Sia – ‘Breathe Me’

Born in Adelaide to musician parents Sia Furler had to relocate to London before finding deserved worldwide success. With background in the South Australian jazz circuit her worldwide travels took her to the UK where she scored a gig as backup singer for Jamiroquai. This in turn led her to collaborations with Massive Attack, William Orbit, Beck  and the current band she’s touring with, Zero 7. With a smooth, fragile voice that balances itself right in between jazz and soul stylings Sia gained more attention after ‘Breathe Me’ was featured in a scene of the TV series Six Feet Under.

The story was that she had some resistance from her old label in the UK about releasing an album overseas. So she wrote a pop album – Colour The Small One, and they responded by dropping her from the roster altogether! Luckily a music supervisor at HBO heard ‘Breathe Me’ and included the song in the series. Immediately after it was aired labels came calling – including the one that dropped her. That song saved her music career. It’s got a pretty cool video too.

www.myspace.com/siamusic
siamusic.net

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Intense.

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Jet – ‘Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is’

So the big sophomore release from one of the biggest Australian band in recent times, is out this week. Jet face stiff competition from other big releases this week; indie hero Beck has an album out, hyped up folk rock outfit The Decemberists are putting out their debut, and fellow corporate rockers The Killers are pushing their second album as well. Beck of course gets favourable reviews no matter what he puts out, and most bloggers has collectively fallen in love with The Decemberists so they’re safe. A lot of venom is flying at The Killers’ Sam’s Town, so that leaves Jet with whoever has the energy left to post. So far the general consensus is this: if you like your retro rock and don’t mind the formula of the first album, then you’ll like this one. Otherwise stay far away. Which can be hard to do if you live in Australia, with Triple J radio and all commercial stations picking up on the album.

I’m not a big fan of this retro rock genre, it was fun when the Strokes and White Stripes were good but all recycled fashion has their use by date and it is now long gone past. Unfortunately Australia seems to have an endless supply of these type of bands, just look at the previous post (ok they’re from NZ but close enough). While Wolfmother is busy rechannelling Black Sabbath into the 21st century all over the world, Jet tries to rework the other big 70s rock sound: AC/DC. Now I can go on listing who else they’ve tried to be this album, but I thought it’d be more fun if I just pick the best bits of the other reviews out on the net so far this week. As said earlier, most of the American blogs and zines are focusing on three other big releases this week, so there hasn’t been that many on Jet yet.

Let start with NME. The UK rag took a break from promoting nu-rave and witch hunting emo bands and gave Jet a 7/10.
Excerpt: “…can they follow an album [Get Born] that owed such a huge debt to others with something that shows the essence of themselves? It’s a question that’s obviously plagued Jet… for about two minutes. With a typically Aussie lack of concern for daggy conventions such as ‘development’ or ‘progression’, they’ve simply made another joyfully old-fashioned rock’n’roll album immersed in the classics.“

(more…)

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The Datsuns – ‘System Overload’

The Datsuns started out in 1997 in New Zealand, and for six years released vinyl only singles on their own label and travelled back and forth to Australia for gigs before taking the plunge to London and scoring a deal with V2 records. They excited a lot of the UK music press but quickly went cold soon after the retro rock movement got a bit tiring. The band came out into the public’s consciousness in a time when there was a flood of garage rock bands, and was quickly dwarfed by the White Stripes, The Strokes and Jet. Their last album got caned by critics and the first one didn’t fare too well either. They’re back with a third album out this year, the lead single System Overload sounds pretty good to me and is getting fair airplay on Triple J radio. A massive round of promo dates in the UK and Europe is going to keep them busy throughout October. Shame about the video though, the song doesn’t really fit into the whole retro sci-fi vibe.

thedatsuns.com
http://www.myspace.com/thedatsuns

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Rizzo & Pizzo – ‘Escalator Love’

Usually I hear about new bands on the radio or seeing them in a gig supporting some other band. This Sydney duo has been so far under the radar I only found out about them last week from a mate, it was my turn to go who the hell..? They don’t play live that much (due to stage fright I heard) and to my knowledge haven’t released anything. But they’ve got two albums written, recorded and for sale on their myspace. They describe their sound as Electro/Trash/Rap/Crump-It- Hump It-Let-It-Bump-It. Nice. This track featured here is a minimalist beats and rhyme number, but if you go over to their site you’ll get a variety of tracks from electro-camp to downright white boy crunk/hop (or whatever) .

http://www.myspace.com/rizzopizzomusic

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The Mean Streaks – ‘Real Physical Danger’

These guys must get the shits getting compared to The Grates, especially coming from Brisbane where they both originate. It’s unfortunate that any female fronted rock band in Australia invariably gets this comparison, such is the latter’s dominance of the genre at the moment, but any association is usually unfair and inaccurate. The Mean Streaks stay true to their name, even after using similar instrumentation and arrangements their songs have a darker tone and a more urgent beat than their pop neighbours. Front woman Jean Nicotine leads her six piece outfit with intense chorus outbursts in much of their repertoire. They have shared the stage with Spoon, The Buzzcocks, Har Mar Superstar, The Presets, Faker, Love of Diagrams and Pharaohs. When I contacted Jean last she said they were taking a break from performing to record some new tracks. They started playing live again recently so I hope that means new recordings will be available soon.

themeanstreaks.com
www.myspace.com/themeanstreaks

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Taken from his debut album Boardface, Gotye’s clip was shot with a digital stills camera taking more then 10,000 shots to make, directed by Jacob Simkin of Dork Films. This man has a love for meticulous craftsmanship for his art – his latest album Like Drawing Blood took more than two painstaking years of home recording and multiple computer crashes. Very strong candidate for album of the year.

Previous posts: Gotye, Faux Pas, Gotye vs Faux Pas

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