Ladies And Gentlemen, The Graduating Class of 2010

(EDIT: For reasons varied and convoluted, some stuff got left off the list. So hopefully this is now the definitive list)
Since it panned out so well as a digital reminder last year, I've decided to compile yet another gargantuan list of all the albums and EPs that have graced the ears of Al's Music Rant over the course of the year. The truly dedicated amongst you will note that, where possible, I've linked to previous features and reviews on the blog.

Think of it as a reminder of the year's catalogue before it gets handily categorised and humourously scrutinised (The Good, The Bad & The James Blunt awards) and glorified (Top 15 Albums of 2009). Or like one of those photomosaics, a small collection of individual elements that contribute to the larger landscape that was the 2010 musical landscape. Strap in, it's gonna be a bumpy ride...

EPs:

65 Days of Static - Heavy Sky

Arms - EP

Aucan - DNA 

Big Scary - At The Mercy of the Elements

Big Scary - Autumn

Big Scary - Winter

Big Scary - Spring

Big Scary - Summer 

Cynic - Re-Traced

Dirty Projectors - Mount Wittenberg Orca 

Fairchlid Republic - Ships Are For Sailing

Hundred In The Hand - This Desert

The Jezabels - Dark Storm

Mastodon - Jonah Hex OST

The Melodics - Paint Me Gold

The Nymphs - The Nymphs

Sleep Parade - Mr Identify

Steven Wilson - Cover Version VI

Sufjan Stevens - All Delighted People
(EDIT:) Summer Camp - Young
TesseracT - Concealing Fates

Albums:

65 Days of Static - We Were Exploding Anyway

The Acorn - No Ghost

Alcest  - Ecailles De Lune

Anais Mitchell - Hadestown

anaROBIK - Operator's Manual

Anathema - We're Here Because We're Here 

Antony And The Johnsons - Swanlights

The Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Autolux - Transit, Transit

Balmorhea - Constellations

Barb - Barb

Biffy Clyro - Lonely Revolutions

Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left-Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty

Big Scary - The Big Scary Four Seasons

The Black Keys - Brothers
(EDIT:) Blue Hawaii - Blooming Summer

The Body - All The Waters of the Earth Shall Turn To Blood

The Bon Scotts - Oddernity

Boxharp - The Green

Brandon Boyd - The Wild Trapeze

Brandon Flowers - Flamingo

Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record

The Cat Empire - Cinema

Cloud Control - Bliss Release

Cog - The Sound of Three (Live)

(EDIT:) Crippled Black Phoenix - I, Vigilante
Crocodiles - Sleep Forever

Daft Punk - Tron: Legacy OST

Danny And The Champions Of The World - Streets of our Time

David Bowie - A Reality Tour (Live)

David Bowie - Live @ Nassau Colliseum (Live - Station To Station anniversary)

David Gray - Foundling

Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest

Deftones - Diamond Eyes 

Delphic - Acolyte

Demians - Mute

DM Stith - Heavy Ghosts Appendices

Doves - The Places Between: The Best of Doves

Dungen - Skit I Allt

Electric President - The Violent Blue

Elephant9 - Walk The Nile

Eliza Doolittle - Eliza Doolittle

Ellie Goulding - Lights

Eluvium - Similes

Eluvium - Static Nocturne

Everything Everything - Man Alive
(EDIT:) Foals - Total Life Forever

Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma

Four Tet - There Is Love In You

Frost* - The Philadelphia Experiment (Live)

Fyfe Dangerfield - Fly Yellow Moon

Garry Schyman - Bioshock 2 OST

Gayngs - Relayted

Gemma Ray - It's A Shame About Gemma Ray

Gil Scott-Heron - I'm New Here

Girl Talk - All Day

Glenn Richards - Glimjack

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

Herbie Hancock - The Imagine Project

Here We Go Magic - Pigeons 

High Places - High Places Vs. Mankind

Hungry Kids of Hungary - Escapades  

Interpol - Interpol

Intronaut - Valley of Smoke

Isbells - Isbells

Jaga Jazzist - One-Armed Bandit

James Murphy - Greenberg OST

Janelle Monáe - The ArchAndroid

Jenny And Johnny - I'm Having Fun Now

Jimmy Eat World - Invented

jj - jj n° 3

Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me

Jonny Greenwood - Norwegian Wood OST

Jónsi - Go
(EDIT:)  Jónsi - Go Live

Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Karnataka - The Gathering Light 

Kashmir - Trespassers 

Kate Nash - My Best Friend Is You

Kele - The Boxer

Kings of Leon - Come Around Sundown

The Kissaway Trail - Sleep Mountain

Klaxons - Surfing The Void
(EDIT:) Kno - Death Is Silent

Kylesa - Sprial Shadow

Laura Veirs - July Flame

LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening

Les Discrets - Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées 

Lightspeed Champion - Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You

Lindsay Phillips - Varning 

Lunatic Soul - Lunatic Soul II

Manic Street Preachers - Postcards From A Young Man

Marina And The Diamonds - The Famly Jewels

Mark Ronson And The Business Intl. - Record Collection
(EDIT:)  Marnie Stern - Marnie Stern

Mavis Staples - You Are Not Alone

Maximum Balloon - Maximum Balloon

Medeski, Martin And Wood - Radiolarians

Menomena - Mines

The Morning Benders - Big Echo 

Motion City Soundtrack - My Dinosaur Life

Mountain Mocha Kilimanjaro - Mountain Mocha Kilimanjaro

Murder By Death - Good Morning, Magpie

Mystery Jets - Serotonin 

Nada Surf - If I Had A Hi-Fi

The National - High Violet

Nicki Minaj - Pink Friday

The Ocean - Anthropocentric

The Ocean - Heliocentric

Oceansize - Self Preserved While The Bodies Float Up

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Sepulcros De Miel

Owen Pallett - Heartland

Pain of Salvation - Road Salt, Pt One: Ivory

Panic Room - Satellite

Parades - Foreign Tapes

Pat Metheny - Orchestrion  

Perfume Genius - Learning

The Phantom Band - The Wants

Phil Selway - Familial

The Pineapple Thief - Someone Here Is Missing

Prince - 20Ten

Pure Reason Revolution - Hammer And Anvil

PVT - Church With No Magic

Quandary - Ready To Fail

Ra Ra Riot - The Orchard

Richard In Your Mind - My Volcano

Richard Skelton - Landings

Roky Erickson With Okkervil River - True Love Cast Out All Evil

The Roots - How I Got Over

Rufus Wainwright - All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu

(EDIT:)  S. Carey - All We Grow 
She & Him - Vol. 2
(EDIT:) Shearwater - The Golden Archipelago

The Soundcarriers - Celeste

Spock's Beard - X

Steven Wilson - Tape Experiments 1985-86

Strong Arm Steady - In Search of Stoney Jackson 
(EDIT:) Sun Kil Moon - Admiral Fell Promises

Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz

The Tiger & Me - From A Liar To A Thief 

Tired Pony - The Places We Ran From

Tobias Cummings - A Trophy

Tokimonsta - Midnight Menu

Tom McRae - The Alphabet of Hurricanes 

Two Door Cinema Club - Tourist History

Unitopia - Artificial

UNKLE - Where Did The Night Fall

(EDIT:) Vampire Weekend - Contra
Various Artists - Scott Pilgrim vs. The World OST

Various Artists - The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Warpaint - The Fool

Way Out West - The Effects Of The Weather

Wild Nothing - Gemini

Wolf Parade - Expo '86

Yeasayer - Odd Blood

Young Heretics - We Are The Lost Loves

Two Zero One Zero

I have to admit that ever since i've taken to becoming a (semi-)official writer of music, I've pretty much treated each year as an excuse to build up towards deciding my annual end-of-year list. Like a sort of audiophile's long-distance marathon, it's a year-long stretch. Such an approach feeds the kind of excitement and passion it takes for one to start their own blog and declare their taste - and furthermore the writing about their taste - worthy of other's interest. The thrill of discovering that new sound or band to fall in love with, earmarking each track in the back of your head as a potential best or worst single of the year. Artwork is scrutinised for its ability to fuel analysis and refleciton, while above all else, the sharing of what's new and what's great as a way of validating your own likes and dislikes about today's fickle music industry.

 Except that lately around these parts, that hasn't been the case. If you're a regular reader of The Rant, you may have noticed that 2010, thus far, has had little of this fanfare. Of course always keeping one proverbial finger on the musical pulse is exciting, but it can ocassionally obscure the details. If you're constantly checking in on what Pitchfork or Stereogum are touting as the next best thing, you can sometimes lose sight of why you got into this whole music 'appreciation' thing for in the first place. 

I know I have. That's why this year I've been doing a lot more listening (and re-listening) to older stuff. The albums that I loved intensely, cracked jewel case and all, that got me excited about music and defined my tases to begin with. Those times when I was younger and would have to make a crucial choice as to what CD I would be spending my hard-earned on. This was of course in the days before torrents and leaks, before 'the blogosphere' and Napster was still in its infancy. Discovering the contents of what lay beyond that image of the baby swimming on the cover was exciting because, apart from cursory listens from friends and the radio, there wasn't a real way to explore a record before you bought or heard it. The only real way to engage was in putting it on, poring over the booklet, listening again and again, taking it all in. A good album would share its secrets with you, as you tired to use it to create your identity - and vice versa. Even if it was one of a million identical copies, or, to quote Full Metal Jacket, "there are many like it, but this one is mine."

I'm not trying to lament some by-gone golden age, and without wading into the sticky semantics of the digital revolution vis a vis music accessibility, I will say that this sort of nostalgic reverlry is the excitement I try to recreate when discovering new music. It's just that attempting to recreat that potent moment where you lose yourself in a record, occurs less these days, for whatever reason.

That's not to say there hasn't been the deflowering of some virgin bands for me this year (Janelle Monae's The ArchAndroid, Warpaint's The Fool and Everything Everything's Man Alive spring to mind; and of course Big Scary and Kimbra), it's just that this hunger for the next big thing can be draining. I've found that whenever I get jaded trawling through press releases for bands I don't really care about, or skipping straight to the 4 or 5 star reviews desperate for something that'll grab me - that all I need to do is revisit the classics. The very bedrock of my not un-sizable music collection, those records that have a staying power long after track twelve comes to a close. 

It's not for nothing that weezer's Pinkerton gets re-issued in a deluxe version next week, and I'll be there, willing to shill out for another copy of a record I already own but with all the unnecessary trinkets. Giving money to a band that are now a shallow parody of their former glory. Why? Because it's one of my favourite records of all time, and all the copies of Raditude and Hurley in the world can't change that.

What's my point? I guess it's simply that you should go back and listen to those albums and bands you loved when you were fifteen because chances are it'll still sound good. Fucking good.

On that note, I want to hear your stories about the albums you fell in love with. I've got a little sort-of project in which I want to interview and collate people's stories about their CDs. If any of the above resonates with you then please shoot me a line here, or on Twitter and we'll sort something out.

Speaking on that topic, here's the review of the latest from one of my old-skool faves.

Jimmy Eat World - Invented (Interscope, 2010)

Arizona’s finest exporters of emo-pop return with album number seven, and after a brief dalliance with producer Butch Vig for 2007’s Chase This Light, they return to the reliable embrace of Mark Trombino. In doing so, it demarcates Invented as a potentially ‘safe’ record.  While lead single My Best Theory buzzes like the boisterous sound of past singles Bleed American and Big Casino, its chugging mid-tempo riff and forlorn lyric (“the answers come back unanswered”) are a bait-and-switch for what is the band’s most tender set to date.

Jimmy Eat World have always dressed up their simple hooks with the irresistible dressing of polished harmonies and glistening production, and Invented does little to break the band’s tried and true formula. The only attempt to change up their game is in bandleader Jim Adkins’ new writing style. Inspired by a photography series of female portraits, Invented finds Adkins creating fictional narratives written from the other gender’s perspective (thus the title). An interesting idea, but the result strays little from his usual love-stung lyrical territory, simply swapping the ‘his’ for ‘hers.’

Only long-time fans will really notice the subtle nuances to the group’s brand of grand-staged emotion. Strings are brought forward in the mix, while the likes of Movielike and the epic title track are built upon acoustic guitar. Aside from that it’s cathartic sing-a-long business as usual. That's not to say that business isn't good. Once the record hits its stride – which coincides precisely with the glistening opening of Stop – there’s a near-perfect run of tunes that sit proudly along the best in the Jimmy canon. In fact, it’s only when they attempt to crank the aggression factor back up, with Action Needs An Audience, that they falter.

As the closing Mixtape circles around the refrain of “you don’t get to walk away, walk away” in a familiar yet comforting swell of textured chords, the lasting impression is that even heart-on-their-sleeve emos, it seems, can age gracefully.

SoundCloud streams:

My Best Theory

Stop

Coffee & Cigarettes

Al's Music Rant: Thank You All

Wow. What an experience. I'll just cut to the chase and say 'thank you.'

Thank you to everybody who came to the show and turned it into such a success, I never would have imagined in the stressful weeks prior to bringing this blog kicking and screaming to life on stage, that it would ever be enjoyable to people, let alone so many people.

In the music industry, when bands sell out, it's a very bad thing - for me, selling out - the entire season- was a very good thing.

So thanks again, I hope you enjoyed the show as much as I enjoyed performing it. It's quite the ego-rub to know that my thoughts on concert etiqutte, Fred Schneider, and - oh, yes - Enya struck such a chord with so many people.

And if you didn't see the show?

Well, fear not, big news this way approacheth. Watch this space and all that.

Until then, read this review (special thanks to Colin Flaherty of The Groggy Squirrel) and rub your mits together and imagine what it must have been like while I set some foundations for future best-laid-plans.

Exciting times.

Until then, I do feel like i've missed on reporting on what has been some very interesting movements in the music industry. I haven't even had a chance to comment on the seismic cultural shifts Mr. Kanye West is making. Surely that has to be the topic of my next post, surely.

But until then.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for coming to the show. And keep your eyes peeled for news.

In the interim, begin following yours truly on Twitter, I'm starting to get the hang of the whole thing now.

Amusing updates and musings ahoy!

Till next time lovers of all things ranty and musicy.

Lock up your children, Al's Music Rant is coming!

 

See that dood up there, the one with the (presumably wireless) mic, acoustic guitar, finger deck goggles and craftily placed treble clef? Well he is none other than the creator and curator of the humble blog you're now perusing. And he's the one who'll be entertaining the hackles out of you as part of the Melbourne Fringe festival.  Ok now play this tune before you keep reading, and try to keep up, it's a bit wordy...

	Dj Shadow - Outsider Intro .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Wow, pretty epic huh? who is that sexy, raspy English voice? Ahhh see you're getting distracted already. Now the show probably won't be as grandiose as this tune is suggesting, but it will be as funny as this tune is epic.

The show will be a mixture of comedy and music, but that's at a very basic level.
It's an hour-long faux-presentation on music where anything (and everything) can be made a target, myself included. Much like the blog, it'll cram in a ton of content but always with the aim to be informative, passionate, and funny.
There'll be all sorts of humour to be had, character stuff, sketch stuff, songs, dancing, talking, iPod quizzes, impressions, silliness, pithy observations, bizarre reworkings, and an easel named Joni.

Guess that does sound pretty epic after all...

Now here's the deets, peeps - there are six shows for the season:

Wed 29 Sep (Preview tix)

Thurs 30 Sep

Fri 1 Oct

Sat 2 Oct

Wed 6 Oct (2 for 1 tix)

Fri 8 Oct

@ The Glasshouse, 51 Gipps St, Collingwood

You can book, pay and print your tickets online at The Fringe Website.

Or you can follow my tweets to get some sneaky previews of what you might get from the show.

Anyway you cut it, it's gonna be sweet.

Now for the regular readers, be sure to check out the last post for sweet interview with the wonderful Kimbra.

And while we're at it, here's a sweet remix of Kimbra's excellent Settle Down from the NY minimalist proudcer Penguin Prison.

Just picture the vocal loops paired with some Club happy, toe-tapping rhythms and you've got the idea - or better yet, have a listen for yerself:

Kimbra - Settle Down (Penguin Prison Remix)

So, in summary, come to the show - read the blog - live a happy life.

See you at the Glasshouse.

Settle Down, won't you...

OK, it's less than fourteen days/two weeks/336 hours until this humble blog shambles to life onstage as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. So it's about damn time I let on about what to expect, since there's no logic or rhyme or reason to these things, I'll just start splurging - throwing a bunch of words and phrases at you and see if they'll stick. Hopefully you can consider this the 'piquing of interest' variety of preview as opposed to 'spoilers ahead.'

• Finger Deck Goggles
• Dancing (of a riddick nature)
• Paul Simon, obviously
• Bill Bailey-esque stage set-up 
• Prince
• Songs, funny ones, not of a Flight of a Conchords parodic ilk, nor Sammy J lyrical excellence, or the high antics of Anyone For Tennis?, but hopefully giggle-some none the less.
• High-brow lyrical quotes
• More Prince
• Sleevefaces
• This
• Impersonations of singers 
• Masturbation
• Genre Analyses (yeah baby, plural)
• And oh yeah, Prince

There are six shows:
Wed 29 Sep (Preview tix)
Thurs 30 Sep
Fri 1 Oct
Sat 2 Oct
Wed 6 Oct (2 for 1 tix)
Fri 8 Oct
@ The Glasshouse, 51 Gipps St, Collingwood

So go ahead and point your browser here for details and book your tix online. 

And while you're there, Ihighly recommend getting along to the following shows:

Dr. Professor Neal Portenza's Interactive Goat Hour (and his amazing website)

OC/DC

The Hermitude of Angus, Ecstatic

Postcards From The Abyss

Booked a ticket? Good, we now return to our regular programming.

I've been sitting on this one for a while now, but since the buzz is (finally) starting to build for the wonderful soul-popster Kimbra, I thought I'd add my discerning voice to the rabble. Following is an interview I conducted waaaaaaay back in March. A lengthy chat that resulted in some music biography and press release material you'll see dotted about the interwebz, but since Kimbra's debut is on the cusp of public release, it still seems timely and relevant. But first, a primer:

"an unknown life-force that nobody could stop"

Just a quick note before we begin (see what I did there?), but this post marks the hundredth in my illustrious career as an amateur blogger. Can hardly believe it's been so many, I guess time flys when you're having fun. Or when you're writing passionately (and hopefully informatively) about something you love. Well just a quick thank you to all, thanks for all the visits, I can only hope you've enjoyed each and every one of them, in which case - here's to another 100!

Onward.

So Big Scary can do no wrong, they finished up their Winter launch at the Toff last Sat and due to perform the Sydney equivalent this Friday. If you're still hankering for more though, I've uploaded my full interview with strummer Tom Iansek, the resultant article of which was printed in Beat last week and is still available to view online. But for those of us who dislike word counts and cohesion, here is that same interview in full. 

Like last time I had a chinwag with them, it was on the eve of another headline show, conducted a week before the Toff gig, Iansek discusses touring, recording Winter and what's next for Melbourne's best independent band ((c) AMR 2010). Enjoy.

Al's Music Rant: Congrats on Winter, it’s another successful expansion of your sound. Following on from the acoustic style of Autumn, was there a certain style or influence towards this new set?

T: I suppose it was more of a chance for these influences that we’ve always had to come through, especially the Bon Iver influence, both Jo and I are massive fans. This set was more the kind of music that I like to listen to, so the Winter tracks are probably my favourite tracks that we’ve done. I really like the mood and the introverted feel that’s there. It’s more the kind of music I like to listen to.

AMR: It definitely contrasts more to Autumn, there’s a lot more going on in terms of layers and sound, it’s not something that’s going to be easy to recreate live.

T: Yeah, we’ve been having that problem already, we did a few shows with Midlake where they wanted only the laidback acoustic tracks and so we really had the problem of ‘do we go down the path of samplers and those sort of effects to create the sound that we’ve done on the recording; or do we just stick with the true two-piece thing and work with that. We stuck with the two-piece thing, and Jo was quite adamant about that. It worked out pretty well

AMR: Do you feel like adding samplers and things would detract from what was exciting about the duo to begin with?

T: Well, with samplers, once you hear a sound that isn’t coming directly from the stage you begin to question, ‘well what is actually being played?’ It was that which we wanted to avoid, and also I suppose we clung steadily to the two-piece.

AMR: It works

T: (laughs) yeah, its worked for us so far, so why stop now? we’re happy to have the recordings slightly different, break the rule for the recordings and that was the aim for the Four Seasons project. Just have a bit of fun and experiment a bit. There’s no reason to limit yourself in the studio

AMR: You recorded at Jo’s Place, what was the impetus for that?

T: So it might have been the first day of winter actually, it was rainy and cold and… it was just perfect. Because for time reasons we had to record Autumn in summer and that didn’t really feel right, but it was really nice to record Winter in winter. And it was recorded at Jo’s parents’ house, they’ve got this beautiful old upright that we play on when we rehearse there, and we’re quite picky about our piano sounds. That was the sound we wanted for the recording, so we just got the gear into the living room and away we went.

AMR: You’ve mentioned that before, about how the space in which your recording has as much character as the writing and anything else.

T: (enthusiastically) yeah, yeah, it’s definitely what I’ve been learning, trying to impart a lot of the character of these instruments and these rooms into the recording. Especially when there’s so few elements, there’s only two of us, there’s only so many layers to these tracks so we’ve really got to make them count.

AMR: And that stems back to the Bon Iver thing, the myth-making where he goes to a cabin and records these songs.

T: Yeah, there’s sort of that, that sort of mystical element to it.

AMR: The Front Room Recordings

T: Yeah, that home-made, lo-fi kind of feel and it’s just a bit more tangible, more character, more real. We try and do that with all our recordings, even the rockier tracks. It definitely comes through a lot more with these sorts of introspective songs. 

AMR: How has that been translating to the live show? Are you trying to keep balance between the older and newer material?

T: We still like to mix it up a little bit, we definitely tailor it to the time and the place. These Midlake shows were all laidback, acoustic, chilled-out tracks.

AMR: Did you get the beard going?

T: I did have a bit of a beard going, it paled in comparison to the Midlake beards – some of those are pretty wild.

I guess in the future we’d like to have a bit more of a mix live, and moreso just for contrast. The contrast between the two generally makes for a more exciting show, I find.

Definitely something we want to take further, but it's a fine balance between holding people’s attention and just getting carried away and trying to play people everything. You have to craft your set-list in order to pull it off properly.

AMR: You’ve been supporting a slew of high-profile local and international acts, how have the performances been?

T: It’s been amazing, The Vasco Era was a pretty intense tour for us: 16 dates in 4 weeks. It was the first time we really have done anything like that and it was a steep learning curve. I think The Vasco Era are such a great act to do it with because there’s such an amazing live band. We learned a lot from them, a lot of tricks I suppose.

AMR: How to get a bigger rider.

T: Yeah, that’s it, even things like developing a bit of a taste for playing covers. They’d often just jam out for an hour or two if they had a chance at the end of their set just playing all these covers. So since then, there’s a few covers we’ve got up our sleeve. Which is more just good to have on hand. Just for fun. It turned the live show into something that was a pressure situation into something that was more about having fun and relaxing. Which was a big step I think for us, so now there isn’t so much stress in the live performance, more about enjoying the moment.

It’s funny you should say that, because it seems like you have been touring non-stop at this front half of the year, you’re obviously very aware about reaching different audiences and different spaces.

There’s no better way to learn than just get out there and play and play. And play some more.

AMR: Can you name some highlights?

T: I think the Melbourne show at the Corner with The Vasco Era, actually all the Melbourne shows have been amazing. Like the show at Prince with Little Red, that was also fantastic. And Prince again, with Midlake was another great show. They’ve been the highlights for us. There’s just been great nights, we’ve never known Melbourne audiences to be this way. We’ve just done little indie gigs for years when there’s fifteen, twenty people in a room, standing in the back nodding along. It’s a different Melbourne with a room of 900 people. But also appreciative, I mean Little Red compared to Midlake – same room, but there’s people at Little Red jumping around, going crazy as opposed to the same number where the room’s just completely silent, standing there and listening intently to what you’re playing. Pretty amazing experiences.

AMR:That’s obviously the advantage of these support slots too is that you get to play all these great venues

T: That’s it, and again, without the pressure of…

AMR: Filling It?

T: Yeah, filling it, just relax and play.

AMR: You’re still a relatively young band but you already have a large catalogue to your name, and the EPs have been a great way to give audiences samples of what you’ve been up to; but is there still a back catalogue that you plan on releasing or are you keen to keep moving forward with the writing?

T: The next step is the album, and we’ve been demoing tracks for the album, and trying to demo all this back catalogue of songs we have just lying around. At this point we’re undecided about whether we want to release all those, or just new stuff or a mix of both. We definitely want to have a bit more direction to the album compared to the Four Seasons which has just been an excuse to play anything, go with the flow a bit and record whatever’s come to us. I think it’ll just take a bit more time to figure out where we wanna go with the album. Definitely a lot more writing and hopefully it’ll have a mix of our better old songs and some good new stuff.

Mid late next year album

AMR: And with the Four Seasons compilation, is that literally going to be the EPs back-to-back?

T: Yeah, we played around with the tracklisting and it worked best grouped together, there’s a natural flow to it still that way, and you can see it takes you on a bit of a journey from start to finish.

AMR: How did you come to collaborate with Laura Taylor on the artwork?

T: Jo found her on MySpace, MySpace Art I think. Just surfing around there was just hoards of amazing artists, and this one caught Jo’s eye. She’s just a nineteen year old from up in Gosford. She’s a very talented girl.

AMR: Speaking of which, you’ve also had a lot of videos produced in association with the songs, how did that come about?

T: Much like the artwork it’s been a bit of an experimentation process, just trying different things here and there, working with various people. It’s been fun and rewarding for the most part.

AMR: Now the scary question. You’ve released everything independently so far, has there been interest from any labels?

T: There’s been interest from labels but we’re at the point now where we feel we can do everything that a label can do for us in Australia. So we’re really hoping to stay independent. It’s a lot more work, but it’s also a lot more rewarding. Also in terms of being able to support ourselves financially, that’s quite an important point because if we can have more time to make music it’ll make for better results. So we went to head down the independent path as best we can.

AMR: It’s obviously a big issue facing lots of bands, not just in Australia.

T: Well yeah, a lot of bands don’t have the option. They just need the financial backing of a label to get them on the road and get them in the studio, to get their work out there. We’re lucky that we’re a two-piece and our costs are so low, we can be in and out of the studio really quickly. We can have both of us and all our gear in one car to get around the country. We’ve actually improved our stacking to the point where the passenger seat can recline almost fully, we’ve got it down to quite an art.

AMR: What can we expect from the sit-down shows for Winter?

T: It’s a very different experience to our regular show, it’ll be just laid-back and we hope to create a different mood. I guess intimacy’s the buzz word, we wanted it sit-down so the audience could relax – not to chat and stand around – but more formal and relaxed.

AMR: Does that mean you exclude the ‘rockier’ material?

T: That won’t be in there, it’ll be all the quieter stuff. 

AMR: And what happens after that? Gearing up towards Spring?

T: So after that we’re pretty quiet through to about October/November, another national tour that hasn’t been announced yet. Pretty full-on from October onwards.

It’s mostly exciting, we’re really excited to be able to play at Falls, and Southbound and Peats Ridge. It’s also… I’ve never been to one of those festivals before. A great way to spend the summer.

AMR: Obviously Spring is next, what can we expect from that collection?

T: Spring is much more light-hearted, upbeat. The title track is just an acoustic number, I tried to imagine what spring would be like as a person, and for some reason I just pictured this person as super-arrogant and better than all the other seasons. To the point of annoyance, which was the vibe of that track. Jo wrote the track that’ll be the single, and that’s a bit more rock, a bit Jeff Buckley rock as much as I don’t like to use those terms.

AMR: How do you feel where you are with the band, as you’ve said it’s been a very busy six months. Do you want to just plow on through, growing with the band and the audiences?

T: Well the first six months were so full-on we didn’t have a chance to think about what was happening, and these months at the moment have been a bit quieter and I’ve had a chance to think about what’s been happening. It’s sort of a mixed reaction, it’s odd to think that I’m out there trying to make it as a musician. I find that as a bit of an odd concept, it’s almost like trying to be a sports star. It’s too much fun, it’s nice that people want to hear your music and hear what you have to say, the tunes you’re writing and things are moving along so well, we’ve got such great momentum happening now. From here, it’s just a matter of going with it.

 

and thus concludes the 100th (!) post. If Triple J did one of them Hot polls now, it'd be fairly easy to choose eh?

Where have you been?

The Fringe show is rumbling away, to be sure to be sure, but if you can't wait to get a comedy fix. May I highlight my involvement with The Melbourne Uni Comedy Law Revue.

It's an annual live sketch comedy show put on to raise money for charity and it's gauranteed some big laughs and great times. There's definitely some great music gags and some even greater non-music gags. So do get along.

Check out the promo below and book online to enrich your life no end. 

In the meantime we return to regular broadcasting, dancing about architecture.

The Morning Benders - Big Echo (Rough Trade, 2010)

There’s a poem that adorns the sleeve for Big Echo that goes “shouting into a valley/big shout: big echo/small shout: small echo,” well if it wasn’t already obvious, The Morning Benders are now attempting their big shout.

After the Shins-alike lo-fi of their debut Talking Through Tin Cans, their all important sophomore effort is a much bolder step to an all-canvassing sound with a confident delivery. Opener Excuses being the aural manifest of their new ambition and a deceptively epic tune. A preamble of crackling vinyl before orchestral flourishes and harmonies befitting of Pet Sounds rub alongside a breezy Californian strum. In fact the entire first half, or ‘Side A’ as the liner notes would have it, is an accessible mesh of atmospheric indie-pop tinged with… well calling it psychedelic might be a stretch, but there’s certainly a lot of studio embellishment involved. Promises and Pleasure Sighs aspire to the same peaks as that delicious opener, albeit with slightly different musical blueprints.

‘Side B’ finds the band letting their already laidback approach unwind even further, and in so doing, the likes of Mason Jar and Stitches contain the ring and experimental amble of Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest. It should come as little surprise then to find Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor helping out with production duties to make the sunny disposition and the highbrow musicianship meet. As the cavernous album highlight Hand Me Downs demonstrates, this is what The Morning Benders, and particularly Big Echo, does best. Any one of its ten cuts could slot nicely alongside a playlist involving such hip revivalists as Animal Collective, Vampire Weekend and Yeasayer without your iTunes blinking twice.

Whether you hold Big Echo dear comes down to that age-old question of innovation: sure The Morning Benders may not be pioneers, but their music stands proudly alongside its influences, they do what they do very well even if they didn’t get their first.

Hear album opener Excuses here and get a free download of Promises for the cost of your email at the band's website.

Perfume Genius - Learning (Matador, 2010)

The term ‘personal songwriting’ seems like an increasingly quaint thing to talk about these days, sure there are still ‘confessional’ songs and ‘intimate’ music, but in an age dominated by social networking and mass media – the personal seems to be an increasingly rare commodity. If that’s the case, then Perfume Genius’ stock is valuable indeed.

Make no mistake, Learning is nothing if not personal. The recording name for one Mike Hadreas, its ten tracks are the result of months spent holed up in his mother’s house in Washington with nought but an old piano, some dinky synths and a whole lot of exorcising.

With its ghostly piano and lo-fi aesthetic, it’s the sound of someone baring their soul set to music, but what is a potentially uncomfortable, emotionally wrought experience is offset by its melodic simplicity and shimmering textural layers. Hadreas’ gentle falsetto trembling between the ether created by the shivering piano and synths that dominate the album.

At times it imagines Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne as a stark troubadour or Sufjan Stevens at his most intimate, in particular Illionis’ touching John Wayne Gacy Jr. Perfume Genius likewise tackles taboo topics, with an alchemy at work that transforms his controversial topics into stirring stuff indeed.

The story-driven narrative of Mr. Peterson should be enough to make your skin crawl, tackling as it does the love between a naive high-school boy and his teacher, “He let me smoke weed in his truck/if I could convince him I loved him enough”. But Handreas renders it with such humanity as to make it tender portraiture, “he made me a tape of Joy Division… when I was 16 he jumped off a building/…I hope there’s room for you up above or down below.”

The rest of Learning is tinged with a similar poignant complexity, though it’s not always explicitly stated there’s a veiled sense of danger and decay lurking behind the lo-fi surface. Lookout Lookout’s uncomplicated arpeggio hook belies its urgency to “lookout, lookout/there are murders about.” Likewise Perry whose closing couplets intone “we may never see you again/whatever good is left/put your trust in it.” Sometimes it doesn’t even take words to transmit its pathos. Gay Angels reaches an almost transcendental state with vocals wafting unanchored over reverberated echoes before settling into a raspy mantra of ‘shhh shhh It’s ok.”

As the title suggests, it’s as much an experience for Hadreas’ as a songsmith as it is for the listener. Some parts of Learning are like audio sketches, half-finished and in the process of emerging but distinguishable none-the-less. In fact the record is smeared with the sound of bruised guilt transcended. As if the tangible pain of its various characters and narrators has transformed their emotional damage into an up-lifting haze of attrition.

It’s a unique and discernable style that’ll ensure Perfume Genius’ debut as the kind of pure, brutally honest recording that tends to skip its potentially pretentious moors to reach a cult audience appreciative of its bravery.

Listen to Mr. Petersen here and then you can download the title track from Matador here

And my currently listening list in visuals:

Gayngs - Relayted