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Stephen K. Amos: “I’m going to tell you what I want”

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Amos

AUSTRALIA can’t get enough of Stephen K. Amos, but there’s one thing he wants to clear up.

“I met an Australian outside a show in London a few days ago,” he says. “And he just went ‘Oh my God, I didn’t know you lived in England!’ Of course I live in England! When I’m in Australia I tend to do a lot of television shows in a short space of time, and they get shown throughout the year, so people assume I actually live in Australia and everything is live.”

While television appearances will likely feature, a new stand-up show is the main reason for the Londoner’s visit this time around. “My new show is full of belly laughs and I like to throw a couple of things out into the audience to get their reactions,” he says.

“If anything happens in the audience or the venue and it’s funny or worthwhile I’ll run with it. The show is tentatively entitled ‘What Does The K Stand For?’ and it will basically answer all the questions that people ask me. I get asked the same sort of things that anyone would get asked; if someone has a funny name, looks a different way, is from a different place, or has different religious points of view and beliefs. I also get asked if I’m in a relationship, so I’ll be talking about break-ups and make-ups. I’ll also be looking at mortality, as I’ve done some calculations and worked out that I’m halfway through my life already.”

While generally known for his black humour and observational comedy, Amos’ new material is of a more personal nature than anything he’s performed before. “I was dumped rather grandly a couple of years ago. I didn’t see it coming at all, and I was given those ‘it’s stopped being fun’ and ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ lines. I thought it was all bullshit and crap, and I’m sure a lot of other people have been through that as well. We’ve all had relationships and know what it’s like to be loved and fall out of love. One of the questions I ask is, ‘is it better to be the dumper or the dumpee?’ I never seek permission from any of the people I talk about on stage. It’s up to me; if I was involved, that makes it my story.”

When asked if he has any regrets about switching from a potential career in law to one in comedy, the 43-year-old answers strongly. “Comedy is the one job in the world I can think of where you can say exactly what you want. There are no set regulations or compliance laws.

“With being a lawyer, the chances are you’ll be defending someone you know to be guilty or cross-examining someone you know to be innocent. It always makes me laugh when I see people’s Twitter accounts and they have ‘these views are my own’ on there. Oh, really? You had to put that there? Do we not all have a personal life any more? You’ll never see me saying anything like that. If I go to my bank manager to ask about a loan or something, they’ll tell me what the bank wants them to tell me. If you come see my show, I’m not going to tell you what you might think I’m going to tell you, I’m going to tell you what I want.”

Despite not actually living here, Amos keeps an eye out for anything topical he can add to his Australian shows, while avoiding other aspects of tour life. “I did shows last year in Australia, just at the moment when the battle for leadership between Rudd and Gillard was happening. That was such good fun as it was so ridiculous. I still can’t believe Julia Gillard was challenged for her leadership and they took it to a vote; only in Australia could this happen.

“When I’m doing festivals overseas a lot of comedians tend to hang out together. Bearing in mind that doing a festival means you’re away from home and loved ones, so the only people you know well are the people you’ve worked with for a number of years. The one thing we don’t do, which would be very annoying, is to sit around trying to out-joke each other. That would be unbearable. I’m currently on tour in the UK now, and finishing in February. I’m doing another radio series at the same time, and putting the final pieces together for the tour in Australia. After that, it’s back to the UK for another show, then a tour of America.”

Stephen K. Amos has the following Australian shows:

Feb 12-16, 18-20 – Adelaide Fringe at The Governor Hindmarsh
Feb 26-28, Mar 1-2, 4-10 – Brisbane Comedy Festival at the Powerhouse Theatre
Mar 12-16 – Adelaide Fringe at The Arts Theatre
Mar 17 – Adelaide Fringe at The Governor Hindmarsh
Mar 23 – Geelong Performing Arts Centre
Mar 24 – Frankston Arts Centre
Mar 28-30, April 1-6, 8-13, 15-21 – Melbourne International Comedy Festival Athenaeum Theatre
May 9-11 – Sydney Comedy Festival at Enmore Theatre
May 16-18 – Perth Comedy Festival at Astor Main Space

Live review: Aviici + New World Sound + Joel Fletcher – Brisbane Riverstage – 24/1/14

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One of the most in-demand DJs in the world right now, 24 year-old Tim Bergling – a.k.a. Aviici – brought his True album tour to Brisbane’s Riverstage on a nastily humid Friday evening for his first major Australian concert. Not since Future Music Festival have so many pairs of short shorts been on a single patch of grass at once, as an all-ages crowd collectively champed at the bit to have their eardrums assaulted by Sweden’s finest.

After an opening set by Melbourne up-and-comer Joel Fletcher, Gold Coast duo New World Sound get the sold-out audience bouncing with their trademark high-energy dance tunes and calls to the audience to get excited for “our boy Aviici”.

By the time our boy arrives at the relatively early time of 7:55, there is a palpable sense of release among the diverse audience as chants of “Aviici, Aviici” reverberate around the natural amphitheatre of the Riverstage and the DJ opens with the country-house number ‘Hey Brother’, followed closely by the piano-led ‘Long Road To Hell’. When it’s time for ‘You Make Me’ several hundred people are bouncing in unison in front of the stage, as thousands of streamers, jets of smoke and retina-searing lasers engulf the audience, and the sound is probably loud enough to be heard in the DJ’s homeland. By the time his remix of Calvin Harris’s ‘Sweet Nothing’ rolls around, the Swede has the audience eating out of his hand; and this is the scene which plays out until the venue’s curfew of 10pm, when the audience file out of the exits a little drained, but very elated.

Live review: Misfits + Graveyard Rockstars + The Wrath – The Zoo, Brisbane – 16/1/14

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New Jersey horror-punk legends the Misfits may have had more line-up changes than Kiss, Thin Lizzy and The Ramones put together (possibly), but with founding bass player and vocalist Jerry Only still at the helm of the iconic band, they seem to be in just as good a shape as ever.

Brisbane’s The Zoo is packed and humid as a sell-out audience takes position to catch the make-up toting trio, with almost as many skulls on T-shirts as tattoos and chains hanging from a variety of facial features. First up is Sydney quintet The Wrath, who put in a strong opening set as the venue fills, followed by fellow Sydney-siders Graveyard Rockstars, whose performance is a mashing together of white horror-punk make-up, head-banging dreadlocks and foreboding tales about death and what might be lurking “six feet under the floor”. “This next song is a doomsday anthem,” says frontman Ash Rothschild. “You can take it how you will. That sounds a bit gay, doesn’t it?”

With a stripped-down stage show for their Australian jaunt, the Misfits themselves don’t take long before lowering the lights and appearing before an audience now collectively losing its marbles. Almost from the second Jerry, Dez and Eric take to the stage a mess of frenzied moshing breaks out front-and-centre, and the energy doesn’t let up for ninety minutes. Jerry Only is the focal point throughout; his trademark devilock hairstyle hasn’t changed a bit since 1977, and his spiked shoulders and skull-encrusted bass head reflect spotlights and drip sweat in tandem.

With Ramones-like speed the songs are reeled off, from ‘Land of the Dead’, ‘Scream’, ‘Attitude’, ‘Angel Fuck’ and ‘She’; the latter written when Only was seventeen, and seemingly about a hundred others. The inevitable crowd-surfing breaks out during ’20 Eyes’, and the band continue unperturbed as a sea of elbows, knees and beer bottles bubbles and boils beneath them.

Almost as quickly as it started the set is over, and I’m left with a feeling that despite the horror-punk label the band is given, there is so much more in their arsenal; from punk, speed-metal, rockabilly, and good old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll. They just don’t make ’em like this any more.

Live review: Pond + Doctopus + Peter Bibby – The Zoo, Brisbane – 14/12/13

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Pond

In the future, when I think back to the time I saw Pond just before Christmas 2013, the main memories I’ll have – besides the outstanding performance of the bands themselves – will be ones of sweat, perspiration, humidity, and even more sweat. That’s what happens when Brisbane’s aircon-less The Zoo is sold out in summer, but what the hell; it’s Saturday night, the cold beers are flowing, and everyone’s getting loose in preparation for Pond.

After a set of folky, charismatic songs by Peter Bibby, the ramshackle trio of Doctopus take to the stage and batter their way through a fantastic collection of sweaty, lairy and hairy tunes, complete with sometimes unintelligible banter between. Theirs is a straight-up, fire-’em-off approach that is both exciting and catchy at once; a coarse but finely-executed set of rough-at-the-edges garage rock. Any band with an instrumental song called ‘QI/Stephen Fry’ and who fly-kick each other in the middle of songs is okay by me. (TIP: their album Buddies is free on Bandcamp – get on that thang).

The Zoo is heaving long before Pond is due to take the stage, and it’s refreshing to see that the crowd is seemingly entirely full of good vibes and enthusiasm for the head-liners, and there’s a generally great atmosphere despite the amount of perspiration going on. The Perth six-piece are in fine form, as they power through ‘Whatever Happened To The Million Head Collide’ and ‘Xanman’ early on, before moving through a set heavy with Hobo Rocket numbers. I’d seen Pond previously (at Laneway Festival last year) and while they put on a good show on that occasion, something about being enclosed on the smaller stage makes frontman Nick Allbrook a more engaging and entertaining mix of rabid posturing, banshee-like wailing, and clear enthusiasm for everything the band is doing.

‘Fantastic Explosion of Time’ is an obvious highlight, but it’s the pulsating juggernauts of extended jams throughout and a manic finish (including the expected level of crowd-surfing) that make the gig – and the band – such a unique one.

Mark Hosking of Karnivool: “It was a nice cap on what has been a very busy year”

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karnivool

THEIR LATEST ALBUM might have won them an ARIA, but don’t expect Karnivool to go changing to try to please us, says guitarist Mark Hosking.

“I certainly didn’t expect it to happen with this band, you know?” he says. “We were nominated for a couple, I think, and hard rock is such a weird area. We don’t even really define ourselves as hard rock, and it’s hard to say what we even are. The new album is quite challenging, but we don’t make apologies for that as it’s part of what we do. I think all awards need to be taken with a little bit of humble pie, but it’s a nice accomplishment. You never know how these things are going to go, so it was a nice cap on what has been a very busy year.”

More than four years in the making, the Perth quintet’s third full-length record sees the band once again pushing the boundaries of rock music.

“Asymmetry is a continuation of the journey that this band is on,” Hosking says. “We’ve always said we’re never going to do the same album twice. With this one we really had a chance to try a few things we’ve never tried before. The process of taking a long time to write music, turning every stone over and making sure we always find something we can use to our advantage is just the next phase of how we’re trying to be creative with this band. If we had our way we’d do an album every year, but we just know that’s not physically possible with the kind of stuff we’re doing. We do need time to breathe, and to be honest there are a couple of songs on the album that have come together in weeks, and others that have taken six to seven months. We’re happy because if we wanted to change it we could, but we seem to keep falling back to this period of time which tends to be around three to four years, when it feels like it’s cooked, if you know what I mean.”

Australian fans won’t have to wait long to see the band, with a national tour locked in for January.

“We definitely back our live show,” he says. “It’s something we feel is strong and we love to do it. There’s always trepidation about how new songs will be received; some people are going to like them and some people aren’t. On the live front, some people hear the more challenging songs and it clicks, or they get it more when they hear it live. We know that live, we have a better chance of getting our music across to people and they can better understand what you’re trying to do.”

Despite the ARIA win and plenty of recognition at home and abroad, Hosking is clear that the band won’t be resting on it’s laurels.

“We’ve just had a discussion about what’s happening in 2014,” he says. “It’s all a bit of a balancing act as we all have other things going on in our lives now and we’re no spring chickens any more. In saying that, we’ve made a big commitment to tour, tour, tour this album hard. We’ll be doing at least another run around Australia. There are some festivals overseas, more European action, and hopefully we’ll be getting to the States, as we’ve promised so many people we will. Around that, we’ll be trying to get these new ideas out of our heads and starting to form the next album.”

KARNIVOOL PLAY THE SHOWGROUNDS MARQUEE JAN 11.

Live review: Muse + Birds of Tokyo – Brisbane Entertainment Centre – 10/12/13

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Muse

You know those people who seem to be at every gig, the ones who wait until the head-liners have just come on stage before pushing their way through the crowd to get a good spot at the front, and pissing everyone off in the process? Yeah, those guys.

Those guys don’t exist at a Muse gig as far as I can tell, such is the desire for this audience to get into the dreaded arena of Brisbane Entertainment Centre early to get a good vantage point to absorb the spectacle that is the Devon trio’s live show. Making people more polite; that’s quite an achievement, even by Muse’s lofty standards. Winning hearts and minds even before the show starts; well played Sirs.

A result of this is that the arena is already almost full by the time Birds of Tokyo take to the stage, and despite seeming a little swamped by the size of the venue at times, the Perth band put out a strong set of songs, including ‘When The Night Falls Quiet’, ‘The Gap’, ‘This Fire’ and ‘Wild At Heart’.

As Muse‘s almost U2-sized inverted-pyramid lighting rig descends from the ceiling to form a bank of retina-melting screens, the band ready themselves behind to face their followers and an Iron Maiden-like voice-over and eerie piano hints at horrors unknown. In almost simultaneous explosions of light, sound, smoke, and collective audience orgasms, the darkly-dressed trio appear and launch into ‘Supremacy’ and hundreds of kids down the front appear to lose their minds in some sort of cult-like pact.

‘Supermassive Black Hole’ is next, followed by the funky ‘Panic Station’, allowing Christopher Wolstenholme to stylishly slap the wood of his illuminated bass fretboard. Front-man Matt Bellamy is a tiny ball of energy and beats his black boots across the stage and down the runway into the audience throughout, dandily strutting like a prog-rock Freddie Mercury and shredding like a hard-rock Brian May. It’s an undeniable fact that the light and laser show are a large part of the overall ‘wow’ factor of a Muse gig, and these elements are what most people end up talking about afterwards, but it’s nice to see it backed up with top drawer musicianship from the three band members, backed up by touring member Morgan Nicholls.

A short blast of AC/DC’s ‘Back To Black’ precedes ‘Knights of Cydonia’, the excellent ‘Feeling Good’ (Nina Simone can’t be beaten), and ‘Follow Me’, before Bellamy has the crowd aping his every move during ‘Undisclosed Desires’. He puts his right hand up; hundreds put their right hand up. He bellows skyward; hundreds bellow skyward. Things are getting biblical in Brisbane at this point in the evening, ladies and gentlemen.

Later numbers ‘Time Is Running Out’, ‘Plug In Baby’, and an encore of ‘Starlight’ and ‘Survival’ make the audience act in what can only be described in a manner approaching going totally ape-shit, and after one last blast of searingly painful lasers to the eyeballs, the band is gone and all that’s left is to rub our eyes better, tackle the gridlocked traffic surrounding the venue, and wonder just how in the world Muse will manage to top this performance next time they visit.

Live review: Steel Panther + Buckcherry + Fozzy – Riverstage, Brisbane – 6/12/13

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It’s pitch black and the humidity is thick. I can’t see two metres in front of my face, and unseen creatures slither and skulk in the bushes and trees around me. Bewildered by the black summer night, I try to work out which way is best to go, and my eyes strain to pick out shapes of branches and hulking tree roots ahead of me. A sense of dark foreboding shakes my very soul, my ears prick up, and the hairs on my arms stand on end as a heavy rustling approaches from my right. As I tense up and close my eyes to await my fate at the hands/claws/teeth of unknown beasts, a nearby streetlight clicks on and the scene before me becomes clear. It’s a middle-aged guy with a mullet in a Steel Panther T-shirt taking a piss with one hand while slurping from a can of Jack Daniels and Coke with the other. Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens really needs to be better lit after dark.

After my heart rate has returned to normal and a quick set by the Chris Jericho-fronted Fozzy in front of a small but increasing crowd, Los Angeles hard rockers Buckcherry take to the stage. “We’re fucking jet-lagged but we’re here,” announces frontman Josh Todd, before using his fantastic rock ‘n’ roll voice in numbers like ‘Everything’, ‘Sorry’ (dedicated to “all the hot chicks on this continent”) and Icona Pop’s fucking horrible ‘I Love It’. A short blast of AC/DC’s Bon Scott-era ‘Big Balls’ is much more welcome despite an obvious lack of rehearsal on that particular number, as is some of The Rolling Stones’s ‘Miss You’ before the band’s own classic ‘Crazy Bitch’. It’s easy to see why they are often compared to classic hard rock bands like Aerosmith and Guns ‘N’ Roses; they are a classy, tight, straight-up rock band capable of playing big rock songs in style. And Todd’s shirtless abs seem to be a big hit with the ladies and probably a fair percentage of the blokes.

Once the stage is set and the lights are dimmed, it only takes someone backstage to hit the play button on Iron Maiden’s ‘Run To The Hills’ to get the majority of this audience frothing at the mouth for Steel Panther. After a short video of the band playing ‘strip battleship’ backstage, the spandex-clad quartet appear and kick into ‘Eyes of a Panther’.

Now, it’s no secret that Michael Starr, Satchel, Lexxi Foxx and Stix Zadinia (as they call themselves) can really play, as all four members are seasoned musicians and have been parts of various ‘genuine’ metal and rock bands going back decades. In many ways they are more successful than the bands they are taking off, and while some of their music and on-stage banter at first appears to be fun, it’s only when you realise that there’s a large amount of people in this audience taking this shit seriously that things get uncomfortable.

By third song ‘Asian Hooker’, the act is no longer funny. In fact, it’s just plain fucking boring. Steel Panther are often compared to original rock piss-takers Spinal Tap, but the thing about Spinal Tap is that their jokes were well-constructed and smart, and the laugh was always on them. A Steel Panther set is basically the same two or three dick jokes repeated with increasing levels of crudeness, punctuated with calls to the most brazen girls in the crowd to “show us your vagina”. You’d need to be a brain-dead moron to continue to find this shit funny for an hour and a half. Add overt sexism, jokes about paedophilia, and clear racism, and you have one of the low points of live music this reviewer has witnessed this year. Slagging off the likes of Hoobastank and the Goo Goo Dolls I welcome with open arms, but for fuck sake, this band needs to get some new material in the banter department. New songs from their upcoming album like ‘Gloryhole’ and ‘Party Like Tomorrow is the End of the World’ suggest that the themes won’t be changing any time soon.

It’d be fair to ask what the fuck did I expect from a Steel Panther show exactly. The answer would be that the band be far less enthusiastic about the darker parts of their act, and much more satirical with their comedy, instead of relying on the lowest common denominator with which to get laughs. Also, not to be so bored and underwhelmed by long stretches of the so-called ‘banter’, which seemed to exist solely to fill time in many instances. It’s telling to see that the majority of the audience laughing so hard are white males with beer guts, with a large amount of them probably old enough to have seen Motley Crue in their heyday.

After pulling a group of girls out of the crowd and encouraging them to flash their chests at the audience, the band is forced to cut their encore-free set short by the strict 10pm curfew at the Riverstage. ‘Death To All But Metal’ is a strong song on which to finish, but as I make for the exit gates, the crowd bellows “bullshit, bullshit” to a by-now empty stage, and behind my pained expression I’m thinking that I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Interview: The Ninjas

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Ninjas2

Until very recently, garage-rock quintet The Ninjas were probably Brisbane’s best kept musical secret, but the release of their excellent new single ‘Yeah Yeah’ may be about to change all that. The band already have support slots for the likes of The Cribs and Sticky Fingers under their belts and with more recordings in the pipeline, the future looks bright for the group. I spoke to Pat Ferris (guitar) and Josh Stewart (vocals).

How are things in The Ninjas camp? What have you been up to recently?

Pat: Things are going great at the moment. We are currently recording some new songs with Sean Cook (Big Scary, Jeremy Neale) at his studio The Plutonium, and experimenting with an old Beta-movie camera and a green screen for our next video to go with our follow up single, ‘Kill ‘Em All’.

You’ve been thrust into the spotlight fairly suddenly with the release of ‘Yeah Yeah’. What’s it been like so far?

Josh: It’s been pretty rad; Ford choosing it as the soundtrack for their new Ranger commercial has been awesome for us. It’s sort of weird though; its not like we haven’t heard our music played back before, but when you’re watching your favourite show on TV and your song randomly comes on it feels kind of rewarding.

Describe your song-writing process. Is it a collaborative effort?

Josh: Our song writing process begins with ideas Pat and I have, then we jam them out with the rest of the band to work out and finalise the structure.

Supporting The Cribs was a pretty big deal. What are your memories of the gig?

Josh: Supporting The Cribs was definitely our favourite show. My memories from the gig are pretty hazy but I remember watching them side-stage and thinking “winning”.

Your music gets compared to a lot of different bands, from The Rolling Stones to The Stone Roses to Oasis to The Vines to The White Stripes. Which or any of these is most accurate?

Josh: They’re all awesome to be compared to, and they’re all pretty accurate in regards to our band’s underlying influences.

What would you rather be: a poor but revered cult band with heaps of critical acclaim, or a stadium-filling international juggernaut that nobody admits to liking?

Josh: Stadium-filling international juggernaut definitely has a nicer ring to it.

What would be on your ideal rider and why?

Josh: Budweiser; the king of beers. Plus some Captain Morgan Spiced Gold.

What are the band’s plans in the short term?

Pat: We’re looking forward to unleashing our next single ‘Kill ‘Em All’ around mid-January, with launches in Brisbane and Sydney around the same time. We have also been in talks with some peeps in the U.S., so another trip over there is looking likely soon as well.

When can we next see The Ninjas live, and what can we expect from the show?

Pat: I believe a sneaky little show at Rics Bar on Friday 13th of December with a special guest appearance by Jason on tambourine.

THE NINJAS PLAY RIC’S BAR BRISBANE FRI 13th. NEW SINGLE ‘KILL ‘EM ALL’ IS RELEASED IN JANUARY.

Check out the video for ‘Yeah Yeah’:

Record review: The Rusty Datsuns – Riverbank (2013 LP)

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This long-awaited debut album from The Rusty Datsuns has roots in the 2011 floods, when the Brisbane trio played tunes to keep their spirits up as the rising water lapped at the door of their Queenslander. Deeply rooted in traditional bluegrass and folk, but with a delicately jaunty modern vibe, Riverbank is a homely and engaging collection of songs put together by members of local acts Bessy-Lou, These Dirty Bones and Chocolate Strings. The circumstances of the band’s formation is telling in tracks like galloping instrumental ‘Let It Rain’ and the excellent title track, and the vocal harmonies on ‘Pastis’ and
playful piano tinkling on ‘Porcelain’ are more than impressive, while closer ‘Billy Bob’ injects a dose of stomp into proceedings. The overall positive approach to song-writing gives the album a warm and welcoming feel, making this the type of stuff best enjoyed with a dark oak ale in your hand and a piece of straw hanging from your grinning mouth.

Live review: British India + Lunatics on Pogosticks – The Zoo, Brisbane – 22/11/13

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British India

In town to play a brace of dates in support of their ‘Blinded’ single launch from their successful fourth album Controller, Melbourne quartet British India – like the rest of us – would endure the stifling humidity of Fortitude Valley’s The Zoo to once again prove they are still one of the best young rock bands in the country.

With multitudes of scantily-clad young punters sinking Smirnoff Blacks and playing pool at the back of the sweaty venue, up-and-coming Triple J Unearthed High winners Lunatics on Pogosticks get the crowd up front even more warmed up with a set of noisy and energetic pop-punk tracks with hints of the more raucous side of Sonic Youth.

British India waste very little time in getting right into the action; starting their set with the always-excellent ‘March Into The Ocean’, before running through a near-perfect mix of songs from Controller, classics like ‘Tied Up My Hands’, ‘Run The Red Light’, and a cover of Blink-182’s ‘Dammit’. While there is plenty of energy, suitable amounts of jumping around on-stage, and a decent level of audience banter via frontman Declan Melia, the best thing about British India is that they can really play; there is proper musicianship under their appropriately gimmick-free exterior.

Finishing up with the rousing ‘This Ain’t No Fucking Disco’ in front of an audience by now losing their collective marbles, British India prove they have lost none of the strengths that have been their trademarks for nearly ten years.

Live review: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club + Immigrant Union – The Hi-Fi, Brisbane – 17/11/13

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It’s hard to believe that Californian rock band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club has been in existence since 1998. For me, their near-perfect blend of neo-psychedelia and barely-restrained garage-rock aggression transcends time and trends, owing to the fact that throughout their seven album, fifteen year career they haven’t ever tried to be anyone but themselves. Originally on the line-up of the now deceased Harvest Festival, the band delighted their Australian fans by swiftly responding to the cancellation of their festival shows and announcing a headlining tour of their own. Tonight’s result is that Brisbane gets to experience Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in West End’s The Hi-Fi. Game on.

An already quite full venue greets support act Immigrant Union; a band of mish-mashed styles (both musically and hair-wise), featuring Dandy Warhols’ drummer Brent DeBoer on frontman duties. Written descriptions of their music often feature the word ‘folk’, but tonight’s performance is a quite exhilarating mix of bluesy roots and country, with extended jams only being beaten in length by the awesome hair of singer-guitarist Bob Harrow.

Lighting in a now packed Hi-Fi is sparse and ominous as the effortlessly cool trio of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club walk onto the stage, amid reverberating roars of welcome and gasps of shock (come on, people) at guitarist/vocalist Peter Hayes having a solitary cigarette perched on his guitar neck, the light trail of smoke heading ceiling-wards from the red-hot tip while reflecting the light and adding to his already smooth exterior.

Starting with the grand ‘Hate The Taste’, the trio build a monumental sound from their respective instruments, before heading into ‘Beat The Devil’s Tattoo’ and a cover of ‘Let The Day Begin’ by bassist Robert Been’s father’s band The Call. Switching styles, instruments, pace, and groove comes easy to the three-piece throughout, as an ecstatic crowd are treated to the likes of ‘Ain’t No Easy Way’, ‘Screaming Gun’ and ‘Conscience Killer’, before a final blast of scathing, fiercely powerful guitar rock with ‘Spread Your Love’.

Obviously an encore is called for, and BRMC oblige with a further four-song outing, including ‘Whatever Happened To My Rock ‘n’ Roll (Punk Song)’. With pounded ears, a sense of dark elation, and the foreboding doom of the working week ahead, we make for home. What a bloody great gig.

Live review: The Breeders + Screamfeeder – The Tivoli, Brisbane – 29/10/13

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IMG_5812

Roll up, roll up; it’s nostalgia week on the Australian music circuit, and time for every boring old middle-aged bastard to come crawling out of their miserably mundane existences to take another dull stab at revisiting a rose-tinted version of their faded youth with all the vigour of a discarded teabag. At least that’s how I feel about the peppering of paunchy forty-something fuckwits hanging around outside The Tivoli bragging about their glory days in the early nineties when grunge was king and they still had hair.

“Alright motherfuckers,” exclaims one particularly inarticulate example. “The last time I saw The Breeders they were playing on a bill with Sonic fucking Youth and fucking Nirvana”. Well, I once saw two tramps having sex in a doorway; what’s your fucking point grandad? It’s a real achievement on your part to have been born when you were. Keep up the good work and get the fuck out of my way.

Morons aside, tonight promises to be a pretty special evening. It’s been twenty years since Last Splash first pumped from the speakers of our cassette players and despite its almost unbreakable ties to the nineties, it still sounds bloody brilliant. But what about the show, the gig, the live arena? That’s where the test now lies for the recently reformed and rejuvenated band, and tonight’s performance will show that class never fades away, it just hibernates from time to time.

Support for tonight is Brisbane’s own Screamfeeder, who are an apt choice for this show. They’ve been knocking around for a similar amount of time as the head-liners, or “an awesome forty-five years” as frontman Tim Steward proudly tells us, although they put in a set of such high energy and skill that if we all rubbed our eyes, looked at the floor and looked back up again, it might feel like 1996 all over again. By the time the always excellent ‘Dart’ is rolled out, The Tivoli is full and by closer ‘Bunny’ we are champing at the bit for The Breeders.

It’s with little fanfare that Kim and Kelley Deal, Josephine Wiggs, Jim Macpherson and Carrie Bradley take to the stage, and after a warmer-upper Guided By Voices cover, we’re straight into ‘New Year’ and the roof-raiser that is ‘Cannonball’.

Now hear this. I caught the Pixies when they did the Doolittle anniversary tour, and while it was great to hear those undeniably classic songs being played by the full line-up of the people who first recorded them, it was a robotic and over-polished performance by a band whose majority of members seemed to be going through the motions. Nothing could be further from the truth tonight, as The Breeders gloriously fuck up intros, trip on pedal switches and quite literally get their wires crossed; all the while adding to the charm of their show and likeability of the band themselves.

The Deal sisters are a joy throughout; their big goofy grins not for one second hidden under some fabricated aura of rock star cool, while bassist Wiggs is the vision of ice-cold contrast and barely changes facial expression throughout the whole show. The audience goes daft for ‘Cannonball’ and cools down until around ‘I Just Wanna Get Along’, before a broken violin forces a switching of two songs and threatens to bring on an OCD rage among track-listing purists, and ‘Drivin’ On 9′ provides a charming and whimsical finish.

Perhaps sensing that it might be another twenty years before The Breeders pass this way again, the audience calls for not one, not two, but three encores, including tracks from Pod and a cover of ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’, with vocals led by the still-grinning Kelley. With a multitude of smiles, waves and ecstatic cheers, The Breeders leave the stage for the final time and we’re teleported back into the realities of 2013 again, feeling happy and fortunate.

As I head for home I wonder if in twenty years time we’ll be standing outside some venue ranting like bell-ends about the time we saw The Breeders. After tonight’s performance, I’d say it’s a given.

Record review: Jeremy Neale – In Stranger Times (2013, EP)

/ Paul McBride / Leave a comment

Jeremy Neale

Brisbane indie-pop troubadour Jeremy Neale must be one of the hardest-working musicians plying his trade today. Not satisfied with being a member of rabble rousers Velociraptor, surf-rock piss-takers Teen Sensations and space-noise act Tiger Beams, as well as being support act of choice for the likes of The Preatures and Surfer Blood, he’s now releasing a long-awaited debut EP under his own name. It’s reasonable to think that having fingers in so many pies might mean In Stranger Times would be a patchy affair, but in reality, it contains some of the Queensland Music Award winner’s best musical output to date. Giving generous nods to sixties lo-fi garage-pop and classic girl groups of the same era, it’s a fun and catchy breath of musical fresh air from start to finish. Neale’s innate ability to write three-minute pop gems and his soulful garage croon are his strong points, most notably on latest single ‘Swing Left’, which manages to mix clap-along pop with ominous piano-led despondency. The title track is another highlight, as Neale joins forces with Brisbane’s favourite all-girl guitar band Go Violets to run through a perfectly-rounded pop song with instantly catchy guitar intro and boy-girl harmonies to die for. ‘A Love Affair To Keep You There’ is a darker effort; the inevitable break-up song that’s in contrast to the previous lyrical content. It will be interesting to see if Neale continues with his solo ventures in the near future, or whether he’ll be happy to remain as frontman and song-writer for Velociraptor or one of his other acts, but on this evidence the path to take should be pretty clear. (Create/Control)

Live review: The Cribs + The Ninjas + Filthy Jackal – The Zoo, Brisbane – 25/10/13

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Gary Jarman

Gary Jarman

Reading articles about Wakefield indie guitar trio The Cribs recently, I was somewhat surprised to learn that this current tour marks their tenth anniversary as a going concern. When the turn of the millennium brought the downfall of Britpop and a resurgence in New York hipster bands influenced by the lo-fi guitar lines of Television and street threads of Johnny Thunders, certain U.K. music press – panicked by the thought of their watery scene being left behind – sought to crown a new generation of bands as the great white hopes for British guitar music. Enter a thrown-together group of bands of varying quality and style, consisting of The Libertines, Razorlight, the Jarman brothers of The Cribs, and others. Amid the haze of a million indie bands, the time has passed quickly since their 2004 debut, but are The Cribs still a force, or should they fade into the dark, as so many of their contemporaries have done? Today’s gig would be the only way to tell.

First up in Fortitude Valley’s The Zoo is Filthy Jackal, who despite seeming quite isolated in a sparsely-filled venue put in a decent effort, culminating in their heaviest song of the set, ‘Bereft’.

Following them is Brisbane garage rockers The Ninjas, who immediately up the quality many fold with a quality set of groovy, sleazy, danceable, fat-riffed tunes. Sounding tight rhythmically from the off, their swagger-y songs – including the excellent ‘Yeah Yeah’ – ooze globular hints of Manchester circa 1990 (think Happy Mondays if they could play) and early 2000s indie like The White Stripes; making them a perfect choice for what is to come next.

Releasing a greatest hits record and embarking on an anniversary tour are indulgences for many over-the-hill bands, but within seconds of The Cribs taking the stage, it is clear that the three Jarman brothers (plus touring member David Jones) are anything but past it, and they are pretty damn tour-tight for guys who now live thousands of miles apart. The obvious focus is on singer-guitarist Ryan, who these days could pass for a Dee Dee Ramone look-alike, and bassist-vocalist Gary, but it’s their solidity as a unit and energy that are most impressive throughout the set. Taking songs from each of their five albums, including the excellent ‘Hey Scenesters!’ from Hey Fellas and ‘Come On, Be a No-One’ from In The Belly of the Brazen Bull, the band slash, bash and crash their way through an hour of top quality guitar rock, before heading off stage amid a maelstrom of belly-up drum-kits, dropped guitars, and sweat.

The lesson learned here tonight? The Cribs are in no way a spent force; no f**king way.

Olly Knight of Turin Brakes: “This is the ultimate Turin Brakes album”

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turin brakes

TWELVE YEARS after their debut, Turin Brakes’ new album We Were Here sees the band going full circle. Singer-guitarist Olly Knights explains.

“It’s the first time we’ve ever made a record that takes into context the records we’ve already made,” he says. “Normally we just go for future-facing progression at all costs. Progression is great, but if you keep just trying to be different eventually you lose something, whether it be your audience or the thing that made you special. We wondered what would happen if we made a record now that had the same kind of sonic and emotive ideas as our first album. We thought that might be more interesting, and in a way this is the ultimate Turin Brakes album. We’ve put ourselves in the fans’ shoes for a second, and tried to make the record they would want. The reaction in the UK has been exactly what we hoped for; a lot of old fans feeling like we’ve made the record they always wanted us to make, and it has that same mid-seventies feel as The Optimist.”

The folk-rock duo, consisting of Knights and Gale Paridjanian, went as far as using reel-to-reel tapes in search of sounds of old.

“It was how we made our first record,” he says. “Then computers got better and faster after that, so we left the reel-to-reels behind. Computers can be both good and bad for music. On this record we felt we wanted to get away from the cut and paste nature of a computer; you can spend too much time tweaking things to death whereas with tape you can’t. It’s very healthy to simply have to get it right and move on. For some bands who have grown up with computers it wouldn’t make sense, but the whole point with Turin Brakes is that we can just get into a room and play a song, and we wanted to make a record that made use of that.”

Australian fans of the band shouldn’t have to wait too long for the chance to see them in the flesh.

“There’s talk now of hopefully getting down there in Australian winter, 2014,” he says. “We had such a great experience earlier in the year when we came over. It felt like there were still a lot of Turin Brakes fans in Australia, so it was really wonderful for us.”

WE WERE HERE BY TURIN BRAKES IS OUT NOW