I’ve seen stewing.rainfall.eats, dreaming.munch.magnetic and best.prosper.lash, yet nothing has felt so splendid as mutual.minds.dusty, a welcoming kiss and instant ease. Being led through librarian.labels.shelf and insert.they.coherent to life.toast.think where we listened to each other, made coffee to drink and learnt strong surface depths. Moving past scare.types.reveal we lay in exist.light.drums, linked.digits.fears quelled and simply felt. Quench.lakes.giving, watching us with patience, letting in little outside lights, lives.puzzle.lush, while elsewhere the oily river babbles, struck.give.rewarding.
Standing by the cliff, she says, ‘I want you to push me first and then dive in after to save me.’ I don’t ask why and she laughs and the harness tightens. ‘Are you scared?’ Only of losing you, I say. ‘Don’t worry,’ she says, ‘after this you’ll have only lost fear.’ I can almost see her skin eating the sunlight, caramel clashing and consuming the blue. She turns to face the cliff and the future and says, ‘Now fucking push me.’ I put my hands to the small of her back and whisper in her ear, I love…
A tiny brow crease and wrinkle of the little pock that lives above the left. There’s something in her eyes. They’re glistening, not with tears but a spectrum, a fast vastness that ripples and contorts and plays across the iris like a borealis flirting upon the tundra. This thing in her eyes, it doesn’t hurt but does carry fear; it doesn’t propel, but does carry hope; it doesn’t carry her, but does makes her float. The brows push together more, increasing indent. There’s something in her eyes. There’s a word for it, wholly inadequate but labelled, an unbearable lightness.
I wonder what I’m supposed to be some times. A sin eater? A catalyst? Collateral damage? Is it one of those perception things, a parallax error where life doesn’t line up for us because we see it from different angles and they’ll always be at odds? I wonder what that means I am some times. The glass? The water? The waiter? Is it one of those preconception things, a baked-in behaviour as over cooked as this analogy? I wonder what I should say some times. I am, I am not, I may be? Yes, no, maybe? I wonder?
I threw all of your things out like so much good trash. I went out and put it all in the garbage, stared at the recycling bin and shrugged, saying, ‘Sometimes there’s nothing to be done, buddy,’ before walking back inside. All I kept was one lousy photo, it’s not even of you, just some trees you can’t much see and a hazy sunset that means nothing to me. I put it in a box of forgettables, one day I might look at it and remember you, it happens, but it won’t feel like anything, not even a waste.
Billy had a penis growing on his head somewhere. Reputedly it was quite big, as people had remarked upon it many times. Unfortunately Billy could neither see nor feel the penis and its exact dimensions remained a mystery to him. ‘What a dick head,’ someone might say, with begrudging wonder in their voice. If particularly preoccupied with ire or other matters they might exclaim, ‘You are the biggest dick head I have ever met.’ Unsure whether to feel pride at its invisible splendour or shame for the inexplicable tone of exasperation that accompanied its mention, Billy was routinely confounded by the continuing fascination of others. Still, he was pleased to be noticed at all and grew to quite enjoy his phallic point of difference, though it could never be compared to his original visible member he knew deep down that it should be something special to draw such frequent and fervent commentary. Having concluded thus, that his mysterious appendage must simply be splendid to others but was quite literally beyond his grasp, Billy continued to live life as he always had, with a pride of dormant butterflies ever waiting to flutter at a friend or stranger’s utterance, ‘Billy, you are a massive dickhead.’
Of course there were darker times, late at night or whilst dwelling in a pit dug from indecision and inner derision, occasions when Billy wondered why it was he could not see what others saw. What lack might he have, what missing sense or unintelligence was inhibiting his perception? When these niggling threads would irritate the mind, Billy found it soothing to unravel them to their fullest. The midnight oil burnt quick in deep rabbit holes, as he wandering through wiki warrens and endless YouTube tutelage, where an article on auras might lead to an excerpt on extra sensory perception, essays on the collective unconscious drew magicians and medical doctrine together, philosophers and philistines held court over soothsayers and sense memory in discourses that ran a roughshod gamut from zeitgeist and eyesight. Billy grew dizzy with knowledge and an increasing absence of clarity, his head hurt and he would often dwell in a migraine inducing fugue of phallically focussed phantom limb symptoms.
Having exhausted all internal and online avenues, inevitably Billy turned to back to the world for answers.
Article originally appeared on The Music Apr 6th 2018
Don’t despair, Donny Benet’s latest album contains the same mix of self-deprecation, satire and synth you’ve come to expect – sort of like the soundtrack to an ’80s summer coming of age comedy at the intersection of arpeggiation and assonance – but over the course of four albums Benet has polished his shtick so much that it’s almost impossible to hold on to.
Most of Donny’s charm comes from his simplicity and sincerity, the anachronistic auteur delivering droll woes over dubious loops. But there’s only so much mileage you can milk from the sad-boy romantic sound before the appeal starts to droop and Donny seems more like a Reddit brand ‘Nice Guy’ than a stand-up comedian with a backing band.
Maybe the world has changed in the four years since we spent the Weekend At Donny’s or maybe Donny hasn’t. All the tracks on The Don are individually bouncy things, rife with potential giggles and nostalgic beats, all delivered with an oddly well-kempt joie de vivre. But it’s a little too clean and manufactured, a bowl of refined sugar where one or two spoonfuls might be nice but anything more than that and you’re probably doing yourself a damage.
Abridged article appeared in The Music (April 2018)
Jaala’s Joonya Spirit feels like a concealed middle finger held in the pocket of an oversized op-shop jacket worn by someone much cooler than you. There’s a prickish quality that’s intriguing rather than alarming, even if you know getting close might hurt a little.
Tempos flare between slam dance, soul, and social dissonance. Tracks are quickly irreverent and seditiously relevant, bounced along by Cosima’s quirky delivery and salty, kawaii-killer attitude. It seems sort of grubby and immediate, but wipe away some of that oddly glamorous grime and there’s a thousand facets to be seen. Most of the song are restless with purpose, the sort of cohesive flux brought out in zoetrope, and it makes the schismatic timing all the more admirable for the cohesion it brings.
More Mangelwurzel than Hard Hold, Joonya Spirit manages to straddle both scenes, splicing the saccharine with the incisive. Schofield’s new synths slot seamlessly into the existing synergistic dissonance Moles and Jaala create together, adding a pop-ish quality akin to an unexpected balloon explosion. The overall effect is a compelling kind of propulsion, jagged and smoothly erratic.
Innocently itself, cool without care, Joonya Spirit is a confident release that deftly sidesteps the second album slouch.
It wasn’t the knife or the way she held it that scared me, it was years of experience and the absentminded way it undercut her words, waiving it limply along like a conductor‘s baton on a broken wrist. ‘Did you lie to me because you’re an asshole or because you thought you’d get away with it?’ Neither, I say. A bad answer for a worse question. She had me backed into an actual corner. ‘So, what, you just did it for fun?’ I felt the absurd teeth of semantics closing on me and nearly laughed myself to death.
Abridged article appeared in The Music (April 2018)
Evelyn Ida Morris’ debut step away from Pikelet fame invokes an incalculable amount of things; Amanda Palmer’s piano, Nick Cave’s film scores, a score of Guillermo del Toro films, classical parlour performances, performance art; punctiliously avant-garde and profound, most notably it is and isn’t any that, hewing closer to the calm heart of a maelstrom in the eye of a needle, something almost impossible to see and almost certainly unheard of.
In (re?)claiming Evelyn Ida Morris as an artist and not merely a member of a growing concern, Morris has dived directly into the heart of individualism in a frankly startling and perversely intimate way. It’s welcoming yet obtuse and certainly not for everyone, which is subjectively the heart of it and the gnawing appeal it wields.
Every piece carries something cascading and desperate. A haunted timbre like an infectious susurrus blowing through the eaves. Everything is tuned to a maddening key, somewhere in the range of knife sharp, and the percussion does pierce but it’s the occasioning of Morris’ voice, dabbed selectively throughout, that truly captivates.
Evelyn Ida Morris has made something starkly, unexpectedly special, a melodious manifesto that offers an unadulterated glimpse into a single soul.
Article originally appeared on The Music Mar 12th 2018
Flowertruck hauls around a pretty particular kind of sensibility. Something not quite akin to irreverence or satire, it’s a brand of impassioned nonchalance that has less to do with apathy and more to do with a sort of lackadaisical confidence drenched in a summer pop malaise that feels just as Australian as lead vocalist Charles Rushforth’s Strine patois.
The group’s debut LP seems to have grown directly from their first EP Dirt, deploying the same mixture of buoyant melodies and melancholic deliveries, but the overall sound is fuller and more mature without losing the seed of what made it worth cultivating. Mixed and mastered with a light touch by some notable names, the compositions are polished but not overproduced, allowing every element a chance to shine, whether that’s a kicking snare, banging tambourine, or lyrical bon mot.
Starting with Enough For Now – a song that can be summed up as saying “you’ll do” (in the best possible way) – and winding up with Come Across, a cheeky self-deprecating treatise that has the band apologising for itself with a smirk and a wink, Mostly Sunny feels like some bloke you know spinning a year’s worth of yarn.
Clear, confident and considerately paced, Mostly Sunny is the start of a bright future.
James lay on his back, writhing, and wondered if life was hell. He had eaten part of a page of a Kafka novel and thought it might mean something. It did not. Expelling his supply of futility in parallel with his desperation, James writhed some more and snagged a mesothoracic leg on a linoleum knot, leaving it detached and autonomously alarmed at his side. He couldn’t feel its absence and was shocked at the hole that made. Midst thorax contractions came fatuous lucidity. I should have eaten Joyce, James thought, it might have changed something. It would not have.
‘Like eighty percent of what I say just comes out as ash and lands at my feet so you can kick it around and complain about choking on the dust.’ Sometimes while Jo yells I like to trace the path of my life. I picture little stones placed on a sea of fog and I tiptoe over them, making light little leaps where necessary and cooing at the ruined splendour lurking in the haze. Nothing we tell each other will build me a stable path. ‘Well fuck that,’ he says, ‘don’t light a fire and bitch about the heat.’
Are you seriously asking me if I’ve heard about god? Have you heard of the fucking internet, of art, of television, of books, of fucking humanity? People have been batting that shit over the net for as long as we’ve been scared of the dark. Yeah, I’ve heard about god, and his miraculous cuckold baby. If they have a plan for us all, for me, and it includes the devil and all that rapture battle crap, then it definitely includes me being miserable and screwing up and sinning like, well, every other damned human since the apple was bit.
A Few Short Words 