Some of my favourite (and most embarrassing) memories are from the year 2002 – the year I discovered the Sex Pistols. Up until that point I’d never given my parents much grief and was, for the most part, a quiet, hard-working kid, but the moment this strange new world was opened up to me I craved so much more. Of course, in retrospect it’s all a bit hilarious, but at the time I was dead serious.

There were a lot of words I’d never heard of before hearing this song (and others, like ‘God Save The Queen’). I had no idea what anarchy or fascism was and, growing up in a middle to upper class family, I really had no reason to – nothing to complain about at all. But upon discovering the meanings of these words I, of course, decided that I had been oppressed my entire life. Flipping open any of my personal diaries from that time, you’ll find many charming entries – “Dad told me to go to bed early tonight. I said no because I was expressing myself. He told me to go to bed. FASCISM IN THE HOUSEHOLD.” I took on the hardly ideal Sid Vicious as my role model, beginning every diary entry with “Dear Sid”. My screen name was 51D L1V35 (figure it out yourself – I cannot bear to talk about that) and I wore a padlock around my neck until it rusted onto my skin.

It’s ironic how strongly I felt about punk back then, because the other bands I worshipped were the laughing stock of anyone who considered themselves to be real aficionados on the topic. Good Charlotte, Sum 41, Blink 182 – hardly punk at all. And yet I took on this air of self-importance, denounced every kind of “system” there was (don’t you love 13-year-old girls?) and often spat lengthy tirades concerning Avril Lavigne.

I guess every kid goes through a stage, and this one eventually morphed into emo, which eventually morphed into a subcultural vapour – I don’t really think of myself as belonging to anything nowadays and listen to music from all over the shop. It’s really funny to reminisce though and hearing this song really takes me back – even though I was a total angsty brat at the time with nothing to even angst about, it makes me smile to think of the days when all of this – anarchy, padlocks, Sid Vicious, safety pins – meant the world to me, and I hope other people look back on their silly stages in just the same way.

The ‘blogosphere’ (sorry everyone, loathe the word but nothing else is quite as apt) has been exploding lately with mention of Adelaide four-piece Steering By Stars, who grabbed my attention as they sound very similar to one of my favourite discoveries of last year, Kyte. The post rock band has just released their debut album, Cables, and recently wrapped up a couple of launch dates in a few different cities. I grabbed drummer Tom Smeets for a couple of minutes via email to ask him some questions about the band, Cables and post rock in general.

How did the band get together?

We’d all been friends for a while before the band got together and had been playing in other local bands around Adelaide. Steering by Stars formed when we decided that we wanted to create music that was a little more personal to us. I remember it being a very messy and demanding start to a band. There were quite a few ideas and directions being thrown around and I think we were generally just trying too hard to squeeze everything we had imagined for this band into the music. It took us over a year to really get an understanding of how the band was going to work and for us to develop a set of music that we felt was actually honest and worthwhile sharing.

Why post rock? What do you think of Australia’s (very small) post rock scene and where do you think it’s going?

I don’t think we ever made a conscious decision to create ‘post rock’. When the band was beginning we had ambitions to be orchestral and emotive, and at that time no-one was brave enough to sing, so it just kind of happened that we began to write songs instrumentally and that style of arranging stuck. There was, however, always an intention to add vocals to our music but it never really felt right. It wasn’t until Lachlan [Wilson, vocalist] began experimenting with his vocal effects that we thought we had actually found a vocal sound that might work in the band. It started off relatively subtle and we used the vocal sound as more of another instrument, cautious of losing our original intentions for the band. But now as the music is evolving and our confidence is growing, the vocals are beginning to take a stronger role in our song writing and as a focal point in the band. The epic instrumental arrangements are obviously still there and it will probably stay that way for a while.

To be honest, I haven’t really been exposed to that much Australian post rock probably because – as you said – the scene seems to be very small. Bands like These Hands Could Separate the Sky, Panzer Queen and the Burning Sea (from Adelaide) are doing amazing things for the genre. As for post rock’s direction? I don’t really see it taking off anytime soon but I reckon we’ll probably see its influence become a little more prominent in other styles of music. Parades’ Foreign Tapes is a good example of what I mean.

You recorded Cables in 3 days – was that a stressful experience? What is the theme of the album?

It wasn’t entirely stressful. We knew how much time we had available in the studio prior and therefore spent a lot of time preparing and practising our music. Before recording the album we’d pretty much been playing Cables as a live set and so were quite comfortable with the songs and how we intended them to sound. Not everything goes to plan though, and by the third day there seemed to be fair bit to do and not a lot of time to complete it in. The stress levels did rise a bit then but I think in that moment we also became quite aware of how much we had completed and had to remind ourselves to feel proud about that too.

I don’t think there is a theme to the album. Each song was written to create a particular mood or feeling for the listener and essentially drag them through this wash of emotions. I think it’s meant to be disorientating and overwhelming, so maybe they’re the themes of the album – but I reckon you might not get them if you throw the album on while you’re vacuuming the lounge.

You decided to release the album on vinyl rather than traditional CD – why is that? Are you worried that this might limit the number of people who can access your music?

We wrote and arranged the songs on Cables to flow in a contiguous way and thought that a vinyl release would be the best medium for representing that. For me, the process of listening to an LP is also more conducive to absorbing the music as a whole and I think this is important for Cables to work. As for its accessibilty, we’ve also released the album digitally via our website and iTunes. Hopefully that’ll cover our bases.

How have people been reacting to the songs live so far?

Generally I think the reactions have been quite positive. People seem to stick with us from beginning to end, which is a great compliment and sometimes surprising considering our music (I imagine) can be quite demanding? When we play live we really strive to create an atmosphere and sometimes that can work fantastically and other times it can’t. I think a lot of the time the environment and scenario that we’re playing in really impacts on how well the music translates. Ideally we’d love to be playing in theatres or artspaces, which is something we’re beginning to organise with a couple of other interstate bands and will hopefully have some news on that soon.

I can’t lie – I don’t know much about electronic music. I enjoy it casually, but I wouldn’t be able to talk about it extensively or call myself a massive fan. When the chance came along to see two of the genre’s biggest bands in action, though, I couldn’t exactly refuse – after all, both have reputations as heavyweights on the live circuit as well as recorded, so why not? For those obsessed with electronic music who are unable to attend Splendour in the Grass this weekend, too, this was a really big night – the only huge double bill amongst the sideshows this year – so it wasn’t any surprise that the venue was packed to the rafters.

Hot Chip was down a member, with co-vocalist Joe Goddard on paternity leave, but the UK band didn’t miss a beat. Getting started with ‘Boy From School’, laden thick with vocal harmonies and a thumping bass that carried throughout the set, Goddard’s presence became evident when his face flashed onto a screen, moving and singing along to the songs – though sometimes slightly out of sync, it was an inventive touch that filled in the gaps. Bringing out auxiliary instruments such as maracas and having guitarist Al Doyle occasionally taking an extra percussive role heightened the frenzy as the band powered through hits like ‘Over and Over’ and new tracks from their latest album One Life Stand, all linked in a medley style and driven by those infuriatingly catchy electronic blips. Closing with ‘Ready For The Floor’, the crowd was just that as the wait for LCD Soundsystem began.

As a thick layer of smoke billowed over the floor and a piano tinkered its introduction, the members of New York City’s finest emerged, bleeding into ‘Us Vs. Them’. The beauty of LCD Soundsystem’s songs is that on record they are 8-minute epics, meaning that live they swelter to intense highs matched by the enthusiasm by both the band and audience, made all the more exciting by the presence of a huge flashing disco ball. Frontman James Murphy, in no way sober, wished an audience member happy birthday and segued into a glorious ‘All My Friends’ by singing ‘Love Is In The Air’ for a recently wed friend. The two percussionists together made a racket that saw drummer Pat Mahoney break his kick drum pedal two songs in, and Murphy himself joined in the percussion at times too, pushing songs like ‘Daft Punk is Playing At My House’ to incredible heights. Though the performance started losing steam towards the end, ‘Yeah’ kicked it right back up, setting the dance floor on fire, and first encore ‘Losing My Edge’ was laced with delicious irony (which hilariously seemed to pass over a lot of people in the crowd – really, come on now, what band are you seeing?).

Closing with a rousing ‘New York I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down’ (the night’s “Lionel Richie moment”, according to Murphy) mixed with Jay-Z’s ‘Empire State of Mind’, lights flashing, the feeling around the pavilion was one of triumph. Though throughout the evening I’d been having a bit of a laugh at all the ridiculous hipster dance moves echoing around the venue, by the end of it I too was flailing my limbs like a demented rag doll – after all, if you can’t beat them, you sure as hell better join them.

Set:
Us vs. Them
Drunk Girls
Get Innocuous!
Pow Pow
Daft Punk Is Playing At My House
All My Friends
I Can Change
Tribulations
Movement
Yeah
—
Losing My Edge
New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down / Empire State Of Mind

All photos from FasterLouder

Supported by: Here We Go Magic, Kid Sam

The Melbourne cousins behind Kid Sam make music so vast that it’s incredible to think there are only two people behind it. The pair slowly eased into a set that sometimes lent itself to post-rock style guitars and at others featured loud distorted riffs, always topped with Kieran Ryan’s reverb-drenched vocals. Kishore Ryan, who also hits the skins for Otouto and Seagull, is one of Australia’s best drummers at the moment with his precision and passion, creating a vicious wall of sound coupled with the guitar at climaxes. This band has been on the rise lately for very good reason – check them out if you get the chance for a hypnotic show.

While Here We Go Magic’s music itself doesn’t offer anything particularly impressive or different, the Brooklyn band’s live delivery was spot on. Playing in Australia for the first time, the quintet was a multi-functioning machine but plugged in together for busy five-part vocal harmonies when required to create a dancey atmosphere throughout the audience. Though met with technical problems mid-set, the band powered on through an explosively jaunty set, slowing down occasionally to show an atmospheric, melodic side. Extra props to bassist Jen Turner for a very interesting set of dance moves that did not stop for the entirety of the band’s set.

Tonight’s show was the first of Grizzly Bear’s two in Sydney but the venue was far from full, lacking the famous barrier separating floors, but the enormously lush and textured sounds emanating from the Brooklyn quartet filled the gaps in the room. Beginning with Daniel Rossen’s floaty vocals in Veckatimest opener ‘Southern Point’, duties were soon handed over to co-vocalist Ed Droste for ‘Cheerleader’, where their voices melted together in a goosebump-inducing swirl. The two alternated during the night, with bassist Chris Taylor and drummer Christopher Bear providing backing vocals, most stunning on ‘Knife’. The impressive stage setup included jars of lightbulbs hung from wooden structures and a lit hessian backdrop cut to look like the jaws of a cavern, with the lights flashing dramatically to create an atmosphere perfectly suited to the antique feel of the Enmore.

Despite general tightness and stunning visuals, the performance wasn’t without fault – ‘Two Weeks’ fell flat, with none of its recorded harmonic thickness and Taylor letting up in an endearing backing vocal slip, and the performance itself began to drag slightly as it neared the end (though ‘Showcase’, apparently performed for the first time in three years, was a welcome surprise). Minor flaws aside, though, Grizzly Bear was mostly an impressive beast of a live band, their songs possessing a raw beauty that shone all the brighter on stage.

Set:
Southern Point
Cheerleader
Little Brother
Knife
Shift
Fine For Now
Two Weeks
Showcase
Ready, Able
I Live With You
Foreground
—
While You Wait For The Others
On A Neck, On A Spit
—
Fix It

Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear have risen dramatically in profile over the last year following the release of their third and most exciting album yet, Veckatimest. Their first visit to Australia was only six months ago for Sydney Festival and yet they’re back already, playing sideshows in Sydney this weekend and Splendour in the Grass next weekend. I spoke to frontman Ed Droste about the band’s success, Twilight and Jay-Z.

(Prefer full article format? Head to page 36 of the online edition of Drum Media #1018 to see my write up as it appeared in the magazine.)

How are you? It’s really cold right now…

I’m good, it’s extremely hot here right now. It’s like 102 degrees here, it’s like an unseen record for heat in New York, we’re all dying, so I’m a little jealous, actually.

You’re returning to Australia only six months after your debut tour. Did you expect to be back so soon?

No. We just had such a good time last time we were there and then Splendour in the Grass wanted us to play. It was one of our favourite places we toured so we kinda just were like “Yeah! If we can go back we’ll totally go back”. Any chance we get to go back to Sydney and Melbourne, we sort of jumped at it. I don’t mind the long flight.

How has festival season been so far?

It’s pretty good! We did Glastonbury and Primavera in Barcelona which was really fun. What else did we do? Coachella…I think I might be missing some other ones. But we’re about to go back to Europe, actually, before we come to Australia and do another one in Portugal and one in England called Latitude. So it’s pretty good. It’s been a great summer. Actually we just did one in Maine and spent the fourth of July weekend in Maine and it was amazing up there, coastal Maine is absolutely incredible.

Last visit you played at Falls Festival and Sunset Sounds – how did you find the Australian festival experience?

I loved it, the experience was so much fun for us. Not only were the club shows in the city really great but we really had a good time with the Falls Festival and Sunset Sounds – one, getting to see the country and two, getting to escape our insane winter. Some of the audiences were really fun and cool, and they’re really well organised and generally made us want to come back again when we were offered the opportunity.

Veckatimest has been the biggest album you’ve had so far. What do you attribute that success to? Did you change your approach?

You know, we didn’t really change the way we write, we always kind of write them just in the manner of everyone going off and doing their own sketches and then coming together and collaborating. I think it was just a combination of maybe our songwriting maturing a little bit, and also just having toured a lot for four years or so and it was just another step up for us, but yeah, it was definitely bigger than the last releases.

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My parents left for Europe on Tuesday. They’re gone for a month and it’s weird that I’m as sad about it as I am – any other 21-year-old would be rounding up the troops for a good old party time, and yet here I am, missing my mummy’s company already. Oh man.

It’s the first time they’ve jet off together for more than a week, so naturally my mother was worried and reminded me of all sorts of things. Don’t forget to lock the doors. Don’t cook just in case you burn the house down (hah!). And please, Giselle, for the love of god, PLEASE don’t crash your car.

Which brings me to this song.

As you all probably have noticed by now, I’m a big believer in nostalgia and often talk with fondness about songs older than my entire life. Simon & Garfunkel is always number one, of course, but then there’s The Carpenters, The Beatles, Anne Murray and so on. And John Denver. My parents were always big fans of his and, despite being laughed at on more than one occasion for enjoying ‘country bumpkin’ music, have always been very fond of him. I grew up listening to him and was always so jealous that they got to see him live shortly before he died (and last year, upon meeting one of my now very good friends, I died with jealousy to learn that she, too, had seen him live. Gosh!).

This is the song I remember most from my John Denver-filled childhood, and it came back to me in the worst of ways last year. My mother had given me a copy of his Live at the Opera House album and I was pretty stoked, playing it over and over in the car. This particular night, I was driving to my best friend’s new house in the city that I hadn’t been to yet, so I was unsure of the directions. I was driving down a one-way street singing ‘Take Me Home Country Roads’ at the top of my lungs, unaware of my surroundings, and realised quite suddenly that I had to make a right turn, so I went for it, still singing along – and crrraaassshhhhh!

I was turning right from the middle lane and collided with someone who was driving down the right lane. Yep. Leave all your sexist and racist jokes out of this please, I know I’m far too easy a target! So not only does ‘Take Me Home Country Roads’ remind me of my childhood and parents, it also reminds me of being unable to open my car door and a $2000 insurance excess. Oops…

Melbourne’s Tinpan Orange are back with a beautiful new single, ‘Like Snow’, in the lead up to their national tour next month. Combining luscious violins with a strummed acoustic folk beat, the track is as gentle as it is subtly forceful, evolving from a slow show to quietly frantic sawing. Vocalist Emily Lubitz goes from quiet crooning to a unison chant with the violins in between verses, creating a sense of unity as the track continues to build intensity. Perfect track for a brisk winter morning, and goodness knows we’ve had plenty of those lately.

Tinpan Orange play The Vanguard on Saturday 14 August as a part of their national tour, after which they’ll be jetting off to Europe in support of The Cat Empire.

DOWNLOAD: Like Snow (mp3)

Two Door Cinema Club are one of the latest indie dance bands to hit the globe, with their debut album Tourist History, released in March, propelling them to dizzying heights worldwide. Ahead of their appearance at Splendour in the Grass next weekend, I caught up with frontman Alex Trimble.

(Prefer full article format? Head to page 46 of the online edition of Drum Media #1017 to see my write up as it appeared in the magazine.)

How are you? Where are you in the world right now?

I’m not too bad, how are you? I’m at the Roundhouse in London where we played last night, we’re just packing up our gear.

How was Glastonbury last week and how was the experience compared to last year?

Glastonbury was incredible, it’s always an experience, it was really amazing. They were definitely different, they were a lot bigger and a lot more enthusiastic this year, there were kids singing along and stuff, it was really, really cool.

Are you looking forward to Splendour?

I’m definitely looking forward to it, it’s the first time any of us have been to Australia so we’re all really excited for it.

Are you prepared for the cold?

It’s not cold, we’re from Ireland!

Since you’ve been a band from the ages of 16 or 17, how do you think things have changed for you as people since then?

We’ve always been the best of friends and that’s kind of continued. We’ve progressed really together as a band and we’ve progressed as songwriters and musicians, I think. Our reasons for being in a band have remained the same from the start – we do this because it’s what we love. We love playing shows, we love making music, we love recording music and that’s why we’re in this. In terms of inspiration, we love discovering new music all the time, what we listen to is constantly changing and we’re always searching for new music and stuff so that’s kind of always changing.

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I’m 35 years late with this but I only heard this mashup this week and I am IN LOVE WITH IT. I’m not much of a hip hop fan at all (I blame it on ignorance rather than me actually hating it – I just don’t know much about it) but this is fantastic and goes really well with the Grizzly Bear song. Apparently The Hood Internet does heaps of indie/hip hop mashups so I need to check it out.

And speaking of Grizzly Bear, I interviewed Ed Droste yesterday and will be getting a Q&A up on the blog within the next few weeks, as well as one with Alex Trimble of Two Door Cinema Club. I’ve been a busy girl so look out for those soon!

If you’ve been following the blog for a while now, you’ll probably have noticed that the thing that I’m most passionate about in life is (other than overeating) Simon & Garfunkel. I find it unbelievably difficult to express how much their music means to me, how it’s shaped my life and continues to do so, and I hate that I was born a couple of decades too late because I’d give anything to have been one of the first people to experience their music as a fresh new sound in the 1960s. If I believed in God, I’d say that this duo was an act sent from him/her/it. That’s how much I love them.

Like many of my favourite things, I discovered Simon & Garfunkel through my father. He is a really wonderful man – we have our differences and he’s not exactly the most gregarious of characters, but from time to time we sit down and talk about anything and everything, and from childhood to the present day I’ve never admired anyone quite as much. My dad is so grounded and smart and knows so much about so many things. He’s like a walking encyclopaedia! I’m pretty blown away by his mind and I pick it at every chance I get. So it’s only fitting, really, that my favourite thing in the world came from his influence.

I can’t remember the first time I heard them because they were such a constant in our household when I was growing up. I’ve probably mentioned car singalongs ad infinitum on the blog in past Throwback segments, but they were really one of the highlights of my beautiful childhood – road trips to the beach or far-off relatives’ houses, windows down, music blaring, children and parents harmonising together (my dad was big on teaching us to harmonise). ‘The Boxer’ was one of those songs that I heard all the time, learned to sing at an early age and belted out at any opportunity I had.

My father and uncle briefly had a musical project together in which they imitated the style of Simon & Garfunkel and wrote some pretty great songs about their experiences as refugees and their experiences now in Australia. I really wish I had mp3 links to post up, because they were really brilliant. One was ‘Twenty Years Ago’, and one was ‘Ballad of a True Friend’, dedicated to my dad’s beautiful friend Pam Baker when she passed away in 2002. The harmonies that my dad and uncle created were very much inspired by my favourite duo, specifically ‘The Boxer’, so that’s another reason why this song is particularly dear to me.

There are countless memories attached to the song – my sister making awful “tell the truth” puns relating to the famous “lie la lie” chorus, my mother imitating the cymbal crash directly after that, the first time I heard it live last June and the second time I heard it live the day after. It is one of those songs that I have constantly revisited over the years and found something to silently sing about inside. It’s not my favourite Simon & Garfunkel song (that title goes to ‘America’, which incidentally is also my favourite song of all time tied with ‘The Temptation of Adam’ by Josh Ritter and also a song I have no real recollection of hearing in childhood, with second place going to ‘A Poem on the Underground Wall’) – but it is the one that I recall the most when thinking about how I came to love the thing I love the most.

I am constantly trying to convince people to listen to Simon & Garfunkel. They seem to be one of those bands that everyone is aware of, but few people, that I’ve met anyway, are truly excited about any more. The reaction I get when telling people that they’re my favourite is either “oh, that’s cool!” or “my dad listens to them, you loser”. I’d like to turn the entire world into “oh, that’s cool!” people – or even better, “me too!” people. Starting with all of you.