Monthly Archives For June 2013

LISTEN: Back Back Forward Punch – ‘Don’t Stop Now’

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Not enough ‘disco’ happens on this blog. I’m not averse to the stuff. Don’t hate Fridays either. My penchant for disco/pop resurfaces once a year when a good track or remix comes around. For the rest, it’s subtle repression.

After being born to immigrants who conceived me over a syncopated bassline and a 4/4 beat, growing up listening to Disco made Melbourne’s Western suburbs a lot less shit. My earliest music memories involved the ass end of the Bee Gees era, Diana King and a lot of Gloria Estefan’s ‘Turn The Beat Around’. There was nothing ‘Australian’ about my childhood. There is nothing Australian about growing up watching your old man mow the lawn singing Donna Summer either. I’ve had a bittersweet affinity with the wider genre, but here’s trying not to hold it against anyone.

Depending on what your Friday vibe feels like, this is essential listening. ‘Don’t Stop Now’ is a smooth groove by Melbourne duo Back Back Forward Punch. There’s a faux-sax, laser synths and a general schmooze that could only really tag along with band name that sounds like a naff move on a Tracey Anderson workout DVD. Laura Boland’s voice reminds me of Giselle Roselli on Flight Facilities’ ‘Crave You’ (minus the twee). I’m slowly trying to be less deducive about anything electro-disco, so this one gets points for feel good tunes to tide over the week with. Excellent production and Groove Armada stamped all over this one. Still love Gloria, BTW.

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PREMIERE: Bad//Dreems – ‘Hoping For’

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Out from the gentrified sprawl of suburban Adelaide comes a new video from WTH favourites Bad//Dreems.

Defying age, occupation and Centrelink brackets, the new clip from Bad//Dreems takes a steep ascent to the peak of Cultural Cringe and sticks a shovel in at the summit. The current climate for jangly, interbreeding suburban garage bands looks like it’s probably sticking around. I’m cool with the late checkout, but I just prefer pepped-up, happy “chillmate” from bands like these guys, Laughing Leaves, The Stevens etc. rather than the rest of the vegetarians lamenting about their girlfriends through their nose. That shit just makes me sad.

On the other hand, ‘Hoping For’ is heaps of fun. Along with Client Liason’s infamous homage to our wide brown land, this video also needs to be reconsidered by Tourism Australia. It’s all bro-gan schmoozing, muscle cars and other miscellaneous behaviour that makes self-deprecating nationalism, revered. As for the loose dick on a trampoline, no one wants to take liability for that. The video was shot in Port Adelaide and in the north of South Australia near Orroroo. Kinda makes Airbourne look like they need to re-sit their citizenship.

Thriving boganvillea brought to you by rad director Al Kinsie (Who By Fire), brilliant subtitles and VHS effects courtesy of Ben Helweg.

Bad//Dreems are releasing their upcoming EP Badlands on July 19th. The band are heading out through Adelaide and the East coast during July and August for a string of dates, stay tuned for details.

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LISTEN: TV Colours – ‘The Neighbourhood’

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TV Colours is Bobby Kill – or Robin Mukerjee, to his mum. A key player in the tight-knit Canberra scene, he’s worked with Danger Beach and the sorely-missed Assassins 88.  Members of both those bands now play with him, along with the enigmatically named ‘Catfish’ from The Fighting League. Bobby’s debut album was 6 years in the making, with two versions ditched along the way, but it was well worth the wait – there’s not a dud on it. Packing 15 songs into 45 minutes, Purple Skies, Toxic River blasts you with its serrated guitars and petulant vocals, which sound like someone shouting at you from inside a padded cell.

Purple Skies is back-to-back impeccable garage jams in the style of Hüsker Dü. In fact, Bobby’s got a penchant for all kinds of late-70s Americana: mullets, muscle shirts and Mustangs – just check out his Tumblr. When the album isn’t gouging your ears with overdrive, it drifts into moody instrumental sections that sound like the score to a John Carpenter film.

While TV Colours’ sound is meticulously crafted, his major asset is an ability to write hooks that are tight as fuck. The guy’s devotion to melody is so complete there’s even a Beach Boys reference on the album, with a track entitled ‘I Soon Found Out My Lonely Life Wasn’t So Pretty’.

The first single off Purple Skies was the punchy ‘Beverly’. It caused immediate excitement, even copping a Pitchfork review within a few days of its release. Album opener ‘the Neighbourhood’ is now streaming on Soundcloud. It’s a furious number that reeks of alienation and teenage angst. A thoroughgoing introduction, the song walks through pretty much all the album’s aesthetic devices without losing any of Kill’s trademark concision. The lead-in riff sounds like early Sonic Youth, with its clear tones and pretty but slightly off-kilter chords, and there’s a frenetic verse that’s gradually slowed down and torn apart by a gut-wrenching guitar solo. The track closes with a dark synth passage that has the same mixture of parody and dread as a David Lynch creation – a fitting coda for a song raging against the deadening drag of suburbia.

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Purple Skies, Toxic River is out now through Dream Damage and Aussie-loving French label XVIII Records, with tour dates soon to follow.

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WATCH: Fraser A. Gorman – ‘Dark Eyes’

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Fraser A Gorman

Running through a field singing a love song as starched up as a wool cravat; Fraser A Gorman certainly isn’t the first guy to put it on video. That being said, for the good-guy niceties of everybody’s favourite Dylan doppleganger, Fraser’s always been modest than he deserves to be.

Fraser’s better known around these parts for bringing his alt-country jams around town. If haircut, likeability and ability to cut a slick tune are the first factors of charisma to win over the masses, then the dude wins at all three.

‘Dark Eyes’ is a shift away from Fraser’s usual pastoral tones; the chords are looser, the country jaunts traded in for sunnier strums and a giant hug of a horn section past the bridge. His band Big Harvest usually takes a front seat in the live side of things, but here it sounds like they’re satisfied just to saunter along for the ride. It could be the way those strings fill out against Fraser’s honest tone, or perhaps the cross-point that stands some place between melancholia and optimism – but there’s something that is unequivocally very Lucksmiths about this track.

I should also mention the duo from Arthur & Angus have done a brilliant job on this video. The clip was filmed in one take, on a property of an 1820’s mansion near Ballarat in Victoria. Also during filming, four prized race horses managed to escape from the paddock. (The video should probably go viral, but is available for your viewing here.)

There’s a real endearing thing about getting a guy to run 3km in a suit, singing then have him plunging into a cold dam without breaking out the ventolin. Another great one from Fraser that’ll keep me grinning like an idiot for a while.

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Catch Fraser A. Gorman on Wednesdays in July at The Spotted Mallard in Brunswick.
3rd July – with Stu Mackenzie (King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard)
10th July – with Bob Harrow (Immigrant Union)
17th July – with Mike Skinner (Mallee Songs)
24th July – with Tim Neilson (The Death Rattles)
31st July – with Forever Son

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INTRODUCING: Just A Touch

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just-a-touch

Melbourne production duo Just A Touch (Denis Arbatov and Nick Fankhauser) have whipped up this funkalicious gem. You’ll also hear a familiar voice throughout – the one-man wolfpack, Alan Garner. Naturally titled ‘Wolfpack’, this is the first single from the duo. There’s a lot to feast on in three minutes; the Nile Rodgers flavoured guitar chords, the jolty bass line, the smirk of that cowbell – which all makes for a highly addictive disco jam.

‘Wolfpack’ is the only song available so far on their Soundcloud page, but I’m excited to see what else these guys come up with. For novelty’s sake, you know.

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EXPAT: Rat & Co Europe Tour

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Since the swirling, electronic cacophany of One (壱) Uno (壹) hit our earwaves last year, Rat & Co have been on the up. Over the last two months, the Melbourne based band have been travelling across Europe supporting WTH poster boy, Chet Faker.

Between shows – Josh, John, Nick and Kaia took some time out to document some jams, beach hangs and sidewalk burgers through the UK, Italy, Madrid and Switzerland for us.

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Merman. Sexy Benny…

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Lux Fragil, Lisbon, Portugal. One of the most amazing clubs any of us had ever been to. Owned by John Malkovich, sporting an impressive Funktion One setup.

Kaia got to play a song before they open up the club and Daniel Avery took over.

 

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Synthesiser studio, Hamburg. The lovely guys offered us to borrow a midi keyboard as we had left ours in the hotel, they then brought us into their studio that was full of all our favourite synths. Josh cried…

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On the beach with the largest seagulls in the world (according to Nick Cave) Brighton, UK.

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Josh playing the first Rat & Co show in Brighton, UK, alone.

Kaia could not get a working visa in time. He doesn’t play guitar very often anymore so it was a special treat for everyone there. Groovy.

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Chet Faker soundcheck Munich… In a converted factory. Cool vibes.

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Struggle day. The day after Ben’s birthday in Berlin, one hour of sleep, on the road to Cologne, Burger King to the rescue…

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Lake Como, Italy. A beautiful Italian lunch next to the water and the sea planes. We didn’t get to go to the Moto Guzzi factory though.

 

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Lucerne, Swizterland. The view out of our apartment window, some cards tournaments and well needed rest.

 

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Rat & Co are returning to Australia in July for an East Coast tour next month. Get to it.

5th July – Northcote Social Club, VIC

11th July – Alhambra Lounge, QLD

12th July – Goodgod Small Club, NSW

 

 

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LISTEN: The Shiny Brights – ‘Deep Blue Sea’

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When you Google ‘the Shiny Brights’, you get an odd assortment of links to both music and laundry websites. Turns out that’s because this Adelaide five piece named themselves after their local laundromat, in honour of the fact that their rehearsal space is stuffed full of white goods.

The Shiny Brights first made an appearance in 2008 with debut EP, Let’s Not and Say We Did. They got a whole lot of Triple J love and went on to play the Big Day Out, Parklife and Fuse festivals amongst others, and were handpicked to perform at the Great Escape Festival in Brighton. They also toured with talent like You Am I, The Vines and The Grates. The band put out their Too Many Chiefs EP in 2010, but then went mysteriously quiet – apart from a handful of singles released over the course of 2011-12.

Late last year drummer Miles ‘Buns’ Wilson took to the band’s blog to clarify (in a rambling post that covered his parking fines, his grandma’s cat and what he had for lunch) that, contrary to rumour, the Shiny Brights were not breaking up. They had in fact been busy in the studio with Gerling‘s Darren Cross, coming up with new offering ‘Deep Blue Sea’.

The hiatus seems to have worked wonders – ‘Deep Blue Sea’ is a refreshing new direction for the band. Their earlier stuff was fine, but it just didn’t cut it for me. Their new single, however, is ridiculously catchy – with a breezy riff and a bass line that’s up there with the work of The Lucksmiths‘ brilliant Mark Monnone. All five Shiny Brights join together to bawl out the lyrics, which have an ambivalent slant that belies the song’s cheerful vibe. “I was out in the cold watching the rain / I was out of my mind, out of control / deep blue sea, devil and me,” they shout, invoking a saying that’s haunted pop music since at least 1931.

The Shiny Brights have some more stuff coming out this year, so keep your wits about you.

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