August 2015

Jen Cloher – live @ ACMI, Melbourne

Music / / 1 minute of reading

Halfway through her gig at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image’s David Bowie exhibition, Melbourne singer-songwriter Jen Cloher introduces her own Bowie moment: her song David Bowie Eyes is an obvious nod to partner Courtney Barnett, standing on her right. It’s possible at least a few in the audience are here mainly to get up close to Australia’s unlikeliest and best musical success story, but it’s Cloher (looks like Patti Smith, drawls like Lou Reed) who’s the real rock star of the pair. Her set starts quietly with Hold My Hand – an impossibly moving vignette of ageing and decay – but when Mount Beauty kicks in, her band begins rumbling like a feral cross between the Velvet Underground and Crazy Horse. Cloher’s lyrical economy and classic sense of rock dynamics is the opposite of Barnett’s brilliant verbosity, but the combined chemistry and charisma of the two on stage together is riveting: held together by Jen Sholakis’ supple drums, the songs power along, set ablaze by Barnett’s bottleneck guitar playing. For the finale, they rampage through Bowie’s Suffragette City, Cloher’s final, ironic shout of “suffragette!” delighting the overwhelmingly female crowd. Barnett’s debut album was a deserved hit around the world earlier this year.… Read more..

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All things dull and ugly

Australian Politics, Environment, Qld Politics / / 3 minutes of reading

The headline on the Climate Spectator website said it all. “Approval of Adani’s mega coal mine overturned – for a skink and a snake, not a fried planet,” it read. The federal court’s decision, it went on, came down to “protecting two animals you’ve probably never heard of”: the Yakka Skink and the Ornamental Snake.

The trade minister, Andrew Robb, apparently suffering from reptile rage, described the skink as a “patsy”, implying that opposition to the mine was based on a hatred for coal more than concern for a lizard that is rarely seen even by herpetologists. (The best way to find one is to look for the little piles of poop outside their burrows.)

Not since former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett called the Orange-bellied Parrot a “trumped-up corella”, when its critically endangered status proved problematic to the planned relocation of a chemical plant, have we seen such disdain heaped upon a critter for getting in the way of development.

Kennett’s attitude to the parrot – which has a wild population of about 35 – summed up the general care factor towards any animal that’s smaller than a whale and not as cute as a koala. Species such as the Leadbeater’s Possum and Tasmanian Devil have benefitted from broad public recognition.… Read more..

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Too far gone: The return of the Hard-Ons

Music / / 4 minutes of reading

NB: This is a really old piece, from 1999. It was originally written for Rolling Stone (Australia) but never got published. I found it when I was going through some old papers at home – and thought I may as well give it one.

It’s a Thursday night at the University of New South Wales Roundhouse, and the new, improved and reformed Hard-Ons are rampaging through Suck & Swallow. As the song descends into a maelstrom of noise, Peter Black is making like Nigel, Spinal Tap’s spandex-clad guitar hero. After a final squeal of feedback, there’s a pause. “As you get older,” Blackie tells us, “you become even more of a wanker.”

The Hard-Ons began their meteoric rise (OK, OK – that’s the first and last bad pun of this story) in 1982, as teenagers growing up in Sydney’s western suburbs. Blackie, bassist Ray Ahn and singer/drummer Keish de Silva went on to become one of Australia’s greatest ever singles bands, and probably punk’s unlikeliest success story.

Between 1985 and 1993, the Hard-Ons topped the Australian independent charts with an incredible 17 consecutive releases and made significant inroads overseas with a succession of high-energy, ultra-melodic gems. Career sales figures are conservatively estimated at around the 250,000 mark, although Blackie will tell you that “a quarter of a million sounds better”.… Read more..

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