All posts tagged criticism

  • The Weekend Australian album review: The Roots – ‘undun’, December 2011

    An album review for The Australian, reproduced below in its entirety.

    The Roots – undun

    As concept albums go, Philadelphia hip-hop band The Roots’ Undun isn’t too far removed from reality.

    Dubbed an “existential retelling” of the life of a fictional American man named Redford Stephens, who lived between 1974 and 1999, Undun “seeks to illustrate the intersection of free will and prescribed destiny as it plays out ‘on the corner”‘.

    Drugs, violence, desperation and regret play out in the narrative contained within these 14 tracks.

    The tale begins at the end of Stephens’s life: in Sleep, MC Black Thought raps: “All that I am, all that I was, is history / The past unravelled, adding insult to this injury”. In Make My, the protagonist, still in a disoriented state, concludes: “If there’s a heaven, I can’t find the stairway”.

    It’s a fascinating and original approach to urban storytelling that remains compelling throughout the album’s 39 minutes.

    After 13 albums together, the Roots’ sound has become so distinguished and refined that it’s simply a joy to hear them at the height of their game. In effortlessly smooth track Kool On, each instrument – guitar, bass, drums, keys, vocals – can be clearly identified in the mix. Drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson can be relied on for at least one classic beat an album; on Undun, it’s The OtherSide.

    The final four tracks – the “Redford Suite” – consist of a beautiful, elegiac orchestral arrangement. It’s the final surprise on an album that further solidifies the Roots as genre leaders.

    LABEL: Universal
    RATING: 4 stars

    This review was originally published in The Weekend Australian Review on December 31. For more of The Roots, visit their website. The audio for ‘Make My‘ is embedded below.

  • The Weekend Australian album review: Witch Hats – ‘Pleasure Syndrome’, December 2011

    An album review for The Australian, reproduced below in its entirety.

    Witch Hats – Pleasure Syndrome

    Though this Melbourne quartet has been associated with jagged, sneering punk rock on previous releases, a second LP, Pleasure Syndrome, finds Witch Hats in pursuit of something less dark, more beautiful.

    The bass-heavy swagger and distorted guitars are still in place, but singer Kris Buscombe has clearly been honing his ear for pop songwriting in the three years since the band’s debut, Cellulite Soul.

    This repositioning of the sound has worked: those put off by Buscombe’s wounded howl and his bandmates’ discordant squall in the past will now enjoy songs such as In the Mortuary, a quasi-acoustic ballad featuring pretty lead guitar phrasing and Buscombe’s sweetest voice yet. These 10 songs are more confident than anything the band has released before.

    First single Hear Martin – built around a creepy keyboard line and written from the perspective of infamous gunman Martin Bryant – is the most accessible track here. It’s followed by Ashley, whose persistent bassline underscores the album’s most unsettling track. Buscombe revels in exploring the darker side of humanity, as best evidenced in album opener The Bounty, a gritty tale of frontiersmen scalping their peers for “fifty a head”.

    Witch Hats has heart, skill and wide appeal, and Pleasure Syndrome gives 10 more reasons descriptors underrated and underground should be associated with this band no longer.

    LABEL: Longtime Listener
    RATING: 4 ½ stars

    This review was originally published in The Weekend Australian Review on December 31. For more Witch Hats, visit their Bandcamp. The video for ‘Hear Martin‘ is embedded below.

  • The Weekend Australian album review: ‘Rewiggled: A Tribute To The Wiggles’, December 2011

    An album review for The Australian, reproduced below in its entirety.

    Rewiggled: A Tribute To The Wiggles

    Once you get past the initial cognitive dissonance of listening to well-known Australian adult bands cover songs written by coloured skivvy-clad adults for children, there’s a lot to like about Rewiggled.

    The concept is simple: 20 contemporary artists are given the chance to reinterpret the Wiggles’ songs, with consistently interesting results. Some bands sound right at home: Spiderbait’s Rock-a-Bye Your Bear is a cute, taut rock number, the Snowdroppers inject a bluesy swagger into Wags the Dog and Adalita’s Get Ready to Wiggle is full of hazy, down-strummed chords, true to character.

    Megan Washington and her band bring a surf-rock feel to The Monkey Dance, while Architecture in Helsinki’s Wiggly Party becomes a neon-tinged, hyperactive dance number (which, admittedly, is one of few tracks here that grates on repeated listens).

    The Living End thrashes out Hot Potato with such vigour one suddenly wishes they’d do a whole album of Wiggles covers. While most tracks are upbeat, there are some calmer moments: Sarah Blasko’s I Love It When It Rains is an earnest, piano-and-voice affair, Angie Hart’s midtempo Our Boat is Rocking on the Sea is drenched in reverb, and under Clare Bowditch’s guidance, Georgia’s Song becomes elegiac.

    The musicianship is so solid — and the songs so damn catchy — that Rewiggled could find its way on to the stereo without kids’ prompting.

    LABEL: ABC Music
    RATING: 3-1/2 stars

    This review was originally published in The Weekend Australian Review on December 24.

  • Rolling Stone album review: Eddy Current Suppression Ring – ‘So Many Things’, December 2011

    A short album review, published in the December 2011 issue of Rolling Stone.

    Eddy Current Suppression Ring 
    So Many Things (Fuse)

    Garage rockers collect odds and sods in one place

    A collection of this Melbourne band’s out-of-print singles and other rarities, So Many Things is a fine starting point for those who haven’t yet been charmed by Eddy Current’s addictive garage punk rock. Most of the 22 tracks here are so rare they’ll be new to most ears: gritty slow-burner “Demon’s Demands” might be the best ECSR track you’ve never heard; the title track is a hilarious rant about a failed relationship, while “Hey Mum” is a touching tribute to the singer’s mother set against characteristically trebley guitar tones. When they’re on, ECSR are among the best rock bands in Australia.

    Andrew McMillen

    Key tracks: “Demon’s Demands” [embedded below], “Precious Rose”, “You Let Me Be Honest With You”

  • The Weekend Australian book review: Marieke Hardy – ‘You’ll Be Sorry When I’m Dead’, September 2011

    A book review for The Weekend Australian’s Review. Excerpt below.

    No bottom to the naked truth

    You’ll Be Sorry When I’m Dead
    By Marieke Hardy
    Allen & Unwin, 304pp, $29.99

    Life in modern Australia as a hedonistic young woman is vividly portrayed in Marieke Hardy’s You’ll Be Sorry When I’m Dead.

    Hardy, 35, charts her life so far via a series of short stories built around particular themes or events – a friend being diagnosed with breast cancer, her adolescent love of the Fitzroy Football Club, the shame of holidaying with her parents as a single adult – which allow for digressions to help assemble a fuller picture.

    We learn Hardy, the granddaughter of author Frank Hardy, is an only child raised by a pair of “theatre folk” whose open attitude toward nudity rubbed off on their daughter. Hardy writes gleefully of informing programming staff at radio station Triple J during a job interview that there are naked photographs of her “all over the internet”. She was married once, in her late 20s, to a man with a young child from a previous relationship. This relationship is mentioned on page 101, then glossed over until their acrimonious break-up is detailed near the end of the book.

    In between Hardy, a Melbourne-based broadcaster and scriptwriter for shows such as Packed to the Rafters and most recently the ABC series Laid, depicts what seems like her entire romantic history.

    From scampering around naked men in the Fitzroy changerooms as a wide-eyed, sexless child to attending her first swingers’ night, her stories leave little on the cutting room floor when it comes to sex. At the swingers’ night, after describing an excruciating series of pre-coitus conversations where both author and participants coyly refuse to reveal much about themselves, Hardy is confronted with the beginnings of an orgy:

    In the corner, just out of view, somebody was already making a spectacular amount of noise on the round bed. We edged our way towards it, stepping over the anarchy of flesh. “I do believe,” I said in hushed, reverent tones to my boyfriend when our eyes adjusted, “that nice lady in the trench coat over there is being fisted.”

    Your reaction to that particular image will determine whether or not Hardy’s eye for graphic detail is for you. It’s clear that little shocks the author, and this self-aware, detached manner of approaching her role as narrator heightens the appeal of these stories.

    Curiously, Hardy allows some of the people she writes about to respond, with revealing results. At the end of a chapter where Hardy and her then-boyfriend engage the services of a male prostitute, her ex writes, via email: “My only criticism, as a writer, would be, if you’re going to share then don’t hold back. Because it seems you want to share Marieke the caricature, when the soul of the Marieke that I knew, in dark, hard times, well, she was a real person. And a lovely one at that.”

    For the full review, visit The Australian’s website. For more on the book, visit Allen & Unwin.

  • The Vine festival review: ‘Ric’s Big Backyard Festival, Brisbane’, April 2011

    A festival review for The Vine. Excerpt below.

    Ric’s Big Backyard Festival #1
    Ric’s Bar, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane
    Saturday 26 March 2011

    What makes a good music festival? Let’s make the educated assumption that, for the vast majority, value for money is the key determinant. If a buyer perceives a festival to be worthy of their time – and, more importantly, money – there’s a high likelihood that the festival has a line-up that appeals to them. If not, the buyer refuses to part with their money, and spends their day elsewhere. Such is the dilemma faced by the first Ric’s Big Backyard Festival – ‘#1 Autumn 2011’, according to a note on posters and wristbands, and thus hinting at future events. The value proposition for festival #1 is thus: 20-odd bands for $75, spread across three stages near the Brunswick Street Mall in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley. More specifically, the majority of the festival action is contained within Ric’s Bar, a long-standing pillar of this city’s live entertainment scene. Ric’s holds two of the festival’s stages – the main stage is located behind the venue, in the laneway between the Royal George Hotel and X&Y Bar.

    From the outset, one problem is apparent: the festival’s value proposition isn’t strong enough. Upon arriving just before 3pm, a trip to the Upstairs stage – where local actVelociraptor are playing – reveals a modestly full room, with a reasonable gap between skittish punters and the band exhibiting their idiosyncratic style of gang-pop. Their eight members include three guitarists, two drummers, a bassist, a keyboardist, and a singer. They play obnoxious, shambolic pop music that could easily come across as contrived, but manage to avoid it, somehow, probably because they don’t seem to give a shit. It’s a fine line between appearing to not give a shit, and actually not giving a shit, and they err on the latter. Still, even this early in the day, it’s clear that the venue’s close confines – or, to put it another way, forced intimacy – is going to work against the festival.

    There’s more space at the Outside stage, where Guineafowl are playing, to a crowd consisting mostly of staff from their label, Dew Process, and a handful of half-interested punters. It feels like a high school dance, where everyone’s afraid of making the first move; or, in this case, enjoying themselves. The band are copping the afternoon sun in full force. This six-piece play indie pop which draws heavily from the U2 school of songwriting; lots of needly guitar lines, dramatic choruses, and extreme earnestness. They finish with something of a whimper, having barely elicited applause from the audience throughout their half-hour. I count eight Toohey’s Extra Dry flags positioned near the stage; two banners are plastered behind the drum kit. Also within eyeshot are five Smirnoff banners and a few Red Bull umbrellas and tables. None of the above detracts from the musical performances, but it’s pretty clear how Ric’s have pushed the corporate sponsorship envelope.

    At the Downstairs stage, Ben Salter is playing songs from his forthcoming solo album, The Cat. Salter is known – and loved – as the singer/songwriter/guitarist of Brisbane acts The Gin Club and Giants Of Science, among others. Few current performers in Brisbane can match his talent or reputation. Still, this is neither the right time nor place for slow, introspective ballads. No-one’s doubting the quality of the songs, but Salter’s act – accompanied by a guitarist, bassist and drummer – strikes the wrong chord today, and not particularly due to any fault of his own. It’s just that the festival seems stuck in first gear, and it’s not clear what will inspire a shift upwards. “You’ve got your money’s worth, then; those who paid, at least,” announces Salter, in reference to the event’s sluggish ticket sales and resultant freebies.

    For the full review, visit The Vine. For some photos of the event, visit Mess+Noise’s photo gallery, taken by Elleni Toumpas (who also shot the image used above).

  • The Vine live review: ‘Tool at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre’, January 2011

    A live review for The Vine. Excerpt below.

    Tool
    Brisbane Entertainment Centre
    Monday 24 January 2011

    First, a confession: I am guilty of taking Tool too seriously. Throughout my adolescence, they were my one and only; my idea of modern music’s apex. I took the ride, I swallowed the pill. I bought the shirts. I’ve listened to Tool’s music more than that of any other band. Theirs was the first proper live show I saw, in 2002, aged 14. It blew my tiny mind.

    So it’s with a continuous sense of melancholy that I look upon tonight’s proceedings, and with fresh eyes and broader musical experiences, realise that there’s not a whole lot about Tool that’s remarkable. Having bought into their idea of reality – the anti-image, the mystique, the overwrought psychoanalytical component of it all – so heavily in my formative years, to step back into their world is to question past allegiances. Theirs is a musical rabbit hole deeper than most bands are able to conceive, let alone dig; sift through the smoke and smug, though, and you’re left with a handful of unwieldy hard rock songs that mean a lot to a lot of people.

    The band play ten songs in nearly two hours, beginning with the last track from 1996’s Aenima and ending with the same album’s first track. Timothy Leary’s“Think for yourself, question authority” spiel resonates around the room at the beginning of ‘Third Eye’, a 15 minute-long trek through some of Tool’s weightiest subject matter, and heaviest musicianship. It’s intended to be an eye-opening beginning, no doubt, and it succeeds: yellow lights flash into the audience during the song’s chorus-of-sorts (“In / Out”, sings Maynard Keenan, over and over), while the screens behind the band swirl with violent colour and movement. It is the longest, and probably most difficult song in their repertoire, comprising many different suites which require complete attention from each player. They nail it, though, and thus set the bar high for the set’s remainder. To their credit, nothing they play tonight is met with anything less than their best, and when they’re in lockstep – as in the thunderous midsection of ‘Jambi’ – they’re pretty much untouchable. Adam Jones’ talkbox guitar solo in this song is one of their most inspired musical decisions. It takes me back to the first time I heard it, having bought the album – 10,000 Days – at a midnight launch in 2006. (Remember when people used to line up to buy music? Jesus.)

    For the full review, visit The Vine.

    I am mainly posting this review because of the amazing comments attached to that article. Please click the above link to read all of them; 30+, at time of publishing this blog. I got this amazing hatemail from a Tool fan in a private message on The Vine, which I just have to share with you verbatim. Thanks to ‘DR-HAZE666’ for the feedback.

    WHITE NOISE! MELANCHOLY? TOOL REVIEW GONE WRONG!!!

    Your review is a Joke my friend….. Good for a laugh, and an exceptional insight to your intelligence & taste in music. But, i guess thats why your a journalist & not a musician. AND THANK GOD FOR THAT!!!

    WHITE NOISE”- For future reference,white noise is the sound an old analog T.V makes when turning it to a channel that has not been tuned in to a particular frequency. You know, like continuously moving sand paper, “SSSSHSHHHHHHHHHH” What u heard was 3 “Access Virus” synth’s, in unison. Being utilised to create a trance like,state of concsiousness, & show casing new CGI art, created by Adam Jones. Leaving the band to have a well earned 5minute breather. Also, adjustments to Danny’s kit were done, snare changes etc, whilst this was happening. And tracks ‘ Jimmy’ & ‘H’ (2 tracks played @ Aenima tour) are well beyond 5 minutes in there duration. Which is gives us another insight to your attention span. But hey, each to there own. I was stoked to hear them play tracks like right in two, & intension, as they haven’t played these tunes in previous tours. And intension did not have ANY sequenced parts at all. THEY PLAY EVERYTHING LIVE!!! Stop with the sweeping assumptions, and do some research you fool!!!

    You just saw the smartest, most innovative rock band of this generation, on the biggest stage & light production they’ve brought out here for any previous tour, and you missed it completely. Congratulations bro!!! You may be only a freelance journalist, but you certainly have the ‘BULLSHITTING’ gift of a professional journalist. And yr another reason why bands such as TOOL, & majority of the rest world, detest the media, and the uneducated opinion’s spread to the “TINY MINDS” of the general public.

    So let me get this right…Your a TOOL nerd that has no appreciation for the composition,musicality & musicianship of “SCHISM”. Your high point of the gig was when Justin wallowed a slightly out of tune vocal part, over the chorus of a song, thats originally by “Peach”. A song that consists of 2, maybe 3 chords and a chorus riff, & travels at a tempo of around 60-BPM. And whilst Adam Jones varied the intro notes of ‘Lateralus’, & into an extended version, that proceeded to a world class drum solo, that is virtually impossible to replicate by almost every other drummer on planet earth, YOU FELT NOTHING??? YOU FELT NOTHING???? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU GET INTO BRO????

    No wonder you had a feeling of melancholy. What you experienced was something similar to say, a 3 year old child, sitting in on a university chemistry lecture.Your in the wrong class buddy!!! The “WOLFMOTHER” workshop is being held down the road, next door to the generic,banality,regurgitation workshop. Put your pen down, and do the world a favour….  kill yourself!!!

    Kind regards.

    Pete.

    Elsewhere: a conversation with Tool frontman, Maynard James Keenan.

  • The Vine album review: AXXONN – ‘Let’s Get It Straight’, December 2010

    An album review for The Vine. Excerpt below.

    AXXONN – Let’s Get It Straight

    Once a duo featuring No Anchor (and ex-Iron On) bassist (and sometime TheVine contributor) Ian Rogers, AXXONN now exists solely as an outlet for Brisbane artist Tom Hall, whose spectral sounds are captured on Let’s Get It Straight, Hall’s debut full-length under the AXXONN moniker.

    Stylistically, it’s a surprisingly mixed bag: where past releases consisted almost exclusively of noise and electronica-based compositions, here, Hall displays a willingness to step outside his comfort zone. He experiments with layered acoustic and electric guitars in ‘Golfini’, and a clean piano tone in ’10 Pound Trouble’, which opens with an extended sample of sparrows chirping. It’s unexpected, and almost laughable at first; then, cute. It’s the only moment that could be construed as humourous across nearly 50 minutes of furrowed-brow concentration. This isn’t to say that the album isn’t enjoyable – it is – but while it’s a tough record to hate, it’s even tougher to love. Diverse though the sounds contained within Let’s Get It Straight are, there’s few highlights, in the true sense of the word. Instead, the album works best as just that: a document to be observed in full. If just one track appeared on your iPod Shuffle, you’d probably skip it.

    But if you began with ‘Slave Driver’, the album opener, and let it play through to ‘Nai’, it works. ‘Slave Driver’ opens with less a roar than a glacial synth yawn; it evokes imagery of deep space, or an arctic tundra, or somewhere desolate; somewhere free from mankind’s greasy fingerprints. This feeling of isolation is why I return to the album: gradually, Hall’s soundscapes seem to increase in both density and volume until you find yourself lost in the mix.

    For the full review, visit The Vine. For more AXXONN, visit his website. The music video for his song ‘Let’s Get It Straight‘ is embedded below. Watch it – it’s great.

  • Mess+Noise album review: The Holidays – ‘Post Paradise’, November 2010

    An album review for Mess+Noise. Excerpt below.

    The HolidaysPost Paradise

    Somewhere between Cut Copy’s electro wonderland, Gypsy And The Cat’s soft rock, and Empire Of The Sun’s delusions of pop grandeur sits Post Paradise, the debut from Sydney’s The Holidays. Despite such reference points, the album somehow remains interesting. Put it down to the strength of the songs, which unerringly achieve that rare pop trifecta: accessibility, originality and memorability. Tony Espie, who’s worked with The Avalanches, Midnight Juggernauts and Cut Copy, has mixed the album, which may account for its overall slickness and sheen.

    Favourite moments? The way the guitars intercut the vocal melody in ‘Broken Bones’; the ethereal introduction to ‘6AM’, which dissipates upon meeting the sound of an alarm clock and takes a right turn into tropical pop-land; the double-tracked phaser effect applied to the guitars in ‘2 Days’, and the joyous, nonsensical vocal hook in its chorus; and the seemingly effortless chillwave upon which ‘Conga’ rides (accompanied by bongos, widdly-widdly guitars and an incessant, sensual bass throb).

    Full review at Mess+Noise. More of The Holidays on MySpace. The music video for ‘Golden Sky‘ is embedded below.

  • Anwyn Crawford discusses live music review techniques

    Owing to both arrogance and pride, it took me a while to realise that as a music critic, constructive criticism from your peers should be welcomed.  I get it now, which is why I was thrilled to receive an email from Anwyn Crawford in response to my Porcupine Tree review earlier in the week.

    “I have some thoughts on your recently linked-to live review,” she wrote, “if you’ll permit me to share them with you.”

    Of course.

    Anwyn is an Australian music critic based in Brooklyn. Her words have appeared in The AgeLoopsThe WireMess+Noise and Cyclic Defrost; contributions to the latter two are under the pen name Emmy Hennings. You should read her Overland opinion piece on Nick Cave, entitled ‘The Monarch Of Middlebrow‘.

    Anwyn doesn’t consider herself as a freelance writer, because in her own words, “I probably only publish about three articles a year”. That said: she knows her shit. I’m holding her advice on par with what Andrew Ramadge told me last year.

    The topic of discussion – my Porcupine Tree review for The Vine – can be found here. You should read it before reading the below, which is an unedited copy of what was sent to me.

    First up, it’s far too long. Unless you’re going to be deliberately discursive, or be pursuing a particular thesis about a cultural event that is significant to a lot of people, for instance Marcus’s review of The Tote’s last evening, then less than half that length is ample. Believe me, readers don’t want or need that much information in a live review format. I’m not saying this because I think it should be a “dumbed down” format or that readers aren’t capable of digesting something more complicated – they are – but it’s important to respect the expectations of the form that you’re working in, whatever that might be, which means that if you break the expectations for a particularly compelling reason, then the results will be more fruitful. Part of the skill of a live review, I think, is try and relay, in a reasonably short numbers of sentences, your experience of the performance to a readership. This means trying to pick representative moments of the performance – or occasionally unrepresentative moments, if these seem to get closer to the truth of the event. A song-by-song catalogue has little narrative interest for a reader.

    Secondly, and this is my big beef with so much music writing – PUT YOURSELF IN IT. I know that the first rule of essay writing that we’re all taught at school is never to use the first person pronoun. It’s time to put that rule aside. Reviewing is an inherently subjective act. It’s your opinion, and your experience – own it. This doesn’t mean describe what you had for dinner and how your feet were sore and “Oh, I missed the opening band” (classic street press gaffe), it means: don’t let your writing be bloodless. A reader wants to know why the performance might have mattered (or not mattered) and the only way they’re going to be able to get a handle on that is if you tell them why it mattered to you. It will also, almost inevitably, make your sentences shorter and more energetic, because you can can avoid clunky constructions like “One expects” and its many bet-hedging variants. “I think” “I was ecstatic” “My brain was melting” “This has stayed with me for days” – don’t be afraid to say I.

    Thirdly, avoid Latinate constructions and “pretentious diction”. I’m with George Orwell on this one. Translate them back into plain English. “Resultantly” = “As a result”. It doesn’t sound more sophisticated when you write “Resultantly”, it just confuses the meaning. Same goes for words like “emotive” (emotional) “reciprocate” (respond) “regale” (you need “shout” or something similar there, because “regale nonsense” as a clause makes no grammatical sense without a subject who is being regaled). Take a sentence like: “It’s a fittingly exhilarating close to an achingly beautiful song, into which the singer interjects a heartily-applauded full band introduction.” It took me about three runs to actually figure out what that meant. “It’s an exhilarating close to a beautiful song, and when singer XY pauses to introduce the band, he gets hearty applause”, is much clearer.

    And lastly, also related to Orwell’s timeless advice, avoid cliches and ready-made phrases. Chords nearly always “flourish”. A band is too often on a “jaunt” when the writer doesn’t want to use the word “tour”. There are millions of basslines that “pulse” and countless pianos that sound “plaintive”. Find a more interesting and a more accurate word, if you can, but bear in the mind the above: don’t let it become pretentious. Verbs are your friend, adjectives are often not.

    Just the kind of kick-up-arse I needed. Thanks, Anwyn. Pay attention to her blog.