All posts tagged the-australian

  • The Weekend Australian Review story: ‘Etched In Memory’, October 2015

    A story for the October 31 issue of The Weekend Australian Review. The full story appears below.

    Etched In Memory

    Glenn Ainsworth’s art is an exercise in beauty, tragedy and catharsis

    Baxter Ainsworth, as sketched by his father, Glenn, in 2014It was the night before the stillbirth of his son that Glenn Ainsworth realised he needed to sketch Baxter. He and his wife, Nichole Hamilton, were staying overnight in Buderim Hospital, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, in February last year. It was a Wednesday, and that morning the couple had been told Baxter had no heartbeat. They were offered sleeping pills, but both refused. Instead they lay together, numb with grief.

    “We just both lay there all night, watching the bloody clock,” says Ainsworth , a softly spoken 38-year-old. “That’s when I knew what I wanted to do.”

    Hamilton gave birth to Baxter on Thursday, February 13. “We were dead tired; we’d been awake for two days,” says Ainsworth . “I was just staring at him, trying to burn him into my head. You know that your time’s limited. You’re not going to see him after that day.”

    At first Ainsworth chose not to tell Hamilton of his plans to sketch their son, but when he did, she wasn’t surprised. Art runs in Ainsworth’s blood. Inside the garage of their two-storey home at Peregian Beach is a studio where the civil engineer paints and sketches, honing a talent he first picked up between rugby league matches while growing up in Biloela, a rural town in central Queensland. With Baxter’s sudden death, the couple were ushered into an exclusive club that no one joins voluntarily.

    “I thought stillbirth was something that only happened in Third World countries,” says Hamilton, 40, beside her husband of 10 years. “Nobody talks about it, and that makes it harder for friends and family to know what to say.”

    In time, the couple found their way to Sands Queensland, an organisation that provides support to parents who have experienced miscarriage, stillbirth and newborn death. It wasn’t long before Ainsworth decided to offer his skills to those who had joined the club. “It just grew from there, I suppose,” he says. “I thought it might be a nice opportunity for other people: if they can’t do a sketch, I’ll do it for them.”

    Says Nicole Ireland, president of Sands Queensland: “Glenn wanted to do something. He suggested that parents could make a donation to Sands, and he volunteered his skills to sketch their babies. A lot of people are more comfortable displaying drawings rather than photographs.” Parents can order a “free spirits” personalised portrait, hand-drawn by Ainsworth, based on supplied photographs. The proceeds go to the organisation, which is funded through Queensland Health’s community self-care program as well as via member donations. “(Glenn and Nichole) obviously have great support around them,” says Ireland, whose son Nicholas was stillborn 10 years ago. “But (Glenn would) have to balance his giving back with his grief.”

    In the couple’s home, adjacent to the rooms downstairs where Hamilton runs her physiotherapy clinic, Ainsworth sits at his computer and opens a scanned copy of his sketch of Baxter. His eyes trace the soft curves of his baby boy’s face, hooded in a blanket, his tiny hands grasped together just so. “Some of them are quite difficult, because some of them are quite young in terms of the gestation period,” he says quietly. “A lot of the bubs get a bit bruised, and have skin tears and stuff like that, which is just awful. I look at the pictures, then don’t do anything for a couple of weeks. I just have a think about it.”

    He starts with the face, making sure to get the proportions right before adding other details. Sometimes he draws composite sketches based on several photos. At the parents’ request, he can sketch around tubes and cords, thus removing their child from a medical context. He has completed 11 sketches so far, averaging one a month, and usually has another two or three waiting in the queue.

    Moving across to a filing cabinet beside his workspace, he flicks through folders until he finds his original drawing of Baxter. He holds it carefully at the edges, silently taking in his priceless drawing of a boy who was gone too soon. In the shock that followed his stillbirth, neither parent considered taking a photograph of their son. Hamilton’s sister did, though, and in the months that followed those few photographs became the couple’s most important possessions. A framed copy of the sketch of Baxter hangs now in their bedroom. “I’m glad that Glenn’s art has a chance to help people,” says Hamilton. “It’s a beautiful thing to share. I love his drawing of Baxter.”

    When asked how long each drawing takes to complete, he laughs and replies: “Put it this way: on an hourly rate, I’d be on about 20c an hour.” But it’s not about money.

    Ainsworth tends to lose track of time down in the quiet of his studio, with performers such as David Gray, Lady Antebellum and Amos Lee playing softly from the speakers. He sketches with a range of pencil grades and isn’t picky about brands or styles, opting to buy whatever the local art shop happens to have in stock. He is a self-taught artist, and doesn’t pay much attention to the work of contemporary professionals, though he is particularly fond of a New Zealand landscape artist named Tim Wilson.

    The grieving process hasn’t been easy. Hamilton says that for the first year, she cried every day. Ainsworth’s experience was much the same. “I’d get in my car each morning and cry all the way to work, and on the way home, 40 minutes each way,” he says. “I burst into tears all the time now.”

    Talking about the experience in his home with a stranger isn’t easy, either. Hanging on the wall of his living room are some of Ainsworth’s artworks, including photorealistic paintings of a sea turtle and clownfish. “You’ve got everything ready to bring a baby home. You go from the highest feeling to the lowest,” he says. “I’m just climbing out now, after 18 months.”

    Losing Baxter has made the couple stronger. “It’s welded us together,” says Hamilton, smiling at her husband. “I couldn’t have survived it without Glenn’s hugs and help.”

    The father still experiences the odd moment where the memory of his son hits him like a punch to the sternum, prompting him to ask himself: Holy shit, did that happen? They both find it hard to hear other parents making complaints about their children.

    “To hear your baby cry, you’d give anything,” says Ainsworth.

    About 106,000 couples experience reproductive loss each year, yet it remains a difficult topic of conversation. Indeed, Ainsworth and Hamilton are highly attuned to how uncomfortable this topic can be. When new patients arrive at her clinic and ask whether she has kids, there’s now a moment of hesitation as Hamilton measures whether to tell the truth. It’s much easier to talk about a dead grandparent than a dead son. “It’s not our discomfort anymore, it’s theirs,” she says.

    Since that February day last year, the couple has learned a few things about how to best support bereaved parents. Just be there. Be an ear. Sometimes a hug is the best response. Ask the parents: What was the child’s name?

    For the artist, his is a project wrapped in beauty and pain.

    “It’s something to immerse myself in,” says Ainsworth, returning to the computer and showing some of the other baby boys and girls he has drawn. “It’s this little guy’s birthday next week, I think.”

    He pauses. “It’s an awful thing: no one should ever have to bury their child, irrespective of age. With stillborns, you don’t get to share any of those memories. I do these sketches for my sanity.”

    For more about Sands Queensland, visit sandsqld.com

  • The Weekend Australian album reviews, June – July 2014: Scott Spark, Sia, Jonathan Boulet

    Three reviews published in The Weekend Australian in June and July 2014.

    Scott Spark – Muscle Memory

    Scott Spark – 'Muscle Memory' album cover, reviewed in The Weekend Australian by Andrew McMillen, June 2014Piano-led pop is the domain of this Sydney-based singer-songwriter, who demonstrates a firm grasp of the genre on his second album. Backed by a compact rhythm section and occasional flourishes from stringed instruments, Scott Spark has arranged a winning follow-up to his 2010 debut, Fail Like You Mean It.

    His piano playing is inventive, but it’s his strong voice and fine ear for melody that sets these 13 tracks alight. The album bursts into life with driving opener ‘Days Are Business’ and maintains its momentum into the first single, ‘Two Alarms’, a workaday anthem for the disaffected modern wage slave. Spark navigates the space between such macro themes and more personal tales with grace; the heartache of missing a significant other is written large across album closer ‘Keep It Together’, while ‘Tag Along’ tells the story of meeting that same person for the first time. Well-trod though these lyrical paths might be, Spark’s unique toolbox includes a smart eye for detail, clever turns of phrase and a consistent ability to surprise the listener, such as when the string section in the latter track gently glides behind Spark’s voice until unexpectedly blooming into a sublime countermelody.

    ‘Going Out Tonight’ is built upon echoing, shimmering keys. The pleasantly disorienting effect doesn’t diminish with repeated listens, while the jarring chords of ‘Cut Loose’ impart a sense of urgency fitting for the album’s poppiest track. Muscle Memory is an engaging listen from top to tail.

    LABEL: MGM
    RATING: 4 stars

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    Sia – 1000 Forms of Fear

    Sia – '1000 Forms of Fear' album cover, reviewed in The Weekend Australian by Andrew McMillen, July 2014Few careers in Australian pop music have burned as steadily and slowly as that of Adelaide-born Sia Furler. Her second album, 2001’s Healing is Difficult, yielded a couple of singles that hit on the British charts but barely raised heart rates here; a key placement in the finale of HBO drama Six Feet Under in 2005 added fuel to the fire, as did her ARIA Award-winning fifth LP, 2010’s We are Born. Yet it is only in the past couple of years that the spark has finally burst into full conflagration. Happily for the camera-shy 38-year-old, her greatest success has come through writing hit songs for the likes of pop luminaries Rihanna, Katy Perry, Britney Spears and Beyonce. For Furler, the result has been fortune without much of the fame.

    Fittingly, the blonde mop on the cover of her sixth album is presented sans facial features. Beneath that golden dome lies one of the world’s sharpest musical brains. Few would doubt that Furler is a master of her craft, and 1000 Forms of Fear is a fine summary of everything that she has learned about the art of pop songwriting. Furler’s long-time collaborator Greg Kurstin handles production; it’s a winning combination as he too writes regularly with big-name pop acts.

    This album is packed with soaring choruses that highlight the singer’s formidable pipes. Her voice is a curious instrument that’s perfectly capable of cycling through high-register scales with beautiful tone, yet Furler is just as keen to emphasise her vocal quirks. This stylistic decision is central to her appeal, as they remind the listener that a human being is behind the microphone at all times, rather than an auto-tuned studio machine scrubbed of all imperfections.

    Simplicity and repetition are key components of the best pop music, a fact Furler knows well and replicates across 1000 Forms of Fear. Its 12 tracks are named for key words or phrases sung in the choruses, usually leaning towards peculiar or memorable images (‘Hostage’, ‘Free the Animal’, ‘Eye of the Needle’). First single ‘Chandelier‘ is a stunning composition based on Furler’s experiences with alcoholism (“Keep my glass full until morning light / ‘Cause I’m just holding on for tonight”), while ‘Elastic Heart’ — which first appeared on a soundtrack last year — is a universal tale of human resilience.

    The instrumentation draws largely on keyboards, live drums, bass and guitar, though sparse piano is relied on for the album’s two big ballads, ‘Straight for the Knife‘ and ‘Cellophane’. Overall, its tones and moods are well-paced, with the poppiest tracks offsetting the slower tempos of the two ballads — tracks six and 11, respectively. Smartly, Furler saves her best for last. Six-minute epic ‘Dressed in Black’ ends 1000 Forms of Fear on a haunting note: in its final two minutes, Furler throws her all into impassioned, wordless vocalising amid dramatic chords, drawing a firm line under her best collection to date.

    LABEL: Monkey Puzzle/Inertia
    RATING: 4 stars

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    Jonathan Boulet – Gubba

    Jonathan Boulet – 'Gubba' album cover, reviewed in The Weekend Australian by Andrew McMillen, July 2014The first time we heard Sydney songwriter Jonathan Boulet was five years ago, on a self-titled album that bubbled with nervous energy, clattering acoustic guitars and folk-rock sensibilities. It was a similar story with a stronger second album in 2012, yet Gubba heralds a considerable stylistic shift.

    Written, recorded and self-produced in Berlin, this third LP sees Boulet replacing acoustic instruments with distorted guitars and punishing drumbeats. Defined as “pop music with a scummy outer layer”, its 14 tracks are packed into 34 minutes and showcase Boulet’s previously hidden affinity for rock and heavy metal.

    We’ve known for five years he knows his way around writing a catchy song, and in that respect nothing has changed: although Gubba is noisier and more aggressive than its predecessors, musical and vocal hooks abound. Many of these songs are driven by fearsome bass grooves, most notably ‘Is Anybody Dooming’ and the Melvins-esque track ‘Bog’. Boulet is a notable drummer above all else, and innovative percussion is a consistent highlight.

    Five tracks fail to reach the 90-second mark and instead are used to showcase curious musical ideas that feel unfinished due to brevity. Of these shorter tracks, ‘Set It Off’ is the standout: its driving guitars call to mind New York noise rock band A Place to Bury Strangers. Gubba is best appreciated as an insight into the scattered mind of a talented songwriter whose musical abilities far outweigh his lyrical aptitude.

    LABEL: Popfrenzy
    RATING: 3.5 stars

  • The Weekend Australian album reviews, April – May 2014: Future Islands, Astronomy Class, DZ Deathrays

    Three reviews published in The Weekend Australian in April and May 2014.

    Future Islands – Singles

    Future Islands – 'Singles' album cover, reviewed in The Weekend Australian by Andrew McMillen, April 2014Four albums and eight years into its career, this Baltimore pop trio has hit its stride with Singles, a 10-song collection that all but lives up to its title. The band’s previous release, 2011’s On the Water, was memorable but lacked the consistent hooks that set Singles apart. The songs are assembled with the usual suspects on keyboards, bass, guitar and drums, but vocalist Sam Herring dominates.

    Even after cycling through every synonym for “unique”, I fall short of capturing what Herring offers. He possesses an improbably wide vocal range, from sweet high melodies to a surprising death-metal growl that makes a brief appearance in ‘Fall from Grace’, but he has the emotive weight to sell the lovelorn concepts that take centre-stage. There’s no room for second-guessing his sincerity. Herring is as compelling a frontman as I’ve heard in any genre, let alone in the pleasant pop music with which Future Islands concerns itself.

    This point of difference is worth the price of admission, yet the leap forward in songwriting that William Cashion (bass, guitar) and Gerrit Welmers (keyboards, guitar, programming) have assembled around Herring is remarkable. Standout moments include the driving guitars on album opener ‘Seasons (Waiting on You)’, the sighing synth sounds in ‘Doves’ and the poignant mood that imbues ‘A Song for Our Grandfathers’.

    It’s to the trio’s credit that all 10 tracks are uniformly strong. Naming an album Singles takes no small amount of self-confidence, yet in this case it’s well-earned.

    LABEL: 4AD/Remote Control
    RATING: 4 stars

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    Astronomy Class – Mekong Delta Sunrise

    Astronomy Class – 'Mekong Delta Sunrise' album cover, reviewed in The Weekend Australian by Andrew McMillen, April 2014For all the great strides that the genre has made since attaining critical mass more than a decade ago, Australian hip-hop can tend to mine the same soil over and over. Familiar thematic tropes have become entrenched in the minds of artists and audiences; to pursue sounds from outside of that comfort zone is to risk alienating listeners.

    For that reason, this is an ideal third full-length release for an established hip-hop trio whose reggae-influenced 2006 debut Exit Strategy sounded unlike anything else circulating at the time. So, too, does Mekong Delta Sunrise, an album overflowing with original ideas that again separates Sydney-based Astronomy Class from the usual suspects.

    By immersing itself in Cambodian culture, the trio has tapped into a rich vein of stories and sounds. Gifted MC Ozi Batla (The Herd) is the perceptive guide through this unfamiliar territory; his fantastic wordplay is a consistent highlight, but the way his percussive voice bends around the two evocative verses of ‘Four Barang in a Tuk-tuk’ may be a career highlight. The musical accompaniment layered by producers Chasm and Sir Robbo bustles with traditional basslines and beats offset by local instrumentation and samples, while many of the chorus hooks are beautifully sung in the mother tongue of Cambodian Space Project singer Srey Channthy. This is far from opportunistic cultural tourism; instead, a compelling and unique snapshot of a band extending itself and succeeding. Too brief at 37 minutes, Mekong Delta Sunrise makes clear that Astronomy Class has a deep respect for the country that has inspired its third — and best — album.

    LABEL: Elefant Traks
    RATING: 4.5 stars

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    DZ Deathrays – Black Rat

    DZ Deathrays – 'Black Rat' album cover, reviewed in The Weekend Australian by Andrew McMillen, May 2014Two years between releases finds this Brisbane duo evolving beyond its self-dubbed “thrash party” roots in favour of songwriting maturity. It’s taking a risk of alienating their established fan base but, to DZ Deathrays’ credit, it works. This new sound suits the pair better than the comparatively juvenile approach heard on the ARIA award-winning 2012 debut Bloodstreams and its preceding EPs.

    Shane Parsons’s penchant for catchy, effects-heavy guitar riffs hasn’t diminished, nor has Simon Ridley’s hard-hitting work behind the kit, yet these 11 tracks represent a significant step forward. Aside from the monstrous headbanger ‘Reflective Skull’ — the heaviest track they’ve released to date — the mosh-friendly moments of their early career are largely toned down. Instead, the pair demonstrates a firmer grasp on the mechanics of writing memorable, replay-friendly songs within the limited confines of guitar, drums and vocals.

    This compact format is ideal for the live circuit, a realm wherein DZ Deathrays has plenty of experience both nationally and overseas. Parsons mentions in the promotional material that “all we’ve done for two years is drink and tour”; fittingly, the bones of Black Rat were formed while on the road.

    Lyrical depth or complexity has never been high on the duo’s priorities, and here, the trend of serviceable but unremarkable hooks continues. Parsons’s tortured yowl remains a central force, but it’s just as often superseded by a more confident singing voice, and several tracks feature pretty vocal melodies. The subdued verses and explosive choruses of ‘Keep Myself on Edge’ contain shades of Brisbane labelmate Violent Soho, whose successful sonic evolution on last year’s Hungry Ghost has undoubtedly been studied closely by many rock acts around the country.

    Like that band, however, DZ Deathrays’ chief appeal is huge riffs and punchy percussion. On that front, Black Rat certainly delivers. Parsons describes it as “definitely a night-time record. After 9pm; that’s where it finds its place.” He’s right.

    Distinctive first single, ‘Northern Lights’, is an impressive departure from the duo’s regular formula; its busy follow-up, ‘Gina Works at Hearts’ — written from the perspective of a stripper who “just loves the attention” — could have been a Bloodstreams B-side. This stylistic seesawing is typical of Black Rat.

    It’s not quite a classic — album No 3, perhaps? — but it’s the sound of a confident band torn between its populist, party-friendly beginnings and a new-found ability to embrace glimpses of beauty amid the sonic destruction.

    LABEL: I Oh You
    RATING: 3.5 stars

  • The Weekend Australian album review: The War On Drugs, March 2014

    An album review published in The Weekend Australian on March 15 – my first ever five-star album review, I believe.

    The War On Drugs – Lost In The Dream

    twod_dreamAbout 3 ½ minutes into the first track, ‘Under the Pressure’, is when it first becomes apparent that Lost in the Dream may be a masterpiece: a muscular brass melody seeps into the mix, mimicking the chord progression and adding a new urgency to an already brisk tune. Its final three minutes are free of percussion; instead, waves of shimmering guitar tones and bass harmonics slowly fade out, to stunning effect. It’s one hell of a mood-setter that summarises the album’s pervasive feel of hazy discontent tinged with brightness.

    Within moments of track two settling into its groove, all bets are off. This galloping indie rock number is an instant classic that captures The War on Drugs at its most vital: four players locked into one of the most remarkable and moving grooves I’ve heard. It’s a cop-out that one hates to defer to, but words don’t do it justice. ‘Red Eyes‘ — the album’s first single — is a towering musical achievement that will be studied decades hence, just as we still study Led Zeppelin, the Stones and the Beatles.

    The War on Drugs was formed in 2005 by singer-guitarist Adam Granduciel and Lost in the Dream is the band’s third album, yet as with its predecessor Slave Ambient (2011), many of its complex sounds were assembled piece by piece by the frontman. “I wanted to do something that showcased what the band had become without necessarily giving up control of the recording,” the 35-year-old recently told American website Grantland. “I feel like with this record, I wasn’t ready to do that yet.”

    A break-up left him alone in a big, empty house with the task of finishing this record, which sees the band teetering on the precipice between indie acclaim and mainstream acceptance. (The quartet visited Australia at the end of last year, playing day slots to modest crowds at Falls Festival and a handful of smaller headline shows.)

    Granduciel’s anxiety and depression during this period played their part in Lost in the Dream’s sonic footprint; despite the upbeat bravado of ‘Red Eyes’, many of the remaining nine tracks favour introspective, world-weary instrumentation and narratives.

    Sixth track ‘Eyes to the Wind’ is a fine example: at a key moment midway through the song, Granduciel sings “There’s just a stranger, living in me” in his sweet, distinctive accent, which sits perfectly amid strummed acoustic guitars and delicate piano runs. Album closer ‘In Reverse’ dwells in late-night self-examination — “Sometimes I wait for the cold wind blowing/ As I struggle with myself right now/ As I let the darkness in” — amid a buoyant chord progression and insistent backbeat.

    There is darkness on Lost in the Dream, as in life, but these moments ultimately are outweighed by hope. In sum, this is a striking statement from a visionary songwriter and his dedicated bandmates. It’s a masterful hour-long work whose strengths and charms are immediately evident yet whose secrets are buried deep.

    LABEL: Inertia/Secretly Canadian
    RATING: 5 stars

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

    Album reviews published in The Weekend Australian in February 2014.

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    Warpaint – Warpaint

    Warpaint - 'Warpaint' album cover, reviewed in The Weekend Australian by Andrew McMillen, February 2014The 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

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    Halfway – Any Old Love

    Halfway - 'Any Old Love' album cover, reviewed in The Weekend Australian by Andrew McMillen, February 2014Eight 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

    Harmony - 'Carpetbombing' album cover, reviewed in The Weekend Australian by Andrew McMillen, February 2014“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

  • The Weekend Australian album reviews, Sept – Nov 2013: Wolf & Cub, Jae Laffer, Mick Turner, Greta Mob

    Album reviews published in The Weekend Australian between September and November 2013.

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    Wolf & Cub – Heavy Weight

    Wolf & Cub - 'Heavy Weight' album cover, reviewed in The Weekend Australian by Andrew McMillen, September 2013While Perth act Tame Impala has been flying the flag for Australian psychedelic rock since 2010, playing on American talk shows and at nearly every festival in the world, Adelaide quartet Wolf & Cub have been quiet.

    Following an excellent debut in 2006’s Vessels, their second album, 2009’s Science and Sorcery, was a stark disappointment.

    Heavy Weight, then, marks a return from the musical wilderness — four years away is a long time for any band, especially a mid-tier independent — and a return to form that will have Tame Impala looking over its shoulder. Joel Byrne (guitar and vocals) and Joel Carey (drums) are the two original members, but with the change in line-up comes renewed focus: 11 songs deep and no missteps to speak of, only a meandering and characterless two-minute coda to eighth track ‘See the Light that’ we could have done without.

    Elsewhere, ‘All Through the Night’ is a sprawling, urgent cut in the vein of Canadian indie rock band the Besnard Lakes; ‘I Need More’ is as streamlined a pop song as the band has produced, and in ‘Got a Feeling’ Wolf & Cub end Heavy Weight on an uplifting note, similar to how Californian rock act Black Rebel Motorcycle Club closed its most recent album.

    Embedded throughout these songs are smart basslines, tidy percussion and Byrne’s vocal hooks and impressive array of guitar effects. May their fine work here land them on US talk shows and global festival stages before too long.

    LABEL: MGM
    RATING: 4 stars

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    Jae Laffer – When The Iron Glows Red

    Jae Laffer - 'When The Iron Glows Red' album cover, reviewed in The Weekend Australian by Andrew McMillen, October 2013As frontman of Perth-born pop act The Panics, Jae Laffer is well regarded for his songwriting quantity and quality.

    Best known for the ARIA award-winning third album, Cruel Guards, and its lead single, ‘Don’t Fight It’, the band has been firing since its 2003 debut album, A House on a Street in a Town I’m From.

    It’s unsurprising, then, that Laffer’s first solo release is just as accomplished as everything that came before. These are acoustic pop songs bolstered by warm instrumentation; the enterprising Laffer plays nearly every sound heard on the album besides drums and bass, the latter being handled by his Panics bandmate Paul Otway. It’s a potent chain of 10 tracks without a single weak link.

    The screaming saxophone in ‘Leaving on Time’ is a thrill, as is the lovely vocal duet with Angie Hart in ‘To Mention Her’. The best is saved for last, though: the chilling title track closes the album, and it’s right up there with the best songs that Laffer has had a hand in.

    Press materials suggest he was moved to write and record an album quickly; he desired spontaneity, to sing the words to the songs “while the ink was still wet on the page”. If the man can whip up 10 winning pop songs from scratch at speed, then other writers have reason to be quaking in their boots.

    That ability, coupled with his distinctive, laconic vocal style — long central to the Panics’ appeal — results in a truly rare bird. Highly recommended.

    LABEL: Dew Process
    RATING: 4.5 stars

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    Mick Turner – Don’t Tell The Driver

    Mick Turner - 'Don't Tell The Driver' album cover, reviewed in The Weekend Australian by Andrew McMillen, November 2013New work by one of Australia’s most distinctive guitarists is always worth a listen, and usually worth dwelling on at some length.

    Don’t Tell the Driver slots neatly into the latter category. It’s the fourth album by Melbourne-based musician Mick Turner, who is one-third of the internationally acclaimed instrumental rock act Dirty Three. His laconic, meticulous style of playing is evocative no matter the context; a memorable quote by Bobby Gillespie, frontman of Scottish rock band Primal Scream, describes his six-string style as “the way that stars are spaced out across the sky”.

    Turner’s past solo releases have been tough to recommend due to their meandering, unfocused nature: his last album, 2003’s Moth, comprised 19 short, looped instrumental ideas. Here the guitarist has enlisted a diverse group of players to bolster the mix, and it works well: horns, piano, melodica, bass and drums drift in and out of focus but never overshadow the star of the show.

    Most notable is the addition of vocals on a few of the 11 tracks: Caroline Kennedy-McCracken’s softly sung words wrap nicely around the gentle rhythm of the title track, and opera singer Oliver Mann makes an unexpected appearance at the beginning of album standout ‘Over Waves’.

    That Turner has embraced a more traditional style of songwriting is to his credit. No one else plays guitar quite the way he does. Don’t Tell the Driver is recommended as his strongest and most accessible work to date.

    LABEL: Remote Control Records/King Crab
    RATING: 3.5 stars

    ++

    Greta Mob – Let The Sunburnt Country Burn

    Greta Mob - 'Let The Sunburnt Country Burn' album cover, reviewed in The Weekend Australian by Andrew McMillen, November 2013‘Yorta Yorta’, the opening track of this Sydney band’s debut album, is one of the most striking songs released this year.

    The narrator tells a story from his childhood of being caught trespassing while fishing in northern Victoria. When he pleads ignorance, stating his belief that the land belonged to the local indigenous clan – the Yorta Yorta people – he’s told that “There ain’t no more of them blacks alive / They started killing them back in 1835”. In his dream that night, the narrator witnesses a tribal elder’s brutal murder at the hands of a white farmer. The singer ends with an impassioned cry that echoes Midnight Oil’s ‘Beds are Burning’: “The truth be known, we don’t own this land / Let’s give it back to them”.

    This seven-minute tale is set to a rollicking rock backbeat; clashing guitars and mournful harmonica lines add to the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the seven tracks that follow don’t come close to the opener. Greta Mob was formed by singer Rhyece O’Neill – who plays nearly every instrument here – and drummer Luke Millar two years ago; Let the Sunburnt Country Burn was recorded in a warehouse in Berlin, in Sydney, and in a shearing shed south of Mudgee, NSW.

    The album sounds fantastic, thanks to the natural reverb of those open spaces. Although this is an uneven debut, there are some great ideas. Greta Mob may soon join the Drones and the Kill Devil Hills, two independent acts that continually strive to make intelligent, evocative Australian rock music.

    LABEL: Greta Mob Music
    RATING: 3.5 stars

     

  • A Conversation With Alex Grey, American visionary artist, 2011

    In early January 2011, I was scheduled to interview the American visionary artist Alex Grey [pictured right] for The Australian ahead of his first Australian art tour. The problem was that at the time, my home city of Brisbane was in the midst of some of its worst-ever flooding.

    Due to a sketchy internet connection, I didn’t want to risk the possibility of a Skype video call dropping out mid-interview, so I sent through some questions for Alex and his wife Allyson to answer via email. Their answers formed the basis of my 800 word story for The Australian, which you can read here.

    Our full email interview is below; Alex’s answers are included verbatim, without editing. Examples of Alex’s striking art are embedded throughout this interview.

    ++

    Andrew: Many readers of The Australian would be unfamiliar with your work. How would you describe your painting styles to those who haven’t seen it before?

    Alex: My best known works are paintings that “X-ray” multi-dimensional reality, interweaving biological anatomy with psychic/spiritual energies in visual meditations on the nature of life and consciousness.

    Is there an intellectual rationale behind your work? Has this changed much over the years?

    My work has been called visionary because I’m a painter inspired by glimpses into the subtle visionary realm, which is the source of all sacred art. There is more of a spiritual motivation to the work. The philosophical framework from which one could view the artwork is an integral and consciousness evolutionary perspective. This is a crucial time for humanity when all the world religions are becoming familiar with each other. Art can play a special role in bridging these traditions, thereby helping to make peace in a volatile climate. A planetary civilization is dawning. We need fresh iconography that points to a sustainable relationship of humanity, the web of life and harmony amongst nations.

    What do you aim to communicate in your art?

    Life is multi-dimensional and all beings and things are interconnected. The cosmos is a continuum in which every creature plays an important part. Our bodies are marvelous gifts of biological evolution that we have the good fortune to experience in our brief life span. Life is a miracle. Love is the highest principle and experience and is the way of all religious teachings.

    I’m interested in each of your painting methods. What materials do you use? After visualising a piece, where do you start, in terms of the actual painting? Do you prefer to spend long periods of time painting, or is it split up into many shorter sessions?

    We both paint with acrylic but prefers oils. We paint on linen and on wood panels. In Alex’s art, everything starts with a vision that results in a drawing and a redrawing over and over again until it is refined enough to transfer the image to canvas or wood. We both love painting for long periods. Sometimes when we have painted together for as long as 20 hours straight.

    We are also founders of a church on 40 acres of land with over a dozen employees and many volunteers. We have many responsibilities that fill our days. This is not a distraction from the artwork. This is a realization of the “great work” which is to build a temple of art that we call the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.

    Do you listen to music while you work?

    Almost always. Sometimes we listen to wisdom teachings on audio.

    Which artists do you listen to?

    Bach, Beethoven, Shubert, Shpongle, Ott, Fats Waller, Led Zepplin, Tool, loads of trance music, Toires, Heyoka, Crystal Method, Animal Collective, Bob Dylan, Canned Heat, Joe Satriani, John Fruscianti, Moby, Peter Gabriel, The Beastie Boys, Clash, Stones, The Beatles. George Harrison and Sting are mystics. Recently, at Daniel Pinchbeck’s documentary film premiere of 2012, Sting came up and hugged Alex. We were starstruck.

    Our daughter Zena queues us into a lot of new music.

    Your larger pieces are often reduced in size to appear in various media – books, calendars, postcards, and on the web. Do you find this dismaying at all? Is anything lost in the art, when it’s reduced from the original size?

    It’s a representation of the work for the purpose of reaching a wider audience. Reproductions are not just smaller, they are NOT the original. To the see the original is a more direct hit. There is still power in a reproduced image, though. It’s just through a glass darkly. An artwork has power when it is iconically viable from the size of a postage stamp to the size of a billboard.

    We produce or license images and sell them to benefit the building of a sacred temple.

    Many people – myself included – first found your work through Tool album covers. I believe your work has been used by some other musical acts, too. Was there any hesitation in being involved with these projects?

    Or am I just THAT sort of Rock Whore? Am I just a trollup in a beret? Just kidding.

    No. People had told me that I would love TooI. I was having an exhibition in Santa Monica when Adam Jones became interested in my work. This motivated me to listen to their music. I was kind of a late comer. Allyson and I were immediately bowled over. We’re huge fans and look forward to seeing them on our last night in Australia.

    I’ve met Adam Yauch of The Beastie Boys. We are both rather avid scholars of Tibetan Buddhism and we hung out once at a Dalai Lama event. That was so cool.

    We love the guys in S.C.I. and are particularly friendly with Michael Kang who we often see at festivals like Burning Man. What fine musicians they all are. It’s an honor to know such artists.

    My work appeared on the last Nirvana album cover, In Utero. I heard that Kurt Cobain liked my work but I never met him or went to a Nirvana concert.

    Are there any Tool collaboration projects forthcoming?

    No. There is nothing planned at this time.

    I believe you both teach (or taught – past tense?) Visionary Art at The Open Centre. What are some of the values that you try to instill in the students who take your courses?

    We have taught visionary art at many centers all over the world. We recently taught a workshop in Moscow with a Russian translator and then in Mexico City with a Spanish translator. We look forward to teaching a three-day Visionary Art workshop in Byron Bay, January 25-27 [2011].

    At CoSM, the art and spirit educational nexus is called MAGI — Mystic Artists Guild International. We teach art as a spiritual path. We just had a workshop before the Full Moon ceremony called, “Visioning Your Highest Intention.” The purpose of MAGI is to form a higher social organism of inspired minds capable of building sacred space together. Sacred space has always been created by the intertwined wills of people dedicated to a divine purpose. Creating and sharing sacred art can be a form of worship and service, introducing a transformed world view to community and activating cultural renewal. The MAGI bear gifts of beauty for the newly born vision of planetary civilization and universal spirituality. Mystic artists are called to an authentic and disciplined manifestation of their visions.

    I’ve read in High Times that you work in your loft, where you prefer to have your family and library nearby. How do you deal with distractions while working? Do you have an ‘artist at work’ sign posted somewhere?

    Allyson and I have worked within eye shot of each other for thirty-six years. We are each others best friend and most honest critic and advisor. I like to work near all my source material of imagery and philosophy.

    Zena grew up here. When Zena came, Allyson and I had already been together for thirteen years and had already developed our rhythm as artists. Zena has been the greatest gift of our lives.

    What is a distraction? The path to building a temple is a big project. The project IS our art so we are always making our art.

    We are trusted filters for each other. We always have the others best interests at heart.

    Arguably your most famous works, The Sacred Mirrors, took a decade to complete. What do you recall from that time? Did you realize that you were creating works that would come to define you as an artist?

    Painting the Sacred Mirrors felt life defining. Allyson inspired and later named the Sacred Mirrors series. The idea would never otherwise have been realized. At that time, they were the most affirmative statement I could make as an artists to connect the human and the divine, a dissection of the self through the layers of body and soul. The paintings pointed in the direction of a new kind of figuration for me, something I call, “Transfiguration,” the physical body in relationship to transcendental light. The work has a universally sacred aspiration.

    The other beautiful thing that the Sacred Mirrors memorialize is one of our most profound psychedelic experiences. The Universal Mind Lattice visually recounts a meltdown of the physical body into the white light torroidal fountain and drain of energy. What really completely reformatted our psychic hard drive was that Allyson and I did drawings of the same place. We both saw our infinite interconnectedness with the great web of all existence, a love energy flowing through all beings and things.

    What is your proudest artistic achievement?

    Yet to come.

    I was reading an article about the New Year’s Eve just passed, and the scope of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors [CoSM] in Wappinger. It seems like a massive undertaking, yet having not visited, it’s hard to picture. Could you help me out by describing the space?

    The mission is formidable and ultimately doable. Collectors have actually donated works back to CoSM to be part of this great project. Many artists resonate with the practice of art as their spiritual life.

    CoSM lives on 40 wooded acres in the Hudson Valley of New York, 65 miles north of New York City, walking distance from a railroad station running from Manhattan’s Grand Central Station. CoSM has six buildings and a barn and one by one we are make them beautiful and enjoyable as we design and prepare to build the sacred temple. A small staff lives on the property and many volunteers come to joyfully serve the project. We started holding Full Moon ceremonies in our home in Brooklyn in 2003, had a spiritual creative art center in Manhattan for five years, and now an artists refuge.

    What does the Chapel mean to each of you?

    The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors is yourself, the temple of your body and the temple of your spirituality. Art is a fusion of those elements. God/love is what brings them together. Love is the secret name of God. When you surrender to love you see through God’s eye. That is what you see when you are staring at a Sacred Mirror.

    Building a Chapel is the work of a community. If we all get along we can make something beautiful together. If we do not get along, our progress is impaired in making something beautiful and of having a sustainable relationship with the planet.

    Unless I’m mistaken, you seem to both now thrive on the notion of patronage – you’re financially supported by your fans and followers, who pay you to express yourselves through art. Was this always the goal?

    We travel because we are invited. To make art and have others love it and want to see it is a terrific honor. Every creative person yearns to live by their creativity. Our art is our ministry. We decide what art we are making and we make it to serve the greater good. Many creative people are considering the ethical energy that they are putting into their manifestations. A moral element deepens the narrative.

    Do you remember if there was a particular moment when you realized you were a self-sufficient artist, who no longer had to take on projects for commercial clients?

    I live and work to serve others.

    At 17 I painted Fun Houses. At 19 I painted billboards. At 21 I worked in the Anatomy department at Harvard Medical School, preparing exhibits on the history of medicine and disease and preparing cadavers for dissection by medical students. At 26 I was a medical illustrator and for ten years I taught anatomy to art students at New York University (NYU). Chapel of Sacred Mirrors became a non-profit organization in 1996 and at age 45 I stopped doing medical or other types of illustration work. Since then, I paint, sculpt, study, teach, lecture, write, work everyday as a co-founder and director of CoSM, now a church.

    What would retirement look like for you two? It seems hard to imagine you giving up your public roles as CoSM owners and operators. Finally, what would you each like to be remembered for?

    For as long as we are breathing we will be working on this project. Why retire from a life you love? We’ve been given a project to dedicate our lives to. What a gift! It will involve many visionaries who are our friends. Everyone is welcome.
    We’d like to be remembered for a universal spiritual message that reunifies the sacred visionary imagination with the art of our time.

    Of course, we’d like to be represented by the completed and sustainable building of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.

    ++

    To learn more about Alex Grey, visit his website.

    Elsewhere: my story for The Australian about Alex Grey’s first Australian art tour, published in January 2011.

  • Discussing ‘Lonesome Highway’

    Let me tell you about ‘Lonesome Highway‘, my first feature for The Weekend Australian‘s ‘Review’ arts + culture lift-out. The story – which you should read (or glance at) here before continuing – discusses the challenges faced by Australian country musicians in 2010.

    'Lonesome Highway' by Andrew McMillen, The Weekend Australian Review, 6 February 2010

    I spent the week beginning Monday, 18 January 2010 playing the part of ‘freelance writer without work’. I was pitching stories every day, and none of them were sticking. By Friday – after alternating between liaising with editors, and catching up with some friends in the Brisbane music scene – all I had was an approval to interview a hip-hop act for an online publication.. who don’t pay for online content, as I learned soon thereafter.

    Earlier that week, I’d sent a Dirty Three/Laughing Clowns tour-related pitch to the editor of the Weekend Australian’s ‘Review’ arts and culture lift-out. I’d been email-introduced to her by a helpful fellow editor at The Australian a few months ago, when I was pitching the idea of a story around the Robert Forster book launch/conversation at Avid Reader. (That one didn’t stick either, obviously.)

    Fevered as I was in my determination to get a story idea – any story idea! – accepted, I sent that D3/Clowns pitch and promptly forgot about it. I’d prefaced it with a reminder stating that I’m a writer for Rolling Stone, jmag, etc, and that we’d last emailed in November.

    At 4pm on Friday, 22 January – generally despondent, after a week of work with few returns – the editor of ‘Review’ called me. That’s 5pm local time from her office in Sydney, owing to daylight savings.

    “I’ve got a problem,” she began.

    “Oh?” I replied, wondering a) what I might have done to cause a problem, and b) whether I could perhaps solve said problem.

    “I need a story on Australian country music following the conclusion of this year’s Tamworth Country Music Festival. My regular music writer’s just gone on leave. Would you feel comfortable taking on this story?”

    I paused for several seconds. “…you know I’m mostly a rock writer, right? For Rolling Stone, and stuff?”

    She confirmed, and reiterated the question. The story was due on Wednesday; as in, five days’ time. Word length unspecified; it could be 1,200, or it could be 2,000. I inhaled, and accepted the challenge.

    Immediately I pictured myself frantically pushing a library ladder around towering bookshelves that represent the contact details of everyone I’ve ever met. “Which of these people knows something about country music?” I yelled, in my mind. I sure didn’t.

    In a gesture that would be repeated throughout the time I spent researching, writing and editing the story, the editor took her time to provide me with some suggested paths of research, historical background, and narrative guidance.

    As soon as I hung up, I emailed dozens of my contacts within the music industry, searching for anything resembling a lead with regard to country music-related interview subjects. I put the call out on to my friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter. And for the first time, I used a site called SourceBottle, which allows journalists to request sources within a wide range of industries and subject matters.

    To my surprise, helpful responses began appearing in my inbox as fast as I could send out requests. My contacts introduced me to experts on the subject. My friends on social networks tipped me off to artists and their managers. And SourceBottle delivered some great offers from watchful PR professionals, who were keen to have their clients represented in a story.

    So began a crash course in researching the current players in Australian country music. I read stories filed from the Tamworth festival by The Australian’s regular music writer, Iain Shedden, who I’d interviewed a few months earlier for One Movement Word. I wrote an outline of what I planned for the story to cover, and warmed up with some phone conversations over the weekend. I spent Monday on the phone to country musicians, radio announcers, artist managers, alt-country artists, schoolteachers, historians and record label staff.

    All told, I conducted 18 interviews, throughout which I scribbled notes in preparation of listening back to the recorded audio. Tuesday – the 26th, Australia Day – was spent shaping what I’d learned from the experts into a coherent story.

    While interviewing, a frequently-recurring topic prompted me to pay more attention to the apparent dearth of  media opportunities available to country musicians. Ultimately, this would become the focal point of the story: what was imagined as a mere discussion on where the genre stands in 2010 morphed into a sympathetic piece highlighting the many challenges faced by country performers. As stated in the story, these are related to image, airplay opportunities, marketing, media attention, and even differences within the community.

    I submitted my first draft at 4am the next morning. Upon review, my editor suggested that a couple of follow-up quotes were required from Troy Cassar-Daley to describe the genre in his own words. And somewhere between fact-checking and quote-verifying, I’d forgotten to tighten the narrative structure, so my editor reshaped the piece to improve its flow.

    Upon confirming her final edit, the biggest story of my career was out of my hands. It wouldn’t appear in print for 10 days. (The cover from the February 6 issue of ‘Review’ is below right.)

    The Weekend Australian 'Review', February 6 2010It was the most exhilarating journalistic experience of my life. Five days focussed on researching and synthesising the story of a centuries-old art form into around 2,000 words. What a challenge. I’m so glad I accepted it. It even resulted in my first live-to-air radio interview for ABC Mid-North Coast the day before the story was published. (At the time of writing this, I’ve not yet listened back to it, owing to embarrassment…)

    In a way, the whole experience – the initial unexpected, but not unplanned-for phone call, the willingness on the editor’s part to take a chance with me – justified the time and effort I’ve dedicated to my writing since I changed my mindset and became serious about pursuing it as a career.

    Looking back, it seems that this occurred sometime in June 2009. I’m simply thrilled that eight months later, I’ve been published in The Weekend Australian, one of the country’s biggest newspapers. Awesome. If you have any questions relating to this story, I’ll try to answer them in the comments.

    Thanks to the following people who helped with the story.

    Interview subjects: Troy Cassar-Daley, Adam Harvey, Graeme Connors, Amber Lawrence, Anne Kirkpatrick, Joy McKean, Felicity Urquhart,  Luke Austen, Chris Pickering, Roz Pappalardo, John Elliott, Geoff Walden, Nick Erby, Bill Page, Aneta Butcher, Cheryl Byrnes, and Scott Lamond.

    Contact sources, miscellaneous inspiration: Stephen Green, David Carter, Craig Spann, Deb Suckling, Ed Guglielmino, Rick Chazan, Nick O’Byrne, Alison Brown, Dan Stapleton, Deborah Jones, Rachael Hall, Tim Lovett, Blair Hughes, Paul & Deb McMillen, and Matt Weller.

  • The Weekend Australian Review story: ‘Lonesome Highway’, February 2010

    This is my first feature for national broadsheet newspaper The Weekend Australian‘s ‘Review’ arts and culture lift-out. Entitled ‘Lonesome Highway’, it’s 2,000 words on the challenges faced by Australian country musicians. [Click the image for a readable version.]

    'Lonesome Highway' by Andrew McMillen, The Weekend Australian Review, 6 February 2010

    This is by far the biggest story of my career; you can read about how it happened here. Full story text included below.

    Lonesome Highway

    Once a year country music gets its moment in the sun, then it all goes cold again. Andrew McMillen reports on a neglected genre

    The country music scene appears on the radar of most Australians only each January, at Tamworth Country Music Festival time. Television shows brief clips of guitar-slinging performers; newspapers run wide shots of cowboy hat-wearing, denim-clad fans lining the main street and, if we’re lucky, which we mostly are, we’ll be shown “the weirdest busker on Peel Street”, says singer-songwriter Felicity Urquhart with a sigh, referring to the many performers who line Tamworth’s main drag and vie for the attention of visiting news crews keen to shoot and run.

    Golden Guitar winners rate a mention in the mainstream media and then country music is put back in its box.

    As singer-songwriter Adam Harvey puts it, “people tend to dismiss country music without giving it a go. They think we still sing about the one where ‘my wife left me and my dog died’, or if you play it backwards, it’s where ‘my dog left me and my wife died,’ ” he says with a laugh.

    The problems are many: image, airplay opportunities, marketing, media attention, even differences in the sector about what country music should be in a wider music world dominated by glossy pop singers who flaunt skin and layer digitally enhanced vocals over processed beats .

    As Harvey suggests, not everyone even knows what country music is.

    The Australian’s music writer, Iain Shedden, puts it this way. “Country music, since it was first called that in the 1940s, has evolved and fractured into hundreds of sub-genres, from alt country to cowpunk to pop country crossover, so it’s impossible to attribute one strict formula to all of it.

    “In Australia, however, it’s a little easier to define. Stretching back to the pioneering output of Tex Morton and then Slim Dusty, songs have simple folk structures, generally led by acoustic guitar, but accompanied by other instruments also used in the folk tradition, such as mandolin, banjo, harmonica. Most often the songs are in waltz or 4/4 time,” he says.

    “The connection to the land is probably Australian country’s strongest lyrical characteristic, with John Williamson one of the leading exponents of that form. Lyrics often have a narrative, although at the pop end of country (taking Taylor Swift from the US as an example), they can be more abstract (or banal) with no ties to rural life at all.”

    Amiable superstar Troy Cassar-Daley calls country “the story of everyday people. Vocally, it’s sincere; instrumentally, it’s proud to wear sounds like banjos and fiddles in the mix. Other music steers clear of those because they don’t want to be labelled, but we proudly use instrumentation that has the feel of the hills that cover this great land,” he says. “Lyrically, it’s pure home-town pride. And you know you’re listening to country – not pop or rock – when you hear songs for the common man. There’s a lot of people living, loving and dying in Australia, and this music is about them.”

    Following this creed, Cassar-Daley won six Golden Guitars this year, including album of the year for I Love This Place, taking his career tally to 20.

    “Afterwards I got a text from Keith Urban asking, ‘Can you just leave some for someone else?’,” he says, laughing.

    Cassar-Daley was a popular winner, but there were questions elsewhere when writer-photographer John Elliott, a festival veteran, gave a lecture titled Let’s Get Real: The Need for Authenticity in Australian Country Music. “Great country music tells stories about our country; about who we are and where we come from. I think a lot of younger artists have lost this focus,” Elliott argued.

    He also said performers needed to have an appreciation of what had come before. “Without that respect it becomes very bad pop music,” Elliott said. “And it has to have more of a connection to the country than wearing a hat, having a twangy guitar and getting your clip played on the Country Music Channel.”

    Dusty’s widow Joy McKean, who celebrated her 80th birthday with a concert on January 21 at Tamworth’s Capitol Theatre, agreed. McKean is a songwriter who managed her husband’s career for more than 50 years. “As yet, no one has crystallised what it means to be country like Slim did. He was the point of reference for country music, and I don’t think we have that now. A lot of people are paying lip-service to country music for their own means, without having a genuine feeling for the music.”

    The variety of music styles being presented in Tamworth this year gave some force to this argument, although Dusty’s daughter Anne Kirkpatrick, while warning today’s performers not to get “too wound up in the image to the exclusion of the heart and soul”, acknowledged the stature of Urquhart and Cassar-Daley in the business.

    But no matter how good the country artist, there is still the matter of getting them heard. Aneta Butcher, who manages Australian country music at the nation’s largest independent record company, Sydney-based Shock Records, says: “I don’t know if we’re ever going to get mainstream radio to pick up what we market as country music. If we’re taking a country act to radio, we generally have to provide a pop mix of their single and hope for the best.”

    In the US – where Urban is a huge star – there is a vast network of country radio stations, something Australia lacks. Urquhart, who won female artist of the year last month, has been sitting in as host of ABC radio’s Saturday Night Country program while regular host John Nutting is on leave, and says that in the absence of other outlets, “all we can do is try our best to promote, expand and educate the listeners of our ABC program … I truly believe there’s something in country music for every Australian.”

    Scott Lamond, who was raised in Bundaberg on a healthy diet of Dusty and Williamson, has reported on country music events for the ABC for the past five years. “I know ABC radio takes country music seriously, but generally speaking there are limited broadcasting opportunities for country artists outside of community radio,” he says. “I spoke with [2010 Golden Guitar winner for group of the year] Jetty Road, who mentioned that there’s around 70 commercial stations in Canada playing country music 24/7. Australia just doesn’t have that; the platforms on offer to artists who want to share their music are limited.”

    Harvey has tackled the issue of attracting attention by inviting performers from outside the country realm – including pop singer Guy Sebastian – to sing on his 2009 release Duets. Sebastian headlined a show at this year’s Tamworth festival, which was one of the first to sell out. The presence of such an unashamedly un-country artist was the talk of Tamworth, but as Harvey sees it, there has always been a diverse array of acts on display at the festival, where this year an estimated 2500 acts played across 10 days.

    “The old guard tend to forget that the traditional Tamworth crowd’s getting older,” he says. “I understand we’ve got to respect our heritage, but we’ve also got to make sure we’re encouraging a steady influx of young performers. And if we’ve got to drag a few people with us to move the industry forward, we’ll do what we have to.”

    Harvey’s willingness to test boundaries, is, he says, just “a bit of common sense. I’m aware of how important it is that we plan a long-term future for our industry.” Performers needed to remember “that we’re product who’re expected to sell records”.

    Twelve-time Golden Guitar winner Graeme Connors says the country industry is in something of a trough.

    “From my perspective, the music business cannot function without artists who are creating interesting, challenging, and diverse works … The business has this constant demand for large-selling records, and not every artist can do that with every release.” A powerful, individual voice is what’s missing, Connors says.

    “That void will be filled in time, if only because the human spirit is incapable of staying in a lull. In the interim, there’ll likely be someone at the young end of the spectrum who’ll find a voice that reminds us just how good music can be.”

    This year’s anointed up-and-comer is Luke Austen, winner of the 31st annual Star Maker talent quest. It’s a title previously held by Urban and Lee Kernaghan. Austen, 28, isn’t exactly a neophyte, having spent four years on the road with lauded bush balladeer Brian Young and six years as bassist for Cassar-Daley. He also co-wrote a song on Cassar-Daley’s I Love This Place.

    “We prefer to select a winner who’s already working professionally in the industry, because they get it,” quest co-ordinator Cheryl Byrnes says.

    A cautionary note is struck, nevertheless, by Geoffrey Walden, founder of the Gympie-based Australian Institute of Country Music. He contends that the Tamworth talent quest programs tend to build artists who don’t appeal to the younger demographic of potential fans. “It’s about marketability from the perspective of what the industry sees as the future of country music. They’re generally after someone who’s marketable and who’ll appeal to a wide audience, but not necessarily a young audience.”

    Austen is acutely aware of the expectation thrust on him. “There hasn’t been a major star in a long time, but I’d like to put that pressure on myself because I feel that I’ll perform better. It inspires me to dig in and really make it work. I’ve won the respect of my peers, and now I just have to concentrate on backing it up with good product.”

    Nick Erby is a Tamworth local who has attended all 38 country music festivals. “Competitively, contemporary Australian country music is the best you’ll find anywhere. We’re not backwards, we’re just underexposed,” he says.

    Erby has a long history of broadcasting country music on radio, but now works online. He points out that terrestrial licenses for Australian radio are restricted and finite, but thousands of stations exist online, each broadcasting to niche audiences. “Online technology is shaking up the radio industry. Once the cost of access drops, the option will become more attractive to a wide array of listeners.”

    He sees this as a potential answer to the lack of exposure for country music: his Country Music Radio online simulcast of this year’s awards overloaded his US-based server. “You watch,” he predicts. “In the next two years, the awards will be streamed via live video.”

    Industry insiders also point to the success of the 20-year-old Swift, whose career and style could entice young Australian performers and fans. Swift’s second album, 2008’s Fearless, has sold more than seven million copies in the US. Butcher voices a hope shared widely: “Swift appeals to younger girls, who might be influenced to give country music a try,” she says.

    Traditionalists may squirm, but this could be the future. As Urquhart says when despairing of the limited view of country music held by the media at large: “What about our shining lights and our new discoveries? There’s so much more to country music than footage of a hay bale and a guy with a chook on his head.”

    And even someone as successful as Cassar-Daley half-jokes as he helps out with phone numbers: “Good luck with the story, mate. Keep it positive. We need it.”

    This story originally appeared in The Australian’s ‘Review’ lift-out on February 6 2010. A link to the story on The Australian’s website is here.

  • A Conversation With Andrew Ramadge, news.com.au and music journalist

    Andrew Ramadge, journalist. Serious business.Here’s a conversation I had in August with Andrew Ramadge [pictured right], one of my favourite Australian journalists. He writes about consumer technology for news.com.au, and music for Mess+Noise and The Brag. He came to my rescue when I was humbled by Hungry Kids Of HungaryHe’s written a lot, but my favourite article of his – the one that really brought him to my attention – is ‘Tall Tales And True‘, a look at the state of Australian music journalism for M+N in March 2009.

    Andrew: Hey Andrew. I’m mostly interested in how you got into journalism, and how you’ve progressed from print to online journalism. When did you first become interested in writing professionally?

    My father was a journalist and he still is. He edits a newspaper now. When I was a bit younger, I swore that I wouldn’t get into the media, that I wouldn’t follow in his footsteps, which as you can tell; I failed at. [laughs]

    The first time I realised I really loved writing was when I was at university, in Melbourne. I was doing a Bachelor of Arts. Most people do a Bachelor of Arts when they don’t know what else to do, or when they just want to get on the dole for a while. I was one of those people who really enjoyed it. I loved writing essays, forming arguments, and at the same time I was reading the street press, and reading record reviews. I’ve always loved music. At that point, the street press critics were emerging writers and I thought I could do that as well. I sent in reviews to Beat and that’s how I got started.

    So music journalism was your way into the industry?

    Yeah, that and the fact that my father was a journalist, so I suppose people would say I always had it in me, anyway. After I finished my degree, I moved to Sydney. I was looking for work and a position was open at News.com.au and I took it. One of the reasons I got into online journalism was because I started my career as a web developer. I sort of had a little bit of experience in journalism, and a lot of experience in online. It seemed to be the perfect synthesis.

    Was the opportunity at News.com.au for a consumer tech journalist, or did that role evolve?

    I started off as a general news desk journalist. I was doing a little bit of sub-editing, a little bit of production work, as well as putting in calls, and just highlighting the news of the day. After I’d been there about a year or year and a half, I think, before News.com.au put in a new section for technology. Again, because I’ve got a background in computers, and online development, I was kind of a perfect fit. I applied for that job once it became available and I got it.

    Do you find it odd that you find you got a job at News without an internship or without that kind of way into the industry, which I know a lot of students do pursue?

    I suppose; I’d already been working when I was in Melbourne, for the street press, and also editing the website for Beat magazine online, so I had an online editor experience. Also, I think internships are becoming more rare nowadays. I think Fairfax may have actually suspended their cadetship program recently.

    I think the ways that people get into journalism now are different than they have been in the past. One up-and-coming technology journalists that I know is Ben Grubb, who’s also from Brisbane. He will have a career in the industry because a lot of people know him and are keeping an eye on him. He didn’t do a cadetship. He did it himself. He started a blog. He showed he had talent, ambition, and I suppose he went around making good contacts.

    Cool. What did you learn during your time writing for street press? You started as a freelancer, I suppose, and then you became a staff member when you were editing.

    Yeah, I started out writing reviews and features. At that point, Beat had a website, but it was pretty perfunctory. It wasn’t very good. I wrote a business case for the publishers of Beat magazine to start a new website for them, and then I built it and edited it. That’s that side of it.

    What I learned about writing when I was at street press was the same thing everyone learns, really, which is a pretty good introduction: some free CDs, you get to go to a lot of concerts and meet people and figure out how everything works, really. I also eventually learnt not to be precious, which is another good thing. I learnt that there are only so many times that you can get angry at an editor for changing a few of your words. After that happens for a few years, you sort of get used to it, which is a very good lesson to learn, especially for mainstream media where the editing process is a lot more intrusive.

    Mess+Noise mag. Photo by Dan Boud - boudist.com

    How did you make the transition to Mess+Noise?

    When I found out about Mess+Noise, I left Beat. I continued to edit their website but I stopped writing for them, by and large, and threw myself into Mess+Noise, which was the best experience I’ve ever had. It was wonderful.

    I joined them for issue two of the print magazine, after I’d seen issue one. That changed the way that I think about everything, really. I went from doing the regular street press thing, which is 400 word reviews and 1,000 word features, to just having free rein to do whatever I wanted. What I wanted to do for Issue 2 was write a 3,000 word piece, not about a particular band, but about a genre and scene in Melbourne, which at the time was the art rock scene, which was centered around the Rob Roy Hotel. That’s what I did.

    It was really liberating to just be able to do that. I also realised that anyone could do that. It’s if you have someone who promises they’ll publish it as well, you’ve got an extra impetus.

    When I joined Mess+Noise, the editor at the time was Danny Bos, and he really opened up a huge amount of possibilities for me. A bit later on, Craig Mathieson became the editor, and I learned a lot from him, as well.

    How did Mess+Noise come about? I’m not too familiar with its history as a print magazine, only the website.

    It grew out of another website, which I’m not 100% clear on the back story of, but it was called Mono. It was an Australian music website that was in the late ‘90s, I think. Danny Bos was a member of the team who did that.

    After Mono, Danny started Mess+Noise as a website. In some ways it was similar to how it is now. It was mainly a discussion board. He really wanted to put out a music magazine, so as soon as he got organised enough and got his money together, he started doing that. Then it was put out every 2 months for a bit over 2 years. There were 16 issues.

    I read that they were purchased by Destra a couple of years ago.

    Yeah.

    And as of late last year, they’re owned by The Sound Alliance.

    Yeah, that’s correct.

    How do you think this site got such a strong following and such a devoted, loyal audience? That’s always fascinated me. Its audience seems to be quite opinionated and quite passionate about the indie scene in Australia. How does that come about?

    Some of it was a follow on of momentum from Mono, so a lot of the people who used to talk about music on that website followed Danny to Mess+Noise. I also think it grew a reputation over the years of publishing really high quality music journalism, which if you do it for long enough, then it can get you a lot of respect and a lot of people following what you publish.

    Do you enjoy writing for the web more than print?

    A little while ago I had my first feature in The Weekend Australian; a full-page feature. I enjoyed writing it and seeing it in print, as well. But I suppose I’m one of those writers who is at the right age to still feel very nostalgic about print, which a lot of writers my age do. I had to come to the thinking that “just because it’s in print means that it’s necessarily better than the web”.

    Mess+Noise mag. Not sponsored by Eiffel 65.

    When I opened up the paper that weekend, I still liked reading it and seeing it there, but I realised it wasn’t as important to me as some of the stuff I’ve written for online. I think for me, that sort of distinction between print and the web is starting to go. It’s much more about the quality of the piece itself. It doesn’t matter where it’s published.

    You mentioned that a lot of people still think that what appears in print is perhaps more valuable and more valid than its web equivalent.

    Yeah.

    I think that might be related to the fact that print still pays quite well and it still has that professional reputation, whereas I suppose a lot of other online outlets aren’t..

    ..don’t have the same reputation and they don’t pay as well, is what I think you’re trying to say? It depends on the magazine, the newspaper, or the news website or whatever. Obviously, street press doesn’t pay very well at all. That’s a print title, whereas the website of Pitchfork Media might pay ten times as much as street press.

    Part of it is that. It’s not necessarily whether it’s print or web. It’s just the title that you’re writing for. I can tell you that at News.com.au, we pay our online freelancers a professional rate, the same rate that they would get if they were getting if they were writing for the Sydney Morning Herald in print.

    As for reputation, you’re right; with newspapers, let’s continue talking about the Sydney Morning Herald. That’s been around for what, a hundred or more years? I think it has been around for more than a hundred years. Over that time, it has built quite a reputation. If you work a few years in there, then – in a sense – the reputation brushes off on you.

    But I guess what we’re going to see now is that websites that have been around for a long time aren’t going to go away. The big websites that are there now, theoretically, are going to continue into the future. If they don’t, another website will take their place. They’ll build their own reputations, as well. Give it another 10 or 20 years and you might end up seeing that websites have a stronger reputation for breaking news or publishing quality journalism than print does.

    I guess time will tell on that. You mentioned online freelancers for News Limited titles earlier. Do they employ many of those at the moment?

    I’m not really sure how many freelancers we’ve got all up. I know that in the technology section, we’ve had several freelancers.

    I spoke to a guy from the Brisbane Times a couple of months back and he said they’d pulled all their freelancers because they couldn’t afford them.

    We haven’t dropped any of our freelancers, yet. I’m not sure that we will, either. I think everyone realises that at the moment, online publishers are trying to figure out how to make money, and they’re not being particularly successful. That’s a whole range of reasons, and obviously, that’s why both News Limited and News Corp internationally and Fairfax in Australia have both flagged that they’re probably going to be charging for content soon.

    I guess that’s why magazines and newspapers can afford to pay writers 70 cents or $1 per word, in some cases, because they do have a traditional advertiser base who understands the rates, and the magazine editors can apportion rates per what they receive from advertising.

    Obviously I’m generalising here and trying to make sense of it, but I can see that website editors might not have figured that out yet, which is where the debate about paid content comes in. They’re trying to monetise the user base.

    I’d be happy to talk to you about this off the record, but not on record, only because I don’t want my opinions on the matter to come back to haunt me at work.

    Fair enough. You mentioned you got your first piece published in the Weekend Australian. How did you get that in there?

    Andrew Ramadge on tour with Laura in 2006

    Well, The Australian is owned by News Ltd, which is the parent company – the sister company of News Digital Media, which is the publisher of News.com.au. They had an article that they thought I’d be good at. They sent me an email.

    They approached you; that’s interesting. I’m sure, over the years, you’ve become familiar with and adept at pitching article ideas. When did you first start to do that, because I’m assuming that during your time at street press, you didn’t get much freedom to pitch new ideas.

    You’re right; I didn’t have a huge amount of freedom in what I could pitch. For example, I couldn’t pitch an article on a band that no one else but myself really cared about and that was never going to pay for advertising. Also, I couldn’t pitch for large opinion pieces or in-depth features that would have taken several pages. That’s not the way that street press works.

    I did have a little bit of freedom in being able to pitch about local bands. For example, if there was a really great band in Melbourne, I could pitch to the editor and if they ever had a spare half page or something, then I might be able to use that for a small article, which is one of the limitations of street press – and why I joined Mess+Noise was almost evolutionary for the way that I started working.

    I still had to pitch articles. What we used to have in the early editions of the magazine was an editorial board; when I say board, we just met at the pub, really. It was a group of writers and editors, and we’d all have to pitch what we wanted to do to the whole group.

    There were no limitations. We could pitch whatever we wanted. Half the time, everyone would be like, “Great, let’s do that.” That’s how I came to write 3,000 word articles about a particular scene. In one case, I think there was a 5,000 word article about one musician, or the ‘storytellers’ series, where I interviewed different musicians about how they came to write some of my favorite songs. That sort of stuff would never have been in street press, but it still was subject to a pitching process.

    You started with verbal pitching at the pub. Do you still pitch articles to your current editor?

    Of course. Now that I’m working for a big company like News Limited, pretty much every article that I write has to go through a pitching process.

    How does a story idea come about? Do you read something you’re interested in and you think about the angle you’d like to take? Or in some cases, would there would be a news event you have to write on, or your editor asks you to write about?

    It’s probably a mix of both, about half the time an editor asks me. There are different sorts of editors; there’s a technology editor, and then there is also whoever is actually running the news portion, whether it is the morning editor or the afternoon editor. Something might be going on that they want a story about, so they’ll ask you to write.

    The other half of the time you’ll pitch an idea of your own. You’re exactly right; those ideas come from things that you’ve read or perhaps you’ve had a tip from a source, or whatever. Also, the other thing to note is that your story won’t always come through. You might get a tip off and investigate it but find out later that it’s either not worth the story, or someone told you the wrong thing, or it doesn’t stand up.

    What makes a good editor?

    I’ve worked with different publications and different styles of publications. Obviously, a magazine editor is very, very different than a breaking news editor. By breaking news I mean somewhere at a pace like News.com.au, which tries to stay up with what’s current 24 hours of the day, 7 days of the week, and tries to be informative about what’s going on at that very moment.

    I’ll talk about magazine editors in general, only because that’s where I’ve written a lot more of my feature articles for. In a good editor you need confidence; to not accept any bullshit, either. If someone doesn’t like something, they need to tell you and that’s fine. You also need to be very supportive of your writers.

    Do you see yourself becoming an editor in the future?

    Yeah, and I think I’d really like that as well, but no time soon. I’m not done with my writing yet. There are still a lot of things that I want to write.

    You have News.com.au and you’ve got Mess+Noise occasionally. Do you have any other publications that you write for?

    Mess+Noise magazine. I believe this is 'Sir' on the cover.Yeah, I’ve been involved with Mess+Noise for a very long time now, and I used to be an editor there. I was editing the reviews and opinion section of the magazine before it went online. I still write for them whenever I can. It’s just a matter of finding the time now, because I’ve got a full time job and it’s very demanding.

    I also have a weekly column in The Brag called Pop In Print. Last year I published an essay for Overland, which is a literary journal. In the future, I’d like to continue publishing pieces in places like Overland and Mess+Noise, which favor in-depth, long-form journalism.

    I saw you comment on ‘Tall Tales And True‘ where someone asked you what you got paid for the article. You told them that you’ve long since given up on expecting to be paid for everything you write, and instead you try to focus on what you’re passionate about and telling the best story you can. If you get paid, that’s a bonus. Does that come back to not being precious, which you mentioned earlier?

    No, it’s not about being precious, this one. When I first joined Mess+Noise, when it was a magazine, I didn’t get paid for any of the articles that I was writing at that point, only because Mess+Noise didn’t have any money. It was a love job, a do-it-yourself job. Basically, it was just a zine, a very pretty and very high quality zine, but it was still a zine.

    Now, I’m really passionate about this; everyone needs to pay the rent, and I suppose I’m lucky enough that I can pay the rent by being a journalist during the day. Even if I couldn’t, I’d still prefer to get a day job and then write about what I want, out of hours, without having to worry about whether or not it’s going to contribute to the rent.

    The reason being is that there’s a huge weight lifted. You can write about whatever you want if you don’t worry about whether or not you’re going to get paid for it. A lot of the best things I’ve ever written were for no money and I went into it knowing, and just stopped being concerned. If that’s not a concern, it frees you up to actually prioritise what you really want, which is: “I’ll write this exactly how I want, about what I want.” I’m a big fan of do-it-yourself culture.

    It’s interesting because you did that for Mess+Noise and you started with street press, which as you say pays pretty poorly, and in many cases, for all contributors, it’s a love job. The people who write for it love writing about music. Do you find the time to write for pleasure lately? I notice you haven’t been updating your blog very often.

    The blog is simply a collection of the things that I publish in Brag, so it’s about 6 months behind the print version at the moment. I don’t have a lot of spare time lately. Hopefully, that will change.

    Do you have any daily routines?

    No, I’m incredibly disorganised. [laughs] My routine at work depends on what’s going on during the day and what I’m going to try to do in that day. If you’ve got a day where you can go and try to find a new story and break some news, your routine will be a little bit different than when something is broken in North America overnight and you’re following it up.

    Are you a procrastinator?

    Sometimes, yeah. It’s funny; when it comes to my writing outside of work, the writing I do after 9 to 5, I tend to leave things a little last minute.

    Has that been a problem?

    Yeah, it can definitely be a problem sometimes. One of the biggest problems it can cause is to add to your stress level. I don’t think anyone would argue that people who are a bit more organised tend to get less stressed out about things and stressed out about getting things in at the last minute. Then again, it depends. Every writer that I’ve ever met works in completely different ways. I’m not too worried about it.

    I ask that question of a lot of people, if they procrastinate and how they deal with it. It’s definitely a recurring theme, especially with writers, to sit on a task you know you’ve got until the very end, at the last possible moment. I often think that working that way is possibly sacrificing the potential quality of the piece. If you’re rushing to have it done by a certain time, you’re not fully thinking about the issue, unless you want to argue that by mulling it over for so long it’s just ticking away in your subconscious and you know exactly what you’re going to write.

    Andrew Ramadge

    I believe very strongly in the second model, which is that even if I’m not writing something, if I’ve been thinking about it for a month, what I end up writing in the last day of that month will probably be pretty good. Not probably, actually a lot better than if I’d started on the first day of the month. I can guarantee you I would have been sitting there thinking about the issue for the 30 days before I started writing.

    It’s interesting how that works. How do you find new music to write about?

    To be honest, probably this year, I’m not writing about new music as much as I have done in the past. As you know, the column that I write every week is about old music. I think that’s probably because when I was editing the review section of Mess+Noise a few years ago, I was totally caught up in everything that was happening that week. I suppose just for a change of pace, when I started doing my column, I started focusing more on what was really important to me and what I was really passionate about. Every record I write about now is not necessarily new but I think it’s got something in it, a reason for people to listen to it, or a reason for people to read about it.

    How do you find new music to listen to?

    Nowadays I rely a lot on my friends. As you would imagine, a lot of my friends are music critics and they’re probably doing what I used to do, which is keeping on top of things that happen every week, new releases, and who’s touring. Anything they recommend to me I usually give it a try.

    So you kind of take the back seat these days and let others drive?

    A little bit. I don’t necessarily want to do that forever, but at this point in my career and life, I’m pretty happy having music recommended to me, rather than searching it out all the time, but again, that’s just because of time constraints. I don’t have as much time as I used to, and I’m also no longer a reviews editor, so I don’t get quite as many CDs sent to me.

    Thanks for your time, Andrew!

    Andrew Ramadge writes for the Technology section of news.com.au. For an outdated list of his writing, check his MySpace and Pop In Print. He’s also on Twitter.