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.