Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2015 i Rolling Stone Australia

THE EVOLUTION OF ASH GRUN- wald over the past decade has been one of the great quiet success stories of Australian music. While his career was initially bred through the blues scene, Grunwald has never let himself be pigeon-holed, embracing influences from hip-hop, rockabilly and the rich history of psychedelia to forge his own sound. “I remember thinking after I had done one album,” says Grunwald, “how incredible it would be to have 10. All the creativity and change that goes into that journey. I’d look at someone like Tom Waits and just think, ‘Wow. That’s where I want to be.’” With the release of his latest set, the aptly-titled NOW, Grunwald surpasses his ambitions – this is his 11th release in a little over 12 years and marks just…

WHEN KISS FIRST TOURED Australia in 1980, they were, says frontman Paul Stanley, “prisoners of the hotel”, such was the pandemonium surrounding the band. “It was amazing to be front page news every day and to meet some incredible people and some equally incredible women,” he titters. Thirty-five years on, Kiss are returning once again this month, bringing with them their ‘spider’ stage production. Stanley checked in ahead of the tour to reflect on the band’s career. You’ve been doing this for 42 years. Is there anything left for you to learn about playing live? I’m pretty good at it. But that doesn’t mean I enjoy it any less. What happened with time is I cherish what I do that much more. So to be up onstage, I don’t know…

SUCCESS HAS COME COMPARATIVE- ly late to American singer-songwriter John Grant, and for that the 47-year-old is relieved. “When I was younger the desire to escape was so great that I would have embraced fame wholeheartedly and I wonder if I would have lived to see my forties,” admits Grant, who talks about his life with a self-analytical tone that can quickly be engulfed by passion stemming from a troubled past. “I had a lot of self-destructive tendencies.” A gay man who was diagnosed HIV-positive in 2011, Grant now resides in Reykjavik, sharing an apartment with his graphic designer boyfriend. His 2013 solo LP, Pale Green Ghosts, earned him a nomination as Best International Male Solo Artist at the Brit Awards, while Sinead O’Connor invited him to collaborate, but he…

TUCKED AWAY in the one corner of Sydney you’d least expect to find it, the Barnes family enclave is a rambling, brilliantly converted warehouse, humble and spectacular at the same time. Two ramshackle tables – each of which could comfortably seat 10 – line the front-room-cum-kitchen, testament to the fact that, while this may principally be home to one of Australia’s best-selling singers and his wife Jane, it is also a much-loved refuge for the family and friends the couple have so warmly welcomed into their world over many decades. On this sunny early-spring afternoon, the house is a hive of activity. Inside, Jane is offering drinks and preparing a gorgeous, homely lunch. Outside, in a courtyard littered with potted citrus and succulents, Barnes is playing host to an odd…

Scream Queens WED., 9 P.M., CHANNEL 11 Let’s call it right now: Scream Queens is already looking like the smartest move Ryan Murphy’s ever made – it has all the best elements of Glee and American Horror Story, but it tops them both. The sorority sisters of Kappa Kappa Tau have a big problem: a mysterious killer in a red devil costume, who’s only slightly more evil than the sorority sisters themselves. Scream Queens turns this setting into an anthology series – a murder or three per week – that goes for laughs, like a demented mix of Scream and Gossip Girl. Emma Roberts is the most horrible Kappa of them all, queen bee Chanel Oberlin, sneering lines like, “That girl was a bitch who thought she was all that…

IT’S A BALMY AUGUST MORN- ing in the offices of Up Late With Miss Piggy. The usual squad of flunkies, including Gonzo, Pepe the King Prawn and Scooter, surrounds Kermit the Frog, the showrunner. Fozzie Bear is off somewhere, possibly violating the office’s “no Snapchat at work” policy. Piggy is the talent, so she doesn’t arrive until much later in the day. There’s a discussion of new guests, and Yolanda, a kindly rat, has a suggestion. “Hey, let’s call Josh Groban next. He’s single, he has a great voice and he gives me the feels.” Pepe the King Prawn nods his head energetically and speaks in a vaguely Spanish accent. “Oh, he gives me the feels, too.” The rest of the room titters. Pepe doesn’t back down. “What? He’s a…

1 Macklemore & Ryan Lewis TITLE TBD DATE TBD Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ follow-up to their million-selling 2012 debut, The Heist, ran into an unexpected delay: At the height of their success, Macklemore – who has been in recovery for drug and alcohol addiction since 2008 – backslid with weed and pills. “I went in and out of sobriety,” says the Seattle rapper. “That usually ends up in creative stagnation.” It wasn’t until October that he was able to give his full attention to making music with producer Lewis. “When I got back into my 12-step meetings, it was like, ‘This is no joke’,” Macklemore says. “ ‘Do you want to make another album, or let go of everything you worked for?’ ” You can hear their ambition on songs…

JUST AFTER SUNRISE ON AUGUST 1ST, TOKYO police stormed into a sleek two-storey townhouse on a quiet residential street in Japan’s capital and arrested Mark Karpeles, the 30-year-old head of Mt. Gox, the largest bitcoin exchange in the world. By the time they led the doughy, pale Frenchman away, the police could barely make their way through the throngs of reporters closing in outside. ¶ Just three months earlier, when I met Karpeles here, the scene was considerably calmer. He was baking apple quiche, a recipe passed down from his grandmother. Scruffy and chipper, his dark hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, he wore baggy green pants and a f lour-dusted black T-shirt with the words THIS ISN’T EVEN MY fiNAL FORM. System of a Down played from his…

The Dead Weather Dodge and Burn Warner Five years after their last beautifully-deranged outburst, Nashville’s freakiest supergroup return with another slice of dark absurdity, once again defying any attempt to decipher which bits of genius came off the cuff and which were carefully calculated. The blueprint hasn’t changed too much – Zeppelin and Beefheart coaxed into a cyberpunk orgy of big riffing and brash swagger – but where Jack White stole the show on 2010’s Sea of Cowards, Alison Mosshart is the jewel in this twisted little crown. Returned to spotlight-vocal duties, Mosshart sizzles on opener “I Feel Love (Every Million Miles)”, all angry magnetism and diffused lust, setting the tone for the rest of the album. “Lose the Right” reprises that vibe brilliantly over an explosive organ riff and…

WRAP-UP LIVE LODGE 2015 ALL ACCESS PASS Our bespoke pop-up venue is back in Sydney for three massive weeks of live music. Catch up on the wrap-ups and watch exclusive behind-the-scenes coverage, including galleries, interviews and live videos. WATCH JAMIE LAWSON LIVE AT THE RS OFFICE The British singer impressed Ed Sheeran so much that he signed him to his label. He plays live for RS. EXCLUSIVE HEAR DAN KELLY’S NEW ALBUM FIRST We’re streaming Australia’s favourite Paul Kelly-related songsmith’s new record in its entirety. Hear it first! VIDEO AT HOME WITH MAC DEMARCO ROLLING STONE spent a fun day with the rising indie-rock star at his house in Rockaway, Queens. DeMarco is playing Falls Festival this New Year. POLITICS THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MALCOLM Now that he’s had time to…

WHEN HE SCREWS UP THE opening verse to “Wasn’t Expecting That”, Jamie Lawson chuckles quietly, apologises to the audience at his Nova 96.9 Red Room Global Tour gig and begins the song anew. “Usually no-one knows my songs so I can get away with that,” he confesses. Those gathered inside Dublin’s Whelan’s pub are in on the joke. A hit single in Ireland in 2011, the bitter-sweet “Wasn’t Expecting That” has been newly classified double platinum in Australia, turning the 39-year-old singer-songwriter, largely unknown in his native England, into an unlikely pop star. But if Lawson sounds humbled by this most slow-burning of ‘overnight’ successes, for his most high-profile champion, cheering on from side-stage, it’s an overdue vindication of the singer’s talent. “Jamie’s ready for this,” says Ed Sheer-an, saluting…

1 PURISTS DON’T LIKE THEM – BUT THEY’RE OKAY WITH THAT For every metal fan who fell in love with Deafheaven’s 2013 breakout, Sunbather, there was a traditionalist who balked at the band’s heartfelt amalgam of black metal, post rock and shoegaze. “I love the metal community, but I could do without the strictness and the nit-picking,” admits frontman George Clarke. Instead of trying to conform, Clarke and his bandmates have embraced the controversy. “We’re outsiders,” he says, “and that’s totally fine.” 2 BLACK METAL IS IN THEIR HEARTS As teens, Clarke and guitarist Kerry McCoy devoured the sounds of crossover black metal group Cradle of Filth, then moved on to the genre’s Scandinavian progenitors. “Initially, the allure was that it was frightening, extreme, visceral – and entertaining,” says Clarke.…

I AM AN ANGRY PERSON. NOT AT you! Angry at life, I guess. Not the fact that I am alive, or that it’s not always fair, but angry that I can rarely make life go at the speed I want, get it to rock as hard as I want, tell me enough, teach me enough or show me enough. About 99 per cent of the time, I just want more. This is no bad thing. Dissatisfaction can lead to great things. For me, it pours petrol on the raging fire that is my curiosity. This is why I travel as much as possible. If I’m not obligated to 10 things at once, I hit the road and take whatever work I have along. I have met deadlines from here to…

“In November 1996, Dave Graney was the reigning King of Pop,” recalls snapper Bleddyn Butcher. “At the ARIAs two months before, he’d crowned himself with a luxurious wig, cut in the leonine style actor Peter Wyngarde affected when playing the Last of the International Playboys, Jason King. Graney was dressed in a pink, crushed-velvet suit, a jackpot spray of tacky medallions and a knuckleduster emblazoned “DAVE”. Jaws dropped, eyeballs popped, bellies ached. The peacock had landed, the peacock had ascended the throne! Soon enough Black+White magazine, the ‘art photography’ journal, wanted in on the action. They had a music-themed issue coming up. Would Dave be interested? He’d have to get some of his fabulous gear off but he could of course keep the wig. Dave wasn’t remotely fazed. He’d give…

AFTER 30 YEARS, RIDLEY Scott is returning to his Blade Runner roots – by revisiting cult novelist Philip K. Dick for the new Amazon series The Man in the High Castle. Based on Dick’s 1962 sci-fi novel, the 10-episode show imagines an alternate history in which the Nazis win World War II and rule the U.S. (The East Coast is now known as the Greater Nazi Reich; the West Coast is the Japanese Pacific States; and the American flag has a white swastika against its blue background.) The show unfolds as a riveting alternate-universe thriller. Underground resistance fighters plot to bring down the regime as the fascist government engages in political power plays, while a contraband film sought by both sides suggests that some mysterious behind-the-scenes character is pulling the…

ONLY NEIL DEGRASSE Tyson could possibly pull off TV’s riskiest gamble: hosting a science talk show. Tyson – an astrophysicist, author and host of last year’s reboot of Carl Sagan’s iconic series, Cosmos: A Space-time Odyssey – debuted Star-Talk in April on the National Geographic Channel and quickly saw it become an Emmy-nominated success. Developed from Tyson’s long-running podcast series of the same name, the show is a surprisingly entertaining mixture of pop culture and intergalactic nerdery. (A sampling of guests includes Seth MacFarlane analysing Stewie’s time machine on Family Guy, David Byrne reminiscing about his inspiring high school math teacher, and David Crosby geeking out over sci-fi novels.) Now, for the show’s second season – set to air in January – Tyson may stretch the limits of the conventional…

Black Mass OCTOBER 8TH JOHNNY DEPP KICKS OFF the spring season on a high with a scary tour de force as Whitey Bulger, the Boston gangster convicted in 2013 on 11 counts of murder. “I’m very excited to slide into that skin,” says Depp, 52, who also slides into the awards game after career setbacks (The Lone Ranger, Transcendence, Mortdecai). Depp just kills it in this one. The Walk OCTOBER 15TH JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT EX- cels as an ardent, acrobatic Philippe Petit before, during and after the Frenchman took that daredevil walk on a steel wire between the World Trade Center towers on August 7th, 1974. Better yet, director Robert Zemeckis, shooting in vertiginous 3D, puts you up there with him and oh, baby, wow. The Martian OCTOBER 1ST DIRECTOR RIDLEY…

Little May For the Company Dew Process The drama was already high and rising with Little May. The pagan bonfire climax of the “Hide” video, the cathartic bush funeral of “Dust”; each propelled from poetic murmur to triumphant crescendo by outsider heroines on proud, majestic chords. The late arrival of producer Aaron Dessner, chief music writer and atmosphere-weaver for Brooklyn guitarchitects the National, is almost too perfect a development for the Sydney trio’s debut long player. Texturally he’s a distraction. Once you recognise him lurking behind the watery arpeggios and slow-building strings of “Cicadas”, you more than half expect Matt Berninger to croon in over the solid piano blocks of “Sold”, or the bit where the slow ripples of “Seven Hours” open into a cathedral of sensuous exhilaration. It’s to…

Don Henley Cass County Capitol Don Henley was country before it was cool, long before he was a singing, drumming and songwriting member of the Eagles. Cass County, his first solo album in 15 years, is named after the East Texas plains where Henley, now 68, grew up amid farming, oil rigs and the Southern radio crossfire of blues, gospel and honky-tonk music that produced rock & roll. Henley alludes to those roots and ideals in his true grit here – 11 original songs of working-stiff portraiture, broken-love autopsy and sunset-years judgment – along with a handful of rich-soil covers. They include the Louvin Brothers’ 1955 hit “When I Stop Dreaming”, Jesse Winchester’s rustic 1970 jewel “The Brand New Tennessee Waltz”, and the psychedelic-prairie waltz “She Sang Hymns Out of…

Keith Richards Crosseyed Heart Republic Keith Richards’ first solo album since 1992 opens like a fever dream, with the 71-year-old rock god croaking acoustic blues like Robert Johnson after burning down a half-ounce spliff. But it’s a feint. “All right, that’s all I got,” he snaps just under two minutes in, before upshifting into his most eccentric and best-ever solo set. Crosseyed Heart is the sound of Richards following his pleasure wherever it leads, with a lean, simpatico team including longtime session pals Steve Jordan, Ivan Neville and Waddy Wachtel backing him up all the way. Naturally, there’s a dip into roots reggae: Gregory Isaacs’ 1974 lovers’ rock signature, “Love Overdue”, complete with brass and Neville’s sweet backing vocals. There’s also a straight read of “Goodnight Irene”, a folk standard…

The Leftovers Justin Theroux, Amy Brenneman Created by Damon Lindelof, Tom Perrotta It’s been three years since 140 million people simply vanished in what’s become known as the Sudden Departure, and life goes on in the mid-American town of Mapleton kinda. That’s the premise of The Leftovers, HBO’s haunting 10-part series based on the novel of the same name by Tom Perrotta, whose books Election and Little Children also made for biting screen adaptations. Eschewing apocalyptic tropes as surely as it does any explanation for the Sudden Departure, The Leftovers zeroes in on how Mapleton’s interconnected characters cope with a world forever changed by what may or may not have been the Christian rapture. Chief of police Kevin (Justin Theroux) tries to keep the peace and rebuild his life after…

Heavy Dose of Rock AC/DC brought a new line-up and new songs to New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium for their Rock or Bust tour, which will hit Australia in November and December. PALE EMPERORS Tourmates Billy Corgan and Marilyn Manson made a scene at a SiriusXM event in Chicago. Why the nun outfit? “Easiest answer would be to say, ‘Nun comment’,” says Manson. WHAT’S IN A SHIRT? At Bigsound, Peter Garrett donned a “With Goodesy” T-shirt. All proceeds from sales of the shirts go to the Go Foundation. HELLBENT FOR LEATHER St. Vincent gave a shout-out to the “freaks, queers and dominatrixes” at San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival – and covered a snippet of Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus”. FLEA’S BEES The Chili Peppers bassist has a new hobby: his “beautiful little…

WHEN VIOLENT SOHO RE- leased Hungry Ghost in 2013, their gameplan was simple. “We got some time off work and presumed we’d do the one album tour,” says guitarist James Tidswell. “Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, back to work.” Such was the success of their third LP – it was certified Gold in September last year – that the initial run of shows grew to nearly two years’ worth of dates, before the band finally brought the touring cycle to a close last December with a triumphant gig in Mansfield. After a few months off, during which frontman Luke Boerdam holidayed in Europe, the Brisbane quartet regrouped in May to listen to the songs the singer (and main songwriter) had begun piecing together during the Hungry Ghost tours. If there was any…

DAVE HOSKING IS THE FIRST TO emerge from Boy & Bear’s rehearsal room, all bed hair and big smiles as he strides down the rehearsal complex’s poster-clad hallway. Guitarist Killian Gavin isn’t far behind, dressed casually in jeans and a grey pullover. The studio in Sydney’s inner-west at which the band rehearse is, today, doing a booming business, as Lee Kernaghan (unrecognisable without his trademark hat) strolls past and strains of Led Zeppelin’s biggest hits waft through the air as a tribute band go through their paces in one of its myriad rooms. In an hour’s time, Gang of Youths’ hulking black tour bus will pull up out front, depositing more gear and bodies into what is clearly a very familiar place for many of the country’s musicians. It wasn’t…

FOR THE 14TH YEAR IN A ROW, Bigsound returned to Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley last month, bringing with it delegates from all over the world, 150 of Australia’s best bands and thousands of punters. The result? Three very big nights spent wandering the Valley checking out as many acts as possible and, during the day, listening to keynote speakers such as Pitchfork’s Jessica Hopper, activist Brother Ali and former Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett. Come its conclusion on September 11th, the levels of exhaustion were matched only by the sense of excitement about the music scene in Australia. Here are five acts that caught our ears. 1 KOI CHILD Getting Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker to produce your debut album is a sure-fire way to have a line snaking ‘round the block…

IN THE EUROPEAN SUMMER OF 2013, the members of Parkway Drive gathered in a field in Leicestershire to watch Rammstein headline Day Three of that year’s Download Festival. It wasn’t that they were huge fans of the German metallers, but they’d heard about the band’s fire & brimstone live show and wanted to check it out. Little did they know that evening would help change the course of their career. “It was incredible on so many levels,” recalls vocalist Winston McCall, sitting in the ROLLING STONE office on a recent trip to Sydney. “We watched a band that spoke a handful of English words control 100,000 humans in an hour-and-a-half set, and I was glued to that stage. That’s what’s possible with artistic vision. It wasn’t like, ‘Let’s go be…

‘HEY, YA MADE IT, great to see ya!” says Donald Trump, having just stepped aboard his throne room of a plane and stopping by my seat to extend his hand. “You get the big tour yet? No? What the hell? C’mon, I’ll show you myself.” I follow him into the stateroom of the 757, past three rows of sleeper seats wrapped in eggshell calfskin, with seat-belt buckles of plated gold and the family crest stitched in every headrest; past the conference centre, with its mahogany table and a dozen executive high-backs snugged around it; past the in-plane theatre, with its oyster-shape couches and the 57-inch flatscreen tuned to Fox; past the bumped-out bulkhead and the first of two bedrooms, this one fitted with mohair couches that convert to a full-size…

IT’S A WARM EVENING IN June, and Jon Batiste is bringing a little bit of New Orleans to New York. The 28-year-old musician-composer and his band, Stay Human, are playing the final night of a residency at New York’s posh NoMad Hotel. Suddenly, Batiste hoists his melodica and leads the musicians (and the audience) out onto the streets – parading down Broadway second-line style past surprised bystanders and into a restaurant, where the horn section ends up jamming on the scaffolding above the entrance. “If a moment leads you to do something,” Batiste says with a smile, “don’t fight the feeling.” As of September, Batiste is trying out that philosophy on national TV as musical director and bandleader on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. “His music makes the audience…

THERE’S TOO DAMN much. Too much good stuff. Too much great stuff. Welcome to the age of Glut TV. In an August speech, FX boss John Landgraf bluntly summed up the crazy times we’re living in: “peak TV in America”. He broke down the numbers – last year, there were 371 scripted series in prime time alone. “We believe 2015 will easily blow through the 400-series mark,” he said. “This is simply too much television.” Fact: There will not be enough hours in 2015 to watch all the TV you want to watch. It’s not humanly possible. If you give each of your eyeballs its own screen, then wire another one into your cerebral cortex, you’d still run out of time. All the shows you promise yourself (and your friends,…

Soaked in Bleach Stars: Tom Grant Directed by: Benjamin Statler Shock With rumours of his murder refusing to die, Kurt Cobain is now Generation X’s JFK. Although this docudrama doesn’t add anything new to the conspiracy theory, its cogent assembly of the anecdotal, circumstantial and scientific evidence is compelling enough that you’ll again be left wondering. The chief proponent of the Kurt-was-killed argument is Tom Grant, the private investigator Courtney Love hired when her husband went missing in early April, 1994. Smelling a rat, the former cop made audio recordings of his dealings with her and other principals as he fruitlessly searched for Cobain. These tapes provide the basis for so-so dramatic re-enactments. But the film’s at its most convincing when asking how the Nirvana frontman injected three times the…

Black Mass Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch Directed by Scott Cooper ICE-COLD. DEAD EYES. DE- monic laugh. His face a mask you can’t read until he’s up in yours. That’s Johnny Depp giving everything he’s got in a riveting, rattlesnake performance as South Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger in Black Mass. The FBI finally grabbed this Osama bin Laden of gangsters in 2011. The Irish mobster had been hiding in plain sight since 1994. Now 86, Bulger moulders in prison, found guilty of 11 of the 19 murders with which he’d been charged. Jack Nicholson did a f ictional take on Bulger in 2006’s Oscar-winning The Departed (while a fugitive, Bulger reportedly sneaked in to see the film). Black Mass, smartly directed by Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart), casts a…