A quiet weekend - Hear
HEAR is the enema your iTunes needs. Bringing you the most thought-provoking and up-to-date music reviews this side of Lester Bangs, HEAR sifts through the ever growing mountain of press releases and promos to only feature albums, EPs, LPs and mixes that we want to, not that we have to. Also, we try and make things make sense in 200 words or less so that you can just listen to the music.
Witch Hats, 'Solarium Down the Causeway'
Witch Hats are undeniably one of Australia's most intense rock bands, a newer and slightly more urgent version of that band that Nick Cave was in, in the early '90s (what's their name again?). They've just released a new EP, Solarium Down the Causeway, which just made me think of the 6km walk I used to take to the shops, where a Solarium and porn store were the only bastions of visible civilisation on the road to glory (German baked goods being the glory).
Rowland S Howard, 'Pop Crimes'
Rowland S Howard is a true poéte maudit and treasure of Australian music. From his hallowed start in the Boys Next Door through work with These Immortal Souls, cameos with Lydia Lunch, cult solo album Teenage Snuff Film, production for Melbourne decadents HTRK and now his new auteur outing Pop Crimes, Howard has been the most rarefied and unaccountable of local figures; an impossible, maligned, hyper-aesthetic style icon whose songwriting and economic destruction of guitar syntax changed the sound of erotic longing and resignation in avant-rock forever.
Coven, 'Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls'
I make a lot of noise about fishing, and why shouldn't I? It's the incontestable king of blood sports! Nothing beats blasting out into the salty blue yonder aboard my boat The Baboso Grande, and having it out with that most vicious specimen in Neptune's hideous menagerie- The Blue Marlin. And while I'm out there killing those big weird bastards I like listening to the most flagrantly satanic record ever made: Coven's Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls.
'Maker', Pontiak
Regardless of the era, older brothers who smoke pot and play Dungeons and Dragons are perennially cool. Virginia's Pontiak capture that wizards and jean jacket vibe perfectly on Maker, their third full-length album.
Trudging through stacks of sludge and fuzz, this is slow-groove downer rock, like if Dead Meadow, Black Mountain, and Tame Impala made a really stoned baby with Black Sabbath.
Boys
Frankly, we've had a glut of female singer/songwriters lately. Which is a shame, as some of this year's terrific releases from the ladies (Emiliana Torrini, St. Vincent, Juana Molina, Amaya Laucirica) may get lost amidst the mediocre Bjork wannabes.
Hopefully Boys - the sophomore release from Nashville's Cortney Tidwell - won't get lost amongst the deluge.
Regression
Nate Young is a fiend catcher and master of morbid atmospheres. The Detroit native's latest solo disc, Regression, out-graves anything by his erstwhile group, Wolf Eyes, with apposite subtlety rare in analogue electronic music. Passing over familiar Noise strategies of assault and explosion, Young's tape burbles, synthesizer whorls and junk textures are determined by a cold, disciplined pathology of restraint.
The Duke Spirit interview
The Duke Spirit are defensibly the hardest working band in rock 'n' roll today. They tour ceaselessly, interview tirelessly and they all have second jobs at a cannery in Middlesex. I spoke to Toby, the hardest working member of the world's hardest working band, and he said it wasn't so bad, Snow Patrol work in a textiles factory where they get paid in corned beef, cholera and the lash.
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