I’ve been keeping a keen eye on Cassette Kids lately. They played at the Oyster party in Sydney the other night:
When I first saw a fledgling Cassette Kids in the early half of 2007, they seemed to be another one of those bands that had a charismatic frontwoman backed by three Sleeperblokes. However, their performance at the Oyster Party proved that singer Katrina Noorbergen’s (above) outstanding stage presence has rubbed off on the other band members as, whereas previously they had seemed slightly anonymous, they displayed a similar level of zing as their vivacious vocalist. While Noorbergen remained the captivating focal point, there was an increased confidence and stage-presence to her band-mates that created an excellent stage dynamic.
Similarly, Cassette Kids’ sound continues to develop too. Forwards Backwards and Acrobat, both of which feature on their debut EP, were fireballs of noise which did the seemingly impossible and got an audience made up of the fashion crowd to stop posturing for a few minutes and actually dance.
Towards the end of the gig, Noorbergen dished out copies of their limited edition CD from the stage. The six-track EP is exciting in that it is the sound of a young, up-and-coming group seeking its direction, and it succeeds in transferring some of the band’s irrepressible verve onto record, which is never an easy task for bands like Cassette Kids for whom live energy is so important. The EP will be launched with new and re-recorded tracks in the next few months, so a full review will appear here then.
At the end of July, Cassette Kids head back on tour with The Presets (after the dates had to be rescheduled from last month due to illness in the Preset’s camp). Having played successful shows on the first half of the tour, Noorbergen is excited about the prospect of getting back on the road, and explains how her band managed to secure the support slot in the first place. “Our manager put us forward and The Presets were like: ‘Yeah, alright.’ The fact that they approved us means so much to us. You know, we weren’t just tacked on because we were cheap or something.”
Sydney's Bridezilla headlined The Annandale for the first time last week. I reviewed it for Drum Media:
BRIDEZILLA FIREKITES UNDER LIGHTS HUNTER DIENNA The Annandale Hotel, Annandale 14/06/08
Brother and sister duo Hunter Dienna opened the evening with one guitar, occasional accordion and duel vocals, with guitarist Tom Waite’s low-down growl being complimented perfectly by sister Xanthe’s (below) softer tone. This minimalist sound, combined with intelligent, dark lyrics, created an enchanting atmosphere. Hopefully we will be seeing plenty more of this unconventional, intriguing two-piece in the future.
Also boasting two vocalists, Under Lights displayed straightforward, strident rock with enough interesting parts and energy to keep the audience entertained. Next, Newcastle’s Firekites offered largely instrumental, acoustic songs. While their set suffered from the absence of keyboardist/vocalist Jane Tyrell, it was certainly hypnotic and when the guitars, drums, violin and vocal all came together the result was something quite lovely.
Having frequented the Annandale stage on numerous occasions over the past couple of years, the venue must feel like a second home to Bridezilla. After setting tongues wagging as a precociously talented bunch of schoolkids supporting longer-established acts, they worked their way up the gigging ladder until, on this cold June evening in 2008, the time had come to discover whether they were ready to step up to the mantle of being headliners themselves.
A busy room greeted the five teenagers, who looked typically elegant and showed an ever-growing confidence and poise as they performed tracks from their eponymous EP, of which Brown Paper Bag and the brooding, epic Chainwork were especially well-received.
Bridezilla’s continuing musical growth was illustrated by the fact that new song, If I Had A Child, saw violinist Daisy Tulley play guitar (below) and take over singing duties, while the ever-entrancing Holiday Sidewinder harmonised and regular lead guitarist Pia May played autoharp. The group then returned to their more familiar instruments, with Tulley prowling atop the bar and weaving violin parts around Millie Hall’s lung-busting saxophone solos and Sidewinder’s powerful vocal.
Live favourite St. Francine ended the set in a thrilling crescendo of noise and commotion. Considering how these five musicians have such a command over their instruments and the audience, it is hard to believe that they are still so young (remember, two of them are still doing their HSC). The rapturous reception that the quintet received as they encored with future single, Forth and Fine, proved quite emphatically that Bridezilla are indeed ready to be headliners in their own right.
EUGENE MCGUINNESS The Early Learnings Of Eugene McGuinness
Another British singer/songwriter? Isn’t the market already saturated with them? Maybe, but in a time when the likes of Blunt and Morrison are considered by some to be the height of musical talent, we should thank our lucky stars for artists like Eugene McGuinness.
The Liverpool-based 21-year-old’s debut is an intriguing, challenging combination of musical styles and instruments. His vocal is more Jamie T than James Blunt as he combines a jaunty bark with a wonderful, soaring falsetto yelp, and his brand of upbeat, sometimes psychedelic indie-folk-pop is played out to a cacophony of guitars, electronica, frenzied percussion, handclaps and piano.
Amid this giddying atmosphere, McGuinness tells worldly, poetic stories of modern-day life. He talks about insomnia-fuelled, late-night web surfing, about kids getting lost in supermarkets and about small-town, Burberry-clad yobs, yet manages to make it all sound strangely romantic, like the witty observations of Morrissey being delivered by The Pogues.
With so many albums nowadays sounding ultra-clean and radio-friendly to the point of being bereft of charm and character, this rough-and-ready record is a heartening listen. The Early Learnings… may not be perfect, nor is it instantly accessible, but it certainly bursts with honesty, invention and idiosyncrasies. Because its eight tracks are over in just 27 minutes, this is more of a mini-album than a full-blown long-player, but it certainly does enough to suggest that Eugene McGuinness has a very bright future ahead of him. Hopefully, his is a name you will be hearing plenty more of.
My interview with Youth Group was the cover story in Sydney's Drum Media:
ROB TOWNSEND TALKS TO TOBY MARTIN AND DANNY ALLEN FROM YOUTH GROUP ABOUT THE UNUSUAL WAY IN WHICH THEY CREATED THEIR LATEST ALBUM
For a few months late last year, Youth Group found themselves holed up in a run-down, abandoned 1920’s mess hall in Waverton on Sydney’s lower North Shore. Why? Well, their desire to take their time in putting together their fourth long-player, The Night Is Ours, meant that they had to opt against traditional recording methods. “We took four months to make this record and if we’d spent that long in a conventional studio it would have left us completely and utterly broke. So we had to find somewhere that was basically cheap or free,” frontman Toby Martin explains.
The band went about transforming a dilapidated old building on the harbour into a studio by bringing in all of their own gear, turning the dining room into the band room and the bathroom into the control room. While it may have lacked some home comforts, it didn’t take them long to fall in love with the tranquillity of the location. “Sometimes I would just go and sit on the point and look across at the city, with all the boats going about their business as the sun went down,” drummer Danny Allen tells me. Martin goes on: “I can’t believe we found this place, especially in Sydney. Normally you have to rehearse in a tiny cube in Alexandria.”
Such unusual surroundings certainly had an impact on the sound of the record. “My first reaction when we found the space was that we should make a loose, ramshackle country record, or a record of sea shanties,” Martin laughs. “But what we were writing was a bit more intense and claustrophobic so I thought that it wouldn’t have anything to do with the location, but it does in a way that I didn’t expect, in a contemplative way.”
As well as recording in such a curious place, the quartet also went about the creative process in a different way, and the fact that they weren’t watching the clock meant the songs evolved slowly and organically. In fact, they didn’t even rehearse their new tracks before entering the makeshift studio. “One of the things I found very liberating was that we could write, arrange and record all at the same time,” Martin recalls. “We didn’t have to do our creative stuff at home on the demos, we could actually just do it all in one go.”
The main thing that stands The Night Is Ours apart from Youth Group’s previous offerings is that it is a little less guitar-based, and many of the songs were dreamt up by Martin at the piano. I ask whether this slight departure was a conscious decision or if it just happened that way. “It was pretty conscious I think. I’m always looking for a novelty in songwriting,” Martin says.
“Like Crazy Frog?” Allen chips in.
Martin chooses to ignore his bandmate’s helpful interjection. “On [second album] Skeleton Jar I was into guitars and particularly exploring alternate tunings. Then on [third album] Casino Twilight Dogs I was more into standard tunings. I’m not a very good guitarist and I find I get a bit limited just playing the same stuff over again. I was looking for a new toy and a way to open up certain parts of the brain, and the piano is a big part of that. The xylophone is next,” he jokes.
The result is an album that is less sonic and rocky, but rather filled with subtle nuances and intricate arrangements. “It was really interesting to hear the guys saying: ‘shall we put some guitar on this?’ because that never normally happens last,” Allen remembers.
Martin picks up this thread. “Often I didn’t play anything when we were jamming. I’d just sing. Sometimes the way I play guitar can guide the arrangement of a song in a way that is not necessarily interesting, so it was better to let everyone else find their parts.”
“That encourages things to change a lot,” Allen adds, before - fittingly considering they are discussing the band’s collaborative processes - Martin finishes his sentence for him. “And the song finds its own place. You don’t have to make a decision about it; it just finds its own way without too much forcing.”
While this is Youth Group’s fourth album, the more casual music enthusiast may have only discovered the band through their cover version of Alphaville’s Forever Young, which was absolutely massive when released in 2006. I ask whether they have found it hard to shift the tag of merely being ‘that band who sang Forever Young’. “It has been a bit frustrating recently,” Martin frowns. “A lot of people know us for that song but, while it is a good indication of our sound, I don’t think it’s a good indication of our background.”
The song was famously used on The O.C. and appeared in adverts for the show in Australia. “It shows the power of advertising,” Allen says about the single, which subsequently went double-platinum in sales. “It blindsided everyone. To see Youth Group on top of the charts was just the most bizarre thing ever. It was great, but afterwards we realised it was going to have repercussions, because that is a lot of people’s introduction to the band. We don’t play it at all anymore unless people really yell out for it.”
Again, Martin continues where Allen leaves off. “It has quite a polarising effect. Some people are like: ‘Youth Group have got other good songs too, you know.’ That’s really nice. I think some people like coming to our gigs and not hearing it.”
Thanks in some part to Forever Young, Youth Group’s last album, Casino Twilight Dogs, was a massive seller. This leads me to ask whether such commercial and critical success led to the quartet feeling the pressure of expectation weighing heavily on their shoulders as they put together The Night Is Ours. “We were just very wrapped up in the process of making this record, so I don’t think we thought too much about the outside world,” Martin shrugs, before adding: “It’s just really nice to know that people are going to be vaguely interested in listening to it.”
“It’s so hard to predict what people will think. You can’t tell what’s going to happen so you can’t worry about it,” Allen notes. “We’re just glad that Casino Twilight Dogs did do so well, because it got us to this point.”
While the four friendly chaps that make up Youth Group obviously hope that The Night Is Ours is well-received when it hits the shelves, they have greater aspirations than simply denting the top end of the charts for a couple of weeks. “Earlier this year we played as part of The Triffids reformation gig at the Sydney Festival. Their songs sound so good 30 years later. It was a very good lesson in what you should aim for with your art,” Martin states. “That is the ultimate goal: to make a record that still sounds good in 30 years time rather than being at number ten or number 15 in the charts this week.”
Sydney-based singer/songwriter Dave Anderson recently launched his album at Newtown’s Vanguard:
It was the culmination of a year’s hard work; the launch of Dave Anderson’s self-financed CD which, due to full-time work commitments, he lovingly crafted in the dark of night, at weekends and during stolen moments here and there. Opening the set alone, he was soon joined by a full band for an upbeat run-through of songs from the aforementioned long-player, Wish It All Away.
Clearly knowing his way around an acoustic guitar, his songs were intelligent, well-written and delivered earnestly and went down very well with the crowd, although trying to instigate a singalong with a bashful audience who were still sipping their post-dinner coffees was always doomed to failure (but then I always have hated The Vanguard for the way the music seems secondary to the food. After all, how an artist can give their all amid the clinking of plates and the round-the-table chatter is beyond me).
The highlights of the evening included a barnstorming rendition of standout track, Sing Me A Song, and most songs that involved the lovely use of viola. While Damien Rice is clearly an influence, ending the set with a slightly unsubtle cover of Volcano seemed like an odd choice, so it was pleasing that Anderson encored with a couple of his own tunes because, ultimately, it was great to see someone performing tracks that they care so very passionately about. Dave Anderson is these songs, and these songs are him.
As he finally removed his flat cap, his face opened up and revealed a winning smile which suggested he had had the time of his life. I’m sure he will have plenty of further opportunities to display his music in Sydney, as he is certainly worthy of a place on the live circuit.
Sydney’s Angus and Julia Stone played two sold-out homecoming shows at the Enmore Theatre this week. I was at the second of them:
It doesn’t seem long ago that I was watching Angus and Julia Stone playing a free gig at The Rocks or a show at The Vanguard to a couple of hundred people. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago, about 17 months in fact. So it was quite remarkable to hear a cacophony of fervent screams from over 2,000 people as they stepped onto the stage at the Enmore Theatre. Such a reception illustrated just how quickly their star has ascended in their home country, especially considering that they have spent a large chunk of the last couple of years in the UK.
It really shouldn’t be a surprise how popular the siblings have become though (we’d already had a hint at the love Sydney felt for them at last year’s Great Escape Festival). After all, what’s not to like about them? They are both genuinely lovely, humble people who write honest, emotive, catchy-as-hell tunes and deliver them beautifully.
This Enmore show proved that their arrival on the big stage is no accident either, as their new songs proved to be increasingly confident in their arrangements while remaining charming. Julia’s vocal driven For You was a highlight, as was a new Angus ditty, Suzy (or maybe Susie, or Suzie) which pointed in the direction of reggae just slightly. As usual, many of their acoustic numbers were backed by bass and drums, while they also utilised harmonica, trumpet, keys, clarinet and the harp-playing skills of Victor Valdes to embellish their sound.
While their new tracks were well-received, as were older songs Private Lawns (which saw Julia almost rapping at one point) and Mango Tree, it was offerings from their album A Book Like This which went down best. Just a Boy closed the set triumphantly while encore The Beast ended the night to rapturous applause. Quieter moments saw a veil of silence fall over the theatre and, at one stage, as half of the crowd keenly tried to clap along, the other half shushed them.
Above all, this mermerising night suggested that, rather than this being the pinnacle of their musical adventure, Angus and Julia Stone are set to go on to even bigger and better things.
....Here is a clip of Just a Boy. Please excuse the slightly poor sound quality, it was recorded on my digital camera, but you get the idea of the crowd’s adulation, especially at the end:
ISOBEL CAMPBELL & MARK LANEGAN Sunday At Devil Dirt
When former Belle and Sebastian member Isobel Campbell and Screaming Trees growler Mark Lanegan got together to record 2006’s award-nominated Ballad Of The Broken Seas, it seemed as unlikely a partnership as Little Red Riding Hood collaborating with the Big Bad Wolf. Yet it proved to be a beguiling combination, so it is little surprise that the odd couple return for another outing.
Whereas the first record focused on the sandpaper and silk juxtaposition of the two singers, Sunday At Devil Dirt concentrates firmly on the whisky-gargled voice of Lanegan, with Campbell largely offering honeyed backing vocals. However, while her singing duties have diminished, this is very much Campbell’s record, as she wrote, arranged and produced it.
Lanegan’s delivery offers an equal amount of tenderness and menace. His vocal is often reminiscent of Tom Waits, while on The Raven he edges closer to Leonard Cohen’s baritone and in Salvation has the warmth of Johnny Cash. Campbell does occasionally take the front seat, most notably on the yearning and kinda filthy Shotgun Blues, which belies her twee image. Throughout the understated folk and cracked blues of the album, strings, brushed drums, bells and twangy guitars make for an enchanting, haunting ambience.
Because the contrasting vocals are no longer such a novelty, Sunday At Devil Dirt may not have the immediate appeal of its predecessor, but with each listen it reveals itself to be a deeper, layered and more atmospheric album, and is therefore ultimately even more rewarding than their debut.
I recently interviewed one of my heroes, Kimya Dawson. Here is an exclusive, extended version of the feature which ran in The Drum Media:
ROB TOWNSEND TALKS TO KIMYA DAWSON AS SHE PREPARES TO VISIT AUSTRALIA FOR THE FIRST TIME
When I last saw Kimya Dawson a couple of years ago, she hugged me. Not just me though; upon finishing her show in a tiny English venue, she hugged pretty much everyone in the audience. This is a typical way for her end a gig, and sums up the strong bond between the American singer/songwriter and her loyal fan-base.
Since forming anti-folk band The Moldy Peaches, Kimya has released five acclaimed solo albums, and through this year’s hit movie, Juno, has permeated the consciousness of mainstream music audiences. Her songs soundtrack many moments in the film and Ellen Page and Michael Cera sing the Moldy Peaches track, Anyone Else But You, in the closing scene. “I was on the set when they filmed that. Those kids were just super sweet. I know they were nervous I was there.”
The overwhelming impact of Juno means Kimya is hot property. While she is happy plying her trade in her own wonderfully understated and DIY way, record companies have been unsuccessfully dangling carrots in front of her in an attempt to cash in on the film’s success. “One of the super-huge ones offered me tons of money to do a publishing/album deal,” she sighs. “I told them: ‘No. I’m not going to make any albums you like and you’re going to pressure me into doing advertisements and projects that I’ll refuse to do.’ I don’t what to have the stress of dealing with somebody trying to convince me that something is a good idea.” She also recently turned down a request from McDonalds to use her music in their commercials.
Kimya has never been interested in fame or wealth, and although her raised profile finds her playing to bigger crowds, she tries to retain the intimacy her performances are renowned for. With just an acoustic guitar accompanying her delicate vocal and deeply personal lyrics, her gigs are captivating experiences. “I still do some small shows and house shows and I’ve always pushed for all-ages shows. I’ve been finding bigger spaces that still feel total comfortable, like old abandoned renovated churches that can hold a shitload of people, so that they can still be big but have a really good energy and vibe and not just be like, you know, a dude bar vibe, but to have an artistic feel.” She is always happy to deviate from her set-list too, although an injury is restricting her from being able to play her entire repertoire. “I think I’m getting tendonitis. My hand has just been fucked and my finger is hurting me so I’ve just been modifying the songs. I’ve just been playing them with my thumb which is how they were written. There are a couple of songs that I’m struggling to be able to play. I haven’t been able to play The Beer for a few weeks.”
However, happy as she is to take requests, don’t expect to hear any Moldy Peaches tracks. “Some people feel cheated that they don’t find out until they’ve bought a ticket that I’m not going to [play Moldy Peaches songs], but I’m like: ‘Wouldn’t you feel more cheated hearing a half-assed version?’”
While Kimya’s most-recent album, Remember That I Love You is new to people who have only recently chanced upon her because of Juno, it is actually over two years old. Excitingly, a new album has been recorded, and is due this year. She is just hoping to find a window in her hectic schedule to complete the artwork; if only there were more hours in the day. “It’s funny because I also had to do the artwork before we left on our last tour and I didn’t manage to do it then. Every day that I don’t get it done is just pushing the album release back a little bit.”
Arriving in Australia on the back of American and UK tours, Kimya admits she never thought life would turn out this way. “Becoming a professional musician wasn’t my dream growing up. We [The Moldy Peaches] just made up some songs, played them a couple of times, knew some dudes [The Strokes] that were getting big and who asked us to tour with them. We were like: ‘Weird. Okay.’ It was all pretty accidental. I went from being like: ‘I make expresso,’ to being like: ‘Wait a minute, I’m in Japan!’ It wasn’t like I set that as a goal and then worked at it for years. It just kinda happened. It is pretty surreal but I think I would have always ended up travelling anyway, so I feel super lucky.”
Her Sydney dates will be family affairs, with support coming from husband Angelo Spencer (above). Their 23-month old daughter, Panda (also above), will also be travelling with them. The combination of being a doting Mum and playing in larger venues gives touring a slightly different dynamic for Kimya and means, understandably, that she isn’t always able to hang out with all of her fans after shows. “A girl in Nebraska got really mad at me because I needed to get out of the venue and run back to the hotel to check on Panda. She said: ‘You loved having your picture taken with people before Panda was born.’ I was like: ‘Are you serious? You really want me to neglect my child so you can have a picture to show your friends?’”
While the affection between Kimya and her devotees makes such an encounter anomalous, her nature is such that she still wishes she could oblige every single request. “If I could be in ten places at once I would totally give them everything they need. I really try to give a lot of myself but sometimes people are like: ‘No, I need more. I can’t just have a hug. I need a hug, a picture, an autograph and I want you to call my friend on my cell phone,’” she laughs. Generally though, she loves engaging with fans; a fact that is illustrated by how pleased she is to receive my phone-call: “I’ve really been looking forward to this interview, because I know you’ve been following along for a while,” she excitedly tells me. During our conversation, the amity with which she chats to a long-term fan like me perfectly illustrates just how much she cares about the people who listen to her music. As Australia is set to find out, although fame and fortune have come a-knocking, Kimya Dawson remains quite the most sincere, grounded and kind-hearted person one could hope to encounter.
Peep Show series five has just aired in the UK, and was once again a familiar combination of laugh-out-loud funny inner-monologue, cringeworthy situations and abject misery as we live within the heads of two social misfits, Mark (David Mitchell) and Jeremy (Robert Webb), as they embark on the day-to-day grind of modern-day life.
As with the previous four series, home is the two-bedroom flat in Croydon. Mark still crunches numbers at JLB while Jez harbours dreams of making it as a musician, all the while sponging from Mark. We rejoin the odd couple at an unsurprisingly downbeat juncture with Mark trying to hoist himself from post-wedding depression by desperately searching for ‘the one’. Meanwhile, Jez still drifts through life, riding on the coattails of his housemate and, as we discover, his mother.
During the six-episode series, which is largely centred around Mark, the duo get up to the usual scrapes including a disastrous double-date which ends with them encountering a teenage burglar. Elsewhere Mark getts raped by a ‘lesbian’ and Jez performs at a Christian music festival. All the action, once again, is entirely shown from the POV of its characters and, as always, the best moments come from the characters’ inner thoughts.
The protagonists are obviously perfectly-defined by now. Jez is still having sex with everything that moves while Mark, in spite of the fact that he seems to have more romantic liaisons this time round than in the show’s entire history, is still a mess of deep-rooted anxiety, guilt, misery and awkwardness.
While Peep Show is still clearly the best situational comedy around right now, series five wasn’t the best so far. Its episodes were far too self-contained. While that may sound like an odd complaint (all sitcom episodes are self-contained), the narrative lacked enough of a thread to carry it along from the start of the season until the end. Mark and Jez seemed to just move from one embarrassing and ultimately disastrous scrape to the next with no real direction. While this was a similar problem in the last series, at least then it was all building up to the big will-they/won’t-they wedding. In earlier seasons, Mark’s long-standing infatuation with Sophie and Jez’s marriage to Nancy/love for Big Suze/Toni tied everything together well and gave each episode nice subtext and drive. We are so invested in these characters now that we need more than what almost amounts to a collection of unrelated incidents.
Another problem with this series was the under-use of long-term peripheral characters. While Big Suze, Johnson and Jeff perhaps had a smiliar amount of screen-time as with previous outings, they certainly didn't have the same impact on the narrative. Perhaps most disappointingly though was that Superhans (above) seemed not to be as prominent as before. He was the lynchpin of the funniest show of the series, episode two, where he gets Sophie's cousin Barney to… well, you’ll just have to watch, but otherwise he was used too sparingly - often just for the occasional, outstanding quote ("Jez can you tell me, yeah, as a mate, someone who knows me really well; is the bottom half of me on fire?").
One interesting new character though is Dobby, the computer nerd who is surely ‘the one’ for Mark. Hopefully the writers were foreshadowing something for the next series, as she is an excellent addition to the Peep Show world.
Ultimately though, the whole thing just felt too downbeat, even for Peep Show. Jez’s selfishness came across as slightly malicious and the sense of doomed inevitability surrounding poor old Mark removed any sense of hope or surprise in most of the situations. We just knew things were going to go horribly wrong, thanks usually to Jez. Okay, so that is the tried and tested Peep Show way, but it just felt a little too formulaic in this latest run of shows. To quote Mark, it was too “grimly predictable.” For the first time some of the gags really missed the mark too – most notably the sperm-bank scene.
In spite of these issues, there are still as many funny individual moments here as before, and of course, there are quotes to die for (“I would literally stab a baby for that,” “Never said it was bum-rape, Mark,”) and thankfully the cliff-hanger end was strangely optimistic and leaves the door wide open for series six. Indeed, the closing scene even offered redemption for Jez, who had a wonderful moment akin to David Brent telling Finchy to ‘fuck off’ in The Office. Ironically, although episode six was the least amusing, it was possibly the best of the series as, for the first time in what feels like ages, it wrapped itself in plot revolving around Mark, Jez and Sophie. Now that is what we bought into.
Narrative issues or not, Peep Show is still head and shoulders above the rest, and hopefully, if series six can reintroduce Nancy (or give Big Suze more to do) for the sake of Jez's character, get Superhans even more amongst the plot and tie Dobby, Soph and Mark into a storyline together, we are in for a treat. And then of course there is the whole mess between Mark, Jez and Soph. Yikes.
I recently interviewed The Thrills as they prepared to tour Australia. Here is the story:
AS HIS BAND PREPARES FOR ITS SECOND EVER TOUR OF AUSTRALIA, THE THRILLS FRONTMAN CONOR DEASY DISCUSSES THE STATE OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY WITH ROB TOWNSEND
The Thrills’ vocalist Conor Deasy is eager to get back to Sydney. However, it’s not the stunning harbour views or the sandy beaches that are making him especially anticipatory about heading back this way, but rather the opportunity to right a few wrongs. “Our gig in Sydney still goes down as the most unfortunate gig of our career,” he laughs as he recalls how everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong on their only previous show in the city. With guitars slipping out of tune and amps blowing, their performance was not an experience he remembers fondly. “I think about every ten gigs something goes wrong and we had about a year’s worth of unfortunate incidents in that gig. By the end it probably looked like I was cursing the crowd but really I was just cursing God.”
The Irishmen return to Australia with three albums under their belts, the latest of which, Teenager, deals with adolescence and, more specifically, the loss of adolescence. I ask whether the band consciously creates records with such strong themes or whether it is more of a representation of their mindset at the time of writing. “The first album [So Much For The City] was a grand accident,” Deasy explains. “I knew there were a lot of California reference points but it wasn’t until the very end that I realised it was very much a concept album. I think with the second album [Let’s Bottle Bohemia] I was more consciously trying to bring a concept together but I don’t quite know if I pulled that off. With this record I didn’t really try but for some reason I had the title before the songs, which is an odd thing to do. I wanted it to be simple and very pure and even the songs that didn’t quite go that way still kinda fit. So it is a themed album but it is more by accident I think.”
However, the positive reviews Teenager received weren’t really mirrored by sales. While their first two albums ripped a big hole in the UK top ten, their latest offering struggled to punctuate the top forty. I ask whether he thinks this is an indication of the unhealthy condition of the music industry and the shift in the way people are consuming music. Deasy concurs, saying that illegal downloading is a problem for a band such as his. “I don’t think it’s the album’s fault. I think Teenager is a great record. The industry is in a certain kind of state and the unfortunate thing about illegal downloading is that sometimes you just need those few extra sales to keep you ticking over, to keep the wolf from the door and to keep the label happy.”
Deasy goes on to talk about how albums don’t seem to have the same significance they once did, now that you can press a button and acquire a band’s entire back-catalogue, rather than having to rummage through dusty old record shops. “I love the notion of an album, but music seems to just be about tracks now. If you think about it, there is so much stuff vying for young people’s attention that it seems unlikely they are going to obsess over when a band like R.E.M. will release its next album. People are becoming increasingly irreverent about music, and it’s hard to be passionate when it’s so disposable and cheap. The sound quality is getting worse and art work is disappearing. The ramifications worry me a bit,” he frowns.
While the changing shape of the industry may be a concern for Deasy as he ponders if “a fourth album is viable nowadays unless you’re Coldplay,” The Thrills continue to excel in the live arena, as they are set to prove on their return to Australia. While in Sydney, as well as playing their own sideshow, they line-up at the Come Together festival, and Deasy is keen to brush up on his geography before he greets the crowd. “I remember going on stage at one of the Australian festivals last time and saying: ‘Hello Queensland,’ and we were on the other side of the country at the time. I guess word must spread fast in Australia because at every gig after that someone held up a piece of paper or cardboard saying We’re Not In Queensland. It became a bit of a running joke for the tour and whenever I meet an Australian who was at any of the gigs I get reminded of it. That was my big faux pas.”
With a debut album that was a winning mix of guitars, keys and wit one might expect from a band hailing from the same city as Pulp, The Long Blondes received many plaudits. So it is somewhat unexpected that the band’s second long-player moves in a slightly different direction.
While the clever wordplay – based around references to British celebs such as Peter Sellers and Ronnie Corbett - remains, opener Century demonstrates how “Couples” heads down a much more synth-drenched path. Therefore, it is little surprise to learn that the album’s producer, Erol Alkan, has previously worked with Daft Punk, Justice, Klaxons and Hot Chip.
This strong start is followed by Guilt, a dazzling track that lands slightly closer to The Long Blondes’ first record, with funky guitars and an unabashed vocal that channels a young Debbie Harry at her most vivacious. Next up, The Couples is pleasing enough, but the age-old trick of putting all of the strongest tracks at the start of the album is all too apparent here, as things soon take a downturn.
The clunky, ugly I Liked The Boys and Round The Hairpin sandwich the unsubtle Here Comes The Serious Bit, which tries to make up for a lack of melody with a shouted chorus that aims at being rousing but is actually pretty annoying. Later in the album, Too Clever By Half and Nostalgia are interesting in their electronic experimentation, but ever so slightly miss the mark, which pretty much sums the album up as a whole.
