ALBUM REVIEW: Iron & Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean

(released on 4AD / Warner Bros. 2011)
Review by Michael Bird
                                             

2/5

I like Iron & Wine a lot. I’ve liked pretty much everything Sam Beam has done, actually. My favourite Iron & Wine is the lo-fi early albums, The Creek Drank The Cradle especially, but I’ve enjoyed all the subsequent collaborations and EP’s that saw Beam graduate from minimalist guitars to standard indie arrangements to world music experiments. 2007’s The Shepherd’s Dog was the furthest Beam had strayed from his early work, but many of the endearing qualities of previous Iron & Wine albums (intimacy, most vitally) remained. Kiss Each Other Clean is another step away from Beam’s humble musical beginnings, but ultimately amounts to experimentation at the expense of quality.

Opener ‘Walking Far From Home’ is about a minute and a half too long, and highlights one of several shortfalls found on the album. Beam’s lyrical wheelhouse so far has been forlorn love songs, pastoral folksiness and nostalgia. If he’s been vague on character or events, he’s made up for it with a knack for striking imagery, and almost always left the listener with at least an impression of what any given song might be about. Here’s an abridged list of things Beam apparently saw when he was walking far from home; ‘a building high as heaven, rainclouds, little babies, lovers in a window, sickness blooming fruit trees, children in the river, a boat full of believers, sunlight on the water, flowers on a hillside, a car crash in the country, a white dog chase its tail, naked dancers in the city’. There’s plenty more, but you get the idea. Along with the crush of instruments trying to find room in the track, the vocal is just overwhelming and messy, and just keeps going. If brevity is the soul of wit…

Beam continues to widen his sonic palette on Kiss Each Other Clean, throwing everything from tenor saxophone to processed electronic warbling into songs. There’s no need to start yelling ‘Judas’ every time new sounds come into play, but Kiss Each Other Clean is almost track to track schizophrenic, never settling on a style and never really giving the new elements time to be explored and find their space. Beam doesn’t settle on a style long enough to give it his own signature, and as such a lot of the album sounds like a funk/jazz band featuring Beam on vocals, or a reggae group featuring Beam. By his own admission Beam was exploring sounds from the past and attempting to put together an album that would evoke the feeling of a few hours worth of 70’s radio (if you were on a decidedly weird and varied radio station, I suppose), but Kiss Each Other Clean pales in comparison in that regard to something like John Frusciante’s Shadows Collide With People or even Cee-Lo Green’s latest. Beam largely fails to put his own stamp on the sounds he is paying homage to, and it all sounds thrown together rather than carefully stitched together. 

There are some enjoyable cuts on the album, the clean pop of ‘Tree By The River’ or the more familiar ‘Godless Brother In Love’. Again, there should be no expectation for an artist to recycle past formulas, but it feels as though Beam only really hits his stride when he’s playing with more familiar elements. Rousing final track ‘Your Fake Name Is Good Enough For Me’ is a glimpse of what could have been on the album, running long enough to let the novel elements (horns, a decidedly reggae/funk feel to the percussion) take root and build rather than just poke their head in the door before disappearing.

NEON LOVE - Live at Karova Lounge (teaser)

Neon Love played their final show ever last Saturday in their hometown of Ballarat. We at Duckduzz were fortunate enough to be there. If you missed the show then you should be happy to know we filmed the whole thing. YES! The whole damn show will be online sometime in the coming week. In the meantime, here's a taste of what's to come!

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ALBUM REVIEW: Yeasayer - Live at Ancienne Belgique

(Self-Released, 2011)
Review by Michael Bird
                                              

3.5/5

I suspect that one of the reasons Yeasayer’s debut All Hour Cymbals was met with more enthusiasm than follow-up full length Odd Blood is the absence of any real sense of discovery in the latter. Yeasayer had been playing together for little more than a year when All Hour Cymbals hit shelves, and were undoubtedly still refining their sound and exploring what they could do as a group. Odd Blood is a much more streamlined and focused album, but at the expense of loose arrangements, varied instrumentation and a willingness to let songs wander. Live At Ancienne Belgique shows that Yeasayer have arrived at a comfortable middle point between the two albums, at least in their live show.

The performance is taken from a time when Yeasayer were still touring and promoting Odd Blood, so initially the focus is on releases from that album. A little of the oppressive studio click-track feel of cuts ‘Madder Red’ and ‘Rome’ is gone though, and both songs benefit from the looser, livelier atmosphere. There’s a little imperfection in the keys and percussion, giving life to what might otherwise have been a monotonous affair. Straddling the line between acoustic performance and digital texture has always been one of the group’s strengths, but erring on the side of truly live performance is what elevates Yeasayer above their contemporaries in the experimental indie scene.

Singles ‘Ambling Alp’ and ‘2080’ are highlights toward the end of the show, and both are microcosms of the whole Yeasayer live package. Front man Chris Keating ups the delay on his vocals (he seems to control a great deal of what would normally be left to the sound desk from his keys/mixing station) and both guitar and bass swim in effects evoking vintage psychedelia. Again, the effects betray welcome hints of imperfection, wavering tonally from time to time and not always falling into place with the same precision you’d expect from a studio release. Live At Ancienne Belgique captures Yeasayer in an exciting phase, hitting their stride in a performance that emphasises the most enjoyable parts of their first two LP’s and sets the stage nicely for their next release.




The album is available for download here: http://yeasayer.net/xmas/


 

An interview with Alec O'Hanley (TWO HOURS TRAFFIC)

Interview by Sean Sebastian
                                                     

Constantly referred to as one of the most successful independent acts to hail from Canada in recent years, Two Hours Traffic were recently in the country touring their new album Territory. This album marks the band’s third major studio album, under Bumstead Records. However the band’s writing process has remained untouched since their first EP, The April Storm, released in 2003, “[We’re] generally pretty collaborative,” says Alec O’Hanley, guitarist and back-up vocalist, “Usually one of the three of us; myself, Andrew or Liam, will bring a sketch of a song to the group and we’ll all hammer it out from there. We don’t really pigeon hole ourselves to the instrument we play. So there’s healthy discourse,” he adds almost sarcastically, “[The process] can last anywhere from a week to several months”.

Photograph by Scott Munn

The Australian leg of their tour sees them teaming up with Triple J favourites The Jezabels, to play shows at The East Brunswick Club and The Bended Elbow. The two bands met at a Dead Letter Chorus show in 2009, “We had done a little jaunt with Dead Letter Chorus in June. And our manager down here, Jeff Trio, kinda floated their EP around. They showed up at our show in Sydney and we concocted a cultural exchange,” Alec adds with a wry smile.  “And I think it’s panned out rather nicely so far. [They’re] the most polite band we’ve encountered so far”.

The band’s sound lends itself to the sentimentality of popular teen dramas, and the similarity hasn’t gone unnoticed. Their track Limelight featured on an episode of The O.C. in 2006, but the whole ordeal can be quite fruitless, “It can be anti-climactic. I remember our local newspaper back in Prince Edward Island has a piece saying Limelight was gonna be in the O.C. That night we all tuned in and it was just on in the background for like five seconds. You don’t wanna go along with that sort of thing too much,” he says with a laugh.

That said, the soundtrack for The O.C., at the height of its popularity, had a knack for breaking indie acts and this effect can be seen to have touched Two Hours Traffic. Their following album Little Jabs was nominated for the 2008 Polaris Music Award.

But popularity isn’t a quality the band is concerned with, “When Liam and I started the band in high school, we had no idea how long it would persist, or to which heights. We’re still small potatoes in the big scheme of things. We don’t pat ourselves on the back very much”.

Following this tour, Alec plans to knuckle down and start work on the next album, “I’d love to really delve into writing. Get a whole bunch of equipment and bunker down in Prince Edward Island and experiment with the guys. Try to make our masterpiece”.

Alec expects the album to be released later this year.

DUCKDUZZ presents: FELIX WEATHERBOURNE

Written by Sean Sebastian
                                                  

Felix Weatherbourne, standing in the studio he hand-built with his dad, recounts the last year; the gig he played at Falls Festival, “I played in this ‘GeoDome’, it was a little outside the main stages, in this sort of village. It was weird, it had a kind of ‘carnie’ atmosphere. But the dome got packed out and it turned out to be really good.” He also spoke of the untimely break-up of his band, Press Colour, “Some things were said,” he pauses, the faint smile fades from his face, “I mean, I appreciate honesty. It’s a good thing.”  And the origins of his solo music career, “Mountain Man was the first track I wrote. This was in April, 2010. Back then I had no idea how to use any of the equipment I have now.” Influenced by the looping mastery of Jamie Liddell and Reggie Watts, Felix’s music is constructed almost entirely of his own voice. He denounces the use of backing tracks, “it’s like a Britney Spears type of thing. I don’t like that.” So when it comes to playing live, Felix simply creates his songs from scratch.


Check out Felix Weatherbourne playing live at the Grace Darling Hotel, Collingwood supporting Signet Mae and Bright Knights on the January 25th.

ALBUM REVIEW: The Walkmen - Lisbon

(released on Fat Possum, 2010)

Review by Kim Larkin
                                            

3/5

Almost every aspect of Lisbon will remind you of another song or band, sometimes just proving that there is something else you could be listening to, including ‘old school’ The Walkmen. Leithauser’s vocal seem to be a combination of Dylan’s pronunciation and the presentation of risky range heard in the Cold War kids. Upon saying that, he does completely hold his own in comparison to the messy music (bringing us back to the garage aspect of The Walkmen). Let me just clarify as messy not being a bad thing, in Victory for example. There’s a pleasant delay to the sound, and it gives off the same charm as any Vampire Weekend song where, regardless of the intentions behind the lyrics, it seems like a decent ‘summer song’; see Woe is me, undoubtably the highlight of the album..

In all honesty, any sentiments presented in the album through the lyrics are lost as focus remains on the music, the melody of Leithauser’s voice turns purely into notes through his elongated vowels and lazy words, as the guitars normally remain quite sharp and almost piercing. There’s something simple and genuine about all the songs, and their earnest sound (yes, including the mariachi horns) will let you forgive the upcoming disappointment and listen to the album a second time (possibly more) without resentment.

While I Shovel the Snow is the main plateux of the album, where nothing seems to be happening, especially in comparison to the momentum in songs from the first half of Lisbon. It’s somewhat of a let down as The Walkmen seem to ignore the contrasting dynamics of songs such as Angela Surf City and Blue as Your Blood, which is what really makes the album. Listening to the last few songs on Lisbon just feels like a poorly staged concert where all the energetic songs are played at the start to get the crowed going, and all the lullabies are played at the end of the to serenade sleepy attendants to their cars. The song Lisbon itself is a big step away from The Walkmen fans knew from their biggest hit The Rat in 2004. It’s a decent song, but not worthy of being deemed the albums title.

Lisbon is a far lighter album than their earlier Bows + Arrows and You & Me, but with the same regal feel expected of The Walkmen and their use of trumpet processionals, vintage instruments and upright pianos. Combining what sounds like garage and folk (unsurprising as Chris Zane, Mumford &Sons producer also produced this album), The Walkmen return to their original roots as members from garage/indie bands Jonathan Fire*Eater and The Recoys. 

WHY YOU SHOULD GO TO BIG DAY OUT

Written by Michael Bird

                                                        

Sure it’s more or less moot at this point, as tickets for Big Day Out 2011 sold out in about 30 seconds, but it’s worth reminding ourselves why Big Day Out remains the Australian festival despite competition from Splendour, Falls, et al.

Where else would you hear:

Australian bands like Silverchair, Grinspoon and Powderfinger time and time again. Even when they’re not touring so much or jet out of the country for most of the year, there are some Aussie bands who have become regulars on the main stages (eventually), and you could pretty much trace the evolution of a band like Powderfinger by taking a look at their BDO shows. You could also trace the evolution of Daniel John’s hair, which is just as interesting. Outside of grassroots festivals, it’s hard to find an event in Australia that continues to showcase Australian rock like Big Day Out.

Political hoo-ha that everyone actually cares about. The infamous flag ban of 2007 ignited debate right across the social spectrum, with political heavyweights getting into it almost as much as the topless steroid guy who debated freedom of expression with you in line at the port-a-loos. Jet performed their set against an Australian Flag backdrop, and while not many people were offended by the flag, Jet’s music remains highly offensive to this day. 

Cedric’s sheep rant. Their truncated 2001 set is well worth checking out on its own merits (seriously, check it out on Youtube, Arc Arsenal is fucking insane), but perhaps the most memorable part of At the Drive-In’s Sydney performance was front man Cedric Bixler-Zavala insulting first the press gallery and then a large portion of the crowd in a bizarre anti-mosh rant. Taking issue with the amount of crowd-surfing that was going on, Bixler gesticulated, made some vaguely racist comments and then bleated like a sheep before the whole band left the stage. Tellingly, teenager Jessica Michalik was killed in the Limp Bizkit mosh later that day, in perhaps the darkest moment for the festival, adding a touch of prophecy to At the Drive In’s set.

YOUNG HERETICS - Purple Sneakers, Melbourne 19/11/2010

Text and Photos by Matthew Hallett
                                                                   

As the crowd gathered in anticipation of what was to come, beverages were consumed and cameras were at the ready. Word seems to be spreading of how amazing Melbourne duo Kitty Hart and Matthew Wright aka Young Heretics really are. As they setup their instruments, they look well-dressed and ready to go, along with the aid of a bass player and drummer; Young Heretics begin playing, their confidence and conviction highly evident throughout the night.

They opened with two new songs, which had more of a rock feel than some of the duo’s usual warped pop songs. The crowd was instantly hooked in, enthralled by what they were witnessing. That’s what is great about Young Heretics; their music contains so many different elements and is so unique that it draws you in. Their sound was a lot larger and more filled-out compared to their debut album ‘We are the Lost Loves’. Yet among all the great sounds and the hypnotisingly-brilliant stage presence (on what was a relatively small stage) the stand out factor was the duo’s amazing ability to harmonise so beautifully, even with the wall of sound from other instruments.

Fans were treated to the emphatic Risk/Loss and the stunning We are the Lost Loves, as well as another new song which Kitty called The Lion King Song announcing this would also be on a future album. Probably the biggest highlight of the night the set closer Bones of a Rabbit, a song that just continues to build, with beautiful harmonies and vocals that soar high into the heavens, taking you on an incredible journey, capped off by the duo’s floor-tom and cymbal attack at the end which was also enthralling to watch.

It was a shame the set was relatively brief because Young Heretics are an incredible live act with a brilliant set of songs, and with a taste of what is to come on album number two, one can truly be excited about what lies ahead for Young Heretics.