With summer festival lineups starting to trickle through, arguably the biggest, Falls Festival, has just announced its huge 025th anniversary lineup. Headlining this year’s festival, which makes stops in Fremantle, Lorne, Marion Bay and Byron Bay, will be our very own Flume in his . first local shows since December, Seattle’s Fleet Foxes, and the amazing, explosive Run The Jewels.
As always, there’s a fantastic mix of local and international acts; Brighton pop rockers The Kooks will be returning to Australia for the first time since 2015, as will hip-hop’s most eloquent young upstart in Vince Staples, whose latest album Big Fish Theory continues to be a huge hit, while Glass Animals will be returning once again, having last visited for Laneway 2017. The always amiable Liam Gallagher is along for the ride with LA quartet Foster The People, and possibly the happiest rapper in the game, D.R.A.M., who will hopefully actually show up this time, having cancelled his appearance at Groovin The Moo earlier this year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWaljXUiCaE
Closer to home we’ve also got Angus And Julia Stone, Peking Duk, who by all accounts delivered Splendour’s wildest set, Dune Rats, The Smith Street Band, Julia Jacklin, Bad//Dreems, Methyl Ethel and DZ Deathrays all coming in hot.
Oh, and there’s also the small matter of Daryl flaming Braithwaite too, because what party would be complete without everyone screaming every word to The Horses.
While the lineup is pretty great overall, it would be remiss of us to ignore the ongoing issue with Australian festivals being completely non-diverse. It’s weird, frankly, considering the industry itself is diversifying at a (slightly) faster rate than ever, but for some reason these major lineups aren’t really changing to reflect that. There’s like five women on the entire, almost exclusively-white bill. Sigh.
You can find the full lineup below (individual locations will vary as always) and there’s still plenty more to be announced. Tickets are on sale to the general public from August 29th and you’ll no doubt have to be right on the ball to get one as it’s going to sell out quicker than a hiccup.
Falls Music And Arts Festival 2017/18 Full Lineup
Fleet Foxes
Run The Jewels
The Kooks
Glass Animals (No Sideshows)
Peking Duk
Angus & Julia Stone
Foster The People
Liam Gallagher
Vince Staples
Jungle
Dune Rats
The Smith Street Band
D.R.A.M.
Daryl Braithwaite
Everything Everything
Allday
The Jungle Giants
Thundamentals
Methyl Ethel
Slumberjack
D.D Dumbo
Anna Lunoe
DZ Deathrays
Confidence Man
Julia Jacklin
Bad//Dreems
Cosmo’s Midnight
Winston Surfshirt
Luca Brasi
Alex Lahey
Camp Cope
Flint Eastwood
Ecca Vandal
Dave
Total Giovanni
Since Kendrick Lamar released one of the surefire contenders for album of the year in fourth studio album DAMN earlier in 2017, its visual accompaniments have been nothing short of spectacular. Humble saw traditional themes of Catholicism (including a #lit Last Supper) intertwined with gritty urban scenes and a torrent of dollar bills. DNA told a more cohesive story, Don Cheadle guest starring in a lie detector interrogation of Lamar. The latest video released today for fourth album track Element is at once as gripping and symbolic as Lamar’s previous two efforts.
Co-directed by Jonas Lindstroem and the Lil Homies (the duo of Lamar and President of TDE Dave Free), the video for Element is far more deliberate and slower-paced than the previous two. The track itself, featuring production from James Blake, Sounwave and Ricci Rivera, was speculated to be a subtle diss at any combination of Drake, Big Sean or Jay Electronica, but it’s physical violence providing the broiling undercurrent to the video with shots featuring brawling gangs, a father instructing his son in boxing and even Kendrick himself throwing hands (and pool cues) at one point. Watch it below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glaG64Ao7sM&t=99s
The video is mostly slow-motion shots beautifully compiled together, adding so much more malice to the more visceral scenes and juxtaposing it with utter tranquility for the more harmonious shots like the small child playing with a bug in the grass and the silent group of nuns and ramping up the menace for the more disturbing images, including a small child aiming a revolver and a bloodied victim coming to on the pavement.
Element is must-see music cinematography, and goes a long way to sitting an artist like Kendrick Lamar on an entirely different level to his contemporaries.
DAMN is out now via Top Dawg Entertainment.
Image: Exclaim
It’s been 30 years since seminal rap collective Public Enemy first exploded into the world with their iconic debut album Yo! Bum Rush The Show in 1987.
A uniquely aggressive, politically-charged brand of hip-hop that ran counter to the largely inoffensive party vibes of other rap artists from the same era like the Beastie Boys and Big Daddy Kane. Yo! Bum Rush The Show, and the records that followed it in It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back and Fear Of A Black Planet, became at once one of the defining sounds of East Coast hip-hop as it found its footing in the turn-of-the-decade musical landscape and set the bar and the tone for similarly confrontational and hard-edged groups like N.W.A. and Body Count to follow in their footsteps.
Now in the twilight of their careers, it was never a foregone conclusion that Public Enemy’s vocal faces in Chuck D and Flavor Flav would get together for another album after 2015’s fourteenth studio effort Man Plans God Laughs; Chuck currently getting flammable supergroup Prophets Of Rage off the ground for their debut record and Flav having been relatively quiet in the intervening years. It was a surprise then to receive confirmation of what has heretofore been a secret project from Public Enemy, their fifteenth studio album Nothing Is Quick In The Desert and its official release date next week.
There’s obviously little known about the album at this stage, only a confirmation that it exists and a cryptic statement from Chuck D: “The record business is appearing like a desert, but the music has a life if you look at it right.” The feeling though is that it’s going to be as combustible a Public Enemy record as we’ve ever seen. The Independence Day release date is clearly no coincidence, and you can bet that the United States’ deteriorating sociopolitical climate will be a deeply-explored topic. Donald Trump has assumed presidency since PE’s last album and police brutality and racism are still as rife as ever across America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PaoLy7PHwk
Public Enemy have made a career of lining similar issues right in their crosshairs and never being afraid to pull the trigger and, if what we’ve heard from Chuck D’s involvement with Prophets Of Rage as well as the latest album from their contemporaries in Body Count is anything to go by, expect Nothing Is Quick In The Desert to be hard-wired with truth bombs, the kind whose impact would have been maximised by a shock album drop. Anything less would be a disappointment.
It’s unlikely we’ll get a taste of the record before it arrives, reportedly as a free digital download next week, but now seems like no better time for a brand new Public Enemy album and we’ll be waiting on tenterhooks to see what they’ve got in store for the world.
Image: Public Enemy
It’s been an enormous week in the world of Jay-Z news and rumours. Wife Beyoncé giving birth to twins, reportedly named Shawn Jr. and Bea, obviously being the biggest news. There was also an adorable flurry of activity on Hov’s Twitter account, a succession of “I promise I’m not drunk” tweets shouting out seemingly every artist past and present in the rap game as well as finishing with a tribute to ‘the greatest rapper of all time’ Barack Obama, who also just inducted Hov into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (the first rapper in history to do so).
Nailing the ‘old person trying to use the Internet’ vibe was a humanising and funny addition to the recent scuttle of Jay-Z (hyphen newly and rightfully restored) news, which also included the announcement that all twelve albums in his discography have gone platinum. A truly remarkable feat.
Even here in Australia, music media lost it this week when Bluesfest hinted about a potential Jigga headline set for their 2018 event. “He is a beauty and it will be an absolute pleasure to bring him to Bluesfest. That only leaves around 99 artists to go”, teased Peter Noble.
And there’s the small matter of a new Jay-Z album coming on top of all that.
Its entire rollout process has been typically cryptic to say the least. Titled 4:44, it started with mysterious billboards popping up across the globe, then a trailer for a ‘Tidal movie’ (of course you already knew it was going to be Tidal exclusive) starring Lupita Nyong’o, Mahershala Ali and Danny Glover airing during the NBA finals.
Going the same route as other 21st century God-tier artists like Frank Ocean and wife Beyoncé, the new record is going to be a visual one.
4:44 will mark Jay-Z’s thirteenth studio album and his first since 2013’s absolutely tepid Magna Carta Holy Grail, an album made free for digital download for Samsung customers via the Jay-Z Magna Carta app, which is an utterly appalling sentence to attach to a record by one of the greatest rappers in history.
This was peak 2013 though, this version of Jay-Z a galaxy away from the gritty hustle of Reasonable Doubt, the coronation of The Blueprint and the euphoric celebration from atop the world with partner-in-crime Kanye West on Watch The Throne.
Magna Carta Holy Grail was billionaire businessman (no longer feeling like a business, man) Jay-Z, and it was palpable that he’d lost a step or two in the same way Kobe Bryant had. The pair mirrored each other somewhat, both hotheaded, swaggering upstarts in the 90s before conquering the game at the turn of the century, in 2013 finding themselves at the twilight of their respective careers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNlciK_2qCA
Magna Carta felt like what might have been a very anti-climactic ‘it’ for Jay-Z’s musical career. It barely played like a cohesive record, just a cheap and soullessly inorganic way to broaden the subscribership of Hov’s venture into music streaming, Tidal, and it’s easy to see why 4:44 might feel kind of the same. Its promotion has definitely been really similar, mysterious advertisements and this time with a partnership between Tidal and Sprint to boot because gross.
Look past the hamfisted marketing gimmicks though.
There’s been wild speculation around the title, Jay-Z’s known connection to the number 4 as well as a subtle nod to 44th President of the United States Barack Obama quickly being pointed out. It could be an Obama tribute album, “for 44” some have concluded. Given that Tweet from earlier in the week and Jay-Z and Beyonce’s close personal connection to the former President, it seems like almost a given that the album will at least touch on him at some point.
Then look at the actors starring in this Tidal movie. You’ve got two Oscar winners, Ali and Nyong’o (for Moonlight and 12 Years A Slave respectively), and the other is Danny fucking Glover. Three hugely important black actors starring on a visual album that might be centred around the first black president and soundtracked by one of the most successful black men of all time?
Don’t talk to me or my son again if you think this isn’t going to be must-see and hear.
The first snippet Adnis sheds just a little bit of light, a downtrodden sounding Hov almost mumbling “letter to my dad that I never wrote, speeches I prepared that I never spoke” while Ali goes to work on a boxing bag being held by Glover. We’ve not had a Jay-Z album since Obama left the Oval Office and was replaced by his polar opposite, Donald Trump. Ditto since the Black Lives Matter movement rightfully forced itself to the front of the global social consciousness. There will be plenty for Jay-Z to say on this album, and smart money says he won’t hold back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oLAtQ0YjwA
On the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, not 15 minutes from where Shawn Carter spent his childhood in the Marcy Projects, is the house that he helped build: the Barclays Center. I’ve been lucky enough to have seen Jay-Z live once in my lifetime. It was his third concert in a series of eight to celebrate the grand opening of the arena in 2012,i and the relocation of its new occupants, the Nets, from New Jersey to Brooklyn. An NBA team Jay-Z had purchased a minority stake in and helped move to his hometown, he swaggered around the stage that night in a pair of custom made number 4 Nets jerseys, with “Brooklyn” splashed across the front of them and behind enough gold chains to finance an island nation. He looked like the undisputed King of New York City. The city was under new management.
The message was clear that night: here was a man who had clawed his way from being just another disenfranchised and disillusioned black kid in America to a billionaire and one of the most successful people in the world. This night was Jay-Z planting his flag at the top of Everest and the peak of both his artistic and professional careers. It was a shame to see him sell off his stake in the Nets just two years later and his entrepreneurial pursuits to clash so ungraciously with his music. The fire and determination that got him to the top seemed like they’d disappeared, replaced by a slick corporate sheen that felt completely wrong.
It’s why people might be right in suggesting it could be time to hang up the mic and focus on other ventures. Maybe Jay-Z is a better businessman than a rapper in 2017 and maybe 4:44 is the last we hear of Jay-Z the artist. If it is, expect it to be a swan song befitting of arguably the most prolific rapper to ever live and far and away the most successful. There’s no way he’d bow out on anything less… we all hope.
Nobody really remembers Kobe Bryant’s frankly godawful, injury-plagued final few seasons where he was a broken-down shell of his former self. What they do remember is him taking over one last time and lighting up the Staples Center for 60 points in his retirement game, going out on top. If 4:44 is Jay-Z’s 60 point game, we might be about to be hit with one of the best releases of the year.
Does the world need a new Jay-Z album? No, and it hasn’t for some time. But it seems like he’s got something much more important to say here than simply ‘subscribe to Tidal’, despite surface impressions. And if that’s the case, we should all be listening.
4:44 is out June 30th via Tidal.
Image: Flickr
Having just released their outstanding fourth studio album Ark last week, we thought we’d ask Byron Bay quintet In Hearts Wake about three albums that helped shape who they are today. Charged with answering such a probing question, guitarist Ben Nairne.
Silverchair – Diorama
I got this album when I was 12 and would listen to it in the car or on the bus on the way to school most mornings. I love the way they incorporated so many strings and horns into the album, it was so fresh and unique to me.
To this day I still listen to this album regularly and it doesn’t feel like it has aged at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoL5Q72HZWg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA_ZiyI3Ros
Coldplay – A Rush Of Blood To The Head
The first time I ever attended Splendour In The Grass was in 2003 when I was 13. Coldplay were one of the headliners and they had released this album the year before. I remember standing there and hearing the piano intro to Clocks, the entire crowd instantly went crazy and it was the first time I had witnessed a proper festival crowd.
Every time I hear that song it gives me nostalgic goosebumps and reminds me of that show. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way at any show since.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d020hcWA_Wg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHzvjIvJbfE
As I Lay Dying – Shadows Are Security
This album was released in 2005, a year or so after I’d started playing in metal bands and it was so exciting. I remember thinking it was a masterpiece, every song was a banger and I wanted to write and play music just like that.
In Hearts Wake actually covered Reflection at a battle of the bands back in 2006 which was actually our first official gig under that name.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydWlUMz2AGs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF0wgpuspyM
Ark is out now via UNFD
Image: Music Feeds
Politically charged rap-rock supergroup Prophets Of Rage, featuring members of Public Enemy, Rage Against The Machine and Cypress Hill, introduced themselves to the rest of the world last year with The Party’s Over EP serving as their fiery introduction.
They made headlines for their memorable pop-up set outside the Republican National Convention last year and now they’re set to make plenty more, today teaming up with full-time pot-stirrer and documentarian Michael Moore to direct their latest video for the to-the-point Unfuck The World, as well as announcing their debut album for later this year.
Opening with an ominous air raid siren and interspersing live shots of the band with stock footage both old (50s nuclear war drills, North Korean military marches) and of more current events (some of the more violent protests of the last year and that Pepsi Ad) covering plenty of social and political ground.
Unsurprisingly it’s Donald Trump copping a lot of the negative press covfefe ire of the group here, his smug face popping up again and again throughout the song. You can watch the full video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ad4MH7fMLs&t=184s
It’s a very damning critique of the current state of society, the violent and confronting imagery combining with a crushingly heavy sonic assault to create a palpable sense of dread and doom from start to finish. Chuck D and B-Real bounce off each other perfectly, delivering their lyrics with the same force that made PE and Cypress Hill so successful and Michael Moore’s idiosyncratic rapid-fire delivery of a host of different footage provides the perfect visual companion.
Unfuck The World is the first single from Prophets Of Rage’s debut studio album. Self-titled, it’s been announced for release on September 15th. If the quality and the fury stay as consistently high as on Unfuck The World then Prophets Of Rage may end up being one of the most important releases of 2017.
Prophets Of Rage is out September 15th via Caroline.
Image: Consequence Of Sound
It’s felt like such a long wait between albums from Philadelphia’s The War On Drugs, their breakout smash Lost In The Dream back in 2014. They returned with a brand new single Thinking Of A Place earlier this year with whispers that a new record was imminent. Today they’re back again with the exquisite new single Holding On and some fantastic news for fans.
Clocking in at just over four minutes long, actually quite short and snappy by the usually lofty standards of Adam Granduciel and co, Holding On rides along a wave of gorgeously icy synths, a relentless bass line and guitar licks dancing around like flames. Granduciel’s breathy Dylan-meets-Petty vocals waft over it all dreamily. Listen to it below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBWiMAu3uII
Holding On should definitely appeal to those whose favourite moments on Lost In The Dream were its anthemic uptempo tracks like An Ocean Between The Waves and Red Eyes and bodes well for a strong follow-up record.
That record, also announced via social media today, will be titled A Deeper Understanding and is slated for release August 25th this year. With a North American and European tour in support of it, surely it’s only a matter of time before The War On Drugs make their way back to Australia.
A Deeper Understanding is out August 25th via Secretly Canadian.
Image: NPR
Tomorrow night, seminal rap metal group Body Count are touching down in Australia for the first time in two decades. The three-date tour will be in support of their sixth studio album Bloodlust released back in March.
If you’ve never heard of Body Count, they’re a heavy metal band fronted by Ice-T – yes, Ice-T, rapper and terrifying celebrity, best known as Detective Tutuola on Law & Order SVU.
Their story is one for the ages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBUxUa0TrsY
Ice-T, real name Tracey Lauren Marrow, grew up in Newark before finding himself an orphan at age 12 and transplanted to live with an aunt in the notorious Crenshaw district of Los Angeles. Attending Crenshaw High School, where fights between Crips and Bloods in the halls were commonplace, Marrow left school and joined the army. He was dishonourably discharged, and admitted to using his newfound military training to rob banks.
Disillusioned by the criminal life after his friends were sent to prison and he himself was involved in a serious car accident, Marrow instead decided to pursue a career as a rapper, changing his name to the immortal Ice-T after reading novels by real life pimp Iceberg Slim, and flourishing as a successful solo artist. His debut album Rhyme Pays was released in 1987, followed by Power in ’88, The Iceberg/Freedom Of Speech… Just Watch What You Say in ’89 and O.G. Original Gangster in ’91.
Like his contemporaries in N.W.A., Ice-T wove tales of LA street life into his music, ultimately winning a Grammy for Back On The Block with Quincy Jones – and he was only just getting started.
As much a fan of heavy metal as he was of hip-hop, Ice-T formed Body Count in 1990, with high school friend and guitarist Ernie C, along with other students from their years at Crenshaw High. It’s around then that shit hit the fan.
Asked to explain the difference between Body Count and his solo work at the time, Ice-T described it thus: “An Ice-T album has intelligence, and at times it has ignorance. Sometimes it has anger, sometimes it has questions. But Body Count was intended to reflect straight anger. It was supposed to be the voice of the angry brother, without answers. If you took a kid and you put him in jail with a microphone and asked him how he feels, you’d get Body Count: ‘Fuck that. Fuck school. Fuck the police.’ You wouldn’t get intelligence or compassion. You’d get raw anger.”
Their self-titled debut album, the primordial rap metal ooze along with the equally politically charged Rage Against The Machine, from which far more commercially successful bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit and dozens more would spew forth in the mid-90s, was a revelation.
Not the first time the two hardest genres of music in rap and heavy metal had collided on record (thrash metal overlords Anthrax and the incendiary Public Enemy having collaborated in ’91 on a rework of Bring Tha Noize) but this was one of the first full rap metal albums, and it hit hard.
Dark, brazen lyrical content shouted over punishing riffs and squealing guitar solos, the sound would have intoxicated fans of either genre. Packaged with song titles like KKK Bitch (detailing a sexual encounter with the daughter of the Grand Wizard), Momma’s Gotta Die Tonight (a macabre tale of a son murdering his mother after she reacts negatively to him bringing home a white girl), Bowels Of The Devil and, slipped right in there at the end of the record, a little tune called Cop Killer.
You can probably guess how that went down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH8gUhDd6WE
Released barely a year after the beating of Rodney King, Cop Killer was a direct response to the incident, name-dropping then-police chief Daryl Gates (who famously said that drug use was treason) and King in the chorus. Not limited to the King beating, Cop Killer also served as a much broader middle finger to the scourge of corruption and brutality in the police force experienced directly by Ice-T, his bandmates and their legion of fans. Indeed, the song begins with the monologue:
“For every cop that has ever taken advantage of somebody, beat somebody down or hurt ’em because they got long hair, listen to the wrong kinda music, wrong color, whatever they thought was the reason to do it. For every one of those fuckin’ police, I’d like to take a pig out here in this parkin’ lot and shoot ’em in their motherfuckin’ face”
Expectedly, Cop Killer’s message found itself bluntly misconstrued by the mainstream majority. Choosing to focus on the shock value lyrics instead of delving deeper into what would compel a group of black men to use them, President George H. W. Bush no less called for Body Count to be withdrawn from commercial sale. The late gun-toting actor Charlton Heston recited lyrics from the song at a Time-Warner shareholders meeting, many in attendance would receive death threats over the song. Honestly try without laughing to imagine dusty old Charlton Heston uttering lines like “I got my black shirt on, I got my black gloves on, I got my ski mask on, this shit’s been too long” and “I got this long-ass knife and your neck looks just right” or even “I got my stereo bumpin’, I’m bouta kill me somethin’, a pig stopped me for nothin'”.
Tipper Gore, of Parents Music Resource Centre and their crotchety crusade against popular music, deemed the album ‘obscene’. “Cultural economics were a poor excuse for the South’s continuation of slavery,” she said at the time. “Ice-T’s financial success cannot excuse the vileness of his message… Hitler’s anti-Semitism sold in Nazi Germany. That didn’t make it right.”
Ice-T responded in top form, of course. “The Supreme Court says it’s ok for a white man to burn a cross in public but nobody wants a black man to write a record about a cop killer… they’ve done movies about nurse killers and teacher killers and student killers. Arnold Schwarzenegger blew away dozens of cops as the Terminator. But I don’t hear anybody complaining about that.”
Attempting to tour New Zealand in 1992, the police commission there brought Body Count before the Indecent Publications Tribunal in an effort to have their Auckland concert cancelled, the first time in 20 years that a recording artist had been brought before the tribunal. After actually listening to the album (who’d have thought), they threw out the case. Still, this kind of backlash was unheard of and astonishing.
A firestorm of public outcry and being unable to sell your very first album without its most successful song on it would usually mean a death sentence for just about any band. Luckily, though, Ice-T’s success as a solo artist gave him plenty of cushion or perhaps because banning something only explodes its popularity (Body Count had sold over 480 000 copies by 1993), the group would continue releasing albums sporadically for the next two decades, including ’94’s Born Dead, 06’s Murder 4 Hire and 2014’s Manslaughter right up to this year’s Bloodlust.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlk7o5T56iw
While founders Ice-T, Ernie C and sampler Sean E. Sean have remained constants, the Body Count of today looks much different from the group who caused a national uproar nearly 30 years ago, unfortunately due to tragic circumstances. Drummer Beatmaster V died of lymphoma in 1996, bassist Mooseman in a drive-by shooting in 2001 and rhythm guitarist D Roc The Executioner from leukaemia in 2004.
Nevertheless, the group have stuck around in various incarnations and, in a world where police brutality against African American people is a daily occurrence, and travesties like the Rodney King beating have been underscored by the senseless killings of Trayvon Martin, Alton Sterling, Jocques Clemmons, Korryn Gaines, Paul O’Neal and countless others, Body Count are just as relevant and just as important in 2017, perhaps even more so, than they were at their peak in the ’90s. Sonically they’re absolutely going as hard as ever, their latest record a crushing whirlwind of brutal riffs and furious demands for justice.
You likely won’t see Bloodlust ripped from shelves or raising political ire today, and indeed the themes aren’t delivered quite as bluntly as they were 25 years ago. Still, the message remains loud and clear. “It’s unfortunate that we even have to say “Black Lives Matter”,” he said. “If you go through history, nobody ever gave a fuck. You can kill black people in the street, nobody goes to jail, nobody goes to prison. But when I say “Black Lives Matter” and you say “All Lives Matter”? That’s like if I was to say “Gay Lives Matter” and you were to say “All Lives Matter”. If I was to say “Women’s Lives Matter” and you say “All Lives Matter”. You’re dilutin’ what I’m sayin’, you’re dilutin’ the issue. The issue isn’t about everybody, it’s about black lives at the moment.”
On body Count’s relevance today, Ice-T pointed out that “Music happens in climates. Groups like Rage Against The Machine and Korn were born when the world was in turmoil, then music went into this delusional period where hip-hop became about nothing more than poppin’ bottles. Now we have impending doom again, racism is at an all-time high and it’s our season again.”
Bloodlust is an uprising against racism, hypocrisy, ignorance, police brutality and the mistreatment of minorities at every level, echoing 1992’s Body Count eerily. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and sadly it seems even after three decades that not a thing Body Count railed against on their debut has been resolved. All they can do is keep spreading the message and keep spreading it louder and angrier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_0xYamFYYI
Body Count Australian Tour Dates 2017
Supported by A.B. Original
Thur, Jun 1st: The Tivoli, Brisbane
Fri, Jun 2nd: Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne
Sat, June 3rd: The Big Top, Sydney
Bloodlust is out now via Century.
Most of the way through a gigantic and largely sold out national tour, one that started with barely any breathing room between the release of their outrageously good debut album Alright Already, you might have forgiven Sydney duo Polish Club for showing up in the city of the Brown Snake with less than peak energy levels.
If you showed up to their sold out set at The Foundry late last week and watched them tear down the stage you’d know that’s not how Polish Club do business though.
Locals Feuds warm up the early crowd with a set full of beautiful slow-burners that build to huge-riffed crescendos and Maddy Jane all the way from Tasmania keeps the pace impeccably, a soulful cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams one of the highlights of her set.
With the Foundry crowd sandwiching themselves into every area of breathable space between the stage and the bar, Novak and John take the stage and proceed to burn it to the ground. Fiery newies Where U Been? and Shark Attack! as well as old toe-tappers Did Somebody Tell Me and My House. I’m only 90% sure they even managed to squeeze all those in, (the whole set such a beautifully blurred-lines boogie that I may be simply adding to the Polish Club myth in my head), nonetheless their new material blended effortlessly with the old from the start.
Original ballad Don’t Fuck Me Over incites one of the first of many singalongs, the slower songs spaced out across the set to wonderful effect. Lighter-waver Divided later on is another that showcases Novak’s second–to-very-fucking-few talents, possessing the Giannis Antetokounmpo edition of vocal wingspans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bny5sidTGBY
Not just a singer either, Novak and drummer John bounce off each other hilariously onstage. They fire shots directly into the maroon heart of Brisbane (“This isn’t my own personal opinion, but FUCK THE BRONCOS” and “The Brisbane Roar? That’s not even a mascot, your team is named after a sound”) and play the Sydney heels like they were born to do it.
They redeem themselves in the Sunshine State pretty quickly though with a chest-beating cover of Like A Dog that would have a single tear running down each member of Powderfinger’s cheeks even with a few ad-hoc lyrics thrown in here and there.
It’s pure bedlam for Alright Already’s first pair of singles in Come Party and Beat Up, same doubly so for frenetic signature tune Beeping. Somewhere out there the vaguely threatening Polish Club fan got goosebumps as the boys tore through the tempo-shifting rollercoaster of If It Was Me, the drunken swagger of Broke another highlight in a show bursting with them.
They promise they’ll finish with another cover after bringing the house down with Able and (as much as I was hoping they’d finally embrace their calling as Twobastank (the two-piece Hoobastank tribute band), they do just that with a disgustingly good rendition of their Like A Version debut from earlier in the year; Flume’s Never Be Like You in a stomping blues arrangement that’s so good it makes the original sound as lifeless as New South Wales’ State Of Origin efforts in the last 15 years by comparison.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r44qJ8AooWE
There are few musical experiences more joyous than a Polish Club show in 2017. Fun, carefree and loud, my ears rang for the rest of the next day and when I’m having to get my grandchildren to yell everything at me because of my crippling tinnitus in a few decades I’ll remember this night (and then give them a highly exaggerated and long-winded tale of it while they groan inwardly).
The duo’s energy is relentless and hopelessly infectious from curtain-raiser to finish and Alright Already’s journey from studio to stage has been kept simple and crushingly effective. There might be no band less likely to mail a show in right now than Polish Club, they’ve brought the heat live consistently since their beginnings as a band and tonight was no exception.
It’s time to get these two on a major festival bill somewhere, for the love of Bernard Fanning.
Image: Tone Deaf
Stress no longer, LCD Soundsystem fans, frontman James Murphy has taken to the band’s Facebook page overnight to announce that their hugely anticipated sixth album has been completely recorded. According to Pitchfork, Murphy first made the announcement several days ago during their set at Sasquatch! Music Festival, but has now made it concrete. In a highly informative post, Murphy reports completion of the music and mixing with just ‘some art stuff’ to finalise. He reveals a rough timeframe of six weeks if everything goes to plan (though braced everyone for a likely longer wait than that) and apologised for the unexpected wait for new music. Read the full post below:
https://www.facebook.com/lcdsoundsystem/posts/10158816788330444
The new album will be the first LCD Soundsystem material since 2015’s Christmas Will Break Your Heart that was released shortly after the group reunited following their split in 2011 and their first longplayer since 2010’s third studio effort This Is Happening. As yet untitled, the record will be the last to come from the original DFA Studios in Manhattan, the birthplace of every prior LCD Soundsystem album. Murphy details that they’re closing it down after he has been there almost 20 years.
The dance punk superstars went off the grid for five years after their third album until early 2016, where their reunion was confirmed and saw them return to headlining mega-festivals including Coachella, Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits and Bonnaroo among others. Amid fevered anticipation for a fourth studio album, LCD Soundsystem spent 2017 releasing a pair of singles in call the police and american dream and performing other new songs live that had their fans’ hopes sky-high. If what we’ve heard of this new record so far (assuming any of these songs make the final cut), album number four is going to be a triumphant return.
Australian fans should welcome this news with rapture, the band had initially cancelled their 2016 tour dates here to finish work on the album but are set to headline a monster Splendour In The Grass this year, a festival taking place oh, a little over six weeks from now.
Might Splendour be one of LCD Soundsystem’s first performances following the album’s released? Fingers crossed Murphy and co. get all their ducks in a row and have their catchers mitts on by then.
LCD Soundsystem Tour Dates
Monday July 24: Hordern Pavilion, Sydney (sold out)
Wednesday July 26: Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne