Category — Music

Much like last year, I really don’t have it in me to do a huge thesis on what music I liked this year and I admit to forgetting to keep track of a lot of music I bought in 2011, but there were a few standout albums that I listened to a whole bunch. I’m not going to force myself to list some arbitrary number and I don’t claim that you should love these albums or that they were even the best albums released this year. They are just the ones that had a chorus, or a line or a brief moment of music that made my skin buzz.

The Jezabels – Prisoner

I really dug the Dark Storm EP and so had pretty high expectations of this album and initially, it didn’t meet them. Prisoner is a bit of a grower, and as seemed to be a theme for me and music this year, it wasn’t until a particular moment travelling that the music finally clicked. In my case, it was driving along in the early morning on our way to Monument Valley and just as I drove up over a peak in the road and the sun rose about the mountains in the distance, the chorus to ‘Endless Summer’ built and everything just seemed perfect:

Kurt Vile -  Smoke Ring For My Halo

Argh. This album is just so quiet and intense. I’d never heard of Kurt before Fi played me this album over good food and wine one night last winter. It’s an album for certain hours of the day, an album for days of a certain pace. It’s an album I know I’ll be coming back to in ten years time.

PJ Harvey – Let England Shake

PJ Harvey is the last of the female musicians from my teenage years who’s yet to disappoint me, last to not become a media whore, fall apart or freeze her face with botox and whose music I still listen to on at least a weekly basis. I prefer her backed by a band and admit to longingly searching for a ‘Long Snake Moan’ or ‘A Perfect Day Elise’ on her most recent albums, but Let England Shake is amazing. It’s definitely an album not to be picked apart, but to be listened to in full each time.

Puscifer – Conditions of My Parole

This album was the biggest surprise of the year. I really like Tool, am pretty indifferent about A Perfect Circle and really didn’t like what I heard of the first Puscifer album. I actually bought this out of politeness because I was in the Puscifer store in Jerome when we went to the Caduceus wine tasting room on our trip and I felt obliged to buy something and I’d heard ‘Man Overboard’ and thought it was kinda catchy. Turns out it’s the weakest track on an album that is equal parts tender and angry. It’s also one of the only albums I’ve listened to compulsively since I was about 23. Did not expect that from this band. ‘Monsoons’ is absolutely gorgeous:

13 & god – Own Your Ghost

13 & god is a collaboration between The Notwist and Themselves. So…German indy/electronica and American absurdest hip-hip. In my perfect world, everyone would have bought this album had their mind grapes blown. It’s a slow-burning intense album and doseone is, in my humble white girl opinion, one of the most interesting emcees in current hip-hip. ‘Armored Scarves’ should be listened to the evening, on your porch, with your choice of beverage and friends:

You know those people (they are usually very attractive people, so you would have noticed them) who have amazing luck with gigs? Somehow they’re tapped into the vein that pumps out names of bands that you’re going to love way off in the future and they see them in some small, smokey bar that serves amazing whiskey concoctions and they stand by the stage, having a numinous experience that you’ll never understand, because by the time you hear of this band, they’ll have just toured the city you live in and you missed them, or they’ll tour when you’re flat broke, or they’ll be in the US at the same time as you are, but their tour will be two weeks ahead of you at every stop.

Clearly I am not the former kind of person, I am the latter.

I have terrible luck with gigs generally. The only reason I ever see gigs these days is because someone manages to penetrate the concrete fog of work that’s enveloped me for the last six months, long enough to tell me I’d like this band or musician and they’ve bought me a ticket and could I please put money in their bank account. I nod sternly, before the chain around my neck that is attached to my computer, snaps my head back to do some more work.

Not this time. Not today. Turns out that one of the last bands on my current ‘Would Sell My Soul and Your Soul and Maybe My Mother’s Soul’ list is going to be in Vegas the first night we are:

Shellac? For $10?

Bless me Father for I have sinned.

I went to Newcastle for the weekend and as always happens when I leave, I came back to Sydney with way too much to think about.

Storm clouds are rolling in over the city, and it’s a Monday, so we should all be listening to ‘Armored Scarves’ by 13 & God. The whole album makes me feel like Dark Night of the Soul does.

In Australia we have a TV program called Rage, which just plays music videos. Rage also has guest programmers, usually famous musicians who are touring Australia and they pick a few hours worth of clips and film some face-to-camera stuff discussing their favourite tracks and/or videos. This is where I discovered a lot of music I was really into as a teenager.

One of the most frequently picked videos is Aphex Twin’s ‘Come to Daddy’, and without fail, it’s also one of the videos the guest programmers choose to give an introduction to and the introduction is always the same: this is the most fucked up music video in existence. Now don’t get me wrong, you’ll never forget the first time you saw ‘Come to Daddy’ and in its heyday, the guest programming section of Rage started around midnight, so you were usually drunk, and easily entranced, so yes, it was initially terrifying, even on the second or third viewing, but not every week.

My favourite intro to ‘Come to Daddy’ was by Trent Reznor, who was still defaulting on-camera to his overly earnest, King of the Goths persona, despite it being post-The Fragile. He glared moodily down the camera and chuckled and explained that he was about to show us the most fucked up music video of all time and all of Australia groaned and yelled ‘We know! We get it, we’re an island far, far away from America, but we too have seen ‘Come to Daddy’! In fact we have seen it one billion times now!’

Personally, I would argue that ‘Come to Daddy’ while no doubt warped, is less unsettling than ‘Windowlicker’ which I genuinely will avoid when inebriated and alone.

However, nothing Aphex Twin or any other artist has done, or will do in the future will ever hold a flame to the terror that I feel when I see what is actually the most fucked up music video of all time. Yes, I’m talking Lionel Richie’s ‘Hello’:

He’s her teacher! She is blind! He is lurking in the dark singing ‘hello’ to her! She bastardises the art of clay by producing one of those slightly out of proportion portraits of him that was surely the precursor to the art of tattooing poorly proportioned portraits on oneself and housewives of the ’80s considered this to be a love song.

Jesus.

Just to set the scene, and put everyone’s minds at ease, I am writing this while I sit at my desk eating some chocolate chip cookies which have a very high chip to cookie ratio. I am alive.

A month or so ago, I suspected this was not going to be the case.

I first heard about Steve Albini when I read one of those ‘Here are the favourite albums of [insert name of famous musician]‘, one of which was Big Black’s notorious, Songs About Fucking. It was probably in Rolling Stone. I was probably 13.

I always liked the cover of that album.

Around the same time, I happened to see a live clip of the band performing ‘Jordan, Minnesota’ and it suitably unnerved me.

Later I saw him in a tour doco about PJ Harvey, called Reeling, which I’ve never been able to track down again. Please turn your inner monologue to your best female British accent and imagine PJ Harvey saying, ‘This is Steve Albini. He likes to set his shoes on fire’. Then pan your inner mind camera to Steve Albini, who has just set his shoes on fire.

Then of course I naturally progressed to discovering Shellac and I do love me some Shellac, particularly 1000 Hurts, which is one of my favourites.

Last time I was staying at my parents’ farm, I borrowed my mum’s car and in it discovered a mixed CD I’d made. I cruised into town listening to Swans and Old Man Gloom, had a delightful dinner with some friends. It was a bitterly cold night, and very dark and silent by the time I needed to head back to the farm.

‘Prayer to God’ started playing just as I pulled off the highway. I came to the front gate of the property, cursing my parents for having cattle in the front paddock, which made it necessary for me to open and close two sets of gates in the cold.

I drove through the first set and jumped out, fumbling to get the gate closed as quickly as possible, fingers numb, teeth chattering.

From the car, where I’d left the door open, Steve was screaming ‘Kill him, fucking kill him, killing him already kill him. Just fucking kill him!’

I was suitably spooked. Then I heard it. A rustle. A very large rustle, close by, but out of range of the headlights. I froze. Whatever was making the rustle froze.

Steve’s screams intensified.

Until that point I had always assumed I would die by way of choking on a sausage while tripping over a sausage dog. I assumed people would always laugh and go ‘Oh that Julia! Remember when she tripped over a sausage dog and choked on a sausage?’ I assumed that given enough time people would add a little double entendre to the mix and nudge each other while they told the story and strained to remember what my face looked like, or how my voice sounded.

I never imagined I would have to fight for my life against some dark nemesis in the corner of my parents’ farm.

I could not move. I was freezing and frozen. Perhaps it’s the years of smoking, the binge drinking years or maybe my old man blood pressure disease, but my fight or flight instinct took a really long time to kick in. When it finally did, I was off running. I jumped in the car, screamed ‘Shut up, shut up!’ at Steve, forgot to take the handbrake off, turned the lights on high beam and floored it. Dust flew everywhere and as I sped towards the second set of gates, I imagined my mysterious foe running along behind my car.

The second gate, by way of poor design, needs you to put up at least two car lengths short in order to open it fully. I have never run so fast in my life, and I even went without my usual rigorous checks for fence spiders.

I screeched to a halt right outside my parents’ bedroom window, the high beams penetrating their blinds, the speakers of the car still pulsing loud, angry music into the otherwise silent country sky and I ran inside and shook off the heebie jeebies.

The next morning, feeling much more confident, I was telling the story to Mum. I was all ‘It sounded like it was at least a 12-foot tall military-trained attack bear, or maybe an errant Milat brother!’

She looked at me over her glasses and possibly over a newspaper. ‘Really? You were in the front paddock and you heard a russle in the corner? Did you ever think it might be the cattle next door?’

And no people, I clearly did not consider that, because how lame would it be to tell a story about how you’re so spooked by Steve Albini that you ran, screamed and almost cried at the sound of a cow standing up, on the other side of a fence?

The end.

This morning I woke up and it was Friday and it was sunny and I’d had a good bit of sleep and a cute outfit to wear and an idea in my head to wear my hair in two plaits on top of my head like a milk maid and so I was obviously in a very good mood, and when I’m in a very good mood, I tend to listen to hip hop and this morning, I decided that I am currently very obsessed with a track called Eating Homework by a band called Them (later Themselves). How could anyone feel bad when listening to this?

My favourite part is the last “verse” in the last minute of the song.

Photo by Jules Ameel

 And you can lead a horse to fresh water,
But you can’t teach it how to be okay when you decide to leave.

 This song breaks my heart every time.

When I was in high school, I became really obsessed with what I’ll call “diss-hop”. It was the very late nineties. Biggy and Tupac had been dead for several years, Suge Knight was in jail and the whole West Coast/East Coast hip-hop rivalry was spluttering to an embarrassing halt. By embarrassing, I mean even a white schoolgirl growing up in Orange could see that the homies didn’t really want to front. And by Orange, I’m not even talking about Orange County, Cali-for-ni-a. I mean Orange, New South Wales.

Australia.

Population approximately 31,000.

You should be wearing your shame face right now hip-hop, that’s right.

I was an atheist Catholic school girl, whose celebrity crushes were a thing of legend. People used to cut out pictures of my favourite celebrities for me, and bring them to me as we waited in canteen line. I was like the Godfather of suspended disbelief in celebrity/pleb romances. I also really liked hip-hop. I wore Adidas shelltoes, baggy jeans, a wallet on a chain. I was basically Fred Durst with boobs and a brain [and better taste in music].

The Internet was very slow back in the late-’90s in Orange, and so I used to download one hip-hop song a week and obsessively listen to it, and when I had eight or so songs, I would give a list of songs to my friend Phil, who had faster Internet and a CD burner, and about five CDs, because in those days, four out of every five CDs would corrupt. A few days later, he would bring me The Precious.

Because I didn’t really know what I was looking for, I don’t think any newsagents in Orange stocked The Source or High Times, I downloaded anything and everything, including a lot of diss-hop. While I’m sure it has a very colourful history, by the time I got to it, it was in a shameful state. The disses were all about how one rapper was gay and another rapper wasn’t and how NWA used to be cool and now wasn’t. On that they actually had a point. Please see the atrocious, yet ridiculously catchy NWA song ‘Chin Check’. Someone needs to impound Snoop Dogg. Yeah, you heard me. Sadly, I can’t find the Next Friday version that has the really scary intro, so you just get the 100 per cent yeesh version.

We had this rule in my household growing up, we were a musical democracy, so when we went on road trips the mixed tapes would be loving created by me, but the music had to be sourced from every family member. Usually this worked really well. I liked my mum’s choice of Free and Led Zep, she fell pretty hard for Mr Bungle and both my sisters liked pretty much the same stuff I did. Sure there was that one time I threw a tape out the window [sorry environment!] when my mum suggested that Babes in Toyland or Yeah Yeah Yeahs were slightly too repetitive for her taste, but generally anything went. Except for the dreaded “k-word”. The k-word is exactly what you probably think it is and the term came about when a kid came up to my mum in the playground to tell on another kid for using the “k-word” and my mum only realised what the kid meant after she asked them, ’K-word? What’s the k-word?’.

Awkward face.

Anyway, my mum flippantly brought up the “no k-word” rule about 30 seconds before my next song was due on the mix we were listening to at the time, and as I agreed with her that it might be a bit weird to sing the k-word together as a family, I realised that the next song did indeed actually contain the k-word. Several times. A k-bomb was set to explode in the family car. And that, kids, is why you don’t listen to post-West Coast/East Coast rivalry rap in the car with your parents.

All this comes back to me because the other day I re-discovered my favourite example of bad diss-hop, a lovely ditty by Cypress Hill called ‘Ice Cube Killa’. Please, enjoy. Unless you are my mum, in which case, you don’t want to hear these lyrics. Or maybe you do. I don’t know.

My friend Fiona sent me this live clip one day a couple of months ago, having discovered Jonneine on a record label she likes. Fiona’s eyes were wide and I think her comment was something along the lines of ‘Jesus. Who is this?’.

After watching the clip, which isn’t very good quality, but is quite captivating, we both bought her album that very afternoon, and my birthday celebrations this year are already planned around a show Jonneine is playing at the Annandale.

The album is dark, like mid-era PJ Harvey, with lots of sex. Definitely one of my favourite albums release so far this year.

I selected this little gem, Themselves performing live in Utah, because it showcases the radness that is the MPC1000, as well as the vocal talents of one Doseone. And ladies? He is easy on the eye.

Actually, if you like that, and your attention span hasn’t been destroyed by 140 character dialogue and half hours of advertising-injected television, check this out also. More Themselves, Themselves on Themselves, plus some live stuff.