Growing in number

Remember when I said "fuck is the new wolf"?

Well, check out the new album by Yo La Tengo's "side project":

Before you say anything, let me point out that these guys are no trend-hoppers. Apparently the CF's have been around for 20 odd years and their extensive catalogue includes such climaxes as "Fuckin' Gary Sandy" and "More Than A Fucking". Fuck me! So if anything you can put them among the many other old bands that have reunited upon discovering that "the kids" have adopted their schtick.

This news comes hot on the heels of the announcement that Toronto's Holy Fuck will be fucking their way to Brisbane and playing the Zoo on December 13th, supported by fucking good local bands Taste of Teeth and Toy Balloon. And Fuck Buttons will be pressing the "f" key at the Australian ATP in January.

Something is definitely happening here. It's a genuine fucking movement. Keep your eyes peeled and send any information (in the words of People magazine: "Send us your fuck stories") to Fuck Watch c/o Is By Bus.

Howe Gelb, The Troubadour 28/10/08

A couple of weeks ago I read an interview with Howe Gelb. I'd heard of his band Giant Sand but that's all; it was just that I'd already read everything else in the magazine. The interview turned out to be amusing and thought-provoking and Gelb turned out to be witty and charming. A little bit of wit and charm goes a long way in the doltish world of rock, the vapid world of pop and especially the (mostly) unattractive, introspective world of alt-country.

Not long after that I opened up the street press and what did I see? My new friend Howe is coming to say howdy! A few downloads from the new Giant Sand album proVISIONS later I could confirm that Gelb's interview persona was not a false advertisement.

The wit is in the words - "Raggin'/they talk like a filibuster/Their words surround me/like I was Custer"; "Every girl is like a pearl/Heart strung along/then left stranded" - and the charm is in the tunes. Giant Sand's music is like its home-state Arizona, a little to the left of Tex-Mex and a little cooler. To mix metaphors but stay regional, it fizzes and soothes like a lime-necked Corona on a hot day: bitter, citric and sweet.

At the Troubadour last Tuesday we only got the frontman, his guitar and an electric piano. Gelb lived up to his rep as a laconic, Tucsonic gentleman but also revealed a penchant for moronic sonics. That is, right after hypnotising the audience with a whispered verse, in the part where Smog might do a li'l skip or Bonnie Billy might snap at his own ear, Howe would step on a guitar pedal and treat us (or himself) to the sort of wacky effects I used to giggle at when I was 13. The best one sounded like a high-pitched sitar with reverb. Obviously used to an acoustic piano, our man also became entranced by the "scat" effects on the keyboard and all up spent a good five minutes hunched over and smiling faintly at the doos and daas at his fingertips. I loved all of this and only wish some of the more po-faced troubadours of the world would take a leaf.

Blooming in the first few songs from an unassuming dude in a denim jacket and a trucker's cap to an assured showman, Gelb took the time for a chat between most songs. After removing his hat to say "thank you" (to the audible delight of a couple of the ladies in the room), he would either tell the next number's story or just open up to the floor.

Gelb: "Whaddy'all wanna hear, a song about love or a song about politics?"
Man with Queensland accent: "Love! Love! My girl left me!"
Gelb: "Who's Magill? Alright, this one's about love and politics. Well, it's kind of a love song that involves the ramifications of... well, you'll see".

Thus began a song about a returned, wounded soldier:

Looking in your eyes I surrender
Such surrender is rendered justified
You stand with boot upon my fender
Reflected in my glass eye.

Later we had a song about "the smallest possible... increment of love" (which turned out to be about chromosomes) and, for an encore, a return of the wacky guitar effects for a bizarre medley of "Ring of Fire/Hey Jude". Somehow even that was witty and charming.

Bruises on the fruit: weather changes moods

What do you feel like listening to right now? That's a relatively easy question, despite how often we find ourselves gazing endlessly at a shelf or wearing out our thumb trying to find something just right.

Take a step back and a more interesting question presents itself: why do you feel like listening to that right now?

Obviously there's a lot at play: what did your parents play for you as a child; what do your friends like (although I've made friends through music as much I have come to like music through friends); what sort of a day are you having; are you tired or buzzing? Even days of the week seem relevant. Friday for me is always the Stooges or somesuch; yesterday I heartily enjoyed Pussy Galore's Dial "M" For Motherfucker as I gulped down a morning coffee.

But what I've been thinking about lately is the weather. Whichever side you choose or are destined to take in the free will vs determinism debate, there's no denying two things: we're slaves to our bodies and our bodies are slaves to the world. All your thoughts, tastes, desires and moods ping electrically around your brain, which is carried around and kept alive by your person. And your person lives in the world where it sweats, gets sunburnt and shivers.

It's around this time of year that I always notice it most. It's as if we're brought closer to the world as our flesh warms up and our blood flows back to our extremities. At the very start of Spring, when it first becomes possible to enjoy a mandarin on the verandah in shorts, I put on Pavement. "So drunk in the August sun" indeed, although it's mostly earlier stuff of theirs that fits the bill. Lately I'm enjoying psychedelic music (both guitar-based and electronic) and I can't help wondering if the animated chaos of green grass, fluttering insects, swooping birds, rotting fruit and horny people all around me has something to do with it, as well as the equivalence of bathing oneself in sound with enjoying the first couple of months of heat before it becomes unbearable.
Most strongly, in Summer when I'm swimming through Brisbane's 80% humidity in 40 degree heat under black clouds with the smell of rain about to fall in fat drops, I understand the vast yet claustrophobic reverb of The Go-Betweens' Before Hollywood, the deep-voiced melodrama of The Triffids' In the Pines and the stickiness of Talking Heads' Remain In Light. On a sunny day I put on The Triffids' Born Sandy Devotional and think of blinding sand. From albums such as these and the sweaty, tanned arms in music videos an alien or eighteen-year-old might gather that the '80s must have been a hot and humid decade.

Gold Coast Summers were different. I still put my longstanding devotion to Sonic Youth and anyone that sounds like them down to my adolescence swimming in a creek surrounded by dry bush and screaming insects, wondering what sort of music the trees would make if they could.

The music of a place must have something to do with its weather. Think of Ibiza and Seattle. At the opposite end of the humidity scale to Brisbane I find that when my skin's drying out and the insides of my nostrils are turning black in Sydney I get into the harsh scrapings of, say, Kiosk and Bird Blobs. Sometimes the weather seems to change music. When I rode a bus through fields of ice last year The Field's droning repetition was calming and crystalline. Listening to The Field now in a hot wooden house is more like surrendering to the lethargy and insanity of heatstroke.

I can't remember what the other half of the year sounds like, it seems so far away.

I'd be interested to hear anyone else's seasonal favourites.

The Long Blondes: Can't you see new idols?

The Long Blondes have had their career cut short and, not surprisingly, I am sad. Partly because I had such high hopes for them but mainly because I had that special feeling that, despite their faults, they were "my thing".

I first saw them in Tangents and a Plan B gig review and thought, "This sounds like my thing". I first heard them on an instore listening station a year later and thought, "This sounds like Arctic Monkeys". Then one hot afternoon I heard "Weekend Without Makeup" on the radio in my bedroom. Perhaps I'd dropped my unfair expectations by then but it sounded like exactly what I'd hoped for; I put the album on my Christmas list and never looked back. For something so brash it was a hell of a grower.

In a Plan B cover story, Everett True wrote that a friend of his whispered to him that the Long Blondes looked like they used to be in ska bands - and he didn't mean they played Desmond Dekker covers. True was kinder, saying that if he was honest (hmm) they reminded him of his old "Pastels crew". The Long Blondes did have a bit of the over-enthusiastic late convert about them - you know, like the annoying "I'm indie!" singer from Los Campesinos! or your friend who at age 15 suddenly gave up sport and got piercings, running around dividing everyone up into "us" and "them" and thinking they were the first person ever to namedrop various second-tier punk bands and French philosophers. That is, the Long Blondes were try-hards despite being old enough to know better. And I loved them for it. My Long Blondes badge is one of my most proudly displayed.

Like most bands these days they claimed, as one anonymous Wikipedia contributor put it eloquently, somewhat more eclectic influences than their sound suggests. They knew what buttons to push in 2003:

"Our shared influences include The Mael Brothers, The Marx Brothers and The Bewlay Brothers. We do not listen to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors or Bob Dylan. We chose an instrument each and learnt to play it. Approximately three months after we formed, we played a victorious 25 minute
set at Leeds Hi-Fi club. We inherit the aesthetics of early Roxy Music.* We have a lot of influences, sometimes we sound a bit like them, sometimes we sound a lot like them. Sometimes we sound nothing like them at all."

They sounded like the mid-point between the Au Pairs and Blondie, but only to the extent that the Strokes sounded like Television and Interpol sounded like Joy Division. The guitars and drums were a bit like Arctic Monkeys.

Their studied glamour was chintzy. Some of the words (mainly, intriguingly, written by a man who was in a relationship with a woman in the band for another woman in the band to sing to men about women and sometimes to women about men) were squeezed awkwardly into lyric patterns and hung on chord progressions that resembled a modernist hat-rack you can't fit in your car to take home. But this was because, like any band worth watching, The LBs were in love with ideas. In any event, honesty always shines through and it did in rousing shout-along choruses and even more so in quiet moments like, "Never ever ever try to tell me it's a pleasure being alone/Because all I have around me are the records and the books that I own", and "That's what happens when you listen to Saint Scott Walker/On headphones/On the bus."

The "adventurous" second album was more brash if not plain grating in places (mainly due to harsh modern pop production), even more ideas-heavy and a bit slower to grow. If anything it only increased anticipation but in the meantime it added detail to their enticing world of boredom, affairs and belief in the redemptive power of glamour and had a couple of bangers to boot. "Guilt" has been playing in my head since I read the sad news.

I imagine an alternate reality in which The Long Blondes, having gone on to great fame, appear as talking heads on a documentary in 20 years' time. In my mind several of the band members are like Viv Albertine from the Slits: charmingly attractive and well-spoken but disappointingly ordinary, talking about a mere phase of their life. Guitarist and principal songwriter Dorian (who in this parallel universe never had the tragic stroke that the band blames for their break-up) is like the ever-wistful Glen Matlock, the man who had the brain and the dream but not the face or the voice; who "got it" more than anyone else but attracted suspicion more than adoration because he seemed a little too smart. He's much cooler than Glen though. Singer and looker Kate Jackson has her own interview and sits on the edge of the couch fiddling. She's an out-of-touch, chain-smoking, self-obsessed diva with destroyed hair and the corners of her lips curling down like Siouxsie Sioux - in other words, she's wonderful.

Kate was the star for better and for worse. For better because she deserved it. She was a fan first and foremost who painted portraits of '60s British movie stars, memorised Jarvis lyrics and carefully cultivated a darts-watching, vintage skirt and scarf-wearing persona. For better beacuse she relished her meagre fame and wore it well ("How does it feel to be a style icon?," the former vintage clothes store clerk said to Plan B. "Fantastic. Fan-bloody-tastic! Fan-bloody-bloody-tastic!"). For worse because it took something away. On stage at the Zoo in Brisbane, during the first song while the too-well-lit room was still cold and the small audience's feet were firmly planted, she danced and pouted towards a point 10 degrees above our heads with such professionalism I longed for her to trip on a cord and burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of it all like Karen O. Alas, that didn't happen but nor did we take our eyes off her.

The Long Blondes got somewhere by taking themselves too seriously: by authoring arch melodramas, acting like stars and dressing glam in Sheffield pubs. Perhaps what held them back - like most bands on their second album (or their first album if they've come to prominence through a series of feted, unexpected singles) - was that they took themselves too seriously. Your 15-year-old friend with the op-shop makeover was exciting at first, but after a while you wished she would let her guard down and have some fun without checking whether the NME approved. The Long Blondes obviously had to get some things out of their system, like "This is who I am" and "This is what I've read". I believed that the imminent release of "Singles", a compilation of their early, legendary you-know-whats (a great idea and long awaited by this foreign press reading ebayophobe) would bring that era full circle and give them the freedom to fulfil the potential I saw. I'm not sure what I hoped for, but maybe having seen that they had the influences and the ideas, and having heard them chance upon the odd beauty, I hoped they'd pull it all together and make something universal. Then again, it's hard to imagine anything better than "Weekend Without Makeup", "Giddy Stratospheres" etc.

*More bands should inherit the aesthetics of early Roxy Music.

TB Treats: In loving memory of Toy Balloon Mark I

Nimai, guitarist in Toy Balloon, looked at the blackboard outside Ric's. "Oh, he's called it that?," he said. "He's been wanting to use that one for a while. I wanted to call it Boybeard." It was early 2007.

So I gathered that the name that fits the band's aural and visual asesthetic so well was chosen with little fanfare by the only other member, Cooper, who plays the Groovebox. The Groovebox! Silver thing the size of a laptop made by Roland, incorporating a 303, a 606 and a 909, or maybe the one after. Drum machine, synth and sequencer. The Groovebox took the debate out of song titles, giving us such hits as "74", "14", "36" and everyone's favourite, "18" (not an Alice Cooper cover).

They played instrumental music. You're probably thinking "soundtracks". Well, in that case the reference points are Beverly Hills Cop II for the tom rolls and synth bass and... jeez... Made In USA for the thrashy, climactic guitar. But then, the electronic scapes are Warped enough that Morvern Callar is just as apposite and the guitar benefits from a little bit of Top Gun afterburn (even if it's just Nimai's lemon-suck face in the high parts). Speaking of soundtracks, it's pretty accurate to say that their warm, retrofuturistic pop-pulse presaged M83's vaunted nu-gaze reinterpretation of John Hughes powerballad teendom in some ways (a good year before Saturdays=Youth).

Instead of hopping the dance w/guitars bandwagon, these guys drew from a solid education in '90s Australian post-rock, classic shoegaze and the millennial IDM stuff everyone listened to for about two years when rock was "dead" and extrapolated from there.

Gradually the tracks got names and the band got fans to learn them. "Dance With Yr Girlfriend", but noone got the hint. They practiced and performed at the Hangar and formed allegiances with other new electronic-leaning bands - aheadphonehome, Re:enactment, Mr Maps. Still noone really danced but there was always plenty of nodding and shuffling. Still no cover of "Axel F".

A couple of weeks ago at the Tongue and Groove I saw Toy Balloon for the first time in a few months. They had pushed their sound further in each direction - Cooper to ever more synthetic spaces and Nimai towards chainsawing abrasion - and were all the more lovable for it. Good peeps and not shy of a bit of humble mic chat, they let it be known it was their last gig before a hiatus which would not end until they had a singer. Now, they had been saying that sort of thing for about a year but this time everyone seemed to sense it was for real and bayed for an encore and, tellingly, the band obliged. (I can't recall the name of the new song, which I think involved the sea, but it was very good and highly danceable, although noone really danced).

According to Toy Balloon's Myspace they've been recording an album with Phil of aheadphonehome/The Hangar. This is something to get excited about. Again there's mention of adding vocals, which is hard to imagine, but then My Bloody Valentine found room for them in their dense bliss-out.

Toy Balloon played what may actually have been their last gig in their current incarnation last weekend at Tabu, to a tiny audience, and people danced.

Band names

Fuck is the new Wolf.

Nice Fade #4: Boyz n the hood; Satan not guilty

The dancing season is now well under way and, like Verdi, we have celebrated in four movements. Sleeveful of Slight's latest "movement" is a big one. Those watching will have noticed it's been percolating for two weeks. Thus we lay rest to our celebration of the indie disco DJ with an in-depth look at an enigma (who looks vaguely like the other dude from Dollar Bar?) and the devil himself. Readers: we hope this series has given you a new appreciation for the arcane craft of making people dance. DJs: cheers. Ric's: how about a slot?

Hoodie Guy

Who is this guy? Goatee, greasy hair, worn out grey sweater. I’ve seen him countless times, hunched over the decks downstairs, smiling wryly and nodding his head while some fantastic chart pop sets glittering bodies to move. The music is always good, the floor is heaving more often not but still, I know nothing about him. It’s not just that I haven’t done my research. There is something very enigmatic about this DJ. He is what Winston Churchill might have called a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a hoodie.

If the records were ever taken and the charts ever tabled, I believe that Hoodie Guy would be shown to be the most consistent Ric’s DJ of the post-Heinz era. He only plays good songs. As he makes his journey from Madonna to indie rock each track on the way seems to be the perfect pick to engage the dancefloor as a whole. This isn’t rank populism. It’s that precious intuition that allows great DJs to guide the night using their taste without scuttling the dance floor through some misjudged personal indulgence. Each song has to be known to enough people to keep the floor full while being unexpected enough to be exciting. Our hoodied mysterio negotiates this course masterfully. He can make you miss your last train – the mark of any great DJ. Yet for all this, I feel that he is the DJ that I know the least. I caught him playing The Rolling Stones’ ‘Hey You Get Off My Cloud’ very early one Saturday night. It sounded brilliant but other than that, I couldn’t tell you where his personal tastes lie. If he didn’t think that his favourite song was a surefire floor filler, I suspect that he wouldn’t play it.

There's almost a wryness in the way he keeps his personality in the shadows. One Saturday night I caught him DJing downstairs while Trigger was on upstairs. Being in frequent need of fresh air, I was swapping between the two dance floors via the back stairs and as I did, I observed that Hoodie Guy was absolutely killing it. Patrons were drawn to him like iron filings to a magnet. Each time I arrived upstairs it was a little lonelier while downstairs grew more crowded and euphoric. By the time of lockout, upstairs was all but abandoned while downstairs was an ebullient swarm of dancing humanity. Just as the night peaked Hoodie Guy dropped ‘Don't Look Back in Anger’ – Dave from Trigger’s signature song. Maybe it was pure coincidence but it seemed a terrifically dry piece of humour. As if to say, “I can steal your patrons and do what you do too.” Good humour, of course.

Still, I can’t help but feel a little disappointed by Hoodie Guy. Though the music is close to impeccable, I feel that he’s holding something in reserve and we’re poorer for it. He’s a cool guy and if he gave his own tastes a freer rein, the dancefloor might be a bit emptier and people might make a few more trips to the bar but I think at the end of the night, those who were still around would go home having experienced something special.

All this speculation may be a moot point. I have it from a good source that Hoodie Guy is moving to Melbourne in the next few months. That’s a loss for us but we wish him luck all the same. Godspeed Hoodie Guy, we hardly knew you.

Harvey Satan’s Fightclub

I hate Guilty Pleasures[1]. In fact, to borrow a line from a far greater writer, I don’t believe in the death penalty but if the inventor of Guilty Pleasures was being shot tomorrow, I would turn up to watch. Irony has its place in modern culture but I don’t think that the concept Guilty Pleasures has anything to do with irony. It’s about style over substance. Songs are either good or they’re not. It’s often difficult to tell at first. One tends to notice style and feel the visceral impact of a song first and then shape this into an opinion later. When something is stylistically different from the traditional lay of one’s tastes, it’s tempting to recoil in horror from the impact that it makes but one shouldn’t. These moments of doubt are the budding edges of one’s character. If one can dwell in them open-mindedly, it can lead to revelations, the growth of the self. You might just end up deciding the song is shit but still, it’s something worth doing. To deny these moments and simply dismiss these songs as guilty pleasures is to neuter the parts of your personality worth sticking around for. This is how people deteriorate. You give into Guilty Pleasures. Pretty soon you stop putting in the effort required to get the difficult stuff and just buy records that sound like things you liked when you were still cool. You’ll end up as some sad fuck granting your husband “his own time” on Saturdays, claiming him for things you want to do on Sundays and compulsively reading bad vampire novels.

One of the things I like best about the Ric’s DJs is the way they play R&B, chart pop and indie music alongside one another. It celebrates how good music is simply good music and by trusting that everyone is smart enough to realize this, it creates a winning atmosphere. It wasn’t always this way. Legend has it that back in 2004, the first time that DJ Heinz played Britney Spears ‘Toxic,’ half of the dancefloor sat on the ground in protest. Thankfully, the sitters have either lightened up or fucked off to some darkened alley where they’re still sitting cross-legged awaiting the revolution. What is clear is that when Harvey Satan is presiding over his Fightclub of a Friday night, this attitude is happily absent.

Harvey Satan’s personal tastes seemed to be skewed towards scuzz rock. If it’s slightly dark, slightly distorted and slightly danceable, chances are he’ll play it. But he mixes it deftly with the more danceable hip-hop, the more innovative R&B, liberal doses of indie classics, the odd well-placed Prince song and the songs which will be cluttering the year-end top 10s. His Satanic majesty is even liable to play the odd request. Through this he creates vast tapestries of songs whose one common thread is that they’re terrifically enjoyable. No other Ric’s DJ who is currently spinning has quite as much craft as Harvey. His sets seem to be structured as complete pieces and more often than not, he does it well. When he does, it doesn’t matter if you don’t know or like a particular song. You’re likely to be dragged along by the momentum he’s built – a good thing. I haven’t figured out how he does it. Playing a lot of Santogold seems to be a characteristic of late (another good thing). Further, he exploits the one indispensable record of Ric’s DJing - The Rapture’s ‘Pieces of the People We Love’ – better than any of his counterparts. The Rapture should really be taking a cut from the Ric’s DJs. One hears them about four times a night but it always sets the floor alight and I can’t say that I’ve grown sick of them. But where other DJs seem to toss “Whoo! Alright Yeah...Uh Huh” out there as a get out of jail free card or more slops for the braying idiots, the Beast with the Beats uses the Rapture as the axis along which the rest of his night runs – the impossibly danceable mix of pop shine and punk noise that links ‘Date With The Night’ and ‘Milkshake’. It ties his diverse nights together and highlights what a special band the Rapture are. This is what DJs can do.

‘Red Right Hand’ is Harvey’s recessional hymn and I’ve been amazed to look about the dancefloor when it gets played at the end of the good set. It’s not exactly a dance number so instead, people stand exactly where they are and talk to one another. There are smiles, there is lots of nodding and laughing and lots of gesticulation that suggests outpourings of feeling, if not meaning. Harvey Satan is not the new Heinz, he’s his own man. But as long as Harvey is on the decks, the legacy of that visionary DJ who had the audacity and belief to play ‘Toxic’ alongside ‘Take Me Out’ will be in safe hands.

[1] Is everyone familiar with the concept of Guilty Pleasures? They are club nights which apparently “took the world by storm” a couple of years ago at which the DJ plays a whole heap of songs from the past which you’ve always had a secret, embarrassing affection for. At Guilty Pleasures nights you can let your hair down and indulge these feelings without shame. It sounds a bit tacky but everyone has so much fun. I just went along with some people from work but etc. etc.

Nice Fade #3 - You'll be the one to always complain

Remember when Yves Klein Blue gave Ric's what they obviously thought was a folksy, backhanded compliment (although it was phrased a little carelessly) and thus provoked a personalised reproach from the venue itself in the form of a public press release? That sort of thing might have been one of the reasons Sleeveful of Slight chose like me to write under a pseudonym. But as SOS's previous columns have made abundantly clear, his love and hope for this city's nightlife are great and with that investment comes great concern (check the word count). I give you Nice Fade part 3: "the critical instalment". All opinions are those of the author yada yada but I've got his back in a fight.

Hutch, Kleenkutt and Butterz – the old school hip-hop team of B B Bounce

I don’t like hip-hop but a lot of people do. Still, you wouldn’t know it by looking at the barren upstairs dancefloor every second Friday when B B Bounce is on. I don’t know where the fault lies and I’m not saying that the dream is dead but something is definitely wrong.

DJs Tablesalt and Bluebeard

While everyone else we’ve looked at so far dates from the Heinz era, either as a DJ or a punter with a fully formed persona, DJs Tablesalt and Bluebeard represent a new generation of disc spinners. This pair isn’t a DJ team but they share the same temperament and their faults as DJs. One night I turned up at Ric’s to find Tablesalt downstairs and Bluebeard upstairs and their sets were indistinguishable. You’d rush away from one dancefloor and arrive at the next only to hear the very song you’d just tried to escape being faded in. To save with repetition, I’ve grouped them together.

If the problem with these two DJs had to be summed up in one word it would be obviousness. Remember when Triple J promoted the Hottest One Hundred by giving away a cardboard box in which you could package all the Hottest One Hundred’s released to date? I swear that that box is all that these two bring with them when they play. Their sets are bludgeoning in their obviousness. It’s not that the music that they play is all bad. In fact, being obvious, a lot of it is quite good. The songs that you know you’ll hear and are looking forward to when you step out the door in the evening are all there, but they are together in such an uninspired fashion that the experience is considerably less than the sum of its parts.

There is no vision or intuition in their work. They don’t seem to be striving to create a tangible experience for their audience or playing off them. They just want “to DJ” and go about it in the most paint-by-numbers fashion possible. It’s as if they’ve commissioned a survey of songs that music fans in Brisbane want to hear when they go out, taken the 20 songs that appeared most frequently, isolated and distilled their key common features (by this stage they amount to a big chorus, big beat, possibly Triple J airplay) and then put this into a computer that compiles a set of songs that best match the criteria. All the heart, risk, individuality and all of the magic is drained out of the night and you’re left with a shitload of Queens of the Stone Age and the one Strokes song that you’ve heard too many times battering you about the head. On paper, this might not seem like such a problem. Obvious songs are good songs – what more do you want? Had I not seen it in practice, I’d be convinced by this proposition but I have and the reality is something quite different.

String a few obvious songs together in succession and you start to feel a strange feeling in your chest. It’s as if your capacity for positive belief is draining out of your veins and being replaced by a cold, empty dread. This vague uneasiness grows and as a new song fades in, it takes form in the thought that the possibilities for the night are narrowing. Just when the night should be going stratospheric, this thought becomes a conviction. Bluebeard and Tablesalt are masters at conjuring this feeling. I hadn’t felt it since going to The Depot and hearing ‘This Charming Man’ slide into ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ week after week. But at least at the Depot, the feeling that you could be stabbed at any moment provided some excitement to offset the disillusionment. Ric’s is a nice place – you won’t get that. Instead, you’ll think that perhaps you could try to talk to a stranger but dismiss it as ridiculous. Those kind of conversations require an ecstatic delirium that you’ve noticed has just vanished from this room. You realize that you feel a whole lot more sober than you did before and think about getting a drink but you remember that you’ve already spent more money than you were supposed to tonight. As you turn these thoughts over, the last of your fervoured expectations for the night drain away. It happens just when you should be leaping into a deep and meaningful conversation. Best to go home. There’s a bus in twenty minutes and as you walk to it you reflect that maybe you do go to Ric’s too often. But where else is there to go in Brisbane? You wait for your bus and think about moving to Melbourne or London.

I’d suggest that Tablesalt and Bluebeard go out on a limb more but to tell the truth, these guys are at their best when they stick to the script. ‘Last Nite’, ‘The Bucket’ and ‘Paper Planes’ will be dropped in brutal succession but they will be the highlights of your night. It’s when they get into the “DJs pick” slots on the printout that you really start thinking whether you know anyone sitting at the tables outside. There’s Bluebeard’s trawl through late nineties Australiana (Girls Like That, The Song Formerly Known As, Buy Me A Pony); there are the nostalgic signature tunes (Bluebeard – P.U.S.A.’s ‘Lump’; Tablesalt – Cake’s ‘The Distance’) and then downright stumpers (Foo Fighters ‘Monkey Wrench’ and The Offspring’s ‘Come Out and Play’). Just because you remember it, it doesn’t mean that it’s good.

It’s not a completely lost cause. Tablesalt deserves plaudits for his early spinning of the John Steele Singer’s ‘Strawberry Wine’. While nepotistic circle-jerking is an ever-present ingredient in the inability of local music scenes to rise out of a square ditch of perpetual mediocrity, this is a song which earns its place alongside the songs we come to hear. Any DJ who realises this, plays it and, through this, inspires local bands to make music that people might actually want to dance to deserves credit. And Bluebeard – who's been singled out for a lot of criticism here - always pulls a few dance moves from behind the decks which bring an energy to the turntables that I’ve not seen before. If he could harness that to a bit more vision - who knows?

It’s been said that you can’t knock a tryer and these guys do try. They are out there more than I care for, spinning tunes into the small hours and this kind of enthusiasm shouldn’t be discouraged. It is essential to any great cultural scene. The enthusiasm and ego of indie DJs is an unseen thread that runs through the history of pop music. That burning desire to share and encourage music is what seeks out promising bands and gives them the self-belief and chance to actually deliver something good. It’s behind every good club night and every good indie label. It reaches its apotheosis in the reckless, almost self-destructive devotion of the Alan McGees of this world without whom we’d have no My Bloody Valentine, no Primal Scream, no Oasis, no Ride, no Jesus and Mary Chain and no Teenage Fanclub. Where would we be then? Fucked - that’s where. But enthusiasm itself is not enough. Give them a fulcrum and they could move the world but fucking hell, it’ll take some engineering.

Having a Quiet One

Have you ever lied to a co-worker or hairdresser that you had "a quiet one"? Maybe because you couldn't be bothered explaining what you actually got up to, or perhaps because you just knew you couldn't do justice to the special picture held in yr memory? I had both last week.

~

Last Thursday night I joined an audience of no more than a dozen people in the poky basement of Tongue and Groove, where the stage was pushed back so that the bands played almost in the round between the other musicians' equipment and the awkwardly placed poles.

Local improvisers Blank Realm played first and were surprising as always. They started with their backs to each other crouched over guitar pedals, keyboard, bass/amp and a whistling doolackey covered with knobs, noodling and occasionally coming into chorus like a group of elderly people struggling collectively to remember some haunting tune from 70 years ago. The players and their drone rose until they bust through the clouds to peaceful weightlessness before... floating there for a little while. And singing. It was unexpected and very nice. Before they crashed down into - and here's the surprising part - a groove, of sorts. They weren't exactly chooglin' but there were no wave kinda drums and you could nod yr head and tap yr toes. They progressed through several movements and while their mental connection was palpable - I was impressed to learn that none of the parts were pre-written - instead of the set as a whole having some compelling form what remains in memory is a series of moments: a Jah Wobble bass riff; an accidentally polyrhhythmic guitar loop; piercing keyboard scree; ethereal singing; the pounding climax and unpretentious tail off. Heroically, one of them went straight to his night shift.

I went home to have some ice cream and do the washing up and came back to find Anonymeye (for whom this gig was a foreign tour fundraiser) plucking two acoustic guitar strings while fingering his laptop to produce digital rumble, which he cut off abruptly as he said "Thanks". I guess he sets up quickly.

Unlike the Realm, Secret Birds clearly worked out their parts if not the whole set beforehand judging by the 10c-sized turns and meaningful looks when cues were missed. Whittled down to a power trio of dblack and two kids he enticed by waving a bag of weed (just kidding: two talented musicians I didn't recognise) they performed A Celebration of The Riff In Rock Music With About Five Sweet Examples. The guitar channelled Sabbath via Sonic Youth with high melodic bass and syncopated drums straight from a '70s place somewhere between Faust and Santana. Crucially, the riffs were sweet. The band - but mainly the guitarist and his pedals - explored each one thoroughly, only going a bit long on one occasion. Perhaps the constant shapeshifting that keeps Secret Birds surprising for us also keeps it fresh for them because their effort was commendably disproportionate to the number of people in attendance. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay for Collapsicon.

~

Friday night was even more intimate. In a bookshop I didn't even know existed, three orphic musicians reclaimed the descriptor "singer-songwriter" from the jaws of Cerberus before a seated, friendly crowd. Try that one out at the watercooler.

Helen sang gentle songs of empathy and ecstasy (not the kind discussed here in a previous post) with a timeless voice accompanied by graceful guitar, in a style somewhere between a folk lullaby and a spiritual. Just what I needed, and still do - one hopes for a record.

Brutal Hate Mosh is not a metalcore or oi-punk band. It is a drunk young woman fiddling with her ipod, laughing and occasionally singing along or strumming a guitar and it was as great as it could have been terrible. "Tell your girlfriend you've got gingivitis," she sang, kneeling on the floor and drumming on her chair. When you can express your lust for life through that sort of nonsense and chuck a Cat Power without being obnoxious, you're great.

Personality-wise, Harriet from Melbourne was the polar opposite of Ms Mosh. She was the sound of a person curled up under the covers, singing softly to herself in an old-time warble, one arm emerging to pluck a detuned guitar. As singular and special as this was it was also depressing. I exited, still quietly buzzing from the first two acts.

~

This weekend promises to be eventful. The Tongue and Groove is bound to be a much tighter fit when No Anchor aweigh tonight and everyone should check out the launch of new indie dance night "Stolen" at the Step Inn on Saturday. Now and then, though, it's nice to have a quiet one.

Nice Fade #2: Do the Robot; Be Lame

In the second part of our series on indie DJs, Sleeveful of Slight sets his sights on three more contenders for DJ Heinz's coveted crown: an Anglophile, a robot and an icy fan.

Dave and Robot Girl

Dave and Robot Girl host ‘Trigger’ upstairs every second Saturday. Dave’s tastes tend towards all things Oasis (he is rumored to have never refused a Kasabian request) while Robot Girl has a penchant for kitsch from the seventies and eighties. Their sets teeter on the brink of an inspired populism that draws people onto the dancefloor and an indie version of wedding DJing. When they’re on form, it’s very good. You’re amazed all over again by how good ‘Dancing in the Dark’ by the Boss is. However, too frequently it lapses into an exercise in Guilty Pleasures and you find yourself dancing vaguely to a song from the eighties you know from an ad and thinking sadly about the passage of time and whether most marriages are formed out of people settling for second best. At 3am you’re belting out ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ with the rest of the dancefloor but there is a nagging sense that the communal vibe has less to do with a loved-up coincidence of brilliant youth than it does with lowest-common denominator tribalism of football hooligans.

I don’t mean to be too harsh on these two. Trigger may lack the sense of infinite possibilities that comes with the very best of nights but there is a genuine positive side to its unique approach. All those friends who say they’ll meet up with you on Saturday night but disappear after fifteen minutes in search of “music that they know” are actually an each way bet at Trigger. They might stay and if they do they’ll dance all night - this is a good thing. Further, if a bunch of English slappers have stumbled off the Brunswick Street Mall into Ric's and you'd like to cop off with one of them, you'd want Dave and Robot Girl on the decks. Of course, this latter point poses the following consideration: with RGs next door, the Fringe bar down the street and the Down Under Bar but a two minute train ride away, do you really choose to come to Ric's so that you can spend your night trying to cop off with English slappers? The answer is yes.

Dave and Robot Girl are good sorts but I can’t help but feel that they could push themselves further – a little less ‘Let’s Dance’ and a little more ‘Sound and Vision’.

Penny Lame

I have a friend who is still telling the story of the first time he heard ‘Take Me Out’ by Franz Ferdinand on a Thursday night when Heinz was DJing upstairs at Ric’s. He was dancing with a strange girl and both of them were desperately disappointed that the other couldn’t enlighten them as to the song’s identity, so knocked out they were by its brilliance. “It’s a great story” he assures me and to be fair, it’s not bad but there is always some distance between the sparkle in his eyes and the received tale. That said, I understand why he’s still telling it.

The first few times you hear and appreciate a really good song are always a special moment but when this happens on a crowded dancefloor the experience is intensified exponentially. The volume, the lights and the close proximity of cool people combine to create euphoric sense of the here and now - an ineffable moment. Dancing to new music as it comes out is the best way to enjoy music and the enjoyment of that experience is always reason enough to drag yourself of out of your house. I would go so far as to say that if you froze the clock at a point in either recent history or the near future, the fullest and most advanced expression of what is good about human civilization would be located on a dancefloor on which the best songs of the last 12 months were tumbling out while positive people danced joyously.

Penny Lame aka Fan Girl respects this more than any other DJ at Ric’s. She has a surly front. One time she refused a song request so coldly I felt like a rapist. Nevertheless, she has a surprisingly warm-hearted dedication to the celebration of the here and now. If you’re going to hear your new favourite song while out, chances are Penny Lame will be on the decks. She was playing Black Kids ‘I’m Not Going to Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance’ back when you could only download the EP from their myspace and she earns extra kudos for her embrace of the Teenagers' ‘Homecoming’. Of course, devotion to the cusp of the new doesn’t always come off. One time I witnessed the downright bizarre selection of ‘George Washington’ – an excellent youtube clip but hardly a floor filler. But fuck it, I’d rather hear an odd pick than hear ‘The Bucket’ being flayed to the marrow once more.

The most serious criticism I’d make of Penny Lame is that while she’s always good for a few threads of song selection, she never seems to draw the night into a cohesive whole. But even this, I suspect, might be on the wane. The other week I witnessed a half-hour that was pure Heinz. Indie flowed into Destiny’s Child and back into indie without a hint of irony or poor judgment. There were leaps from the best songs of the day to brilliantly appropriate classics ('Atomic'!) and I swear that despite the constant flow of people up the stairs not a soul left the dancefloor. Everyone was smiling (excepting Penny herself, naturally) and one could have almost plucked the euphoria from the air. All this lasted until the very first song that the next DJ played at which point half the dancefloor went to the bar or toilet. I don’t think Penny Lame is quite ready to claim the throne that is the upstairs DJ pen at Ric’s and rule the Brisbane indie scene as DJ Heinz did just yet. She lacks the Shakespearian breadth of vision and the inspiring flights of personality that defined Heinz at his very best. But pretty soon, she’s going to have her first complete night and everyone who is there for it is going to have blinding fun. I hope to be among them. Tick tock!

Cheapening the Summer of Love

"Australia's at the dawn of its Summer of Love" - me at Splendour in the Grass, quoted in Is By Bus, 6 August 2008

"I don't think attitudes to drugs have changed ... a lot of people still feel that drug-taking is morally wrong and extremely risky, they're just making a purely economical decision." - 20-year-old Brisbane university student who requested anonymity, quoted in Brisbane Times , 2 September 2008

I bet that twat goes to QUT. Specifically, Gardens Point. I should know because I went there for four long years and actually spoke to people that used the phrase "real world" to describe the inane shit they couldn't wait to sit in traffic for after graduating from that brutalist Lego space station. Surely only those walking shells could think the increase in ecstasy consumption amongst young Queenslanders is due solely to the federal government's "alcopop" tax?

No. Professor Jake Najman of the Queensland Alcohol and Drug Research Centre seems to agree (although I am more willing to believe the paper has quoted selectively than I am to believe the good professor's a total nonce), sharing the insight that "Young people will make a trade-off where they see the benefits of a switching to a cheaper product." So does the managing director of Gategrash Security (sic in Brisbane Times) who notes helpfully, "The average price of a pill is now about the same price as a six-pack of bourbon and cola." Fuckin' sweet mate.

I don't doubt that the price of drugs (plural) has a bit to do with their respective popularity. But have these people ever heard of, ooh I don't know, youth culture? Let's break that down further: culture?! Will the next "study" prove that increased sales of fluorescent clothing correlate to the rising cost of natural dyes? Is the current popularity of electronic music dictated by a cold cost comparison between guitars and sequencers and the economically justifiable decision to sack the bass player?

As hackneyed as my Splendour revelation was, it's bleedingly obvious that the last few years have seen a gradual then exponential blooming of ecstasy music, ecstasy fashion and ecstasy consumption. But despite the impressive properties of the drug itself, I don't believe it (or its relative price in units of alcopops) can take full credit. Humanity isn't that boring. Economics would be a whole lot easier if it was. There's no straight chain of causation. It's a web. But that spider's spitting music.

You can have the music without the accoutrements just like you can have the sticky string without the web, but not vice-versa. All those jocks would start to feel mighty silly in their little pink shorts if they were still in the pub listening to Nickelback. Far fewer of the girls who brought their hair-straighteners to the festival would be taking four pills at sunset if they were about to see Grinspoon and Silverchair. I didn't get hugged by a single stranger at this year's RATM-headlined Big Day Out, only 6 months before that Splendour love-in. And speaking of Splendour, did you get a chance to compare the crowd sizes and frequency of bodily movement at Wolfmother and The Presets at the end of Sunday? Yes, these seem like obvious comments. That's because they are. Or should be.

The people behind the analyses of Queensland youth your parents are reading in the paper are the ones that advertise in the street press for recreational drug users to come and answer a survey for $50 (apparently the report quoted in the Brisbane Times was based on a study of 80 recreational drug users). Leaving aside the skew their advertising placement and student/junkie-baiting reward must put on the results, if the researchers want their numbers to reflect reality in any way they will need to revise their questions. To include "radio", "Myspace", "Triple J", "Cleo CD covermount", "TV", "ads", "Facebook", "footy culture", "Daft Punk revival", "Cutters", "Juggers", "indie-dance crossover", "disco punk", "fluoro", "sunglasses", "glowstick", "clothes", "celebrities", "friends", "people" - it goes on - and especially "music". Of course, this is impossible.

I'm not being anti-intellectual. I'm being realistic and giving culture - popular culture, youth culture, music culture - the respect it deserves. And I'm not complaining either. Every cultural development gets exploited by wangs trying to sell shit to kids. Long may the kids remain that little bit too fast.

Nice Fade #1: Heinz means beats; Barry competes

These days everyone's writing gig reviews. But the young chancers rushing home from the concert with a Spirax jammed into their jeans are only telling part of the story. What about the rest of the night? Our new Thursday series is dedicated to the all-too-human figure that plays God with your night out: the DJ. Intrepid undercover reporter and indie disco veteran Sleeveful of Slight shares his many thoughts.

DJ-ing seems straightforward. You don’t have to write the songs, you don’t have to perform them and seeing as we’re talking about an indie dancefloor here, you don’t even have to scratch, phase or beat match. All that you really have to do is pick good songs and know how to work a cross-fader. This is essentially true. Nevertheless, everyone who has experienced at least one good night out and has also attended one house party that goes past 1AM must acknowledge that despite the straightforward requirements set out in the brief, a yawning chasm separates a superlative DJ from a cabal of drunk Audioslave fans hijacking an ipod. Taste, of course, is a major factor but for a night on the dancefloor to enter the realm of the magical, a DJ’s good taste must be calibrated by something else – a nobility of spirit. Good DJing requires a belief in the present and a love of the past; warmth towards and faith in one’s audience and a personal vision for the room one is filling. The tension between these factors must, at all times, be balanced out by selfless devotion to creating a joyous experience for those who fall under your spell over the course of the night. DJing is a noble art and for mine, none more noble than DJ Heinz has graced the decks of Ric’s Bar. His taste was broad and impeccable and his focus was on fun.

Conversations on the couches or balcony were always being stopped by someone dragging people up to dance. There were dancefloor filling certainties – "Rock Lobster", "99 Red Balloons", "Get It On" – which invariably made an appearance each week. Heinz mixed the songs of moment and classic in a seamless weave that made present seem like a breathtaking step on an ever-ascending staircase of human achievement. He was generous with requests but rarely to the detriment of his better judgment. Best of all, he periodically went off into tangential strings of inspired song selection. When it was boogie-woogie it was bad and one went to the bar and got a drink (or rather 2 drinks) but frequently, it was utterly brilliant. The Jesus and Mary Chain’s "Happy When It Rains" flowed into The La’s "There She Goes" and then into Pavement’s "Gold Soundz". Paul Simon’s "Call Me Al" gave way to the Dandy Warhols' "We Used To Be Friends". This was some of the most glorious DJing I’ve witnessed.

To dwell in the past is morbid. Brisbane’s pop scene has come along in leaps and bounds since Heinz retired from the decks. The club nights that have sprung up (Wolfgang, Common People, Exile, Electric Kiss, Monster Joe’s) have enriched the party scene to no end while a slew of DJs have kept the wheels of steel at Ric’s spinning in Heinz’s absence. Nevertheless, I retain a fondness for the old maestro. When I wander towards the last train or cabline at the end of the night, I invariably compare the DJs performance to that of Heinz. How do his successors stack up?

DJ Barry

DJ Barry aka El Norto aka The Drummer From Gentle Ben aka That Guy From Ric’s With The Sideburns is a Romantic figure. His presence in Ric’s contributes a large amount of soul to one of the most soulful places in Brisbane city. His belief in the pop song seems near total and the fact that this belief remains so positive and undimmed despite him being well beyond on the average age of a member of his dancefloor lends a heroic glow to his presence. I make a point of trying to talk to him at least once every time I see him. At worst, he responds with truculent tolerance. More often, he has a good story about seeing a particular band live – R.E.M. in 89, My Bloody Valentine, Guided By Voices - he’s seen them all.

As a DJ, Barry is a little unpredictable. He’s DJing so often that one senses that his tangential detours last whole nights instead of the 5 or 6 songs that most DJs go for. In addition to this, getting the dancefloor moving isn’t always his aim. There’s been more than one time that I’ve raced from the Zoo, the Tivoli or the Arena to Ric’s in a state of post-gig euphoria only to cop country song after country song from El Norto. DJ Barry does not do requests. Nevertheless, you’re bound to hear some excellently unexpected pop songs any time he’s on the decks – that and "The Laws Have Changed" by the New Pornographers. There is no better DJ to get drunk to while talking to your friends and when he wants to get people dancing - he will. A sprinkling of Smiths after the stage has been cleared and the house is moving.

And that’s perhaps the essence of it. Ultimately, Barry is king of downstairs. He is everything that Heinz was to upstairs and probably a bit more but we are grouping these reviews under the banner of tribute to a retired DJ for a reason. We are seeking out a true successor to Heinz for the upstairs dancefloor because upstairs - with its dedicated dancefloor, movies on the wall, balcony, couches and pleasantly dark lighting – is ultimately where the magic happens. Barry will never be that DJ but that’s okay. There’s something of the triumph of the human spirit in DJ Barry and we salute him for it.

Come back next Thursday for part 2 (two-for-one Coronas before 10!) In the meantime, got any stories of your own to share? I'm sure DJ Heinz soundtracked a few misspent youths and post-youths. And what about DJ Barry - love him for being his own man or hate him for not playing your fave? Do tell...

Beach House: a lot of jokes to tell

Beach House @ The Troubadour, 23 August w/ Bachelorette and The Rational Academy

Old fact: The sitting on the floor at the Troubadour thing is acceptable on rare occasions, like when seeing Sodastream or some local folkster with a small crowd. A sold-out concert is not one of those occasions. When people are clearly struggling to reach the facilities and members of staff have asked politely if people could stand it turns into sheer bloody-mindedness. Please note that I had a sweet position at this gig and was not terribly inconvenienced. I just tend to like situations where everyone present can approach their optimum level of comfort - the greatest happiness for the greatest number, dig. That said, once everyone was upright there was a shedload of people who just couldn't see so it seems you can't win.

Boring fact: Yes, it was sold-out (blogs hey?) and thus quite warm and squishy. Just setting the scene.

New fact: Beach House's Victoria Legrand can really sing. The voice on the recordings is one of Beach House's main attractions (and given their minimalism it would have to be) but in person it shone, as in Greatest-era Chan Marshall without the affect, as in classic jazz singers I couldn't name. Too many singers both female and male attain a pleasant amount of intimate huskiness by not singing, instead half-breathing into the mic. Sometimes it's quite nice but it's beyond a cliche and not going to impress on its own. Legrand just happens to be blessed with an attractive, expressive timbre which she has the heart to actually use. As in chest-deep, face-contorting, resonant singing. This is why, when she asked if everything sounded "like on the record", I was tempted to yell out "better". I'm shy so I'm blogging it instead.

Fun fact: Beach House are fun! Their understated, pleasant music of the kind that works well when applied liberally to dinner guests - actually a kind of aural equivalent of the Troubadour's decor - happens to be good enough to permit them the indulgence of being audience-hating, shoegazing prats. They have low tempos and their press shots contain one beard and two sets of downcast eyes - not good signs. However, there's a hint of cheekiness in their name, artwork and musical adornments that lean slightly towards kitsch (rinky organ, aloha slide guitar) - good signs. Thankfully the good signs were right.

The duo and their tour drummer, who mainly added colour to the muffled drum machine rhythms familiar from the records, opened with their most accessible song "Gila" and attacked their instruments with gusto. Victoria wore a fantastic pantsuit and cracked wise in an odd, jet-lagged way. Behind the keyboard she also engaged in some sweet boogie-woogie dancing which may have been an in-joke with the drummer. With some effort a few laughs and other sounds were extracted from the audience and, at the peak of the frenzy, scattered head-nodding escalated into mass knee-bobbing with faint smiles. Their set was short and hit-heavy. Songs from the self-titled debut seemed to be the crowd favourites but, while "Master of None" exceeded the impact of the recording, "Gila" and a powerful "Heart of Chambers" from Devotion were the standouts for me.

New Zealand's Bachelorette also surprised pleasantly in her supporting role. I found her robot/electro-fetishising Myspace shtick a little contrived but on stage she revealed something more organic and heartfelt, despite being one woman with a guitar accompanied by a backing track and an impressive, engaging array of computers and TV screens. While she didn't seem perfectly comfortable on stage (I couldn't help overhearing a loud talker make reference to a teacher on her first day) it's always nice to see some honesty. This made it all the more complimentary when she shared the tourist's view that "you people are not like the people outside". The songs I enjoyed most were at either end of her spectrum: the coldly humorous "Electronic Man" (or somesuch) and the closing song whose organic swirl reflected the change from graphs to blue sky and treetops on the monitors.

I arrived too late to see The Rational Academy but it was Meredith's third last show so I wouldn't mind seeing them before what I regard as a big loss.

"Gila", Beach House: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnIq0X12i-8

Boots and all: http://turnitupto10.blogspot.com/2008/08/this-weekend-i-went-to.html

The Breeders

The Breeders on record are exquisite. Not perfect, but perfectly imperfect. Nothing sounds inevitable even though the songs aren't particularly radical (although some are). Each sound somehow carries with it the sense that the person making it was aware of their freedom to do whatever they wanted and chose to do exactly that, neither in deference to tradition nor against it but simply because that was the sound they wanted. You get the feeling the Breeders could play "Mary Had A Little Lamb" and make it sound new. They came close by being one of the few bands to cover the Beatles successfully ("Happiness is A Warm Gun") and a few of their own songs resemble nursery rhymes. It's like Louis Armstrong's ability to play a three note melody and make it swing like a one-tonne wrecking ball. If we could break it down, which I'd rather not do anyway, I think it would be a matter of milliseconds. "Feel", they used to call it. No wonder Kim Deal invented All Wave.

Kim told Kingsmill on the J-Files a few years back about one of her scattered studio sessions in the years leading up to comeback album Title TK. She was trying to record a bass part with a flam, which means playing the note just after the kick drum so it says "flam". However, when the engineer played it back there was no flam. The kick and bass hit precisely together. The engineer probably thought it sounded punchy but Kim grew increasingly frustrated, eventually realising that the studio's software was "correcting" her playing. This incident and others like it led Kim to issue a fatwa against digital and pledge allegiance to what she named All Wave, meaning all analogue. Digital means on and off. Zoom in enough and you see (or hear) pixels. Analogue - that's tape - is a continuous wave that doesn't lie. Calloused fingertips, a catch in the throat, a rusty hi-hat. Grey areas. Feel.

Breeders bass player Mando Lopez recently told Timeoff of how the band tried each song in different styles before settling on the versions to be recorded and of his amazement at watching the Deal sisters spend three days mastering just one of those songs. This wouldn't be strange at all for some bands - say, Radiohead - but Lopez's reaction probably had something to do with the disjuncture between the painstaking effort being taken and the two-minute, three-chord, nonsense-lyriced result. This only shows the Breeders' awareness of the freedom they, like any artist, have; as in, they could still be rearranging and rerecording "Cannonball" in infinite permutations. Their genius lies not just in the choices to which they commit (as in, "let's play an E then a D") but also in their ability to somehow make this process audible. By subtracting elements, making split seconds matter and embracing imperfections they send a wink down the tape and remind us that nothing is inevitable.

What we end up with is strangely familiar, like an x-ray of your own skeleton. Brutally beautiful, like one of those preserved bodies with the skin taken off. Tender like a kiss and like a bruise. Perfectly imperfect.

~

Live, they're a different proposition. They're less dynamic. You don't feel like Kim and Kelly's lips are a hair's breadth from your respective earlobes. The drummer speeds up and plays loud. The mystery and preciousness of a 4AD record cover is replaced by odd, grinning people in tracksuits saying "what?" and shifting from foot to foot. It's less Pixies and more Guided By Voices - a sense of your favourite band playing your favourite songs in your loungeroom while you're too drunk to be surprised. In short, damn good fun.

Gaslight Radio's billing as support band for the Zoo on August 4th was welcome proof of their continued existence but on the night they are contrary in almost every way possible. Making it clear they are writing a setlist on the fly they eschew the hits (except maybe "Tina From Robina" and "The Jewel and the Falcon" [If that was the first song?]) and accompany their guitar tuning with an equal number of thinly-veiled disses ("Monday night in Brisbane, woo!") and complete non-sequiturs ("Are we on Adelaide time?"; "Which hospital were you born in?"). But whatever's eating them hasn't got inside the music, which they savour as if it's their one respite, caressing guitars and sharing smiles when their eyes aren't closed. Gaslight Radio aren't frugal with romantic melodies and crescendoes and it's easy to let them wash past but pummeling closer "The Razor's Edge" demands attention and bodes well for the future. They continue to name songs after coastal towns, my favourite of the night being "I Don't Wanna Go Back to Kempsey".

There's a pinch-yourself feeling when the Breeders set up several metres away and launch into Brisbane favourite (thanks Butcher Birds) "Tipp City" - the first of three Amps songs - especially after a weekend of watching OK bands on huge stages from squinting distance. The Deal sisters' complete lack of pretence only makes them seem more wonderfully eccentric and they endear themselves to the varied crowd effortlessly. In fact, the atmosphere is so casual I somehow don't mind the chatter emanating from the bar. It's with this playful attitude that the Breeders dip into all of their albums, with only Title TK seeming to get short shrift (forgiveable for those who saw them last time around). The still-new Mountain Battles songs are my favourites, particularly those sung by Kelly, who is tonight's crowd favourite for her willingness to have a crack at violin ("Drivin' on 9") and Mariachi Spanish (the should-be-(already-is?)-classic "Regalame Esta Noche"). Unfortunately we don't get the twin-tongue-twisting "German Studies" but most of the other newies get played. I still can't tap my foot to "Overglazed" but I like it. The hits from Last Splash are refreshingly loud by comparison; "Cannonball" hasn't hit this hard in years. "Happiness is A Warm Gun" stops breaths. "Iris" and "Safari" are weird and feel natural: the Breeders' magic in a nutshell.

(Fasterlouder.com have a detailed review and pictures. I'm surprised there aren't any of me because I copped that flash in the face a few times.)

Making the links #1: harsh landscape

Recently I got the Internet hooked up, having lived without it for a few months. The Web can be pretty depressing but it's amazing how you can fall arse-backwards into something great. You can drag your cyberbody on its stomach across the deserts of Myspace or Triple J Unearthed for months looking for one band you wouldn't be completely averse to sharing some low-key bill with. Then one day you might spy someone with an interesting name in a top eight and on closer inspection find something tantalisingly solid beneath your fingertips. Grabbing hold, you pull a chain up out of the sand and before you know it you've followed the links to some sort of oasis where you become giddy trying to sample all the delights at once.

Like the other night when I was checking Good God's Myspace to see if there was any news (nup) and happened to follow a link to Feathers' profile, recalling the promising description in Before Hollywood's "Bands to Watch in 2008" back in January when they had no songs up. Well, now they have five songs and a video and they're crackers. Their gothic yet minimal bass-driven plod unwinds with rare patience but it's when they add an ethereal shimmer and a bit of sing-song that they really grab this Bad Moon Rising tragic. The places these songs inhabit are near the one Sonic Youth spent some time in for that album; Lydia Lunch was another prominent resident and Batrider are the Kiwis that moved in next door. In fact, all of the bands mentioned in this post seem to have been there. You'll recognise it when you find yourself in an empty house banging and creaking in the dead middle of day, surrounded by hissing scrub and heat haze. (For all I know Feathers is over; I wouldn't mind catching them live but it seems the set on Turnitupto10 will have to do for now.)

Anyway, from there I followed the trail to Beaches, who are a Melbourne band and something of a supergroup featuring members of Love of Diagrams, Spider Vomit and others. I didn't know that at first; all I knew was that their scuzz-damaged surf/garage/Velvets instrumental slowjams made me superkeen for their November album. And while we're on the topic of dark surf music, I had never heard of apparent expat Severine Devereaux before now either - if you ever do get sick of the aforementioned Badmoonrisingville her cool floating lounge might be a fine place to wash off the dirt.

Some further scratching around revealed that Beaches are in with a crowd called Mistletone who have a not-too-shabby roster. Would you look at the lineup for this gig?

Go forth, Melbourne folk, and rock dreamily. We Brisfolk will console ourselves with knowing that when we see Beach House it will be at the Troubadour and the Rational Academy in support should be nice. And whenever we want to find something new we can seek the assistance of bands like Feathers and Good God who seem to have a knack for making cool friends near and far.

The Bell Divers: just so

I've wanted to write something about The Bell Divers for a while, having lived with their debut album June July for a few weeks and an unmastered version for some months before that. However, I've been hesitant to tarnish such a finely crafted thing with my comparatively fatuous rambling. What got me moving is that they're launching the album at the Brisbane Powerhouse this Sunday arvo. As well as wanting to at least try to be timely, there's some combination of the blogger's desire to get in first with a kind of protectiveness. See, I wouldn't be surprised if they were picked up by the broadsheet weekend liftouts like Augie March given their literate, elegant songcraft and understated Australianness - which is all well and good, but there's also this delicious oddness, a wilful perversity that needs celebrating and that somehow seems to make them our thing.

Rock 'n' Roll was supposed to be music for outsiders. We all know what happened to that idea and the marketing opportunities it presented but, even if it had remained pure, what are the outsiders to the outsiders to do? Some chase extremes and wind up self-mutilating performance artists but it's often the quiet, thoughtful ones that surprise us the most.

Consider Scotland's post-punk Postcard Records scene: Orange Juice and their fey, jangular mates. The Bell Divers probably know well the story of Forster and McLennan showing up at the door with their suitcases in 1980 and seeing Edwyn Collins or someone on all fours, ear up to the speaker to identify the precise model of Fender guitar being played on a John Fogerty song. If the story took place a few years earlier that person might come across as somewhere between sad and despicable but in the atomic shadow of punk's Year Zero policy they seem downright revolutionary.

The Bell Divers have their ears up to the speaker for OJ, The Go-Betweens, Magnetic Fields, forgotten '80s pop, Flying Nun, Swedish troubadours, and probably other things I've never heard of. Not that any particular influences are obvious. They seem to be one of those intensely focused bands formed by people who no longer have the naive enthusiasm required to accept compromise as the price of playing music with others and are lucky or determined enough to have found other people with a similar, very particular sound in their heads.

In this case the sound is a chiming, cleanly strummed guitar pop with keyboards; pithy and restrained but certainly not lacking decoration. Precisely the kind of thing you have to do really well to avoid mediocrity, but which shines all the more brightly when it is good.

The lyrics, enunciated with sincere plainness like a less droll Robert Forster, continue the double-outsider theme. Class is avoided in Australian alternative music and understandably so - inner-city kids with supportive parents playing dress-ups in back alleys seem damnably blithe when Bird Blobs come out with "I don't want to end up like my old man/Drunk at the mill you know he chopped off his hand". Bell Divers tackle it head on but from an honest, unromantic perspective, like Todd Solondz making a film about the kid brother of Bird Blobs' protagonist, gaybashed for pronouncing his "T"s, hiding from his dad and reading novels.

The songs are glimpses into the lives of ignored characters: the woman sharing life in a caravan park with "these brutal men/who have never seen the world". The lover of a man in jail who sees the sorrow in his "underwater eyes". The middle-class single who takes a tracksuit-panted "white trash lover" or invites a homeless man inside for potentially sinister purposes. And in the beautiful, dreamy "Little Breath", the 50-year-old woman whose son hangs up to soon but for whom "flour turned to wheat" when a 53-year-old man she met on a cruise made love to her. This isn't exploitation. The refrain from "Life in a Caravan": "The tourists come/and they go away/They take something from us/I don't know what". (Of course, the same song comes up trumps again with "Meet me in the games room and fuck me on the pool table".) Nor is it borrowed glamour. The other half of the album's songs deal with nothing more exotic than thoughtful youngish men considering relationships and personal growth, but share an uncommon eye for meaning in the mundane epitomised by "Fallen Down"'s "deep in a photograph of her family/you stare out dumbfounded".

Finally, a word about mystique. The Bell Divers have it. Singer Clinton navigates a crowd like some sort of noble among savages, wearing shorts. Guitarist Lobby is a smart-casual style icon who has busted out Chic-style guitar breaks mid-song and opened a set by deadpanning "Walk Don't Run" at 1am in the Troubadour. Their handful of gigs have included Ithaca Pool and community halls in the daytime. They have the ability to jar with a turn of phrase or by simply stopping a song when you're not ready. These details are important and, when the only criticism I can drag up after listening to the album too much was expressed by a friend as "it's a bit Bell Divers", the mystique could be what keeps me eager for what's next. For now, though, I don't need to be reminded not to take for granted this gem of an album.

*The Bell Divers photos were taken from their website - they looked ripe for the plucking and say more than I could but I'd be happy to remove them if requested.

Update

So we've started a blog and tested the waters with a few posts, then done nothing for about a week. That might be a long time in blog-land but not for us. Still, some sort of update seemed to be in order. A few things should start appearing over the next week.

We did go to Splendour but what is there to say about that? Of course there seemed to be some fertile material at the time but statements like "Australia's at the dawn of its Summer of Love" or "Discovery's the new Pinkerton" don't seem so profound in the cold light of day (there was a lot of love though). We were also acutely aware of the "everyone's a critic" thing, which my friend lampooned fairly accurately when he leaned over to me during the Presets and said dryly, "That guy did arrangements on the Sleepy Jackson album you know".

We won't be deterred, though. All shame was abandoned at the Blogger registration page. Stay tuned.

Blue Carousel beat influenza

"One thing I remember having a really depressing effect on me was the first Ramones album. When I heard it, I mean, it was a great record, to an extent, but I hated it, because I knew, we'd been doing this stuff for years - there was even a chord progression on that album that we used - and I thought, fuck, we're going to be labelled as influenced by the Ramones - when nothing could have been further from the truth." - Ed Kuepper of The Saints, quoted in Clinton Walker's "Stranded".

So many people in some of the most innovative bands must know that feeling all too well. Recently a member of a Brisbane band that has spent the last few years refining an inspired mix of 303 beats and post-rock/shoegaze guitar textures told me how he feared his band would be described (in my opinion erroneously) as "like Cut Copy and The Presets but not as good". Such paranoia is hard to stifle when the sheer logistics of grouping a band, rehearsing, booking gigs and saving up for a recording and a tour, in the hope that someone will notice, allow the rest of the world so much time to catch you up or even leave you behind. Anyone toiling in obscurity in the first few years of this milennium with a sound informed by certain strands of early post-punk or mixing dance and "angular" guitars could probably tell you all about it.

What brought on this thinking was my first hearing of the debut release from locals Blue Carousel, Musseé E.P. I wondered if people hearing the single might think these guys are copping MGMT when clearly they've been at it longer than that. Any amount of listening would dispel such a call, just as my initial reaction to seeing them live - pegging them as Strawberry Jam-era Animal Collective copyists - was shaken off after a couple of songs. You can play "spot the influence" on any first EP, even (say) Pavement's Slay Tracks. Here you might find recent Animal Collective in the opening burbles and vocal stylings, Sparklehorse in the impressionistic lyrical reflections, Mercury Rev in the melody and bombast. But it is the mark of a good first EP that these sources are soon forgotten and the songs become ends in themselves.

It would be doubly unfair to dwell too much on influences when the band in question has more than shown its ability to think outside the square simply by having no obvious forebears in its own local scene. You could probably name a few things Brisbane bands are known for doing well and they would be unlikely to include psychedelic pop that Dave Fridmann might be interested in producing.

The melodies and arrangements here are nothing if not ambitious. Most colourful is the drumlessly propulsive Portraits From Memory, in which the unreal glow of things past is reproduced via choral glissando, sparkling guitars and cymbal crescendos. Elsewhere and a little more down to earth are a joyous I'm-on-my-way stomp (Kanashii Uta, which comes closest to sounding like MGMT's dancefloor-fillers) and a darker pop song reminiscent in tone of the Killers' first album (Mr Zian is a Lonely Boy...) before the epic closing dirge. There are infinite coastlines of sonic detail in and around the songs and if any criticism can be made of the lush sound it's only that the inventive guitars can get a little buried under the fuzzing synths. However, anyone with enough money can buy fancy pedals and keyboards; what makes Blue Carousel a stand-out band is that all this texture and decoration is applied to an inventive frame of memorable melody and intriguing words - we are, after all, talking about pop songs.

In short: one to watch. Now, and hopefully later. Just don't leave it 'til later then call out for songs off the first EP.

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Coming back to the intro to this post, I'm having trouble of thinking of many examples of the Saints/Ramones effect. Thinking on a big scale, You Am I's last 10 years has given me the feeling that they would have been huge had they been a "new" band in the wake of Is This It?. On a local scale I am reminded of the Whistlestops (now performing in Melbourne as The Isle of Man), who seemed to live and breathe laconic skiffle before either the post-Libertines neo-neo-British Invasion reached our shores or Yves Klein Blue melded it with cabaret stylings. Ponyloaf seem to have existed a little early for Australia's current keytar 'n' vocoder explosion. Comments are invited if you can think of any others.