If you enjoy transportative music and a fabulous light show, consider catching up with Chelsea Wolfe and her three-piece band. They’re a tight unit – drums, bass, electric and acoustic guitars, keys, synths – elevating Wolfe’s atmospheric songs. The hour-twenty set passed in no time at all – suddenly, it was encore time – with the almost ritualistic quieter tunes complemented by eruptions of guitar and pummelled drum kit. I knew only Wolfe’s Abyss album and recognised two* of its highlight tracks, but didn’t feel the poorer for my ignorance. Wolfe also managed the rare feat of quieting the bar chatter – an attentive (goth-prominent) crowd, with only a couple of exceptions. Whether cruising or rocking, the one constant was Wolfe’s voice, as much instrument as the electric guitar used for effect not solos. And yes, a round of applause to the lighting engineer who enhanced the mood and theatricality of the concert. Off now to look at some albums and lyric sheets.
I got hooked on the band Heart back in the ’80s when their Brigade album made a splash (such that I wrote a book inspired by it), so finally getting to see them live (twice!) was a true bucket list moment. Sisters Ann and Nancy are in their 70s, not that you’d know it. Ann, who has fended off cancer and performs from a wheelchair due to a recently broken elbow, is a clear trouper, her voice strong and clear; Nancy prowls the stage with her guitar, bobbing, hopping, interacting with her bandmates, taking the lead vocals on These Dreams. There’s some banter, introductions to a couple of songs, nods to Bowie and Zep. The song selection is superb, showcasing the band’s versatility, from the classic rock power of closer ‘Barracuda’ to soaring hits like ‘Alone’ and ‘Never’ to acoustic ballads such as ‘Dog and Butterfly’. The 90-minute set is a tour de force that was totally worth the journey.
One of the best things to come out of seeing Roger Waters performing The Wall was discovering Lucius, whose harmonising singers were performing with him. Similarly, The Cult has put its support act, WA’s Mayatrix and The Psychics (previously known as Moana), on the radar. Margaret Court Arena wasn’t doing either band any sonic favours when I saw them – Ian Astbury lamented the energy suck of the stadium and appeared to remove his ear pieces for the encore – but even so, the Psychics pushed out a delightful bass thump with their infectious gumbo of rock, psychedelia and more. Singer and guitarist Moana has voice and presence to burn, and burn them she does. They’ve been around for at least a decade – their In the Allure album is marking a five-year anniversary during their tour with The Cult (how good is Dracula?) – and they’ve been releasing new material since (wrap your ears around the latest, this year’s Black Moon Medicine). Rock on!
Ever since I first heard the Brigade album by Heart, sometime around 1990, I reckoned there was a story in it. Not just the micro stories of each song, but a bigger narrative.
I wrote a short one, melding tracks All I Wanna Do (Is Make Love to You) and The Night*. Didn’t much like it, too simplistic, one note. It’s still in the drawer.
Then, in 2019, emerging from four years of PhD in climate change fiction, I felt ready to take a shot at a longer treatment of the Brigade project. But wait. Just around the corner, in March 2020, the Queensland Writers Centre was having a weekend novel-writing ‘boot camp’ with Kim Wilkins. Perfect. Stop writing, get some ideas together, work on something else to fill in the time**.
(Kim, by the way, ran the first QWC workshop I attended after I moved to Brisbane in 1998. It’s where I met my tribe. To a large extent, that workshop set me on this path.)
Brigade, Kim reckoned, probably wasn’t Heart’s best album, when I said during our introductions that my project for the weekend had been inspired by it. I was too slow to add that it might not be their most lauded, but it is the one with the vampire!
It was a fun weekend, bouncing around story ideas and character arcs with each other, emerging weary but also energised, with a note book full of trajectories and ideas that lit a fire under the project. Needless to say, I played a lot of Heart writing the book, especially Brigade, tapping the moods and themes. Cruel Nights (yep, from a song on the album) is still anchored around the meshing of those two key songs, but the entire album is in there.
I did check in with the rights holders about using a stanza for an epigraph*** but it was a bit pricey for this project. Still, I like the compromise of using Heart song titles as chapter headings. Picking appropriate ones from across the catalogue reminded me again of how diverse and accomplished this band is, what a set of pipes Ann Wilson has.
So yes, the long wait between books is finally over, and yes, it’s another vampire story. Also a kind of love song. With Heart.
Cruel Nights is available for pre-order at Brain Jar Press and will be out on 21 May.
* funnily enough, All I Wanna Do is not one of my favourite Heart tunes. The Night, it’s right up there, though. ** still working on it. *** there are some lyrical Easter eggs in the text, but I had to wrap them carefully to avoid any copyright issues.
I’m very pleased to share the news that I have a new book coming out! The novella Cruel Nights is slated for release through Brisbane’s Brain Jar Press on 21 May 2024.
Says the publisher:Brain Jar Press is pleased to present Jason Nahrung’s Cruel Nights, a vampire novella which harks back to the vampire novels of Poppy Z. Brite and Anne Rice while also asking what might have happened to those characters once the nineties were over. It’s an extraordinary read for anyone with fond memories of the grunge era and the horror which sprang up around it.
And the blurb:
…a grunge-soaked tale of love and vampirism in ’90s Seattle.
Charlie died in Nevada, 1973, after seeing Led Zeppelin live on stage and making the wrong choice on the long drive home.
Corey meets him at a TAD gig seventeen years later and feels an immediate attraction. They both swear their night together will be a onetime thing, but neither can stay away.
Corey and Charlie spend two decades building a life together, a mortal and vampire in love, but there are some things Corey’s not willing to give up. She can move cities when Charlie’s eternal youth raises suspicion and she can rebuild her career as a music journalist after every disruption to their life, but as she gets older, it’s harder and harder to be satisfied with their nocturnal existence.
Then a moment of weakness delivers Charlie and Corey the one thing they never expected to have…and their relationship gets more complicated than either of them ever dreamed.
In which the extremely personable and knowledgeable host George Penney chats with yours truly at Bohemiana about locating vampire fiction in Australia, the importance of fiction in the climate crisis, and some of our favourite goth rock.
I also name drop the superb albums Lotus Eaters by Wendy Rule and Crater Vol.1 by Android Lust, which were on high rotation when I was writing my island Gothic Salvage.
I note quite a few familiar names from across the literary spectrum on George’s interview list – a valuable opportunity to get behind the scenes in the writing process.
Collide is one of those artists I turn to for background music — which isn’t to say that the duo’s music is without its edges, just that usually it’s the kind of cruisy, atmospheric electronica that makes the rest of the world fade away.
Statik and kaRIN have come out fighting, with guitars leading the attack.
Opener “Wake Up” announces this urgency, the swell and subside of electronica topped by explosions of buzzing guitar as the song unfurls. The energy runs through the entire album, taking on a dance-floor groove in “Soul Crush,” an infectious swagger in “Side to Side”, a slow burn in love song “Fix”.
It’s still distinctively a Collide album, with Statik commander-in-chief in the studio and kaRIN’s bringing the evocative vocals (indeed, here there’s more of a consistent collision of those smooth vocals with spiky instrumentation than before). She touches on themes ranging from the global (“Blurring the Edges,” “Pale Blue”) to the intensely personal (“Intruder,” “Freaks Me Out”); from comfort, to resignation, to defiance.
Funded through Kickstarter, the album was developed in part from Shikhee’s found-sound adventures in Berlin. On early listens, I’m not sure I’m getting much impression of that particular place, nor a sense of an unfolding narrative such as drove the (predominately) soundscapes of the water-themed Crater Vol.1, but I’m thoroughly enjoying the outing – one of sonic postcards, perhaps, possibly as much in time as space.
Which is not to say this album isn’t transportative – far from it. There’s an air of the urban – a subway feel on the analogue styling of “Daughters of Dawn” (think Glass Candy), a rain-washed city scape perhaps seen from the cab or bus window in the fetching “Heart Tunnel”, and the familiar touch of AL-style industrial (“In Memory”, “Insects”). And is that a ghostly callout to AL’s “Stained” on “Plaza Steps”? Elsewhere, muted conversation and bird chirps, the beeping of an alarm clock and patter of rain, offer a feeling of melancholy enlivened by digital rays of sunshine.
As always, the Android Lust journey rewards multiple, close listens, the layers revealing – suggesting – more the deeper one submerges. Down here in the depths of winter, it’s the perfect weather for it.
And while I’m getting excited about new music, on the near horizon is a new EP from Nine Inch Nails, Add Violence, in which it appears we’re getting songs of resistance and defiance. First taster “Less Than” shows some retro-style frustration, while second release “This Isn’t the Place” feels like a bridge at song No.3 on the five-song EP. Bring it on!
Herewith, three groovy recent outings that put a smile on my dial:
1. Totally 80s. Sure, the tour is well over now, but I enjoyed this greatest hits parade far more than I thought I would. Great to see Real Life’s David Sterry, for starters; Wa Wa Nee brought the keytar; Katrina of the Waves rocked out. The main draw, though, was ticking off a bucket list item to finally see Berlin‘s Terri Nunn in action. The set list for Berlin: No More Words, Metro, Masquerade, Animal (yes, still making vibrant music!), Dancing in Berlin, Take My Breath Away, Sex (I’m a). Such a happy vibe, I was smiling from the moment the second song of the night, Safety Dance, got the crowd grooving.
2. Ghostbusters.The remake. Seen it twice now and it’s very cool. The climax feels a little pedestrian (maybe that was just the echo of the original) but to see these four women work together so capably — not an arse shot in the whole movie — is such a delight. Sign me up to the Holtzman fan club. I like what the flick said and how it said it and I had a lot of fun at the same time. Neat cameos, too.
3. Pokemon Go. I blame/thank my wife. She loaded it on my phone. And then I went to the city and saw the augmented reality overlay the game provides and it was, like, wow. And then last night we’re parking (because Ballarat turned on the wind machine) and we’re surrounded by other people parking because there are three PokeStops with lures and the critters are spawning like crazy and it’s fun and it’s kind of communal fun — I haven’t seen that much life in that street on a Monday night ever. I also like that public art and graffiti and historic sites are PokeStops so these sites are drawn to your attention. How much attention you pay as they spin and disgorge goodies and critters is up to you.
Anyway. Today is a day to consider some good things and share the word. May you too count good things.
Ha! See what I did there? Doesn’t matter, I’m sure Nina Dall would still roll her eyes at such a naff header (and damn you, unsmart quotes).The fact remains, her ‘autobiography’ makes for a compelling read.
Nina Dall is one half of punk-pop duo The Dolls, the other half held down by her somewhat more brightly clad cousin, Rose. Their rise to fame from suburban Sydney pub band to international touring act is the subject of Cherry Bomb (Allen & Unwin), as told by Jenny Valentish.
Claim to fame: I worked with Jenny when I pulled a stint at J Mag, and she now holds the fort at Time Off in Melbourne. She’s been interviewing musos since she was 16, and has knocked around in front of a few Marshall amps in her time as well. All that experience is put to good use in Cherry Bomb, where the world of the band on the rise is brought to realistic life — ambition, stress, creativity, publicity. Sex. Drugs. Spats.
The story is told in Nina’s first-person point of view, in retrospect, so she can throw in the occasional tease about something that was to happen, or a dollop of background, or an aside. Sometimes those little asides break the flow, especially early on when they pop up in the middle of dialogue and a dinosaur like me has to go back to remember what the conversation was about. But mostly, it works — Nina’s voice is engaging and authentic, her vocab showing she’s not as dumb as everyone thinks.
Sure, she’s got issues. Both the cousins do. Family secrets and questions of self-esteem run thick and acidic through their co-dependency, but maybe that’s what makes them a winning team, even if maybe you don’t want to share a taxi with them.
Circling the pair is their aunt, a faded rock star who offers an in to the industry when they need it, and the producers and love interests and hangers-on all looking for their cut.
I got a chuckle that Jenny was able to take her love of utes and country music muster experiences, as outlined on one of her blogs, and put it to good use here.
Jenny’s got a great turn of phrase and an eye for detail that inform Nina’s observations.
I pictured Kane’s wife as nagging him frequently, in a dithery voice. She’d be wearing one of those satiny dresses that women buy in provincial boutiques, with the pattern of a seventies casino carpet. Thin blonde hair, spindly wrists. You couldn’t even hate her.
The text is broken up with artefacts: a faux review of Nina’s parents’ separation; record reviews; lists. It gives Cherry Bomb almost a scrapbook feel. Each chapter — check the heads for song titles — is introduced by a salient quote from aunty Alannah’s autobiography Pour Me Another. They make you want to read that book.
In the back, Jenny provides a soundtrack for each chapter. And yep, Cherry Bomb is in there. It’s no surprise the Runaways are mentioned, either, although now I’m doubting myself for thinking Kristen Stewart did a job in the movie. Damn you, Jenny, and your acerbic ways!
This book — Jenny’s first fiction title — totally rocks. Read it loud!
Christmas already, and there have been a few additions to the music collection since mid-year’s round-up. Certainly enough to get through the summer!
The latest album from Melbourne’s Wendy Rule was funded through Pozible and is now available. It’s well worth the listen, harking back as it does to her World Within Worlds album — meditative and moody, mixing pagan themes and love songs and not being shy about topping the five-minute mark. Plucked guitar, steel guitar, cello, flute set the scenes, with occasional tribal percussion breakouts such as on ‘Black Snake’ and ‘After the Storm’, and electro carnival on ‘From the Great Above to the Great Below’. ‘Home’ is another standout for its sheer yearning for a place that’s ‘more than a suitcase, a room’; Rewind wishes to undo the mistakes of the past ‘when I was fucked up and blind’; and ‘Ereshkigal’ — almost nine glorious minutes of it — shows entrancing layered vocals with tribal influences. Ideal for a winter’s night in or a lethargic summer’s arvo.
By contrast, Gary Numan‘s Splinter: Songs from a Broken Mind (Machine Music, 2013) is a full electro-industrial assault, harking back to the brilliant Jagged album. ‘I Am Dust’ opens in winning fashion while ‘Here in the Black’ brings in orchestral elements worthy of a soundtrack, a space explorer alone in the black, or perhaps drifting through their own inner void. Thematically, the album offers the usual touchstones: love gone awry, aloneness, lost faith. ‘Love Hurt Bleed’ is an EBM standout, while Numan varies the terrain with Arabesque elements on ‘Splinte’r, gorgeous percussion on ‘Where I Can Never Be’, piano on farewell tune ‘My Last Day’. As with Black Snake, there’s familiar material here, an artist playing to their strengths, but engaging highpoints making it a worthy of addition to the collection.
Mona Mur and En Esch swagger with menace on 120 Tage: The Fine Art of Beauty and Violence (Pale Music, 2009), a switchblade-packing duo stalking the city alleys and nightclubs in knee highs and combat boots. Half sung in German, half in English, the songs range from dance fuzz joy of ‘Visions and Lies’ to the grungy back-street feel of ‘The Thin Red Line’ to poppy ‘120 Tage’, all headlined by Mur’s cabaret sex-and-dare vocals. A touch of oom pah pah (‘Mon Amour’), elsewhere circus (‘Der Song von Mandelay’), some spoken word (eight-minute story of ‘Surabaya Johnny’), add texture — and introduce three Bertholdt Brecht/Kurt Weill covers as well. ‘I want to crawl in the mud with you and drag you underground,’ Mur sings on opener ‘Candy Cane’ — it’s an offer hard to resist, with the rest of the album dragging the listener down into a world of, as promised, beauty and violence. On ‘Eintagsfliegen’, ‘this is my rifle, this is my gun, one is for killing, the other is for fun’ gives the idea. ‘Snake’ is a sultry winner. The only annoyance is three minutes of noise tacked onto the end of chugging closing track ‘The Wound’. If this was a nightclub, it’d have a warning sign on the front door.
Mentioned previously, but must be mentioned again, just how superb is the latest Nine Inch Nails album, Hesitation Marks. Welcome to middle-age doubt, with all the studio genius Trent Reznor has to offer. Such superb songcraft …
Also on the playlist:
Tycho Brahe finish 2013 on a high with a new EP, Triplex Part 1. Cracking synth pop with ‘Castaway’, funky dancefloor bass on ‘Loveless’, instrumental ‘Arizona’ and, on ‘Lullaby’, a less characteristic touch of gloomier, moodier music.
Adalita, All Day Venus (Liberation, 2013): Second solo album from the Aussie rocker, delivers plenty of guitar-driven heartbreak and lonely nights. Highlight: ‘Warm Like You’, on which she sings ‘I was born cold, I’ll never be warm like you’. Adalita also plays bass on the enticing EP Let Yourself Be Free, by duo Dark Fair; the b-side is rockin’, too.
Finally got around to snaffling albums The Birthing Pyre and Somewhere Under the Rainbow by the Jane Austen Argument, another Aussie duo with a winning way with tunes set against an emotional, hip urban landscape. Tom’s high range — see ‘Bad Wine and Lemon Cake‘ — is worth the price of admission.
1. Totally 80s. Sure, the tour is well over now, but I enjoyed this greatest hits parade far more than I thought I would. Great to see Real Life’s 
