Tag: Australia

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – K.G.

I know I came here to do something. There must’ve been some good reason for me to draw all over this eggshell page with intricate English mosaic, or else what am I doing? Am I losing my mind? My touch? If I’m not here for any good reason, or any reason at all for that… Continue reading King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – K.G.

AC/DC Power Up with Returning Members

After several years of rumors and speculation regarding their recording activities and membership, AC/DC have now confirmed a title, tracklisting and release date for their 17th studio album. Power Up will strike down in the bins of your friendly neighborhood tone dealer on November 13, via Columbia Records. The album – the Australian hard rock… Continue reading AC/DC Power Up with Returning Members

I Am Woman

Helen Reddy strides into New York City, 1966, where a giant variation of a sexist ad from 1953 is somehow still prominently featured on a subway wall. It’s the single mother’s first foreshadowing that her supposed recording contract with Mercury Records is about to be terminated by a Male Chauvinist Pig who can’t believe she… Continue reading I Am Woman

Mini Skirt – Casino

I believe punk has found a rightful home in the Land Down Under. It took us long enough. But everything about that floating penal rock calls for punk music. It’s hot, it’s dry (and still savage). The poison still flows beneath the ground there, something I can’t say about many other places. Where punk all began… Continue reading Mini Skirt – Casino

Cut Copy

Shiver and Burn: Cut Copy Catch a Case of the Chills No one could ever accuse Cut Copy of being minimalists – until now. For nearly 20 years, the band has openly embraced the pleasures of excess, delivering a consistent cavalcade of electronic dance pop built to perfection and polished to a radiant gleam. But… Continue reading Cut Copy

The Chats – High Risk Behaviour

Australia, world superpower in all things garage and punk, gave us The Chats, a mullet sportin’ Foster’s lager PSA, and they gave us High Risk Behaviour, a shotgun slap of punk ooze just in time for the coming jean shorts season. This new wave of Aussie punk has taken the same measures that their British… Continue reading The Chats – High Risk Behaviour

Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears

This is the kind of oddity – deceptive title and all – that used to show up in the final hours of all-night marathons at Southern drive-ins. Today, we get Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears playing Atlanta in the hope that someone here has seen the popular Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries TV series from Australia. Essie Davis has… Continue reading Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears

Grace Cummings – Refuge Cove

Grace Cummings, the hidden gem mined by Eric Moore of Flightless Records, releases a folk walkabout album that seems to give coastal Australia a voice. A very unique voice at that. The vocals at first emergence kinda throw you off. You can’t be ready for them. Your ear must digest it, realize that this voice… Continue reading Grace Cummings – Refuge Cove

New Package Traces Paul Kelly’s Path

Unquestionably one of the world’s most gifted songwriters, Paul Kelly is revered in his native Australia. If his North American fanbase is significantly smaller, it remains steadfast. As for the rest of you, it might admittedly seem a bit daunting trying to get a good handle on an unfamiliar guy with over 35 music-making years… Continue reading New Package Traces Paul Kelly’s Path

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Infest the Rats’ Nest

Insatiable Aussie monolith King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard release the yang side of this year’s two-album offering with Infest the Rats’ Nest. It’s a hell-bent, interplanetary suicide mission – but we just call it Gizzard’s take on Metal. Infest the Rats’ Nest follows the cautionary tract of a world where human intervention has led… Continue reading King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Infest the Rats’ Nest

The Nightingale

Photo by Matt Nettheim

Jennifer Kent was hot in Hollywood after the success of 2014’s The Babadook, and the Australian director could’ve made any number of classy genre films. Instead, she headed back home to helm this gorgeous grindhouse movie about an Irishwoman seeking revenge for her fallen family in the future Tasmania of 1825. There’s plenty of politics… Continue reading The Nightingale

Tropical Fuck Storm: Braindrops Keep Falling on My Head

The drought is almost over. There’s another Tropical Fuck Storm on the horizon, it’s coming in fast, and we’re right in its path. The Melbourne foursome, spearheaded by Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin of art-psych outfit The Drones, will splatter their second platter of kaleidoscopic vomit onto the commoners come Aug. 23, via Joyful Noise… Continue reading Tropical Fuck Storm: Braindrops Keep Falling on My Head

The Scientists

Swampland Soirée: The Scientists Dig It Up and Revel In It “The Scientists were fueled on negative energy – a negative sort of group. A bit like the Stooges, the way the group worked is very similar. There’s not many groups that have worked that way, and I think the result is intense energy.” That’s Kim… Continue reading The Scientists

Robert Forster – Inferno

Robert Forster’s reputation mostly – and rightly – rides on the Australian’s output alongside late bandmate Grant McLennan in the much-loved Go-Betweens. Often overlooked in the shuffle, however, is Forster’s stellar 1990 solo debut Danger in the Past. For his seventh outing, the newly minted Inferno, Forster returned to Berlin and rekindled his connection with… Continue reading Robert Forster – Inferno

Shogun Gives It Another Spin in the Sheets

Tim “Shogun” Wall – the unhinged singer for Sydney’s incomparable Royal Headache – is a self-acknowledged pain in the ass and the catalyst for the quartet’s multiple breakups, presumably for good earlier this year. Guitarist Joe Sukit has already rebounded nicely with the Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys, and now Wall moves further front and center… Continue reading Shogun Gives It Another Spin in the Sheets

All India Radio – Space

From the outset, All India Radio is all over the map. The name suggests a group from the Indian subcontinent, and the music draws clear inspiration from British late-period psychedelic/space rock (most notably Pink Floyd) and late-late-period American psych revival (specifically Flaming Lips). After all that, All India Radio is actually an ambient/chillwave group from… Continue reading All India Radio – Space

Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You Really Feel

“You know it’s okay to have a bad day,” Courtney Barnett reminds us on “Hopefulessness,” the opening track of her new album, Tell Me How You Really Feel. Though ripe with the lean prose and bulky sounds typical of Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, this time around Barnett has parted… Continue reading Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You Really Feel

Camp Cope – How to Socialise & Make Friends

What separates Camp Cope from other hyped indie bands aren’t the messages in their songs. That’s not to disarm the heavy topics captured in the lyrics of sophomore album How to Socialise & Make Friends. These songs resound because the messenger – singer and guitarist Georgia “Maq” McDonald – knows just how to make you feel her frustrations, fears and fury.… Continue reading Camp Cope – How to Socialise & Make Friends

Hooray for Hoodoo Gurus Reissues!

Australia’s long-running Hoodoo Gurus have announced that their entire catalog of recordings will be reissued via the revived Big Time Phonograph Recording Co., the long-defunct label that first signed the band in 1982, a coincidence that lead singer and songwriter Dave Faulkner considers “a delicious irony.” The band’s complete catalog, including rarities, has just been… Continue reading Hooray for Hoodoo Gurus Reissues!

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever

Hammering Out the Hits! For Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Writing Songs Is a Breeze – But Not Naming Bands I’ve yet to meet a music fan who hasn’t fallen for Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. The problem is, my sample size is relatively small. Despite two spectacular mini-LPs to their rather convoluted name, the Melbourne, Australia… Continue reading Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever

Grant & I

Grant & I: Inside and Outside The Go-Betweens By Robert Forster [Omnibus Press] In 1983, an up-and-coming band released an album of smart, jangly music way outside the mainstream that somehow found an audience and presaged a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame career. I’m referring to R.E.M.’s Murmur. The same year a promising Australian… Continue reading Grant & I

Courtney Barnett Tells Us How She Really Feels

Indie rock’s most industrious slacker, Courtney Barnett, returns on May 18th with her new album Tell Me How You Really Feel. Not that the Aussie ever slowed up since her 2015 breakthrough Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit, touring incessantly, running her own label (Milk!) and late last year issuing a… Continue reading Courtney Barnett Tells Us How She Really Feels

Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile – Lotta Sea Lice

I’ve never been much of a fan of Kurt Vile, whose slacker aura has always struck me as contrived. I have been very much a Courtney Barnett fan, although I think the Australian makes better songs than albums. I did not have high hopes for their joint venture – my gut said his vibe would… Continue reading Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile – Lotta Sea Lice

Cancer Takes Three More

Cancer took three more musicians from us over the past several days. Gord Downie (pictured), lead singer for Ontario band The Tragically Hip, succumbed to brain cancer on October 17th. After going public with the news of the diagnosis of his terminal brain tumor, the group embarked on a final tour with him last summer… Continue reading Cancer Takes Three More