Who the Bloody Hell Are They has been nominated for the inaugural SMAC Awards – The Sydney, Arts and Culture Awards – presented by FBi 94.5fm and Time Out Sydney. As you can probably guess, we’re pretty chuffed to be nominated, and we’re in the running for the SMAC In Your Face Award alongside former Mess + Noise and now world-conquering writer Emmy Hennings, the rogue anti-World Youth Day bloggers No To Pop Coalition, the Raise The Bar crew who helped rally support for changes to the NSW Liquor Licensing Laws and event organisers-turned-bloggers The Supper Club.

And then there’s us, who have no little to no social value whatsoever in comparison to the four other nominees in our category – but that doesn’t matter! We’d still like to win (maybe even more so because of it) but we need your vote!

You have to vote for every category, but that’s just a minor inconvenience isn’t it? I’m not sure what we win, though I’ll guess we’ll find out at the awards ceremony which is being held at the start of December or something.

ANYWAY – please, please, please head to http://smacawards.com/smacawards/smac-in-your-face-award.aspx and vote for us!

http://smacawards.com/smacawards/smac-in-your-face-award.aspx

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Lenka – ‘Gravity Rides Everything’

Last week I had the pleasure of chatting to former Decoder Ring frontwoman, and now solo artist in her own right, Lenka, about her debut record. There’s a chance that if you were a fan of her former band that you won’t like her new solo material. It’s sprightly pop, bordering on bubblegum in some points, although the intelligent lyrical content helps save it from being more than just disposable sound.

Preceding her album a the release (digital-only… I think) called The Woodstock Sessions EP, named after the studio she recorded part of her debut in. It’s a completely acoustic affair, and includes this – a cover of Modest Mouse’s ‘Gravity Rides Everything’.

http://www.myspace.com/lenkamusic

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The Dawn Collective – ‘Ghosts Shod in Steel Shoes’

Too many years in the making, Sydney’s The Dawn Collective have finally released their debut album, Save A Place For Us. Their music is hard to describe: it’s dramatic in the way that Sigur Ros is dramatic, but it’s heavily grounded in the folk traditions of someone like The Frames. But then at times (not in this song, but others) that these incendiary guitar lines kick in seemingly out of nowhere. It all makes for a rather idiosyncratic sound.

If you’re in Sydney this Friday, the band is launching their debut album at Spectrum on Oxford St in Darlinghurst. Definitely one to check out.

http://www.myspace.com/thedawncollective

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Quirky popstress Kate Miller-Heidke has a new disc out called Curioser that’s been garnering plaudits as of late, and ‘Can’t Shake It’ is the first single lifted from the album. Once again she’s throwing some varied influences into the mix – New Wave, Kate Bush, pop rock, ’90s dance – but it feels more focussed than the material off her debut, which at times had the tendency to run away with itself. This one feels a little undercooked at times, and that guitar riff reminds me a bit of the Rogue Traders (but it’s actually used intelligently, so I can deal with it) but it’s pop music with some edge. It’ll be a hit, and hopefully remind the Austereo audience that pop music doesn’t have to be bland or a facade like Katy Perry.

Actually… I pick Kate over Katy any day. Yep, in both senses of the word.

http://www.myspace.com/katemillerheidke

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Clue To Kalo – ‘User to a Carrier (By the Sister)’

Adelaide outfit Clue to Kalo have been kicking around for a number of years, although they haven’t made much of an impact on the Aussie musical landscape. Instead, they’ve been focusing most of their energy on the overseas market, particularly the US, where they’ve toured a handful of times, including this year with lo-res popsters Casiotone for the Painfully Alone.

The main man – and progenitor of the sounds – of Clue to Kalo, Mark Mitchell, records all of his group’s music on computer and then takes it to the rest of the members so they can embellish it in a live setting. It’s amazing the sumptuous sounds that a record like the latest (and third) Clue to Kalo one, Lily Perdida, has despite it being recorded on a cold and clinical Mac. That’s indicative of Mitchell’s innate pop sense. A concept album of sorts, the whole disc is based upon this character Lily Perdida who we never hear from on record, but instead we hear songs from people that know her. So by the end, we’ve got a picture of who Lily is through those that know her best. This song, ‘User to a Carrier’, is sung in the voice of Lily’s sister… if you didn’t guess that one already.

http://www.myspace.com/cluetokalo

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Skipping Girl Vinegar – ‘Sift the Noise’

There’s an irrepressible positivity to Skipping Girl Vinegar and their debut record Sift the Noise that makes them instantly appealing. I mean, the emo parade have the monopoly on depression in music, so why not explore other emotional avenues? And if anyone has a reason to be upset, it’s their chief songwriter Mark Lang, who lost family members during the four-year making of his band’s debut. Yet it’s a loss that doesn’t phase him, because throughout Sift the Noise he consistently looks through the negatives to discover the positives. There’s a lesson in there, I reckon…

http://www.myspace.com/skippinggirlvinegar

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Qua – ‘Circles’

If you’re wondering who the handsome man with the ’70s mo is, that’s Qua. Well, it’s actually Cornel Wilczek but he performs under the name Qua. His music is constantly shifting, evolving. Prolific might not cover it, either. He onlt recently released the minimal Silver Red, an EP borne out of live improvisations he conducted with Pivot’s Lawrence Pike on drums. Now he’s about to release his new album, Q&A, which ‘Circles’ comes from. It’s thumping, beat-heavy electronica, with drums courtesy of Mr Pike as well as former Architecture in Helsinki stickman James Cecil. (I believe both Cecic and Wilczek went to RMIT in Melbourne together, along with Tim Harvey from Hot Little Hands!)

Artist bios are usually full of shit, but I love this quote: “Foregetabout folktronica, kiddietronica, or even pigeonholetronica as Qua is operating in his own league. This is Quatronica”

http://www.myspace.com/quamusic

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