Posts By Dom Alessio

Cuthbert and the Night Walkers

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Cuthbert and The Night Walkers – ‘Newtown (La La La)’ (mp3)

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I can unabashedly say I love this song!  If you live in Sydney. especially the Inner West like myself, it’s a great geographical name-dropper of a song.  If you don’t live in Sydney, you can hear about some of our great suburbs.

Cuthbert and the Night Walkers really are one of those great feel-good bands.  Yes, there are 10 members in the band.  This includes five wonderful backup singers.  So it gives the band a kind of Polyphonic Spree vibe.  Richie Cuthbert is the brainchild of the group, and his songs, at their core, are indie-folk tunes, with lyrics that tell a story (Bob Dylan is listed as an influence) and music that’s heavy on melody.   Add 9 more people to the equation and you get a Sufjan Stevens / Architecture in Helsinki type feel. 

I had the group (not all of them, they wouldn’t have fit in the studio) on my radio show a few months back, and they were such awesome guests.  I implore you to go and see them when they do their thing live.  Although, they’re taking a 3 month break, so, I dunno… write yourself a Post-It note to remind yourself of this 10 piece extravaganza.

Their new single is posted here – ‘Newtown (La La La)’ – and it’s such a happy-go-lucky number.  It’s my MySpace profile song now, because it makes me smile.

http://www.myspace.com/cuthbertandthenightwalkers

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The Seabellies

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The Seabellies – ‘Song We Don’t Speak Of’ (mp3)

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I once got an SMS from one of my mates saying “Come down to the Hopetoun and watch the Seabells play.  It’s the finals fo the Fasterlouder comp”.  So I jumped on fasterlouder.com.au and searched for this band called the Seabells (the comp was to win a spot on the Australian V Festival lineup) and I couldn’t find them. And he kept raving about them.  And then I found out they were called The Seabellies.

Pointless story sure.  I don’t care.  It’s my blog.  Needless to say, these guys are awesome.  Jonno Seidler, former Who the Hell cohort, is a big fan of The Seabellies.  I’ve never seen them live, but I will endeavour to do so very soon.  There’s six members in the band, but they each play about a thousand instruments each – just check out the list on their MySpace site!  Don’t you just hate multi-talented people?  I hear they even swap instruments during their sets.  That’s cool.

They’re just unleashed their debut EP Wave Your Fingers To Make The Winters and I’m itching to grab a copy.  Their style is maybe what you’d call baroque pop: layered indie pop rock tunes, channelling 60s Beach Boys with a dab of Brian Eno.  Think Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Architecture in Helsinki, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah but not as aggressive (and in the case of CYHSY, much better singing).  They’re doing a handful of East Coast Australia dates, so keep an eye out for them and make sure you go see them. 

http://www.myspace.com/theseabellies

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The Third Cycle

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The Third Cycle – ‘The Turning Day’ (mp3)

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted something on Who The Hell.  Perhaps I was too busy.  Perhaps I was lazy.  Nah, not lazy, busy… I promise!

So these four Northern Beaches kids like to call themselves The Third Cycle.  If you’ve gone to at least a handful of gigs in the past few years where the bands on stage turn their amps up to eleven, then you’ve probably seen the members around, either in this band, or in their previous bands.  Vocalist Jess Donnellan used to play in an all-girl group called Charlie.  Bassist Clint Ossington and drummer Scott Chandler used to play in a band called Unsaid (Clint used to sing and Scotty used to play percussion).  And Matt Dobson… well, I just can’t remember what band he used to play in!

They hit the stage in 2006 surrounded by a lot of publicity – smart move really on their behalf: build the hype and watch the people come, which they did at their first official show at the Annandale Hotel (they played a warm-up show under the name “The Turning Day” – yep like the song – at The Lair, Metro Theatre in Sydney). 

They’ve played a bunch of shows, and are starting to build a pretty solid fanbase.  They’ve got a 3-track demo floating around, and you can hear all the songs off it on their MySpace page.  I think they’re currently recording an EP with producer Dave Petrovic, so keep your ears out for it.

Oh, and P.S. I don’t know what “The Third Cycle” actually is.

www.thethirdcycle.com
www.myspace.com/thethirdcycle

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The Locus Scene

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The Locus Scene – ‘Chinese Whispers (demo)’ (mp3)

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Maybe it’s pop, maybe it’s rock, maybe it’s just a sweet song… this is the first offering from The Locus Scene, a band that won the MusicOz Award in 2004 for Best Rock Artist, and they hadn’t even played a gig!

It’s been great to see this band come so far: from their first gig at the Annandale Hotel, which admittedly was a bit shaky, to now being confident, and having a slew of fantastic songs (personal fave: ‘Crowded Room’), many of which will appear on their upcoming debut EP In Technicolour.  Locus Scene frontman Luis Rojas is the brains behind most of the songwriting and recording of this EP, and if his band-in-hiatus, Shanghai, is anything to go by, there’s no doubt this EP will be an eclectic mixture of styles and instruments.  He’s just finished producing the new EP from Mz Ann Thropik ao hopefully the Locus Scene EP will be of the same recording quality.

It’s been a couple of months since these guys played live, as they’re searching for a new guitarist, but keep an eye out for their return, and their super-amazing drummer Stassy!

http://www.thelocusscene.com
http://www.myspace.com/thelocusscene

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Bridezilla

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Bridezilla – ‘St Francine’ (mp3)

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Shit… I don’t even know where to begin when trying to write something about Bridezilla. They’re pretty cool but I’ve never been swept away with them like I know a lot of people have.

There’s definitely a lot of novelty factors to the band – and I don’t mean it as a derogatory remark, but it just garners them a lot more attention than bands who are playing music in a similar vein. The band has an average age of 16, and with 4/5 of the band female, that’s always going to attract some attention. And they definitely play music that’s light years ahead of what most high-school bands are playing. I think I remember my high school band was playing shitty Nirvana and Metallica covers, and we probably threw in ‘Under the Bridge’ there as well.

Throw in a saxophone and a violin and you get some pretty cool instrumentation to go with their indie-pop tunes (and hey, indie-pop is the new black). There’s also a few songs on the net, and ‘St Francine’ was the only one I could manage to rip off from the Triple J Unearthed site. It’s cool, but I haven’t managed to see them live yet, and people rave about their live shows, so I reckon they might have a couple more engaging tracks up their sleeve. Vocalist Holiday Carmen-Sparks has a Sarah Blasko, breathy quality to her voice, which is guaranteed to either piss people off or make them fall in love with her. There’s a YouTube vid on their MySpace, and she seems to carry herself pretty well on stage, so I reckon a lot of the nay-sayers would probably fall in love with her performance side.

Hey – I stole this from the Annandale Hotel website. I thought it had some cool info:
“Our first gig and song was played at The Bondi Wave in 2005, with just violin, saxaphone, guitar and voice. We did not…and still dont know our style of music or what we wanted. We were called “BOY” for that gig hence all of us being girls. Soon enough we had asked josh to put some drums on a few new songs as an experiment…and we loved it and him…so we asked him to join the band.

“We now have drums in all of our songs. Our second gig was at Bondi BLYMP, organised by WAYS. We were at the time called “The Cupie Dolls”, but on the night changed it to “BRIDEZILLA”. During the Summer period we played two gigs in the band room for underage raves (SUBMISSION) at HOME nightclub. Just recently… BrideZilla recorded eight songs at the Big Jesus Burger Studios with amazingly talented and generous Chris Townend!!!! And… we now have a manger, Mr. Scott Horscroft!!!! who is the most Excellent!”

http://www.myspace.com/bridezillaa

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