MUSIC
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0New Weird Australia
New Weird Australia (NWA) slipped onto the scene in July 2009, releasing Volume One in a compilation series featuring new, eclectic and experimental Australian-only music. Available for free from the NWA website, it has so far racked up 3000 downloads, with Volume Two released this month. There’s no specific theme or genre. Bluegrass glitch and free-jazz nestle alongside “sprawling sample ephemera” and psychedelic folk on ...
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0The Cab Effect
“Pitchfork contacted you?” “Um, hang on, let me check … yeah. Pitchfork. The founding editor [Ryan Schreiber] got wind we had a new record and asked us to send him a copy. Have you heard of Pitchfork?” It’s six weeks prior to this exchange and Melbourne duo Black Cab are perched on stools at a Melbourne wine bar. They’re smearing cheese on tiny crackers, discussing ...
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0Wolf and Cub (Oxford Art Factory)
Sometimes, nothing can sum it up better than commentary from the random pissed guy, lurching through the crowd with his schooner. Wolf & Cub are playing their hearts out to a capacity Sydney crowd who all appear to be aged between 18 and 18-and-a-quarter. A casual poll in my immediate vicinity reveals many are primarily here to see tour support act The Scare. From opener ...
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0Grey Daturas (The Ding Dong)
You know a band’s got volume when you keep your earplugs in for a mid-gig toilet break. It’s the first leg of Grey Daturas’ June/July Australian tour. They’ve recently returned from yet another European tour where – among 20 other dates – they played with Neurosis, Om, Earth and other revered instrumental doom-drone acts. Ding Dong hosts a sparse yet devoted crowd. There’s a good ...
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0Archie Bronson Outfit – Coconut
Is UK three-piece Archie Bronson Outfit making a dash for mainstream success? Their third LP Coconut is lighter, catchier and more diverse than the urgent, ragged blues-rock of 2006’s Derdang Derdang. Anthemic single ‘Shark’s Tooth’ and tremelo-drenched ‘Bite it and Believe it’ hover on 3 minutes and ooze radio single. Furthermore, the disaffected misogyny of Derdang Derdang is gone. One could actually contemplate liking the ...
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0Witch Hats (The Metro Theatre)
What do you get when you combine an SMS command, a dogged sound dude, and a set played to a sparsely filled Metro Theatre? Echoey, damn echoey, that’s what. Just how Melbourne four-piece Witch Hats like it. Here as support for The Drones, Witch Hats are onstage at 8.30pm. One song in (I don’t recognise it from their debut LP Cellulite Soul) I retreat from ...
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0Wooden Shjips – Vol 2
Vol 2 doesn’t deviate from the Wooden Shjips formula. Mainly, because it’s not a new release. Instead, the psyche-rock San Francisco four piece have selected a fist of five hard-to-find tracks and released it as Vol 2. “Hard-to-find” is, of course, subjective. But somehow, with this band, it flies. Committed Wooden Shjips fans probably find finding their shoes hard. Yep, their songs are that tripped ...
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0The Dead Sea (The Hopetoun)
Half-way through The Dead Sea’s set at The Hopetoun on Saturday night, distraction begins to creep over me. How, I wonder, am I possibly going to review this band and avoid the words “cinematic”, “soundscape” or “builds into a mesmerising wall of sound”? They’re all apt handles for The Dead Sea’s atmospheric, and frequently ambient, sound. But this is an era when Sigur Ros and ...
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0Eddy Current Suppression Ring (Goodgod Small Club)
The first time I lost a shoe in a moshpit was in the summer of 2002. Reverend Horton Heat, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco. The second time was at Eddy Current Suppression Ring on Friday night. Losing a shoe to a pit is one of life’s nobler milestones. Nay, it’s an act of character. A little-known fact is that in the common phrase “losing ...
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0Turn up the tiny guitar
Attach it to a distortion pedal and it sounds like a wobbly, out-of-tune bass. Pitchshift it up with a delay effect and you’ve got steel drums. The humble ukulele played by electric ukulele lady, Rose Turtle Ertler, sounds nothing like Tiny Tim. ...
