Posts By Annie

LISTEN: Pascal Babare – ‘Heaven Clubs’

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Pascal Babare released his first album, Thunderclap Spring, in 2009. Written in his late teens – he was only 19 by the time it was finished – the songs are surprisingly delicate: warm, acoustic drones fleshed out with warped instruments and slide guitar.

Originally from South Australia,  Babare spent part of his childhood living in ashrams with his parents, a composer and a chorister, and a camel called Jinglebaba. Much of his material was written overseas, in Kyoto, London and Berlin. You can hear these influences creep through in Babare’s eclectic, New Age-y sound.

Thunderclap Spring quickly became an object of the UK music press hype machine, receiving a particularly glowing review from the BBC. The Line of Best Fit even suggested Babare was a budding genius. It was praise well-deserved, but somehow four years elapsed before we heard anything more from this guy.

He’s back now, thank goodness, with ‘Heaven Clubs’, the first track from forthcoming album Sorry, Morning. The song’s a kind of bubbling, organic laptop pop, reminiscent of folktronica acts from the early 2000s like Clue to Kalo and Machine Translations. It’s immediately clear that he’s brushed up on his production chops – which I suppose wouldn’t be hard, given that Thunderclap Spring was recorded on an inbuilt laptop mic. ‘Heaven Clubs’ sounds comparatively crisp and close. There’s a satisfying instrumental chorus featuring one of the sharpest hooks Babare’s written to date, and a wonderful, enveloping coda.

It’s a sprightly sound for a tune with lines like ‘at least the dead leaves can fly / you’ll know no such peace / you strapped yourself to your door / and then prayed for release’. But Babare has a dry sense of humour, moving swiftly from themes of suicide to a wry portrayal of heaven as a country club.

Sorry, Morning will be available soon through blackmaps. For now you can pre-order it on iTunes. I hear an album launch is in the works, where Babare will be backed by Melbourne four-piece Teeth. You can also catch him from 28 September until 27 October at the NGV, recording an EP with impromptu supergroup Batman Park.

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LISTEN: Mouth Tooth – ‘Red Belly Roadhouse Blues’

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I came across this curio by Melbourne band Mouth Tooth while doing some research on Smile. Both bands consist of former members of the sprawling Red Berry Plum and share a guitarist in Max Turner. Mouth Tooth is definitely the weirder of the two projects, which is why you’ve probably heard a bit less about them.

‘Red Belly Roadhouse Blues’ is off the duo’s Group Therapy EP. There’s something very unsettling, if undeniably pretty, about this tune; the effect’s kind of like one of Bill Henson’s nocturnal vignettes. An eerie western number, ‘Roadhouse Blues’ is led by Rhys Mitchell’s creepy falsetto, with a slide guitar weeping quietly in the background. Mouth Tooth describe their style as ‘psychedelic ward’, and the lyrics here seem like an exercise in Freudian free association. ‘Heaven is a roadhouse / and you are the waitress,’ Mitchell croons, ‘I want to dissolve you into my coffee’. The video has a grainy, VHS ambiance. Mitchell and Turner’s disembodied heads float over scenes that could have been taken from Twin Peaks, smiling as they deliver lines like ‘I want to stir you through the darkness / Have you with my breakfast / Girl, you make my heart race…’. Check it out below.

 

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LISTEN: Abstract Mutation – ‘Expert Loner’

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Abstract Mutation is James Grant, proprietor of CD-R imprint Vinyl Only Tapes and yet another emigre in the horde of Kiwis presently residing in Melbourne. Grant makes retro-futurist techno that critiques the banality of a hyper-administered, technocratic world at the same time as it indulges in anachronistic tropes from the time of MS DOS, NetScape, 80s corporate chic and clunky computer graphics.

Single ‘Expert Loner’ is composed of garbled rhythms and slightly off-beat tones that sound as though they were generated by an early PC. Like most Abstract Mutation songs, ‘Expert Loner’ is about the interplay between process and improvisation. It’s laid out over a regimented house beat but engaged in a kind of devolution, as some parts fizz out and new elements are scattered in their place. Maybe I’m overplaying my hand here a little, but the EP (titled, fittingly, Fake Keygen) seems to reflect – and kind of joke about – the disorienting and two-dimensional nature of life in a post-internet age. #orly

Despite being picked up by a bunch of very hip international blogs, Abstract Mutation currently has a criminal 85 ‘likes’ on his Facebook page. I guess music like this isn’t exactly going for the heartstrings, but something that manages to be both this cerebral and this light surely deserves attention.

Fake Keygen is out on cassette label 1080P, which is run by Rose Quartz’s Richard MacFarlane. Grant also released the excellent Serenely Skeptical EP as Spelunks just last month, which you can pick up here.

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LISTEN: Bushwalking – ‘High Hogs’

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Bushwalking is yet another local supergroup, this time a Sydney-Melbourne cross-border operation. They originally got together to record some tracks for the solo project of Songs‘ Ela Stiles, but the combination of Stiles, Karl Scullin from Kes Trio and Fabulous Diamonds‘ Nisa Venerosa worked so well that they decided to just get it over with and form a band already.

At first they called themselves Zsa Zsa, after the serial monogamist (she had nine husbands) and one-time Miss Hungary Zsa Zsa Gabor, but I guess that didn’t quite sum it up, because they quickly switched to the more true blue Bushwalking. Their first album came out on US label Army of Bad Luck, which is run by none other than former Deerhunter bassist Josh Fauver. It featured a bunch of engrossing psych jams that were heavy on the innuendo, with names like ‘Natural Vagina’, ‘Bath Sex’ and ‘First Time’.

Now they’re back, with second album No Enter coming out on 6 September (this Friday!) through Chapter. ‘High Hogs’ is the lead single, and it’s off the flipping chain. Driven in equal measure by Stiles’ grubby bass line, Scullin’s angular, twisting guitar and the girls’ meditative harmonising, it’s got a wild, almost primitive feel – which is very much enhanced by Venerosa’s pensive drumming and the animal ‘whoop’ that punctuates the verses. ‘Verse’ isn’t really the right word though; ‘High Hogs’ unfolds in the spiralling structure of a drone, closer to the experiments of Fabulous Diamonds and Kes Trio than to any traditional rock song. But it’s still tight as hell – for all its proggy impulses, this track is visceral, direct and very loud.

 

You can catch Bushwalking in their respective home towns on these dates:

Friday, 11 Oct – Red Rattler, Sydney (tickets via Moshtix)

Saturday, 12 Oct – John Curtin Hotel, Melbourne (tickets available through the John Curtin website)

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LISTEN: Smile – ‘Sunni Hart’ / ‘Born Again’

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Melbourne band Smile formed in 2012, when two members dropped out of the unwieldy seven-piece Red Berry Plum, leaving the rest to go it alone. The present line up is led by singer/guitarist Pete Baxter and features Josh Delaney of Rat & Co. and Chet Faker and Max Turner, who also plays in Mouth Tooth.

Smile’s debut album, Life Choices, came out just over a week ago. It’s full of warm, reflective pop songs that fall somewhere between slowcore and slacker rock. Their sound reminds me of Spain‘s mellow hooks – and there’s an appropriate nod to the Velvets in opening track ‘Still Waiting For My Man’.  There are some nice Melbourne references on the album, with songs called ‘Pascoe Vale’ and ‘Amess St’, but for some reason it always makes me think of summers in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and the afterglow in your skin when you’ve spent the day in a hot dusty car between beaches.

Smile recently put out a video for ‘Born Again’ – a title which, along with B-side ‘Jesus Song’, hints at some childhood experiences with religion that Baxter’s alluded to in interviews. The single has been neatly prologued with naive love song ‘Sunni Hart’, a short-and-sweet, Lemonheads-style number about a girlfriend with a wonderful name who’s almost too good to be true.

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Smile are launching Life Choices on 19 October at new Melbourne venue Boney. For now, you can get the album here and here.

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LISTEN: Full Ugly – ‘Drove Down’

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Full Ugly started out as a side project of Love Connection‘s Nathan Burgess and Michael Caterer, but since half of Love Connection relocated to New York it’s become more of a full-time venture. Caterer’s amongst those who up and left town, but Full Ugly retains its all-star cast, with the recent addition of Thomas Mendelovits from Milk Teddy.

‘Drove Down’ is the A-side from the band’s first official release, a 7″ due out through Bedroom Suck on 6 September. The track starts out with Burgess singing about working a dead-end job at a hotel and looking for love, and it ends, uncertain but hopeful, with a long drive down a highway at night, on the way to something new. Although it’s only a couple of minutes long, ‘Drove Down’ feels stretched out, as though to convey literally its sense of longing. It reminds me of ‘Amber’, a highlight from Dick Diver‘s Calendar Days, or Lower Plenty single ‘Nullarbor’ in its delicate unfolding of tension and laconic storytelling style.

You can preorder the ‘Drove Down’ 7″ here. Full Ugly will be playing BIGSOUND on 10 September at Brisbane’s Alhambra Lounge, and a debut album is on the way.

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INTRODUCING: Jimmy Tait

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Apologies to any Sarah Blasko fans out there, but acoustic guitar-slinging songstresses have never really been my thing. You know, the ones who write weepy ballads about their ‘man’ or, possibly worse, peppy empowerment jigs about moving on. The same thing goes for the boys, I guess. Hopefully one day John Butler’s dreadlocks will strangle (or at least gag) him.

For some reason, these lightweight, folksy ballads irk me more when they come from women. That probably makes me sound like some sort of iron-trousered, neo-Thatcherite anti-feminist, but hear me out. In an industry that’s still mostly male-dominated, when a woman gets herself out there I just don’t want to see her ‘femininity’ come off so darn cliched.

What I do want to see are post-punk hellraisers like Savages, fall-down drunks resurrected like Cat Power, psychedelic mums like Beaches‘ Alison Bolger, digression-prone eccentrics like The Orbweavers‘ Marita Dyson. Or jaded cynics like Jimmy Tait front woman, Sara Retallick.

‘All my friends/Sitting on the fence/They’ll never rush to my defence,’ Retallick sighs on new single, ‘All My Friends’. She sounds a bit mournful, but mostly just resigned. She’s been referred to as ‘Australian gothic’, but the result is less gauche than that might lead you to believe.
The new song creeps up on you, accruing some satisfying little touches as it goes along – like the bend in the main guitar riff and the low voice that shadows Retallick’s lead. With the swaying choral ensemble of the last few bars, it’s probably the most melodically beautiful thing Jimmy Tait has produced so far.

Retallick has been performing as Jimmy Tait since 2008. The band’s current incarnation features members of the Gin Club, The Orphanage and The Wintership. People like to point to the influence of slowcore on Retallick’s songwriting, and there are intimations here of Low’s Things We Lost in the Fire, but her music also calls to mind the deep drawl and simple riffs of Smog.

That alt-country link rings true to some extent – Jimmy Tait was named after Retallick’s drover grandfather James Tait, and the upcoming album was recorded in her home town of Katunga, a blip on the map of North-East Victoria. The record is due out some time in September. If it lives up to the promise of ‘All My Friends’, Australia’s got a new singer/songwriter worth getting behind.

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