Review: Ben Connolly
  – Nicholas Roy |
It’s a great romantic ideal, isn’t it? A fresh-faced boy with a heart of gold, a far-away stare and a modicum of musical ability notches up a home recording completed in his dreary Melbourne abode. Everything about it screams eyes-rolling type cliche, that we’ve read the story a million times to know it backwards and that nothing new or exciting can ever come out of that set up again. But that’s exactly what Melbourne lad Nicholas Roy has attempted in his first long player Nicholas Roy, released in August through indie label Little Tribe. And it’s a solid effort which manages to take a slightly different route than the troubled singer-songwriter path, but has it worked? |
Continue reading Nicholas Roy “In A Shoebox Under The Bed” – LP Review
Brisbane band Blame Ringo is a band steeped in its own curio past, to the point of it almost being written off as a comic band. The name itself, and the mileage the group got over the official rebuke from Ringo Starr over its previous name, set it up early on as a tongue-in-cheek piss-take. They followed that through with curious film clip for single “Garble Arch” off its first long player – which became a bona fide Youtube viral phenomena – and then a cute tour concept of playing in laundromats; an audience would be forgiven for thinking this band’s interest was firmly in taking the mickey, rather than solid songwriting. And there would be nothing wrong with that; there are plenty of decent and long-lived acts in this land and abroad who could stake their claim firmly in piss-takery, whilst still holding credible assertions of musicianship (think The Fauves, TISM or, further afield, The Duckworth Lewis Method).
Jeff Lang was not always the teller of disturbed tales accompanied by face-melting blues guitar shredding. There was time – in the heady post-grunge days – way back at the beginning of this 15-year-long and counting career, that Lang appeared to fancy himself as a bit of a fringe-rock crooner. His then long locks and fresh face even graced morning television and he seemed always just on the verge of tipping into the mainstream proper.