All posts tagged band

  • The Weekend Australian album review, July 2013: Karnivool – ‘Asymmetry’

    An album review for The Weekend Australian, published 20 July 2013.

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    Karnivool – Asymmetry

    Karnivool - 'Asymmetry' album cover, reviewed in The Weekend Australian by Andrew McMillen, July 2013Never before has an album like this been released by a popular Australian rock act. Dark, deep and challenging, Asymmetry is the third album by Karnivool in eight years, and it sees the Perth quintet moving further away from the accessible, pop-like approach to songwriting that characterised its early releases in favour of intricate, unwieldy prog-rock suites.

    For this, the group is to be admired, as it certainly is not taking the easy way out by pandering to the sensibilities of its significant national audience. Taken in whole, as a 66-minute song cycle, it’s an interesting listen. The problem here is that the songs simply aren’t strong or memorable in isolation. “Interesting” is probably not the adjective these five musicians were aiming for, either.

    Better known as frontman for Birds of Tokyo, Ian Kenny is Karnivool’s most potent weapon. While this was certainly true on 2005 debut Themata and 2009’s Sound Awake, here, Kenny’s vocal hooks are frustratingly few and far between. Dominating the mix is the incessant sturm und drang of his bandmates, who appear to have become scholars of Swedish technical death metal band Meshuggah.

    Shifting tempo changes are the order of the day; aggressive and contemplative moods crash into one another, with little rhyme or reason. The overall effect is as messy and disorienting as the album artwork. Complexity for the sake of complexity soon numbs the ears, and even after repeated listens Asymmetry simply doesn’t make much sense.

    LABEL: Sony
    RATING: 2 stars

  • The Weekend Australian album review, March 2013: Songs – ‘Malabar’

    An album review for The Weekend Australian, published 16 March 2013.

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    Songs – Malabar

    Songs - 'Malabar' album cover, reviewed in The Weekend Australian by Andrew McMillen, March 2013The second album by one of the least Google-friendly bands is short in duration – 39 minutes all up – but long on quality ideas.

    A quartet based in Sydney, Songs were impressive on their self-titled 2009 debut: an eclectic set that centred on taut, jangle-pop numbers, but also found room for a couple of sprawling noise-rock epics. Malabar is a more focused collection than the first that favours the former style over the latter.

    The duelling male-female vocals of songwriters Max Doyle and Ela Stiles are just as complementary as before. If anything, this is their defining trait, and the band uses it to stunning effect on this album’s sixth track, ‘Ringing Bells’. Late in the piece,

    Stiles’s wordless melody weaves between sparkling guitar notes and the driving rhythm section: the result is one of the finest songs in their young career. Fans of veteran American indie trio Yo La Tengo will enjoy Songs’ approach, as the two bands have a few stylistic tropes in common.

    Never is the mix any more complicated than a handful of instruments working together; all in all, Malabar represents a remarkable command of songwriting dynamics and sonics. ‘Looking Without Seeing’ is another highlight, built on a hypnotic bassline, featuring Stiles’s soaring vocals and the unexpected appearance of a flute.

    The core duo clearly made the right decision in introducing Cameron Emerson-Elliot (guitar, formerly Youth Group) and Ben James (drums, Talons) into the fold, as the eight ideas here, plus the abbreviated ninth track, ‘Reprise’, a return to the haunting melody of ‘Ringing Bells’, are all winners.

    LABEL: Popfrenzy
    RATING: 4 stars

  • Rolling Stone album review: The Drones – ‘I See Seaweed’, March 2013

    An album review for the April 2013 issue of Rolling Stone Australia. Click the below image for a closer look, or read the review text underneath.

    The Drones
    I See Seaweed

    The Drones explore cracks of beauty and humour amid the darkness on sixth LP

    The Drones - 'I See Seaweed' album reviewed in March 2013 issue of Rolling Stone by Andrew McMillenThis album’s greatest surprise is saved for the penultimate track, ‘Laika’: an orchestral upswing suddenly blooms from nowhere, and it’s later paired with a harmonising female choir. Neither stylistic decision sits well with The Drones’ reputation for misanthropic, noisy rock ‘n’ roll, but the result is beautiful.

    This Melbourne band’s sixth studio album sees keyboardist Steve Hesketh expanding the quartet to a five-piece. His contributions here work well, often providing another layer of rhythmic bedrock to keep these eight tracks grounded; on ‘How To See Through Fog’, though, Hesketh’s tinkering accounts for a memorable lead melody.

    Singer Gareth Liddiard is well-known for penning some of the most original rhyming couplets in Australian music; I See Seaweed is no exception. The eight-minute title track alludes to rising seas and overpopulation: “We’re locksteppin’ in our billions,” he sings, “Locksteppin’ in our swarms / Locksteppin’ in the certainty that more need to be born”. It’s the heaviest song – lyrically and musically – that The Drones have released since ‘Jezebel’, the devastating opener to 2006’s Gala Mill.

    But it’s not all dark. ‘Nine Eyes’ sees Liddiard using Google Street View to visit his childhood home – accompanied by a sinister groove – and wondering “what kind of asshole drives this lime green Commodore” parked out front; ‘A Moat You Can Stand In’ matches a hilarious skewering of modern religious practices to a taut, thrash-rock tempo that nods at their early material.

    I See Seaweed captures a singular band in scintillating form, delivering yet another astounding collection of songs.

    Label: MGM
    Rating: 4.5 stars

    Key tracks: ‘I See Seaweed’, ‘Laika’, ‘Nine Eyes’

    Elsewhere: I interviewed Gareth Liddiard for The Vine a fortnight before the album’s release

  • The Vine interview: Gareth Liddiard of The Drones, February 2013

    An interview for The Vine. Excerpt below.

    The Drones: “I’m not addicted to love”

    Gareth Liddiard of The Drones, interviewed by freelance journalist Andrew McMillen, February 2013

    It’s a busy time for Melbourne rock band The Drones – or so I thought. When singer/guitarist Gareth Liddiard (main photo, far left) calls in early February, their sixth studio album I See Seaweed is less than a month away from release, and the second All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP) festival to take place in Australia – curated by Liddiard and his bandmates – is but a fortnight away. Yet the singer is lazily strolling around at his home in the Victorian bush, oil can in hand, searching for strong mobile phone reception. A picture of calm.

    I’m being slightly disingenuous in this depiction, of course. Late in our half-hour interview, it emerges that Liddiard’s had little time to himself lately. While their ATP curating duties have long since finished – judging by what I hear today, it seems there’s little more required of The Drones beyond showing up next weekend, shaking some hands, plugging in, and playing some songs – completing I See Seaweed has been a full-time concern of late.

    It shows in the songs. I’ve played the eight-track album perhaps 25 times by the time Liddiard and I speak, and I’m convinced it’s a contender for their best yet. Our conversation contains in-depth discussion around songs that, at the time of writing, you won’t have heard. Album spoilers aside, Liddiard offers a typically expansive conversation that touches on space-bound canines, alternative ideas to programming festivals, The Drones’ newly-confirmed fifth member, and experimenting with topless photography.

    The lyrical themes of I See Seaweed are as varied as ever; it seems that nothing’s out of bounds for you. How do you decide what to write about?

    It’s more what not to write about. Some things are boring, and they’re done to death, so I steer clear of them, really.

    For example?

    Any sort of clichés. I don’t pick cotton; I’m not addicted to love. You know what I mean? Some things have been done before, so I try not to do that.

    I’m just trying to think whether I’ve ever heard a Drones love song before. I don’t think I have.

    There are love songs, but they’re not really obvious. It would be retarded if we did love songs, because I’d either get into trouble from the bass player [Fiona Kitschin, Liddiard’s partner] for being in love with someone who isn’t her, or if I wrote a love song about her, imagine me showing her the chords and telling her how to play it! That’s really wrong.

    Point taken. You mentioned avoiding clichés; has that always been something you’ve aimed to do? Has this changed since [2002 debut album] Here Come The Lies?

    I’ve always tried to avoid it, but I wasn’t always successful. I wasn’t always aware that some things were clichés. It’s self-awareness, that’s all. And being self-critical, I guess. Everyone has their blind spots, but you’ve got to work on those. Some people go, “check this out, man!” as if it’s some amazing thing, but they’ve just copied someone else. They have this enormous blind spot.

    I think the best example for all that is something like American Idol, or Australian Idol. There’s some severe fuckin’ blind spots going on there; people who aren’t self-critical at all. They think they’re good at what they do, but they’re not. If they just rationalised it – or if they used rational thought – they would see where they’re going wrong. But often that’s painful to do.

    I don’t find any clichés in your writing. Certainly not in the last few albums.

    Like anyone, I fuck up. I just try. I like it; it’s fun. It’s interesting. It’s like science. I’m sure a lot of scientists would be a wee bit striking [in their approach] when they initially put their hypothesis out there. People shoot ‘em down. But I’m sure there’s a large part of them that would be excited to see where they went wrong.

    It’s all about the truth; it’s getting close to the truth. They’re trying to find out what the hole is. I’m just trying to figure out what I’m capable of. I mean, I’ve got limits. I’m just using up everything within my limits to make music that’s interesting. Because I want to hear interesting music. That’s all that is.

    For the full interview, visit The Vine.

  • The Vine interview: The Butterfly Effect, April 2012

    An interview with all four members of The Butterfly Effect for The Vine. Excerpt below.

    The Butterfly Effect: “I felt that I’d lost everybody’s faith and trust.”
    by Andrew McMillen

    I arrive at The Butterfly Effect’s rehearsal space in an inner north suburb of Brisbane on the afternoon of Wednesday, 8 February 2012. After pushing open a door bearing the band’s name in bold type, I find all four members in band position, almost as if they’re ready to begin playing. Ben Hall is sitting behind his drum kit, Kurt Goedhart is sitting before a wall of amps and noodling on his guitar, Glenn Esmond is cradling his bass and leaning over his pedalboard, and singer Clint Boge sits at a desk behind a computer and a set of speakers. They’re not rehearsing at the moment, though: instead, these four men are working on a first draft of the setlist for their final tour together. Two days earlier, the Brisbane-based hard rock act announced that Boge will be leaving the band after the tour culminates in early June. The other three members will keep the name, audition to find a new singer, and press on.

    Though the announcement was a shock to the band’s significant national fanbase, it’s less surprising when you consider their last few years of activity – or lack thereof, perhaps. Their last album was released in 2008, the sprawling, ambitious Final Conversation Of Kings, which saw the band reaching toward a more epic, prog-rock sound than what we heard on their 2003 debut Begins Here or its superb follow-up, 2006’s Imago. Though the quartet had toured occasionally throughout the last few years – including a short run of dates celebrating their 10th year together, in October 2011 – they had also been trying to produce a fourth album. They still haven’t gotten very far, apparently.

    Clint disconnects the speakers on his desk and distributes the milk crates that supported them. Kurt stays more or less in the same spot he was sat when I first entered the room; he continues to hold his guitar, and absent-mindedly plays a few notes occasionally, while the other three position themselves around the desk and do the majority of the talking. It’s clear that Clint and Ben are most interested in having their say, though Glenn does interject with a few nuggets of wisdom throughout our 45 minute conversation. Immediately before the interview begins, there’s an air of friendliness which morphs into tension remarkably quickly, as I start with the most important question: why is Clint leaving, after over 10 years fronting one of Australia’s most successful hard rock bands?

    TheVine: How long have you all known about Clint’s decision?

    Ben: It’s been a few months.

    Clint: September [2011]. It was mid-September when I came in and said I didn’t feel like going on anymore; continuing on. It took a little while to cement in, I suppose.

    How did the rest of the band react?

    Ben: I think it’d been coming. Everyone knew that there was something that was simmering. Not simmering, but… we’d obviously been trying to make a record for three years, and I just don’t think we were getting very far. I don’t think we were all happy with the way it was going. There was many tense moments, lots of points over those three years where we sat down and tried to realign, and I think it just came to a head on that day. We all agreed that we weren’t in the same direction, so maybe we shouldn’t waste any more time doing that. It was not a decision that was made…

    Clint: It wasn’t made lightly. It was something I’d thought about quite a lot leading up to that day. I think it came from… there were a couple of suggestions made to me about who I should work with, and who I should be trying to extract the best melodies with, and not really getting the songs, or delivering them in the right way. That was the last straw for me. I thought, ‘If I’ve lost the faith from my bandmates to produce what I think are the best melodies…’ and to have that trust taken away, then I couldn’t go on working like that. Not only that, but I don’t want to be the weak link in a band. I don’t want to be the guy that’s not pulling his weight. That was another reason, too. I thought, ‘If that was the case, I’ve got to go.’

    Not only that, man, but I think musically-wise I was looking for something different that I wasn’t quite hearing in the songs. I [think that some] of the ideas that I [was trying to communicate] weren’t being actioned. They weren’t being done, so I felt lost in that department, as well. It’s probably been happening for some time. I really felt some pressure, to not make the same mistakes that I feel we made on Final Conversation. Wanting to step up and go beyond was the focus.

    In terms of the band’s style, you mean?

    Clint: Yeah, yeah, and especially my vocal delivery, and what I heard in the songs and what I could hear being the final product. That was all taken into consideration, and the decision was made based on all of those points.

    Where were you on that day? Did you meet here [at the rehearsal room], and discuss it?

    Clint: Yeah, it was just another practice day, pretty much. I sat in my car for about 20 minutes, pretty nervous, thinking, “This is a big decision to make.” And not only that, to come in and do it cold. I pretty much walked in, grabbed my mic, put it in my pocket… because I thought, “I’m taking my bloody microphone!”

    [Ben begins laughing, and says, “Far out!” Glenn laughs and says, “I’m taking my bat and ball, and going home!”]

    Clint: [laughs] It was a bit symbolic, but nah, I actually needed it to do something with it. I was going to do some singing at home, and it’s a better microphone than I’ve got at home. I said to the guys, in light of the email that was sent and the two band meetings that happened previously in the year, I felt that I’d lost everybody’s faith and trust, so I removed myself from the band. Everyone took it pretty well. I thought so. There was no, “Fuck you, and up yours Jack” and whatever. “Get the fuck out of here or I’ll bash you,” or any of that sort of bullshit.

    Ben: Would’ve made for more of an exciting story, but. We can organise it?

    Clint: And also, Benny sent me a text message afterwards and just said, “Look man, you know we don’t want to go out like that.” Which I said to the guys, “I don’t want to go out arguing and screaming, and calling each other names”.

    Ben: We’ve done plenty of that over the years. There’s been of that sort of shit going on. It’s not just Kurt and me; it’s Clint and Kurt, or me and Glenn. We’ve had plenty of years worth of fights and all that sort of that shit. The second that Clint walked in, when that was the outcome, I think we all felt that this time, more than any before, that it was probably the right decision. It was probably something that had been coming for a fair while. As much as you don’t want to let it go, you fear having nothing. This band’s everything to all of us. It has been. But you go, ‘Cool, let’s reflect and look at what we’ve done.’

    Clint: And celebrate it.

    Ben: Immediately, I started to feel a better sense of achievement than I had the whole time I’ve been in the band. We’ve done a lot of stuff together, and we’ve achieved a lot, and it’ll be great to hold this together in light of what we’ve done, and do this tour that’s coming up. Already today, we’re talking about the setlist, piecing it together, and getting excited about it. Which is awesome. It could be a terrible break-up, but everyone’s been adult-like.

    Clint: I think that’s the surreal thing for me — when we did that tour in October. That week or two for the [band’s] ten year anniversary. We all came in, the pressure was off of writing an album, and it felt good to hang out. I really enjoyed that tour. [He looks around the room and is met with nods.] I thought everyone got along really well. There was a good sense of camaraderie. There was no hint of any malice towards each other. It was really… and it was odd, because I was expecting being at the airport and being sat in a different section of the plane. Sort of feeling this – ‘Oh shit, I’m the odd guy out’, and having the crew shun me and go, ‘You bastard, you’ve effectively taken one of our meal tickets off the table’ sort of thing. But no, it was good. Everyone was really good. And now it’s — do the last tour, really celebrate and enjoy a long time in the music industry, and some great achievements, and off we go. And then it’s a new singer for The Butterfly Effect, and a solo album for me, and rock’ n roller.

    For the full interview, visit The Vine.

    Note: Quotes from this interview originally appeared in the April 2012 issue of Rolling Stone Australia

  • Mess+Noise ‘Storytellers’ interview: The Panics – ‘Cash’, April 2012

    An interview for the Mess+Noise ‘Storytellers’ series. Excerpt below.

    Storytellers: The Panics

    ANDREW MCMILLEN revisits our occasional “Storytellers” series, whose premise is simple: one song by one artist, discussed at length. This week it’s The Panics Jae Laffer talking about ‘Cash’, a song from their 2003 EP ‘Crack In The Wall’.

    Four years before striking it big with their breakout, ARIA-nominated single ‘Don’t Fight It’ in 2008, Perth-based rock band The Panics released their third EP, Crack In The Wall. A stopgap between their 2003 debut LP House on a Street in a Town I’m From and 2005’s Sleeps Like A Curse, its seven tracks saw the still-young band yearning to find a sound of their own. Chief songwriter and singer Jae Laffer is the first to admit that their previous releases sounded like “guys imitating their heroes”, while doing a good job of it.

    Crack In The Wall’s second track, ‘Cash’, is instantly appealing. The song opens with a finger-picked acoustic guitar riff, which remains a central motif even while Laffer’s bandmates build around that earworm riff. I meet with Laffer at The Hi-Fi in Brisbane in late 2011 after their soundcheck. In a few hours’ time, he’ll lead his band through a set which focuses largely on their 2011 release Rain On The Humming Wire and its precursor, 2007’s ARIA-winning Cruel Guards.

    For the moment, though, Laffer is happy to cast his mind back seven years and relive ‘Cash’, a song he demonstrates and narrates for a few minutes while I film him near atop the venue’s staircase. After being interrupted by a couple of Hi-Fi staff, we relocate downstairs, where he continues to strum his guitar while we talk, eking out all manner of half-formed ideas and subconscious melodic curiosities. At one point I pull out my phone to play ‘Cash’ and jog his memory about a particular sound effect; he admits he hasn’t listened to it in a while.

    Jae Laffer on ‘Cash’

    ‘Cash’ was off Crack in the Wall. I wrote it in 2004. We call it an album; it’s got seven tracks, and it feels like an album. But ‘Cash’ is a good example of what was on the record at the time. I’m trying to think of what we were listening to at the time. There was definitely a little bit of Radiohead in our life, that kind of thing. We’ve been big fans of English music for a long time. I can just remember simply doing that [guitar riff].

    The title ‘Cash’ came because Johnny Cash died around the time we were rehearsing the words and writing the tune … At the time, I think because we were so into the Johnny Cash stuff that he was doing – the American Recordings stuff – we started calling the song ‘Cash’ because it had a country feel to it … It wasn’t about him; it was about his kind of character. It’s kind of autobiographical. It’s a hazy song but there was that uncompromising kind of spirit of someone like Johnny. The lyrics started to pour out like [sings], “He took his own life in a fire/To warm his hands, to feel it right.” … [It’s about] the people who give all for art, or for life, or whatever it is. That whole song kind of drifts along that. It’s just the timing of his death, what we were listening to, and just coming up with a riff that had a vague country feel.

    Were you surprised when I asked to talk to you about this song?
    Yeah, because I’ve never talked about that, apart from at the time when … it was on the radio a little bitt. It’s nice. People still request it. It’s a hazy kind of subject but it also seems to be full of purpose, and it’s catchy as hell. There’s something intriguing about the whole thing. I like it for that reason.

    I think of it as the ultimate Panics song, in some ways. It sums the band up well, lyrically and musically. Do you agree with that?
    I don’t know. Because we’ve had a bunch of albums now I could probably think of half a dozen songs which sum up maybe that time, or a couple of years. It is quintessential and I think it’s the style of lyric and also it’s the soft-meets-really-thumping sound as well. We’re known for a few ballads, but at the same time the guys are all-out rockers as well … When we mix them together with my voice, which is – I’m not Tom Jones, I kind of rap along like that. That’s just how I sing. You’re right.

    What do you recall about how the song came together? Was it that guitar bit that started it off?
    Definitely. I can’t remember what we were listening to at the time, but it seemed to be very “of the moment”. I remember thinking that about the riff … It was one of the ones where you start playing it and realise you want to finish the song quick because you want to get it on the radio. It had one of those feels to it. It was cool like that.

    For the full interview, visit Mess+Noise. The song ‘Cash‘ is embedded below.

  • Rolling Stone story: ‘The Butterfly Effect splinter’, April 2012

    A story which appeared in the April 2012 issue of Rolling Stone Australia. Click the below image for a closer look, or read the article text underneath.

    The Butterfly Effect splinter
    Brisbane rockers part ways with singer after 10 years together

    In mid-September 2011, Clint Boge drove to The Butterfly Effect’s rehearsal space in an inner north suburb of Brisbane. It was just like any other practice day for the hard rock act, who had released three albums since their debut EP in 2001. Boge switched off the engine and sat alone in nervous silence for 20 minutes, thinking about the bombshell he was about to drop on his three bandmates: he was quitting.

    Boge recounts the tale in blunt terms. “I felt that I’d lost everybody’s faith and trust, so I removed myself from the band. Everyone took it pretty well, I thought,” he says. “There was no, ‘Fuck you, and up yours Jack,’; no ‘Get the fuck out of here or I’ll bash you,’ or any of that sort of bullshit.”

    Rolling Stone arrives at the same rehearsal space on February 8, two days after Boge’s announcement was made public. The band are putting together the first draft of a setlist for the 20-odd tour dates that will run through late April until early June.

    The ‘Effected’ tour and the best-of compilation released simultaneously will allow fans to farewell Boge, and mark the end of an era for one of this country’s most successful hard rock acts.

    Boge’s bandmates weren’t entirely blindsided by his decision. “It’d been coming,” says drummer Ben Hall. “We’d obviously been trying to make a record for three years, and we weren’t getting very far. There was many tense moments; lots of points where we sat down and tried to realign. It just came to a head on that day. We all agreed that we weren’t [heading] in the same direction, so maybe we shouldn’t waste any more time doing that.”

    It wasn’t a decision that Boge made lightly. “I’d thought about it quite a lot leading up to that day,” he says. “There were a couple of suggestions made to me about who I should work with, who I should be trying to extract the best melodies with; and [that I wasn’t] really getting the songs, or delivering them in the right way. I couldn’t go on working like that.”

    The Butterfly Effect was formed in 1999 by Hall and guitarist Kurt Goedhart while the pair were in high school. Boge saw one of their first gigs, at the Ipswich Racecourse – with a different vocalist – then rode home with Hall and showed the drummer lyric ideas that would form the basis for their debut EP. Bassist Glenn Esmond joined the group in 2002.

    “It’s definitely going to be sad. I’m not going to bullshit to you,” Boge says of the forthcoming tour. “I have moments where I just think, ‘Fuck – it sucks that it’s gotta go like this.’ But the thing is, I’d rather walk now than have these guys looking at me in a year’s time, saying, ‘Fuck you, I hate you, get out of my face.’”

    After the ‘Effected’ tour, Boge plans to record and release a solo album, continue working with his other hard rock act, Thousand Needles In Red, and devote more time to his vocal coaching clinic, Road Coach. His three former bandmates will audition for a new singer – they won’t reveal who’s on their shortlist – and work toward the release of their elusive fourth album.

    “We’ve been extremely blessed to be able to do this for as long as we have,” says Esmond. “I really do appreciate all the stuff we’ve had done far. I just feel stoked to have been able to do it. Whatever happens from here – I’m content that I satisfied all my dreams [doing] this.”

    “I’m sure we’ve all still got more to achieve,” adds Hall. “We’ve lost a limb, but hopefully we’ll find another one, and power on. We’ve got plenty of songs, so we’ve just got to find the right person. They’re some big shoes for someone to fill.”

    Further reading: The full transcript of my interview with the band was published on The Vine in April 2012.

  • The Weekend Australian story: ‘Dirty Three’s divine trinity of sound’, March 2012

    A story for The Weekend Australian’s Review section, published in the March 3-4 edition.

    Dirty Three’s divine trinity of sound
    by Andrew McMillen

    In his 2009 book The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll, Australian singer-songwriter Robert Forster wrote that “the three-piece band is the purest form of rock and roll expression”. The author had American band Nirvana in mind when he penned that line but admits instrumental trio Dirty Three fits “the whole theory and idea perfectly”.

    Brandishing an unconventional guitar-drums-violin configuration, Dirty Three formed in Melbourne in 1992 and has celebrated its 20th anniversary by releasing its eighth album, Toward the Low Sun. Forster, co-founder of Brisbane pop giants the Go-Betweens, describes the band’s unique musical style as “the magic of a chemical explosion”, and notes “they come from the time of grunge. They existed when Nirvana existed; another three-piece who were chaotic, mad and intense on stage. You can probably still see a bit of that in them.”

    Dirty Three’s catalogue evokes by turns deep melancholia – due largely to Warren Ellis’s emotive violin strokes – and sublime euphoria when the three members lock into a rhythmic pulse that is, oddly, reliant more on guitarist Mick Turner than drummer Jim White. Bobby Gillespie of Scottish rock band Primal Scream has referred to Turner’s idiosyncratic playing as “the way that stars are spaced out in the sky”, while White is more interested in exploring experimental percussive techniques than holding down anything resembling a standard rock drumbeat.

    Yet viewing Dirty Three through the lens of rock – or, for that matter, jazz or folk – is wrong. And although the band lacks a vocalist, it doesn’t sit comfortably with what’s typically understood as instrumental music, either. “Normally people who do instrumental music can be quite dry and sedate, whereas Dirty Three put on a show,” Forster says. “They have an aesthetic of something like ‘minimal’, or instrumental music, but they have a rock ‘n’ roll attitude. It’s almost like there was an invisible lead singer there. That was part of their appeal, besides the fact that they have very good melodies, and that there was something charismatic about the band.”

    The group’s absence of vocals has affected the course of contemporary Australian music in strange ways.

    Gareth Liddiard says Dirty Three has been “a huge influence on what I do lyrically” with Melbourne band The Drones, of which he is lead singer, as well as his solo material. “They made me realise that if you’re going to have words, they need a f. . king good excuse to be there in the first place. They better be good, otherwise why bother?”

    Liddiard says Dirty Three’s music “sounds like someone pushed a drum kit down the stairs and plugged a violin into a f. . kin’ Marshall [amplifier]”. He follows this stark assessment with the highest compliment: “For my money, they’re the best band from this country, ever.”

    Before the band’s formation, all three members had spent years playing in various rock groups. “It seemed like there was this healthy live scene starting in Melbourne,” Ellis says of the early 1990s. “There was a lot of venues to play in, a lot of opportunities to get out and play in front of people. The live scene provided a livelihood for a lot of people. Bands were really trying to confront and challenge you, and there was this great crowd of people going along to check it out each week.”

    Ellis puts the band’s irregular musical components down to a desire to be different. “When we started off, we really wanted to challenge people’s conceptions and also to go against the mainstream,” he says. “There’s something great about feeling like you’re out there, flying your own flag. There is something really empowering about it.”

    The story behind the trio’s debut gig is emblematic of the hunger for original live music in Melbourne at the time. Ellis had a friend who owned a bar called the Baker’s Arms; he told the violinist that he wanted background music but didn’t want to play CDs. Ellis asked White to play drums; he, in turn, asked Turner to play guitar. On a Friday afternoon, hours ahead of the band’s first performance, the trio rehearsed some ideas in Ellis’s kitchen, then played them that night.

    “We had to play for three hours, so we made the songs really long,” Ellis says. This ideology is occasionally reflected in the length of the band’s recordings, too: ‘Deep Waters’, from the 1998 album Ocean Songs, runs for 16 minutes. Ellis’s pal enjoyed the performance, paid them $50 apiece and asked them to come back the next week. To three young men trying to support themselves as working musicians, this was a great deal. “We’d go down and play every Friday night, and get out of our brains,” Ellis says. “Our mates would come along; it was just this great Friday night where nobody had to clean up the mess after.”

    Two decades later, the trio commands a worldwide following and the kind of deep respect among the Australian music community that has been afforded to few acts. All three attribute the band’s longevity to the fact they rarely meet face to face: Turner lives in Melbourne, Ellis calls Paris home, and White splits his time between Brooklyn, Detroit and Australia.

    A week or two before its national tour in March to celebrate the release of Toward the Low Sun, the band will convene in the Victorian capital for rehearsals and simply to catch up. “We usually sit around talking for a few hours talking, just because we haven’t seen each other for so long,” Turner says. “We don’t necessarily talk about music; just about life, our friends, our families.”

    The guitarist believes this close friendship is another reason they have lasted the distance. “We’ve all got a high regard for each other,” Turner says. “If you lose respect for your bandmates, that’s when it’s going to fall apart, I think.” Ellis agrees. “We’ve always treated each other as equal in the musical sense, and in terms of the group’s profile. We share all the songwriting, and royalties equally,” he says.

    “Nobody’s seen as contributing more or less. We’re a group, in the purest sense.” The trio are in regular contact via phone and email; a necessity, given that they split band management duties three ways.

    “We did that a long time ago,” White says. They were once managed by Rayner Jesson, who also handled Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, but that relationship ended a few years before Jesson’s death in 2007. “It ebbs and flows over the years in terms of how engaged we are,” says the drummer, who handles their tour bookings. Last year the band played just two shows together: a festival slot at All Tomorrow’s Parties in Tokyo and a benefit concert in January for 3RRR announcer Stephen Walker (to raise money for the legendary broadcaster’s multiple sclerosis treatment) at the Forum in Melbourne, featuring Cave on keyboard.

    Turner admits the lack of a single decision-maker can be problematic. “If a question comes up, it’s got to be fielded around, so it takes a while to be answered,” he says. “One of us might be on tour, and it’s hard to get down and do your email when you’re in the middle of travelling.”

    The three men occupy themselves with other creative outlets during the band’s downtime. White regularly tours and records with other bands: last year he toured with Australian folk-pop trio Seeker Lover Keeper, and the week after we spoke he was scheduled to play shows in Helsinki, Geneva, Istanbul and Tel Aviv with American singer-songwriter Cat Power (real name Chan Marshall) who is one of only two vocalists to have lent their voices to Dirty Three songs. The other singer is Sally Timms, of British rock act The Mekons; both contributions appeared on the trio’s previous release, 2005’s Cinder.

    Ellis has been a member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds since 1995; he plays electric mandolin and guitar in the band. With Cave, he has scored several films, including The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Road and Australian film The Proposition, directed by John Hillcoat, which won the pair an AFI award for best original music score in 2005. He also played in Cave’s other rock band, Grinderman, which announced a hiatus at the Meredith Music Festival last December after releasing two albums together.

    Turner splits his focus 50-50 between art and music. His distinctive paintings have appeared on the cover of all of the band’s albums besides its 1995 debut, Sad & Dangerous. His work has been exhibited at galleries across the world and he plans to release a fourth solo album later this year. The guitarist recently attended his primary school reunion, and was amused to discover not one of his former Black Rock State School classmates had heard of his 20-year-old band; unsurprising, perhaps, given that the trio’s sound exists on the periphery of contemporary Australian music tastes.

    Ellis’s Bad Seeds bandmate, Ed Kuepper, calls Dirty Three’s output “a form of pure expression”. According to Kuepper – who co-founded Brisbane punk rock group the Saints and whom Turner considers “one of my only guitar hero figures” – the band consists of “three very recognisable, distinct musicians and they don’t get in each others’ way. They probably become even stronger together. It’s a rare thing.

    “It’s a really unusual thing that they do in terms of Australian music; the approach to the way they play, and the non-standard rhythm [section],” Kuepper says.

    “Very few people do that. Even fewer have any sort of success because in some way it’s quite an esoteric thing that sits outside of the kind that seems to get lauded in Australia, which is generally a lot more mainstream and musically conventional.”

    Since Toward the Low Sun is an extension of the band’s remarkably consistent canon, rather than a stylistic reinvention, it’s unlikely Dirty Three’s eighth album will set the ARIA charts alight on release. The nine theatre shows the band has booked in March, though, are likely to sell out, if its previous national trek two years ago – billed as a performance of the 1998 LP Ocean Songs in full – is to be used as a benchmark of popularity on the live circuit.

    The new album had a particularly long gestation period: the band recorded for six days in February 2010, then didn’t review the recordings for more than a year. It did some additional recording in March last year. An American producer based in Melbourne, Casey Rice, captured the first session at Head Gap Studio in Preston: he worked with the band on its last release, Cinder, too.

    “They’re very focused,” Rice says of Dirty Three’s work ethic in the studio. “A lot of time it’s not just a matter of trying to get it right in a performative sense; it’s more of a feel thing.” The band will play a song slowly, then speed it up for the next take; it will try a song played softly, and then louder; White will work the kit with his drumsticks, then try his brushes for a softer percussive tone.

    “The basis of everything is tracked live,” Rice says. “If there’s more than an electric violin, guitar, and drums on a song, then it’s been added as an overdub. So the bass, extra strings, mellotron, and nylon stringed guitar were overdubbed. But the process remained the same for Toward the Low Sun: they set up, and played it down. That’s what works about Dirty Three; that’s where the magic comes from.”

    There’s that word again, the one Forster used: magic. A distinct sense of the otherworldly encompasses everything the trio does. Yet it’s not exactly the most accessible sound in the world, and there are few points of reference for unfamiliar listeners to latch on to. Liddiard recounts an anecdote that highlights the band’s divisive nature.

    “I’ve seen Dirty Three 40,000 times,” says Liddiard, exaggerating only slightly. “I remember standing behind two dudes at one of their gigs; it could have been in Sydney, or Perth. One guy’s like, ‘This sounds like cat shit, let’s go.’ The other guy just looks at him, incredulous. Like: ‘What the f. . k? Can you not hear that?’ That really sums them up. Some people just don’t get it. And if they don’t get it, there’s something wrong with them, I find.”

    Dirty Three‘s tour starts in Perth on Friday, then WOMADelaide, Adelaide, March 10; Port Macquarie, March 12; Melbourne, March 16; One Perfect Day Festival, Gippsland, March 17; Castlemaine, March 18; Sydney, March 21; Brisbane, March 22; Lismore, March 23.

    Toward the Low Sun is out on Remote Control Records.

    This story was originally published in The Australian; view online version here. For more Dirty Three, visit their website.

  • Vale Andrew McMillan, Darwin-based journalist and author: 1957-2012

    Darwin-based journalist and author Andrew McMillan [pictured below] died yesterday, January 28 2012, aged 54. I received word via a text message from Andrew Stafford just after I went to bed, around midnight. I wrote back, “Holy shit. Thanks.” Then I lay awake for the next hour, cursing myself. I was to meet him in Darwin, six days later.

    I first became aware of the eerie reality that I was following in the footsteps of my near-namesake soon after my work was nationally published. Looking at my email history, the first mention of his name is in a note from Australian writer Clinton Walker on August 12, 2009.

    andrew,
    this is so funny because only lately been in touch w my old friend from bris old rock writer andrew mcmillan, you must be aware of your precedence, and a fine one it is too […] i had a look ata bit of your stuff and really enjoyed it and wanted to say goodonya and keepitup. clinton walker

    In February 2010, I was emailed by the international label manager/A&R at Shock Records, David Laing.

    hey Andrew,
    I assume you’re the same AM who used to write for RAM? If yes, first of all, thanks for all the great writing that was hugely influential on me in my teenage years fromthe 100th issue of RAM (my first) onwards… also, I’m responsible for a few releases that you may have an interest in if you care at all for the styles of music you used to write about – including a couple of compilations called Do The Pop! that trace the incluence of the Saints and primarily Radio Birdman into the local real rock’n’roll scene in ’80s, and also some reissued from the Hitmen – and I’d love to send you copies if you’re interested in seeing them…
    Thanks and regards
    dave

    Then in May 2010, in an email conversation with Brisbane writer Andrew Stafford:

    By the way, are you aware of yet another rock-writing Andrew, your namesake in fact, Andrew McMillan? Slightly different spelling – but Andrew, along with Clint Walker, was one of the original rock journos in this town, and arguably the most original. Started Suicide Alley (later Pulp) fanzine with Clint – the first rock fanzine in the country – and later wrote Strict Rules, his fantastic account of Midnight Oil’s tour through Aboriginal communities in 1986, leading to the Diesel and Dust album. A fascinating man and a great writer, well worth your checking out. – AS

    Then in November 2010, in an email conversation with Australian singer Carol Lloyd of the band Railroad Gin:

    It may freak you out to know that in the 70’s, Railroad Gin were often reported on by a guy who wrote for Rolling Stone, Juke etc. who was called Andrew McMillan….! He’s now a novelist based in Darwin..saw him when I did a panel thing with Noel Mengel at last year’s Brisbane Writers Festival.

    I wrote back, “By the way, I am aware of Andrew McMillan! We’ve not met yet, but I’m sure it’ll happen eventually.”

    The sad reality is that this will never happen, now.

    In recent months – having reached a point in my writing career where I felt up to the challenge – I became more interested in exploring the concept of meeting this man, this well-known writer with whom I share more than a few parallels. I knew that he was ill, first with bowel cancer, and now with liver cancer. On November 25, 2011, I emailed him for the first time:

    Hi Andrew,

    I don’t believe we’ve ever emailed, but I’ve certainly been aware of you for a few years now as we have almost exactly the same name. I’ve been mistaken for you many times! More on me at the web address in my signature..

    How are you? Last I heard was that you were in a poor state following the removal of a bowel tumor – I think this is the last thing I read about you, just over a year ago. Judging by your Facebook page, seems you’re doing much better now. I caught your recent interview on the MusicNT website, too. Good stuff.

    I wanted to ask a favour. I’d like to visit you at your home in the new year, and interview you extensively. I think it’d be an interesting idea for a young journalist like myself to talk about writing and life with an older bloke who almost shares the same name with me.

    Is this a possibility? Is this something you’d be interested in? Or should I bugger off?

    Happy to chat anytime mate. My number below.

    He replied the next day:

    Hi Andrew,

    Tickled to hear from you. The first I heard of you was via a flurry of emails from fans who read a piece in the The Australian and wondered what the fuck had happened to my style. I was bewildered. Then in 2009 when I was due to appear at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival I found myself on the bill of a Queensland music festival with old mate Christie Eliezer etc talking about music journalism. A strange call, given I’d rarely concentrated on music writing since about 1985. I accepted the invitation but got no response. Obviously they had the ‘en’ in mind.

    I get emails occasionally congratulating me on reviews of records I’ve never heard. And calls from people seeking contact details for band managers I’m supposed to be best mates with. I plead ignorance; they, no doubt, hold my ignorance against you.

    That said, I’m intrigued by the concept of a music journo called Andrew McMillen coming out of Brisbane. I was first published in 1975 and got out of there in 1977. Never looked back.

    I’m now dealing with liver cancer and all kinds of shit, so my time appears to be short, hence forming a band The Rattling Mudguards and having much fun on the way out.

    I trust your transcriptions are accurate so I’d be happy to entertain you in Darwin in January.

    Cheers,

    Andrew McMillan.

    * Patron, Life Member: Northern Territory Writers’ Centre
    * Acting Chief Of Staff (1991-2011): DARWIN’S 4TH ESTATE
    www.myspace.com/darwins4thestate
    www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ryZ36Ts0Gg&feature=email
    * President For Life: Darwin Foreign Correspondents’ Association
    * Founder: John Jenkins Society (est. Hotel Darwin, 1989)
    www.andrewmcmillan.com.au

    The Christmas period passed. I finished reading Andrew Stafford’s copy of Strict Rules: The Blackfella-Whitefella Tour, Andrew’s account of the 1986 tour of remote Aboriginal communities shared by the Australian rock groups Midnight Oil and Warumpi Band.

    (To further confuse matters, a handwritten note on the book’s first page reads, “To Andrew – welcome to Strict Rules. Best wishes, Andrew McMillan.” It’s for Stafford, not me, but plenty of people thought otherwise when I showed them.)

    It’s an excellent read; profound, beautiful, and heartbreaking, by turns. You can read an excerpt on Midnight Oil’s website. Drummer Rob Hirst wrote the foreword for a re-released version of the book in 2008; it was first published in 1988, the year I was born.

    McMillan captures the feel of the Australian desert better than any writer I’ve read. For the first half of the book, he refers to himself in the third person, as “the hitch-hiker”. (The book is dedicated to Andrew’s mother, father, and “the people who pick up hitch-hikers.”) It’s a cracking read, and the pace never wavers as he explores the logistics behind the tour, the nightly performances to mostly-bewildered locals, the history of the land, and the people who live there. After I finished, all I could think was: I wish I read this sooner.

    On January 2, I emailed Andrew to arrange my Darwin visit.

    Hi Andrew – happy new year. How are you?

    I want to check with you re timing for my planned excursion to Darwin. Are there any particular days or weeks that we should avoid? My January is filling up pretty fast so it might be best to look at early-mid Feb. What do you think?

    He replied the same day:

    At this stage my diary is free for 2012, apart from putting the finishing touches to an anthology (selected works 1976-2011) and the live album my new band The Rattling Mudguards recorded in October with Don Walker on piano and the Loose Screws on backing vocals.

    Apart from that, everything else is dictated by my health. I’m fairly confident, despite the prognosis, that I’ll still be around in February and look forward to meeting you then.

    I asked him whether I could stay at his home, and about the exact nature of his prognosis. On January 3, he told me:

    You’re welcome to camp here unless I’m in need of a full-time carer by then. Hopefully that won’t be the case.

    The prognosis? They got it wrong last year when they said I wouldn’t make through the footy season. The latest, a month ago, gave me three months max. I aim to beat that. I’ve got a few things to finish off yet.

    On January 16, after getting caught up in the day-to-day minutiae of freelance journalism for a couple of weeks, I emailed Andrew after working out my ideal travel dates.

    Hey Andrew,

    How are you? A quick note to let you know that I’m intending to fly to Darwin on Thursday February 2. Not sure how long I intend to stay yet; up to a week is my best estimate at the moment. I just wanted to check that this date is OK before booking flights.

    The next day, Andrew said:

    Feb 2 sounds good. If we run into problems, friends within the neighbourhood and without have offered to put you up for a few nights.

    I’ve attached an old RAM story from 1981 I’ve dug up for my anthology. I transcribed it a few nights ago. Would you mind proof-reading it for words that are obviously out of place? I figure it’ll be a neat exercise for you, giving you a clean sense of how I was writing 30 years ago and how we move on.

    I was honoured to proof-read his old work, about an Australian band named Matt Finish. The same day, January 17, I replied:

    Flights are booked for Friday Feb 3, returning Wed Feb 8. Arriving around midday on the Friday. I’m seeing (and reviewing) Roger Waters do The Wall on Feb 1 and didn’t fancy the early flight on the 2nd. So 3rd it is.

    A good read on Matt Finish. Had never heard of them. I’ve attached a doc with a couple of comments down the right side, but no changes to the main text. Just a few small things that I noticed.

    I was chatting to Jim White of Dirty Three today for a story I’m writing. He asked whether I was you. He remembers your writing from RAM.

    Do keep sending through some stuff to read ahead of my visit. I finished Strict Rules a couple weeks back (borrowed Andrew Stafford’s copy) and loved it.

    That was the last I heard from Andrew. On January 24, I followed up my last email and asked, “Is everything OK – or as OK can be, given your situation?” Four days later, he died.

    I feel foolish for having not ventured north earlier, for not having appreciated the urgency of his situation. Upon receiving that text message last night, I felt immediately that this mistake will be one of my biggest regrets.

    I have no idea how our meeting would have unfolded. I was looking for inspiration, for insight; I wanted to learn about writing from a man who has written his whole life. It saddens me that we only ever exchanged a few casual emails. I was looking forward to days of conversation, of introspection, of self-analysis, of advice, of inspiration.

    Vale Andrew McMillan. I hardly knew you. I wish I did.

    Written by Brisbane-based journalist Andrew McMillen, January 29 2012.

    Above photo credits, respectively: Bob Gosford, Glenn Campbell, Bob Gosford.

    Update, January 30: ABC News NT have uploaded a fine video tribute to Andrew on their YouTube channel. It runs for two and a half minutes and can be viewed below.

  • Rolling Stone story: ‘The Discovery Channel: triple j’s power over Australian music’, December 2011

    A feature story published in the January 2012 issue of Rolling Stone Australia, under the ‘National Affairs’ banner.

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

    National Affairs: The Discovery Channel
    Is triple j’s power over Australian music being used for good, or evil?

    by Andrew McMillen. Illustration by Andrea Innocent

    In many ways, triple j studios – located on the third level of the cavernous ABC building on Harris Street, in inner Sydney – also functions as the central nervous system of the Australian music industry. On any given day, hundreds of thousands of listeners across the country are tuned in. Label owners, promoters, publicists and musicians follow the station with relentless fascination, as its playlist and musical preferences can literally make, delay, or break careers in the notoriously fickle music business.

    For decades, since the national broadcaster’s inception in August 1980, triple j has continued to grow: in terms of staff numbers, audience popularity and, as a direct result, cultural influence. With great power comes great responsibility. As triple j continues to slowly evolve into a gangly octopus whose arms now extend far beyond its initial radio habitat into print media, significant online networking, year-round event promotion, and – with the October launch of a standalone Unearthed station – digital radio, it’s worth taking a magnifying glass to the station’s many activities to examine whether their great power is being used for good or evil.

    Two senses are immediately pricked entering triple j studios: the eyes are met with bloody red walls contrasting against innocuous whites, and the ears latch onto the sounds of triple j being piped through the station’s corridors, while Zan Rowe broadcasts her morning show live to air just a few metres away. Station manager Chris Scaddan strolls past their huge music library to his corner office. His coffee table is stacked with months’ worth of printed music media: street press, monthlies, international imports. A recent issue of triple j magazine sits conspicuously atop the pile.

    He turns down the live broadcast to a quiet gurgle as he considers a question: how would he describe triple j to someone who’d never heard it before?

    “It’s uniquely Australian,” Scaddan says. “We’re about new music; mainly, new Australian music. We’re targeted at 18-24 year-olds, so we’re here for young Australians. We play diverse styles of music; we’re independent and non-commercial, which is important. At this point, we’re a brand that reaches across quite a few different platforms. We’re our audience as much as anything, as well. We’re really in touch with our listeners, and we hope that what we’re doing is reflecting and inspiring what they want, and what they want to listen to, and what they want to know about.”

    Eight minutes into the interview, in response to a question about whether triple j’s support is crucial to the success of Australian bands on a national scale, he cites a recently discovered statistic that he’s clearly very proud of: in October 2011, the station posted audience figures of 1.5 million in the five capital cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide).

    “At the moment, we’ve got as many people listening as we ever have. But are we crucial to a band’s success? I don’t think so,” Scaddan says. “Certainly we’re a national broadcaster, and we’ve got a really strong audience. I wouldn’t say it’s crucial to whether you make it or don’t. There are so many different ways that you can find a career or an audience through the Australian music industry. There’s so many examples of bands who may not have been played by triple j who are doing just fine.”

    “Just fine” is a relative term, of course. For every Art Vs Science, Boy & Bear or Washington playing to thousands-strong crowds on the national stage, there are dozens – perhaps hundreds – of acts across Australia who enjoy strong support within their hometowns or capital cities, but struggle to make the jump to national notoriety without the nod from triple j. Does Scaddan find that bands get pissed off when they get told, ‘thanks, but no thanks’ in response to their latest release?

    “That does happen,” he replies. “That’s the nature of the business we’re all in. Just like artists who are pitching for articles in Rolling Stone and don’t get a mention get pissed off, and can’t understand it sometimes. It is really, really difficult. We’re always looking to try and find a really good balance of genres, of locations – nationwide, so we’re not just picking bands from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane all the time.”

    “It’s difficult, and sometimes bands who want to get triple j airplay might not crack it on the playlist. That doesn’t mean they’re still not getting played in other ways on the station. They tune in and they’re not getting played as often as Gotye, or Florence + The Machine, and they think they should be. You just hope they can understand that there’s a limit to how much music can fit on the station and make it work.”

    Such programming decisions lie not with Scaddan, nor with music director Richard Kingsmill, but with the entire triple j staff. When Kingsmill is questioned – in jest – about whether he’s the most powerful man in Australian music, he practically explodes in exasperation from a couch positioned nearby the station’s carefully stacked CD collection.

    “It is not anywhere near the truth. It is just such a misconception to think this place isn’t a team of people,” Kingsmill says. “I have said this time and time again, and if people still think that I sit there and basically call all the shots, they are wrong. I can’t say it enough. This station is built on teamwork. It always has been. If you’ve got a bad framework, or teamwork vibe happening in this place, it shows on the other end of the radio. When we all work together, we get the results. It’s as simple as that.”

    ++

    What happens when your band wins the musical equivalent of the lottery, the triple j Unearthed slot to open the main stage of Splendour In The Grass? In 2011, the competition was won by Brisbane indie pop band Millions. Twenty-two-year-old drummer James Wright is being a little humble by equating the contest to a lottery: those rely on luck alone, not songwriting talent.

    Still, it’s curious to hear Wright honestly state Millions’ intentions upon forming in December 2010. “The entire objective of the band was using triple j to get where we want to go,” he says. A four-piece comprised of members from three Brisbane bands you’ve never heard of, Millions realised during their initial rehearsals that their sound might appeal to the national broadcaster.

    “There was the fleeting chance that, if we maybe more deliberately went towards the triple j sort of sound, in terms of being more accessible than our previous bands, then we might have a shot at actually doing some good, and getting played,” Wright says. “We didn’t exactly have high aspirations for it, but we were really happy with the two songs we’d written [at the time].”

    He says that Millions are “the exact opposite” of their previous bands, in that their path was “extremely thought through, to the point of calculating exactly how many shows it would take us to get where we wanted to go, and to who we should play these shows with and why we should do them and where we should play them.” The Splendour 2011 slot was unexpected for the band, and “pretty much blew everyone’s mind” according to Wright, but not unsurprising given their ambitions.

    Stephen Green is well acquainted with this kind of mindset among artists. Since beginning as a radio “plugger” – a guy who pitches new music to stations across the country – he now runs his own publicity consulting business, SGC Media.

    “The problem of triple j being so dominant is that it artistically skews what some bands are coming out with,” he says. “If you’ve got the opportunity to do the song that’s in your head that’s not very ‘triple j’, or you tweak it somewhat and make it sound like bands that are getting airplay… I think a lot of bands are going down [the second] path a little more.”

    “The tracks that I think work least are the ones that the band have gone, ‘right, we’ve got to get on triple j’, and they’ve tried to write a ‘triple j song’,” Green adds. “If it just happened like that, then – great. But I think too many bands push down that path. Being generic so that you sound like every other band is not usually the way to stand out and have a particularly successful career.”

    When Green works on publicity with Australian artists, he never plans a campaign assuming that the act will get triple j airplay. “If you do that, you’re setting yourself up for a big disappointment,” he says. “I don’t think you can make assumptions that anybody’s going to play anything.” So what happens when triple j rejects the song or record you’re pitching them? “Well, you kick the wall, the client gets shitty and says, ‘you didn’t rep it properly’. You break up, and that’s the end of that!” he laughs, clearly joking.

    Like Green, Megan Reeder Hope places a high value on including triple j in her marketing plans. As general manager at Secret Service Public Relations, Reeder Hope works regularly with the Brisbane-based record label Dew Process, whose roster includes Mumford & Sons, The Grates and Seeker Lover Keeper. “triple j is essential,” she says. “It’s probably the crux of my plans of how we work at Dew Process.”

    “That’s not to say that we don’t value the rest of the media: community radio is really important, as is commercial radio when you get to a certain point,” Reeder Hope says. “But I think triple j is that centrepiece that needs to be in place to be able to do all of the other ones, as well. From our perspective, triple j has a high level of integrity. They really do things in a way that’s uncompromising of their own editorial policy, while still always putting the music first. It really is all about the music for them. They support artists, and they support them throughout their careers.”

    Back at the station’s Sydney studios, music director Richard Kingsmill is clearly proud of the station’s success, and unapologetic to its critics. “If anyone’s got any complaints and arguments against us, or thinks that we’re in some ways trying to monopolise the Australian industry….” He pauses. “You get damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If we sat back and went, ‘Well, we shouldn’t monopolise the Australian music industry, we should sit in this corner and do our little job and not try to do anything,’ we’d get criticised for being negligent and not proactive. If you’re proactive, then you tread on toes a little bit, I guess, but we’re not meaning to tread on toes.”

    “It’s not supposed to be 100 per cent,” Kingsmill continues. “No one can be 100 per cent, and no one should expect triple j to be 100%. We do what we do to the best of our abilities, and we try as hard as we possibly can, with the best of intentions. But at the end of the day, we’re all humans. So we’ll take chances and we’ll take risks, and sure, we’ll piss people off, but we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t think there was a section of the community out there who was actually enjoying it.”

    Further reading and discussion: