Putting Melbourne rapper Illy’s latest album into some sort of frame of reference as a new release isn’t easy, as it’s not a new album at all. Cinematic: Uncut is simply a re-release of his successful 2013 Cinematic album, with six new tracks tacked onto the end to make it more tempting for the record-buying public to shell out their hard-earned dollars in these twisted times of rampant online thievery. The original album featured collaborations with the likes of Hilltop Hoods, Drapht and Daniel Merriweather, and peaked at number four on the ARIA charts, but does the new material make giving it another shot worthwhile? The answer is probably not, unless you’re a diehard fan, although the 28 year-old has plenty of those. New collaborations with Spit Syndicate and Way Of The Eagle and a re-record of his triple j ‘Like A Version’ are laudable enough efforts, but each of these doth not a new album make, while adding another mix of ‘Am Yours’ is pretty damn lazy. While ‘Tightrope’ remains one of the most annoyingly-catchy Australian songs released in the last twelve months, and there is plenty of decent material spread over the album, the addition of a feeble six new tracks leaves a bad taste in the mouth. There are plenty of re-releases which are as welcome as they are fascinating; offering previously unheard studio cuts or alternative versions which breathe new life into old songs. This isn’t one of them. (ONETWO)
“We know you’ve waited a long time, cuz we ain’t been back for aaaaages!”
While no apology is needed for the unfortunate circumstances in which the Rolling Stones were forced to cancel their last Australian tour, it’s nice that Mick Jagger acknowledges the fact shortly after an explosive opening double-salvo of ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ and ‘It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It)’. It’s also nice that he receives a response loud enough to probably kill every bird within a ten-mile radius.
Two songs in and it already feels that incredible amounts of energy have been expended by both band and audience. The lack of a support band hasn’t kept an arena-sized bunch of music fans of mostly advanced years from allowing themselves to be whipped up into a frenzy by Jagger, who almost can’t find enough parts of the stage in which to shake his bony hips and flail his arms like it’s 1969 all over again. Besides the prancing peacock frontman, ol’ Keef and Ronnie are looking mean and lean (and dressed mostly in green) as they puff on cigarettes and interchange licks. Charlie is the epitome of cool and reigns everything in. Touring members are sounding and looking hot. The knowledge that we’re witnessing a bunch of frail septuagenarians roll casually yet efficiently through their hits has been suspended from our minds and we are being drawn into the Stones’ world of swagger, mystery and comfortable trainers, if only for a couple of hours.
‘You Got Me Rocking’ is up next, followed by ‘Tumbling Dice’, after which Jagger gets playful, referring to the G20. “Everyone in Brisbane was so well behaved, I hear” he says, almost sneering. “Even Tony Abbott was well behaved” Cue boos. “No shirt-fronting for Abbott. He was in a Putin-free zone.”
The always-outstanding Mick Taylor joins in the fun to run through ‘Silver Train’ and ‘Bitch’; the former taking a few seconds to start, while Jagger confesses they are “trying to remember the arrangement.”
A punchy 1-2 of ‘Paint It Black’ and ‘Honky Tonk Women’ takes the fervour up a notch before Jagger introduces the band and leaves the stage to let Richards take lead vocal on ‘You Got The Silver’, ‘Before They Make Me Run’ and ‘Happy’. “All you up the back there – I’m thinking of you,” he mocks, in his trademark whisky-soaked voice; the voice that gives rise to the argument that he might be the best vocalist on stage tonight, just as there exists the strong argument that Mick Taylor is the best guitarist present. Not that it really matters, anyway.
An extended version of ‘Midnight Rambler’ sees just about all band members do a circuit of the tongue-shaped extended stage, and ‘Miss You’ allows bassist Darryl Jones to unleash his incredibly funky fills. ‘Gimme Shelter’ and ‘Start Me Up’ keep the hits a-comin’, then Jagger cranks his inner dandy up to 11 as he comes back onto the stage draped in huge red feather cape for ‘Sympathy For The Devil’, and ‘Brown Sugar’ gives back-up singers Lisa Fischer and Bernard Fowler the chance to strut their stuff.
And now, the obligatory encore. Huge kudos to the guys and gals of Vibrancy, the Choir of the Cuskelly College of Music, for their perfectly-executed take on ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’, although their choral careers might have just peaked – sorry guys, it’s all downhill from here. Closer ‘Satisfaction’ does the job, and multiple bows and a spot of fighting over tossed plectrums and drumsticks later, and the night is complete. Not bad for a bunch of guys labelled as has-beens as far back as the early seventies.
Some garage bands should probably stay in the garage, and others have a duty to kick the door down and explode into the street with a furious blast of colour and imagination. Sydney’s Food Court is most certainly of the latter variety; this gang of jangly fuzzmeisters is exactly the type of shot in the arm Australian guitar-rock could do with right now. Recorded by Straight Arrows’ Owen Penglis and mastered by the always-excellent Mikey Young of Total Control/Eddy Current Suppression Ring, this seven-track EP takes more from ‘90s garage than it does from the original ‘60s wave, with hints of Weezer and early Green Day, and the results are all good. Single and opener ’14 Years Young’ is the obvious high point; its shouty chorus and brash guitars set the quartet’s stall out in no uncertain fashion. ‘Red Wine Teething’ is more measured, even if it reeks of hangovers and walks of shame, while ‘Dripping’ is rougher around the edges and points to what ought to be a pleasingly destructive live show. The cocky swagger of ‘On The River’ is a fitting climax to an EP that sits well beside anything from Palms to The Frowning Clouds, and a lot more besides. Building from here is what will make or break the band, but with only one song out of seven finishing up anywhere near the four-minute mark, this is urgent and necessary stuff from a promising addition to garage-rock goodness. (Independent)
Load up on Red Bull and bring your friends – English house duo Dusky will be playing some seriously lengthy sets on their Australian tour, says DJ Alfie Granger-Howell.
“We have already started our tour in the UK and Europe,” he says. “We’re doing extended sets; about four hours, which gives us the chance to play a lot of different music and new stuff.”
Formed in 2011, the duo rose quickly to play clubs and festivals internationally, including a recent appearance at Glastonbury.
“We hoped that it would kick off and turn into something big,” Granger-Howell says. “At the beginning we were both doing part-time work and other music work. It’s been a while now, but being able to just put our whole lives into Dusky has been pretty amazing, and not something that we really expected. It’s quite a short space of time, but the last three years have been a steady [rise] for us. At the same time, if we look back and think how much has changed for us, it does seem like a short space of time. We had some other music projects before – both producing and deejaying – but for Dusky, it does feel like it’s happened quickly.”
The upcoming Australian shows will give the duo – known for their eclectic tastes – a chance to air an abundance of new material.
“We’ve been playing a few new tracks in the set and people have been getting into the action, which is always good fun. We like to tailor our sets to the crowd’s reactions. Sometimes we’ll play something deeper, something more house or something more techno, depending on what the crowd is reacting to. Either way, we tend to play quite eclectically, so expect a few different styles and genres in the set.”
With an almost unbelievable six EPs already under their belts, expect a follow-up to 2012 debut album Stick By This to be released in the not-too-distant future, albeit after one more EP release.
“We just love the EP format,” Granger-Howell says. “We’ve always just had the music sitting there, so it makes sense to put them out, although we have a few tracks we keep just for our sets. We enjoy getting the music out there, seeing the reaction and letting people listen to it. We just enjoy doing it, and to me it doesn’t seem like a huge amount of music, but I guess when you really look at it, it is a lot. We are aiming to release another album at some point next year, which we have been working on. We began working on it alongside our future EP. It’s probably about halfway there now; we’ve got about six or seven tracks finished, so it’s well on the way.”
With such an eclectic range of music emanating from the mixing desks of two people, it’s certain that they won’t agree on everything, says Granger-Howell.
“We’ve got quite similar tastes but we both listen to stuff outside of dance music that we don’t necessarily share the love of. Looking at my musical background, I’ve been into a lot of classical music and jazz which I don’t think Nick has any affinity to. He listens to some electronica and old soul stuff; I wouldn’t say I hate them, but I wouldn’t listen to them.”
DUSKY PLAY:
FRI 7 – THE MET, BRISBANE
SAT 8 – HARBOURLIFE, SYDNEY
SUN 16 – QUEEN VICTORIA MARKET, MELBOURNE
THEIR LATEST EP, LOVE TAKING OVER, IS OUT NOW VIA 17 STEPS.
Damien Rice has never seemed like one to chase commercial success, but he found it nevertheless with his 2002 debut O; an album which broke a thousand hearts and made the Irishman a reluctant star. It says a lot that he waited four years to release a follow up, and it’s taken a further nine for this third album to appear, but his lack of commercial ambition remains steadfast, if his inclusion of the letter ‘u’ in ‘favourite’ is anything to go by. The recent disturbing trend of middle-class whiners posing as earthy folkies and finding success is not one Rice could ever be associated with, as he gets straight into showing off his vocal range with the opener and title track. The nine-minute soaring ballad that is second track ‘It Takes A Lot To Know A Man’ could be a mini-album in itself and is worth the price tag alone, whereas ‘The Greatest Bastard’ comes straight from the school of Nick Drake. ‘I Don’t Want To Change You’ will have global audiences singing along while shedding a sea of single tears, and there’s the expected healthy dose of melancholy spread over ‘Long Long Way’ and ‘Trusty And True’. Rice has never sought fame, but when you’re this good a songwriter, it’s going to find you all by itself, and even an album of only eight songs like this seems like an embarrassment of riches. (Atlantic)
THERE was only one recipe for success when writing the latest Lamb album: keeping things organic.
The English electronic duo’s sixth album, Backspace Unwind, is the band’s second since their 2009 reformation, and singer-songwriter Lou Rhodes says it took her and Andy Barlow to get back to basics to make it happen.
“When we split in 2004, the whole thing was getting very confused,” she says. “I was dying to go off and do more acoustic-based stuff, to the extent that I was trying to pull Lamb in an acoustic direction. At the time, when we wrote Between Darkness and Wonder, we were writing with a full band as well. As a result, that album is quite confused as a Lamb album as it has all these elements pulling in different directions. When we split up, I wrote three solo albums then got back together in 2009 to do Lamb shows and subsequently write 5, [after which] we talked about what Lamb was and where it had gone wrong. The essence of Lamb is basically Andy’s electronica and my song-writing, and the kind of strange dialectic that they do with each other. So, writing a Lamb song is very much of a case of starting from really basic principles like a drum track from Andy or a few simple words from me. We always have to grow [songs] between us, and that’s what makes a Lamb song.”
Formed in 1996, the genre-defying duo may have found a new lease of life with Backspace Unwind, helped by their new, relaxed approached to song-writing and the ability to banish that doubt-instilling inner monologue.
“I was describing this to a journalist the other day,” Rhodes says. “It feels like from the very beginning of the process of writing this album that there was a flow that somehow set into place and we just ran with it. It just feels like that’s kind of continuing now that it’s released. The response has been amazing; people seem to really get the album and it’s really very, very positive. This is our sixth Lamb album, so at the very beginning I had this though in my head, ‘oh shit, what have I got left to write about?’ So I started playing around with free association ways of writing, so rather than thinking about what to write about, I almost got my mind out of the way and it became almost like a meditation. I’d kind of let the thoughts come through me, rather than from my mind, if you can imagine that. The mind is a terrible editor; it’s like ‘no, that’s shit’ or ‘no, that’s great’. It comments. If you do some meditation, you notice your mind kind of commenting on everything, and you’re just like ‘won’t you shut up a minute.’ That was my process with certain songs; ‘Shines Like This’ and ‘In Binary’, which are very much examples of that way of writing, where I just let it flow. As a result, the lyrics are quite abstract in a way.”
An invitation to perform with a Dutch orchestra found the duo more than a little out of their comfort zone.
“We were asked if we would like to play some shows with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta,” Rhodes says. “It’s a world-class orchestra, so how could we refuse? It was a real learning curve for us, as there was quite a communication barrier between our world and theirs. I mean, they are very much a classical setup with recognised boundaries and they like to play what’s on the page, and Lamb is just about the opposite of that – we play almost exactly what’s not on the page. Andy can a bit bolshy at times, so it was a very interesting dynamic, I’ll put it that way.”
A five-date February tour of Australia is locked in, and Rhodes is hoping to go down as well as they have done in these parts in the past.
“We always have an amazing time when we come and play there. We find Australian audiences incredibly open and enthusiastic. Australian music is generally very positive, and when we play live it’s important that we have that amazing connection with the crowd – we certainly seem to get that in Australia. There’s a lot of positivity in Australian people, maybe because it’s a relatively new country in the world; you’re not dragged down by history as much as many of us. We seem to have made a connection there and long may it survive.”
LAMB PLAY THE TIVOLI FEBRUARY 10. BACKSPACE UNWIND IS OUT NOW.
After listening to this sixth studio album by alt-rock quartet Bush, it’s tempting to pull out a clichéd phrase or two – “how the mighty have fallen” being the most obvious. But, were the British band, formed in 1992, ever that mighty in the first place? Grunge kids knocking around in the ’90s will remember being weaned on Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, while Bush’s 1996 album Razorblade Suitcase may have registered as their most noticeable, but ultimately fairly forgetful, effort. And so, having split and reformed in 2010, Gavin Rossdale and co. are sticking to the formula: pushing formulaic, lacklustre rock dirge with laughably cringe-worthy lyrics and an utter lack of soul. Lead single ‘The Only Way Out’ is as good as it gets, and that ain’t good at all; “Follow me down to the water, through the trip wires in your head” being the opening line. Good one Gav, old chum; get all that repressed high school poetry out of you in one fell swoop. The turgid electro-rock of ‘Loneliness Is A Killer’ is another low point; it’s less a song, more an excruciatingly obvious attempt to make noise big enough to fill arenas. Bush have always been much more successful in America than anywhere else in the Western world, and this album will probably keep their bore-rock train a-rollin’ there. I can’t even begin to think of a reason why. (Zuma Rock Records)
Andrew Dice Clay is one of America’s most controversial and outrageous stand-up comedians. Banned from MTV and many other television and radio stations, and opposed by women’s rights and LGBTI groups internationally, he has been a polarising force in comedy for more than 30 years. He’s also one of only a handful of comedians to have sold out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row, and has a considerable acting career under his belt. For the first time ever, Clay will appear on Australian stages, as he brings his ‘The Diceman Cometh Down Under’ tour throughout October.
First of all, why has it taken so long for you to come to Australia?
The truth is I really don’t go anywhere. I don’t leave the States. Australians have always been coming to see me here so I just figured, why not. They’re cool people. They’re always at my shows in Vegas and they are some of the coolest people I’ve met, so I decided you know what take the trip, enjoy your life and have a good time. Let me tell you something, Australian people know how to have to good time.
Australians are no strangers to blue humour, but what can we expect from your show? Is it safe for us to bring our grandparents?
Uh, no! Not unless your grandparents are real and love the real deal, you know what I mean? I’ll tell you the truth, when older people come to see me they go crazy, maybe because they’re older, maybe they don’t give a fuck but they just love it. They go crazy.
Why should the Australian public spend their hard-earned cash to hear what Andrew Dice Clay has to say in 2014?
You know what, I’m current and I am the funniest guy in the world, that’s the bottom line. It doesn’t even matter what I’m talking about, they’re just going to leave the theatre going ‘I am so glad I got to see that’. I’m a concept performer, I know what I do to crowds.
When you were first starting out and throughout the ’80s and early ’90s, there seemed to more comedians willing to take a chance and be ‘controversial’. Do you think fewer comedians are willing to take a risk now?
Yeah, you got a lot of dirty comics out there. But you know dirty and funny are two different things, so a lot of them just curse for the shock value of cursing, but it’s not shocking anybody anymore. You got to paint pictures. I know how to paint those comedic pictures — those filthy, dirty, comedic pictures. That’s the key because anybody can talk dirty, anybody walking the street can talk dirty, it’s another thing to make it really funny and that’s where I pride myself.
You’ve been known for making some pretty controversial statements about certain groups of people in the past. Have you ever regretted anything you’ve said in your shows, as time has passed?
You know what, not really. No. The stuff I talk about; it’s base. It’s relationships, it’s what goes on between people, you know, sexual but it’s sexual cartoons. It’s funny! It’s like, I could meet the nicest girl, polite, nice, you know and then I kiss her and turn her into a dirty little whore. I don’t want somebody to be nice in the bedroom, I don’t want anything with being nice in the bedroom. And then you take it on stage and it just makes it really fucking funny.
Do you think you could have ever been as successful as you have if you hadn’t been seen as being controversial?
You know what, I honestly didn’t set out in my career to be controversial. It just came with the territory. I never even thought that way. I’m an actor and a comic, so it’s all about acting for me, it’s all about performance and theatre, [it] wasn’t about being controversial. The media did that. I never even used to think of that stuff.
How was your experience working with Woody Allen and Cate Blanchett in ‘Blue Jasmine’?
Working with them was unbelievable because from doing nothing, all of a sudden I’m working with what I call Hollywood royalty from the Baldwins to Cate Blanchett, who was just, to me she was just a throwback to what movie stars used to be. She’s unreal and she’s deserved every award she [has] won. I love her that’s it. And I’ve loved her for a long time before I did the movie with her, but doing the movie, I got to see how cool a person she was: down to earth, grounded, family-orientated. Just a great girl.
Does your return to stand-up and touring mean your acting career is on hold?
No, no. I just did a new thing that Martin Scorsese is doing for HBO. So that’s the newest one.
What are you most looking forward to about coming to Australia?
You know what, to me it’s just going to be a whole experience. It’s just going to be fun. The shows are going to be great. I’m going to have some of my people with me and we’re just coming there to have a blast.
Let’s get this straight from the off – legalizing everything probably isn’t a good idea, and it’s safe to say Geelong retro garage-rockers The Frowning Clouds know that. That aside, this is a band with some serious pop-writing chops, as this third album from the quintet shows. Plenty of sixties-inspired jangly pop with more than a few welcome psych-rock touches is the modus operandi that long-term fans of the band will recognise, although there are a few neat new tricks slotted into a series of two to three-minute tracks to keep things interesting. Indeed, it’s the lack of extended King Gizzard-esque psych-rock wig-outs that make Legalize Everything bounce along so nicely, although at no point does the mood get beyond incredibly laid-back. Opener ‘Carrier Drone’ sets the tone with a chilled and distorted chorus of “take me, take me anywhere you want”, while ‘Sun Particle Mind Body Experience’ carries on the relaxed vibe with some shiny guitar moments. Tracks like ‘Move It’ and ‘No Blues’ display an intriguing diversity to the band’s sound that points to a more eclectic future, while space-rock instrumental ‘Radio Telescope’ sounds like a group of guys making ear-searing noise just for the sheer pleasure of it. All in all, it’s this mix of elements that combine to make an album that’s catchy, crackly and a whole lot of fun.
Best track: Sun Particle Mind Body Experience If you like this, you’ll like these: The Kinks, The Small Faces, The Byrds In a word: Swingin’
Ahh, how good it is to have a new album from Lanie Lane. It’s been a long three years since the Sydneysider’s debut To The Horses, in which time she’s supported Jack White and Hall & Oates before falling a little off the radar. Such a break brings with it the chance of new sonic territories being explored, and the first thing that hints at a change in musical direction is the distinct lack of anything rockabilly-related on the cover. ‘I See You’ is the first of several more measured and tender tracks from the 27 year-old, as it quickly becomes clear that this album will go a long way to shaking off the ’50s rockabilly pin-up crown that Lane had previously made for herself. However, while the uptempo bops are seemingly a thing of the past, the restrained nature of Lane’s vocals on a series of ballads and country-pop numbers only serves to make them even more entrancing, as on the soaring ‘La Loba’ and later number ‘Made For It’. Single ‘Celeste’ begins with some wonderfully jangly guitar lines before Lane’s smooth and soulful vocals will make you not give a damn that rockabilly ever existed. ‘No Sound’ is the track closest to the Tarantino-flavoured work of Lanie Lane of old and is most likely to get a bar gig kicking into gear, and while the ten-and-a-half-minute ‘Mother’ perhaps takes the mick, it’s still the slower tracks that sound best. It’ll be interesting to see how Lane pulls these songs off live, and what lies ahead for her in terms of how any future record sounds, but a move this ballsy deserves admiration and support. While Night Shade is a big change in style and might not please everyone, the value of what’s been added is worth many times that of what’s been lost. (Ivy League Records)
Before having even heard of note of Foxygen’s third album you’d be forgiven for thinking they’d lost the plot. Twenty-four songs spread over a double LP seems like the sort of rock music folly that ’70s punk killed off for good, but the Californian duo of Jonathan Rado and Sam France are seemingly undeterred. They even go as far as labelling their opening track ‘Star Power Airlines’ in a nod to a time when rock stars flew in planes with their band logo painted on the fuselage.
Thankfully, the expected musical flatulence doesn’t appear, although it’s barely kept at bay in parts. Second track and lead single ‘How Can You Really’ goes a long way towards bursting that particular bubble; it’s Big Star-esque aesthetic soothes and radiates warmth, before the piano balladry of ‘Coulda Been My Love’ shows that the duo have lost none of their song-writing talents during the crazy times they’ve experienced since the release of 2012’s We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic. Indeed, it could be suggested that the alleged infighting, shambolic live performances and so-called exhaustion have made …And Star Power what it is. Much like their heroes The Rolling Stones’ 1978 classic ‘Beast of Burden’, Foxygen have their own bruised-and-battered anthem with ‘You And I’, on which France is found asking “Why doesn’t anybody help me? Why doesn’t anybody care?” amid tales of broken bodies and divided relationships.
The next four tracks, labelled the ‘Star Power Suite’ are a fairly ridiculous few minutes that start off sounding like a medley of ’70s theme tunes in the vein of The Fall Guy or Smokey and the Bandit, before ‘Mattress Warehouse’ picks things up again; its organ-driven base allowing France to mumble and stumble through his vocals in the elegantly wasted manner he has made his own. The driving whimsy of ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ provides an album highlight shortly after, ‘Cold Winter Freedom’ throws some heavily-distorted synths into the mix to make it the heaviest track here, and ‘Freedom II’ is about as Rolling Stones as any band is going to get without snorting their dead father’s ashes.
By the last quarter, the gloves are well and truly off and nothing is left in the tank. The flailing fury of ‘Talk’ gives way to the cheese-balladry of ‘Everyone Needs Love’ and its calls to “shine on”, before closer ‘Hang’ closes proceedings on a miserable and dragging note.
At 82 minutes, boundaries of length and self-indulgence aren’t quite reached and beached, but there’s a lingering feeling that at least four or five of these tracks could have been left out or set aside for the special edition and no loss of quality would have resulted. At times out of focus, at times incoherent, but always engaging …And Star Power is more like three or four albums disguised as one. However, for all their retro leanings and sometimes misguided ideas, Rado and France remain top-drawer songwriters, and it’s that fact that make this album worth a spin or two.
Beginning his career as the talented one in The Smiths provided Johnny Marr with a pretty solid foundation on which to build his musical world after shedding the Sultan of Sorrow that is Steven Patrick Morrissey. His second solo after album after last year’s The Messenger, Playland is a further opportunity for the 50 year-old Englishman to quietly impress, as he has been doing with a variety of projects for several years. If impressing was the intention, however, Marr has mostly fallen short here. Rather too much of this album sounds badly dated, perhaps most closely exemplified by lead single ‘Easy Money’, which comes off like a wince-inducing mix of Duran Duran and Dire Straits. There are still some fine moments though, as there will always be when a guitarist as good as Marr is involved. ‘Dynamo’ and ‘The Trap’ contain some of those wonderfully ringing and intricate guitar lines we come to expect from his fretboard; the ones he should stick to building all his songs around. The main problems are a lack of quality songcraft and consistently expressionless vocals; a losing combination if there ever was one, and one that leaves you feeling like an opportunity has been missed here. Marr is a vital talent – of that there is no doubt. He simply needs a writing partner to take these songs to a higher level, and then he shouldn’t ever consider himself a lead singer ever again. (New Voodoo Records)
BLUE MOUNTAINS psychedelic/pop quintet Richard In Your Mind have returned with Ponderosa, their most accomplished album to date.
Band leader Richard Cartwright explains how it came together and why marching to the beat of your own drum is a good thing, ahead of their Sydney shows.
“People seem to get it,” he says. I think it’s kind of a weird album I guess, although that’s for other people to decide. There are songs on there that stick out like a sore thumb, but we decided we’d keep them on there anyway because that’s what we like and what we wanted to do, and it seems that other people are like ‘it’s great that you did that’ instead of ‘you really messed up the whole thing by doing that’. So, we’ve been pleasantly surprised that people get it, and that’s cool.”
A 14-track collection of psychedelic pop gems mixed and produced by regular cohort SPOD, Ponderosa features woozy instrumentals, waves of percussion and a few surprises.
“There’s one called ‘Good Morning’ and even a little of ‘My Volcano’; they’re kind of synthy and groovy,” Cartwright says. “’Good Morning’ especially has a pitch-shifted and distorted vocal. It’s kind of noisy. We wrote heaps more songs than we put on the album. We basically kind of just chose the best. In making the list, we played around a lot before deciding. There are still heaps of songs we really like that didn’t make it on, but we tried to balance the instrumental tracks in between the songy-songs to make sure people weren’t getting too lost in an instrumental before giving them another kind of stronger-feeling anchored to a proper song. In the long run, there’s an argument for not having too much coherence. I feel like there’s always more work to be done leading up to releasing it, but we’ve had it ready for a little while now, and now it’s not just in our heads, it’s in the world. We wanted to make sure we got it right. It took as long as it did, and once it was finished it was decided we were putting it out in five months, which seemed like ages, but time is on a slope and it goes fast and here we are now. It feels good.”
The singer explains how the off-kilter album found its title after a discussion about the Cartwright family on the American TV Western Bonanza.
“Well, I’m a Cartwright,” he says. “Not that I really grew up watching a lot of Bonanza, but my parents and people in the generation above did grow up with it would talk about Bonanza and start singing the tune to me. It was only recently when my mother came to visit and we were talking about Bonanza that she mentioned that the ranch was called Ponderosa out of the blue, and I thought it was a kick-arse name for something. The whole album is a diverse album; it goes to different places, but in a way this idea of home and trying to describe the different things that stand for a unified whole or the quest for home or something; it’s not specific but it’s a vibe.”
While the influences and variety of sounds on Ponderosa are as eclectic as they come, single ‘Hammered’ is a frolicking ray of sunny pop that pays tribute to daytime indulgence, although Cartwright admits it’s not necessarily about alcohol.
“It depends on what you’re getting hammered on, really,” he says. “With booze you should wait a little bit, until you’ve done something, but if you’ve got the day off, the sun is shining and you want to have a spliff in the morning, you can.”
When he’s not getting loaded in the daytime, Cartwright can probably be found collecting ingredients for dinner, as described on ‘Four Leaf Clover Salad’. But how many four leaf clovers constitute a salad?
“I think it’s the same rule as ‘a few’, so three,” he laughs. “Two is only a couple of four leaf clovers, so obviously you’ll want more, so I’d say three is enough for a little salad. My wife is really good at finding four leaf clovers – she finds them constantly, and the way you get luck is by eating them, or so she tells me. I was walking the dog one day and that concept occurred to me, as I think I did eat a few.”
Expect upcoming Richard In Your Mind shows along the east coast to be heavy with new material.
“To start with, it’s a small eastern tour; Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Newcastle, Byron Bay, Brisbane and stuff. Then, hopefully we’ll play a bunch more shows. We’ve played a couple of shows, mainly focussing on the new songs. We want to make sure a couple of the new songs are more up-to-scratch, but at the moment our set is probably 50 percent new stuff. We’ll try to get it up to about 75 percent new stuff, while keeping songs we’ve always enjoyed playing live as well.”
RICHARD IN YOUR MIND PLAY THE LANDSDOWNE FRIDAY OCTOBER 17 AND NEWTOWN FESTIVAL SUNDAY NOVEMBER 9. PONDEROSA IS OUT NOW.
THE TEA PARTY have had more than their fair share of break-ups and make-ups, but frontman Jeff Martin’s confidence in their new album and upcoming tour is higher than ever.
“It’s surreal, but we’re an achievement and an accomplishment,” he says. “I’m very proud of the three of us; that we overcame what seem now to be very petty differences, but at the time we thought to be much more than they were. The music won the battle and brought our friendship and this very important band back together. There are a lot of great rock bands out there, but there’s nothing like The Tea Party, and I think it’s good that we’re back. The mental framework of the band is better than ever, so here we are.”
The Canadian rock trio formed in 1990, but split in 2005 due to the dreaded ‘creative differences’, before reforming in 2011. Their new album The Ocean at the End is their first since 2004’s Seven Circles.
“It’s everything you want,” Martin says. “Everything that The Tea Party is capable of doing is on that record, and that’s a lot. That’s a lot of music on one record. It’s exactly what we need to be like now, you know? For ourselves and for our fans. Over the course of the years we were apart, promoters were calling our various agents with massive offers to get the band back together. The wounds were pretty deep for the three of us, then after seven years my agent called me and asked if I’d entertain the idea, and I was like ‘you know what? Yeah.’ Time had passed and I missed The Tea Party, and I missed Jeff [Burrows, drums] and Stuart [Chatwood, bass]. I was game, and if the other two were ready, so was I. And that was that. Musically, it was on fire immediately from the first rehearsal, although it was icy for the first few months as we tried to feel each other out, since we hadn’t spoken for seven years. That being said, I’ve known Jeff Burrows since I was five years old. Lots of bands say they’re like brothers or whatever, but this band truly is, as we’ve known each other that long. We just had to learn to trust and respect each other again; we’ve each grown with our own individual experiences and I think it’s now better than ever.”
Ontario-born Martin now lives in Perth, so it was an easy choice for the band to re-find their musical feet on Australian soil; the result being a 2012 live album entitled Live From Australia.
“The criteria that the three of us initially held in our minds was firstly, can we be that great rock band again and make that magic on-stage?” Martin says. “Yes, we ticked off that box with the reformation tour. Point two: can we rekindle that beautiful friendship that has to exist for us to continue? We ticked that box off. I had to also prove things to Jeff and Stuart, and also to myself – and we won’t go into it or anything – but towards the end of The Tea Party the ship lost its captain, you know? I sort of went off the rails, so I had to prove to myself, Jeff and Stuart that I could be the captain of the ship again. Then it was time to say we have to make music, but the one thing we did realise was if The Tea Party was going to come up with a new record, it has to stand up to anything we’ve done in the past; it’s got to be that good or else don’t do it at all. That’s why we took our time over a year and a half. We did four recording sessions, two writing sessions and we did them in tiny blocks of time, stepping away and coming back. It’s our statement now; it’s exactly where we’re at, so let’s go forth and conquer.”
An upcoming nine-date national tour will give fans a chance to reacquaint themselves with a band that has made Australia its honorary home in recent years.
“Australians have great taste,” Martin says. “Still to this day, there’s a great rock ‘n’ roll audience in Australia. Many of the great bands that came out of Australia had to prove themselves in the pubs; the INXSs, the Midnight Oils and all that stuff, right? They had to be a great live band to make rock ‘n’ roll fans go ‘yes’. I think that’s why Australian audiences have been so passionate about The Tea Party, because when we’re on we’re one of the best there is. Australians really appreciate the musicianship and passion that we put into it, you know? I want the band to be at its very best when we’re playing here and for it to be firing on all cylinders. It’s going to be a big campaign, about two-and-a-half years, but for music of the band, Australia is very much its home.”
When asked whether The Tea Party are back for the long haul, Martin once again answers with towering confidence.
“I’ll tell you this. I don’t know if it was an e-mail or text, but I got it from Stuart a couple of weeks ago saying he’s already booked pre-production in Vancouver for 2016. So apparently we’re making another record [laughs]. We’ll be touring Australia and making some great memories. Following that, we’ll do Canada, then take a couple of months off. After that, the world is calling. We’ve got Asia, South America, Europe; we’ve made a commitment to ourselves and this music, as well as the fans, and for us it’s the real deal. I’m looking forward to it.”
THE TEA PARTY PLAY:
MELBOURNE PALAIS THEATRE – OCT 12
SYDNEY ENMORE THEATRE – OCT 15
BRISBANE THE TIVOLI – OCT 23
IT’S ALMOST certain you haven’t heard of them, but Yarrawonga trio Woodlock have a fanbase most bigger bands would die for.
Their last national tour sold out despite an advertising budget of only $150 and they’ve sold 15,000 copies of their debut EP, and singer/guitarist Ezekiel Walters puts it down to one thing – the power of busking.
“Busking is a really good way to get your music out,” he says. “I guess that’s how our fanbase got up pretty quickly. I think people like that we’re undiscovered as well. Because we haven’t had radio play, it makes it a bit more of a discovery when people find us and they really like us – they like the fact that we’re not well known. We’ve got quite a good Facebook following; it’s crazy.”
The folk/indie trio are currently touring their way up the east coast, but it was a chance meeting overseas that sparked the formation of the band.
“We’ve been a band for about two years,” Walters says. “It was me and my brother Zechariah – we played music together at school, and we met Bowen [Purcell, percussion] on a missions trip to Africa. We were there playing music to people, then we got back to our hometown Yarrawonga and we started playing at the local pub. We were enjoying it quite a bit, so we decided to all quit our jobs, buy a caravan and do a bit of a trip around Australia. We planned to go busking, fruit-picking and do a bit of pub work to pay for petrol and places to stay. It was great fun – in the end we didn’t do anything but busk, which was pretty cool. We managed to make enough money on the street to pay for the odd slurp and a place to stay. We met a lot of people and sometimes they let us stay at their house and stuff like that.”
They’re a band that have earned their spurs on the streets, so it’s in the live setting that Woodlock feel most at home.
“We’re used to a busking setup, so it’s me and my brother on acoustic guitars and our drummer plays buckets,” Walters says. “We’re also going to have an extra member travelling with us on this tour, so it’ll be a fuller sound. There’ll be a lot of epic drums – that’s what we’re trying to go for on this tour. We’re aiming to get a lot of people into the drums and get people really enjoying it. The good thing about busking is that you get really good at performing on the spot. We get a lot of random things happening to us when we’re on the street and it’s helped us talk to people. We used to be quite shy, but you can’t be like that when you busk because you have to relate to people. I think that’s why people like us – because we’re very relatable and we just want to play music.”
Being in a band with your brother doesn’t work for everyone, but it hasn’t been musical differences that have come between the Walters boys.
“It’s good and bad,” he laughs. “We’re pretty close, so there’s not much tension. But when there is tension, it gets pretty aggressive. We had a full-on punch-up when we were living in the caravan – it was over washing too. He hadn’t put away my washing and we got into a full-on fight. I won, and I’m the younger brother too, but I’m a bit bigger.”
WOODLOCK PLAY:
BRISBANE BLACK BEAR LODGE – OCT 9
SYDNEY NEWTOWN SOCIAL CLUB – OCT 10
Paul McBride 