All posts tagged halfway

• December 21, 2016

  The Weekend Australian album reviews, December 2016

  I reviewed 14 albums for The Weekend Australian in 2016. Many of them were great, but the only five-star rating I awarded was to the below album, which was released in April. The full review follows.

  Halfway – The Golden Halfway Record

  It makes sense that artists get better with age, for with age comes experience and thus a greater palette of colours with which to paint becomes available. Yet in popular music — in rock ’n’ roll especially — the common narrative arc is for young bands to burn brightly with their early releases before eventually losing some of the energy, hunger and joy that brought them together to make music in the first place.

  There are exceptions to this trend, of course, and Brisbane band Halfway is one of them. The Golden Halfway Record is the fifth album that this eight-piece band has released, and it is the third album in six years on which the band has exceeded its own high standards. Any Old Love earned 4½ stars on this page in 2014; it was a near-perfect collection of songs that prompted me to describe Halfway as one of Australia’s best rock bands.

  And after careful consideration I can only conclude that this album is perfect, and that there can be no doubt that Halfway is among a handful of the most talented and consistent acts in operation. It’s a major statement to make about a band that most Queenslanders haven’t heard of, yet alone those who live in the country’s south and west, but all of the evidence can be heard in this sensational 11-song set.

  Book-ended by a dramatic intro and outro, The Golden Halfway Record offers yet another significant stylistic leap for the performers and particularly for the primary songwriters, guitarists John Busby and Chris Dale. The progression from 2010’s An Outpost of Promise to Any Old Love was pleasing and commendable, but this is something else. Heard here is a band at the peak of its powers, to use a critics’ cliche, yet the most scarily impressive aspect of this ascent is that the octet may have only just passed base camp. One can only imagine the summit Halfway yet could reach.

  The trouble with writing, recording and releasing a perfect album, of course, is that the task becomes even harder next time. But that’s for the band to worry about, not us. We listeners get the pleasure of living inside such exquisitely crafted rock songs. The album as a whole is so well plotted and paced that to pick single moments feels barely adequate, but to name just one, fifth track ‘Welcome Enemy’ is a new high-water mark.

  It pulses with an effortless wisdom and depth that belies how hard it is to write music so affecting with the same old ingredients available to every rock band in the world. From front to back, The Golden Halfway Record is exactly what its title describes. It arrives with the highest possible recommendation, and an insistence that if you’ve ever enjoyed the combination of guitars, bass, drums, keys and vocals, you simply must hear this.

  I also reviewed the below albums for The Weekend Australian in 2016. They are listed in chronological order, with the publication date and my rating noted in brackets.

  • Ed Kuepper – Lost Cities (January; 4 stars)
  • The Drones – Feelin Kinda Free (March; 4 stars)
  • Iggy Pop – Post Pop Depression (March; 4 stars)
  • Explosions In The Sky – The Wilderness (April; 3.5 stars)
  • The Dandy Warhols – Distortland (April; 3 stars)
  • Witch Hats – Deliverance (July; 4.5 stars)
  • Sacred Shrines – Come Down From The Mountain (July; 4.5 stars)
  • Crystal Castles – Amnesty (I) (August; 3.5 stars)
  • Sugar Army – Beast (September; 4 stars)
  • REMI – Divas & Demons (September; 4.5 stars)
  • Warpaint – Heads Up (October; 3.5 stars)
  • The Panics – Hole In Your Pocket (October; 4.5 stars)
  • The Peep Tempel – Joy (October; 4 stars)

   

  No Comments / Music Criticism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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• February 28, 2014

  The Weekend Australian album reviews, February 2014: Warpaint, Halfway, Harmony

  Album reviews published in The Weekend Australian in February 2014.

  ++

  Warpaint – Warpaint

  The music made by the four members of Los Angeles indie rock act Warpaint rarely contains hard edges.

  Usually, it’s the stuff of film dream sequences: ethereal, emotive and somewhat divorced from reality. This wistful aesthetic worked well on the band’s 2010 debut The Fool, and still does four years later.

  But it’s the seventh of 12 tracks here, ‘Disco//Very’, that’s most immediately striking. Powered by Jenny Lee Lindberg’s busy bassline and drummer Stella Mozgawa’s intricate cymbal-and-snare pattern, its opening lyric almost works as a band mission statement: “I’ve got a friend with a melody that will kill/ She’ll eat you alive.”

  These four are masters of mood and melody, and Warpaint is a fine document of that fact. Three years in the making, it’s an engrossing listen from the wordless opening track, ‘Intro’, right through to its plaintive closer, ‘Son’.

  First single ‘Love Is to Die’ is an instant earworm on par with The Fool single ‘Undertow’ in terms of sheer accessibility. As before, vocals are shared among Lindberg and guitarists Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman. In Australian-born Mozgawa the band possesses one of rock’s finest drummers, yet they’re not above paring back the percussion, as evidenced on sparse penultimate track ‘Drive’.

  It is to Warpaint’s credit that their second album is full of interesting and accomplished experiments rather than the comparatively simple emulation of initial success. While it is well worth the four-year wait, here’s hoping the band’s work ethic speeds up a little before the next release. Warpaint comes highly recommended.

  LABEL: Remote Control
  RATING: 4 stars

  ++

  Halfway – Any Old Love

  Eight players make up Halfway, a rock band from Brisbane that injects banjo, pedal steel guitar, piano and mandolin into the genre’s usual instrumentation.

  The central lyrical theme on Any Old Love is evident in the title: almost all of the 13 tracks are love songs in one shape or another. Whether it’s the exploration of that emotion in its nascent stages (‘Honey I Like You’) or towards the end of a difficult relationship (‘Hard Life Loving You’), the prose is never less than honest and true.

  So, too, are the razor-sharp melodies conjured by these eight men, particularly album opener ‘Dropout’, a ludicrously catchy instant-classic that is at once familiar and unique. In a departure from the shared duties observed on 2010’s excellent An Outpost Of Promise, almost all of these songs are credited to John Busby, who shares vocals with fellow guitarist Chris Dale.

  Both possess soft, distinctive voices that sit snugly amid their bandmates’ driving groove. There is depth to the stories told here, too: “Bar stories and cautionary tales on the Central Western Line”, reads a subtitle in the liner notes, referring to the 780km Queensland railway system that runs from the state’s Emerald to Hughenden.

  There’s even a helpful glossary that lists 13 terms and names mentioned in the lyrics; clearly, a lot of thought has gone into this album, the band’s fourth. Any Old Love marks another accomplished entry into the growing catalogue of one of Australia’s best rock bands.

  LABEL: Plus One
  RATING: 4.5 stars

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  Harmony – Carpetbombing

  “I know I smell like petrol; smell like I’ve been sleeping rough / Like I’ve got on everything I own, no matter what the heat.”

  An ominous spoken-word piece by Cold Chisel songwriter Don Walker, ‘The Closing of the Day’, is as memorable as album openers come. Accompanied by a lone guitar looping spectral notes, its function as calm-before-storm is perfectly executed.

  It leads right into ‘Water Runs Cold’, where the bass and drums make their first appearance and, within a minute, Harmony’s secret weapon cuts in: the stirring vocals of Amanda Roff, Quinn Veldhuis and Erica Dunn, which provide stark contrast to the full-throated roar favoured by guitarist and lead vocalist Tom Lyngcoln.

  It’s this juxtaposition of femininity and masculinity that first proved compelling on the Melbourne band’s self-titled debut album in 2011. On Carpetbombing, they’ve sharpened their songwriting. The result is a potent collection of bleak, beautiful songs that can be atonal at times, awash in dissonant chords and clattering cymbals. It’s in these moments that the gospel-style vocals are deployed like a floodlight into a pitch-black cavern. The effect is used sparingly, however; Harmony is far from a one-trick pony.

  Highlights include the peculiar, push-and-pull rhythm of ‘Diminishing Returns’, which concludes with a cutting guitar solo by Lyngcoln, and the six-minute epic ‘Unknown Hunter’, which may be the band’s most remarkable piece of work.

  Carpetbombing is not an easy listen. Its unique charm requires some immersion before being properly appreciated, and its unconventional song structures continue to surprise long after that uncertain first listen.

  LABEL: Poison City Records
  RATING: 4 stars

  No Comments / Music Criticism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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• September 22, 2010

  Rolling Stone story: Halfway – ‘Between Alt-Country and a Rock Place’, September 2010

  A story for the October 2010 issue of Rolling Stone on the Brisbane-based alt-country/rock band Halfway.

  Click the below image for a closer look, or view the article text underneath.

  

  Halfway: Between Alt-Country and a Rock Place
  Brisbane collective embrace pared-back approach, Forster wisdom on third LP

  by Andrew McMillen

  Three albums into a ten-year career, Brisbane alternative country act Halfway have hit their stride with An Outpost Of Promise, released in July through +1 Records. If you’re unfamiliar with their earlier work, fear not: their latest is “definitely a good place to start,” according to Halfway’s John Busby, who alongside Chris Dale forms the band’s core duo. “It’s the least country record that we’ve done before, so maybe that makes it more accessible.”

  Put Dale and Busby in the same room and you’ll soon find them finishing each others’ sentences. Both in their late 30s, their friendship was forged in the central Queensland city of Rockhampton in the 1990s before they relocated to Brisbane and formed Halfway in 2000. But while the pair are the heart of the band, they are bolstered by an extended family – all Halfway’s eight band members meet twice a week at ‘Halfway House’ (a room underneath Busby’s mother’s house) to “have a beer, play music, and just talk,” says Busby. “It’s never really toil. I love hanging out; it’s the best part of being in the band.”

  The country tones that coloured their first two albums – 2004’s Farewell To The Fainthearted and 2006’s Remember The River – are marginalised on Outpost, which features 10 songs played “straight up, with tension and drama,” according to its producer and former Go-Between Robert Forster.

  Forster’s wisdom triggered a shift in the pair’s approach to songwriting. This time, the pair ensured that every song worked with just guitar and vocal first, before soliciting embellishments from their bandmates. Busby suggests Forster gave them confidence by exposing each song’s acoustic core; “rather than just trying to make a lot of racket”. “That’s how we ought to go forward,” Dale concludes.

  “Just let the songs do their thing.”

  For more Halfway, visit their MySpace. I reviewed An Outpost Of Promise for Mess+Noise earlier in the year. It’s ace!

  No Comments / Music Journalism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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• July 20, 2010

  Mess+Noise Mid-Year Report 2010: my top five

  Mess+Noise asked their critics to pick their top five Australian releases so far this year. I chose these:

  The Gin Club
  Deathwish (LP, Plus One Records)
  With nine songwriters in the mix across the genres of rock, folk and pop, The Gin Club’s fourth full-length could easily have fallen victim to too-many-cooks syndrome. It didn’t. Instead, it’s one of the best Australian albums of recent memory.
  Read Andrew’s review here.

  Halfway
  An Outpost Of Promise (LP, Plus One Records)
  This Brisbane alt-country act contain as many members as The Gin Club, but on this release, the songwriting of core duo John Busby and Chris Dale is informed by the direction of Go-Betweens co-founder (turned album producer) Robert Forster. The result is 10 finely-honed songs that bear a homely, barroom feel.
  Read Andrew’s review here.

  Nikko
  The Warm Side (LP, Tenzenmen)
  Another Brisbane band – swear I’m not biased. Post-rock with vocals done well.
  Read Andrew’s review here.

  Faux Pas
  Noiseworks (LP, Sensory Projects/Heroics)
  Outrageous, otherworldly electronic pop written in a Melbourne bedroom. An outstanding debut.

  Parades
  Foreign Tapes (LP, Dot Dash/Remote Control)
  This one was overwhelmingly dense upon first listen, and took a few listens to reveal its genius. Unconventional pop songs dressed up in the always-awkward “art rock” tag. I’m glad I gave it time. You should too.

  Visit Mess+Noise to see the rest of the critics’ picks.

  What are your top five Australian releases of 2010 so far?

  3 Comments / Music Criticism / Andrew McMillen

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• July 20, 2010

  Mess+Noise album review: Halfway – ‘An Outpost Of Promise’, July 2010

  An album review for Mess+Noise.

  Halfway – An Outpost Of Promise

  Call them alt-country, call them roots-rock. The accuracy of genre identification matters not, as at the heart of the matter lies a simple fact: Brisbane’s Halfway are damned good songwriters. That the key writing duo of John Busby and Chris Dale are past winners of the Grant McLennan Fellowship – a $20,000 Arts Queensland grant – is not surprising given the strengths of their third LP.

  Recorded by Wayne Connolly and featuring a Robert Forster production credit, it’s their most ambitious and considered work to date. Even at their most scintillating – ‘Sweetheart, Please Don’t Start’, a five-minute long, achingly beautiful epic – Halfway are characterised by a rare kind of understated cohesion. There are very few sharp edges on ‘Sweetheart’, and I don’t mean that as a backhanded compliment: it’s the most gripping song here by a long way. Built on a recurring refrain (“Not like some old love/You’re more like the sea/A heart’s coming home, love/And they wash you to me”), it’s only in the final 90 seconds that the song is injected with a sense of urgency through an increase in tempo and the appearance of softly-distorted guitars.

  Full review at Mess+Noise, where you can also stream two tracks from this album. More Halfway on their MySpace.

  1 Comment / Music Criticism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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