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The Drover’s Wife review – plot twist leaves Australian classic spinning on its axis
First published in the Guardian, September 2016
A selection of short stories by Henry Lawson was published in 1959 called Fifteen Stories. Australian author Colin Roderick wrote in the introduction: “[Henry Lawson] never attempted to draw people he did not know … it was the world of the drover, the prospector, the miner, the rouseabout, the shearer, the railway worker, the swagman and the sundowner, the cocky, the timbergetter, the underpaid apprentice, ...
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Penis whistles and performance art: Dark Mofo
First published in The Lifted Brow, August 2016
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. ...
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Dark Mofo, 2016
First published in The Wire magazine, August 2016
A mirror hangs from a tree reflecting the clean Tasmanian sky. I’m in the exercise yard of New Norfolk Hospital For The Insane, taking a break from what’s inside. The asylum – originally built for sick convicts – sprawls over both sides of the River Derwent in this small town 40 minutes from Hobart. Many locals worked here; others were family of inmates. The asylum ...
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Kill Climate Deniers: the play that infiltrated Parliament House
First published in Guardian Australia, September 2016
At midday on 31 August, a silent and subversive music event happened inside Parliament House. Milling among the gaggles of children on school excursion were about 15 unacquainted visitors distinguished by one thing: all wore earphones and walked the same route through the building’s public zones. I was one of them. That morning, as instructed by the artists, I downloaded an album from Bandcamp called ...
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Music You Missed: April, May, June 2016
First published in The Guardian, July 2016
Time’s the revelator,” country musician Gillian Welch sings in her song of the same name. I assume she meant things such as love and grief, but it applies to music more than anything. Only time can reveal which records will bloom, then shrivel and fall from the vine – and which will make a late great run towards eternity. ...
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The ‘queering’ of Hobart’s monuments
First published in The Guardian, June 2016
Taped to a wall at Long Gallery in Salamanca Place in Hobart is a 2005 essay by historian Marilyn Lake about Tasmanian monuments. Key sentences are marked in highlighter. “For God and Empire. King and Country.” “There are no statues of women in Tasmania.” ...
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‘The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic’ (review)
First published in the Australian Book Review, June 2016
Were I to mimic the style of Chicago-based music critic Jessica Hopper, we’d be off and running by now, or grappling with a question that had bulleted straight to the topic’s heart. When this anthology’s 42 think-pieces, reviews, and ephemera first appeared in Village Voice, Chicago Reader, SPIN and elsewhere, a few words of context may have preceded each of them. Here, we just have bald beginnings such ...
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Music You Missed: Jan, Feb, March – 2016
First published in The Guardian, April 2016
Victoria’s Golden Plains festival celebrated its 10th anniversary in March. The line-up featured Sleater-Kinney, the Buzzcocks and Violent Femmes but it was Australian acts Royal Headache, No Zu, the Necks and Black Cab that thrust enthusiasm into ecstasy. ...
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10 great Australian albums that flew under the radar in 2015
First published in the The Guardian, December 2015
If the Australian music tree of life were illuminated where the money flowed, only a twig or two would light up. The root structure, trunk and sturdy branches consist of volunteers. ...
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Broken Heel festival: ‘Even Australia’s founding fathers dressed in drag’
First published in The Guardian, September 2015
As a kid, Anthony Carthew watched Mad Max 2 car chases from his front door. It was 1981 and the crew was staying in the outback town of Broken Hill and filming on Silverton Road where Carthew lived. “We had a property on the edge of town,” he says. “Out the back door, the red dirt went on forever with the saltbush and sunsets.” Now, ...