Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2017 i Rolling Stone Australia

Fired Up Stones GREAT TO SEE THE REAL ROLL- ing Stones finally out of hiding and seriously back in town with their gutsiest effort since Exile On Main St. Mick’s wailing harmonica exploits along with Charlie’s super-charged timekeeping highlight a hard-hitting band once again playing at the top of its game. Stay around, guys – you can still do it! Christopher Lynch Kilsyth, Vic Mining Music UNDERGROUND DEEP IN A coal mine I’m without music for up to 12+ hours a day, so being able to read your mag on my lunch break is great. If I can’t hear it at least I can read about it. Keep the bloody good interviews coming, and the bang on reviews, ta. Dan Middlemount, QLD The Voice AS A TEENAGER OF 15 IN…

1 Beyoncé Lemonade Beyoncéshuteveryone else down this year with a soul-on-fire masterpiece, testifying about love, rage and betrayal that felt all too true in the America of 2016. The queen delivered a confessional, genre-devouring suite that’s larger than life yet still heartbreakingly intimate, because it doubles as her portrait of a nation in flames. She dropped Lemonade as a Saturday-night surprise after her HBO special, moving in on every strain of American music from country (“Daddy Lessons”) to blues metal (“Don’t Hurt Yourself”) to post-punk-gone-Vegas dancehall (“Hold Up”) to feminist hip-hop windshield-smashing (“Sorry”). Even with “All Night” as an ambiguous resolution, it’s a whole album of hurt, which is why it especially hit home after the election. Beyoncé explores what it’s like to get sold out by a lover –…

The Strokes guitarist just released the debut album by his new hard-rock band, CRX. “It’s fairly obvious why I chose this category,” he says. New Order “Age of Consent” A lot of New Order songs are heavy on the electronics. I really like this song because it sounds like a band. Peter Tosh “Legalize It” Quitting the Wailers was a ballsy move, but he wanted to be a singer. This song spoke to the hearts and minds of stoners all over the world. George Harrison “Wah-Wah” He had to separate himself from the Beatles to find out who he was. It’s so dope he wrote a song about a guitar pedal. The Heartbreakers “Born to Lose” Johnny Thunders was one of the coolest voices to come out of the New…

HALF A BROKEN HEEL, POOLS OF SPILT cocktails and discarded pocket squares – all the expected evidence of a Spring Carnival afterparty is scattered across the rooftop terrace of South Yarra’s The Emerson hotel. Less anticipated, however, is the scheduled entertainment – a collaboration between former Eurythmics guitarist Dave Stewart and Jon Stevens, best known for fronting Noiseworks and the Dead Daisies. “It’s not the kind of normal gig we’d do,” remarks Stewart a few days later, sitting on the balcony of his hotel room overlooking Sydney’s Dawes Point. “Nine new songs in a row, to an unsuspecting audience.” The charismatic Brit is decked out in his usual dark shades and low-brim hat, sipping on his lunch soup between meandering tales of Stevie Nicks and near plane disasters. To his…

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Lucy Dacus is a 21-year-old singer-songwriter from Richmond, Virginia, whose debut LP, No Burden, was issued by the tiny EggHunt label early in 2016; by mid-year, she was signed to Matador Records and playing her identity-crisis anthem, “I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore”, on CBS This Morning. The album is a head-turning mix of indie-rock introspection and ancient Piedmont soul born of a youth spent listening to Springsteen and, surprisingly, musical-theatre songs, which her mum played in local productions. Dacus performed sometimes too: “I liked singing but hated acting. I feel like this job, playing music, is close to theatre, but without any pretending. I get to be myself.” After a tour with Car Seat Headrest, Dacus returned to Richmond – home to a thriving indie-rock scene – to settle…

Dori Freeman SOUNDS LIKE: Modern day Americana imbued with the spirit of classic country and the occasional pop flourish FOR FANS OF: Iris DeMent, Brandy Clark, Alison Krauss WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: Twenty-four-year-old Dori Freeman grew up in Galax, Virginia – population: 7000 – in the Appalachian region of the U.S. Between the location and the fact that her father was a bluegrass musician whose band would practice in their home, it’s not surprising that, after a brief dalliance with metal and punk as a teen, she found herself drawn to traditional country and Americana. Her debut self-titled album is anchored in the sounds of her upbringing (“Go On Lovin’” channels Loretta Lynn, whom she recently supported), while a slight Sixties pop influence slips into the likes of “Tell…

Wood began dating Marilyn Manson when she was just 18: “He promised freedom.” IT’S RAINING SOMETHING BIBLICAL IN NASHVILLE, COM- ing down like vengeance between the roadway signs for chicken wings and Jesus and Donald Trump. And here, inside a farm-fresh joint called Butcher and Bee, at a table spread with pickled okra and fried chicken and kale, Evan Rachel Wood is questioning the nature of our reality, the cogs and wheels that have created this very scene, up to and possibly including the guy posted up at the bar who looks like an older Elvis, if Elvis were crazy tall and wearing vintage tweed. “What if this is all bullshit?” Wood asks. “What if this is just conditioning? What if all this is learned and not true? Who am…

July 20, 2012 James Holmes, 24 Aurora, CO Purchased an assault rifle at a gun store in Colorado and more than 5,000 rounds online. 12 killed, 58 wounded Dec. 14, 2012 Adam Lanza, 20 Newtown, CT Used a traditional rifle and an AR-15, both of which were purchased legally by his mother. 27 killed, 2 wounded June 7, 2013 John Zawahri, 23 Santa Monica Bypassed state regulations by building his own AR-15 out of component parts he bought online. 5 killed, 2 wounded July 16, 2015 Mohammod Youssef Abdulazeez, 24 Chattanooga, TN Opened fire on two military centres with a weapon he bought online. 5 killed, 2 wounded Oct. 1, 2015 Chris Harper-Mercer, 26 Roseburg, OR Obtained weapons from family members and a licensed firearms dealer. 9 killed, 9 wounded…

MUST-HAVES Simon and Garfunkel: Bookends 1968 These high school pals from Queens were three years into their stardom – the biggest, most creatively ambitious act to come out of the folk revival since Bob Dylan – when they made this classic, gorgeous and unprecedented album: a look back at the Sixties even before they ended, as hard lessons and now-distant dreams. Bookends was only half a concept album. Side Two was ultimately an unrelated melange of recent singles. But Side One was an exquisite suite of urgency and remembering – the distance and despair within families in “Save the Life of My Child”, the passing of the U.S.’s ideals in “America” – ending with the eerie, prophetic intimacy of “Old Friends” and the early warning in “Bookends Theme”. “Preserve your…

Manchester by the Sea Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams, Lucas Hedges Directed by Kenneth Lonergan YOU CAN’T REALLY PREPARE for the emotional powerhouse that is Manchester by the Sea. And you shouldn’t know too much about writer-director Kenneth Lonergan’s heart-piercing triumph about a family tragedy that extends from those directly involved to the community that alternately offers and withholds nurturing support. Casey Affleck gives the performance of his life as Lee Chandler, a Boston janitor called back to his Massachusetts hometown of Manchester when his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler, superb) dies of a heart attack. Left in charge of his teen nephew Patrick (a live-wire Lucas Hedges), Lee is broken by memories of the life he lost in Manchester with wife Randi (Michelle Williams) and their three children. Williams and…

1 Westworld Showcase A shockingly violent, nudity-packed, philosophical study of man’s tenuous grip on his own morality (and mortality)? Sounds like HBO at it again. Westworld, their biggest gamble since Game of Thrones, is based upon a cheesy, Seventies Michael Chrighton novel and movie where uptight office drones let off steam by shooting and raping their rocks off in a robot-inhabited Wild West theme park. Thankfully, the TV version digs far deeper below the surface of the source to ask some big questions about our increasing desire to power down our humanity. 2 The People v. O.J. Simpson Ten America’s favourite football jock turns out to be a psychopath coddled by a star-struck legal system. No matter how well you might think you already knew the story, The People v.…

IT’S BEEN A LONG AND WINDING road since prodigious 1999 debut The Captain swept Kasey Chambers onto the world stage – the album’s title track going on to feature in HBO phenomenon The Sopranos. “When they ended up winning an Emmy, and the producer got up and accepted the award, he thanked me in his speech,” Chambers recalls. “It was so weird – you know, thanking people like Elvis Costello and the Rolling Stones for the music they used… and Kasey Chambers. I was like, what the fuck!” Since then, the local country-roots-Americana scene’s foremost keeper of the flame has released a slew of crossover hit singles and turned out 10 studio records, a picture book, and an autobiography. With latest, double-LP outing Dragonfly – Disc One is Chambers’ first…

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“My first five albums were absolutely massive and I was completely and utterly depressed.” The Song That Makes Me Homesick Elton John “Rocket Man” 1972 “There was a period where it used to make me cry, and I didn’t know what I was crying about. But there’s a period before you get famous, and then there’s famous. And I think why it brought a tear to my eye was, there’s a separation between normal and abnormal, and grieving the loss of being a civilian. I remember sitting down thinking, ‘I’m a rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone.’ You get isolated when you become famous, and I think I recognised the isolation of fame in that song and grieving the loss of being the young person I…

“WE WENT TO A SMALL BAR WITH DAVID BOWIE IN ROTTERDAM. IT WAS MADNESS.” A MAN WALKS INTO THE ROLLING Stone office with $20,000 in his bag. It’s not cash, but an oboe. The man is Iva Davies, the musical mastermind behind Icehouse, who are embarking on a national tour this month to celebrate the 40th anniversary of first walking on stage as a band that was then called Flowers. Despite being something of a classical music teen prodigy, he says, “I had a love-hate relationship with the oboe. It’s a very temperamental instrument and it could drive me insane.” The world of pop turned out to have its own share of insanity, which he’s only too willing to talk about as he looks back on four decades. Do you…

“There’s no benefit that’s derived from pulling into a fetal position. We go out there, and we work. And over time things get better.” MY FINAL INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT OBAMA IN THE White House had been scheduled for the day after the presidential election. I had hoped to look back on what he had achieved over eight years and the issues that mattered the most to him and to the readers of ROLLING STONE, hear his advice for Hillary and about the road ahead. It was to be the “exit interview”, his tenth cover for ROLLING STONE, our fourth interview together. Before flying down to Washington, D.C., on the morning after the staggering election results, I called and offered to postpone. This had to be one of the worst days…

“DEPRESSION HAS OFTEN been the general background of both my work and my daily life – it was the sea I swam in.” LEONARD COHEN WAS THE POET OF BROKENNESS. THE KNOWLEDGE HAUNTED the first song that drew attention to him, “Suzanne”: “Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water/And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower. . . . / But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open/Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.” • That brokenness was always there. It proved central to his music and to his body of poetry and literature (nobody else ever mastered all three disciplines as well as Cohen), and it marked “Hallelujah”, his most famous vision of transcendence: “It’s…

Ratings are supervised by the editors of ROLLING STONE. “I can make my own bread. I can make my own wine. I can make my own bed in my own damn time. Hell, I can make my own luck. Am I not pretty enough? Who gives a fuck!?” —KASEY CHAMBERS, “Talkin’ Baby Blues” Kasey Chambers Dragonf ly Warner Kasey Chambers has always tended to eschew the more reticent course of songwriting from a point of abstraction, consistently wearing her profoundest truths and uncertainties on her sleeve. It’s an artistic penchant given full flight on free-ranging double-LP Dragonfly: “Talkin’ Baby Blues”, a shot of Woody Guthriesque spoken-word acoustica, is itself a stunningly candid retelling of Chambers’ storied life to date. From country-roots arrival The Captain (1999) through pop-rock outlier Carnival (2006)…

The Flaming Lips Oczy Mlody Warner 2013’s The Terror was more than just a morbid mood piece. It was a timely reminder that no matter how many confetti cannons they discharged or how many fake blood vials they poured on their faces, Wayne Coyne’s fearless freaks could still be very real when they wanted to be. But if The Terror caught them heading into the middle-age abyss with eyes wide open and guns blazing, then Oczy Mlody is the calm after the cataclysmic storm. The album is painted in the same soft hues as 2002’s Yoshimi, but without a song like “Do You Realize??” or “Fight Test” to give this flighty collection some heft. The closest thing here is “The Castle”, where Coyne sings of a girl with eyes…

“Hey Schoolgirl” Non-album single 1957 Simon and Garfunkel were Queens teens when they cut this slice of Fifties-rock candy as Tom and Jerry. It landed them on American Bandstand. “Bleecker Street” Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. 1964 This gently buoyant postcard from the ground zero of the folk revival comes with naive but ambitious imagery, already showing Simon’s poetic streak. “Anji” Sounds of Silence 1965 This intricate solo instrumental was a rite of passage for young folkies in Britain. Simon learned it there, nails it here. “Blues Run the Game” Old Friends 1997 Simon produced a ’65 recording of this folk-blues diamond by Jackson C. Frank. Simon and Garfunkel’s take sat in the can for 30 years. Both are beauties. “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)” Parsley,…

Moonlight Mahershala Ali Directed by Barry Jenkins IT’S HARD TO PINPOINT HOW Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight makes you see the world with new eyes. But it does. And then it owns you. Reduced to tweet size, it’s about growing up black, gay and alienated in the Miami projects. Jenkins, adapting Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, locks focus on one boy, Chiron, through three stages of his life – as a nine-year-old, a teenager and an adult. Three stellar actors (Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes) take us on Chiron’s journey. They’re unforgettable. Brutally bullied at school, Chiron gets no help from his crackhead mother (a superb Naomie Harris). His comfort is Juan (the outstanding Mahershala Ali), a pusher who teaches Chiron to be at peace…

“I put my number online. I get dick pics and messages from haters, but it’s mainly love.” The last time I thought, “I’m in trouble now” I was just out shopping in Sydney, and I spent a stupid amount of money on some shoes that I definitely didn’t need from Miu Miu, and I feel like my brain was telling me ‘no’, but my heart was saying ‘yes’. I was like, oh shit, I’m in trouble with myself, and my bank account. The last time I threw a tantrum I threw a really bad tantrum when I was on a conference call with my record label, and there was someone who was telling me I need to be more friendly and approachable, so they had this idea that once a…

‘I’M A PRETTY BIG NERD,” SAYS JOE JONAS, sitting in the L.A. house he’s dubbed “the Shaqteau”. If you’re wondering how it got that name, check the life-size cutout of NBA great Shaquille O’Neal that greets you upon entrance. Jonas – who just released his debut LP with his disco-pop crew, DNCE – has come a long way since his teen days as a sitcom star on the Disney Channel. But he’s kept a boyish sensibility, even as he’s become a little more rugged and sophisticated with age. “I’ve always been attracted to fashion that lets you be yourself,” he says. For Jonas, that means a house stocked with childhood memorabilia as well as fine art and a wardrobe that mixes leather and letterman jackets. “I’m a big-time New York…

When the Replacements split in 1991, it didn’t take bassist Tommy Stinson long to form his next group. It took even less time for it to fall apart. Switching to vocals and guitar, he’d intended Bash & Pop to be a “real band”, but their 1993 debut, Friday Night Is Killing Me, was largely the work of Stinson and drummer Steve Foley, with help from the likes of Tom Petty alum Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell. After abandoning the project Stinson went on to do time in Guns N’Roses and Soul Asylum, but when GN’R reunited last year, he started focusing on new solo material. When he played it to friends, they all said one thing: “It sounds a whole lot like a Bash & Pop record.” And so it…

UZ PERSONA Cutting a shadowy figure in a masquerade mask and hat that reads FUCK in Old English letters, UZ surfaced in 2011 and even played Coachella in 2014. His sound: ominous trap music to match his ominous look. WHO IS THIS GUY? Diplo, whose Mad Decent label releases UZ’s music, has said, “All I know is he’s definitely not me.” Some fans are convinced that UZ is French oddball DJ Troubl, who uses the alter ego to make more-accessible music. Malaa PERSONA Spinning moody house in a ski mask, Malaa plays frequent live gigs and has baited fans with a series of mixes called Who Is Malaa? WHO IS THIS GUY? He has the same booking agency as Paris’ DJ Snake, Mercer and Tchami. Most theories suggest one or…

“I needed to shut everyone off for a while and completely destroy myself. I needed to become totally lost.” WHEN RYAN ADAMS WAS A KID growing up in Jacksonville, North Carolina, he used to ride his skateboard to the mall. Though it “was pretty far from where my neighbourhood was”, he’d do it “because I wanted to be close to records”. During the week he’d save his lunch money – $1 a day – and if things went to plan, by Friday he’d have enough cash to buy an album. More often than not it would be a punk rock record from the Dischord or SST stable, something that didn’t go unnoticed by store clerk Jere Mcilwean. There was another guy who worked there – “He looked like he was…

Sohn   Rennen 4AD/Remote Control “The Wheel”, from Sohn’s 2014 debut Tremors, is a beguiling track. His clear, yearning croon is layered over a single stuttered, treated vocal utterance on loop and plinking percussion, and it’s all swollen up in the middle, the voice dropping out as the synth washes get loud. There’s nothing like it on Rennen, the London-born, Vienna-based producer’s second album, on which the man born Christopher Taylor turns away from the warm, acoustic-toned electronica of his debut and towards something colder, more clinical and harder to connect with. Opener “Hard Liquor” sounds a little like U.S. soul singer Allen Stone if he started playing around with synthesisers (“She needs that hard liquor, and she’ll be ok”), and Rennen never really escapes that quasi-churchy, school camp feel…

Deadmau5 W:/2016ALBUM/ mau5trap Electronic producer Deadmau5 retreated, Bon Iver-style, to write the bulk of his dense, thoughtful eighth album in the Canadian countryside. While most of his fellow main-stage festival favourites continue to either churn out vocal-driven, vaguely house-inflected pop, or vocal-driven, vaguely trap-inflected pop, one of the music’s most famous and visible stars has done neither. With the breadth and beauty of a rural sky, 10 of the 11 expansive tracks on W:/2016ALBUM/ unroll across at least five-and-a-half-minutes. Tracks ebb and flow from style to style; they end abruptly, rather than pretending to blend seamlessly. This is an album, proper, and most definitely not a mix – and it’s definitely not made just for a big-room dance floor. There’s still plenty of the four-on-the-floor numbers through which he made…

Lion Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman Directed by Garth Davis DEV PATEL DOESN’T APPEAR until nearly an hour into Lion – but when he does his strong, soulful, Oscar-buzzed performance cuts deep. The film is based on Saroo Brierley’s bestselling memoir A Long Way Home, about a five-year-old Indian boy, raised in abject poverty, who falls asleep on a train and ends nearly 1,000 miles away in Calcutta. With only a child’s memory of his single mother (Priyanka Bose) and his Hindi village, Saroo is stranded on dangerous streets among a Bengali-speaking populace he can’t understand or dare to trust. It’s then that this kid is adopted by an Australian couple, Sue and John Brierley (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham), who give him an education and raise him in posh, middle-class…