Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2016 i Rolling Stone Australia

“Why are we excited about virtual reality again? Since when did IRL become a dirty term?” Urban Vice KEITH URBAN NEEDS TO talk about his druggy days more often. [RS 777] Talking about his vices and his relationship problems makes him sound like an Aussie, and separates him from his God-bothering Nashville country chart counterparts. He can now count me as a fan. Chrissie Dibendra Yarraville, Vic. Virtually Over WHY ARE WE EXCITED about virtual reality again? [RS 777] 3D glasses at the cinema give me a headache and I can only imagine the social problems that will come from people finding yet another bloody way to escape from reality. Since when did IRL become a dirty term? Darren Blake Adelaide, S.A. Garrett the Polly Goneski? APPEARING ON THE COVER…

“AZZITGOINOUTTHEOR- right?” It’s the first word most of us have heard from Bernard Fanning in a couple of years. The response raises the pressed tin ceiling of Bangalow’s A&I Hall, a hundred-year-old picture palace nestled 20 minutes into the lush, subtropical hinterland from Byron Bay. A round 500 people have swarmed in for the former Powderfinger frontman’s “hello neighbourhood show”, a friendly gesture to the shire he recently claimed as home, and the unofficial launch of a new phase comprising not one but two albums: Civil Dusk in August and Brutal Dawn, due early 2017. We’ll hear some of his smash hits, too, in a minute. But before he strikes a note, his conversational preamble signals an intent to communicate on more intimate terms than his old band’s arena rock…

Attrell Cordes – a.k.a. Prince Be, of the pioneering hip-hop group P.M. Dawn – died on June 17th of diabetes-related kidney disease. He was 46. Working alongside his brother Jarrett, Prince Be brought new levels of elegance and vulnerability to hip-hop with hits like 1991’s “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss”, which sampled Spandau Ballet, and “I’d Die Without You”. “I didn’t want to do anything that was in hip-hop already,” he told ROLLING STONE in 1995. P.M. Dawn’s commercial fortunes faded in the late 1990s, but you can hear their influence in artists from Kanye West to Drake. “Prince Be could have been hip-hop’s Brian Wilson,” Questlove said. “Eccentric. Rich. Textured. A sad beauty.” Added Boy George, who recorded with the group, “Working with P.M. Dawn was a blast. Prince…

SOUNDS LIKE: In her own words, “Shellac meets Andre 3000” FOR FANS OF: Janelle Monaé, Esperanza Spalding, the Internet WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: A graduate of the Berklee College of Music, Rubinos’ infusion of R&B, punk, electronic and jazz is pure New York – that is, the side of New York that Girls won’t show you. Her sophomore album, Black Terry Cat, is Rubinos’ kaleidoscopic showcase of fizzy electronic and funky analog textures. Her complex arrangements bolster some hefty analyses of everything from romance (“Lonely Lover”) to racial politics (“I Won’t Say”). Spoken, sung and spit as percussively as a poet, her verses waver between English and Spanish – but she’s not keen on her music being pigeonholed as “Latin”. “I’m proud of where I’m from,” says Rubinos, who’s…

“I’d hit refresh and each time it would go up by a thousand plays.” SOUNDS LIKE: A sweet spot on the dancefloor where Seventies disco, Eighties synth-pop and Nineties R&B intersect, albeit with a modern sheen FOR FANS OF: Låpsley, the xx, early Madonna WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: Half-Russian 24-year-old Aleksandra “Shura” Denton grew up in Manchester with a twin brother and a passion for science fiction and playing soccer for Manchester City. She became “obsessed” with listening to hometown heroes the Smiths while working in a record store at 16, which fostered a love of music, playing guitar and recording songs at home. Internet fame came in 2014 when the video for self-produced single “Touch” amassed over 26 million views; two years later and debut album Nothing’s Real…

After he split with Ciara, “I was scared as shit. I felt like I failed publicly. I didn’t have anything to fall back on.” OUTSIDE, IT’S RUSH HOUR, A STILL- sunny spring evening in Atlanta, but in here, you’d never know it. This room is windowless and dark, illuminated only by a projector shooting shimmering green stars onto the ceiling, a computer monitor displaying Pro Tools, and the glowing rack of gear beneath it. The air seems composed mostly of high-grade kush smoke, accompanied by just enough oxygen to sustain life. On a shelf in the corner are litre bottles of sugary soft drinks – Sprite, Pineapple Sunkist, Strawberry Fanta – mixers for a bottle of codeine cough syrup adorned with a picture of Homer Simpson. This control room and…

The last song I listened to A new demo off our [next] album. It’s about how I’m totally incapable of loving or trusting people. I have so much trouble listening to other music when I’m in writing mode, because I’m a jealous, petty, competitive motherfucker and I hate everything. If it’s good, I’ll hate it ’cause I’ll be jealous. If it’s bad, I’ll hate it even more because I hate bad writing. The last meal I cooked An omelette, yesterday. I’m a terrible fucking cook, the worst that you could possibly imagine. The omelette came out really cheesy and really peppery. The last time I swore at the telly Yesterday. Not for any reason, I just swear at the television. “Fuck you, Kerri-Anne.” “Fuck you, Richard.” The last time I…

“I think humans are prone to creating things that destroy us,” says Montaigne. IN A CRAMPED CAFE IN SYDNEY’S inner city, Montaigne is talking about artificial intelligence. “Only recently have I come to terms with [machines],” she says, “but if Elon Musk says it’s OK, then I’m OK with it. But also, I do have my reservations that super A.I. is going to destroy us all. I think humans are prone to creating things that destroy us.” It’s a slightly strange topic to be casually throwing about over a light lunch of scrambled tofu and avocado on sourdough, but it’s also entirely appropriate: Montaigne (real name Jess Cerro) is clearly someone who thinks deeply about a lot of things. While eating she waxes lyrical about spirituality (she describes herself as…

1. The Minicomputer “The Raspberry Pi is a small, credit-card-size computer that you can program any number of ways,” Adana says. Last season, when Elliot’s crew attacked a data-storage facility, they attached one to a thermostat and used it to hack into the facility’s climate-control system. “That was an exciting thing for us to showcase, because it’s relatively new,” Adana says. “We took the time to solder every single copper wire, just like in real life. None of it mattered, because we covered it up with electrical tape. But we knew.” 2. The Super CD Elliot secretly stores information from his hacks on his own audio CDs, using a tool called DeepSound, which lets you hide files within other files. “He’s encrypting images inside audio tracks, but if anyone ever…

 SOUNDS LIKE: A sonic stream of dusty light showing how visual albums with a lyrical skin can be “A lot of the time I was just trying to capture that feeling of first falling for someone.” FOR FANS OF: Bon Iver, Father John Misty, the National WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: Following two prodigious yet insular EPs and a seven-track mini album, the Armidale-born songwriter takes more chances with structure and external input on debut album First Light. The John Castle-produced “Still In My Heart” and his co-write with Gang of Youths’ David Le’aupepe (“Give Me Tonight”) have a particularly mellifluous feel to them; but the lion’s share was written, recorded and produced by Tebbutt in a room he created at the back of his parents’ place in Newcastle. Four…

“Neo-soul caught my attention more than any other sub-genre” SOUNDS LIKE: Two parts punch-drunk neo-soul, one part New Wave boom-bap and a light garnish of house music FOR FANS OF: J. Dilla, Basement Jaxx, J-Rocc WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: Kaytranada initially perked ears with remixes of songs by Janet Jackson and Missy Elliott – classics that he retooled with brash, bottom-heavy rhythms. Since then, he’s been cosigned by veterans of the era he loves – producing for Talib Kweli and Mobb Deep – and has worked with other artists who wear their love of the late Nineties and early Aughts on their sleeves, like the Internet, Disclosure and AlunaGeorge. Kaytranada’s debut album, 99.9%, hit shelves in May, and the record finds the producer uniting two generations of collaborators –…

 THE AMERICAN WRITER ELIZABETH Hardwick once wrote, ‘When you travel your first discovery is that you do not exist.’ I’ve always liked this line without knowing exactly what it means. Some things are like that with me, pieces of lyrics, poetry or prose that ring true although I don’t fully comprehend them, couldn’t explain them lucidly to another person. Grant and I didn’t disappear when we travelled to England; the situations we encountered, though, tended to come at us as one, and be experienced as one. The diversions of the previous months shrank as we regained the exclusive company of each other, processing our surroundings together, convinced of our destiny. “IT WAS SPECTACULARLY APPARENT – THE GO-BETWEENS WERE GOING TO GET NOWHERE IN LONDON. THE SCENE WAS TOO BIG, THE…

“We wanted a show that was visceral, that came from a really gut place, that tapped into our fury.” DECEMBER 1985: IT’S AN ICY TORONTO NIGHT, AND 16-year-old Samantha Bee is on a mission to not fail out of 10th grade. It’s going to take some doing. Up until this point – and thanks to a “kind of criminal boyfriend”, who enjoys both car theft and tempting Bee to cut class so that they can lie around, watch TV and, you know, maybe do other things – Bee has managed to, as she explains, “skip the maximum amount of school that I could skip and still pull good grades”, which had been a carefully calibrated form of rebellion, “because I am still a Catholic schoolgirl, and I like my gold…

Ratings are supervised by the editors of ROLLING STONE. This is not the uncertain alchemist of ‘Departures’. Bernard Fanning Civil Dusk Dew Process There’s a sense of homecoming to Bernard Fanning’s third solo album. It’s not quite the prodigal son returning to the Brisbane Platinum mine of his youth, but Fanning is certainly re-embracing an old honesty, reclaiming some of the identity that he shrugged – deliberately enough – when setting out alone. Recorded with producer friend Nick DiDia at a studio the pair built together in Byron Bay, Civil Dusk marries modern sparkle to shadows of Seventies AM rock – a tapestry of human voices and real instruments, imbued with organic honesty that’s not naked, but rather tastefully well dressed. It’s a production aesthetic that perfectly matches the creative…

Dustin Tebbutt  First Light Eleven/Navrik You’d quickly run out of fingers and toes if you counted up the number of guitar noodling, falsetto wafting, sensitive male artists that have cropped up over the past half a decade. It’s successful in the short term, but this archetype has a longevity problem – the emotional intensity that burns on a single flickers to tedious self-indulgence when stretched to the length of an album. It makes it easy to sort chaff from wheat if the songs do manage to hold up, and luckily for Dustin Tebbutt they do. Musically, he’s shot somewhere left of City & Colour and right of Bon Iver. His arrangements are air light, propulsive, and melodically interesting; the pop hooks they rely on are grippy. His falsetto is clear…

GROUPLOVE KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY Indie rockers Grouplove found platinum success with their synth-y single “Tongue Tied” in 2011. Following a lot of touring, the band took a break while its two singers, Christian Zucconi and Hannah Hooper, welcomed a baby daughter. The group aimed for rebirth on its third album, Big Mess (due in September), which combines sunny hooks with personal lyrics about the couple’s new chapter. “Traumatized” centres on their living-room talks regarding parenthood, and “Welcome to Your Life” even samples their daughter’s voice. “We tapped into a lot of levels of life you don’t really tap into until you become a parent,” says Hooper. ANNIE LICATA RINGO FINDS A LITTLE HELP FROM FRIENDS This year, Ringo Starr planned to record a country album in Nashville. But…

DOES ANYONE PLAY A dickhead as winningly as Danny McBride? Since his indelible turn as the loudmouthed, lovably villainous baseball player Kenny Powers on Eastbound & Down, McBride has proved himself comedy’s leading, and most brutal, satirist of modern white American bravado. His new HBO series, Vice Principals, concerns rival high school administrators gunning for the same job – or, put another way, two monomaniacs engaged in a ridiculous war for power. “The story was something [longtime collaborator] Jody Hill and I came up with in 2006,” Mc-Bride says. “It’s totally random that it’s coming out while the country is facing a giant power struggle. But that’s the way art works sometimes!” Vice Principals takes place in a high school, and you were a substitute teacher once – what were…

The Strokes Vibe Retro. The band set up in an old furniture store near the former site of CBGB. For sale The band’s new Future Present Past EP ($15), a T-shirt featuring their fake band name, Venison ($15) Must-have item A glammedout varsity jacket ($150) Did the band show up? Just Albert Hammond Jr. Justin Bieber Vibe Hot Topic at Christmastime. Fans were let in 20 at a time at the shops, which were set up during two of Biebs’ Purpose tour stops. For sale Purpose denim jacket ($350), sweatpants ($100) Must-have item “My Mama Don’t Like You” tee ($50) Did Bieber show up? Yes, with a police presence. Kanye West Vibe Hip-hop couture. His downtown NYC shop took in a self-reported $1 million. For sale A Life of…

“Suicide should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” said Springsteen. ALAN VEGA, SINGER IN THE influential protopunk duo Suicide, died peacefully in his sleep on July 16th. He was 78. Henry Rollins first reported news of Vega’s death, sharing a statement from Vega’s family. “With profound sadness and a stillness that only news like this can bring, we regret to inform you that the great artist and creative force, Alan Vega has passed away,” Vega’s family wrote. “Alan was not only relentlessly creative, writing music and painting until the end, he was also startlingly unique. Along with Martin Rev, in the early 1970s, they formed the two person avant band known as Suicide. Almost immediately, their incredible and unclassifiable music went against every possible grain. Their confrontational…

United Kingdom The song’s vocal hook and bouncing piano come from the house-music subgenre UK funky – specifically, “Do You Mind”, a 2008 dance hit by Crazy Cousinz and singer Kyla. Kyla had taken a break from music to raise a family when she was contacted to sing on the track: “I was doing a mummy meet, and my e-mail went off,” she says. “When I found out it was Drake, I couldn’t believe it.” London remixer Logan Sama was also tapped: “I just added some energy at the end of the song,” he says. Canada Drake’s hometown, Toronto, is one of the most diverse cities in the world, and that global sensibility informs the song. Toronto producer Noah “40” Shebib (who is of Irish-Lebanese descent) was Drake’s right-hand man…

The former White Zombie frontman, who is spending his summer on the road with Korn, broke down his favourite monster songs. Roky Erickson “Creature With the Atom Brain” It’s a very big-sounding rock song because he’s got a really big voice. The song itself isn’t particularly creepy – it’s the lyrics and delivery. The Cramps “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” Their whole thing is horror-rock monster songs. This is pretty low-fi and trashy. It has a really 1960s garage-rock sound. The Castle Kings “You Can Get Him, Frankenstein” A doo-wop-y song from when I was a kid, like “Monster Mash”. If you went to a Halloween party, you heard this. Tom Waits “King Kong” It’s a great song. He’s just telling the story of the love story of King Kong,…

‘It’s Raining Men’ does nothing but annoy me.” The Song That Reminds Me of Growing Up Book of Love “Modigliani (Lost In Your Eyes)”, 1986 “One of my favourite times from my youth was early high school. It was a time of finding my own identity and New Wave was something that I really listened to in those years. This is one of those total synth-poppy New Wave tunes. I can’t hear it without thinking about being a 15 or 16-year-old kid.” The Song You Wouldn’t Expect to Find On My iPod Kenny Rogers “Ruby Don’t Take Your Love To Town”, 1969 “I’ve always loved that song, ever since I was a kid. Just the other day I was listening to it super loud in my living…

Margaret Glaspy SOUNDS LIKE: Low-end-heavy indie rock with disarmingly honest lyrics FOR FANS OF: Exile in Guyville-era Liz Phair, Alabama Shakes, Joni Mitchell WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: Trained on instruments ranging from fiddle to trombone, inspired by Elliott Smith and Bill Withers, this California-born singer-songwriter’s first full-length, Emotions and Math, shows off an ability to create heady, openhearted rock. Her recent tourmates – moody synthpop band Lucius, folk pair the Milk Carton Kids and jazz-rock outfit Lake Street Dive – show the breadth of her appeal. Her Bonnaroo appearance provided an opportunity for her voice – which can sound both gnarled and feather-light – to charm a field of people. SHE SAYS: “I produced this record. I started to demo all of the songs a while back; I…

SOUNDS LIKE: A peek behind the doors of Twin Peaks brothel One Eyed Jack’s FOR FANS OF: Nite Jewel, Mazzy Star, Cold Cave WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: Austin creepgaze trio Troller push the darkwave lexicon into doom metal, noise and ultra-romantic Lana Del Rage. Their second album, Graphic, was released on vinyl and cassette on the local Holodeck imprint and recently caught a CD reissue courtesy of metal stalwarts Crucial Blast. A moody – and pop-leaning! – counterpart to the local community of Austin synth enthusiasts (Survive, Flatliner, Ssleeperhold), Troller is both ugly and beautiful, full of swooning melodies that blow lushly through dank electronic dungeons. THEY SAY: “We’re always trying to find a balance between hard and soft in our sound, and when we found these source images…

SOUNDS LIKE: Restless rhythm-n-brooding, mixed with a modern pop-electro edge and coming-of-age cynicism FOR FANS OF: Chet Faker, Frank Ocean, the Weeknd WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: The Auckland-based crooner initially rose to recognition as a finalist on New Zealand’s Got Talent, performing acoustic ballads under his own name Evan Sinton. Not long after the television series wrapped, the then-teenager’s guitar and keyboard were stolen from his car, setting in motion a laptop-led shift to his electro second-life as Maala. First effort, the minimalist synth-lingering “Touch”, surfaced in March 2015 and – although only anonymously shared via Soundcloud – hit the radar of Beats One tastemaker Zane Lowe, who would later champion breakthrough single “In the Air” and his self-titled EP. Last month, Maala released his debut album, Composure, a…

“I’M A DREAMER. IF I DREAM IT AND I PURSUE IT, I DON’T GIVE A FUCK WHO’S IN MY WAY. I JUST GET THERE.” K ATE CEBERANO OPENS HER front door in layered swathes of clothing, protecting a vulnerable throat against the Melbourne chill. Halfway down the hall she’s bollock naked: head up, shoulders back and best foot forward in a massive oil painting. So goes the dance of art and life. As we settle into a cosy corner, her back against the heater and a spaniel called Banjo at her feet, she frames today’s portrait on her own terms. “I don’t believe in labelling of any kind,” she says. “It’s where the worst of pop psychology has left us: with words. When words fail, there’s music.” Kate Ceberano is…

“I used to deny my past in terms of artistic worth, saying there’s no connection.” ELLA HOOPER HAS EIGHT SYMBOLS tattooed across the fingers of her left hand – four Celtic runes under each knuckle, four sonic waveforms above. She says they’re there to remind her of order, that some things are incorruptible. Steady. This is partly because Hooper, in her day-to-day, operates at an alarmingly high frequency. Here’s all the things Hooper is: singer, songwriter, musician, TV presenter, radio host, educator, mentor, actor, board member, personality at large. “I’m so busy doing it all I don’t get space to see what it is I do,” she says when ROLLINGSTONEmeets her at an East Brunswick cafe, near where she’s currently sharehouse-ing with bandmates. “It’s not great for a career because…

Ball Park Music  Every Night the Same Dream Stop Start/Inertia “Feelings come in waves,” Sam Cromack begins anxiously enough, but there’s no stopping the default tsunami of exuberance in this Ball Park. Take “Pariah”: a solo piano lament for a tragic state of being that gets sucked into warp-speed freak-out over seven minutes, synths babbling and rhythm escalating to hallelujah finale. “Peppy” aims for the melancholy edge of psychedelia too, but soon surrenders to a rich, swirling soup of Sgt. Peppery goodness. A quiet, flutey tete-a-tete with someone called “Leef” climaxes in a choral epiphany Queen might have considered a little over the top. In “Don’t Look At Me Like That”, a sad drunken phone call morphs into a snappy riff-pop jingle at the 90-second mark. Even the “Nihilist Party…

Nice As Fuck  Nice As Fuck Love’s Way The Jenny Lewis-helmed, superbly-named Nice As Fuck arrives with its own theme song and an arsenal of chill break-up tunes. Au Revoir Simone’s Erika Forster and the Like’s Tennessee Thomas round out the trio with New Wave drum-and-bass syncopation. Meanwhile, Lewis pulls off subtly nuanced vocals. She coos like a disco star in a champagne flute (“Angel”), wiggles like a B-52 on the surf-y “Higher” and recalls the minimalist New York punk-funk swagger of ESG on “Homerun”. It’s all part of her great escape. Each lilting song is a different disguise Lewis tries on. “I’m searching for salvation/I’m my own valentine,” she sings. But in the words of Neil Sedaka, breaking up is hard to do. Explaining why you’re breaking up/running away/slamming…