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28
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #45. Darren Hanlon – Little Chills

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2004 – #5. Darren Hanlon- Little Chills
(Candle)

Our story of Darren Hanlon continues. After the minor success of Hello Stranger, Darren did a lot of touring, both in Australia and abroad. When he returned to us, he made an album that was far less upbeat than his previous offerings. Little Chills stripped away the humour for something sweeter and more touching.

It was painful going to Darren Hanlon gigs at this point. It seemed most people came to laugh – which is fine, Hanlon definitely set himself up for that. But when the funny songs about bicycles and beta tapes dried up, it seemed like people would laugh at any clever pun. “Oh”, they would think “That was the joke. I better laugh here.”

Little Chills has Darren’s best song – I Wish I Was Beautiful For You. One of those once-in-a-career songs, I can imagine people reinterpreting and covering this song for years to come. A pretty little piece on the place of good looks in the story of true love.

The travel was sneaking into his songs. Brooklyn Bridge, Ends If the City and even the short, sharp opener Wrong Turn… there is a journey on this album (highlighted by the cover). And it’s a transient album for Hanlon too. His first bid as a serious songwriter – in say, the Magnetic Fields mold – it didn’t really connect with the public as much as Hello Stranger.

To be honest – it is my least favourite of his albums, yet I still love every song. even the only ‘joke’ song – (There’s Not Enough Songs About) Squash – is fun, and makes more sense when you find out it was written for a friend’s band.

I still went to every Darren Hanlon show, but enjoyed them a little less each time. And maybe it was me as well – I was outgrowing the jingle jangle Candle Records stuff, as well as cutesy power pop.

26
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #44. Paul Kelly – Ways & Means

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2004 – #4. Paul Kelly – Ways & Means
(Capitol)

Eleven albums (kinda) and over 20 years since he first started, Paul Kelly made my favourite Paul Kelly albums. And I loved a lot of Paul Kelly albums before that. And this isn’t some sort of revisionist Time Out Of Mind thing. It is simply the most Paul Kelly of Paul Kelly albums, with a dash of fun, and big dollop of love and sans 80s production. It was also one of his best backing bands ever. Finally, Ways & Means was a generous, 21 track double album. It seemed like Kelly’s big statement and about little things.

Two things informed Kelly’s approach to this record. One was the desire to make a country/soul/rock album. I mean, that’s a big friggin tick from me right there. The second, stated in many interviews at the time, he wanted to write a love-gone-right album. This record, released when Kelly was 49, sizzles with sexual energy and loving abandon.

Ways & Means opens and closes with instrumentals, the only two on the album. Gunnamatta welcomes us to the record. It’s a surf music inspired piece that’s warm and inviting. It feels like we are being washed up on Australia’s shore, but that Australia is Kelly’s young and fanciful Australia. When the journey is all over, what feels like a ballroom waltz called Let’s Fall Again eases you out the door, a little more eager for adventure than you were before.

But even love gone right has parts that go wrong. That album cover sums it up – the lovers, and those who look on and hope for the same. The Oldest Story In the Book covers such a love triangle – two life long friends, and the pretty girl that comes into their lives. Two falls in love, the other leaves to write songs about the girl he never had. Classic Kelly.

Disc one is heavy loaded with potential hit singles – Heavy Thing is a Stonsey/soulful anthem about coming on strong. Wont You Come Around covers similar ground, impatience for love, and of asking and getting. Beautiful Feeling is such a great love song that friends of mine used it as their wedding song. Finally, Sure Got Me is a song I had the pleasure of living out. When I met someone, and they liked me too, and it all clicked, and it all worked, and this song kept playing on the stereo in my own head.

The backing band for this album are the Boon Companions, who feature Kelly’s nephew Dan, the well loved and respected Luscombe brothers and Bill McDonald on bass. With so many songs, there is a loose, fun, first-idea-best-idea feel. They are having a blast, and it comes across. You can hear this best on To Be Good Takes A Long Time.

It’s not all light and good times. But even the sad songs come from a good place. Can’t Help You Now is a goodbye to someone, and being happy now that you are over them. Similarly, the person in You Broke A Beautiful Thing is not wallowing – he even says he’s not mad in the song. He’s just moving on, and making a positive step.

But it’s all about love (and sex). Your Lovin’ Is On My Mind, from disc 2, pretty much sums up the album. Young Lovers, Big Fine Girl…the celebration doesn’t end.

I’m not sure if there is a parallel, but my love of this record coincided with a new strength in my own personal life. Listening back to this album, and the memories these songs conjure up – they are good times. Maybe if I listened to more socially stable records, I would be happier?

A few years later, I got to work with the CEO of EMI, who was a big Paul Kelly fan. He loved some of these old stalwarts that I loved, but more importantly he treated them with respect, in a way no other major label in Australia does. Paul Kelly doesn’t sell a super amount of records, yet his label allowed him to release a double album. Even Red Hot Chili Peppers gets grief from their label about doing something like that. Anyway, when I left that job, I wrote that CEO a letter saying, in brief, thanks for the work and thanks for releasing Paul Kelly’s Ways & Means.

26
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #43. Youth Group – Skeleton Jar

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2004 – #3. Youth Group – Skeleton Jar.
(Ivy League)

I am claiming this one: I was chatting to Toby from Youth Group about the album, and he said he didn’t know what to name it. I suggested Skeleton Jar, the name of one of the songs on the album. Now, I’m sure it had occurred to him. I’m sure it also occurred to others. Still, he said he thought it was a good name and a few months later, there it was – Skeleton Jar. And it was fucking unbelievably good.

Some people hate Youth Group. They have this air of being a Sydney scenester band – which is so weird because the Sydney scenesters hate Youth Group too. None of them look like Lou Reed. None of them have expensive haircuts, or wore black. They probably got a few too many of the good support slots because of their label, but they didn’t manage to ever sell that many records. Anyway, I bring this up because I can’t actually think of many people I know who love this album who are still my friends. For such a big album for me, it was a small album for the world.

There is a sadness on this album, and it wasn’t always going to be that. There had been some line up changes. And with that, some of the fun, Pavement-y, Weezer-y things got lost, in favour of something darker. I was lucky to hear various demos sessions and was surprised as Toby Martin wrote more and more songs, each better than the last. It also meant that some songs I loved a few months ago were bound to get lost.

There was also personal tragedy in Martin’s life, with the recent death of his father inspiring a few songs (only one of which made the record). From this, his songwriting took to a new level. I remember Andy Cassell, from Ivy League, with no sales pitch angle involved, telling me once he just thought Toby Martin was a genius. That was before this album came out, and I was a big fan. I took that comment at face value at the time – but when this album came out I realised what Andy saw.

The collection of strange stories, images and ideas on this album are uniquely Youth Group. And it’s so surprising that these guys I could talk to at the pub about various things, could be so – there’s no other word for it – poetic. My friends bands could be clever, they could be witty – but none were brave enough to be poetic.

The album opens with Shadowland, and great pop thumper. And a great image, of some lost no man’s land, and someone trying to survive it. Later, Toby would tell me it’s about those years when you are just out of high school and you don’t know what to do. I mean, what the fuck. Most people would be literal, clever or funny. Martin came up with a term I still use, and wrapped it in a beautiful painting of chimney stacks, force fields, life coaches and watchful skies.

I don’t know what most of these songs are actually about. One I know least is Skeleton Jar, the title track that was written very late in the game. I do remember a friend of a friend’s mother died. And that first friend taking the second friend out. My friend felt like hell, but her friend felt like dancing. And she told me how, watching her friend in grief but dancing, made sense of some of the words in Skeleton Jar.

There are hundreds of these moments on this record.

I searched through your house for my skin.

She puts on a face. Makes it a brave one.

His lungs are machines, his hands are a fridge.

And it changed the way I saw my world. In the way Dylan changed the way people saw their own words. Trains, buildings, buses, trees, planes – all mentioned in these songs in such wonderful ways. And we shared the same world – this leafy, rustic Inner West.

This album is wrapped up in Sydney. It’s wrapped up in my early 20s. They recorded one more track after the album came out, and they re-released the whole thing with the new song (Someone Else’s Dream). With that, Youth Group managed to make my year-end best of compilation 3 years running (Shadowland was released as a single in 2003). It only hints at how much this band was part of my life in those times.

One last story.

That song Toby wrote about his father is Why Don’t the Buildings Cry. A gorgeous song, where the title comes from being buckled under by such sadness, that you think that, well, the buildings really should be crying as well.

When a really, really big death hit my life, I ran to my music collection for solace. Of the thousands and thousands of useless discs, vinyl, mp3s, whatever – I remember thinking that there was nothing to help me. I put on song after song about death or life or whatever, and turned each one off after a few seconds. My drug had let me down. Although the silence was even worse. No song in the world could take this confusing pain in my head and heart, wrap it into a melody and release it as a song.

Except Why Don’t the Buildings Cry.

I listened to that song over and over again and it got me through that night.

26
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #42. Lazy Susan – Never Better

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2004 – #2. Lazy Susan – Never Better
(-)

This is, of course, another one that’s tough to be objective about. Lazy Susan’s Never Better was recorded, and I was asked to fill in on bass for a bit. It ended up being quite a long bit and one of the favourite times in my life.

It’s a beautiful album. There is something very straight ahead about it. It’s not heavy on keyboards, guitars or lo-fi madness. It sounded like a million bucks.

When Paul first gave me a CDR to learn the songs, he left off two songs that we never played – I Will, and Why Don’t We Just Call It A Night. I had learnt all the funny chords, and memorised every part of every other song. Then these two new ones came along and reminded me how great the songwriting was.

25
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #41. The Reservations – Last Impressions

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2004 – #1. The Reservations – Last Impressions
(NonZero)

This is the first album I ever recorded. Obviously I feel about this record in a way no one else does. I wont go into everything I feel about this record here – it will take too long. But here are some (marginally) interesting things about this record, especially for people who have never heard, and most likely never hear, this album.

1. I probably should have tried harder to market this record. And even just the artwork and stuff. But I was so tired after we made it. And also, I’m not the best at tooting my own horn. So – it leads me to be impressed by the MySpace generation who seem to be quite good at it. Also, it makes me value label people – because even me, arguably more qualified than 99% of musicians on the planet – can’t be my own label.

2. I am still very happy with this record…and more so as the years pass. When someone (foolishly) asks me to play a song I’ve written, it’s usually something off this album because they are kind of simple, nice, pleasing songs. If it makes any sense to anyone – I was trying to write songs that sounded like real songs! I gave that up after this record.

3. This album came from such a sad place, and sounds so happy. Inversely, when I was quite happy, I wrote a really unhappy sounding record. I think it makes sense though. When I was unhappy, the last thing I wanted to do was dwell. I just wanted to make people happy. There were a bunch of very unhappy songs that we never recorded.

4. I think everyone did a great job on this album, but I have to really say Michael Carpenter’s production was amazing. I had never worked with a producer before. We sounded way better than we were. How we managed to get such an array of sounds, with such limited tools, and limited time, I don’t know.

5. So yeah. This was my record. Others (especially Casey) were involved. It’s not, by any means, all me. But – it’s the record in the history of all time that is MOST me. I still love it, and I still feel mostly the same as the 22 year old on here. I think I managed to stay pretty true to who I am.

6. Yes, we stole the tape reel cut out thing from a Pyramidiacs album.

There is more to say but not here, and not sure who would ever want to hear it anyway. I’ve been bashful in past years, but really, if you ever want to hear this stuff just ask. I should put it up online somewhere, really.

(It might seem really vain to write about this record, but this is turning more into a history than a list. And it would be really disingenuous to exclude this album when talking about my musical like in the 00s)

(We did shoot a film clip that I didn’t really like, and I was quite awkward in, and I don’t have a copy and lets not talk about that again)

24
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #40. Ugly Duckling – Taste the Secret

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2003 – #10. Ugly Duckling – Taste the Secret
(Emperor Norton)

Friends of mine liked this record. And in particular a girl I liked. So sue me. I bought an album I would never normally buy because a girl I liked liked it. I have no idea where that girl is anymore, and even Ugly Duckling have fell off my radar. But Taste the Secret was awesome.

So it’s the last album for 2003 and looking through my iPod, this album gets played A LOT. It has everything I love about music – energy, lyrics, humour, smarts, fun. It just happened to be in hip hop.

In the end though, it’s all about the smarts. Beautifully made fun of in Dumb It Down, a song in response to their label telling them to dial down the clever lyrics. And it is clever – I’ve yet to meet a musician who doesn’t love Opening Act, a spot on dissection of what it feels like to be the first band on that no one cares about.

More fun – Turn It Up, although tries a little bit too hard to be a hit single, is great on it’s own terms. Witty, hilarious, exciting. Mr Tough Guy is a cheeky attack on gangster rap and it’s followers. Potty Mouth is wordplay about swearing. All great tunes, all should have been hits.

Then there is the hilarious theme of the record -the Meatshake. It’s a fictional fast food place that sells what sounds like liquid kebabs, and their fictional competitors, the veggie hut. Their fight goes over a couple of songs and a few skits. It’s weird and wonderful.

I went back and got their older stuff, and keep an eye out for new stuff still. I guess I’m not in a place, life-wise, where much hip hop comes on my radar. And in 2003, hip hop seemed pretty shit from the outside. Which is why it’s great to find little gems like this one.

24
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #39. Amy Rigby – Til the Wheels Fall Off

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2003 – #9. Amy Rigby – Til the Wheels Fall Off
(Spit & Polish)

I loved a whole bunch of country-ish female singer songwriters around this time. Lucinda Williams, Laura Cantrell etc. But I’ll distill it down to one, because one rose above the pack. Amy Rigby’s Til the Wheels Fall Off.

I have since learnt her history. She was married to Will Rigby of the DBs, and made an acclaimed solo album called Diary Of a Mod Housewife (it’s great). But I found her on this record, after Laura Cantrell covered her song Don’t Break the Heart.

My insatiable appetite for music at this time led me to her newest album, without a note heard. She is a fiery, female, funny Elvis Costello. The songs are interesting composition wise, but her lyrics are always clever, and she’s always got her heart out.

Another reason I love this record on a personal level was it let me dwell in the confusion of relationships and love. It seems being a 22 year old boy and being a 44 year old single mother had a lot in common. The other sex was still confusing.

It’s those batch of, I guess I can call them, WTF songs that really hit home. It opens with Why Do I? – a largely spot on assessment on not being comfortable when I should be, not being happy when things are going great. Even better is Shopping Around, about how the generation before us never met as many people as we did – no wonder it was easier for them to choose someone.

There’s The Deal – a doomed agreement between two lovers to leave the baggage out of it, done as a note perfect Bacharach pastiche. O’Hare compares the wasting time of circling planes to the long drawn out waits between courtships.

Then there’s the rocking Are We Ever Going To Have Sex Again? Ok, so maybe not my life, but a great song about the passion going out, done with such wit that it is still a mainstay in Rigby’s sets today.

The music is pretty great. Bit of rockabilly, a bit of garage rock keyboards, plenty of cool guitar work. It might not be everyone’s sound, this sort of gritty, rootsy rock. But by damn it sure is my sound.

Amy Rigby is having fun on this record, while still talking about big subjects. Sometimes you just sit back and think of your problems and just throw your arms in the air, laugh, and say, this world is mad. And that’s what this record is good for.

(And then the next record was even better…)

23
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #38. The Jayhawks – Rainy Day Music

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2003 – #8. The Jayhawks – Rainy Day Music
(Lost Highway)

Yet another last album. What was with 2003? The Jayhawks had suffered so many indignities, and it looked like they were finally on the right label (roots rock hitmakers Lost Highway), with the right record – Rainy Day Music.

It was touted as a return to country rock form – but that isn’t strictly true. Taking away the commercial pop leanings of their last two albums, Louris did return to acoustic guitars and simple, low key tunes. But it has little country – it’s a folk album, with a fair bit of power-pop.

Louris gave us some of his best songs in this collection. All the Right Reasons, Save It For A Rainy Day, Come To the River, Stumbling Through the Dark… it’s worth noting that this year’s best of, Music From the North Country, had as many songs from this album as Tomorrow the Green Grass and Hollywood Town Hall.

The album got rave reviews. It was on many best of the year lists, especially in folk and country circles. Yet, they still couldn’t get their career to the next level. It must have been so disheartening, and by the end of the year, the band have gone on ‘hiatus’.

The Jayhawks I think still exist, technically. Whether there will ever be another album under that name is a different story.

23
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #37. Gillian Welch – Soul Journey

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2003 – #7. Gillian Welch – Soul Journey
(Acony)

Yeah, this is a pretty obvious one. Gillian Welch’s fourth album took on a wider palette – drums, organs, electric guitars – and some of her best songs. Sad though, in that it’s seven years since Soul Journey was recorded and with no new album in sight, I’ve pretty much written her off.

How great it was though, when I first put this album on. From a career full of impossibly beautiful songs, this album opens with Look At Miss Ohio, a song it seemed that people started cover almost immediately. It started off as classic Gillian Welch, but then a minute or so in, there’s drums!

Looking back, all those additional instruments aren’t that shocking. They serve the songs, and they weren’t missed in a live setting. Wrecking Ball, Wayside – all worked well with or without drums.

The two best songs are not only without drums, they are mostly without David Rawlings, her long time guitar player/producer. The Welch only recordings – No One Knows My Name and I Had A Real Good Mother And Father – share a theme, alluding to Welch’s own life as an orphan. Then there’s One Little Song, as much a manifesto as anything she has ever written.

So we can only imagine how this new sound could have evolved. This year we got a debut album by Dave Rawlings, which gave us some clues. It would be so great to hear a new album, but word is they aren’t even close to starting.

23
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #36. Soap Star Joe – Tell Her On the Weekend

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2003 – #6. Soap Star Joe – Tell Her On the Weekend
(Laughing Outlaw)

Soap Star Joe were a wonderful band from Sydney who never got their break. They were my friends, and I was a big fan of the band. But they always seemed to struggle, and shortly after this album came out, the band broke up, and most of the people involved in this album I never saw again, and we seem to never talk about it. We didn’t use the word in such a context in 2003, but I look at this record and I feel – fail. Which is a shame because Tell Her On the Weekend was not terrible, and is in parts pretty great.

When I first saw Soap Star Joe, they had a different line up, but the singer/songwriter/guitarplayer was still Mick Wilson. Of all the musicians I’ve had the pleasure to meet in this time of my life, Mick was one of the best – and most interesting. He was always such a fun guy, always seemed a little mad, but not in a look-at-me eccentric way (like having an afro at an indie gig of 20 people). No, Mick was very natural, he seemed out of step with the indie pub rock world. But he was writing fantastic songs.

They had a few self funded, cheaply made EPs (which I loved) and finally found a home at Laughing Outlaw Records, run by local rock scribe and record man Stuart Coupe. The first release, an EP called Handstands For Love, was excellent. Yet for some reason, radios in the country weren’t blasting Met Drunk In the Corner – a hit single if I ever heard one. They continued to struggle for gigs and make their mark.

They released another brilliant single – Ziggy Niszczot (Never Played Guitar) – named after the South Sydney Rabbitoh’s player, about an era when the club was being sold after a few years of big business blunders. Who was writing stuff like this? Mick Wilson was. He was brilliant.

Time came for an album. They certainly had the songs. Talking to the guys at the time, they all seemed excited, but they also seemed tired. They had been playing these songs for a long time, for little reward. And it’s very important to note how old these songs must have felt, because they decided to try and be more creative in the studio.

But no one seemed to agree on what that new thing was. Managers, labels, producers, friends, fans – everyone had an opinion. Saul gave me these mixes with an electronica, bubbly mix that he thought was brilliant. It sounded unrecognisable. It didn’t seem like anyone had a vision – or had the ability to speak up for one.

I remember sitting around with some of the guys and some friends one night, talking about album names, and how it was just a joke by then. There was a couple of serious suggestions that were made fun of immediately. Otherwise, it was write-off. The title used eventually – Tell Her On the Weekend – was flat, unmemorable, and the product of a committee. It was the one everyone could live with. Heck, I would have preferred the serious suggestion of ‘Sunglasses’. At least it was weird and striking.

It’s the story of what I felt happened to this record. I still know many people involved, and no one ever seems to discuss it. But it was a fail because no one could agree – and more crucially, too many people were involved. It seemed everyone had an opinion about what the band should do, and Mick kind of fell by the wayside. He was never the loudest person in the room in the first place.

Tell Her On the Weekend lacks some of the sparkle and weirdness that made their EPs so great. That’s all I want to say because anything else – well I’m just doing what everyone else was doing. It should have been this, it should have been that. It’s how it turned out and actually what we have is still pretty great.

And it’s great because of the songs, some of Mick’s best, were not lost. Bus Stop, which opens the record, greets you with one of the best opening lines in rock. Raguletto, Kosheree, BBQ Police, Sega Master…songs about things that only Mick Wilson could come up with. Have you ever seen songs with such titles?

There are three real winners on this record. She Will Shine, the single, is them at their pop best. And who can beat a line like ‘High rise construction keeps popping up like Mormons…”. Not a Mick Wilson song, but Stuck In Traffic is the saddest song they have.

Finally, If I Were A Telescope. I think it’s their best song. It’s certainly my favourite. A love song that mentions 2sm coffees, Nick Cave and Sandra Sully.

We don’t really talk about Soap Star Joe anymore. They broke up shortly after the album. I don’t keep in touch with the guys. Every so often, I see someone who was there, like Worth, and we have a moment of regret, what could have been.

(Oh yeah, obviously no film clips for this…)

Author: admin