THE POP LIFE
Up-and-Comers Down Under
By NEIL STRAUSS

SYDNEY, Australia
When it comes to pop music, Americans have a bias for acts that speak their language. Consider the impact that British bands have had on American pop and rock compared with those from, say, France, Germany, Spain and Italy combined.

Despite this favorable bias, Australia, a large country with a relatively small population, has rarely been a major pop contender in the United States. The last great wave of Australian bands was Midnight Oil, INXS, Men at Work and Crowded House in the 1980’s. Though at other times this country has given Americans a wide variety of acts — among them Olivia Newton-John, Kylie Minogue, AC/DC, Savage Garden and one hit from the Easybeats — it is hardly a pop mecca with an identifiable sound.

Yet despite the weak Australian dollar and a major music industry slump, Australia has experienced a flourishing of quality music and new optimism about achieving international acclaim. Part of this hope comes from the success of a Nirvana-esque garage-rock act from Sydney, the Vines, which has led to a flurry of American major-label talent scouts scouring Australian clubs.

“People went through a period where they thought Australia was too far away and too difficult to get to, but now they seem to be interested again,” said Geoffrey Schuhkraft, chief executive of the On Group, a top Australian management company. “The industry at the moment is as rich and diverse as it has ever been in Australia. We are brought up in a pub culture here, so you can’t survive if you can’t play well enough to blow other bands off the stage.”

Ever since the Vines found a foothold on American radio, he continued, “a lot of U.S. labels have been following each other down here, and hence there have been a lot more signings and interest in Australian acts. I have three new Australian acts all in negotiations with major U.S. labels as we speak.”

In the last year several Australian artists have been trying to break into the American mainstream, including You Am I, Kasey Chambers, the Living End and Powderfinger. In February and March there are releases from at least a dozen more acts scheduled from contenders like the folk-pop trio the Waifs; the female singer Dan; cult-audience Australian acts (several living in England), including the Go-Betweens, the Dirty Three and Nick Cave; and several high-octane, high-quality New Zealand rockers, among them Pacifier, D4 and the Datsuns.

Beyond even these, there are scores more worthwhile bands that are little known in the United States to pop and alternative music fans. (Most are available only through online sites like www.whammo .com.au.) Here is a small sampling of Australian acts, ranging from pop to rap to blues to, for some reason, a blossoming introspective alternative pop scene:

“Sensual Being,” Archie Roach (Mushroom Records): The most acclaimed musician on this list releases a new album, collaborating with a very different Australian legend, Paul Kelly. This powerful recording reflects movingly on Australian history, including the treatment of itinerant fruit pickers and the lives of Mr. Roach’s generation of Aborigines. His album also deftly pulls from soul, blues and country. The wonderful Australian response to American country music is painstakingly researched on another excellent album, “Buried Country: The Story of Aboriginal Country Music.”

“Storms Dressed as Stars,” Gersey (Trifekta): The Melbourne vocalist Craig Jackson and the guitarist Matt Davis make indie-rock to dream to, spiriting the listener away on a swell of jangling, introspective rock on their second album. Also highly recommended on the Trifekta label is the electro-pop sextet Architecture in Helsinki.

“Dirty Sweet,” Jet (Rubber Records) and “Eastern Terrace,” the Sand Pebbles (Camera Obscura): Just as New York rock has been having a revival, so has the scene in Melbourne, thanks to garage-rock bands with “the” in their name like the Cants, the Casanovas, the Specimens and the Pictures. The Sand Pebbles are one of the best bands in Melbourne, stretching out on psychedelic garage-pop that pays tribute to all the right influences. Two electrifying non-“the” acts are Warped and Jet, with the latter as perhaps the most hyped band in the scene. On its debut vinyl-only EP, Jet comes on like a version of the Rolling Stones rubbed raw by sandpaper.

“Three,” the John Butler Trio (JBT): This is truly inspired modern folk for fans of Jack Johnson or Dave Matthews. A former busker from southwestern Australia, Mr. Butler alternates passionate songs about relationships with equally committed music about issues facing Australia, from deforestation to uranium mining.

“Part 1,” Koolism (Parallax View): From Canberra, Koolism is the standard-bearer of Australian hip-hop. Though it can throw down the funk live like the Roots, Koolism’s strength is that it sounds like a hot summer’s breeze, with nimble, laid-back rhymes and dub-heavy beats. For an overview of the Australian hip-hop scene, try the worthy (though somewhat Melbourne-centric) compilation “Obesecity,” released by the store Obese Records.

“3,000 Feet High,” Paul Mac (Eleven): A highly accessible dance record, “3,000 Feet High,” comes through with a stunning pop hit, “Gonna Miss You” (sung by Abby Dobson of Leonardo’s Bride), and a gritty techno dirge, “Heatseeking Pleasure Machine” (sung by the Australian rock icon Tex Perkins), in addition to appearances from members of Silverchair and Single Gun Theory.

“Happy,” Machine Translations (Spunk): With five albums to his name, J. Walker of Machine Translations should have an international cult following by now, especially with this precious mix of light orchestration, inward-gazing songwriting and post-rock experimentation.

“Let Your Love Be Love,” the Sleepy Jackson (EMI Australia): This is an eclectic, shambling, caterwauling album, yet somehow it coheres beautifully. Sleepy Jackson, a band from Perth with a troubled past, vacillates between sweet psychedelia and dissonant rock like an Australian answer to the Flaming Lips.

“Sun” (Preservation): A collaboration between the avant-garde guitarist Oren Ambarchi and the producer Chris Townsend, “Sun” is an unexpectedly straightforward record, a winsome and whispered soft-pop meditation calling to mind subdued rock bands like Galaxie 500 and Cardinal.

SHOW #111-Apr 20, 2003-Melbourne, Australia-Corner Hotel

From the minute we landed in Melbourne it was love at first sight. Everything
about the city just captured my attention. It reminded me a lot of Venice
Beach in Los Angeles. Very bohemian. But when we took the stage that night I
didn’t know what to expect. Especially since the amplifier company ran out of
Fenders and I had to use a Marshall stack (except i laid ‘em side by side.) It
was one of the best mistakes ever cause we rocked the hell out of the Corner
Hotel. That show stands as 1 of my top 5 shows ever. We sounded great, the
sound was great and everyone had a wonderful time. The Australian fans were
just unbelievably mad for us. it reminded me, in some ways, of Manchester.
But of course there is no substitution for the Mancurians but the Melbourians
were not far behind.

Mike Randle
mike@lovewitharthurlee.com

Most of the stuff on the Camera Obscura label is pretty interesting and this is no exception. This Australian band plays some pop music that is quite strange and not that mainstream sounding, mainly due to the fuzzed out instruments and out of phase sounds. The Julian Cope cover, “Out of my mind on Dope and Speed” is the highlight of the CD for me. I really love this version. The more commercial oriented songs, “My Sensation” and “Dirty” could be hits but again, perhaps a little too strange. Glad to see someone doing this! “One Time at Sundown” was a cool short 2 minute instrumental piece that I really liked. “The Sundowner” is a long, nearly 9 minute track with some cool organ and spaced out sounds accompanying the slow driving sound. Interesting stuff. A few of the tracks remind me of their labelmates, Abunai! A very enjoyable musical experience.

- By Scott Heller

How did you meet each other?

Piet, Ben and myself all write for an Australian television show called ‘Neighbours’. That’s how we met. Both Piet and I also worked with Andrew at a radio station here in Melbourne.

What are your musical backgrounds?

All of us have played in other bands with varying success.

Which pawl has pushed you to play together?

Ben and I have been playing together for a long time. He’s one of my best mates and we’ve successfully shared a vision for the band. Piet and Andrew came onto the scene a couple of years ago and are both great friends and brilliant musicians. You could say it all came together in an earth shattering kaboom.

I haven’t listened to “Noah’s Ark” 7”, was it your first recording as The Sand Pebbles and how does it sound?

Our first recording was a self released cd called ‘Shakes’. It’s a collection of songs and recording experiments. It got Camera Obscura interested in us. The ‘Noah’s Ark’ 7” was our first release on the label. It has three songs - a power pop effort (‘Noah’s Ark’) and a couple of one-chord wig out instrumentals (‘Hey, Let Me In’ and a more mono mix version of ‘The Sundowner’).

What was the feedback that you received when Camera Obscura released this record?

Some people really loved it and could tell what we were trying to do. Critically I suppose it got what it deserved. Nothing over the top but it piqued some interest and got people wondering what we’d get up to next? Which direction we’d go in.

When have you begun to work on “Eastern Terrace”, your debut album?

‘Eastern Terrace’ was pieced together from recording sessions over a long period of time. So it wasn’t like we went in and banged it down in a couple of sessions. ‘One Time at Sundown’ was done back in 1998 for a Film Festival here in Australia. We just put it away and didn’t really think about it again until we started putting this record together. ‘Moving Too Fast’ would’ve been the last song to get written and recorded in the middle of 2001.

I found that this album is very aerial especially on the vocals and the melodies, how did you work on the falsetto / girlish vocals?

We were working on ‘My Sensation’ and someone suggested Andrew try and sing falsetto. He did it for a joke and we loved the results. Then we had to convince him it sounded good. It really brought out the emotion and vulnerability of the song. We then went falsetto mad and tried to get it on every song on the record. It also works well with ‘Moving Too Fast’.

Julian Cope’s “Out of my Mind on Dope and Speed” is very spacey with lots of effects. Wasn’t it too hard to put together all these effects without denaturing the essence of the song?

The bass and drums to that song are quite hard and rockin’. We wanted something to counter that hardness so we didn’t want chunky rhythm guitar or copy Julian’s original that has wild piano on it. So we did those spacey overdubs in Ben’s kitchen on a sunny Sunday afternoon. We were sitting at his kitchen table - he played his old 70s string synth while I fiddled with the frequencies and effect pedals it was going through. Both of us are very primitive when playing keyboards so there’s nothing musically challenging going on there but we had a ball doing it, getting those freaky sounds.

On “Moving too fast”, the guitars sound very raw at the beginning then there is a quite big contrast with the light vocals and the last dreamy part on the track, how did you develop this one?

We’re always looking for contrasts in songs especially contrasting sounds. ‘Moving too Fast’ has that gnarly sounding guitar at the start so we wanted to have beautiful singing over the top to off-set that guitar. Then it goes into that dreamy section with the horns and things. It’s an unexpected twist that takes the song and the listener in a completely different direction. But it works a treat. I’m really proud of that song. It’s one where we successfully nailed what we were trying to achieve.

Why do you end “Eastern Terrace” with a reprise of “Moving too Fast” with only strings and brass?

We were mixing the record and played a version of the song with just Clare Moore’s string and horn arrangement and Andrew’s vocals. We thought it sounded beautiful, deserved it’s own time and decided it was a nice way to round off the album.

The electronics side of “One time at sundown” is very interesting as it brings something special to your music, How did you get this idea use samples and loops?

The idea was to try and do some psychedelic music with electronica, loops and samples. A friend of ours Murray Jamieson is a bit of an electro-wiz and he can snap, crackle and pop sounds in very quick time. So Ben and I started doing some stuff with him and the very first sessions produced both ‘One Time at Sundown’ and ‘The Sundowner’. That incessant melody line is Murray’s.

Tracks as “The Sundowner” or “Charmed” are very light, dreamy and by the way very psychedelic. It shows another side of the band. Why does your music move from Pop / rock songs to quite long progressive instrumental numbers.

The band loves doing both short, sharp and shiny pop songs plus longer, more psychedelic instrumentals. When we were putting it together we saw there was quite a natural progression with the songs. So the album starts out with the most accessible tracks and then, as you keep listening, it starts getting weirder, wilder and wiggier. It starts off in one place and by the end you’re somewhere else altogether. I especially like ‘Charmed’ just because it floats along for eight minutes seemingly without direction but there’s a fair bit going on with different things coming in and out. Check it out with some headphones.

The cover and booklet are made of blue, I found that this color is perfect to illustrate the mood of “Eastern Terrace”, like if a part of your music was attracted by oceans and seas.

That’s interesting. All of us live close to the sea so it’s definitely in our sub conscious if nothing else. Plus I love surfing. We took a road trip at the end of the millennium from Melbourne to Cactus - a notorious surf beach in South Australia with plenty of big sharks. It’s where the desert meets the ocean. The beach is surrounded by these desolate, mountainous sand dunes that are like moonscapes. It’s a very rugged, quite breathtaking place. I always think of Cactus especially songs like ‘The Sundowner’. I can see a brilliant red, orange and purple sunset where the desert meets the ocean.

How has you got in touch with the Opera singer Sophie Viskich and who had the idea to include her vocals on “The Big V”?

Sophie is the girlfriend of one of our best mates Hannes Berger. She does big productions here in Australia - opera plus things like ‘The Sound of Music’, Andrew Lloyd Webber type shows. So when Hannes started seeing her we were immediately thinking we’d use her on one of our songs. Edith Piaf inspired a part of ‘The Big V’ so it all made sense. Sophie came and recorded her part at Ben’s house. It was funny seeing this star with headphones that were way too big, singing into a microphone stuck to a wardrobe and doing a melody she’d never heard before. She took it all in her stride. She’s done ‘The Big V’ live with us a couple of times and it always gets a great reaction.

Will you do some shows to promote the record ? Any plans to tour abroad?

Got a party coming up? We’ll be there. I was in France at the start of this year and was totally blown away. Such an amazing, beautiful place. I also did my best French accent that mixed very well with my dulcet Australian tones. It’s the new language of love. Or is that the nouveau langue l’amour?!

Do you begin to work on any new songs?

We’ve recorded a fistful of new tracks that are shaping up all right. The next album will be a lot more rock, a bit looser and with a bit of raga thrown in.

Why do you prefer to include band’s quotes in the booklet the lyrics?

We all work as writers for radio and television so we all reckon we’ve got something to say! Also, as music fans, we like to read liner notes while we’re listening to an album.

How do you describe in five words your music to a guy that has never listened to the Sand Pebbles?

Mogadon pop wigged-out rock

Any last words?

Thankyou Renaud, thankyou Zoopaloop, thankyou ball boys. May all your news be good news!

The Sand Pebbles copped their name from a 1966 Steve McQueen film. They write for television in Australia. They’re songs are sprinkled with cinema references. Tarantula! asked three members of the Sand Pebbles - Ben Michael, Chris Hollow and Andrew Tanner - to place the songs off their 2002 album ‘Eastern Terrace’ in a cinematic context.

‘My Sensation’ is a slow, seductive slice of psychedelic soul that trips from here to the 24th Century. The song’s lyrics mention co-writer Dylan Tawse’s resemblance to English actor Paul McGann (‘Withnail & I’, ‘The Monocled Mutineer’).

BMX: “Al Pacino in ‘Cruising’ - leathered up at the disco getting into it way more than he’s supposed to be.”

AT: “‘Harold & Maude’ - romantic, in a cute and weird kind of way.”

CH: ‘My Sensation’ is the song that comes onto the radio when Bill Murray wakes up each morning for ‘Groundhog Day’!

A cover of Julian Cope’s slightly wired, nicely crazed track from his 1989 ‘Skellington’ album.

CH: “Michael Keaton in ‘Mr. Mom’ vacuuming in headphones and singing along.”

BMX: “The original ‘Scarface’ where Tony and his sister take up arms against the cops for a final showdown.”

AT: “‘Taxi Driver’ - threatening, in a violent and weird kind of way.”

‘Moving Too Fast’ squeezes Aristotle’s three act structure into five and a half minutes of song.

CH: “The middle section is music for the trippy communal love scene in ‘Zabriskie Point’.”

BMX: “‘Less Than Zero’. Sexy young drug heads getting it on and then fading away.”

AT: “Anything by Kurasawa”

A short electronic excursion - ‘One Time at Sundown’ was used as the St. Kilda Film Festival theme song in 1997.

CH: “The harmonica sound is a straight rip from ‘Midnight Cowboy’. So maybe it’s the modern version with Crispin Glover as Ratso Rizzo.”

BMX: “An ad for soft drink.”

AT: “Any slo-mo fight scene from Peckinpah or Scorsese.”

A panoramic instrumental inspired by Tom Verlaine’s ‘Warm & Cool’ album that has drawn many comparisons to Spanish director Ennio Morricone.

CH: “The opening to ‘Invitation to a Gunfighter’ in which Yul Brynner plays a French-speaking Creole gunslinger who insists at gunpoint on having his name (Jules Gaspard D’Estaing) pronounced correctly.”

BMX: “‘The Club’. The montage building up to a final glorious victory.”

AT: “Some weird shit from Herzog.”

A desert baked song that has lyrics lifted from bassist Chris Hollow’s ‘Neighbours’ scripts. The opening lines set the scene and the tone, ‘Yes, I’m dirty on this town, the feeling’s mutual I’m sure.’

CH: “I went to see the director’s cut of Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid with an old girlfriend a few years ago and at about the 2 and a bit hour mark she whispers in a weary tone, “when’s ‘Billy the Kid’ going to start?”

BMX: “‘Midnight Cowboy’ - Joe Buck has had his dreams crushed, but still hopes for something special from the big city.”

AT: “Someone else said it - Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid.”
_{Dylan as Alias in ‘Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid’}

‘The Sundowner’ is the most obvious cinema soundscape on ‘Eastern Terrace’. It was also the name of a 1960 film starring Robert Mitchum, Deborah Kerr and Chips Rafferty.

CH: “We put harpsichord on this song after hearing the ‘Get Carter’ soundtrack. But ‘The Sundowner’ is definitely for a stoner surf film like ‘Morning of the Earth’ or one of those nature films like ‘MicroCosmos’ with all those close-ups on insects and flowers unfolding.”

BMX: “‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ - space walking, free falling, finally Hal cutting off your oxygen and getting released into deep space!”

AT: “Magnificent Seven”

‘Charmed’ is a song that mixes Aaron Spelling’s coven with talk of genetic engineering and the Germinator – the two subjects fitting together very snugly. The song opens with a snippet of conversation from the TV show…
Boyfriend: “…if I hadn’t sold out to the molecular biology program at Stanford…”
Piper: “So you can make Peking duck and clone D.N.A.”
Boyfriend: “The duck’s harder…”

CH: “A manga cartoon dream sequence.”

BMX: “An Alyssa Milano only episode of ‘Charmed’, she’s in tears at one point over having to spilt up with the guitar player from the Sand Pebbles - he leaves her with this song to take with her (cut to a sad, desperate man…ie. Me!)

AT: “Andy Warhol’s ‘Flesh’?”

This pared down version of ‘Moving Too Fast’ is called the Director’s Cut and succeeds in being the first director’s cut to be shorter than the original.

CH: “‘Malcolm’. It reminds me of the music that accompanies Colin Friels when he’s travelling along the tram tracks.”

BMX: “The end of ‘Two Lane Black Top’ as Laurie Bird drives off on the motorcycle.”

AT: “Wonderland”.

_{Two Lane Blacktop}