Record Review - Tony Joe White

Published in the Shortlist section of the Sydney Morning Herald, Friday Nov 8 2013.

Tony Joe White

Hoodoo

YepRoc Records

Tony Joe White has been playing music for over fifty years. His songs have been covered by the likes of Elvis and Waylon Jennings. He’s been there and done it and so has nothing left to prove.

As such, Tony Joe, now in his 70s, can do what he likes best – sitting in his studio, a beer close at hand, waiting on a song. “I just gotta wait on ‘em, and when one comes by, I take my guitar out and grab it,” he said to me last year. That’s just how he rolls.

Latest cut, Hoodoo, is a collection of the most recent songs he’s grabbed. A slew of lean, scuzzy blues grooves, his fuzzed out old Strat laconically leading the way over a bedrock of drums and bass, the odd Hammond stab, a little harmonica. His voice is hardly worth bottling, but it doesn’t matter, it suits the mood. ‘The Gift’ is pure sweat-drenched road song, the title track filth-encrusted blues boogie. Messy as hell, and all the better off for it.

3.5/5

Samuel J. Fell

Comment - Thoughts On Cup Day, 2013

At around a quarter past two in the afternoon, I receive a text message asking me, with no small amount of incredulity, why I’m not at the pub. I’m hunkered down attending to a difficult piece of writing, one which has had my number for a month or so and no matter how hard I try, the words fail to fall where I think they should. Or they do, and then I realise they shouldn’t be there. As such, the text message is welcome respite, and so I down tools and jump on my bike.

It’s Melbourne Cup day, the first Tuesday in November, and so most of the country is at the pub. To be honest, I’d forgotten about ‘the race which stops a nation’, retiring as usual to my cluttered desk out in the garage in the morning with no thought other than to finish this beast of an article before eating dinner early and going to bed.

As it happens though, I’m chaining my bike to a post in the middle of town and walking in the front beer garden gate, past two men cheerfully threatening the manager who’s just ejected them for being too drunk. A police cruiser pulls up in the carpark and so the scene seems ugly before it’s even begun. Inside though, it’s cheerful and the hooch is flowing and I find Matt and Marty at a table over in the corner nursing schooners, not saying much.

I join in their lack of conversation and we have a few, there’s a brief fashion parade over on the stage by the front bar, I get another Vic stubbie and we talk about this and that. Then the race starts, with almost no fanfare – I can’t even see a screen and have no idea who’s running. Matt’s laid down a few bets and so strains to see the television set on the wall at the back of the adjacent dining room.

In three and a half minutes, it’s over and I turn back to what’s left of my beer and Matt checks his phone to see if he’s won anything. His horse comes in second, so he collects $22, which is regarded as a mild success. The pub begins to empty almost immediately – for a day when all and sundry are wont to get their mid-week drink on, the pub will close earlier than almost any night of the year. People start early, finish early, everyone goes home and it’s all over bar a few fascinators lying under tables, empty champagne glasses scattered around, smart hats now sweat and bourbon stained, pushed back on heads at jaunty angles.

Now that the racing is done, the band fires up, their first words to the dwindling crowd being that they’re a bit rusty on this first song, they need to work it out so bear with them, which isn’t something you want to hear from any band. They confirm our worst fears mere seconds after the vocalist, a short woman in an even shorter dress who really shouldn’t, opens her mouth and we choke back what’s left in our glasses and beat a hasty retreat to Marty’s backyard where there are still two eskys full of ice and beer, left over from his birthday celebrations the Sunday just gone.

We pick up the kids from school on the way home and retire to Short Street where it’s calm and we can put decent music on the stereo, the beer’s already been paid for and it’s quiet. We continue our sporadic conversation and our wives arrive home from work and it becomes a mellow Tuesday afternoon drunk where chat flows nice and your rub your bare feet in the cool grass. Far better than any horse race, which I had forgotten was even on.

Samuel J. Fell

Record Review - Cherrywood

Originally published on Mess+Noise, October 21 2013

Cherrywood

Book Of Matches

Love & Theft

There is something uniquely beautiful about unkempt male vocal harmonies. The ragged joining together of masculine voices, perhaps fuelled by too much whisky, certainly informed by a love of the music at hand, an unlikely choir to inspire acoustic accompanied sing-alongs around fires on winter’s nights.

Melbourne quartet Cherrywood, treading the Victorian capital’s doom country path, well worn by the likes of Wagons, The Wildes, Graveyard Train and Twin Beasts, are the embodiment of such goings on. These two years past have seen them worm their way into this tightknit scene, their live shows thumping paeans to the country music of old (dirty, gritty, real) while raising check-shirted arms, fists clenched, in salute to the punk and the rock ‘n’ roll that comes from the same place.

After two years then, Cherrywood have committed to disc what you’d have seen on stages around Melbourne’s inner north. Book Of Matches is the debut cut, and where it does indeed stand up, is how eerily close it sounds to those late night stage-burning shows, something any band will tell you is harder to achieve than almost anything else.

Driving acoustic guitar defines a lot of where Book Of Matches is coming from, that laconic country strum which, at the drop of a hat, is able to kick up a gear, driving forward, pinning you to the back of your seat. Lashings of mandolin, the steady thump of the double bass, the shuffle of a snare drum accompany, playing an outrigger role for the most part, but all jumping off that disc as if these four unruly types are in your house – perhaps an added bonus of playing acoustic instruments.

The music is dark and surprisingly heavy though, for such an acoustic band. Their cover of traditional gospel number ‘In My Time Of Dying’ is a violent, churning, living beast of a track, vocals almost shouted, throaty, a constant beat which has no end, the mandolin high in the mix to create a country bluegrass behemoth.

By contrast, following track ‘Could Wash No Devil From My Bones’ is joyous and upbeat. No less foot-to-the-floor, but with a jaunty vocal and a melody which immediately brings a smile your lips, to the lips of even the most staunch country music aficionado. It’s this ability to switch between aural violence and pleasure that also defines a lot of where Book Of Matches is coming from: ‘Skeleton Key’ seeps melancholy, very sparse; ‘Midway Point’, after a false start, kicks into a Celtic-tinged mile-a-minute foot stomper; ‘Autumn Blues’ fuses the country with the blues, a riff which if electrified, would be Rock ‘n’ Roll 101; and album centrepiece ‘Pentridge’ stretches out, long and slow, lamenting, soul crushing, with haunting backing vocals from Erica Dunn, her higher register combining artfully with the gruff male leads.

Which brings us back to the vocal harmonising that fuses this record together. There is nothing sweet about it. It’s not something with which to sooth one’s savage breast, by any means. But it’s powerful and real, it’s rough and tumble, it’s vibrant and it vibrates and it’s beautiful to behold, Cherrywood having it down pat, the foundation to their music, their sound, their musical way of life. It’s what makes Book Of Matches so startlingly strong, I certainly hope there’s a lot more of it to come.

Samuel J. Fell

For Mess+Noise version, click here.

Record Review - Lime Cordiale

Published in the Shortlist section of the Sydney Morning Herald, Friday Oct 4.



Lime Cordiale

Falling Up The Stairs

Chugg Music

There’s a fair bit of buzz about on Sydney quintet Lime Cordiale, and after seeing their set at the recent BigSound conference, you can see why. They’re as their name suggests; sweet, summery, easy to get into. Their pop-laced, brass-tinged rock ‘n’ roll the perfect accompaniment to long, sunny days spent sipping brews with friends.

This is captured to a tee on their second EP, five tracks that espouse a carefree, upbeat vibe, as catchy a set of tunes as you’re likely to hear. Where they stand out though, amongst a sea of carefree, upbeat pop bands, is in their ability to write some of the most memorable and melodic hooks this side of Abbey Road.

Lead single ‘Bullshit Aside’, with its faintly reggae-ish vocal inflection, is all lush sing-a-long. The title track slinks along, the bass very much in the front. But it’s ‘Sleeping At Your Door’ which steals the show, a song which is almost literally summertime in song form – Beach Boys, eat your heart out.

3.5/5

Samuel J. Fell

Comment - What Came Out Of BigSound

BigSound

Fortitude Valley, Brisbane

September 10-13, 2013

Sitting on the bus into Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley for the final night of BigSound – Australia’s reasonably modest answer to the behemoth that is Austin, Texas, music industry shindig South By South West – I find myself savouring the calm.

It’s early evening on a Thursday, traditionally a day to let loose, to get a jump on the upcoming weekend, but it’s been a long few days and so I’m enjoying the relative quiet; the hum of the engine, the gentle forward motion, the space, the solitude.

It’s short-lived though. “Last stop before the city,” yells the driver, a pork barrel of a man in navy blue shorts, neck like a ham, and so I’m ejected onto the sidewalk at the corner of Ann and Brunswick and the calm is all but a distant memory.

For this is the Valley, where the city’s drunken elite meld all too easily with the barrel bottom, a place that used to house the bohemian element, before rapid, and rampant, development had them fleeing across the river to the relative safety of hippie haven, West End.

The music still resides in back alleys though, upstairs in odd warehouse spaces, boutique venues still thriving and so it’s the ideal place for BigSound, this year running for the 12^th time, a three day conference that brings all involved in music in this country, and beyond, together to nut out problems faced by an ever-shrinking industry, to collaborate in order to overcome barriers to growth, to find the ‘next big thing’, to talk.

Idle talk, big talk, small talk, chit chat, back chat, talk back. It’s all about the talk – to paraphrase from ‘79 sci-fi flick Alien, at BigSound, no one can hear you scream. Because they’re all too busy talking. It’s a tsunami and it washes over you leaving you battered, bruised ear drums, craving silence. I long for the bus.

“It’s about connecting people,” says Executive Programmer Graham Ashton, this year being his last BigSound at the helm. Given it’s late on the Thursday, he’s sufficiently relaxed. “People come from all over the world… [BigSound] is about making connections.”

Networking, they call it. It’s happening all around us, standing as we are in the dingy smokers area out the back of what was once Mustang Bar, people with sky-blue lanyards talking shop. Or perhaps, given the hour, shit.

During the day, over the past three days, BigSound is a mild-mannered conference, comprising panel discussions like The Future Of Australian Music, Indie Labels 2013 Style, Touring Tips & The Live Music Environment, along with a plethora of In Conversations.

By night however, it’s like this; there are over 120 bands playing over two nights this year, and so music flows, as does the hooch, and an environment like this is fostered, where people spill outside in between songs to network. To connect.

“There are no rules to this,” Ashton says after a bit of thought. “That’s why music is so exciting. Every band is different, every idea is different, there are no rules. One thing though, [BigSound] isn’t education, it’s inspiration.”

The inspiration for most comes in the form of the music itself – scungy rock ‘n’ roll bands, thundering country, lilting folk and pogo pop, for this is why we’re all here. Whether it’s Billy Bragg or Robert Forster playing Bakery Lane to a full house, or some young quintet out of Melbourne playing an early slot to an almost empty room, the entire place throbs with not only literal sound, but with an inspired energy. People are excited, they want to share, and so connections are made, as they should be.

It’s not all beer and skittles however. One of the reasons events like this exist is to talk about what’s not going right, about how to change same, how to better the industry and to help all those who work within.

In typical fashion, during the The Future Of Australian Music discussion, outspoken promoter and label head Michael Chugg lashes out at commercial radio’s local music quotas, saying, “The quota’s far too low and they take advantage of late night… running tracks from midnight to dawn. They’ll deny it, but it’s true… It’s bullshit, and it’s holding the industry back.”

At the Byron Bay Bluesfest showcase at lunchtime on Wednesday, festival director Peter Noble attacks on a different front, saying in front of a large crowd, “I don’t want to criticise [politicians], but they’ve got to emulate,” referencing the lack of support the Australian government offers its musicians compared to their Canadian counterparts.

Perhaps he should have had a word in Wayne Swan’s ear, although the ex-Treasurer seemed far more preoccupied with UK punk poet Billy Bragg, seen at both his show and his keynote speech, tweeting later about the latter, “A really engaging discussion by Billy Bragg… about the power of music and the purpose of politics…”

It’s a shame Bragg wasn’t around a few months ago to give the same talk to the crumbling Labor party, but I digress.

So it remains to be seen what comes out of BigSound this year, at least in terms of solid, lasting, effective change. If you were to just buy a ticket to the music side of things, you could easily be forgiven for thinking that music in Australia is alive and well, and it is, without a doubt.

A new government though, not one renowned for generous arts funding, will have an impact, but as the dust still settles, people nursing final night hangovers, it seems inspirations and connection, the initial aims of BigSound, have been achieved. There is, however, still a lot to talk about.

Samuel J. Fell

*A different version of this story ran on Crikey, Friday September 13, 2013 - click here for that version.