Rolling Stone album reviews, November 2010: My Disco, Shihad, Passenger
Three album reviews for the December 2010 issue of Rolling Stone.
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My Disco 
Little Joy (Shock)
Melbourne noise trio ease off on the throttle, but retain their edge
“There are others / Others just like me” deadpans My Disco’s bassist, Liam Andrews, in “Rivers”, over and over. He’s taking the piss. Since forming in 2003 this Melbourne trio have prided themselves on sounding unlike anyone else in Australia. Again they’ve opted to record with Steve Albini (Shellac, Big Black), and again their minimalist sound reaches a creative apex. Like on previous albums Cancer and Paradise, Andrews, his brother Benjamin (guitar) and Rohan Rebeiro (drums) describe a sonic wasteland that’s bleak, confronting, yet wholly compelling. Their largely instrumental approach has always relied upon repetition, endurance and sheer force. By those measures, Little Joy is no different; only better. Taken as a whole, these nine tracks convey a sense of propulsive moment; of evolution. Album closer “A Turreted Berg” – characterised by a subterranean bass hum, a simple backbeat and screaming guitar squalls – is the single best song they’ve released. Studious without being stuffy, Little Joy is My Disco’s finest yet.
Key tracks: “A Turreted Berg”, “Young”, “Turn”
Elsewhere: an interview with My Disco’s Ben Andrews for The Vine
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Shihad 
Ignite (Roadrunner)
Wellington’s finest deliver an underwhelming eighth album
Eight albums in, Melbourne-via-Wellington rock quartet Shihad are still struggling to reclaim their mojo with a consistent full-length effort. It was back in 1999 that they released their last all-class LP, The General Electric; 2008’s Beautiful Machine, Shihad’s last effort, was bogged down by melancholy pop. Balancing heavy and soft songwriting modes has always been a concern for the band, and Ignite doesn’t buck the trend. Its best tracks are led by either sledgehammer riffs (“Sleepeater”, “Lead Or Follow”) or anthemic vocal melodies (“Ignite”); although such peaks are underwritten by the unremarkable (“I’m A Void”, “Engage”) and the plain forgettable (“In The Future”). The most disappointing part of this LP is that there’s nothing here we haven’t heard before from Shihad. A stylistic reinvention we need not; instead, it’d be nice to hear some songs that can outlast the album cycle. Admirable though it is that they’ve maintained a 22 year-old career – and that they’re still attempting to better their distinguished past – in whole, Ignite just doesn’t measure up.
Key tracks: “Sleepeater”, “Lead Or Follow”, “Ignite”
Elsewhere: an interview with Shihad’s Tom Larkin for The Vine
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Passenger
Flight Of The Crow (Inertia)
Local luminaries lend a hand to much-loved U.K. songwriter
Plucky Brit Mike Rosenberg brought his Passenger project to Australia in 2009 and hung around long enough to busk our streets, earn some cash and endear himself to an all-star cast. Funded entirely through his busking sojourn – if we’re to believe the marketing – Flight Of The Crow features the likes of Josh Pyke, Boy & Bear, Lior and Kate Miller-Heidke lending voices and instruments to Rosenberg’s 11 songs of loneliness and longing. His guests are consistently impressive without stealing the show; instead, the spotlight remains firmly upon Rosenberg, whose distinctive voice shimmers with just the right amount of pathos to induce repeat listens. In the title track, he sings of waking up alone and unhappy, questioning the worth of “living widescreen”, and missing birthdays and New Years in a convincing manner, which crystallises the self-doubt of solo travellers the world over. Rosenberg’s hustle alone is worthy of respect; that the man can write credible acoustic pop tunes is a bonus.
Key tracks: “Golden Thread”, “Flight Of The Crow”, “Shape Of Love”
Rolling Stone story: Hungry Kids Of Hungary
A story for the November 2010 issue of Rolling Stone, on Brisbane band Hungry Kids Of Hungary.
Click the below image for a closer look, or read the article text underneath.
Hungry Kids of Hungary Stay Close to Home for Debut Disc
Queenslanders finally drop their debut after a pair of promising EPs
For Brisbane-based indie pop quartet Hungry Kids Of Hungary, the three-year path to their debut album was paved with transcontinental correspondence, two EP releases, and a stack of national tours supporting the likes of OK Go, Little Birdy and Bertie Blackman.
Escapades took shape in the suburban home of producer Matt Redlich, with whom the band recorded their second EP, last year’s Mega Mountain. Over cold drinks on a warm Brisbane day, singer/guitarist Dean McGrath and singer/keyboardist Kane Mazlin reflect on a recording process that began in January 2010 and concluded six months later.
Ultimately, the band were faced with a choice: record with a familiar face in a comfortable, inexpensive environment, or return to Tony Buchen’s studio in Sydney, where the band recorded earlier single “Let You Down”.
As an indie band faced with financial realities, though, the decision to remain Brisbane-bound seemed simple. ”We love Matt’s recording space,” says McGrath. “It’s underneath his house; it’s just cosy, and suits us down in the ground. There’s a pool out the back. We started recording in January – when it was far hotter than this – so we could do takes and then go for a swim. I was interested in doing something different and pushing us out of our comfort zone, but I think the right decision got made in the end.”
The band also found that removing time and money constraints had a positive effect on their songwriting. “We actually did some pre-production this time,” reveals Mazlin, in reference to an exhaustive process of rehearsal, deconstruction and rearrangement of each song.
“Sometimes you end up putting it together exactly the same as you started,” says McGrath,”but I think it’s a dangerous thing to have an album’s worth of songs ready and then just recording those 12. The cool thing about stretching it out over a long time is there’s four songs on the record now that weren’t written at the start of the recording process.”
Hungry Kids formed in mid-2007. Drummer Ryan Strathie had played in separate bands with both Mazlin and bassist Ben Dalton; McGrath was a mutual friend. As McGrath and Mazlin share vocal duties, the band agonised over Escapades‘ tracklisting. “It was always going to be a little tricky for us to make everything flow,” says Mazlin. “But I think we managed it.”
When asked to pinpoint the band’s sound, McGrath is laconic. “Pop’s the simplest way to describe it. It’s what we do. I think it’s unnecessarily complicated to give it a whole bunch of sub-genres.”
More Hungry Kids Of Hungary on MySpace. The music video for their song ‘Coming Around‘ is embedded below.
Rolling Stone album reviews, October 2010: Washington, Ben Folds/Nick Hornby
A couple of album reviews for Rolling Stone, which appeared in the October 2010 issue.
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Washington
I Believe You Liar
Charismatic newbie delivers an impressive debut album
Following a string of EP releases, Melbourne-via-Brisbane singer-songwriter Megan Washington delivers an impressive debut album, whose 12 tracks were written and performed by the eponymous singer alongside producer John Castle. On I Believe You Liar, the pair play all the instruments that comprise her heady mix of piano-heavy pop. The star here isn’t just Washington’s impressive vocal range, but the clever wordplay and knowing sense of irony that sees her question whether she makes us hum in “Sunday Best”, and write an entirely danceable chorus around the concept of not wanting to dance (“Rich Kids”). Such additions are cute without bordering on kitsch. While most tracks swing with contagious joy, the album’s handful of slower moments – like the morbid “Underground”, which deals with the singer’s preference for cremation over burial – reveal an introspective bent. Given the singer’s ability to compel with both modest and garish modes of songwriting, Washington’s debut is a consistently enjoyable listen.
Key tracks: “Rich Kids”, “How To Tame Lions”, “Clementine”
Elsewhere: an interview with Megan Washington for The Vine
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Ben Folds/Nick Hornby
Lonely Avenue
Piano tinkler gets together with pop fiction’s poster boy
It’s a music geek’s wet dream: American singer-songwriter Ben Folds collaborating with British novelist Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About A Boy). Here, multi-instrumentalist Folds uses Hornby’s emailed short stories as the lyrical basis for 11 tracks that sparkle with irreverent humour. Take “Levi Johnston’s Blues”: a hilarious character narrative written from the perspective of the “fuckin’ redneck” who knocked up Sarah Palin’s daughter. Folds’ musical vision wheels between the rollicking, piano-led pop for which he’s become known (“Working Day”, “From Above”), and more subdued compositions like “Practical Amanda” and “Password”, which feature stunning string section interjections courtesy of arranger Paul Buckmaster (David Bowie, Elton John). “Your Dogs” – a tale of suburban discontent set to catchy, taut instrumentation – can be counted among the finest moments of Folds’ career. Lonely Avenue is a meeting of two brilliant minds in near-perfect sync. Hopefully, it won’t be the last time they get together.
Key tracks: “Your Dogs”, “Levi Johnston’s Blues”, “From Above”
Rolling Stone story: Halfway
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 LPby 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!
Rolling Stone story: The Go-Betweens Get Their Own Bridge
A short story for the September 2010 issue of Rolling Stone, about The Go-Between Bridge opening in Brisbane.
Click the below image for a closer look, or read the text underneath.
The Go-Betweens Get Their Own Bridge
by Andrew McMillen
In the tradition of Melbourne’s ACDC Lane, Queensland now has Go Between Bridge. In 2009, Brisbane residents voted to name the city’s newest river crossing after The Go-Betweens, who formed at the University of Queensland in 1977 and went on to achieve international acclaim. On June 25 this year, Robert Forster marked the structure’s completion with a concert on the bridge itself. Ahead of the event, Forster described the naming as “heart-warming, and a bit surreal”. Forster opened with “Steets Of Your Town” from 1988′s 16 Lovers Lane. The song was written by band co-founder Grant McLennan, who died from a heart attack in 2006, aged 48. Beforehand, a crowd of 5,000 witnessed Yves Klein Blue, The John Steel Singers, Bob Evans and Josh Pyke perform adjacent to the silent Brisbane skyline.
The above photo was taken by Brisbane-based music photographer Matt Palmer.
Elsewhere: I reported on this show at length for Mess+Noise. I also interviewed Robert Forster for M+N’s ‘Icons’ series a few weeks before The Go Between Bridge opened.
A Conversation With Dave Miller of PVT, Sydney electronic rock band
I spoke with Dave Miller [pictured far right] – one third of the Sydney-based electronic rock act PVT – for Rolling Stone on May 11. At the time, it hadn’t yet been announced that the band were changing their name from Pivot to PVT due to legal threats. I’d been listening to an advance copy of their third album, Church With No Magic, for a couple of weeks. Dave and I spoke about the new songs, the addition of Richard Pike’s vocals to their formerly instrumental-only approach, and the name change. (In either case, the name is still pronounced ‘pivot’.) Our conversation is below.
Andrew: I’m not sure what’s the most obvious question to begin with, Dave: the name change or the presence of vocals on your new album. Let’s go with the name change.
Dave: We got issued a cease and desist letter by a band in America, and it was just one of those things where we could have been clubbed. It was probably going to be extremely costly, and the potential of losing a court battle was not really worth the money and also it would have just held the album back a year or something while we had to do this. We figured we’d kind of do a cut and dry type thing.
It’s just one of those things, where if we want to keep this name so badly, it could cost us loads of money and we would have to put the album back a year because of some righteous American emos who think they deserve the name more. That was just one of those things, so in some ways we kind of saw it as a positive thing, and kind of shedding some old baggage and moving onto new things. That’s how I’ve eventually thought about it.
Do you think that thing’s been a long time coming? I’m sure you guys were aware that there were other bands called Pivot?
Yeah, we kind of thought they’d go away and the one band that was issued the court stuff was – they’ve never played outside their hometown. They’ve never put out a record on a label. We’ve played 10 times more places than they had in their own country, yet they still wanted to hold onto their dream of making it big time or something, I don’t know. We kind of gave up on guessing what the reasoning for it was. It could have been money or whatever, but regardless we’ve let the babies have their bottle.
When you put it like that, it’s a drag, man.
Yeah, it was a drag and we found out when we arrived in America, for SXSW, which was really bad timing. But as I say, we’re kind of seeing it as a step forward for our band, rather than a step back.
Do you think your fans will understand the change?
I don’t know. As far as liking the new name or something, I hope that they’ve all realised that sometimes these things happen. It’s happened before, loads of times before. There’s sometimes stuff like that happens, and on the Internet everyone in this sort of Internet world, everyone is just as important as each other, or seemingly as important as each other.
I saw that the name has been changed briefly on your Facebook page, and a couple of fans picked up on it.
I didn’t see that. Did they like it?
Yeah, the comment was “Good work on the name change PVT. It’s way more efficient now.”
Okay, yeah it’s more efficient, like Kraftwerk. [laughs]
Moving on to discussing the addition of vocals. Who argued loudest to include them?
It was just a thing that when we first started jamming our stuff and recording in studio, a lot of the ideas were vocal ideas rather than guitar or keyboard or something. We just rolled with that. Richard’s always been able to sing and it was just one of those things where we thought, “Well, why don’t we do this? We can do this.” It was a challenge and we could’ve quite easily done another instrumental album like the last one – O Soundtrack My Heart II, or something – but that would’ve been done in 3 months. It was a sort of challenge and we kind of realised, being in a touring band for 18 months altogether, we realised we don’t really listen to much instrumental rock music at all, and a couple of times we were like “If we don’t listen to it, why are we making it?” That was just an aside. It was more about the fact that we wanted to progress, I guess.
Is it just Richard singing on the album?
Yeah, it’s all Richard.
His vocals in ‘Crimson Swan’ are excellent.
Yeah, thanks [laughs] I’ll pass it on to Richard. That was one of the songs where we sort of wrote and recorded it in the same room in a couple of days. It was one of those things that was really organic and felt right straight away. We didn’t really work on it a great deal. It was just like “okay, we’re done. Let’s move on.” We don’t want to add to it too much and we don’t want to over think it.
Is there a particular track on the new album you’re most fond of?
Probably ‘Crimson Swan’ the most at the moment. It will probably change. I like playing ‘Timeless’ live, that’s really fun at the moment, when we’ve been playing it at the shows. But I guess it varies, as what happened with O Soundtrack. Those changed throughout the time. Sometimes you get bored playing certain songs or whatever, but I think ‘Crimson Swan’ has been a favourite of mine for a while.
The album is a bit of a brief affair. It’s 10 minutes shorter than O Soundtrack. Do you have many outtakes and B sides from that recording session?
Yeah, we’ve got loads. [laughs] We have about almost another album actually, but there’s just some songs that didn’t fit in with the [hearing] of it and other songs that were better – fit the general overall feeling of the record, that it just didn’t feel right. Like I said, there was maybe one song that might have gone in or might not, so we just decided to leave it out, as far as the continuity goes, and flow of the record.
Is the album’s title of particular significance?
It’s just a phrase I had. I kind of caught an idea that Laurence and I recorded, ‘Church With No Magic’ and I liked the symbolism of it. Richard decided to use the phrase in the chorus of the song and then it turned out to be the title of the record. It was just one of those things. But it was just something that I picked up.
When recording O Soundtrack you were in London and the Pikes were still in Sydney, most of the time. Did the process differ this time around?
Yes, it was entirely different. We recorded almost everything in the same room, and it was recorded and edited everywhere. It was recorded mostly in Sydney but some parts in London, and edited when we had some time off on tour [laughs] in London, and France, and Sydney, and it kind of was a moving project as we were touring around the world. Any time we had a small chunk of time off we’d start working on it again. I guess that’s one of the reasons why it has a real live feeling about it; it sounds like 3 guys in a room, and I like to think it sounds like all our live shows have over the past year. There’s mistakes, and there’s bombastic drums and lots of air in the room. That was my thing, we kind of wanted the record to sound a bit more – not “garagey”, but like 3 guys playing in a room.
I was re-reading the interview with Richard Ayoade from a couple of years ago. During that discussion you were talking about the advantages and disadvantages of using digital gear. One of the quotes was “Inconsistencies are great. Mistakes are good, and to have rough edges is kind of important.”
That’s what we made sure, that we… we didn’t focus on it, but that was another thing that we kind of made a point of in this record, to not sand off the edges and to keep it a bit more live and raw.
So it’s less reliant on the cut-and-paste style of digital recording?
It was recorded digitally, but not anything like chopping up drums and guitars so that everything fits perfectly, and sounds like fucking U2 or something. We didn’t want to do that. We just wanted to leave it as we played it. That’s basically it.
From that same interview there’s another quote one of you said, “we’ve seen a lot of live electronic music and been very bored, so that’s something we wanted to avoid – we don’t want to be cold and faceless.” Have you got anything special in mind for the next album tour?
I don’t know. I’m not sure if we’ve thought that far ahead, but one thing that we have realised makes a big difference is lighting. I know that’s not a new thing but it makes a difference as far as the audience’s interaction with the show. I think when we’ve had good lighting, it seems like it’s given us a far bigger boost. It’s like the comparison between having bad sound and good sound, having no lighting versus lighting makes a massive difference. If we can find the man who’ll make us light up well, we’ll take him on tour.
But I don’t think as far as live or electronic music, I think there’s probably a big difference between solo electronic stuff that I’ve seen, and what we do. Just because there’s a guy that plays electronics doesn’t mean that he’s an electronic act. There’s always exceptions to the rules as well; Jamie Liddell’s solo live act is absolutely amazing.
As a musician, do you find that an album release is less exciting in 2010 than it was a few years ago, given how easily accessible and traded music is these days?
People don’t really know when release dates are, do they? And they don’t really care for them. They just kind of want it as soon as it’s available, which is kind of… that’s the ‘me’ generation, which is not really my feeling but I understand it. Life moves on and society moves on, but I’m still totally excited about the record gig. I kind of wish that that particular date was a big deal. I remember when I was much younger, waiting for the date that the new Nine Inch Nails record would come out and go to the record store, and buy it that day. I wonder how many people do that anymore. [laughs]
But I’m excited, and I know Richard and Laurence are. It’s just a matter of… I’m more excited about people hearing this record than the last one, mainly because it’s a bigger progression, maybe, for us.
I’m interested to know how many labels these days have contingency plans in place for if an album leaks, or more accurately when it leaks?
Yeah, I don’t know; I think it depends on the band and the manager and the label and everyone else. It’s not just the label I don’t think. Everyone kind of has a say in it. You’re right, it makes a big difference as to when it happens and stuff. I can’t answer that question.
As I understand it, you’ve been a part of Pivot for 5 years now, Dave, is that right?
Maybe a bit less than that, 3 or 4 years probably. I’d probably played the first gig with them in 2006, so 4 years now.
At this stage, is there a particular band leader or do you all have equal input into what goes on?
[laughs] I think it’s pretty democratic. Any sort of ideas, being musical or otherwise, anyone can kind of shut down and anyone can get a ‘thumbs up’ too. Yeah, it’s good having a 3-piece group. There’s always a majority.
From what I’ve seen of you playing live in Brisbane over the last few years, the audiences keep growing and growing. I’m curious to know how you feel about where the band fit into the Australian musical landscape.
I don’t know, to be honest.
I find that at festivals, people know the Pivot name by now and they know you’re pretty different to everything else that appears on festival line-ups. They’re drawn to that.
Yeah, if people are open-minded like that, that’s great. [laughs] It’s just a matter of getting the gigs in the first place. That’s probably the main problem.
Was making a living from touring outside of Australia always the goal for the band?
Making a living any which way we can as far as the band goes, whether it’s playing in Europe, Australia, or America, or whatever. It’s not really – like lots of territories and lots of places you don’t really make any money. It’s more about the fact that you’re playing to a new audience and they’ll get excited and next time you might make money. It’s a slow process, but we played loads and loads in Europe over the past 2 years and I’m hoping it’ll come out to something next time we tour there as well.
I gather from your mailing list that the live video for ‘O Soundtrack My Heart‘ [embedded below] was recorded for a French TV show. Is there any chance it’ll be released as a whole performance on DVD or something eventually?
Yeah, when we got sent the DVD of the show, it was actually the first time we’d ever seen us videoed before, in decent quality, rather than just off our phones or something. It couldn’t have been a better situation and it was like an amazing lighting show and playing in front of 5,000-10,000 people in an outdoor festival with night time in France. It was pretty amazing. [laughs] Everything kind of fell into place.
I don’t know; it’s been a while since I looked at the video. I guess eventually maybe. I can remember there being a few duff notes that Richard was blushing about. But other than that I think we’ve got the whole concert. It’s just the matter of whether.. I guess it’s all in good time.
Final question, Dave. You’re a professional touring musician in a band that’s appreciated in indie circles throughout the world. What would you be doing if you weren’t a musician? Was there ever a plan B for you?
I used to do programming for websites and stuff. I’d probably be pretty bored of that by now and would’ve turned to something else. I don’t know, it’s never bothered me before, but maybe I’d be a florist or something, I’m not sure. [laughter] It’s best not to think of at the moment!
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PVT’s third album, Church With No Magic, is released July 16 2010 (today!) via Warp/Inertia. For more information – including links to buy the album – visit their website. Video for the first single, ‘Window‘, is embedded below. You can read my album review for Mess+Noise here.
Rolling Stone album reviews, August 2010: Drawn From Bees, Itch-E & Scratch-E, PVT
My first album reviews for Rolling Stone, which appeared in the August 2010 issue.
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Drawn From Bees
Elementary Tales For Young Boys & Girls
Ambitious rock collection favours both quantity and quality
This limited release box set fulfils the rigorous, self-imposed work ethic outlined by Brisbane art rock quartet Drawn From Bees in 2008: to write, record and release new material every six months. Think of Elementary Tales as a long-exposure snapshot of an ambitious band-in-progress. Comprising 35 songs split between three EPs and a debut album, Fear Not The Footsteps Of The Departed, Drawn From Bees aren’t short on hooks, nor willingness to experiment. The nine tracks on second EP And The Blind Shall Lead The Way each hit high notes; lead cut “Long Tooth Setting Sun” contains one of the best examples of their favoured four-part harmonies. Very few of these songs feel undercooked; many sizzle with admirable clarity of vision. Their studious devotion to deadlines could be construed as over-earnestness, yet if anything, this career-so-far summary only underlines how serious Drawn From Bees are about their art. Taken in its entirety, this is a remarkable body of work.
Key Tracks: “Long Tooth Setting Sun”, “And the Blind Shall Lead the Way”
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Itch-E & Scratch-E 
Hooray For Everything!!!
Lukewarm third LP an itch better left unscratched
That this Sydney techno duo Itch-E & Scratch-E open their first release in a decade with a remix of the Scribe tune “F.R.E.S.H.” speaks directly to this album’s misguided nature. Considering their reputation as scene innovators in the early-1990s – remember the understated, ARIA Award-winning beauty of “Sweetness & Light”? – the Scribe joint seems the techno equivalent of waving a white flag. Elsewhere, NYC rapper MDNA lends his rapidfire potty mouth to “Other Planets” and The Scare’s Kiss Reid guests on “Electric”, yet these compare unfavourably to the album’s latter instrumental tracks. “Fishtank” and “Imperial Rockets” are the only true captivators here, but ultimately, these intergalactic sojourns can’t reconcile overall weakness. The uninspired cowbell/vocoder combination in album closer “Found It On The Dancefloor” serves only to still whatever slight momentum had been gained. More proof that just because you can reunite, doesn’t mean you should.
Key Tracks: “Fishtank”, “Imperial Rockets”, “Found It on the Dancefloor”
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PVT 
Church With No Magic
Electro rockers deliver much-anticipated third opus
The band formerly known as Pivot have added vocals to their blend of rock and electronica, yet what lies within Church With No Magic isn’t as immediately compelling as 2008′s O Soundtrack My Heart. Fans of the previous record will soak up the raucous, pitch-shifted dissonance of “Light Up Bright Fires” and the propulsive, choppy title track; hereafter, the hooks all but disappear. They’re replaced with an overbearing influence of woozy, amorphous electronica. On “Window”, from Laurence Pike’s clattering percussion to his brother Richard’s proudly-sung affirmation (“I won’t slip / I won’t fall / I won’t change”) and Dave Miller’s layered production, there’s a sense of cohesion that evades some of the latter tracks. PVT’s strongest material occurs when they meet rock and electronica halfway.
Key Tracks: “Light Up Bright Fires”, “Window”, “Church With No Magic”
Rolling Stone story: PVT Lose Vowels, Add Vocals For Third Album
A story for the August 2010 issue of Rolling Stone Australia. Click the below image for a closer look, or read the article text underneath.
PVT Lose Vowels, Add Vocals For Third Album
International success brings up a few new challenges for edgy Sydney trio
By Andrew McMillenFor an international touring act, one of the unfortunate side-effects of building a respected profile is an increased likelihood of coming to the attention of those opposed to your ascent. Sydney-based rock/electronica hybrid Pivot became familiar with this situation first-hand upon arriving in the United States for SXSW in March. Ahead of the release of their third album, the trio were forced to either rename their band, or face a lengthy court battle to determine the rightful owner of the Pivot name. Their solution? Drop the vowels. “It’s more efficient, like Kraftwerk,” jokes the band’s synth/electronics manipulator, Dave Miller.
He rationalises the decision to become PVT. “We were issued with a cease and desist letter. It was probably going to be extremely costly to fight, and the potential of losing a court battle was not really appealing. If we wanted to keep the name so badly, it could have cost us loads of money and we’d have to put the album back a year because of some righteous American emos who think they deserve the name more. We figured we’d do a cut-and-dry type thing.”
Church With No Magic – out on July 19 via Warp/Inertia Records – will be their first release under the PVT moniker. It’s a departure from their 2008 album O Soundtrack My Heart, as the trio have opted to include vocals, courtesy of Richard Pike. Miller explains: “We could’ve quite easily done another instrumental album like the last one – O Soundtrack My Heart II– but that would’ve been done in 3 months. To write with vocals in mind was a challenge; after being in a touring band for 18 months altogether, we realised we don’t really listen to much instrumental rock music at all, so we were like, ‘If we don’t listen to it, why are we making it?’”
The Church recording sessions differ significantly from the band’s previous experience, wherein Miller contributed to O Soundtrack remotely while living in London. This time around, he and the Pike brothers – drummer Laurence and guitarist, producer, and now vocalist Richard – recorded “almost everything” in the same room. ”It has a real live feeling about it; it sounds like three guys in a room, and I like to think it sounds like all our live shows have over the past year. There’s mistakes, there’s bombastic drums, and lots of air in the room. For this record, we made a point to not sand off the edges, to keep it a bit more live and raw. It was recorded digitally, but we weren’t chopping up drums and guitars so that everything fits perfectly and sounds like fucking U2. We didn’t want to do that. We just wanted to leave it as we played it.”
Listen to PVT on their MySpace; view the video for the first Church With No Magic single, ‘Window‘ below.
A Conversation With Damian Kulash, OK Go singer/guitarist
OK Go are an American pop band. I don’t want to cheapen their career by naming just its apex, but it’s the easiest way to refresh your memory: they’re the band behind ‘Here It Goes Again‘, better known as ‘the treadmill video‘.
On February 13 2010, I spoke to OK Go’s singer/guitarist Damian Kulash [pictured right] on behalf of Rolling Stone Australia. He’d been up all night shooting a second music video for their song ‘This Too Shall Pass’. The first video couldn’t be embedded anywhere outside of YouTube because of the restrictions put in place by their parent label, Capitol Records, which is owned by EMI Music. The band’s response was to upload an embeddable version to Vimeo, write an open letter to their fans explaining the situation, and seek outside funding to conceptualise and film an entirely different music video. [You should click the above links to watch the videos, if you haven't already seen them.]
Shortly before Rolling Stone’s May issue went to print at the end of February – confusing, right? - OK Go left Capitol Records, effectively undermining my story’s relevance. [More on that experience here.]
Below is the full conversation I had with Damian, which is one of the last interviews the band gave while still signed to a major label.
Andrew: Before we start, are you totally sick of talking about this whole issue?
Damian: The politics of the music industry are… tiresome. I’ll put it that way. It’s important to me and I’m fascinated by it, but I’d much rather be thinking about making things, than how to distribute them.
What kind of response have you seen from your fans in regard to your letter?
It’s been pretty positive. My letter has been received by some people as a polemic, or as a big screed, but truly, the letter was just an explanation to our fans about why certain things weren’t available to them, because I think people really didn’t understand what was going on. I didn’t see it as a big political move; it was just an explanation to our fans, and we’ve gotten very good response from them. I think they’re just happy that we treat them like adults.
What kind of response have you seen from the record label? I read your interview on New TeeVee where you said your main contact at the label wants as badly as you do for the video to be embeddable.
I think most folks at the label probably share our opinion that things should be easily distributed. There are a lot of competing agendas within the record label, so I’ve gotten a wide range of responses. The digital department of EMI France actually tweeted the letter and was distributing it because they felt it was a defense of their position. Other people felt like it was an attack. It’s a big company, so there’s been a wide range of responses.
Beyond your fan base and record label industry people, the general public has also paid attention to the letter. I refer to your quote in Time about how you think there is a quiet majority who are just interested in seeing how the music industry works these days, and seeing your explanation from the inside.
That’s definitely been the basic response that I’ve felt. I obviously can’t quantify it, but the loudest comments in the music industry in general are mostly from people who hate labels and who hate major labels and feel the industry is set up to screw musicians. I don’t feel like that’s generally representative. I think it’s easy to hate the machine. You really get those comments from people that actually try to make a living making music. It’s mostly people who have this purist idea of what music should be to them; give up their day jobs because they want their musicians to be absolutely conceptually totally pure and not ever have to worry about money for them.
I read your Mashable interview where you said that a year or two ago, EMI switched the embedding stuff on all of your videos, but you didn’t pay much attention as you were making your new record at the time. Looking back, do you wish that you had paid attention? Would you have done anything differently back then?
We have to pay attention to how our records and our videos and everything is distributed because we make ‘em and we care about how they get out there, but I wouldn’t be a student of the music industry’s technicalities if I wasn’t convinced that the animating passion in my life is making things, and how the distribution of them affects that. I know it sounds incredibly circular, but I don’t particularly care if the music industry works until I make something and it fucks up the way I want that thing to be shared with the world.
I’m glad that when I’m writing music and recording music, in between records, I’m not spending my time trying to figure out the solution to the logistical problems of the music industry. Those are some things that we have to pay attention to out of necessity, not because we like paying attention to them.
There is a quote from you in the letter where you say, “Unbelievably, we’re stuck in the position of arguing with our own label about the merits of sharing videos. It’s like the world has gone backwards.” As musicians, you must feel that having these kinds of conversations about the business side of music drains your creativity or your time that could be better spent creating music.
It seems to me like there are a couple of things. One, the music industry is very clearly in an incredible crisis and that’s what makes this story complex. There is a lot to talk about because we’re up against what appears to be a sort of unresolvable problem. People want to talk about it. Two, I think a lot of us feel incredibly passionate about music and by its nature – almost by its definition – the important part of music kind of defies words. To me, what makes music sort of magical – what makes music the thing that I live for – is that you can communicate things like music’s four-dimensional emotions instantaneously. It’s like emotional ESP.
I think when something comes along, something to talk about in music, something very rational or logistical and sort of left-linear logical, that’s attached to the distribution of music or to the manufacturing or production of music, then at least there is something to sink our rational brains into and some people really want to talk about it. Maybe this is something of a stretch as an argument, but we do a lot of interviews and it’s impossible to answer substantive questions about music because music is a feeling, not an argument. Whereas, everything that surrounds music – how it’s distributed, the politics, and the money behind it – gives you something hard and logical to talk about. I think that’s sort of why there is so much fascination on these things.
Bob Lefsetz wrote in response to this situation that “if the labels want to maintain control, they have to first get the hearts and minds of the artists.” As an artist who deals with labels on a regular basis, do you share his view?
Yes, in essence they do. I think that the value in music from which we derive the money in music can no longer be generated by limiting access. The way you assess value in most commodities is related to supply, the whole supply and demand curve. The reason you have to pay to have most things is because someone else restricts your access to them or you have to pay for the access to them. There are certain things that don’t follow that model and music has sort of jumped the barrier, I think.
Twenty, fifteen, or even ten years ago, music was a physical thing that could be bought and sold. Even if conceptually the music wasn’t, there was a way of controlling access to it: you either owned a CD or you didn’t. Either you had access to it or your friend did, or you got it from a library. More likely, you bought it and had access to music.
Now that has sort of broken down and the music industry is not going to be able to get that genie back in the bottle. You have to find a different level to work with, and I think that – whatever the financing situation is, no matter which body is financing the logistical mechanics of music – that body will have to have a better relationship with musicians and record labels. Record labels deal in very black-and-white terms with this restricted access thing, and now everyone is going to have to believe in a new model simultaneously, otherwise money won’t be generated for music.
By now you’re all too familiar with the arguments surrounding this YouTube issue, having lived them out and told the world about it. If you can comment on it, I’d like to know how EMI rationalise the ‘disable embedding’ decision to the average web consumer – the one who just wants to share their cool videos with their friends?
There has been a conceptual shift between videos being advertisement and videos being product. They’re sort of ‘on the fence’ still. All labels still want their videos to be seen far and wide, but they also want to be paid for them to be seen far and wide. Whereas once upon a time it was just amazing that there was a website out there [YouTube] that would actually help you distribute your advertising. Now, there is a website out there that is actually distributing your product without paying you for it. I think that’s how they justify it. They want people to see it like: “we paid for that thing, how come you won’t pay us for it?”
Do you think that the thought of the average web user even comes into their equation, or is it all just discussed in terms of profit and shareholders, as you alluded to in your letter?
They’re not such morons that they can’t take into account what people want. Labels don’t have a singular mind. It’s not like one big beast with one agenda. I think a lot of people at labels understand what people want and are frustrated with the way things are working. I think there hasn’t been a very clear-eyed assessment of that shift in music videos from advertisement to product, or in general, of the attempt to blur promotion and monetization. There used to be an obvious revenue stream, and that was selling records [CDs]. Since that is shrinking so incredibly fast, now all the things that you essentially pay for to promote that revenue stream are now things that they’re trying to turn the tables on and get money for actually having done.
I don’t think they’re incapable of thinking about what people want. I think everybody suddenly is trying to eat the hamburger at the same time that they’re still milking the cow. You can’t have it both ways.
Final question Damian, and it’s a bit of a philosophical one, so take a deep breath. If labels continue to herd viewers into absorbing their artists’ content in specific web destinations like on YouTube, what are the wider ramifications for the nature of sharing content online?
First of all, I’ve been talking this whole time as if I have a kind of answer, like I know exactly what’s going on and there is an obvious path forward. I don’t know what the ramifications will be. The first step that seems obvious to me is we do need something like record labels to perform some of the functions record labels traditionally have. This is what I think the critics of major labels often miss, is that for all of their exploitative, greedy, and short-sighted policies, they did provide a risk aggregation for the world of music making. They invest in however many young bands a year and most of them fail. Those bands go back to their jobs at the local coffee houses without having to be in tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of personal debt for having gone for it.
If we don’t want to be just a domain of the independently wealthy and people who can take time off from their jobs for a couple of years to see what happens, or finance their own world tour while they figure out exactly how to make the number at the end of the column black, then somebody has to be doing this risk aggregation.
Historically, when a band did well, or an artist did well, the profits could be so substantial that they would cover the other nineteen losses that the failed bands meant for a record label. A label could take the very extreme numbers of the music industry: you might have a less than 1% chance of success, but if you do succeed there is a massive reward, and it sort of evens them out over dozens or hundreds of artists a year.
Something sort of needs to be doing that unless we want music only to be the domain of the independently wealthy. I think then you have to figure out what that means for content distribution. Somehow, some sector of the business has to be able to make a significant reward off of the success of that one-in-twenty, or that one-in-fifty, or that one-in-one hundred in order to keep the system running.
At the same time, we all want this magical, wonderful, instantaneous global distribution – via the internet – to make music ever easier to get to and to make it more universal and more accessible. We have to figure out how to get the money that people are willing to spend on music into the hands of musicians, and into the hands of those risk aggregation bodies.
Right now, it seems people are willing to spend money pretty freely on music. They just tend to do it more on hardware or on their broadband connection. People are willing to pay for extremely fast connection to the internet so they can download big files. They just don’t particularly care for paying for the file themselves, or see that as something they should be doing. People will pay a lot for an mp3 player. They don’t expect that part to be free, so to get people to value their music in that way, then we should figure out how to look at the system from a macro perspective and figure out a reasonable way forward.
Thanks Damian. I admire your ability to speak coherently about the music industry, especially after an all-nighter. [The band had been up working on the second video for 'This Too Shall Pass', which is embedded below.]
I don’t know how coherent I’ve been, but if you can whip that into shape and make me sound like I was, then more power to you. I appreciate it.
[You can read more about this story for Rolling Stone Australia here.]
Rolling Stone story: OK Go and embedding music videos
My first cautionary tale as a print media journalist: a lot can happen in the time between submitting a story, and the magazine going to print.
In late January, I pitched a story to Rolling Stone. Its focus: the discussion surrounding American rock band OK Go and their open letter to fans explaining why their label had blocked the embedding of latest new music video. Shortly after I researched, interviewed and submitted this story in late February, the band left their label – effectively destroying the story’s hook. It was edited from 800 words to around 200. Damn!
So here’s a treat: you can read the original story I submitted to Rolling Stone. Just pretend that OK Go are still signed to Capitol Records, and it’ll all make sense. I promise.
But first, here’s the (short) story that appears in the May 2010 issue of Rolling Stone (which features Hendrix on the cover). Click the below image for a closer look.
Here’s what I submitted.
EMI Killed The (Streaming) Video Stars
By Andrew McMillen
On the back of a clever, low-budget music video added to YouTube in July 2006, American rock act OK Go’s star went supernova. The original upload of the band’s treadmill dance routine to their single ‘Here It Goes Again‘ has been viewed 50 million times. Nearly four years later, restrictions put in place by their parent label, EMI subsidiary Capitol Records, have made it much more difficult for that level of ‘viral’ success to be replicated, whether by OK Go or any other act signed to EMI.
How? The label now enforces embedding restrictions on content published to the YouTube channels of all EMI-signed acts. Why? The label owns the band’s videos, and the label doesn’t receive ad revenue when the video is embedded outside of YouTube.
It’s a discussion centred around EMI’s apparent shift in values. In the eye of the storm stands OK Go singer and guitarist, Damian Kulash. Speaking to Rolling Stone before the band’s mid-February Australian tour, the frontman reflected on the changing nature of streaming online content.
“Once upon a time it was just amazing that there was a website out there [YouTube] that would help you distribute your advertising,” referring to the long-accepted notion of a band’s music video as a marketing tool. The relationship between YouTube and content owners changed from friendly to adversarial when the latter realised they were missing an opportunity to make a buck from the free online service. Putting himself in EMI’s shoes, Kulash suggests: “[Content owners] want people to see it like: “we paid for that thing, how come you won’t pay us for it?”.
Kulash is far from a clueless musician whining about losing precious YouTube views. Having eloquently opened a proverbial can of worms when he published an open letter to their fans on January 18 , the singer is all too aware of the complexities surrounding this issue, and of the industry’s wider foibles. He bluntly states: “I don’t particularly care if the music industry works, until I make something and it fucks up the way I want that thing to be shared with the world.”
That thing, in this case, was the band’s newest filmed creation for single ‘This Too Shall Pass’, which was uploaded to YouTube in early January. [Vimeo version embedded below.]
Like the treadmill video, it’s another monster one-take effort involving the band:this time, they’re assisted by 200 extras. Brilliant though the video is, it didn’t catch fire like ‘Here It Goes Again’.
After being “flooded with complaints”, the band realised that the video couldn’t be embedded on external sites, since the software that overlays texts ads onto YouTube videos is configured to only work on-site.
Hence Kulash’s apologetic letter, and the band’s decision to upload the video to ad-free competitor Vimeo. In the letter, Kulash explained that years ago – post-treadmill video – the major labels “threatened all sorts of legal terror, and eventually all four majors struck deals with YouTube which pay them tiny, tiny sums of money every time one of their videos gets played.”
While in Australia recently, Kulash again commented on the issue, this time with a piece entitled ‘WhoseTube?‘ that appeared in the opinion pages of The New York Times. Estimates of those “tiny, tiny sums of money” range between US$0.004 and $0.008 per stream of an ad-overlaid video. By Kulash’s math, EMI’s gross for streams of ‘Here It Goes Again’ is capped at around $5,400.
Since the no-embed rule was enforced, the band has seen only small change. “Our last royalty statement from the label, which covered six months of streams, shows a whopping US$27.77 credit to our account,” Kulash wrote.
When speaking about his parent label, he suggests that “clearly there hasn’t been a very clear-eyed assessment of that shift in music videos from advertisement to product, or in general, of the attempt to blur promotion and monetisation.” He concludes: “The value in music from which we derive money can no longer be generated by limiting access.”
On the national front, it’s difficult to judge whether EMI Australia’s policy mimics that of the larger North American body. At the time of writing, some videos by EMI Australia artists – uploaded to the label’s YouTube channel, account name ‘musich3ad‘ – can be embedded, like Tina Arena, Something With Numbers, Kasey Chambers, You Am I, and Miami Horror. Some can’t, like Keith Urban, Angus & Julia Stone, The Cat Empire, and Operator Please.
Empire Of The Sun content lies on both sides of the divide: ‘We Are The People’ is embed-friendly, while ‘Walking On A Dream’ is not.
EMI Australia’s digital media department repeatedly denied requests to comment on their embedding policy, though their publicist arranged the interview with Damian Kulash for this story.
To further confuse this already-complex discussion, consider that EMI Australia was unwilling to publicly address whether their position on streaming online content has shifted from a platform of free marketing to a mere revenue-generating device, while simultaneously allowing Rolling Stone access to one of their most vocal dissidents.
On the upside, it was great to interview Damian Kulash, OK Go’s singer, who is easily one of the most business-savvy and eloquent musicians I’ve spoken to. I’m not surprised that they left Capitol, and I expect they’ll be a stronger band for it.
