Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2016 i Rolling Stone Australia

“Melbourne is the best city in the world, and you’re clearly jealous you don’t live here. Jerks.” Amity Advice THE AMITY AFFLICTION GET a lot of shit, but your story [RS 778] proved to me once again how important they are as a band. At a time when millions of people are suffering from depression, to have someone like Joel Birch stand up and talk about his own experiences really helps those sufferers (myself included) not feel so alone. I wish him well in his sobriety. Danielle Bayley, Northcote, Vic GREAT AMITY AFFLICTION story. I can’t help but wonder, though, how Joel Birch will go with his sobriety when the rest of the band are getting drunk around him. It strikes me as quite selfish on their behalf – surely…

TWO YEARS AGO, BILLIE JOE ARMSTRONG WAS driving into Manhattan when he came across a throng of protesters. Outraged by a grand jury’s decision not to indict a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer for the killing of Michael Brown, they filled the streets and backed up traffi c for [Cont. on 14] kilometres. Armstrong was moved. “I got out of my car and marched with the people,” he says. “It was a trip to see people rebel against the old order.” The experience inspired the title track of Green Day’s new album, Revolution Radio (due October 7th), a collection of songs about the chaotic state of America in 2016. It’s not a political concept album like American Idiot – there are also more personal songs like “Ordinary World”, a sweet ballad…

The unofficial spokesman for the ‘emo revival’ scene, Evan Weiss, will bring his emotive indie-rock project, Into It. Over It., to Australia in September for the first time. Leaving his touring band at home in an effort to keep overheads low, Weiss is audibly chuffed to be making the journey. “I’ve wanted to come to Australia since I was a kid,” he says over the phone from Chicago. “But there were always things that made it really difficult. So I couldn’t be more excited about this.” Having made a name for himself via a relentless touring schedule, an unflappable work ethic (his 52 Weeks endeavour saw him write, record and release one song a week throughout 2009) and a flair for penning heart-on-sleeve indie gems, the songwriter’s third LP, Standards,…

BLACK SABBATH’S CURRENT tour is called the End, but to Ozzy Osbourne, it feels like a new beginning. The farewell tour, which landed in Australia and New Zealand in April and wraps with a gig in Sabbath’s hometown of Birmingham, England, in February, has featured some of the band’s best shows ever. “Nobody gets stoned. Nobody gets drunk,” Osbourne says. “I used to resent going out on the road. But now it’s fun.” The singer’s personal life is another matter – all he’ll say about his rocky relationship with wife Sharon is that “it’s great”, although he has since announced he’s undergoing therapy for sex addiction. Osbourne also co-stars in a new History Channel series, Ozzy & Jack’s World Detour, in which he and his son, Jack, road-trip to various…

Architects guitarist Tom Searle passed away just after midnight on August 20th following a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 28. His twin brother, Architects drummer Dan, broke the news on Face-book, stating: “He was an incredible songwriter and guitarist. He was my closest and oldest friend. He was a funny, intelligent and sweet man and he leaves an enormous void in all of our lives.” Searle had been periodically absent from Architects shows over the past 15 months, and the band cancelled a U.S. tour in June when he was admitted to hospital. Searle co-founded the British metalcore act in 2004, and the band’s seventh album, All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us, was released to widespread critical acclaim earlier this year.…

THERE’S A FIRE IN DARREN Hart’s deep brown eyes. He sits on the edge of the couch with long fingers tapping at his knees, like there’s only a starter’s gun between him and a single bound that might conquer the world at light speed. “I don’t get tired on stage,” he says. “I see bands walking off who don’t do half as much stuff as I do and they are literally almost throwing up. I’m like, ‘Damn, man!’ I’m so glad I kept fit and worked out all my life. My lung capacity, my endurance . . . I could play for much longer.” Hey, we’d love it, too – every theatrical knee-drop and soulful guitar solo played behind his lush rock star bouffant. Studied from videos of Buddy Guy…

Sophie Lowe has just returned from Kentucky where she was filming Above Suspicion, a true crime thriller where the 26-year-old Australian actress stars alongside Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke. With the film now wrapped, Lowe’s focus has once more shifted back to her other passion: music. Her latest track, “Mean”, is a collaboration with Los Angeles production duo TWINKIDS, and introduces a darker, atmospheric aesthetic to the alt-pop sound of 2015 singles “Breathe”, “Understand” and “Pink Flowers”. “When I wrote the beat I was really angry,” Lowe says of the tonal shift, explaining that the track embraces vulnerability and the idea “that you don’t want to be alone”. The now L.A.-based Lowe says she’s already written a “bunch of songs”, with the aim of putting out a new EP before…

Ratings are supervised by the editors of ROLLING STONE.  Wilco The album seems shaped by the Midwestern-ness that’s always defined the Chicago-based crew. Schmilco dBpm On “Normal American Kids”, the opener of Wilco’s 10th studio LP, Jeff Tweedy delivers maybe his most straightforward lyrics ever. Over coffeehouse strums and muted electric-guitar lines that swirl like an old movie flashback, the singer recalls being a teenage stoner with a chip on his shoulder, getting high “behind the garden shed” and “under the sheets in my bedroom”, loathing the “normal” kids – but also fearing them and maybe, secretly, envying them. Misfits of all ages should relate, and the reflective sentiment brands a deceptively pastoral Wilco record, their most folk-rockingly introspective since 2007’s Sky Blue Sky. It’s a nice follow-up to last…

The Delta Riggs Active Galactic Rah Rah Radio/Inertia Following up a record as well-rounded as 2014’s excellent (if under-appreciated) Dipz Zebazios is like AFL player Aaron Sandilands in a cafe: a tall order. At times on Active Galactic you can hear the Delta Riggs straining to outdo that album’s psyched-out weirdness and pop nous, but they eventually deliver a cosmic punk disco that outstrips its predecessor as the band harness an effervescent, throwaway-your-worries vitality. It’s there in the bounding indiepysche funk of “Slingin’ On a Saturday Night” and the tight, taught “Get Right”, while the creepy disco-stalker vibes of “Take You For a Ride” could either be a hedonistic summer soundtrack, or round out Ivan Milat’s Desert Island Discs. Moments like the tripped-out groove of “Sunny” feel like the 1991…

Harts   Smoke Fire Hope Desire Dew Process When Prince invited Darren Hart, aka Harts, to his Paisley Park mansion in 2014, he famously said, “He reminds me of me at that age.” The praise could hardly be higher for the Melbourne singer/multi-instrumentalist, and while it would be hyperbolic to call him heir to the throne after Prince’s untimely death in April, on Harts’ second LP he demonstrates the maturity, skill and range to show that he’s no flash in the pan. Where 2014 debut Daydreamer was an electro-funk-dominated nod to his musical mentor – think Justin Timberlake with guitars – Smoke Fire Hope Desire is more purple haze than Purple One, with more gravelly riffs and fewer squiggly synth lines, surely concocted with live crowds in mind. Tracks like…

“Janine” Space Oddity 1969 Young folkie Bowie tries to woo a beatnik lass. This ends with a line Paul Westerberg could have written: “Take your glasses off and don’t act so sincere.” “Holy Holy” Non-LP single 1971 A glam ode to dazed gnostic egomania. He cut it twice – the keeper is the lean-and-mean second version, from 1974 with the Spiders From Mars. “See Emily Play” Pin Ups 1973 A tribute to one of his early heroes, Pink Floyd’s doomed Syd Barrett. It turned Barrett’s jauntiest tune into an orchestral psychic meltdown. “Growing Up and I’m Fine” Demo 1973 He donated this perfect piece of girl-group-style pop to Mick Ronson to launch his solo career, which sadly bombed. “Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise)” Diamond Dogs…

“We’ve never toured. We’re essentially a baby band,” says bassist Jeff Ament. “We can finally road-test these songs.” WHEN CHRIS CORNELL AND three future members of Pearl Jam came together in 1990 to record Temple of the Dog’s one and only album, they never could have imagined playing the songs in arenas a quarter-century later – it was merely a one-off tribute LP in honour of a friend, Andy Wood of the Seattle band Mother Love Bone, who had just died of a heroin overdose. Despite producing an MTV hit, “Hunger Strike”, the album remained a grunge footnote. So, last year, when the bandmates began talking about reuniting for their first-ever tour, they weren’t sure how it would be received. “We were anxious about what size venues we could play,”…

1 THE WIDENING CIRCLE OF AMERICAN MUSIC Noted shapeshifter and Bay Area native Cass McCombs’ storied catalogue spans the American canon, from the unruffl ed folk-rock shades of 2003 solo debut A to the proto-punk sketches of 2015 B-Sides compilation A Folk Set Apart. Eighth LP and ANTI-debut Mangy Love finds McCombs luxuriating in blithe funk and seraphic soul. “I’m always trying to understand American music,” he explains. “And as I look at it, it expands.” 2 MUSIC AS COMMUNION “It’s just a way to enjoy a community,” McCombs says of his creative drive. Over the years, the inclusive approach has seen him collaborate with Phish bassist Mike Gordon and Easy Rider actress Karen Black, among others. Joining McCombs on Mangy Love are several stalwart friends such as Angel Olsen…

‘MY WHOLE LIFE, EVEN NOW, I’m attracted to mayhem,” Todd Phillips is saying, feet resting on a spotless coffee table inside his spotless office on the Warner Bros. film-studio lot in Burbank, him having turned this lifelong attraction into so much money you can’t believe it. Take the three Hangover movies, from 2009 to 2013, all of which Phillips directed and two of which he co-wrote. Altogether, they’ve raked in $1.4 billion, with lunacy galore, chain-smoking monkeys, unexpected face tattoos, roofie-puffed marshmallows and so forth, ad nauseam. Crazy stuff, none of which would have happened had Phillips not allowed his $8 million paycheck for the first instalment to be cut to exactly $0.00 (“Yeah, zero dollars,” he says) to get it made at a price the studio would approve. He’d…

“We were so inspired by Bowie, especially those early albums.” The Song That Reminds Me of Growing Up The Rolling Stones “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, 1965 “My dad was a Beatles fan, and my mum was a Rolling Stones fan. And my mum was the boss of the house, so [we heard] more of the Stones than the Beatles. When I hear this I always think of my mum. And she would say, ‘They’re the best band, they’ve got a really good beat.’ And when we put our band together mum said to me, ‘You’re gonna make it’, and I said, ‘Why?’ And she said, ‘Cos you’ve got a good beat.’ [Laughs] I thought, ‘I hope it’s as easy as that.’” The Song You Wouldn’t Expect To…

TROY CASSAR-DALEY STRIDES into the ROLLING STONE offi ce dressed in Johnny Cash black from the tip of his boots to the collar of his leather jacket. “Ooh, let’s have a look at these first,” he says, donning his reading glasses and checking out the editor’s collection of vintage guitar pedals. “Very nice. I’ll have to take a photo. I’m a sucker for pedals.” The 47-year-old country singer is looking in life’s rearview mirror this year with two big projects – an album and a memoir, both titled Things I Carry Around. On the new album’s title-track you talk about significant things you carry around with you. Do you have something on you right now? I do, brother. [He reaches for his wallet and pulls out a 1957 Australian penny.]…

“Everyone has an interesting story to tell. I just think you get better at telling it the longer you go.” SONGWRITERS AREN’T OVERLY keen, as a rule, to dwell on their very first song. A dismissive wave of the hand and an indulgent chuckle, if not the full face-palm of embarrassment, tend to greet such archaeological queries. Not so Tom Iansek. The guy from Big Scary and #1 Dads exudes a rare kind of fascination under interrogation. Weirdly reminiscent of the young David Byrne, he has the piercing attentiveness of a man who seems to consider each moment with equal intrigue. “It was called ‘Christmas Day’. It wasn’t too bad,” he offers with a blink of surprise. He springs from his chair in his airy, wood-floored recording studio in Collingwood,…

“I WAS TOLD, ‘YOU COULD HAVE BEEN RIHANNA IF YOU’D JUST SHUT UP.’ I WAS LIKE, ‘THEN I’D RATHER GET OUT OF THE GAME.’ ” ‘I’M INTERESTED IN WHY I always seem to press the button,” says M.I.A. “Everyone knows that pressing buttons is bad. You press a button and you get punished.” It’s a sparkling July morning, and she’s drinking coffee in London’s Hyde Park, dressed in a forest-green sweater dress and matching dark-green shades. It happens to be her 41st birthday, but M.I.A., who was born Mathangi Arulpragasam but goes by Maya, says she doesn’t care about birthdays. Instead, what’s on her mind is her seemingly endless ability to stir up trouble. In recent years, M.I.A. has managed to piss off both the NFL (which sued her for…

Rae Sremmurd   SremmLife 2 Interscope/Ear Drummer Exuberant Mississippi brothers Rae Sremmurd exploded in 2014 with three consecutive U.S. Top 40 singles and a debut LP that combined stomping Southern rap and pop concision into a sound as reliably tight as an old AC/DC record. For the follow-up (guided once again by the massive beats of producer and mentor Mike Will Made It), they return a little bit grown-up and a lot more hyped up. Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi’s indelible appeal remains their elastic voices, which squeak, squawk, shout or (as in the case of “Swang”) break into a gauzy falsetto. The sound here is less melodic than on their debut; it’s an in-the-red reboot of mid-’00s Southern crunk music, with cameos from vintage champagne sprayers like Lil Jon…

Dare Stop Start/Inertia If Northeast Party House are getting older, they’re not sounding it. The six-piece signposted their hedonistic bent from the outset, and album two sees no signs of that abating. It’s no bad thing, not when tracks like “Heartbreaker” ride seductive basslines and jangly guitars into Primal Screamesque all-out dance incursions; “Your House” turns a cheeky proposition into an irresistible overture, all crunchy riffs and insouciant confessions – “I’ve been thinking of a way to get to your house!” shouts vocalist Zach Hamilton-Reeves; and “Wallflower” blooms from jittery groove into blissed-out synths and keening harmonies. The Bloc Party comparisons are understandable, but NPH are no cheap imitators – their lyrics might be centred around young people pastimes and hazy nights bleeding into the day after, but their music…

Big Scary Animal Inertia Hunting. Lurking. Resting. Waking. Animal is a four-legged beast depicting “four stages of the animal” in evolution “from dark to light”. Not Art may have been an ironic title for Tom Iansek and Joanna Syme’s AMP-winning album of 2013, but the disclaimer is inconceivable this year. The follow-up is an unwieldy monster, as any representation of human duality must be when rendered in episodes of electronic sound and splinters of opaque poetry. The Melbourne duo’s suggestion that any of the four sides are equally valid entry points only confuses the one fact you can take to the bank: Animal plays nicer as she goes along. The first four songs are primal acts. From the visceral thwack and grunt of “Oxygen” to the carnality of “Savior Add…

SAFIA Internal Parlophone When SAFIA won Triple J Unearthed’s Groovin the Moo competition three years ago, they were fresh-faced Canberra kids who loved singer-songwriters and electronic music equally. The trio’s breakout single, “Listen to Soul, Listen to Blues”, found that middle ground between heartfelt crooning and a desire to make people dance. SAFIA’s major asset is Ben Woolner’s warm and malleable voice, which shines with the help of his bandmates Michael Bell and Harry Sayers. SA FIA’s readiness to switch things up serves them well on their debut album. Internalgets off to a dramatic start with the five-minute instrumental jam “Zion”, before Woolner’s vocals assume the album’s lead role. Throughout, he sells the age-old lyrical themes of loves lost and unrequited with nuance and conviction. “Fake It Til the Sunrise”…

MUST-HAVES Hunky Dory 1971 Planet Earth, meet David Bowie. One of him, anyway – even in 1971, the former David Jones had already burned through a few pop disguises, posing as a folkie hippie songbird or a London mod pinup boy. He scored a novelty hit in the summer of 1969, “Space Oddity”. But Hunky Dory was the album where he staked his claim as the most altered ego in rock & roll, billing himself as “The Actor” on the back cover while stretching out as a singer, songwriter and all-around mind-freaker. Bowie croons surreal ballads such as “Life on Mars?” and “Quicksand” like a cosmic theatre queen. He also steals guitar flash from the Velvet Underground in “Queen Bitch”. Led by Rick Wake-man of English prog-rockers Yes on piano…

Sully SEPTEMBER 8th TOM HANKS HITS A NEW CA- reer peak as Capt. Sully Sullenberger, the pilot who crash-landed into the icy Hudson River on January 15th, 2009, saving all 155 passengers. Hailed as a hero, Sully is privately haunted by nightmares and aviation experts who say he did wrong. Director Clint Eastwood, shooting with IMAX cameras, nails the visuals. But it’s as personal drama that Sully soars. Hanks catches Sully in one line: “I did my job.” Eastwood, 86, can relate. Having worked in Hollywood for 60 years, he values Sully’s experience over computers that ignore the human factor. The Magnificent Seven SEPTEMBER 29th “LET’S DO IT,” SAID DENZEL Washington when director Antoine Fuqua urged a reboot of 1960’s The Magnificent Seven. Washington rides like gangbusters into his first…

“Tours around 2012, 2013, it was party time all the time.” The last time I had a birthday party On tour, last year. It was in a dressing room, I think we were in Des Moines or Boise, Idaho, and someone just rolled in with a cake. I’m not a big celebration guy. I’m not an in-the-corner-by-myself kind of guy, but I’m also not, let’s all rally around and celebrate me! That seems weird. The last word I looked up in the dictionary I looked up ‘literally’, ’cause I was having a conversation with someone about how they’ve changed the definition in the offi cial dictionary, ’cause people don’t use the word ‘literally’ in the way it’s literally intended. I was saying it to them and they were like, “Bullshit,…

Nat “King” Cole “Mona Lisa” I used to sneak my way into movie theatres singing this song. Whoever was working the door would just let me in for free after hearing it. Sam Cooke “A Change Is Gonna Come” From the opening notes on, this song just captures your heart and soul. He was killed before it even came out. Marvin Gaye “What’s Going On” If it came out now, this song would still be right on time. He’s singing about picket lines and police brutality. Linda Ronstadt “Cry Like a Rainstorm” I’ll be on an airplane trip and put this song on. It just soothes me. She has one of the greatest voices of all time. Beyoncé “At Last” Her records don’t always do her justice, but she can…

THE MURDER-FOR-HIRE DEAL WENT DOWN inside the Edison Diner, a small red-brick eatery off Route 1 in New Jersey, on September 13th, 2009. Joe Passalaqua, a dark-haired 54-year-old with arms as thick as his Long Island accent, scribbled “$30,000” on a piece of paper and slipped it across the table to Chris Kontos, a Greek-American who owned strip clubs and restaurants throughout the state. “Thirty for the three,” Passalaqua said. “I need cash, half upfront.” He also asked Kontos to supply the weapon, “a .357 or a .40-caliber, has to be a revolver. And if you can, get hollow-points.” When Kontos asked how soon the hit could be done, Passalaqua told him, “Within two weeks, maybe sooner.” Six months earlier, on St. Patrick’s Day, two masked men with guns had…

The Scientists A Place Called Bad Numero Group “One-two-three-four!” is the only way for the Scientists’ story to begin. The raggedy bonus disc by Perth punks the Cheap Nasties is prehistory, but the barking echo of the Ramones’ garage is an apt ground zero for this five-disc trip inside Kim Salmon’s most beloved and influential vehicle. Disc one proper traces the first Scientists’ teenage trash beginnings, from the dishevelled innocence of “Frantic Romantic” via the spit and crunch of “High Noon” and the reckless body-hurling of “Walk the Plank”. The second, Sydney-to-Europe incarnation announces disc two with the timeless dirge of “This Is My Happy Hour”. Riffs get lower and meaner and Salmon’s delivery more and more deranged as Tony Thewlis, Boris Sujdovic and Brett Rixon decorate their own clanging…

James Vincent McMorrow We Move Dew Process For a casual listener of James Vincent McMorrow – or if you hopped in around the time of single “Cavalier” – We Move might come as a little bit of a shock, because there’s a fair bit of distance between it and McMorrow’s last record, 2014’s Post Tropical. Where that album was dramatic – with orchestral flourishes and endless synth washes – We Move is completely direct, the effects minimal. It’s an even further slip away from the folk and isolation of his debut, Early in the Morning. We Move is McMorrow’s sideways slip into R&B – a slip that, upon further listening, feels very comfortable. McMorrow’s stunning falsetto finds a fair match within glitchy, electronic beats, and thick and stanky bass lines.…

Jimmy Barnes   Working Class Boy Harper Collins If you’ve read rock star memoirs before, you know that there are certain things that are typical to the point of being cliché. A hard-knock life taught resilience and strength. Family was key. Music was the ticket out. And all those things are true of Working Class Boy, but not necessarily in the ways that you’d expect. The first volume of Barnes’ memoirs pulls few punches; and there are plenty, both figurative and literal. While there are moments of levity and love (especially regarding his stepfather, the man who was to give Barnes his surname), there’s parental neglect, alcoholism, physical and sexual abuse, and the constant threat of random violence. It’s not just amazing that he had a successful career; it’s downright…