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.
The eating disorder anorexia nervosa has the highest death rate of any mental illness: up to 20 per cent in the absence of treatment.
I didn’t know this until I read The Boy Who Loved Apples, in which first-time author Amanda Webster takes on twin challenges: to write a confessional account of the most difficult time of her life and to educate readers about the complexities of an illness few understand intimately, especially as it applies to boys. She succeeds on both counts.
The events Webster describes took place in 2003, when the eldest of her three children, Riche, was 11. The story is told through the rear-view mirror: in past tense and in a matter-of-fact tone that has the (perhaps unintended) side effect of unnerving the reader, especially in dramatic moments, of which there are many. It’s as if Webster, the narrator, is observing someone else live out her interactions, her mistakes, her omissions. This narrative device works well.
The psychological reality of living with anorexia is shocking: the battle of the book’s subtitle is no overstatement. Webster describes in painful detail the relentless, punishing routine of feeding Riche protein shakes – practically his only source of nourishment for almost a year – five times a day, while responding to his tired series of calorie-conscious questions. “This won’t make me fat, will it?” asks a boy who weighs a desperately unhealthy 25kg.
Recrimination is a consistent theme throughout this book, towards Webster’s husband, Kevin, a frequent-flying investment banker who is rarely at home during the week, and the author herself, a self-confessed “corporate wife”. It does help that Kevin is a high-income earner, as the family eventually spends more than $2000 a week to manage Riche’s illness.
Soon after she moves from Mullumbimby in northern NSW to Brisbane to begin Riche’s treatment, Webster ransacks the bookshops for anything on eating disorders. She notes wryly that such books are shelved alongside sex guides; her own love life has been no great shakes since Riche’s diagnosis. The books solidify her belief that her son’s illness was brought on by parenting mistakes. (She’s wrong, and eventually learns that blame benefits no one.)
Much of the narrative concerns interactions between the author and her son, though there’s also a recurring cast of doctors, psychiatrists, dieticians and support staff, as well as her two younger children and husband. This one-on-one dynamic works in favour of the story, as it highlights the truly consuming nature of the illness:
“It was trench warfare, an endless battle with no tea breaks. If I’d thought about it before, I would have assumed anorexia popped up at mealtimes – a fight over food, and then on with the day. I didn’t realise the illness controlled every waking moment, or that it affected every aspect of life.”
To complicate matters, it becomes clear that throughout those long, lonely months in Brisbane, the author herself is fraught with depression, anxiety and, later, post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the “skull-shattering tedium” that envelopes her life and the life of her son.
Alcohol becomes a crutch. She fights on the phone with Kevin, whose work keeps him in Sydney, and longs for the company of her other, attention-starved children.
Webster never normalises Riche’s behaviour: there is nothing normal about an 11-year-old attempting suicide after coming into contact with a tiny puddle of car oil (“It’s making me fat. Look how fat my arm is.”) or scraping the skin from his hands after an iced bun was eaten in the house (“I had to use my nails. I’m fat.”). Webster shifts between helpless fury towards his irrational, starved-brain behaviour and compassionate self-reminders that it’s the illness at fault.
That the Websters survived that terrible year is remarkable, as is the frank and humane way in which the author frames the grim realities of their situation. This is an important story delivered with a fantastic eye for detail. It is, ultimately, one focused on love and sacrifice at any cost. And thankfully there is a happy – and healthy – ending.
As cyberspace encroaches ever deeper into our everyday lives, it’s worth pressing the pause button to question how we choose to spend our time in an era of digital distractions. The two books under review present opposing viewpoints on this conundrum.
In Digital Vertigo [pictured right], Anglo-American entrepreneur Andrew Keen takes a critical stance against the technologists behind social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter, for reasons exemplified in the book’s subtitle. Keen knows his topic from the inside: on the cover the title is presented as a Twitter hashtag and the author’s name as @ajkeen. He has more than 19,000 followers on that medium, and this book seems to have been written between his frequent pond-hopping to speak at social media conferences.
The tale begins with Keen staring at the corpse of Jeremy Bentham, the long-dead British philosopher and prison architect best known for his Panopticon design, in which inmates can be watched by outside observers at any time: “a prison premised upon the principle of perpetual peeking”, as Keen writes. Per his wishes, Bentham’s body is permanently exhibited inside a glass-fronted coffin — an “auto-icon” — within University College, London. Keen’s segue is that social media represents the “permanent self-exhibition zone of our digital age”.
A curious introduction, no doubt. Time and again, Keen revisits the concept of the auto-icon while examining how our culture has become “a transparent love-in, an orgy of over-sharing” and comparing today to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, where “to do anything that suggested a taste for solitude was always slightly dangerous”. Many readers will recognise a kernel of truth in this comparison: to log on to the internet in 2012 is to be inundated with requests (demands?) to share, to socialise with other humans.
Keen’s title is also a reference to the 1958 Hitchcock film Vertigo, where the protagonist eventually learns that everything he believed to be true was the product of malicious deception by his peers. Keen ties this to social media by describing it as “so ubiquitous, so much the connective tissue of society” that we’re all “victims of a creepy story that we neither understand nor control”.
The scenic route that Keen takes to arrive at this tenuous point is not particularly interesting. He fills entire chapters by paraphrasing academics and journalists, and attempts to list seemingly every start-up social business making waves in Silicon Valley. As a self-described “super node” of the social network, Keen seems quite proud to tell us that he closed his personal Facebook account in September last year.
What could have been an original tech-dissident’s tale from the belly of the never sleeping beast is instead convoluted and messy. Keen draws heavily on historical references and too often these miss the mark, though a thorough examination of the creation and fiery destruction of the Crystal Palace in London is a highlight. It’s worth considering whether the meandering and messy nature of Digital Vertigo — including many typographical errors — is a symptom of the author’s inability to avoid the attention-shattering properties of the web.
At the time of writing, @ajkeen was still tweeting, by the way.
Conversely, British novelist Nick Harkaway tries his hand at long-form nonfiction for the first time in The Blind Giant [pictured right], and strikes on a narrative that immediately grips the reader. Using tight language and evocative descriptions, Harkaway’s introduction is a nightmare vision of a dystopian, tech-led society where “consciousness itself, abstracted thought and a sense of the individual as separate from the environment” are all withering away. A contrasting vision of a “happy valley” follows, and is just as realistic and compelling.
Harkaway admits in the afterword that the book had its origins in “unpicking the idea that digital technology was responsible for all our ills”. This late-declared bias aside, The Blind Giant is a measured and thoughtful take on a problem that will concern us all soon, if it doesn’t already.
Though the author is clearly tech-inclined – he notes on page one that he was born in 1972, the same year as the release of the first video game, Pong – he is not fanatical. He compares attempts to switch off from the internet with refusing to open your mail: “It doesn’t solve the problem, it just leaves you ignorant of what’s happening, and gradually the letters pile up on the mat.”
His narrative arc is well considered and draws on disparate topics such as neuroplasticity (how the brain alters its make-up to take on new skills and abilities), whether social media helped or hindered the anti-Mubarak revolutions last year (in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and London) and the intriguing idea that we are living in an era of “peak digital”: “the brief and impetuous flowering of digital technology during which we inhabit a fantasy of infinite resources at low market prices”.
Harkaway is a consistently engaging narrator: his fascinating analogies, elegant word play and occasional use of humour all point to his storytelling skills. True to the subtitle, his book cuts to the core of what it means to be human and how we might go about managing new and emerging technologies.
It’s no self-help guide to unplugging yourself from the wired world, nor does he encourage us to spend more time with our heads in “the cloud”. Instead, Harkaway urges us to acknowledge our humanness on a regular basis, regardless of whether that human happens to be engaging online or off.
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.
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.
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.
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.
By combining the ethos and aesthetics of punk-rock and electronica with hip-hop, Californian trio Death Grips have established an entirely unique sound.
On this debut album, producer Andy Morin, percussionist Zach Hill and vocalist MC Ride work largely with dark, abrasive tones which imbue the act with a menacing edge.
Much of this can be attributed to Ride, whose combative style of rapping sits high in the mix amid rolling waves of electronic percussion and a galaxy of fleeting samples, including muscle car engines (‘Hustle Bones’) and Venus Williams’s impassioned scream (‘System Blower’). Rarely is Ride’s voice unadorned: most of the time, it’s run through distortion and delay filters or looped on-the-fly to create a consistent wall of sound.
Death Grips’ experimental style sits so far outside mainstream hip-hop that they’ll be easily dismissed by most. The rewards for those with patience are significant, though: The Money Store is the musical equivalent of randomly surfing the internet while wired on caffeine.
The three discover interesting sounds, stretch them out of shape, mash them into three-minute shocks of beautiful dissonance, then discard them. The album’s 13 songs each contain distinctive moods and themes.
From the sinister lyrics of album closer ‘Hacker’ (“I’m in your area / I know the first three numbers”) to the overdriven guitars in ‘I’ve Seen Footage’, there’s never a dull moment. Highly recommended.
Does the world really need another guitar-pop band? Brisbane has proved fertile ground for the genre of late: the Grates, the John Steel Singers and Yves Klein Blue all achieved national notoriety in recent years mining this rich vein.
Funnily enough, all three are labelmates with newcomers Last Dinosaurs, suggesting that Dew Process has something of a local monopoly.
The young quartet’s debut LP practically radiates with neon intensity, so smooth, shiny and punchy is the production on these 11 tracks. Every frantic guitar strum and finicky hi-hat hit rings clean, and Sean Caskey’s vocal melodies are strong without becoming overbearing – though he does fall into the pop musician’s trap of writing instantly forgettable lyrics.
It’s either confidence or arrogance that convinces a band to open an album with its best track. I’m leaning toward the former, though Zoom is such a perfect example of guitar-pop done right that the rest of the album pales a little in comparison.
Earlier single Honolulu almost scales the same heights. The steel drums in Andy suit the track, but come off a little outdated in the wake of Sydney band the Holidays nailing the use of that instrument on its 2010 debut, Post Paradise. Spacey mid-album instrumental Satellites is the only unnecessary track here; its presence makes no sense amid an otherwise impressive, tight collection.
The best track on Hilltop Hoods’ sixth album, ‘Rattling the Keys to the Kingdom’, is built on the familiar lyrical trope of rap group pitting itself against its many competitors.
Yet here the narrative rings true: this Adelaide trio genuinely owns the Australian hip-hop throne, so when they rap “We came and we conquered” while a chant of “Hill-top! Hill-top!” repeats in the background, they’re being both arrogant and honest.
Their last release, 2009’s State of the Art, was the genre’s bestselling album yet. Fans and rivals alike look to these three to see where they’ll take the art form next; likely, more than a few hope they’ll falter and cede control to another crew.
To their disappointment, this offering is another jewel in the crown. The meaning of its title is made clear in the second of three interludes entitled ‘The Thirst’, when a voice explains “It’s a metaphor that we’re from an underground culture that’s risen up into the limelight; we’re down below, drinking from what’s coming above.”
Since the overwhelming success of the Hoods’ breakthrough 2003 release The Calling, Australian hip-hop has joined the mainstream. Where cultural cringe once confined the genre to the margins, the nation’s biggest music festivals are now just as likely to book hip-hop acts as they are pop and rock artists.
Drinking from the Sun represents the trio’s first real attempt at penetrating the North American market. It’s impossible to view this album through any other lens: all signs point to a concerted effort to impress newcomers.
At a touch over 41 minutes, it’s also their shortest album to date. While MCs Pressure and Suffa certainly can’t hide their distinctive accents, DJ Debris turns in perhaps his most impressive effort to date. The beats and instrumentation are uniformly world-class, and will give the trio its best shot yet at turning foreign ears.
They’ve also enlisted a pair of instantly recognisable American voices – Black Thought (of The Roots) and Chali 2na (Jurassic 5) – to lay down tidy, if unspectacular verses; another guest is Australian singer Sia Furler, who has written and sung for mega-sellers David Guetta and Flo Rida.
Lyrically, the two MCs discuss death (‘Lights Out’), break-ups (‘Now You’re Gone’), self-doubt (‘Good for Nothing’) and Suffa’s new-found sobriety (‘Shredding the Balloon’), while brass, strings, guitar and Debris’ beats fill out their now-signature sound.
Their answer was evidently ‘none of the above’. But the headliner is many hours away as we file into the Showgrounds just before the clocks strike 11am. The days preceding have seen heavy rain pelt Brisbane for extended periods, so it’s admirable that organisers have managed to greet us upon arrival with what appears to be a smoothly running festival. Ground staff are relying heavily on plastic matting to cover up the muddiest spots, and for the time being, the entire venue is easy to navigate with regular footwear while staying dry.
The sun shines overhead as I take up position before the metal stages, 4a and 4b, in anticipation of Finnish metal act Turisas. It seems they’re late; stagehands continue soundchecking, until twenty past, when they instead hoist the next band’s banner, The Black Dahlia Murder. Hundreds of disappointed people file out; nothing has been communicated to the audience as far as I can tell. (I later learn from a friend that they were moved to a midday slot at another stage.) A rare organisational hiccup, and not a good start to the day.
The sky breaks for the first time at 11.48am. I’m standing under a tree watching Chimaira, who sound OK. A little keyboard-heavy, which is odd for a metal band. Lots of blast beats and breakdown. There’s a heart-warming singalong to ‘Pure Hatred’ – namely, the chorus of “I hate everyone!” – while I apply my poncho for the first of many times today. The tent before stage 3 sees a sharp increase in visitors seeking shelter. Zebrahead are playing. Eh, pop-punk. The merch tent between the stages features the most impressive wall of shirts I’ve ever seen.
Out in the main arena, Stage 1 bears a banner that reads Pinkerton. Underneath, a band is playing Weezer’s ‘El Scorcho’. Turns out it’s Saves The Day halfway through playing that album in full. It’s weird, but their version is competent enough and I guess it’s much cheaper than booking Weezer. At stage 6a, CKY draw a couple thousand people before the rain returns at 12.50pm, scattering the casual observers and encouraging the dedicated throng up front to thrash harder. From a distance, it looks and sounds like they’ve got a different singer – his voice seems way off Deron Miller’s on-record delivery – but research afterwards suggests that Miller’s still in place. Just having a bad day, then. Their set is enjoyable enough, but most (all?) of these songs are 10+ years old. I referred to them as “a band seemingly near the end of their tether” in a review of their August 2010 tour, and I feel the same way today. Telling that the quartet don’t even bother with more recent or unreleased material; just the hits, thanks.
“So many good bands today, oh my god. Cannot believe that!” says the singer of French metal band Gojira from stage 4b. He’s right. It helps that his band kick arse. They’re one of the heaviest acts on the line-up, and one of the most anticipated by the metalheads: this is their first-ever Australian show, and they’ve drawn a big crowd to take in their seriously impressive and brutal sound. Sample song intro: “This song is about whales that fly… into outer space!” *crowd roars, horns raised* Apparently they only play for 20 minutes – four songs’ worth – which is disappointing, but in that short time they stand out as one of the day’s best acts. Friends have been recommending them to me for years, but today is my first exposure to Gojira. I’ll definitely be returning.
For the full review and many more photos, visit The Vine. Slipknot photo credit above: Justin Edwards. iPhone photo credit: Andrew McMillen.
To those familiar with Melbourne-based Yeo Choong’s past releases, the opening bars of his third album, Home, will come as a shock.
Acoustic guitar, harmonica and his voice are high in the mix, rather than the synthesisers and electric instruments that characterised his debut album, 2006’s Trouble Being Yourself.
There, Choong walked the tightrope between pop and funk; to pin him as an Asian-Australian Justin Timberlake/Pharell hybrid was close to the mark.
On Home – available for download at http://snackswithyeo.bandcamp.com/ – the songs are near-nude in comparison, which forces the listener to focus on Choong’s vocal and songwriting abilities.
It’s a bold move, yet Choong clearly has the confidence in his own abilities. These are songs of gentle beauty. A banjo can be heard on ‘Selma Blair’ and ’10 & A Whiskey’, while third track ‘Meeting at Sea’ is the gentlest and most beautiful cut.
There are two rockers, ‘August 28, 1973’ and ‘Caves’, which break up the mellow instrumentation with electric guitars and forceful percussion. The gut instinct is to view Choong’s stylistic change in terms of maturity. The 13 tracks show he has lost none of his writing abilities, but one hopes that Choong hasn’t disposed of the synthesisers just yet, either.
Given the considerable success of two-piece garage rock acts such the White Stripes and, more recently, the Black Keys, the formation of Melbourne duo the Peep Tempel in 2009 makes a lot of sense.
The addition of a bassist for their debut album certainly won’t hurt their chances, though, as what the three achieve here is incredible: they manage to make bare-bones rock and roll sound fresh and exciting.
The Peep Tempel is a dark, invigorating set of songs that demand to be played front to back, repeatedly. The style swings between breakneck rockers (‘Lance’, ‘Collusion’) and the slow, foreboding lurch of ‘Mission Floyd’ and ‘Do What You Want’. Each of the 10 songs imparts a sense of urgency in the listener.
It takes considerable skill to operate within such strict confines – the classic configuration of guitar, bass, drums and vocals – and still conjure up memorable musical and vocal hooks. There isn’t a single moment on The Peep Tempel (the name comes from a strip club in an Inspector Rex episode) that sounds played-out or predictable.
It’s hard to know how much of the narrative, which includes tales of unemployment and police brutality, is based on the band’s inner-city west Melbourne existence and how much is fiction. One thing is certain: this debut is very near to rock and roll perfection.
As we hurtle towards 2012 and the holiday season, TheVine has asked our critics to give us their Top 10 best music “things” from over the past year — whatever the hell they may be and in whatever haphazard fashion they so declare. Go.
—
10. The Drones at The Hi-Fi, October 28 2011
I didn’t review this one. I went by myself. I don’t think I even spoke to anyone at this show. But over two intense hours, The Drones reinforced why they’re my favourite band. ‘I’m Here Now’, in particular, blew my mind. I think the bit where Gareth sings, “…and for the first time now, I’m looking right at you” is my favourite moment in any Drones song. Cathartic. It kinda goes without saying, but: never, ever pass up an opportunity to see The Drones live. Here’s footage from Sydney, the night after I saw them:
9. Les Savy Fav at Laneway Festival Brisbane
This was one of those “you had to be there” kind of shows, so I’m a little hesitant to include this on the list. But Christ, are this band incredible live! I haven’t seen one man own a room – or, in this case, a tin shed – like this before, and doubt I will again (until Les Savy Fav visit Brisbane again). Watch this video, and keep in mind that the rest of their 45 minute set was just like this:
“Some bands simply have singers; guys with strong vocals that get the job done. Some have frontmen; guys who, in addition to singing, take it upon themselves to keep the crowd pumped. I’m reminded of that quote from Almost Famous, where the singer is like “You know what I do? I connect. I get people off. I look for the guy who isn’t getting off, and I make him get off”. This is entirely apt when discussing Tim Harrington of Les Savy Fav. To say that his performance sets the Inner Sanctum alight is to understate the obvious. For the next 45 minutes, he owns the room. A chubby, bearded, near-bald man with a hell of a voice and (metaphorical) balls the size of grapefruits, has – within minutes of the band taking the stage – commandeered an orange vest from TheVine’s photographer, Justin Edwards and marched through the crowd; extra-long corded microphone in hand, singing in people’s faces, rubbing himself against poles, and drinking whatever people offer him.
At times, his performance veers toward the unbelievable. Like when he grabs some silver paint from his bag of props – the dude comes prepared with all manner of costumes and supplements – and rubs it all over himself, before dropping into the front row and leaving gigantic silver handprints on the faces of the entire front row. Or when, right near the end, he marches through the crowd, picks up an orange security barrier, and has the crowd hold him aloft while he stands and sings. All the while, his gun band thrash away at their idiosyncratic style of danceable noise-punk, with barely a glance toward the mesmeric insanity of what their singer is doing. Even as it happens, it feels like one of those performances that you’ll be telling people about for years to come. Harrington redefines the boundaries of what’s possible and acceptable onstage.”
8. Nova Scotia – Nova Scotia
This fine debut was released at the start of the year, but it’s still one of 2011’s best albums. They’re an indie rock band who live in Brisbane. They’ve hardly toured outside of this city so you’ve probably never heard of them, but believe me, they’re worthy of your attention. Try this track:
Excerpt from album review: “Final track ‘The World Is Not Enough’ is the best cut they’ve put to tape. Built around an instant-classic bassline and subdued guitar licks – which must have been tough for the three guitarists – the song does an abrupt about-face at the halfway mark and becomes another thing entirely. The inclusion of brass instruments late in the piece is the final inspired decision on an album full of them.”
7. Warpaint [pictured above] visiting Australia twice: Laneway Festival and Splendour In The Grass
I would be even happier if this was an annual occurrence. A fantastic band.
Laneway review excerpt: “On the Car Park Stage, four women called Warpaint prove themselves as one of the day’s highlights, soon after shouldering instruments and counting in. I spend most of the set in awe of Stella Mozgawa, whose control and power behind the drumkit is a thing of rare beauty. While all four of the LA-based band are strong instrumentalists, Mozgawa is the band’s beating, metronomic heart. She’s not a particularly flashy player, but the way she dominates her kit with an insistent, rolling flurry of notes has to be seen to be believed. Warpaint’s sound is rarely brash; they often opt for creeping subtlety in their guitar lines and vocal delivery, though there are occasional moments of raised heartbeats, as in standout ‘Undertow’. The crowd increases as their set progresses; quite possibly the result of text messages sent across the festival instructing friends to come witness this shit-hot American rock band. Highly recommended.”
Splendour review excerpt: “Under the McLennan tent, Los Angeles quartet Warpaint are the closest thing to perfect we’ve heard so far today. They write intelligent dream pop and deliver it in an effortlessly smooth style. In Sydney-born Stella Mozgawa, they’ve got one of the best rock drummers alive. It’s clear that Warpaint live, breathe and love their music. They toured with the Laneway Festival only a few months ago, but they’ll always be welcome on these shores.”
6. Witch Hats – Pleasure Syndrome
An incredible second album from one of the best rock bands in Australia. I hope I don’t have to use the phrases ‘criminally underrated’ and ‘underground’ when describing Witch Hats for much longer. Here’s a taste: ‘Hear Martin’, the first single from an album which you can – and should – buy directly from the band. Here.
5. Eddie Vedder dedicating ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’ to — the very recently deceased (at the time) — Mike Starr, at Vedder’s first show of his Australian tour, 10 March 2011
This broke me. An incredibly sad, beautiful, powerful, unforgettable moment. I had a strange feeling that something remarkable would happen at this show, which is why I brought my audio recorder along. I was right. Excerpt:
“Though Vedder’s performance – nearly two hours long, and featuring nearly two dozen songs – is thoroughly entertaining, there is a very dark moment embedded toward the end; curiously, right after ‘Betterman’, a track whose narrative shifts from depressed to optimistic across three minutes. Here’s the moment transcribed below in its entirety.
[Vedder finishes playing ‘Betterman’. Crowd cheers. A few moments later, a woman yells from the back of the room, “That was beautiful, Eddie!” Crowd cheers again.]
Vedder: Thank you very much. First night of a new tour – that’s exactly the kind of support you appreciate.
[Crowd laughs and cheers.]
Vedder: There was a, um… the first tour our group ever went on was with another band. It all seemed… I mean, it’s still new and exciting, but you have to work at ways to make it new and exciting. It was just a trip. It was just mind-blowing, starting out. I’d never actually been, like, in a band, and on tour. I’d played little shows here and there. But this was, like, the real thing. There was another band that we were with, and they had records out, and I was kind of looking at them to see how to behave. It was pretty intense. There was a guy in that group – the group was Alice In Chains, that we toured with.
[Crowd cheers.]
Vedder: The guy who played bass in that band, his name was Mike Starr. Our orbits changed a long, long time ago. We hadn’t seen him for years. He’d been going through a rough time for quite some time. Uh, yeah. I don’t know if you heard, but he’s no longer with us, as of yesterday. I’ve just been thinking about him. A lot. I don’t know what anybody could have done. It’s just really sad when life, and living life, and all that the planet and the people on it have to offer; and all that you can offer it, and them. It’s too bad when sobriety’s just not enough to keep you alive.
[Crowd applauds. Vedder begins playing ‘The Needle And The Damage Done’ by Neil Young. It’s heartbreaking.]”
4. The Dandy Warhols at The Tivoli, May 31 2011
This is one of few shows I witnessed this year that I wish I could relive. Despite going to dozens of gigs and nearly every major festival that visited south-east Queensland in 2011, I find myself returning to this particular set. An unlikely Tuesday night highlight at the tail end of a national tour. Magic. Excerpt:
“What if I put it to you that The Dandy Warhols are one of the best American rock bands alive? The more I watch and listen tonight, the more plausible it seems. I didn’t walk in expecting to happen upon this realisation. It hit around halfway through, when the rest of the band left the stage—keyboardist Zia McCabe and drummer Brent ‘Fathead’ DeBoer for a toilet break, apparently—which left frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor to unveil his “secret weapon”: a solo version of ‘Every Day Should Be A Holiday’. I doubted whether he could pull it off. The Dandys tend to work through sheer volume, I figured, not cutesy, sentimental moments better suited to stadium schlock-rockers. I was way the fuck wrong. From the first downward, loosely-strummed chord, CT-T begins singing. Right near where I’m standing—up the back of the balcony— a bunch of middle-aged men begin bouncing around, arms around shoulders, singing along at the top of their lungs. Then, what seems like the entire crowd joins him to harmonise during the chorus. Its ascending melody is irresistible; contagious. Over a thousand voices follow his trajectory: “Anytiiiii-hiiii-IIIME / Baby let’s goooo-hoooo-HOOO / EverydAAAA-AAaay-aayyyyyy / Should be a holidaaaaaay”. Which sounds fucking stupid on paper, sure, but in the flesh, it’s hair-raising. He gets to the line in the second verse – “Super cool / The Dandys rule, okay?” – and…I can’t disagree. All of a sudden, I realise I’m watching one of my favourite bands.”
3. Daring to criticise Tool’s Big Day Out sideshow in Brisbane (see here)
Even though I’ve been a hardcore Tool fan for around half of my 23 years, when I saw their Brisbane show the day after the Gold Coast BDO in January, I had forgotten just how intense their fanbase is. So when I wrote a mostly positive live review that poked fun at a few elements of their oh-so-serious concert, I was surprised at the reaction from a handful of Tool fans who took umbrage at my decision to criticise the band. It’s worth clicking the above link and reading through all 31 comments to witness the sheer blind insanity that Tool invoke in certain people, but here’s a sample of awesome eloquence:
“SHUT THE FUCK, UP AND GO BACK TO YOUR UNEDUCATED,OVER CRITICAL CORNER, WITH YOUR CD COLLECTION THAT NO DOUBT, CONSISTS OF SHIT LIKE “SOMETHING FOR KATE” “OPERATOR PLAESE” “MILLI VANILLI” “MGMT” AND THE LIKES, AND refrain from slowing down the natural evolution of mankind!”
And from the same commenter, this time sent to me via TheVine’s personal message system:
“Put your pen down, and do the world a favour…. kill yourself!!! Kind regards. Pete.”
2. Gotye feat. Kimbra – ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’
I was in Odessa, Ukraine with my girlfriend when I saw this video for the first time, soon after Gotye tweeted its release in early July. Our hotel’s shonky internet connection meant that we had to pause halfway through to let the rest of it load, but once viewed in full, the song’s power was remarkable. Even then. Incredibly, it still is, even after hearing it hundreds of times. The intertwining male and female vocal harmonies toward the end of the song still give me goosebumps, every time. Watching the pair duet at Splendour 2011 was a revelation: the crowd response was extraordinary. I knew then and there that this track would win the Hottest 100 (and wrote as much for Mess+Noise). Simply a killer tune.
1. Tyler The Creator – ‘Yonkers’
32 million YouTube views and counting, this still stands up as my favourite track of the year. Released in February seemingly out of nowhere – I hadn’t heard of Odd Future before ‘Yonkers’ – this sparse, menacing narrative sent me and many others down the rabbit hole of discovering a prolific and diverse catalogue, one self-released by a group who only just left their teens. Coupled with an instant-classic music video and verse after verse of memorable lyrical hooks, ‘Yonkers’ is a modern hip-hop masterpiece. Though nothing on Tyler’s 2011 release Goblin came close to the quality of this first single, this young writer/producer and his crew of collaborators certainly made their mark this year.
Women of Letters: Reviving the Lost Art of Correspondence Curated by Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire
Penguin, 412pp, $29.95
A fine cross-section of humanity – largely womankind – is on display in Women of Letters, a book born from a series of live letter reading and writing events “celebrating wine, women and words” in eastern capital cities in 2010.
The events were founded by writers Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire through their desire to “showcase brilliant female minds”, and also in the name of a good cause: all royalties from the sale of this book will go to Edgar’s Mission, an animal shelter in Victoria.
Comprising 69 authors, many of whom are well-known Australian musicians, writers and actresses, and 16 topics, Women of Letters contains many surprises, joys and profound learnings. Here are but a handful of moments that this reviewer felt most appealing:
Comedian Judith Lucy’s letter “to the night I’d rather forget” taught her “the invaluable lesson that it is never a good idea to combine alcohol with being a f . . kwit”. In a letter “to my first pin-up”, Adam Ant, former Triple J Magazine editor Jenny Valentish reflects on music journalism: “writing about tortured artists for a living, my keyboard is constantly awash with salty sentiment . . . I’m like a professional enabler for these people”. Actress Claudia Karvan and comedian Virginia Gay take a literal interpretation of “a love letter” by addressing theirs to the concept of love itself, with very different outcomes.
In a letter “to the moment it all fell apart”, musician Amanda Roff strikes on speculative fiction so absorbing that John Birmingham would give a nod of approval. “I remember lining up outside Melbourne Zoo, waiting for the army to sell the last of the meat,” she writes, taking the reader deep into her post-apocalyptic world.
This freedom of the open brief offered each writer the ability to choose how much of themselves to reveal. Many opt for brazen honesty. Singer Missy Higgins is particularly touching when writing “to my turning point”: she discusses her first experiences with depression. “I’m thankful to you, dear Turning Point, for . . . showing me that I’m not alone, that it’s OK to be sad.” In “to the letter I wish I’d written”, musician Georgia Fields asks, “Why am I still, at 27 years of age, so paralysingly terrified of what people think of me?” she writes. “Why can’t I just relax and be myself?”
The few blokes who appear in these pages generally opt for sentimentality too, especially when writing “to the woman who changed my life”.
Bob Ellis writes to his wife: “You are more than I deserved, and I less than you deserved, and this is too hard.” Rocker Tim Rogers is brutally honest in his self-assessment while writing to his ex-wife. “I wanted to thank you for what you’ve done to me. It wasn’t intended to be a love letter. But what changes someone more completely than love, and loss?”
Comedian and actor Eddie Perfect comes up with a great line while writing to his wife: “I don’t know what a family is, how to define it, other than as a collection of people who bind themselves together and get weirder and weirder until no one understands them.”
The highlights are so plentiful that I must mention a few more: Crikey editor Sophie Black writing “to my first boss” about her 1993 work experience at New Idea (“in one working week, at five dollars a day, I learnt enough to put me off journalism for the next decade”); Jennifer Byrne’s decision to read a heart-wrenching letter written in 1910 by a dying explorer on a fraught expedition to Antarctica; Noni Hazlehurst writing “to my ghosts”, which turn out to be the “gloriously impulsive, intuitive, emotional” voices in her head, and radio broadcaster Fee-B Squared writing “to my nemesis”, her bad back.
Women of Letters offers a joyous bounty of many voices, writing styles, laughs and regrets. Having read this book, I feel as though I know humans and their various conditions much better.
Andrew McMillen is a Brisbane-based freelance journalist.
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.
I didn’t know this until I read The Boy Who Loved Apples, in which first-time author Amanda Webster takes on twin challenges: to write a confessional account of the most difficult time of her life and to educate readers about the complexities of an illness few understand intimately, especially as it applies to boys. She succeeds on both counts.
In Digital Vertigo [pictured right], Anglo-American entrepreneur Andrew Keen takes a critical stance against the technologists behind social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter, for reasons exemplified in the book’s subtitle. Keen knows his topic from the inside: on the cover the title is presented as a Twitter hashtag and the author’s name as 
Conversely, British novelist Nick Harkaway tries his hand at long-form nonfiction for the first time in The Blind Giant [pictured right], and strikes on a narrative that immediately grips the reader. Using tight language and evocative descriptions, Harkaway’s introduction is a nightmare vision of a dystopian, tech-led society where “consciousness itself, abstracted thought and a sense of the individual as separate from the environment” are all withering away. A contrasting vision of a “happy valley” follows, and is just as realistic and compelling.
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.
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.
What we now take for granted once existed only on the fringes of popular music.
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.
By combining the ethos and aesthetics of punk-rock and electronica with hip-hop, Californian trio Death Grips have established an entirely unique sound.
Does the world really need another guitar-pop band? Brisbane has proved fertile ground for the genre of late: the Grates, the John Steel Singers and Yves Klein Blue all achieved national notoriety in recent years mining this rich vein.
The best track on Hilltop Hoods’ sixth album, ‘Rattling the Keys to the Kingdom’, is built on the familiar lyrical trope of rap group pitting itself against its many competitors.
Their answer was evidently ‘none of the above’. But the headliner is many hours away as we file into the Showgrounds just before the clocks strike 11am. The days preceding have seen heavy rain pelt Brisbane for extended periods, so it’s admirable that organisers have managed to greet us upon arrival with what appears to be a smoothly running festival. Ground staff are relying heavily on plastic matting to cover up the muddiest spots, and for the time being, the entire venue is easy to navigate with regular footwear while staying dry.
A fine cross-section of humanity – largely womankind – is on display in Women of Letters, a book born from a series of live letter reading and writing events “celebrating wine, women and words” in eastern capital cities in 2010.