Hello Again, Summer Flake

Steph Crase continues to bewitch and beguile as Summer Flake on her new album, Hello Friends. Here she is aided and abetted by friends (fellow Batrider Sarah Mary Chadwick features on the album, alongside bandmates Joel Carey (Peak Twins) and Antony Bourmas (Antony Of The Future)), but the end product is solely her, her wistful, languid take on bluesy shadow-tinged pop inflected with her glorious vocals and guitar riffs. From the noir lurk of 'Shoot and Score' that crashes into sonorous languor in 'So Long' to the 90s indie throwback fuzz of 'Wine Won't Wash Away', this album is littered with shimmering gems of soaring inflection and sundrunk daydreams of half-chances, wishes and regrets. Even when taking the acoustic route, like on the sparse haunt of 'Tumbling Down', Crase holds you in thrall. Her vocals offer harmonies that pierce the heart, regardless of their notes of chagrin, weary acceptance or steely resolve. The warmer production here augments her growing confidence in her songcraft and existence at the front of the stage. You probably don't need to hear this from me - bloody Henry Rollins is vocally on board for Chrissakes! - but take it from me, this is a fantastic record. Australia is blessed with some truly stunning and idiosyncratic singer/songwriters - and Hello Friends is proof that Summer Flake is the cream of the crop. Pre-order the album here in lipstick-smeared red vinyl through Rice Is Nice - it is a beauty in every sense.

The Return Of Twin Peaks From Heaven

We are all looking forward to the return of Twin Peaks, aren't we? The David Lynch show opened up so many televisual worlds - without it (and its iconic, idiosyncratic imagery and score) we wouldn't have the plethora of outre, lovely shows we have today. But then there is Chicago band Twin Peaks (not to be confused with SM faves from Adelaide, Peak Twins), whose third album Down In Heaven is due to drop in May (through Communion Records). Tenuously like the titular TV show, each album has seen an insidious shift of tone. 2013's Sunken was more of a fuzz-drenched punchbowl of raggedy rock, while Wild Onion the following year seemed to reach for the bleachers with its meticulous mix of party blasts and pleasant platitudes. With the 60s Kinks/T-Rex/Easybeats twang of 'Walk To The One You Love', it sounds as if the guys are spiralling further into the past to claw into the future. Twin Peaks is a band unsure of what they are, but will continue to play music that flows naturally forth from the springs. 

Twin Peaks will be in the UK in April - playing Camden Barfly on April 19.

Border Kenny Fetish

Liam Kenny is prepping another attack on the senses. Having explored the musical cover artform on his A Kenny For Your Thoughts project last year, the Bitch Prefect/Peak Twins/et al musician is punching out his first solo record under his own name. Called The White Man Is Oppressor, it promises to be pretty gnarled and visceral, if first taste 'Border Fetish' is anything to go by (which, due to his chameleonic back catalogue, isn't much - this album could be anything). A chugging, snarling punk sprawl, Kenny sneering as he garishly cuts into the psyche of the white Australian male. As hard and harsh as Cobwebbs at their most insane, 'Border Fetish' circles around the blood in the water, scraping metal distortion back and forth, a chaotic oscillation, with Kenny coughing, grunting, spitting and snarling. An attack on the privileged platform that he himself is inherently a part of, The White Man Is Oppressor is going to be an acerbic, bitter punk pill to gnash on - and one that was desperately in need of being made. You will be able to get the album through Eternal Soundcheck, but until then, hit Play and self-flagellate.

Old Mate's Under Pressure

It's so great to have a new Old Mate track. It Is What It Is was such a surprising gem from last year, its schizophrenic laconicism and downer aesthetics somehow combining to create something wholly inexplicably wondrous. They are slipping this first taste of new album Maraby (to be brought out through Format Records) right under the radar - as they are wont to do - and the maudlin gospel western 'Atomspheric Pressure' plays like the vocals (featuring Joel Carey) has been mastered at the wrong speed - or if Jack Ladder took a handful of Diazepam and covered Charlie Pride. That sax though - Australia has been killing it with effective solos in their tracks over the last few months. Its abnormally addictive - my girlfriend heard me playing in the kitchen and asked why I was playing "shit in slow motion" but after a few plays said "what the hell is with this song? This shit is getting stuck in my head." I think that says it all - no more reviews necessary.

Wallowing In Vintage Violence

After that interview with Liam Kenny last week, I thought I would continue with another Adelaide funk out that features a Liam Kenny that isn't Liam Kenny. The drone in the punk synth wail of Vintage Violence (not to be confused with the Italian punkoids of same name) evokes John Cale (seeing as they cribbed their name from one of his albums, that is a fair if obvious make) and more insidious gothic synth lurkers like 'Desert' and 'Nerve damage'. This Liam Kenny (of excellent unhinged boozehounds Wireheads) is joined here by fellow Old Mate old mate (and a Peak Twin) Ben Quici. The seven-track album moves along at a oozing pace, the industrial crawl emblematic of the bleak Gothic claustrophobia Europe continually pumps out of the pores of its desecrated earth. Especially when you hear 'Back To You', which is as desolate and dead-eyed as they come. It's brooding, barren, brilliant. Out through Format Records as a digital download or 100-run cassette, both from here.

INTERVIEW - Liam Kenny

This is an interview I actually did with Liam Kenny (Bitch Prefect, Peak Twins, a veritable shit tonne of other things) in accordance with the release of his "solo" record, A Kenny For Your Thoughts. Seeing as I cannot get 'Avalanche' and 'I Am The Ocean' off the stereo at the moment - and seeing as this should have been posted in December - I would launch into it now.

SONIC MASALA: The album/project on paper sounds like an inebriated conversation that has somehow sprung into fruition. How did the idea come about? Was it something that once conceived came together pretty quickly, or was there a fully-formed idea from the onset?

LIAM KENNY: Yeah it started as a joke and many would say it remains a joke... Really we just thought it was an interesting and weird thing to do. For a relatively young person to do a kind of Bryan Ferry, Rod Stewart, middle age style covers record, we just thought that'd be funny. And then once you have an idea you don't hate you may as well do it. 

SM: Kate (Reid, of it Records) has said to me (and its official, seeing as she's put it in the newsletter) that she started the label for this express "joke". When did you realise 'you know what, this dumb idea isn't so dumb after all'? Plus I like the idea of Liam Kenny, the middle aged crooner. I'm also a massive fan of Roxy Music - make of that what you will. Was there a thought to go 'full sell-out' mode, wear white suits and hit the RSLs and jazz clubs around Melbourne, somehow transform into a lounge lizard? There are moments, such as Billy Idol's 'Eyes Without A Face', where that warped vision could very well have been a reality.



LK: Yeah I mean ultimately we don't just see it as a joke because it's a lot of effort to go to for a joke. Jack (Farley) and I are proud of the music and we obviously think it works on a 'serious' level... and that's probably why the idea of dressing me up in white suits and kind of creating a character or whatever never really occurred to us... I'm really not into that sort of thing... I'd rather the tongue be kinda always half in the cheek than be devolving into total shtick. And of course we love Roxy Music and Rod Stewart, who doesn't? Well, maybe some people don't. But yeah, the balance between laughter and tears is one that needs to be navigated in life at all times. When doing it in music it's gotta be subtle. Something like Johnny Telefone, that's one of my favourite artists in the country. You could argue that he's playing a character, but there's an honesty to it and a depth of emotion that goes beyond humour or seriousness and ends up being both and neither. It's elusive. That's where you wanna be.

SM: Were there songs then that you originally had in mind but then had to be discarded due to the shtick element? It can be a tightrope after all (which you thankfully command well - it's a great record, something I should have said from the outset ha). Why no Roxy/Rod specific music/language? It's funny you mention Johnny Telefone - because there are artists in Australia that do mine this territory quite well, even if for differing reasons. Donny Benet is another, although he might fall into the shtick category that you are artfully avoiding.

LK: I didn't have anyone in mind, just reacting to the imagined "Kenny For Your Thoughts lounge Variety Hour." Although now it's not sounding so bad........ I don't think there were any songs we decided not to do for that reason. We've still got a really long list actually, we'll probably do a second album. I reckon a good Roxy Music one to do would be 'If There Is Something' from the first album. That thing is an emotional rollercoaster.

SM: Oh man that would be killer. The highs and lows of Kenny and Farley... Speaking of which, as you are pushing AKFYT as a collab between the two of you, can you tell me more about the relationship in the making of the album? I notice that iT Records are still promoting this as AKFYT by Liam Kenny - is that merely a superficial misnomer, putting your name on the label to draw in sales? (I'm not trying to be facetious or anything here either - I am honestly interest in the connection and collaboration between you two, and indeed with iT Records).

LK: It's definitely a collaboration more than it is a solo record, (as) half the ideas are Jack's. But it probably gets referred to as a solo record because that's how it's presented - as a singer doing a covers record. The idea of two people doing a covers record doesn't really have a rich kind of aesthetic history or whatever, it's better for the show business / Las Vegas side of it for it to be billed as a solo record, if that makes sense. But to be honest we really didn't actually think about any of that, we just let Kate get on with it. As for our relationship making it, we made it over maybe two years. We'd work on it pretty rarely. We were living together at the time and Jack had a studio set up in the home. Occasionally we'd just do another one. Me and Jack are very good friends, I have a lot of respect for what he does, he's an exceptionally talented individual. It all happened very comfortably.

SM: Jack has been getting a fair bit more work over the past two years too - did you find that his ideas grew or even diversified each time you came back to the project?

LK: I'm sure I might have noticed if I was looking but to be honest when I'm working with Jack I just expect everything to go perfectly. It's when something goes wrong that I begin to notice and then question him and probe him and make him feel bad about himself. That's the appropriate dynamic.

SM: You have to keep him on his toes! The "conceptual" status of AKFYT fits into the idea of conceptual art that Sol DeWitt upholds - "the idea becomes the machine that makes the art"... Is that how you feel about the eight songs that make up the album?

LK: I dunno man... I mean I don't know if it applies here really... I mean its just a collection of recordings and ideally they'd all work individually... We didn't reject anything because it didn't fit with the idea, if anything the idea expanded to accommodate the different recordings we were making. Frankly though I wouldn't be looking too much into this stuff, I can guarantee none of this ever occurred to us. I'm struggling to articulate any kind of thought process in what we did. We just recorded versions of songs we liked. I'm even uncomfortable with the notion that it has any artistic coherence or worth at all. It's basically just meant to be a party record.



SM: Haha. I didn't mean to make AKFYT out to be any more cerebral or "artful" than it is - maybe I'm over thinking things. I will say that these songs do work individually. I heard 'Avalanche' and thought "shit, why don't we have this kind of dirge-lite dance music in Australia more?" It's easily my favourite on the album. But outside more "lounge-friendly" fare that plays into the joke readily ('Sea Of Love', 'Eyes Without A Face'), then you have a somewhat faithful version on Neil Young's 'I'm The Ocean' (almost an obscure choice, with Pearl Jam as his backing band) and All Saints' 'Never Ever'. Both could stand as karaoke songs.

LK: I reckon there's heaps of stuff in Australia with a similar sound to 'Avalanche' nowadays. It was pretty inspired by groups like Repairs and Nun. It's pretty derivative, from my end anyway. The way I'm singing and playing on all of the songs is all trying to sound like different other things. That's part of the reason there's so many guest musicians too, it's just meant to be a massive pile of thievery and appropriation. I'm usually not trying to sound like other things currently happening when I record music, usually I'm trying to avoid it, but on this I just copied everyone a lot. I reckon it works for the idea of a covers record. If you're not gonna have original songs you may as well do them in an unoriginal way as well. But again I don't think me and Jack ever had this conversation, that was just how I looked at it myself. Jack would obviously argue that he is focused on breaking new ground at absolutely all times. If the album has any 'original' kind of achievements they're all Jack's. Apart from the title, that was all me.

SM: What drew certain guest musicians (Zond's Justin Fuller, Super Wild Horses' Amy Franz, Ela Stiles Twerps' Martin Frawley et al) into the fold then - how did you feel they fit into the AKFYT idea?

LK: We just got heaps of guests because recording with mates is an enjoyable thing to do and we knew it would improve the album and make it less boring. It works with the idea like I said because -  the whole record is about other peoples' work. May as well have more other people on it.

SM: If it's about other people's work - how did you choose the final eight tracks? What was it about these that appealed?

LK: Again there was no real thought process. We just kept doing them until we had a half hour of music. They're songs we like, that was the only criteria.

SM: Fair enough really! Is there much thought in the way of playing these songs live, or is going to remain a release-only endeavour?

LK: Nah no live shows, we were thinking about doing a one off show when the album came out but it didn't really end up happening. I get sick of everything having to be done live, there's always this pressure to play live all the time, especially in Melbourne. It's over the top. Why does there have to be a thousand shows every night? Sometimes a recording should just be a recording. There's enough fuckwits up on stages already.

SM: Haha, there is certainly a flood of music in Melbourne. Do you have a particular favourite from the album?

LK: Yeah I like the Bob Dylan one the most, it's the saddest one.

Grab A Kenny For Your Thoughts here.

METRO SCHOOL REUNION FOREVER!

(Post written by Fred Savage Beasts)

Adelaide - home of the severely underrated genius. Right where Australia balances between the currents from the Antarctic and the wide, brown desert. Wide streets, trams, Jamie Siddons, Crows and now this… The Metro School Reunion. This is the reason you’ve been looking for to take your beat up VK Holden on its final legendary drive.

Get a load of the bands on the list, dammit! TV Colours alone would make this worthwhile. Like the Crows say, “FAAARK…” All these bands should be in the test team.

TV COLOURS★CONSTANT MONGREL★HIT THE JACKPOT★NATIVE CATS★LAKES★SCHOOL OF RADIANT LIVING ★BITCH PREFECT★PEAK TWINS★OLD MATE★RULE OF THIRDS★WIREHEADS 

On at the city's stalwart Hotel Metropolitan on October 5. Wind down the windows, rubber band your teas towels round your frozen water bottles and get yourself there. Any way you can.

Friday Cover Up WORLD EXCLUSIVE - Kenny Has Billy's Idol Without A Face

It's always nice to open Friday with something special - a present before the gift of the weekend to come. And Liam Kenny doesn't want to disappoint so he is pulling out all the stops with the next track from his upcoming A Kenny For Your Thoughts LP (out soon through it Records). The cover he has chosen? None other than Billy Idol's "classic" 'Eyes Without A Face.' The almost six-minute track is a candy-cane kaleidoscope of confection, featuring some lovely echoing backing vocals from Amy Hill (Constant Mongrel, School of Radiant Living). Kenny does well to sound many things at once here - fragile, vulnerable, confident, sultry, ironic, ardent. You could just about see him belting this out at an RSL near you, all sequin jacket and knock-off Ray-Bans worn indoors, a faux-Stevie Wonder waver of the head in the process. But its the instrumentation that pushes this into the stratosphere - offering the emotional heft that Idol could never achieve. There is something about basic drum machine beats with Kenny Loggins groove and a surreal sonic swirl that plucks one's heartstrings, doesn't one think? Yes, one most definitely does.

  

A Kenny For Your Thoughts is Kenny's first solo album, and it promises to be something incredibly unique, on a par with the other outre projects he has on the burn. Jack Farley's production here can be seen as a collaboration of sorts, whilst Kenny is helped out by the cream of Melbourne music's crop - alongside Hill, Martin Frawley (Twerps), Ela Stiles (Songs/Bushwalking), Joel Carey (Peak Twins), Justin Fuller (Zond), Al Montfort (Dick Diver/Total Control/UV Race/Lower Plenty/Eastlink), Pat Telfer (Bitch Prefect), Amy Franz (Super Wild Horses) and Jack Mannix (Circle Pit). Can't bloody wait.

Friday Cover Up - Cohen, Get A Kenny Up Ya

Liam Kenny, he of Bitch Prefect/Peak Twins/The Friendsters et al, is finally going it alone. But as usual, you can't take the guy for granted, for he is soloing on an album of demented covers, brilliantly titled A Kenny For Your Thoughts. First bite is this insane rendition of Leonard Cohen's 'Avalanche' - a sound-squall of siren-strapped guitar swirl, electronic attacks and beat marches that is as relentless in intensity and fever as it is somewhat macabre. It's fantastic, in other words. A Kenny For Your Thoughts will be coming out on the newly minted It Records (White Hex), which was actually started so that this album could come to fruition - I think the gamble's paid off.

Peaking through double-vision

There is something here amongst all this squelch. Once when I was having a bad time I listened to a lot of Roy Orbinson, BRMC and The Smiths. 'Well done, great creative choices, you really went out on a limb there, didn't you?' I hear you say... Well, fuck you, I didn't have time to go searching far and wide while I was balling my eyes out wondering why nobody thought about me before they went off and did what they did. But, man, I wish I had've had this then. At least then I would have been able to carry off besieged Romeo with a little more aplomb.

Peak Twins new self-titled album oozes cool - slowly. It comes from a big empty room next door where there are people who have 'been there too, man'. They just handled it way better than you did.



You can nuzzle up to your very own copy here. Out now through the infallible Bedroom Suck.

VIDEO VACUUM - Courtney Barnett, Peak Twins, Forest, Girls Names

It's a breakneck kinda day, one thing piling up on the next. So these excellent music vids should help alleviate the tension, baby...



Sonic Masala's current fave song of the year has just been equipped with its own rad visual, with Courtney Barnett and co clowning around on the clay tennis courts for 'Avant Gardener'. Everything Barnett does at the moment turns to gold - even if there was backlash for her cover of a Yeezus track. Cmon! She appropriated Coon cheese into the lyrics! That's sleight of hand comic genius of the Aussie laconic sort! Anyway, we have the whites, the wooden racquets, the good natured rivalry, the durries at drinks breaks. Golden. Barnett is playing in London, the Notting Hill Arts Club to be exact, tonight. If you're around, check her out - she's on at 8.30pm and will be the best act of the night by far.


Peak Twins - So Long from BSR on Vimeo.

Adelaide's Peak Twins have developed the perfect Blue Velvet-esque slow-dance karaoke tune in a decrepit photo studio film clip committed to celluloid. They are warming up for the eponymous album release through Bedroom Suck, and it promises to exceed expectations as the band subvert genres to their own cursed whims with uniquely salacious results. Great stuff.



Two Aussie bands juxtaposed with two UK acts. Cambridge kids Forest are infusing their jangle slackerdom with ample amounts of scuzzy, blase abandon. Their 'Coaster' vid has the requisite shimmering, slightly out of focus images, the clowning around in a field, and...blase abandon. Just abandon the blase and embrace the fuzz, because Forest dish out in generous helpings. Their freshly-minted EP Caramel Arms should be a good'un. If you value Brit bands because you have NME grafted to your inner thigh, disregard others and give these guys a try - they are genuinely fun.


Finally we have Belfast buddies Girls Names, who have released the almost-nine minute title track of their album The New Life as a single. Good on them, eschewing convention. Truth is, this is my favourite song on the album, perfectly encapsulating the band's emancipation from twee noise pop to a moodier expanse - a similar chrysalis moment that the Horrors encountered a few years ago. This B&W clip is epileptic performance art at its most cloying yet entrancing. Seriously though, the combo of sight and sound is a hypnotic masterstroke.

Blase Histrionics & Cacophonous Vibes - Two Weeks Of Scott & Charlene's Wedding

 

Last year was absolutely stellar for Aussie rock albums, whether they were narcissistic (Slug Guts, Spinning Rooms), or narcoleptic (Bitch Prefect, Pageants). Possibly at the top of the heap was Craig Dermody AKA Scott & Charlene's Wedding. Starting with the struggling ne'er-do-well in 'Gammy Leg', the ambling spirit of Para Vista Social Club which also graced the excellent split record with fellow Australian slackers Peak Twins. It's Dermody's scratchy, blase observations of the minutiae of Australian life that elevates his music, which continues onwards even after he has moved to New York. The bare-bones honesty is endearing and relatable, as can be seen on the title track to his about-to-be-released mini-album (through Critical Heights), Two Weeks. There are only a couple of new tracks on here, but with a new album in the wings we won't have long to hear how the misplaced Dermody views life in the Big Apple. Odds on, its same shit, different day. Hopefully that leg of his has healed...

Scott & Charlene's Wedding - Two Weeks