favourite long form
-
0Penis whistles and performance art: Dark Mofo
On the bus, the duet from Dirty Dancing, ‘(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life’, is playing too loud for the tinny speakers. Pink balloons hang from the ceiling and tassles fringe the aisles. The windows are papered over so we can’t see out. It’s cheap, nasty and there’s nowhere to hide. “Can I sit here?” I ask a guy with a spot beside him. ...
-
0Ben Lee (Paddington Uniting Church)
Hippies carrying pillows file into Paddington Uniting Church. An events company called My Heart Space is producing the evening and a guy in a company tee welcomes us. On a table dressed with pink candles and oil burners is a sign instructing us to ‘LIVE every moment’ and ‘LAUGH every day’. There’s a lesson about LOVE too, but a large pink heart obscures it. None ...
-
0Jenny Hval – APOCALYPSE, GIRL
In 1969 feminist Carol Hanisch wrote an essay called The Personal Is Political. It was her response to criticism that the ‘consciousness raising’ meetings she was organising were not political, but personal. The meetings were therapy, said the critics; navel-gazing at the expense of bringing down the system. “They belittled us no end for trying to bring our so-called personal problems into the public arena ...
-
025 years on: The Necks’ Sex revisited by Kate Hennessy
Piercing the darkness and din, over her drink, were my sister’s eyes, insisting I meet their glare. I’d done it, just before, and it had been horrible. She was in hell over there on her high swivel stool and was blaming me. Around that time – 2003-ish – I maxed out on seeing The Necks live. I certainly stopped bringing friends and family. The gig with ...
-
0Laura Jean – Laura Jean
I wonder if Melbourne folk singer Laura Jean Englert ever feels exposed by her honesty. Or did she fly fear’s cocoon long ago? This self-titled record is Englert’s fourth. She released EPs at 21 and 23 years old, and LPs at 24, 26, 29 and now 32. Public peaks of expression as she bore out the private troughs and joys of her twenties, like an ...
-
0Matmos (City Recital Hall)
“I saw Matmos in London years ago. They had some sound issue and couldn’t play so the brown-haired guy peeled the other guy’s pants down and spanked him.” My plus one’s story will surprise you if you’d pigeonholed the American electronic duo of Drew Daniel and Martin Schmidt as serious-minded experimental glitch artists who probably didn’t crack a smile during their shows. If you’d assumed ...
-
0The Orb (Metro Theatre)
When I first heard The Orb as a 15-year-old they detonated my idea of what music was and how to listen to it. And when the pieces settled again they were in a different shape for good. As the years passed, I could place their influences and see where they slotted in. But by then it was too late. The Orb had already dissolved into ...
-
0Lindsay Phillips – Solguden (Mess+Noise review)
Bushfires are burning in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. I’m here visiting my family home of 32 years, looking at old photos with my mother, packing boxes to take if we need to evacuate. Outside, blackened leaves scatter on hot, high winds. But more unsettling than the fires or the heat is the sudden impermanence of things that at last touch or sight seemed ...
-
0Leonard Cohen (Entertainment Centre)
“I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come tonight to fool you.” This line from ‘Hallelujah’ is far from Leonard Cohen’s best. Neither is it the most transcendent moment tonight. It is significant because he adds the word “tonight” and because “you” is us. Cohen is singing about his approach to this show and possibly to his touring renaissance more broadly. He didn’t come to fool ...
-
0Red Rattler: Rat’s Piss beer – and grassroots support – on tap
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s recent announcement of $560,000 for a National Live Music Office was good news for an industry used to the bad variety. The forces bearing down on live music had long been identified: the undue weight given to residents’ noise complaints; building codes that lassoed venues into the same category as airports; poker machines’ tsunami of cash versus the tenuous trickle-down of ...
