Haiku from Japan
Earlier in the year I wrote a few haiku reviews that I didn’t get around to publishing, the story of my life given the collection of half written pieces and sketched out ideas that clog my hard drive. As I was recently in Japan on holiday, it seemed an apt time to think about posting them […]
Muuy Biien – Age of Uncertainty (Autumn Tone)
ACT 1 Cue to a back alley. With their cracked sidewalks that yield scuttling cockroaches at night, they do attract young punks hungry for a back story. To be sure, no one knew the five boys of Muuy Biien then; and one member, at least, was frying chicken for a chain restaurant to make ends […]
Scott & Charlene’s Wedding – Mid Thirties Single Scene (Bedroom Suck)
Ben O’Connor from Chapter Music, when describing Dick Diver, commented: “(they were) more about investigating ideas about Australian identity, rather than being a celebration of Australianness.” This is true of several bands from the roster of Brisbane-via-Melbourne label Bedroom Suck Records, bands that, like Dick Diver and Twerps on Chapter Music, have been described as […]
NOTS – Cosmetic (Goner): The Analytic Approach
“No novelty”, shouts Natalie Hoffman, lead singer and guitarist of Memphis punk band Nots, on their sophomore record Cosmetic. It’s one of the last tracks on the record, but it’s the one to reference in case someone wants to point out that this gang of four is “an all-girl band”. Carrie Brownstein has often stressed […]
NOTS – Cosmetic (Goner): The Impressionistic Approach
Nots says NO! to everything. We say YES! to Nots. ‘Entertain Me’ is a force of nature. It doesn’t care about you, or me, or any of the other two-thousand people on the beach. It’s right up there with Hookworms’ ‘Away/Towards’. The John Steel Singers’ ‘State of Unrest’. dEUS’ ‘Suds & Soda’, even! It’s a […]
Rattle – Rattle (Upset the Rhythm)
There’s the old saying that ‘writing about music is like dancing about architecture’, i.e. pointless. But as Robert Christgau rightly retorts: “One of the many foolish things about the fools who compare writing about music to dancing about architecture is that dancing usually is about architecture. When bodies move in relation to a designed space, be it […]
The Julie Ruin – Hit Reset (Hardly Art)
By Alexis Late Sometimes I don’t feel like being challenged by music. I want to escape into the wistful longing of Frankie Cosmos, or swim in the gentle heartbreak of Waxahatchee. I close my eyes and wallow in the miserable beauty that infuses in me like a mellowing tea. Each song is a sliver of […]
Tourist Dollars – Tourist Dollars EP (Deaf Ambitions)
Listening to Melbourne’s Tourist Dollars on their debut EP is like drifting into scenes of a slightly melancholic 1970s romance movie. They’ve got this nostalgic swagger to them, like a band performing to a mostly empty school hall covered with adornments from a local party supply store, with two star-crossed youths swaying beneath a softly […]
Eagulls – Ullages (Popfrenzy)
Don’t put faith in a new band. Few religions pass the scrutiny of reason, but identity and happiness can’t be entrusted to a handful of fallible human beings, let along twenty-somethings with a whole life of lessons ahead of them. Eagulls had me for a while, though – and probably you, too, if you’re reading […]
“This is the indie establishment”: Red Hot’s Day of the Dead
Disclaimer: I’ve probably never heard a Grateful Dead song in my life. At least not knowingly. This is an unfortunate position for me to be in, considering I am reviewing an album containing 59 covers of songs by the Grateful Dead. Just so you know. In 2009, the Red Hot Organization, fighting AIDS through pop […]
