CD Review The Tallest Man on Earth The Wild Hunt (thru Inertia) This album comes out on April 16 and is by Swedish singer-songwriter, Kristian Masson. (Has anyone written about the recent propensity of solo artists to give themselves band-like names? Cat Power; Joan as Policewoman; Florence and the Machine etc. Interesting.) Anyway, this album [...]
READ MOREMarch, 2010
Music to sharpen knives by
It seems clear that the correct music to play when sharpening a knife is side one of Keith Jarrett’s 1975 live recording, The Koln Concert. It’s a little too long — that is, you will be finished with the knife before the music finishes — but that is better than rushing the sharpening in order to [...]
READ MOREVale Alex Chilton
Big Star singer and all round music legend Alex Chilton has died, most likely of heart failure. Bummer. Somewhat amazingly, his death became a trending topic on Twitter yesterday as twits mourned his passing. Pretty interesting measure of…what? Popularity? Importance? Anyway, he was responsible for some pretty amazing songs over the years, not least ’September [...]
READ MORELisa Idol
I gave former Idol contestant Lisa Mitchell’s debut album a bit of good wrap when it came out, so it’s nice to see her getting some acknowledgement from her peers in winning the $30,ooo Australian Music Prize (AMP). I still reckon the way Idol treated her was disgraceful but I guess she’s getting the last [...]
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Folk with a future
CD Review The Tealeaves The Tealeaves (Dist. by Vitamin) Having decided that I’m not a huge fan of this album, can I just get a small round of applause for resisting the headline, ‘Not My Cup of Tea’? Thanks. The Tealeaves are a relatively new acoustic band out of Melbourne (I think) and on my [...]
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Music to digest Newspoll by
It seems obvious to me that Dennis Shannhan, the Newspoll entrails reader at The Australian, needs a soundtrack. What long-running soap opera can survive without one? Every fortnight, the tireless Den is wheeled out to cast his Betty Davis eyes over the results of the polling-they-own and come up with a few hundred words that [...]
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Judging CDs by their back covers
Borders bookstores and others in favour of protecting the Australian book industry are going to be angry at me for this. I offer no excuses. Here’s the sad truth: increasingly, the only reason I go into a bookshop is to take notes about books I might want to buy elsewhere. Specifically, I jot down titles [...]
READ MOREDylan on Letterman
Roseanne Cash just tweeted — yes, this is me relaying information gleaned from my Twitter feed (welcome to the world) — that she had never before seen this clip of Dylan’s 1992 performance of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ on the David Letterman show, and she sounded a little startled to realise that it is her [...]
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The carrion of a murdered prey
CD Review Them Crooked Vultures Them Crooked Vultures (Sony) I’ve been a bit reluctant to review this album; in fact, I’ve been a bit reluctant to even listen to it. I can sense when I’m being set up for a disappointment. But anyway, having spent the past few days with it on moderately high rotation [...]
READ MOREMusic games
Interesting little presentation on the growing popularity of music-based games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Click through the slides and check the figures. Notice too the quotes from music-industry people about rights owners not getting enough money. Still, with the fight on to shore up the industry’s revenue base, it is hardly surprising that [...]
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