music

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Tycho Brahe and Psyche electrify the Espy


It was arranged a week ago and barely publicised, but the Tycho Brahe and Psyche gig at St Kilda’s legendary music haunt the Esplanade Hotel (the Espy) was one of those cosy gatherings that fans salivate over for years after.

Tycho Brahe, from Brisbane, operating in duo mode with Ken Evans on bass and vox and Georgina Emery on keys and backing vocals, opened for German-based duo Psyche in the Espy’s basement room: tiled floor, cats and dogs wallpaper, and oh the cute rudeness in the band room tucked away behind yet another flight of stairs!

I was thrilled to hear Tycho cover Joy Division’s ‘Atmosphere’, Real Life and Depeche Mode; they pulled Psyche’s Darrin Huss, originally from Canada, up to take lead vocals on ‘Tainted Love’ with its neat segue into the Dr Who theme. They closed with a new track, ‘Love Rocket’ , and it was a blast.

Ken reports that the home studio is operational once more, though work still remains to be done since the family home was submerged during January’s disastrous Brisbane floods.

Psyche were largely unknown terrain for me — they have an excellent track on the Brisbane flood fundraiser Surge and Subside — and they put on an entertaining show, drawing on 30 years worth of material. Darrin was perhaps best described as exuberant as he pranced and yowled for the best part of two hours, giving it his all. Ken returned to do backing vocals on a Yazoo track (‘Situation’?), and there was another Joy Division cover (‘Disorder’, if memory serves) amongst others. ‘Gods and Monsters’ was one track that stood out in the EBM assault overseen by Stefan Rabura.

It was a fun night with an appreciative crowd drawn from across the spectrum: fish nets, tight jeans, checked shirts, sloppy t-shirts. With such a great vibe, it was a definitely a good gig for the psyche.


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Catching up on the tunes…

Some ‘on hold’ music while I’m otherwise engaged …

Warpaint: ‘Elephant’ is a cruisy Sunday afternoon.

The Horrors: stop us if you’ve heard these synths before!

Sietta: Aussie beats and fetching vocals … interesting.

Call me shallow, but if you put a cow skull and a bra on the album cover, yeah, I’ll have a listen… and well worth it too, with the ripping eponymous tune from Abbe May’s album, Design Desire.

Sarah Calderwood’s debut album is due out in November. Thoroughly exciting!

Felinedown: new EP, awesome live show, tunes to throw you around the room (on tour in October)

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Collide’s Counting to Zero really does add up

American duo Collide remind me a little of Massive Attack, but the midnight version. I’ve got a promo copy of their latest and seventh studio album, Counting to Zero (Noiseplus), on high rotation, and their electro cruise is so smooth – find a place under the lasers in the fog and let your slo-mo bat-catching go wild. Suggested track: ‘Lucky 13’, suitably slinky beats with singer kaRIN hitting some sultry notes down low.

It doesn’t pay to get too complacent, though. They like a little mid-song pause, a little change of tempo, just to keep you on your toes. See ‘In the Frequency’ for a fine example: fuzz guitars making highlights, and a gradual fade to grey, setting up the heavier bass attack of ‘Clearer’.

kaRIN and programming partner Statik perpetuate their distinctive sound – her fetching pipes remain the lead instrument as the layers of music builds and fades in step – while pushing their studio savvy out all the speakers. There are shards of Vangelis, Goldfrapp, John Foxx, Portishead … some Middle Eastern notes, too. The album is both perfect mood music for a chill-out as well as a funky stereo-sound experience.

counting to zero by collide

The tone is set from the opener, the slow-building ‘Bending and Floating’, a doorway into a rich electronic landscape the name of which kind of says it all, really. Across the 11 tracks, the vocals do float above the electronic current, and there’s some bending going on, too: keyboard and strings on the exemplary title track with gorgeous guitar courtesy of Scott Landes, a quietly catchy lead track in ‘Mind Games’, a fractured electro snatch and grab in ‘Tears Like Rain’.

‘Human’ is a slow burn, kaRIN exercising some range to bring added emotion – “who’s going to fix you when you’re broken?” – to an outfit who can come across as sonically icy rather than fiery.

‘Further from Anything’, with Secret Meeting collaborator Dean Garcia (of delicious, departed Curve) on bass, changes gears nicely for a last-half jolt before the slide to the end, concluding with the poppy (and suitably named) closer, ‘Letting Go’.

With more than half the songs clocking in at more than five minutes, the album takes almost a full hour to unwind, and it can lull. kaRIN’s default vocal setting is a lullaby croon and it will take you away – to a good place.

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Hot act to follow: Fever Ray

Is this an awesome cover or what? Actually, if you said or what, you can go away and write your own blog post.

Fever Ray had a song, The Wolf, on the soundtrack for the Red Riding Hood movie which was, arguably, the best thing about the movie. Well, the eponymous Fever Ray album (2009) is just as awesome.

This band — the solo project of Swedish musician Karin Dreijer Andersson — was made to make soundtracks.

Such atmospheric electronica, and then Dreijer Andersson’s voice beaming out from the very low to the almost childish high. It’s compelling stuff.

It’s grand, too, to hear the accent in her voice; a little like Bjork, not afraid to show her roots. Apparently, the male-sounding vocals are also hers, run through a transformer.

fever ray solo debut album

The debut album (she and her studio collaborators have been around; Karin and brother Olof form The Knife) opens with a monkish ‘If I Had A Heart’ and builds from there. The electronica underpins the tunes but leaves plenty of space; ’80s sounds feel thoroughly modern with great use of stereo effects. And the whole thing feels like a movie waiting to be written.

Some of the lyrics can be obtuse, but there are delightful vignettes of life — suburban, urban, defiance, the unity and despair of love.

There’s a little bit of slink on ‘I’m Not Done’; catchy ebb and flow on the haunting ‘Keep the Streets Empty for Me’; a Celtic dirge feel on closer, ‘Coconut’. A consistent, cohesive, captivating album.

‘Stranger Than Kindness’ is one of two bonus tracks on the deluxe release, which includes a DVD. ‘Wolf’ was released as a single in March.

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Gary Numan’s Pleasure Principle electrifies Melbourne

pleasure principle album by gary numan

Gary Numan: synth pioneer and resurrected man. And loving it.

Numan rose to fame at the head of the 1970s electronic music wave, then fell from grace as grunge and rock and other stuff took centre stage. And then the power of the synth was reharnessed and Numan rose again: heavier, darker and — if a packed house at Melbourne’s Forum is anything to judge by — once more hugely popular.

Last night’s gig showcased the past and the present. It opened with a playing of tracks from the album The Pleasure Principle, released in 1979 and the first by Numan as a solo artist. Numan took the centre console last night with two others also on keys plus a drummer and bass, and it was the rhythm section who underpinned the evening with their massive, um, rhythm. Add three or more layers of synth bass and soundscape over that and there were times when it felt as if the music was reaching inside to rip out lungs. Having a fake night sky arcing over the Forum’s faux ruins with Greek gods in attendance just made some of the tracks all the more surreal as the synths soared and the drum-bass combo thundered.

The album was put to bed with its hit single, ‘Cars’. A quick transition and two keyboards have been put to bed: Numan had the mic and there was an electric guitar and a gorgeously heavy rendition of ‘Down in the Park’ indicated a change of gear. That was then, this is now: great blasts of modern-day Numan, heavy on the Jagged album, brought the crowd and the gig alive as nostalgia was blown out the windows. Almost. The last tune of the main set was ‘Are Friends Electric?’ and oh, the answer had to be yes, or at least, at this point in the night, electrified. A three-song encore finished it off nicely.

Numan was in fine fettle: clad in black, mop of black hair over his pale face, and an artist at the top of his game. At the top of his game and loving it. He paid homage to late bassist Paul Gardiner who played with Numan on Pleasure Principle and in Numan’s preceding band Tubeway Army but otherwise had little to say other than ‘thanks for coming’. Sometimes a chat is nice, but sometimes it just as enjoyable to be able to sink into the music and let it do the talking, and last night was like that: the set flowed and enervated and enthralled, the band were energetic, the lighting superb, the crowd totally into it. And Numan, smiling, whether crouched over the keyboard or playing guitar or prowling with just the microphone, was the consummate performer. The pleasure principal.

Click here for a 2008 interview with Numan, ahead of his ’09 Australian tour.

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Jeff Martin’s 777 live in Melbourne — FTW!

ground cries out by jeff martin and the 777Live, baby, live…

I’ve always thought the best route to peace, love and understanding was a Gibson and a Marshall stack. So here’s a thought: instead of sending SEAL teams prowling around the world to put bullets in ears, how about we send Jeff Martin and his 777 brethren instead? Line the anti-social motherfuckers up against a wall and blast them with good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll till they see the light? And if that doesn’t work, we could strap them to the bass drum and play, say, ‘The Grand Bazaar’ until their chests explode, because even evildoers deserve to die with a song in their heart..

Which is my way of saying that last night’s gig from aforementioned Martin and Co. was brilliant fun.

With long-coated Jay Cortez grooving on bass and Malcolm Clark working up a hell of a sweat on drums, and most effective guest appearances by a chap called Rory who played a damn mean harmonica, Martin unleashed his latest venture at Melbourne’s Prince Bandroom in St Kilda. It’s a great venue, with two bars and a terraced floor and an elevated stage, and my usual power for attracting dickwads flagged so it was only some fool drunk in a cap pestering other people near me and the usual twats with iPhone cameras causing distraction.

Despite a forthcoming tour in Canada, the Tea Party seems to be becoming a thing of the past, because last night’s gig paid very little attention to the catalogue (although, it seems Melbourne got quite a different set list to Brisbane): instead, the 777 played pretty much their entire debut album (I’ve reviewed it here). Admittedly, it carries a lot of signature Tea Party elements, so maybe the shift isn’t that great.

There wasn’t a great deal of chatter last night — Martin’s voice was scratchy thanks to days on the road with this tour — but the music did the talking, and it was talking about moving on. In a set that went for at least an hour and a half, there was only a handful of Tea Party tunes, popping up towards the end. ‘Grand Bazaar’ and a wonderfully rolling, rollicking ‘Black Snake Blues’ formed the encore. Other old and recent tunes included ‘The Messenger’, ‘I Love You’ and ‘Shadows on the Mountainside’.

Coming off the disc, The Ground Cries Out is a solid and engaging album, but yes, it’s covering familiar ground. Live, though, it’s a rock ‘n’ roll beast: anthemic title track, slinky ‘The Cobra’ with Martin taking to the guitar with a bow, string-pickin’ ‘Riverland Rambler’ for a quieter moment, shades of blues and Hendrix and India and Persia, sexy rhythms and Led Zeppelin shadings, of course, right down to the double-neck guitar. With added theremin.

It’s worth noting that those dirty rhythms were also on offer in the immediate support, The Eternal: hell of a sound for a three-piece and worth checking out.

Usually I come away from a Martin gig — whether Tea Party or Armada or solo concoction — with a touch of the profound buzzing somewhere deep inside — a connection — but last night I was left with a different buzz: more physical; external rather than internal. Still, there’s no argument: the 777 have truly taken flight. Ten hours since the gig finished and my ears are still ringing…

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Jeff Martin: The Ground Cries Out … for something new?

ground cries out by jeff martin and the 777

Jeff Martin has been wandering since the Tea Party split up in 2005 (see below for reunion news!): a solo album, then the Armada with Wayne Sheehy, and some touring — a lot of touring — with numerous collaborators as the fancy took him. In there was a move to Ireland and now to Australia. Bassist Jay Cortez has become a regular, joining Martin in his latest endeavour, the 777, which is completed by drummer Malcolm Clark.

The 777 album The Ground Cries Out (Riverland/EMI) is a gorgeous product with a gate-fold centre piece in the CD booklet that sets the tone before the stereo has even hit play. If you’re a fan, you won’t be surprised to hear Middle Eastern stylings, Indian stylings, some foot-stomping blues, and that Tea Party-style rock. There are lovers leaving, lovers yearning, meetings in gardens, angels, nefarious shadows, stars, fires and femme fatales … familiar rhythms, familiar scenes, familiar phrases. It’s all feels very … familiar.

Fortunately, Jeff Martin’s brand of familiar can still be engaging: the title track is as catchy an anthem as, say, ‘Line in the Sand’, and one of the standouts, ‘The Cobra’, is given an extra touch of ominous by Cortez’s deep bassline.

Cortez has a big hand here, playing a bunch of instruments and penning ‘The Mekong’, an instrumental with a strong Vietnamese/Thai vibe. It’s one of two instrumentals, the other a more standard guitar piece.

‘Santeria’ and ‘Queen of Spades’ offer irresistible grooves, ‘Riverland Rambler’ shows country underpinnings with honky tonk piano while ‘1916’ uses a railroad beat. Closer ‘The Pyre’ — another standout — ramps up the atmospherics with thumping percussion and buzz guitar chorus.

The album feels to be skating perilously close to finding comfort in the familiar, but in this case, the devil — and the delight — is in the details.

Jeff Martin 777 are on tour. Toe-tapping is assured.

And in other Jeff Martin news: the Tea Party are reforming to play gigs in Canada in July and August, with tour dates out real soon. You can almost hear the fingers snapping as they cross throughout the USA and Oz, can’t you?

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Adalita: singing with ghosts

adalita self-titled album

I’ve been spending a lot of time with ghosts lately. They’ve been surfacing from old photos – some, not that old – as I’ve been digitising my negatives. Loss, it’s like a sea creature, isn’t it; a kraken, rising up when you least expect it, wrapping its long, sticky tentacles of lost love and missed opportunity and abject failure, all those dark tendrils that curl around your heart, your mind, even your lungs. And squeeze. It’s hard enough to face in the privacy of your home, let alone taking it on the road and singing it to faceless masses. Masses who chat over the top of your hearteache, who pay lip service to your craft … no, I can’t imagine it.

Which is why I found Adalita’s solo show at Melbourne’s Toff of the Town so damn engaging. I’ve seen her rock out before at the helm of Magic Dirt – I think the last time, maybe the time before, her lead guitarist stabbed his guitar neck through the low ceiling insulation at Brisbane’s venerable sweat box, The Zoo. Great gig. Great emotion.

And last night at the Toff, it was all about emotion, and there’s no better way to explain it than by starting at the finish, the sole, perfunctory encore tune, anything but perfunctory here. Adalita and guitarist JP Shilo duetted while MD guitarist Raul Sanchez slowly wound up a buzzing guitar, its recurring rasp slowly drowning out the singers as they backed away from the mics, until it was only the guitar, discordant, chaotic, howling. The guitar was loss and the crowd applauded as silence fell, because they understood enough to know that when Adalita dedicated that song to Rowland S Howard and Dean Turner, it was a eulogy.

The ghosts… Howard, an Aussie music legend of Birthday Party fame who had a big hand in Shilo’s career, and MD bassist Turner both died in 2009. The latter co-produced Adalita’s self-titled solo album, which she’s touring now. As if stepping out from the shadow of a band isn’t enough pressure; isn’t enough vulnerability.

In the absence of her band, Adalita had PJ providing effects and support on guitar and violin. Sanchez stepped up for an atmospheric dual guitar instrumental, and support act Amaya Laucirica played drums for one and later a guitar duet for ‘Good Girl’.

It’s a line-up you’ll hear on Adalita’s album, which provided the set list for the evening. She has a great voice, Adalita, and it was grand to hear her playing with form, breaking up the rock song formula to turn songs into stories with changes of pace and volume. It was a short and sharp set, a little melancholy, a lot hungry, a solid chunk of Gibson-driven rockin’ with backing tracks and effects pedals filling out the sound where needed. But that encore: such a powerful ending for a gig on a tour that signifies a new start.

I should think the ghosts would be happy with that.

WE got to the Toff halfway through Spencer P Jones‘ support gig, and apparently halfway through an argument as well. The one-time Beast of Bourbon was hurling insults and guitar licks at a section of the crowd in a performance that straddled the line between performance poetry and song; there was a certain air of Johnny Cash-style maudlin in there, between the shots of tequila (was it?) and slurps of beer and fiery glances. For the record, Amaya Laucirica played first support.

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Listening to music while the world slowly bleeds

This is Lucia Micarelli, whose violin is a favourite attraction of the HBO television series Treme (available on DVD any minute now…). There’s a lot of soul in that playing, isn’t there? That violin appears on a couple of tunes on the Treme soundtrack, which has been on high rotation here while outside the house the world continues to find its own little slices of hell: floods, fires, cyclones, earthquakes, tsunamis — and that’s just in our little corner of the globe.

treme soundtrackIt’s a grand soundtrack, lifted from the first series, with an eye focused on post-Katrina New Orleans, one blink blame, one long stare at recovery and pride, and plenty of winks at simply enjoying life, whatever may come. The album’s resonance reaches further than Louisiana, right across the Pacific to rubble and mud and houses and lives thrown asunder. There’s comfort in the fact that American’s inability to care for their own (cf Steve Zahn’s ‘Shame Shame Shame‘) isn’t replicated on the grander scale; that citizens and nations rally in support of those in need. Japan and the Pacific: it’s your turn now, and how sorry are we that you need it?

I realise that tectonic plates are one thing and global warming is another, but honestly, would it really hurt us to take a little better care of Spaceship Earth, even if — egads — its passengers might have to tolerate a little inconvenience? There’s nothing quite like a natural disaster to remind you just how delicate an ecosystem is, especially when it’s the one you rely on to keep you breathing.

Also playing…

Inspired by The Runaways movie, I finally added some serious Joan Jett to the CD collection and haven’t been disappointed — great rock ‘n’ roll to bop away at the keyboard to. Hard to go past ‘Do You Wanna Touch Me (Yeah)’!

Also making noise is the latest from Theatres des Vampires, Mephisto Waltz. The Italian outfit don’t quite scale the same symphonic heights as Nightwish, but their tunes are lush and grand; Sonya Scarlet’s voice offers distinctive warmth and wide range, a real femme fatale feel, with her accent to the fore. Buzzing guitars, thumping drums, strings and piano: all the bases are covered in a theatrical but not overblown presentation.

Rounding out the play deck is an oldie but a goodie from Velvet Acid Christ, lust for blood. This synth-driven industrial/EBM album is perfect accompaniment for editing and, turned up, urban action scenes of the spooky noir variety, but damn me if the door bell sound on one track isn’t STILL fooling me every time…

Here’s ‘Carmilla’, from Theatre des Vampires: probably not what Sheridan Le Fanu had in mind, but I’m not going to disapprove.

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Pseudo Echo love an adventure at the zoo

lion at melbourne zooThe lions enjoyed Pseudo Echo. At least, that’s how I interpreted the wonderful roars and coughs coming from the nearby enclosure while the veteran synth pop band sang the night down at Melbourne Zoo.

The zoo’s Twilight concert series proved the perfect accompaniment to a cloudless evening as we sprawled on the grass and munched on fair-priced and tasty Asian meals with pinot noir and cheese platter chasers.

Children gambolled in the dark as the crowd sang along to a parade of hits: ‘Listening’, ‘Love an Adventure’, ‘Funky Town’, ‘Living in a Dream’ and more. No sign of the ’80s hairdos, but the music was as vibrant and fun as ever, with a short-haired, bearded Brian Canham out front on vocals and guitar, and some wonderful drum work.

pseudo echo

Pseudo Echo at Melbourne Zoo

Before support The Hiding signalled it was time to hit the turf, unroll the picnic blanket and pop the cork, we had an hour and a half to wander a large portion of the zoo, taking in the giraffes, seals and aformentioned lions. It’s always a bittersweet visit, zoos: cats prowling their petty slice of turf, living the easy life but seeming to simply not belong behind the wire. The zoo is beautifully landscaped but, especially having seen many of the animals in the wild, I couldn’t help but feel a touch of sadness. It’s the price of conservation and, in some cases, preservation, I expect.

Regardless, it was great to Pseudo in the wild. Let’s hope they continue to prowl!