November 2011

Death to shuffle!

Music / / 4 minutes of reading

It’s funny how, 10 years since the advent of the iPod was supposed to mark the death of the album as a conceptual art form, great albums keep magically appearing. They appear about as regularly as articles proclaiming (yet again) the death of the album.

Cue Diana Elliott in yesterday’s Age. Given this isn’t exactly the first time this argument has been promulgated in the last decade, I presume Diana has crawled through a wormhole from 1965, back when pop charts were ruled by singles.

Remember singles? These marvellous seven-inch creations only had room for one song per side – you could squeeze maybe a couple more in to make an EP, but at the expense of sound quality and all-important volume. Ray Davies, the Kinks’ master songwriter, still speaks fondly of them as his favourite musical medium.

Back then, albums mostly were little more than filler padding out a couple of sure-fire hits. Then the Beatles and Bob Dylan came along and expanded the minds of a generation, at the same time spoiling the party for those unfortunate Baby Boomers suffering from what wasn’t then called Attention Deficit Disorder.

Last week, a couple of friends began frantically tweeting each other about the merits of a new album by Melbourne’s Witch Hats.… Read more..

Has Julia got her mojo back?

Australian Politics / / 4 minutes of reading

At the moment, it’s only a whisper, and it may be well past too late. But there’s more than a hint in the last few weeks that Julia Gillard’s government may just have turned the corner.

Yes, there is the continuing political and humanitarian debacle over asylum seekers, but that is a failure of imagination, goodwill and commonsense that besmirches both sides of politics. Otherwise, Gillard’s had the best few weeks of her turbulent Prime Ministership. First she managed to secure the carbon tax’s passage through the Lower House. When Alan Joyce decided to play hardball with the unions by grounding his Qantas fleet, Julia (via Fair Work Australia) sent them post-haste back to the negotiating table, for once looking surefooted in what was, for her, familiar territory.

Then came the carbon tax again as it sailed comfortably through the Senate. Tony Abbott, who had all but pledged to nail himself to a cross to fight its introduction, chose this moment to attend a conservative leader’s forum in London. I wonder whether David Cameron took the opportunity to avail Tony of his views on climate change. The Tory British PM is an ardent supporter of a price on carbon. Just today, by the way, the Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency warned that the world had possibly as little as five years to clean up its act before the tipping point of irreversible and dangerous climate change was reached.… Read more..

Autoluminescent

Music / / 4 minutes of reading

A few days ago I bumped into an old friend in the city. He manages a well-known local band here in Brisbane, and he asked me if I’d be prepared to participate in the making of a documentary about the group. He wanted to do something a bit edgier than the standard rock doco, though. “Every documentary I’ve seen lately it’s just a bunch of people saying how great [band/performer X] was,” he said. “It’s really boring.”

He had a point, and I was reminded of it last night when I saw Autoluminescent, Lee-Maree Milburn and Richard Lowenstein’s documentary about former Birthday Party/These Immortal Souls guitarist Rowland S. Howard. The first half of this two-hour film is weighed down with luminaries (not only peers and former bandmates like Nick Cave, Mick Harvey and Phil Calvert but also Henry Rollins, Thurston Moore, Bobby Gillespie, etc, etc) generally crapping on about how great Rowland was.

And that’s validating, sure, but if you’re seeing this film in the first place you probably have some idea of who Rowland S. Howard is and why he mattered. Most likely you already think he’s fabulous. The film survives this slightly creaky beginning mainly due to the late guitarist’s outrageous charisma (with his high cheekbones and extraordinarily brilliant blue eyes, rarely has a dying man looked so beautiful) and the sumptuous direction.… Read more..

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