THE LYNCH MOB: why is Twin Peaks so influential on Australian music?

How did a bizarre TV show from the ‘90s become a badge of underground cool in the Australian music scene?

This article was originally published for ABC's Double J website

Twin Peaks was a popular show in 1990-91 with a US audience of 34 million. The show’s co-creator David Lynch was already an Oscar-nominated auteur when he set about writing it with Mark Frost. While its game-changing cinematic qualites were appreciated at the time, what is truly remarkable about Twin Peaks is how this otherworldly creation influences other art forms, now more than ever.

The cult TV show, set in 1989, concluded with an enigmatic quote from Laura Palmer’s doppelganger: “see you again in 25 years”.

In the show’s fictional world, that time is now.

The Sound From Another Place

Ever since Australia became the only country to send Julee Cruise’s 'Falling' to the top of the charts in 1991, local bands have been looting the show for inspiration in a way only matched by the Scandinavian metal scene. Why this is fictional town is yet to release its grip on the Australian imagination is one of its most profound mysteries.

"There’s something very exotic about a small town in America," says singer-songwriter Sophia Brous, ahead of her performance in the star-studded In Dreams: David Lynch Revisited show at London’s Barbican Theatre. "It’s a like an inverse version of Crocodile Dundee. We like stepping into the cold austerity of a town like that, it’s like a holiday."

Isobel Knowles, member of the Icypoles and formerly of Architecture in Helsinki, thinks of Twin Peaks in similarly cinematic terms.

"Australian cinema often tells stories about people and places which seem light and happy on the outside but have dark undercurrents," Knowles says. "This darkness goes very deep and it’s never resolved. It’s not necessarily as overt as Twin Peaks, but it’s always there."

Knowles also links the show’s setting to its Australian appeal.

"In Twin Peaks, the forest is a giant aspect. The Australian wilderness is inherently creepy, and having grown up in Australia it's impossible to dissociate environment from history. Maybe this is another reason it's so appealing to Australians."

Brous agrees. "In Australia, we’re on this island on the other side of the world and there’s a sense of inquiry from being far away. We’ve gravitated towards different scenes, like the growth of punk, or industrial…the development of someone like Nick Cave for instance. In Melbourne especially, because of stations like RRR that represent new and interesting forms of music, there’s been platforms for new and interesting stuff."

That Show You Like Is Going To Come Back In Style

New and interesting stuff is what grabs attention in local band scenes and Easter eggs for Twin Peaks fans litter current gig guides. Psych rockers Vicuna Coat and hardcore combo Flesh World are both named after clues in the show. The big mystery of the series ('Who killed Laura Palmer?'), led to the name of pop-punk act Laura Palmer.

Psych band White Lodge and defunct shoegazers Ghostwood (whose members turn up in Jagwar Ma) both take their names from locations in the show, while post-rockers Laura and Adelaide country-pop quartet The Audreys are happy to let their names suggest it. Less-obsessive fans can spot the influence in electro duo Peak Twins.

Songs like ‘Leo Needs a New Pair of Shoes’ by Ben Frost and ‘The Fish in the Percolator Song’ by Hobart new wavers hMAS – both created away from a world populated by bands looking to drop hip references – are particularly interesting examples.

But it’s not just about clever pop cultural references - bands are mining Twin Peaks for musical inspiration.

Melbourne indie-pop group the Icypoles recently grabbed international attention for their cover of 'Just You', a saccharine love ballad written by Lynch and played by three of the show’s troubled teens.

"'Just You' is this pop song stuck in the middle of this beautiful, moody world," says Knowles.

"To most people, a song is just a snapshot or a short moment, but at the same time, it becomes its own thing after that point. This mix of pop music and cinema matched with a lot of the work I’d been doing as an artist."

Diane, make a note

For those who directly work with Lynch – such as the headliner of this year's DARK MOFO festival, Chrysta Bell – there is the danger of being reduced to a muse, of his identity overtaking their own.

"There will be a risk of that if I don’t kill it on the new record," Bell says, "But there is no downside to the endorsement. If I didn’t enjoy discussing him so much then the only downside would be being asked about him more than people ask about me. But I truly care for him and respect his talent, so that’s not an issue. It’s a win-win."

Jazz legend Jimmy Scott, who sings Angelo Badalamenti and Lynch’s Sycamore Trees in the series' surreal final episode, is similarly confident about working with Lynch.

"David Lynch saw me and wanted to use me," Scott says. "He said he liked my aura. I didn’t understand the storyline at all. He had me in a dark room, in a suit and bow tie singing to a dwarf," he laughs. 

Where we’re from, the birds sing a pretty song

The show’s soundtrack lives on in music by artists like the Dunes, the Paradise Motel, early HTRK and most bands described as ‘dream-pop’.  Brous says it’s the liminal state between dream and reality Lynch explores that so many find appealing.

“He’s someone who’s very into the threshold between the subconscious and the conscious. He often uses these ethereal, bell-like voices that flow in and out of… that through you, it’s like music flowing through you. He’ll have someone like Jimmy Scott with a strange and beautiful tone, and use these unusual sounds. He knows the voice is naturally the most expressive instrument there is, and that we respond to it unlike any other.”

The unusual, always appealing to a creative and subversive arts scene that feeds on a revered international influences like Lynch, is still yet to become usual. With Lynch himself increasingly focusing on his own music instead of film, his appeal to an Australian artists isn’t dying anytime soon.

As Bell says, “any artist that really digs Lynch’s thing and delves into his work will probably end up with some influence in her own creations. It’s such a strong spice, it can’t help but make it’s way onto your dish. At least a few sprinkles. Sometimes more.”

HAPPY 21ST: An interview with Angie Hart and Simon Austin of FRENTE

Celebrating the 21^st anniversary of their legendary debut Marvin The Album, pop icons Frente talk of American stadium tours, ‘that’ Juice cover and feeling “stabbed” by the Late Show, but as ANGIE HART and SIMON AUSTIN tell ANDY HAZEL “as an Australian, you just have to suck it up”.

Even if you weren’t alive in the early 1990s or have never heard of the Punters Club, listening to Frente sounds like eavesdropping on another era. When acoustic pop played by talented musicians sold in droves and international influences were filtered through a local scene instead of downloaded directly. The innocence, musicality and vibrancy of the Melbourne quartet still impresses as they prepare to celebrate the 21^st anniversary of their million-selling debut Marvin The Album. 

Looking back, Frente’s signature songs Accidently Kelly Street and Ordinary Angels could be seen as ripostes to the overtly masculine Aussie rock of the era. “It definitely wasn’t a conscious reaction to anything,” says guitarist Simon Austin, sitting at a Bourke St café, over the sound of a passing tram, “but it was different.”

“We weren’t capable of playing anything else,” adds singer Angie Hart, beginning a habit of completing Austin’s sentences.

“When we started rehearsing in earnest,” says Austin, “we would actually arrange a song. We’d take a day or a week to arrange it. I put these guys through hell!”

“Simon had a really strong vision,” says Hart sipping a beer. “It was never ‘I’ve got a vague idea for a song, let’s see how it works out.’ We’d work on one line until that was completely finessed then move onto the next.”

“I thought we were a polished pop band, but I guess we weren’t,” she continues. “Now people talk about how ‘ourselves’ we were, which I guess we just couldn’t not be – I was trying really hard not to be!”

With ARIA awards in the bag, Ordinary Angels still charting, Accidently Kelly Street riding high and Marvin The Album on its way to selling over 1.2 million copies worldwide, Frente were riding high. When ABC’s The Late Show joined in the fun with the bullseye pisstake Accidentally Was Released, their local reputation never fully recovered. “I had a real moment of feeling…stabbed,” says Austin. “Then I thought, you know what? It’s an Australian thing. I know all those guys and they mean it lovingly - they’d never say it, but they mean it out of love. Once you get that it’s OK. To a certain extent, as an Australian, you just have to suck it up. And it’s good. People don’t allow you to get too full of yourself, or full of yourself at all, or even half full of yourself,” he says laughing.

Several months after the success of Accidently Kelly Street, Hart posed naked (but for some carefully arranged necklaces) on the cover of now-defunct music magazine Juice, an image burned into the minds of many teenagers. While the cover doesn’t bother her, the accompanying interview is “a massive cringe”.

“I spent a lot of my time justifying it and saying it was great, but I look back on it now and I didn’t really understand what that meant. I wasn’t a particularly modest person so it wasn’t a big deal to get my kit off. But I look back now and think ‘oh yeah, I was a 21 year-old female artist who was fed up and looking for a ‘fuck you’ - it was a great opportunity to talk about what’s going on in MY life!’” she laughs derisively.

Is it something she’d do again? “I doubt I’d be asked!” she laughs. “Probably not in that context. At this point in my career, I’d like to do anything that furthers people’s awareness of themselves and makes them feel something about who they were. If I have any foibles I could put forth and have people identify with, I’d be more happy with that.”

Temporarily relocating to London at the behest of their label, British audiences turned out in their thousands as promotional difficulties scuppered their chances of a big breakthrough. In the US the band’s pithy take on New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle cracked the Top 50 and an opening slot for Alanis Morrissette’s first major North American tour brought a whole new audience.

“At a certain point those tours get very, very surreal,” says Austin with a sense of awe. “That Alanis tour…there were some very strange science fiction moments of people walking her on stage, it was all very religious. You’d look out into an audience of 30 000 people and there’s 29 900 girls with straight hair and 100 boyfriends standing there like this [impersonates bored tough guy]. It was bizarre. We’d do these huge outdoor shows, and you might as well put the music on the PA and go home because there’s 60 000 people and, it’s great fun, but it’s not even terrifying. It should be, but it isn’t because you have such a disconnection.”

Conversely, the opportunity to connect with their audience was behind the reunion. “We all got on the phone to each other around the same time and it was just…now. It’s time,” says Austin. “We’re making it as polished as it can be, but mistakes are going to occur. It’s going to be great, we’re going to trip over each other, but that’s Frente.”

Live Review: TEMPLES, DEEP SEA ARCADE, THE FROWNING CLOUDS

The Corner, 10 May

Challenging the excavation works outside the Corner for loud, earth shattering impact, Temples have captured the hearts and memories of a broad age-range of tousle-haired rock fans, most of who respond warmly to the authentic garage rock of The Frowning Clouds. This weeks’ featured band on Spicks and Specks are no mere mimics, the triple guitar drives short sharp blasts of addictive rock. The time-proven sound renders the songs almost interchangeable, but you can imagine the band playing with identical energy in 30 years and stilling winning new fans.

Like or loathe Deep Sea Arcade the energy exuded by lead singer Nic McKenzie is a welcome change from the typically instrument-bound vocalist of most rock bands. While his pitch wanders as much as his feet, the songs are tight bursts of Anglo rock that benefit hugely from McKenzie's strutting, mic twirling and swagger, performing like he's trying to impress an army of NME readers. While it's not everyone's bag, confidence goes a long way. Steam and the closer Girls are stand outs from a set that raises the bar for our international guests.

Packed behind the photographer-lined barrier, the crowd greets the parting curtains with a chorus of shrill calls. “Hey, how's it going?” mumbles Temples’ big-haired singer and sparkly guitar slinger James Edward Bagshaw. Wearing a similarly sparkly top and skinny jeans, Basgshaw eases into the microphone, bending his knee and raising his heels to softly sing in a voice drenched in reverb. The quartet’s loud - but never angry - opiate rock is essentially glam excised of sex and charisma.

Boasting one of the best sounding shows this venue has seen, Temples’ power is partly due to their careful control of effects and textures. The glazed distortion of the guitar, the trebly crunching bass and driving drums form a sound that moves like a marshmallow tank. The whole band look like they should be mooching around forests with Bran in Game of Thrones, and this sound and style merge to overshadow the songs themselves.

From a set of loaded with unthreatening fury and unmemorable melodies, obscure B-side Ankh is an unexpected highlight. The keening Keep in the Dark is typical of their biggest strength (the glistening glam stomp), and biggest weakness (a tendency to maintain and repeat instead of elevate).

Closing their set with Sand Dance, the raucous crowd draw the band back from behind a door signed “Dressing Room For Temples Only”. Minutes later, accompanied by a cloud of potent pot smoke, the band emerges for an encore that sees them throw out the rulebook to stunning effect. Mesmerise is a ten-minute trip into Spacemen 3 / Krautrock territory is hopefully a sign of things to come, before the exuberant Shelter Song closes a night of carefully curated, and wildly received, rock and roll.

MARLEY AND ME: An interview with Aston 'Family Man' Barrett of The Wailers

Keeping the spirit of Bob Marley alive and the Wailers in line, ASTON ‘FAMILY MAN’ BARRETT tells ANDY HAZEL about taking advice from Stevie Wonder and the discovery of Australian tropical ‘sweet potatoes’.

His voice oozing down the line like spilt molasses, bass legend Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett wastes no time in getting to what he sees as the point of our interview. “Yes I’m comin’, and we’re comin’ - we’re the Wailers! Let them know they must come out early and dance until late,” he booms with a laugh impossible for a skinny man before adopting a hushed tone of mock drama.

“See, I am one of the men who take Jamaican music to the forefront. Me and Bob [Marley], Bunny [Wailer] and Peter [Tosh], we set that standard far and over people before us. Reggae lets everyone know it is the art of the people. It is the universal language and it carries the message of roots, culture and…reality!”

Performing the Bob Marley greatest hits album Legend (“top to bottom, and then some hits!”) to which he provided basslines, Barrett sees Wailers shows as a chance to remind audiences that, despite their global influence, the band are all about roots. “Reggae is always being updated. There is a lot of new kinds of gear in the music stores, those sounds can get wild, but you’re just buying effects. When time goes by, technology always intrudes, but we stick to the roots. We always say that some is leaves, some is branches, but I and I is the roots.”

Naming himself ‘Family Man’ for of his role as a musical ringleader, it’s this inclination, as well as a verbal agreement with Marley over royalties, that saw him unsuccessfully sue Marley’s estate to the tune of £60 million (AUS$110 million) three times. Despite this, Barrett is happy in his current role. “I think of a different term than bandleader, or boss, or foreman,” he explains. “We have to work and live together, but I is the one who is in charge. I label myself ‘Family Man’, and the name…became legend!” He says with another hearty, possibly herbally-assisted, laugh. “I have to keep all the young people in line, so they don’t…walk on the wild side!”

The wild side is a place Barrett clearly knows all about. Earning his nickname another way by fathering “about fifty-two” children, he feels most at home when touring. “I have so many great memories of these songs. When Bob was alive, we once met up with Stevie Wonder, and he was saying to Bob ‘you’ve got to release Jamming as a single!’ We knew it was a good song but we didn’t think it could be a single. Stevie says ‘If you don’t do anything about it, I will!’ so he made the song Master Blaster! I loved playing with Stevie.”

Memories of his first trip to Australia are equally happy. “The first time I came to Australia was with Bob and we played a lot of great shows. I liked the rainforest. Up there, the forest was so fruitful, I was surprised to walk up on a sweet potato that we fried like a ripe mango,” he says still sounding astonished. “I don’t know what it was. It looked like a sweet potato and tasted like a sweet potato but you don’t have to cook it. I thought I was in dreamland! You just break it in two and eat it, it was amazing!”

Live Review: THE MAGIC BAND, THE GRANDMOTHERS OF INVENTION

The Magic Band being very very real.

Corner Hotel, Apr 11

The longhaired middle-aged white mostly male audience eagerly assembles around the stage. Though many contain their obvious glee by standing still and expressionless, as if about to spot a rare train, anticipation crackles. Soon, the somewhat older Grandmothers of Invention amble on, smile, and ease into non-hit Call Any Vegetable. You don’t have to be a manic Frank Zappa fan to see that his one-time sidemen have had extremely interesting lives, and know their way around their instruments. It’s this last point they seem most interested in exploring; bass solos, drum solos, flute, guitar, gong solos, it’s all here, with varying fidelity to actual Frank Zappa songs. Answering the eternal question we all want answered via a song called The Eternal Question, its chorus “What was Zappa really like? / Did he fly into a rage? / I bet he smoked dope all the time / And did he really shit on the stage?” is answered amiably by the song’s writer and band saxophonist Don Preston (“uh…no!”). After a set explores Zappa's ability to inject humour into jazz, we get his most pop moments and set high-points Go Cry on Somebody Else’s Shoulder and Peaches en Regalia by which time the audience are largely onside and the band seem delighted.

From a bandleader who celebrated his musicians’ creativity by giving them room to stretch out, we get a bandleader who channeled musicianship into several-minute songs exploding with ideas. “We are The Magic Band playing the music of Captain Beefheart!” the band helpfully shouts in unison, before jumping in the air and exploding into My Human Gets Me Blues, the first of many songs from game-changing album Trout Mask Replica. Lead by one-time-drummer Drumbo, the show highlights his incredible voice, musicianship and personality, and were it not for the utterly unique force of personality and songwriting genius of Captain Beefheart it would be at risk of becoming The Drumbo Show. The bluesy Low Yo Yo Stuff and Diddy Wah Diddy follow, but rather than play it safe the band go for, and hit, some of the most complex music ever to crack a Top 50 album chart. Music that seems even stranger coming from a bunch of sexagenarians in cargo pants and loose t-shirts.

While the collective lifetime drug intake of the audience would be enough to euthanize Japan, the band themselves are phenomenally sharp with only guitarist Zoot Horn Rollo’s smiling, sagging visage betraying any errant years, even as his fingers move like Errol Flynn undoing a blouse. Hot Head, Click Clack, Golden Birdies, Owed T’Alex and an almighty Steal Softly Thru Snow are only narrow highlights over a set full of jaw-dropping rhythmic shifts, stabbing guitar riffs and deep bluesy rasping vocals. It’s a privilege to witness such influential pioneers in 2014 and to hear these distant transmissions burn brightly.

Live Review: HUNX AND HIS PUNX, THE UV RACE, SCOTT AND CHARLENE’S WEDDING

A Hunk and His Punk. Photo by Carol Bowditch.

The Curtin Bandroom, Apr 23

Against a backdrop of sheets decorated like a busier, ruder version of the cover of the Chipmunk Punk album, Scott and Charlene’s Wedding chatter as they gather. The room fills in minutes as the band begin barreling through their set. From behind a straggly curtain of blonde hair, singer and songwriter Craig Dermody leads the band through a rambling, glorious clutch of songs with local classics Two Weeks and Gammy Leg the high points. Sipping from his pint and grinning at guitarist Gill Tucker as if to say ‘hey, nice one!’ they finish on the moronic genius of Karen.

Playing what seems their hundredth Melbourne show, The UV Race is a six-strong army channeling the arty mayhem of Melbourne's Little Band Scene of the early 80s. Fittingly for a band that sounds as though they've not listened to any music post 1983 their songs are emboldened with a vitality missing from much modern music. Like a house party started then abandoned by Mark E Smith, the packed room carries the friendly intensity bursting from the stage.

After a lengthy break, and to a crowd now wild with anticipation, leather-clad pretty-boy Seth Bogart arrives on stage and smiles. “We're Hunx and His Punx and we're from California”.

Opening with You Don’t Like Rock and Roll the band’s fusion of lovable 50s rock and roll and a gay-punk aesthetic is so bold and brash and the audience so on-side it’s near impossible to resist. “Ha! I know you!” laughs Bogart pointing at someone in the front row. It seems the whole room wishes they were that person. “This goes out to acne survivors” he says introducing Bad Skin before blasting through the “political song” Everyone’s a Pussy (Fuck You Dude) in ten seconds.

Reveling in a style-over-substance brand of raw rock and roll, the simpering brilliance of Bogart (“this song is called…Bad Boy” he smiles to no one in particular) is a powerful force. Older songs like Gimme Gimme Back Your Love and newer track Mud in Your Eyes show a musical adventurousness bordering on the non-existent, each short, sheared anthem of defiance another sermon to the converted. The Curse of Being Young, and another “political” blast of sub 30-second hormonal angst Don’t Call Me Fabulous are further examples of carefully-crafted, perfectly rendered Punk Rock^TM, just like the cartoonish backdrop they play before. The homosexual overtones are charming, funny, like a younger brother putting on a family show, and they’re just as impossible to dislike.

Returning with a reconfigured lineup as Shannon and the Clams, this trio, lead by Punx bassist Shannon Shaw is tighter, punchier, and more about the song than the look. Once a three-song set has been heckled out of them (including the killer I Don’t Want to be in a Cult No More), and Hunx has fled the stage to the merch desk, the audience, still thirsty for more, flop toward each other, grinning like stroked cats.

Live Review: ELVIS COSTELLO AND THE IMPOSTERS, THELMA PLUM

Hamer Hall, 17 Apr

Trapped in our comfy seats by the politeness a place like this engenders (and a determination to get value out of the $140 ticket price), the largely middle-aged audience are respectfully attentive to support act Thelma Plum.

Quite what separates Plum from the several hundred other Waifs-ish sweetly gritty voiced folk artists this country can boast is unclear. Giving the spectacular acoustics little to work with besides forgettable songs about ex-boyfriends and a tame cover of Chris Isaak's Wicked Game, accompanying guitarist Liam Gerner however, uses her work as a springboard for some inspired axe-work. Plum’s brash likeability eases the transition from folk festival to classical venue, and closing song Dollar – with some hilariously arrhythmic clapping from the audience – is the high point of a tricky set.

With no ceremony but to raucous fanfare Elvis Costello and the Imposters set about playing a curious set. Unlike 2013’s Spinning Wheel of Song tour sending us down memory lane, tonight is a litany of reminders of his rich, less-visited catalogue. An opening salvo of Brilliant Mistake, Blue Chair and Seconds of Pleasure shows we’re getting a set he wants to play. And so we move thematically through Costello’s “Easter pageant” section, in which he plays songs he’s written about resurrection (Stations of the Cross, Suit of Lights, Ascension Day and He Came Back), and a tribute to recently dead songwriting legend Jesse Winchester (Quiet About It and Dancing the Night Away), that gives Costello a chance to tell some self-deprecating stories and pay tribute to a hero.

Better known tracks are saved for an encore that lasts as long as the preceding set. Costello, who turns sixty this year, comes alive on a stellar version of Watching the Detectives with an interlude of Walk Us Uptown, from his curious yet successful collaboration with The Roots. Shipbuilding gets a haunting reinvention courtesy of keyboard legend Steve Nieve, and near-glam takes of Alison, Beyond Belief, I Want You and the erstwhile (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding shows Costello is still finding inspiration in his back catalogue. Energised, canonical takes on Oliver’s Army, Pump It Up and (I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea ensure that, even as we call out for still more, no one leaves feeling ripped off.

Live Review: DAY RAVIES, LOWTIDE, PARADING, CONTRAST

The Liberty Social, 18 Apr

Contrast (replacing Possible Humans), the first of tonight’s Anglophilic guitar-heavy line-up, set the precedent for turning the charisma to zero and the effects to ten. Bashing out a batch of five-minute-plus slices of careening shoegaze, the four-piece win the small amassing crowd over in no time. Singer/songwriter James Thomson finds a seemingly limitless number of ways to invest languid guitar sounds with the piercing fury of Jesus and Mary Chain. Recent single Dull is the highlight of a revelatory set.

Playing longer and darker songs than those on last year’s Swallowing a Sunflower album, Parading somehow manage to combine the sensation of floating on a cloud with the reality of actually falling through the freezing atmosphere while being stabbed by millions of tiny water droplets. Boasting the brilliant, piercing guitar of Keith Mason, the sheer force of the band’s music takes on an extra depth as dry ice billows and the blue lights render them sickly ghosts.

Several months away from (finally) releasing their debut album, Lowtide begin their set with their best known and oldest song No Horizon. Once the highlight of their set, its early dispatching indicates a newfound confidence, one replicated in the bright, crystalline mix and the band’s banter. Wedding Ring and upcoming single Blue Movie are highlights of a set driven by the dual basses of Lucy Buckeridge and Giles Simon.

Despite the unremitting quality of tonight’s acts, Sydney’s Day Ravies manage to earn their headliner role with a set that ably showcases their balance of texture and pop song-writing. Despite forming in 2011, last year’s debut album Tussle announced their national arrival, set critics fawning and ensured hype built quickly. It’s hard to imagine Lani Crooks’ chimerical keyboard lines, Caroline de Dear’s muscular bass and the hacked chords and melodies of Sam Wilkenson’s guitar can translate live as well as they do on record. Happily, they massively exceed expectations. Following the meticulous guitar work of Lowtide’s Gabe Lewis is a big ask for any performer, but Wilkenson’s mix of crunching chords and fluid melodies work around the other players brilliantly. I Don’t Mind and Tussle highlight Staring is Caring stand out, but it’s the rollercoaster ride of Fake Beach with its fuzz bass and synth stabs that shows how much this band have going for them, and how bright their future is.

IN SESSION: An interview with JOSS STONE

Joss Stone laying it down.
Photo by Cynthia Serenissima 

Mid-way through recording her seventh album, soul pop icon JOSS STONE takes some time out to bring ANDY HAZEL up to speed on resurrecting lost songs, the Spice Girls and her ambitious touring plans.

When Joss Stone plans a world tour, she really doesn’t mess around. “The idea is to play at least one show in every country in the world,” she explains keenly and without a flicker of doubt. “After Australia and New Zealand, we’re in Dubai, then Europe. We’re in the process of booking everywhere else. I want to play a show, look about the place, see what good we can do while we’re there, and see what music we can listen to while we’re there. In Australia, I’m hoping to find some music that originates in Australia. Rather than sitting in my hotel, I’ll get out and about and see what’s going on.”

Playing with Archie Roach and the Black Arm Band last time she was in Melbourne (an experience she describes as “really wicked”), this monumentally ambitious tour may not be as farfetched as it seems for someone with the career trajectory of Stone; TV talent contest winner at 13 and multi-million seller at 17. “I’d like to go further into Australia. Dive right into the middle of the country and see what happens. The whole tour will be documented on my website every two or three days. We’ll post a short video from each place, maybe put a documentary together later, but for now it’s just something fun people can follow.”

Having taken nine months off from a hectic touring schedule, our interview finds Stone taking a break from recording her forthcoming album in her newly finished home studio. “I’m in the process of recording it right now,” she says happily. “In fact at the moment I’m cutting violin - they’re in the other room. After I chat to you we’re back to it.”

Still unnamed and unfinished, Stone says the album will be “a lot more groove-oriented. There are lots of ideas going round, and I don’t want to say what they are yet. It’s got a reggae backbone. It’s a bit hip hop and RnB. It’s not really the usual wailing vocal thing I’ve done in the past.”

While Stone may be focusing more on rhythm than before, she won’t be abandoning her first love anytime soon. “Soul music is an expression of emotion. It’s feelings, and whether or not you like the notes being played is irrelevant in soul music. Actually, as I get older it bothers me more, but soul music is just music that’s meant. That’s what I like about it. If it meant something to me as a little girl, it will never not mean something to me. It’s the same with pop songs. Some of the Spice Girls’ songs I danced around to aged 10 still make me smile, and they mean something, that’s never going to change. A lot of pop songs now, they don’t really sit close to your heart in the same way.” Would collaborating with Mel C be out of the question? She laughs loudly at the suggestion. “Wow! That would be a laugh! I’d love to hear that! Mel C has an amazing voice and she’s really lovely. Ha!”

In a career marked by lending her youthful energy and rich voice to revitalising obscure soul songs or duetting with other artists, Stone still has many unfulfilled ambitions. “There are a lot of people I want to work with, but there’s not one person I think ‘fuck I want to nail that person down and just do it’,” she explains. “If the person wants to collaborate with me, it’s going to be a really good piece of music. If that person isn’t passionate, forthcoming, or hard to find then it was never meant to be. But, if you don’t ask you don’t get,” she qualifies, before considering Music, her duet with reclusive neo-soul icon Lauryn Hill. “That took a long time not because she was holding out, but because it’s hard to get hold of her. I knew she was right, and I knew it was in the stars, so I kept trying and she did it. It was a beautiful thing. I felt very honoured.”

The songs Stone is most famous for singing, she reminds listeners, aren’t hers. This role of interpreter is something with which she is wholly comfortable. “In interviews, I always made a point of saying ‘this song is not my song, it’s by the Isley Brothers, or Womack and Womack or whoever’ because it’s important people type that in and see where this song came from, why it’s lived for so long and who inspired it,” she says avidly. “Super Duper Love was a song we hardly changed at all. Sugar Billy wrote it and he’d lived his whole life pretty much unknown and almost no one had heard it. Because I did it and people heard it, he died a happy man and I hold that close to my heart. I didn’t know half of these songs for very long before I recorded them either. I was shown something by [producer] Steve [Greenberg], and I showed it to someone else, so it’s a circle really.”

LEAVING HOME BEHIND: An interview with Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes

Alex Ebert, aka Edward Sharpe. Photo by Will Schube.

No longer just a singer in a “drugged out naïve hippy band”, ALEX EBERT of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros is now a Golden Globe-winning composer who's writing a screenplay he began working on with Heath Ledger.

A new resident of New Orleans, Alex Ebert has spent the last two months neck deep in the glitzy side of his previous home, Los Angeles. The move satisfies his love for community. A love that has seen him take on the persona of Edward Sharpe, the bearded, wild-haired singer for ragtag collective the Magnetic Zeros. Ebert explains “LA has no community so, growing up, I imagined it. A while back, my mom showed me a story I wrote when I was six and it began: ‘Once there was a boy who had a crew’. That touched me, because I hadn’t seen that in what…25 years, and it was fun to know I always had my eye on that,” he says, laughing quietly.

“I’m actually doing a lot of writing about the concept of childhood and cool, a friend and I are working on a book called Kingdom Cool. All of those qualities – communities, optimism earnestness – they’re the counterculture now, they’re the un-cool thing.”

Increasingly, Ebert is no longer being seen as part of the culture with which he has been so closely associated. Still writing instantly catchy and hummable songs like Home and 40 Day Dream, attention has been coming his way for his more ambitious projects. Winning a Golden Globe for Best Original Score for the Robert Redford-starring film All Is Lost, he believes he’s no longer considered a singer in, as he puts it “a drugged out naïve hippy band".

"Leading right up to the announcement I was jittery, jittery, jittery,” he says happily reliving the moment. “But I was able to watch myself be jittery, so I started thinking ‘maybe I’m jittery for a reason, maybe I’m going to have to deliver some kind of speech’. It was a very surreal thing. Awards shows are very glitzy and nothing more than a popularity contest on some level. To be recognised for something you worked really hard at – and I really loved working on that score, and I love the film – to be recognised for something you put all your heart and soul into, was amazing.”

Despite the accolade, Ebert still feels the outsider, at least on a personal level. “There was a fun moment at the Golden Globes where [Robert] Redford was talking to Bono and I was standing behind them and I heard them talking about me and Redford said: 'now he really understands silence’. I thought that was so amazing that I just had to say something, so I excitedly blurted out this long-winded monologue and basically proved I didn’t understand silence at all,” he chuckles.

Ostensibly in Australia to promote last year’s eponymous album, his band’s third, Ebert has no qualms about the fact his mind is far from organising music into releasable packages. “The album is dead for me. It always has been, but I love writing songs so I’m writing a lot of songs. I’m scoring a Pixar short film, which I’m really excited about,” he says happily. “It’s a beautiful, beautiful story, so I’m having fun doing stuff.”

Stuff, it turns out, includes writing a screenplay he developed with sadly departed good friend Heath Ledger. “It’s a musical I’ve been developing that with a director who uh…I shouldn’t give away his name, but he’s a very respected director. I pitched him the idea and he loves it. It’s a bizarre, out-there musical that I can’t talk too much about, but it’s certainly great to be carrying on anything I talked about with Heath.”

While winning the Golden Globe has, he admits, opened up new doors and lead to working on several scores with “well-respected directors” he can’t name, Ebert is still most glad for the chance to simply be heard, and to move on from his past experiences with drugs and poverty.

“Composing orchestral music is seen as being a bit…heavy, and it’s not actually. I’d gone so far down in some people’s estimation it’s nice to know that people might consider that we have something else to say now, and my opinions will be heard by different people.”

What Ebert plans to say to this new audience is however, unclear. As with most people in Hollywood, he’s working on a lot of projects and, with luck, one might find funding. An avid and productive, if unpublished, screenwriter, Ebert is most excited about the conversion of one of his scripts into a film.

"I’d written a screenplay two nights before the awards, now I’m on the third draft and I’m very excited about it. The source is quite strange,’ he says struggling to explain it. “It’s kind of a Native American version of The 400 Blows. It’s a very important story to me, I have a lot of people helping me get the script together.”

For a man who makes singing folk pop and driving an old bus full of new friends into a desert for a party seem like the best idea ever, what excites Ebert most now is revolutionising taxation, and no, that’s not a euphemism.

“I’m working on a few socio-political web-based problem solving techniques - basically big new ideas, at least to me,” he explains keenly, sounding like an excited social science teacher. “Taking the idea of acting ‘as if’ – virtual reality ideas, basically – and applying them to problem solving strategies to bypass the red tape of politics and social change.”

Before confusion sets in, Ebert clarifies. “I bought the domain thenewirs.com, because I’m making a new IRS – the Inland Revenue Service, our national taxation system here. With The New IRS, you’re able to choose where you’d like your tax dollars to go. It’s designed to allocate percentages of your income taxes into categories so you can fund what you’d like to.”

The website, now live, means that, along with his other projects, an Edward Sharpe tour may be increasingly rare; his name becoming more common in film credits, and his Pied Piper charisma and yearning for community finding new outlets.

Live Review: BURNT LETTERS, THE ACFIELDS

Burnt Letters, bringing the pain. Photo by Roisin Malone.

Retreat Hotel, 
Apr 5

For reasons best known to the venue’s management, tonight’s show takes place in the sardine-tin of the stage-less front bar rather than the spacious band room. What the place lacks in space and sight-lines, it more than makes up for in vibe, and, as tonight’s show teaches us, that’s what it’s all about.

Folk duo The Acfields are one of the least pretentious bands you’re ever likely to see, and playing to a room crowded to temperature and humidity bolstering capacity, their set seems like an accidental victory. The brother-sister combination of Dan and Hannah Acfield pen songs about their grandparents, their car and each other, each one leavened by their sterling harmonies. Freely chatting to the audience between (and during) songs, they trample all over the line between audience and band, giving instruments to the crowd and starting conversations. Songs like After You, Taking Your Time and Green Mazda earn a rapturous applause from a chipper crowd.

Opening a set with a sing-along of the traditional Down to the River to Pray is an ambitious move for an alt-country duo like Burnt Letters. If, however, you’ve brought along a swathe of the Melbourne Mass Gospel Choir, it turns out to be a smart one. After turning the pub into a church, singer-songwriters Lou Pine and Kinch Kinski replace the choir with a backing band (spontaneously named the Roughshod Angels by Kinski), and rip the tarp off a stellar set.

Quick Against the Moon, Sweet Face and Split in Two (a song about “The sort of women that stay up all night talking politics and drinking goon,”) show off the duo’s songwriting skills and the (Werckmeister-esque) harmonies. Acknowledging their influences both local and legendary in the rowdy East Brunswick Club and the band’s skills in building an atmosphere in Knotted Pine, it’s the crowd-rousing take on Son of a Preacher Man that gets the biggest response. A sense of humour and humility combined with songwriting and vocal talent this good is rare. To see it generate such an enthusiastic response is cockle-warming like a small town welcome. Closing with Talk to You, the opening track from the debut EP tonight’s show is launching, the choir return and Burnt Letters give us another emphatic example of inclusive warmth.

Live Review: DEAR PLASTIC, INVISIBLE DEARS, OH PEP!

Scarlette Baccini, on form as ever. Photo by Dee Dee

Ding Dong Lounge, 28 Mar

While other Dear Plastic fans are presumably elsewhere frantically scrabbling for Kate Bush tickets, the few punters who catch the opening set from half of Oh Pep! see something very special. Missing their rhythm section, the duo of Olivia Hally and Pepita Emmerichs play a folksy Americana that makes you wish you were sitting on a hay bale in a Mississippi twilight. Dedicating the song Big Strong Man to their missing male members (heh heh), Emmerichs’ crystalline harmonies and tumbling violin and mandolin melodies show her fearsome skills, though these never detract from Hally’s beguiling, seemingly wood-aged songs. Travelling and new song Railroad sound ancient, and news of their imminent five-month tour of the US and Europe is heartening. Any band that has customised crockery as merchandise deserves a far bigger audience.

Invisible Dears are a five piece with a superfluity of technical skills and ideas, and it's these qualities that are both their biggest asset and weakness. Faultlessly shifting styles and tempos several times each song (though never straying far from soundtracking a Dolmio ad) is as fun to play as it is alienating to a non-virtuoso listener and suggests the band are constantly bored of their own songs. While individual segments are interesting, do you, dear reader, think Daniel Johnson's fragile masterpiece Walking the Cow needs to be injected with optimistic funk, sped up and played ‘right’? Didn’t think so.

With the venue near capacity by the time they go on, Dear Plastic take to a stage that resembles a model of a city block; a teetering tower of Moog gear, squat amplifiers, expansive synthesizers and a lone microphone stand. After an arresting instrumental piece, singer Scarlette Baccini joins her bandmates, opens her mouth and sets jaws dropping. Expressive, rich, dazzling, it’s rare to stumble across an instrument this natural and distinctive. Best given the room to shine as it is on recent single, the Goldfrapp-esque Everything’s Coming Up Roses, and tonight’s launched single Buck Up and Pay the Reaper, these songs aim high and rarely miss.

Without dramatic shifts in dynamics or obvious choruses, songs like No Way to Know, Physical Chemical and Bridge to Burn are surging, enveloping creations. Hooks emerge from clouds of rich keyboard textures though sometimes obscure each other and the chiming guitar lines. Baccini, resplendent in multi-coloured Lycra top and striped leggings, is an engaging presence, constantly in motion, always in control. Like a fervent soundtrack to a David Lynch film, Dear Plastic are not, as they claim on their Bandcamp page ‘dishing out more melancholy than Radiohead’, their emotional range is far greater than that. It's a revealing and distinctive set, and one that promises even better to come.

Live Review: SNAKADAKTAL, CITY CALM DOWN

Snakadaktal in action. Photo by Arianna Lucente

Northcote Social Club, March 29 2014

A young, loved up and turned out crowd packs the room early on for this, the last ever show from one of Melbourne's most galvanising bands. But before 2011's Triple J Unearthed winners can take to the stage, City Calm Down kick out some jams. Skillfully deploying keys, dub-deep bass and punchy drums, all the ingredients are in place for new wave dance-floor bangers. Riding between the clean groove of LCD Soundsystem and louche funk of A Certain Ratio, new song Pavement is a fiery calling card, proving the four-piece are hitting new heights. Over buzzing 16-beats, chugging basslines and spiraling synth arpeggios, singer Jack Bourke channels the dramatic bluster of Ian McCulloch. Lost: Trapped, Speak to No End and closing epic Dare are longer than they need to be (though not long enough if you’re dancing, but, being Melbourne no one is), and demand a bigger stage. CCD would be a perfect Golden Plains discovery for those not already won over.

To deafening cheers, Snakadaktal arrive on stage, stand in a line and smile tiredly at each other. “The summer of year nine, we were all at Phoebe's house,” explains drummer Barna Nemeth, of their journey to now. “Since then we've experienced so much awesome stuff, and we're forever grateful. Thank you.” Occasional outbursts of sincerity pepper tonight’s emotional set. With the audience giving the band far more than they give us, the night plays out like a sleepwalker being shouted at by a drunken football team. Singer Phoebe Cockburn couldn’t invest the songs with less effort or emotion, yet the audience responds as if she were invisibly administering cocaine. With only the atmospheric noodling of Joseph Clough’s Rickenbacker (and Cockburn forgetting the lyrics to Isolate) enlivening the first half of the set, song after song (Union, Hung on Tight, Air, Wake Up) vanishes like a rescinded uncertain suggestion. This is the sound of commitment-phobia, of respectfully keeping it down, of really nice people being really nice.

Until, finally, songs cease to resemble their sedate recorded versions and a thrilling Too Soon, Fall Underneath and Dance Bear burst into being. No longer a set more suited to a sensory depravation chamber, moshing, crowd surfing, girls on the shoulders of boyfriends, and a dancer dressed as a crocodile appears on stage transform the venue into the first night of Schoolies week. Closing with The Sun III, instead of an encore we get a teary group hug and scarcely a wave goodbye. An ironically bombastic end to a career of a band that, like them or not, never faked a note, and chose to float away rather than self-destruct.

Live Review: WENDY RULE

Northcote Uniting Church, 22/02/2014

Half an hour after doors open, a line of fans threads their way blackly down High Street. Longhaired and mostly female, the line enters the church hall through clouds of burning frankincense, past autumnal branches and clusters of candles. Before a note is played it’s apparent a Wendy Rule concert is about far more than just music.

Launching her seventh album Black Snake, by playing it through, possibly, she tells us, for the only time, Rule has assembled an adoring crowd and stellar septet to back her. Arriving on stage in a long flowing dark silk dress, she begins with the titular song, her deep, expressive voice instantly arresting and the artful deployment of marimba, guitar, flute, percussion, cello and violin inspired.

Standing before a pentagram of candles she moves into Juniper, a slow celebration of new marriage. Vaguely reminiscent of British folk singers from the 1960s, her overt spirituality sets her apart. "This album comes from soul journeying. Deep journeying and crossing thresholds," she says by way of introducing Rewind, another intensely personal ode to a recent life event. After fifteen years documenting her personal and spiritual journeys in music, it’s unsurprising that the atmosphere in the hall is one of mutual love and respect, and if that sounds bit hippy, it is. This is a woman who introduces a song called Why Must Love Be Twined with Sorrow? with the laughing admission, "Of course, it's written by a Scorpio!"

Many of her songs are given a shot in the arm by the mercurial violin of Aaron Barden, including the solemn ode to Mother Earth A Will of Its Own. Rule is likely to be the only singer who introduces a song (Ereshkigal) with both a brief guide to Mesopotamian goddesses, and a dance ensemble that interpret the five elements; a performance more ceremony than gig. Ever the high priestess, Rule plays a role she is both beloved in, and born to.

After a 20-minute break we move to the album’s second half. A stirring song "about our role in the cosmos and how we are all connected," From Great Above to Great Below follows. Several about her favourite topic, the movement of time and the seasons, After The Storm, Winter and Home follow. Closing with another hymn for the Wiccan church of the earth, All Life Flows into the Great Mother, the (expected) encore sees a dance troupe assemble, all long dresses and flicking hair. Rule leads the band through Horses and Zero, an early song "about magic", with its Einstein-defying chorus of "all space is here / all time is now". Frankly, she's Wendy Rule and reductionist materialism be damned, she is a woman who knows exactly what she's doing.

Live Review: SUNNYBOYS, RON S PENO AND THE SUPERSTITIONS

L-R. Richard Burgman, Jeremy Oxley, Peter Oxley. Photo by Carbie Warbie

Forum Theatre,
21 March 2014

Far from the hordes of Cat Empire fans across the road in Federation Square in average age and explicit enthusiasm, tonight the Forum attracts a more discerning crowd. Selling out the first of two shows, Australian power-pop legends Sunnyboys are amidst a comeback the likes of which they couldn't have predicted a couple of years ago.

Much like the red wine his surname suggests, Ron S Peno and the Superstitions are an acquired taste. Here he, and his proficient band, hold the reverent, attentive and largely over-40, crowd in his thrall. Moving like a flamenco dancer demonstrating ineffective swimming strokes, Peno is a galvanizing presence, but it’s not until the last third of the show that his voice opens up and we can hear what he’s feeling. Then, it's captivating. Call Your Name is the turning point of the set and by the closing with Myself in Thee the sound is huge and game is won.

After a brief video comprising live and promotional footage from their early days and a scene-setting interview the Sunnyboys stride out, accept the euphoric applause and launch into a thorough overview of their three albums. After opening with As I Walk, early song Love to Rule and Tunnel of My Love guitarist Richard Burgman (a man who doesn’t stop grinning all night) says 'It's been a long time boys and girls and we're very glad to be here'. Singer/songwriter Jeremy and brother bassist Peter Oxley are joined by another brother Jim for an exuberant take on Happy Man, and Alastair Spence jumps in on keyboards for Let You Go as the audience increasingly resemble the crowd across the street.

“How does it sound?” asks Burgman rhetorically to his bandmates after a brace of thrilling guitar pop that takes in What You Need, It’s Not Me and You Need a Friend and a lot of inter-band smiling. “I think they like it boys!” he laughs. The first set closes with a Nuggets-worthy I’m Shaking, before returning for Trouble in My Brain, the immortal Alone With You and a rugged Show Me Some Discipline. Howled out for a third encore, the victory lap of early single The Seeker introduced as “a song we haven't played in 20 years,” fills the room with joy. A stunning show, and not just to those who were lucky enough to grow up with the catchy musings of Jeremy Oxley on their Walkman.

CHALI’S ANGLES: An interview with Chali 2na of Jurassic 5

Jurassic 5 founder and prolific rapper CHALI 2NA returns to Australia for the second time this month, ANDY HAZEL discovers a man keen to leave his mark in more ways than one.

“Uh…I’m just getting out of the shower,” says a chuckling Chali 2na down the line from his home in Los Angeles. “I do apologise.”

Literally fresh from reunion shows as part of legendary hip-hop collective Jurassic 5, the self-styled baritone MC is keen to get back to Australia after an ecstatically received concert at last year’s Coachella Festival. “I felt like we picked up where we left off,” he says keenly, “like we never broke up. The show was amazing. Coachella is one of the more professional festivals in America, and it’s an honour to be part of it. We were one of the first rap groups to ever perform there, at the very first Coachella, so it was cool to bring it back round again.”

Their reunion marked the 20^th anniversary of Jurassic 5’s formation, and 2na is keen to “rekindle some fires”, as they tour. “We’re out there performing as heavy as possible,” he explains. “There’s new music, shit that you haven’t heard before, some stuff we might make into a live album, basically we’re just celebrating 20 years of J5.”

Since the band’s split in 2007, 2na notable collaborations with acts like Rizzle Kicks, K’naan, Rusko, Slightly Stoopid and Hilltop Hoods, and long-time friends Ozomatli only hint at his true workload. However, 2009’s Fish Outta Water album, and recent EPs Against the Current parts1 and 2 are what bring 2na the greatest pride. “I call this whole series Against the Current because I’m not trying to compete,” he qualifies. “I mean, big up to people like Kendrick Lamar - I’ve got mad respect for him - but I’ve got to challenge myself. I just want to be the best me I can be, be better than the last thing I did.”

This attitude only partially explains 2na is so in demand however. “Respect is key in the hip hop game and respect is everything in the streets,” 2na says plainly. “I get what I give. I ain’t out here trying to beef and battle rap. I am a regular human being and I move like a regular human being on this earth. When I put myself out, I get back for the rest of my life; you treat people how you want to be treated.”

When it comes to collaborating on his own projects, 2na likens the process to another of his passions, graffiti. “I look at every endeavour, every project, everything I’m part of, like a painting. I have to pay attention to the detail and the construction of the picture, find the right angles. I have to figure what I need to do to help that picture come about…man, I can’t help but get so deep with these questions!”

Drawing a signature tuna fish mural in Fitzroy last time he was in town, 2na is keen to brighten some new walls. “Please let me know if there are any graff writers out there,” he asks keenly. “I want to paint as much as possible when I’m down that way.” You heard the man. Get busy.