It was once a fairly typical career trajectory for an Australian band that was doing well to announce – usually with much fanfare - they were heading overseas to conquer the world.
More often than not that aim was usually not achieved, and the band quietly broke up from homesickness and/or frustration, or simply hopped the plane home from London or LA and just went back to playing at the Espy or The Sando. Parcels have a gone a different way about it, immediately upping sticks from their Byron Bay homeland to Berlin of all places – although they have probably even less in common with the blackclad Melbourne bands that headed there last century for the feeling of edgy oppression and/or the heroin.
Odd things happen – the golden-haired and golden-helmeted chaps from Daft Punk turn up at one of their gigs, and part-write and part-produce a song for them. They support Phoenix among others. They slip across to America to appear on Conan. And now present Tieduprightnow (Kitsune/Because), another piece of their clever mix of modern electronic funky shuffling and almost classic pop songcraft – they admit they love The Beach Boys, and why not? Clip also affectionately pisstakes this wide brown land, in the manner to reinforce the world’s view.
That mention of Conan above leads to the observation that American talk-show TV has become a perhaps unlikely outlet for music a little more interesting than you might expect. I mean, there’s Parquet Courts being Ellen’s favourite song of this couple of days. Seeing them there is nearly as surprising as finding their new record has been produced by Danger Mouse.
Mardi Gras Beads (Rough Trade/Remote Control) seems to have some melancholy among its occasional outbreaks of guitar racket. Another slight turn in this is it being an Austin Brown composition, rather than one of A.Savage’s tunes of quiet savagery. It’s one of a number of uneasy balances to them.
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Back in ‘local muso making good elsewhere’ file, Alison Wonderland made a positive impression at Coachella, although she - like everybody else – is still fighting through that impenetrable shadow Beyonce and her all her friends cast over the event.
One thing that going to make Alison important is her blurring of the line between simple DJ and live performer. Easy (EMI) has some guts and some hooks to it, as well as the beats. A little affected? Yeah maybe, but that’s just the way the kids are these days. Add the international class clip with a bit of quirk that should get it noticed widely, and let's just watch things unfold.
One current American critical artist is Kacey Musgraves, although she’s another they can’t quite find the right pigeonhole for. Sure, there’s some Americana country in there – in title of Space Cowboy (MCA Nashville) alone. But even allowing for its mentions of goldrushes, heartbreak, and horses in the lyric there seems something a little too modern in its sensibilities, a little too raw and honest even as you count the rhinestones in her stage outfits.
It’s both pretty and prickly, and she comes across as the woman that’s simply not gonna waste her time on you if you’re not up to it. She does indeed need some space, cowboy. Oh, now I get it. The pedal steel weeps in, as it should in any good country song, but there’s more to it than just that.
Oh, you want it darker? Bonnie Prince Billy’s soft but weary melancholy dovetails nicely with what I’m trying not to call ‘ScandiNoir folk’. But his downbeat re-readings of Susanna Wallumrød’s walks in foreboding forests have become quite something.
Wild Is The Will (Drag City) is another of hers that suits Mr Oldham’s chin-stroking ruminating style. But of course, the perhaps perverse selling point here is looking into the baby’s eyes are the song unfurls. A furrow in an unfurrowed brow, a gurgle, a thoughtful smile, even as the song’s subject gets executed and buried. Well, there’s a couple of years therapy in that bub’s future, to be sure.
Something altogether noisier is the racket emanating from Shepparton Airplane. Can really only be described as ‘post-punk’ with the churn of guitar coming in from various corners of No Prize (Wing Sing) as Steve Carter’s words are yelled into void. Yeah, that’s Peep Tempel’s rhythm section as the motor to this, although this is chunkier fare than you’d expect from that band. Bitten off more than they can chew? Yeah, maybe – but they’re biting into hard and chewing like buggery for the win. Song even remembers to have a hook, as if to show it has had some care taken with it.
Now, we’ll just drop the ‘post-‘ element of the description of the previous as what Bad Nerves do is certainly of the old-school plain no-frills straight-up punk model. Despite being from a less fashionable bit of London, Can’t Be Mine (National Anthem) is almost pure New York City amphetamine rush. Nuance? What sort of namby-pamby concept is that? This is simple “WonTooFreeFor!” running-on-rails guitars of a model you can probably date back to The Ramones triple-speed bubblegum. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
