Andy Kelly (Ivy League founding dude)
Andy + former Collingwood captain Nathan Buckley (that’s AFL for the uninitiated)
My favourite albums of 2008 in no particular order
Primal Scream - Beautiful Future
I would like to put forth the bold proposition that this is Primal Scream’s best album for many years, maybe since Xterminator - which if I’m being honest I didn’t really like anyway, but a lot of other people do, so I’m basing it on that. It’s so melodic and up, and it’s full of great songs like “Uptown” and the title track, which is a crackerjack. There are some really great, melodic guitar lines all through it, and Bobbie Gillespie is one of the great front men, so stop crying and have a listen for God’s sake.
Jack Ladder – Love Is Gone
If this album became popular in the glory days of the NME, some reviewer would say something like “When Fred Neil and Roxy Music meet up in a juke joint on the dusty back roads trampled by Jack Kerouac, this what you get”, and even ‘though that is a totally imaginary review that has never been published, that imaginary reviewer is absoloutely right. I think this is really original and exciting music, and the sounds on the record are absoloutely fantastic. My favourite numbers are, “Love Is Gone”, “Best Kept Secret” and “The Barber’s Son”, but they’re all very good.
Death Cab For Cutie – Narrow Stairs
I like Death Cab for many reasons, none of which really matter to anyone but me (that’s the entire edifice upon which blogging is based I suppose, so I’ll still carry on like you’re paying attention). Some of those reasons are: Ben Gibbard’s lyrics; his saucy new long hairdo and sideburns, and the fact that he suddenly came across onstage like a full blown rock star on their Australian tour this year; Chris Walla’s production and guitar playing; the fact that that the fickle nature of fads and fashion don’t affect them; and the fact that they do their own thing every record. I think this one might be my favourite which is pretty rare when a band gets up to album number whatever this one is (five?), as I like all of their previous ones a great deal. I think they get better with every album, and by God we don’t say that about too many bands do we? “I Will Possess Your Heart” is a great single, and such a good indication of what the whole album is about. I dips me lid to The Death Cabs.
Youth Group - The Night Is Ours
Out now on Ivy League Records! Contains the hits “Two Sides” and “All This Will Pass”. Purchase now!
Really, if you don’t like this album I would say you are probably a bit of an idiot. Putting aside the fact that Youth Group are one of my favourite Australian bands ever, they are on the Ivy League label and we manage them…putting all that aside, just over there, to one side, I love this record. I love the way it sounds, I love every song, I love Toby’s lyrics, and I love the fact that they made an album exactly the way they wanted to, with people they wanted to, and that it wasn’t just an indulgent experiment, they really made a truly fantastic album. I hope they are as proud of making it as I am of knowing them for doing it. It didn’t sell as many as their last album, but who cares? This tests the very cocky saying that you don’t care if an album sells 5 million or 500 (generally said by an artist who has just sold 5 million as opposed to one who has just sold 500) but I honestly feel like I’ll love this album as much in twenty years time as I do now. Actually by that time, it may well have sold 5 million…million…million… (jump to dream sequence set 20 years in the future where we see the band playing a show in space wearing kaftans made of spun gold and driving ruby encrusted hovercrafts).
Eddy Current Suppression Ring – Primary Colours
Everyone I know – or certainly a lot of people I like - think this record is incredible, and we’re all right. The way “Primary Colours” and the first album sound is so refreshing and exciting. Of course the sonics wouldn’t mean anything if the songs weren’t great, but by golly, they are great alright. It seems that in spite of all of the band’s best efforts to keep everything under control and to not let the whole thing blow up beyond a level that is fun for them, everything just keeps snowballing. That’s unavoidable really, because you can’t stop people loving music that is so genuine and sounds so good, you just can’t invent it. It’s crazy how rare that is, which is why I think myself and so many other people love this album. To make things even better, I’ve heard loose talk that if and when the band make a third album, the idea is to record it on cassette four track. That could very well be the greatest record ever made in my humble opinion, and as a fan, I insist upon it!
Favourite song
Graveyard Girl – M83
When I first heard this song on the radio, I had one of those extremely rare but very exciting instances where I had to pull over in the car to make sure I heard the DJ back announce it to find out what it was and who sang it. I couldn’t believe it the first time I heard it, I couldn’t even really quite tell what was going on with the melody because I didn’t turn the volume up until about halfway through, but it had such great atmosphere that I loved it straight away. I bought it from itunes the day it was released, and that pretty much sums up the way this song affected me like I was a teenager in the ‘eighties – which oddly enough I was – going into Music Market at the Woden Plaza the day a new album was released by, shall we say, Australian Crawl ? I love really melodic pop songs, and this song lays it on so thick that I think I listened to it on repeat fifteen times the day I bought it. It’s got a similar atmosphere to “Melt With You” by Modern English which is no bad thing in my eyes. There is something in the lyrics and the production that kill me every time and make me feel like the Year Ten formal is coming up, and I have to hire a tuxedo with a matching pink bow tie and cummerbund from Grace Brothers. It’s not just nostalgia ‘though, it is a brilliant song in its own right in my considered opinion.
Favourite shows
The Vines - Troubadour, LA
The Vines played a lot of great shows this year –until they didn’t play any at all - but I think this one was probably the best of all of them. They can be absoloutely incredible on their best day, or as was the case with this show, even on their worst days. Let’s just say that everyone within and around the band probably would have preferred to eat glass or have wet tennis balls thrown at them by Andrew Symonds for two hours instead of being at soundcheck that day, but incredibly, when it was time to go on stage, they played one of their greatest shows and completely blew my mind for a living.
Jack Ladder - The Hopetoun
This was the first time I’d seen Jack Ladder play, and it was absoloutely ruddy marvellous. I felt a bit like I was witnessing the early days of rock and roll, he was playing all these great scratchy sounding guitar lines backed by his off- the- rack, bespoke bass player and drummer who are so perfect for those songs it’s, well, it’s perfect. He was really something else that night, it was the first time I’d heard the songs from the new album, and I was sold.
78 Saab – Homebake
I sent a text message to Andy Cassell during this set saying that 78 Saab are one of the greatest Australian bands ever, and I will happily text that to anyone, any time. Not only did they play a perfect set playing songs from all three albums, they played one new song that is really bloody good, AND “Keep On Rocking Me” by the Steve Miller band. If they had only done that and nothing else it would have been one of my gigs of the year, let alone all the other stuff.
Cabins – The Metro
Cabins are still working out exactly what they are going to be, and that is partly why they are so exciting. On this particular occasion they were supporting The Vines, and walked out to a sea of screams which is probably a bit better than what they’re used to playing at Chili’s on the central coast on a Thursday night (I am willing to stand corrected on this point ‘though, never having been to Chili’s) and then launched into a set that just kept building and building in mood, and was really genuinely exciting. If you’re interested in testing the veracity of my outrageous claims, you can re-live my experience that night, albeit on a small screen on a computer that will probably keep buffering and possibly drive you mad - at www.moshcam.com - follow the links to see the Cabins show, I’m sure you know how it all works.
Other things I thought were very good
England - An Autobiography
Contemporary accounts of major moments in England for the past 2000 odd years. They loved fighting each other, for ages, and kept wanting to rule parts of France. Now they like Celebrity Big Brother and still print the NME. The jury is still out on whether there has been progress or not.
Lionel Rose Documentary on SBS
I didn’t know much about Lionel Rose before watching this, and I found his story really touching. He is a true gentleman, was an amazing boxer, and he wore some really fantastic suits when not in the ring. It also made me realise that I would quite like to see a return to an age where sportsmen smoked pipes in press conferences.
Holdens from 1962 – 1975
Any model from the era mentioned is alright by me. At the risk of jinxing the whole thing, my 1969 HT has been running amazingly well all year after a rocky start to our relationship a couple of years back. Full credit to Terry, the mechanic who looks after it who quite literally wrote the book on Holdens – 50 Years Of Holden by Terry Bebbington – that’s him. Motoring is generally a soulless pursuit these days, you can’t feel the road, you’re cut off from the outside world encased in an air conditioned piece of tin with your GPS telling you where to go and listening to Kyle and Jacqui O for the most part. In a Holden you can wind the window down, fat-arm it, take in some fumes from Cleveland Street, and you feel alive – in spite of the fumes that are probably slowly killing you. It’s a small price to pay for feeling so good I say.
Evie’s First Fat-Arm
Speaking of fat-arming (the practice of resting your arm out of the driver’s side window whilst in motion, and also at the lights) , my chest swelled with pride recently when my daughter fat-armed it over the side of her pram for a good fifteen minutes when we were out for a stroll. Needless to say I took her straight to the milk bar and bought her a chocolate Moove, a packet of Dunhills and a form guide and went directly to the TAB.
December 10th, 2008
Alicia Kish (Label manager)
Up vs down in Osaka
Recorded stuff that ruled:
Eddy Current Suppression Ring – Primary Colours
Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago
Violent Soho – We Don’t Belong Here
Foals – Antidotes
Fuck Buttons – Street Horrrsing
Jack Ladder – Love Is Gone
The Kills – Midnight Boom
theredsunband – The Shiralee
SPOD – Superfrenz
Death Cab for Cutie – Narrow Stairs
Songs/Love of Diagrams split 7″
Live stuff that ruled:
PJ Harvey @ Opera House
Bjork @ Opera House
Golden Plains, esp Future of the Left
ECSR, Peewee + Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys @ Excelsior
Sparkadia @ The Corner + Homebake
megastick fanfare @ Hopetoun
Straight Arrows @ the Sly Fox
SPOD @ every single show anywhere
Ace non-Ivy League local bands of 2008: Violent Soho | Eddy Current Suppression Ring | The Straight Arrows | My Disco | The Stabs | Talons | Ohana | Love Of Diagrams | Songs | Baseball | megastick fanfare | St Helens | Ghoul | We Say Bamboulee | Richard in Your Mind | Jordy Lane
December 10th, 2008
Martin Doyle (Ivy League A+R scout / label manager)
This dude is a Hungarian astronaut called Farkas Bertalan but he stole Marty’s face
Best Albums Of 2008
1. Bon Iver - ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’
2. Eddy Current Suppression Ring - ‘Primary Colours’
3. Black Mountain - ‘In The Future’
4. David Vandervelde – ‘Waiting For The Sunrise’
5. Pivot – ‘O Soundtrack My Heart’
6. Santogold – ‘S/T’
7. Wooden Shjips – ‘Volume 1′
8. Diplo / Santogold – ‘Top Ranking’
9. The Bug – ‘London Zoo’
10. The Black Angels – ‘Directions To See A Ghost’
Best Lost and Found Discoveries of 2008
1. Spacemen 3 - ‘The Perfect Prescription’
2. Damon – ‘Song Of A Gypsy’
3. Rodriguez - ‘Cold Fact’
4. Various Artists – ‘Love, Peace & Poetry, Asian Psychedelic Music’
5. Mulatu Astatke - ‘Ethiopiques 4′ (2nd year running)
6. Alice Coltrance - ‘Journey In Satchidananda’
7. Ten Years After - ‘Self Titled’
8. Leaf Hound - ‘Growers Of Mushrooms’
9. PJ Harvey – ‘To Bring You My Love’
10. The Rain Parade – ‘Emergency Third Rail Power Trip’
Top Ten Gigs 2008
1. Brian Jonestown Massacre @ The Metro
2. Bridezilla @ Laneway Festival (Sydney)
3. Lady Saw @ Becks Bar Sydney
4. The Cool Kids @ Oxford Arts Factory
5. Battles @ BDO (Sydney)
6. The Laurels @ FBI Birthday / World Bar
7. The Fearless Vampire Killers @ The Tote
8. X @ The Excelsior
9. Tame Impala @ The Beach Road Hotel
10. The Cruel Sea @ The Metro
December 10th, 2008
Alex Burnett (Sparkadia)
AB meets BB
Top five cities that we have played in
Barcelona
Berlin
Paris
Oslo
Glastonbury Village
Top five albums
MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
Lee Hazelwood - Cake or Death
Ratatat - LP3
TV On The Radio - Dear Science
Santogold - Santogold
Top 5 gigs
Arcade Fire - Enmore, Sydney
Vampire Weekend - at a shitty club in Brighton
Dizzee Rascal - at Glasto
Bluejuice - at the Gaelic in Sydney
Jimmy Eat World - at Brixton Academy in London
Top 5 anthems
Cloud Control - Death Cloud
Caribou - Melody Day
Spod - Aminals
Metallica - All Nightmare Long
The Verve - Love Is Noise
Worst/Best reality shows with “love” in the title
“Rock of Love” - starring Bret Michaels from Poison
“The Age of Love” - starring Mark Philippoussis
“Flavor of Love” - starring Flavor Flav
“A Shot at Love” - with Tila Tequila
“I Love Money” - all the best weirdos from “flavor” and “a shot..” together
“I Love New York” - not the city - a chick apparently with the same name…
“Must Love Kids” - starring TLC as moms. awesome. moms.
December 1st, 2008
