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.

Mick Turner and Jeffrey Wegener, GOMA, 18 July 2008

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Whether they care or not, it seems unjust that Mick Turner and Jim White of the Dirty Three do not enjoy the same level of recognition - at least in Australia - as their bandmate Warren Ellis. While the latter's instantly recognisable violin is the voice of their instrumental ensemble, each man's contribution is both necessary to the band and outstanding in the field of his particular instrument. If pressed I would probably say Jim White's drumming is the most important puzzle piece but that's another post. Right now we're talking about guitarist Mick Turner: he of the minor pluckings, tender brushings and occasional overwhelming swells so integral to the Three.

Outside his most famous project Turner has put out a number of solo releases as well as collaborations with White under the name Tren Brothers. The Trens have occasionally acted as a kind of alt-country/post-rock Sly and Robbie, most notably as the band on Cat Power's best album Moon Pix. For this GoMa performace Mick is accompanied on drums by Jeffrey Wegener (The Saints, Laughing Clowns, Kuepper).

I arrive at the gallery just in time and it's easy to slip through the comfortably-sized crowd to the front, hopefully not just because I'm drunk. Turner and Wegener begin the set and every song thereafter tenderly. Mick trickles sounds into his loop pedal: a chord progression like a wandering horse; raspy bowed guitar strings; plucked notes like stars appearing in the sky; sometimes a melodica. Jeff dips his drummer's toes into this lapping lake gingerly at first: brushes on rims, tom rolls like tiny waves on the shore. Some songs crescendo spectacularly, others simply amble along. The melodies, though soon forgotten, are haunting as if Will Oldham turned into a guitar and sang songs of lament, praise and contentment.

When Wegener gets going and switches up to rods then sticks his individuality becomes apparent. Where Jim White's swaying drunk style complements Mick's free-to-say-the-least approach to rhythm by adding or omitting hits, scrapes and crashes before suddenly rejoining the beat, Wegener sticks almost stubbornly to a groove once he's chosen it, stretching or quickening his playing elastically but patiently until he matches whatever Turner is doing. Now that I've seen his approach to free-ish music I am more inclined to seek out the Laughing Clowns I've been putting off for a while now.

Having arrived too late to see any of the Picasso exhibition I am enthralled by the evolving backdrop of Mick Turner's paintings intercut with car window travel footage. Turner the painter has a voice almost as singular as his guitar playing - I didn't know until now that he painted the Dirty Three album covers. In terms of reference points his style and subject matter are somewhere between Chagall, Leunig, Nolan and the Australian painter whose name I can't recall that depicted a fiery spirit screaming over grasslands (how am I supposed to Google that?). Naked women with enigmatic smiles lie on giant kangaroos' backs, floating over eucalypts and Holdens. Everything looks like it's about to be set ablaze by the sun and everyone has big, piercing eyes, even the animals. Time-lapse makes apparent the similarities between the construction of a painting and Mick's layered-colours approach to music.

At the end of the set Turner spruiks his wares amusingly and I purchase a set of Art Cards and Blue Trees, a wonderful collection of 7's and EP's. If no one else likes a drunk at least performers and salesmen do.

Mysteries #1: White Mansions

I ran into several members of White Mansions at the Troubadour one night before a show, but not theirs. They were playing Ric's that night. I told them how sad I was to be missing them and asked when they would be playing again but they didn't have anything lined up. "Building anticipation", muttered one. That was as much of an understatement as if the phrase were applied to a smack dealer giving you your first hit for free (do they really do that?). As with Dollar Bar's two-minute songs, On/Oxx's twenty-minute sets and rare live treats like the Bell Divers, White Mansions are masters of less is more.

The drug metaphor is apt: their melodic, loud rock music really scratches an itch for me. I first saw them a couple of years ago at a time when Violent Soho were also blasting my face back into a grin with loud guitars, pop hooks and, importantly, shouting. Not tight-panted screeching but full-throated shouting. We didn't know what we'd been missing. The term grunge has been tossed around a bit and isn't far off the mark. Mr Mansions delivers his instantly familiar nursery-rhyme melodies with Cobain-like intensity. How does a band pull this off without being Puddle of Mudd? Answer: great songs.

You can sing White Mansions songs in the shower after hearing them once. In fact, you will sing White Mansions songs in the shower. They're smash hits in my world. Songs about drinking, fuck buddies (chorus: "come again") and that horrendously catchy theme song about wanting to live in a big white house. If you shower with a friend, you can do the two-part boy/girl harmonies. Of course, it's unlikely either of you will have Kellie Lloyd's cupcake-sweet voice. Oh and you'll have to chuck in some "ninga niddle nee" for the nagging guitar parts. Why go to so much trouble with bathroom orchestration (other than the obvious reason that it'd be really fun)? Because they still haven't bloody released anything for you to listen to at home.

Which, together with their apparently all-encompassing "build anticipation" ethos (their Myspace consists of a picture of a house and their "friends" are all alcoholic beverages), was why White Mansions were the first entry for this "Mysteries" thing... until I read last week that (a) they are going to play at the Troub on 1 August and (b) they're going to be selling music in some "new media" format and some T-shirts to raise money to fund their debut album. Hooray! Except I can't go because I'll be at Splendour. Shit. Can someone please buy me one of everything?

IS BY BUS

is a new website about music.

We have often found ourselves bored at a computer and, having read the usual foreign music websites and a few choice local ones, still hungry. What seems to us to be missing is something with the breadth and depth of our favourite music sites but more relevant to us, here, in Brisbane or at least Australia. We want news and reviews that don't just make us wish we lived in NY or London. We feel that we might better enjoy unapologetically long dissertations about music and pop culture that don't rely on references to little league, frat house keg parties or the Stone Roses at Knebworth. We want to read something - anything - about the band that blew our minds last Wednesday night but have only an enigmatic myspace page as their public face. While bad journalism is the scourge of modern music, good journalism can enrich the art experience for all involved. It's kind of tragic that there was no real discussion or analysis of, say, On/Oxx or Me Mu & Meow, and no proper record of the historic 610 Ann St milieu.

This won't be a Brisbane-only thing (Before Hollywood is the Brisbane music blog) although for obvious reasons we will pay special attention to local bands, avoiding free kicks and blind eyes.

A note about the name: "Is By Bus" is a great song by Gaslight Radio. They, like the editor of this website, were originally from the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast had a terrible bus service; anyone whingeing about Brisbane's buses really doesn't understand. But there's something romantic about them (buses), no? (If you don't agree I'll make you a mixtape - "Girl At the Bus Stop" by My Drug Hell for starters - Ed). A great proportion of our music listening has been on buses over the years. Any night out is framed by buses, for better or for worse. Anyway, maybe Gaslight Radio are an example of a band that (a) you wouldn't know if you relied solely on foreign music websites for your info and (b) demand to have more written about them. Perhaps we should do a feature...

- The Editor, Winter 2008