I kind of never got around to posting about this album because, I dunno, it seemed to do pretty well on radio and I kind of figured it didn’t need “help” (like that’s what blogging is all about - ha!)

Then, just out of curiousity I searched my Google Reader archive for posts about Whitest Boy Alive’s latest album “Rules” and was somewhat surprised to find that, beyond a vague reference on PbroA there seems to have been very little coverage about the album. More than anything, I’m kind of curious - did this album not strike a chord with anyone else?

See, I dig this album - a lot, actually. If anything, it’s the pairing of an old funk aesthetic with a new electro-inspired sound. It’s the space that sits between the sparseness of four instruments and nothing else. It’s the realness of four guys in a room (tracked live with no overdubs, if you believe the PR). It’s also the damn good, simple and to-the-point songwriting that does the job with minimal fuss and maximum effect.

This is definitely a people’s album - it’s not a chin-stroker. “Rules” contains simple songs of love and life, sung simply (almost naively at times) by guitarist/singer Erlend Øye, and brought to life by band playing simple music to twitch your bum to, in amidst all that simplicity lies the key to the album’s excellence - it’s a masterful demonstration of restraint of the highest order. There’s so much they could have done but didn’t - and they’ve saved the album in the process. The space that you hear in the reverb after each drum hit could have been drowned out by countless elements of overdubbed studio trickery and a bombastic mix, but WBA have held to the KISS principle. It works wonderfully.

What did you think of the album? Did I miss something, or did I get lured in by the schmaltz? Have you heard it all before? Did it just not float your boat?

“Rules” is out now (aaaages ago) and comes highly recommended!

Listen

• Island (mp3)

And there was me thinking just a week or so back that it had kind of been a while since I’d heard new recorded material from Richie Cuthbert and his crew. And then just like that, lo and behold, an announcement enters my inbox: they’re back.

Cuthbert & The Nightwalkers return with a new single entitled “Pace Ourselves” and it’s just what the doctor ordered - an eccentric, shouty, fun tune with a singalong refrain.

It’s kind of the anthem of a big night in reverse - the song starts with the tale of a night gone wrong (dodgy mobile phones! lonely bars! references to The Streets maybe?) that builds into the bliss of meeting a friendly stranger, getting high on life and… well, getting sloshed (”Pace Ourselves” elegantly turns into “Waste Ourselves”, y’dig?)

If anything, it’s “that” song that should prevent the group from endangering themselves of being pidgeonholed as a red frog-eating, perpetually high-school aged innocent pop group. F bombs! Drinking tales! Yeah, the Nightwalkers have grown up I guess.

Oh, the single was also mixed by Cornel Wilczek (a.k.a. Qua) - expect good things to come from the rest of the album if this man has had a hand in shaping the rest of the tunes, because this guy is the goods (coincidentally I was listening to Q&A and Silver Red back to back just today, so I’m particularly Qua fanatical at this point in time)

New material means new live shows and that means definitely good. This band are essential live viewing if you haven’t already seen them. You can see them tomorrow night (10th July) at Q Bar or the (still a long way off) single launch show at The Hopetoun on the 5th of September.

Listen to the track

• Pace Ourselves (mp3)

A few people have mentioned that it slipped under the radar a little, so what the hey:

Once upon a time, The Basics made a great single. It was called With This Ship. I remixed it. It got released on their Like A Brother EP last month. The end.

If you want to take a listen to said remix, have a crack at this stream:

Enjoy!

(oh and you can buy the EP from the band’s myspace, or iTunes)

Last week I visited the World Bar to check out the FBi Radio fundraising event, one of the many that had been organised to save the ailing station (who, by the way, are in the clear for now). The evening was a varied, wild and frequently bizarre affair with sets by a number of Sydney mainstays including The Paper Scissors, Richard In Your Mind, Fait Accompli and others.

Easily the best set (for me), however, was a short, almost unnoticed set right at the start of the evening from Parades (I’ve raved about them before). Let me tell you - this is going to be a great band to watch emerge in the months to come. Their live sound is impeccable, managing to succeed at being both energetic and intricate. Their songwriting appears to only be getting more sophisticated, and generally their sound is moving in a larger, more expansive direction that suits itself well to a live setting.

If you haven’t checked out the new single “Dead Nationale” (hearted by many), make sure you do so at the below link.

Ensure you see them live soon - in particular make a note in your calendar for August 6th where they’ll be appearing at the Oxford Art Factory with Seekae, Megastick Fanfare, Ghoul and Bearhug. Quite a lineup!

Listen

• Dead Nationale (streaming at Polaroids of Androids)

Here’s the story of my first listen of Deastro’s new album Moondagger:

1. Chance upon album, vaguely recall positive mentioned of Deastro
2. Insert album in CD player
3. Instant grin, room reverberates with explosive energy, evening transformed within 30 seconds, etc

This is a first listen album. It’s not a grower - it’s all there, hitting you smack in the face right from the word go. Fortunately the instant appeal doesn’t dissipate over time - I’ve been giving it plenty of spins over the last couple of weeks and it continues to stand up as a great pop album.

Deastro is a one-man project belonging to Randolph Chabot Jr, apparently all self-produced and home recorded. Perhaps due to this creation process, there’s a delicious dichotomy in the music he creates - all at once the songwriting is human, personal, genuine and even unassuming while the sounds are frequently colossal, epic, almost stadium-esque.

The Deastro sound is defined by layers and layers of synths and Randolph’s swampy, ethereally treated vocals, but instead of rigid, robotic drum programming most of the rhythm section is propelled by live drums and bass, which give the songs a lot of their energy and help further both the expansiveness of the sound and the personality of the recording.

I’m pretty fascinated by the lyrics - the ones I can make out anyway. Randolph (from what I can gather) seems to hold Christian convictions which appear to permeate the song content. References to God are frequent (”Day of Wonder”, “Vermillion Plaza”) with my favourite instance being the bonus track “The Shaded Forests” as he yelps out the Psalm-derived refrain “whom shall I fear?” followed by “we’re gonna make it home!” … in the wrong hands it might be another biblically plundered cliche, but when he sings it it’s extraordinarily compelling. Naturally the album isn’t confined to a single subject matter - it seems to span all manner of topics of interest in Randolph’s worldview. Now to find a lyric sheet so I can actually decipher them.

Seriously, get the album - I love it to bits, and I think you will too. It’s an “up” album - try it on a Friday night or the start of a roadtrip. It’s epic.

Listen

• Parallelogram (mp3)

In the blogging universe it’s difficult to ignore The Drones, this in part being due to Seany-boy excitedly pounding millions of gushing posts a day about the group (OK, so he’s slowed down a little lately). That being said his enthusiasm is justified - they certainly are one of the best talents to emerge out of Australia in recent years.

Where The Drones really shine, however, is on the stage. Their recent performance at the Laneway Festival in Sydney was one of the best of the day and the only Laneway Stage set I’ve seen that managed to reach the back of the crowd instead of getting lost in murky acoustics along the way.

If you’ve missed an all-out Drones headlining tour (as I have, to date) fear not! They’ll be soon returning from their overseas tour and doing another lap of Australia in support of their most recent album Havilah. I plan to be at their Sydney show (pending ability to make it back from other commitments), so maybe I’ll see you there!

Here’s the full swag of dates. You can download their third single at the bottom of this post.

I won’t attempt to hide it: I’ve been a terrible blogger lately. I could blame a few things: music projects, Real Work, other projects, having a wonderful daughter and wife that are immensely more fun to be around than computers, you name it.

Having said that, I’ve also had a little less to blog about due to me pushing a lot of news and info that I’d typically blog about through Twitter (you can find me under the name of @flukazoid). I like Twitter because it’s oriented around timely, bite-sized pieces of information. It forces you to not waste words, and functionally it brings that content to life through its network-based community.

That being said, Twitter’s strengths (conciseness in particular) are also its weaknesses, and there’s a lot that can’t be said or communicated with the service.

Over the last couple of months I’ve been thinking about being a little more focused in my use of Twitter and blogging, and have decided that I’m going to use the services like this:

• My Twitter profile will have most most of the news and time sensitive information. I’ll also ramble about stuff I’m listening to, discoveries I’m making, news that’s interesting, gigs I’m seeing. It’ll also have plenty of moments from the rest of my non-musical life, but I hope it’s interesting and entertaining all the same.
• This blog will have (hopefully) more in-depth writing about music, reviews, some more abstract thoughts about music which I have residing in an increasingly large queue. The content on here will hopefully be a lot more pure - less noise and clutter.

So consider this me jumping back into the blogging world, but reserving a lot of content for Twitter. Both are good, with strengths in different places. I’m hoping to use them to their best advantages.

This self-indulgent ramble has now been concluded. Read somebody else’s post, I’m sure it will be of greater value!

The new Odawas album has been getting some plays here lately. I noticed a little buzz surrounding it when it appeared on the radar (mostly thanks to Twitter and some limited blog coverage), but I haven’t heard much more about it. Which surprises me, because I was expecting it to be a lot more controversial than it has been.

So let me just get things out there in the open: I don’t get it.

I don’t get why I find this album enjoyable, why I don’t find it cloying, why it didn’t get tossed out my front door so it could find a new home under the tyres of rush hour traffic.

On paper, the album is not supposed to work. Not only that, it shouldn’t even get a look-in. The songs are open-ended, languid affairs, drenched in dense layers of morose synths. The mix has so much reverb it doesn’t even wade in the stuff, it swims. The percussion frequently reminds me of downtempo AOR staples from the 80s. It’s got plasticky synth-pianos. And to cap it off many of the tracks exhibit FRETLESS BASS. Did I mention synth panpipes?

Yes, I have to fess up: I’m enjoying the record. So the question is: why does it work? The answer, clearly, is that I frankly don’t have the thinnest wisp of a clue.

I never heard the earlier Odawas full-length, so I don’t know how this rates with their earlier work or how it compares in terms of sound. The music on this album is basically super-atmospheric, melodic singer-songwriter music, emerging from a sombre, reflective universe - I haven’t ruled out the possibility that the album was written in a lonely bar on a distant planet where few humans ever venture.

Despite the fact that most of the defining sounds on the album come from synthesized sources, it gives off strongly folk vibes. The harmonica flourishes probably do something to aid this impression, and the fact that the vocals sound uncannily like a young Neil Young at his most yearning doesn’t hurt either. Guitar strums sit nestled amongst the synths from time to time, but overall this album offers tones and sounds that normally don’t get a look-in on singer-songwriter material unless they’re in the hands of someone like Daniel Lanois.

To conclude, this is a grey-weather album. It’s not a daytrip sunshine car album, and it’s not a downtempo party album. It sounds best suited for wet days when you would prefer to curl up in a blanket with a mug of cocoa. Try it out - you might love it, or you may hate it.

(The album has also been given rotation for my daughter Nadia’s bedtime music. She seems to like it for chilling or sleeping to, which gives it bonus points)

You can get your first taste by listening to an mp3 below:

Listen

• Harmless Lover’s Discourse (mp3)

I’d had this one sitting on my review pile for literally months, but for some reason I’d never actually flipped it on. Turns out I was missing out - it’s a lovely little find.

Parades are a Sydney four piece that were apparently formed in early 2008. For the most part they make understated semi-lo-fi pop (think The Radio Dept., Notwist, perhaps The Postal Service, et al) that straddles the gap between electronic pop and and a live band dynamic, while occasionally their sound expands to a dense, atmospheric, even anthemic full band sound (somewhat Expatriate-esque, but with more Explosions in the Sky and less new wave 80s bands).

Their self-titled EP contains 5 tracks, each featuring concise and to-the-point songwriting (not always a common trait in music of this ilk), and melodies that are frequently tweaked to perfection and instantly hummable. Opener Shut Up And Be Young opens with a classic sing-along sunshine-y refrain underscored by ambience and propelled by a simple click-and-glitch drum program, while second track Invaders has a great driving synth bassline and constant momentum, punctuated by shimmery guitar arpeggios and organs. Emotion is presented in its primary colours, but don’t be alarmed: it works, mostly because it doesn’t sound contrived.

Third track Mountain Moves doesn’t exactly reach out and grab me - it plays pretty straight cards as a normal poppy indie rock band song - but it’s certainly competent. The Replicant is extremely Radiohead-esque (mostly a cross between Sit Down. Stand Up. and The Gloaming), and it’s perhaps a little melodramatic, but stands as a solid tune. The EP closer Great White North is another indie rock moment, but features a great dynamic build, nice duo-ing of guy and girl vocals and a great all-out post-rock climax - a great performance.

For an album entirely recorded, mixed and mastered entirely in one of the band member’s garages, the recording carries itself surprisingly well. The performances sounds confident, in part because they don’t attempt to achieve more than their strengths allow, which works to the band’s advantage. The sound quality may not be up to scratch compared to a studio recording, but at the same time the band sounds like they’ve been afforded the liberty of developing their sound at their leisure, which can only be a good thing. I’d love to hear the group in the hands of the right producer to smooth some of the bumps and maybe introduce a new perspective to their songs, but given the band’s capable creation of this release, there’s no reason they can’t build on their experience for the next time round.

In short, this group is on my list of bands to watch. Read this post on their Myspace for info on how to order their EP, and if you want to see them live you can catch them at World Bar with Papa vs Pretty on March 6th.

Listen

• Shut Up and Be Young (mp3)

The video for the new Basics single With This Ship has finally hit the Internet after being under wraps for some time:

The song has been through a few incarnations since it’s first live outings in early 2008, but has become a straight shooting pop anthem. Trust me, it’ll get in your head and not leave for days.

The single (7″ and CD) will be in stores next week. The B-side is Tim Heath’s first ever released composition entitled Trouble In His Head and I am not making an understatement in saying that it is EXCELLENT. Keep an eye out for it. (update: it’s streaming over here)

The Basics will be participating in a Red Cross Bushfire Appeal gig in Melbourne on March 1st (details here), but have released no official tour plans beyond that.