Tagged By lower plenty

LISTEN: Lower Plenty – Sister Sister LP

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Lower Plenty are my favourite band that I almost forget exist all the time. Except when you occasionally see them pop up in an FB event as second support for some EP launch at a bowls club on a Wednesday or whatever and I shake my fist at the sky shrieking “MELBOOOOOURNE’, then quickly look at flights, then remember that going to rock shows in Melbourne is the easiest way to make me question if living is really all it’s cracked up to be. And then, I don’t know, I cry.

By playing and recording so infrequently, they’ve taken the pressure off and given themselves the room to make music of low-key genius – fans will wait because it’s worth it. Sure the whole ‘recorded-on-one-cold-afternoon-in-a-Collingwood-kitchen, before they got into their Commodores and sped off through the fog in separate directions not to speak for another year’ mythology touted in the press-release (… ok, I made some of that up) for this record does play into certain ideas of what makes music authentic in Australia – but hey, it’s true. They can’t help it if it’s a good story as well.

Maybe because I know that story it’s easy to imagine a kind of coziness and familiarity to this record. Also cause at this point listening to Al Montfort’s voice is like settling in for a few wry, beautiful stories with a mate on the back deck over a – fuck I’m doing the mythologizing now. But if there’s a less trite way to say it I can’t think of it. He always sounds so breezy, which might be kind of difficult when you’ve got something serious to say. But here he pulls it off. The dry melancholy of ‘All the Young Men’ is thick with a resigned hopelessness, and he’s maybe delving a bit into the way we (underground music people/people who wanna be cool generally) glorify irony and a lack of sincerity in ‘Bondi’s Dead’ ‘I was the best at undermining civil unrest / I was the king / of keepin’ it all in’. We’ve probably also got him to thank for the fissures of atonal jazz that pop up through Sister Sister – I haven’t listened to much of the Snake and Friends stuff but from what I understand it’s a bit like that.

Mostly this record still leans more on country and folk styles than the punk and post punk and techno punk of some of the member’s other bands. Though they still manage to subtly unsettle you at every turn with some creepy, occasionally abstract sounds (What is that? A kind of weird sounding flute?). This sense of foreboding is present, too, in the way the olden times Irish folk singer prettiness of Hayward’s vocals is used in songs like ‘So It Goes’ with its chugging, ominous percussion and ‘Ravesh’, which sounds like confidently striding into insanity, all imagery and symbols and looming saxophone circling like a vulture overhead.

The contrast between Hayward’s vocals and Jensen Tjhung’s is interesting– they’re archetypal feminine and masculine, spectral beauty and down-to earth gravelly earnestness, but all the wistful sentimentality comes from Tjhung’s songs. Montfort’s and Hayward’s duet ‘Shades of Lawn’ feels romantic but the lyrics are someone who’s had it up to here; ‘You wouldn’t be grinnin’ / if you weren’t winnin’ / take that smile off your face / get your shit out of the place’. Hayward’s song are the freakiest, like ‘Ravesh’ or closer ‘Treehouse’ with its thin spooky violin or the taunting of ‘On Off On Off’.

There’s balance in everything Lower Plenty do – they can delve into dark areas but keep everything moving forward, touching on sadness but never dragging you through it. I think they pretty much perfectly captured it on the title track of their last record Life / Thrills when Tjhungs sings ‘What have I got? Heaps. / What have I lost? Heaps.’ That’s the line I think about when I think about Lower Plenty, the clear eyed self-knowledge, the willingness to sacrifice and move on. It’s what makes remembering them every couple of years such a delight, and means we’ll continue to wait as long as it takes every time.

Sister Sister is out on Bedroom Suck for you to purchase and enjoy now.

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WATCH: Snake & Friends – ‘Missus and the Masses’

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al montford

If you’re kicking about checking out local Melbourne bands on a regular basis you’ve probably been (metaphorically) touched by the talented hand of Alistair Montfort. Dick Diver, Total Control, Lower Plenty, UV Race – the list of groups Montfort puts his name to rolls on and on. Now a new one’s set to join: Snake and Friends.

With what seems to be their first music video, a song called ‘Missus and the Masses’ has shown up on Montfort’s teeny tiny YouTube channel, and you can watch it below. It’s going to be showing up again on Snake and Friends’ debut LP, which, as far as I can tell, doesn’t have a name, date or any other info attached.

‘Missus and the Masses’ is about as scrappy as Montfort’s efforts in UV Race – though it’s perhaps not as unabashedly messy as the stuff that showed up on Homo. ‘Missus and the Masses’ teeters on the edge of acceptable standards of production, but you’ve gotta take the Montfort with the Montfort and love it for what it is. Always one to appreciate the simpler parts of Australian life, Al describes his video as “an ode to a couple frothy ones”, kicking off with a ne’er do well chant of “sink more! sink more!” and closing out with an elastic synthesizer screw-about.

YouTube

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LISTEN: Lower Plenty – ‘On the Beach’

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It has never been more apparent how diverse the Melbourne music scene is than right now. It is a petri dish of musical experimentation where interchanging combinations yield different results and nearly each mutation leads to acclaim.

Case in point: Lower Plenty. Named after a Melbourne suburb, Lower Plenty is one of those bands that’s made up of musicians from other noteworthy groups (all Melbourne based) but manages to make a name for itself thanks to good music, not just goodwill.

For the curious, parent bands include UV Race, Total Control, Deaf Wish and The Focus. Take note though: Lower Plenty sounds different from all of these bands; less dissonance and more down-tempo honesty. Think acoustic pop – really low key but not under produced.

‘On The Beach’ is a song stripped to its bare bones. It’s soft and drawling, focusing on the minute details of musicianship to show how a good tune can be made up entirely of subtleties. Softly pattering drums, guitars dipped in languor and equally wistful vocals, with lyrics consisting of lamentations and daydreams; ‘On The Beach’ is a fantastic slow burner that eschews sharp peaks or crescendos in favour of graceful meandering.

Lower Plenty are releasing a new LP, Life/Thrills on Bedroom Suck in late June, the follow up to their acclaimed previous effort, Hard Rubbish. I’d keep my eyes on the horizon for this; it’ll be a good’un.

BUY

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COLLECTIVE PEG #4

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ANDREW MCMILLEN

Andrew McMillen (@NiteShok) is a freelance journalist based in Brisbane, Australia. He writes for Rolling Stone, The Australian, The Global Mail and Qweekend, among others. Find an extensive collection of his work here: andrewmcmillen.com

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Urthboy – ‘Empire Tags‘

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This is a classic example of telling an Australian story through hip-hop; a vision of the local version of the artform at its strongest. It’s my favourite track on Urthboy’s fourth album Smokey’s Haunt, released October 19 via Elefant Traks.From instrumentation and production through to lyrical content and message, this is simply a killer track. The Australian flag issue gets nudged every few years and I’m glad that Urthboy is doing the same through a contemporary medium.”From a time when the empire tagged the globe / We ain’t cleaned that graffiti off the front of our home,” he raps; in the album liner notes, he writes, “Let’s keep it simple, the flag of another country sits in the corner of ours and that’s some shit straight outta the 18th century. We’ve been staring so hard at the past maybe we’ve gone cross-eyed.”

I feel pride when I listen to this: for my country, for our freedom and ability to question the status quo through song, for Australian hip-hop, and for Urthboy himself. I’ve followed him since his 2004 debut Distant Sense Of Random Menace. It’s been a pleasure to watch his talents grow and grow. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

www.urthboy.com

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A.H. CAYLEY

A.H. Cayley (@ahcayley) is a Sydney writer, editor, broadcaster, and, evidently, hat-feather collector. She is the deputy editor of PAN Magazine, curator and host of quarterly live-reading night Confession Booth, a presenter on FBi Radio, and a contributing writer for publications like Time Out and The Big Issue, but she devotes most of her words to local music over at Mess+Noise. Her personal work found here: www.ahcayley.com

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Lower Plenty – ‘Nullabor‘

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I broke up with the man I was supposed to marry a few months ago, not long after Lower Plenty’s Hard Rubbish came out. The whole situation was so hard and so sad, and for nights on end, lying paralysed in the dark on my best friend’s sofa bed while he tried to find a new place, and pack up the life he’d shared with me, and come to terms with the bombshell I hadn’t been able to hold any longer, this song, playing on repeat through a set of battered earbuds, felt like all I had in this world.

‘Nullabor’ kicks me in the guts and makes me feel suffocated and restless and tired, but at least that’s something. It inherits a place as distant, desolate and lonely as the inhospitable stretch of country after which it’s named, and it’s just as beautiful; it’s as stunning as the whole outback. That nodding, mournful beat sits heavy around your neck while Al Montfort’s unique, wavering voice tells such an immense story in so few words. For the purity of its sadness, ‘Nullarbor’ is at its heart an optimistic song; it’s about letting go, and it’s about freedom, as painful as it can be. Even in the depths of its apparent hopelessness, there’s still that glimmer of hope in its protagonist’s eye; that brief but steely reassurance that says you’re doing the right thing, and that keeps you driving on, numb, through the dust.

soundcloud.com/special-award-records/sets/lower-plenty-hard-rubbish

 

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MARCUS TEAGUE

Marcus Teague (@MarcusTheVine) releases and plays music under the moniker Single Twin.
His previous band Deloris released four albums throughout the ’00s and he is currently recording with a new project, Near Myth, who are set to release their debut album in 2013. He co-founded Mess+Noise and is currently the Deputy Editor of TheVine.com.au.

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(DAVE: Rules are meant to be broken and sometimes pegs don’t fit; so we went with all three of Marcus’s PEGs this month. Mostly because I couldn’t decide which ones to cut… I mean, could you?)

Collarbones – ‘Hypothermia‘

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I have a tendency to either listen to a song once and move on or just loop things over infinitely. As with this. What I like so much about ‘Hypothermia’ is — apart from that weird whirring sound that hums throughout, like a generator next to the bins out the back of a bar, which in turn perfectly illustrates the late night, just-outside-of-everything fuge state that the song has in store — is that I don’t think even it knows what it’s doing. I couldn’t say if there’s a verse and a chorus. It’s propulsive and arch and longing and melancholic. It could be your party jam or your breakup song. It could be background music or you could learn all the lyrics. You could play it on a guitar or in your rock band. Everyone concerned sounds effortless. It scans as a true and an entirely self-generating four and a half minutes of music. I don’t know if people realise how hard that is to create. I can’t really think of anything better you could say about a song.

collarbonesband.tumblr.com

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Grand Salvo – ‘The Boy’s Story Of His Faithful Family Dog‘

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Grand Salvo—Paddy Mann— is consistently making some of the most focused, technically incredible, and melodically and lyrically gifted music in the country/world. It’s just true. His musical universe is wholly contained and to be treasured. I’ve said it before, but if Paddy was from the UK or the US or, I don’t know, Iceland, he’d be globally revered, no doubt about it.

While his strength will always be finding nuance in simplicity, Paddy’s music has been getting more complex and layered across his six albums, although fundamentally his great gift is honing in on simple motifs and tweaking them, to the point of unearthing some crucial element that was hidden before. Or up ahead. His latest, sixth album ‘Slay Me In My Sleep’ is probably the Grand Salvo world at its most baroque, so I get that the passing listener might think it sounds fluffy or twee. Maudlin, maybe. Those people are wrong and idiots and missing out.

‘Slay Me In My Sleep’ is not a collection of standalone songs. It’s a self-referential, circular work that requires multiple listenings. So it’s hard to pick one song from the album. But the fact that he calls his dog a “teenager” in this is incredible.

www.grandsalvo.com

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Ballads – ‘Your Mistake‘

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Disclosure: I’ve been in two bands with the singer in this band. He never sang in my bands because he said he couldn’t sing. Even with a microphone in front of him on stage. He sent me these songs and I wrote back “Sounds great! Who’s singing?” He said it was him and I got really mad. Because he never sang in my bands and because I wasn’t in this band.

Ballads are all friends from Newcastle who came together in Melbourne and they’ve only released, I think, four songs, including a 7”. ‘Ballads’ as a band name makes more sense after you’ve heard their music. They’re not a folksy “woe is me and her” band. More forlorn and doomed. There’s a definite sleepy, half-drunk/broken Grizzly Bear vibe here. If you don’t want to skol shots and slink underwater in the bath looking up at the woozy light here I don’t know what would do it. They’ve got a Wurlitzer in the band and it makes me want one. I’m still a bit mad.

ballads.bandcamp.com

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MEGAN GORDON

Megan Gordon (@groupiemagazine) is the unashamedly keen Managing Editor of Groupie at Pages Digital. She once dressed as Dobby the Elf at a Harry Potter screening she helped organise at Sydney University. She’s also spent some time in Montreal were she was cold, drank bad coffee, spoke terrible French and worked at Nightlife.ca in her spare time.

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Pear Shape – ‘The Coca-Cola Kid’

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Pear Shape is one oddly sculpted sound situation you want to happen to you! The Sydney band crafts a decidedly exuberant brand of pop.

Their tune ‘The Coca-Cola Kid’ is as joyful as an advertisement for its namesake, only way less calorific and 100% more genuine. The band is also respectfully corporation free, producing their new EP (also named The Coca Cola Kid) independently.  Underneath the playful hooks, there’s a serious commitment to solid musicianship. These boys may play silly, but they’re dead set committed to their craft Their songs are crisp, structured and lyrically strong.

‘The Coca-Cola Kid’ is one of the best pop songs written by an Australian band this year; it’s a real shame that it isn’t on repeat across more stereos. But as the sun starts to shine stronger, I have a feeling people’s thirst for this tune will grow. Drink it in kids.

www.facebook.com/pearshapemusic

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DAN AZZOPARDI

Dan Azzopardi (@dan_azzo) is the director of Sydney-based artist management and publicity agency, Mammal Sounds. Two years ago, he co-found Acid Stag, a music blog specialising in local and international indie and electro. Every Saturday night, catch him on FBi Radio, laying down sweat-inducing disco.

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Elizabeth Rose – ‘Give In‘

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Admittedly, I’ve given a lap-dance to this song. The electro pop jam sports seductive vocals and a deep, grind-worthy bass-line, making it a total boudoir anthem. ‘Give In’ is the opening track to debut EP Crystallise from talented Sydney producer Elizabeth Rose. Due to its accessibility, it’ll likely be the 21-year-old’s next single release, and subsequently picked-up by mainstream media.
Do me a solid? Imagine your dream date straddling your lap whilst the following lyrics are being sung in an innocently breathy tone: “It’s too late to cool it all down; especially when the wheels are in motion, I can feel a reaction to the words coming out; and if you feel the need to survive, I got answers tonight, you just tell me how; why won’t you give in?”
If you reacted to the above with a stir in your loins, don’t feel ashamed – you’re not alone.

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Lower Plenty – LP ‘Hard Rubbish’

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Stream the cassette here – Hard Rubbish by Lower Plenty

Lower Plenty will release this long player through Special Award records on the 15 April 2012, it’s pretty good and doesn’t sound like the other bands that the members originate from. It’s got a nice eerie folk sound that you should probably just have a listen to. Follow the label for the official release here – http://www.specialawardrecords.com/

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