0.32.1 - I come from a land down under (Weeks 33-35 Part 2)
This week: Music from the great land of Australia
God, I'm so tired.
It's not jetlag any more; at least, I am pretty sure I am mostly back on UK time. Instead, I've been dealing with sleeplessness generated by my cracked tooth, for which I now have a scheduled extraction next week, and facing into the reality of the job I have been working at for the last five years rapidly transforming into a place I no longer want to be a part of. It's difficult - not only do I like most of my colleagues, I enjoy the work, have a team I like and want to support, and the circumstances of my employment are very comfortable for me. I really don't want to give those things up, especially in the face of the fact that the business itself should be fundamentally viable and profitable. Part of me worries that I am in my feelings, that this is another period of change and uncertainty that I just need to power through to get to an oasis of calm on the other side. The other part worries that I'm chained through loyalty and career inertia to a sinking ship which has taken on too much water through mismanagement and wild, expensive ideas to the detriment of the core business, and I'll be dragged down with it.
Either way, mentally I've spent the first week back from my holiday in a pretty dark place; I've had this blog entry and the banner image open for a few days now, just trying to get up the enthusiasm to sit and write about the music we listened to on the holiday we adored when it now seems so far in the past that it might as well have happened to someone else. But not doing so is also impeding me from moving forward, listening to new music, advancing towards my goal of 1000 albums this year, and while society crumbles around me and the other shoe definitely drops, if I don't hit my self imposed target I'll feel like this year has really been wasted.
So, here I am driving myself forward to catalogue all 29 of the Australian bands I listened to while we were in Australia. As with previous very long lists, I'm going to limit my word count per album, but there were a couple of other things I wanted to fold in to the discussions of these artists.
First, this is going to be my most reductive article yet. The reality of overdosing myself on Australian music for two weeks was the completely mundane realisation that Australian bands are influenced by other bands around the world, and are inspired by that in their own works. There's a continental music industry of Australian bands who, while not always crossing over to international success, have a respected and successful career on their home soil, and my ignorance of that shouldn't in any way make me think less of their music. However, in terms of how I relate to it, there's always going to be an inevitable point of comparison between whatever I am hearing, and other bands who move in that musical genre. As such, in an attempt to codify my aggressions, I will be including for each album a "This is the Australian version of:" point of comparison, because otherwise I'd be using half my word count trying to find someone to compare them to anyway.
Secondly, the way I picked these albums bears some discussion. I was looking for some kind of primer on prominent Australian bands I might not have otherwise encountered. One of my favourite things to come out of the continent musically is Australian music radio station Triple J, who's "Like A Version" videos on YouTube and songs on Spotify often bring people to my attention doing interesting and excellent covers of songs by other artists. When I wrote about G-Flip's Drummer album earlier in the year, I listened to that exclusively because I'd seen them perform Taylor Swift's Cruel Summer on Like A Version and been blown away by it. However, I wasn't sure how indicative just grabbing names from Triple J's playlists would be because I've seen many international acts perform on there as well. So, instead I found this article from the Australian version of Rolling Stone magazine. In it, current Australian artists nominate historical Australian artists as crucial and influential. I figured that I could use that list, both with the nominees and those nominating them, to get a reasonable cross section of Australian music across generations and genres. However, for each artist, I'll be trying to find and post a Triple J "Like A Version" performance if I can find one as well.
Thirdly, while I downloaded 30 albums to listen to, I have a confession to make. I tried to listen to Giver by KLP but I don't know if it was because I was 17 hours into an across the world flight or I was coming down with a cold and had a headache but for whatever reason, its hardcore electronica dance beats I just could not engage with. It's the first album this year, out of everything I've listened to, had recommended to me, gone into sight-unseen that I've just given up on half way through. So, sorry if you are reading this KLP, I did try. And that's why there's only 29 albums on this list and not 30.*
Finally, I'm going to talk about the music and try not to talk about the holiday that inspired it. I'm conscious you, the reader, don't care what I did on my holidays and frankly I am OK with that. I will say, for any curious Australians reading that, that I found the entire continent a delight, we visited 4 cities, did a 4 day road trip, had brilliant weather even though it was winter and frankly had an incredible time. If you are considering visiting, I'd strongly recommend it. If your concern is of the snake/scorpion/spider variety and that is putting you off, I will say that in fourteen days, including long drives across open country, we saw zero snakes, zero scorpions, and one spider which was smaller than my pinkie fingernail. A+, would vacation there again.
So, once more, for the last time, lets rattle off some 50 word lighting round reviews of some Australian albums.
The Australian Version of: Sheryl Crow
On Like A Version Covering: Savage Garden? Oh no.
I thought this might be Australia's Sad Girl Summer candidate, but she's far more light guitar country than confessional music-as-therapy. I really enjoyed it, and it was a breezy listen, but its amongst the shortest albums I've listened to so listening to something outside of her debut might have given me a better idea of who she is musically. Nice, pleasant, easy listening in the non-pejorative way.
TRY + SAVE ME by Bec Sandridge
The Australian Version of:
On Like A Version Covering: "You're The Voice". This cover rules.
There are albums I listened to on this trip that I wish had crossed over, or had made it big outside of the soils of Australia. This is one of them. Bec Sandridge makes proudly Queer Electro Pop / Rock with a unique style and laser-fine focus. I don't have a reductive comparison for Bec Sandridge because I both think her influences are too varied to narrow down to one and her style is so unique to her any comparison does her a disservice. I loved this album and I've listened to it multiple times and still have it saved on my phone. My strong dark-horse recommendation out of these 29 albums was the second one I listened to.
Wolfmother by Wolfmother
The Australian Version of: Styx, Rainbow, Boston, pick a 70's Classic Rock band of your choice
On Like A Version Covering: Nope, so here's PVT covering one of their songs instead
I played a lot of Guitar Hero as a young man. That's the only reason I know who Wolfmother are, because Woman was on GH2 and I probably fake-played it 2000 times in my life. I knew Joker And The Thief as well which I think was also in a Rock Band or Guitar Hero game, but if you had told me those songs came out in 1978 and not 2006 and I would have believed you. Wolfmother want to make classic rock music and they do accomplish that, but they're just not doing enough different or inventive with it to compete with the bands they are emulating. Fine driving music.
Woodface by Crowded House
The Australian Version Of: Crowded House
On Like A Version Covering: "Everybody's Talkin'". There's a half a dozen covers of their music by others on there too.
I have two competing memories of first hearing Crowded House. I distinctly remember seeing the music video for Locked Out from Together Alone on MTV and loving the song; I'd hang on for 20 minutes to see if if it was announced it was coming up in the rotation. I also remember my Dad buying this album on CD, and having it in heavy rotation for a while; both of those things can be true, but the sequence is fuzzy. Regardless, I both knew and was told that the Finn Brothers were musicians of the highest calibre, and this album, and its follow-up, are total comfort listening to me. It's a tour de force of earnest, perfectly crafted songwriting and Weather With You and Fall At Your Feet and Four Seasons In One Day are undeniable classics. If you've not heard this, give it a chance to enchant you.
Blue Planet Eyes by The Preatures
The Australian Version of: HAIM
On Like A Version Covering: "Everything Now" by Arcade Fire. A guilt-free way to enjoy it!
Sometimes my reductive comparisons are hard to pin down. We put The Preatures on in the car and within a minute or two I thought "huh, they've got a kind of HAIM vibe". That feeling did not go away, and dear reader, that's not a bad thing. They've got great, imaginative song construction, great close harmony singing and a kind of energy that fluctuates from languid to excited effortlessly. This is another really great album that maybe deserved to do better internationally than it seems to have done.
1000 Forms Of Fear by Sia
The Australian Version of: Sia
On Live A Version Covering: The Pretenders. God she's so good.
I've long standing love of Sia's voice. I was listening to Zero7's Simple Plan for this blog back in January, and she's always held a special place in my pantheon of female performers. I think its possible that she's the best pure musician in pop music. What she writes, and how she performs it, has no reliance on aura, on celebrity, on appearance or any of the garnishes used in pop music. She's the anti-Katy Perry, someone who will write a song humming with intent and meaning, and perform it with such prowess that it's message is driven into your psyche like a hammer blow. Chandelier is an explosive cocktail of desperation and catharsis disguised as a party song; I listened to it about 20 times in a row when I first heard it I was so blown away, and the rest of the album is just as potent. This album belongs on "Best Album Of All Time" lists.
The Australian Version of: Maroon 5
On Like A Version Covering: Nope, so here's Tonight Alive covering one of their songs
I said these are the Australian version of Maroon 5, but really its Adam Levine who owes Savage Garden debt for opening the door for relentlessly middle of the road soft rock songs beloved of suburban mothers and tweens alike. I have grim memories of them assaulting the UK music charts with Truly Madly Deeply and To The Moon And Back and time has not done anything to improve my opinion of their music. They may be elder statesmen of Australian international success now, but lots of people seem to like Neighbours as well; popularity is no guarantee of quality.
How To Socialise And Make Friends by Camp Cope
The Australian Version of: L7 / Bikini Kill / Sleater-Kinney
On Like A Version Covering: "Seventeen Going Under". I really love their version.
I have musical deja vu about Camp Cope. When I added them to the list of albums, I saw the name and thought "have I seen these as a support act? where do I know their name from but none of their music?" I still don't have an answer, and never will now they are no longer a going concern; a shame because this was another album that struck me as special when I listened to it to the point of playing it for Catherine in the car as we were driving around. Camp Cope are punk as fuck, have opinions about the treatment of women, both in music, in society, and the mistreatment and recrimination they face. It's punk, abrasive, and unapologetic; its shouted more than sung in places, but with good reason. Not for everyone, but everyone should listen to The Opener just for the barrage of bitter invective at the music industry it unfurls at high speed.
HIGH by Keith Urban
The Australian Version of: Garth Brookes
On Like A Version Covering: Ha, no chance
Here's the things I know about Keith Urban. He's Australian, he sings Country songs, and he's married to Nicole Kidman, who has been my celebrity crush since I saw her in Malice and Batman Forever in the mid 90s. I wasn't expecting much from this, and it totally met my expectations. It feels like country music has moved on from the dirt road/big truck/honkey tonk stylings of a decade ago, but Keith Urban hasn't, and that's fine. It's not to my taste, but it never made me want to switch it off in outrage or disgust.
Reverence by Parkway Drive
The Australian Version of: Pantera
On Like A Version Covering: No, which is a shame, but here's In Heart's Wake covering one of their songs and doing a pretty damn good job of it.
One of the few modern Australian bands that I already knew about, Parkway Drive have built a deserved following for playing sincere old school metal. Most modern metal builds on what came before, but goes in its own direction; Parkway Drive instead remain faithful to the principles set out in the 90s by Sepultura and Slayer and Pantera and follow in their footsteps. You might ask why this is OK when I lambasted Keith Urban for doing the same thing, and the real answer is - no-one else is making music that sounds like Parkway Drive do, as well as they do, right now. Metal has always been a niche, one which needs champions and standard bearers, and Parkway Drive can realistically claim to be keeping the flame of classic metal alive in the world. Reverence is the album I listened to on this trip, but the same can be said for Ire or Atlas or any of their other albums in their now 20 year career.
Fever by Kylie Minogue
The Australian Version of: Herself
On Like A Version Covering: They should be so lucky. However, here's Tame Impala covering my favourite Kylie song.
I've already told the story of seeing Kylie in a tent in 1997 just before her comeback made her the international megastar she has remained since, and it's possible that single performance helped redefine my relationship with pop music, but somehow I've only listened this year to her terrible self-titled album from 1994. I went back and forth between listening to this and Light Years, but the tie breaker was getting this album as a recommendation from my friend Andy as well. It's a flawless piece of pop production; if Light Years was the big swing, the unknown step into reinvention as a disco queen, one year later Fever shows the confidence of someone who has found what works, and is leaning into it with feeling. The singles are the tentpoles of the album, with Can't Get You Out Of My Head and Come Into My World being undeniable, but the album deep cuts are no lesser in quality - Burning Up, the last track on the album, is my favourite album track but everything on here feels like it could have been a monster hit.
Frogstomp by Silverchair
The Australian Version of: Bush
On Like A Version Covering: The Beatles. An utterly unhinged choice to do "Yellow Submarine".
In the mid 90's and early 2000's, I'd regularly get these kind of compilation albums of vaguely thematically linked music; here's one I covered back in the 2017 version of this blog Somewhere in a collection of mid-tempo alternative rock was Tomorrow by Silverchair, a song so in the mold of the Bush/Reef aesthetic that I thought it was Bush for a long time. The rest of the album doesn't veer too far from that formula either, so your enjoyment will be entirely contingent on your level of enthusiasm for gravelly earnest growling and mid tempo guitars. As I said at the start of this, the idea of being a local version of an international band makes total sense to me, but I'm not sure there's room for more than one band which sound like Bush in my own personal musical experiences.
Left of the Middle by Natalie Imbruglia
The Australian Version of: Alanis Morrisette (in her dreams)
On Like A Version Covering: Obviously not. However, Alex Lahey charitably covered her here.
There was a time when appearing on an Australian soap opera was the first step into a pipeline which ended with pop stardom, and Natalie Imbruglia was just the next one up to the plate. Having had success packaging heartthrobs and girl-next-door types, for Natalie they saw the success of Alanis Morrisette and decided they also should do that, so Natalie was packaged as the Australian version, flung into the charts with a cover of a Danish song (because no-one is going to notice that) and put some vaguely angsty English lyrics on it. That's where the planning phase ended however, because Torn was a hit but they didn't have 11 other Danish songs to steal, and their hit factory only knew how to write milquetoast saccharine pop hits so that is what the rest of the entirety of this album is. I don't blame Natalie, everyone wants to be a star and she did her best, but the music industry really got to step 2 of this plan, then broke for lunch and never came back. A hard skip.
Welcome To Whereever You Are by INXS
The Australian Version of: U2
On Like A Version Covering: Obviously not, but several bands have covered them, including Vance Joy doing Don't Change here.
When I listened to Kick back in May I never considered that it would mean I had to listen to a different INXS album in August. I like Kick, I know a lot of songs from it. I have no knowledge of any of the rest of their catalogue, until now. We drove across the south coast of Australia listening to this album, and honestly, it really grew on me. Its got less of a synth/hook gimmick to its sound, and is much more straight up rock and roll, much in the same vein as early U2, and I kind of felt that my vision of INXS as a chart act had been obscuring them as musicians and songwriters. I think Welcome to Whereever You Are is a better album than the one everyone knows the songs from, and that's probably a real shame.
Physical by Olivia Newton-John
The Australian Version of: I don't have a good frame of reference for Disco Divas, sorry.
On Like A Version Covering; Again, not likely to happen, but at least one brave band covered Hopelessly Devoted To You on there
I'm aware that I've blown past 50 words on basically every album I've covered on here but these last five are the ones I have the least to say about them, so I'm going to try and be speedy.
I've watched Grease many times; my sisters musical obsession came on early and strong and I was in the firing line for much of it, so I knew ONJ as an actress primarily. If I'm being totally honest, I've found it difficult to form any kind of coherent opinion about the music on here; It's perfectly fine, dated for sure but I don't really have a bellweather for "70's disco pop which is mostly nodding at the idea of being about sex without in any way being explicit". I don't dislike it, but I'm not enraptured by it, it doesn't speak to me but it feels of a quality where it should be taken seriously. I don't know, I feel like whatever position I hold about this album is going to be wrong in some way; its the perfect centrepoint of a variety of conflicting ideas in my head. I can't think of how to explain it better than that.
Back In Black by AC/DC
The Australian Version of: AC/DC
On Like A Version Covering: No, but this piano cover of Thunderstruck by Odette rules.
Sometimes, through a combination of talent, luck, timing and pure energy a band releases an album that always and forever from that point on becomes the perfect example and encapsulation of a genre of music, unshakable in its primacy. That's Back In Black for a certain kind of Rock music. If you pull a hundred people aside and ask them to name a classic rock song, you're going to get some people who say Ace of Spaces, some people who pick something from KISS maybe. But there's a reasonable chance two songs from this album make that list also, which tells you everything you need to know. I said before when I reviewed Powerage that I'm not the worlds biggest AC/DC fan for a number of reasons, but its impossible to do anything other than acknowledge the timeless majesty of this record.
Business As Usual by Men At Work
The Australian Version of: Roxy Music
On Like A Version Covering: Sadly, no representation. I guess no band would be crass enough to go into Triple J's studios intending to sing Land Down Under**, and what else would they cover?
There isn't a soul reading this article right now who can name a song by Men at Work other than Land Down Under without pulling up a track listing from somewhere. I don't know whether bands who sprinkle in a tongue in cheek song onto their album and have it blow up regret their decision, or delight in the fact that it got them noticed at all. I listened to all of Business As Usual and it was full of the kind of Boomtown Rats/Roxy Music early 80s Art Rock sounds I was kind of expecting, but the hit defines the record. It made decent driving music but beyond that, despite my best effort, my only enduring memory of this record is lyrics about Vegemite Sandwiches.
Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
The Australian Version of: Nope, not touching this one.
On Like A Version Covering: Nope, but here's Sharon Van Etten making a decent fist of covering People Ain't No Good.
The first Nick Cave album I heard was Let Love In, which I copied off a friend after hearing Red Right Hand several times; Murder Ballads was the first Nick Cave album I purchased with my own money after Where the Wild Roses Grow somehow made it into the UK singles chart, probably on the strength of Kylie Minogue name recognition as well as excellent musical craft. Its such a dark and intense album that listening to it while driving through the Australian countryside was a strange juxtaposition to the normal mental state that causes me to put this on (black, depressive anger that the overall stupidity of people), but this is an album immune to the cheer of blue skies and clear fields around you***. The narrative quality in combination with the dirty blues and Nick Cave's gravel-choked delivery make this a near perfect ideal of a concept album to me.
DiVinyls by DiVinyls
The Australian Version of: The Bangles
On Like A Version Covering: No, but there are no less than three versions of I Touch Myself covered on there, here's Australian band Lime Cordiale with the cover.
I don't want to repeat myself and just do the Men At Work blurb again, but I Touch Myself being the hit off this record makes it stand out above the rest of the songs I had not heard before this holiday. That being said, DiVinyls get extra credit for it not being a novelty song, and as we progressed through the record, it was apparent the quality level was high throughout. Maybe it was the salacious idea of referencing female sexuality so openly in the repressed climate of the early 90s that garnered international attention, but DiVinyls were a serious band with a five album catalogue who probably deserved greater recognition outside of their home soil than they got, and retrospective credit for being part of a movement to unashamedly bring women's voices into musical genres normally dominated by men.
Rebuild Repeat by Hockey Dad
The Australian Version of: See Footnote****
On Like A Version Covering: Malibu by Hole, an interesting choice!
This was another band I had no knowledge or expectations of which I ended up really liking. Maybe its just the drum nerd in me, but I ended up explaining in no doubt tedious fashion to Catherine just how much the drummer of Hockey Dad is flexing inside their songs, adding flourishes and fills throughout when they could have chosen to stay doing straight-ahead grooves across their laid back summer rock sound. The whole thing feels (as covered in my reductive comparison footnote) like Hockey Dad have taken the foundation laid down by other, less interesting bands, and found a way to make it interesting and enjoyable. This isn't going to blow your socks off or change your life, but when you're looking for a chill indie rock group which has something more about themselves than your average bear, give Rebuild Repeat a try and let me know if I am way off base.
Before Hollywood by The Go-Betweens
The Australian Version of: The Smiths maybe?
On Like A Version Covering: No, but here being covered by Franz Ferdinand!
When I did my first pass through the article I referenced at the start of this blog, I got to about 26 or so artists I wanted to listen to. My goal was to get to 30 to make sure I had enough to listen to for the two weeks of the trip, so a second pass through added this album because The Go-Betweens seem to have Elder Stateman on Australian Rock status even though I have never heard of them and consider myself pretty plugged in to music, even music from the 80s like this. All I can say is it didn't land for me at all; we listened to it on the same day's drive as Hockey Dad, Gang of Youths and DiVinyls and was proclaimed the only boring album we listened to that day by Catherine. Come after her internet, I didn't say that. I'm sure it has great meaning if you grew up listening to them in the 1980s, but I just couldn't find anything here to get excited about.
Go Farther In Lightness by Gang of Youths
The Australian Version of:
On Like A Version Covering: "Why Does It Always Rain On Me" by Travis
If Bec Sandridge was my personal favourite new Australian band by the end of our holiday, Gang of Youths were Catherine's, and I was very taken with them as well. I'd heard them recommended on a music podcast I used to listen to but the hosts made them sound like a fairly generic throwback to Strokes-era indie rock. Imagine my surprise to find they were more experimental, more avant garde, and significantly more interesting than that recommendation made them out to be. They're hard to pin down into a specific comparison point, much like Bec Sandridge, and for the same reasons - they're pulling influences from a dozen places, their own cultural heritage, and creating something new and interesting and different from it. They're special, and I listened to angel in realtime. afterwards just to make sure I wasn't imagining things and that album was just as impressive. I may be wildly late to the party here, but if you are looking for music that's interesting and different and takes you on a journey, pick a Gang of Youths album and let them remind you that interesting things can happen with guitar music still.
Diesel and Dirt by Midnight Oil
The Australian Version of: The Jam
On Like A Version Covering: No, but here's The Presets covering one of their songs.
When you go around Australia today, much is made of the respect and restitution efforts being made to the First Nations indigenous people of Australia; every public building, tour, TV show and public facing spectacle starts with an acknowledgement of First Nations Elders and their land rights, as it rightly should. That wasn't true in 1987, but it didn't stop Midnight Oil writing an album of protest music lamenting the then terrible treatment of First Nations people in Australia and the ways in which they had been exploited. This is straight up protest music, with a powerful message but a beat you can dance to and a chorus that sticks in your head. While Beds Are Burning is best known, the whole album addresses social and societal issues in 80s Australia head on, and like The Jam, does so by being bitterly insightful and righteously angry in their lyrics and sound. Sometimes justice does prevail, progress is made, and the relic remains as a victory lap for a group of musicians being on the right side of history.
About Us by G-FLIP
The Australian Version of: Avril Lavigne (in a good way)
On Like A Version Covering: I've already linked them doing Cruel Summer but if you think I was going to put anything else here you don't know me at all. This cover is outstanding.
I wrote about how I found and loved DRUMMER this year because of getting served this cover via the YouTube algorithm because of my love of Taylor Swift. I still think that album kicks ass, and this debut album shows the promise that the later album delivers on. It's maybe not as polished, and a bit messier both in terms of the relationships and choices being made in song and the production and performance, but its still a creditable pop rock album which spawned both this and their new album Dream Ride which I've also now listened to and enjoyed. Just excellent, upfront pop rock music which feels like it could find a bigger international audience if the right song lands on TikTok or similar.
Stay with me folks, I know this is a lot but its the last 5 now and I promise I'll never try and fit 30 albums into one post again, this has taken a week for me to write...
Highly Evolved by The Vines
The Australian Version of: The Hives
On Like A Version Covering: Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz which they get style points for at least.
I thought these were The Hives. I didn't know the bands which did Get Free and Walk Idiot Walk were not the same band. They sound like the same band, and like four other bands with The in their name at the time. I like this kind of spiky guitar driven rock music, but this got a little one note after a while.
Shiny New Thing by CXLOE
The Australian Version of: Billie Eilish
On Like A Version Covering: Good Luck, Babe! You could not pay me enough money to cover this song, there's no earthly way you can surpass the original, and putting a dance beat under it was not it.
Cxloe would like to be Billie Eilish; listen to Till The Wheels Fall Off from this album and tell me I am wrong. She does a passable impression of her as well, and there's nothing wrong with this album fundamentally apart from it's a painting of a unicorn standing next to the actual unicorn; the miraculous thing being emulated will forever outshine its imitators.
In Ghost Colours by Cut/Copy
The Australian Version of: New Order via The Avalanches
On Like A Version Covering: Seemingly not, but they're big enough to have had their song Lights & Music covered by The Jungle Giants nearly a decade ago
Unashamedly a kind of 80's synth pastiche combined with some modern touches, your enjoyment of this will be based entirely on your tolerance for the 80's revival that started a decade ago and seemingly has never stopped. As a child of the late 70s and early 80s, this pushed my buttons in all the right ways and I found it energetic and upbeat and it kept me in a good mood all the way through.
Postcards from a Living Hell by RedHook
The Australian Version of: Within Temptation
On Like A Version Covering: A Tate McRae song I don't know, and they metal it up real good.
I included this band because they were the ones in the Rolling Stone article nominating Parkway Drive as an Australian musical icon, so I felt they deserved a listen, which turned out to be one of the best choices I made. I love female-led melodic metal and this album is an excellent example of the form. Emmy Mack can growl and scream and carry a soaring melody and you can tell how much I liked this album that I immediately recommended it to two other people I thought might like it, made a point to learn the singers name for this article, and spent more than fifty words talking about it even though I said I wasn't going to do that. The third absolutely solid new band I discovered on this sonic trip through Australia.
Odyssey Number Nine by PowderFinger
The Australian Version of: I've run out of energy to find an appropriate comparison point.
On Like A Version Covering: No, but here being covered by Clare Bowditch in a stripped down interpretation of My Happiness.
I knew the name of this band; I assumed when I listened to this album, I'd come across one song on here which had been an international crossover hit in the indie rock explosion of the early 2000s. Somehow, I did not, and have carried the knowledge of the band's existence for two decades without probably ever hearing a note of music which they have produced. I think our time has passed, we missed our chance, and while I couldn't find fault with Powderfingers music, I couldn't find anything to love either.
Oh god, we've done it, together you and I. If you've made it all the way to the end of this...whatever it is, thank you. Cataloguing the 50 albums I listened to while on holiday, a mishmash of styles and decades and everything without much to thematically hold them together has been the hardest thing to push through for me, but I'm committed to writing something about every single one of the one thousand or more albums I listen to this year, so I had to face into it and push the boulder up the hill.
I know these compilation reviews can be a bit all over the place, and lacking in substance, so if you are still with me reading this, you are a true friend. Now this is over, know that I've got to write about The Counting Crows, and then on to Radiohead after that, and in there we'll go back to having some stories to tell.
I love you all. Till next time.
* Eagle eyed readers might notice there's only 28 albums in the matrix at the header of this article but 29 albums reviewed. That's because somehow I forgot to put Nick Cave into the header image, then put the flag in, then realised my mistake, then realised if I put Nick Cave back in I'd make the flag image look weird so decided just to leave it out and cover it here with this increasingly redundant footnote. Thanks for reading.
** Obviously that hasn't somehow stopped me using it in the title of this article which is full of links to Triple J content but I have far less credibility to lose and I couldn't think of a more appropriate song lyric for this article title.
*** Catherine has not heard this album before and when we got to the end of it and I asked her what she thought she said "Are all of this song so violent?", which prompted me to explain the whole concept of the concept album to her. She is less worried about Nick Cave now as a result.
**** The problem with reductive comparisons is that they carry with them the baggage associated with the artist your are invoking for your comparison. Honestly, they sound a little like early Coldplay, a little like Travis, a little like Mumford & Sons - insert any pop-adjacent guitar indie band with earnest male vocals, but all of those bands do Hockey Dad a disservice by comparison. Hockey Dad are interesting; they just are musically close to those artists in structure.
