MUSIC
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0Machine Translations – TELEPATHIC HEAD (SINGLE)
It’s been 13 years since multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer J. Walker started making music as Machine Translations. Back then, he was based in the lovely seaside escarpment town of Coledale, north of Wollongong. In the 10 years between 1997 and 2007 there were eight records – all variations on Machine Translations’ theme of beguiling, left-of-centre pop. Walker has since moved to South Gippsland in Victoria ...
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0Tumbleweed (The Annandale)
When word arrives on Saturday night that Tumbleweed are supporting The Meanies at The Annandale under the pseudonym “Stumblin’ Jesus Mosquito”, I ditch previous plans and march through the rain to the pub. The boisterous roughheads barging around The ‘Dale, fists full of schooners, look exactly how I remember Meanies fans looked back in the day. They weren’t pretty then either. There’s a buzz in ...
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0Pikelet (Oxford Art Factory)
Ever spied what are unmistakably a band member’s parents at a gig and pitied them for fronting up to support the racket their offspring is cooking up onstage? You have? Well, pity not the Roberts family. Blue Mountains act The Maple Trail is the brainchild of Aidan Roberts (also guitarist/co-writer in Belles Will Ring), a band that plays the kind of approachable alt-country that a ...
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0Pikelet – STEM
Much has been made of the fact that Pikelet, aka Evelyn Morris, was the drummer in Baseball. Why? Because her second LP Stem is such a delicately-crafted, kaleidoscopic affair that it’s hard to imagine the chick who used to slaughter the skins in a hardcore band could possibly dream it up. ‘Toby Light’ opens with a merry-go-round melody so timelessly naïve it could be background ...
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0Gareth Liddiard (Notes)
Notes’ cabaret seating arrangement bequeaths the best seats to those who buy the pricier dinner/show combo. The food is fine; the pre-show music is not. Two arcs of speaker stacks are suspended from the ceiling on either side of the stage like unsightly elephant tusks. They’re trumpeting music that’s simply horrible. “Isn’t this the chick who sung Black Velvet?” a diner hazards, miserably. It’s a ...
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0Liars – SISTERWORLD
The Liars have got creepy nailed. On Sisterworld they combine it with carnivalesque and a splash of nautical. If you weren’t in the loop when the New York three-piece launched their website (www.thesisterworld.com) take a peek now. It’s all the reasons we love them, right there. The tour of Sisterworld’s haunted (art)house starts with ‘Scissors’, the king hit, the killer single, the track on the ...
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0New Weird Australia showcase gig (St Petersburg warehouse)
Online label New Weird Australia likes to hold its gigs at the plusher end of the Sydney warehouse spectrum. The previous show was at Marrickville’s luscious Red Rattler and tonight is at the well-appointed St Petersburg in St Peters. This is a good thing. I enjoy concrete bunkers with crumbling stairwells and a light dusting of asbestos as much as the next music fan but ...
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0The Kill Devil Hills (Hotel Gearin)
The road rolls before us like a miracle of faith as our car spears its way through the fog. Something akin to muscle memory prompts me to turn left off the Great Western Highway, through the dense mist that shrouds the road, to reach my old local, Hotel Gearin in Katoomba. We arrive early, after assurances by the pub that the band has no support ...
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0Ghosts of Television – FORSAKEN EMPIRE
You don’t get the feeling Sydney band Ghosts of Television arrive at rehearsals shrugging. Ideas squirm forth from Forsaken Empire like maggots on month-old meat. But are they having us all on? Why, this is sunny Sydney – from what deep, dank pit does this darkness emerge? I wonder what kind of costumes they wear on stage? Leather? Capes? Neither of these, as it happens, ...
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0Black Cab (Bridge Hotel / CAD Factory)
The pub with no (tap) beer. Was Slim Dusty’s classic slice of Australiana inspired by The Bridge Hotel in Rozelle? When Melbourne band Black Cab – already unenthused about our sunny Harbour City – arrive at The Bridge to play Friday and Saturday nights supporting Tim Rogers’ Rolling Stones cover show, it seems cruel (and unusual) that they can’t even throw back a tap beer ...
