April 2016

PJ Harvey’s bubble bursts

Music / / 5 minutes of reading

It’s tough to be critical of Polly Jean (PJ) Harvey. As an artist, her place in history is secure: hailed as the world’s best songwriter by Rolling Stone upon the release of her first album, Dry, in 1992, Harvey is the sole dual winner of the Mercury Music Prize (first for Stories Of The City, Stories Of The Sea, released in 2000, then for Let England Shake, released in 2011). And she’s not just a critic’s darling – she bears the royal seal of approval, having been awarded an MBE for her services to music in 2013.

So a new release by PJ Harvey is a certifiable event. And the usually reserved singer/songwriter is making sure that the follow-up to Let England Shake will be noticed: she’s recording it behind one-way glass at Somerset House in London, turning the studio into an “mutating, multi-dimensional sound sculpture”.

In effect, PJ Harvey is turning herself into an exhibit, and hopes the audience “will be able to experience the flow and energy of the recording process”. London-based art commissioning organisation Artangel has said in a statement: “The working process of a project has always been as important to us as its public presentation, and here both can be fully explored and revealed at the same time.”… Read more..

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Australian anthems: (I’m) Stranded

Music, Qld Politics / / 4 minutes of reading

The video begins, appropriately enough, with the sight of a door being kicked open – then a hurricane of noise rushes through. Until very recently in Brisbane, it was still possible to visit the decrepit building on Petrie Terrace and stand in front of the fireplace on top of which the words “(I’m) Stranded” were once daubed in red letters, where the Saints shot the primitive but charged clip for their debut single.

It’s not quite where Australian punk rock was born – that, arguably, happened a little further down the road, in the Saints’ rehearsal room on the corner of Milton Road, not far from the Castlemaine XXXX brewery. Club 76, they called it. But the Saints had been going for a few years by then – since mid 1973, by guitarist Ed Kuepper’s reckoning.

Being first can be an overrated virtue, but in the Saints’ case, it needs to be stated over and over again. (I’m) Stranded, which appeared on the band’s own Fatal label in September 1976 (the same month the 100 Club in London held a festival featuring a colourful assortment of new bands including the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Damned) was the first independently produced rock single in Australia.… Read more..

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Sunnyboys: The Complete Albert Sessions/New Kicks

Music / / 6 minutes of reading

The recent re-emergence of the Sunnyboys on stages around the country has been a genuine feel-good story. Between roughly 1980 and 1984, the band – singer and guitarist Jeremy Oxley, his brother Peter on bass, Bil Bilson on drums and second guitarist Richard Burgmann – were a flaming meteor across the Australian music landscape, adored by fans and critics alike. And then, like a meteor, they just fizzled out: the band’s momentum cruelled by changing fashions and Jeremy’s descent into a long battle with schizophrenia.

It’s a story well told in a recent documentary, The Sunnyboy, that has brought new attention to this great Australian band’s legacy. An earlier compilation, This Is Real, and the band’s tentative return to live performance via the Hoodoo Gurus-curated Dig It Up festival has cleared the path for a serious re-evaluation of their small but vital catalogue of recordings, and it starts here, with the classic self-titled debut from 1981 spread over two discs and stacked with more bonus material than any fan could dream of.

The Sunnyboys’ brilliance lay in a combination of sensitivity and toughness that distinguished them from both their predecessors (after raw beginnings in northern New South Wales, they emerged fully-formed from the late ’70s Sydney punk scene left behind by Radio Birdman) and those that followed, such as the Gurus.… Read more..

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Blog update: Notes From Pig City

Miscellaneous / / 2 minutes of reading

Hello there. This blog hasn’t been updated for a long time. Let me explain. I actually haven’t been idle; in fact I’ve been writing more than I have in years. I’ve got out of taxis; some family stuff has settled down. So I’ve thrown myself back into journalism, and a lot of that work is getting published. I just haven’t been taking care to upload those pieces here.

I should have been, because this was supposed to be an online repository of my journalism – published or otherwise. I just simply haven’t kept up. I’ve finally done a big catch-up by uploading as much as I can on here, as well as standardising formats and tagging everything up. This means that much of what you see below will almost all be months old (in a few cases, years old) but I’ve added the dates and credit of publication.

They say the Internet never forgets, but it actually does, sort of, and I wanted to rescue all this stuff before it disappeared into those Way Back Machines. There may or may not be stuff you’ve missed, but the main thing is it’ll be here. In future, when new stuff comes out, I’ll post teasers with links on the day of publication before uploading the rest later.… Read more..

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