Mar
31
Following the critically acclaimed release of their debut long-player “Between Last Night & Us” ARIA award winning band The Audreys will release their much anticipated sophomore album, When The Flood Comes, on April 19th (through ABC Music).
The first single off the album, ‘Paradise City’ was released digitally on March 15 and has already been added to triple J’s playlist.
Paradise City is a stand out track that the band have been performing live over the last few months:
“It has changed a lot from the version we’d started playing live but it’s changed for the better,” says Taasha Coates (songwriter/vocalist and multi instrumentalist).
Fellow songwriter Tristan Goodall adds “it’s always a great track to play live, and now it has a new life on the record. We took a lot of time to get it right in the studio”
After nearly two years of constant touring and sell out shows, rave reviews and an ARIA win, the band had found themselves high and dry in a song writing drought. But in a universe controlled by dynamic balance, The Audreys’ song writing drought was broken by a flood. Rather than a metaphorical flood of songs, it was a soaking of sentiment that seeps into the corners of When the Flood Comes.
This is an album of lyrical and sonic beauty that expands their musical template beyond the alt-country-tinged instrumentation and smoky pop of their gorgeous debut. Musically, it’s a revelation that almost defies categorization. It aches. It breaks. And it drips with passion.
To coincide with the album release the band will also head out for an extensive national tour, which will include all capital cities and extend into many regional areas. Special guest support on all shows will be J Walker (Machine Translations).
Tues 20th Lizottes, Central Coast - www.lizottes.com.au / 02 4368 2017
Thur 29th Hoey Moey, Coffs Harbour - www.offbeatoperations.com.au / 02 6652 3833
Fri 30th Newcastle – Northern Star Hotel - www.bigtix.com.au
Mar
31
50 Cent ‘Blood on the Sand’
Filed Under Game Reviews | Leave a Comment
In the sequel to the #1 best selling 50 Cent: Bulletproof, players will be able to play as one of the world’s biggest hip-hop stars in an all out battle to protect 50 Cent’s assets and to collect payment from a crooked overlord.
The 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand video game features 50 Cent in a multi-player online drop-in and drop-out co-op world that allows him to call on his G-Unit pals to watch his back in intense gameplay action. 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand will include interactive counter-kills that let’s the player take control of the finishing moves with a wide-selection of maneuvers to combat foes.
50 Cent, the video game hero, will for the first time find himself behind the wheel in a variety of driving missions and will also take to the sky in aerial combat.
50 Cent: Blood on the Sand will be packed with more exclusive unreleased music from 50 Cent and G-Unit, that provides a new arsenal of beats to listen to as the player battles to regain control of 50’s possession’s.
Available 4th Quarter 2008 on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3
Mar
30
Back in ’93, before Ipods, Australian Idol, Big Brother and yes – way before the word ‘emo’ became a noun, five blokes put together a band that sent a polite ‘fuck you’ to the Australian music mainstream. The band was One Inch Punch, later known as Mid Youth Crisis (MYC). Their music was fast, muscular and sincere. Now, after a ten-year absence, three of its founding members, Steve Milligan, Heath McAnally and Adrian Lombardi, have re-banded as Coué Method.
In this new incarnation for the three, much of their earlier work has been retained; Milligan’s distinct vocals are powerful and melodic, the lyrics weave through dilemmas that are personal as much as they are political, and Lombardi and McAnally’s guitars sweep between the dissonant and uplifting.
There are fresh nuances too. With Ben Reichman (bass) and Sam Johnson (drums), the rhythm of the outfit drives like an escapee with the jacks giving chase. Regarding lyrics, Milligan himself attests, ‘I don’t feel hemmed in by political correctness anymore. I just say whatever I feel.’ Certainly, there is an accompanying sense of freedom that permeates the melodies. Society’s glaring imperfections are denounced, it’s direction questioned, but not without conceding one’s own inescapable flaws. The other end of the spectrum reveals love, hope and a faith in oneself to prevail.
The sonic landscape of Coué Method’s debut record, …to mock a vapid world, owes much of its shaping to Johnson, who took the job of drummer after mixing. ‘It was a role I had been itching to get back into after a few years out of the beat game. I knew and loved the material, so it was a very simple transition.’ Less metallic are the guitar tones in favour of more traditional and spacious sounds, but still provide a barrage that is unashamedly punk rock.
Originally, the Coué Method is the name given to a psychotherapeutic approach toward self-improvement. Wikipedia tells us Émile Coué’s unique discovery was that willpower is the biggest obstacle in any cure. A fitting name, then, for many musicians, these not the least, who overcome personal challenges everyday to continue what they love doing best.
Coue’ Method’s debut album “To Mock A Vapid World” is instores April 26. The band will be joining Against Me! and Crime In Stereo for the east coast dates of there upcoming Australian tour.
Mar
29
Presented by Video Hits, Channel V, 3 Mobile, Myspace and Street Press Australia
Operator Please are heading back to Australian shores in April to play a string of shows to their home crowd with a run of dates that will take them across the country. And with a number of the dates ‘all ages’, everyone will get a chance to catch the Gold Coast favourites in the flesh.
The band will be coming fresh from the UK & Europe where they toured throughout France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands & the UK. Operator Please recently played the NME Night at London’s famous Koko club, supported Foals on a sold out tour of France and have been confirmed for a number of UK summer festivals including The Great Escape.
This tour is a chance to catch the ARIA award winning five-some on this national Australian tour before they jet back to Europe via New Zealand & Japan.
Meanwhile ‘Leave It Alone’ - the third single from ‘Yes Yes Vindictive’ – has been released in Australia and is available now.
Taking to the road with Operator Please are Melbourne’s Little Red and Flamingo Crash*.
You can catch the tour on the following dates:
Wed April 9 Wollongong Uni Bar
Tix: Pre - $18 Door: $20 Venue: (02) 4221 8050 Bigtix: www.bigtix.com.au
Thurs April 10 Newcastle Uni Bar on the Hill
Tix: Pre - $18 Door: $20 Venue: (02) 4968 3845 Bigtix: www.bigtix.com.au
Fri April 11 Metro Theatre Sydney (all ages)
Tix: Pre - $20 Door: $25 Venue: (02) 9550 3666 Ticketek: 132 849 www.ticketek.com.au
Mar
29
The Understudy - Songs From The City
Filed Under Interviews | Leave a Comment
Words by Nick Milligan.
Having spent her early teenage years living in New York, Lucy Hearn returned to Australia with a sea of imagery and stories. Her debut album, under the guise of The Understudy, is a collection of songs that explore what it means to be in love - and to not be in love.
Lucy Hearn had a very clear idea of what she wanted her debut album to sound like, but it didn’t work out the way she had expected. Having stayed in contact with a close friend living in New York, whom she had formed a friendship with during her time spent in the Big Apple, he invited her back to the city to record.
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I had demoed all the songs at home with a little bit of instrumentation, but every time we went to record a song, everything went out the window,” explains Hearn, as she sits on the sofa at Reverb HQ. “I would tell Chris, who engineered [the album], ‘I really think this song should be on an acoustic guitar,’ and he’d say ‘Oh, ok,’ and hand me an electric. But we’d play it and it sounded really good. We had the album mixed professionally, but it was recorded in New York attics, basements and houses.”
Hearn is based in Newcastle now, but she has brought with her some inherent inspiration. Two of the albums tracks, including ‘Smoke & Strangers’, are specifically about New York as a city, both in its people and aesthetics. “I am much more interested in the shape and sound of the city, than I am of the country,” admits Hearn. “I’m synesthetic, because I hear music and see colour. So to me some songs represents certain colours. To me, a lot of the songs have green tones, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they would to anyone else.”
Hearn has called her album What Not To Think While In Love, and it will come as a big surprise to those who are most familiar with Hearn as a solo performer. There are diverse arrangements, from the gentle electric lull of the opener ‘Last Easy Day’, to more jaunty tunes like ‘Fine Young Folk’. Lyrically, Hearn has created a strong sense of place. In an odd way, there are echoes of The Whitlams, created not only by keyboards and piano, but also through laconic story-telling and rumination (”This could all be fixed with a stiff drink”). As a vocalist, Hearn shares the diverse nuances of The Howling Bells’ Juanita Stein, as certain songs call for poignancy and others a tongue-in-cheek sense of mischief.
Hearn explains that songs can come into her head at any time, often unexpectedly - and she doesn’t need to have an instrument in her hands. “Sometimes I write from the [vocal] melody up. When I wrote ‘Last Easy Day’, I was at work and I had an idea for a lyric come into my head. Then the melody came soon after. I didn’t want to forget it, so I sang it to myself for five hours until the end of my shift. I went home and finished the song,” says Hearn.
Originally Hearn had planned to call the album Monuments, but discovered that an Australian punk band had already used the title. During the production in New York, the final title occured to Hearn - and it stuck. “What Not To Think While In Love made sense, because I had just broken up from a relationship before I went over [to New York], and a lot of the songs took on a completely new meaning to me, in light of how the break-up occured,” reveals Hearn. “I couldn’t reconcile why I was writing songs with this subject matter if I was supposed to be loving somebody in a relationship.”
Lyric-writing provides a deeply personal interlude for Hearn, but the singer admits that she will often cut a lot of the truly revealing content, in favour of fenetically appealing material. “Some words look good to me and some words don’t. I’m really concerned about the aesthetics of the lyrics, as opposed to the meaning behind them. I think about the rhythm of the words and how they fall out of my mouth. That’s far more important than wearing my heart on my sleeve,” says Hearn. “Sometimes I sacrifice the deepest truth for more polished lyrics.”
Hearn wrote her first song when she was 12 and learned guitar when she was 14. Her parents weren’t particularly musical, but when the burgeoning musician picked up a guitar, she had discovered the perfect instrument to write songs with.
The Understudy’s music will soon be released digitally and has already received airplay across Australia on Triple J. Upon adding her music to the station’s Unearthed website, the response has been immediately noticeable. It won’t be long before The Understudy finds herself in a leading role.
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