New Music

LISTEN: Wireheads – Arrive Alive LP

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arrive alive

The Australia on Adelaide band Wireheads‘  new record isn’t the ‘smoking cigs in your sharehouse and goin down the shops to buy more cigs and cheezels’ kind of Australia. It’s violent and murky and sinister. Sometimes it’s fun too but in a way that might go off the rails any fucking second. Album opener and title track, ‘Arrive Alive’, throws up the image ‘getting shot dead in the head/ for tryna buy orange juice/ you got two dollars in your hand’, and album highlight ‘Dedication’ the merciless bashing of beautiful faces.

But this record also might be about a hunt for something redemptive and beautiful, a bit of subtlety in circumstances that are more suited to blunt, unforgiving ugliness. Cause there’s those female vocals in the background of ‘Dedication’ too, working as a foil to the violence with a bit of uneasy romance; ‘your face is so goddamn beautiful/ your face makes me feel unusual’. And then ‘Organ Failure’s desperate squealing sax offset by interludes of sweetly drawled ‘darlin’s’ and a super pretty bass melody.

You’ll never get the energy of a Wireheads live show on record (take a look at the 20-odd people listed as contributing to the record on Bandcamp though and you’ll see they gave it a good go), but what you do get is time and space to let the emotional core of a lot of these songs to sink in. You get things like ‘Ice Kool Flavour Aid’, a straight husky cowboy ballad that’s earnest in a way that not a heap of other Australian bands would have the guts to do.

Arrive Alive is full of familiar characters and archetypes: prisoners ex-soldiers, emperors and goddesses and the dying. They’re all wondering what it means to survive, and if that’s really the most important thing. The fantastical elements could be allegories to real shit: ‘Proserpina’ is the Goddess of the cycle of life and death – or a woman offering redemption. Emperor Nero is another dictator fucking around while everything burns to the ground. Or maybe they they’re just funny stories to write songs about – ‘Nero’ is especially wacky, with that woodwind that makes everything feel like it’s coming down around your head.

The first couple of times I listened to this record I thought it was a bit long and maybe trying a little hard to be weird – but I reckon that was just because there’s so much packed in here it’s easy to get overloaded. Now I’ve got it a bit more I couldn’t think of anything I’d cut. Maybe ‘Isabella Says’ – I don’t care that much about ‘cosmic gamma rays baby’ – but then there’s the funny little flute freak out that leads you into the beautiful ‘So Softly Spoken’, making the honest simplicity of that song able to catch you off guard and be something properly lovely.

Arrive Alive is a smart, packed, generous record with ideas popping out the seams. Because of this it’s easy to overlook the humanness of a lot of the songs, the honesty and the heart – I nearly did, and now I’m tellin’ ya not to make the same mistake.

You can listen to and buy Arrive Alive via Tenth Court here

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WATCH: Obscura Hail – ‘Little Web’

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obscura hail

As Obscura Hail, multi-instrumentalist Sean Conran focuses on the intricate details on life, revelling in the minute facets of a minimalist folk sound and playing in the infinitesimal spaces between lingering notes. Throughout his songs, which are commonly described as ‘basement pop’ or ‘baroque folk’, Sean handles each delicate moment as if it were dangerously fragile – each experience or thought a priceless treasure to take care of. For his latest single, ‘Little Web’, Sean has taken inspiration from the lives of fictional video game characters. The song narrows its focus to Sean’s self-imposed isolation from others in favour of a virtual world and how his preference towards actions of non-existent figures created a disconnect from reality ­– choosing to dictate his own narrative with the only limitations being the ones imposed by the game itself.

‘Little Web’ opens with a soothing and melancholic guitar melody, before Sean’s wispy vocals interject with the opening lines “Moving pictures on the silver screen / living their lives in a 2D scene / I’m glued, I’m glued / to the seat in this room”, setting the scene of Sean seated in front of the illuminated screen, immersed in a world of his own creation. The accompanying video offers a series of recorded moments, most seemingly insignificant but weaving together into a tableau of introspection. Frames of outdoor scenery offer a glimpse into a world beyond the computer screen – natural sunlight and stars instead of the harsh artificial lighting of the virtual world. The song carries a stark beauty, minimalist in nature but impressive in impact.

Obscura Hail is on the cusp of releasing an album entitled Leaves, Earth, which follows on from the Thrown Into The Sea EP. Leaves, Earth will be out in August through No Safe Place Records.

You can see him supporting Jules Sheldon at the Old Bar in Melbourne on 25 July.

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LISTEN: Rebel Yell – ‘Never Perfection’

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Pic by Glen Schenau

Pic by Glen Schenau

Some people have a tendency to dismiss music that has too strong an aesthetic – from artists who’ve taken more than one second to think about what people might like to look like as well as listen too. I reckon that’s super reductive of what music is, and, most usually, sexist as hell.

I love Grace Stevenson’s (who’s also in 100%) solo thing Rebel Yell because it’s vibe and sound and image, form and function all coming together to deliver maximum impact. Her first single ‘Never Perfection’ is dark industrial electronic music that you can dance to if you want – but it’s not really dance music. It doesn’t matter that much if you’re having fun, as long as that bass keeps pumping you’ll keep moving. The lyrics are completely unintelligible but she’s delivering them like a manifesto, insistent and direct. There’s a trend for punk shows in Brisbane lately to have a synth band/artist opening or playing after the headliner and it’s worked both to break the three white dudes with guitar monotony and to encourage electronic music with some darkness and muscle to bloom.

 

 

The video, done by Helena Papageorgiou, is all purple smoke and strobes flashing over Stevenson’s striking face, and does a great job of recreating the vibe of a Rebel Yell live show – slightly elusive, always making you want more. I also like that although it’s shot like a underground-rave scene, you can see it was filmed under someone’s house, so it’s more like you’re at a really good house show with about three minutes before the cops arrive.

 

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Before now, the Brisbane bands that have become most popular interstate have usually been of the sunny garage pop or likeable-stoner party rock variety. But maybe we don’t care so much about being liked any more. Maybe now we wanna make music that’s cold, distorted, and bold. And look fucking good doing it. It isn’t just me that thinks this has real widespread appeal – Rebel Yell just signed up to work with Rice is Nice on her EP Mother of Millions, out August 19.

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LISTEN: These Guy – ‘Lunchbox’

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cover art

I’ve always liked the idea of transporting my vegemite sang and muesli bar in a compartmentalised, carbon neutral (obviously) lunchbox, but in reality I just shovel last night’s pizza into a plastic bag and hope for the best. I have no idea how Joe Saxby, Josh Coxon or Eddie L’Estrange pack their sammiches or why a lunchbox is relevant to their debut collection of tracks as These Guy, and to be honest I’m not sure they do either. And that’s ok, we’re all just figuring it out and that’s fine.

Lunchbox begins with ‘The End’, where These Guy’s broad spectrum of alt-pop influences bleed together in a spin cycle of sounds that unfold over the album’s duration. ‘Coming Around‘ is the first punctuation point and one of the earliest singles, combining the indie pop ethos and sad boi pathos in what is a foundation theme on Lunchbox. Quirky synth hooks bubble up on most tracks to buoy each pessimistic lyric, refusing to let Saxby be sad about things he is justifiably shitty about (see: closing track ‘The Main Thing’, an 11-minute sprawling psych middle finger to long distance relationships). Despite this, Lunchbox is a significant upswing in mood from These Guy’s debut EP when it was Saxby’s heavily overcast solo project.

Techno pop track ‘Biscuits’ and ‘The Main Thing’ have featured in These Guy’s live set for a while now, but hearing them packaged up on Lunchbox makes the pivot from “everything is doomed’ sad to “silver-lining” sad a whole lot sharper. There are just so many quirks built into each song it’s hard to keep track of the ideas, from the disco synth hooks, full fret shredding and sax solos on ‘Over Before it Begins’ to the jangle pop guitar melodies of ‘Suburban Restaurant’, one album could hardly provide enough space to flesh them out.

Yet it’s the clean execution of these ideas which propels These Guy above the white noise of cookie cutter indie pop, with lofty vocal melodies, frenzied instrumentals, delay-heavy synths and a generous peppering of guitar licks all balanced by clever production. Lunchbox is like a pleasant hallucinatory experience, you’ll go places you didn’t know existed and come out wondering where the hell you’ve been and how you can get back there.

Here’s a treat for youse ahead of the album’s launch on June 16th.

 

You can see this play out in all it’s technicolour glory at Brisbane’s Black Bear Lodge on July 15th.

 

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LISTEN: Witch Hats – ‘Deliverance’

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Witch Hats

You can sense the muscle on some songs. It’s easy to visualise tendons gripping bone, the fibres stretching and tearing as the tune gives itself a good working out over and over again as you whack it on repeat. They just get beefier over time, the technique behind the brawn revealing itself; this one ain’t just a dumb banger, it’s got brains up top too.

Melbourne-based Witch Hats’ ‘Deliverence’ feels this way: a simple snare crack to start proceedings and then then the bass is there, swinging like a pendulum covered in treacle it’s so goddamn thick, trudging across the no man’s land the song sets us in, while guitar leads warble and flutter their way behind frontman Kristofer Buscombe’s sneering rasp of a vocal delivery.

“And I would lose it all/to watch your body fall/to see ya pissed down the drain”. Hate runs all the way through ‘Deliverence’. Not a misunderstood, hot-blooded hate, though; hate with purpose, with vision, like the hate of hell, Buscombe proclaiming “Hallelujah” before each chorus.

It’s been a fair few years since their last one, Pleasure Syndrome. In that time Witch Hats have stripped away the velvet curtains and lamplight that populated videos for songs like ‘Hear Martin’ and replaced it with the post-punk simplicity of black silhouettes and fire. The mechanical bounce of the band against the projections of destruction that makes up the majority of the video for  ‘Deliverence’ is hypnotic, like being presented with the inner workings of a well-oiled machine. It’s worlds beyond the slightly self-regarding nature of their older work.

Witch Hats have stripped away most all the finery and shine; and that don’t matter anyway, they still got teeth.

Witch Hats’ album Deliverence is out 1 July and available to preorder on vinyl and digital.

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LISTEN: Sarah Mary Chadwick – ‘Makin It Work’

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sarah mary chadwick

There’s a shaky kind of hopefulness to this new song from Sarah Mary Chadwick.  It’s like she’s got her hands out grasping desperately for something she’s not sure she wants, and which she might not get anyway.  ‘Makin It Work’ is the first single off Chadwick’s forthcoming record, with the kind of hilariously doomed title of Roses Always Die. Even knowing that, Chadwick makes us hope along with her here when she says she’s ‘moving towards a kind of finish line’. Even though neither we nor, it seems like, Chadwick, know what the other side of that line’s gonna look or sound like, we want her to get there.

The constant ticking drum machine and electric organ will be familiar to people who already know Chadwick’s stuff, but ‘Makin it Work’ doesn’t have the layers and atmospherics of a lot of Nine Classic Tracks. It’s more restrained and inward-facing, like this is a song she could have just written for herself and we’re getting a privileged private listen. However there’s no joke in her statement that ‘it’s a big song cuz I’m happy’, cause it is. A big song, a big moment, a big deal.  It must be for Chadwick to sing something like ‘baby oh baby/ spin me round and save me’, even if she’s then gonna say she doesn’t care who does the actual saving. It’s so big she had to stop and look around and write a song about these feelings cuz who knows how long they’re gonna last.

There’s an overriding notion in a lot of love songs, and, the world in general, that once love comes to ya it’s all easy – which might be true for some. But for Chadwick it seems like nothing’s ever easy. And that’s where her vulnerability and her power comes from, the effort, the fight, the pleasure, the spit, the degradation, the fuck ups, the times when hope hurts more than hopelessness.  For someone whose lyrics can be realistic to the point of self-defeatism, this song is a beautiful exercise in trying to start the circulation again, to believe that it’s worth the effort to Make It Work.

Roses Always Die will be out August 5 on Rice is Nice

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FEATURE: Keep Community Radio – 4ZZZ Brisbane

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keep community radio

Today is the National Day of Action to oppose the proposed budget cuts to community radio across Australia. We think these cuts are a load of bullshit. Not just cause community radio is so vital for giving marginalised voices a platform to be heard, not just cause it’s another step along a dark scary road of devaluing the arts that the Australian government is on, but also cause community radio is often one of the first places that you get to hear some of the best new Australian music. We, and everyone else in the Australian independent music community, owe a lot to community radio.

So we wanted to do our little bit, and hand the mic over to some of our favourite community radio broadcasters to tell you why they love what they do, and to recommend some new Australian tracks they love (cause, you know, it’s all about the music man). These are the kind of voices we’re looking at losing if the cuts go through, and we think that’s a bloody tragedy.

First up we’re focusing on Brisbane’s 4ZZZ 102.1fm, which, with these cuts, is in danger of losing it’s innovative and experimental new digital platform, Zed Digital.

You can learn more about the proposed cuts HERE. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more top shit community radio voices from Sydney and Melbourne too.

Grace Pashley

The Amplifier – Monday 1–3pm (Grace is also one of our contributors and a general badarse committed to telling stories of women in music with her Amplify Her project, as well as being a great organiser of feminist events and forums in Brisbane)

The thing that struck me first about 4ZZZ was the history of it all, like shit, REAL PUNKS must have done some crazy ground-breaking stuff here in the 80s or whatever. You know, before music died? But after that settled I can see the place is just teeming with people who have incredible energy and ideas to develop the station. Pulling funds from the digital arm of community radio is like shooting the future in the face. It’s one of the best ways to encourage innovation outside of fm programming, allowing risks and encouraging those just starting out to experiment.

When I started writing for Who The Hell I knew very little about Australian music, but now I love it so much I migrated mediums to 4ZZZ where I talk about it for a whole two hours every week. It’s really just a gigantic Al Montfort compilation. He played in 4ZZZ’s carpark on tour before returning to Melbourne, which coincidentally is where I’ll be bailing to if this radio gig doesn’t work out. Do you want another fucking hipster in Melbourne, Turnbull? Fund community radio, keep Brisbane weird.

Gabriella Cohen – ‘Yesterday’
Cohen’s debut album is one of my favourites this year, and this song is just a beautifully arranged chocolate fountain of melted psych indulgence.

 

King Single – ‘I Wish You Happiness’
The beauty of radio is that when you can’t find the words for why you really, really like a song you can just let the track speak for itself. It’s just good ok!

 

Lalic – ‘Fuck Love’
Uggghhhhh I love Lalic so much how are they so good. I get away with actually reviewing a track like that on radio. Mostly because radio has no comments section. 

 

Josh Watson

Tips for Teens – Sunday 10pm–midnight

Tips for Teens is a new release music show that I’ve been doing since mid-2012. I tend to play music from artists that are identified as ‘underground’. It’s a pretty vague term and I cover a wide range of styles. The aim of the show is to draw attention to new and interesting music that I think isn’t getting enough attention elsewhere. That’s kinda how I got turned on to community radio initially, because I’d be able to hear music played that I couldn’t hear on any other station.

For someone living in a non-metro area with limited internet, it was pretty important. Of course there’s much more important work done at our community radio stations that extends further than music. I think 4ZZZ is a really special place because of programs like Indigi-Briz; Queer Radio; Locked In; Radio in Colour; Brisbane Line and more that deal with other political and social issues. Community radio is brilliantly diverse and a lot of fun to get involved in.

Spike Fuck – ‘Guts’

It’s a good thing that not that many people try to do the whole heart-wrenching ballad thing these days. It’s not the kind of thing you can half ass and sound as convincing as Spike Fuck does. Guts could be a massively overproduced 80s pop hit, but it’s also just good how it’s recorded here. She’s one of the most interesting songwriters around.

 

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