Hittin' The Gubba

If you have been following Jonathan Boulet before now, rest assured that you have NOT been following Jonathan Boulet. More known for his sojourns into atmospheric rock with Sydney band Parades, or his "shouty-indie" solo fare (especially on the success of 2012's sophomore effort We Keep The Beat, Found The Sound, See The Need, Start The Heart). But Boulet and his band have bigger, doomier riffs to fry, and third album Gubba is about to shatter whatever preconceptions you may have had of the band before now. You see, Boulet is all about stretching parameters as far as they can go whilst getting the crowd/listener to collectively use it AND lose it. Gubba is a hodgepodge of rock explosions a la the best of John Dwyer's Thee Oh Sees efforts, just with added dirge and a tongue parked permanently in cheek. It's funny, heady, silly, heavy, and cool. In short - this is the Jonathan Boulet we've been waiting for all this time...


Gubba is out now through Popfrenzy in Australia, with Europe to follow suit later this month. Boulet is based in London nowadays (lucky me!), but is launching the album throughout August, with a show in Brisbane at Black Bear Lodge.

Interview - Keep On Dancins

2013 has been an interesting year for Keep On Dancin’s. The four-piece came into the year having released a warmly received debut album The End Of Everything and with an extensive playing schedule under their belt. Supports for the likes of Velociraptor and Dan Kelly were becoming commonplace. But the band deliberately fell off the radar, a belated cassette release Black Lassie the only hint that the band were still in action.

“For a good year now we’ve really reined things in,” drummer Alex Dunlop explains. “Jacinta (Walker) and Tegan (Rickard) wanted to focus on Tiny Migrants, and Yuri (Johnson) had Teen Sensations, and we all just needed a rest from it all. We were playing so often – it never approached the level of burnout, but we overexposed ourselves a bit. Then after that time we got back in the saddle and started playing a couple shows, and it felt right to be moving forward again.”

The main focus for the band is the upcoming release of sophomore record Hunter, and the process has seen them approach the art of music in a more calculated manner.  

“We didn’t realise how many people liked (The End Of Everything) until after we had a break, and it changed the way we looked at things,” Dunlop stresses. “We didn’t really roll it out properly; we just played and played and sold bits at shows. We have tried to be cleverer with it, the whole experience. Before we played more like a lot of bands do, that is to play until we drop without thinking about what we were doing. This time we are weighing up what to do with film clips, we’ve planned the single (Grey Ghost), we’re doing interviews; we are picking and choosing what and when we play… Before we were playing every little dive because we said yes to everything, and it didn’t do anything for us.”

This new approach obviously bled into the writing and recording of Hunter also. “We recorded with Sean Cook, and we took things really slow; we spent a whole week on one song,” Dunlop emphasises. “We may have spent more money, but it also allowed us to take our time with it, adding bits here and there as they presented themselves to us. Because of that it feels really layered; there are drum loops involved, it’s quite metronomic, so it’s obviously very different to what has come before.”

Hunter won’t hit our ears until 2014, but the band are prepping us with the launch of two tracks from it, Grey Ghost and Baby, the second track of which has its own film clip which follows the four-piece as they wander around a day at the Ekka. The video was put together by Dunlop himself, something he admits was a great experience.

“We got a friend to bring his Handicam and follow us around the Ekka, just having some fun, feeding animals, playing games, going on rides and stuff. I got it together and chopped it all up into something. There was no song designed for it though, because there was no lip syncing or anything, so I just picked Baby because it had a dreamy quality to the whole experience. But we had decided that Grey Ghost should be the single a while ago, but wanted to show both off.”

Keep On Dancins launch the single/s tomorrow night at Black Bear Lodge, with Roku Music and Martyr Privates in able support.

Marihiko And The Black Bear

Tonight Black Bear Lodge harbours a special night of percolating sound explorations from across the globe. The show highlight will be Japanese sound artist and composer Marihiko Hara, whose sojourns into ethereal, white-fog ephemera are majestic slices of sonic interaction and discoveries. His album Flora (out through Nightcruising and Drone Sweet Drone) is a mesmeric interweaving of spacious, hesitant piano with field recordings and electronic melding - a deliberate calibration of a gossamer-thin rebirth, opening the eyes for the first time on a new world superimposed over the old, all lit from within. Support is coming from Sydney-based Portuguese artist Matupo (who is releasing his Communication EP on the newly minted Memoirs label on Friday - you can grab it here), jazz improvateurs Mooshim and local debonair manipulator Andrew Tuttle. It's a free show too, so come down, sit on the floor, lie down if you want to, and escape the world for a few hours - you will not be disappointed.

Karl Flies Kites

The Melbourne-via-Perth duo Sodastream holds a special place in my heart. I was introduced to them by my then flatmate Niall (he also incessantly played Tracy Chapman and Bob Marley to the point of aural cringe, followed quickly by red-mist rage, but that's another story...). The album - 2000's Looks Like A Russian. The combination of Karl Smith's plaintive acoustic guitar and deadpan, oft beauteous lyrics with Pete Cohen's double bass and baritone backing vocals formed a beguiling worldview, one which still sends shivers down my spine. Songs like 'Wedding Day' and 'Done With Everything' still resonate with me over a decade on, and I truly believe that their show at the Troubadour a couple years later (in support of sophomore album The Hill For Company) rivals the Mark Kozelek show there last year (the venue now known as Black Bear Lodge), or even the Magnolia Electric Co show I saw in London in 2009, for reverence and magisterial beauty.


The band split up in 2007, after four great albums, but have since gravitated towards each other - Cohen joined Smith in the band Lee Memorial in 2011, and this year they reformed as Sodastream for some shows. That said, Karl Smith is releasing some material on his own in the form of the album Kites (out now through Fortuna Pop) - and man, the memories came flooding back. Smith's voice was the first hook - that elegant, fragile timbre. Then there are the songs themselves - the gentle, undulating plucking of acoustic strings, the fragile delicate nature of their construction... The songs reverberate with the conflicting emotions Smith was feeling as he prepared for the imminent state of fatherhood, a daunting yet exhilarating process, and songs like the excellent 'Little Lucy' and opener 'After Mr Morrison' perfectly capture such swirling emotions.

For a man who was born in New Zealand, raised in Bangladesh, schooled in India and kickstarted his musical career in earnest in Perth, Smith is not only worldly, but steeped in the intimate knowledge of isolation in its many forms. This echoes through his acute observations, always a pleasure to behold. Welcome back into my life, Mr Smith.

You can (and really should) buy Kites here, now.

Taking The Ancient Night Bus

Not too long ago I posted about 'Molokai', the first single from Melbourne psych-pop maestros The Ancients' forthcoming third album Night Bus (out through the inimitable Chapter Music). They now have a second release in 'Hey Now', and damn it is so much better! It's like Unknown Mortal Orchestra spent their winter in Scandinavia with Soundtrack Of Our Lives. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised - I haven't heard their first two records. But this had me absolutely in the Ancients camp - so warm, sepia-tinged and raucous in a fuzzy, overtly happy kinda way. They have a couple of shows coming up in October in Melbourne (including an in store at Polyester), but more importantly for Brisbane folks The Ancients are playing Black Bear Lodge Thursday December 5. Lotsa time to save the pennies and swim in the waters of adulation - seriously, this song has one hell of a hook.

A Decade of Mere Migration Noise Celebration

Your tiny words don't mean a thing. But if you don't mind, then keep making whatever noise you want to make. Keep it up for ten years. Tiny Migrants launch their little slab of noise (some Mexican hat cum XXXX brewery, back and forth, jumpin', thrivin' and strivin' to survivin' tunes) at a very special show this weekend. Brisbane's own independant stalwarts Mere Noise records are celebrating 10 years on the trot with parties THIS WEEKEND at Black Bear in Bris and Off the Hip in Melbourne.



To do anything is hard. To run an independent record label for ten years in a town renown for siphoning culture southward through its ample storm drains and cultural backwaters... verges on biblical. You thought Job had it tough? He never had to work through an industry re-inventing itself whilst living off beans so he could put out shit-hot local bands on 7" records throughout the world.  The fact that Mere Noise exist is a fucking testament worth your admiration. Get down to one of the shows and party like it's 2003. It may be mere, but it's a lot louder than the silence that would be without them.

  

Thursday Cover Up - Black Lassie Keeps On Dancin

Not as much a review (and moving the cover post from its coveted Friday slot) as a promotion. Tonight there is a goddamn rad gig at the Black Bear Lodge, with the top three bands releasing new material. Gothic sorcerers Occults and Adelaide's punk brood Rule Of Thirds both release 7"s, whilst local maudlin minstrels Keep On Dancins finally give hard copy to follow up their excellent The End Of Everything LP with a pink cassette in the form of Black Lassie (out through Long Gone Records). Seven tracks of Spaghetti Whimsy, opening with an echo-drenched slowburn cover of seminal Brisbane guitar pop band Custard's 'Nervous Breakdance', the "EP" offers every facet of the KODs that makes them such an attractive prospect - the reined in wistful saunter, the occasional brash outburst, soaring vocals, the coyness, the shyness, and the ness-es in between. It's no stretch from familiar ground for the band, but that's not what anyone wants, now, is it?

Rounding out this delectable bill is new-ish phenomenon Screaming Match, who kick everything off at 8.  Ensure you get down there (and that awesome artwork again provided by Sam McKenzie.

Keep On Dancins - Nervous Breakdance (Custard cover)