Here’s a question you’d expect to hear at a football riot, not read in a music review: who’s ready to have their face ripped off? This second album from Melbourne punk quartet Clowns will not only do brutal things to your kisser, but it’ll have a go at putting your ears out of commission while it’s at it. Their 2013 debut album was a savage tribute to partying and punk rock, and while Bad Blood continues in a similar vein, it comes with a growing range and belief. Like a school bully who lets you think you’re off the hook before hitting you a slap, opener ‘Human Error’ takes a full minute to kick into gear; its scratchy riffs build anticipation for what’s to come. Single ‘Euthanise Me’ is an early highlight; its melodic elements and broken-down interludes are welcome additions to a powerful punk track. Next comes a trio of 90-second hammer blows in ‘Figure It Out’, ‘Infected’ and the title track, which is perhaps the most metal here. Closing anomaly ‘Human Terror’ is easily the most interesting; at 11 minutes it’s at least three times longer than anything else and isn’t a journey for the faint-hearted. While Clowns’ brand of punk is as ferocious as ever, it’s the longer songs that impress most, as the band have grown significantly in terms of musicianship since their debut. That isn’t going to do your face any good, all the same. (Poison City)
Hey, did anyone see the Grammys this week? No, me neither. I was too busy listening to the debut album by Melbourne ten-piece Dorsal Fins, and FOMO can GTFO because this stuff is smokin’. Patched together by Liam McGorry (Eagle & the Worm, Saskwatch) and members of the Bamboos and New Gods, Dorsal Fins are a band on a genre-bending trip of sometimes dreamy, always layered alt-pop that twists, turns and captivates at every moment. Just about everything is a high point; Ella Thompson’s perfect pop vocals on the express train of a synth-pop track ‘Monday Tuesday’ are especially fine, while McGorry doesn’t hold back on his social commentary cuss-fest ‘Jacqueline’. The fact that the first few bars of ‘Heart on the Floor’ sound like the drum intro to Spinal Tap’s ‘Big Bottom’ before the song turns into an ‘80s Madonna-esque pop ballad reflects the wonderfully random tangents the album takes throughout. Elsewhere, the title track cranks the psych-rock guitars while ‘Cut the Wire’ is all dark electronica, and there are beautiful and melancholy ballads in ‘Escape Me’ and ‘Superstar’. Being a ten-piece means that Dorsal Fins have a multitude of tricks up their sleeves, so hopefully this won’t be simply a side project to the band members’ other more well-known ventures. With this album, Dorsal Fins have marked themselves as serious contenders; not even a Grammy win could make me dislike them. (Gripless/Remote Control)
English indie-rockers Peace are an infuriating bunch. Their 2013 debut was a promising affair; all early-90s influences and shiny approaches to love, life and happiness. On their Australian tour they proved themselves to be a powerful live act, capable of raining red-hot riffs on punters the length of the east coast. Why, then, is this second effort so excruciatingly dull? Is it the crippling sameness of the vast majority of the 18 tracks? The draining middle-class angst peppered heavily throughout the lyrics? Or just simply, the lack of a good tune or two? The combination of these things doesn’t leave much to be admired, except perhaps groovy single ‘Lost On Me’ and the rougher ‘I’m A Girl’; songs that provide hope that it’s only difficult-second-album syndrome that’s stuck its nose in here. Everything about the painfully atrocious ‘Someday’ and singer Harrison Koisser’s misguided suburban rapping on pseudo-funk sonic-fart ‘World Pleasure’ provide low points, while most of the rest blends into itself with nothing left but blandness. “Try to change the world you live in, oh you, try to make it better for your children, oh you,” he sings on opener ‘O You’ – and that, people, is your cue to dry retch, while closer ‘The Music Was To Blame’ pretty much sums up the whole album just by its title. Being a ‘big’ band is great and being a cult band is better, but unfortunately Peace are neither of these; for now they’re stuck somewhere in the murky middle, filed under “meh”. (Columbia)
Belle and Sebastian have always been somewhat of a perplexing quantity. At times brilliant, horrifically twee and infuriatingly vague all in the space of one album, the Scottish sextet has generally always been critically acclaimed during their near 20-year history, but have never translated that into commercial success. Will this ninth record change their fortunes? The answer is probably not, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a fine effort nonetheless. Wonderfully slick and soulful opener ‘Nobody’s Empire’ recalls the best poppy parts of 1998 classic The Boy With The Arab Strap while dealing with some pretty dark lyrics about singer Stuart Murdoch’s struggles with chronic fatigue syndrome. ‘Allie’ veers a little too closely to being Beach Boys-lite before exploding into life, and lead single ‘The Party Line’ is a surprisingly groovy disco number that makes you want to dance like John Travolta circa 1977. It becomes clear that eclecticism is still very much part of the band, as the indie misery of ‘The Cat with the Cream’ bleeds into club banger ‘Enter Sylvia Plath’. It’s a mixed bag up to this point, but one that’s fun and engaging, although the quality tails off a little towards the end, with the exception of the faux-calypso duet with Dum Dum Girls’ Dee Dee Penny on ‘Play For Today’. Ladies and gentlemen, hold on to your hats: Belle and Sebastian have relocated their mojo. (Matador)
Fences is a Seattle-based musical project centred on the songs of vocalist and guitarist Christopher Mansfield. His approach to song-writing is different to many Seattle natives before him; you won’t find any of the grunge stylings of Nirvana or earthy folk of Fleet Foxes here. Indie-rock lite is the cornerstone of this particular album – the band’s second in five years – and while the general feeling of pleasantness can be a little tiring after ten songs, it’s perfect for Sunday mornings or polite company. Opener ‘Songs About Angels’ sounds sweet but has some fairly dark lyrics, possibly based on Mansfield’s past struggles with alcohol and a stint in rehab. Most well-known to Australian audiences would be sprightly single ‘Arrows’, which has had a decent share of radio play here, undoubtedly aided by an appearance by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis to add some big-name glamour as well as some well-placed cuss words in a pop setting. ‘My Mountain Is Cold’ features some nice mandolin touches and the title track references the band’s hometown with the words “it’s okay, it’s mostly grey,” before confirming that their biggest strength is their vocal interplay between Mansfield and bassist Lindsey Starr. This is a nice enough album, but the difference in quality between the Macklemore & Ryan Lewis tracks and everything else makes it a little disjointed, fostering a feeling that the album isn’t far off being a single with eight B-sides. (Elektra)
Human nature is roughly defined as the qualities which are common to humanity, so it comes as no surprise that this attempt at a Christmas album is the most vacuous form of crowd-pleaser. The Sydney vocal quartet’s pseudo-Motown shtick may be big in Vegas, but then so are gun crime and gambling away your kids’ inheritances, so don’t expect anything other than bitter disappointment from this album. All the obvious choices are here – ‘White Christmas’, ‘Winter Wonderland’, ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ and a particularly cringeworthy rendition of ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’. It has to be assumed the regularly-excellent Jessica Mauboy’s appearance on ‘Sleigh Ride’ is a record company obligation, while the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra’s choice to be a part of ‘Amazing Grace’ could be described as foolish at best. The rest just sounds like a rejected boy band at an especially bad office party. Smokey Robinson provides the only touch of class on ‘Please Come Home For Christmas’, but it’s nowhere near enough to save this album from being re-gifted. In the end, it’s the contrivance that rankles most; nothing says Christmas like a bunch of soulless, insincere crooners flaccidly warbling their way through such an obvious attempt at lining their pockets. My IQ is lower, I feel like a lesser person and I may have nightmares after listening to this album. For the love of Santa’s sack, don’t let the same thing happen to you. (Sony)
It’s just gone lunchtime and Paolo Nutini isn’t having a great day.
“Sorry mate, the phone is making such a stupid noise right now. It’s this touchscreen phone thing they’ve got in the hotel – I just want to take my f**king hands to it, you know? It just won’t stop.”
Assurances that he can be heard perfectly and attempts to steer him towards the subject of music don’t deter the 27 year-old Scotsman from getting some choice complaints off his chest.
“I’m just in this hotel and it’s all so streamlined,” he says. “What I can’t stand are the taps and soap-dispensers. They should just have a handle that you turn to make the water come out, or a button you press to get soap. Now it’s all motion sensors; I’m standing in front of it like some sort of Jedi trying to wash my dirty hands, as if I have all day to stand here dancing with this f**king contraption.”
One subject that calms the multi-platinum-selling singer and songwriter down is Bluesfest, at which he will be performing in 2015, although it’s the memory of a previous festival experience that gets the conversation flowing most freely.
“The last time we played Bluesfest, I remember looking at the bill and seeing the name Rodriguez,” he says. “My friend had introduced me to his music when I was about 16 or 17, and I’ve always been fascinated by those two records of his. For years nobody knew anything about him; there was something otherworldly about him. People were wondering whether he was alive or not, and nobody could find out that information. I managed to meet the man himself that day. He was exactly what you would imagine, you know? Elegant, charming and everything I had hoped for. It was weird after that, because we got to know each other in a way; he came to our show in the States, I got to know his family and since then we’ve played on stage a couple of times together. One day I even got sent a little bit of footage of him singing my song ‘Last Request’, which is one of my prize possessions. Now, I play that song more the way he played it than I ever used to. I’m almost covering a cover of my own song. I’ve heard rumours of him making a new record; I just hope whoever is making it with him takes the right approach and makes it as good as it should be. I’m excited to hear what new music from him would be like.”
Nutini and his band will appear at the festival in April as part of a typically impressive line-up, which includes legendary funk godfather George Clinton.
“I love some of the mad sounds on the [Parliament/Funkadelic] records,” he says. “He’s a wild character and really individual. You don’t get a lot of George Clintons around in today’s music scene. The Black Keys are a great band; they seem to be smashing it wherever they go. And I believe there’ll be a bit of the Gypsy Kings as well. Alabama Shakes, Jurassic 5, Gary Clark Jr., Pokey LaFarge; it’s a pretty tasty bill. I’m just looking forward to getting on there playing, sampling the atmosphere and enjoying the fruits of the soil. I remember Byron Bay being a great smelling place [laughs].”
His latest album, Caustic Love, has earned rave reviews, but it only came about after over four years away from music; something Nutini offers several explanations for.
“Mainly because I’m f**king hopeless, that’s why,” he laughs. “Well, there’s an element of that, but sometimes I let good things get me very high and they can take me away somewhere. All of a sudden I can find that a few weeks have gone and that has had a knock-on effect when you’re working with other people as well – you can’t just pick up people and put them down. The other side of that is that I let negative things drag me down, you know? I can find myself wallowing; it’s something I’ve noticed about myself. Then I’ve just been liking the idea of working with my hands; I was getting a great sense of pleasure and achievement from days where maybe all I did was cook or plant a few things in the garden. I was picking up some wood and trying to do some carving. I was also travelling around places with no agenda; around Valencia and Barcelona then maybe to the Netherlands. I was re-tracing the footsteps of places I’d been on tour and not really seen much stuff, and I was writing all the time. I liked the fact that there was no schedule and no pressure. It’s nice to feel you’re not being challenged all the time. I think my body might’ve need a bit of life nutrition; I had to expand my mind a little bit.”
PAOLO NUTINI PLAYS BYRON BAY BLUESFEST SAT 4TH APRIL 2015. CAUSTIC LOVE IS OUT NOW.
The Grates duo of Patience Hodgson and John Patterson may have been heavily focussed on baking scones at their Brisbane tea rooms over the last couple of years, but don’t expect them to go all buttery and lose bite just because they’ve had their hands on more cupcakes than guitar strings of late. Written, recorded and produced within a week, and released on the band’s own label, Dream Team sees the pair, joined by beat-keeping barista Ritchie Daniels on drums, return to the frantic pop-punk of their formative years in the mid-noughties. The result is an album which gains much from the band’s sound losing its pop sheen, and is all the more exciting for it. Hodgson is in her finest shout-y form throughout, especially on opener ‘Call Me’ and the deceptively brutal ‘Dirty Hands’, and Patterson provides the chunky pop chords at all the right moments. Just when the assault doesn’t appear to be letting up, ‘It Won’t Hurt Anymore’ throws a sensitively-aimed curve ball as an unexpected highlight. While ‘Friends With Scum’ recalls X-Ray Spex, ‘I Wish I Was Alone’ owes a debt to every coming-of-age teen comedy film made in the late nineties. A streak of assured independence seems to have been the ingredient which has made the band rattle and roll once more, although it’s unlikely that a future holding album release parties would be more profitable than one involving bake-offs. One thing is for sure: Dream Team is as exciting as it is explosive. Welcome to The Grates’ finest moment. (Death Valley)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Paul McBride 