Future Of The Left

'Polymers Are Forever' (Remote Control)

(previously published on ArtsHub)

Fucked Up interview with Damian 'Pink Eyes' Abraham

Never to be labelled as anything near conventional, it’s a strange concept to see Toronto punk kings and queens Fucked Up touring the world with Foo Fighters. It’s not an irony that lost on ferocious vocalist and basically most-punk-man-on-the-planet-right-now Damian ‘Pink Eyes’ Abraham – yet he maintains there are strong links between each member of the now stadium rockers and his punk rock upbringing. “When we first met the Foo’s on Toronto, we’d heard from our friends The Bronx who’d opened up for them, that they are the coolest people you will ever meet, prepare to be shocked,” he says. “And so I was like, yeah, how cool can they be? Let’s be honest, I’ve met some cool people.

“Nate [Mendel] from the band was in Brotherhood, one of the greatest hardcore bands of all time. They were one of the bands that got me through high school, I loved that band to death... Basically all of the band – with [members of] Sunny Day Real Estate and The Germs – played in a band that was so pivotal for my musical awareness.”

To backtrack, Fucked Up are now ten-year veterans of the punk rock scene. In that time they’ve delivered over sixty releases (mostly singles and odd-length 7”s and 12”s) including three studio albums. Their second full-length, The Chemistry Of Common Life, scored much critical acclaim and won them the Polaris Music Prize. Their live shows are notoriously brutal and their onstage antics have garnered respect and disdain in equal measures (MTV won’t be calling them back in a hurry). They famously played a 12 hour set at the Bowery in New York City in 2008 to celebrate the Chemistry... release and were joined by members of Vampire Weekend, Dinosaur Jr, Les Savy Fav and others on stage. They’ve (unsuccessfully) sued Rolling Stone Magazine and Camel Cigarettes, they’ve played ATPs and pretty well every other major festival in the world, they’ve just released their third album – an 18-track rock opera set in Thatcher’s England called David Comes To Life, for which they’re apparently penning a prequel – and they’ve even covered Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas for a fund raiser with members of Yo La Tengo and Broken Social Scene, along with Tegan & Sara, Bob Mould, Kyp Malone, GZA and more.

There’s no doubt they are a big fucking deal, yet Abraham’s warmth and modesty is disarming down the phone line. When I suggest the new record had me reaching for the liner notes like I was 14 again, he recalls a similar youth. “The best thing you can hope for in a band or for anyone who’s trying to do anything creative is that something you make is engaged with by other people... We live in a world now where you don’t necessarily have to engage with music, there’s not necessarily any cost to it so you can go and listen to it and process it and then move on. There was a time where I would pore over the liner notes and where I knew the lyrics to every single song.”

Though their roots run deep into the American hardcore of the ‘80s and ‘90s, Fucked Up express a variance in song constructs that suggest wider influences. Abraham confirms that his musical upbringing was as much Sonic Youth as it was Black Flag, and elaborates that it was more the idea of punk that moved him more than any particular sound. “A lot of the stuff that’s perceived as punk these days runs against what I perceive punk to be,” he continues. “But there’s always been a legitimate beating heart to the scene and y’know, you can’t stop an idea. The idea of DIY punk is a very powerful one if you’re a kid and a fan of music. You don’t really wanna be a cast from the heavens rock star, you just wanna be someone that plays music because you love it. DIY punk is a great way to make music and be involved in music because you just do it yourself and you literally take complete control of a situation. As a kid you have very little power in your life and here you’re given power. You don’t like the music you’re hearing then start your own band; you don’t like the bands that are coming to your town then book another band; you don’t like the records that are coming out then put out a record. It’s just so awesome that this idea never really died. And I don’t think it ever will die. It will continue getting co-opted and bands will keep ‘selling out’ and moving on but it’s gonna stay pure because there’s always a kid who’s gonna say ‘fuck that band in the mainstream, I want a band like this’.”

The early stages of Fucked Up saw distributors refusing to carry their material as it did not adhere to the usual confines of what a ‘release’ should be. They found like minds in Deranged Records who were happy to carry whatever they produced. The albums came slowly as the band grappled with the gravity of stringing a group of songs together in some sort of continuum. But after the success of Chemistry... they were confronted with an entirely new pressure. “After the last record we felt that we had an insurmountable amount of hype on us y’know. I really felt like we had hit a point where we were like ‘where the hell are we gonna go with this record?’ Chemistry... really felt like, it was really flattering, but it felt like they’d painted us into a corner in a way.”

Thankfully this external pressure played a large part in the development of the concept of David Comes To Life. “We thought we’d do this record that we wanted to do anyway and we were kinda like if people don’t like it, they don’t like it. So we made it a concept record with this idea we’d been playing around with for a long time.”

There has been much conjecture in recent weeks over the band’s future after Abraham was quoted as saying that he is sick of touring and needed a break. At least during this interview there is little indication of the band’s imminent demise, though he talks of an altered course. “I have a feeling this will be the last full LP with me as the sole vocalist of the band,” he says. “I’m pretty sure that’s the direction we’ll end up going in and that’s for a variety of reasons. Number one, I don’t wanna get the band to a point where it gets stale and you can’t really dial it back from a concept record. Where do you go? I guess a quadruple live record’s the logical progression [laughs]. We’re at that stage now where there’s gonna have to be some changes. And that’s not gonna happen tomorrow, but definitely down the line.” He adds that they’ve just completed The Year Of The Tiger and that they’re planning a prequel EP to the new record surrounding Veronica – the album’s leading lady. Diehard fans fear not... It doesn’t seem likely they’ll be tossing it away just yet.

Samson McDougall

Royal Headache interview with Joe Sukit by Samson McDougall

“It’s hard to explain the way that it’s just changed over the last three or four years,” says Royal Headache bassist Joe Sukit of his base of Sydney and the resurgence of live music. “It started out as a very, at least when I moved to Sydney, as a really DIY warehouse kind of space thing. Bands couldn’t play at pubs, that was pretty much it, there were no pubs to play. But over the years, there’s all these bands and kids that couldn’t really play their instruments being forced into this situation where you make it happen however you can. But it feels like in the last couple of years at least they’ve just evolved into these really great bands and everyone’s writing really great songs and making really great records. It’s really an inspirational place to be and it’s exciting because everyone’s behind each other – and y’know, if you don’t support each other what have you got? We’re on our own, so we make do.”

As a definition of the punk ethos, the above statement reads about as conclusively as I’ve ever heard it put. Through venue closures and the might and power of the Australian Hotels Association that reigns supreme in New South Wales, emerging musicians were forced into a situation of creating their own realm, completely independent of any existing structures, which had become more suffocating than supportive. And waddaya know, the music is coming out on top.

A sweet product of this transition are Royal Headache. A mish mash of members of established Sydney bands, they converged in the garages and warehouses of the city to produce something unique, untried and ultimately satisfying. “Every person in the band is obsessed with music and not just one type of music either, but everything,” continues Sukit of the sonic thrust of the band, which sits somewhere between the realms of punk rock and soul. “Essentially, at the core of every single kind of music that we like, there’s a rawness and a realness to it. Whether it’s hip hop or whether it’s punk rock, you’ve gotta believe what they’re saying. And also you’ve gotta sound authentic and real otherwise what’s the point? That’s the main thing that we try and get across; definitely that’s the main thing that inspires us to do real shit.”

They dropped a self titled debut album earlier this year and it was jumped on by independent radio. Though they haven’t been regular visitors to Victoria thus far, their few shows will remain etched in the minds of anybody lucky enough to have caught them. The quality of the shows they’ve played here speak for themselves – Flip Out and Golden Plains before they even released an album – but their first full-length release and subsequent release party visit this weekend, have been a hell of a long time coming. “We actually recorded it about a year and a half ago,” Sukit continues. “We recorded it in one day and then it was just a process of... Shogun wasn’t happy with a couple of vocal tracks so he was back in for another couple of gos, going back and recording with a couple of different people and then... Ultimately it was about us going to America and our trip over there for Goner Fest that sort of kicked our arses and we thought all right, we’ve gotta get this thing mixed and ready and out. If it wasn’t for that, we probably still wouldn’t have the record out. It was just a matter of getting the record to sound the way that we’d sort of envisioned and do the songs justice really.

It has been worth the wait. The album is dripping in this old world soul built out of solid straight-up garage jams. “It worked out for the best in the end. It was a bit dumb that we laboured over it for so long in the end, but to tell the truth we spent a lot more time just not talking or thinking about the record, so it just sat there doing nothing. To eventually get it out was just a huge relief. It was taking a huge toll on us, y’know, we weren’t able to just get out and do what we wanted to until we had that gone. We just had to get past it I guess. The aim is by next year to have a completely new set and never have to play these songs again until the reunion tour in 2020 or something.”

On the band’s recent US tour, they drove the interstates on a steady diet of fuck all – sleeping on floors and hangin’ in bars until gig time. Sukit was not overly convinced of many of the bands they caught on the tour, and he tells me that apart from Goner Fest, a lot of the music they experienced while there was less than inspiring. But if there’s a positive to be drawn from the experience, it’s the reinforcement that Royal Headache are on the good path. “We went over there with no expectations and just figured that we’d go over and have a holiday and take the band so we could make enough money to make it to the next city on the map,” he continues. “We didn’t really expect to go over there and do anything or for people to come to shows, so every single night was a different thing and a surprise. It was fun; we spent a lot of time in the van just looking at highways and stuff. Then you get to the city and sit in the bar for four hours before you play. That side of things, after a month of doing that, and going back to stay with the two people in the club that want to put you up for the night – so you’d go back to their ghetto apartment and sleep on the kitchen floor – after a month it can get draining, but we had fun. America’s a weird place.

“You’re going around and most of the bands that we played with each night, it’s like they’re afraid to show themselves or be themselves within their music or as a band. It’s like a show. They’ve gotta come up with a character or have a gimmick and this is what they are, but it’s not actually who they are as people. There’s something really confronting or ugly about Royal Headache when they see that. To go and watch a bunch of people pretend to be someone else is not exciting to me, I don’t find that interesting. We’d rather just get up there and do our thing. It was a strange thing, the type of thing they’re used to... Like even the punk bands, it’s like they’re this kind of band and they sound like this band and they’re influenced by this sort of band. I don’t think Royal Headache are really like that at all. I think that was a little confusing and confronting for them.”

Dick Diver Interview With Alistair & Rupert

Dick Diver didn’t so much burst onto the scene so much as sneakily weasel their way under the music radar. They’re the kind of band that you hear once and they’re instantly recognisable. The only way to describe their sound is that it leans in obscure angles. There’s a familiarity in their poppy rock tunes, but their guitar tones feel like they’re sloping off to the bar and their vocal harmonies feel like happy accidents. They are a four-piece band made up of tonally identifiable individuals – they mix and match these unique voices in playful and interesting ways.

They arrived a couple of years back and have played a few shows. They managed to get an EP, Arks Up, out at some stage and it was a cracker. Then we waited and we waited and they seemed like they’d all but disappeared. In fact, if it weren’t for the odd live performance and the fact that a couple of them play in other bands around the traps, you could’ve sworn they’d dropped off the planet all together.

Then, as if from nowhere, they finally drop an album. The thing is better than good. It captures all of their tonal slackness and packs a real sense of humour outside of the, often narrative-ly straight up, Australian stories it tells. Founding member Alistair McKay explains it was the writing of these songs that caused the hold up. “Both Rupe [Edwards] and I write pretty slowly,” he says “We write a lot of songs but we’re not happy with most of them. This is the first record that we’ve done with Steph [Hughes] and Al [Montfort] doing stuff as well. We recorded a bunch more that we had but we settled on ten that we wanted.

“I reckon Rupe probably throws out about 90 percent of the stuff that he writes, I write fewer songs. Al writes heaps of songs but he’s in six bands; Steph’s in three at the moment and it was just a matter of going up, recording a bunch of things and having the time to sit back and think relatively critically about it and pick out which songs we thought fit together.”

Of the large amount of material that Rupert Edwards discards, he puts much of it down to his own belief in the songs more than the stock of audience or those around him. “I don’t really worry about or care about whether people can relate to it or not – if that happens, that’s great,” he says. “I’ve gotta be happy with being able to sing something. I’ve gotta be happy and feel good about singing it. Not because it’s all autobiographical, it’s all pretty made up, but some stuff just feels OK to sing and other stuff just doesn’t.”

The songs paint a picture of inner-suburban life. Numbers like New Start Again paint a pretty grim portrait, whereas Flying Teatowel Blues or Seagulls offer snippets of daily life and Head Back slaps a cheeky grin across the arse end of the record. It’s accomplished, without being self conscious or arrogant. The songs string together like a wee narrative all of their own – albeit a brief one. “Pretty good,” answers Edwards when questioned how he feels about the record now that it’s finally on the shelves. “I guess it’s been so long in the making and it feels like it’s been so long since we recorded it to now. This is a pretty common thing with bands I guess, but I feel pretty over it in terms of waiting to have it out. I’ve listened to everything so much now that it’s just weird that everybody’s just hearing it for the first time. So I’m feeling good about it but it’s just a weird thing that there’s been such a delay I guess.” He still reckons he’ll be able to bring some enthusiasm to their launch, “Playing them live is still heaps of fun, I’m not at all over that.”

New Start Again marks the group’s first attempt at shared writing duties and the rewards are plain. The calibre of songwriting is bolstered by the use of vocal pairings that alternate through the listen – it’s never a bombardment or four-way vocal harmony, but the changing selections of vocals to songs right through lends the thing freshness and light. “Maybe the way the band formed, Rupert and I had played together for a long time with just us two,” continues McKay of the band’s incorporation of shared writing and singing duties. “So when we formed for the first bunch of shows that we did and for the EP, we had a bunch of songs that we’d written and so naturally it sort of came as a top down kind of thing. But now that we’ve played together more and spent more time together as a band, it’s just developed organically into a more collaborative thing, which is great. It’s much more enjoyable for everyone; I think you get the four different voices a lot more, I enjoy it a lot more personally.

“It’s never been a very laboured process. Put it this way: I don’t think many of the song pairings that we’ve done on the record have been done other ways. They either started with someone singing and then someone joining in at practice and the rest saying yeah that sounds cool. Or when we’ve recorded, someone will jump in at the last minute and try things. Actually we tried a couple of extra over dubs and that kind of stuff in terms of vocals. Generally we tried to sort of cut back. We didn’t want to end up sounding like the Beach Boys or something. Even though we all like the Beach Boys.”

The recording took place in the outer suburbs of Melbourne and the thing was captured by producer/musician about town Mikey Young. There is warmth to the album that smacks of a bunch of people having fun and not taking the process too seriously. They recorded the album in a couple of days, largely live in the living room of a house in The Dandenong’s. Sound kind of intense? Not at all says McKay.

“I wouldn’t use intensive,” he laughs. “It was really great. It was really relaxed and just a lot of fun.” The set up was pretty simple; their gear, Young’s “very impressive preamps”, some mics and a laptop. McKay agrees the vibes achieved are a lot about the chemistry of all recording in the same room. “We’ve never tried it that way with Dick Diver,” he says of attempting to capture their sound in separate booths. “Rupe and I have done recording in a studio separate, and it was just awful, I didn’t enjoy it at all. Especially with Dick Diver being a vibes band, for want of a better word, we just kind of, y’know feed off each other and I guess we’re a bit loose and sloppy as well and you lose that if you’re playing by yourself or playing to a click track or if you’re even in different rooms.”

Royal Headache (gig review)

Curtin Bandroom

There’s a bloody line out the door when we rock up outside Melbourne’s most underused venue, the John Curtin Bandroom. It’s surprising that a not-often-seen-in-Melbourne Sydney band, Royal Headache, can pull such a crowd for their belated album launch, yet we’re informed that the room is near sell-out despite the doors having just opened. And this has happened regardless of the fact that Useless Children – you’d expect for many, an enormous drawcard – have (apparently due to a health emergency) vanished from the bill.

With the reshuffle, Woollen Kits start a little late and move us through a crash course in pretty straight-up garage rock. Their stuff is toe-tapping good, catchy as all hell and they hold a large majority of the room in their hands despite a shitty mix. We jostle for a decent spot and explore each sonic corner of the room and find that front of stage is the only area that sounds any good. With a rapidly filling space, this does not bode well for the headliner.

Royal Headache burst onto the stage and thrash out songs – one, two, three, four – without even breaking a sweat. Their live tunes feel faster and the instrumentation is gloriously sloppy. Said mix is as poor as the opening act so we again flank the crowd and power for front centre. There’s a decent contingent of moshers in close and we’re forced to play along.

Vocalist Shogun pleases the audience on removal of shirt revealing the physique of a whippet and too-high pants. Such is the nature of Royal Headache; there is purity of spirit, truthfulness to (collective) self that transcends the hip-ness of their soul/garage appeal. They plough through most the album and further – Really In Love, Eloise etc; though sadly no Honey Joy – oblivious that a large proportion of the audience are experiencing their sound through a kind of muffled vacuum afforded by the room. There was a risk of sameness creeping in to this bill once the dynamic Useless Children were removed, but Royal Headache stand and deliver proof that they’re worthy of any hype that’s preceding them.

Samson McDougall

Dick Diver

‘New Start Again’ Chapter Music (A

(Album review previously published on ArtsHub)

There’s something instantly recognisable about the music of Dick Diver and it’s not just carried through the vocals. It’s a tonal thing – a sort of lilt in the guitars and fluidity of sound – and it somehow reacts with my brain chemistry in a pleasant way, making each song likeable and memorable. They’re the kind of band that you see once and their tunes remain with you. The great thing about this is that whenever you see Dick Diver again, you recognise your little song buddies and you actually feel part of it somehow – you connect.

Dick Diver have an amazing tune called ‘Tender Years’ which they released on their EP ‘Arks Up’ in 2009. The song was a regular show closer for the band from the early days and I felt slighted that they omitted it from an all-too-brief ten-track album. Initial reservations aside, ‘New Start Again’ ambles ever so slightly through the first number ‘Through The D’ and I’m wondering whether the wait for a debut has been worth it. It has all the trademark slack tones and tangled guitars, but as an opener it fails to grab. Second song, ‘Hammock Days’ however, rights the ship and from here on in the album takes shape as a collection of Melbourne stories structured around fab lyrical passages and fine guitar work.

The exploration of vocal harmonies pays off here. A double-fronted unit (Alistair McKay and Rupert Edwards), they have the luxury of leaning on the vocal support of bass player Al Montfort (also of Straightjacket Nation, UV Race and, more recently, Total Control) and drummer Steph Hughes (Boomgates, Children Collide) – no slouches in their own rights. Rather than saturating the album in four-part vocals though, they subtly dot pairings through the recording to fantastic effect.

The album’s nexus comes in the form of sixth track ‘Flying Teatowel Blues’. The almost talked vocal is cut by the most unforgettable and simple chord progression and ripping solos, the thing is so understated and perfect it feels like they’re not even trying. Coupled with Twerp’ self-titled debut (also out this month), ‘New Start Again’ has summer barbecue written all over it, yet both records convey this shadow of sadness that lingers in around the edges of their songs. It’s thinking people’s barbecue music, and is in every way well worth the wait.

Samson McDougall

Sand Pebbles (images from High Vibes Festival 2009)

Sand Pebbles are living proof of the healthy state of music in Victoria. They represent a strata of musicians who hold down career-type jobs and dedicate a portion of their free time to the band. That’s not unusual in itself; what is unusual is that they’ve been doing it for about 12 years now and have just released album number five. That’s healthy output by many career-bands’ standards, yet the Sand Pebbles have managed to keep it steadily rolling through the love of creating alone.

In their latest release Dark Magic, Sand Pebbles enter new songwriting territory. Known mainly for pulsing psychedelic jams, this album sees the band stride ably into more folk-inspired terrain. It’s nothing to freak out about if you are a fan of their mind benders, there’s enough of their ‘usual’ sound on the record to ease the transition. But Dark Magic shows experimentation with new sonic thrust, vocal dynamics, and relationships and complexities between guitars.

The band are one of the only around to have members’ ages spanning four decades. It’s a strange dynamic, and odd that they found one another at all, yet it grants the five-piece authority over the entire history of rock’n’roll as direct inspiration. With all five active as songwriters, I was curious as to how they can manage to bring it together at all. “The thing that ties us together is a sense of humour really,” says Bassist and self-professed ‘boss’ of the outfit Chris Hollow, “and the music but when we get together it’s always very funny.”

“Chris and I will be the loudest at expressing our opinions,” says guitarist Ben Michael X, “but someone like AT [Andrew Tanner, guitar/vocals] who’s the wise old silver fox, he just kinda hangs back and ends up getting his own way. Everyone only probably writes one or two decent songs a year. Seriously, all these singer/songwriters who want you to buy ten songs about them breaking up with their girlfriend, fuck that! You end up with two great songs and eight shit ones. You’re better off with five songwriters and you get the best of what they’ve got... We’ll save all the crappy ones for our solo records.”

Putting me on the spot, Hollow asks which song I like best from the release. Scrambling, I tread the diplomatic route and suggest the folky elements as a point of difference from their previous works. I also, thankfully, point out album closer and exploratory dreamscape Blue Eyes In Black & White, for which Michael X and Hollow claim partial pen duties. “Tor [Larsen, guitar/high vocal parts] went to Scotland and did the Highland Way,” explains Michael X of the folkier elements, “which is a walk across Scotland and what 500-years-ago Scottish youth did to become men. While he was doing that he met lots of freaky people living in huts in the Scottish highlands and just got into folk roots. So a lot of his lyrics on this record are traditional folk songs. Long Long Ago, I’m pretty sure is a 17th century folk song.”

Larsen’s vocals find new legs on this release. As a one-in-a-million shot coupling for Tanner’s voice, Larsen steps out of the shadows on Dark Magic and up into shared lead duties. One of the results of this is single Occupied Europe (Take Me Across The Water), in which Larsen’s singing defies his age, experience and even gender. At a recent performance in which Tanner was unable to play, Larsen stepped into full-blown singing duties for the duration and did not miss a beat. After the show I asked whether he’d found it difficult and he said, “I could tell you that I struggled, but really it was just a lot of fun”. This takes nothing from Tanner’s chops, as follow up to the aforementioned single Another Way To Love reinforces – all dulcet harmonies and building guitars – but Larsen’s exploration of his talents is allowing the band a breadth of freedom to delve into new wells of sonic inspiration.

“The thing about Tor is that he’s just unafraid to be pure, he has that quality,” says Michael X. Hollow adds: “And it made those songs completely different. Most of those songs that night were absolute Andrew staples, so it was like being in a different band. It comes very naturally to him.”

Sand Pebbles had the honour to be asked to play the Stephen Walker benefit show earlier this year alongside Dirty Three, Dave Graney, Gareth Liddiard and more at the Forum. As long-time fans of Walker’s Triple R radio show Skull Cave, the event touched upon what it means to be part of the music community. “We were fans of Triple R before we were musicians, our goal was never to be on Triple M or Triple J,” says Hollow. “It’s a real thrill. When we’re being played [on the station] everyone still texts each other, it’s still a real buzz.”

“Being a music fan, I grew up listening to and loving the Skull Cave, it really informed me,” continues Michael X. “It was the first place I heard the Velvets when I was a teenager and the Stooges and all that kind of shit. When we put out Ghost Transmissions I remember being in a shitty mood at home... I got in the car to go out and get some takeaway and [Walker] played Black Sun Ensemble. It was just one of those great moments in music when you go ‘fuck I’ve listened to this station all my life and it’s turned me on to all these songs that inspired me to write these long jammy kinds of songs’ and then to hear it on that station, I was pumping the air.”

This aversion to the mainstream and passion for music has led the band into a running association with Galaxie 500 and Luna main-man Dean Wareham, which will culminate in Sand Pebbles supporting Wareham in his upcoming tour of Sydney and Melbourne. For Sand Pebbles, to be acknowledged by an artist they admire, be it Stephen Walker, Dave Graney (who offers a fitting passage on Sand Pebbles in his memoir 1001 Australian Nights) or Wareham, far outweighs the prospect of any commercial success.

“I look at 20-year-olds now in their Nirvana tops and think ‘fuck dudes, grunge fucked music! It fucking ruined it and you are a dead-shit bogan for liking that shit’,” says Michael X. “I’ll go on the record as saying that Nirvana are fuckin’ bogans. There was Luna and Galaxie 500 playing these wonderful, great rock’n’roll songs with so much more beauty and depth.”

“As an artist, he’s never let us down,” adds Hollow. “He didn’t let us down in the ‘90s and it was all grunge, he still played music that wasn’t fashionable at the time.”

“If he says ‘do you want me to play guitar on your record’ or ‘do you want me to help put your record out overseas’, that’s like wow,” continues Michael X. “Would you want some businessman liking you or would you want some musician who you’ve grown up respecting liking your records? Like rather than a commercial radio cowboy [hat] wearing cock face or a great musician that you love. It’s no fucking contest.”

IGGY POP: ROADKILL RISING

SHOUT FACTORY

Easily the sickest thing about this collection of bootlegs from 1977 to 2009 is the completeness of the package. The thing comprises four CDs, traverses 64 tracks (mostly live bootlegs) and covers a total of well over four hours of Iggy. So for somebody (myself included) who’s a fan but hasn’t necessarily tracked the career of this punk god blow by blow, this document brings together any and all of the shit that’s cemented Pop at the forefront of rock’n’roll for the last forty-odd years.

The discs outline tracks from each of the four decades Pop’s been doin’ his business. From the opening bars of Raw Power you’re taken there. It’s striking through the first disc (the ‘70s, der) the amount of soul and funk thrown into the mix. I Need Somebody scrapes the gutters of loneliness, while Search & Destroy plays out as vital as it’s ever been, in a recording from a Cleveland club in 1977. For bootlegs, the general sound quality ain’t too bad either. There’s jeering, and moments of crowd violence and abuse, but somehow it all adds to the ‘punk’ of it all.

The subsequent discs offer more than enough variation on thematic and sonic exploration to satiate something in every listener. Whether it’s the Nightclubbing and Shades ‘80s period of Pop/Bowie collaboration (and if you don’t know shit about that, read Paul Trynka’s bio Open Up & Bleed); the raw power of his ‘70s material that rocked the UK years before the Sex Pistols arrived on the scene while listeners at home scratched their heads and nodded along to America (the band); the heroin chic of his ‘90s shit, which incorporates the (also Bowie co-write) Lust For Life and this writer’s all time favourite Candy; or whatever he’s been up to in the last decade (not quite so hot, but you can’t deny his live shows); there is some motherfucking thing here for every motherfucker and that’s that.

Beyond the notables there are nestled gems to be discovered and the covers he pulls out across all four discs are glimmering insights into the inspiration of the man. Van Morrison’s Gloria gets a rework (replete with the chorus blasting ‘I.G.G.Y.P.O.P, Iggy Pop!’). Rock’n’roll (you know, the old-type stuff) classics You Really Got Me (Ray Davies), Hang On Sloopy (The McCoys), Real Wild Child (Johnny O’Keefe), and Louie Louie (Chuck Berry) all get a run through along with a bunch of curios including the Batman Theme. The lack of liner notes and limited selection of photographs detract from the thing, but only in the sense that you wanna know more, immerse yourself in this world, be at these shows.

In experiencing Roadkill Rising in a gluttonous fashion, what is really illuminated is that this one guy (and arguably through his various incarnations and collaborations) has pretty much shaped any punk rock variant you listen to today. Not only was he doin’ it first, but he’s still standing, doin’ it last. And his pop sensibilities and rare song writing genius have allowed him to transcend genre (incorporating soul, gospel, rock’n’roll, punk, post-punk, new wave, etc, etc), time period, fashion, social strata, gender, age and language barriers to deliver himself to the world, time and again. For this we should all be thankful. If you don’t love Iggy Pop, there is something seriously fuckin’ wrong with you; but if you do, you will love this release. Satisfaction guaranteed.

Samson McDougall

Sand Pebbles: Dark Magic

Entering into this, the Sand Pebbles’ fifth album, you find yourself in familiar territory. Distinctive guitar tones circle beneath Andrew Tanner’s strong vocal, which kicks off about ten seconds in and is joined by Tor Larsen’s twenty-odd seconds later. The guitars gather over one another, delays and echoes bounce around for a bit before gradually converging into rippling melody. Spring Time (Who Hasn’t Lost Their Head?) is classic Sand Pebbles. Melding elements of ’70s psych with ’60s folk and pop, it acts as perfect pallet cleanser – once wrapped-up some six minutes later, there’s no question where you are. Second up, Because I Could continues on the same trajectory (it could almost play as the second, albeit more thumping, part of the opening number) but from here Dark Magic veers into some new and exciting territory.

The alternation between Tanner and Larsen on this release broadens the canvas upon which the band can draw. On single Occupied Europe (Take Me Across The Water) Larsen holds complex lyrical patterns singlehandedly and delivers the vocal track of the record. Third number Long Long Ago sees Larsen steer us through the first of a series of straight-up folk songs. His voice emerges from a largely backing role and commands the Sand Pebbles machine onto bold new ground. On first listen you’d almost swear they’d brought in a female vocalist, such is the sweetness of his voice.

Still, the rare and beautiful combination of Tanner and Larsen’s voices has come to define the Sand Pebbles’ sound, as the title track along with the brooding Another Way To Love reinforce. That and the inimitable guitar signatures and irregular rhythms, which are given room to breathe in the more instrumental closing couplet. These signposts guide the listener through an otherwise complex voyage and ease the transition from genre to genre.

Regardless of contributions from Galaxie 500’s Dean Wareham, Luna’s Britta Phillips, Spiritualized’s Will Carruthers, et al., which are for the most part difficult to pinpoint, this record signifies an alternation in flight-path for Sand Pebbles and at the same time grounds them as one of the most innovative and important acts Melbourne has produced in recent times. This is a band willing to explore and diversify to their strengths and possibly to the detriment of their more psych-leaning audience. It’s a bold record with hidden jewels aplenty, and no great surprise in that.

Samson McDougall

SIMONE FELICE INTERVIEW WITH SAMSON MCDOUGALL

When Simone Felice’s daughter Pearle came into the world during a thunder storm last year, he looked at his child for the first time and wondered whether she’d come from a better place. At 33 years old the man, a native of the mountains of New York State, had endured a level of suffering and personal tragedy to rival most lifetimes. His pain is reflected in his music, through his writing with groups The Felice Brothers and The Duke & The King, and further explored in his first novel Black Jesus. The story paints a bleak depiction of small-town USA, the disconnectedness of societal elements and the US war machine; and tests the depths of desperation and depravity experienced in our modern world. Yet there exists, as with his music, a thread of light – a music of chance occurrences – that alleviates the gravity of the work.

“I feel like humanity is teetering on the brink of complete degradation and collapse, but you know, at the same time I am hopeful,” he drawls from his Mountain barn/recording studio where he works. “In some ways I have to be because I have a brand new baby who’s one year old. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, so I have to look on the bright side and realise that we have love and the sun still shines and there’s food on the table and fire in the stove. I have a great task laid out before me now and that is to try to make her world as light and as good as it can possibly be.”

Declared legally dead for seven minutes as a 12 year old, Felice survived an aneurism but had to re-learn all basic motor skills. The same condition struck him another blow last year when a series of fainting episodes revealed an irreversible calcification of his aortic valve, which led to emergency open-heart surgery. Heartbroken by the loss of an unborn child in 2009, the arrival of his first child has, as any parent will tell you, altered Felice’s outlook of the world and forced him to pay greater heed to the beauty the exists in the day-to-day.

“When I was a kid there was always the shadow of the cold war and nuclear destruction at any moment,” he continues. “There’s always been war and famine and hatred and rape and bigotry and greed but there’s also always been love and laughter and smiles and babies born and songs and art and so I feel like it’s a scale, like in an old market. The scale sits this way or that and it always seems to be sort of in balance, although you could argue that it tips to the dark side more often than not, but like I said, I have a new way of lookin’ at life. So when my baby was born and I looked at her, I thought I can learn something from her and we can learn from the wisdom and the innocence and the wonder that the children have in their eyes.”

It’s interesting then that Black Jesus paints such a grim picture of humanity? “Have you ever read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road?” he queries. “Well, that’s a spot more grim than this book and he won the Pulitzer Prize for it and Oprah had him on her book club [laughs]. My book is like a children’s story compared to that. I don’t think there should be too much controversy about it.”

Where Black Jesus goes further than The Road is that it names names. Black Jesus is not only a grim depiction of the lows that humans can reach, but it deliberately points the finger at the US government and armed forces for their crimes against the world while infiltrating big business and the mechanisms of fame in the same downward spiral. Overall, however, you’d have to call it a human story – a story centred on some very insignificant people from a very small town.

“I hope that people will be able to relate to it because it tells the story of regular people, the common folk,” he continues. “I wanted to tell a story about people that are on the fringes of society, these are the people that I grew up around. That little town Gay Paris is basically the town I grew up in just with a different name. So a lot of those stories and a lot of those characters are based on people I knew growing up.

“I think it’s important as a writer to write what you know, to tell the truth. I’m so happy that this book is out and that people can read it. It feels like a real gift to me because I’ve been writing stories for a long time and poetry a long time so to have it out there now is a really special feeling for me. This is the first of a handful of interviews I’m doing and it’s kinda hard to believe. I mean, I’ve put a lot of records out and done a lot of stuff and played for a lot of people and hopefully moved people through my work, but it’s another thing to have a book in print for people to hold in their hand and take on the train with them.”

Dredging these stories from the same realm of personal experience, it’s no wonder there are similarities in aesthetic and thematics between his prose and musical output. “I think that they overlap thematically sometimes because the characters and stories kind of spring from the same well. But to bring a song to life for instance or prose to life, they are completely different disciplines. I think that they are branches of the same tree, but the fruit is different.”

These differences in process extend far beyond the constructs of musical collaboration. The editorial process especially required Felice to completely remove ego from the equation in order to ‘dance’ with the editorial knife for the sake of the vision of the work. “I wrote the first few lines of that story in 2005,” he continues. “I had a friend that went to Iraq and fought there and came back with injuries, though they’re the kind that you can’t really see... you know what I mean. So I wanted to tell a story about the traumas of war and I wanted to tell a story about how love can save your life and how we can see in different ways than with our eyes. I got a really great editor in London, who believed in my story and really encouraged me and helped me, and I’ve found over the past two years I put it down on paper and I hope people like it.

“It’s like with music, a good producer will illuminate the great parts of your song and help you shed the dead skin of the other parts. That process was really great. It’s interesting to trust someone to put a knife to your creation. But if it’s the right person and you can trust them then you have to surrender to the knife. And if you let them in, then you do the dance together.”

...AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD SAMSON MCDOUGALL – INTERVIEW WITH CONRAD KEELY

Conrad Keely, one half of Texas’s ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead brains trust, seems pretty relaxed. When I catch up with him in his – spiritual at least – home in Austin, he’s recovering from a hangover (it’s about 9pm his time, must’ve been a pretty big one) and lamenting the mixture of tequila and beer. It’s OK though, because outside of his media commitments this evening he’s living in some kind of dream existence by the standards of many. At the moment, he informs, he’s putting the final touches on some visual art for an exhibition before heading into the studio at some indeterminate future time to work on what will be the eighth ...Trail Of Dead album in about sixteen years. All this means that his other, more recent, creative endeavour, a novel, will have to wait for a while as he negotiates the rigors of life as a multi-faceted renaissance-type man. Yet when explained he’s living the dream of millions he offers, “It’s nice to hear that because in some ways I feel like I’m the consummate slacker.” Bastard.

...Trail Of Dead was born out of Austin in the mid-‘90s. The product of the fusion of, for the most part, two young creative minds, Keely and Jason Reece erupted onto the scene and by the release of their third album in 2002, the Pitchfork perfect-scoring Source Tags & Codes, they had the medium to heavy rock world in a spin. Their sound melds elements of psychedelia, punk, Brit pop, even classic rock, and somehow manages to defy identification with regard to time and place. By Keely’s estimation, their sound resulted from the converging and alignment of two differing music pedigrees. “When we first met as kids our musical backgrounds were more contrary,” Keely says. “As soon as we established a common ground they’ve pretty much been parallel since then with the real exception that Jason’s been into ‘90s hip hop and I’ve been more into folk than he is. As far as common background, now it’s very complementary, but when we met, he was the hardcore punk rocker/skate punk; he turned me on to Dag Nasty, the Descendents, Fugazi and all that stuff. I was the ‘70s prog rocker, I turned him on to Pink Floyd and Rush and Genesis, the classic rock.”

There is a Britishness to ...Trail Of Dead that distinguished them from the US grunge and hardcore explosions of the mid- and late-‘90s and strangely brought them into line with much of the Brit pop of the same period. This different-ness, and the growing reputation of their wild stage shows, allowed ...Trail Of Dead to sidestep the attachment to any one ‘scene’ and develop their material on their own terms. “I was born in the UK, I’m an Irish citizen, maybe that’s where it all comes from,” Keely continues. “I’ve never thought of it in those terms, it’s something that we do almost subconsciously I guess. Other than that I don’t think that there’s any way for us to explain it. We’ve never really wanted to sound like our time period, to me we’ve always wanted to sound futuristic, that was always the goal. In a way it was our goal and personal mission to ourselves to create a type of music that we pictured being played in another time. It’s difficult to articulate but every album we’ve done has basically been a product of our environment at the time.”

For good and bad, the band have been able to push forward with each release without the constraints of actually writing for a particular audience. In doing so, they undoubtedly alienate listeners through a constantly morphing aesthetic. But, as Keely explains, it’s allowed the band to develop a continual narrative, of sorts, across and through all of their releases to date. “For me, every album is an experiment launched from the previous album,” he continues. “And although I’ve heard feedback that each album we do is drastically different, I don’t see them as being that drastically different at all. I see them all as being part of a continuous journey. I’m not strict about the narratives. I don’t tell the story of Tommy, the deaf dumb and blind kid you know? It’s more about leaving as much up to the listener as possible in terms of how they want to build that narrative.”

The novel Keely is writing centres on a character featured on the artwork (also by Keely) on the cover of this year’s release Tao Of The Dead. In fact, he reveals that the narrative is intertwined with Tao... and somehow the band’s music and the novel are interconnected. “The book that I’m working on is more of an accompaniment, [the record and the book] accompany one another,” he says. “I’ve been working on the book for years. When I did the artwork for Tao Of The Dead I introduced the character for the first time. It’s a sci-fi fantasy, steam punk in aesthetic, set in a future world where it surrounds the boy that’s been on the last two album covers, who’s a type of telepathic savant.

“I think it’s a great time for literature and books in general. There seems to be a lot of great stuff coming out now and a real sense of resurgence and interest, especially among the young adult crowd. Novel writing is very challenging; it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. When I’m in book mode, that’s all I’m doing that day. But at the moment it’s my art, there’s an exhibition coming up so I’m finishing a piece for that. Then there’s the record, so the book has to take a back seat, which is fair enough because the book is going to take longer than any of these other things and I don’t want to rush it.”

Thankfully ...Trail Of Dead have set aside a little time to pay a visit to Australia in September (only their third visit to date). We’re hoping their devastating live performance hasn’t slowed too dramatically, as their two previous visits have registered as entries in the rock mythology of the last decade. As far as Keely is concerned, the passion for creating music under the ...Trail Of Dead moniker is as alive as it’s ever been – they still have unrealised creative goals. “We try not to kill ourselves,” he says of touring. “We used to be far more aggressive about touring but not so much now. Jason’s got a kid, he’s raising his son, so he has to have time off which frees me up to work on the book. The thing that feels the best about it is knowing that we haven’t achieved our goals. There’s these musical and artistic goals and visions that we are still striving for, still searching for. Perfection eludes us and in some ways I don’t want to necessarily achieve it, I always want to be striving for it and as long as I still have that sense then I’ll always feel we have something to accomplish.”

Henry Wagons – Interview by Samson McDougall

Henry Wagons exudes a natural charm, a gregarious larrikinism; on stage or in person he is instantly likeable, a born performer. His band, Wagons, operates as an extension of this personality. Somehow he’s managed to surround himself with the right mix of mates and musicians to deliver this little piece of himself, and themselves, through the media of country music. The sum of it all is a heaving meat party. Their shows are famously wild, unhinged and unbridled affairs. You can’t help but be swept into the open sweat-soaked arms of this band; drawn into the panting bosom of the beast. All they ask in return is that you love them like they love you... and they most undoubtedly do. You can tell.
Having been forced into guitar lessons at an early age, Wagons didn’t practice and claims in those early years he “Never really took it up”. The instrument gathered dust through his adolescence and was not revisited until he started university. Looking back on the past ten years – which have included five album releases, numerous national and (recent) international tours, awards and ultimately resulted in his existence now as a full-time professional musician – it’s frightening to think that all of this stemmed from what was realistically a happy accident. With an instrument gathering cobwebs for all those years, it was only a matter of time before it was going to be played, or discarded. “I did an arts degree because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do,” he says. “A philosophy degree only has 12 contact hours so there’s plenty of time to do other things in between. I had to do something, so I picked the guitar up again. I never stopped.”
There is very little about Wagons, bar his fortuitous nomenclature, which rings of country. To describe him, you’d lean towards words like urbane or cultured – he hosts an arts segment on the ABC for God’s sake – you could take it as far as saying sophisticated. That’s not to say that country folk can’t or don’t express such qualities, but Wagons exists and seems to belong in an urban setting, his fingernails are clean so to speak. It’s unsurprising then that his initial forays into creating music came in the form of rock bands (a hard-rock outfit called Breaking The Law of particular comic value).
Witness Wagons play and you’ll understand he was destined for a life in the limelight. His profile leaking off of stages and into the wider cultural consciousness through his recent forays into media reinforces this. Armed with a solid base knowledge of music handed down by parents he describes as “open minded and supportive” of his pursuits, there is no question in his mind he’s following the good path. “My Nan always talks to me about how she wants me to give up music and get a real job,” he says. “I go and visit her every week when I’m in town. She says ‘doing music makes you tired’. I think doing five gigs in five days is nothing like working in a television factory like she did five days a week. I get the feeling she would’ve had to’ve coped with more industrial strength noise and more hard labour than I do, so five gigs in five days doesn’t bother me. It’s a pretty cruisy job.
“Being in front of the camera, I get a very similar creative rush as I do on stage. It sort of stretches the same muscles, having to do stuff on the fly and play with words, it’s all exciting stuff. But music is my passion and my number one go-to for stretching the creative muscles. When it comes down to it I’m just an attention seeking only child, so by any means [if] I can get people looking at me and giving me their attention, I’m happy for it.”
Equal to the providence that saw Señoir Wagons return to his instrument, his entry into the realm of the pastoral stemmed from circumstance rather than design. “Wagons [the band] came along at a pivotal moment,” he continues. “I only knew about five or six guitar chords and my drummer gave me an American Recordings Johnny Cash record. I was reading a Cormac McCarthy novel at the time and had just seen Dead Man, the Johnny Depp/Jim Jarmusch film at the cinema. That combination, that triad is what made me make some fucked-up country music.
“I never really thought about it, at the time it was just a fun thing to do, but ever since it’s had this weird kind of momentum which has accelerated over the last couple of years. It’s always had enough of a gathering snowball effect to keep going for the ten years I’ve been playing in the band.”
This snowballing has forced the Wagons machine from the comfort of their inner-city environs and thrust them into the countryside – forcing them to front up with their self-deprecating brand of alternative country in the beating heart of the scene. It brings about some interesting questions in terms of audience: who is it that listens to Wagons? On what levels are listeners engaging with the earnestness of some of the songs, while rolling with the relative comedy of others? And, most importantly, how can they be sure when the joking’s done and the ‘real’ country’s begun?
“In the early days of Wagons, the most country we’d get would be a suburban barbeque – we didn’t swing too far from a foccacia and a latte,” he concedes. “Because we were so Melbourne-centric, there were concerns that what we did wouldn’t really translate. But I found that with each new frontier there’s more similarities than differences. There’s an odd similarity in playing in the country and playing in town. Sure, after 2am differences start to emerge but ultimately what it comes down to is a bunch of people getting together on a Saturday night that like watching live music and getting pissed, who are in for a good time and if there’s a band there that can deliver it, then they will have a good time.
“The further out of the capital cities we go, there’s a higher likelihood of having an amazing night. In the capital cites, whether in Australia or in the US, you pretty much know how it’s going to go: you’ll be playing in a civilised bar, sure there’ll be a couple of shit-faced people but you pretty much know how they’re gonna behave. When you get out into the sticks, there’s always a bit of an edge to it, you never know quite how it’s going to go. It can be really fun and an amazing time or it can be an absolute heartbreaking nightmare where everyone is just crumbled and cruel. Either way it leads to an amazing evening.”
This attitude in conjunction with the self-assuredness of the show plays no small part in winning listeners over from urban clubs to festival stages and country halls. To have the balls to remove yourself from your comforts and ‘put out’ in strange environments agrees with the universal concept of fortune befriending the bold. There’s something very human about testing yourself, pushing the bounds of what’s attainable for those brazen enough to dare; Wagons encapsulates and translates these concepts with precision. “Everyone in the band likes, as Dave Graney calls it, ‘rude music’,” he continues. “It doesn’t mean swearing or violence, but music that isn’t timid or mild mannered. Whether it’s Si [‘the Philanthropist’ Francis]’s passion for brutal hip hop or Mark [Dawson]’s love of Otis Redding, everyone in the band likes big and brash music, so we like to put on a big show. It can be a surprise when people turn up to their corner bar and get a bunch a dickheads pretending like they’re headlining Woodstock, [but] it’s entertaining and it more or less works.”
This belief that anyone can have a crack; that if you love it, you should chase it; and that the reward should be weighed in the connection with audience and the energy that brings, is a large part of what sets Wagons apart. Their appeal is broad: making everyman music with a sense of humour and self-derision. It’s a very Australian concept, and it seems the further they stray from the capital cities, the further they are prepared, and expected, to push the envelope into the ‘rude’.
“There’s some kind of parallel universe between Bunbury Western Australia and some shitty bar in New York or London. It’s the same guy with long curly hair and a trench coat that doesn’t really say much but comes up and talks to you in a quiet voice after the show and you think, ‘I talked to that guy eight years ago at a bar in Brunswick’. It’s a parallel existence that these creative people and music lovers have, and I’m coming up against it and enjoying the company of these people wherever I go. I was originally worried about when I’d tease the crowd or berate someone or make fun of some things, but the further out you go, the more people love to hang shit on their friends. I don’t think I can control what I do enough to change it from place to place. I can’t help but be a smart arse.”

The Black Angels – Interview with Christian Bland

Christian Bland of psychedelic rockers The Black Angels is not one to complain about the pressures and drag of being a touring musician. As we speak he’s excited to be gearing up for a flight to Spain, which will see his band playing Primavera Sound festival for the first time. Though, until now, strangers to Spain, The Black Angels are no strangers to festivals. Hailing from Austin, Texas – home of the annual industry showcase South By Southwest – The Black Angels have played, amongst others, no less than two All Tomorrow’s Parties festivals, Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and SXSW. It’s unsurprising really, given the natural association of the festival psyche and psychedelic music in general, but Bland puts the band’s natural leanings to festival stages down to a commonality of mind between musicians and audience.
“It’s great because they’re big gatherings,” he says. “When you have a big gathering of like-minded people it makes it all the more powerful. All Tomorrow’s Parties, they’re really awesome, something we’re really in to. We played at the one in Camber Sands England, which is like a beach holiday place that’s abandoned the rest of the year, and we played the one in Kutsher’s in upper-state New York, which is an old country club and straight out of The Twilight Zone.”
In moving from Florida to Austin in 2002, Bland set himself the task of finding the right people, in what he believed to be the right place, to form and band. Initially hooking up with childhood friend Alex Maas, the pair experimented with upwards of thirty local musicians over two years before discovering Stephanie Bailey. With the benefits of hindsight, the process obviously paid dividends, but Bland maintains that he had faith in the quality of the town to relinquish the players he was looking for eventually. “After living here for about two months I got in touch with Alex,” Bland continues. “We’d grown up together since I was about 11, so we’d done all sorts of creative stuff but never played music together. It was two years before we finally found Stephanie and once she joined it really started to take off.
“There’s a band playing every night of the week here so when we’re home we’re always goin’ downtown and checking out friend’s bands. There’s a real good thing happening here right now. There’s a lot of music that’s up my alley right here in Austin. SXSW has a major influence. When our friend’s bands come down for SXSW they always say, man we’re movin’ to Austin. They get the bug.”
With access to a huge range of local and international artists in Austin every March, Bland decided it would make sense to hold a celebration of the psychedelic acts that were visiting. Thus a new festival, Psych Fest Austin, was spawned and, as Bland explains, what started as an excuse to hang out with their touring friends and other like-minded musicians rapidly grew into a three-day extravaganza of all things psychedelic. “It’s continually grown,” he says. “We started Psych Fest the weekend before SXSW in March 2008. The idea was first to see which of our friend’s bands were coming for SXSW and ask them if they could come a couple of days early and play at our festival. The first one was just a Saturday then the next year it grew into three days. We’ve started to fly bands in who are leaving before SXSW. This last year we did it at this old abandoned power plant here in Austin and it was really awesome. It was maybe double the capacity of the last year. It’s just been a gathering of all of our friends and is really one of my favourite times of year these days.”
Bland credits his initial interest in psychedelic music with his first experience of hearing the space-age ‘60s-inspired jams of Brian Jonestown Massacre. “Once I discovered them,” he continues, “it opened doors to discovering bands like The Warlocks or Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – they were the centre point for where it started for me. I started playing guitar when I was like 21or something and they just inspired me. My Mum and Dad listened to the oldies stations when I was young and that’s the music I fell in love with. So when I heard Brian Jonestown Massacre, they sounded like that old stuff in the modern day and I just thought man I wanna be a part of that.”
Sharing a stage with BJM’s Anton Newcombe in 2006 was an obvious highlight for a band that have, through extensive touring and festival appearances, been allowed to rub shoulders with many of their heroes and contemporaries. In playing as the backing band in 2008 For legendary psych God Roky Erikson though, The Black Angels were to not only able to fulfil a dream of backing one of the band’s biggest influences, but also play an integral role in Erikson revisiting a painful yet incredibly productive and influential period of his life. “One of the reasons I wanted to move to Austin was [Erikson’s former band] the 13th Floor Elevators,” Bland continues. “Getting to play with him was surreal, it was crazy. Alex and I had seen him play a couple of times around Austin and after we saw him we’d say, man I wish he’d just played a couple more 13th Floor Elevators songs. So when we got to back him as a band our goal was to get him to do the first five songs off their first album.”
Bland explains that though Erikson would regularly perform some of these songs, they figured the others were too painful for him to revisit. What they discovered when practising with Erikson prior to their shows, were far more pragmatic reasons for him avoiding the material. “I didn’t know if he’d like to revisit that time of his life because it was rough,” Bland continues. “That was when they were taking all the LSD and he got caught with one marijuana joint and they were gonna throw him in jail for a long time, like five years, or he could go to the mental institute for like two years. So he went to the metal institute and they gave him electro-shock therapy. It really screwed him up. It’s crazy, for one joint, what a waste.
“We realised that the reason he didn’t do [the songs] was that he didn’t remember how to play them. So we invited him over to our house and Nate Ryan and I would sit down with an acoustic guitar, a music stand and the words in front of him and re-teach him his songs. It was pretty challenging at first because he was so frustrated that he couldn’t remember the songs but he just kept plugging away at it. We knew that in the recesses of his mind he must’ve known them because he’s sung them hundreds of times. Eventually it just started to click and he was playing them and lo and behold we got to do the first five songs of the album while we were playing with him in his backing band.”

FUCKED UP: David Comes To Life

ALBUM OF THE YEAR???

The slow trickle of free downloadable singles from this – Fucked Up’s umpteenth release, third full-length album and first rock opera – suggested a marked change of tack for Toronto’s largest punk export. For a band that have constantly dismantled and rearranged the very fabric of what recorded music should resemble, it’s unsurprising they would further push the limits of what they’re capable of, but a 78 minute rock opera by anyone’s standards is a stretch.

Introduced early to our hero David, we traverse a fictional account of life in Britain during the Thatcher years. With Damian Abraham’s trademark screams muted somewhat, bassist Sandy Miranda’s vocal melodies blur the edges of what has largely institutionalised Fucked Up as a punk outfit. Melded with extended ‘straight’ rock jams, as opposed to the usual thrashing assault, the vocal dynamic bends the paradigm of where exactly their music sits. Guitar parts lock into a steam train of a rhythm from the outset with delicate almost Neil Young-ish lead touches. The effect is more the heaving of pulse and breath than the changeable and often borderline violent passages fans would be accustomed to.

The tempo and overall feel shifts through brackets of songs rather than the individual numbers themselves. They trick and tempt with brutal abandon at times (fourteenth track I Was There is as critical as any previous release), but in holding out from relinquishing the psychosis of their earlier material, they deliver a work that is remarkably listenable and will define this band for years to come. Undoubtedly, given the quality of the record, destined for minor accolades on a path to obscurity, David Comes To Life stands firm as what in a just world what would be heralded as a shining example of what’s within reach for those bold enough to dare.

Samson McDougall

I Dream In Transit – Interview with Steven Heath

“People kept Saying David Lynch, David Lynch, David Lynch but I’ve never seen his films,” says I Dream In Transit’s Steven Heath when queried about whether the band’s nightmarish compositions would make for killer movie soundtrack material. “Something pretty strange, a little bit dark, I think. When I hear Sigur Rós I think of icebergs for some reason. What I see in my head is like a 1940s movie with the sound turned down, and that doesn’t make for a very entertaining hour and a half.”

For the moment Heath’s sights are set on this weekend’s Paranoia Pop mini-festival he’s organising at the Workers Club. I Deam In Transit’s insomniac dreamscapes will be joined by Cuba Is Japan’s high-seas adventures, A Dead Forest Index’s discordant brooding and a bunch of other, equally boundary-pushing, outfits for what is shaped to be an aural extravaganza for those bold enough to experience it. “The idea behind the event, and even calling it an event and not just a gig,” Heath continues, “is that all of these bands do express things differently with their stories and experimenting with sound. Hopefully it will be a listening event where people can come along and stand in the dark and have things happen around them.”

A recent relocation to Melbourne from Sydney has opened the door for Heath to get involved with more events like Paranoia Pop. He explains that while he thinks the quality of music in Sydney is equivalent to anything that’s happening here, the numbers of gig-goers pale in comparison. “We fit in to the music scene here a lot better,” he says. “I don’t think I could have put this kind of event together in Sydney. There’s a lot of interesting projects up there but there’s just not the audience for it. There’ll be a lot of fascinating things up there but Sydney people just don’t go and see them for a lot of reasons. It’s just not as welcoming as here. In Sydney people tend to prepare for a Friday or Saturday night out but when they go out they don’t really seem to be enjoying themselves. Here it’s about going out as opposed to the preparation.”

Interestingly, similar thematic sentiments run through I Dream In Transit’s music. As their name suggests, their tunes somehow revolve around a disorienting core of the airport lounges and restless wakefulness we experience during travel. “We came up with the name at the airport in response to the idea that it’s a very strange thing to do to be a person who’s constantly in transit,” he continues. “I guess the idea of air travel and way we live now is kind of strange, a weird form of psychedelia. So the idea of jetlag we tried to convert into a sound.”

The results are strikingly accurate given the existentiality of the subject matter. There is a familiarity in the mood of the music they create that floods with recurrent memories of the forgotten ‘in-between periods’ of our journeys. It’s a universally appealing concept, and one that will make for a unique live experience. “It’s all we knew in a way,” Heath continues. “A lot of the psychedelic music being made I enjoy but the lyrics and the concepts don’t really mean anything to us. A lot of it was centred around the Vietnam War and themes of the ‘60s, even with bands like The Black Angels, bands making music now. What we did know was airports and travelling and industrial areas and shopping malls – anonymous empty spaces and so we just tried to convert that into a sound. It’s not really about overseas; it’s more about the process of getting there and the in-between periods of life. It’s a weird kind of grey area of existence that nobody seems to notice when they’re out of it. We tried to remember it for some reason.”

Samson McDougall