SOMEONE LIKE HER: An interview with ADELE

Experiencing the type of fame that comes only a few times a generation, Adele is a genuine, multi-million-selling diva in her native UK who has set several new chart records in recent weeks. Why it is has been a topic of some discussion, ANDY HAZEL looks for clues in a 2009 interview he did with her for Frankie Magazine.

It was meant to be a normal interview, but Adele is a hard one to track down. Three cancellations, a postponement and several phone cards later, her warm and broad South London accent crackles from her mobile as she relaxes between shows on her tour bus.

Still reveling in the first flush of fame, Chasing Pavements has recently hit it's 100 millionth YouTube view, her album 19 has just cracked the Top 10 and Adele is finding herself thrust from an anonymous yet promising BRIT School graduate living with her mum to internationally famous, tabloid-analysed, award winning BRIT School graduate living with her mum.

"I moved out for a bit," she says warmly, "but I moved back in 'cause I missed her," she laughs. "She comes to a lot of the gigs and the TV shows - but not the early morning ones. She doesn't travel with me anymore, she just checks up on me. She can tell if something isn't right or if I'm upset. I call and text her everyday if I don't see her." Adele agrees that this might be why she's handling the pressures and strains of life so well. "To be honest I'm quite oblivious to it, I know things have changed a lot and that it's all happened so fast," she pauses for thought. "But I like it better this way; not thinking about it." Surely that must be pretty challenging, ignoring fame while all around you life changed. "Well," she thinks carefully. "I never wanted to be famous. I only decided I that I wanted to do this when I was offered the record deal over lunch. I was there with my manager and my mum, we got taken out to lunch by this guy from XL and he just kind of popped the question. We looked at each other and I said, 'yeah, OK then'. It was really that simple."

This kind of poise and relaxation is hard to come by, and indicative of the way that Adele has courted fame, without any scandals, celebrity boyfriends or anything to distract from the music at all (despite some tabloid obsession with her physique). At the core of all of this attention and fame though, is her voice. "I always loved to sing," she says happily. "I have done since I knew you could make noise. With the kind of artists I grew up listening to it was never about having a talent, it was about looking pretty and having a gimmick; that's all they knew 'cause that was all I saw on TV y'know. So, it seemed impossible for me to consider it as something I could do for a living, it wasn't something I ever even thought about growing up."

A key aspect of Adele's rise to prominence is her graduating of the BRIT School of Performing Arts and Technologies, a school dedicated to training adolescents who want to make a career in the performing arts. Through focusing on dance, musical theatre, drama and technical theatre, graduates have collectively amassed dozens of awards and tens of millions of album sales which isn't bad for a school with less than 900 students that only began in 1991.

"I didn't know about The BRIT School before I went there," she says keenly. "I was just really bored at my secondary school. The BRIT School was free, it wasn't full of kids pushed by their parents like I thought it might be, there were kids who were there on a Saturday morning working because they loved it. I would literally jump out of bed in the morning knowing I was going there; I'd never felt like that before. I think it was well overdue when a lot of us [seven] all got big about the same time. There was me The Feeling, The Kooks, Leona Lewis, Katie Nash, Katie Melua and Amy Winehouse - all of us Brit School graduates, all of us debut albums at number 1," she laughs. "But, y'know. It's not like we planned it!"

NINJA TUNES: An interview with NINJA of THE GO! TEAM

Ninja, singer with The Go! Team opens up about ‘destroying bands who sell millions of records’, the making of Rolling Blackouts and the possible split of the band later this year.

It’s rare for a band to be so tightly wound to the picture painted by their name, but then The Go! Team were never going to do things by halves with a name like that. Rolling Blackouts, their current album and one likely to be featured prominently in their upcoming gigs, is a melange of the riotous hip-hop beats, cheerleader chants, slashing guitars and horn blasts with which they made their name, but also finds time to chill out a little, something lead singer Ninja has little time for. “Once I start I can’t really stop,” she says of her famously exuberant stage presence. “If you’re running the 100m you can’t slow down and say ‘whew I started way too fast, gotta take a break now’ you start off at one level and you can’t fall beneath that level, and that’s it really. I don’t plan to be 110% constantly, it’s just what I would do at home even if no one was there with me.” At the suggestion that there is a difference between the performer Ninja and the woman behind her, Ninja gets even more vocal. “I am Ninja! There is only Ninja, there used to be someone else but Ninja killed her. I’m not like Beyonce; she thinks she has her performer side and her shy lady side, that’s not me. There is just Ninja.”

With gigs renown for tight, thrilling reinterpretations of their sprawling recordings, Ninja is the prime force and pinnacle of the Go! Team as a live unit. However, when it comes to making the music, there are two versions of the band. “Yeah, and it’s always been like that,” she says changing pace. “Ian [Parton, songwriter and guitarist] locks himself away for a while, a few months maybe, with some sandwiches and bottles of water. He has to create the album on those scraps of food and people come over and put down bits and pieces; bass guitars, guitars…you never know what’s going to happen. He’ll get guests in to sing on parts, then he shakes a wand and the album is finished. We’re happy being involved in the live version, that’s the fun part where we get to mix it up and get involved. The album is made up of Ian’s influences and that’s his baby.”

The creation of Rolling Blackouts, saw Parton became even more hermetic than before and its creation is something Ninja describes as ‘shrouded in mystery. “I had emails and calls like ‘can you come down to the studio for this…’ or I’ll write raps or harmonies. We’re always recording stuff and not knowing what it’s going to sound like. I’ll record things and wouldn’t know what was going to happen with the song. The first time I heard the album was when the journalists heard it. But when we’re performing these songs on stage we’re singing and rapping a lot more.”

While fans are used to the low-fi rush of a Go! Team song, there has been more than one review which mentions the loss of Ninja’s lyrics to the horn blasts, booming drums and blasting guitars, likely due in part to Parton’s insistence on mastering to a C-60 cassette. “Ian puts it together and it’s a really clear vision he has; he would have liked to make it even more low-fi if he could. If I’m rapping something I want people to hear and understand the lyrics I write because you know, I spend a lot of time writing them, so I’d like it less low-fi but then he’d want it more low-fi. I think you need to see us live on stage as well as on record, because live I strive for clarity which I think is what the audience want as well as all the crazy stuff we do.”

This optimism and blithe sunshiny attitude is core to The Go! Team’s sound and energy and Ninja’s selection as the band’s focal point was a stroke of brilliance on the part of Parton when he was assembling the band. Last here in January 2009, their forthcoming tour sees them play smaller venues, which comes as a strange move given the massive airplay recent single Buy Nothing Day has received. “When we play a place that’s more intimate, that’s a challenge to us because we only have a tiny little area to jump around in and we love that, though it does usually result in injuries. We’re also doing festivals to thousands of people who may never have heard of us,” Ninja quantifies clearly relishing the opportunity. “Festivals are a challenge. We’re battling against weather and the lure of other bands so we have to get an audience and keep them there throughout the set - even if they don’t know who we are!” She says excitedly. “We’ve got nothing to lose - people don’t know us so they don’t expect much and we destroy it! We destroy those other bands who have sold millions of records and have a big following, you see they have a lot to live up to, whereas we get to surprise people.”

Something that came as a surprise to a lot of people was the offhand comment made by Parton during an interview with a small Irish newspaper in February “This may be our last year as a live band.” He also confirmed that the band “might split up” after this tour. Ninja is similarly uncertain, though doubtful. “I don’t know. I have loads of stuff I want to do, I’m working on a solo project with interesting producers, one of the producers is Starslinger another one is a guy called Rural. There’s a lot of stuff I want to do, who knows what’s going to happen really. I just don’t know, but I’ll put it on my blog when I do.”

Best catch them while they can still be caught.

Live Review: SANTANA

ROD LAVER ARENA

Seeing a legend like this is a strange experience, one almost crushed under safe expectations, stifling any chance to feel the transcendence the band built their legacy on. However, one glance around the arena says it's unlikely the crowd is looking for anything like that. With Carlos Santana you know exactly what you're going to get; a dude in a hat playing a lot of guitar, a large backing band of similarly proficient musicians, and a piñata full of Latino goodtimes.

With well over 100 previous members, the current 11-piece lineup fills the stage with 30-odd drums and copious percussion, none of which is wasted. Riding rugged over the top off the heavily swung rhythms, pulsing bass and stinging Hammond oozes Carlos's guitar tone, dripping with sustain and busy as a Spanish flea pulling one song into the next. "I'm very grateful, very blessed at this time, on this planet," says Carlos after shaking the place to the ground for the umpteenth time. "It's important for us to stay lightheaded and to live in wonderment, healing and love." The audience cheers. "I happen to know a lot about love right now," he smiles. "You see, I got married in December to this lady..." and in walks Cindy Blackman (you know, Lenny Kravitz's drummer from Are You Gonna Go My Way). Cue a stonkering five-minute drum solo, a sloppy kiss and a blistering intro to Jingo, which has the audience cheering louder than ever.

From the crowd, many of who would have helped Abraxas to number one in 1971, there is a palpable excitement and a lot of arrhythmic arm waving when Santana pulls out Oyo Come Va and Evil Ways before segueing into A Love Supreme (there is a lot of segueing tonight). All inspiration for another soliloquy, this time we're told about 'SOCC' aka 'the Sound of Collective Consciousness' a concept with enough references to 'a younger time' and 'bringing the love from Woodstock' to make Anthony Carew apoplectic with rage. "If you remember one thing from tonight, make it this...you are light and love," he solemnly intones before we all, gender by gender, chant it back arms aloft: "I am light and love!" So, it’s a relief for some when the band launch into Sunshine of Your Love and several of his recent Smooth(er) efforts, taking us back to the safety of the idea of Carlos, leaving us free to comfortably nestle in his warm spirit and copious baggage.

WITTERTAINMENT: an interview with THE BEDROOM PHILOSOPHER

At the outset of the Melbourne Comedy Festival, The Bedroom Philosopher proclaims there is nothing more boring that hipsters and moves on from Northcote with a new comedy show ‘Wit Bix’, which is all about wanting to kick start some conversations.

“I like a pun,” muses the Bedroom Philosopher aka Justin Heazlewood, a revelation which will surprise no one familiar with his work. “I think the name Wit Bix sums up the show because it’s a segmented show, a series of short witty bits. I’ve been self obsessed for 30 straight years so I know myself pretty well and I can say that I am witty.”

With several Triple J hits under his belt, an ARIA nomination and a plethora of TV appearances earned during his years of slogging it out as Australia’s sole representative of indie folk comedy, Heazlewood is more optimistic than ever, a state reflected in Wit Bix, though a proclivity for self-depreciation hasn’t entirely lost him.

“I’ve been the king of whimsy in the past, and there are expectations that I’ll do this awkward, indie shambolic style of comedy,” he says of the assumptions that he brings with him now. “Wit Bix has a lot of wordplay, but it’s more angry and political than I’ve been before. There’s a song about Australia and how much I hate it being conservative, xenophobic and dumb written as a jaunty John Williamson bush ballad. Good comedy has to be original and surprising, because essential comedy is a surprise and laughter is a tiny scream. You’re being attacked by a concept you didn’t see coming, and as times goes on it’s harder to be shocking and original. My usual criticism of things I don’t like is that the writing isn’t intelligent enough, I adore wordplays and juxtapositions.”

With a sideline in writing for Frankie, J-Mag and The Big Issue as well as several websites, Heazlewood gets a lot of room to experiment with language and wordplay which any subject he touches is rife with. However, 2011 sees him moving further into the realm of television with recent appearances on In Gordon Street Tonight and a forthcoming, if overdue, appearance on Spicks and Specks. “TV makes you relevant in Australian comedy and this is my TV year. I’m also doing the Channel 10 Comedy Gala, which I guess is a sign of some success,” he states with a blithe defiance before sighing despondently. “It’s such a confusing dynamic for someone as self-deprecating as me, so I’m handling it by being really cynical. I’m a musician and a comedian simultaneously, but music is more fashionable than comedy so I’m actually trying to turn into a massive rock star. Everyone in Aussie comedy is so polite and supportive of each other, I want to be like Liam Gallagher was in interviews because if I have to read one more interview with a polite indie band not really answering the questions they’re asked and dropping the right words I’m going to shoot myself.”

As a writer, musician, comedian and cultural commentator, multitasking is something Heazlewood clearly excels at. “I’m Gen Y so I’m naturally born with the ability to do four things at once,” he says breezily. “I play music and write so therefore I’m like every second person in Melbourne, plus, I’m a Gemini so I’m already split down the middle. I was born in a bogan town to down to earth country folk, so I’ve got this no bullshit perspective, but after 10 years in the big smoke wearing vintage clothes, I’d like to think I have the ability to be insider and outsider at the same time.”

With more multiple dualities than an episode of Twin Peaks, Heazlewood finds these roles an eternal font of frustration and inspiration, or, as he puts it: “with music, people only want to hear your old stuff and in comedy you have to have new material, so in musical comedy they cancel each other out.” The Bedroom Philosopher, occupying a niche no one else in Australia has attempted and predating the Flight of the Conchords by several years, depicts this state as “the clown and the balladeer punching the shit out of each other. I’m a frustrated musician turning tricks because audiences like it,” he confesses, “and because it really annoys the indie community. I’d argue the music scene has never taken itself so seriously and that my sort of music has its place in that. It’s just awesome how angry people get when they can’t put you in a box,” continues Heazlewood with glee. “I’m the King of Hipsters, I’m the biggest one there is. Northcote is the most hipster thing a hipster could ever do, it’s basically the last word in hipsterness. I’m also the first to admit that it’s old now, and you’d be struggling to find a more tedious conversation at a party than trying to define a hipster. You’d bore everyone stupid, get awkward silences and the only thing left to do would be to call a taxi.”

After the success of last year’s album Songs from the 86 Tram, its accompanying tour and ARIA nomination, Heazlewood was glad to return to subjects that used his improvisational skills and spontaneous wordplay.

“86 Tram was a writing exercise to make myself disappear,” he says keenly. ”Before then I’d been banging on about my own neuroses and issues for about 10 years but for that, I didn’t even want to be in it. Wit Bix is back to me again only now I’m more confident. I hit 30 and got angry which was a great source of jokes. The show is me making fun of men, I talk about how much I hate going to stand up comedy nights, not being happy with Australia, and about how awkward we are about Aboriginal issues and how no Gen Y person will go there to the point of racism itself. This makes it one of the freshest sources for comedy, I acknowledge that too. I like to think there are jokes to be found in any topic and I think I’ve found quite a few as well as making valid statements about how we’re stuck in an awkward silence. All art is a conversation of some kind and I just want to kick start some new conversations.”

Live Review: OMAR SOULEYMAN

NORTHCOTE SOCIAL CLUB

There has rarely been a more diverse and uniformly excited crowd than that squeezed into a very sold-out Northcote Social Club tonight. Anticipation is expressed through spontaneous cheering, near-constant clapping and the occasional honk of a Mega Blast (a vuvuzela-like hand horn), and it’s all very warrented. From the moment the red curtains part and the initial disappointment that we will not be treated to a band, but rather a dexterous synthesizer player/electronic percussionist Rizan Sa’id, subsides, it is a night like nothing else.

Dressed in his red and white checkered keffiyeh, dark circular glasses and light green, smartly trimmed thobe, Omar Souleyman looks as relaxed as a man with a 500 album back catalog would be, as he paces back and forth across the stage. With a long history as a wedding entertainer in his native Syria, Souleyman is clearly no longer adored only in the Middle East as his performance here elicits adoration most acts would happily retire on. Known by most for his three albums on the Sublime Frequencies label, it’s clear Souleyman hasn’t changed his shtick one iota. He tucks his mic in his armpit, claps and motions for the already excited crowd to get up and get involved, which he never needs to do because we already are. Still, when a man with his sense of authority gestures minimally, the effect is huge and appreciation is expressed even more ardently.

Simply hearing musicians use scales that don’t follow standard intervals is a welcome change. The combination of ceaselessly spiraling, slightly nasal-sounding Arabic scales, brittle steel-drum percussion and a rapid, pounding 4/4 bass drum interspersed with Souleyman’s echo-laden voice is a powerful one. ‘Eeeer-yah!’ he chants again and again in various songs after brief synth flourishes and pitch-bend heavy instrumental break from the po-faced Sa’id. We cheer back with cries of ‘Omar!’ and ‘Habibi!’, raised wrists twisting, feet stamping and copious blasts from plastic horns all of which melds into the song perfectly. The fluidity of the rhythms, the quavering of the notes and the space Souleyman’s voice generates is intoxicating. Over the course of the gig Souleyman smiles more and more, as stage invaders wielding filming iPhones circle dance, stuff money in his pocket and occasionally kiss his hand. This is not your standard show and it’s a glorious example of the power of charisma and the variety of ways in which positivity can be made and music can feel totally fresh again.

CD Review: UNIDENTIFIED FLYING COLLECTION OF SONGS – MY OWN PET RADIO

(INDEPENDENT)

Who exactly My Own Pet Radio is (Sam Cromack) and what he’s about should become apparent to anyone paying attention to the Australian independent music scene over the next 12 months. Singer and songwriter with current Triple J hypees Ball Park Music, Cromack is a prolific individual, with this first full-length release following on from his band’s two EPs and four singles, all released in 2010. With a proliferation of deftly played acoustic and electronic instruments, and responsible for all singing and production duties, the album, like its artwork, shows Cromack is fascinated by structure and assembly.

At times, Unidentified Flying Collection of Songs sounds like a learning process, though an eminently listenable one. When Cromack occasionally risks losing songs to production experiments it’s never in an egotistic way, and nothing here, no catchy hook or spiralling effect, outstays its welcome. Listening to the album puts you in the unusual situation of not knowing what the next song will do once one, usually abruptly, ends. Album highlight and closing track How Strange You Are evokes melancholy Kiwi pop, All Colours disappears into a gorgeously unhinged vocal arrangements, while The Banana Situation offers wry and catchy self-analysis.

Cromack’s inspired mix of low-fi production works in favour of the music. Opening track I Am Having Such a Good Time Here is a hilarious mix of acoustic guitar and harpsichord-driven verses, which explodes to a vocal-drenched hook of a chorus. Like other parts of the album, it’s reminiscent of Beck, when he was still driven by a sense of adventure.

Though it’s unlikely many other musicians could assemble an album with this sense of inventiveness and playful intelligence, the most notable achievement here is that Cromack drives the whole album with a quality that is sadly bereft from most new Australian music, personality.

Live Review: GOLDEN PLAINS

MEREDITH SUPERNATURAL AMPHITHEATRE

When there is such a high level of expectation around a band and a festival there is a lot of room to fall, but The Hold Steady entertain no such notions. Blasting a gapless, breathless rush of smart and verbose punk rock, the band pack so much energy into the music that frontman Craig Finn comes across like Woody Allen if Allen had dabbled in brilliant punk rock instead of respected jazz clarinet. Though most of the incredibly dense lyrics are lost, the sheer thrill of songs like Hot Soft Light, Sequestered in Memphis and the twin guitar attack of Rock n Roll Problems seal the deal that this will be one of the shows of the festival.

If watching Airbourne is like watching Jersey Shore (as one punter accurately notes), then watching Wavves is akin to watching a reality TV show. Will he lose it this week? Will he argue with the crowd, his band or both? As it turns out the recipients of Nathan Williams bitter ennui are an overly aggressive security guard, the sound guy and ‘fucking grasshoppers’. Opening with So Bored and King of the Beach before continuing to get mopey about California and being young, the brilliant low-fi haze of his recordings is lost live, and the songs become more mechanisms for eliciting a steady stream of bodies across the crowd barrier. Job done.

Possibly the band most people are most excited for Belle and Sebastian prove that plane fares for a twelve-strong band plus crew is not wasted with a complete blinder of a set. Though meek in voice, Stuart Murdoch is anything but on stage, careering along the front row, crowd-surfing, high-fiving and kinetically expressing his joy at playing. With a set that’s heavy on If You’re Feeling Sinister and The Life Pursuit plus a version of Kinks’ Victoria that gets everyone on side, they are a perfect match of venue, songs and audience, even if certain tough-looking musicians occasionally yelp and flinch at an unexpected insect landing on them.

Landing a pressure-heavy 9PM slot on the last day is Architecture in Helsinki who choose to return from a yearlong absence with a new look and new songs. Unsurprisingly, it all goes brilliantly and the new look; white suits and tails with blue sparkly bow ties matches their mid-80s lightweight electro-pop perfectly. Mixing in crowd-amping new versions of old favourites, it’s the new songs that really impress. Deep Down will be all over the radio and in charts before the year’s out, while the titles Escapee and Desert Island won’t mean much now but are songs that are sure signs the band are stronger than ever and their forthcoming album is something to hanker for.

While Hawkwind were fascinating from a ‘how will they do it?’ angle (the answer is they don't, with robotic dancing girls on stilts and overlooking your classic single), World’s End Press take that awkward 2AM-after-the-headliner-slot and run it into the ground. Earning deafening vocal love and several hundred elevated shoes partway through their blinding single Faithful, W.E.P are a bizarre beast. One misstep and their blend of 80s beats, flailing dance moves, sparkling lamé and rubbery basslines would come crashing down, but their sheer energy, sincerity and undeniable conviction means they become an unlikely high point of a festival whose success is largely based on familiar acts playing familiar songs in a familiar setting.

While that’s essential to a certain degree, this year’s Golden Plains was one full of surprises, the most welcome of which was the programming; eclectic, complimentary and almost impossibly, without a dud. From Graveyard Train’s piercing cry of ‘Wake the fuck up Golden Plains!’ as they redefine the role of opening Day Two, to the micro-second thought process written on hundreds of faces as ‘who’s Imelda May?’ turns to ‘holy shit this is awesome!’ the only sensible reaction is; ‘Golden Plains, you clearly know what you’re doing, please carry on.’

CD Review: GIMME SOME – PETER, BJORN AND JOHN

(Cooking Vinyl)

Regardless that this is the band’s sixth album, most people will arrive at a PB&J album with expectations of stylish, featherweight pop. When Young Folks hit it felt like such effortless sliver of genius that you’d expect its composers and producers to be able to turn out a dozen more like it, which made its accompanying album Writer’s Block such a relative disappointment. With Gimme Some there’s no Young Folks but further, no attempts to write anything light and catchy or even produce the album themselves, which is remarkable given the experience they’ve had behind the desk. This move is perfectly exemplified by Breaker, Breaker, which takes a blistering 99 seconds of supercharged guitar-driven pop with a suitably thrilling filmclip and leaves no prisoners.

The band doesn’t seem in a particularly good mood throughout Gimme Some. There’s no joy in their delivery, from the opening repeated lines of ‘I don’t think you are sorry for what you did / I know you need it and you just don’t know how to quit’ through to the closing ‘I know you don’t love me and I know the reason why.’ While heartbreak has been the impetus for some of the greatest indie pop songs of all time (say, The Field Mice’s If You Need Someone or The Concretes’ New Friend), here the writers seem too scared to fully explore them, content with initial feelings of bitterness and anger, keeping the songs short for fear of giving too much away.

Peter Morén’s Lennonesque piercing vocal and slap-back echo haunts the album, an evocation that does the band no favours. Instead, when they stretch out and show a hint of vulnerability as on the closing IKYDLM, they get interesting and the production of Per Sunding (of Swedish indie pop gods Eggstone) gets something to explore. Worth a listen, but probably not many.

CD Review: BLUE SONGS – HERCULES AND THE LOVE AFFAIR

(Shock/Moshi Moshi)

Nostalgic house music can be incredibly powerful when done right, when songs are assembled with personality, intent and deft production. The odd thing about Hercules and the Love Affair (HLA) is that there is no real identity associated with the band and so it is that Blue Songs seems to float around a musical concept of Chicago house-influenced pop with no real heart. While this might be fine if you want to switch off and relax with the last warm breeze of summer and some good conversation, there is little offered in the way of dynamics or arresting beats as their debut boasted.

Most associated with the earlier incarnation of HLA not with ringleader Andy Butler, but guest Antony Hegarty for their most notable track, Blind. Here, the most notable guest is Kele Okereke who turns in a limp-wristed effort on the insipid Step Up. More impressive is the gliding, pulsing bassline, heavily compressed brass and four-to-the-floor beats of Falling (almost worth price of admission alone) and the late-80s encapsulation of My House, which oozes late-80s nostalgia in an infectious way, the only songs which really build on their beginnings.

Nostalgia seems to be Butler's main motivation on assembling Blue Songs. While it can be glorious to be reminded of an era when someone resurrects their hybridised version of it, it’s less exciting when their version is so faceless and any chance to connect with the music is challenged by shifting vocalists, none of whom leave a strong enough impression.

HLA leave their boldest move for last, with a bizarre, beatless, breathy cover of Sterling Void’s seminal It’s Alright, which only reminds you how great the Pet Shop Boys cover was, a band whose Behaviour album Blue Songs would dearly love to be.

Live Review: ALPINE

CORNER HOTEL

Despite the murmuring of dissent in the weeks leading up to this gig, it turns out a local band with minimum airplay and only a handful of gigs under their belts CAN release a debut EP and nearly sell out The Corner on a Friday. Alpine, whose hype has been moving from a low buzz to a steady roar since their signing to Ivy League last August, prove beyond a doubt that 2011 is going to be their year. Kicking off with a brief instrumental Lovers, they leap into Too Safe from their EP Zurich and it’s safe to say the young, stylish hand very vocal audience are very familiar with the singles and grow more enthusiastic with every song.

Before the third song is over, the band’s songwriting format begins to show; bold guitar chops, icy vocal harmonies, 303-style pulses from the bass guitar, clipped minimal drums and dense washes of synth. It’s a stellar combination and one the six-piece toy with joyfully. Comprising of four guys and two artfully made up and attired harmonising girls Phoebe Baker and Louisa James, Alpine have struck a winning combination. Christian O’Brien’s slashing dry guitar work sounds simplistic but is delicate and precise, holding this unusually tight band sound together and ensuring that the only way the songs stray from their recorded version is by an elevation in intensity.

The stunning mid-set highlights Hands and Tough Skin see the constantly writhing and dancing Baker’s makeup run, as does the sweat down the backs of the tightly dancing audience. New songs Seeing Red, North South East West and Vigour, promisingly, get the audience responding louder than ever. As cupfuls of glitter are hurled toward the ceiling, the projections of the cosmos that have been illuminating the band reach a flickering peak and Baker’s microphone is flung to the floor as the single Heartlove kicks in it’s impossible not to be caught up in the thrill of the moment. Encore Icypoles (recently remixed by impossibly hip British producer Star Slinger) ratchets the joyful intensity up another notch, and the coda to Icypoles ends a set that could be turned into one of the best albums of 2011. Alpine are onto a winner and delivered one of the best gigs of recent memory to prove it.

FRIENDS IN DEED: An interview with NARDI SIMPSON from STIFF GINS

NARDI SIMPSON fills ANDY HAZEL in on life as half of acoustic duo STIFF GINS and how stripping away your identity can sometimes be a good thing.

With the release of their third album Wind and Water, acoustic duo Stiff Gins seem at the peak of their creative powers and damn happy about it. “We’re totally excited about the album, it’s been a long time coming,” says Nardi Simpson. “The songs have been around for about four years, when we started to demo those songs. We waited a couple of years to get the album together, then we got funding to finish it, spent the last two years recording and finally…it’s here.”

Though four years may seem a long time between albums, Simpson and band-mate Kaleena Briggs are good at squeezing life experience into their time together since their formation in 1997. Playing in Kuwait to Australian army troops, extensively touring Africa and Europe and 2011 is the first year they’ve assembled a backing band for live performances. “It’s always just been the two of us,” Simpson says. “We’re usually loners, we’re a bit shy. We’re a little bit intimidated by musos because we think that we’re two friends, and we don’t feel like we’re ‘on the scene’ or ‘in the business’”.

Raised from Redfern but now living in Marrickville, Stiff Gins are most commonly identified as being an indigenous group, a label that initially obscured the music more than they would have liked. “We freaked out at the beginning because it has such strong associations,” she intones carefully. “When we went over to Edinburgh people thought that they were coming to see traditional Aboriginal music, so…words can overtake what we do. As we’ve become more comfortable with who we are it matters less,” Simpson continues. “We know we’re able to do justice to that term and represent that as well as representing a lot of different things. We’re blackfellas and we’re proud of that and we’re songwriters and we’re proud of that, we can deliver on both of those in 45 minutes.”

While Australians may just be catching on to the dazzling harmonies and sweet blend of folk-pop that the band birth, people in unlikely corners of the Earth who might be ahead of us. “Things that are huge for us; our heritage and who we are just disappears over there. When we went over to Africa we were driving around with this guy who asked us where we were from and we told him we were indigenous Australians, and he said ‘we’re all indigenous’. He said ‘oh no, you’re not black,’ and I got angry. Then I realised that the politics of colour of skin is totally different there; you’re black or your not, and we weren’t. What’s at the core of who you are might not have any relevance anywhere else.”

Identity and nature seem to be big inspirations for both Briggs and Simpson as songwriters, but overriding even these sources is their friendship, which has lasted even longer than the band. “It was hard for me to come to terms with being daggy relatively young,” laughs Simpson about the suggestion that their music will age well. “I was all about getting on stage at Homebake and the Big Day Out, winning an ARIA, all that stuff. I thought that being in a band would make me even a little bit cool, but because we had such different upbringings and we let the music unfold, your experience as you get older changes and your stories become more interesting and you get better at delivering them in a different way. Because we’ve been doing it for ages, I can’t envisage a time when we‘re not playing. A while back, I felt like we were losing a bit of what it is that enables us to have the friendship, but now -because we’ve got a publisher and record label and an agent, it’s cleared some space for us to do what we do best. It’s all about the friendship again.”

WRITTEN ABOUT LOVE: An interview with RICHARD COLBURN of BELLE AND SEBASTIAN

Not minding being woken up at 8AM in the midst of a Glasgow winter, Belle and Sebastian’s drummer RICHARD COLBURN is happy to talk about band dynamics, his love of touring and Australian beer, as ANDY HAZEL excitedly discovers.

“I’m in Glasgow, in mah bed...I just woke up man,” says Colburn sighing tiredly, his Scottish burr seeming extra-thick. About to embark on an extensive global tour to promote the band’s 2010 album Write About Love, Colburn fills time between working with the group by also playing with Snow Patrol and occasionally with their singer Gary Lightbody, REM's Peter Buck and Zooey Deschanel in Tired Pony. “One album and three gigs!” He says qualifying the latter “not sure that counts as a band.”

A little more animated, Colburn brings us up to date. “I’m in the studio just now with a Spanish band; me and [Belle and Sebastian bassist] Bob [Kildea], we’re the backing band of the studio. I love working with other bands and different things with them, I’ve done it so long now I’m not qualified to do anything else besides music,” he says with a laugh. “I was over in the States for a month before I got married,” he continues casually. “We didn’t get a honeymoon in, but we’ve both just been so busy. I’ve got a baby coming at the end of July too, which complicates things. I think we’re back by then, we might stop for a little while.”

This blithe referral to life-changing events is a perfect example of the earthy realism that underpins Belle and Sebastian. Call them twee and fey but the members are from working class Glasgow and singer Stuart Murdoch, a boxer and Colburn, a champion snooker player, are as unaffected as they come, still living in the suburbs in which they were raised. Colburn still admits to being thrilled that he can travel and play music the way he does. “I am a fan of touring I love it, I really love it, I don’t think I could be happier doing anything else actually. We’ve not toured for so long which means there’ll be lots of old songs in the set by the time we get to Melbourne. We often tend to reintroduce old songs into the set after we’ve had a break. Someone will want to hear something old, You’re Just A Baby or String Bean Jean, that sort of thing.”

Excitement contained, it seems Colburn is just as enthusiastic about the time between gigs as playing them. “Well last time I was in Australia I was in Perth and we hired bikes and drove up to Bon Scott’s grave, which was cool. Me and Bob are less proactive in the ‘lets go out and find stuff to buy’ department when we tour, we’re more about going out after the gig, I’m more an advocate of that. It depends if it’s a gig day or if you have a day off, sometimes someone will go off on their own, Stuart might go and check out public transport or something. There are times like that, after 15 years it’s inevitable you get into habits.”

Besides the habit of consistently putting out acclaimed albums, Colburn is surprisingly forthcoming about the inter-band dynamics, those same ones that come to play when touring, something that will inevitably be a part of a seven-strong band with an entourage. “We always try to be as democratic as possible, but you always need one person to be decisive otherwise nothing gets done. The dynamics have shifted over the years,” he continues. “The first two records were pretty much all Stuart and quite rightly so, they were all his songs. We were almost like a backing band in the beginning, but around the time of [The Boy With The] Arab Strap, other members started having an input; Stevie or Isobel mainly, and latterly Sarah as well. At first, it was all Stuart but soon he decided he didn’t want all that pressure and we all concentrated on working together and it opened up a lot more.”

Songwriting in the band has obviously undergone a major shift since the release of debut album Tigermilk in 1996, though the band still sounds unmistakably like itself, which, it seems, is in part due to the weight given to each member's opinions. “Occasionally people will suggest things for each other, it depends who writes the songs,” he explains. “It’s got to be OK by Stuart and they have to have a really firm idea of what they want. It could be me or Bob or Beans [keyboardist Chris Geddes], sometimes songs are only half written so we just experiment together as a band. I do all my own parts but sometimes it’s the songwriter who makes suggestions, especially if it’s not quite working for some reason, we’ll change parts around and think about adding other instruments, like horns maybe.”

The opening track from Write About Love, I Didn’t See It Coming, sees Colburn kicking off the album with an atypical funk beat, introducing one of the favourite subgenres of Belle and Sebastian songs; the dance number. “On that particular song we recorded it a different way,” explains Colburn keenly. “I think there is some electronic percussion in the backing track, but even without that, it’s such a different song from anything else we recorded for that album. I’d love to go further down that route, explore more of the electronic and dance stuff,” he says before laughing. “A few years back we were going to make an entirely electronic album where we all played keyboards, like Depeche Mode. Perhaps we’ll get back to that at some point, I know Beans was keen.”

When it comes to songwriting, much has been made of the role of spirituality in some of Murdoch’s later lyrics, an aspect Colburn is happy to discuss though unable to contribute much to. “Christianity is big for Stuart yeah, and in the songs he writes there’s definitely the content inspired by Christianity. He’s always been an avid churchgoer, but as for the rest of us not so much no, that’s more of his scene and we’re happy to go along with it.”

Something he’s far happier to go along with is a chance to be introduced to is the work of some Australian microbreweries. “I enjoy Australian beer and always like the selection of alcohol we’re given in our rider when we play Australian shows, and I’d love the opportunity to try some other. Usually on a rider they just give us VB or Carlton or whatever, which is fine, but we’d love to get our hands on some microbrewed beer, we’re always up for that.” Well, you know what he’s drinking Melbourne, get your round in.

CD Review: NATURAL DISASTERS – D. ROGERS

(Popboomerang)

Often in the heady world of popular music, someone who isn’t an attention seeking charisma machine can find their songs lost in the ever-faster-flowing release of new albums, singles and scenes. Replacing fireworks and neon signs with brains, a dulcet voice and acerbic lyrics is D. Rogers, who, on his fourth album, has decided to bring in fewer accompanists on what is a surprisingly eclectic album.

Don’t be fooled by the image of a myopic singer-songwriter from Northcote, Rogers is a writer who is comfortably in command of an arsenal of sounds without ever playing to a cliché or straying from a delicate, oddly hi-fi, production. A string section on Pay to Pay is gorgeously arranged, lending the track a wintry ominous quality, reinforced by reversed drums, while Emma Heeney’s beautiful vocal harmony brings a warm complimentary glow wherever she lends it. Possibly the most beautifully realised song here is Hanabi, a two minute burst of fuzzpop that brings Rogers back to Japan, the country where his first two albums were born, to celebrate space, land and tradition; a long way from the domestic concerns that give the album its title.

With less of a country edge than his earlier work, Rogers isn’t all about ‘casting a spell’ with his voice and guitar, which the opening track Not Correct and the acquiescing lament I’d Cave prove he can do with ease. A cranking ‘band’ (himself and drummer Dave Kleynjans), bursts through on the power pop crackle of Your Heart’s An Only Child, lead off single Westgarth Talking and spellbinding closer Food & Electricity. With no songs straying over four minutes, Rogers is still revelling in the pop song framework, but it’s rarely been used with such a manifold talent or acuity as it is on Natural Disasters.

CD Review: THE GO! TEAM – ROLLING BLACKOUTS

(Memphis Industries / Shock)

Go! Team mastermind Ian Parton recently described Rolling Blackouts as ‘all over the shop’, which is quite something from a guy who seems to have a very fixed idea of atmosphere and almost no rules for how to create it. Though known for their cheerleader chants, squalling guitars and ruthlessly low-fi approach to sample-based good times, The Go! Team here bring in a whole new element; harmony. Though not a huge deviation from the unhinged raucousness of the still-brilliant début Thunder, Lightning Strike there are moments when things become unexpectedly sublime. The glistening 80s keyboard swoops on Apollo Throwdown, sweetly naive melodies on Ready to Go Steady, Deerhoof’s Satomi Matsuzaki’s vocal on Secretary Song and Best Coast’s Bethany Consentino’s contributions to the Triple J-hyped Buy Nothing Day all hint at this being their most song-oriented album yet. Introducing an African choir on the brilliant The Running Range that exemplifies the freedom Parton operates under, given that there are essentially two versions of the band; Parton in his room bringing in guests and band members as he chooses to make an album, and an exuberant sextet who sell it.

Apparently mastered via a C90 cassette the album doesn’t sound low-fi to its detriment though vocal clarity is sacrificed for that glorious nostalgic scuzz which seems to suggest happiness in a sunny pre-internet age. With rumours that the band may be splitting after their tour this year, the instrumentals Super Triangle, Yosemite Theme and Lazy Poltergeist hint at a possible future for Parton’s music; heavy on Boards of Canada-style Moog lead lines and acoustic guitar, by no means a bad thing. Hopefully this focus on melody and harmony won’t mean their live show is any less thrilling when they bring it in May.

Live Review: M WARD

PALAIS THEATRE

Tonight’s tickets state in black block writing ‘M Ward, sponsored by Frankie Magazine’, and boy does it look like it. So many nice frocks, tight jeans, softly pointed boots and perfectly tousled hairdos are squeezed into the Palais this evening that it’s remarkable 1000 Pound Bend bothered staying open. With all the unfussiness befitting his plain-speaking songwriting style, Ward walks out, waves, straps on his Gibson Hummingbird and launches into a dynamic bluesy instrumental. With the crowd already attentive to every plucked string and pealing harmonic when he introduces his gruff tenor with Paul’s Song, we’re transfixed. Which is a hard thing to be by one man and a guitar, no bells or whistles, just minimal use of harmonica, a little delay pedal and some simple piano. There is no overwhelming talent or blazing charisma with Ward, and it would be distracting if there were. His voice is expressive, his songs decent and his guitar playing excellent; a collection of talents that could be found in a dozen musicians in any given city, yet somehow, with Ward, one and one and one is four.

A wave of applause rolls around the theatre with the opening notes of Chinese Translation, a hush descends for the Dylan-meets-Khalil Gibran poetic solemnity of Requiem and cheering breaks out for a neat expropriation of Don Gibson’s Oh Lonesome Me.

Just before entering into a gorgeously caustic version of Hold Time, Ward ruefully mentions that he’s promoting an album he released two years ago, ‘late, I know, but I love coming here.’ Whether he likes being on stage is another issue. He rarely smiles and dispatches songs almost begrudgingly, echoing a recent interview in which he mentioned his disdain for performing. The songs however, don’t suffer at all. Ward’s piano-led take on Daniel Johnston’s The Story of An Artist is perfectly pitched, equally funny and tragic without the solemn reverence it would be so easy to give it. A brief dip into the Monsters of Folk’s Slow Down Jo and The Sandman, The Brakeman and Me are warmly received and Sad Sad Song leaves the crowd cheering louder than ever, despite few audience members seeming to own it. His closing Undertaker dies with a distorting, shorting battery in a guitar pedal, which he weathers to great effect. Plucking Alex, a pianist, from the audience for the encore Rollercoaster proves a smart move as he provides the perfect accompanist, putting Ward in the straight-man position he seems clearly more comfortable in.

Live Review: ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI, PIKELET, LOST ANIMAL

HI-FI BAR

Mistletone again prove they're the promoters to beat as every band brings their own twisted logic to the theatre of electro-pop and emerging victorious on a night that ranks as a highlight in a brightly studded summer of gigs.

Kicking things off are the duo of Lost Animal, featuring a welcomely ubiquitous Shags Chamberlain who helps out on bass. A man who plays in both of the support bands and is an ex-member of the headline band, Chamberlain gets deserved props later in the night from Mr Pink, but here he plays backup to the gritty, misanthropic electro dub dirges of Jarrod Quarrell. It's great to see a wry intelligence and dark sense of humour having its way with these evocative and underused sounds.

One of the city’s most musically talented groups, Pikelet deliver a sterling set of new songs and highlights from the recently AMP-nominated Stem. Always interested in pushing the boundaries of melody and structure, their new songs continue an exploration with new wave disco, polyrhythms and layered sounds. The opening Smithereens, new song The Year Is… are highlights, as are Locust and Weakest Link. 'Shags and I were lucky enough to play in his band last time Ariel Pink was here which makes us the biggest fans in the world' says singer Evelyn Morris in what is news to most of the audience. Their last two songs inspire dancing amongst those closest to her, and it’s a glowing set from one of our city’s greatest musical assets. If new ideas run the risk of being buried under the weight of the previous ones still repeating, then this only means you have to listen closer.

A by now packed Hi Fi Bar are nearing ecstasy as Ariel Pink and his cohorts, who have been mingling with the audience all night, finally assemble themselves amidst their instruments and begin their set. Miming to a TV ad for the compilation CD '60s Gold', Pink, the only member not dressed in a sparkly or riotously colourful outfit, leads the band into a blistering take on Artifact then Bright Lit Blue Skies which ring with a punch their CD versions only hint at. As with few other gigs I’ve ever witnessed, the ringleader has the power to effect good luck; the uncorking of a champagne bottle perfectly introduces L’estat, Pink calls us a ‘bunch of bogans’ before staring down a screaming girl in the front row with ‘I appreciate it, but you are politely declined’ as Flying Circles bursts forth in perfect syncopation. It seems impossible this wasn’t planned in advance but it adds to the uniquely thrilling whole that the very tightly rehearsed band create. 


Though the first half of the 90 minute set is gold, the density of sound, clashing vocals styles, frequent bursts of feedback and need to have everything drenched in reverb wears. Round and Round (introduced with ‘let’s get this over with’), Fright Night and Beverly Kills all work because of their cleaner sound, which also allows Pink’s uncanny pop nous to shine brighter. Don’t Think Twice (Love) is another highlight and the closing blast of Jules Lost His Jewels brings things back up to a height few other bands can manage. Though he paces the stage, swigging champagne or aimlessly wandering as if looking for something, suggests he’s uneasy, he seems born to do what he’s doing. Bands this blindingly charismatic and obviously smart don’t come along every day, or put on gigs this gloriously messy.

Live Review: JOE COCKER, GEORGE THOROUGHGOOD AND THE DESTROYERS

PALAIS THEATRE

With your humble reporter the youngest in the room by a considerable amount, a rapt and enthusiastic audience greeted the return of the English gravelly-voiced blues/soul singer. Though some are applauding the show, others the legend, Cocker’s backing group are worthy of all the adulation they receive. Featuring Hendrix alumnus Mike Finnigan on Hammond, the phenomenal Oneiedo-James Rebeccu on bass and Nichelle Tillman on backing vocals and stealer of Up Where We Belong, they are the perfect mix of sexy 30-something and venerable near-legends.

Dwarfed by this show is the opening slot of George Thoroughgood and the Destroyers who are heavy on theatrics and light on memorable hooks. Madison Blues and Tail Driver allow a copiously sweating Thoroughgood to get fiendish on the guitar, only it seems to be one style he can manage; an open-tuned slide guitar. This doesn’t stop him throwing up his hands mid-solos if amazed by his skills however, and it is, in the end, an entertaining set.

For a man who has spent his near 50-year career sounding like an possessed alcoholic, Joe Cocker looks, unsurprisingly, worse for wear. Never having been the most handsome of crooners, his distinctive singing style is rendered all the more arresting by his huge barrel chest, flailing limbs and squalls of saliva which accompany his outbursts. With a distant, almost blank-eyed gaze, he lurches towards the microphone again and again, contorting his shoulders and squeezing out impassioned grunt after whispered syllable in a near-imperceptible way. Four songs into his set he’s shed his blue paisley suit jacket, said a few words of thanks and his vocal style becomes legible, though his bizarre air-soloing whenever he’s not singing remains. After a blistering run-through of his first US hit The Letter, things get very AM radio with the power ballad to end all power ballads Up Where We Belong and You…Are So….Beautiful….To Me which allows Cocker to scrunch his face up even more and the crowd to get louder in appreciation. Slipping in the title track from his new album Hard Knocks, Cocker then revels in Hitchcock Railway, which gets him back to his bluesiest roots, before searing versions of the songs people paid for; our hearts are unchained, we’re getting by with some help from our friends, but our hats are off. As is Cocker, for a few minutes, before returning to encore with a barely recognisable Cry Me A River and a heartfelt (as if he can do any other way) take on Thankful, satisfying us all.

Live Review: THE ANTLERS, BEAR IN HEAVEN

THE CORNER HOTEL

One scan of the audience and you can tell that there will be a lot of taxis heading north after this show. Quite how so many kids have heard these bands given the scant radio play they’ve received is testament to the power of Pitchfork. Those here tonight have passion to burn, even if the red curtain has been drawn, halving the venue’s capacity, due no doubt to the number of other Laneway sideshows elsewhere.

Switching playing order from gig to gig, tonight sees Bear in Heaven in the earlier slot and clearly not the band most people are here to see. Whether it’s a sound issue or the nature of their songs, there is a BiH ‘sound’ from which there is little deviation, and it rarely sees its elements evolve from a saturating density; little dynamics, heavy basslines, huge synth pads, constant busy drumming and simpering vocals that grow stronger as the gig goes on. It’s a sound that works on record, but as with tonight’s headliners, translating suffusing atmospherics into a compelling gig is a difficult task. Ultimate Satisfaction sees singer Jon Philpot struggling for high notes in a way that seems weak at first, but soon becomes an asset as his voice gamely rides the churning mass of music and whole thing comes together beautifully. Elements fall into place on the simpler Lovesick Teenagers too and also soars as a result.

'You guys are like the Brooklyn of Australia right?’ says Philpot partway through the set, during one of his ‘whisky breaks’. ‘That's cool. Brooklyn’s cool,' his baritone voice cracks, in counterpoint to his quavering tenor when singing. 'This next song goes out to Triple R...and Triple J' he says, launching into the closing Beast in Peace.

The front few rows of the crowd are full of iPhone-wielding 20-somethings clearly a little nervous. Can The Antlers pull of the translation of their delicate and harrowing album Hospice in a live setting? Is it even possible?

Thankfully the anticipation is diffused by the band entering to the bursting strains of Huey Lewis and The News’s The Power of Love and we realize that this band do fun. ‘This is our first night in front of fans, says singer Peter Silberman, ‘we mean wind fans, not you, we thought we might look stupid, but…it’s OK,’ he says drily before the sounds of Kettering overtake the audience’s laughter. With both Silberman and keyboardist Darby Cicci hemmed in by layers of pedals, they slash at the instruments giving the songs their all, using their pedals as much as conventional instruments. Arrangements for songs are thrown out the window as they push dynamic shifts and only Siliberman’s crystalline searing voice roots the songs in the realms we know. Sylvia is hammered home, fans scream the lyrics back at the band, Bear becomes a near-Christmas carol until its all-subsuming chorus hits. Two is taken from a steady brittle guitar chug into an epic tempestuous harmony-laden swathe of atmospherics that serve the piercing ache of the song beautifully. One of the most therapeutic albums of recent years is treated with the respect it’s deserved and few concessions are made to allow it to be just as compelling live.

When Silberman forgets the words, twice, during Wake it’s a testament to the love the audience have for him that a chilling narrative isn’t broken, rather everyone cracks up and starts trying to help him out. Drummer Michael Lerner asks if anyone is up for an apartment swap from Brooklyn to Melbourne, which several people take him up on straight away. The band leave, the crowd bay for more, they return and play a staggeringly beautiful version of Epilogue and sell a LOT of merch. Tonight was a sweet taste of Brooklyn.

THE YOUNG ONES: An interview with BRIDGET TURNER of SIMONE AND GIRLFUNKLE

BRIDGET TURNER of Perth-based folk-pop outfit Simone and Girlfunkle talks about songwriting in parks, getting props from the ambassador to Syria and chasing Cliff Richard with a fork.

“It is strange being in a folk-pop band here,” laughs Bridget Turner for the first of many times during our interview. “There are lots of vaguely inappropriate places to play in Perth if you play our kind of music,” she says of the rock-heavy sounds the city has become known for over the last decade. “Still, there are great scenes here.”

Neither a Simon and Garfunkle tribute band nor any longer a female duo, Simone and Girlfunkle began life as a project between Nelson and lifelong best friend Gabrielle Lammers. Though playing for several years, the band only released their first EP in late 2010, building up enough of a fanbase to ensure the launch was a sell-out and interesting offers of gigs ensued.

“We recently played The Ethnic Business Awards,” she says with a laugh, “it was televised on SBS and Aurora and it’s this big sit-down dinner affair with the Premier and all these politicians. After we played our folk songs, we had just got offstage and were still trembling when the Syrian Ambassador wanted to talk to us. He talked about his wife - which was good - and was full of praise; ‘that was great, you girls keep going’, it was one of the strangest things.”

Now with four other members, Nelson doesn’t find it weird that Simone and Girlfunkle now refers to a partly male collective, “I‘ve never asked the guys if they mind being in a band with this name,” she says wistfully. “I guess not, they do it with a smile, and they show up. We write more collaboratively now too. Gabby and I sit in Hyde Park and write with the birds around us, in nice areas of shade so our guitar doesn’t buckle. When we started singing together we wanted to have a band but didn’t really know it, we glided into it. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, it’s what I want to do with my life, but if you put the focus in the wrong places, it won’t get you what you want. I have no illusions, and it’s working out all right so far.”

With the growth of the band seeming to be almost accidentally happening around the songwriting core, Nelson professes to be set on music as a life-long career, even if the releases aren’t coming thick and fast.

“The EP took a long time, a few years in fact, but when you get paid $50 a gig it takes a while to save up to make a record. Gabby and I messed around and didn’t focus on it much; we were more interested in writing and playing. We recorded an EP of our acoustic stuff, tested out the band with it, and had a launch that was a great success and everyone liked it,” she says happily. “We don’t have the cashola for an LP; we want to record an EP of songs with the band, more pop flavoured than the EP, more…Cliff Richard.”

With a biography containing multiple references to the clean-cut 50s popstar, this obsession clearly requires some explanation. “I really like old music and Cliff Richard especially, and I figure if I keep name-dropping him, a [Google] search for Cliff Richard will bring us up and eventually we get to meet him,” she says giggling at the logic. “I almost got to meet him last year,” says Turner excitedly interrupting herself. “My brother is in the Army and I was at the airport seeing him off, and at another gate, far away, I saw Cliff Richard with all of his people. So, I was running towards him but there was a security gate between him and me and I had to get scanned. Security were like ‘you have a weapon’ and they found a fork in my bag. By the time I was through, he was gone. It was tragic.”

TALL COPY SYNDROME: An interview with DAN WHITFORD and TIM HOEY from CUT COPY

DAN WHITFORD and TIM HOEY from CUT COPY explain how they invented the title for their new album Zonoscope, don't care about chart positions  and have been known to dance to their own songs.

When you listen back to Zonoscope, does it sound like the album you set out to make?

Dan: Yeah, we’re stoked with it! It’s a weird time because we’ve been finished with it for a while and, finally, it’s going to be everywhere tomorrow [February 4], which is exciting.

Tim: It was the same with In Ghost Colours, they had to line up territories and it sat around for ages, which was frustrating at the time. Thankfully, this one’s been more seamless and it’s coming out around the world almost simultaneously.

Since In Ghost Colours did so well, do you feel any need to address the expectations people have about a Cut Copy album?

D: I think you’ve just got to focus on your bit of it. I guess that’s the good thing about having a team around us like our label, management, and people that do all the engine room work of getting a record out to people; we just focus on being creative and making something that it hopefully new and exciting for us and other people. We really try not to think at all about commercial concerns or other people’s expectations, that’s for them to worry about, the whole ‘is it going to work on the radio or whatever’. I guess they might tell us if they think nothing is going to get played, but we’re not really aware of these other concerns that more commercially-minded people might be.

So, you won’t be checking the Australian or Billboard chart entry position then?

D: No, not at all. It’s almost the last thing on our minds really. I guess we didn’t know what a chart was when our last record came out [laughs], and we were lucky enough to have a number one in this country - that was a total surprise. We thought that was the realm of people other than us, [gestures to the massive posters adorning the walls of the Universal Music board room] Bieber and Gaga. It’s not something we think about ever.

What prompted the short video you released in October of you guys in the studio partway through making the album? It sounded like you were revisiting some early Sonic Youth in an abandoned warehouse.

T: Yeah, it sounded like we were making the sequel to Metal Machine Music [laughs]. Our idea was to get people wondering what the hell we were doing in this warehouse space. Making that documentary was a look at behind the scenes of how we were making a record. As artists we’re always fascinated by behind the scenes process and we’re constantly hunting down the series of Making Of... DVDs or books about making albums and I think it gives a really accurate portrait of who we are as well as the process of making that record.

The opening track Need You Now has been getting a fair bit of buzz. Were you expecting that track to be singled out?

D: No, not really, I’m thrilled it has been though. I remember when you [gestures to Tim] first listened to it. I’d been tinkering with it at home one morning we were meeting up to go and talk about some band-related issue, and it was something I’d been tinkering with the night before. In the morning, Tim and Ben turned up and I was like ‘check this out’. It was only a sketch of what that track was but immediately everyone had the same feeling about it, that it was this quite unusual but at the same time classic-sounding track. I think the way we recorded it has done justice to that original idea, creating this sprawling, building thing. It almost moves like Bowie’s Heroes, which was a reference point we were using while we made the album. It has this slow-burning dynamic, starts small, is long, and gets huge by the end.

Did you use the gated microphone trick he does on that track, since you had a warehouse to record in?

D: Not on that track no, but it was something we talked about ‘Hey, we’ve got this huge space - we can do that Bowie thing!’ But that song was partly a process of figuring out how to belt out the vocals more than I ever had before on Cut Copy tunes. It’s one of the vocal performances on this new record that I’m really happy with. It’s awesome that people are having the same feeling we had about it, that there’s something special about it, something that’s unusual enough to stand out but it could still be a single - it is now I guess. It’s nice that that’s translated.

Did you intentionally try to use different vocal range on these new songs?

D: Yeah, a lot of the songs are more percussion-driven, with some of the tracks singing differently felt right rather than doing the vocals I’d done on In Ghost Colours, which had a gentler, almost polite sound. This felt like it needed a punchier, almost stern, chanted vocal sound to it, quite primitive - like you would sing as if you just had drums and vocals. With all of the records we’ve worked up to getting more diverse skills, whether it’s Tim’s guitar sound and finding ways to use the weird noises he can conjure up, or Mitchell’s drumming which has gone from…uh…questionable in the beginning [laughter] to being pretty awesome these days. I think everyone’s gone on a journey since the beginning. Vocally, this has felt like a big development from the last record.

Do you ever dance to your own songs?

T: [slightly embarrassed and carefully] When we’ve been out in clubs and they’ve come on, we’ve…kept…dancing…

D: Yeah, don’t fight it.

T: [laughs] That’s right. I think it’s important for the music to be able to exist in a lot of different contexts. A lot of it is based around house music and references that, but we like the idea of it being able to exist in the club but also at home on the stereo or walking around the city, that’s very important and that’s where a lot of the pop music elements come into it. Maybe we’ll bring in some of the harder house sounds or shoegaze guitar stuff to try and keep it accessible in every kind of environment.

Is a Zonoscope the name of the artwork you used on the cover?

T: [pauses] No, the idea came from us. The cover is actually this bird’s eye view of this world we created for this record and we decided a Zonoscope would be the lens used to view it. We wanted to come up with our own word for it so for the rest of time when anyone mentioned Zonoscope it would only be associated with this album.

Or Googled it even?

T: Yeah, exactly [laughs]. We really liked the idea of this record standing on it’s own and creating a new world which the image on the album cover represents for us. Hopefully it will be in the urban dictionary in years to come [laughs]

D: Yeah, with our faces on it [more laughter].

How did you come by the cover art?

T: We just stumbled across it then tracked down the artist who created it and actually found it in a collection of photomontage artworks that I found in the RMIT art library with a lot of the pages torn out, thankfully this picture was the cover. I thought this guy was incredible and this image seemed like an idea that encapsulated this other place that the record existed in. A big place, quite grand, modern but prehistoric, this combination of here and a far away exotic place as well. We sourced the image from the publisher of that book in Japan. The artist passed away in the 90s but we got permission from his wife who found the image at their house, buried under a whole bunch of other prints. We were lucky to get it in the end; it all seemed to come together. She was really cool about it once she found out we weren’t wanting to put it on a t-shirt and make a million bucks off this image her husband had created.

You’ve worked with other Japanese artists in the past like Nagi Noda, were you surprised to find out that this artist was Japanese?

D: I wasn’t surprised at all. To me Japanese people seem to have a real aesthetic and visual sense whether it’s with pop culture, absorbing Mickey Mouse and Western culture or with their own. There’s some amazing graphic design and designers from Japan, and since I’m a graphic designer, I’m aware of art and graphic art from that era, there are some amazing illustrators too. Technically, one of the things about this image that I really like - and you can see form our previous record covers - is that I’m slightly obsessed with photorealistic, almost airbrushed, art. With [first album] Bright Like Neon Love, that was me recreating that style. Making these hyper-realistic images, it’s almost like a lost art form. [Looks at CD cover] To me it just reminds me of covers that I love, from Krautrock albums or covers that only exist because there’s a super-talented artist who made it, not because you’ve got the latest version of Photoshop [laughs]. And it just looks different; you could try to recreate this in Photoshop, in fact I did my own not-so-good version of this [more laughter] using Photoshop. Soon I was like ‘ah, let’s try and find the actual guy that did this’. There is a magic to the way it comes together. It looks modern and futuristic, but…there’s something about it that is…

T: Timeless

D: Yeah, it almost doesn’t come from now as well. It’s a weird combination that just works.

Part of the power of a lot of the songs on Zonoscope seems to come from the evocation of Australian electro-pop bands from the mid-80s and sounds that listeners might not have heard since then. I’m thinking of bands that only had a few songs like Koo de Tah, I’m Talking or The Machinations, their songs don’t get compiled or played the way that punk or new wave bands do. Is this era a direct inspiration?

D: Well, yeah. One of these tracks is called Strange Nostalgia for the Future, which is based on a Brian Eno quote from when he was talking about Kraftwerk. He said it their music was futuristic but at the same time, it’s nostalgia for 1920s dancehall music; the most modern thing you can imagine but still quite old fashioned in a weird way. We try to listen to new music as much as old, and within the music we love, I can see an evolution over time. I think we reference that pathway and hopefully push it into somewhere new and different as well.

T: I think with synthesizer music it has that connotation of 80s pop scene, and it’s constantly tied to that. We try and re-imagine that with modern production techniques, where we try to find sounds that are more unusual. We use the Fairlight on Zonoscope, which is quite an archaic-sounding synthesizer-sampler, the first one of which was invented in Australia. It’s not in a cool vintage way like a CS80, it’s more clunky and very mechanical sounding, so we thought it would be great to treat that with a more modern production technique. 

Synthesizers will always have that connotation regardless of what you do with them, I think it covers every decade from then till now.

Was making Zonoscope a totally different process to making Bright Like Neon Love? Has the process changed?

T: It’s totally changed. Now, there’s an initial period where we just listen to stuff and we kind of compile references we’ve come across since the last record. Every time we go on tour we come back from overseas there’s an extra suitcase of records and after this period of absorbing stuff there’s another period where I’ll tinker at home, get ideas and get some basic song structures down. Then I get the other guys in to say ‘what do you think?’ We’ll work on them bit by bit and finally we have a more extended session where we go to town on each of the tracks in the warehouse and transform them into the songs they are on the record.

D: For Bright Like Neon Love I just worked on everything at home and gave a cassette to Tim who layered guitar over it. We tracked everything in an afternoon at a studio in Northcote and mixed the thing in Paris.

T: Yeah, I didn’t even realise I was in a band until afterwards [laughs].

When you go overseas, do you feel any more Australian than you do day-to-day?

D: Yeah, we ARE Australian [laughs] so definitely. I think there is an Australian-ness about us, I think we’re pretty down-to-earth and we like good food and good coffee - the same can’t be said for a lot of places we tour [more laughter]. There is an Australian-ness about us we’re quite proud of, but at the same time, from the very beginning we weren’t championed in Australia, we didn’t have a scene or anything. We just did our own thing and eventually things started to develop around us like The Presets or Midnight Juggernauts and like-minded people finding a connection. Now it’s almost that Australia is known for electronic music. When we started you could barely name an electronic act from Australia that had done anything overseas. It was quite a different scenario.

It’s interesting, I feel like we’re an international band these days, we spend as much time here as we do anywhere else in the world and our fans are pretty evenly distributed which is nice for us we because we get to travel a lot and get in front of all of these people. 90% of the next nine months will be spent away. So yeah, we definitely still consider ourselves Australian.

Do you think many of your fans know you’re Australian?

D: Oh definitely.

T: I don’t think we have a distinctly Australian sound, but then I don’t know what one is, I guess it would be rock music, the foundations of AC/DC, stuff like that. Actually, it’s funny, everybody thinks we’re from England when we go overseas it’s often: ‘British three-piece Cut Copy’ even when we talk they never think we’re Australian [laughs].

Will you mainly be touring for the rest of 2011?

T: The majority of the year will be focused on touring, but we’ve also realised that we have a lot of music left over from the sessions at the warehouse and we’d love to get to a point where we’re releasing music on a regular basis. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the next Cut Copy album you need to promote and do a big thing about; we love the idea of putting out a 12-inches of straight-up house tracks. There’s all these little half-ideas and sketches of songs, and it would be great to put out an EP of those, the way bands used to; Guided By Voices or the Suitcase Series. We have all these little ideas that may not fit as part of the next Cut Copy record. It would be great to find an outlet for this and release a lot of music. We love that old model of a band releasing an album a year or even more recently like Deerhunter, Bradford Cox, constantly releasing music – amazing music. It would be great to get to that point, hopefully we can find some time to release that stuff one way or another.