Totally Mild Time

I stumbled across Totally Mild pretty much by accident in February 2013. The year before I'd asked Melbourne troubadour du jour Lehmann B Smith to come up to Brisbane to play a show for a Lofly gig. I missed it due to an emergency operation, but we kept in touch, and I finally caught him in the flesh when I was in Melbourne to see the MBV & Drones ATP (also playing that night at Bar Open - The Menstrual Cycle AKA Snowy Halliwell Nasdaq et al). He was playing in a friend's band which was - yep - Totally Mild. I really dug it.




It's great to see Elizabeth Mitchell's brainchild not only metamorphose into a larger band concern, or because my memory that night has always been hazy (I raced into Bar Open after two days of drinking at the Altona sweatbox, and had just finished up with Einstürzende Neubaten). It is that Mitchell's melodic music is excellent and deserves to be tickling at everyone's spine. Down Time is TM's debut LP (out through Bedroom Suck and Fire), and it is chock full of pop altruisms and melancholic mantras, knitted together with an elegance and a subtle mischievousness that is impossible to ignore. 


 
A stunning achievement, Down Time can be grabbed here.

Pained Murray On A Ciggie Break

Zac Denton and his not-so-merry men (and wo-man) Ciggie Witch are back with 'Look of Pain' (out through Lost & Lonesome and Osborne Again - although no longer on Osborne St RIP *sigh*), a sonorous yet maudlin jaunt, the juxtaposition between sunny composition and wryly morose exposition, continuing to make the same mistakes, only at the expense of himself. The last lines, "Don't even worry yourself/It's my groundhog day" are bittersweet - a hangdog expression, woe-is-me, right? But we all know that Bill Murray came out of it smelling of roses, stopped being shit and became a better man with a film that still gets good Nielsen hits even though Channel 10 play it once a quarter. Who knows - maybe Denton will finally get his Andie MacDowall? We can dream and hope. Fave CW song yet.

Ciggie Witch are cruisin around being ciggie witches with Cool Sounds - catch them here and there:

June 25 — Canberra @ Phoenix w/ Cool Sounds + California Girls
June 26 — Sydney @ The Union w/ Cool Sounds + Staunch Nation
June 27 — Ballarat @ The Eastern w/ Cool Sounds + Crepes + Bleach Boys
July 24 — Castlemaine @ The Bridge w/ Cool Sounds
July 25 — Melbourne @ The Shadow Electric — Lost And Lonesome Leaps & Bounds Festival Party w/ The Zebras + Milk Teddy + Footy + Tim Richmond + Monnone Alone

Quaffing The Healing Crystals Down For Those Cool Sounds

Barely six months have passed since Melbourne dudes Cool Sounds brought us Melbourne Fashion, and yet here is another album to light up and take in. Healing Crystals is eight songs of blissful, sanguine pop, an easy glide down the backstreets of your town. Snowy (The Ocean Party et al) has become more of a fixture on this album, his saxophone lending a warm hum that at once refreshes and lightens the load. There are additional vocals lilting in the background too from the likes of Amanda Roff (Harmony), Ashley Bundang (Zone Out, Hot Palms, Totally Mild) and Zac Denton (The Ocean Party, Ciggie Witch) to add to the wash of sultry sounds. In fact this reminds me a lot of last year's Ciggie Witch record, Rock and Roll Juice. There is an ease and familiarity with all of this, that doesn't feel as put on (or put upon) as other players in this crowded tavern. Especially when they get into storyteller mode, like closer 'Pizzas', which plays out like a vignette of a bit player from Edward Scissorhands, if the film was shot in Coburg. Which to me should be the focus of more jangle rock albums - concept it the fuck up.

Seriously though, Healing Crystals is a lovely record. The fact that French label Beko Disques (who put out the Excusers EP I mentioned recently, as well as Day Ravies and Nathan Roche releases) are putting this out is doubly exciting - grab it here. The boys have had a residency this month down at the Tote - and are finishing up this Sunday with Palm Springs and Tam Vantage in support - get along.

Fighting The Curlew Urges

Mark Zian has one of the most unique voices in Brisbane today. He was (is?) an integral part of the intricate machine that was (is?) Knee Chin, but finds his voice (literally) in the likes of solo outfit I Am Not A Nihilist and his “rock” band, Curlew. Not that many people know it – Curlew (Zian on guitar and vocals; Callum Wheeler on drums) have been something of a hermit/recluse for the entirety of their conception. I have had the pleasure of seeing Curlew three times in twelve months (nigh on a record), two times this year (both of which were Sonic Masala shows – hey, if you want to watch bands you really like, best put them on yourself). The duo have just released Animal Urges, and it’s an album of exquisite, and exquisitely painful, beauty – a sparse malaise of contemplation, rumination and ruin, all spun in a instrumental narrative that is both spare and dense, an exercise in steely tension and gallows humour, an extraordinary existence borne from the sweatboxes of suburban Brisbane, spat under hooded eyes and a sly yet weary grin. Zian has a cracked vocal delivery somewhere suspended between The Drones’ Gareth Liddiard and another of Brisbane’s hidden lyrical geniuses, Amateur Childbirth (their kinship came to fruition when Curlew played the launch of AC’s second album, PRIPYAT, back in February).

Animal Urges is a somewhat different beast from Curlew’s other major releases. Firstly the songs are much looser and longer in length – only three of the nine tracks on offer stay under five minutes, and three surpass the ten minute mark. Take as example the title track. Essentially a suite of songs, the tracks has a spluttering rhythm that suits the primal questions, assumptions and experiences that Zian explores. Whether it be a conversation in a café that circles the nostalgic mores that remembering the highs of narcotic highs can bring, the adolescent realisation of the strengths of being a male yet the pull towards the female, or the internal conflicts that such primal mores can cause, Zian’s presence is magnetic, drawing you into his esoteric, conflicted world. From the soft jangle accompanying soft-focus childhood memories to the harsher preamble to a venting diatribe, the instrumentation mirrors the ever-shifting narrative tangle. Curlew is a band that inhabits a singular worldview, drawing you inexorably into the swirling mental philosophising, and never have I felt more in tune to a person’s unchecked experiences and explorations of what the fuck this life might mean before. And for that you should all be eternally grateful. And the story outlaid on ‘Fitness First’ is brilliant – it gets me every time.

You can grab Animal Urges here. One of the best Brisbane releases of 2014, yet its verbosity, obtuseness and bared-vein honesty will scare some away. Be brave; step inside; close the door behind you; and listen to someone who isn’t afraid to breathe life into the confused world they live in. Amazing stuff. Their next show is at Trainspotters this Saturday July 26 alongside Black Vacation, Ciggie Witch, Blonde Tongues and Pare Ohm - an incredible line up for free.

Drinking The Juice of Young Ciggie Witches

The latest in a long line of acts to come out of Osborne Street in Brunswick, Melbourne (although it’s been a week so more may have spawned) is Ciggie Witch, and their debut album Rock & Roll Juice hits all the hallmarks of this highly creative hub. It opens with a predictable summer jangle about languid Melbourne living, 'Long Weekend', before we get the more baritone vocals of Mitch Clemens on 'Broken Nose' – and it makes sense. It's this particular counterpoint of voice, tone and worldview that works on disparities like wondering why you'd bother getting out of bed if you will only surf the 'Net in, er,  'The Internet' or waiting for your brother to come to the servo to pay for your petrol because you have no money in 'Point Cook'.

Resplendent in shimmering beauty (thanks to some wonderful instrumentation from Ocean Party/Zone Out/Alek & the Ramps alumni) and a measured production from Dusty Anastassiou (Brisbane brother in arms from Dag), Rock & Roll Juice is the perfect aural equivalent of diary entries for these guys and gals – the kind of lackadaisical, ponderous, easy-livin’ existences that do indeed exist, seem point- and fruitless, yet are rich in existential whimsy, introverted melancholy, yet an overall love of living life in the moment, as it comes, without worrying too much about where the 2 minute noodles or toilet paper will come from one week to the next because there is a footy to kick, a beer to drink, a Sega emulator to play, a guitar to strum and a smile to crack.

Rock & Roll Juice is available on limited vinyl here.