New Music

LOOK: St Jerome’s Laneway Festival 2013

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(Words/grovels by Mel Tan)

Festival reviews. Generally a good place to describe the weather in hourly increments, tweet-debate the best burger van based on the number of guys with sleeve tatts and flat caps standing in line, maybe say some nice comments about some bands.

Like every other media outlet covering this festival this year, I would have liked to wring out some nice prose describing every set in such detail so that anyone who who didn’t get along could have heard how awesome Real Estate were, smelt the sweat seeping from the abundance of tropical print, found out the truth about Alt-J’s talking voice etc.

On the contrary, my Laneway was a lot more shit. The bulk of my Laneway experience was spent spent standing in a 3 hour ATM queue. Consequences of forgetting $$ and choosing a halftime Gozelme over entertainment.

Three hours down, Laneway security tried to console all 70 of us standing in the heat with bottled water. Nice move guys. In light of forgoing a bad case of the munchies and missing out on all the bands worth seeing (Cloud Nothings, Japandroids, POND, Poliça, Divine Fits and our boy Chet Faker), I did catch some other good stuff on the day. Here’s a condensed version.

The Men take the record for the shirt-off drummer at Laneway in 3 years. Alpine swapped crowd banter for wolf howls…ain’t nobody got time for that. Twerps worked their usual scrappy charm on a big crowd. High Highs convince us that they should strongly reconsider their Aus citizenship. Real Estate played crunchy lo-fi jams off Days and some tunes off their self-titled. Shlohmo summoned the entire day’s supply of denim overalls, ‘man buns’ and stick-on face jewels to a 20m² pen outside the Future Classic stage. Flume‘s slot at 9.30 meant Bat for Lashes crowd was a little sparser than the turn out for M83 at the same time last year. Despite the smaller crowd, Nat Khan sung all the new stuff, sashayed around in her coloured tin-foil get up and still trumped as GODDESS. And to cap it the day off in true Laneway tradition, there was another cameo by man in a tree.

On a good note, Alan did cart along to every act on the day and managed to capture another great Laneway. Check out his amazing portraits below.

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Ali Barter 

 

High Highs 

Twerps  

Real Estate 

Nite Jewel

Cloud Nothings

Japandroids

Pond

 

 

(more photos after the jump)

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LISTEN: The Stevens

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I’m so fucking homesick right now. And then I hear this EP and it just crushes me. Up tempo guitar-pop that is as catchy as early Twerps on ‘Dance Alone‘. Alex MacFarlane and Travis MacDonald put this together and released a 6-track EP The Stevens last year. Originally released on CD-R and cassette but now it has won the seal of approval from Chapter music who are reissuing the self-titled EP on 7″ vinyl. Very nice. So pencil in the 5th April, which is a Friday, to get a jump on the weekend and pick a copy up from all good record stores or here.

I made the tough call of running ‘Teenage Satellites’ but I would plug any track of the EP… it’s that good. The debut LP is in the works with Mikey Young at the control desk. So we know it’s in safe hands. You can check them out supporting ‘The Wedding Present’ from the UK at the NSC but hopefully more local shows to follow.

Feb 27 –  Northcote Social Club, Melbourne.

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Groovin’ The Moo 2013

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Beyond all the hype of the remodelled Big Day Out or the urban deconstruction of the ATP, you’ll find a series of kick-ass country parties called Groovin in the Moo. These have been going for a while and have had amazing success. The line-up is always Australian heavy and it’s the sort of bands you wanna get down with. I went to a similar festival a while back and I was in awe of how ‘into it’ the locals were. I guess triple J is the station of choice for youth in all corners of the country as they do come out for these shows. In a big way.

Bendigo has already sold-out but there are tickets left for others. So check out Alison Wonderland, Alpine, Last Dinosaurs, Midnight Juggers, Temper Trap, Tame Impala and golden boy Flume. Not a bad day in the paddock.

Sat, April 27 – Showgrounds, Maitland
Sun, April 28 – University, Canberra
Sat, May 4 – Prince of Wales Showground, Bendigo – SOLD OUT
Sun, May 5 – Murray Sports Complex – Cricket Grounds, Townsville
Sat, May 11 – Hay Park, Bunbury

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Website/Tickets

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LISTEN: Velcro – ‘Rocked the Boat’

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‘Rocked the Boat’ is a soft lullaby taken from Budding Teens, a new Velcro tape released on US label Terroir Edition. The label guy has a pretty unique aesthetic and posts merch from Spokane, Washington with another cool band Campfires on the roster.

Velcro will be launching the Budding Teens cassette on Thursday, 7th March at The Gaso upstairs in Melbourne. I’m still not totally down with tapes even though the Velcro stuff sounds real sweet on a sony tape deck, I bought new in 95. It still feels weird but it’s a cheap way to make something worth buying and hanging onto. So if you have any sentimentality – get to the show for this limited release.

Budding Teens has 5 tracks from the Velcro catalogue including the disco number ‘Bong Lion’. These tracks are short, sweet, direct and heartfelt. ‘Rocked the Boat’ is obviously my favourite despite being an older track. It’s because like all good poets, Velcro weaves my emotions into a little ball and plays with it like a kitten. I’m helpless when I hear those warm tones and weighty Melbourne sound.

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LISTEN: James X. Boyd – ‘Elissa Says’

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On his first EP, Brisbane’s James X. Boyd tapped a vein of strikingly personal and deeply beautiful song writing. With a new record coming out this year, his first single ‘Elissa Says’ shows that there’s plenty more of this gold to come.

The track is marked by a combination of Boyd’s pretence-free vocals and completely plaintive lyrics. There’s a simple sweetness to this track that’s immediately nostalgic, but most of all – it’s honest.

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PREMIERE: All The Colours – ‘Second To None’

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We’re stoked to be giving you the worldwide premiere of the video for ‘Second To None’ from All The Colours.

Everything director Guy Franklin touches turns to gold (see previous Kimbra clips). He apparently dreams in monochrome too, and has lent these thoughts and penchant for stuff that floats to the gorgeous cinematography in this new clip.

All The Colours kick off their ‘Second To None’ tour tomorrow.

Friday 8th February – MUM @ World Bar, SYDNEY
Saturday 9th February – Upstairs Beresford, SYDNEY
Saturday 16 February – The Toff, MELBOURNE
Saturday 23 February – Edinburgh Castle, ADELAIDE

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LISTEN: Single Twin – ‘Sometimes I Think About Taking Care Of You Sometimes’

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Single Twin has released a free (if you prefer) 9-track collection of tales that were recorded around the time he made the LP Marcus Teague. They didn’t make the cut for that record but it wasn’t because they were crap instead they just didn’t work. I won’t specualte as to why they didn’t work, I’ll just say that they do require a different level of listening. This is a delicate gathering of guitar/vocal song making with some atmospheric layering, which resides in the framework of Australian singer-songwriting style but has a more folk-husk, kind of wide-vista country, and an almost miserable bearing. Nice Cutlass has a tickle of Explosions in the Sky going on. How could a singer-songwriter strumming a guitar equate to a four-piece instrumental goliath from Texas? By connecting with real emotion and setting your thoughts free to wander through the record.

I’ve selected ‘Sometimes I Think About Taking Care Of You Sometimes’ for your Friday morning as a warm hug to start your weekend. The rest is up on Bandcamp with a ‘pay what you like’ option to raise funds for a vinyl pressing of Marcus Teague. Kinda crowd-funding but more so you know he won’t just buy cigarettes with the 5 bucks you sling him… do they still cost $5?

Single Twin has a backyard show on this weekend in Richmond, Melbourne. So drop by. Details here. And possibly a solo show in Sydney mid-March.

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