Dave Butler

Paper Scissors

A CUT ABOVE THE REST

What happens to indie bands in between albums? Where do they go? What do they do? And why can’t we have them always - the good ones at least - instead of waiting around for several years for a follow-up album?

Who knows? But it’s happened many times before, and it will happen again. Brash young indie kids make a splash, get a lot of airplay, and provide some danceable good times, before disappearing off the face of the earth, allegedly ‘touring’.

That was the case for THE PAPER SCISSORS, whose debut, Less Talk, More Paper Scissors got a bunch of airplay on Triple J back in 2007, and sounded something like an Australian mash up of The Rapture, Modest Mouse and Cold War Kids.

The single Yamanote Line in particular was a winner, and left fans across the country baying for more.

And four years down the track, they’ve got their wish in the form of new LP In Loving Memory, but it’s an older, more focused version of the band than last time around.

Singer Jai Pyne is just a tad nervous about how the album will sit with music fans. After all, it’s been a while.

“It feels good to finally have the album done,” Pyne said. “We feel really happy and proud of it, but kind of anxious at the same time, just to see what people think, if people like it, and how it goes.”

While the debut Less Talk… branched out on some fruity tangents, Pyne and his bandmates are now more secure in their sound, and have focused on forging a coherent long player that’s uniquely their own.

“I think it’s a far more focused work than our last album. I think our first album was pretty eclectic, sometimes just for the sake of being eclectic,” he said.

First Single Lung Sum features Pyne’s signature brash vocals and a colossal chorus, but the surrounding verses have been carefully shaded with some sonically sculpted guitars and crisp snare drum.

“In terms of sound I think it’s colder than the first album,” Pyne said. “It’s a bit more abrasive. There’re strong pop elements to it as well, but it’s a bit more grown up and a bit less funky I think.”

But much of the band’s new confidence can be put down to simply getting a little older, and settling in to becoming a tight bunch of mates, and a solid indie three-piece.

“When you’re first in a band you kind of feel this invincibility, and it’s a real rush of ambition when you’re playing music. We were all pretty righteous.”

The Paper Scissors will be playing at Transit Bar on Saturday June 18 with Readable Graffiti and Rubycon in support. Tickets are $15.30 from moshtix.com.au or at the door.

Jebediah / Violent Soho / Young Revelry

ANU Bar
Thursday May 26

Jebediah at the ANU Bar! What is this? 1997? Is that why there’s so much flannelette?

But no, here we all were, some 14 years since the release of Slightly Odway, and excited as school kids again to see what was - and still is - a cracking good Aussie band.

A three-quarters-ish full house turned out for the occasion, and witnessed a fine performance from the Perth-based indie rockers, filled with lots of charm, humour, and just a little nostalgia.

Support acts Young Revelry and Violent Soho opened proceedings to a largely unresponsive crowd, although Violent Soho fared best out of the two.

The Brisbane lads took on the challenge with an energetic, raucous, and grungy set, closing with a ripping version of 1989 grunge anthem My Pal by God, which went down a treat.

But it was the much-loved ‘Jebs’ that we’d braved the cold for, and they didn’t disappoint.

Scruffy frontman Kevin Mitchell, fresh from his acoustic troubadour outings as Bob Evans, seemed to relish playing with a rock band again, and struggled to wipe the grin off his face for the rest of the evening.

“Did you miss us?” Mitchell asked. “We missed you.” The crowd roared their approval.

It would be wrong to describe the set that followed as a ‘greatest hits’ performance, because there were just as many great Jebediah songs left out as could be squeezed in to the one show. After all these years I’d forgotten how consistent these guys were as songwriters.

Epic singles Harpoon and Jerks of Attention came early on in the set, and- along with Puck Defender, Benedict and Leaving Home, made a good account of the band’s 1997 hit record Slightly Odway.

But this was not just a trip down memory lane. New single Comet off the band’s recent album Kosciusko was welcomed loudly, and it was great to see a bunch of younger fans up the front hanging out for these newer tunes.

Another plus of seeing the Jebs after so many years was the polished musicianship of all four members. The years spent honing their craft made for a much smoother and richer sound, and while a few of the rougher, punkier edges were knocked off, the overall mix was stronger for it.

Even Mitchell’s famous nasal whine, which once had the word ‘home’ from Leaving Home turned into a multi-syllable extravaganza, has toned down a notch or two.

It was a pretty special night at the ANU. When you can look around and see punters singing every word to obscure album tracks from a record that came out over a decade ago, you know it’s a band that’s had a deep and lasting effect.

There’s something just so damned loveable about Jebediah. These four scruffy, punky popsters with a knack for writing catchy tune after catchy tune were never the biggest Aussie band in their era. Not critically at least.

Those ‘critically acclaimed’ gongs went to the Silverchairs and Powderfingers of the nation, and to a lesser extent Grinspoon and Something for Kate. But there was an enduring love for this band on show at the ANU that night, which was pretty powerful to be a part of. Few Aussie bands have been more loved by the punters, and few have been as consistently good. The best part is, with a new quality record out in the form of Kosciusko, it seems there’s still some life in the old girl yet.

Black Creek

If you can judge a piece of creative work by the trials, mishaps and cock-ups that have gone into it, then BLACK CREEK’s new album Ragged Shark has got it all. During the making of their new album, the Canberra lads managed to roll one car, break another two, and travel up and down the east coast of Australia, playing one show to a bunch of bored, surly hipsters in country Victoria, and then on the next night playing to a packed house at the Espy in St Kilda.

Catching up with the four members of Black Creek, the interview quickly descends into a series of jaw-dropping stories from the road; a mangled mix of stupidity, laughter, generosity and some hastily compiled back up plans.

It fits in well with the band’s mix of alt-country, blues and classic rock ‘n’ roll. And with Ragged Shark about to be officially launched in Canberra, the guys are over the moon to have the hard work behind them.

“We went down to RMIT Studio 1 in Melbourne and recorded the album pretty much live in just under two days, and then came back on another day to finish off the vocals,” drummer Jack McGrath says. “We’ve played most of these songs live about a thousand times, so it was just a matter of banging them out,” singer Brent Wijnberg adds.

Under such a tight timeline, some parts were written on the fly, with singer Brent Wijnberg admitting to writing whole verses in the bathroom mere moments before the final take.

A polished debut but nicely scuffed around the edges, Ragged Shark comes off like a mixture of The White Stripes at their most ferocious, then tempered with the smooth southern rock of early Kings of Leon, with some moments of sweet, lilting alt-country added in for good measure.

And with a new album to spruik, Black Creek are heading back out on the road, with an east coast tour planned for early next year. “We’re putting together a tour for the album around March, probably doing the Brisbane to Melbourne highway and playing a bunch of gigs along the way,” Wijnberg says. “And we’ve just written a few new songs on top of the new album tracks, so the ball has started rolling for the next album as well,” McGrath adds.

With a hometown album launch scheduled for Friday November 19 at the ANU Bar, Black Creek has the match fitness under the belt and is ready to kick out some rattling good tunes to local fans. Crazed frontman Brent Wijnberg is under strict orders from the rest of his band to stick to the limits: “six beer minimum to get him warmed up, ten beer maximum to keep him in line,” drummer Jack McGrath says. You can tell that he’s learned this one from experience.

Catch Black Creek live at the ANU Bar on Friday November 19 for the launch of their highly anticipated album Ragged Shark.

Writers Unite!

Canberra Youth Theatre has been committed to developing young playwrights in the ACT for some years now, but never with as much scope and opportunity as in its new Writers Unite! workshop for young playwrights.

Aimed at developing the expertise of up and coming local playwrights, the 15-week course will feature expert tuition from the Head of Playwriting at NIDA Jane Bodie, as well as technical advice from prominent Australian playwright Angela Betzien (Hoods, Children of the Black Skirt), and script developer Peter Matheson.

Artistic Director Karla Conway says that Writers Unite! is an exciting new program for Canberra Youth Theatre.

“We designed this course to try and encourage new playwrights to come out of the woodwork and provide them with exceptional training, to help them craft the stories that they want to tell, and let us start to hear the voices of young playwrights more clearly,” Conway says.

While Conway will be taking on much of the tutoring and mentoring throughout the semester, she’s calling in expert assistance for some of the finer points of playwriting from industry heavyweights such as Bodie, who will help the students to develop their personal experiences into an engaging play.

“Jane will take the playwrights through how to mine their experiences, and explore them to come up with the idea of the play,” Conway says.

“It’s dangerous for a young writer to write things that they’re going through at the time, because it’s not objective. Jane will help the writers to re-contextualize ideas so that they’re not writing purely autobiographically.”

Script developer Peter Matheson will also assist students over two sessions focusing on problems of structure and form, while playwright Angela Betzien will discuss the process of working with actors and seeing a play through to production.

The Writers Unite! program is run in collaboration with a wider, national program, Artists Unite. Participating youth theatre companies around the country will run similar playwriting courses, and each company will be able to choose one new play from an interstate theatre company to see through to production. If a local student’s work is chosen, Canberra Youth Theatre will pay for that student to travel to Adelaide and see their play through to production.

Anyone between the age of 14 and 25 with an interest in developing a play from the basic idea stage right through to production standard should apply for Writers Unite!

Enrolments for the course close on July 16, and Conway urges aspiring young playwrights to make the most of this quality program.

“It’s a really great opportunity,” Conway says. “Not only will we take playwrights through the writing process, but there’s a genuine potential to see their work produced, and really get up and running in establishing themselves as emerging playwrights.”

For details and enrolments head to www.cytc.net or call 6248 5057.

World Music Productions

With Canberra’s live music scene increasingly under threat from stringent noise restrictions and a conservative Labor government, local business man Nir Turner is attempting to kickstart the industry with a one-stop-shop for up and coming Canberra bands. Offering band management, promotions and music video production, WORLD MUSIC PRODUCTIONS is aiming to put the Canberra scene on the map.

Self-professed ideas man Turner says that the initial focus will be on producing music videos; the idea being that if a picture tells a thousand words, then a professional music vid behind a good tune could easily sell a thousand records. “We feel that if people have their own music videos as opposed to just CDs then they can get their image out there as well,” Turner says. “So our team can create anything from a pretty basic music video, right up to something a lot more comprehensive and professional. We start at about $500 and go right up to 11 grand.”

An ex-muso himself, Turner has a background in the promotions side of Sanity Music, and since then has been involved in a number of different business ventures – his most recent being a Sydney based property company that was hit hard by the Global Financial Crisis. Returning to his native Canberra, Turner had the time and money to plan his next move and feels that his experience in the Australian music industry as well as his business acumen could combine to benefit local musicians as well the company’s bottom line.

“When I was in a band years ago in the late ‘90s we came seventh in the Australian Songwriter’s Competition, so I know what it’s like gigging around,” Turner says. “We never took that next step. Yeah, we had a couple of CDs produced and it got played on triple j, but if you want to take that next step and you really want to get out there, basically music videos is where it’s at because people get the gist of your band straight away.”

‘So what’s Turner selling?’ you may well ask. After all, there’s always plenty of fast-talking suits trying to sell young artists a flattering image of themselves with some pretty heavy fine print. It’s probably a good time to remind up-and-comers that, in the immortal words of Tex Perkins, ‘you’d better get a lawyer son.’

Turner says that it’s his music industry contacts, management skills and enthusiasm for the industry that sets him apart. “I’ve got very strong contacts with Sanity Music Group, HMV, and Virgin Music in Australia, so we’ll be working closely with those guys and Sony as well to promote new bands. And later on in the year we want to start our own record label as well to fast track the process.”

Bands, musos or groups with a good tune stuck in their heads, should call World Music Productions on 0435 861 125 and meet with Nir Turner and his crew for a consultation. Music videos start from $500 before GST.

Tim Rogers

The labels ‘singer-songwriter’ or ‘You Am I frontman’ used to be enough to introduce Tim Rogers. But with a variety of new and different projects on the boil, Rogers is a man wearing many hats, and busier than he’s ever been. When we catch up for a chat ahead of his upcoming Canberra show, Rogers is walking home after dropping his daughter at school, and planning a big day of writing ahead.

“I’m writing a cabaret for the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, and we start the new You Am I record in a couple of weeks, and I’m also doing some book reviews,” he says. “At the moment it’s like I’ve taken on a lot of work, and I get offered all these really interesting projects, but there are limits to what I can do in an interesting way. It’s hard to say no to some of these things. I feel really lucky to be offered things rather than have to go begging.”

The temptation of packing up the guitar and jumping in the van is one that still holds strong appeal for Rogers, and he still can’t believe he’s getting away with it. “I was watching the movie Crazy Heart a couple of weeks ago. So I’m sitting there at the theatre with a drink in my hand watching this thang about a country singer jumping in his car with a bottle of hooch, and going to another town and playing another show, and I was thinking ‘that looks like a pretty good life.’ It’s the kind of thing I always wanted to do: it’s like you’re a cowboy or something. And then I had to stop myself and realised ‘fuck it! That is my life! That’s what I do,’” Rogers says.

Taking some of the members of backing band The Temperance Union along with him, this mini-tour is centred on a fundraising show in Wagga Wagga for a youth mental health charity that Rogers works for. He says that a few extra shows were tacked on the end ‘to pay the band.’ “It’s just an opportunity to get in the van, and we managed to find a show in Canberra. That’s sort of the way it’s been for the last couple of years. The shows we do with You Am I are a bit more structured, but anything I do by myself tends to be a bit more haphazard.”

With a lot of work waiting for him back in Melbourne and a new album to start work on as well, Rogers says he relishes the opportunity to get out of town and play some shows. “I don’t take these opportunities lightly,” he says. “The Temperance Union are all really amazing people to play with, and they all play really differently. There’s no real guarantee what show we’re going to do – maybe we’ll do a quiet show, maybe we’ll decide to roust it up a bit. Hopefully it will be a mixture of all of it.”

Catch Tim live at Transit Bar on Thursday May 20. Tickets are $20 on the door.

The Bedroom Philosopher

Without any hesitation, Justin Heazlewood (aka THE BEDROOM PHILOSOPHER) recounts the strangest scene he’s witnessed while travelling via public transport. “A man crying,” he says. “I don’t think you’ll see anything that slices through your mental screen saver like a man in that level of distress.”

It was a scene that cut to the core of this talented satirist, always on the lookout for the unique in the everyday. “It was tragic, and kind of fantastic. Like a gentle reminder from nature that we’re all just organic alien super freaks doing our best, and beneath our rock hard exteriors we’re giggly little cups of care jelly wanting to be loved.

With a rich vein of similarly odd experiences aboard the 86 tram in Melbourne, Heazlewood set about adapting some of the characters he’d witnessed into a comedy set for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Incisive, hilarious and poignant, the Songs from the 86 Tram project has grown into Heazlewood’s third full studio album, with a subsequent national tour underway in support.

By depicting a diverse range of characters from different demographics, Heazlewood has stepped out of the introspective quirk-cult comedy of hits like I’m So Post-Modern and Golden Gaytime to something a little more ambitious. “I was interested in taking on demographics that are rarely satirised in any way,” he says. “Indie musos, wanky artists, middle-aged women and refugees all get a mention. My last album Brown & Orange was all about me and delving into my own strange mind, so for this project I was keen to basically not be in the show at all.”

A lot of the frivolous and biting satire that marked earlier Bedroom Philosopher work remains on the Songs from the 86 Tram album, and current single Northcote (So Hungover) is a typically hilarious depiction of a slacker-scenester talking overloudly and overconfidently on a mobile phone, punctuating his too-cool drawl with plenty of ‘uh’s, ‘ya’s, ‘like’s and ‘whatever’s.

Though a sharp character assassination of the modern hipster, Heazlewood says he can’t swear by the authenticity of the character. “To be honest I can’t say I’ve ever met the guy, yet I know he exists. My god, people say ‘like’ a lot. We’ve all been slowly yet completely brainwashed by American television culture. It started with Sesame Street and ended with Gossip Girl, but whether we like it or not we like, say like a lot, like, uh, ya, whatever man.”

This ride aboard the 86 tram is likely to take audiences to some very odd places. “I’m pretty keen on depicting characters in a comedic way that goes far deeper that the average kind of thing you’d see on TV,” Heazlewood says. “People are damn strange and dark and idiosyncratic. This isn’t something to be shied away from and edited – it should be heralded.”

With a host of new, challenging and hilarious characters under his belt, Heazlewood will be playing material from his new album at an intimate solo gig at The Front on Wednesday April 28. Tickets are $12 on the door.

Karnivool

The five heavy-rocking lads from KARNIVOOL have spent most of the last 12 months bunkered down in an intense creative bootcamp in Perth's Blackbird Studios, meticulously crafting a richly textured new album, Sound Awake. It's been four years now since Karnivool's debut Themata set a new benchmark for what melodic heavy rock records could achieve - blending experimental tunings, intriguing time signatures and sonically diverse guitar melodies, all bound together by a gifted, almost angelic new vocalist in Ian Kenny.

When I catch up with the band's guitarist Drew Goddard, he's in a very relaxed place, satisfied that the months of studio labour have made for a fine record. Goddard says that despite the precision of the finished product, his band followed no set plan during the recording process.

"The process of recording this album was a really strange and confusing one, and unorthodox to say the least," Goddard says. "Most bands have different stages: they go from writing to pre-production, to recording, to mixing and so on, whereas with Sound Awake, it all sort of blended into one."

A four year break between albums gave Karnivool the opportunity to tour its Themata album relentlessly, watching the crowds grow ever bigger as word of mouth lifted the band from the local Perth scene to rock headliners across the country.

"Themata was a real slow burner," Goddard confirms. "We only did a local launch for that album, which was good and we had a good local following for it, but then we kind of sat on our hands for a few months and thought that the local response might be it. Then we sent Cog the album and they really liked it, so we ended up doing a national tour with them and then triple j jumped on it and suddenly we were getting a whole lot of gigs. We ended up touring that album for two or three years."

With an ever-growing list of concerts and festivals to play off the strength of one album, Karnivool could afford to take the time to hone Sound Awake slowly and carefully. The result is an intricately layered rock album that ranges across a vast expanse of sonic terrain; canvassing twisted, explosive punk to sprawling, explorative rock jams. Fresh from his stint at the head of Birds of Tokyo, Ian Kenny is in fine form, drawing Sound Awake's wide array of differing sounds together with his impossibly pure, melodic vocals.

As the creative masterminds of Themata, Goddard and Kenny made a decision to share the songwriting load this time around, making for a fuller, more collaborative album. "Everyone in the band respects each other's opinion, so we decided to be passengers in the Karnivool vehicle and different people took the wheel at different points," explains Goddard. "There's really a piece of everyone on Sound Awake, as opposed to just me and Kenny as it was for Themata."

Passing up the driver's seat takes a good amount of trust in your fellow bandmates. This trust from Goddard and Kenny was rewarded with a much more diverse album on Sound Awake, an album which takes Karnivool's progressive rock sound to much fruitier frontiers.

"One thing we all realise is that Sound Awake is bigger and better than anything that we could have done individually. There are things on there that I just would never have thought of doing. A lot of stuff came really spontaneously from jams and improv sessions. We record our jams and we'd occasionally lift whole sections of music straight onto the album. It's a perfect example of a collaborative effort - it was nothing that any individual in the band came up with alone, it was a unit that wrote that section spontaneously, almost without thinking about it."

First single Set Fire to the Hive is something of a departure for the band and is a highly charged and strangely twisted punk anthem. Goddard says the song was born out of the frustration of waiting around the recording studio. "It came after a bit of a creative drought," he explains. "So that song was us kind of gritting our teeth and lashing out and it's got a bit of snarl to it. It's this anarchic, kind of progressive punk song that is a bit different for us, which is why it really stands out on the album."

The themes of anarchy and political deception run throughout Sound Awake, encouraging listeners to question what they're being told. "Lyrically it's up to interpretation for people to make of it what they will, but that theme of anarchy does run through a couple of the tracks," Goddard affirms. "More generally it's an album about questioning the status quo and what we're told. We all made the decision pretty early on that the difference between what people are told is going on and what is actually going on is absolutely huge, so Sound Awake was quite exploratory in that sense."

Returning to Canberra as part of the Trackside Festival, Karnivool are ready to show fans that the new album has been worth the wait. "We've kept missing out on Canberra on the last couple of tours. We did all the big capital cities, but Canberra always seems to get the blunt end, which we know a bit about living over here in Perth. So we're really itching to get back there and play again."

Be sure to catch Karnivool as part of this year's Trackside Festival, held on Saturday November 21. Tickets can be purchased through Ticketek, Moshtix, Oztix and Landspeed Records.

Phoenix Lisztomania

The first thought that came to mind? Well, it could be worse. If it was down to me choosing what people would love – a choice between the brain-numbing, image-mania pop of GaGa or this kind of middling, mildly anthemic rock – then yeah, I think I’d prefer people like these kids. It could be worse.

The Drones / Witch Hats

Bringing the requisite share of fatigue and influenza, I fell in line to watch The Drones. First came Witch Hats with a new batch of tunes much better than its first. Thin, snarling guitar, big swampy bass and a singer who was willing to belt it out really helped these Melbourne lads come across. The band’s next Canberra show should be well worth a look if it continues to grow and develop like this.

The Drones arrived a little late and with the kind of onstage entrance that you almost never see from a rock band. No lights, no building drums and guitar crescendo to kick us off. Instead, the band members each kind of rambled up on to the stage and had a bit of a chat to each other and to the crowd. It was clear from the outset that Liddiard and co. were in a pretty laidback mood, which seemed to suit the Thursday night crowd well. No stress, no hassles – just plenty of smiles, a few beers and a great band. When the first licks of Nail it Down wafted down from the stage, there was a roar of approval and we were away. 

The show that followed featured a good mix of tunes from the last three albums, with one or two acoustic rarities thrown in. One was the brooding Locust from Wait Long By the River…, with some extra ad-libbed lyrics. The other was the lengthy colonial murder ballad from Gala Mill, Sixteen Straws. This song in particular was worth it just to see the typically unorthodox way that Liddiard plays the acoustic guitar, letting out chopped up arpeggios between lyrics while drummer Mike Noga accompanied on harmonica.

Other highlights included a three quarter pace rendition of Sharkfin Blues and the swelling emotional epic cover of Kev Carmody’s River of Tears. It was also pleasant to hear the excellent album Havilah well represented in the set. The band members themselves enjoyed an appreciative Canberra audience, comparing us favourably to the previous evening’s Brisbane crowd, who drummer Mike Noga labelled a “pack of cunts.”

A solid performance from a very relaxed but also very good and very generous band. May these nice young men and woman call again soon.