As shiny as the Oscars, as confusing as the Grammys, as lucrative as the Nobels? No, the ARIA Music Awards are something else – Australia's own. And the 2009 nominees have been announced!
However, I have some questions:
1. How can there be "nominees" for the "Highest Selling Australian Single/Album"?
This has always confused me. Shouldn't winning this award be about statistics, not nominations? It generates competitive interest and publicity, I know – but surely anyone could figure out the winners right now, just by looking at the sales figures?
(Moral of this story: music journalists cannot be bothered to look through sales figures.)
2. What does "Adult Contemporary" mean?
Nominees this year include Bob Evans, Josh Pyke, Little Birdy and Paul Dempsey – all indie mainstays, each one loved and supported by youth radio stations (especially Triple J). So has "Adult Contemporary" become a replacement for the abandoned "Alternative" category? The teenagers of the 1990s "alternative music" boom are getting into their thirties now, so maybe the ARIAs are growing up, too. (Either that, or Triple J is actually a station for contemporary adults. Hmm . . .)
3. How come 2009 includes AC/DC's first ever ARIA nomination, and not their 50th?
Because the ARIAs only began in 1987. And let's face it, AC/DC have released only two albums since 1987 that are arguably better than "adequate": Black Ice (this year's nominee) and The Razors Edge (1990). Razors Edge does include "Thunderstruck", one of their best hits, but it was disqualified due to the lack of apostrophe in the word "Razor(')s". You can't rock out without appropriate punctuation, and I commend the Australian Recording Industry Association for their strong and principled stance on this issue.
4. Do the ARIA nominations violate their own guidelines?
This year, C. W. Stoneking was nominated for "Breakthrough Artist – Album", despite being ineligible (because his previous album was nominated for a 2007 ARIA). He's since been stripped of this nomination – but he's still nominated for "Best Male Artist", "Best Independent Release" and "Best Blues and Roots Album", so he's doing all right.
Another odd nomination is Ladyhawke (Pip Brown), who's nominated in 6 categories despite being a New Zealander. (Not that we aren't happy to claim her as an honorary Aussie, of course.) ARIA fine print indicates that artists are eligible if they've lived in Australia for more than six months and applied for permanent residency, which may or may not be the case – I'll keep you posted . . .
5. How many nominees have an exclamation mark in their song or album title?
Answer: At least four!!!!
It's good to see a strong field this year – I don't think there are any "what the?!" nominees making up the numbers. Award ceremonies are often controversial (one wayor another), but their real purpose is to celebrate the industry and create publicity for deserving nominees. On that count, the 2009 ARIAs are already a success.
What do you think about giving awards for high sales, "Adult Contemporary", AC/DC or Ladyhawke's fair dinkum kiwi-ness?
There's been a fair number of nice new clips come out over the past few weeks. Maybe I need to be more regular with my rage posts, in future – there's 16 songs here! This post is huge! But it's all well worth reading, I promise.
Anyhow, here's the jig.
(NB, however: I'm not going to comment on Little Red's new single "Witchdoctor", I think I'm probably kind of biased when it comes to those guys. But they had a cover story in The Age's EG section the other day, so they don't need anything from me. Suffice it to say that their new album Listen To Little Red is awesome, so go and buy it already. In brief: Little Red are superb. (As are The Hondas, but don't tell anyone about that little side-project – it's almost like a secret, that one...)
Hey look, naked people. Isn't it interesting that nakedness stops being sexy when it's everywhere? And that complete nudity is less erotic than partial nudity? As for the song itself, it seems to be a bit of a departure for Sigur Ros: a lot brighter & more uptempo than the ethereal glacierscapes they're best known for. It's a good song, with a fun rhythm and some interesting vocal work. The feel of the song is perhaps a little samey overall, but it's only three minutes long, so do we care? (Answer: probably not).
I found this really intriguing. It's an instrumental – an interesting mix of unnatural synth sounds and squelchy electric guitar, with aggressive (non-synth) percussion underneath. It's not a sonic blend that you hear a lot of (although it's kind of like Battles, I guess), but it's a great sound. Pivot here have a compelling & original feel that avoids the "feels-like-80s-fusion" pit of doom, unlike so many other instrumental groups. The structure and the dynamics of this song are excellent: it maintains great intensity without ever being monotonous. The clip is a nice & creepy stop-motion animation, too. It's a cheaper video than it deserves, but it's still good. Overall: well worth some attention, I think.
From the opening riff, I thought it was going to be yet another plodding 80s retread, but this song surprised me. Although the production is all crappy-80s-power-ballad, Faker prove their chops here by unexpectedly transforming the song into an actually-very-good-80s-power-ballad. There's a genuine grandeur and depth to the whole thing. Somehow, Faker's conviction (and songcraft) overwhelmed my inherent prejudices against faux-80s production, which is no mean feat. They still sound a lot like an indie band angling for commercial radio play, but at least they're doing it well. Good stuff.
I read somewhere that these guys had been disparaged as "like Animal Collective playing Queen covers", which Yeasayer themselves thought sounded like a compliment. You know what? It does sound like a compliment. It's probably sort of accurate, too. Their sound is dense and eclectic, but never at the expense of clarity or musicality. The tune is catchy; the vocal interplay is interesting & quite neat, too. I don't think the clip is as clever or "meaningful" as it thinks it is, but the music is definitely worth keeping an eye on.
Even better than their last (ie, first) single. That's because it's a better song: this time, the arrangement is dynamic enough to keep the music from ever seeming too monotonous or derivative. It is derivative, of course, but it's derivative of a style that's never really been explored in depth (or indeed much at all, since the 60s), so that's cool. Ultimately, it's just a really well-written song. The harmonic progression of the chorus is powerfully melancholic, but the rhythm never drags – the interplay of sadness and triumph is wonderfully ambiguous. It's a great melody, and the music as a whole feels genuinely beautiful. The first single didn't sell me their album, but this song just might.
Another driving, punchy, punkish slice of rock – a real locomotive of a track, and it's great. The only other single of theirs that I've seen around, "We Are Amphibious", played almost like a novelty song; this is definitely something else. More sincere, but also better. There's still a nice line of vicious humour underpinning the lyrics, too. Unfortunately, the clip is pretty uninspired; but it does have an explosion and some stuff being set on fire, so it's not a total loss.
Lots of clips have done the "long continuous tracking shot while crazy stuff happens" thing, but this is still an excellent example of the genre. It's a great song, too. The video clip version suffers from "f-ck" censorship of the audio – it's like the song has a stutter – but the damage isn't as bad as it might be. This is probably the song that tipped me over the edge towards actually buying Vampire Weekend's album, and I'm glad I did. It's not a work of genius, but it's very unique, which is almost as good. Catchy songs played well, fun lyrics that aren't what you expect – what more do you want? They may be a bunch of spoilt NY preppies, but so were The Strokes; nobody's perfect.
I've talked about Ladyhawkein the past, but on the other hand practically no-one knows that this blog exists. No harm in a little repetition, then. I don't think this particular track is quite as good as a couple of her others floating around, but it's still very good. If she can produce an album to match her best work, I'll tell you now: it will be awesome.
Look, "British India" is a great band name and all, but I just don't see where these guys are getting all their local success from. To me, it just sounds like the same old pseudo-emo-rock crap; the singer's voice is gratingly monotonous, the songs are uninspired, their haircuts & outfits are only average. What's up, fellows? I just don't get it.
On the other hand, I guess they're not really all that successful, yet... so prove me wrong, guys.
So the record company let them keep "Black Kids" as their name? Seriously? Like, maybe they thought it would give them an "edge", or something? If they're trying to distract me from their music, it isn't working as well as I'd like it to. It's a nice enough indiepop tune, but it just feels too much like a crappy ripoff of Operator Please, and OP aren't exactly perfect to begin with. Black Kids' myspace claims that they're from Florida, but that might be a lie – here they sound as English as a damp crumpet. A crumpet that gets the kids dancing with abandon on Top Of The Pops, mind you. The band all seem to be extremely young, too; so they're probably bound to do well for a little while, before a) evolving into something less twee and not so embarrassingly earnest, or b) breaking up and going off to university.
That's The Horror The Horror, not to be confused with The Horrors. This is a great video – extremely no-budget, and the image-and-sound editing isn't flawless, but it's full of great ideas.
The robot dance! Handclaps! Bright colours! Seriously, it's well done. Good music, too; an interesting sonic mash, almost Britpop but more contemporary, yet with a feel that's a bit 70s punk-lite – almost like The Knack, maybe? There's no immediately obvious influence to reduce it to, which is a worthy quality in itself. It's a good song; I thought the bass riffs and the insistent guitars were irresistible. The breakdown at the end is especially fun – there's even something of a guitar solo! Very neat.
Fantastic clip concept – a continuous pastiche of all those 1980s animated production company promos that played at the beginning of a film or at the end of a tv show. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, watch the clip for a minute). It's a classic & underused style of animation – great fun to watch, and a clever visual hook for nostalgic 80s kids. It also distracts from the fact that while the music is a pretty decent piece of electrish dance, there's not that much to it as a pop song. But it's fun, well-produced and better than most slices of the genre, so thumbs up.
This took a while to grow on me – it's so damn mellow – but gosh, she has a lovely voice. I've grown to think that the song is ultimately a real nice one, too. It's cleverly arranged, and it progresses in unexpected directions despite the classic feel of the changes. It feels like lounge indie, or something; it's in an unusual place, somewhere between Feist, Cat Power and Antony. She's wearing a silly helmet in the video, but who wouldn't?
This is a pretty decent pop tune, but the up-&-down chromatic verse riff sure sounds like a total ripoff of "Like A Feather", that Nikka Costa single (you know, from... holy cow... from way back in 2001, actually; Vanessa Hudgens was only 12 years old at the time). It's a pretty basic riff, so it's not a huge creative deal, but... ah, who cares, this song is distinct enough aside from that. I also like the fact that the repetitive singalong line of the chorus here is "basically what we're gonna do is dance". In a pop song, that's a pretty funny line. And the lyrics promote responsible footwear, which is nice. And the singer apparently has the moxie to attempt a pop career without losing a surname as clunky as "Hudgens", so good on her. Oh wait, she's from that High School Musical thing, so she's already famous. Youth of today, what's up with yr pop? etc.
Summertime – New Kids On The Block Just in case you wanted to see a boy band made up of guys in their 30s. It would be easy to be instantly judgmental – "oh ha ha this is so shit", without even listening to it – but that doesn't matter. Because the truth is, this IS pretty terrible. Or, in other words: this is TERRIBLE. And you should feel comfortable taking my word for that.
That's a bit of a downer to end on. Let's cheer ourselves back up with some Little Red, okay?
So, you thought I was gone? That I'd stopped trying to find the time to post? That the experiment was over? Or perhaps you would have thought this, were you an actual being rather than just a rhetorical construct. Never mind. Here I am, back on some kind of a track. Potentially. Future days & weeks will tell. A variety of future textual stuffs will hopefully abound. Maybe I'll even start trying to lure in some readers. Lurking is a hard habit to shake.
In the meantime... more Rage!
I'll be posting on topics other than this in the near future, I promise. I do have opinions and interests which are not related to music videos.
Nice Westerny feel, this one. (It's disturbingly easy to forget that "Country & Western" has a genuine "&" in it, huh?). The vocals here aren't great – they reminded me of Gomez (raspy, and not quite as tuneful as they probably should be). But the Western feel is achieved without any too-0bvious sound cues, and it's a genuinely fine song. The video's animation is also compelling and very original in style. It's a neat narrative, and it mirrors the Western theme without being too painfully obvious or derivative about it, I think.
Also: much kudos to a video which includes a caption featuring the words DAG NABBIT.
(I always thought it was a single word, but cowhands don't quibble over syllables)
Okay, so the music is derivative as hell and he sounds like a total Stevie Wonder wannabe. Or like Lewis Taylor, but less ambitious (where "less ambitious" is my attempt to say "less pretentious" without seeming a snipe, because y'know that Party song off Lewis Taylor's second album was freaking awesome). Okay. But this is still a sweet track.
The video showcases Jamie Lidell the whiteboy barelybeard geek, here putting the moves on a girl wearing a pantomime horse's head. It seems an unusual (and unusually self-deprecating) approach for a single that's so blatantly funky. But probably a clever approach, given that he is a geeky white guy living in 2008. As with Har Mar Superstar, it makes him hard to honestly dislike (even if there's still something faintly absurd and potentially insulting about the whole thing). Of course, even when it's allegedly serious, funky dance music in 2008 can't help being a cultural parody of disco; it's always a misplaced reference, a hookline into our imaginary 1970s.
But, okay. Forget about all that. It's a great fun song, and there's still more funk and more soul in here than in 90% of modern pop. Even if it is pre-defensively cloaked in a joke.
They seemed to lose it a little, after their aggressively excellent first album. But maybe they've figured out a way forward now – this has a much stronger melody and arrangement than the last couple of singles I can remember them putting out. (In fact, the tune has _really been growing on me). The odd little storyboard-reality video works reasonably well, also. Though it does seem like it's wanting to be more profound & meta &c than it actually is.
So: it's not brilliant overall... but it's definitely something good, I think.
a.k.a. The Saboteurs in Australia, due to obscure copyright bullshit. It's a supergroup that didn't quite live up to potential with its first album, but they've come back with another so there must be something there. Brendan Benson and Jack White are both underrated, in their own ways (Benson's ways being more literal & thereby markedly more detrimental to his career, obvs); I totally love Benson's "Alternative To Love" album, and the White Stripes roll from Jimmy The Exploder all the way thru to Catch Hell Blues. So Benson & White backed by the Greenhornes' rhythm section are bound to promise greatness, yeah?
This single is a promise, then. Energetic as hell, an organ solo and a guitar solo (yes!) – what more could you want? Well, maybe a melody that's slightly more profound. Still, on the strength of this I can see myself buying the album already, so bring it on.
So, would they be getting as much press & profile without a name like that? It's certainly a good way to get noticed when what you're doing is basically obscure & droney synth-noise. It's not bad music, but there's nothing too spectacular about it either. Ah, 'salright, good luck to 'em; listen & enjoy.
It's got some lovely moments, but jeez! The intense drumbeat makes it all tension, no release. And the tension isn't quite compelling enough to be worth it. (Now don't get me wrong, I'm no slave to brief attentions – I love me a good long stretch of droney, monotonous tension. Bring on the twenty-minute bass solo, I can take it. Just as long as it feels like there's something in it, for me?)
If the rhythm would change somewhere, if at some point there was a shift in the feeling, if there was even just a bridge, or something... It's good, but the song as a whole is just too samey and relentless for me. Weaker than it could be, I think.
Great name for a band with an angsty-youth vibe, huh? I didn't expect to like this song even as I was listening to it, but there's a superb momentum to the whole thing. Unlike the White Rabbits above, they manage to build tension but include a payoff too. The video is also deceptively good, with some nice subtle effects – the way the camera shakes as people dance up & down, the images of dancers projected over the singer's face. It's also nice to see some young dancing folk who look like actual people, instead of the usual bland models (or worse, like wannabe pornstars). note: That last part of the sentence is possibly some subliminal code for "girls who aren't so skinny that they have no boobs (or worse, fake boobs)". What do you think?
Rage's "it's 4am, we can program whatever the hell we want" policy occasionally throws up some really bizarre gems. Rage will broadcast, at least once, practically anything that people send them (as John Safran once demonstrated); and hey, kudos to them for it.
Here we have a home video of a singer backed not by a band, but by two air guitarists who sing guitar noises in the chorus. That's an ENTIRE SONG of two guys strumming air and occasionally yelling "ba ba doo da" while the lead singer roars her heart out. But that's the thing, you see – the three of them are all clearly performing as if their lives depend on it. They're really giving it all they've got.
Could it be a mistake? Like they meant to overlay the instrumental backing track afterwards but sent out the wrong tape by mistake? Do they play like this for real, or was it an honest joke? Either way it's astoundingly compelling. You got me, I'm intrigued. PS: a brief interweb gander indicates that they're an actual acapella rock act – they perform like that for real. FUCKEN ROCK. I am genuinely impressed.
Ways to get attention: 1) Unusually-styled "serious" cover of a kitschy original that everyone knows; 2) Gorgeous, mostly-naked girl.
So this video is bound to get itself some notice, right? Seriously, though, I'm not trying to snark it. It is a nice arrangement & well done, and it is always nice to hear an old song in a different context. Hey, it got my attention.
I didn't really dig the first single off Goldfrapp's new album, but this followup is quite different. It's much hookier, and instrumentally closer to the electrodancey-ish stylings of her previous two albums; it makes for a much more intense & immediate grab. Also, the video with the happy guy constantly jumping around in time with the beat - it's physically impressive and rhythmically hypnotic. Plus, it's suitable for the song and visually ridiculous! The whole thing is all just absurd enough that it comes off as reasonably ironic & self-aware, rather than too twee.
Having heard the whole album now, it's really interesting to think how it melds the lush-indie of the first album with the cyborg-disco of the second and third. The sonic midpoint turns out to be very much like a psych-prog 70s thing, oddly enough; but it's still unmistakably 2008. A really interesting direction for her to be taking, yeah? I think I like it.
Another great band name. I'm a sucker, I know. And it's an excellent clip (but I can't find it on youtube – what's up?). It seems to use handheld 2D paper cutouts (they look like grainy photographs cut out from old magazines) in a 3D multilayered setting – it creates a really wonderful moodset & storytelling effect. It's a nice (post-)punky tune, too. Good stuff.
They're back? Really? Hasn't it been, like, a decade?
Anyhow, they're sounding much edgier than they used to. No lush strings or John Barry orchestras this time. They always had elements of harsher techno experimentalism in their earlier stuff, but now it's really in full flight. There's a neat trick here where they process the synth-drumbeats to change their tuning, which creates a genuine melody out of the percussion while maintaining the "tuneless" feel – very clever and effective.
It's an interesting mood to go with, as a comeback. What made them feel this way, to come back sounding like this? And to do it at this time but not earlier, after so long? They sound almost like Suicide (apart from the sweet & melancholy vocals, of course). If we're currently in a postpunk sort of cultural frame (following the "punk" jolt of the Strokes-&-Stripes-&-cetera early-00s rock revival, and/or the mainstreaming of emo), then maybe this does represent the Suicide strand of the postpunk...
(is this train of thought worthwhile, pointless, or stupid? ask again later.)
It's very, very rare that a heavy metal clip on Rage gives me something to make me pay attention, but there was something about this that really grabbed me. There's no deathscream Sepultura vocals, just actual heavy metal – to me, it sounds more like Soundgarden at their heaviest than anything else. It has melody, it has some dynamics, it has vocals which are actually good. Good riffs, too. You don't hear enough of this sort of thing at the moment, I think.
Okay I know you're all like Woo They're Like The Darkness But Like A Few Years Later but, NO. Because: 1) The Darkness could write genuinely excellent hooks & mildly amusing lyrics VS The Galvatrons are hackneyed and infuriating; 2) The Darkness were sweet guitar solos and all the great aspects of 70s bighair prog heroism, which people had forgotten how great they were the first time VS The Galvatrons are all the worst aspects of 80s hair metal which was TERRIBLE THE FIRST TIME and no better now. 2008 does NOT need a fucking Poison cover band, not even as a joke. The vocals are annoying and bad, the lyrics facile, the guitars boring and most of all, please stop the drums, the drums are so horrible oh god the drums stop the drums stop please stop.
I love you Clem Bastow and I'd march with your generally superb opinions into the jaws of hell, but if you try to tell me these guys are truly awesome then I will be sad.
And on the other hand... here's some 80s revivalism which doesn't suck. Why not? Because it's a bloody good song, well sung. Apparently it's the girl from Teenager, but I wasn't much of a fan of those guys; they felt too cold and blank. However: Ladyhawke here (hell of an 80s cultural reference, btw – I'm pretty sure I've never actually seen the film but I remember being very young & staring at it in the video store for years, endlessly fascinated by the title) is really something else. It manages to be evocative of a bunch of classic 80s songs without being utterly derivative; the palette's old, but it's not overfamiliar. Most of all it's a gripping tune, arranged like a pop masterwork and sung with skill and interest. Another song on her myspace, Manipulating Woman, is probably even better. I don't think a debut single has left me more excited & curious for more since, heck, since months & months ago. At least.
So okay, if a mid-80s revival brings us brilliant sparks like Ladyhawke along with the Galvatrons, then it still sounds like a win to me: bring it on.
I'm getting much better at proclaiming my opinions as if they're really worth something, aren't I? If I'm not careful I'll end up replicating all those tropes of "reviews" which I actually hate: "this is my truth, this is the truth, blah blah blah". It's difficult to say what you think without labouring each statement with an "I think". So, how do you show that you're aware it's all more or less subjective, that you're not just being a prick? Reviews (or "commentaries", or whatever) are supposed to give you an alternative perspective, yes? If it's about something you're unfamiliar with, a response shouldn't say "this is good" or "this is bad", it should try to indicate what and where and why it is. That's what I feel. I think. A "review" should try to give you the context to decide whether or not you would think it was good or bad, not just what the reviewer thinks. Do you think so?
I don't believe everything's subjective (at least not to the extent that it makes the concept of "objective" totally meaningless), but the boundary between the subjective and the objective is a fuzzy and chaotic one. If you're thinking along that transition edge, you need to be careful as to how you frame things.
Hey, you want to read something else? That I wrote? Because I wrote a draft of a novel the other day, too. Send me an email & I'll let you read it, I think. It's different. You might not like it. It has jokes, though. Also punctuation. Cheers :)
