploring their bands ability to create a united front. Three days after the album’s release, TheVine connected with a humble but semi-reluctant co-frontman Rohin Jones (he and Jordan Ireland are credited as the eight-piece band’s sole songwriters in the LP liner notes); a man whose answers are somewhat guarded and circumspect. Throughout our interview, “I don’t know” is a recurring response; he also has the curious habit of giving a sharp whistle when confronted with a question that prompts him to search his long-term memory.
We discuss the band’s mystery, democracy, religious undertones, their hometown of Townsville, an uncertain future and Jones’ (above right, second from right) secret hardcore past.
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Rohin, you’ve been in this position before, where you’ve just released a collection of your music out into the world. What’s different this time around?
Umm… [laughs] Well I guess the first time we released, it was giving it out to 30 or 40 of our friends. It was a whole lot less vulnerable experience. That’s one big difference.
Is there a greater pressure or expectation placed upon the band this time around, or do you try to put that out of your mind?
I don’t think there’s any industry pressure; to ‘conquer the industry’, or be some big, successful act. I think the pressure of the last two years came from trying to produce something that we thought was credible, and up to our potential.
The first time I saw you was in March 2009, when you supported The Devoted Few at The Troubadour in Brisbane. I think that was right before you hit triple j airplay, and everything else that went with that. What do you recall of that time in the band’s career?
It was kind of fun. Jord had just come back from Germany, and we picked up where we left off; just playing around. It was nice to play music with old friends again, after having a bit of time off. It was a good time.
Was there a sense among the band that you could become bigger?
Not really, hey. I don’t know how to explain it, but… I didn’t expect that EP to [do anything beyond] just hearing it when I went home, because my parents were playing it. That’s about as much as I was thinking at the time. I don’t think we anticipated anything, to be honest.
That original LP release in 2008 is 52 minutes long. Do you consider it an EP, or an album?
I definitely don’t consider it an album. It’s definitely not good enough [laughs]. I guess we wrote a lot longer songs back then.
When you listen to that first release, what do you hear?
[Whistles] To be honest, I haven’t listened to it in years [laughs]. Usually I get super-close to projects when I’m working on them, so instead of hearing a song, I’ll just hear the mix between the two stereo guitars, or something like that. I’ll be like, “Ehh, we didn’t really get that right”. Or I’ll forget about a part, and go, “Oh, that’s right, that part’s in there.”
Interview – The Middle EastFor the full interview, visit The Vine. For more on The Middle East, visit their website. The audio for their song ‘Jesus Came To My Birthday Party‘ is embedded below.
Mess+Noise album review: Nova Scotia – ‘Nova Scotia’
An album review for Mess+Noise. Excerpt below.
After two EPs and several years spent gigging at every Brisbane venue imaginable, this self-titled album is indie rock quintet Nova Scotia’s first full-length. Released via Lofly Records and mixed by label co-founder Andrew White (Mr. Maps, restream), Nova Scotia is just as demonstrative of the band’s songwriting abilities as their previous discs (2007′s Bear Smashes Photocopier and 2008′s Maritime Disasters), but the sonic differences here are instantly noticeable.
As great as those EPs were, the recording and production – or lack thereof – left a lot to be desired. Here, the instruments can each be heard clearly in the mix, but they haven’t lost that sense of five dudes jamming in a room, which has always been a big part of Nova Scotia’s charm.
Two re-recorded tracks from Photocopier (‘Second Sun’ and ‘Everything’s Perfect’) appear early in the piece, and while they sound better than ever, here’s where nostalgia ends. There isn’t a bad idea on Nova Scotia; if anything, the songs get better as the record progresses. Instrumental opener ‘Teeming With Voices’ is seemingly intended as the band’s theme song, and they frequently open their live sets with it too. Three different guitar tones sit atop clattering percussion. More than once, you get the feeling that it’s all about to cave in on itself. This sense of tension pervades most of the tracks here, and crucially, it’s an asset, not a distraction.
For the full review, visit Mess+Noise, where you can also stream the album’s final track, ‘The World Is Not Enough’. For more Nova Scotia, visit their Myspace.
Rolling Stone story: ‘Jebediah Return From Hiatus’, 2011
A news story for the March 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. Click the below scanned image for a closer look, or read the article text underneath.
Jebediah Returns From Hiatus
Much-loved Perth rockers prepare for fully-fledged comeback with fifth LP
By Andrew McMillenInstruments in hand, four Perth musicians glance nervously at the ceiling as debris falls around them. Overhead, a Godzilla-like monster trades blows with Comet Girl, a costumed vigilante who’s fighting a losing battle. All looks lost until another superhero arrives: Jebediah! The two heroes join forces to vanquish their foe.
Embedded deep in the realms of fantasy – a warehouse in Sydney’s inner suburbs – the real Jebediah, Perth’s celebrated alt-rock outfit, are shooting their first video in more than six years. “She’s Like A Comet” is the second single from the band’s fifth album, Koscuiszko, due in April. Between takes, drummer Brett Mitchell laughs about the “contrived” nature of music videos. Earlier, he was attempting to drum along to the song at a precise speed of 145 per cent in order to capture some slow-motion footage. A few hours into the shoot, as frontman Kevin Mitchell sings into a microphone placed just inches away from a camera, one of the crew expresses his surprise that the singer is so willing to be filmed: he’d heard of Mitchell was camera-shy. ”They must have been being sarcastic!” bassist Vanessa Thornton laughs.
Amid a worldwide climate of once-popular acts reforming for cash, Jebediah – completed by lead guitarist Chris Daymond – are different: they never broke up. Though their last release was 2004′s Braxton Hicks, they’ve played a handful of shows per year, and 2010 was no different: the day after their video shoot, they played to a packed Annandale Hotel, before doing the same at The Zoo in Brisbane. With a seven-year gap between albums, the band is relishing the new material.
“This one’s easily the most fun I’ve had making a Jebs record since the very first one [1997's Slightly Odway], and I also think it’s the most playful we’ve been in the studio,” says Kevin Mitchell. “It’s the closest thing to the first album, where we made a record without considering anyone except ourselves.”
For more Jebediah, visit their website. The music video for ‘She’s Like A Comet‘ is embedded below.
The Vine interview: Kim Moyes of The Presets, 2011
An interview for The Vine. Excerpt below.
Alongside labelmates Cut Copy, The Presets have arguably been the most influential Australian band of modern times. After meeting at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 1995, Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes quickly ditched the ambient electronica they were fussing about with in instrumental band Prop, in favour of a more playful electronica, tinged with darkness. The duo’s EPs in Blow Up (2003) and Girl and the Sea (2004), gave way to debut album Beams (2005), released via Modular Records, which delivered their first club (and festival) hit, ‘Are You The One?’.
The band’s sound soon found favour with a mainstream shifting away from the tired posturing of guitar rock; one moving towards a more hedonistic, celebratory club-like culture that began pervading everything from festivals to the local pub. Whether it was right-place right-time, or something more intrinsically linked to the band’s quickly growing fanbase, The Presets second LP Apocalypso was released in 2008 right as a newly branded mainstream were feverishly scrolling for new icons. Preceded by the mega-hit ‘My People’, which quickly became a generational anthem, sitting in the ARIA Top 100 singles for over 18 months, the album struck a chord,. That year, Apocalypso was second only to AC/DC’s Black Ice in sales terms. (It’s now gone three times platinum in Australia). The band embarked on a solid two years of touring, packing out halls, accumulating international fans (the Black Eyed Peas will.i.am claimed that ‘My People’ was a “huge influence” on that bands album ‘The E.N.D’) and making mockeries of festivals “dance” tents. Apocalypso cleaned up at the 2008 ARIA Awards, winning Best Dance Release and Album Of The Year, as well the Artisan Awards for Best Cover Art and Producer of the Year, a sweep which brought an intense, bizarre period for the band to a neat close. After five years of touring and recording, they retired for a much-needed break.
With a third album to be released sometime this year, and ahead of their re-emergence on the live scene as part of the Future Music Festival touring across Australia next month, Andrew McMillen connected with drummer and keyboardist Kim Moyes to discuss his change in addressing music, the weight of expectations and the ugly side of Australian culture.
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Hey, Kim. Besides a few shows in January, you spent most of last year out of the public eye. Was that a good year for you?
Yeah, it was a great year. The whole last five years – up until the end of the last few shows of Apocalypso – we were touring non-stop. If we weren’t touring, we were making a record, and then we were touring again. It was great. It was a huge experience in my life and career, but at the end of that I think we needed to have a few months off to defrag, enjoy some home time with our partners. We both became fathers in that year. We started working again about a year ago, and it’s been a steady, long slog since then. Right now we’re getting to a point where we have an album starting to take shape and just trying to put the final touches on it. We’re ready to go back out there and face that public eye again.
Was it a bit of a shock to the system to live through five years of non-stop creativity and touring, and then come home and adjust to the everyday pace of life?
Not really, because – without going into it too much – having a kid is kind of like a whole other pace of life [laughs]. There were a few moments where we got to really unwind and enjoy nothingness, and that was not unusual at all. It was bloody awesome. The rest just kind of…I feel like fulfilling the next bit of our lives, that we felt needed to be fulfilled.
You’re playing MS Fest in Tasmania in a couple of weeks, which will mark your return to live shows. What made you say yes to that gig?
We’ve done it a couple of times and always have a really good time there. We really like working with the guy who puts it on. We have a really good relationship with those guys and we thought that’s probably a really good, nice way to start things again. We’re doing the MS Fest, and then the Future Music Festival. It’s an isolated run around the country and a reinvigoration for us. Even being in rehearsals this week – getting ready for it, trying out the new songs and seeing how they fit, tweaking them and all that sort of stuff; it’s really taking the creative juices to another level.
I think there’s only so much… I was talking to Jules [bandmate Julian Hamilton] about this yesterday. I remember when we wrote Beams, and I remember when we wrote Apocalypso, and both those situations we were [playing in other] bands (both Kim and Julian have worked as touring musicians for other bands, most notably Hamilton with Silverchair – Ed) and recording with other bands, and we really felt this urgency to go and work at our [own] music. So we’d be working all day at rehearsal studios with a different band and then at nighttime we’d go to the studio and write songs. We’d done that at fever pitch, and then the same with Apocalypso; we came back after three years of touring and we were so highly attuned to what we were doing and what we needed to do in the next record, that we went in and did it in a short time.
I guess the drawbacks of taking a break from it all is that those things start to fade a bit in your mind; they’re not at the forefront and you start to forget. In a way it’s really great for your creativity to take on new ideas, new concepts, and try things you normally wouldn’t do, and that’s what we’ve done a lot of. But getting back into rehearsal this week and having this run of shows to look forward to, this reality check is really starting to complete the picture. As a result, we’re going to have a really interesting record. But nothing that’s too far away from what we normally do. It’s an exciting time.
For the full interview, visit The Vine. And I highly recommend that you do, if you’ve already read this far: while the above questions/responses are quite standard, the interview took a real left turn once we began discussing how Kim thinks Australians view The Presets, and how they’ve influenced Australian culture in unexpected ways.
For more of The Presets, visit their website. The music video for their song ‘If I Know You‘ is embedded below.
The Vine interview: Adam Franklin of Swervedriver, 2011
An interview for The Vine. Excerpt below.
“In their nine years together, Swervedriver released four startling albums, ranging from storming guitar experimentalism to mind-blowing psychedelia – all dedicated to the nihilistic joys of the open road.”
That’s a line from the band’s 2005-released two-disc compilation, Juggernaut Rides: ’89-’98. It’s an entirely apt description of the sounds and imagery summoned by this British four-piece, whose core duo consisted of singer/guitarist Adam Franklin and guitarist Jimmy Hartridge. Formed in Oxford in 1989, they soon prospered in a time when interest surrounding guitar-led alternative rock and the nascent genre of shoegaze was at an all-time high. They were signed to Creation Records – home to My Bloody Valentine – and released two genre-defining albums within two years: 1991’s Raise, and 1993’s Mezcal Head. Despite their British upbringing, Franklin et al were fascinated by American muscle car culture, and sought to provide the soundtrack to imagined high-speed jaunts across the States. Their first single, ‘Son Of Mustang Ford’, sums up Swervedriver’s ethos in four minutes of scorching guitars and breakneck percussion.
Label woes and band instability eventually brought them to a halt in 1998, following underwhelming sales for Ejector Seat Reservation (1995) and 99th Dream (1998). As it turns out, the band’s final shows took place in Australia while supporting Powderfinger, ending in December 1998 with a last show in Margaret River, outside of Perth (or “self-destruction on a desert highway just outside the world’s most isolated city,” as the Juggernaut Rides liner notes dramatically put it).
In the intervening years, Franklin continued to record and tour as a solo artist, also under the name Toshack Highway, as well as under Magnetic Morning, a collaboration with Interpol drummer Sam Fogarino. Swervedriver reformed in 2008, and three years later – ahead of their first Australian tour since 1998’s ill-fated expedition – TheVine connected with Adam Franklin.
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To begin, Adam, I want to quote a song lyric. “And the photographs of God I bought have almost fade away”. [A line from The Jesus and Mary Chain’s ‘Snakedriver’.]
Oh, yeah. That’s a good line.
I mention this because I read your Magnet Magazine guest editorials, and I was particularly interested in what you had to say about that song. You said it’s one of the greatest lines ever in a rock and roll song, which is pretty high praise.
Yeah, I think it is. Like I said in that blog, the lyric is a surreal sort of thing, and I wonder how it crossed Jim and William’s mind to have that lyric in there. I guess they might have thought of all these things that could happen that’d really suck, and one of them would be if you bought these photographs of God, and then they faded away. I thought it was a great tune, as well.
I’ve got a favourite Swervedriver lyric: the opening two lines to “Last Train To Satansville” (“You look like you’ve been losing sleep’, said a stranger on a train / I fixed him with an ice-cold stare and said, ‘I’ve been having those dreams again”). To me they’re a wonderfully evocative couple of lines. Are you particularly fond of those lyrics?
We probably were at the time, because I think that those lyrics were reproduced in full on the [Mezcal Head] album sleeve. But it was inspired by this song ‘They’re Hanging Me Tonight’ which was a song by a country singer named Marty Robbins. They both have a similar sort of narrative. The key line in that song was “They bury Flo tomorrow, but they’re hanging me tonight.” He’s in a prison cell, waiting to be sentenced. That song just seemed to have that twangy sort of vibe.
Speaking more broadly, what do you think when you look back to some of the material you recorded as a younger man?
Well, I think most of it stands up pretty well. I haven’t really listened to the recordings that much. We’ve been searching around for slightly more obscure b-sides and album tracks to play live, and there are some good things tucked away. There is quite a good catalogue for Swervedriver, really. I’m quite impressed by how many songs were written in that short two years, or whatever, because I think we released four EPs that all had four songs on them, and a nine-song album [Raise] as well. It’s actually quite a lot of stuff. And that stuff was written – it wasn’t like we had songs lying around for five years before. They were all pretty much written around that time.
We got quite prolific. It’s quite different now, because now I have songs I’ve had lying around for two, five, or ten years. And it’s good having those things, because every now and then you think “Oh, actually, I finally found a way that this song might work”. Our recent albums are sort of a mixture of new songs as well as things that can be up to 10 years old.
I came across the compilation Juggernaut Rides. I had to order it off eBay because there’s pretty much no other way to get it these days. It’s great, I love it. It’s a really good summation.
People ask me what my [Swervedriver] favourite album is, and people think you shouldn’t say compilation albums, but to me it’s a good selection of everything, really. It doesn’t have all the best stuff on it. I quite like the fact that it’s not chronologically laid out, so you just jump straight into the middle.
What does it mean to you to know that songs you guys recorded together are still extensively a part of peoples’ lives?
Oh, it means everything. It’s great. The music proves it has longevity. In the early nineties, you’d get little snipes in the press sometimes and people talk about the bands that supposedly were more important that I suspect aren’t still being played by anybody 20 years later. It never ceases to amaze me when people say this song or that song moved them in a way, or helped them through a period of time, and all that kind of stuff. Or that they sort of rocked out to it or whatever. It’s great.
For the full interview, visit The Vine. For more Swervedriver – highly recommended – visit their website. The music video for their song ‘Son of Mustang Ford‘ is embedded below.
Mess+Noise interview: Amy Findlay of Stonefield, 2011
An interview for Mess+Noise. Excerpt below.
Interview – Stonefield: Rock ‘N’ Roll High School
Forget gimmickry, Stonefield’s Amy Findlay tells ANDREW MCMILLEN the all-sister quartet from country Victoria want to be known for their music.
There’s an endless fascination associated with staring into the musical past, as evidenced most recently with the Critics’ and Readers’ poll-topping debut by Perth-based psychedelic rock act Tame Impala. Seemingly from that same well of inspiration spring Stonefield: four sisters from country Victoria, aged 12 to 20 years old.
Brandishing a youthful take on 70s-inspired rock, they won last year’s triple j Unearthed High competition, and have since secured a booking at the 2011 Glastonbury Festival in the UK. Richard Kingsmill, music director of triple j, could be heard singing their praises at the One Movement festival in October last year: “They’ve just had an absolutely brilliant musical upbringing,” Kingsmill enthused. “They’ve got very wide and considerable depth in their music knowledge. They’re four sisters who can really play, and who can really belt it out. They’re already great live. I think they might be a band that might evolve into something.”
Ahead of their Glastonbury Festival slot in June, the Findlay sisters are booked to play the St Kilda Festival, the Adelaide Fringe Festival, and Pushover 2011 in the same month; a gruelling schedule, considering that half of the band members are still school-aged.
You’ve got a pretty full gig calendar coming up. Will it be a struggle to fit in rehearsal and gigs around Sarah and Holly’s school commitments?
Amy: Well, we managed to do it throughout last year when we had a lot of stuff coming up, but I think we’re going to have to do a bit of time management to fit in rehearsals after school. They’re going to have a few days off, obviously, and if it gets too much, they’re probably just going to be switching to home-schooling. So we’ll see how we go.What does the band’s typical weekly schedule look like?
At the moment, because everybody’s on school holidays, we’re just practicing as much as we can every day. This month hasn’t been too full-on with gigs, so we’ve had lots of time to write, and rehearse old songs. But when it goes back to school, it’ll be band practice every afternoon that we can, and on the weekends, playing gigs as they pop up. And interviews during the week.Of which you’re handling most. You’re the mouthpiece.
Yeah! [Laughs]Were you elected into that position, or did the others not want to do it?
I just ended up doing it because I’m the older sister, I guess. It naturally happened that way.Where do you rehearse?
We’ve got a shed on our farm, so we go in there and make as much noise as we like, and no-one really hears. Unless it’s a windy day, and the sound travels. [Laughs]I saw a post on your MySpace blog where one of your wrote that you’d been “warned to look out for “sharks” in the music industry”. Who told you that?
A lot of people in the industry; managers and things. When we first won the triple j Unearthed High competition, I got as many phone numbers as I could and spoke to them, and got some advice. A lot of them said that there’s “sharks” in the industry that we should look out for. There’s also good people, of course. We haven’t really come across any of those sharks, just yet.
For the full interview, visit Mess+Noise. For more Stonefield, visit their Myspace. The music video for their song ‘Through The Clover‘ is embedded below.
