Justin Hook

Ponyo is the story of a fish-girl who wants to be human. Following a near death experience with a fishing trawler, Ponyo (Noah Cyrus) befriends Sosuke (Frankie Jonas), a sensitive little chap with a fierce undercut, an absent fisherman father (Matt Damon), and a mother (Tina Fey) who should have her licence revoked for the way she hugs the sharp bendy roads in the seaside village they all live in.

Ponyo, against the wishes of her father Fujimoto (Liam Neeson), uses her magic power to morph into a sleepy little girl. After which everyone has a jolly good time. I don’t mean to sound flippant – because this is a brilliant film full to the brim with the sort of animation that values craft over technology – but this special two-disc edition is just as much about the special features as it is about the main event. With over four hours of documentary material this is the full Ponyo experience. Fujimoto, Ponyo’s father and regulator of the ocean, who through overbearing efforts to protect his daughter ends up pushing her away, was devised as a proxy for Japanese fatherhood. “Most fathers suppress their emotions. I think that’s how today’s Japanese fathers are,” laughs creator Miyazaki. There’s also the revelation that during production Miyazaki decided that making a film with a children’s nursery wasn’t enough; he wanted to build a nursery. And so he did. It also unravels the creative of making the film and where it all started – halfway up a mountain overlooking the Seto Inland Sea.

Sometimes learning too much about a movie demystifies the experience and clouds the memory, particularly Miyazaki’s elliptical and woozy fantasy films. And for many that sense of magic is usually a function of childlike imagination aligning with visual overload and poetic storytelling. Don’t be afraid though – this spectacular film is not diminished in any way by explanation. If anything the allure is stronger.

Next time you get home exhausted after a tough day working in the factory, bitching at your partner about lasagne for dinner again and complaining about your stupid neighbours, think about James Franco. A few years back James decided he wanted to go back to school. So he enrolled in four post grad classes. He wrote a novel for his literature class thesis. He went to NYU to study Filmmaking; Fiction Writing and Poetry at two other colleges. Next up a PHD in English and another post grad degree at Rhode Island School of Design. He also found time to star in Sean Penn’s well-received Harvey Milk biog Milk and about six other films yet to be released. And then there’s his bizarre meta-turn on the hoary daytime soap General Hospital as Franco – a photographer/artist/serial killer. Quite what one of the most in-demand actors around is doing on a daytime Prozac TV is anyone’s guess, probably just what James Franco wants.

Why is this relevant? Because James Franco is the single best thing about Date Night and he’s only on the screen for about five minutes. His scene with Mila Kunis as the mistaken Tripplehorn couple displays all the manic, eccentric and wanton stupidity that Tina Fey and Steve Carrell fail to achieve during the remaining 85 minutes. It’s not their fault – the script is undercooked and plodding which is slight issue for a period drama, but fatal for a supposed screwball comedy. Phil and Claire Foster are drab suburbia personified – a tax lawyer and real estate agent with two kids who find themselves mistaken for the aforementioned Tripplehorns, and in possession of a flash drive. Except they’re not, on both counts. This in turn sets off a chain of wacky scenes, each crazier than the previous. Except they’re not, on any counts. Throw some crooked cops into the mix and you have one of the biggest disappointments of the year.

So, in conclusion: James Franco.

It’s easy to pity Stone Temple Pilots. Rarely has a band been dismissed so lightly and attracted such undue scorn from perceived allegiances. They were cabin hopping grunge wannabes, cashing in on the gloom rock glory days. Rubbish. Stone Temple Pilots were revivalists in love with rocks golden teenage era - Bowie, Led Zep, The Stooges and Stones. That they found an audience in the early to mid nineties is
mere happenstance.

1996’s Tiny Music… proved they could pull off hook-laden scuzzy garage rock and dreamy psych-pop barely raising a sweat. But the backlash was on and the band spluttered to dissolution, creatively nimble but commercially a spent force. Of course Scott Wieland being a massive junkie didn’t exactly help. And so – as per script – the late oughts reformation is upon us.

Stone Temple Pilots is their first album together in nearly a decade but where there should be a sense of urgency – to justify existence – there’s a lazy reliance on old tricks; a lucky dip of influences, a dash of flair, some melodic crunch and a frustrating sense missing the target. As usual, Dean DeLeo is beyond reproach, an undervalued and innovative riff machine who appears to have been listening to a lot of Aerosmith lately. But even whilst coasting Stone Temple Pilots are intriguing – a band lost in time, not really belonging anywhere in particular, making music purely because it feels good.

When cop films collided with buddy flicks sometime back in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s, the results could be phenomenal. The premise was simple; uptight, clock watching rule-abiding desk cop clashes with freewheeling gun-happy loose-haired maverick cop. Explosions, car chases, car crashes, arguments and copious amounts of broken glass ensued. It was stupid, big budget, no brain VHS-era fun. Eventually audiences tired of simplistic morality and so they teamed Tom Hanks up with a slobbering dog. Soon after it was left to Steven Segal to carry the flame for the ailing genre into the new millennium and last time I checked he was a puffy faced low talker in search of a career. Take that for what it’s worth.

And so, 20 odd years later we have Kevin Smith breathing life into the genre with Cop Out. Is it homage? Maybe. Is it a comedy? Allegedly. Is it ironic? Look, it’s really hard to tell anymore with Kevin Smith. As a lapsed enfant terrible, Smith has entered that phase in his career where it’s not exactly clear what he is doing. Bruce Willis is the perfect actor to skewer a hard-nailed, stereotypical cop – but it’s arguable he was more successful with this sort of wink-wink irony in Die Hard 4. On the other side of the equation Tracey Morgan ramps up his tits-out, manic clown routine to variable effect. In the right context Morgan can be charming – in the way Ol’ Dirty Bastard was charming rushing the stage at the Grammy’s all those years ago – but here, the lack of chemistry between the two leads hurts Morgan more than Willis; Morgan needs a foil – and Willis looks bored. Sadly, there is a half decent film hidden somewhere in the midst of limp storyboarding and twaddling dialogue. But it’s not one of Smith’s better moments.

In The Loop is a film in which a lot of swearing happens. Almost universally, the mouth of Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) is responsible. Tucker is the highly strung, aggressive Director of Communications for an unnamed British PM, who cuts a swathe of verbal destruction through gaffe-plagued ministers, departmental staff, lowly public servants and anyone else unfortunate enough to cross his path. No one is spared from his extreme alpha male bullying. In full flight it’s a wonder to behold; almost operatic.

Malcolm Tucker first cracked skulls in the BBC’s superb Yes Minister update The Thick of It. His is one of the few characters to make the transition to the big screen version, although In The Loop is not strictly a continuation, more a launching pad.

And speaking of launching pads, the spectre of an invasion of the Middle East looms. Intelligence has been doctored, allegedly. Ministers are making complete prats of themselves on national radio; bad publicity and dissent in the ranks runs rife, and so comes Tucker’s job to fix things, finding his way to Washington where competing departments and agencies are bouncing up against each other. Soon enough the case for war is lost in a fog of lies, deceit, mismanagement and petty personal vendettas. Sound familiar? Its high farce, satire and Politics 101, all in one big swearing, sweating ball.

Despite universally compelling performances from an eclectic cast James Gandolfini (The Sopranos), David Rasche (Sledge Hammer) and Anna Chlumsky (My Girl and My Girl 2) something elemental gets lost in translation, a certain British forlorn weariness and foot-shuffling despair the Atlantic Ocean wipes clean. In The Loop succeeds by sending you back to the source document, because I watched the first three series of The Thick of It in quick succession soon after and it was still utterly brilliant. Essential viewing, if not an essential movie. Now fuck off.

The Beta Band weren’t built to last. With founding members exiting early due to failing mental health, chronic internal squabbling and critical adoration that rarely translated into commercial comfort – they were the adorable, quixotic black sheep of British music circa 1998. Never far from a blindingly gorgeous melody, they also pulled off random kitchen sink, hip-hop infused noise with surly indifference. Radiohead loved them, naturally. This is Mason’s debut album under his own name after a couple of post-Beta subterfuge imbued side-projects. On knob twiddling duties is uber-producer Richard X (Sugababes, Annie and Pet Shop Boys) which on the surface seems an odd choice, but Mason has never been one to shy away from a little Casio-tone jiggery-pokery. Boys Outside is Mason’s first output since a bout of profound depression, in his own words he ‘went mental and had a breakdown’. Accordingly, there are calling cards from a fractured mind littered throughout – but on The Letter he assures us “In my mind I’m getting better”…although a little bit later “something bad has happened here”. Still, this is not a record steeped in sadness or crisis despite descents into lovelorn confusion. There are hints of his old band in the lilting All Come Down – typically subdued beginnings climaxing somewhere up the side of a foggy mountain. Throughout it all Mason’s biggest weapon shines – a luxuriant, ghostly textured voice more open and honest than ever before. Boys Outside already sounds like a lost classic.

4.5 out of 5

Mother is the latest film from Joon-ho Bong, who made a figurative splash in 2007 with The Host – a big budget action film that delivered actual entertainment, genuine thrills and memorable performances. Bong’s 2004 serial killer thriller pic Memories of a Murder was even better. Go find it.

Restraint and attention to detail are two of the hallmarks of Bong’s approach. Minor characters are fully formed – they don’t simply appear, filling in space with the occasional quip or clunky dialogue to aid exposition. By the same token his films aren’t replete with flashy, attention grabbing performances or glacial Occidental meditations of life and loss. This is a director with an acute sense of balance.

Mother’s plot could be lifted from any gumshoe novel of the last 50 years. The dim-witted and slightly tipsy Do-joon (Won Bin) makes an ill-advised pass at a young girl whist staggering home. When she is found murdered the next day Do-joon is arrested and made to sign a confession, despite sloppy denials and even sloppier police work. His protective mother Hye-ja (Kim Hye-ja) steps in to make the case but neither police nor lawyers give a rats. The case is closed and Do-joon ambles off to prison. As the layers are revealed, notions of innocence and guilt are skewered, and the line between protection and criminal interference becomes evermore opaque. A pair of scenes toward the end of the film are staggering; quiet, simple and extraordinarily powerful pay-offs. No dramatic orchestral swells and/or doleful Oscar-baiting sobbing. Taut storytelling and eerie cinematography brilliantly capture the grey nothingness of a senseless crime in an unnamed city; it could be anywhere – and that’s the point. Won Bin and Kim Hye-ja were heaped with praise for their compelling performance – rightly so. Mother is one of the best of the year and Bong confirms his status as a world class director.

The HARD ONS were one of those first wave of punk and post-punk bands that saw more early success and critical respect overseas than in their homeland. Died Pretty, Nick Cave and The Saints all experienced similar. As a result, many think European audiences understood these bands better. It’s a notion that Hard Ons bassist Ray Ahn doesn’t buy for a second.

“Nah, no one gets the Hard Ons more than Australians. When we go to places like Spain I can guarantee you we get a bigger crowd than Sydney but that’s not to say we’re more popular. Madrid’s a massive city. If you can’t pull a decent crowd in Madrid you won’t pull decent crowds anywhere.”

Forming in the western suburbs of Sydney in the early ‘80s the band have assiduously stuck to their guns for over two decades. “We knew exactly what was going to happen,” Ahn says. “We were gonna be shunned, and piss off a lot of people. But we weren’t gonna suck anyone’s cock to open doors for us.”

In response the band started kicking down doors with a tireless work ethic. “In October we’re going to Europe; our 15th tour there,” Ahn reveals. “In February we’re going to Japan; that’ll be the fourth tour. Been to America five times. I don’t know any other band at our level that can do that. We’re really fucking lucky man.”

Lucky maybe, but really hard working, creating an ethos that crowds adore. “We’re also fucking underdogs – people in Australia love underdogs,” adds Ahn, warming to the subject. “We’re a uniquely Australian band – you can tell but the way we sing, our attitude… We don’t have any airs or graces. We’re not a bunch of pretty boys. Typical working class Australians and a lot of people relate to that.”

Indeed. Ahn is conducting this interview on a lunch break from his day job at Utopia Records in Sydney, whilst singer/guitarist Blackie drives cabs and drummer Pete K splits his time between Regurgitator and Front End Loader, amongst others. Oddly, this time-sharing arrangement may have extended the longevity of the Hard Ons.

“I know a lot of bands burn out after a few years but we just don’t have that problem cos we don’t see each other that much socially for a start, and we don’t play with the Hard Ons all the time.” But when they do, you’re going to see “three average looking middle aged guys doing the best to rock their asses off”.

For now the band, who Ahn modestly suggests “got lucky in a small period of our career,” aren’t slowing down. “If we didn’t have jobs we could probably do three times as much, but you just can’t because you have to figure out how to pay the rent.”

The classic paradox – rent vs. rock.

The Hard Ons play at The Maram on Friday August 13, supported by Fangs of a TV Evangelist and Boonhorse. Tix are $14 + bf from Moshtix. The wonderfully titled new album Alfalfa Males Once Summer is Done Conform or Die is out now.

The HOODOO GURUS are part of our musical and cultural DNA. They’re everywhere, but strangely seem to exist outside fads, genres or (what’s my) scenes.

With a collective range of influences that run the gamut from Fleshtones and Nuggets-era garage rock through to surf, Little Richard and ‘50s rockabilly legend Gene Vincent, the young Hoodoo Gurus formed in the chaotic and creative early ‘80s Sydney, as lead singer/guitarist Dave Faulkner explains: “We were looking around and seeing the remnants of the Radio Birdman/Detroit scene on the one hand, and on the other there was electronic post-punk art rock. We didn’t see anything in between and realised there’s a whole lot of music that’s not being played.”

The band found their confidence pretty quickly. “We were a bit arrogant,” Faulkner admits. “Within a few months of rehearsing, without even talking about it, it was obvious something was happening. We were just serious from day one. But our success came incrementally.”

After a pair of incredibly well received albums (Stoneage Romeos and Mars Needs Guitars) in the mid-‘80s  yielded a string of instant paisley-tinged pop classics (Tojo, Death Defying, Bittersweet, Like Wow – Wipeout!) the band were ready for their early career wobbles. Ironically, it happened with one of their biggest albums, 1987’s Blow Your Cool. As Faulkner explains: “We got a little bit ahead of ourselves around that album. We had troubles with our record label – they were independent but they were stealing from us and we weren’t getting our overseas royalties; they didn’t approve of our choice of producer… We weren’t masters of our own destiny.”

Faulkner readily admits they were swept up in all the excess of the ‘80s. “Yeah the times we were in, and also getting caught up in the myths of who we were, got us away from the core of what were about. Brad was into Guns N’ Roses and was doing a lot of Eddie Van Halen finger tapping – that was not what I signed up for!” Faulkner isn’t entirely dismissive however. “It was a necessary step. But we had one of our biggest hits (What’s My Scene?) so it was a very important album for our career.”

Fast-forward ten years and the band split to focus on other projects. A few years later the pangs of reunion became too strong to ignore. After well received shows at Homebake and Big Day Out, the next step was obvious. “Those shows were a wake up call. This was a really amazing band just doing nothing. And if people say I’m a sell-out for reforming the group then let them say it. If you don’t like it – just don’t come to our gigs. Just ignore us.”

I think it’s safe to say it’s almost impossible to ignore the Hoodoo Gurus.

The Hoodoo Gurus play at the ANU Bar on Friday August 6. Tix are $40.90 + bf from Ticketek.

3 out of 5

What’s the hardest thing about riding a bike? The footpath. Thanks. I’ll be here all week. Try the veal. Croaky old jokes aside, we all know the hardest thing about riding a bike is passing the drug test. Sure, it does look bad – but artificial stimulants in professional cycling are hardly a new phenomenon. Strychnine, amphetamines, cocaine, testosterone, chloroform, blood swapping, steroids… et al have been on the menu for over 100 years. A cloud of insinuation follows one of the sport’s biggest stars, Lance Armstrong, everywhere he pedals and even the most respected rider of all time – Eddie Mercx – knows his way around a doping scandal.

What to do? Blood, Sweat and Gears makes the case that it is possible to run a clean and successful professional racing team. This doco follows Team Slipstream from inception through its journey to top flight competitiveness. It’s a rag tag bunch of ex-cheats, aging coulda-beens and underachieving upstarts. They might not have the sponsorship or the media attention of the bigger teams – but they get drug tested every second day. Sorta like a massive ‘fuck you!’ to the rest of the sport. By being so defiantly drug-free there is an implicit degree of finger pointing at the rest of the sport. Which, to be fair, probably isn’t so unwarranted.

Any doco about cycling is bound to take in Le Tour de France and therefore guaranteed to contain bucolic footage of the French Alps, quaint cobble-stoned villages and smelly, baguette and cheese encrusted Gauls. On that measure it delivers. But outside the suspiciously looking stock footage of daisy fields, Blood, Sweat and Gears looks rough and cheap. There are elements of friction and suspense yet probably not enough to drive a 90 minute narrative. The notoriously blunt ex-doper David Millar is a fascinating subject but the doco spends too much time meandering when it should be flying headfirst down the mountainside.

BILL BAILEY has opted for the path of simplicity on his current Australian tour. Not the dreadful punning found in most comedy show titles. He’s called it Bill Bailey Live. It’s a reflection of the show’s modest origins. “I’ve prepared a little bit differently this time around. The last tour in the UK was in large venues so it was a show with that in mind. Whereas this tour is in smaller venues way out in the middle of nowhere… Outer Hebrides, Orkney, Shetlands. Stunning places where no one really goes to play.”

Far from representing a fall from public favour, it was a deliberate move by Bailey to return to his roots as a stand up performer. “It’s been a revelation!” he enthuses. “Because I was touring around little community centres I had to strip everything down to its basics. It’s been a real rediscovery of the art of it all.” And a discovery of sorts – “you pretty much know everyone’s name by the end of the show.”

Despite venue size it wasn’t exactly a breeze for the seasoned comic, who is used to playing in arenas where crowds are measured in thousands – not handfuls. “In a way it’s harder. It sounds bizarre, but it’s harder to build a show from a small audience. When you’re on stage and there are a lot of people, they tend to blend together – so you just project the show to the back row. Whereas if you’re in a small venue you can see everyone, you can see their faces!”

As a result the subject matter of Bailey’s new show is more personal and more intimate. In addition to the usual array of keyboards, guitars and songs there will be short films and a visual element of the show that isn’t so easy to pull off in large stadiums. His grand plan was simple, developing a show that could be done in the back of a pub if need be. When reminded of the potential hazards small shows present – getting tackled by an eager spectator a la Slash in Milan for example – he’s sympathetic. “That’s above and beyond the call. But Slash is pretty cool and one of his solos could probably knock down a mugger anyway.”

In April, Bailey played the enormous Ashton Gate Stadium – home of Bristol City FC. It was a triumphant homecoming. “I grew up around there in a little town called Keynsham. Bristol was the big smoke, so going back was a big moment for me. Lots of family and friends were there… it was an emotional moment.”

For a young Bill Bailey, Bristol was the cultural and musical epicentre of his universe, the place where his musical education began. “I used to go and see bands there all the time – Undertones, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Damned, the Stranglers.”

And if you’ve seen Bailey live, you’ll know music is an important part of his live act but it’s not a cheap, jokey, ‘let’s have a laugh at this band’ parody thing he’s aiming for. “No, the musical things tend to be more a recognisable style of music rather than a certain band. Every so often music reinvents itself into a different style – dance music will morph into electro and incorporate retro elements of drum ‘n’ bass, for example. And each time it does that it captures the public imagination for a while. That’s what I use, the familiarity. That’s what the musical sections of the show are about. It’s a form of musical shorthand – ‘oh I see, I know exactly what you’re doing.’ And once you have that familiarity you can mess around and have fun with it.”

Bailey would be most recognisable for Australian audiences as Manny Bianco, the serene yet somewhat dazed and gullible ex-accountant assistant to Dylan Moran’s chaotic Bernard Black in Black Books. He also turns up occasionally on QI (ABC, Tuesday nights) and when in town usually a spot on Spicks and Specks (ABC, Wednesday nights) – which, to the most even-handed of judgements, is an inferior copy of Never Mind The Buzzcocks, the similarly music-themed panel show up to its 23^rd season in the UK.

For around six seasons, Bailey played the role of team captain and was witness to some of the more exciting incidents on the show. “Usually the pop stars that had written their own stuff were pretty cool about it – they were up for a laugh. But some would be terribly precious about having the mickey ripped out of them. I remember reading a brilliant description of Buzzcocks – a vinegary tang of mockery. When Marl Lammar [all-round media personality and current co-host with the brilliant Mark Radcliffe, who also features on Radio 4) was hosting he could barely conceal his contempt for most guests. But if you don’t take yourself too seriously you’ll come out alright.”

The problem is musicians have notoriously fragile egos. “One guy got so nervous he actually ran out the building. He just legged it and kept on going! There was a Benny Hill-styled chase with management trying to stop him. He made it to reception and got stuck in those revolving doors. Then he ran across the forecourt until someone rugby tackled him and dragged him back in.” Is it any wonder Bailey’s quirky observational humour wins awards – this stuff is gold and just writes itself.

Catch Bill Bailey live at the Royal Theatre on Friday July 30. Tickets are $79.90 and are available through Ticketek.

4.5 out of 5

Just when you thought you’d had your fill of bonkers, robot obsessed, futuristic, Philip K. Dick vs. Prince vs. James Brown vs. Fritz Lang concept albums (never! - Ed.) – along comes Janelle Monae to make you look like an idiot. If you make it through the gonzo essay in the liner notes with sanity intact (and believe me its possible you won’t) you’ll find an album that aims very high and hits its mark more often than not. After being ‘discovered’ by Outkast in 2006 and joining Sean Combs’ XX label, Monae has spent the last few years gestating ArchAndroid in a world that sounds hell more fun than this one. It’s a three-suite monster built around outrageously addictive Atlanta grooves, hard funk, big band swing and afro-hip-hop. One minute it’s a dance-pop album channelling Lily Allen right down to a faux-cockney accent (Faster) the next it’s a Goldfrapp-esque downtempo autumn stroll (Sir Greendown) the next it’s sweet Nuggets-era psych-pop (Mushrooms & Roses).

By the time you get to the double hit of soul-pop in Cold War and Tightrope its obvious Monae is some sort of didactic freak blessed with galloping ambition and a fearless shapeshifting voice that remains defiantly unchallenged by some pretty intense stylistic demands. Arguably ArchAndroid could do with an edit – but I wouldn’t want to be the one to suggest it to her. Barely half way through her twenties, my spine tingles considering the possibilities Janelle Monae has wrought. 

4 ½ out of 5

Herb and Dorothy Vogel are a pair of frail, unassuming elderly New Yorkers who live in a small apartment surrounded by clutter, turtles and cats. Stacked against the walls, piled up against tables and consuming every other inch of free space from the bathroom to the kitchen is one of most impressive collections of 20^th century modern and contemporary art ever assembled.

Which in and of itself is not that amazing. Until you find out Herb and Dorothy amassed their collection on the wages of a postal worker and a librarian. Starting in the mid-‘50s the couple would seek out emerging artists in some of the dodgiest parts of New York in its seediest decades; Chuck Close, Christo and Jeanne-Claude and Robert Mangold are effusive in praise and it’s clear the pair are more than just clients. But theirs was a very different kind of patronage as they had only two rules: that they could afford a piece on their meagre salary and that it could fit into their apartment.

The polar opposite of sycophantic art dealers and gallery trolls, they weren’t in it to make a quick buck – sitting out the numerous art booms that could have made them millionaires many times over. By the time they bequeathed the entire collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington it was approaching 5,000 pieces. But they’re not in it for the recognition – Herb managed to keep his art obsession a secret from his colleagues for most of his working life. They collect art simply because they loved it.

But Herb and Dorothy is about more than art. It’s the blissful story of two people who found their passion – and more importantly found someone else to share that passion with. It’s also the story of art appreciation. Much is made of the way Herb studies a piece, an intensity often outweighing the drama on the canvas. An extraordinary documentary about an extraordinary couple.

2 out of 5

Up until Nobody’s Daughter Hole had released a mere three albums and there’s ample evidence this is just another Courtney Love solo album masquerading under a less tarnished banner. That’s three albums in nearly 20 years, only one of which approaches essential status – 1994’s Live Through This. Hardly prolific, their status outweighs their reputation by a wide margin. Attention is the name of Courtney’s game. Maybe because it obscures her song writing skills, which on the evidence here are barren and outdated. Nobody’s Daughter is a throwaway throwback. Love’s throaty, cracked snarl was great in the angsty early ‘90s; nowadays it comes off like a petulant middle ager struggling to find a reason to bother, devoid of all swagger.

Sonically it’s the sounds of modern radio rock – no edges, no urgency, no meaning – and could easily pass as Celebrity Skin outtakes. Not a terminal problem until you realise it was released over a decade ago. It’s not Linda Perry’s (ex-4 Non Blondes, general gun for hire) fault, nor Billy Corgan’s – even though both contributed extensive co-writes. Samantha, one of Corgan’s efforts, is emblematic: a plodding major chord stomper, it struggles to convey any real sense of anguish and descends into a shouty, risible attention seeking chorus “People like you/Fuck people like me”. No wonder he sought an injunction against its release.

Of all the musicians that came out of the Pacific Northwest in the decade that straddled the ‘Seattle years’ there are few that continue to push themselves creatively as much as MARK LANEGAN does.

As lead singer for the volatile Screaming Trees, Lanegan made his mark remaining stoic amongst the chaos that engulfed his band and friends as drugs and major label money swept through town. But that’s ancient history, as Lanegan explains. “I’m not someone who does a lot of ruminating on the past. My mind never really drifts back to those days ever – if at all. They’re not good or bad memories. It’s just a time that I lived through.”

Lanegan’s reticence to dredge the past slightly downplays one of the most critically acclaimed careers of the last quarter century. Taking time out from his main band in 1990, Lanegan started work on a series of solo albums that to this day remain largely unknown gems outside his dedicated fan base. Take 1994’s Whisky For The Holy Ghost for example; a swirling mostly acoustic album soaked in despair, alcohol and tobacco. The Lanegan cliché writ large. For the man himself it was an offer too good to refuse. “To be honest the amount of money they offered me to make it was quite a bit more than I had been paid for any other record.”

Soon after Lanegan returned to his main band for one final album (1995’s Dust) and a tour that drafted a recently unemployed young guitarist from California called Josh Homme, who had just left Kyuss. Lanegan returned the favour by adding a serene menace to Queens of the Stone Age, on and off for the next decade or so.

In between, Lanegan kept himself busy with collaborations with Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs) in the Twilight Singers and Gutter Twins, Isobel Campbell (ex-Belle and Sebastian) and Soulsavers amongst many others.

It’s a dizzying and eclectic range of co-conspirators but for Lanegan it’s a simple equation. “I do numerous one-off things for people, but the longer lasting ones like my relationship with Greg or my relationship with Queens or Isobel – they’ve lasted many years because they’re my friends.” Asking if there have been any rebuffs, Lanegan drops one of many throaty, bone-rattling and frankly surprising laughs. “I’ll let you know if I run across them but it hasn’t happened yet.”

Preparing for the upcoming tour has been a re-education of sorts. “I went back to find songs that would be fun or interesting. And I surprised myself. There were a bunch of songs I thought ‘okay, that’s not bad.’ But there were plenty more where I cringed and thought ‘God, I can’t believe I did that.’ I jut pretend somebody else did it.” Here comes that laugh again.

Catch Mark Lanegan live at the Metro Theatre in Sydney on Thursday July 8. Tickets through the Theatre and Ticketek.

Sometime back in 2008 when it was still regularly funny, talk swirled around The Office about a spin-off. It made sense; over four seasons the writers and creative team behind the show successfully shrugged off the expectations and limitations of its UK parent version and grew to be a pithy sitcom overflowing with characters, wit, heart and plain stupidity. But then after what seemed an eternity, Parks and Recreation was announced and it was clear the only thing the two shows would have in common was a group of writers and producers (Greg Daniels, Michael Schur) and the loose mocumentary feel that, after Modern Family, should really take a long holiday. At a mere six episodes, Parks and Recreation wasn’t given that much time to settle; and to be fair this first batch of episodes is more exciting for what it promises than what it delivers. Amy Poehler as the over-eager, always ‘on’ municipal public servant is frankly a bit all over place; it’s all well signposted mugging and bland ‘aw shucks – you go girl’ positivism. Knope’s best friend Ann (Rashida Jones) and her hapless boyfriend Andy (Chris Pratt) are given scope to shine, but largely their shared scenes are flat. Nick Offerman as Knope’s taciturn boss Ron is the most fascinating aspect of the show, possibly because he’s the one thing that sits still – immovable – amongst the chaos and wacky sitcom situations and hi-jinks that surround him and engulf council chambers. Likewise the surly and snide April (Aubrey Plaza) stakes a claim as one of the better characters by virtue of her nonchalance – the Power of Blah, if you will. Make no mistake, Parks and Recreation is a seriously funny show, one of the best around – but I doubt these six episodes would convince you.

3 out of 5

Press junkets are gruesome affairs; phone conversations with people in a distant time zone who clearly would rather be watering the garden than regurgitating the story behind their latest (and best, of course) album for the 78^th time, discussing the motivation behind a lyric that probably means nothing or vainly selling the charade that rock and roll is a joyous explosion of creativity, youth, chemicals and spare time. Which explains why HOT HOT HEAT’s guitarist Luke Paquin is watching a Matthew McConaughy documentary between press interviews. To be fair, the doco is about the press junket process and sounded like a defiantly ‘shirts on affair’ but Paquin is getting pointers nonetheless. “Well I have found out I’m not nearly as charismatic as he is – and I don’t quite have the pectorals.” I’ll be leaving that one alone.

Notwithstanding his lacklustre gym routine, Paquin and his band mates have taken the somewhat energetic step of playing residencies in LA and New York to promote the self produced fifth album Future Breeds, as he drawls from Brooklyn. “We thought the best way to warm up for the release would be to do a show a week for a month. And I couldn’t think of a better city to be stuck in.”

In between the band play a one off show in Berlin for a large beverage distiller, but Paquin won’t be drawn into an art vs. commerce argument by some Antipodean yokel. Wait, yes he will... “It was an offer we couldn’t refuse. Obviously, there are a few products we probably wouldn’t associate ourselves with and there’s a bit of a moral dilemma with something like alcohol but we’re all adults – we all drink, right? I don’t feel like I’m compromising my artistic integrity too much. Plus we’ll probably get a free bottle of [popular ‘yoof’ spirit] before the show.”

It’s been a rocky ride for the Canadian band over their ten plus years. Members have left, Paquin himself is a mid-oughts recruit and the band left the Warner stable after 2007’s poorly received Happiness Ltd. “Well, I quite liked our last album – but I guess we were getting a little too comfortable.” In response Hot Hot Heat have recorded an album in Future Breeds that feels like they’ve thrown everything up in the air with mixed results. “Well it’s definitely a hell of a lot harder to play these songs live – just in terms of pure technical ability.” As to whether the band have reclaimed their momentum of their early career – you get the feeling it’s a moot point, as Paquin contemplates, “we just wanted to challenge ourselves for our own mental health – just to feel like we had a right to exist in the world.” Not sure such self-doubt doubt conforms to the Matthew McConaughy School of Media Relations– but it’s a refreshing change for these ears.

Hot Hot Heat’s latest effort, Future Breeds, was released in Australia on Friday June 11 and is available at all good record stores.

Matt Tyrnauer, who started his career at the tragically under-appreciated Spy magazine and is now a special correspondent at Vanity Fair, followed legendary fashion designer Valentino Garavani for Valentino: The Last Emperor. The title gives the game away; whilst not necessarily a fawning love letter to the perma-tanned subject of this insidery doco, neither is it an incisive deliberation on the fashion industry. Wisely stepping back and allowing the revolving cast of seamstresses, designers, pooch handlers, hangers on, models and immaculately attired business men to float through the viewfinder, Tyrnauer captures Valentino in the final act of an illustrious decades long career – Valentino retired from the industry in 2008. Sadly, Valentino: The Last Emperor leaves an empty taste, failing to capture the effervescent swing of his best designs. This is the man, after all, who thinks nothing of letting five slobbering pugs take up a row of lush leather seats on a private jet. Giancarlo Giammetti, Valentino’s business and life partner, emerges as the driving force behind the success of the brand. But in one telling, if brief, encounter he also reveals the sheer obscenity of the fashion industry.

Referring to a photo shoot in 1967, Giammetti reminisces about filling a studio with semolina to recreate the look of a North African sand dune. This profligate waste of foodstuffs is mind boggling. You see, fashion isn’t about real life. It’s about venerating the absurd, celebrating the wasteful, applauding the irrational and stroking the egos of artistes whose diminished mental capacity is directly proportionate to their callous indifference to the outside world. Now, I don’t for a minute suggest we should all scupper about in burlap sacks and egg carton trilbies, and riling up at the insanity of the fashion industry is a fools errand but seriously, there have to be limits. Not for Valentino though. The last of his kind, they say. Let’s hope so.

3 out of 5

Like most things Sammy Hagar-related, the genesis of Chickenfoot can be traced back to tequila. The story goes that Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers) and Michael Anthony (ex-Van Halen) were jamming at one of Hagar’s bars, Cabo Wabo, in Mexico. Hagar runs a thriving business empire of themed bars and in the last few years sold a majority interest in his Cabo Wabo branded tequila to the same liquor company that makes Campari, Wild Turkey and Cinzano. There’s nothing more rock than a Campari on rocks, as the famous saying doesn’t go.

After joining the crumpled rockers on stage, Hagar figured his incisive business acumen was again spot on and figured all they needed was another ‘80s throwback to complete the gory picture. And that’s how Joe Satriani – the man with the second hairiest forearms in showbiz – came to find himself in one of the loopiest and least exciting supergroups ever to make a quick buck. Get Your Buzz On – Live is essentially a meat and potatoes run-through of Chickenfoot’s self-titled debut album. Now as much as the band members would like to think otherwise, Chickenfoot, the album, is not Hall Of Famer material. It sounds like a leaden, plodding, joyless hard rock romp through the collected back catalogues of each member – but without the wicked humour of vintage Van Halen (to be fair the Hagar-fronted Halen weren’t that funny), the deft pop-funk of the Peppers or the dazzling virtuosity of Surfing with the Alien. The hour long doco yields far greater rewards – Hagar proving himself to be an utter bore by getting in the face of Bob Weir (Grateful Dead), yelling and screaming at his own non-jokes; Chad Smith’s excruciatingly fallow attempts at vox-pop humour and Nigel Tufnell/Christopher Guest bringing the lols like the seasoned pro he is.

2 out of 5

Occasionally, a film that promises to be a B-grade, straight to DVD, phone-message-checking, magazine-reorganising, CD-alphabetising snorefest turns out to be halfway decent. Its not that I have anything against Timothy Olyphant, as Deadwood’s Seth Bullock he was the stoic heart and moral compass in a world gone batshit insane and sure I no longer harbour a grudge against Steve Zahn for appearing in Reality Bites but really… on paper A Perfect Getaway looks formulaic, dull and uninspiring. It’s a story about a couple honeymooning in Hawaii hot on the heels of a spate of gruesome murders. But being the stubborn young would-be victims that they are, Cliff (Zahn) and Cydney (the underused Milla Jovovich) set out to camp on a scenic, secluded beach. A run in with some island trash spooks the happy couple but warning signs are for audiences – not characters in films. More warning signs pop up in the form of rugged, know-it-all man of action Nick (Olyphant) who, as an exaggerated ex-Marine type, is suitably threatening and occasionally helpful in unequal measures. The trailer trash re-appear out of nowhere just as expected and it’s from this point that the guessing game really begins in earnest. Writer and director David Twohy is no slouch – he’s behind some of best (The Fugitive), the worst (Waterworld) and inexplicably popular (the Vin Diesel helmed Riddick franchise) films of the past few decades. The key to A Perfect Getaway’s success is how Twohy plays with audience expectations – drawing us into well designed, but ultimately dead ended side plots but also keeping the clues solvable. Once the real killers are revealed the movie picks up in pace but loses dramatic tension. It’s an unfortunate trade-off because I was quite enjoying the tease. Nevertheless, it’s an unusually satisfying action thriller and one that really came from nowhere.

For the time being, the brothers that make up the core of Field Music (David and Peter Brewis) have yet to descend into Gallagher-style public slag offs – which is not all that surprising when you consider they come across as the aural equivalent of an afternoon of tea and scones. That’s not to suggest they are either weak or limpid; far from it – this is clever, muscular, at times baroque but uniformly brilliantly written indie pop music. Think Grizzly Bear through an Anglo-pasture-funnel (they exist) but 75% less insufferable. Actually, The Rest Is Noise sounds like Billy Joel circa Brooklyn 2009 but that’s as close to it gets to hacky scenster-ism.

The remainder of the album is a total grab bag of quality influences and musical quotes – Todd Rundgren looms large on the prog-pop arrangements, but this is suffused with the uniquely British, jaunty cloak of XTC with a little bit of skeletal Richard Thompson riffage for good measure; the iridescent Effortlessly makes it seem, well, effortless and Measure is surely Kate Bush via The Books for goods sake. For a double album, it’s hard to fall back on that old adage that “a few less songs would have made it a classic” and Field Music mounts a convincing argument that a surfeit of ideas can be wrangled into something listenable, cohesive and memorable. There might be better albums released this year, but I’d be surprised.  

Montreal really is a magical city. Even when stripped of its musical heritage, from prohibition-era Jazz hang out through to millennial straddling post-rock epicentre and obviously Celine Dion’s home-town, there’s a rough hewed, dark, intensity to the place that escapes words. It is after all, basically a French town an hour’s flight form New York. Maybe that’s why music has always been at the forefront of the city’s identity; and for me The Besnard Lakes are one of clearest exemplars of Montreal’s strange logic fusing crunching ‘70s guitar rock, dreamy psychedelia, grinding shoegaze and swirling spine-chilling harmonies (Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue loomed large during recording) into something approaching indie prog. Like The Ocean, Like The Innocent Pt’s 1 and 2 is the perfect album primer, opening with co-lead singer Jace Lasek’s eerie disembodied falsetto floating into range like a lost seaman’s clarion call until about the four minute mark when the guitars drop right in, letting you know that Lasek not only looks spookily like Ian Hunter – but he also can major chord crash like the heavily ringleted power rock genius. And This Is What We Call Progress and Albatross round out the four standout tracks on the album; the former is a pulsating, riff laden shin-tremor whilst the latter is an undisguised Bilinda Butcher shout out. The Roaring Night doesn’t quite match the sheer grandeur of 2007’s The Dark Horse but I still listen to that album weekly, so comparisons at this juncture might be a tad uncharitable.

Party Down is an unassuming show; the sort that creeps up on you over ten episodes slowly revealing its idiosyncrasies. Revolving around the lives of a small group of dissatisfied and disillusioned actors working in catering to pay the bills before their dreams evaporate means that Party Down is an office comedy with a brilliant get out of jail free card – the putative ‘office’ changes every week when the team go to another home, function, seminar or birthday party. It’s a brilliantly simple plot device that gives the show a sense of forward momentum, leaving behind the sordid office politics so readily mined elsewhere (The Office as an obvious but by no means solitary example). The other brilliant element of the show is its understatement. Mercifully free of big personalities, zany characters and fish out of water situations it is droll, dry and harsh where every other comedy these days is either trying to be the next Arrested Development or has re-heated the mocu-drama to within an inch of its life; Modern Family and Parks and Recreation excepted as they are both quite splendid. Party Down the catering company is managed by Ron Donald (Ken Marino), an overly cautious Brent-like character struggling to supervise a handful of employees who routinely ignore him, regularly drink on the job and generally don’t give a shit about anything – least of all any last vestiges of self respect they may still cling to. Adam Scott (Six Feet Under and fine jaw-bones) is the standout as Henry Pollard – the guy who once had a famous catchphrase in an advert years ago – he knows its over, but he lives in hope. Jane Lynch (Glee), Martin Starr (Freaks & Geeks) and Lizzy Caplan (True Blood) elevate this show to instant cult status.

Surely one of the most unsafe MS Word spell check bands in existence, Silver Mt. Zion continue to confound, frustrate, delight and amaze in equal measure.  For every passage of visceral, eye-popping, locked-in groove volcanic momentum there’s another of middling, directionless distraction. Never a band to structure ‘songs’ in the traditional sense, the Montreal based collective have pushed their sonic palate immeasurably towards the exhilarative ‘angry-crunch’ idiom since their quasi found-sound beginnings as a Godspeed You Black Emperor side project.

Always an acquired taste, Efrim Memuck’s vocals have found a natural cadence vacillating between agit-prop chant, aggravated sneer and disillusioned waft. As usual it’s the longer pieces that reward the most; There Is A Light is one of the band’s finest, a slow-grinding organ and viola gypsy dirge gradually giving in to a cataclysmic sub-terrarium fireball of crunching hard-rock intensity. As is normally the case, Sophie Trudeau’s violin colours every key passage with understated tenderness or vicious, vibrato-laden fury. Silver Mt. Zion have yet to make their unified masterpiece, and Kollaps falls over (oh dear) in places struggling to find a memorable melody or rhythm, but really that’s an uncharitable complaint; they’re not a pop band and those moments are rare and pass easily. Screw it – Album of the Year.

Everyone knew that one day Morgan Freeman would end up playing Nelson Mandela on the big screen, but as the years passed, an aging Freeman meant that Mandela’s latter years would be the focus. But don’t be fooled, Invictus isn’t a Mandela biography. South Africa’s most famous revolutionary prisoner cum Springbok-loving President is presented here as the driving force behind a more communal national or more euphemistically ‘rainbow’ acceptance of the national rugby union team. The political tinderbox prison years are dealt with in flashbacks alone and his newly minted freedom and subsequent election to the highest position in the country is represented in brief introductory scenes that look hastily edited. After that it’s all football, all the time. Despite being universally loathed by the black population because the white Afrikaners love them, Mandela figured the national rugby union team – the Springboks –represented some sort of crude reconciliation talisman, so he promptly invites the underperforming team’s captain Francois Pianeer (a suitably barrel-chested and slippery-accented Matt Damon) to a private defrag. After which Pianeer realises he should steer his team to an unlikely World Cup victory later that year.

It’s that simple, see. Pianeer’s teammates resent being the unwilling poster boys of Mandela’s fresh start, but they eventually acquiesce. Sure, the still seething racial divisions of the post-apartheid era have been smoothed over – but c’mon, this is a story of sport triumphing over racial hatred. Credit to director Clint Eastwood; the ruggers scenes are tightly shot, amply reflecting the beauty and brutality of union with little concession to the international audience who would barely understand the game. But Eastwood has constructed a film where technical expertise is immaterial because Invictus is a simple story of acceptance prevailing over division; a theme the aging director is devoting an increasing amount of time to in the final act of his brilliant career.

The first season of The Big Bang Theory was a surprise runaway success. Coming from the same writing team as Two and A Half Men, expectations were guarded but when it first aired nearly four years ago there was a peculiar simplicity about it; a standard multi-camera, scripted situational comedy in the strictest sense. It didn’t have that interested insidery hipster irony a la 30 Rock, deadpan uncomfortableness as seen in The Office or incessant juvenile vulgarity of its stablemate. Its closest natural bedfellow would be the increasingly diabolical How I Met Your Mother. But where the latter has stretched a once-unique concept thinner than a crepe l’orange, Big Bang has settled into a neat groove with a group of characters easy enough to care about, just the right side of one-dimensional being propelled through storylines with ungainly, awkward humour.

This time around there is a more natural and cohesive interaction between the main actors. Of particular note is Simon Heldberg as the miss-firing, still-living-at-home ladies man Howard Wolowitz; in a show built on rapid fire boom-boom one-liners and stilted geek humour Heldberg increasingly stands out and challenges Jim Parson’s portrayal of bean-pole nerd Sheldon Cooper as the energetic focus of the show. Unusually it’s the nominal ‘star’ of the show Johnny Galecki who falls short of the mark more often than not, being surrounded by scene stopping performances he seems weak and insipid rather than calm and collected, particularly so when his fellow Roseanne alum Sarah Gilbert guest stars alongside him. Viewership has almost doubled since the show’s debut and whilst ratings don’t necessarily or easily equate to quality, in this case the numbers stack up for a reason. Within its self-imposed limitations The Big Bang Theory is undemanding, quirky and satisfying.

Enigmatic electronic Swedish outfit collaborate with avant garde opera artists and release concept album about controversial evolutionary botanist. If that sentence doesn’t strike the fear of god into you, then nothing will. The Knife aren’t the most accessible of bands, known more for masks and not playing to any of the accepted norms of media participation, record promotion or publicity.

So it’s hardly a surprise they’re in the market for astringent barely listenable noise operas.Tomorrow, In A Year is based on Charles Darwin’s On The Origin of the Species but I would challenge anyone to point that out without the benefit of cheat notes and reviews like this pointing it out.

It starts out with a trickle of mild bleeps that could be bird noises I suppose and ends 120 odd, really odd, minutes later with a couple of tracks that might have fallen off a Knife album (Colouring of Pigeons, The Height of Summer) But the album sits uneasily in the bands discography – it’s neither a spooky, icy electronic record nor a thoroughly immersive otherworldly aural space exploration. Being stuck in-between doesn’t suit Karin and Olof and despite the occasional flourish I can’t see even the most devoted Knife fan listening to it all the way through more than once other than to prove a point to the idiots who just don’t get it. Like me. 

I’ve enthused about ZZ Top on this page in issues past and the release of this ‘Then and Now’ type live DVD affords me the ability to roll in the mud once again. By 1980 ZZ Top had well over a decade to hone their live show – and it’s obvious. With only two members (Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill) front of drums at all times, the band realised early on that standing motionless in front of a stationary mic stand would hardly make an enticing live proposition. So we get Dusty leaning in deep, dropping the bass to almost floor level; Dusty and Billy swaying side to side, crab walking around the stage in unison – Cliff Richard and Shadows-style; and both of them wearing singularly awesome beards. It sounds almost quaint. But this small concession to showmanship pushes the music into sharper focus. Fortunately, ZZ Top have practically written the rules for dry, bluesy hard rock – except for that well-deserved if unsatisfactory period of commercial success in the mid-‘80s when they discovered synths and the power of MTV – and Billy Gibbons’ guitar tone has been envied and copied for decades so it’s easy to forget he was the one who invented it. The 1980 concert drawn from the Rockpalast vaults is a treat for the true fan as it focuses wholly, out of necessity, on the early stuff. Fast-forward 28 years and pretty much nothing has changed – Billy’s voice may have dropped an octave or four and the suits are bit nattier but the segue from Waitin’ For The Bus into Jesus Just Left Chicago still delivers chills in its fourth decade. Fashions and genres evolve, rise, fall and get forgotten but through it all ZZ Top have remained a constant. In the absence of a tour this Double Down more than satiates, but it’s not the real deal. I live in hope.

Say want you want about The Killers – they’re soulless chancers who write choruses rather than songs, for example – but you cannot deny there’s a massive audience for safe, anaemic modern radio rock songs. You’re just as likely to hear a Killers song advertising hybrid cars as you are a delicious new chocolate bar or an enticing new financial product from a friendly bank. They write music that is universal, or more unkindly – bland, and as a result they can pull a crowd. On the plus side their live shows are usually celebratory where the records sound calculated, and honestly sometimes all you want at a gig is 90 minutes of fat choruses to spill your overpriced warm beer to. Right? Maybe, but be under no illusion – Brandon Flowers really does think he is Bono and when Dave Keuning fires off some Edge-inspired hanging arpeggios on For Reasons Unknown on a Gibson Firebird it is for all intents and purposes a U2 tribute night. And is it just me or does Flowers slowly adopt an Irish brogue over the course of the evening? No, he does. It’s okay though – some semblance of order is restored over the next few songs – ‘80s saxophone! And then if that’s not enough – sax-funk. Oh the humanity. Nearly a decade on, the Killers are a well-oiled live band so don’t expect much in the way of intimacy or nuance from this DVD, unless you count the alleged ‘acoustic’ rendering of Sam’s Town, which, with electric guitar and drums, quite patently isn’t. Instead expect 120 minutes of well-recorded, well-produced, bright and boisterous rock songs with faint new-waveish tinges. No endearing false starts, no fumbled notes or embarrassing humanesque missteps; just The Killers in all their fashion-shoot crisp glory.

Power is a skinny, orange-haired, Rush-obsessed geek working a dead end mining job. Miners are hard working folk, as you’d well know. They wear overalls, belong to unions, look tough and talk in grunts. They’re real. And mining folk certainly won’t stand for a co-worker who air drums on the job. Yes – air drums. The hollowness of Adventures of Power is set up in the opening montage where Power dances his way home, air drumming to the general befuddlement of all who cross his path, all set to the requisite ‘80s soft rock power anthem. I’m sure you’ve seen it all before – the overcoming adversity, true life-type story of a nerd who dreams of becoming the best [insert obscure leisure activity] in the world. When Power (Ari Gold, who also wrote and directed) attempts the impossible at an underground Mexican drum-off – a Neal Peart/Rush air drum solo without a stool – he ends up on the floor in agony and defeat. It’s a rookie error, but his raw talent is recognised and so begins the transformation from no-hoper to possible champion at the Air Drum Battle in big ol’ New York City. Along the way he steals the heart of a deaf girl. Good on him. He certainly didn’t steal my heart or attention. Adventures of Power is a puerile, underwritten, laugh-free drag that ploughs through every underdog cliché available. Small town kid whose dreams are too big and incomprehensible for the yokels. Check. A rag tag bunch of misfits. Loose cannon son doing it for his injured father. Check. A face off against the spoilt brat rich kid (Entourage’s Adam Greiner not exactly stretching himself). Check. ‘80s soundtrack. Check. A sabotaged drum stool. Check. This film wants cult status so desperately it’s painful. Even if it didn’t, it’d still be painful.

Here’s some simple analysis even the most economically-challenged movie studio executive should understand: Roland Emmerich’s 2012 cost $260 million and is universally acknowledged to have sucked total ass whereas Yoon Je-kyoon’s Haeundae cost $16 million and is one of the finest examples of disaster porn to grace the screen for quite some time. The former is a horrendous example of Hollywood at its most overblown, under-performed, formulaic and downright offensive. The South Korean entry on the other hand is a mind-blowing experience balancing in-your- face technical wizardry, goofy humour and actual delicate human stories revolving around characters that have actual relationships. That’s one of the joys about the current crop of South Korean big (relatively) budget flicks; white-knuckled action sequences can co-exist quite happily with dialogue, emotions, feeling and acting. 2007’s The Host was a perfect example of a monster movie that re-taught mainstream Hollywood how to make a monster flick. And gratefully, it was success. Likewise Haeundae was rewarded with significant commercial success in its homeland. The story itself is actually pretty standard disaster film stuff. A series of increasingly severe earthquakes in the Sea of Japan suggest the ‘big one’ is on the way. Kim Hwi (Park Joong-hoon), a divorced geologist at the National Earthquake Centre, raises the alarm but no one takes heed, of course. His ex-wife works in real estate (boooo!) and her evil boss is about to open a new development right on the shoreline. The next thing you know a bloody tsunami is bearing down on the resort town of Haeundae-gu. The ensuing chaos tears the town apart in a way that $260m worth of CGI cannot accomplish, and in this film heroes die – and stay dead. I know, amazing. Haeundae conforms to the broad rules of these sorts of film, but at its heart there’s a tenderness and lightness of touch that is staggeringly original.

Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara either is a revolutionary hero driven to eradicate hunger, poverty and disease in Latin America or an over-intellectualised tyrant of the worst order who sided with ruthless military dictatorships and oversaw the murder of innocent civilians. The man is divisive, but Chevolution thankfully doesn’t get too bogged down in mythology and politics, instead focusing on the iconography of that image: Guerrillero Heroico or Heroic Guerilla Fighter. That intense, tousled-haired, distant-gazed image of a young Che was taken as he stood at a memorial service for the victims of a suspicious explosion in Havana. Alberto Korda was the photographer and this doco is equally his story; a man who revelled in the bohemian, boozy lifestyle of pre-revolution, pre-Castro Cuba; a man who excelled in the field of taking photos of floozies and bimbos; a man not given to revolutionary zeal; a man more familiar with the business end of a Leica M2 w/ 90mm lens than a Kalashnikov. The image itself was deemed too bland for immediate publication and it wasn’t until a few years later when it began popping up at rallies and demonstrations that it began to take on a life bigger than its subject. The tumultuous late ‘60s proved the perfect incubation ground and with cheap re-production and printing methods the image launched onto the walls, banners and t-shirts of students the world over. Would Che have been disgusted at the commercialisation of his visage or would he approve of it being the clarion call for protests spanning generations and countries? Probably the former, but in the end the image represents something undefinable transcending Che’s mottled and contradictory life story. Chevolution is as both a primer on Che and a fascinating thought bubble on the power of political, commercial and revolutionary imagery.

Chuck was one of the stand-out debuts of 2007. A sharp, witty and effortlessly fun spy caper, think Burn Notice through the prism of goofy ‘90s workplace slacker comedy or a Gen-X Get Smart. Criminally overlooked, it should have been much bigger than the small blip on the radar it actually was. It has already attracted a degree of cult-dom in the US through a successful ‘Save Chuck’ campaign, but here in Australia it remains a DVD nugget. The first season found Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) juggling his menial job at the big box electronics store and a career as ‘The Intersect’; the holder of a fountain of government secrets downloaded into his brain by some opportunistic twist of fate. Adam Baldwin stole the show outright as the uptight, lantern-jawed and long suffering NSA agent John Casey and was rewarded with noticeably more screen time as the show progressed.

For the return season, Chuck is no longer the confused Kafka-esque ‘man in the middle’ – he wants to be part of the system, he wants to be a full-on spy. But as we all know from Charlie’s Angels, espionage and being pursued by the Russian Mob isn’t for tousle-haired softies. Accordingly, Chuck spends much of his time trying desperately to prove he’s not a total screw up. Unsuccessfully. Some of the quaint charm and sparkle has worn off a little this time around as limitations in the concept begin to creak at the edges and frankly the production design is hardly in the realm of Mad Men. Still, that was never the goal. In reality as an early champion of the show I’m probably being unnecessarily harsh, these are really inconsequential quibbles. Chuck is a strange beast; an instantaneously gratifying, lovable slow burner.

Walter White (Bryan Cranston) faced the harsh consequences of his part-time job as a meth manufacturer in the closing sequence of the first season of Breaking Bad. Facing off against the insane and ultra-paranoid drug kingpin Tuco (Raymond Cruz) who, roasted on ice, beats the living shit out of one of his underlings over some perceived slight, Walt finally saw the reality of his predicament and it’s a manic, violent and irrational reality. He might have the chemistry smarts to cook the purest meth ever seen in New Mexico to pay for his cancer treatment, but the drug trade is some seriously fucked up shit. Keeping secrets from your family is one thing, staying alive at a drug meet in a car junkyard is another altogether. Happily, the second season picks up exactly where this scene left off and it doesn’t take long for pathological drug lord Tuco to ramp up the intensity, setting of a chain of events that culminates in a terrifying trip to an empty house in the desert and an elderly mute ex-gang banger in a wheelchair with a doorbell on the arm rest. Lynch would be proud.

Easily one of the best shows of the rebirth-era of television (cf: Sopranos onwards) Breaking Bad is a show that revels in the consequences of deception. It’s not that Walt and his hapless sidekick Jesse (Aaron Paul) are experts in grand illusions or meticulous planners, they’re just lucky enough to get away with it – for the time being. Cranston proves his back-to-back Best Actor Emmys weren’t sympathy votes, playing Walt with equal parts pity, despair, anger, forthrightness and fear. His shaved skull and wan demeanour are no mere parlour trick, and Cruz’s performance as Tuco is gobsmackingly unnerving. When even the minor roles are worthy of note, something tremendous is happening.

Just because your dress sense consists of whacking a baking tray on your arse, a bra made of tulips and a gingerbread house for a hat – doesn’t make you an edgy pop culture icon. Just because you have the attention of the world’s media – doesn’t make you worthwhile. Just because you copied Madonna’s shock and bore media management campaign – doesn’t make you savvy. Just because your songs sound good on the radio – doesn’t mean this is pop.

The Fame Monster looks and sounds like a quickie to capitalise on GaGa’s chart ascendancy and fill a gap in the market. At a swift eight tracks and under 35 minutes it’s tailor made for short attention spans. Bad Romance starts things poorly sinking with sub-Poker Face-sims; probably one of the worst of the album.

Alejandro is her La Isla Bonita moment; as a Madonna rip-off it works just fine. The ass end delivers a couple of dance pop nuggets – but it all feels nastily pedestrian especially for an album nominally about the shallowness of fame. GaGa has spent virtually every minute of her career reminding us she is first and foremost a visual proposition and undoubtedly these songs would get some sort of life on stage. But as it is, The Fame Monster sounds like an excuse to run out a few b-sides and loose tracks and give her a reason to flash her vag to the world. Again. Like she needs a reason.

Robbie Williams is in a quandary. Reality Killed the Video Star is his putative comeback album. That’s how he’s been talking it up. Only it’s not – as he acknowledges quite explicitly (“don’t call it a comeback”) on the wan, sub-Depeche Mode Violator-era Last Days of Disco.

Williams is also making amends for his poorly received, and admittedly poorly conceived, written and executed Rudebox in 2006 by turning in a dozen songs that try to balance his early millennium stadium juggernaut and well, growing old. But Williams still lives in the world where a £20m fall in his fortunes not only warrants media attention but is not considered fatal. And where joke marriage proposals on idiot radio stations is considered a classy promotional tactic. He wants to be taken seriously. He doesn’t want to be taken seriously. He wonders what people in the next century will think about him (Superblind). But he’s just havin’ a larf, right? He’s a scamp, puncturing his public persona and mucking about with the media. Give over. This would be furtive ground in other hands, where flights of fancy are matched equally with incisive wit and genuine soul searching; not here though. Williams is so bloody ham-fisted. Reality... doesn’t feel like a glimpse inside the muddled mind of a charming and skilled entertainer. It’s buffoonery being passed off as pop music. The only thing Robbie Williams continues to skewer is the last vestiges of his talent.

Relax cigarette and scarf fans - The Black Heart Procession return to gloomy, low tempo death-imbued torch song territory. Ho-fucking-ho. The San Diego band have devoted a career to balancing moody atmospherics with quality, mannered song writing. 2007’s The Search altered the mood a little going up-tempo and was a better album for it. But now they seemed to have gone two steps back. Rats sounds like Red Right Hand, which is fine; until you consider there is little reason to listen to an approximation when the original will do just fine thank you very much. The rest of the album is a dirge – the abundant biblical imagery would tire even then most brimstone-inclined listener. Sadly, there is no fire.

There are many ways to review music. I'm adopting the sounds-like method here. Call me lazy.OK, here goes. Sex Prayer is John Densmore via Tortoise. Which is as awful in actuality as it is on paper. Paint Yourself is part CSNY and part Royal Trux. In fact there's a lot of Royal Trux on this album. Not literally, though. Idiot. Everybody Somebody sounds like someone punched the fuck out of Cheap Trick and made them record on a one-track. Massive point and joy deductions for reminding me of Eagles of Death Metal afterwards however. I am unable to listen to this song again. Fuck it. This album's a mess. I love it and hate it at the same time and at thoroughly different times. I'm confused. These are confusing times.

Atlas Sounds is the side project of Deerhunter's Bradford Cox and Logos is his fifth release in the last 18 months.  Ryan Adams, you have nothing on this man. Cox has an unerring ability to deliver skewered, wonky dream pop epics that gobble up motorik, indie noise, alt-rock and shoegaze without a trace of parody or cliché. Make no mistake, his influences are obvious but where others fail, Cox transcends his mental sketchpad to create utterly stunning modern hazy dream nuggets. And despite its side project status, Logos is no throwaway. Guest spots from Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier and Animal Collective's Panda Bear fit well - but it's Cox who demands all the attention. Last years Microcastle was universally and rightfully hailed as one of the year's best and Logos is up there. Again. Wonder if he has anything ready for February.

In April last year New York Magazine - journal of choice for indolent and sarcastic hipsters - proclaimed Gossip Girl to be Best. Show. Ever. Sure, there were a few caveats and NY Mag has a tendency to ride cultural waves for all their worth and, okay, the show is a scarcely veiled doco of WASPY, rich Manhattanites. But what the hey, Upper East Side teen angst was cool again! It was a cultural juggernaut for the inattentive txt generation. The overall ridiculousness of a bunch of image-obsessed New Yorkers grappling with who to sleep with next and how to deal with their meddling family was captivating. Whilst hardly an Austen-esque study of class and privilege there were some pretty universal themes on offer and as long as it's hilariously over the top and looks good then I'm in. Season two opens with Nate (Chace Crawford) and Serena (Blake Lively) retreating in the Hamptons. Of course. Nate's squiring an older woman. Of course. Everything is as it should be in Gossip World. It's senior year and everyone is preoccupied with college - Yale in particular, not that Gossip Girl has ever been a beacon of scholarship but Yale is old money and Ivy League so it'd hardly impact their social lives. Still, it's a risk no one's willing to take - so Columbia and NYU it is. Phew. Not sure any of these characters would survive outside a 5 km radius of a Marc Jacobs store. Its zeitgeist moment may have passed - although S3 features serial teen drama guesters Sonic Youth looking for TV face time after Gilmour Girls finished up - and you could argue we all care a little less about well-sculpted moneyed up teens and more about keeping our jobs but Gossip Girl is unabashed, self aware, extreme-dialogued fun. The reason recessions don't matter in this world is not that they're immune - more that it'd totally bring us down. We don't want that.

Disco. Surely the most reviled genre of popular music. I don't remember burning parties of prog-rock, shoegaze or emo records along the lines of the infamous and disturbing Disco Demolition Night at a Chicago park in 1979. But then I'm no historian, so lay off. All I know is that if you were unlucky enough to be tarred with the (gold lame) disco brush at the end of the '70s - respectability came tough.

Unfairly, LEO SAYER is often relegated into the 'disco-pop type guy who had a few hits then disappeared' column. But Sayer was like any other singer-songwriter looking for a break. He knew his way around a melody (You Make Me Feel Like Dancing), picked his covers carefully (Albert Hammond and Carol Bayer Sager's When I Need Love) and is as comfortable in front of a camera as he is behind the microphone.

But looks can be deceptive as Sayer explains. "I'm a rebel. I've always been a rebel and I love surprising people. But I'm looked upon as a very middle of the road artist, which honestly is the last thing I am. It's just probably because I smile and I'm very nice to people." It's the only time during our conversation that the irrepressible and energetic recently naturalised Australian citizen sounds weary. But there is always an upside. "They seem to like me on Kerri-Anne."

There's an argument to be mounted that Sayers 1976 album Endless Flight is an overlooked classic of the singer-songwriter type. It's a period he looks back fondly on. "I will say this - we always tried to work with the best musicians. Richard Perry [producer of everything from Beefheart to Streisand] surprised me because he knew all these great players and brought them into the studio. We had the best soul players - Larry Carlton [renowned jazz guitar boffin], Earl Slick [Bowie], Ray Parker [pre Jnr and Ghostbusters], Steve Gadd [Pauls McCartney & Simon]. That's why my records from that era stand up. Working with the best people in the industry stood me in good stead."

But after the flood of commercial success came the inevitable drought. Sayer's star faded and releases became rarer. Reflecting, Sayer isn't particularly remorseful. "Well, you know, I think it was basically a problem of continuity. I like to think of myself in the Bob Dylan mould. I like to surprise people and make different records that never really follow or sound like the ones that came before." And if you've been wrong-footed by the Dylan reference, hold on to your britches as Sayer enthuses about his new stuff. "I'm working on a new project that sounds distinctively urban. Like Jill Scott meets Leo." Seems there's a surprise at every corner. Unprompted, he concludes, "there might be a death metal album in me yet." Don't count it out - it's not that much of a jump from L. Sayer to Slayer.

Sayer will perform at The Auditorium at the Vikings Club in Erindale on Saturday November 21. For tickets, call the club on 6121 2131.

To say that The First Dance is eagerly awaited underplays Bridezilla's predicament somewhat. Having been handpicked by Nick Cave, ATP and the indie-rock-cred community en masse as the bright young thing of the scene they'd better not fuck it up. Largely, they don't. Their first major release is a case study in simultaneously playing down expectations (it doesn't over-egg the mix) and broadening potential (2007's Bridezilla EP sounds like a completely different band). First track Lunar Eclipse sets the tone perfectly; an elegiac slow build smoulder, revelling in a light syncopated clutter of drums, violin and reverb-rich guitar snarls. Final track The Last Dance is an intense, delicate hushed gothic ballad. As bookends they do a pretty good job marking out the bands territory. In between there's high country, mountain-green pop songs, Will Oldham-style (Tailback) and alt-country rave-ups (Western Front). That said - it doesn't all work. A few tracks plod along directionless but The First Dance is an invigorating and bold statement of intent from a band seemingly not that interested in the middle ground. All power to them.

Any show that teams The Wire's Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Pacey Whitter from Dawson's Creek (Joshua Jackson) and Denethor from that mystical goblin trilogy thing (John Noble) is onto something. Or possibly on something. Co-created by J.J. Abrams, Fringe relives those glory pre-millennial tension years of The X Files when it was perfectly acceptable to claim your missing coffee mug was actually a conspiracy that spiralled all the way to the highest levels of government.

Fringe's first 15 minute are jaw-dropping (literally, in one instance) and highlight its promise and flaws. It's a high concept show that relies on episodic, self-contained puzzles and typically gruesome crimes being solved through 'fringe' science - mysticism, teleportation, retina mapping and so on, whilst in parallel unravelling the workings of a shadowy and sinister multinational defence and technology company.

It seems like Abrams is making up for the loss of good-will experienced by one of his other shows - Lost - where mysteries are frustratingly left hanging for months on end or pushed into dead-ends, because Fringe moves at a swift pace and manages to score a balance of immediate outcome delivery and plot arcs that encourage commitment. That's the promise. The flaw is character development; Anna Torv as FBI agent Olivia Dunham is wooden and detached and whilst this might adequately suggest a degree of wonder and shock, as the story tightens its grip it becomes a tad repetitious. Reddick plays the stiff Homeland Security type guy straight down the line but he can do so much more. Still - it's that guy from The Wire! On the other hand, Noble and Jackson riff off each other gloriously as loopy, genius father and impatient, unforgiving son and Nimoy... well, enough said. The latter easily makes up for the former. Production design is impeccable giving Fringe a visual tightness and disconcerting sense of unease that elevates the show far beyond its shaky foundations.

Produced by David Simon and Ed Burns (The Wire) and based on the writings of Rolling Stone journalist Evan Wright (who was embedded with the US Marines as they rolled through Baghdad in the early stages of Iraq v 2.0), Generation Kill is an intense and frustrating journey displaying all the hallmarks of a Simon/Burns joint. There is no exposition - you're dropped right into the middle of the action with exposition; it's confusing - characters are initially hard to pin down especially in 100 pounds of khaki Kevlar protection and the dialogue is often impenetrable - see point one and two as well as a whole new level of military-speak that easily rivals The Wire's arcane scripting. But make no mistake - this isn't The Wire in the sand. It's an entirely different and yet somehow familiar and equal beast.

Despite the subject matter, Generation Kill isn't a chest-beating shoot-em-up USA! USA! war-is-hell type story. But nor is it a Chomsky-esque antiwar diatribe (that cut shot of a grunt reading Chomsky was quite funny, though). It's a relatively simple, sometimes absurdly placid, document of a bunch of highly trained, unequally educated, bored Marines driving across hostile terrain in a desperate search for a mission. Actual warfare is seen mainly in the hazy distance. When they eventually find their way into combat - it's confusing and nerve jangling.

This seven part mini-series could have been derailed if Wright's character played as the viewer's voice - clarifying the complex administrative machinations onscreen for the laggards at home. Fortunately, he is mostly a silent observer leaving all the work to us. Generation Kill is more about hierarchical incompetence than fighting wars, and the outright unreliability of middle management and chain of command. It is a story about grunts and how they see their world -ugly, reactionary, angry but nuanced and never condescending. Compelling storytelling and essential viewing.

Letting the hype pass me by, I approached the 'difficult third album' by these once precocious teenagers with no barrow to push. But the Josh Homme produced Humbug has problems. Firstly, it sounds like the Arctic Monkeys through the Homme filter -slinky, high pitched, squeak-slide and background wobble... a sound so recognisable it's rapidly turning into cliché. Here it doesn't gel or fit. Crying Lightning is a simple tune lost with extraneous sonic waffle. My Propeller finds the right balance of atmospherics and propulsion and yet it still doesn't feel right. Pretty Visitors is practically a Songs for the Deaf throw away. Pathetic. Turner is an ambitious songwriter but these tracks all feel like co-writes with their heavy handed producer. Turner needs to wrest control back from the ginger.

You want shouty, jagged, sweat-soaked, jaw clenching, engorged vein, melodic power rock? And you also like pithy agit prop lyrics all about the system and that sort of stuff? Well put down your Nickleback bootlegs and Third Eye Blind re-issues because Future of the Left are back with album number B. Future Of The Left are the cult band di rigueur. Rising from the ashes of McKlusky and Jawback they make exactly the sort of music you'd expect from a trio of well read, jumped up Welshmen. They represent the uncompromising, piquant ying to Super Furry Animal's fruity strawberry fuzz yang. As one of the best tracks - Land Of My Formers - exclaims "They only get under your skin if you let them". And they do.

The first time Elvis Costello played Canberra in 1982 he was smack bang in the middle of one of the most remarkably productive periods of the post-punk/new wave era. With occasional backing band the Attractions, Costello had already delivered at least five bona fide classics in the space of five years - My Aim Is True, Get Happy, Armed Forces, This Year's Model and Trust. It really puts to shame the current crop of artists who struggle to complete one halfway decent album every couple of years. "Yeah, absolutely," agrees Costello. "But you know I have never really understood why it took so long for people to record albums. This one [Secret, Profane and Sugarcane] was done in three days. And looking back our first one was done in 24 hours. One of the later albums - all up it took us three weeks in the studio to finish. Which at the time must have felt like an epic."

To provide a little context the late '70s are synonymous with bloated themed and concept double/triple albums, laser-bedazzled stage shows, the real emergence of AOR and the shared enemy - prog rock, so three weeks in the studio would hardly be considered a vacation. "Back then it wasn't unusual to take three days to get drum sounds right," jokes Costello. "I think the main problem came about because some of the artists had nothing to go in with. They had none of the songs finished and would spend the majority of their time in the studio just wasting everybody else's time and getting nothing done. It was different with us. We had everything ready to go as soon as we hit the studio. We had been playing the songs on stage for quite some time before we went in so really the process of recording and making albums was quite quick. And besides - that's not the way I work. I have to have the songs ready to go."

You can tell. Those albums firmly established Costello as a songwriter who could swing effortlessly between restrained aggression and soulful pop, and one who would go on to tackle pretty much every genre on offer - from straight country and western (Almost Blue) to classical composition (Il Sogno), pop-classical experimentation with the Brodsky Quartet through to highly praised collaborations with Burt Bacharach. There's hardly an ounce of fat on any of Costello's albums in the late '70s and despite their vintage sound just as urgent and essential now as they were when punk was exploding all round him.

But Costello never really fell for punk or the then fashionable psychedelic rock of his youth, gravitating towards the more pub-rock classicists such as Lee Dorsey and the loose grouping that formed around Nick Lowe (who produced all of that first batch of '70s albums) and Dave Edmunds, Rockpile. It was deeply uncool at the time - but somehow, Costello twisted it to his will and remade it in his image.

Indeed, that is one of the hallmarks of his career - regular and wholesale reinvention of sound and image. I suggest his current work falls neatly under the alt-country tag, a more homespun approach where you can hear the creak of the wooden floor, but Costello's not too sure about that "Well, homespun - I don't know what exactly that is meant to mean. Like I said before, the record was recorded quickly and we did use technology to our advantage but it's still quite direct but it's never obvious or heavy. The way it was recorded you can hear us lean into the microphone and we had all sorts of different instrumentation. Mandolins, fiddles and so on. You know they refer to mandolins as old time instruments but I never really understood that - we're playing them now aren't we?" Yikes - it feels like I am the straight man on a talk show with this sort of riffing. But Costello is a notorious raconteur, penning columns in Vanity Fair, guest hosting David Letterman's Late Night show in 2003 and even getting his own show, Spectacle: Elvis Costello with ..., that aired locally on the ABC earlier this year. He's a man at ease with his image and songbook, not afraid to poke fun at himself or drastically reinterpret songs as the mood fits.

As you read this Costello is finishing up a tour of America with his 'Sugarcane Band.' "We've got seven great players on stage every night. It's fantastic. The songs take on a form of their own with each show, they grow...they change like there's a connection with the mood of the crowd. So every night is different." A more scaled back version will appear for the forthcoming run of Australian shows. It will just be Costello on stage sans band. "I will be pulling songs out of my catalogue that I haven't done for years. But I will be looking at them again in a different way. It's interesting - when I go back and look at the songbook, one song leads to another and then another. I find songs I haven't done in ages, had forgotten about and it feels good to play them again." But it's not all stardust memories. "There are some new songs in the shows for Australia ready to go and by the time I get down there will be even more." No doubt he will have applied the blowtorch and reworked them a couple of times by the time he makes it to Canberra.

Elvis will play the Royal Theatre on Wednesday October 14. Tickets through Ticketek. 

This kid's alright, eh. Little bit extravagant, little bit of an attention seeker, sets his sight high, not afraid of the sitar. You know with all the dour, faceless, tepid singer/songwriters around, Wolf deserves thumb slaps for at least having a personality. It's the meat in the pie. Although I doubt he's ever eaten one. Meat pie, that is. Mores' the pity because meat pies are thoroughly enjoyable, especially the fancy gourmet ones. The Bachelor is an ambitious, pastoral romantic Celtic folk record. Some would call it poetic but that's usually shorthand for "I don't get it - but I know I should like it". The excursions into Celt-lectro are unfortunate and blight the record but Wolf does have a unique ability to make you want more. Pies, that is.

Sunday night was a little more surreal for me than usual. On the one hand I was knocking off a delicious prawn salad as SUZI QUATRO and her unreconstructed rock mullet bombarded me with vocal coaching advice on a certain televised national singing competition. From this, I learnt to trust myself on stage more. Great advice I think we can all work with. Then on the other hand, minutes later I was listening back over my conversation with Quatro and hearing a legendary Detroit rocker discussing one of the most tumultuous times in American music, in one of the most incendiary parts of North America - the late 1960s in Michigan.

Iggy was slashing the shit out of chest and shocking audiences nightly and militant rock insurgents MC5 were terrifying everyone who came into earshot, particularly with their infamous eight hour set preceding the violent 1968 Democratic National Convention. There was more than a riot going on and Quatro was up to her neck in it. "We were part of that - that's how we all grew up," she recalls. "All the bands in Detroit were a combination of the Motown influence plus the white rock influence. It was a great city to grow up in, musically. We were right in the midst of it."

The United States was fraying at the seams - the combination of an unpopular war, political assassinations and truncheons falling down indiscriminately on the skulls of the youth was tearing the country apart - so it's not surprising that playing the hardest, dirtiest rock you possibly could was the natural outlet, as Quatro explains whilst prepping for one of her regular Australian tours this September. "We just went out and played music but there was a feeling that came out of Detroit that was like a desperate energy and living in the fast lane. That was the feeling you got from Detroit rock. We all went to the same gigs - we had the same element in most of us."

That element for Suzi Quatro is the classic North American rock and pop songwriter. Citing a wide range of influences from Elvis Presley, Dory Previn, Wayne Newtown and Don McLean she has had an obvious influence in bands like the Joan Jett-fronted Runaways (who were more contemporaries in reality) and The Donnas more recently. And is it possible perhaps that Kim Gordon would never have picked up the four string if Quatro hadn't have laid the groundwork back in the '60s with glam pop hits like Can the Can and Devil Gate Drive. We will never know and science is unable to tell us with any degree of confidence. Unless someone asks Kim Gordon that is. Take that science.

You can catch Quatro at the Royal Theatre on Saturday September 26. Tickets through Ticketek.

Like Roxy Music, Rolling Stones, Devo, Talking Heads and Les Savy Fav, 2009 ARIA Hall of Famers MENTAL AS ANYTHING got their start in art school. Forming in the mid 1970s, it was a handy distraction from class at the time. But then something happened.

In the intervening 30-plus years the band wormed their way into the consciousness of the nation with a string of instantly recognisable songs (Too Many Times, If You Leave Me, Sprit Got Lost, The Nips Are Getting Bigger) and for that co-frontman Greedy Smith blames the wireless. "We came from a period where the only time you heard rock music was on radio stations and a few rock music shows," he explains. "But now we're reaping the benefits because when radio stations do surveys about songs their listeners want to hear, they recognise all of our stuff so we get played quite a bit." Bit like the Stockholm Syndrome then. Well, not quite. "The thing is - a lot of Australian bands from the '90s get far less radio play than we do but have probably sold a lot more records then we did. But we really managed to imprint on people's heads at that stage." OK, so it's actually more path dependence then. Whatever the theory - it seems to be working as the band continues to play over 100 shows each year. As for all those singles, well "we used to put out a single every two or three months!" Is it any wonder they're everywhere then?

Yet for a band who have had to deal with their fair share of knockers and naysayers over the years, primarily focussing on their perceived relaxed attitude, the band never planned 'wackiness' as such. It was more a function of necessity. "When we went to the US we had all these record company executives asking us 'who do you get to do your styling?' and we'd sort of jokingly reply 'St Vincent De Paul.' We just got everything from the op shop so we weren't consciously trying to have a look. It was just that the half-fitting, lairy clothes were the ones we could afford. Geez, those Americans took everything so seriously. We were just oblivious to it."

Oblivious or not, a cursory glance at the Mental's discography reveals a comfort and prowess for songwriting that's often overlooked. An incredible range of influences bubble to the surface - reggae, rockabilly, new-wave, punk-pop and country - but they don't really crowd each other out or overpower the mix. They make it look deceptively simple, and for that reason alone Mental As Anything are one of the few bands that transcend their history and survive without tacky re-invention. Deep down - I think they do take what they do quite seriously.

Mental As Anything play the National Capital Craft Beer Festival on Saturday September 26. Tickets through Moshtix.

Not entirely sure whether to blame Rufus, Sufjan or Antony, but someone has to take responsibility for the propagation of highly-affected, fussily arranged, Venus fly trap torch songs. The sort that tricks you into thinking it's more than it really is. Jenny Wilson has an inclination to favour technique and artifice over substance. Take for example We Had Everything - an attention grabbing song, held together by a genuinely interesting hook and bold melody, it displays a restraint and simplicity lacking elsewhere - only to throw it all away with an unnecessary coda diminishing all that came before. Hardships! seems designed to appeal to the all-knowing, insider-y, hip, bon vivant demographic. All up - it's a bit of a chore.

As an insufferable music snob I take great pleasure in liking things that other people find difficult or outrightly despise. I also turn on bands once they start getting mainstream reviews or attention. I don't listen to music on the radio and refuse to wear denim. I find it impossible to tell the difference between fact and fiction and almost every day is a never-ending stream of pithy, banal observations delivered to no-one in particular. Back in the day, Steely Dan were my band but they confused me somewhat - I didn't know if they were taking pot shots at me or giving me coded messages regarding my superbness. Whatever, their guitar solos killed. Tortoise are my corduroy fantasy but with no complicated wordplay. 'Post-rock' according to my milkman, like I knew what the hell he was talking about. It's all hi-falutin rhythmical sharp edges, synths, blizzard syncopation and un-rusted beats bridging the gap between 1970s Eastern European advertisement jingles and Canadian prog rockers Rush. Beacons of Ancestorship is therefore, tops.

Catchphrase comedy is a capricious beast. It's a fine line between playing to your audience and lazy repetition. As an audience we love being in on the joke, waiting patiently through the setup for the punch-line. We know exactly how it's going to end, but we still react uproariously like upon hearing that glorious assembly of words we've heard a thousand times before. Sounds vaguely like communism to me. If lucky, your witticism will enter the lexicon and echo through schoolyards and cubicles the nation over. And, if that were the measurement of success, David Walliams and Matt Lucas are solid gold comedy giants. However, it's not - and they resolutely are not.

Little Britain USA (and its antecedent Little Britain) is a collection of unendearing, fatuous non-sequiturs strung out over a very slim concept of gross-out sketch comedy played for the lowest common denominator. It has proven to be a very successful formula, with sell-out arena shows, Sunday evening puff pieces and celebrity hook-ups. But beyond Daffyd being the only gay in the village, fake vomit, fat suits and the computer still saying no, there's no real core to this duo's output; not the awkward heart of David Brent, the surreal menace of Papa Lazarou or the blithering ignorance of Alan Partridge. Comedy works when there is reason to watch, committing yourself to fanciful set ups or holding the mirror up to our own internal ugliness. But Walliams and Lucas are incapable of managing the risk.

For this US jaunt of Little Britain there are some concessions for the local audience but nothing that corrects the imbalance of a show that has outstayed its welcome by a wide margin. Which is the approximate length I will continue to avoid it by. Fans, of course, will absolutely love it. I guess that's the point.

Les Paul was responsible for one of the most instantly recognisable articles in the annals of rock. The Gibson Les Paul is the object d'art that prompts salivation in wannabe rock star saddos and delivers salvation for actual rock stars; a hulking lump of wood that delivers such tone, sustain and sheer grunt that it's impossible to consider the birth of rock and its many schisms without it. Along with Leo Fender's namesake it defines the look, feel, sound and soul of late 20th century music transgressing genres, tastes and demographics. Which makes it all the more remarkable how much of a missed opportunity this documentary represents.

Les Paul was not only a six-stringed technical virtuoso but also one of the greatest innovators of recording technology - inventing multi-tracking, phasing, overdubbing and delay to name a goddamn important few. Primarily a country player early on, the restless and inquisitive Paul quickly added jazz to his repertoire before moving onto backing Bing Crosby and Top 40 success with his wife, Mary Ford. All reasonably interesting and necessary exposition-wise, it seems the filmmakers either willingly or by force diminished his role in developing the solid body electric guitar by barely touching the Gibson Les Paul element of his life. Maybe the idea was to redress the balance, to remind us there was a vastly talented and driven man behind "the log," as he called it.

On that count, Chasing Sound works. It's just there is way more to the story that should be told. In its absence hit the local music shop, strap on the most expensive guitar you can find - it'll be a Les Paul - and grind an E major chord in honour of the legend.

When not creating unchallenging and acceptably quirky hit sitcoms (Two And A Half Men, Dharma & Greg, Cybil) Chuck Lorre also writes hit songs for Debbie Harry; namely the late ‘80s disco/pop anthem French Kissin’ in the USA. True story. He also wrote the soundtrack for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie which won him a bunch of pointy awards. Again, true story but I digress.

The Big Bang Theory is the latest Lorre vehicle and whilst he hasn’t exactly extended himself very far, it’s undoubtedly one the highlights of his canon thus far. TBBT is your standard multi-camera, live studio, scripted comedy that follows the lives of a group of hyper intelligent geek friends as they struggle with females, ladies and anything girl-related. Hardly an innovative concept and one could justifiably question the need for Revenge of the Nerds: The Facebook Years yet somehow, despite these handicaps, it works. The answer lies predominately in the casting and ensemble chemistry of the key characters; Johnny Galecki (Roseanne) as Leonard Hofstadter and Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper. The leads bounce tremendously well off each other, the latter deserving of praise for bringing a degree of pathos to what is essentially pro-forma “well, this is awkward” scripting.

From what I understand, there were significant problems with the pilot and the series sat in development hell for a while, something obvious in the wobbly early episodes. By the end of its first season The Big Bang Theory settled significantly and became an enjoyable, worthwhile diversion. Its nominal big brother and stable mate (Two And a Half Men) may get all the ratings but this one deserves the attention.

There are a couple of ways to attack this gargantuan 18 hour, 43 episode series. Firstly, stock up on beer nuts and take it all in one sitting. You’ll probably need a real therapist before reaching the ninth and final disc – but what is art if not suffering. Or you could tackle it as intended – watch an episode/session per day. That way, Dr Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) and his rotating cast of misfits and malcontents will slowly and insidiously seep into your consciousness. The latter is recommended.

In Treatment is a relentless dissection of libido, narcissism, relationships, integrity and honesty. Weston is a middle aged, on-edge psychotherapist stuck in a rut rarely carving any joy out of his career and either lusting after his patients or struggling to control the urge to doze off in boredom. To combat this, he turns to his own therapist, Gina (Dianne Weist) and the irony appears lost on the self-obsessed Weston; in Gina the roles are totally reversed but he struggles to acknowledge the folly of his own middle-aged, text book neurosis.

In Treatment is slow-burning and intense. Another in the long line of intelligent shows that demand attention and commitment (The Wire et al), it’s designed to be taken sparingly and in a controlled environment – because that’s really what the show is about: control – how it is enforced, manipulated and lost. Hosannas to Byrne as Dr Weston, Melissa George as the predatory Laura, Blair Underwood (LA Law) as an emotionally crippled Marine and the ever dependable Michelle Forbes (Battlestar Galactica, True Blood) as Weston’s marginalised wife. In Treatment is true appointment televisionn.

Tinted Windows are the supergroup nobody even requested. Tinted Windows is the album that proves no end of indie cred (James Iha) and power pop participation (Adam Schlesinger & Bun E. Carlos) can save Taylor Hanson from toiling away in well-coiffured obscurity. Songs crackle past in bright, shinny, “wooh-ooh-ooh” fashion. Choruses rise and fall like cheap soufflés. Not exactly bad or offensive this unholy marriage of WTF to major chords is clearly designed to be consumed as disposable, unadulterated sugar rock pop. That being the case I shall gladly oblige and forget about it by next Thursday.

In the late ‘70s the Australian music scene was dominated by confrontation, blood, piss, beer, fleeing Mr Plod and dodging empty bottles in flight. The kids were angry. As Steve Lucas, guitarist with reformed Australian primal rockers X, explains. “People would throw chairs through windows, destroy pubs. They’d climb up the drainpipes to get in. They’d have riot buses and paddy wagons turn up and were literally grabbing people and tossing them in.”

That’s no sense pride in Lucas’ voice, more bemusement that things had gotten so bad and “I’m not encouraging anyone to do that anymore but it’s different times. Back then that subculture was a very real, living breathing thing. The music industry was very stitched up; if you didn’t play the game you were outlawed. And we were musical outlaws. We’d hit and run at venues and leave people damaged and bleeding behind. That’s not what we set out to do but that’s how it happened.”

Indeed, X had a fearsome reputation. The band – the late Ian Rilen (bass), Cathy Green (drums) and Lucas – tore a swathe through Melbourne and Sydney for around a decade between the mid-‘70s and ‘80s releasing two highly lauded albums X-Aspirations and At Home with You, both recently re-released as part of Aztec Music’s excellent and exhaustive reissue series.

That era of Australian music receives kinder treatment as each year passes – maybe because the times were easier, less complicated or confusing. Nowadays we face such a multiplicity of options before we even leave the door, it’s no wonder some people reminisce wistfully, as Lucas agrees. “It sounds so geriatric… ‘You just don’t understand what it was like at the time,’ but it’s true. People were a lot more militant in their beliefs and expectations. There were no VCRs, let alone DVDs, let alone internet and so when the TV went off people went out to pubs and watched live music til 3 in the morning. We’d go from gig to gig playing full houses watching people destroy themselves and have a fair whack at destroying ourselves along with them.”

But with so much choice on offer, X’s brand of aggressive clarity might just be the antidote to our complacent times. “Well I think it’s very timely that X have come around again,” says Lucas, “because we’re needed now more than ever to express an alternate point of view. And we’re not shoegazing introspective wankers. We are up there with a message… Don’t take anything for fucking granted! It’s not wrong to question anything. If I can get a young kid to an X gig and get them to question the way they do something – then it’s worth doing the show, worth re-releasing the record.”

So you’re performing a public service then? “Absolutely. I should be put on the Honours List – Order of Australia for Keeping It Fucking Real.”

You heard the man! X will be keeping it real at the Basement on Thursday August 13.

If you like Air but can't quite handle the highly dependable clatter of Super Furry Animals, then Super Moth Black Rainbow could be your 19th favourite band. There's an easy-going, vocoded laziness wafting across this album that could be uncharitably compared to a nauseating chill out compilation CD but the Moths pull up just on the right side of predictability. Just. Iron Lemonade teases with an ever-present threat to explode and Gold Splatter would be more at home on DJ Shadow's Diminishing Returns psychedelic mix tape. But in the end Eating Us sounds happy enough to merely exist. Apparently that's sufficient these days.

Out of nowhere and taking almost everyone by surprise, True Blood has become the breakout hit HBO have been pining for since Tony Soprano whimpered off our screens. Season Two, which has just started in the US, is regularly pulling in over 10 million viewers per episode and this first instalment DVD is moving units at a rate equalling the commercial/creative nexus that was The Sopranos. Timing surely has much to do with it. Look around the multiplex and the mega bookstore and you'll find all the evidence you need - fangs are back, big time.

But with its soupy Southern setting and languid air of deviant sex, hillbilly histrionics and extreme violence, True Blood is more Flannery O'Connor than Stephanie Meyer. Series creator Alan Ball (Six Feet Under) can take most of the credit for this. A native Southerner, Ball explicitly wanted to avoid the Southern clichés - rednecks, the confederate flag, "yee-haw!" etc. Instead, the focus in True Blood is character development and multi-layered storytelling that largely wears its metaphors explicitly on its sleeve, albeit with a sly wink and devilish guffaw. In this alternate reality, humans live side by side with the fanged ones. But it seems not everyone is entirely happy with vampires in their midst - despite the vampire 'race' becoming a semi-accepted section of mainstream society after those wily Japanese scientists developed synthetic blood, thereby allowing all the vamps to live upstairs in relative harmony.

Of course the Deep South has a spectacularly mixed history, so to speak, with outsiders and you figure out pretty quickly where the writers are heading. But there's much more. True Blood is a sumptuous treat on every level with Anna Paquin, as the all-hearing jailbait Sookie Stackhouse, deserving of specific praise. Alan Ball describes True Blood as popcorn TV which is something of a disservice, because underneath it all is a noir-ish drama/thriller with comedy and social satire weaving through it with effortless grace.

Stovepipe mannequins The Horrors have, out of nowhere, released one of the best albums of the year. Not entirely original or inventive Primary Colours is a sonic eardrum buzz belonging somewhere between Psychedelic Furs in 1984 and Jesus and Mary Chain in 1986. Very specific, but also very delicious. Lots of reverb, cavernous drum echo, manicured distortion and plenty of long black fringes. Who knows - they might suffer the same indignity as Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and be a fuzzy blip on the radar. But if so, then we should at least thank them for the glorious sweaty leather rockers of Mirror's Image and Who Can Say and for having the balls to release an eight minute single - Sea Within A Sea. Bravo.

I'm all for Kiefer Sutherland having a career outside of the small screen straightjacket of 24, but for the sake of differentiation it might be a good idea if he didn't accept roles casting him as troubled ex-cops sneaking around dark, empty buildings - gun in hand, chasing noises in the night. Because all I could think of was Jack Bauer. And how the hapless Ben Carson wasn't a slice on Jack Bauer. Maybe a stuffy period drama or a vampire tit-comedy would reboot our idea of who Kiefer Sutherland is. My unfortunate fantasies aside, Mirrors reads like just another J-Horror flick with the usual supernatural spin - in this case spirits lurking behind mirrors. And for the most part, this is largely how it crawls along.

But underneath is a fine thriller gasping to get out; touching on issues of identity, philosophy and spooky children maladministered by the state, naturally. Our anti-hero, Carson, is a suspended detective and in an effort to prove responsibility to his estranged family he finds work as a security guard in a disused building. Right, now that's the first problem - ain't no disused building ever been problem-free.

Soon enough strange things start happening in the old department store that in fact was originally a psychiatric hospital long beforehand. Never saw that one coming did you? The previous security guard died in mysterious circumstances... oh, god it's so unbelievably rote. Carson slowly begins to unravel the malevolent back story of the fiendish apparitions - at great cost to his family and self. Mirrors are furiously painted, blood is spilt, looks are quizzical and credulity is tested.

Only rarely does the film Mirrors want to be rise to the surface and, for those who make the effort, the genuinely unsettling final scene is exactly what this film should have been. Too bad French new wave horror director Alexandre Aja failed to find the right tone for the remaining 108 minutes.

Despite appearances and a back catalogue suggesting otherwise, Doves are a nimble, hard and funky band. Live, they frequently encore with the monstrous, dance/rock end of the world rave up Space Face/Crunch dating back to their Sub Sub days. Makes sense really. The band not only hails from Manchester but they also met at the iconic Hacienda nightclub in the ‘80s, which at the time was the hedonistic centre of the music universe. Years passed by and the band reinvented as maudlin alt-rockers mirroring the prevailing mood in Britain – all millennial anxieties and jaw-gnashing post Brit-pop comedown. Through it all, there was something more to Doves. Songs laden with inverting arpeggios one minute would disappear quietly the next
only to reappear as crunchy, arena thumpers. On Kingdom of Rust the band has struck a fine balance between history and forward momentum. House of Mirrors and Winter Hill are instant Doves classics, but it’s the white boy funk of Compulsion and skronk-dub of 10:03 that you finally hear a band letting all the elements fall emphatically, gloriously into place.

There’s much to be said about sci-fi films of the ’50s and ’60s. Yes, the giant lizards were hammy and unterrifying but the post war period represented a time when people grappled with the ramifications of victory/loss; living with new fears – mutually assured destruction, creeping communism, duck-and-cover, Cold War. The terror of the tank was replaced with a psychological horror far more insidious. It was the stuff of metaphor heaven and it fed scriptwriters for generations to come. Around 57 years after first release The Day the Earth Stood Still has been given a coat of paint, spruced up for the CGI generation and launched on an unsuspecting and indifferent public. Keanu Reeves plays the alien, earnestly mugging his way through this shocker with all the charm and charisma of a used battery. His crib notes probably said “stoic” but all I saw was “imminent constipation”. He’s not exactly helped by Jayden Smith playing the obligatory opinionated sprog. It’d be cruel to get stuck into a kid, but he’s thoroughly disagreeable and will struggle to reach the low heights of his dad, Will, on this evidence. Jennifer Connelly, John Cleese and a giant orb emit low range energies that struggle to maintain attention. The plot is simple – alien comes to earth to collect a show bag full of animals that are innocents in the destructive nature of man, alien advises humanity it is doomed and are bad, alien begins to blow up world – yet they still manage to stuff it up. In this post-millennial update you can practically hear global warming and allegory in the background but maybe the producers got scared and played it safe. So, in its place is a directionless mess – no plot thrust, nil character development, cod dialogue and a giant robot that would be more suitable as an oversized garden gnome.

Another in the long line of shows ignored by Australian programmers, Chuck was one of the highlights of the 2007 new release calendar and also one of the many victims of the Writers Strike in the same year that truncated seasons, split them in half and generally interrupted the flow of every show on TV. A few recovered easily (The Office and 30 Rock remained safe bets) but for the newer ones like Chuck, Reaper and Pushing Daisies the task to retain viewers in an already vicious market was tough. Fortunately Chuck well and truly hit the ground running. A deft mix of slapstick, mundane office life gaggery, spy caper, espionage drama, twenty-something angst – it almost seemed too clever and chaotic for its own good. The premise required an extraordinary leap of faith – our unwitting/unwilling hero Charles “Chuck” Bartowksi (Zachary Levi) through the magic of the internet, and trickery of his malevolent ex-best friend/rogue CIA agent, has become a fountain of Government secrets. Downloaded into his brain, or something, it activates itself when he gets close to the scene of a potential crime. The Fed’s want him but Chuck is happy enough muddling along as a computer expert at the local suburban big barn electronics warehouse. Chuck eventually relents and becomes part time spy. It could be a hackneyed bore but with well written minor characters and perfectly pitched plot development Chuck exhibits a depth lacking in most network dramedies. Think Burn Notice via Judd Apatow. In the final third of this debut season something intangible happens; everything falls into place and it transforms suddenly from an already great show to outstanding television. A show ready-made for cultdom.

You may have seen him late afternoon on a side stage at the travelling heatstroke carnival that is the Big Day Out, shimmying and shaking, or maybe prancing and pouting in glorious white at one of the smaller stages at Homebake a few months ago. Either way, Ron Peno, lead singer of DIED PRETTY was clearly having a ball. And deservedly so. January capped off an incredible 12 months for the recently reformed inner-city indie stalwarts. In addition to playing two of the more notable festivals on the local circuit, Died Pretty collected a Hall of Fame nod from The Age and started the ball rolling with a Don’t Look Back tour of their beloved 1992 album Doughboy Hollow.

Looking back, appropriately enough, Peno is wistful about the concerts and album itself. “We didn’t except much out of that and had no desire to reform again, basically. It wasn’t an appealing idea to Brett (Myers, guitarist and co-songwriter), but he was approached to do the Don’t Look Back series of shows and it sounded like quite a good idea. What appealed to me was the concept of doing an album from start to finish and Doughboy Hollow is quite a well liked album - the memories I had of writing and recording were all very happy memories, positive and nice. It wasn’t anything nightmarish.”

Despite the 16 years apart, it all fell together quite easily. “We booked for some rehearsals but we cancelled a few because we didn’t think we needed to do any more!” Confident buggers. Of my suggestion that promoters in Europe get on the phone and entice them back to a part of the world that occasionally treated the band better than their homeland, Peno is sceptical, but ultimately hopeful when pushed. “It was good to relive. But not for too long. Nothing worse than bands reforming every five minutes - it’s really boring!” Take note, Beasts of Bourbon.

The Don’t Look Back shows were more than just a chance to blow the cobwebs out for one last valedictory romp around the country in front of crusty old fans yearning for a blast from the good old days. So successfully were they that the organisers of Homebake came knocking at their door for a slot in December. Then not long after, they got another call from the Big Day Out people. “Wonderful!” exclaims Peno, sounding genuinely surprised with the upsurge in attention and festival requests they have been fielding.

But this isn’t some tragic long-lost-band-getting-their-due type thing. Died Pretty played at the very first all-Sydney affair BDO in the early ‘90s, just as Doughboy Hollow was saturating airwaves and Discmans the nation over. “Yeah… it’s pretty amazing. We were riding a bit of a peak; we were one of the ‘bigger’ indie bands at the time. It worked well for us… and to be on a bill with Nirvana on it!”
Nirvana notwithstanding, they have encountered some unusual scheduling over the years, such as being sandwiched between End of Fashion and Gabriella Cilmi at Homebake last December “It was weird. But I really enjoyed her. I watched her whole performance and I thought she was great.”

According to Peno, the admiration was mutual “I was told she was grooving to us at the side of the stage, so I thought I’d return the favour.” And critics of Cilmi’s show-cancelling history and rather ‘honest’ award show antics be dammed, she has a fan in the leader of a cult ‘80s indie vintage act. “Ah gawd, more power to her. She’s had a number one hit. I’d love to have a number one song!” Mind you, that’s as far as the love spread. “As soon as the crowd heard that song – they left,” Peno confirms.
On a similar note, Died Pretty are themselves well versed in the major record company machine. In the giddy early days of Alternative Nation they were offered a Sony deal and, to the surprise and chagrin of many, took it. But Peno remains justifiably unrepentant. “There came a point where we thought we may not get this chance again, so why not just give it a shot. If we fail - fine. If we don’t - even better! We knew what we were doing amongst the cries of ‘sell out’ and ‘you’ve gone commercial.’ Well, no. Not really.” And even though the buzz died rather too rapidly after the first blood of that deal was released (Trace), the era was free of nefarious pony-tailed-record executive meddling. “We had a really great time, they were really good. They couldn’t do enough for us. We were the ones who were demanding not to appear on certain TV shows and saying ‘We won’t play there.’ We were the ones being a bit devilish.”

Which brings us to the current day. Aztec Music have just released a remastered and expanded package of their stunning, moody and unarguable classic debut Free Dirt. “It’s great that someone has the goodness and brains to re-release it,” Peno offers, somewhat humbly. Indeed, there was voluble consternation in some quarters that Free Dirt was overlooked for the Don’t Look Back concerts last. A moot point for sure, but emblematic of the tenderness that many treat that record with - and there’s no doubt the re-release is an essential addition to complete any indie/OZ/garage/VU-inspired/paisley underground/whatever collection. Such were genres Died Pretty messed with.

And Peno continues to mess around. “I’ve got other irons in the fire other than Died Pretty. We’re never going to write any more Died Pretty songs, but we’ve written other songs for other projects.” Peno’s referring specifically to Noise and Other Voices, an electronic influenced project formed with Myers a few years back that retouched a bunch of unrecorded Died Pretty tracks, and his other more country-esque partnership with Kim Salmon, Darling Downs, on hiatus for the time being whilst Salmon grapples with a Surrealists record. And if that wasn’t enough, Myers has already notified Peno of a batch of songs floating around in the baroque pop vein à la John Cale circa Paris 1919. “Organic, lots of strings, piano, acoustic guitars. I’m really looking forward to that.” As we all are.

At a time when many are reminiscing about Died Pretty, Peno and Myers have effectively called stumps on the band. Yet they remain individually restless and creatively unstoppable. The re-released Free Dirt is available through Aztec Music now.

Ryan Adams has copped his fair share of flak over the course of his career. Everything from his choice in female companions, self confessed destructive personal habits, crowd baiting antics, over expressive blogging, extreme work ethic matched with unrelenting cockiness …. pretty much anything he does attracts attention. Blame Adams for making it impossible to look the other way.

But there must be a reason that at around 10 albums into a solo career that has seen little radio attention outside the precocious early 2000’s he still manages to pack out the Enmore on a steamy Thursday evening in what must be one of the most overcrowded months in Sydney gig going memory. Within minutes of launching into When The Stars Go Blue from Heartbreaker it’s clear that Adams is in good form exhibiting a clarity in voice, strength of purpose and overall tolerance that has been absent in some of his more recent tours. For example, a troublesome guitar mix for most of the night resulted in a few cagey sideways glances amongst those in the crowd who have experienced the worst but rather than haranguing a random roadie or throwing the shits around, he laboured away without the slightest appearance of nuisance. In the old days, a walk off would have been probable under similar circumstances. He was clearly having fun. Engaging the audience in hammy, convivial chatter is not something we are accustomed to at his gigs, but there he was – cracking gags and batting off tiresome song requests like a Vegas pro. The occasional blasts of shredding metal riffing through the PA were odd, but playful.

Of course, any Ryan Adams show in this country is unfairly measured against his barnstorming shows in 2002, particularly the much heralded three hour marathon stint at the Metro. Mores the pity. Because Adams is a completely different beast in 2009. His detour through the Grateful Dead songbook still yields magnificent, transcendent jammy results (Let It Ride, Goodnight Rose, Peaceful Valley) and the much maligned Easy Tiger material plays much stronger on stage than record especially when Cardinals lock in and don’t get too fussy. But the older material aroused the biggest response and the inclusion of Oh My Sweet Carolina, Wonderwall, La Cienega, Rescue Blues and a bluesy, dusty low key version on New York, New York was more than enough to satiate. Actually it was highly unexpected. With Cobwebs over and done, Adams retreated from the stage at the family friendly time of 11pm and headed off for a pizza ignoring the showbiz encore ritual. Adams has announced these will be the last shows he plays with Cardinals and it’s a confident bet that in 10 years time we’ll be talking up this tour as another highlight in an already extraordinary career.

There really is no point trying to figure out the work of David Lynch. Those seeking to decipher plot, interpret character motivation or narrative structure and imagery are inevitably doomed to failure. Confused, wordy, undergraduate-styled failure. Indeed, the man himself has made every effort to dissuade academic dissection, claiming he himself has no idea what’s really going on in his films. So, they’re actually not full of hysterical and frustrating red herrings – they’re simply very unusual stories direct from the inside of the brain cavity of a mild-mannered, well-dressed Montana native. And as a noted exponent of transcendental meditation this is perfectly sensible. Most people find 120 minutes of Lynch pretty difficult going, so imagine their joy in this 5 disc set - 450 minutes of head groaning insanity via the feature-length debut Eraserhead, short films (old and new), behind the scenes footage, errant musings, Lynch at work in his studios and a helluva lot more. But to be fair there are large tracts of a penlight camera observing Mr David sitting at his desk from below in silence, so clearly there is some sort of plot for the hardcore fan. Eraserhead is every bit as unusual as the eerie synopsis would indicate; but more importantly it confirms the emergence of a talented, committed and singular vision. What becomes obvious through this collection, though, is that Lynch is no smoke and mirrors charlatan: he truly believes in what he is creating, and the amazing thing is he is creating art that references, emulates and evolves from a diverse bunch – Goya, Man Ray, Rockwell, Rothko, Dali. It’s pretty hard to pin him down and that’s the beauty of his output. Even his straightest story, the, err… Straight Story left people scratching their heads. Sadly not included on here is Lynch’s anti-iPhone rant. Although easy to locate, it should be committed to celluloid for prosperity. We live in brutal, ugly, strange times, so it’s no real surprise that most times Lynch is the one making most sense.

For many years I had written Boston Legal off as a fun, light hearted goofy romp that occasionally touched on real issues that mattered. In the mid 2000s it seemed hopelessly out of place with so many serious dramas around it – The Sopranos, The Wire et al and even comedy had progressed within the confines of the major network yoke with 30 Rock, The Office and so on slaying the multi-camera, fast edit, jump cut shows that David E. Kelly (Ally McBeal, The Practice) excelled in. On top of it all was the odd bromance between William Shatner as senior partner Denny Crane mincing every scene to a pulp and James Spader as the rambunctious Alan Shore. It was typical Monday night fodder, easy on the brain and rounded out with a seemingly endless supply of quirky and by-the-book zany characters.

Then something happened. I watched this all the way through in a couple of days. It’s fair to say I had severely misjudged Boston Legal. What Kelly has done with this show is apply the Trojan Horse to pretty much every cause on the socio-political map and dissect it with a simple brilliant conceit – the pro/con of the court room. Themes are vivid and broad, the Iraq war and abortion are common touchstones, yet one episode in particular is starkly prescient in that it encapsulates, nay predicts, the sub prime meltdown that has gone on to infect the world economy. It’s practically a Wall Street Journal op ed piece through the prism of screwball comedy. And it works. The instrument may seem blunt, but in the hands of actors like Shatner and the ever expanding Spader it’s positively infectious. But singling this episode out would do a disservice to pretty much everything else about the show, especially the addition of John Larroquette as the stern new partner bought in to tame the motley crew of alleged lawyers down. This addition alone displays such confident self awareness that few other shows rarely exhibit. I finished Season 4 eager to explore this show and shamelessly perusing for other available seasons. An immense, happy victory.

Towards the end of its run, the TV series that spawned this utterly unnecessary feature was farcical. A once moody, smart conspiracy nut’s daydream devolved to a sodden by-the-numbers FBI procedural show with a weirdo bent. A concept that relied so heavily on both pre-millennial and sexual tension between its two lead actors could only go so far once the former turned out to be a non-event fizzer and the latter manifested itself as an ill-advised “between the sheets” photo shoot for Rolling Stone magazine. An odious franchise of crime scene shows eventually filled the insatiable gap for the public’s thirst for twisted cop shows, but nothing in David Caruso’s resume goes any length to explaining why series creator Chris Carter pulled this corpse out of retirement for one last tour. From the opening strains of the once eerie theme music to the overblown and trite finale that finds our protagonists – Agent Mulder and Ex-Agent Scully – lip locking in a manner normally reserved for Mills & Boon serialisations, this is a glorified, movie length episode circa 1997.

And that’s where it belongs. Now, I fully understand the pull of fandom (as a Freaks and Geeks extremist I was orgasmically overjoyed when the series was rescued from oblivion and released a few years back) and I also recognise that old concepts can be built upon with great success (Battlestar Galactaca) but neither explains this instalment. It says nothing about the world in 2008 whatsoever; the more prominent threat of terror isn’t disseminated nor climate change attacked. Instead we get a psychic kiddie fiddling priest (Billy Conolly in splendid dramatic mode, hamming but not baking) who may or may not know the whereabouts of a missing FBI agent. Ho hum. Of course she turns out to be the victim of a rancid Mengel-esque cloning experiment run by Russians (natch) but that’s pretty much it. Action, running and Google searching ensues (bam!) and I was left wondering when Dolly the Sheep became such an important topic for 2008. On the upside Amanda Peet is extraordinary as usual, as the lead FBI person and the cinematography is gorgeous – frigid, white and brittle. A bit like a girl I once dated. Hi Beth! Otherwise it’s a confusing mess best left for fans of the show or the mid 1990s.

Back To You seemed like a bit of an anachronism when it first aired last year. It was a return to the simpler more predictable days of situation comedy; multiple cameras, live studio audience, back-and-forth banter suitable for the whole family, and Kelsey Grammar. Pretty basic primetime stuff. But at least it’s not Two and a Half Men – what the fuck accounts for the success of that show? Is it maybe in times of crisis and uncertainty we want familiarity, comfort and nothing too challenging? But then a black man has just become President of the United States, so forget that theory. Gawd, when did everything get so confusing? Anyway, Back To You sees Grammar trading barbs with Patricia Heaton (Everybody Loves Raymond) his co-anchor at a smallish town TV station. The pair’s drunken hook up at a party ten years previous led to a daughter he didn’t know existed and much of this first, and only, series revolves around the slow reveal and concealment of this fact.

Reasonable hilarity ensues, matching the growing slow boil and smoulder of chemistry between Grammar and Heaton. However the real treat lays elsewhere in Fred Willard’s absurdist non-sequiters, superb timing and peculiar reminisces, and even though he’s trawling similar ground as he did in Best In Show, Waiting For Guffman, A Mighty Wind et al, it’s still a freakish delight to catch him in full flight, as is normally the case here.

And fortunately it picks up immeasurably when Josh Gad as the nervous, inexperienced station manager and Ty Burrell as the awkward, stumbling field reporter end up becoming the worthwhile focus points of the show as the Grammar/Heaton/child storyline peters out to an obvious and laboured conclusion. It’s no 30 Rock, The Office or Arrested Development, but it doesn’t want to be. It may be an old design, but Back To You is broad, dependable and solid but a million times better than Two and a Half Men.

Burn Notice is an unusual and at times frustrating show. When drip fed on free-to-air television last year it was difficult to warm to; it seemed cheap and nasty, unsure what exactly it wanted to be – an espionage thriller? Smarmy, tongue in cheek comedy? Cool, controlled insider spy drama? In the end it turned out to be a nimble mix of all these and a whole lot better than anyone had reason to hope for. We have Bruce Campbell to thank for that. And Jeffrey Donovan. The latter, in the lead role, plays Michael Westen as a spy who suddenly without warning or reason finds himself ejected from his shady CIA-esque employer – blacklisted or ‘burned’. Calling on his out-to-pasture, flabby, insolent best friend Sam (Campbell) with contacts all over the spy industry, Westen spends equal time attempting to regain his identity and then uncover the source of his blacklisting, funding himself via mercenary jobs as they arise, usually involving the protection of foolish loose acquaintances who get in too deep for their own good. Through it all Westen’s voice-overs provide DIY advice for the budding spy – the best way to win fights, how to out manoeuvre mobsters and lose a tail, manufacture explosive devices from household equipment and everything in between. OK, you have every right to assume we’re eerily close to MacGyver territory here but this one manages to charm its way out of that abyss with taught writing and, of course, Donovan and Campbell. Gabrielle Anwar as Westen’s on/off girlfriend grows exceptionally more bearable once she drops the risible IRA back story and preposterous ‘Oirish’ accent, and if that’s the most heinous crime of the show, then that’s hardly a complaint. Burn Notice settles after some early staggers and when measured against the yardstick that all DVD TV show releases should be measured by, namely is it worth repeated viewings; then yes, it’s a complete screwball success. Burn Notice is released on December 3, 2008.

(Madman/SBS)
“How many times can we talk about the fucking relationships in the band?” shrieks the smirking, ever wily Lindy Morrison mere minutes into this instalment of the uneven SBS series exploring the classic canon of Oz albums. Well, another 50 minutes now that you ask, Lindy. Grab a drink maybe and enjoy raking over the ‘failed-relationship in bands’ coals yet again cos it’s a magnificent story. The Go-Betweens were one of the most idiosyncratic bands this nation has produced; an effete arch, supremely dapper artist convinces a reserved, movie loving, poetic type to form a band. With little more than a vague notion of playing songs together, Robert Forster and Grant McLennan became one of the great song writing duos of the modern rock/pop era, regardless of nationality. Later, wanting a female drummer Morrison was drafted into the band soon becoming a bedroom partner for Forster, then a few years later Amanda Brown completed the complicated relationship foursome on viola and oboe. And whilst it was Brown’s baroque pop bent that became one of the signature Go Between sounds, it was the art-rock leanings vs. classic easy, almost adult contemporary pop tension between Forster/McLennan that set them apart. 16 Lovers Lane was the first album to be recorded by the band in Australia after enduring some fruitless and painful years in London. This release is evident throughout the album, nowhere more so than the joyous Streets of Your Town.

The real delight on this DVD, other than the boisterous Morrison and articulately hilarious Forster, is the frank memories of and by bassist John Willstead, a disruptive part time member – from openly berating Morrison’s lack of skin skills through to acknowledging he had no idea who the band were before joining and then admitting he didn’t even like them after he found out. A hoot? You bloody well bet. Grant McLennan is obviously only present through extensive archival interviews and concert footage, but this ain’t no wake. It’s a thorough and exhilarating tale of every facet of Lovers Lane told with a wide eyed sense of possibility and bittersweet reflection. It’s also the best and most essential of the series thus far.

Martin has a problem. He thinks he’s a vampire, but he comes across as just a shy, confused and disillusioned teenager in the middle of a sexual awakening he doesn’t quite understand or know how to control. Rather than take the normal path of awkward, drunken Saturday night fumbles and constant rejection, he has a nasty habit of drugging, raping and killing strangers. Not recommended, kids. Maybe it has something to do with his overbearing, Colonel Sanders-esque, Nosferatu-obsessed uncle who takes every spare opportunity to remind poor Martin that he is infected with Satan. Or maybe he really is the 84 year old vampire he claims to be, it’d certainly explain the Salem witch-hunt inspired flashbacks he experiences on a regular basis. One of George A Romero’s lesser known films, Martin is one of the filmmaker’s favourites and it’s easy to see why. Whilst not as gonzo gruesome as any in his …Dead canon it’s one of those great films of the 1970s that uses the decaying core of the American Dream and piles on sub text after sub text. Indeed, this is standard Romero – he has a ceaseless fascination with Dystopia. Martin is basically the story of an introverted vigilante, a kid with a vague chip on his shoulder thrust into the baffling world of sexual politics. There are shades of cable-fave Dexter in Martin; once the blood stops flowing he loses his interest in sex, and his motivation to do anything. Violence is sex, and it’s the only thing that inspires him to keep on going. It doesn’t help that his first consensual experience, with a bored housewife, ends with her committing suicide; but hey, we all have our crosses to bear.

n the background, urban Pittsburgh crumbles, much like Martin himself, in the visually arresting way only ’70s filmmakers like Schrader, Scorsese, De Palma, Friedkin et al could capture. Romero belongs in that club, sadly he is often misunderstood as the Gore King despite the sturdy social criticism underpinning every one of his films. Extras include audio commentary with Romero and the formidable Tom Savini (Martin was his first collaboration with the odd-spectacled genius), short doco, trailers, unsettling TV spots and galleries.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds have followed a uniquely violent, poetic and ambivalent path. They don’t give ass about public or critical perception, and even within a clearly defined sound they can tinker considerably with the edges – like they did this year on Dig! Lazarus! Dig! – yet remain wholly within their own aesthetic. Such definition, perversely, crates freedom.

So in 1996 when the band recorded Where The Wild Roses Grow with Kylie Minogue, just starting to define herself outside the SAW factory pop persona, brows were furrowed and chins stroked. Kylie got instant indie cred and Cave… well I’m still not sure what he got, despite his earnest proclamations herein about Kylie being a ‘national treasure’. I’m not foolish enough to argue the point on that, but I can confidently assert that Minogue is one of the most inarticulate, incoherent and vague interview subjects about an artist she recorded a career turning song with. For god’s sake, surely she had time to prepare a reasonably well structured sentence or two about the writing process or her thoughts on Cave, as a performer or person. Instead we get a babbling brook of simplistic senselessness that not only fails to scratch the surface – it doesn’t even enter the same room. If this doco was planned as some sort of stealth attack of Kylie’s ability to function outside the three-minute radio song format, it succeeded marvellously.

Almost all of the major players are interviewed, Warren Ellis and Blixa Bargeld being notable absentees. Cave’s recollections are expansive and dramatic as would be expected – thought bubble moments of German tourist slayings a particular highlight. Roland S Howard, despite looking like a 60 year-old canteen lady manages to stay upright on his stool – which for anyone who saw his performance last year at his ANU Bar is quite a feat. Conway Savage is deliriously engaging and Mick Harvey’s role as the musical core and equilibrium of the band is reinforced, as if it were necessary.

Absorbing viewing, by and large, yet there are other problems. The doco dissolves into a quasi history of the band rather than the recording of the album, song by song deconstruction style. Worthy and who knows – that may have been the intention of the producers to differentiate from its more famous counterpart. But the result is disjointed and sadly unsatisfying, especially considering the source material on offer.

In case you don’t already know, The Onion is a satirical newspaper. In the previous millennium, in Web 1.0 days, it was considered to be an excellent office-based time waster and quite a good laugh; LOLS weren’t invented at that stage if memory serves. These days its star has dimmed significantly, although some of the earlier faux-headlines retain a distinct glory: World’s Largest Metaphor Hits Iceberg, Holy Shit: Man Walks On Fucking Moon and referring to Bill Clinton, President Feels Nation’s Pain, Breasts. In its heyday it was sharp as a nail and almost every story fused pop culture and current affairs references with satire, verve and astonishing wit. Then it went to shit. As if to prove the latter point we now have The Onion Movie, a disastrous attempt to cash in on the web/print version of the paper. Stuck in development hell for many years, somehow this project has managed to get itself released. It was probably costing more to store the film stock than release this turd. At some stage I guess it made sense to try and bring the humour of the paper to the screen although it’s a rather difficult task to transfer the headline Drugs Win Drugs War to the big screen with any degree of success.

Sometimes ideas are best left in the creative room. Charlie Brooker had a similar problem with his very funny website TV Go Home launching the somewhat funny sitcom Nathan Barley but succeeded barely, and even with the genius assistance of Chris Morris. And The Chaser, who pretty much owe their entire career to The Onion achieved a similar transformation by running headlines ticker-tape style across the bottom of the screen – but at least something else was happening around it, pitiful and stubbornly non-satirical as it was. The Onion Movie has a plot, I think, involving a venerable, respectable newsreader who becomes increasingly sickened at the direction his broadcaster is taking after a corporate takeover. That’s it. That’s the plot. His disgust is manifested by a couple of brisk walks down the corridor to berate the new corporate owners. Wrapped around that feebleness are sketches of Onion style headlines acted out and an incredibly awful and alarmingly out-of-date Britney parody. Seriously, there’s absolutely no film here. It’s a loose idea, rough draft at very best. If you need further convincing of the hideousness of The Onion Movie, consider that Steven Segal’s brief appearances in parody film trailers being the high point. Then shake your head in wonderment and horror.

You ever told a little white lie that came back to bite you? Mangled the truth to get out of a tight spot only to get sprung and subsequently humiliated? Perhaps you valiantly attempted to spin your way out of it by embellishing and making the deceit larger and getting in deeper. It’s a horrible tight feeling of doom and dread, not wanting to get caught out but being too far to back down. Spare a thought then for Donald Crowhurst, the archetypal courageous British lion standing up to be counted in the first round of the world yacht race of its type in 1969 with little more than a few weekends pleasure craft sailing behind him. Crowhurst was a family man, a big thinker whose ideas invariably ended in dust and approaching his middle years there was not much to show. He then hit upon the idea of a solo non-stop circumnavigation of the world to secure a £5,000 booty that would stabilise his professional and personal life. It was the typically mad British thing to do. Things weren’t particularly good from the start. After securing financial backing and press via a ruthless Fleet Street self promoter, Crowhurst captured the imagination of a nation willing to buy into any old British ‘can-do’ mythology on offer; the Empire was still strong and a Brit had sailed around the world a year previous. But even as an amateur sailor he knew the craft he was entering would simply not be up to the task. You can see the regret in his eyes as he sets out from Devon on the last possible day before the race is closed. What follows is one man’s journey into the biggest lie of his life: he falsifies the boat’s log books and convinces himself of unlikely victory by waiting for the race leaders to finish their lap of the world whilst he idles in the Atlantic Ocean sailing absolutely nowhere. Events and nature conspire, but eventually it’s Crowhursts’ own mind that turns on itself.

e becomes a mad Kurtz-like character set adrift from reality, and the world, scribbling philosophical treaties verbatim. This documentary is monumentally sad and thoroughly engrossing, utilising talking head interviews with fellow competitors, family and friends. Recordings of Crowhurst on his journey and footage of equally mad Frenchman Bernard Moitessier ratchet up the intensity, resulting in a sense of shock and disbelief when it’s all over. And I’ve only told you the half of it.

In 2006 it was announced there would be two shows on the very same network both dealing with the behind the scenes mischief of a prime time ensemble comedy sketch show – it was going to be either a masterstroke of programming genius or the most foolish decision since Nixon purchased that Dictaphone – or two shows ostensibly about what happens when the cameras are turned off after an episode of Saturday Night Live. History shows 30 Rock won the ratings battle and heads towards its third season with a full gust of wind and awards behind it, but the similarly numerically titled Studio 60 didn’t fare so well and was canned before the end of its premiere run. Upon release, there was much hype, expectation and grudging respect for this Aaron Sorkin (West Wing, Sports Night) dramedy. Studio 60 promised a return to intense pede-conferencing, light speed banter and highly stylised television of early West Wing. By and large it delivered. The big cheerful surprise was Matthew Perry’s brilliance – who knew this Friend’s huckster had talent, timing and depth? The sad, exasperating surprise was Sorkin’s inability to craft a series set on a supposedly legendary comedy show that is the least bit funny.

Sure, the drama behind the scenes appealed to a certain type of viewer interested in industry machinations and the self referential story lines (Perry’s drug background = Sorkin’s personal history) were charming and knowing – but every so called ‘sketch’ is an abject lesson in comedy by committee. It simply isn’t funny. And it needed to be to maintain the illusion of believability. There is no proof that Studio 60, the ‘show-within-the show’, is actually humorous. Indeed, one wonders if the onscreen portrayal of hapless writers struggling, and failing to bring the funny is actually a manifestation of Sorkin’s fraught state of mind once the audiences began to dip, the critics bared their fangs, and execs unceremoniously decided the show was a lame duck. With hindsight Studio 60 is better now than before. The drama is dogmatically multi-layered, Amanda Peet and Steven Weber work wonders with engrossing character arcs and Brad Whitford is on TV again. Result! Yet whilst the topical, sometimes hectoring story lines may date (some absolutely have) and the first episode Gilbert and Sullivan sketch should be erased from tape and memory, Studio 60 is an admirable, classy and entirely watchable failure.

(Shock)
OK, the sleight of hand in the title is in the suffix ‘Under Review’. The addition of these two words means much, for this is definitely not part of the superior BBC Classic Albums series. Rather it’s a shoddy, poorly filmed, scripted, edited and attended shadow of the originating concept. First and foremost is the total absence of the band or anyone remotely associated with the recording of the over-the-top, in parts hugely enjoyable behemoth that was Use Your Illusion I & II. Instead we get DJs, magazine publishers, empty TV news bobble heads and assorted hangers on to the LA glam scene that resolutely refuse to let past recede and ramble on with pointless, wearisome anecdotes about how they used to hang with Axl and the boys back in the day. It wouldn’t have been so bad if there was a vague association of the subjects on offer, but when you have to rely on sub-par concert footage to flesh out the discussion it’s a doomed mission. Indeed, spending the best part of the first half of this DVD talking about the superior nature of their scorching debut, Appetite For Destruction, is surely a recipe for destruction, or disinterest of the main event at the very least. Having said that, there is some awesome vox-pop type footage of an Australian crowd prepping for a Gunners show in the great western expanses of one of our major cities in the early ’90s, and I was wishing the whole doco had been about those shows at Eastern Creek and Calder Park. But I was shit out outta luck. The Classic Album series is a success because it assembles behind the scenes information, stories and explanations for well known albums sounding the way they do. The band, key production and management staff reliving the moments where splices of tape transcended their humble origins, becoming amazing, memorable songs often induces wide eyed wonder and invariably enriches all future listening experiences, all the while dodging excessive wonkishness. This DVD does nothing of the sort. It’s a shameless cash in worthy of nothing but a court injunction on the grounds of offence to common decency.

(Parlophone)
Radiohead: The Best Of, assembled against the band’s wishes at the conclusion of their relationship with EMI/Parlophone, is exactly what the cover art says – a visual chronological jaunt from the little band from Oxford that could. It’s no spoiler to point out at this early stage that the only things that remain constant with this band over the 11 year run represented here is Johnny Greenwood’s insanely stark square-jawline that mathematicians have yet to figure out, and Thom’s obsessive need to not be a star. He’s against all that malarky, don’t you know. It’s about the music see. Proceedings start creakily at Creep – a song which still leaves me cold – and there’s little at this early juncture to suggest this ragged, poorly-attired mob would become the Krautrock inspired prog monsters they morphed into circa 1997 to 2001. In fact, they come across as a rather redundant and annoying indie-pop band (Shed Seven, Mansun, anyone?) waiting for the bomb to drop. Next up, Anyone Can Play Guitar, clearly honouring the mantra of The Shaggs, proves that anyone can make clips like EMF and by Pop Is Dead an obvious XTC debt looms far too large and any casual observer would have justifiably lost interest and jumped on the nascent Crash Test Dummies juggernaut. Then, by gods, they redeem. But you already know that – it’s no surprise at all. Clips circa The Bends find a band settling into the college rock format, visually and sonically, before their Pink Floyd moment arrives in the Magnus Carlsson directed Paranoid Android. Then it all gets very large and ubiquitous, it was OK Computer after all. Record company cash funds the deconstructionist dystopias of Pyramid Song and Sit Down, Stand Up. As the years progress, the band recede into the background and become less of a feature until their appearances feel more like a contractual obligation than a genuine interest in actually being onscreen. Indeed, by Go To Sleep it’s CGI time - an animatronic success it should be noted. There are many genuine late night Rage classics contained herein, but more importantly, this DVD chronicles Radiohead giving a resolute middle digit to the industry whilst still playing within its confines. That either makes them hypocritical cop outs or smart ass renegades.

There’s no point getting into some lengthy treatise about the shabby treatment of quality US drama on Australian television. Irregular scheduling and lacklustre promotion is par for the course when it comes to shows like The Wire, The Sopranos and Curb Your Enthusiasm. And in the era of TiVo and torrents it’s the major distribution studios that have shown the foresight lacking in TV executive land with swift releases of TV shows, many of which were lucky to even be screened here. Sure, it’s a business and it’s just another product, but still, at least they treat fans with a degree of respect. One of the most justifiably acclaimed shows in the history of television and one of few unapologetic examinations of the American underclass, The Wire was created by ex-Baltimore journo and small screen scribe David Simon (Homicide: Life on the Streets) and fellow Baltimorean and ex-homicide detective Ed Burns. Together they formed a formidable writing partnership, took the drug laden streets of Baltimore as a canvas and painted an unbelievably rich portrait of life in Anytown, USA; replete with chaos, violence, sex, drugs, corruption, duplicity, old-fashioned honour, betrayal and booze. There are no heroes or villains to speak of – it’s not that simplistic and it demands much of the viewer. Story arcs are not always explicit and character motivation only becomes apparent upon devoted viewing, and sometimes not at all. It sounds like a chore, but it’s the furthest from it. Season Three is the reminder that politicians are just as grubby in power consolidation as the thugs, although with far less lethal consequences.

This becomes very clear as one of the main characters meets their demise in the season finale, so obvious on paper but still hard to accept. There are mayoral elections, the ill-fated ‘Hamsertdam’ experiment and Stringer Bell imparting MBA-quality business advice to his underlings. Throughout it all, the density of plots and dialogue is breathtaking – as one of the cast members comments in a supplied doco, it’s the only English language script he’s ever received with a glossary. At times, you wonder whether that glossary should be included as a necessity in each box set. How do you top this effort? Well, I’ll see you next column…

Oh hai – you’re back. Picking up from a few centimetres to your left we have the simultaneously released Season Four, wherein the gaze is turned to the school yard where thugs and runners are made. Where do they come from? Nature or nurture? The kids are gonna learn – then the questions are what and where? The street or the school room? This season is one of the strongest yet with the young unknown cast shining as wise-ass hustlers and sage souls years ahead of their age. One of the main drawcards of the entire series, Dominic West as the hopeless, irascible drunk Jimmy McNulty, plays a smaller role here, but with every characterisation so rich and deep and each actor so committed to the material it simply doesn’t matter.

The Wire is one of those rare shows that straddle entertainment and social commentary, making a point for sure but not ramming it down your throat, and it’s uncommon a plot device appears that isn’t absolutely essential for narrative thrust. Amazingly, this is a rarity in modern televisual screenwriting. It draws heavily on the first hand experience of Simon and Burns, but draws in an intimidating cast of contributors, writers and consultants: Richard Price (Clockers), George Pelecanos, trial lawyers, politicians, academics, prosecutors, academics and, most importantly, criminals. All the pieces matter. It presents urban decay dysfunction exactly as it is: to the police and criminals hierarchies matter and are very much the same - you are simply a cog in the system. Buck the trend and you’ll end up paying for it with demotions or death.

There is an illuminating and compelling documentary in two parts on this disc and that’s not only due to the appearance of Baltimore’s other favourite son, John Waters. Congratulations due to everyone involved in the simultaneous release of these discs (five per season) and, being one of the few shows that not only stands up to – but demands – repeated viewings, they are necessary additions to any collection. Elevating the street to art, The Wire is better than the rest, or as Simon says, “If we had done everything wrong it would have been a cop show.” That’s enough effusion for now. Or at least until Season Five is released.

WHAT: BRIV-VEGAS FOLK/COUNTRY/ROCK/PSYCH/ETC COLLECTIVE
WHERE: THE GREENROOM
WHEN: SAT AUG 9

Any band that lists Spiritualized, Will Oldham and You Am I (Sound as Ever-era … hopefully) as influences are onto something. They also draw inspiration from many other bands, but you’ll need to speak to them in person to find that out. Or maybe throw yourself into their sprawling, ambitious double album Junk, on which there are 26 songs! That’s more than My Bloody Valentine have ever recorded (unchecked fact) and about the same amount Ryan Adams uploads weekly (probably true). Not to be confused with ’80s punk/country rockers The Gun Club, this Brisbane-based, internationally road-hardened society are particularly restless and avid genre hoppers - you name it, and these multi-instrumental type guys will be able to play it. And if that sounds like a challenge to yell out random song names played by other artists at future gigs, then so be it. They seem like capable lads and any band that gets its start at open mic gigs should be well versed in the adroitly worded heckler put down. So drink up and heckle on folks, The Gin Club are in town.

Honestly it’s surprising this band is still going. Perennial also-rans, revelling in low key fuzz, plodding tempos and breathy vocals, theredsunband seem as underdone as a pair of black Hi-Top Cons purchased for $3 at the Fake Markets on Nanjing Road. You know - the ones that fall apart after a couple of weeks. Mangled, inappropriate metaphors aside, The Shiralee is a great album. Honestly. A cursory understanding of the band’s history paints picture so bleak and versed in near disaster and total misfortune it’s hard not to be astonished they can even be bothered writing songs any more. Glad they do though. Down to a core duo of sisters Sarah and Lizzie, this long delayed follow up to Peapod easily outshines its predecessor with sharper hooks, stronger melodies and a sense of cohesion I always felt the band lacked. Sarah’s delivery doesn’t sound so apologetic anymore, but it retains the sense of unforgiving despair that is nowhere near as stultifying as descriptions elsewhere suggest – think Caroline Kennedy of similarly and sadly ignored locals The Plums. Not a misstep in sight, The Shiralee is a success that should get more attention than it probably will.

Albert is the high-Strat wearing lead guitarist from The Strokes, in case that whole new garage rock thing passed you by. And if it did, then don’t bother reading any further because this falls somewhere between his band and um, tedium. Sure there are some neat melodic hooks, the riffs are as metronomic as ever and there are things resembling songs on this release - as opposed to Hammond’s faltering debut - but ¿Cómo Te Llama? (Spanish for “Sorry about the cancelled tour”) lacks spark and a unifying feeling, sounding exactly like the swiftly recorded disc it is. The Boss Americana is a crunchy pop rocker, a million miles away from the East Village and all the better for it. It’s also the most energetic track on a relaxed, almost lethargic, album. Elsewhere, cod reggae sidles up against moody instrumentals, strings, kinetic new wave romps and the inevitable Strokes throwaways. Gawd – there’s nothing worse than getting to the end of an album and struggling to remember anything about it, despite it being fresh in your memory. Who knows, maybe it’s a grower. Or maybe I’ll forget all about it and just listen to Bee Thousand again.

Martha Wainwright’s value is her voice – the way it glides, growls and soars all over the place, seemingly cracking mid-vowel only to assertively reform at the last minute. Her self-titled release was engaging, light on the studio trickery and opulence that invariably weighs down her big brother Rufus. It’s clear that on I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too, Martha is a convert: Big is better. Stevie Nicks big. Highly compressed, studio session player instrumentation type big. There are saccharine guitar flourishes and fills where there used to be space. Where before you could hear the crack of Martha’s voice and space and intimacy filled the songs, now it’s all sheen, density and robustness. In places it works (You Cheated Me and Comin’ Tonight) but usually it’s annoying, all the more frustrating if you are aware of her enormous ability to capture attention through the simplest of couplets and chords. The pair of covers feel tacked on and unnecessary; See Emily Play (Pink Floyd) is rather psych-lite and Love Is A Stranger (Eurhythmics) is a leaden blunt hammer – complete with ’80s horn and Dick Dale soloing replacing the sinister and menace of the original. Why? Who the fuck knows. Well, I bet Brad Albetta does. As Martha’s new husband and frequent musical collaborator, Albetta has really stepped up to and beyond the plate, packing this release full of noise and clutter. Still, the Wainwrights do like to keep it in the family and if it all goes ass up in five years time – Martha will just write a scathing, acrimonious tune about it.

(Virgin)
Upon hearing my love of Genesis people usually laugh and call me names. “Sad old tosser” for example. It’s a cruel world really as they find out soon enough after a quick retaliatory jab to the kidneys. Many people see Genesis as soft ‘80s FM codgers who are unable to dance and equally incapable of touching, visibly. They are wrong. Genesis are one the oldest, most venerated and likeable of that hoary old beast called the prog rock band, who, with their original lead singer Peter Gabriel, recorded the utterly splendid and gorgeous The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway.

This DVD captures Genesis (sans Pete Gabriel, alas) at the start of their 2007 tour in Rome, obviously. It’s their first in 15 years and they had the collective presence of mind to invite a camera crew along for ride as they prepared. The resulting two hour doco called Come Rain or Shine is the real treat on this super three-disc set and one whose enjoyment is not limited to the Genesis fan. The full access, fly-on-the wall material catches some great moments: an excruciating press junket where lead singer/drummer Phil Collins bristles, and then exits when being questioned about the bands fan base or “sad blokes who live with their mums.”

The real bonanza however is the stage show: its design, planning, rehearsal and shambolic operation. Nothing really clicks, graphics totally miss cues and the crew cover their asses and don’t quite acknowledge they haven’t hired anyone to push a button at key moments during the show. As the first show approaches no one can be found to fulfil this key role, simple as it seems. Things get quite tense – band, crew and management get snappy. It’s grippingly hilarious stuff. A little dafter is Collins’ brain wave of a duelling drummer scenario and his drum tech’s subsequent bumbling efforts to secure a stool that sounds just right. “Why did I inherit this stupid fucking task” he ponders, reasonably enough, after one disastrous voyage to the local mega mart. The show itself is as a spectacle: massive crowd, big clean audio, wavey neon stage and a set list that appeases old jerks like me and newer fans alike. An unanticipated victory.

One of the joys of the telephone interview is getting your subject in vastly different time zones. An early morning call can result in sleepy rambles whilst evening calls can run the gamut from drunken tirades to thoughtful conversations full of ready-made quotes, quips and anecdotes. Then there are those interviews where you call the wrong number and waste valuable record company time and money waiting for a non-existent musician to materialise at the other end. Turns out that one digit is the difference between a Welsh pop magician and a random argumentative family somewhere in London, who either improbablely do have a family member called Gruff, or were simply too startled to tell the unusual Antipodean caller to sod off. Either way, I was afforded the luxury of eavesdropping on five minutes of CNN Market Wrap and a bit of domestic squabbling before realising my error and redialling. “Did you do an interview with them?” Gruff Rhys queries helpfully, after hearing of my celebrated dialling skills. I didn’t, but I managed to monitor my share portfolio for what it’s worth.

Gruff Rhys is engaging in that most celebrated of activities musicians stroke their egos with – the side project. Taking time out from fronting psych folk rockers Super Furry Animals, Rhys has paired up with LA based producer Boom Bip under the guise of NEON NEON to celebrate the life of infamous car inventor, toucher of blonde women and trafficker of cocaine John De Lorean - inventor of the wing-doored car that bears his name and stars in the Michael J Fox classics Back to the Future I-III. Rich pickings as Rhys informs me: “Obviously De Lorean was an extremely dodgy guy, but he was a very inspiring subject to write about.

e kind of pioneered some of the less savoury aspects of life in the 21st century - completely obsessed with celebrity culture.” Like the inspiration himself, Neon Neon’s debut album is a shiny clarion call from 20 years ago, or as Rhys prefers, “It’s a fantasy party record! It’s a completely reckless record – glorifying cars and right wing traditionalists like John De Leroan. It’s just an album about a very flawed human being.”

Neon Neon come from the world of 12 inch remixes, Air Jordans and the ‘Keytar’, and like anyone recording a concept album about a questionable character, the famously eclectic songwriter really suffered for his art.

We listened to a lot of crap ’80s music. Crap but beautiful. Like Cliff Richards’ Wired for Sound.” It would be around this point that most people would throw down their Walkman in disbelief, but he’s serious. “We didn’t want to make a parody record. There’s a genuine love of people like New Order and Prince. We were earnestly into it all and quite militant in keeping the record shiny and leaving the darker, more ethereal sound off the record.” Indeed it was the darker material that pleased Rhys the most, despite the fact it never actually made it on the record. “I felt it was some the best things I have ever recorded – but it wasn’t the right vibe.” Who knows, maybe they’ll turn up on a period referencing B-Side of a forthcoming 12” Single.

Neon Neon tour nationally alongside Goldfrapp, Soulwax, Peaches, Dizzee Rascal, Does it Offend You, Yeah? and more as part of Parklife, which touches down at Moore Park in Sydney on Sunday October 5. Tickets from www.parklife.com.au . Stainless Style is out on Lex Records via inertia.

Surely the title of this album is just asking for trouble. Like say “Give Up. Please,” especially given the band’s form since the early noughties. But anyone familiar with The Dandy Warhols and their nonchalant vacant fashionista glaze would also know they really don’t give a fig about abuse, critical or crowd led. Lead Dandy Courtney Taylor-Taylor even went so far as to narrate the doco Dig! where the band came across as nothing but soulless careerists. So, Courtney and co. are either supreme ironists or talentless hacks riffling through 30 years of alt-rock looking for the next hazy dirge. Of course the answer depends on where you sit. For me the Dandy’s were jolly good fun ten years ago and Earth tries very hard to reclaim those glory years, with middling results. The album falters out of the start box with Taylor’s weak, reed thin falsetto on The World The People Together (Come On), before moving swiftly onto the comically awful, dumb-jock vocals of Mission Control. At this point it wasn’t looking good but Welcome To The Third World pretty much pushed me into the negative, floundering in ill-advised Nile Rogers funk circa Duran Duran’s Notorious. Remarkably and somewhat surprisingly, the album is salvaged as it moves on, mainly because there is enough justified by wistful memories of bare-titted tambourine shaking and by making successful concessions to the band of old (And Then I Dreamed Of Yes, Now You Love Me). Neither a comeback nor an outright failure, Earth To The Dandy Warhols breathes some life into a weary outfit many had given up on.

(Eagle Eye Media/Destra)

I never really got into The Doors. Jim Morrison’s vacant lothario preening, faux nihilistic primary school poetry and cadaver stage presence was a false start. Whilst presented as the anti-hippie band from down the coast, The Doors were designed for those merely wanting to flirt with Dante-esque slides into decadence. It was marketed as grimy, grungy and grotty - everything the sun and beach culture of LA wasn’t. That 20 years later the same stretch of the Sunset Strip cultivated the preening, empty, although immeasurably more enjoyable glam rock scene should not be forgotten. Having said that, the Classic Albums series doesn’t rely on a love of the band for guilty pleasures - especially if your taste runs to aging, balding recoding engineers dropping EQ levels and gleaming at the camera with murderous joy. I concede a case can be made that the propulsive, hopscotch guitar and keyboard riffage of Break on Through is a reasonable thrill and an amazing statement of intent for a debut album opening track. But the collective reminiscing made me wistful for a time when this music was received as innovative and zeitgeist stuff - not for the music itself but the scene that surrounded it. All the major players are represented here; Robby Krieger looking like a dried prune recently rescued from a bowl of brine, Ray Manzarek coming off like a terribly groovy English Lit professor rapping with the ‘kids’ and John Densmore stating with a clarity borne of first hand knowledge “self destruction and creativity are not always in the same package… you can’t just wear leather pants, drink and make it.”

Take note [insert name of every up-and-coming rock band]. What is most rankling about this particular disc is the dismissive attitude displayed by some parties that The Doors weren’t about flower power, but personal power. It simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Mainly because it summarily ignores the work of anything north of LA and deceitfully overlooks the inane ramblings of Morrison, who in less lucid moments was prone to rave on like a self-involved grad student: to wit, the lolling, drug-addled indulgence of his song ‘explanations’, included here in all their foul glory - it’s the type of stuff that went unchecked for years until he checked out for good years later in Paris. This Dionysian dream was nothing but a morally bankrupt nightmare.

MARK KOZELEK isn’t a showy character, despite the fact he can rip off Crazy Horse-style guitar shards at ease for well over ten minutes, or just as easily sing sweet lullabies to his cat - one of which rested next to him during our conversation. His trick, for want of a better term, is consistency; you know what to expect with each release and yet remain delighted despite the stylistic similarity that marks his resume. Somewhat surprisingly for a guy whose sepia toned, textured, cardboard-thick recordings suggest a man in the grips of morbidity, he was effusive, expansive and damn near energetic when I spoke to him from his house in San Francisco.

Although reminisces of European tours dampened his mood a little - “For me there’s always a little sense of gloom and doom every time I have to fly into Heathrow. I really don’t like flying. You’re stuck in a plane for 12 hours then all of a sudden you’re very far from the people you’re closest to.”

And it’s not just those who you have left behind that you worry about: it’s those you meet on the road that also cause their fair share of worries. And yourself, as Kozelek explains. “You find yourself acting strange. Sometimes when I’m on stage and I start rambling about my personal life or spilling my guts to some weird fan that’s gonna post what you said online in half an hour… it’s a weird world, a whole different thing. Being in that world where people are obsessed with you is strange, idiosyncratic and exclusive.” But he’s not being the archetypal whinger bemoaning ‘life on the road,’ displayed as the juvenile, excessive, groupies and airports affair by so many who have come before him - he’s making a cogent point that travelling, whilst sounding great on paper, is actually a bit of a bore. “You make a connection with people but not in a way that you do with the people you love at home, its very different.”

And the next time you’re bounding out of a venue, vocally declaring the gig you just saw to be the best ever - well, since the last one at least - just remember it isn’t all strippers and blow backstage. At least it isn’t for Kozelek: “Sometimes, even though you’re out there playing for 500 or 1000 people, so for two hours you sort of have the world in your hands, but in a second those people are out the door, on trains. And I’m backstage with the club guy, who really just wants you to get the fuck out of there because he has to do the same thing tomorrow night, and all of a sudden you’re in a cab and in a hotel room, jetlagged, fucking lonely as hell, and you can’t call anyone ‘cause it’s fucking expensive and it’s some weird hour somewhere else.” Honestly, on paper it sound like a moan, but it was the best description I have ever heard from a musician on the tedium of a professional life on the other side of a guitar. And a topic discussed equally brilliantly in Dean Wareham’s (Luna) recently released autobiography Black Postcards, recommended by Kozelek himself as a true depiction of life as a struggling indie icon.

From his earliest days in intense, emotion-heavy folk rockers Red House Painters to his more recent incarnation as Sun Kil Moon, Mark Kozelek has been no stranger to critical acclaim. But don’t think a few sharply phrased, introspective fan boy observations will get you into his scrapbook of well-thumbed reviews. “I never get into the cryptic writing of a journalist who’s explaining the record - I was there!” Fair point, actually. “There’s really nothing I have to learn from what someone else has to say. Often times things are not accurate – ‘This song was written about something that happened in a hospital room.’ No it wasn’t!”

A sage reminder to all music fans who think they ‘really get’ their artists of choice - lay off the dozy interpretation and enjoy the ride. Pragmatically, Kozlek has his mind elsewhere “It doesn’t matter to me.
I just want the review to be good.”

And he has every reason to hope for that as well, self-releasing on his own imprint Cobra Verde. “I’m in a different place now, I’ve got my own label, got my own website - you know, I’m trying to sell records. So when we get the press I definitely cross my fingers that it’s good, because it’s an investment for me.” Not that we should expect beer company banners proudly emblazoned at Kozlelk shows any time soon. “Honestly, if I got bad reviews it wouldn’t affect me. I wouldn’t second guess the album - ‘Aw man - they were right, this record sucks’ - and I have gotten some bad press on records in the past. Tiny Cities (Sun Kil Moon’s album of Modest Mouse covers) got some bad reviews but it didn’t affect me personally. Pitchfork, Rolling Stone gave it bad reviews and it pretty much trickled down from there, so I was like ‘fuck, I’m trying to sell records, this isn’t good.’ But I totally have a sense of humour; it doesn’t matter to me because I’m making music and I believe in it and I wouldn’t put these records out if I didn’t.”

Red House Painters dissolved slowly in the late ‘90s as the band became more a solo project for its singer/guitarist than a functioning band, so Kozelek made it a formality, began recording under his own name and released a series of acclaimed (naturally) records featuring radical re-imaginings of Bon Scott-era AC/DC tracks. Songs like If You Want Blood, Riff Raff, You Ain’t Got a Hold on Me and Rock ‘n’ Roll Singer were stripped of their sinewy lascivious sexuality and lust, revealing a sense of yearning and despair hitherto unseen in the three-chord Young/Scott wonders. Covers they may have been, but they felt like Kozlek originals conforming to the sombre pacing and almost monotone delivery of pretty much every song he’s committed to wax. In his choice of covers (AC/DC, Kiss, The Cars, John Denver) or original subject matter (boxers felled before their prime), Kozelek sounds exactly the same. Indeed, he chose to abandon the Red House Painters name and start again as Sun Kil Moon because he predicted fans and critics had become bored of his old trading name.

Overall though, he remains comfortable in his own skin regardless of what name it goes by. “I’m 41 now so it’s simply a matter of becoming who you are. It’s like a Woody Allen movie; you use the same guy every time, because it just works. I’m at that stage in my life where I don’t wanna fuck around. I know who I am, what I wanna do and what works for me. AC/DC, Stereolab, Will Oldham (Bonnie “Prince” Billy) have all got a way of doing things and I’m just like that. I don’t have any bag of tricks. There’s one thing I know how to do and I’m not gonna try to pretend to be anyone else.”

Mark Kozelek performs under the Sun Kil Moon banner on Friday July 25 at The Factory Theatre, Sydney, supported by Emily Ulman (Melbourne). Tickets are $30 plus BF from the Enmore Box Office (9550 3666) or www.factorytheatre.com.au . April is out now on Spunk.

(Universal)
That wearisome dinner party game of comparing adaptations failing the transition from the page to big screen now has a sister version – movies that can’t even get magazine articles right. American Gangster is based on a New York magazine article called Return of the Superfly. Reading like a blockbuster in the making, it’s easy to see why it was optioned, speeding through the years with white powdered abandon, the giddy self-aggrandizing braggadocio of Frank Lucas proudly detailing his rise from the streets of Harlem to insane New York drug kingpin. His method, smuggling the dope in the coffins returning from the Vietnam War, was as audacious as the man himself, yet the film fails wholeheartedly in portraying his sheer brutality or kinetic energy. Instead American Gangster is a confused, rambling non-epic, overburdened with trite characterisations, repetitive set pieces and a sluggish tone overpowered by numerous unnecessary location changes.

When the Stax soundtrack ramps up on cue 30-odd minutes in, it heralds the entrance of pimps, hustlers, hookers and tight close up shots of Lucas (Denzel Washington) supervising the action – it’s an absurd game of ride the cliché coming off like an overcooked Scorsese-like mess at best; at worst a flimsy slumming homage to the risible Blow. Technique aside – what is this movie actually saying? The forward thinking street-smart philosophy Frank exhibits in taking on the Italian mob and beating them at their own game cannot displace the misery the man ultimately wreaked. He vociferously defends his actions to this day, claiming he was merely an uneducated black man trying to get ahead. No doubt – but the film glorifies his actions and methods by barely scratching the surface of the man. Washington’s performance is partly to blame, but really the script is the problem – an alternate, better version would have him reading the original article to the screen for 20 minutes.

More disastrously, the alternate ending on offer is a pathetic Hallmark moment implying a level of misplaced brotherhood between Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) and Lucas that simply didn’t exist for the majority of the film due to the parallel character arcs. The rare shinning lights are the RZA as Moses Jones whose mellifluous, breezy manner is a welcome respite from the jarring overacting happening all around and conversely, Josh Brolin hamming it up in the most delicious way possible as a corrupt NYC cop. Despite the plaudits, American Gangster is a lost opportunity.

Like most labels, the contemporary blues/new roots/blues roots/alt-America tag that invariably gets slung around Melbourne based guitarist JEFF LANG ’s neck is a pointless shortcut that counts for nought. Half Seas Over (ABC Music), his most recent release, is a dense, gothic affair where Lang’s role as one of the premier guitarists of his generation are further emboldened.

Its release helps revitalise this exceptional musician, unburdened with ego or tacky over-virtuosity, so says the sprightly Lang after a few well-received shows in his home town over the weekend. “It’s good for the energy and tempos of the gigs to have a new record out – because with the newer songs I have to get them match fit, which means the fresh ideas I bring to the gig also lift it.”

Reference points like Richard Thompson, John Fahey and Bert Jansch weave in and out of his music – but he’s not mimicking, he’s forging a totally unique brand of Australian music that easily defines itself as
totally individualistic and utterly enthralling. “It is called playing music and not working music after all, and it’s something we all do because we’re in love with the sound of music… Well, not the film, but it ends up being a constant thing throughout your whole life where you do it because you’re in love with that sound.”

And it helps that the sound Lang is in love with is currently going through somewhat of a surge in popularity. Look no further than John Butler, Xavier Rudd, The Waifs, The Audreys and the exponential growth of the Blues and Roots Festivals on both our East and West coasts, and you get the impression we’re pushing over pensioners to get closer to the stage. But where some of the aforementioned artists verge on the wrong side of tedious, his intense storytelling and sparse, tense-to-urgent sonic maelstroms aren’t particularly radio friendly. “Nice and comfortable music might sell a lot but it’s not really what I do.” But despite thematic currents of loss and despair, Lang has no time for the archetypal Tortured Artist. “How hard can it be to do something with your time, to spend an evening playing music?”

Lang is highly regarded internationally, a point highlighted when the recently, tragically departed dirt blues legend Chris Whitley proposed a collaboration that eventually turned into Dislocation Blues (ABC Music). He expands humbly, speaking with clear affection, “I had known him for 11 years before the idea ever came up. It took him that long to suggest it because I knew him as a friend and a fan and when you’re a fan, you never listen to it and think – ‘oh man, he needs me to play on this!’ So it surprised me at first but it quickly went from ‘oh really?’ to ‘Yeah… this could be pretty fucking good!’ There’s a lot of common ground.”

And collaborations, like touring new albums, generate a sense of urgency and excitement for Lang. “You do get reenergised. The whole idea of playing in front of a crowd is to go on a bit of a journey, and it’s not a subjugation of an audience’s will to yours. I’m really just providing a spark, just being a good servant of music, trying to be a catalyst.” So there you have it – Jeff Lang: The Public Servant of music, which obviously means he will fit hand in glove when he plays Bureaucracy town next month. “Traditionally, it’s been quite a good audience for live music in Canberra so I’m looking forward to it.” And so should you.

Jeff Lang plays at the Street Theatre on Sunday June 1 from 8pm. Tickets on sale now via 6247 1223 or www.thestreet.org.au .

(Plus 1 Presents/Picturesque Films)
There’s no point avoiding it – this would have to be one of the poorest quality live DVDs I have ever heard, to the point where I have had more enjoyment watching a mobile phone recorded Japanese Guided By Voices cover band on You Tube. It beggars belief that Kilbey (The Church) would think it a good idea to release a performance this sub par and that the transfer engineer could sleep at night knowing there was an example of his/her work in the public sphere purporting to be a commercial quality DVD so bad, it sounded like it was recorded through a public phone three blocks down from the venue, then mixed and mastered through a poker machine.

Gripes aside - no, wait … I have another. Caroline II is a Lou Reed solo track from the album Berlin, released in 1973 - a full three years after he left the Velvet Underground. It is therefore incorrect to state on the DVD sleeve that Kilbey covers a Velvet Underground track. He doesn’t. Why does this matter? Because it gets to the heart of the problem of this disc - it looks and sounds cheap and nasty, and is therefore a wholly unfair representation of Kilbey’s silky, moody vocals and robs almost entirely any shimmering element from the trademark 12-string guitar chime inhabiting most Church songs.

These things matter for an artist like Kilbey, notorious for his studio deliberation - pick a random Church album and you’ll discover soon enough the care and attention I am referring to. Accordingly, it tarnishes the performance ‘recorded’ in New Zealand covering much of Kilbey’s back catalogue but, somehow the still transcendent beauty of Under The Milky Way still shines through. There are special features, but frankly I would have preferred more attention be paid to the main feature. Maybe wait ‘til this one time Canberra resident returns home for a live show before hopping onto this wreck.

(Shock)
Australia is currently experiencing a serious bout of Ramsey-mania. His deliciously tart and ferociously delivered fucks and cunts have lit up suburban plasma screens like a banana flambé. Moral panic! Decency standards sliding further into the abyss! Shut the fuck up! Cunt! Gordon Ramsey is the lovable scar faced curmudgeon shining a light on some of the most frightful kitchens this side of Hades.

This is the British version of Kitchen Nightmares so there’s far less in your face aggression and whip smart editing that mares the US version, but the concept remains the same: restaurant tinkering on the edge of oblivion, clueless over cashed proprietors running for cover and chefs who’d rather spend their day at the bar than behind the pass – enter a belligerent Scottish git to yell them into match fitness and hopefully save the restaurant. It would count for nought if this was merely a circus sideshow of spotty-faced apprentices and windy bluster. But Ramsey believes. He is on a mission to save food preparation, service and delivery – to elevate, and remind chefs and waiters they have a responsibility not only to the customer but to the food.

As a carnivore it troubles me no end that so many have so little appreciation of where food comes from and how it is prepared for our consumption. It’s a mucky business that has created many a vegetarian but chefs like Ramsey, Jamie Oliver, Marco Pierre White, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Heston Blumenthal are all doing their bit to remind us that cooking is not a chore – it’s something that should be savoured, respected and enjoyed. And that’s why shows like this serve such a valuable public service.

Yes, I know gastro-porn is a fad but it sure beats devoting your precious time to the exploits of a bunch of puffed up, goon faced, hilariously named muscle heads knocking about school teachers in a rubber Coliseum. Ramsey is a juggernaut overseeing a £100m, 10-Michelin star empire, comprising twenty restaurants and pubs in the UK, US, Ireland, France, Dubai and Japan. He knows his stuff.

Watch, gasp and learn.

(Universal)
Years back, upon foolishly attending one of Kiss’ endless Farewell Tour gigs, I had the fortune of witnessing a truly nerve-jangling experience far outshining the laughable cartoon parade soon to follow. Pre-show, Won’t Get Fooled Again was playing and as the natives rustled, the instrumental section grew slightly louder as it approached the crashing Pete Townsend power chorded mid-song crescendo, at which point the house lights swiftly dropped and the volume ascended to stadium strength. A potent display of melodic dynamics, it remains my only memory of the show. It’s also a reminder why The Who were one of the most powerful bands around and, as can be seen on Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who, they were also one of the most disparate, opinionated, honest and forgiving set of individuals to inhabit the ‘glory years’ of rock.

In this revealing doco each band member gets a personal history, and whilst each is equally fascinating and in-depth, you still end up wondering out how the hell they made it work. Fortunately this isn’t some airbrushed hagiography – Townsend’s kiddie porn issues are broached and stridently defended, John Entwistle’s bewildering fiscal immaturity is dissected and Keith Moon’s erratic behaviour is remembered fondly yet not entirely excused. Soul baring honesty sees Townsend explain the pressure of being the default songwriter and the need to be a hit factory is made all more harsh when Daltrey chimes in, saying he had no idea how to help him, so he just left him alone. Also particularly illuminating is agreement by Townsend and Roger Daltrey in separate interviews that the rock opera Tommy triumphantly defined Daltrey as the bare-chested, lion-maned frontman after years of searching for a purpose within the band.

Somehow out of dysfunction grew an arm-swinging, fist-pounding unit who made drum blowing up, guitar mauling and amp smashing de rigueur – Townsend’s not-so-playful bitterness at Jimi Hendrix’s wholesale theft of his act at the 1967 Monterey Festival is genius.  Archival footage is voluminous and goes some way in showing the raw intensity The Who exuded – something I have witnessed first hand and can happily report is breathtaking. Extras, including extended interviews, make an already worthwhile release near essential for any fan of big-nosed guitar rock.

(Madman)
There are few legitimate enigmas in rock music - Roky Erickson and Syd Barrett are obvious contenders - and the necessary caveat in this field of mythmaking is the expectation that ‘genius’ rarely equates to ‘psychologically functional’. And really, that’s just fine if you look at the scrapbook. Brian Wilson has been an enigma for decades, living off the sun-kissed memories of at least three generations of fans and critics, but as a musician he is a spent force and as a cabaret act he is a reasonable enough way to spend 90 minutes. Scott Walker - who was born a year after Mr Pocket Symphony - has never stopped moving, creating or perplexing his audience and as this doco reveals with astounding access, he’s one of the most thoughtful individuals ever to pull on winkle pickers, stovepipes and fuck-the-world sunnies.

Yes, there are significant gaps in his output - three albums in 21 years at one point - and he hasn’t performed live on stage in over 30 years, but seeing Walker telling an interviewer at the height if his Walker Brothers (The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore) fame he didn’t care at all for fame or money, just the creation of art, you begin to view him as the most rational man in contemporary music. He released four progressively non-selling and genre defying albums after the dissolution of the Brothers in the late ’60s, but the failure of Scott 4 appeared to have a negative effect on the reclusive star - he released dross for 20 odd years.

30th Century Man charts his single minded rise through fame, fall from public consciousness and, more startlingly, the recording process for his 2006 release The Drift where slabs of meat will be punched for art. Extensive jawdropping archival footage makes this the best home movie ever made about experimental crooner baroque pop and the assorted vox pops from Bowie, Eno through to Goldfrapp and Johnny Marr attest to Walker’s exhaustive influence. One day we may catch up to Scott Walker, but by then he’ll be either another 10 steps ahead or dead.