Finds

I’ve been trying. Like, for real this time, and slowly but surely one might say I am truly starting to “get the hang of things.”

I’m talking about finding and listening to new music, of course.

Here are a few that I have stumbled across, mostly by accident, which makes them that much better. My writer friend Nathan Jolly (of whom I am insanely jealous) wrote an article “on the unexpected joy of random Spotify discoveries“, and he is most definitely right. He’s also just released his second novel, so fuck that productive ambitious guy, amiright?  definitely give him a read. He’s also very prolific within the pages of Australia’s better music press, so there is a decent chance you already have.

This all started with Guided By Voices, as I was on the hunt trying to unearth more of those very special & amazing (to me) tracks that leave me stunned. Thanks to the internet, rabbit holes are now easier than ever to dive into, so it was almost immediately hit by this gem from Robert Pollard’s side project, Boston Spaceships.

It kind of swaggers like cock rock but has the shuffling nonchalance of my favourite kinds of shambolic indie, so of course I’m going to like it.  Since Spotify is like an A.I. Forrest Gump, it keeps on playing things in the same (kinda) vein, which is how I stumbled on this:

First up…how the hell had I never heard Archers Of Loaf? I mean, I heard the name years ago back in the states, but I think I must have just brushed them off because the moniker reminded me of a bastard child of Meatloaf and Captain Beefheart. Just the name, mind you, I mean….fuck it: I missed this one bad. Wait….THEY HAVE BOWLING IN THEIR VIDEO?!?!?

I could stop now and say, “that’s it I’m done”, then storm off and do something useful like take up smoking, but I feel compelled to bring this to your attention:

Yeah. That’s my kind of jam right there.

Stumbling onwards, I came across Superdrag for the first time

I have no idea where to place this in time. Is this an also-ran from the post-Nirvana label feeding frenzy? I had no idea what they looked like or how they dressed, so this video gave also gave me the idea that they were a byproduct of the pop-punk wave and missed it by a country mile. I dunno, but he goes “Yeeaaahhhh” in a way that doesn’t suck, so I kinda like it.

Also: another video from a band of white slackers featuring white folks dancing badly. This is a thing and has been for some time, but no one knows why.

Here is my personal fav from this little excursion, and another regrettable late first listen:

Everyone who knew about this song and didn’t tell me is guilty of some kind of fireable offense, because this is too good and so effortlessly cool that I am all kinds of jealous and awestruck. Further reading on the band revealed that Robyn Hitchcock was a founding member, so “What the hell music universe?!??!”

I don’t know if the rest of their stuff is any good, but it doesn’t matter: this one song is good enough for a career in my eyes.

I listened to the new Arctic Monkeys LP yesterday, called [insert overly long & pretentious LP title here], and it rather sucked. In reading some other reviews about it, mostly regurgitated and forced positive PR spin by folks who should know better, I was reminded that Liz Phair’s Exile In Guyville was recently given a deluxe re-issue.

Now, I’ll be honest: I have only heard one Liz Phair song in my entire life, and that was from a mixtape that a former partner gave me many many moons ago. So, let me apologize now for missing out on this. Beyond the Guyville LP, I am listening to the expansive Girly-Sounds demo cassettes that would form the basis for the “proper” album as well as subsequent releases. My music library is definitely a sexist cesspool of overwrought male geniuses basking in the pitiful glory of their abundant verbiage, so I am doing my best to make amends.

I will always have a thing for just an acoustic guitar & voice recorded on a 4 track, and this is great not only as a curious artifact of pop music history, but because the songs are genuinely…wait for it….good.

Verdict: old Liz Phair demos > Arctic Monkeys latest

This came to our attention via a press release last week. I remember playing a few shows with these lads many years ago, and they have just announced that they are leaving Oz and resettling in LA at the request of their new manager/filmmaker/friend, which is cool but kinda sad coz all the bands we used to know are either broken up or kinda gone from the scene in one way or another. This came with the helpful title of , “If you like The Strokes then listen to this…”, which is an honest and concise way of putting it. A lovely melody here, and top notch production, if that’s your thing. Good luck gentlemen, we hope LA treats you well.

We’ll sign off with a glorious indulgence in nepotism. If you’ve been around or known Royal Chant prior to 2015 then you would have known our lovely James Carthew on guitar, and while he is on perpetual shore leave building robots of the future in San Fransisco he is still very much a part of Royal Chant.

He is also very much doing his own things, including his band Drunk On A Bike. That was “Hugs” off their second EP, helpfully titled Oakland One, because their first EP was titled Oakland Zero, and they have just released their third EP Oakland Eleventeen Two.

It has been a real first-world struggle to get out of my musical rut and get my ears around some new music, but it’s a new habit I am trying to form and I’ll keep plodding along as always. Send me your recommendations if you’re so inclined, because I have started to take these personal suggestions much more seriously these days instead of brushing them off and then annoyingly finally listening to it 6 months later and loving just like you said I would.

Just ask James if you don’t believe me xoxo

New Music T̶u̶e̶s̶d̶a̶y̶ Wednesday

“New Music Monday” sounded waaaaay better, but that didn’t happen, (nor the night after), so this is the best effort from the B squad coming at you. Since it’s not always about me me me I thought I’d share a few tunes from the unheralded underground that exists outside of Australia’s predictable pay-to-play hype-machine.

First up…

“Mantras For A Failed Academic”
–Sad Hill (Perth, AU)

This is a new song from a (forthcoming) new album from a new band called Sad Hill. They’re coming in hot with a stellar pedigree, with at least one member (and possibly/probably two but can’t confirm coz they’re so new that info is hard to track down and it’s raining in Port Mac at the moment so the internet is playing up weird), being drawn from the ashes of former WA indie hard rockers Emperors, which means that their entry into the Australian music scene is basically a retread of Lester Burnham applying for a job as a cashier at Mr. Smiley’s. Trust me: they definitely have fast food experience.

They were recently named Band Of The Day (#146, to be exact), over at UK blog Overblown, to which we immediately thought “Oh, good for them!” [Also: “Hey, we’re jealous but gonna a smile through the pain & envy, make it a double thanks.”] Any press is good press, for realz, but they also described the single as “Some very lo-fi and chuggy punk that seems to be inexplicably mixed with Iron Maiden“, to which we internally replied…wait, what? Is this what we’re calling lo-fi these days? Damn. I don’t even want to know what counts as hi-fi then. They also threw us another curve-ball by listing the band members listed as

Jonathan, Anton, Simon & Elias. Charlie Lopez – Drums, 2011-2014

…even though there are only three people in the band pic and I know that my mate’s name is Greg (unless they are operating an entirely different Andy Kaufman-level and I’ve been left out of the joke). But, that’s the sort of new-band hijinx that warms the heart, really. Check it if you like things on the slightly heavier side but still like to use a thesaurus now and again. “Intelligent rock” is probably loaded with negative connotations, but it shouldn’t be.

We’d like to now direct your gaze to our favourite haunt of Sydney, and apologize now for being a few weeks late getting the word out about the latest from Whispering Jackie. This is “Fast Life”, and I knew this song fairly well before I ever heard the recording after doing quite a few shows with them last year. [Full disclosure: yeah, we did quite a few shows with them last year.]

This is a very fast & catchy number, with a chorus in 6/4 that keeps you slightly off balance but still in step, plus lyrics that somehow manage the impossible feat of directly quoting Neil Young yet leaving the listener feeling better, not worse because of it.

Whispering Jackie have become not only one of our most beloved bands to tour with, gossip over drinks with, and generally be part of the scene with, but they are definitely mates and I don’t use that term lightly (coz I’m not actually Australian and am probably using it wrong anyways.) Everything this band touches turns into furious garage-pop gold, and I am envious in so many ways.  Top stuff.

I’ve been meaning to write about Fingermae since our last show together in 2017 at Vic On The Park (ed: it was last May. Damn, I am slow]. I saw a few days ago that they had a new song out called “Not Racist But”, which immediately made me seethe with envy over the title alone.

WordPress is being a dick about embedding certain music players coz of blah blah blah I don’t know I’m old and tired and have been trying to finish this post for three days, so instead of embedding a proper music player from Fingermae’s Triple J Unearthed page I had to scrounge up this YouTube clip.

You get the idea.

I can’t say enough about Fingermae’s frontwoman Sally, as she is staple of the Newtown music scene, and thanks to her role as booker and soundie at the Town Hall Hotel in Newtown she has probably single-handedly done more to keep my own band going than anyone, including myself. Beyond that, Fingermae have hit upon that one style of music that no one ever does and no one ever even thinks to do: anti-folk.

Their self-styled description alone ticks all of the boxes for me:

“We call it Jazz Punk; there’s lots of chords with unreasonably long names played fast, heaps of sarcasm, adult themes and beats that will compel motion.”

This was literally me for so, so long, and now I want to go back. I remember having so much to say, and it all needing to come out, and watching & listening to Fingermae just makes me straight up…happy. Stupidly, ridiculously happy.

There’s a surfing adage that “the best surfer in the world is the person having the most fun”, and I always think of that when I see Fingermae’s drummer Lauren on stage. Her irrepressible joy behind the kit makes me jealous. I ask myself, “have I ever had that much fun? HAVE I?!?!?”

I honestly don’t know.

We’ll say good night and leave you with a new clip from our mates Wasters, who have joined forces with our fav US director Matt Clements to bring you their new clip for “Keep Me Waiting”.

Again, I cannot say enough good things about this band and their music. They have been great tour mates & given me much food for thought over the last 4-5(?!?!) years we have been kicking around together, and this is another gem in their ever-expanding quiver of impeccable pop-punk hits. Check it.

That’s all from the front lines for now. Blast these loud and show them some love if you feel so inclined. As easy as it can be to get so jaded about music and whatever scene you’re in, trust me: your voice always matters–make yourself heard.

Call/Shout/Complain/Preach/Annoy/Demand Better

xoxo

Coming soon: Support Our Troops, a new series of live music reviews

Music Journalism is in a weird place these days.

For starters, many would be forgiven for immediately responding with, “Music Journalism? Why hello Old Boy, I thought you were dead”, or, more likely: “Music what?!?”

It’s OK. It’s been a rough 10-20 years (by some estimations), but feel free to place the “death of music journalism” tombstone wherever you like in your own personal or global timeline. There’s probably a dearth of great music journalism out there now [editor’s note: yes, there is heaps of good music journalism out there], but I can’t be bothered to google it right now  because there’s nothing I particularly want to read about at the moment. Sometimes all you want to do is listen to the music, other times you want to know everything else about it.

Although there are a myriad of reasons that have collided to produce the modern state of the music industry (the internet, Pokemon Go!, Nickleback, etc etc), what no one really talks about is that there’s no money in the game these days.  In it’s glory days (eh…), at the top of it all sat the record labels, selling their overpriced wares to a public largely held  hostage. Labels essentially functioned like banks who specialized in making high-interest speculative loans in the music industry, with “artists” functioning like tech stocks. So many to choose from, all with so much potential, yet most ultimately doomed to failure and perhaps even suffer the further ignominy of having their ideas co-opted by inferior products.

So…labels would place as many bets as they could, and hopefully a few would pay off big time. These big labels and their rare big winners wound up essentially funding the entire industry, because what no one tells you when you’ve got rock & roll dreams is that boring things like advertising dollars and bottom lines actually matter. You can run a cool ‘zine for a few months, maybe even years, on nothing more than passion and raiding your parents inkjet supplies, but eventually that shit gets old.  Not only that, many of your favourite underground bands who managed to sign on major labels were able to add some coveted artistic cred to the label roster and allowed to run at a loss, but only because theyhad a Britney Spears to make sure the cheques cleared. I would hate Fleetwood Mac with a passion if I wasn’t so apathetic, but even I have to tip my hat to the number of careers their platinum-selling albums helped fuel.

As far as my own experience, I started noticing the change a few years ago, when publications that we would normally be grateful to get a gig mention or album blurb from starting calling us to see if we wanted to buy advertising space. Us? Um….we’re broke. At no point in our lives have we had spare dollars to throw around for that sort of thing, and trust us when we say that it is not cheap. They’re pitching these packages to us and surely they must know that there’s not a chance in hell we can say yes to anything, yet here we are.

What happened?

The money dried up.

With advertising revenues way down, it wound up having a trickle down effect on the music and music journalism. For better or worse, much of what you read is a form of “pay-to-play”, meaning that if you want coverage you’re gonna have to pay for it. Now, we are not opposed to this necessarily, but we did notice that live reviews and album reviews were focusing more and more on those acts that really don’t need it. At all. Why were they getting it? Because just like the ever-increasing income gap, there were fewer and fewer acts that could actually afford to grease the wheels, either through purchasing advertising space or else through direct purchase of coverage.

And that right there is what we simply cannot abide. No one needs to read a live review of a Jimmy Barnes show. Everyone knows what they’re getting with at another show with Barnsey, so can we please donate some verbiage to the acts who actually need it? Honest, unscripted press devoted to the unknowns of Australia’s live music scene has taken a hit in recent years, so we’re going to try and do our part to pick up the slack.

So that’s where this new series/endeavor comes in. “Support Our Troops” (an idea I stole from Atlanta’s Stomp & Stammer), will be my own live reviews of bands we tour with, because let’s face it: if I’m not actually playing I’m not likely to be there. I actually started writing a few of these in the middle of last year, but of course I gave up because that’s what I learned from my suburban-white-bread upbringing. When the going gets tough, fuck it.

So….if all goes as planned, I should have my first installment up tomorrow, covering a show which, truth be told, doesn’t need any more coverage.  But, since I’m going to at least try and follow a few basic ground rules, I’ll give it a go. I may also get it together enough to dust off some of my few false starts from last year, so don’t be surprised if you wind up reading a live review for a gig that happened 6-12 months ago.

That’s all from here, more verbs to come soon enough xoxo

 

Sigh

This is a sad little blog these days. I came here to do a little bit of tidying up and it was the equivalent of coming home late to dinner to find out that it is your anniversary and dinner is cold. 7 years. That’s how long this pile of verbiage has been around, at least according to the stats or whatever guilt meter wordpress uses to keep track of things.

But that’s gonna change.

I’m changing.

I swear.