ALBUM REVIEW: Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

(Released on Sub-Pop, 2011)
Review by Michael Bird
                                             

4/5

Mogwai have become something of an anachronism in the post-rock world. The build-and-release dynamic initially so central to the genre has been eschewed by many post-rock bands of late (whether or not they want to be labelled post-rock) in favour of melodic change-ups and more varied textures. Up and comers North and, to a less extent, Yndi Halda have followed Explosions In The Sky in bringing more than two chords into play, playing with structure and exploring more of the dynamic range between forlorn guitar picking and balls-out distorted crescendo. Through all this Mogwai have, for the most part, remained staunchly loyal to the Slint-inspired church of post-rock; stretching two chord, 4/4 songs out to fifteen minutes in length, drowning guitars in cavernous reverb, and generally adhering to the central tenets of the genre. Surprisingly, given all this, Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will finds Mogwai at their most experimental yet, finally stepping away from the sound they built their name on and rediscovering some of the things about post-rock that are actually fun.

There are only two tracks on the album that are thoroughly ‘traditional’ Mogwai, ‘White Noise’ and ‘You’re Lionel Richie’, which is the longest track on the album but clocks in at a mere eight and a half minutes. Song lengths have been cut in half or more, bringing some immediacy to Hardcore Will Never Die. Where the slow-burning dirge of a song like ‘Letters To The Metro’ might previously have been driven into the ground over ten minutes or more, the piano riff in the song is given time to establish itself, interweave with some counterpoint and then peter out over just four minutes. None of the emotion of the song is lost through brevity, and it’s really only through brevity that the limited emotional range of a band like Mogwai can seem fresh again after fifteen years.

Another way to make a band relevant and vibrant again is to add some new ingredients. 2003’s Happy Music For Happy People featured more electronic work than any previous Mogwai album, but it’s on Hardcore Will Never Die that the band really flex their experimental muscle. Angular vocoder of the sort Justin Vernon has been experimenting with of late dominates ‘George Square Thatcher Death Party’, creating an oddly hopeful atmosphere in spite of the de-humanizing effect such voice manipulation can often have. Robust synth and a motorik beat give ‘Mexican Grand Prix’ a compelling drive (I’m sure Mogwai intended the pun), and the song actually fades out a stuttering guitar melody that could have given way to a new section of the song. A post-rock band, Mogwai no less, fading out a melody that has only been audible for about thirty seconds. It is a startling change of pace, but a welcome one.

All these new ingredients, and a sort of collage of all the elements Mogwai has explored in previous elements, lend an exciting ‘what’s next?’ sort of feel to Hardcore Will Never Die. By the time ‘You’re Lionel Richie’ rolls around to close out the album, it’s almost a surprise to have the song build from mournful ambience to crushing, cymbal-backed distortion. Instead of being one of many classical post-rock cuts on the album, the song stands almost alone in its steadfast homage to the genre, and serves as a reminder that while it’s apparent they can experiment as well as any instrumental post-rock band, there’s a reason why Mogwai remain one of the giants of the genre.

ALBUM REVIEW: …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - Tao of the Dead

(Richter Scale / Superball 2011)
Review by Michael Bird
                                            
2/5

Seven albums in, you could forgive …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead a little indulgence (and expect some, if you’re familiar with the band). You could also expect a continuation of the somewhat stripped down, direct style the band returned to on their last LP Century of Self after a few poorly received, fairly overwrought albums. Tao of the Dead delivers on both counts, but it’s difficult to know where to file the album in relation to other …Trail of Dead releases. 

As far as indulgence goes, the two-part album (with each part in a specified key) is thematically based around a steampunk comic world created by singer/guitarist Conrad Keely, and the special edition version of the album comes with some extra music and a graphic novel to boot. The second part of Tao of the Dead is the fifteen minute ‘Strange News From Another Planet’, which is split into five ‘movements’ and littered with vocal samples and spaced-out ambient sections. So yes, there is plenty of indulgence from the Texas four-piece, but at least it’s mostly just padding to the music this time around, and the songs themselves don’t suffer too much. What dragged the last few albums before Century of Self down was over the top instrumentation and ideas bigger than the band could commit to tape. Stripping back to a four piece and spending only ten days in the studio did prevent too much musical bombast from entering into the equation, but where does that leave the songs themselves?

Unfortunately, one thing …Trail of Dead have lost over the last few years is urgency, and without it a lot of the songs on Tao of the Dead just chug along and disappear without making much of an impact. Token instrumental opener ‘Introduction: Let Us Experiment’ starts the album off with a bang of sorts, but it’s nothing new for the band, who deployed the exact same sonic tricks on the instrumental opener to Century of Self. From there it’s the same rolling toms and middling guitars that have become …Trail of Dead’s meat and potatoes, and there just isn’t much interesting enough to warrant repeat listens. ‘Pure Radio Cosplay’ has a decent keyboard hook, but the trouble is it’s the same keyboard hook used in the first track and again later in the wholly unnecessary ‘Pure Radio Cosplay (Reprise)’. The Jason Reece-sung ‘Ebb Away’ is a welcome break from a run of songs that just sound too alike to be thoroughly enjoyable, with a slower tempo and some space in the production. For all the elements the band stripped away, the instruments that remain crowd each other in almost every track, exhausting the ear.

The multi-part second section to the album (switching from the key of D to the key of F, for those who are interested) is, again, unremarkable. It sounds more like sketches that could have become a few decent songs that have been thrown together for the sake of having a long track with ‘movements’. That the whole of Tao of the Dead was recorded in so short a time suggests that the multi-part song is there more as a gimmick than a creative work, and it doesn’t sound cohesive enough or contain enough build and movement to be memorable. 

Worlds Apart had its faults, but ‘Will You Smile Again?’ is among the best tracks …Trail of Dead have put out. So Divided was equally poor, but the bands cover of ‘Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory’ is gorgeous. Tao of the Dead is a miscued attempt to strip the sound back to something that resembles the bands early successes, but there are no standout tracks to save the album from being wholly forgettable.

ALBUM REVIEW: Cut Copy - Zonoscope

(released on Modular, 2011)

Review by Daniel Hussey
                                             

3.5/5

Being renowned for their fusion of electro-synth and indie-pop, one might justifiably raise an eyebrow at the thought of Cut Copy taking on a step of experimentation in their latest album ‘Zonoscope’. That said, a band can never hope to retain a sense of currency (or indeed, much currency itself) if it fails to achieve artistic progression. So while there are a select number of misses on one or two tracks, Zonoscope’s overall hit-to-miss rate is pretty good for an album that can’t really fail to be noticed as boundary pushing.

As the safest song and the most poppy on the release ‘Take Me Under’ carries across an unmistakeable Cut Copy sound. This radio-friendly track loses nothing in its risk free nature. In fact it is likely the track that ‘makes’ the album – not in the sense that it is the best; but rather in the sense that it redeems Zonoscope from what might otherwise have been a dangerous excess of experimentation. ‘Take Me Under’ let’s you know right away that Cut Copy haven’t lost the vibe of earlier releases like ‘Lights and Music’ and ‘Hearts on Fire’.

Having made a firm and recognisable imprint of their earlier sound, Cut Copy quite rightly take steps outside the usual domain. Exemplifying this Zonoscope’s final track – the fifteen minute epic ‘Sun God’. Those hoping for a mix of samples from obscure 1950s films and the use of kitchen utensils as instruments will be disappointed (although I could be wrong about the latter…), but what ‘Sun God’ carries across in terms of experimentation is more of a shift in mood rather than method. Listening to it holds as a pleasant but rather unremarkable experience for the first third of the song, until the sudden realisation that one seems to be hearing a loosely structured jam session rather than a rehearsed song hits.

This ill-defined shift in mood is the best I can do to characterise the sense of artistic progression ‘Zonoscope’ spells out for Cut Copy. If you want further convincing, give some time to the second last track ‘Corner of the Sky’. Although its bulk doesn’t shift too far from Cut Copy’s typical style, the first minute of the song really leaves one guessing at what should actually be expected to follow. First we hear a dramatic, tension building, faded mix of trebly screeches – but then the disorder quickly shifts into a few moments of structure which seem to hint at an imminent high-energy crescendo which never comes. Instead we’re led back to a more conservative and recognisable Cut Copy sound. 

The mix of old and new should keep any fan happy regardless of said fan’s thoughts on the success of the mix, if only because it proves Cut Copy are pushing their sound along a number of paths without throwing away the so-loved identity solidified in 2008’s success ‘In Ghost Colours’. The listener may well have to do a bit of work to reconcile the gap between where the band is at now and where they were this time three years ago, but Zonoscope makes this as painless as possible by a fusion of familiarity and oddity.

An Interview with Tim Hart (BOY & BEAR)

Interview by Michael Bird
                                                 

Between headlining overseas tours, playing some of Australia's biggest festivals and making friends with the likes of Mumford & Sons and Laura Marling, it's fair to say Sydney natives Boy & Bear enjoyed a pretty big 2010. Drummer Tim Hart took time out to talk to Duckduzz about lessons learned and what lies ahead in 2011.

photograph via Boy & Bear's facebook [link]

Most members of Boy & Bear were originally the principal songwriters in other bands. Did it take some time to gel as a group?

It did take some time to find the right process, but there were no big ego clashes or anything. Generally Dave (Hosking, vocals/guitar) will bring an idea to the group, and then everyone will work on an arrangement for it. Having everyone contribute really just meant there was more freedom to be creative, there's not one person completely controlling the direction of a song.

Having not released an album yet, does it feel strange to have had the success and touring opportunities that you've had?

It does, to be honest. We're stoked with the way things have turned out, and very grateful to everyone who's helped out, there have been a lot of people who helped us along. We were actually planning to record a full length album when we got started on 'With Emperor Antarctica', but it sort of felt right sticking with an EP. We were very confident in the songs that were on there, so we started touring them and it's turned out great.

You had two entries in triple j’s Hottest 100 this year, including your Crowded House cover. Did you look at many different Finn brothers’ songs before settling on Fall At Your Feet?

Fall At Your Feet was always the plan for us. We felt really honoured to be a part of the Finn brothers tribute album, and we actually got the whole thing arranged and recorded in four days, it had a very 'live' sort of feel to it, there wasn't a lot of dubbing or anything. Our producer Wayne Connolly was really happy with what we were sounding like in rehearsals, so it was mostly a matter of translating that to the studio. We have been a little surprised at the reaction the track has gotten, mostly because it's so long, about five minutes. We are proud of it though, and it was great to feature in the Hottest 100.

Your cover of Bon Iver’s Flume has also been very well received live, does it take a lot of work to get these covers going, or is it something that come easily to you as a group?

To be honest, Dave and I used to do covers for money, so we've got a bit of a history doing it. We don't love doing covers really, but we feel it's something we can give an audience who might not be so familiar with our work, as a bit of a point of familiarity. We definitely try to work the covers into our own style, I'm not such a fan of covers unless there's something interesting and original going on, there's not much point if it just sounds the same.

Was the layered, Fleet Foxes sort of vocal style of Boy & Bear a stylistic goal from the outset? Were there particular bands that influenced the sound of the 'With Emperor Antarctica' EP, and are you looking at some changes in sound for your debut LP?

Fleet Foxes were definitely an influence, and also the bands that were probably influences on them too. Bands like Crosby, Stills & Nash, Simon & Garfunkle, they're pretty big influences on us. We have been sounding a little…edgier lately, I suppose. Our sound has changed through touring for the last year or so. We like how it's sounding in rehearsals; we just hope everyone else does too.

Do you feel that you've learned a lot from the last year as a band, wild as it's been?

Definitely. Besides what we've learned just from playing as a band, we learned a lot about how to tour from bands like Mumford and Sons. They're so inclusive, them and a lot of the other bands we've played with like Laura Marling. It creates a really great vibe both on stage and behind the scenes, makes the whole process of touring a lot easier and a lot more fun. We’re still great friends with Laura and other bands we’ve toured with, and if we’ve learned anything it’s that you want to be inclusive and grounded when you’re touring. We don’t think of ourselves as rock stars, we always want to be willing to talk to anyone who wants to talk and get on well with the people around us.

You’re set to record your debut album with Joe Chiccarelli (Augie March, The Strokes) this year; did you actively seek him out as a producer? What’s the story there?

We did seek him out, we're big fans of what he did with bands like The Shins and My Morning Jacket, so we got in contact with him and it all worked out well. The way the exchange rate is at the moment, and the places Joe was most comfortable recording, it made sense to hop over to Nashville, as we're in the U.S for SXSW a bit later in the year anyway. We're recording in Nashville with him, and we've also got tours booked in the U.S, England again for a headlining tour and then back to Australia, hopefully to promote the first single off the album.

Boy & Bear play Golden Plains at Meredith Supernatural Ampitheatre on March 12 (tickets available here) before heading off to play SXSW in the U.S on March 16.
 

A chat with GARETH LIDDIARD

Interview / Written by Sean Sebastian
                                                     

photograph by Daniel Boud

In the intense 40 degree heat at the Big Day Out in Melbourne last week, drunk twenty-somethings followed the bassy drum and bass lines being blasted by nearly every stage. While they poured sweat watching Ninja of Die Antwoord rap into the end of a dildo, there was a large crowd gathering outside a smaller stage. The speakers here were projecting a set by Gareth Liddiard, front man of The Drones. The people here sat peacefully on the asphalt and laughed and cheered heartily as Gareth, sitting alone on stage with an acoustic guitar, referred to the “South African cunts,” in the adjacent tent. His show here is one of the first of his upcoming national tour, in promotion of his recent solo album, Strange Tourist. 

The album is essentially a stripped down version of any other Drones album, but somehow Liddiard’s writing distances itself from his work with the band. The trace elements of traditional bush ballads and poems overshadowed by the full band, have been fleshed out and explored. The tracks on Strange Tourist are, in majority, great slabs of prose; simultaneously melancholy and self-conscious. Commenting on the inspiration behind the lyricism, Liddiard said, “Just not being dead, but being alive. I’m not really an inspiration type. I just think that being alive is a strange thing, and good and bad. All at the same time. It’s a very odd experience”. Liddiard’s a grounded character, un-phased by his immense effect on Australian music, he’s remained the down-to-earth guy one imagines he always was. He adds, “I don’t limit myself to singing about freight trains or girls, I’ll try and sing about anything. I’d sing about taking a shit if it sold records. I try and throw everything into a song”.

The writing of the album was crammed into the space of a few weeks, Liddiard says. “I basically wrote the whole thing in 8 weeks. I was writing an album and it was sort of a bit more amorphous. To separate Blondin Makes An Omelete to The Radicalisation Of D, doesn’t make sense in my mind. In the process, it was the same thing. It was sort of like a different page in the same book. They evolved at the same time. It wasn’t like I finished one and went onto the next”. 

In the right circles, Liddiard is somewhat a visionary and is often placed next to Australian music royalty like Nick Cave. It’s the uniquely Australian sound that is praised by his fellow musicians, but his early musical influences would make you think he’d be fronting a post-punk band, “I listened to The Stooges, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, all of that pot smoking, high school stuff. But then again I was also into jazz. I actually played saxophone before I played guitar or anything like that. So I was always into Charlie Parker and all of that sort of stuff. I’ve always listened to everything, really”. 

However, in the current Australian music climate, notoriety alone doesn’t earn. The Drones have been together since 1998, yet Liddiard makes little more than welfare, “I’m making about as much as someone with a part-time job makes. Everyone thinks we’re rich and shit, but yeah. It’s fucking irritating”. And it’s not just The Drones, it happens with a majority of Australian artists. “Not many of them [make a living]. If people think we’re rich, then they think the ones who aren’t rich are still paying their rent, but they’re not. All my musician friends have jobs. Not the ones who are older and more famous, but in the rest of the scene, everyone works. People think there’s a lot of money in rock and roll, it’s just not the case”. 

Liddiard’s post-tour plans consist of a new Drones DVD, compiled of “a bunch of live shows filmed in this weird warehouse,” as Gareth puts it. It will mostly be tracks that don’t usually lend themselves to the Drones minimal live sound, with the additions of pianos and keyboards. The band are currently in the process of editing their raw footage. 

The Collaborator from Gareth Liddiard's album Strange Tourist (out now on Shock).
Footage directed and edited by Matthew Ellery.

Liddiard will be playing The Mossvale Festival on Saturday 19th March, the East Brunswick Club on the 7th and 8th of April and the National Hotel on Saturday the 9th of April.

NEON LOVE - Live at Karova Lounge

Camera: Anthony Koreny, Timothy Casten, Daniel Hussey, Sean Sebastian, Kim Larkin
Editor: Timothy Casten, Sean Sebastian

                                                 

After six years of blasting indie guitars, catchy tunes and pumping lights, Ballarat band Neon Love have played their final show at their homeground venue, the Karova Lounge. 

Supported by pop-punk-indie-mash-ups The Cairos and Comic Sans, the last show was a sentimental one with guitarist/singer Nipuna Jayasekera going through six years worth of thank-yous and couldn’t-do-it-withouts. “I’m not feeling anything,” says Nip Jay, “It feels like nothing, but I think it’s just me trying to cope with it.”

To say that their last show was energetic would be an understatement. The strobe lights and the velvet capes were a great crowd pleaser, as the dancing mass of people on the floor continued to pass drinks to their friends on stage. 

Although Neon Love are officially over, die hard fans shouldn’t fear; some of the self-confessed brothers are planning on continuing with new bands and musical projects.

Setlist

1. Disco Me
2. I Am Vampire
3. Youth In The Pits
4. In Mexico
5. Pure
6. War
7. Windows
8. Skin
9. Zombie Shake
10. Get Your Freak on Charlie Beacon
11. Reptilia (Strokes cover)
12. Holiday

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!

Follow my blog with bloglovin