So Bernard Fanning's Having A Bit Of A Yell

There’s been books written about it. But it remains a standard question. So, just what makes it Australian music? Many once hoped it might be The Triffids’ dark romanticism through a heat haze, or what The Go-Betweens called their ‘striped sunlight sound’. Although it was more likely – and more popularly - the sound of tinnies being downed as Barnesy screamed about…something, and the crowd didn’t really listen to the words anyway.

Powderfinger took us across the turn of this century with an update to that. The shirt now had a collar, and the social conscience was a little less strident than Midnight Oil’s - although it was present. The ‘Finger’s voice, Bernard Fanning can still get moved enough by the election-footing local political landscape to have a bit of a reasoned yell from the Belly Of The Beast (Dew Process). It seems a very earnest business, this being a rock star – but if he can make some of the proletariat notice they’re just being fed “insipid…three-word slogans”, can’t be a bad thing. 

Or you can look at what’s going on and the mess being made, just punch another cone and call Bullshit (Ratbag). Dune Rats are also an Australia we know – although some might try to ignore. This is kinda punk, in a lot of senses of the word. Song comes up and yells in your face - tunefully at times – before fucking off for another skate, beer, bong, and/or vomit. And you know, why not? But go get a haircut, kid - and stay off the damn lawn.

Nicholas Allbrook then comes in with some bits of the Australian story you might not have expected from that guy from Pond who used to be in Tame Impala. A Fool There Was (Spinning Top) comes on like tumbling Dylan-esque storytelling before the rolling and pitching voyage to America becomes a reeling scream – although maybe more Celtic in original than local. The Pogues rather than The Drones, if you will. Although the howl of anguish comes from the same heart.

See, we’re part of an international market and community now. Thus, you can be an indigenous kid producing music with a laptop in a town of 1500 in rural New South Wales, and still collaborate with a suitable voice in New York City to make music for the world. Ain’t this interweb a grand thing? Based on this, Kuren finds Home (Independent) in a number of places, and gets Ben Alessi to sing of there, from somewhere else. The wall of synths can actually sound a little busy at points through the song, but that’s probably just a young man’s rush of blood as inspiration and new old sounds are found. 

Then there’s collaborations which you may never thought of, but somehow make real sense when they happen. It’s actually only a couple of weeks since Band Of Horses started previewing bits of their upcoming album and visit to unlikely places like the Sydney Opera House, but the second offering might appeal to a whole new range of people. In A Drawer (Interscope) has the immediately identifiable whiny drawl of J.Macsis as second voice, which you find fits really well with Ben Bridwell’s passionate offhandedness, and the band’s scribbly guitars. It’s a scruffy askance conversation, the contents of said drawer possibly a mummified squirrel, or the stash from last Thanksgiving. Life’s little mysteries.       

Like that idea? OK, let’s have what’s possibly one hipster community’s idea of bliss. If James Blake having Frank Ocean and Rick Rubin aboard for his new record wasn’t enough on its own, I Need A Forest Fire (1-800 Dinosaur) finds Blake sharing one of those beautiful aches that could only be delivered by Bon Iver. The loop that centres it has an insistence that can border on annoying if you’re not completely invested in listening. But when you allow yourself to be carried along by the sheer longing of it, it becomes all perfectly and intimately uncomfortable. 

The Klaxons were that band crossing to wider acceptance a few years back, but never really broke out of being one of those terminally second division from England starting with ‘K’. You know, like Kasabian. They at least had the good grace to break up, with James Righton – and really, that’s got to be a stage name, surely? – going on to reinforce the rockstar stereotype by marrying an actress. Keira Knightley, no less. Bastard. He now restyles himself as a one man band affair, Shock Machine. Open Up The Sky (Marathon Artists) is one of those titles suggesting grandiosity, and an artist who may be taking one’s self a little too seriously. There’s much open-armed pleading to said skies, although whether this decade needs a Richard Ashcroft of its own is open to question.