Tame Impala

The Wiggles’ generational crossover

Since forming in 1991, Australian children’s group the Wiggles have pretty much seen it all. They’ve created a vast discography spanning 59 studio albums alone: last year, they were the second-highest streamed Australian act on Spotify across all genres.

In their heyday, the original group performed to more than 1 million people a year. More recently, they’ve noticed something new: a generational crossover. Their fans have grown up, many have formed their own bands – and they’re still fans.

This became obvious in 2018, when Brisbane hard rock duo DZ Deathrays invited guitarist Murray Cook to guest in their video Like People. In the clip, a demonically possessed Cook emerges from a bathroom stall and appears to be taken over by his former character, Red Wiggle.

Later that year, Cook (who retired from live performances with the Wiggles in 2012, along with original Purple Wiggle Jeff Fatt) appeared with DZ Deathrays at the Splendour in the Grass festival. The audience went totally Apple And Bananas.

This set the stage for last year’s all-conquering cover of Tame Impala’s Elephant, for which Cook returned. It went on to win the country’s biggest music poll, the Triple J Hottest 100.

“I just started noticing I was getting stopped in the street a lot by 20-somethings saying ‘the Wiggles were my childhood, you guys are legends!’”… Read more..

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The Laurels: Sonicology

The Laurels started life as a shoegaze band in thrall to the British sounds of the late 1980s and early 90s: Ride, Swervedriver and, most obviously, My Bloody Valentine. Their first album, Plains, was all Fender Jaguar and Rickenbacker guitars, played at deafening volume (with liberal use of tremolo arm) and, while it wasn’t exactly original, the Sydney band had close to perfected the approach.

Four years on, Sonicology sees the Laurels taking a slight left turn. The band still love MBV’s Kevin Shields, but this time it’s his work with Primal Scream circa XTRMNTR that finds an Australian echo. These are densely psychedelic wall-of-sound collages with clear dance floor and hip-hop leanings – minus the paranoid political edge that made XTRMNTR a classic.

Instead, the Laurels sound more like 24-hour party people: there’s a pronounced Madchester / baggy rhythmic influence, particularly the Happy Mondays, and there’s a lot going on. On top of layered guitar tracks, several songs feature trumpet, flute and saxophone; Some Other Time even features a bulbul tarang, a south Asian instrument which translates from its Punjabi origin as “waves of nightingales”.

That’s a pretty good description of Sonicology. It’s highly melodic, but not easy to assimilate when everything is coming at you at once.… Read more..

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Le provocateur

Immediately after cutting their striptease classic Je t’aime … Moi Non Plus in 1969, French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg and his English paramour, Jane Birkin, adjourned to the restaurant of their Parisian hotel. Gainsbourg, full of mischief, convinced the staff to play the record. As the song built, literally, to its climax – with the sound of Birkin in the throes of apparent orgasm – the room went still.

“Everybody’s knives and forks were in the air, suspended,” Birkin later told Gainsbourg’s biographer, Sylvie Simmons. “Gainsbourg said, ‘I think we’ve got a hit.’” And for decades, Je t’aime was the erotic novelty hit for which Gainsbourg was best known – at least outside of France, until a heart attack ended his life aged 62, in 1991.

Four years later, Melbourne musician Mick Harvey – then a key member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – released Intoxicated Man, a collection of Gainsbourg covers, translated into English. In the liner notes, he explained “what might otherwise be an unnecessarily enigmatic project,” professing his bewilderment that Gainsbourg’s work was virtually unknown outside of French-speaking countries.

These days, it’s a different story. Gainsbourg’s legacy is everywhere: from season two of Mad Men (a jingle for a coffee company is a reworking of his racy 1964 single Couleur Café) through the work of everyone from French band Air to Beck to Arcade Fire.… Read more..

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