The Tea Party set kicks off with a new album (“The Ocean at The End” ) sandwich of The L.O.C. and The Black Sea (with a filling of perennial favourite The Bazaar) highlighting just how crunchy the new offering is. Gone is the flowery bloat and overly-earnest emotive slather which marred the late-career albums, in its stead a return to the screeching wail of a well-throttled Les Paul backed by a thumping backline.
Within seconds of the first chords of AWOL, the lead track off Augie March’s return opus Havens Dumb, one thing is abundantly clear: just how large the Augie March-sized hole in the Australian musical landscape had become.
There are moments in almost every Jeff Lang gig which absolutely grab you in the guts. Often it’s while the “disturbed folk” progenitor is wrangling an impossible guitar lick to within an inch of its life; sometimes it’s when he’s fiercely locking into a groove with his long-term collaborator Danny McKenna and sailing on the precipice; others it’s when the starkly rich lyrics arrests you in your tracks.
The night belonged to the self-named “black rose of soul”, and after some band-leader rousing and spruiking, Charles Bradley took centre stage for a set of serious grooves and moves.
In the great lottery of the Sidewave venue scramble, Placebo must surely have pulled the short straw. Not that St Kilda’s Palais Theatre is generally anything to be disappointed with – its grungy dilapidation holds a special place in Melbourne’s rock vernacular. But when it comes to a furious set by one of the world’s best emotive post-punk purveyors, those torn leather seats are just woeful.
Gig talkers are just the pits aren’t they? The bane of any true fans, their inanities strike at the most inopportune of moments, ruining a classic heart on the sleeve moment or a strained high-note, in spite of the daggers of ice being shot across the room, or even the indignant ‘shushing’ from those more forthright in their opinions. Things get a little swayed, however, when those interrupting the moments are three fully grown lions displaying their pleasure/displeasure in no uncertain terms.
There was already a significant amount of water flowing under the bridge by the time Flemington’s famous iron gates were flung open for this year’s Melbourne chapter of the Big Day Out. With ownership wrangling continuing into a second year, a buy-out by one of Australian music’s most polarising characters, a line-up to end all line-ups only to be tarnished late in the day by the pull out of Blur, and now speculation that the national festival will once again be curtailed by Perth’s inability to get its shit together as a cultural collective. In some ways, 11am on the Friday before the long weekend was a welcomed event, if only to end the continual news feed of the daily life of Australia’s biggest orgy of rock.
This is a cavalcade of tunes which have soundtracked hundreds of roadtrips and countless Hottest 100s
There’s always something special about country town festivals. For the locals, there’s the rare joy of rocking out with your house key in your pocket; for the ring-ins, there’s the extra heady buzz of a sugar fuelled roadtrip, or skanky train chug at the end of the night. From the get-go this buzz was palpable at Bendigo’s fifth turn on the Groovin’ The Moo carousel.
There is, however, an impressive boldness with the simple honesty with which they’ve approached their career crossroads moment: shunning the best-ofs and karaoke tour of their past glories in favour of a 38-song full career retrospective (a completist’s wet dream)…
There are a couple of caveats to make about Stonefield as they took to the stage at The Northcote Social Club. The first is that they are a band of young, impossibly cute sisters from country Victoria, all apart from singer/drummer Amy Findlay, able to lay claim to being teenagers…
It cut a little close to the bone, it was a little unbelievable, it was exotically unfamiliar… but yet that one long story seemed to confirm the rest of the evening – it was Seasick’s very tale of being alongside such a luminary and put paid to any notions that they were not worthy to share.
Once raised, the euphoria (and audience) refused to leave the stage, with the encore becoming a seething cathartic mess of humanity, dancing off against each other and the band and proving that one can never underestimate the joyful power that Angelique Kidjo can bring to the stage.
What is the collective noun for a group of fuzzed-out guitars? Is it a gaggle?…
With 20 years under its belt and a major crisis in confidence, Big Day Out organisers and marketing teams got all introspective in the lead up to the 2012 event. For many, it was time to question the event’s continued validity in the now flooded one day festival market…
