Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2018 i Rolling Stone Australia

Malcolm On Top THERE’S NO DENYING THAT Malcolm Young made for one of the best ROLLINGSTONEcovers in recent years, but I can’t help but question your decision to put Malcolm on the cover over his brother George. The Easybeats had arguably more historical relevance than any other Aussie rock band. Not to mention he was also a driving force behind AC/DC as well as his own band. Barry Pence Cowra, NSW WOW! THE OBITUARIES FOR George and Malcolm Young were just gobsmacking. The photos are amazing – you have captured them well. I love reading the articles on Australian musicians. Anna M Brisbane, Qld As the Days Go By GREAT WORK ROLLING STONE on Darryl Braithwaite‘s Living Legend article. [RS 794] He’s a real nice guy, having met him backstage…

1 Kendrick Lamar DAMN. Rap’s most powerful voice at the absolute top of his game, with nothing left to provebuthisstayingpower.Lamar’s2015 watershed To Pimp a Butterfly was a brilliant hip-hop therapy session, exploding with quick-change flows, warped introspect and kaleidoscopic beats. The chart-topping DAMN. is his bare-knuckled MC blowout, just as potent but hitting with more immediate impact. He brushes off haters on “YAH.” (“Fox News wanna use my name for percentage”), then dives deeper, musing on family and referencing the Bible. On “FEEL.” he unloads his head over a trippy slow jam, going roughly 50 lines without break on one breathless stretch, a virtuoso synaptic display that’s dense without becoming impenetrable, thanks to Lamar’s feel for flow and hooks. The single “HUMBLE.” is a tour de force, packed with punchlines…

THERE IS A REMARKABLE scene early in Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars, the new Show-time documentary about the guitarist’s career, that sums up his meteoric rise as a British-blues prodigy and worldwide superstar: Bob Dylan in a London hotel room in 1965 watching John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers on TV and raving over that band’s guitarist – Clapton, then barely out of his teens. “I still can’t believe that’s real,” Clapton says, laughing in a New York hotel lobby the day after a screening. “I thought, ‘Oh, that must be Photo-shopped.’” Life in 12 Bars also has extraordinary footage of Clapton with Cream, revealing interviews with the women in his life and painfully frank sequences on his battles with heroin, alcohol and the accidental 1991 death of his young son, Conor,…

THE FIRST COLD NIGHT OF November in Portland, Oregon, found John Gourley and Zach Carothers of Portugal. The Man in a familiar position: in a maroon Ford E350 van, Carothers driving, Gourley in the back. Nine years ago, after the van they’d been touring in shot its transmission for the fifth time, they bought this one used and have logged 217,000 miles since, enough to crisscross the country more than 77 times. During that time, PTM built themselves up from alt-rockers with a debt to Bowie and Pink Floyd and whatever else was handy to this year’s biggest crossover band, with a U.S. Top Five single, “Feel It Still”, that references everything from Motown to the Black Panthers and “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)”. Their breakthrough album,…

The singer-songwriter’s latest album, Modern Burdens, features new recordings of songs from her 1996 debut, The Burdens of Being Upright. Liz Phair “Fuck and Run” This song made me want to stop and write about real things. I realised you could have conversational lyrics and a good melody. Guided by Voices “I Am a Scientist” Robert Pollard is talking about self-discovery as a grown-up. The low-fi sound inspired me to try something similar. My Bloody Valentine “Only Shallow” I remember laying on my back with my friend, stoned, and listening to this. We could visualise the sounds coming at us on a conveyor belt. It’s superatmospheric. Tom Waits “A Little Rain” I love a good, sad, rainy-day song, but this one takes the cake. The line “a little rain never…

SOUNDS LIKE: Boundary-less dance music that bangs FOR FANS OF: Flying Lotus, Shlohmo, Machine-drum WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: Since she first broke through with her debut album Midnight Menu in 2010, TOKiMONSTA – aka Los Angeles native Jennifer Lee – has grown to become one of the most essential voices in dance music. Her live sets and mixes have always eschewed genre boundaries – you’d be just as likely to hear an Aphex Twin cut as you would a hip-hop sample – but new album Lune Rouge sees Lee make a concerted effort towards sonic cohesion, with a distinctive pop inflection. Lune Rouge’s origins are dark: in early 2016, Lee underwent life-saving surgery for a rare brain disease called Moyamoya. Recovery from surgery was arduous, and not only did…

 ALBUM: UNDERWORLD “I FEEL LIKE NO ONE’S EVER TRUSTED MY IDEAS UNTIL NOW.” RELEASE: JANUARY 12 WHEN YOU LOOK AT TO- night Alive’s successes both at home and abroad – the Sydney outfit enjoyed ARIA Top 10 debuts, major label backing, sold-out tours and coveted festival slots – it’s easy to see why vocalist Jenna McDougall looked like she had it made. An inspirational musician in her own right, she was navigating a persistently masculine industry with what seemed like a perennially sunny disposition. But at a crucial time in her life she found herself bombarded by a chorus of voices that weren’t her own. For the better part of a decade, McDougall learnt first-hand what it was like to have middle-aged label execs commenting on everything from Tonight Alive’s…

ALBUM: MAKE WAY FOR LOVE REL: FEB 16 Marlon Williams’ second album comes with a warning of unstoppable emotional momentum in its title. “I’ve never used music as therapy,” the honey-voiced crooner from Lyttelton, New Zealand, says of his California-made album. “It’s always been cathartic in some ways, but I’ve never needed to have it as a vehicle to work things out. Until now.” The album comes in the ache of a break-up with fellow Kiwi singer Aldous Harding — which might just be idle gossip if she didn’t play such a key role in the healing. Their long-distance duet, “Nobody Gets What They Want”, “was well and truly a part of the process”, Williams says. “It’s a really great feeling that music can have that sort of functionality.”…

ALBUM: DEPTH OF FIELD RELEASE: FEBRUARY 23 TWO YEARS AFTER THE TOP 10 Eternal Return, Sarah Blasko is set to release her sixth album, Depth of Field. Recorded in “many studios” around Sydney – including “bits and pieces” in her own home and bass and drums at Jim Moginie’s Oceanic studios – and produced by Blasko, the Sydney singer-songwriter penned between 25 and 30 songs for the record, with 10 making the cut. “I feel that it follows on from Eternal Return but it is certainly not the same,” considers Blasko. “There are far less keyboards for starters, as that album was kind of a keyboard love affair. But it’s always important to me to pick up from where the listener saw or heard me last, so there are connecting…

ALBUM: TBC RELEASE: TBC Courtney Barnett may have only recently released her full-length collaboration with Kurt Vile, Lotta Sea Lice, but she hasn’t been resting on her laurels – it seems the follow-up to her breakthrough debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, is almost finished. In a recent interview with Beats 1 DJ Zane Lowe, Barnett revealed that she’s “trying to come up with a title for my new album . . . It’s all one sentence thoughts, you know, trying to come up with something clever.” Upon being quizzed if it’s finished she said it’s “getting close”.…

ALBUM: TBC RELEASE: MAY TBC ‘I WANT IT TO HAVE THE ‘GUNS BLAZ- ing’ of the first record,” says Chris Cheney from the Living End’s Melbourne rehearsal studio, where the trio are currently writing songs for their eighth album. “The last couple of records we’ve probably been guilty of being a little tame here and there and trying to put too much emphasis on crafting the song too much as opposed to just plugging in and fucking bashing out some noise. So there’s a lot of noise on this record already. The shackles have been pulled off.” With Cheney now living in Los Angeles, the three-piece reconvened in Melbourne in November and spent three weeks “throwing around” some of the “100 ideas” the frontman had accumulated on Garage-Band, followed by…

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? Get out of your own way. Ego is a killer. What does religion or spirituality mean to you? Spirituality is crucial. It is a very simple thing. You have to give the world back to the world. It is the law that I abide by. You get out of life what you put in. You put flop in, you get flop out. You put in love, you get out love. What are the best and worst parts of success? You’re like, “Fuck, this started supercheesy, get to the jokes.” The best part is your dreams come true. The worst part is that your dreams come true and you realise it ain’t going to fill that hole. It’s the ego, dude! Ego is the…

“N.E.R.D. and Pharrell are tapped into something else right now.” The First Song I Loved Thin Lizzy Jailbreak, 1978 “I would go downstairs when my parents were still asleep on the weekends, and pull [Live and Dangerous] out and put the needle on and listen to that with headphones on. I would just listen to that record over and over again. It was badass. So tight, so much groove. And the song is so offbeat and so crazy and so lean. I remember that really capturing my imagination.” The First Song I Played on Radio Deftones Feiticeira, 2000 “I was given a show [on XFM in London] and I asked, ‘Please, it’s my first ever real show in my own name, let me kick my time off with my own…

SOUNDS LIKE: Soulful R&B duets over soothing electronic soundscapes FOR FANS OF: Phantogram, Crystal Castles, Chvrches WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: This Canadian duo’s career was given an extra push when they were discovered through Toronto non-profit the Remix Project. Jayli and Hayden Wolf grew up on opposite sides of British Columbia, but their lives were similar. Both were raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses and didn’t cross paths until they were leaving the religion, meeting through mutual friends and later connecting while trying to launch their individual music careers. “Our whole childhood past was so similar that we bonded instantly,” Hayden recalls of their immediate connection. As they began collaborating, they realised that their romantic and musical spark was undeniable and decided to take their relationship and joint career seriously. THEY…

SOUNDS LIKE: The sweet spot of a Sixties-tinged summer hit FOR FANS OF: The Beach Boys, Rooney, Weezer WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: Long Island-based musician Ryan Camenzuli writes infectious, abrasive yet melodic indie-pop with a framework that is constructed with precise multi-part harmonies and surf rock guitars. His debut album On Human Freakout Mountain conveys the earnestness of someone going through and trying to document the coming-of-age experience. HE SAYS: “I felt like I was always very reserved in being open about things and being myself in a lot of ways. I think once I broke that barrier, it started getting so much easier for me to open up and be truthful,” says Camenzuli. “Once that started happening, and I started writing more honestly, I let me be me.…

SOUNDS LIKE: The self-described “Hannah Montana of rap” tackles the tribulations of teen mundanity with a blend of hazy hip-hop and assertive, gloss-pop. SOUNDS LIKE: SOPHIE, Anna of the North, Vera Blue WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: In 2015, while attending a concert by Melbourne MC Allday, then-16-year-old Grace Shaw “had a vision that I would be supporting him on a tour”. Days later the Brisbane rapper-slash-singer was skipping high school to “muck around” with music, quickly graduating from her own “not very polished” GarageBand productions to licencing beats over Facebook. Soundcloudshared first effort, “Suicide Blonde”, paired a fly-on-the-wall account of a friend’s slow slip into depression with a thumping, club-ready trap beat from Adelaide’s Tigerilla, and was swiftly followed up by “Sunglasses”, a snarling, nursery-rhyme square-up of copycat culture.…

NOEL GALLAGHER HAS JUST rushed back from his son’s Christmas concert to make this interview on time, and his review of the primary schoolers’ musical efforts is a stark reminder of Gallagher’s penchant for telling it like it is. “They were a bit out of time,” he deadpans. It’s no real surprise that Gallagher’s own children, who by all accounts are his pride and joy, aren’t safe from his “truth bombs”. With the new Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds album Who Built the Moon? topping the UK charts, not even the recent release of his estranged brother Liam’s solo album can shake Gallagher’s optimistic mood. You worked with electronic musician David Holmes as a producer on Who Built the Moon? . What was it that made you…

ALBUM: IVORY RELEASE: MARCH 23 The New Zealander’s fourth album was recorded in Los Angeles with Steve Rusch (Letlive., Solange) and, says Wigmore, “most definitely follows the eclectic nature of previous albums, however this album feels a lot more ‘at peace’ than previous records. I felt very little pressure to appease anyone on what kind of songs I wanted to write or how I wanted to produce it.” The 11-tracker features the ballad “Cold Cave” as well as the defiant “Hallow Fate”. “I was pretty pissed at the state of things going on with my career and the letdown I felt with the people I had trusted to help me in the music industry. This song discusses these sentiments and was a very therapeutic release for all those feelings.”…

ALBUM: TBC RELEASE: MID-YEAR BOUNCING BETWEEN studios in New York, where she’s been working with producer David Kahne, and Sydney with local producers Ross James and Alex Burnett, Thelma Plum has almost finished her debut LP. “I’ve spent the best chunk of this year on it,” she says. She was inspired to work with Kahne because of his involvement with Lana Del Ray’s pre-fame albums (released under the name Lizzy Grant). “Some of my favourite songs ever are on those records. Then I realised that he’s worked with the Strokes, another band that I’ve listened to for years.” Lyrically, Plum has felt empowered to become more political. “When I released my first EP, I was 16 and a lot of it was about where I was at at that time.…

ALBUM: BLEND INN RELEASE: FEBRUARY 9 To make their second album, the NSW indie-rockers decamped to Seattle’s famed Robert Lang studios, the same place Dave Grohl laid down the initial Foo Fighters demos, and the last place Nirvana ever recorded. “We spent a few weeks there and had a blast in that amazing studio,” says vocalist/guitarist Zach Stephenson. “The album has a bit of a darker and heavier feel to previous things we have released,” he adds. “Lyrically I think the record explores the last couple of years for us and what we have gone through on the road and growing older whilst touring.” The 12 songs set for inclusion – “All bangers,” smiles Stephenson – feature first single “Homely Feeling” and another called “Sweet Release”. “It’s about letting it…

ALBUM: TBC RELEASE: TBC Having been (controversially) dubbed “the best up-and-coming live band in Australia” by Triple J, the Brisbane outfit’s debut album will feature a bunch of the songs they’ve been charming audiences with here and overseas, such as “Boyfriend”, “Bubblegum”, “Try Your Luck” and a re-worked version of “Don’t You Know I’m In a Band”. “The album is ironic, self-deprecating and has some badass basslines,” says vocalist Janet Planet of the 11-track effort. “We think our album sounds like what you’d want a Confidence Man record to sound like.”…

Kimbra Primal Heart Warner ★★★★ BY ANNABEL ROSS If Kimbra’s second record didn’t reach the commercial heights of her first, it at least cemented her reputation as one of the most daring pop artists around. The Golden Echo (2014) was a tropical punch of future-soul that, while impressing most critics with its ambition, felt a little too scattershot to connect with a broader audience. The influence of fellow pop rebel, the intergalactically inclined Janelle Monae, was palpable throughout, in stark contrast to the more uniformly BjÖrk-on-Broadway feel of 2011’s Vows. Like its predecessors, Primal Heart is surprising, potent and polished til it sparkles, but it paints within narrower parameters, allowing Kimbra’s voice and personality to come to the fore and sounding less like a caricature of herself. Co-producing every track…

Django Django Marble Skies Because ★★★ ½ Having staked out genre-hopping adventurism on their self-titled debut before tidying up for 2015’s Born Under Saturn, Django Django are back to feeling comfortably loose with their alchemy. Marble Skies both streamlines and diversifies their excitable, eccentric pop without losing the celebratory DIY spirit that animated their early tinkering. Thanks in part to Metronomy’s Anna Prior, who joined on drums while David Maclean shifted to more of a producer’s role, the London ensemble bring rhythmic sinew to airy earworms (“Further”) and retro rave-ups (“Tic-Tac-Toe”) alike. All the while, guitarist Vincent Neff’s floaty vocals conjure disembodied campfire warmth. Yet the biggest highlights wind up being a pair of curveball collaborations: Slow Club’s Rebecca Taylor sings snake-charming lead on the dancehall-flirting “Surface to Air”,…

“I don’t really throw tantrums. I’m more likely to sulk in my own juices than make it everyone else’s problem.” The last time I confronted a phobia Oh jeez, I think I’ve got so many demons I don’t know if I’m ready to deal with any of them. I just keep stamping them down and hoping they go away, but that’s probably not the best solution. I should probably get a little smarter about it and face those things. The last time I got injured onstage I’m not sure that’s ever happened. I’ve been emotionally injured on stage, with the audience reaction or something. There was this one time when we were playing a show at a folk festival and there was this older gentleman, he had his own lawn…

In 2003, Evanescence burst onto the scene with “Bring Me To Life”, the first single off what would become their multi-platinum debut album, Fallen. A slice of Goth-drama-meets-arena-metal, one of its key moments is a rap midway through – a rap that founder, frontwoman and driving creative force Amy Lee hated. “In the beginning a lot of people told us what to do, I didn’t have control of everything,” she explains down the line from Chicago. “I definitely fought that rap really hard. I was crying in the studio when we were doing it because I felt like our first moment out was showing people a picture of us that was slightly distorted.” Fourteen years on, Lee was able to take the song back courtesy of Synthesis, an album of…

TALK TO ANY OF TIMO- thy “Timbaland” Mosey’s friends, and you’ll hear the same thing: that just a couple of years ago he was a totally different man. They’ll tell you that he had lost his way, becoming depressed, overweight and contemptuous of the severely minimal beats that fuelled hits by new artists like Future and Migos. He hadn’t had a major success since Beyoncé’s 2013 self-titled LP; his marriage was faltering; and his closest industry friends, the producers Pharrell Williams and Swizz Beatz, were concerned enough that they were checking in to give him pep talks. “I felt like I wasn’t committed, I was riding off ego,” says Timbaland, 45, looking back. “It was really about me neglecting my gift. As a producer and a soundmaker, I had to…

SOUNDS LIKE: Indie pop-rock with a twist of punk and a splash of millennial curiosity. FOR FANS OF: The urgency of Violent Soho, the vibe of Nineties indie-rock, and lyrics of generational questioning and critique WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: Starting out three years ago as a solo venture by frontman Caleb Karvountzis, Tiny Little Houses have grown from a Soundcloud collaboration between Karvountzis and guitarist Sean Mullins into an established band (completed by bassist Al Yamin and drummer Clancy Bond). Having released two EPs and received Triple J and FBi radio play with single “Entitled Generation”, their debut album Idiot Proverbs serves up commentary, questioning, and a dose of reality about life as a twenty-something. Witness the lyrics to “Entitled Generation”: “I’m 25 and still not living out of…

SOUNDS LIKE: Fired-up anthems for the Brexit generation to lose their minds to FOR FANS OF: Early Arctic Monkeys, Jamie T, Liam Gallagher’s accent WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: Dominic “Yungblud” Harrison moved from his northern England home of Doncaster to London as a 16-year-old in search of his musical dreams. All he found was disappointment as he chased the sounds on the radio: “I thought, ‘Bieber’s doing that, [Shawn] Mendes is doing that, that must be working, I’ll just flutter my eyelashes and wink at some girls and it’ll be fine.’” Only it wasn’t. Disillusionment soon set in, and he was forced to take a step back and reassess his priorities. “I was always enthralled with chaos and mayhem,” he says of the sounds he adored growing up, “and…

SOUNDS LIKE: A cinematic melange of Eighties New Wave, quiet storm and goth-pop. FOR FANS OF: The xx, Broken Bells, Beach House WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: A little over a year ago, Los Angeles trio Lo Moon posted a seven-minute slice of dream pop, “Loveless”, to the internet. It found the ears of Pharrell Williams and ex-Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla, and the song is closing in on a million YouTube streams. Frontman Matt Lowell, a Berklee grad, wrote the falsetto-filled number about five years ago while trying out different genres in New York as a singer-songwriter. “It’s the first song I felt really excited about,” he says. Lo Moon have since released two more tracks, “Thorns” and “This Is It”. The latter was a Top 20…

HE’S THE ZELIG OF AUSTRALIAN rock. In 1971 Ross Wilson’s band Daddy Cool released what was then the biggest selling local album of all time in Daddy Who? Daddy Cool. That was overtaken by Skyhooks’ Living in the 70’s, which he produced. And that was usurped by John Farnham’s Whispering Jack, which contained “A Touch of Paradise”, a song he co-wrote. Then there’s Mondo Rock, his Eighties group that is being celebrated with The Complete Anthology and the reissue of their catalogue. As the band prepares to tour Australia in June, 70-year-old Wilson jokes that he’s ready for the spotlight: “My wife told me I should start dyeing my hair again, so I obeyed.” Do you remember the first gig you ever saw? I do. It was early 1958, I…

ALBUM: TBC RELEASE: TBC “With the EP going so crazy, it’s meant every day there’s something on, so finding time has been the hardest thing,” says Dean Lewis of recording his debut album. The Sydney singer had a giant 2017, with his debut single “Waves” going triple platinum in Australia, being streamed more than 45 million times, and used in high profile TV shows such as Suits and Riverdale. When not touring his first EP, Same Kind of Different, he’s been busy recording his as-yet-untitled full-length in London with the team behind the EP, Edd Holloway and Nicholas Atkinson. Sixteen songs have been laid down, “and then about 20 more almost made it”. “I’m trying to write little movie scenes or little worlds, and by using that technique you can…

ALBUM: TBC RELEASE: TBC JUDGING BY SOME OF ITS GUEST performers, the new album by Sydney electronic duo the Presets will have something of an international feel to it. “We recorded an African choir in regional Victoria and a Caribbean choir in LA,” says Kim Moyes. “There are vocal contributions from singers all over the globe who worked remotely to get us parts for songs, some of whom you may be familiar with and others who might be a fresh discovery.” Also adding their talents to the album – the duo’s fourth, and the follow-up to 2012’s Pacifica – are Shane Parsons from DZ Deathrays, who plays guitar on one song, as does Kirin J. Callinan, while “old mate” Touch Sensitive is also involved with a couple of tracks. The…

ALBUM: TBC RELEASE: TBC Holly Rankin, AKA Jack River, is putting the finishing touches to her debut album, and though she won’t reveal its title will say, “It’s named after my favourite Neil Young song.” Recorded and written over five of the “hardest, craziest years” of her life, she says: “With this album I have felt less inclined to fit in and more inclined for the songs and project to reside in its own space.” The singer describes the track “Confess” as “the song where I have tried to perfect my vision of early 2000s pop meets grit folk. It’s Alicia Silverstone meets Oasis meets Natalie Imbruglia.”…

ALBUM: TBC RELEASE: MAY TBC AT THE START OF 2017, DEAD LET- ter Circus set themselves a goal of recording two albums in the year. “There was a joke, as if we’d get that together,” chuckles frontman Kim Benzie. In May they ticked off the first part of that equation when they released The Endless Mile, featuring acoustic reimaginings of earlier material. Then Benzie had what he refers to as a “massive download from the ether of new music”, and by September the band had entered Studio Circuit on the Gold Coast with producers Forrester Savell and Matt Bartlem to record the proper follow-up to 2015’s Aesthesis. “I’d say it’s a bit heavier than [that record],” says Benzie of the as-yet-untitled album. “[The Endless Mile] created a pendulum effect where…

Tune-Yards I can feel you creep into my private life 4AD/Remote Control ★★★★ Sometimes Tune-Yards’ music sounds like field hollers from the American south in the 1940s. Sometimes it sounds like troupes of South African schoolgirls doing skipping chants. Sometimes it sounds like an early Eighties New York downtown mash-up of electro, disco and art-pop. The fact it’s all the work of one white thirty-something woman, who can translate all the above onstage with just a bass player for company, speaks to the genius of Merrill Garbus. On her fourth album, Garbus pulls back the curtain a crack to allow the listener a peak into how she builds these songs. There’s the deliberately skew-iff piano chord that’s repeated throughout “Heart Attack” until its part of the fabric of the song,…