Tagged By melbourne

INTRODUCING: Pepa Knight

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Not being much of a swashbuckler myself, I have found myself only rarely drawn to Jinja Safari-like adventure music. But despite the fact that Pepa Knight has not strayed far from this artistic direction, his new single ‘Clams’ has a guileless quality about it that is (on third listen) increasingly appealing to me. Why is this? Who can say. It’s a sunny day and pop music is temporal. Regardless, there are some reasonably objective things that we can say about this tune.

Following from his recent (very successful) single ‘Rahh!’, it looks like we are getting a clear idea of the sonic space Pepa Knight’s solo project will inhabit: utilising myriad instruments (mandolins, tabla, flutes) and layered harmonies to create atmospheric, major key pop tunes. I also need to include here that, personally, I will always be in favour of a mandolin solo. And whether the line ‘God only knows where I’d be/Wilson said to me’ is a reference to Tom Hanks’ soccer ball in Castaway or Brian Wilson’s 1960’s Beach Boys classic ‘God Only Knows’ is irrelevant – both meanings fit comfortably with this tune, which is equally nautical and nostalgic.

One thing that makes Knight’s music ambitious is his constant insistence on creating positive vibes. To write a happy song that doesn’t sound twee or jar the listener is a much harder task than writing a muted Thom Yorke emotional divebomb. Whether or not he has achieved his goal is up to the listener, but to even attempt it is a brave move. Or maybe he’s just legitimately this happy, all of the time. That’s a scary thought, but if you like what you hear, stream away:

Pepa Knight will be launching ‘Clams’ on these dates:

Friday, 1 August – Goodgod Small Club, Sydney (RSVP on Facebook)

Thursday, 7 August – Northcote Social Club, Melbourne (RSVP on Facebook)

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INTRODUCING: The Backstabbers

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The Backstabbers are a brand new duo consisting of Rupert Edwards (Dick Diver) and Amy Hill (School of Radiant Living), with a hypnotic quality that emanates from their brand of morose, drum-less folk.

If you can dig a few tunes that tug at the heartstrings and are less than cheerful, you should checkout The Backstabbers’ new cassette, Shame. I hope I don’t undersell how much impact music like this can have – these songs have a stern beauty and a calmness that eases the mind.

Piano and trumpet fill the space solemnly, as if they were echoing through an empty house. The girl/boy harmony work is especially sweet, taking the edge of the ‘strine in Rupert’s accent, adding an ethereal quality and giving fullness to the sparse arrangements on tape.

Shame dwells on the nature of friendships and the slow meandering of daily life, communicating thoughts and feelings simplistically but successfully. The songs are fully formed, if a bit rough around the edges. Regardless of its lonesome and haunting nature, this is well thought out, touching music.

The Shame cassette is out now on Hideotic and can be purchased through Eternal Soundcheck.

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INTRODUCING: Alyx Dennison

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Alyx Dennison is probably best known as half of Sydney duo kyü, who released their first album in September 2010 and disbanded shortly thereafter. Dennison went on to work with psychedelic oddballs Richard in Your Mind and Jonathan Boulet, amongst others. She then spent some time overseas, where she began to pen some solo material – dropping a little teaser, ‘LAX’, mid-last year.

Dennison has never claimed to be a particularly skilled instrumentalist, and on ‘LAX’ a lightly picked guitar operates as a simple framing device for her dexterous voice, which swoops and trills almost like a bird.

A debut album, recorded by David Trumpmanis (Sarah Blasko, Bluebottle Kiss, Peabody), is due out in August through Popfrenzy. The first single is ‘I Don’t Love You Anymore’, another sparsely constructed track which, led by Dennison’s powerful voice and the pounding of what sounds like a single tom, is reminiscent of kyü’s neo-primitivism. The drumming functions like a barometer of Dennison’s mood, rising and falling as her intensity builds and wanes, the song ending in a crescendo as the two elements are looped and layered atop one another.

Keep your eyes peeled for album launch dates in August.

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LISTEN: Contrast – ‘Less Than Zero’

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Contrast are from Melbourne and describe themselves as ‘a coupla blokes who like skateboarding and local music’. Of course. But as bored as you might be with all the ‘regular guy’ modesty going around at the moment, these dudes are making music that’s interesting enough to reveal actual underlying ambition and talent.

Listening to their new EP, Less Than Zero, you’d believe they were the latest English buzz band: a bit shoegaze-y, kind of punk, with smart lyrics and delivery that effortlessly transitions from snide to sincere. There’s Primary Colours-era Horrors in the expansive intros and atmospherics, echoes of Major Leagues in the sweetness of the guitar lines and apathetic vocals, and of course all the usual ‘80s shoegaze references – but with enough of their own pop smarts that it’s hard to care much about who’s done it before.

You can pick up a copy of Contrast’s EP Less Than Zero here.

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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.

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PART 3: Remission & Other Songs – Interviews with Australian Musicians in Healthcare

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Anna Davidson

Illustration by Geoffrey A Thorsen

ANNA DAVIDSON

When you really think about it, there are so many distractions to forget how limited we really are. On a day-to-day basis, the incentives to participate in or manipulate the environment from which we find ourselves are often fairly daft. Anna Davidson‘s cartoonish drawl is mostly straight to the point and as a sufferer of chronic illness; her perspective as an artist is intertwined with her experiences as a consumer of health services.

“After slitting my wrists and taking lots of drugs my housemate dragged me to the car and drove me to the hospital, where they stitched and bandaged me up. I had to wait in a weird courtyard with some kid who had drunk an entire thing of goon and a whole packet of Panadol. Waiting there for an entire day and did not help my situation at all. Once I got into the hospital 12 hours later, my really crazy roommate was screaming all the time and it was really stressful. I would go and tell the nurses that I felt uncomfortable and they just didn’t give a shit.”

Considering some of the difficulties she has experienced within the health system, Anna’s her artistic output is not terrifying or depressing for the matter.

She recently relocated to Melbourne from Brisbane, where the rest of her primary outfit, Major Leagues still resides. On the day of the interview, Anna and Fergus Miller (Bored Nothing) had just completed their self-titled EP for their outfit Revenge Surgery. A Lennon/Yoko-esque project, the EP was self produced and written and recorded by the pair in six-days.

MS: Have you met any other creative people in hospital?

AD: Definitely. On the day that I was committed for the first time, I had been bandaged up and stuff. You have to go into a waiting room and I was there all day, just waiting for a temporary bed or whatever. I barely remember it, but that day this other guy, who overdosed on purpose, was being committed too and he ended up going to emergency to get his stomach pumped. We were in hospital for probably a month together. He was a really great artist. Mostly graphic stuff. He was extremely talented. There was another guy who was an indigenous painter and he gave me a little canvas.

They have art sessions, once a day usually, so you could do drawing and stuff. They have a guitar but you could only use it with someone watching you for an hour or something. The second hospital I was allowed to use a guitar, but yeah same kind of deal. I didn’t have to have supervision but I had to return it and sign a thing.

Do you think most people who work in mental health have a mental illness? Like they got into it because they were trying to solve their own issues?

I never thought about that. My first psychiatrist was just really clinical and cold and it was stressful. It made me more anxious having to talk to him. Lots of the nurses in the public health system seem not to care about the patients very much. Some of them weren’t very nice at all or understanding. But in the private hospital, the second psychiatrist I had was super lovely.

I guess it depends on the person, but I’ve had both ends, like this person actually cares about my mental health and this person shouldn’t be doing this job.

Do you ever think playing a live rock show is kind of absurd?

Yeah, of course. I feel like that about everything.

How do you deal with that?

I guess I get some kind of enjoyment out of it, which I don’t get from other things in life. Drawing and playing music is all I really enjoy doing and lots of the time I don’t really enjoy either of them.

[The illness] is part of my personality and my personality is obviously a part of what I create. So many of my experiences have just been being really depressed. I’ve thought I just want to stop music so many times, but I just get bored. I guess now its just habit as well. I think I feel pressure from my family to do something with my life and luckily they are very supportive with my music stuff. I question why I continue to do it. So, I guess this is me quitting music right now [laughs]. 

Who wrote the songs on Revenge Surgery? Did you write them collaboratively?

Fergus wrote two of the songs, but the other four I wrote the skeleton and then Fergus added guitar and wicked cool drums.

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How does doing something like Revenge Surgery differ from your other band Major Leagues?

It was definitely more fun. I thought about quitting Major Leagues because everything can be so stressful. We are looking at tour stuff at the moment and we’ve come to point where we are supposed to play with bands that will pull the most people, so we can sell the most tickets but I don’t really want to play with those kinds of bands. I just want to play with bands that I like, who I want to watch play three times on a tour. That side of things is difficult.

(Read the full interview below.)

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