So, I’m trying something out this month, and have lashed together a little video preview thing for some bands playing this month that you might think are awesome too.

And what a fine month February’s turning out to be here in Sydney… a full five of my very favouritest people all gracing various stages across the weeks:

Courtney Barnett (Oxford Art Factory, 14th Feb, supporting Jens Lekman)

Absolutely loving the noise coming out of this band. Awesome live, too. They’re supporting Jens Lekman on the 14th at Oxford Art Factory.

The Smith Street Band (The Annandale, 15th Feb)

A relative newcomer, but firmly up there with my absolute favourite bands of all time. Just a pure, unadulterated joy.

Jeremy Neale (FBi Social, 1st Mar, supporting Gung Ho)

There has to be something wrong with Jeremy Neale, right? He’s in at least three bands, one of which is Velociraptor (who are brilliant), another is Running Gun Sound (see below), as well as performing under his own name, in a sharp suit. No-one has the right to be that fucking awesome. NO-ONE.

Shady Lane (OAF, 8th, 14th and 22nd Feb, Free!)

‘Built Guilt’ was a little corker from the front part of last year, but I didn’t realise what a charmer singer Jordy was until he sat down and did a little Field Recording session with me. Don’t think the show will be as sparse, but it will be totally worth your time, and worth a damn sight more than the zero dollars they’re charging for these shows.

Running Gun Sound (OAF, 21st Feb, part of the ‘Gimme Shelter’ night)

It was only after I’d played ‘Just You See’ about a hundred times before I realised Jeremy Neale was in this damn band too. Seriously, I’d ban myself from writing about him again, but I think that’d leave me about two or three Australian bands left I could actually talk about. Anyway, this lot stand out for me not because of the surf and garage Aussie standard racket, but the oddly Public Image Limited vocal that gets dropped on its head. Love it. Bet this’ll be cracking fun – they’re playing as part of the ‘Gimme Shelter’ night at the OAF, so it’s a pretty safe bet I reckon.

Got a bit caught up with The Day Job this week, so this is pretty late, but still – there’s a fair few decent acts to go see tonight and over the weekend. Here’re the ones I fancy the look of:

THURS 15th Nov 2012

Iluka, Evil J & Saint Cecilia, Briscoe @ FBi Social at King’s Cross Hotel

Violent Soho, Dune Rats, Bloods @ GoodGod

The War On Drugs, Good Heavens @ Oxford Art Factory

FRI 16th Nov 2012

Battleships, Belle & The Bone People, Light Giant @ FBi Social at King’s Cross Hotel

Millions, SURES, Black Vanilla, Driffs, Mannequins, Felix Lloyd, Rascals And Runaways plus a Dandy Warhols DJ set @ Mum at The World Bar

SAT 17th Nov 2012

Bears With Guns @ The Standard

SUN 18th Nov 2012

The Preatures, Regular John, SURES, Chicks Who Love Guns, The Upskirts, She Rex @ The Annandale (from noon)

(This looks a bit daft – The Annandale is demolishing something or other, so they’re building a stage on the roof and going mental. Which is a perfectly sensible response. Sounds like fun though.)

I’m an amateur nerd when it comes to US Elections – I absolutely love them, and have done since Clinton’s insurgency in 1992. Each time Americans have gone to the polls, I’ve stayed up as late as I humanly could to see the states turn red or blue. This time round, I’m in Australia and the glories of timezonery mean I can watch the results come in (or not), while awake. This makes me very happy.

Not least because the lunatic festival of weirdness that has been this election cycle – made up of some of the most memorable man-tanned goons ever to graced the political stage – has been a total fucking barn-burner. If you can’t get excited about this election, there’re things wrong with you only surgery can cure.

I’m not American (although Mrs Showburner kind of is), and I certainly don’t worship the place from afar. There are things wrong with it that flat out horrify me. Things that would flat out horrify self-respecting African warlords, if we’re being completely honest. But – I’m also not as much of a fucking idiot to say things like ‘ all Americans are fat’, ‘all Americans are stupid’, or ‘did you know most Americans don’t even have a passport’ accompanied by the same eye-rolling usually seen on the village idiot or some kind of goat. If you are one of those people, seriously – get help. You’re a fucking moron and need to go to a library or something.

Meanwhile, I largely sit in the middle ground somewhere, that recognises that some things are worth keeping, and some things are really, really dumb and need changing. And I can hold both ideas in my head at exactly the same time. I don’t think I’m special in that regard.

So, since I’m already thinking about voting and the choice Americans are making as I write this, and about how the choice they’ve been offered has been pitched (by both sides) as between voting for The Only Man Who Can Help and the Very Devil Himself, I got a bit cross about an article on The New Yorker. Yes, I’m an effete liberal egghead pinko, but bear with me.

The guy was banging on in the worst sort of hipster way about how (I think) no music listened to on the internet matters any more, because (I think) a sociopathic record stall-holder wouldn’t sell him a cut-price piece of vinyl leading him to go onto Spotify. Which (I think) seemed to lead to some kind of existential funk.

Go read it. Then tell me if you think I’m being a twit for getting sent over the edge by stuff like this:

“The Internet frees up cultural treasures while simultaneously eroding the mechanisms that endow them with value”

Aside from it being just about the worst writing I’ve ever read, that bugs the ever-living crap out of me, and was the turd atop a particularly florid crap-cake of a piece. Let me list some ways in which he has irked me:

- One thing is not necessarily mutually exclusive to another thing. Using Spotify doesn’t mean you get an invisible tattoo on your face that means you can’t walk into a record shop.

- Someone needs to tell the man that record shops still actually exist. Some of them even exist in New York, I’m fairly confident.

- “Instead of carrying around a stack of tapes, would Sir prefer perhaps to carry around all of recorded music in a pocket-sized device Sir was already planning on taking with Sir? Excellent. A fine choice Sir, I commend your common sense. You could have ended up like this guy, Sir, after all.”

- Live music is still live music. Anyone who moans about music having no value anymore and doesn’t go to see live music is a fucking charlatan and a fool, and has no business talking about the state of music. Not saying this chap’s one of those, but recorded music exists alongside the live experience, and live music’s not going anywhere. Least of all into the internet in some magical Tron-like way.

- By the way, the internet hasn’t actually replaced ANYTHING yet. Seriously, can anyone think of something that existed in 1990 that doesn’t exist today and that has become extinct because of the internet? I’ve been thinking about it and I really can’t think of anything. I’m prepared to be corrected, but I think it’s a toughie.

- That bloke you met on the record stall? He’s a miserable bastard, not some kind of noble fucking metaphor. Fuck him, and his type. I hope his ass goes bust. Being miserable to your customers is only funny when you’re the landlord of famous pubs in Soho, London.

So, aside from me just ranting because I’m full of Scotch, what has this got to do with anything at all?

To start with, it’s about choice. Choice is not something that either precludes you from doing two things at the same time, nor should your choice define who you are. Similarly, the choices you make may not be the majority opinions. That happens. Your favourite record is not necessarily the world’s favourite record. Any damn fundamentalist who tells me that I’ve made the wrong choice needs to learn that. Preferably by shutting the fuck up. So – radical atheists, evangelical Christians, you can both get back into the same fetid ideological cave you share and leave me the fuck alone. A pox on both your damn houses.

Also, Spotify is not the end of anything. As above, I’m struggling to think of one damn Internet thing that has caused the end of any other pre-Internet thing. There’s a Blockbuster down the street from me, Universal Records still employs people, I can still buy a newspaper in an actual shop on an actual street, and TV ratings still utterly dwarf anything the internet can deliver. Spotify meanwhile is a totally amazing and hideously clever use of technology that adds to the rich experience of music – it’s not something that’s come to rob your house or destroy your childhood, it’s fun and makes life a bit easier. Amazing in its way, and I’m a huge fan – but really, that’s all it does. A bit like pop music, really.

Still – and attempting to wrap this up before I fall down – I think what I’ve been trying to say is that having a choice is a fucking privilege, no matter how small you think it might be. Just wait until it’s gone, then come and bitch to me about how Spotify is a bad thing.

And to all my American pals, I hope you voted, whoever you voted for. If I had my way, all politicians – everyone in fact – would be required to listen to the opening line of this track, and then behave accordingly. That, my friends, would make for a truly interesting choice.

Holy cow – there are TEN gigs on this week I’d equally show up to, and it’s only on Wednesday when there’s no conflict. So – while you need to pick and choose wisely this week, each and every one of these has got something awesome to see, so you really can’t miss. If I’ve got to pick one though it’d have to be either the folky Slow-Club-ish goodness of Achoo! Bless You (pictured) at The Annandale, or Boomgates comforting jangly fuzz at GoodGod, both on Saturday.

WEDNESDAY Nov 7th

Cabins, Winter People, The Khanz @ Bondi Beach Road Hotel (Free)

THURSDAY Nov 8th

Atom Bombs, The Fabergettes, The Metal Babies @ Brighton Up Bar

City Calm Down @ GoodGod (also doing FBi Lunch Break @ King’s Cross Hotel [1pm, Free])

I Know Leopard, Driffs, Iluka, Black Lakes @ The Standard

FRIDAY Nov 9th

Tessa & The Typecast @ Upstairs Beresford

Texture Like Sun, Patrick James @ FBi Social

SATURDAY Nov 10th

Henry Wagons & The Unwelcome Company, Achoo! Bless You @ The Annandale

Spod (Single Launch) @ Brighton Up Bar

(Track’s unembeddable for some reason – link to it here: http://snd.sc/POX7jM)

Boomgates @ GoodGod

The Tiger And Me @ Red Rattler

Just a quick one this since I know precisely fuck all about synthpop, so can really only talk about HOW FUCKING AMAZING THIS RECORD IS for so long before I start to repeat myself.

Bottom line – this is a massive, massive slab of unutterably brilliant, shimmering, otherworldy, pop magic from Chvrches. The bonus features are that there’s just enough of a Scottish accent to make the point about where it’s from, and it comes with a Miaoux Miaoux remix (above) that stands on its own as a peer to the original.

This one’s going on repeat, repeatedly.

Slash is at the SEC, which will have the faint whiff of ‘I wish Axl was here’, The Pharcyde are doing Upstairs At The Beresford which smell strongly of nostalgia, and The English Beat are at The Factory, which will probably just smell a fair a bit, but I think we all know the highlight of the big rooms this week is The Beards, supporting Kate Miller-Heidke at The Metro.

For  those of us who like our bands a bit closer and our floors a bit stickier though, there’s actually a shit-ton of good stuff this week, with at least three must-sees  for me.

GIGS OF THE WEEK

#1: Fabergettes, Brendan Maclean, Community Radio, Orca! Straight Ahead @ FBi Social, Weds 22nd August

Been partial to Fabergettes’ garage-y doop-wop racket for a lot of this year and if I’m honest, a lot of that’s down to the name. I love a good “-ettes” suffix, can’t get enough of it. This’ll be excellent.

#2: Die! Die! Die!, The Go Roll Your Bones, Sweet Teeth @ The Standard, Thurs 23rd August

“Stalwart” is a word lazy people use about bands like Die! Die! Die!, but it’s about right – hard not to love a band who point blank refuse to quit, continue to churn out diamond-tipped belters like their latest (below), and who show up on tour in Australia without drums or amps, assuming that they’ll be able to borrow them in return for tour tickets.

#3:  Expatriate (Album Launch), Bloods @ FBi Social, Sat 25th August

Yes, I’m harping on about Bloods (pictured) again, what of it?

Also playing this week if my tastes make you sick:

Weds 22nd August

Corb Lund @ Notes In Newtown

The Jungle Giants @ The Beach Road Hotel (free)

Jack Carty, Leroy Lee @ OAF Gallery (Folk Club, free)

Thurs 23rd August

Little Bastard, Lacey Cole, Achoo! Bless You @ OAF Gallery (last night of residency)

Boy In A Box, Kingswood, Young Romantics @ GoodGod

Day Ravies, Bearhug, Dead Radio, Family @ FBi Social

Rapids, Bon Chat Bon Rat, Mere Women, The Chitticks, Embassy @ OAF (A Night On The Town With OAF, free drinks!)

Friday 24th August

Gin Wigmore, Jackson McLaren, Black Bear @ The Standard

Loon Lake, Glass Towers, Cub Scouts @ GoodGod

Polo Club (EP Launch), Colour Coding, Madhu @ FBi Social  (Polo Club also playing Sat 25th)

Royal Blood, The Guppies, Bubbaganouj, Little Napier, FLWRGN, Apes, Kilter, Helmut Uhlman @ World Bar (Mum)

Saturday 25th August

Polo Club, Xanthopan @ OAF Gallery (free, Polo Club also playing Fri 24th)

Illy @ The Hi-Fi

Polar Nation @ Upstairs At The Beresford

The Jungle Giants, Toucan, The Universal @ GoodGod

I said I was sworn off writing about SXSW, but that was before I moved to Australia, before I decided I was stupidly, giddily and childishly excited about going back to Austin for the first time in a couple of years, and before I decided that I just plain wanted to.

So! Australians! – let’s get down to it.

Are you in a fucking awesome band? 

Then you should apply to showcase. Don’t fuck about, start planning your application RIGHT THE HELL NOW. If you want to give yourself the best chance possible of scoring a berth, you need to, among many other things:

• Get a bunch of shows booked, get recordings of them, get reviews and photos of them sorted out
• Accept every interview request from (and beg for coverage in) every tinpot little music blog you can think of – including and especially this one.
• Ignore those shitecandles who tell you that it’s ‘all about the music’. If you’re genuinely serious about quitting your shit-eating job and playing music for a living you need to start learning how. This means learning about being a pro. Go speak to EVERYONE who’s got more experience than you. Make friends. Then write about it somewhere. Prove you’re worth inviting.
• Go and sort out your website, your facebook page, your twitter feed, your tumblr, your instagram feed, your pinterest page, your foursquare and your flickr account. For. Fuck’s. Sake. It’s the 21st century, and the fact that everyone has a smartphone, everyone’s online and everyone should be able to find something out about your band in any damn way they like shouldn’t have escaped you. Just fucking do it. Ask a teenager if you’re stuck.
• Make friends with other bands, in particular ones who are also applying. Seriously, you’ll need pals with spare strings at some point, 100% guaranteed.
• Nose around the Sounds Australia site. Ask them questions. I’m new here, but back in Scotland there were umpteen different things the Scottish equivalent put together to help you apply. Don’t be a dick, go and say hello and ask for help – if they’re half as awesome as the Scottish lot, they’ll be super cool.
• Look into grants and funding. It’s mind-blowingly expensive getting you and your gear to Austin. Help is available to those who deserve it though and you’ll only have yourself to blame if you don’t ask.
• Learn about the visa process. In fact, learn it off by heart. It’s the one thing that totally screws most bands. No kidding, this is important.
• Finally, tell me if you’re going – I’m diving headfirst back into writing about bands going to SXSW, in particular the Aussie ones. No really, tell me.

Do you run a fucking awesome label?

Then you know about SXSW, I don’t need to persuade you lot.

Do you like fucking awesome bands on fucking awesome labels?

Then – and I can’t repeat this enough – DON’T FUCK ABOUT. Get yourself a ticket, and do it bloody quickly, the hotels are filling up already. If you miss the good hotels, don’t panic, there’s like a million ways you can get somewhere to stay. I’ll write about them later, but you don’t need to worry about that now – just get a pass if you want to be guaranteed to get into the good stuff, the price goes up in a month or so, and keeps going up after that. But no kidding – it may be a long way away, but it’s the best fun you’ll ever have.

Further Reading: SXSW – Main Site

I love getting recommendations for bands. Since I know dick all about Australian bands, I’ve been getting a lot of that in recent months. Basically, everyone I know or meet’s been chucking names at me left, right, and centre.

The Smith Street Band was one such recommendation, the finest pointer I’ve had in years actually. It turns out they’re not only awesome but have awesome taste since it was them who, in turn, just got me into Sweet Teens.

There’s no surprise at all, musically, why their Melbourne peers have been recommending them to anyone who’ll listen. The hoarse and throaty vocal, the guitars peeling the paint off the walls, the rhythms threatening to fall apart any second – so far so Smith Street, right?

The thing with Sweet Teens though, is that their musical core is firmly in the past. Two specific points in the past to be precise, 1977 and 2002. For this band it’s like the history of recorded sound consists of Joe Strummer’s early work, The Libertines’ Up The Bracket, and – er – that’s it. No fooling – it’s absolutely fucking uncanny in some places. Go and download their debut album (it’s free, brilliantly), take one listen to opener ‘This Ain’t England’ and feel the irony gland in your mind swell until it bursts. It couldn’t sound more like that Whitechapel scene if it dusted off its Guards jacket and slept with Kate Moss.

That’s the easy version though.

The more feeble-minded will hear the Libs influence or the Clash homage and write them off as clones, pastiche, or copycats. You should stick with it though – it’s got a heart the size of a fucking Volkswagen, plus I’m pretty sure this band both get the joke and don’t give a fuck if you don’t.

Taking a quick spin through the records that have lasted the years with me, it’s the ones where the band has managed to convince me that they really and truly couldn’t be having any more fun, that there is literally nowhere they’d rather be right now than singing this song, just for me, right now.

Sweet Teens have got that sort of charm. In hip-hop production circles (the sort of circles I move in regularly, obviously) there’s a special type of near-autistic obsession reserved for achieving the right amount of ‘swing’ in the beat, the slight time adjustments that give it a human-sounding edge. Mike Skinner of The Streets was a master of this, with programmed beats nudged here and there to sound like it’s marginally off-kilter.This lot have set the internal swing gauge in their head to eleven.

From the first notes, the whole thing threatens to fall apart at the seams almost every few bars, but it manages to sound like it’s a result of the fact they’re just HAVING TOO MUCH FUCKING FUN TO WORRY ABOUT THE TIME SIGNATURE! And then they chuck in a sample taken from the cricket commentary. How can you not love this?

Anyway, back to that criticism that they sound like other stuff, done well before. Y’see, this is what technology has done to us – as someone’s almost certainly already said, the problem with anyone being able to record a professional-sounding demo in their bedroom is that literally anyone can record a professional-sounding demo in their bedroom.

Broadly, I’m all for making it easier for anyone to slap a tune down, but let’s be honest, a lot of new music is turning into teenage poetry, the sort of thing that should never be let out into the world. The next update of Garageband should contain some kind of artificial editing intelligence that won’t let you save the thing unless it’s actually any fucking good.

We’re way past the end of history when it comes to music, and complaining that something sounds like something else is just a waste of everybody’s time – everything does that now. The only thing left to distinguish the wheat from the shite though is no longer raw musical talent, it’s personality.

And that, friends, is why Sweet Teens can be this artfully shambolic and stuff their influences front and centre. That’s why, with their force of charisma and volume of pure unadulterated child-like joy, they come across all box fresh and shiny and new and pure, dead brilliant.

Further Reading: GO GET THE (FREE) ALBUM. Also, let me save you a LOT of potentially embarrassing Googling and point you in the direction of their facebook page too.

Since Bell Biv Devoe’s show got cancelled this week, I know you’ve got a hole in your diary, right?

Problem is, you’re probably not going to either of Chet Faker‘s shows since they’re both sold out, and while you may be tempted to go to see the UK’s Passenger at the Hi-Fi, why not go for something a little less obvious this week, eh?

That said, if you use Eventfinder, it’ll tell you the very excellent Alpine are playing in Sydney this week – they’re not, not until the 31st at OAF at any rate. You should so go to that, by the way. As well as catching Good Heavens at The Lansdowne on Friday. Which, happily, would leave you free for Dune Rats with Children Collide on Saturday.

Rambling much this week? Boy howdy.

GIG OF THE WEEK

Good Heavens @ The Lansdowne, Fri 17th August

I was a teenager when Sonic Youth released Dirty, and while I fell for the ballsy sneer of “100%” (I was a teenage boy after all), it ended up being Kim Gordon who made that album stand out for me, twenty years on. Good Heavens made me remember that.

Weds 15th Aug

The Delta Riggs, Money For Rope @ Beach Road Hotel

The Rubens @ Manning Bar

Thurs 16th Aug

Iowa, Sounds Like Sunset, Lyyar, Narrow Lands @ FBi Social

Sea Legs, Iluka, The Darkened Seas, The Grease Arrestor @ The Standard

Little Bastard, The Mountains, Jack Dawson & Callithump @ OAF Gallery

Wolf And Cub, The Walking Who, Grass Taylor @ Rock Lily (The Walking Who also playing Fri 17th)

Ainslie Wills, Caitlin Park, Brendan Maclean @ GoodGod

Fri 17th Aug

Bears With Guns, Open Skys, Enerate, Dusty Yellow Sunbeams @ FBi Social

Children Collide, Dune Rats, Bad Dreemz @ The Standard (also playing Sat 18th)

No Art, Making, The Darkist, Mr Wang @ OAF Gallery (Sydney Art Day)

Bandintexas, Gabby Dever & The Fishermen, Koro Vacui, Georgia O’Connor & The Loveless Children @ Red Rattler

Panama, Mrs. Bishop @ Beach Road Hotel (Movement)

Burning Love (Canada), Epics, Lo! @ The Sando (Resist Records night, Burning Love also playing Sun 19th)

Mere Women, Hira Hira, Bad Jeep, Deathsquare, Chalk Eaters @ Blackwire

The Walking Who @ Upstairs At The Beresford (also playing Thurs 16th)

Sat 18th Aug

deerRepublic (EP Launch), The Former Love, Goldsmith, Bec & Ben @ FBi Social

Children Collide, Dune Rats, Bad Dreemz @ The Standard (also playing Fri 17th)

The Ruminaters, Pirates Alive, Smaal Cats @ OAF Gallery

Mental As Anything, Smoking Ponies, Super Florence Jam @ Beach Road Hotel

The Delta Riggs, Money For Rope, Kill City Creeps @ The Annandale

Between The Devil And The Deep, El Alamein (EP Launch) , Stockades, Harbourer @ Blackwire (7pm)

New War, Lost Animal, Scattered Order, Four Door @ The Square

Ungus Ungus Ungus @ The Lansdowne

Sun 19th Aug

Burning Love (Canada) + Fatturs Della Morte + Hostile Objects @ Blackwire (4pm, All Ages, Burning Love also playing Fri 17th)

Jordy Lane isn’t Jordie Lane, and Shady Lane was his grandfather’s nickname, but he didn’t know that when he came up with it. All of that kept me confused for a while.

Shady Lane also have an album out – a very good one called Built Guilt that you should definintely own – and Jordy graciously came and sat on a decorative park box round the back of Oxford Street and bashed out two absolute little charmers from it, nothing but an old guitar with barely enough frets on it for company.

The album itself goes off in spirals of creativity, blood going to it in thousands of ways, with bloopy keyboards and unusual noise interventions all over the place. It’s a confusing listen, but like looking at the ocean, you just *know* there’s some powerful stuff behind all the foaming and the movement.

Here though you get a nice sense of where it all starts, the currents beneath.

002 | 01: DUMB HOPE

002 | 02: STARFISH

Further Reading

Get more Lane in your life at http://facebook.com/ShadyLaneAU