Posts By Annie

TRACK BY TRACK: Dollar Bar – Paddington Workers Club

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dollar-bar

It’s been 10 years now since Dollar Bar released their self-titled debut LP. In 2013 the band emerged from a six-year hiatus with the excellent follow up, Paddington Workers Club, named after ‘a shitty old bar room’, long shut down, that was a focal point of Brisbane’s Spring Hill scene.

The album could have been recorded back in the 90s, when Dollar Bar first formed, its sound falling somewhere between early Pavement and GBV. The band hasn’t lost its sense of humour, but these days the tracks (e.g. ‘Hipster Mental Ward’, ‘City Pricks Sitting Pretty’) take aim at the kids inhabiting the stages and the dives that Dollar Bar long left behind.

Dollar Bar sent us a track-by-track account of Paddington Workers Club. Check it out below:

 

‘Diff’rent 4 Gurls’

I’d formed a new band with my brother David, along with John and Cuffy from Dick Nasty. We did this song based on White Town’s ‘Your Woman’. Dollar Bar liked it and gave it a burl. After several attempts at re-recording and overdubs, we agreed that our original take, including guide vocals, was strongest. Basically it’s the poor man’s Strokes. (Dale)

‘Hipster Mental Ward’

This song was inspired by my time working in administration at a mental hospital in Toronto. Opposite the hospital was an arty stretch of Queen Street West – one of the hippest spots in town. I wrote the lyrics on my walks through the lush park grounds to purchase caffeine hits, and there were literally always tattooed girls riding bikes outside. The part about the guy putting his $20 bill in the microwave to sterilise it is a true story too. (Patrick)

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PREMIERE: Dorsal Fins – ‘Fell’

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dorsal fins art

Dorsal Fins is brand new project led by Liam McGorry, trumpeter and songwriter for Melbourne soul collective Saskwatch. Initially conceived as a studio-only band, each track has been developed in collaboration with musicians from local acts Eagle and the Worm, the Bluebottles, New Gods and more.

Dorsal Fins have just dropped the video for latest single ‘Fell’, which features Ella Thompson (the Bamboos) on vocals. The track opens with a faded choral sample that could have been lifted from Walt Disney’s Snow White and lyrics that call up Lewis Carroll’s maniacal imagination: ‘All the doors were locked/too small to squeeze/you drank from a cup/that said “Drink me”’. Propelled by a clean piano line and rich, swooping bass, ‘Fell’ is fleshed out by gorgeous vocal loops and layers of synths and horns that sit low in the mix.

The video – a mishmash of vintage sci fi, foreign landscapes, rolling traffic and endless train lines – was made by Jason Galea of ZonkVision. Galea is also responsible for the distorted B-grade psychedelia of previous clip, ‘Nothing Left to Hide’.

Thankfully McGorry has dropped the studio-only conceit, and Dorsal Fins will be launching their upcoming 12”, Gripless, at Shebeen on Thursday, 3 April. Jacky Winter and DJs Martin King and Stu Mackenzie will be supporting. Incidentally, Martin King has just released his own reworking of ‘Fell’ – check it out here.

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PREMIERE: Nathan Roche – ‘Call Back’

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nathan roche

Next month Nathan Roche will deliver the second instalment of his glorious ‘Newtown Trilogy’. It comes only five months after the release of part one, his first solo effort, Watch It Wharf. This guy is as prolific as he is self-deprecating: he’s played in seven different bands from Townsville to Sydney (most recently Camperdown and Out, alongside members of Royal Headache, Dead Farmers and Raw Prawn) and has described earlier albums as “shambolic, poorly recorded, unstructured and rapidly conceived”. He’s also written a couple of books (there’s a sterling promo video for the latest), with red pens provided at one launch party “for those who wish to personally edit” his work.

He may be underselling himself, but Roche’s breezy, piss-taking attitude sure is charming. It’s all over Watch It Wharf, a record packed with Lou Reed-channeling tracks set around the pubs and docks of the (formerly) blue-collar inner-city Sydney.

Follow-up album Magnetic Memories wears its influences proudly, drawing on Brian Eno’s early pop output and the Americana-laced oddities of post-Big Star Alex Chilton. Mind you, it’s still pretty dinky di, with tracks celebrating the Hollywood Hotel in Surrey Hills and contemplating the relative merits of Walsh and Gordons bays.

Magnetic Memories is smoother than the predecessor album, with woodwind from Millie Hall (Destiny 3000, Bridezilla) and Caroline de Dear (Day Ravies), and cello by 2SER’s James Newman. Roche seems stuck at a point on the cusp of the 1970s and 80s when old-style rock’n’roll was taking a second glance at the saxophone. So you can just relax and let the arrangements on the title track lick you behind the ear while Roche huskily croons, ‘Magnetic memories/I got a tropical disease’.

New single ‘Call Back’ is even better – a punchy number that rails against the lifestyle impositions of the modern mobile phone device. It’s got bouncy, Roxy Music-style keys and back up vocals drawn from Lou Reed’s seedy take on American soul music.

Magnetic Memories is coming out in April via Glenlivet-A-Gogh (which has taken over Roche’s own Fartpound Records imprint) on vinyl, CD and digital.

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INTRODUCING: Babaganouj

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Babaganouj

Yet another band to have risen from the ashes of the dearly departed Yves Klein Blue, Babaganouj was formed by guitarist Charles Sale in 2011 – just months after YKB split due to ‘creative differences’. Named after a ridiculous 12-second song by Sydney legends Smudge (not to mention a delicious eggplant dip) Babaganouj has something of a Brisbane all-stars line up. Originally featuring Jack Gleeson of Inland Sea on drums and Harriette Pilbeam from Go Violets on bass, they’ve recently added a second Violet, Ruby, who’s also part of lollypop behemoth Johnny and the Fembots.

Babaganouj draw on bands that represent the rougher side of twee pop: the Lemonheads, the Pastels, the Vaselines. In fact, they’d just about pass as a Lemonheads tribute band, with their boy-girl harmonies, 90s hairdos and derpy sense of humour (the line ‘I fell for you and I hurt my knee’ could rival any of Evan Dando’s silly puns) – if it weren’t for Sale’s genuine knack for writing power pop hooks.

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INTRODUCING: Heart Beach

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Heart Beach

There’s something uncompromising about Heart Beach. Their music is spare but rough, its few elements swiping at you from a blank background in the way a Malevich claws at your vision. The songs all feature Jonathon McCarthy and Claire Jansen’s intertwining vocals – his a caterwaul, hers a disarming coo; a guitar sound like shredded sheet metal; and the restrained, ever-patient drumming of Daniel Butcher.

So far the Hobart three-piece have four releases to their name. The first, 2013’s Holiday/Weather, has a hint of surf rock, but as though it were soaked through by the chilly Antarctic waters that creep up to meet the Tasman. The stark, droning vocals of ‘House’ sit atop an icy layer of feedback that gives the song an illusion of industrial echo. ‘Record’ is short and sharp, a punk tune that’s the closest Heart Beach have come to sounding optimistic. And, from January this year, the insistent, driving ‘Hours’ has to be the band’s most emotive track to date.

Heart Beach have just returned from a stint in New Zealand playing Camp a Low Hum. For now they’re taking a little time to recuperate, but we’re sure to hear more from them soon.

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PREMIERE: Vowel Movement – ‘Hotel Sorrento’

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Vowel Movement

Urban Dictionary informs me that ‘vowel movement’, aside from being a terrible pun, is the sound that comes out when you’re too drunk to talk but try valiantly anyway. It seems like a logical choice of band name for these guys once you hear singer Jack Stavrakis’ slurred diction on debut single, ‘Hotel Sorrento’. Better yet, the video – a quaint, homemade affair – stars a bunch of their mates getting boozy and doing unspeakable things to sausages at a backyard barbecue and cricket match.

The song feels pleasantly sunburnt as it recounts a ritual Australia Day conversation – one that’s perhaps no longer relished: ‘Over salad and a few snags / you’ll tell me about Chaucer, about Shakespeare / Always / That’s Hotel Sorrento’.

Vowel Movement are launching ‘Hotel Sorrento’ and its B-side, the previously released ‘Pigeon Feet’, tomorrow night! They’ll be joined by The Primary, Tulalah, Grandstands and James Moloney & the Maddog Harrisons at Alia Arthouse from 9PM.

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INTRODUCING: Retiree

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retiree

Retiree have just dropped the film clip for ‘Together’, the lead single from their self-titled debut EP. These Sydney-siders make house music for your leisure days. It’s cool and slow, featuring acoustic and electronic instrumentation – plus just the right amount of cowbell. There are notes of an upbeat Arthur Russell in the muffled synth tones, airy vocals, disco-inflected rhythms and easy melodicism here, but with a deliberate Australian bent – check, for instance, the skip who introduces the video.

There’s also a suggestion of what Client Liaison might have been if they were born in the present day instead of shot into the future, mullets and all, from a cocaine-infested 1980s in which Ansett was a going concern and corporate Darwinism was à la mode. Appropriately, Client Liaison have done a remix of Retiree’s ‘Rain’ – or should I say an overwrite, taking the slippery original and producing a kitsch pop banger.

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