Merry Christmas

So, another Christmas is upon us. While last year was spent in the frosty South of England, this festive period I find myself amid the blistering sunshine of the Sydney CBD (below).

Still, just because Australia doesn't have traditional white Christmases, doesn't mean you can't get into the spirit. Check out the tree we made out of a broomstick and twigs (above).Thanks for reading over the past year, keep an eye out for my end of year review in a few days. In the meantime, how about a Christmas treat or two. Merry Christmas.

Adam Green - Oxford Art Factory

ADAM GREEN
SONGS
Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst, 16/12/08

Sydney-based Songs opened the evening sounding a bit like The Go Betweens. While the set was slightly too long to retain momentum throughout, the four-piece offered intelligence in their sound and there were some stirring moments, as they carefully built up layers with guitars, keys, drums, bass and male/female vocals.

Backed by a makeshift band including Operator Please’s Chris Holland, Adam Green’s baritone croon sounded delicious during opener Emily. Dressed in a pink leather jacket, skin-tight purple jeans, silver shoes and no shirt, the New Yorker had a maniacal look in his eyes as he danced bizarrely – like a cross between Iggy Pop and a child high from too much soda. Before crowd-surfing his way through Broadcast Beach, he gleefully informed the crowd that, on this, his debut Sydney appearance, he was really, really drunk.

While there were obviously lots of tunes from his latest record, the brevity of Green’s compositions meant he was also able to extensively revisit his back-catalogue. It was a high-energy affair as he rattled off Gemstones and Friends Of Mine, and occasionally he had to bring the tempo down simply to catch a breath. After he embarked on some more crowd-surfing (this time topless, as his jacket had long-since been discarded), the highlight of the night came when he stood alone on stage and performed an acoustic rendition of Mozzarella Swastikas. The cryptic nature of the lyrics were typical of Green’s style: “He fed my dolphin stars/Like you’d put gasoline in cars,” he sang. His band soon rejoined him as he played further tracks from his debut album. Dance With Me got the crowd moving with its suitably jaunty chorus and Baby’s Gonna Die Tonight ended the set with a bang. After an encore which included the nasty No Legs (“There’s no wrong way to fuck a girl with no legs/Just tell her you love her as she’s crawling away”) and crowd-favourite Carolina, Green left the stage looking exhausted.

The show was always fun and occasionally insane, but the craziness on offer shouldn’t detract from the fact that, above anything, Green is a fantastic songwriter who can segue so many musical styles with incredible comfort. It takes some talent to go from a Sinatra-style croon to a post-punk holler all within the same song and make it work. It may have taken this unique artist five albums to make it to Sydney, but it was worth the wait.

Review by Rob Townsend

The Tough Alliance - A New Chance

THE TOUGH ALLIANCE
A New Chance

There’s so much happening on the third studio album from Swedish duo The Tough Alliance that it is quite hard to define, but essentially it is a fusion of dance music and classic pop, all done with a definite Scandinavian twist. One reference point is Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, which was clearly an influence in its crossing over of indie, pop and dance. Also, while comparisons to fellow countrymen Shout Out Louds might be lazy, there is certainly the same optimism and exuberance about their output. Although The Last Dance sounds like something Shout Out Louds would have discarded without thinking twice about, First Class Riot is great, and is what Britpop might have sounded like had it originated in Sweden rather than England (Swedepop doesn’t have the same ring to it though, does it?)

Elsewhere, there are 80’s synths, loads of samples and a few singalong choruses too. But sometimes things don’t work, like the painful Miami, which sounds like a bad remix of a rubbish, generic rave tune from the late 80’s. The band’s keenness on being eclectic sometimes sends them in directions that would be best avoided, like the reggae-influenced Looking For Gold. However, A New Chance certainly has heart and, while it is nowhere near as visionary as influences KLF and Primal Scream, it should be praised for trying to do something interesting in combining sounds both current and reminiscent. The result is, in equal parts, a joyous, fresh-sounding summer album and a slightly jarring homage to the past.

Tom Cooney - Presque Vu

TOM COONEY
Presque Vu

A couple of years ago, Brisbane’s Tom Cooney packed in his job to record a mini-album. While it may have been a brave move, considering how acoustic singer/songwriters are two-a-penny, it turned out to be a well-judged act of self-belief and led to appearances with M Ward and Fionn Regan and slots at Splendour and Homebake. And so his debut full-length record arrives, promising much.

Cooney is very much of the Damien Rice school of adult folk. His songs are carefully constructed and, like Rice, he brings in female vocals and strings when necessary. Another similarity is the intimacy of his lyrics; they are certainly written from the heart. The only small problem though is that, while gentle strumming and wistful words about love are all very pleasant, Presque Vu almost seems a bit too polite. Cooney’s vocal is lovely and warm, but it remains frustratingly held back too much of the time. It would have been nice to hear him open up his lungs and get more emotional or angry: anything to give an edge to his soft tones. The few times he does show heightened animation, swearing amid the rumbling drums and bowed guitar of Beneath The Wheel and lamenting on the stripped-back Silence, represent the album’s strongest moments.

More of this would have been nice, but there is still plenty to admire in the mild atmosphere Cooney has created, and if you like your folk gentle, pleasant and honest, then this largely impressive debut will be right up your alley.

Hercules and Love Affair interview

ANDY BUTLER, THE MAN BEHIND HERCULES AND LOVE AFFAIR TALKS TO ROB TOWNSEND ABOUT HIS BAND’S APPEARANCE AT THE NEVEREVERLAND FESTIVAL

“I’m expecting good things.”

In the three decades since his birth, New York-based DJ, Andy Butler, has never been to Australia. However, while the man behind dance act Hercules and Love Affair may not yet have ventured this way, he has been keeping a keen eye on the scene on this side of the globe, and is therefore looking forward to finally making it here for an appearance at the Nevereverland Festival. “I’m a fan of certain Australian bands from my youth and I know there’s a healthy, driving music culture there and that dance music is pretty popular. So, I’m excited.”

While Hercules and Love Affair is Butler’s baby, it is something of a collaborative effort. With the band being on the legendary DFA label, LCD Soundsystem’s Tim Murphy is heavily involved, while other artists who have leant their support to Butler’s project include !!!’s Tyler Pope and Antony Hegarty of Antony and The Johnsons. While Hegarty’s dazzling, haunting vocal appears across the album, it won’t be on display in Sydney. “Obviously Antony Hegarty is not touring with us,” Butler confirms. “He has a new album coming out in January and so is touring at the moment in Europe and doing press stuff.” However, even without the distinctive figure of Hegarty, the stage will still be brimming with activity at Nevereverland. “We have an eight-piece ensemble,” Butler beams. “We have a little horn section with a trumpet and a trombone player. It’s a big group.”Within this impressively-sized collective, Butler boasts two singers who, as well as performing lead vocals on other tracks, happily fill Hegarty’s shoes: Hawaii-born San Franciscan, Kim Ann Foxman, and sultry New Yorker, Nomi. “We’ve done hundreds of shows at this point and they’ve been singing those songs for the past six months,” Butler shrugs when I ask him about the difficulties of deputising for Hegarty in his absence. “Antony gave us his blessing and encouraged the girls to take his parts.”

Butler’s band is certain to bring a disco flavour to Nevereverland, but their sound is far from a straightforward cut-and-paste of the seventies dance scene. In fact, it is born out of his eclectic musical background. At age 12 he was composing modern classical pieces on the family piano when he heard the 1980’s Yazoo b-side Situation. And so began a love affair with electronic music. “I’m influenced by any sort of music that resonates. I became very interested in disco music as a teenager but I also went to school and studied minimalist composition, started listening to singer/songwriters and also started paying attention to new-wave music. So there’s more to it than just one particular sound or another.” His taste may be diverse, but there is no denying that disco holds the most prominent place in Butler’s musical heart. “The genre or style is very colourful. Disco music, for me at least, has some of the highest levels of musicianship – wonderful levels of emotion and drama. I find disco to be very exciting and not the sort of throwaway music that for a long time it was treated as.”With Butler having a celebrated history in DJing in supercool New York gay clubs, I wonder whether performing at festivals still feels alien to him. While his band has been on the bill of many a festival during its recent European tour, I ask if he prefers playing in smaller venues. “I like both. Festivals can be really fun experiences because you can reach a very diverse audience that you might not normally reach. It’s a challenge because there are people from all different backgrounds and it’s up to you to bring them together and create an energy and a vibe. At a club date everyone comes knowing what to expect and they are already bringing their own bit of the party.”

With the Modular-heavy Nevereverland Festival being predominantly filled with dance acts, there are plenty of bands that Butler hopes to check out, time permitting. “It depends on how gruelling the tour schedule is,” he says through a yawn that suggests the tour has indeed been pretty exhausting to this point. “It’s fun when you have some time and you can be a festival-goer for a little bit, but often we find we have got to pack up and put ourselves on the road to the next gig. The bands [at Nevereverland] are up my alley though, and it makes more sense in terms of a line-up than a lot of festivals we’ve played. Musically it will be very interesting.”

Teeth & Tongue - Monobasic

TEETH & TONGUE
Monobasic

Those of you that remember Melbourne-based band Moscow Schoolboy will already be familiar with their singer, Jess Cornelius. Following the demise of that band, New Zealand-born Cornelius has gone it alone, and now works under the moniker Teeth & Tongue.

With a lovely vocal melody and intriguing percussion including a whistle, There Is a Lightness to My Bones is a pretty way to open her debut album, but is also something of a red herring as from then on things go down a much muddier route. Showing impressive vocal range by swapping the soaring, higher register delivery of the opening track for a low-down growl over dirty blues guitar, it is hardly surprising that Cornelius has drawn comparisons to PJ Harvey. Hello Ricardo is just one of a number of tracks that sounds as though it took influence from the English singer/songwriter. Sea Ice further shows off her dextrous, rather beautiful voice, while, elsewhere, the wonderful Stacey Come Over sounds like Patti Smith singing Bat For Lashes covers.

At times, Monobasic is both interesting and exciting. On the downside, it may lack momentum in places and could be accused of sometimes feeling slightly derivative, but there is enough here to suggest that – if she can avoid coming across as a PJ Harvey wannabe and continue to find her own voice – Cornelius has a healthy musical future ahead of her. This gutsy album is certainly a very good start and you’re certain to be hearing more from Teeth & Tongue in 2009.

Mercy Arms interview

MERCY ARMS GUITARIST KIRIN J. CALLINAN TALKS TO ROB TOWNSEND ABOUT STARTING AGAIN FROM SCRATCH

“It felt like if you played in a band and were half-decent, you’d get wined and dined and you’d sign a record deal.”

Two years ago, Mercy Arms were the words on everyone’s lips. The buzz surrounding the young four-piece was absolutely massive. There was a seemingly unfaltering momentum about the band and, when a major record deal was signed, everything pointed towards them being The Next Big Thing. It was all too easy. “That’s really what it seemed like,” guitarist Kirin J. Callinan (above)admits. “You’re playing showcases to the biggest labels in the world and getting flown around and it’s like, ‘It’s all happening. Well done. Pat on the back.’ I don’t want to sound too naïve, but that’s how it was… Then the shit hit the fan.”

Like so many recent victims of cash-strapped record companies desperately throwing acts overboard in a bid to stay afloat, Mercy Arms found themselves having to negotiate their way out of the newly-signed contract. However, rather than this false start leading to their implosion, they simply got back up, dusted themselves down and came back with a galvanised spirit. Sidestepping the hype that had once propelled them, earlier this year the Sydneysiders released their debut album independently to critical acclaim and have since set about taking it on the road. “It’s back to reality now,” the intelligent and articulate Callinan tells me from the back of his tour bus in London. “We’re paying for everything ourselves, we’re doing things on the cheap and it feels better this way.” Their recent travels have taken them to the UK, LA and New York. “Over here we’re starting from scratch. You walk down the street and no-one knows you.” He stops himself and chuckles at his last sentence. “That’s not to say I walk down the street at home and I’m The Beatles.”While Mercy Arms’ ambition is such that they intend to continue giving plenty of attention to succeeding overseas, their time away from home has left them excited about an imminent return to Sydney for a performance at Homebake and a headline gig at The Gaelic Theatre. “At our opening show at [London’s] Scala, supporting Ladyhawke, there were four people there when we played the opening song. That makes you appreciate the fans back home and how well people have taken to us.”

While they have plenty more runs on the ladder to climb, their time overseas has certainly been a success. Indeed, the band has just finished a UK tour in support of Cut Copy, performing tracks from Mercy Arms, their epic, eponymous debut album to sold-out venues. Following the rollercoaster ride of the last couple of years, the spring is clearly back in Mercy Arms’ step, and the way Callinan already talks about getting into the studio to record a new album suggests the band is excited about the journey that lies ahead. “The first record, while I’m very proud of it, was a learning experience. It is a record of green and brown, and we want to make the next one blue and red. Bolder and more defined.”With bolder intentions come different recording methods, and Callinan explains the way in which they plan to put together their follow-up record early next year. “Going into the studio [to record Mercy Arms], we already had the songs from the rehearsal room and from playing live. When we recorded them, it was just a matter of pulling away the layers. On our next album, rather than working the songs in the rehearsal space and recording them as they are, we want to get a bit more adventurous; maybe go into a studio and record the songs and rearrange them, pull them apart, deconstruct them and put them back together again. Get them down and then work out how to play them live after that. That’s very exciting for me.”

As anyone who heads to The Gaelic Theatre will discover, Mercy Arms is made up of big personalities; most notably guitarist Callinan and frontman Thom Moore (above). Always strikingly-attired, the guitarist stalks the stage, filling the room with imposing guitar noise while Moore belts out classically-structured melodies with a soaring vocal. The fact that Callinan is the Yin to Moore’s Yang leads me to ask whether having two such strong characters in the group ever causes clashes. “Often,” Callinan laughs. “Obviously there are difficulties, but it is also where a lot of our strengths lie. It’s not just me and Thom either; it’s all of our personalities. We spend a lot of time trying to, you know, keep things civilised, but I think a lot of the positives come when we’re at each other’s throats. That’s when the most exciting music is made.”

Adam Green interview

ADAM GREEN ENTERTAINS ROB TOWNSEND WITH TALES OF TRANSSEXUALS, SWEATY GROINS, VOMITING AND GHOSTBUSTERS

“I like it when my balls get all sweaty. I like it when it makes this special smell. I rub it on my neck like cologne. It’s quite attractive.”

Adam Green is not your everyday interviewee. Within 30 seconds of our conversation beginning, the American indie crooner has already gone off at the strangest tangent. “Something compelled me to think that if I put cologne on my neck before I went to bed I would have particularly good dreams. It worked for a while but the only problem is they were all about transsexuals giving me blowjobs,” the lynchpin of the New York scene tells me in answer to a question I think had something to do with his upcoming debut tour of Australia. He goes on, “Anyway, with the cologne being thrown in the garbage, those dreams have dissipated. Now I just like ball-sweat on my neck before I go to bed. I dream about hockey,” he says with such disappointment that I feel compelled to tell him there are certain places in Sydney he can go if he would like to meet some real-life transsexuals. “I don’t really want a transsexual hooker,” he interjects. “I just want to have a lovely transsexual that follows me everywhere and is really pretty and cuddles me at night.”

Wrestling the conversation back to Green’s first visit to this country, I discover that financial constraints mean he’ll be without his trusty backing musicians for the tour. “If I brought my band – like, five guys – it would cost a fucking fortune to do just one trip, not to mention the actual tour,” he frowns. While arriving alone is not ideal, Green has excitedly recruited a temporary band for his time here, and it might contain a few familiar faces. “I ended up hooking up with those guys from Operator Please. They helped me to put a band together that mostly just involves friends of theirs, and some people from Operator Please might also play. Maybe I’ll even do some stuff with strings with them.”

Though Green has never played here before, either as a solo artist or as part of legendary anti-folk band The Moldy Peaches, talk turns to the last time I saw him play in London a few years back. This sends the conversation hurtling in another random direction. “Oh yeah, that was a fun show but a crazy, horrible day for me because the night before I had gotten food-poisoning. I’d never had food-poisoning and always prided myself on having an iron stomach. All of a sudden… holy shit. I threw up 500 times. This shit wanted to leave my motherfucking body.” Barely stopping for breath, he regales me further, his chatter mirroring his lyrical style: funny, leftfield, snappy and littered with expletives. “I was watching that show Cribs. It was [American actor/comedian] Pauly Shore’s house. He is such a sleazeball, lowlife jerk-off. He was showing me his schmucky, stupid house. Then all of a sudden I threw the fuck up over everything.”

Considering how Green clearly enjoys veering away from the straightforward question slash answer dynamic of an interview, I ask just how bored he has gotten of being asked about Juno – the movie which ends with Michael Cera and Ellen Page singing Moldy Peaches’ song Anyone Else But You. “I don’t mind it,” he shrugs. “I’ve been a fan of Michael Cera and Ellen Page for a while and I am excited about the movie but, yeah, who wants to talk about Juno all the time? I like Ghostbusters too but I don’t talk about it every fucking day. The Ghostbusters song is probably twice as good as Anyone Else But You,” he laughs. Sardonically, he adds, “But, yes, Anyone Else But You is wonderful. Kimya [Dawson] and I wrote that shit together and it was impossible. You could never probably fucking do it. Never. Nobody. Just us. And we should be paid for it so handsomely.”

And with that tongue-in-cheek outburst, our time together comes to an end all too quickly. No time even to discuss his latest album, Sixes & Sevens, which is a delightful journey through folk, swing, indie, jazz, and honky-tonk. Before he bids me farewell though, he temporarily ditches his delicious irreverence in order to look forward – five albums into his solo career – to finally arriving in Australia. “I wish Moldy Peaches had come to Australia,” he laments. “It’s weird to me that this is the first time.” Though it’s taken him a while to get here, he promises fans heading to Oxford Art Factory that it will have been worth the wait. “I do believe in an old-style rock show. It’s really going to rock the house.”

Young at Heart review

It starts off with a 93-year old woman singing a rendition of Should I Stay or Should I Go? She recalls to the narrator that it was originally by a band called Crash. And with that, we know we are in for something out-of-the-ordinary with Young At Heart.

The documentary follows a choir of very old, very infirm men and women as they prepare for a European tour. From the aforementioned opening scene, one might think this film is going to poke fun at the older generation, to mock them. Ha ha, look at the silly old codgers. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Young At Heart does indeed begin laughing with (and maybe a little bit at) the ragbag gang of crusties as they get together in a rehearsal hall once a week to try and get their heads around new songs suggested by their younger leader, Bob Cilman. We meet Len, who always gets stuck on the same two lines of I Feel Good, we meet Joe, with milk bottle glasses and a winning smile, we meet flirty Eileen who, like all of her peers, can’t get her head around Sonic Youth’s Schizophrenia. Before we know it, we are entirely invested in these creaking, hunched folk on the screen. They are no longer just people who can’t get their musical timing right, they are people we really care about. And so the story really begins.

In a bid to give the seemingly directionless group a boost, Cilman – part megalomaniac, part care-assistant – re-introduces two former vocalists. They struggle to shuffle their frail frames into the rehearsal hall. Bob Salvini can barely walk due to crippling spine pain, and Fred has to carry a portable oxygen tank from which pipes lead into his nose. The returning duo is greeted with hugs of love and affection by the rest of the group. Old friends reunited. The tears well up in the cinema’s audience at this point. They continue to flow throughout, through a performance in a jailhouse, through the death of more than one band member, to the big show at the film’s finale.

That’s not to say this film is over-sentimental. Not by any means. No-one in the band wants your sympathy. They just want to get on with working out how the hell to get their tongues around Yes We Can Can. These people prove themselves to be go-getters to put you and me to shame. Cilman too, while a hard task-master, proves himself to be a kind man. He is not exploiting these people; he is helping them find a new lease of life.

The documentary is a fairly straightforward affair, there are no real aesthetic frills – there don’t need to be, as the old-timers’ personalities light up the screen well enough on their own. The soundtrack is wonderful though, with existing and well-known songs given a whole new dimension. Coldplay’s Fix You is a good tune, but when sung on a stage by an elderly man barely alive, in tribute to his intended duet partner who died that very week, it becomes a whole different song altogether. Moist-eyed, yet bursting with dignity and pride, the singer makes the words his own. It is one of the most affecting things you will ever see. If you fail to cry at this moment in the context of the previous 90 minutes, you are simply not human.

Very few films are life-changing, but Young at Heart can make that claim. It makes you want to make the very most of every little moment that life has to offer. The protagonists of this wonderful story may be shackled by decrepit old bodies, but their hearts are indeed as young as yours or mine.