The Naysayers: Hellfire Sing Sing album launch
“We made an album. Where’s our million bucks?!”
Review
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Book Who’s Talking mini-episode: La Belle Sauvage
I was lucky to be asked to join Book Who’s Talking producer extraordinaire Josie to chat about master storyteller Philip Pullman‘s latest work, La Belle Sauvage, the first volume in the new The Book of Dust trilogy. Following on from the intelligent, subversive and wildly imaginative His Dark Materials trilogy, Pullman takes us back to…
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Aeon
I have to preface this review by outlining what I will and won’t cover. Part of Aeon‘s specialness is the unexpected, the unsaid and the unpredictable, so I can’t describe the structure of the work too much, lest I spoil the delight and surprise for future audiences. So aside from the small number of details…
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The Money
In an era heavy with self-publishing, from the selfie to the blogger influencer, from citizen journalism to reality TV, from political outsiders to plebiscites, we’ve rejected the elites and valorised the everywoman and everyman as earthy, connected and wise. Traditional arts and performance are challenged by the practically infinite stream of user-generated content, curated and hosted…
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Lilith: The Jungle Girl
Camp, trashtastic anachronism is the order of the day in Sisters Grimm’s Lilith: The Jungle Girl. Which is unsurprising on some level if you’ve ever seen a show from Declan Greene and Ash Flanders, or indeed just visited the company’s website. Blending the familiar colonial narrative tropes of taming-the-savage and classying-up-the-dame (TBH, pretty much the same story), and queering roles…
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The Punch Brothers, at the Melbourne Recital Centre
The stately Dame Elizabeth Murdoch Hall at the Melbourne Recital Centre is no stranger to hosting top-of-their-game musicians, virtuosos with something to prove. So to some degree, it’s no surprise the MRC programmers have taken another bite of the cherry in having the Punch Brothers return to play this space. The audience milling around the…
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The Decemberists at Hamer Hall, 29 March 2016
The Decemberists are one of my favourite, all-time bands. Hands down. Right up there. Ever since my sister introduced me to the band in the early 2000s, I’ve devoured each of their albums voraciously, from the consistent, folk-rock-sea shanty-heavy to the increasingly country-rock to the progressively conceptual. The Decemberist’s last visit to Melbourne several years ago…
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Broken Man
[stag_intro]If I’m being completely honest, I came really late to loving country and bluegrass.[/stag_intro] [stag_dropcap font_size=”50px” style=”normal”]I[/stag_dropcap] liked guitar-heavy singer-songwriter types, and loved me some folk, but it took a while of slow genre-absorption before I realised that – indeed – I kinda liked country. Of course, not all country, but that whole batch of music…
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Adaptation
[stag_intro]Adaptations, the new EP coming out from indie outfit The Animators, is a tight quartet of alt-rock tracks.[/stag_intro] The Animators have been building a following since 2009, from a kickstart providing the soundtrack for a documentary film, through to supporting acts like Bonjah and winning over Triple J audiences. Adaptations takes four tracks from front…
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Lincoln Le Fevre at the John Curtain
With Lincoln Le Fevre (say it like “Fever” you ignorant bastard. FULL DISCLOSURE: I SAID IT LIKE “FEV” WITH AN AWFUL ACCENT UNTIL POLITELY CORRECTED), on stage at the John Curtin, you can trace a few things back to the crystal clear purity of the Tasmanian waters from which he sprang: An immaculate beard, fully legitimate…
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Jumping on the Highwire
[stag_intro]I saw the Perch Creek Family Jugband at the Melbourne Recital Centre once. The band’s fun persona was a bit odd plopped into the MRC’s more formal auditorium (and more staid audience), but I really enjoyed the band’s relaxed style and enjoyment of playing together, ignoring the brutal deception of one band member not actually…
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Kishi Bashi at the Northcote Social Club
[stag_intro]We are all special, unique, intrinsically valuable snowflakes, however clearly some of us snowflakes have their neurons hacked together to handle complexity the rest of us can’t imagine. Kishi Bashi is clearly one of these magical fucking sprites.[/stag_intro] The setup couldn’t be simpler: one man, one violin and just a touch of dozens of pedals,…