31.8.07

Listening: The Beasts of Bourbon - Little Animals - track by track



Previously - in Rock...

This album marks a most welcome return to recording by the Beasts of Bourbon, ten years after their last album Gone.

It contains a smorgasbord of dirty swampy rock goodness that is happy enough to tip the hat to a range of rockers from the Stones to the Stooges, Ian Rilen to The Drones and the PowderMonkeys to Kurt Cobain, all the while doing their own thing, doing it well and having a ball in the process.

At the moment, I'd have to call this my album of the year - maybe in a tie with Grinderman.

Can't wait to see these guys in Canberra on the 19th.

Recorded simply in three days, the bio on their Myspace page tells the story of the album better than I could but I liked this part in particular

The labour pains are short and sharp: a day and a half of ragged rehearsals on a wet winter's weekend, then three days at Newmarket Studios in North Melbourne, with the band's live mixer, Skritch, in the producer's seat. The place has the right vibe, Spencer says. That's crucial, and hard to find. The band sets up drums and amps to record live.

Tex is feeling ruthless. He wants to work on ten songs, max. He doesn't want to muck around with 15 or 16 and let most of them go to the dogs. He's thinking of classic, hard rock albums of the '70s: condensed, high impact. Short intro, first verse, chorus, solo. Bang-bang-bang. Keep it all happening. No fat, no filler and then, "oh shit, it's over."


I Don't Care About Nothing Anymore 2:45

Good old school rocker with just a hint of funkiness in its heart. There's an almost Tom Waits-ish quality to the way Tex barks out some of the vocals and then he just slides effortlessly into rock high notes (but not too high - more QOTSA than The Darkness) and back again. The guitar is buzzy and heavy and compelling, the beat is driving and the lyrics are basic without being simple. Great opening track



I Am Gone 2:13

From the opening chords, you feel like you're walking down the street like a rock badass - the style shifts a tad from the first song and the guitar feels at times like some kind of glorious rock punctuation mark as it chugs along. Vocally it's a little more in Cruel Sea territory but darker. A good album track - not outstanding in its own right but it builds the album mood nicely.

I Told You So 2:49

This song features perhaps the simplest guitar riff I've heard - it's just 1-2-3-4 over and over through the whole thing - yet somehow it seems to work. It creates this slightly uneasy feeling, like you're waiting for something more to kick in but it never suggests that it actually will.

Fortunately the guitar sounds heavy and buzzy and rock and the occasional key changes and the slight Cobain tinge to the vocals make this an interesting track. (Even the guitar solo is pretty minimalist compared to the rest on the album).

Lyrically, it's another in the basic but not simple basket.

Master And Slave 4:51

We return to more conventional dirty rock goodness in this Domination/Submission themed love song.

What I like about this song is that it knows it can rock hard without having to play fast or too loud - rather than strutting, it strides, surveying its rock environment and slowly nodding approval.

Elements of this song remind me of the Powdermonkeys - but as with the rest of the songs on this album, it's more of tip of the hat than anything else. In other parts, it's as good as Chase the Dragon.

The feeling from this swampy rock journey is almost exhilarating as you feel all the elements of the band rocking together in complete sync, the guitar in particular is rock-tastic and doesn't slip for a second.

Little Animals 5:14

I'm not sure but I think the Beasts have created a new sub-genre here - the downbeat rock/bluesy eco-lament. There's something unnervingly un-rawwwwk-like in singing about animal extinctions but damned if they don't manage to do it in such a stylish drinking-red-wine-in-a-dim-bar-at-3am kind of way that it totally comes off. It's not preachy or sanctimonious, just bluesy. Extra points for the sting in the tail and being able to put the word Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) in a song too.


The Beast I Came To Be 2:14


Back to the rock with this one with its Stooges-worthy energy,drive and vocal rhythms. It's an intense burst of rock, dark but measured - like a triple espresso in guitar form. And then, as sharply as it began, it's over. Pow.

Sleepwalker 2:58

This album is dedicated to the late Ian (Rose Tattoo, X) Rilen and I think that this song is the band's musical offering to him.

It's classic dirty sludgy heavy blues - and like a lot of Tatt's songs, it has all the attitude of a gang of 70s bogan toughs that you accidentally bump into in a back alley (and wish you hadn't).

Too Much Too Late 2:53

Solid 70s rocker that would be a highlight on any album by the current crop of rock wannabes (Airbourne, Wolfmother, Jet etc) but which in the company of the other songs on this album is good enough but nothing outstanding. (Of course, by definition, if every track was outstanding, then none of them would be).

Fortunately the depth of guitar talent here brings the rock in the solos and Tex Perkins could sing the phone book and make it sound cool, so it's all good.

New Day Of The Dead 5:17

This song effortlessly puts out the kind of epic deep-jangling take-your-time rock that the awesome The Drones strive for but still haven't quite nailed. This is the song that rock journos should be thinking of when they (over)use the word "soaring" to describe guitar work - shivers up the spine stuff.

Vocally and lyrically this is one of the stronger songs on the album as well - Perkins packs in the feeling and I love to know the story behind the lyrics.



Thanks 3:15

This track was the spark for this album and lifts the mood instantly as the band thanks someone (or everyone) for all the drugs (which I imagine if they did it individually would take quite a bit longer :)

There's a bit of a country blues Rolling Stones feel to this one and with it's spoken lyrics and cheeky lairish grin, is a fine finisher to the album that just makes you wish there were more than ten songs in total.



To the Beasts of Bourbon, from the bottom of my rock heart, I say thanks.

Rating: 95%

(This the band picture from the cover art - love that sense that the band is just about to dump you in a shallow grave somewhere)

30.8.07

Playing: Songs for Lost Highway

Bird Stealing Bread Iron & Wine The Creek Drank The Cradle 4:23
Islands In The Stream Philippa Nihill Dead Sad 3:21
Harry Was A Bad Bugger Tex, Don And Charlie All Is Forgiven 5:21
I'm Holding You Ween 12 Golden Country Greats 4:04
Sorry Song Tiddas Show Us Ya Tiddas 3:02
(Untitled 3) Warren Ellis 3 Pieces For Violin 6:29
San Quentin Johnny Cash Johnny Cash at San Quentin 4:09
Chelsea Hotel #2 Leonard Cohen The Essential Leonard Cohen [Disc 1] 3:08
Roscoe Midlake The Trials Of Van Occupanther 4:51
Guenevere And The Fire Penelope Swales Justifying Your Longings To The Doctor 3:22
Wedding vows Sam Evans Brown Couch Soundtrack 2:55
Heart Of Gold Neil Young Decade [Disc 2] 3:08
Terrified The Devastations Coal 4:54
Blood Red River Beth Orton Central Reservation 4:17
The Lonely Goth Mick Thomas And The Sure Thing Dust On My Shoes 4:30
Stagger Lee Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Murder Ballads 5:17
Tale Of The Bull The Spoils Hurtsville 3:50
Make It Count Barb Waters & Kim Salmon Rosa Duet 3:37
Pink Moon Nick Drake Pink Moon 2:08
Angels Of Warrandyte The Beautiful Few Metal For Melbourne 2:06

Browsing: Everyzing



I've been looking around Everyzing a little this morning and it looks like a site with a lot of potential.

It's a search tool for online audio and video - they convert speech in the clips (podcasts, youtube videos etc) to text which is then searchable.

You can also upload your audio and videos to the site but you need to sign up to their advertising plan, which I'm not so excited about.

I was a little put off by their laughably corporate sounding About Us blurb:

EveryZing is the most powerful digital media merchandising platform available today.

Media companies of all sizes leverage our unique ability to drive the volume of online content consumption and create new and powerful revenue streams. Through our speech to text, search and optimization technologies, and consumer-facing website, we create greater opportunities for consumer and advertiser access to online content.

The company's best-in-class technology and comprehensive set of advertising services enable our partners to profit from their content by launching digital channels that deliver the entertainment, news and information that consumers crave.

but that's their perogative I guess.

29.8.07

Exploring: My bookcase (part 1)



Maybe it's wrong but whenever I visit someone's place, I can't avoid taking a look at their bookcase and cd collection - it's a great way to get a sense of their interests and tastes.

I'm sure that to some level or another we are conscious of this when we stock our shelves - unless we have enough room for everything - and it's the books/cds that paint the best picture of us, the one that matches our own image of ourselves, that are placed most prominently.

Then again, maybe it's just the books that we think we are most likely to need.

I was looking at my bookcase a couple of weeks ago and realised that accurate or not, it does tell something of a story about me. This set of pictures (you can find the entire set on Flickr) simultaneously offers an opportunity to talk about some books that I think are pretty cool - killing two birds with one stone.

I'm going to start with an easy part as I'm now thinking that it would be good to have cover pictures of the books and I'm not entirely sure that I'll be able to find them all.


(Click on the pic for the full-sized version)

This is the top of the left bookcase - the place where the things that are too big to fit in the regular shelves live. There's also my hole punch, because it's one of those things that take up too much space on the desk and won't fit in the drawer with the rest of the stationery.

On the right is a folder of ideas and tasks that I'll come to someday maybe. (Probably, but not urgently). This came about after reading David Allen's book, "Getting things done" - which offers strategies for, well, getting things done. It's largely about organisation and lists and whatnot, as well as the way it's easy to get overwhelmed by the number of unfinished tasks we have floating around the back of our mind.

I've always been pretty chronically disorganised, which I put down to being easily distracted and regularly thinking of new things to do before the old ones are finished. (One day I hope to put the rest of the ideas in the book into practice :)

The folder on top of that one is the "Things to do" folder, with tasks broken down by context - e.g at the computer, around the house, at work, errands, calls to make. Sadly, it's probably a little dusty but from time to time I pick it up and try to knock off a few things or cross off things I've managed to get done anyway.

Below that is the manual for my printer, a Canon something something. I have a lot of manuals - again, that don't get a lot of reading beyond the time I first buy the thing or when it goes wonky.



This is sitting on the printed out manual for my favourite game creation software, FPS Creator. (ok, so I haven't tried any others but it's still awesome).

I've posted a little before about work I've done with FPS Creator but in essence, it allows you to create first-person-shooter video games. (This is where the point of view - pov - is yours, so you move around the environment holding - or not - whatever weapons or other objects you can find)

As much as I'd like to be more tree-friendly, I find it hard to go past the print-out when I want to read anything more than a few pages - it's the combination of the tactile and the ability to scribble on it that technology still hasn't quite managed to adequately capture yet.

The PC, smart young thing that she is wrote her Master's thesis in linguistics on some of the speeches made directly after September 11, both by Bush and Bin Laden. (Sorry honey, still haven't read it yet but given that it integrates two things I'm really interested in, politics and language, I'm looking forward to it.)

The bright red-spined book under this is a notebook of various ideas and rants and raves I've jotted down over the last 14 years - as well as some excessively angsty and self-indulgent moaning from my working-myself-out period in my 20s that I'm pretty happy to have put behind me.



Below this is an anthology of Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics that I think I inherited from one sharehouse or another in the past. An underground/counter-culture comic created in 1968, it ran until 1992 and is now being made into a stop-motion animated film. (Here's some of the test animation from it)



I like this one because it has a great subversive sense of humour and I've always liked comics.



I've also always been right into surrealism and dada - two art movements from the earlier part of the 20th century that explored the inner world. There was a major art show of the surrealists at the National Gallery in Canberra when I was at uni and I've always regretted not going along on the big road trip a few people arranged.

At least I have the book I guess.

28.8.07

Wondering: Is there a nude statue of Alexander Downer in the heart of Canberra



Alexander Downer is the current Australian Foreign Affairs minister (and renowned pillock).

This sculpture, in the main public plaza in the heart of Canberra was commissioned by his father, Alexander Downer Sr. in 1964 when Downer Jr was around 12.



The good folk at Artwranglers have rightly asked the question - are those the chubby buttocks of our current international face?

Kind of horrible to think about really. (But since the thought got into my head, it seems only fair to share it with you :)

The always awesome Paul Keating summed it all up nicely when he referred to Downer as "the idiot son of the establishment"

27.8.07

Comparing: My Humps - Alanis Morrissette vs Black Eyed Pea

I have to confess that I usually tend to let songs like My Humps (Black Eyed Peas) slip by me with their mindless crass commercial tackiness but after being pointed to a rather awesome looking blog - tuning - by Shane (thanks champ) I found a great reinterpretation of the song by Alanis Morissette (a.k.a God from Dogma) which points out how horrible the lyrics are by stripping away the funky beats.

Here's Alanis



and here's the original if you managed to miss it first time around as well

Playing: songs for Monday Sunset

Apartment Custard 2:26 Goodbye Cruel World (The Best Of Custard)
Point And Shoot Yo La Tengo 4:18 I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
Electioneering Radiohead 3:50 Ok Computer
Electioneering Easy Star All Stars 4:34 Radiodread
The dead step out Konrad Lenz 2:12 Film Music
Vending machine Snowbug 6:38 Inextricably intertwined
Why Won't She Marry Me? Digger And The Pussycats 3:56 Watch Yr Back
Don't Say Nothing Patti Smith 5:52 Peace And Noise
Another Episode Sleepy Township 1:29 Set Sail
Four Corners The Sea And Cake 5:44 One Bedroom
Fish In The Jailhouse Tom Waits 4:22 Orphans: Brawlers
Black Magic Jarvis Cocker 4:21 Jarvis
The Metal Tenacious D 2:45 The Pick Of Destiny
The Salty Knowledge Of Tears Soulwax 2:42 Much Against Everyone's Advice
Bad boy for love Ian Rilen 6:14 Love In Murder (Bonus)
Sister Morphine The Rolling Stones 5:34 Sticky Fingers
She's A Bread Baker C.W. Stoneking 3:17 King Hokum
Fistful Of Dallas Ground Components 5:37 An Eye For A Brow. A Tooth For A Pick.
Candidate David Bowie 2:40 Diamond Dogs