Month: October 2013

Record review: Busby Marou – Farewell Fitzroy (2013 LP)

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Busby Marou

With their 2011 self-titled debut album and lead single ‘Biding My Time’, Rockhampton duo Thomas Busby and Jeremy Marou announced their arrival onto the music scene with a uniquely Australian take on the folk and country genres. Now, after two years of playing shows up and down the country several times over, it’s time for their so-called difficult second album, and it’s a task they take in their stride with total ease. Singer-guitarist Busby is the primary songwriter of the pair, while Marou provides backup vocals and impressively quick-fingered guitar licks, despite apparently never having had a guitar lesson in his life. As you listen to their tales of leaving home (Fitzroy being the river on which Rockhampton lies), being on the road, and of broken relationships, you can’t help but think of classic Australian troubadours like Paul Kelly; such is the evocative power of Busby’s lyrics. Anthemic folk number ‘Luck’ is a major highlight, while ‘Heard It All Before’ shows they can rock hard when they want to. Second track ‘Get You Out Of Here’ is another peak while ‘Over My Dead Body’ begins as a slower and more melancholy affair, before Marou unleashes a devastatingly fast solo. This album’s generally bright and breezy vibes make it perfect for a summer’s day, and the down-to-earth appeal of Busby Marou’s songs mean they can be appreciated just as much in the local pub as they can on the country’s biggest stages. (Footstomp)

Live review: Foals + Alpine – The Tivoli, Brisbane – 2/10/13

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It’s a school night and one of Brisbane’s biggest and best venues is sold out – this is something very few bands have been able to achieve in recent months. Such is the diverse appeal of English indie-rockers Foals that it’s obvious this is one of those gigs that attracts people who don’t often go to gigs. Hipsters too; lots and lots of hipsters.

Support for tonight is Melbourne indie-poppers Alpine. Having just jetted back into the country from North America after playing a number of shows there, they admit to being exhausted, but put in an energetic and typically tour-tight performance, heavy with songs from their excellent album A Is For Alpine. Singers Lou and Phoebe are charming and enchanting as ever, and they finish with ‘Gasoline’ to a huge show of appreciation from the audience. With more tour dates in Canada the States on the cards in the next few days, life is only going to get more busy for the six-piece, but they’re looking and sounding mean and lean.

Foals’ stage setup is pretty impressive. A small army of dudes spends quite an amount of time setting up a lighting and sound rig that could fry the retinas and burst the eardrums of an audience several times the size of this one, but it’s all part of their live appeal. By the time the quintet take to the stage amid a haze of pink and blue lights and kick into ‘Prelude’ and then ‘Total Life Forever’ to huge reverberating cheers, the Tivoli is as rammed as I’ve ever seen it, and the phrase “losing their shit” could be applied to the audience collectively.

Holy Fire hasn’t been around that long, so there are plenty of tunes from that album on show, including ‘My Number’, ‘Providence’, and ‘Late Night’. Frontman Yannis Philippakis’s crowd-surfing-from-the-balcony-thing may feel a bit contrived (come on, we all knew he wasn’t gonna not do it), but again, the audience responds by almost to a man losing their shit. You’d definitely feel a little hard done by if you had suffered an “immediate eviction”, as the sign says, if you’d been caught crowd-surfing at any point before this event, but I guess you can’t evict the main man.

With an encore including ‘Inhaler’, many people have gone home after this gig claiming that this has been the best live show they’ve ever been to; such is the effect of this band’s music.

Record review: Lenny Kravitz – Are You Gonna Go My Way: Deluxe Edition (2013, LP)

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Lenny Kravitz

You know that feeling when you listen to an album that you used to love for the first time in years, and all those nostalgia-tinged memories of how good it is come flooding back in an instant? I just had one of those feelings, courtesy of New York multi-instrumentalist, multi-award winning, multi-bloody-everything, Lenny Kravitz.

First of all, it’s hard to believe that it’s been twenty years since the release of this bonafide classic album, Kravitz’s third after his 1989 debut Let Love Rule and 1991’s Mama Said. His recorded output up to that point had been a solid but not quite breakthrough series of soul and pop numbers; held back by their influences while their writer hadn’t yet found the boldness of his own voice. Are You Gonna Go My Way would change all that and establish Kravitz as the star he had been trying to be since 1988. It would be his first top-twenty album in the States, hit the top spot in Australia and the UK, and spawn five singles. As a result, there’s been no looking back for Kravitz ever since; he’s gone on to fill arenas the world over and even launch a film career.

Of course, the obvious focal point of this album is that guitar riff in the title track and opener. It’s a bombastic riff inspired by Hendrix and Prince and often pops up in those top ten riffs of all time lists that guitar magazines like to publish from time to time. In short, it rocks, but like Kravitz’s entire career, this is an eclectic album in terms of sounds and styles, unbound by genre or trend.

Second track ‘Believe’ is an orchestral ballad that is a nice cool-down after the frenetic pace of ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’, while ‘Heaven Help’ heaps a spoonful of soul over things, and ‘Just Be A Woman’ is the tearful acoustic number that Kravitz tends to throw in on every release. ‘Black Girl’ couldn’t sound more ’70s if it tried, but while there are many fairly obvious influences at work here, it’s all top quality stuff.

Deluxe editions and reissues are often nothing more than an underhanded attempt to squeeze more dollars out of the record-buying public, but the extras included here are well worth getting your teeth into. They include twenty extra tracks, instrumentals, acoustic versions, and a fifteen-minute radio interview from the era, making 31 tracks in all. It’s been twenty years but this album still sounds amazing.

ARE YOU GONNA GO MY WAY: DELUXE EDITION IS OUT NOW.

Interview: Paul French of Mining Boom

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mining boom 1

This Labour Day weekend is not only a three-day affair, but Goodgod Small Club is celebrating turning three with a birthday bash filled with more musical talent than you can shake a stick at. On the bill with the likes of The Murlocs and Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys is Perth indie-rock quartet Mining Boom. Frontman Paul French tells me what to expect from the gig.

Ok, so I was trying to look up stuff on Mining Boom, and your Tumblr basically consists of videos of people fighting and a picture of a man punching a giraffe. What’s the deal with that?

Rest assured, the Tumblr was made with the best of intentions. Early on we realised that we never had anything to update it with, so it just descended into all kinds of shit talking and pop cultural debris. None of us own a camera, or do anything other than playing music, so we never have any kind of band hi-jinks to document. In saying that, there is something about the concept of a physically imposing person, that we as a band fully endorse.

Your music has variously been described as “garage pop”, “stoner rock” and “suburban Australian misery”. How would you describe it?

Lately we’ve had a few people brand us with the ‘stoner’ tag. I would definitely say we are more of a meth-oriented band; in fact you might even say we are the Cypress Hill of meth. Nah, I’ve always had difficulty trying to put a banner term on what we do. The thing about genres is that they are generic. To me it’s just common sense kind of stuff, it sounds like the place it is from, it has synths because it is 2013 etc.

You’ve just played the BIGSOUND festival for the first time, and got pretty great reviews. How was the show for you? What other bands stood out for you?

We didn’t really get a chance to see many bands, between playing our set and trying to find a place to stash our equipment, we kind of had our hands full. Robert Forster was good and I heard Bad//Dreems played well. I saw Thelma Plum hanging around at the bar before we played and she looked good, I probably should have said something.

Shortly you’ll be playing the Goodgod’s third birthday party. What can Mining Boom fans expect from the show?

Pyrotechnics, choreography, classic band banter.

In ‘Craigie’, there’s the line “One day I will bash that c*nt,” and “One day I will go to the gym.” Is it written about one person in particular, and are you more of a weights or a cardio band?

People always misquote that line, it’s actually ‘one day I will go legit’. It must be my thick West Australian accent or something. I’d say we would be 75% cardio 25% weights, on account of our drummer, Brendan. He is quite the physical specimen. I’ve seen him rip up phone books and impregnate men.

Recorded music from Mining Boom: we want some. What is on the horizon in terms of your debut record?

Yeah we are still working on our album, it should be all done by the end of the year. It’s going to be called ‘TAFE’ and will be available on Spunk Records early next year.

What would be included in your ultimate tour rider?

Protein shakes for Brendan (jack3d, horny goat weed etc.) Camembert. Coon. Quince paste. Emu Export. Tony Abbott’s daughters.

What are your plans for the rest of 2013 and beyond?

Finish the album.

TICKETS FOR GOODGOD BIRTHDAY NIGHTS ARE AVAILABLE HERE: http://www.dashtickets.com.au/?/tour/26

Interview: Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys

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Bed Wettin Bad Boys

This Labour Day weekend is not only a three-day affair, but Goodgod Small Club is celebrating turning three with a birthday bash filled with more musical talent than you can shake a stick at. On the bill are Sydney’s brilliantly shambolic punks Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys. We chat to Nic and Ben about their plans for the gig and life as a ‘Bad Boy.

I have to start by asking you about the band name. How did you settle on Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys?

Nic: The same way all good bands get their name, a ouiji board ceremony with celebrity magician David Bowie.

Shortly you’ll be playing the Goodgod’s third birthday party. What can BWBB fans expect from the show?

Nic: A pretty similar set to most BWBB sets: eight or so loud rock songs, with one or two mishaps and maybe a bit of jive-talk. As Adam Lewis and the Goodgod team have taken care of promotion and organisation very well we don’t have to worry about back line, parking, figuring out the door split etc., so we may even be a little more relaxed than usual. When your band is called Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys you’ve pretty much got to create most the shows you play. So thanks Adam for asking! I’m looking forward to plugging in and playing for once in my friggin’ life and having very few other responsibilities.

Ben: Today some people at work said they’re going to come to the show. I have a distinct professional, as opposed to social, way of dealing with things. Expect accountability, micromanagement, responsibility, outcome measures.

You’ve just played the BIGSOUND festival in Brisbane, and got pretty great reviews. How was the show for you? What other bands stood out for you?

B: BIGSOUND was the one time as a band we got a few perks. They put on a free barbecue during the day after we played. We got to watch cable TV. A guy let us borrow a drum key. It was a great few days. We played an all ages show at Tym’s Guitar Store with Songs, and it was good to see a bunch of young people at the show having fun, in a place like Fortitude Valley, which can be really draining in every way.

N: I don’t want to talk about it, ’twas a strange few days. Glad we did it though as it showed the industry you don’t have to be a caricature of a human to be in a band.

It’s practically impossible to find a written description of your music – including Pitchfork’s – that doesn’t mention The Replacements. How much of an influence were they on your musical development? What other bands have shaped how you write and play music?

B: Sometimes I feel as that The Replacements comparison is warranted, but other times it’s just lazy writing, an easy way out. ‘This band is gonna rock you like this band,’ rather than working at writing actually how a band makes you feel.

N: We all agree The Replacements are a great band but I actually don’t think they were that important on our development musically, as in I don’t think any of us use them as a template for our song writing or playing. I do think there’s an underlying philosophy or approach to playing rock ‘n’ roll that we share though, essentially being liberated by punk then drawing from the history of guitar music until it forms into something that feels familiar but isn’t some awful retro-rock revival. I think the huge scope of music I’ve listened to has indirectly shaped how I write and play music as opposed to any specific artist. From (Australian) X to Brian Eno, the behemoths of classic rock to your humble basement rockers.

Moving to Sydney from Cairns must have been an experience. How did you find the move at first, and in what ways did you discover music when you got there?

B: This is a really complex question to answer and I just wrote down a huge answer but didn’t cover anything significant. I’ve been in Sydney for six years now. A quarter of my life. I was back in Cairns a couple of months back and it was the first time since moving to Sydney that I realised what an unbelievably beautiful place it is, visually.

BWBB have a reputation for performing while less-than-sober. What would be included in your ultimate tour rider?

N: Collectively I don’t think we’re ever that drunk playing any more, I mean at least not most of the time. It’s nice to have a few drinks before, while and after playing cause we’re all busy people and it may well be the only time we get to let loose that week. I think people confuse less-than-sober with not being a bunch of timid, top-button-on-shirt-done-up, beige, flaccid indie band. Ya know; being a little bit primal, rock ‘n’ roll as a release, not a fashion show.

B: I feel there’s a real boredom during the three hours between loading in gear to a venue and playing. Don’t drink out of boredom, but sometimes there’s nothing else to do. Drink to celebrate. Hey, we’re a group of friends playing rock ‘n’ roll and at the end of the day there’s no pressure to do any more, any less. I’ll drink to that! (note I’m not a very good guitar player just to clear up reasons why I mess up at times)

N: Tour rider: I’d prefer some type of stout or dark ale opposed to the watery beer usually provided. If we’re talking big dumb music festival that breeds inflated egos: Gin and tonic water. DVD of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Some Lebanese bread and dips. Picture book of baby animals. Music device that plays rap music like Kool Keith, Big L, Tommy Wight III, UGK, Clipse to get me PUMPED UPPPP.

B: For the tour rider, I’m a sweet vermouth man.

What are your plans for the rest of 2013 and beyond?

N: Being a Bed Wettin’ Bad Boy feels real easy at the moment. For the first time since Doug joined which was 2 to 3 years ago we don’t really have any set goals or deadlines. We literally have no plans and will just continue to do what we do. Earlier this year we wrote a list of half-song, riffs, home demos and unreleased songs we’d like to re-work or re-visit. Hopefully through the summer we’ll have the time to “work” on them. I say “work” cause I don’t think it’ll feel like work. Playing together has started to feel like second nature and although we’ve been taking it easy post-album launch and tour I think we’ve unknowingly been pretty creatively productive. Once we have a big old list of songs ready to go we’ll think about working towards another record.

B: I was away for four months this year and I guess it’s a bit of catch up still after that. We’re all busy people outside of this band, so we just try do what we can when we can.

TICKETS FOR GOODGOD BIRTHDAY NIGHTS ARE AVAILABLE HERE: http://www.dashtickets.com.au/?/tour/26