I found a porno on the internet. Eight minutes long, some business lady, starch white collar protruding from sensible cardigan, not plain or pretty but deviant in the field, pulled over by the roadside to rub one in. ‘Regular women squirt who you wouldn’t think,’ the caption said. Eight minutes, four driving, considerate, checks her mirrors and doesn’t look at the camera. Eight minutes, four driven, concentrating, opens her legs and closes her eyes. After she comes the screen fades, an intertitle displays ‘To be continued…’ but it’s proven empty. Below, the footer claims, ‘There is no relevant content.’
Article originally appeared on The Music Apr 21st 2017
Mid Ayr’s latest four-track is one part pop-rock, three parts dream-gaze, in almost that exact measure. Going through Elm Way is like taking a late summer detour through an innocuous suburban estate. Sure, it’s a well manicured piece of civil construction but it lacks some of the gritty thrill you get from more rustic projects. Underneath all the production it becomes much harder to connect with Hugh Middleton’s meaning, especially after revisiting last year’s earnestly lo-fi leanings. Hopefully down the road is a middle ground in the shape of an album that blends the best of both.
My fear of mirrors goes back a long way, but it wasn’t until I reached intellectual maturity that they really started to terrify me. Thoughts are food and fear grows fat on supposition. At that point in life, I could look into my own eyes and see I wasn’t there. I realised the emptiness inside was a real thing that wanted me dead. I began avoiding all reflection, all I could do was look outwards and listen inwards. A walking cage forever closed, a jailer bound by duty. I try now not to see myself as other people might.
A gift for his sister, I sold my first book to my dealer and had him put it on tick. Every artist starves in their own way. I don’t eat much as it is, so I may as well feed the beast. Well, the urges at least. Creativity’s not some raging monster quelled by contraband, nor are narcotics a siren song shorthand for the muse’s work. Anyway, my inspirations are as vaporous as their progeny and so far cost me less than the pursuit of my dreams. I’ll see if I can sell the next one to my psychiatrist.
It’s thirty seconds at best of the most picaresque sunlight and soft, fleet rain. The heart in my mind yells at me to embrace it, throw my arms out, tip my head back, find my epiphany moment in that dichotomous display. The extreme power of not showing force is nature’s voice screaming at me in the softest possible way. Gentle is not weak. Restraint is not relent. We can be all things. I reach inside, down deep to the pain and anger and hatred and hope, close my hand around it all, and wait for the weather to change.
Article Originally appeared on The Music Apr 7th 2017
K Flay is the kid Missy Elliot and PJ Harvey might have raised.Scathingly witty, sardonic but not too dark, instantly upbeat and engaging, Every Where Is Some Where follows her first album’s trend of typical irreverence and atypical construction, blurring honest and understated lyricism with an addictively anarchic beatscape and fiercely delivered conviction. K Flay somehow manages to back moments of vivid rage against tranquil pieces of vulnerability, stitching a dozen disparate elements into something immediate and consistently delightful. Even her outright vulgarities are well-earned, varied, and as purposefully placed as every detail in Every Where Is Some Where.
I was standing over the corpse of my last relationship when the detective walked in. The world deconstructed under her gaze, a breed of aggressive disapproval that begged every inch of information from the scene. I felt compelled. I’ve been drawing conclusions, I told her. ‘Well then,’ she said, an iron reed, ‘show me what you’ve got.’ I passed her the little notebook I’d been carrying around. Taking a look at the cartoon heart I’d rendered, torn in two, she smiled from the inside. ‘Classic,’ she said, ‘I see it all the time. Obviously suicide.’ I’d fallen in love.
Article originally appeared on The Music Apr 7th 2017
It’s been said before, but Julie Byrne’s got that Joni Mitchell thing going on, meandering through folky feelings and slenderly plucked strings, describing the scenery with expansive yet laconic candour. Not Even Happiness is Byrne’s second trip into this territory, while it finds her better prepared, or at least more polished in production, it’s also our second trip here and it feels a little like getting a postcard from the vacation you took last year. Byrne is clearly a natural songwriter, so it’s a real pity that among a handful of beautiful but interchangeable tales, the interlude is the standout.
I press my forehead to hers and don’t say I love you. The scent of grape bubblegum lingers in the threads of her cotton summer dress. For a minute I’m five again and I don’t know anything, joy and pain are base and unaccounted for. I sense her skin is warm and smooth, but my nerves are inverted, all my efforts scrape against bone. The more I press the less I feel, every sensation dissolves in the search. Soon my flesh will melt entirely, I’ll be stood naked in garrulous detail, and she won’t say I love you too.
Standing there, back to the wall, drawing slowly on a cigarette, watching her laugh. Watching her, sat there with that stranger. Nicotine and cut grass molecules intertwine like entropic time. The stranger leaning easily against her, arm around frame, around dame. Dropping cigarette on concrete, pressing boot into cherry, approaching the bench. Recognition paints a colour, she smiles to introduce a stranger. ‘I’m Jack,’ he’s saying. Shaking hands with continuities trembling. Forgetting what was and knowing what’s next. ‘Old friends,’ she’s saying, writing new histories, drawing shares in the same empty frame. Walking away, everything confusing comes into relief.
Article originally appeared on 4ZZZ April 6th 2017
Who would have thought there were so many Australians with soul. It seems like every week there’s a new quartet, collaboration, ensemble or collective, crooning their way to success with brassy aplomb, most of them with more instruments than a hedgehog has quills. It’s almost enough to make you want to have a meltdown, until you actually have one. Which leads us here, either a humorous segue or grim portent depending on your narrative lens.
More than just an unfortunate spillage in the dairy isle and a six month ban, The Meltdown in question here are a seventeen piece funk, country, soul, guitar, synth, posi-goth, hyphen behemoth. Scratch that, they’re actually just a modest eight piece of Melbourne based Soul/Jazz/Blues. Brought to you buy the purveyors of the finest radioactive gospel.
They’re really good at what they do too, managing to make a forty minute record play on long past any real sense of time, and the tongue-in-cheek decision to put long winded country blues ballad Forever And Always before Don’t Hesitate’s alt-gospel proselytism of positivity is just one of many master strokes of ironic cohesion. Swaying between bouts of mild-tempo’d pain and moderately paced pleasure, big-brass spear and backup vocals at hand, un-derisively self-titled is an album poised to leap into the roiling fray of the fatted music industry midriff.
We live in tumultuous times, and having something familiar like this to fall back on can be a great relief. So, imagine the comfort of slipping in and out of genre tropes like trying on the guests’ coats at your parents’ key party, this one a little George Clinton and that a little Marvin Gaye, all of them still super-cozy despite or because of being so big you’ll never touch the sides. In this way, The Meltdown are a misnomer made balm and prescribed against their moniker. Keep rubbing it on and surely you will find relief.
Article originally appeared on The Music Apr 3rd 2017
Sometimes a two-piece can come out thin and slip into overcompensation. Instead of filling those similar spaces with bouts of distended distortion and riff indulgence, Diet Cig lean into their sparsity like it was Archimedes’ lever. There’s a raging softness knitted into the duo’s angst that makes their debut joyful and refreshing, both in timbre and taste. Swear I’m Good At This is an aural security blanket wrapping up the damaged teen in all of us, telling us it’s alright not being okay, being hurt, angry, happy, manic; but this album is so far from alright — it’s great.
I’ve been repeating myself a lot lately, which I guess is better than repeating others, but still, it feels like I’m stuck in a spiral, a vortex not a closed loop, spinning round and round and revisiting myself at moments of minor variation. It’s mildly maddening, like missing your subway stop for malfunctioning doors. I wanna get off, but then it feels like I’ve tried that already. Maybe I should stick it out, things could get better. I think they get better. Have I tried that? I don’t know, it feels like I’ve been repeating myself a lot lately.
I haven’t felt too great lately, so it’s been a while since I thought about suicide. It always comes alive like a safety mechanism locking into place, you know, like how surge protectors work. I put it in play to kill vanity, but it bores me now. I’d like to blame Franny and Zooey, but if I started targeting my influences I’d simply be left in different shreds with nothing to enjoy. Usually I try to focus on not focusing on it, but even wallpaper can drive you mad over time. I only want to enjoy my misery more.
Hunched over the kitchen bench between a ream of baker’s paper and a pile of bush-grown reefer, the hair-wand in hand, Caleb looks lifestyle channel manic. His apartment is furnished in the same vein, modern minimalist meets mad scientist, patches of projects in nebulous progress and experimental discard everywhere, each an indication of interests sought at the time, abandoned as soon as their knowledge was won. Since Caleb keeps his head shaved as part of his ascetic aesthetic, things should have made sense as soon as I saw the straightener. ‘We’re trying dabs now,’ he tells me.
A Few Short Words 