Australian and New Zealand Music News

by Evan Alexander

Sadly, it’s been ex TV stars and reality program wannabes that have been dominating the Australian charts for the last few months. Australian Idol winner, Guy Sebastian has been the big seller, becoming only the third Australian male to have his first two singles debut at number 1, he has been jet-setting all across the region. Back in Melbourne this week after having spent the past week in Asia where he has been promoting his first single 'Angels Brought Me Here', Guy is said to be an Idol in Malaysia as well, the single debuted at the number 1 position there. He presented an award at the MTV Asia Awards and rubbed shoulders with the Black Eyed Peas as well as ‘Popstars’ (did you get that one in the States, another similarly nauseous reality program that turns wannabe’s into pop groups) Liberty X who commented that Australia's Idol winner should have won World Idol and how much they loved his album. Guy's single this week debuted in the number 1 position knocking fellow Australian Idol runner up, Shannon Noll down to the 2nd sport with his first release “What About Me’. Already BMG are planning the release of Guy's second album.

His first album was rush recorded and released within weeks of the show ending in order to capitalize on sales momentum.

Delta Goodrem, former Soapie star turned Aussie pop princess is currently in Los Angeles, where she is writing new material, her US release is set for July. ‘Born To Try’ is said to be the first single for the US which is a signature tune for Delta having notched up top 5 positions in most territories including number 1 here in Australia and number 2 in the UK. Sony Music in the US are very confident about Delta's US career saying that they feel Delta can fill a void in the US market for a female artist with vocal prowess of a Celine Dion but the song writing feel of Dido.

In the singles chart this week, another ex soapie star, long-time Australian pop Queen, Kylie Minogue's second single from her album ‘Body Language’, 'Red Blooded Woman' came in at No. 4, but not so in the US. In comparison to her most successful album to date ’Fever’, which sold 1.1 million copies in the US alone and earned her a Grammy last month, 'Body Language' dropped out of the top 75 in just two weeks, from a poor first week debut from No. 42 to No. 83 selling a total of only 60,000 units. In Australia, sales have also been extremely sluggish, with sales of just over 100,000 within 14 weeks of release.

Peter Andre, an Australian singer who had a few big hits about ten tears ago now, predominantly in the UK, has returned to the top of the charts. After being a contestant on UK reality TV Show 'Im a celebrity, get me out of here' a few weeks ago, Andre has re-released his 90's hit 'Mysterious Girl' which is expected to debut at the number one position. The recent TV show appearance has made Peter hot property again in the UK.

The complete antithesis to all this network fluff, the biggest debut album this week was ‘Columbia Jane’ by the recently deceased Australian icon Slim Dusty, which entered at number 5. Slim has been a quintessential Australian musical icon for half a century, he sang songs about life on the land and the people who live it and his passing was almost a national day of mourning. His most famous song was ‘ A Pub with No Beer’.

The musical dynasty of the Finns represents rock royalty in New Zealand.
Neil Finn, the man behind Crowded House and brother Tim Finn, founder of Split Enz, are the country's best-known musical exports. Neil's son Liam Finn is now bearing the family torch with his band Betchadupa (see below).

It has been eight years since the last Finn brothers' collaboration ("Finn") but the brothers are ready to record together again. Neil says the new project is more developed than their previous effort.
"Last time it was in between projects, and it was a bit of a side thing ... a sort of glorified home-demo session in many ways, which was fantastic," Finn said during an interview at his home studio in Auckland.
"But this time we're just trying to get ... the songs really fully realized and give them space and time to breathe."
The album, says Finn, is predominantly acoustic and vocals-centered, with a "few exotic instruments." When completed, the international release is likely to be supported with tours of North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Staying with the Finn Dynasty, Neil’s son Liam’s band Betchadupa have been in LA recording their second, as yet unnamed, album and mixing it. Returning to New Zealand for one gig in Auckland from a quick run of sold out shows in Australia, (where they are receiving heavy radio coverage), before heading back to Oz for the Real Live ‘n Local tour with Jebediah, Magic Dirt, 28 Days and Machine Gun Fellatio.

Bic Runga, who relocated to Paris last year, and has been working out of the city of lovers to promote and tour her album ‘Beautiful Collision’ throughout Europe, has set a new chart record back home in NZ, overtaking Split Enz, ‘Beautiful Collision’ has now been on the New Zealand Albums chart for 81 weeks and been certified 8x platinum - making it the longest running New Zealand album on the charts ever.
It takes the record off Split Enz and their ‘True Colours’ album. She will be returning home next month, however, for a nationwide acoustic tour.

Australian Releases

Ways and Means, Paul Kelly

EMI / Capitol

From the jumpy bluegrass jilt of ‘The Oldest Story In The Book’ to the raucous slide riffing of ‘Heavy Thing’, Way’s and Means is one man’s musings on a very well trodden theme; love, the oldest story in the book indeed.

A double album full of Paul Kelly love songs, the expression ‘middle of the road‘ may come straight to mind, and fair enough, it is, but connoisseurs of such things will be well satiated with this one. Kelly has penned some brilliant tunes in his time, and it’s no fluke of circumstances that most of them have seeped their way into Australia’s collective national consciousness. From Coca-Cola adverts to pub jukebox’s, dig him or not, the man is a stalwart of modern Australian musicality.

My point, he has earned this position and deserves to be taken seriously. Well written, hook ridden and superbly put together; Ways and Means does tend to linger around mid paced rhythms and ‘safe’ arrangements, but that’s the genre. All the necessary ingredients for great songs are present and accounted for. Book-marked between two breezy instrumental’s, without being banal, sentimental or smug, Kelly really does know what he’s doing and he’s extremely good at what he does.

Mach Schau, Hoodoo Gurus

EMI / Capitol

One wailing laptop whistle and we’re in. Guitars crunching and bass pulsing, Mach Schau finds the Gurus doing what they do best. Gnashing six-string rock, dripping with melody and that pertinent Hoodoo panache. Superbly produced by Kim Salmon, there’s no elements whatsoever of old boys strapping on new toys or pretentious mid-road musings. Not that I was expecting any, but we are talking about a band that formed in 1981 and released their first album in 1983. From the grind and grunt of ‘Sour Grapes’ to the minor chord grope of ‘Dead Sea’, the Gurus display well-honed finesse and flair with aplomb throughout the entirety of Mach Schau. Dave Faulkner’s renowned vocals are in as fine a form as they’ve ever been and the oomph control knob on Brad Shepherd’s amp hasn’t slipped down a notch.

Dear Friends and Enemies, Big Heavy Stuff

Redline

“As you go along in life, you acquire both. It’s an embracing of all people, of both friends and enemies and putting people into one, instead of separating and putting people into boxes”. – Greg Atkinson
Greg Atkinson’s songs are the cohesive centerpiece around which Big Heavy Stuff revolve. The follow up to 2001’s Size of the Ocean, Dear Friends and Enemies was recorded between Oct 2002 and July 2003, a period of international turmoil and eventually war and though the songs stem from an internal focus there is a pervading sense of a wider form of an external coverage and representation of events.
Second single ‘Homesick’ (featuring backing vocals from Powderfinger’s Bernard Fanning) is a chunky, melodic musing that adds a refreshing slant of understanding and acceptance to the well-trodden ‘musician on tour away from family and friends’ theme. ‘Mutiny’ climbs from a whisper to a jaw jarring pump through a tremendous climatic arrangement, whilst ‘Mary I Colour You In’ swaggers across a rolling terrain of genuine rock ‘n’ roll conviction. If Dear Friends and Enemies were a meal it would be a salad with a really rich dressing.

New Zealand Releases

Concord Dawn, The Uprising

Inertia

The debut album by New Zealand’s second highest selling electronica artists ever, ‘Uprising’ is a feast of hardcore drum’n’bass mayhem.

Blending trad drum’n’bass grooves with heavy rock riff based stylings (‘Raining Blood’ samples the Slayer track of the same name) and blippy short repetitive one finger type keyboard techno motif’s, Matt Harvey, the d’n‘b half of the duo, looks at it from a culinary perspective; “ It’s like your making Chinese food but using parmesan cheese. It tastes a little bit Italian but it’s still Chinese food. Making different marriages is where you discover something new and fresh”.
Featuring appearances by Scribe, Optiv and Tiki of Salmonella Dub, Concord Dawn are establishing themselves internationally with this one. Already lauded in the UK as a force to be reckoned with, ‘Uprising’ is unabashedly geared towards fast, grooving, scorch marked sweaty dance-floors.

Red light syndrome, Pluto

Karmic hit

Something to be reckoned with from this acclaimed Auckland five piece. Hearkening back to a sixties type vibe, the seventeen tracks on ‘red light syndrome’ resonate with an authenticity that manages to maintain an element of understated intelligence without bordering on pretentious.

The New Zealand press ate this album up, hailing it as ‘the future of rock. I wouldn’t go that far, but there is definitely an undeniable spring in its step, so to speak. Oddball rock pop is a fair description of what to expect here. Acoustic guitars are countered by swaggering spiky rock riffs, snappy drumming, sound byte samples and some screechy come vibrating come horror film score keyboard effects. Songs like ‘Candy Arse’ throb and pump, whilst others like ‘and I love her’ and ‘bare song’ cruise along smoothly with tendencies towards Pink Floyd type arrangements and Beatlesque melodies. Well-constructed song structures flow freely from track to track yet an element of intentional dysfunction is cleverly maintained. Nothing ‘throw away’ about this one.

The Rich Harper Band

The Rich Harper Band hails from Los Angeles, a dynamic and powerful blues trio, the success of their debut CD, "Don't Think Just Play", earned them the position as one of Amazon.com's prestigious "Emerging New Blues Artists", and by the time their second CD, "Bottled Up Blues" was released, Europe had jumped on board by making the band the #1 selling artists in Switzerland on Amazon's charts. In December of last year, Rich, Australian ex-pat, percussionist Chris Cooke and native New Yorker, bassist Frank Scarpelli released their fourth major offering, a new live CD entitled “Onward”. There was a murmur on the grapevine of an Australian tour, so via email, I caught up with the man himself to find out what the story was and ask him a few questions about three pieces, Cynthia Manley, Redondo Beach and the steel mills of Pennsylvania.

Rich, rave reviews of your work have come from such far-flung corners of the earth as South East Qld, Australia to Denmark. How have you achieved such a widespread global fan base?
A: Thru blind persistence. We sent the CD's out to every DJ & music publication we could find, then sat back & waited to see if anyone would listen or write a review on us. I have been very fortunate & very blessed & probably very, very lucky to have so many people take the time to listen, to play & also write about my work.

You hail from the steel mills of Pennsylvania; when and why did you decide to settle in LA?
A: I wanted to pursue a music career. I thought about my options & decided if I was going to starve to death, I would prefer to do that in a warm climate, so I chose LA. That was way back in the 1980's. Wow... that seems so long ago!

Your list of influences reads like a who’s who of blues / rock guitar pioneers, in particular; Eric Clapton, Freddie King, Rory Gallagher and B.B King. What was about these guys in particular that appealed to you?
A: I can't really say. Sometimes you just hear things & you stop & say to yourself, what was that & how did he do that? Every one of these guitar players I grew up listening to had that effect on me. There are a lot of great guitar players out there, I just happened to be influenced by these particular players.

Why have you chosen to keep the band as a three piece? T.R. Marshall of ‘Blues On Stage’ said of your second album Bottled Up Blues; “I like the un-complicated sound of the three piece, nothing seems to be missing or added un-necessarily”, is this why? You don’t get cravings for horn sections?
A: It just works personality wise & musically with us 3. We have thought about it, but why fix something that isn't broken? I may in the future write a song where it would need horns etc, but we would only do it that way in the studio. I can't see us at this moment ever wanting to change the way we do things "live". We have done songs in the studio where we added keyboards, but "live", it is & will probably always stay just the 3 of us. So no matter how we record it, we'll always go out "live" this way unless someone comes along that can just fit right in. But you know what? Never say never...

You’ve appeared on a fair few compilations and other artists albums, including Taxim Records; Desaster City Blues, Fallouts; The Fine Art Of Dining Alone and Bootleg; Speakeasy. How did they all come about?
A: Thru friends, thru playing out "live" & someone walking up to you saying they would like to have you on their CD. Again, it's all luck I think.

As She Moved In (My Guitar Moved Out) from Bottled Up Blues was ranked number 1 on Rolling Stone Magazines ‘Mp3 and More Blues Chart’. Despite the obvious, what inspired the song?
A: Thru the years I have watched this happen to many friends of mine that were just fantastic players, then met someone & just walked away from it because the new person in their life wanted them to. Not because they themselves wanted to. Then of course, years later, when I go home to visit family & friends & we go out, they always say to me, I wonder if..... So, we were recording "Bottled Up Blues", we needed another song & it just came to me.

What was impetus for the new live album Onward?
A: The "Family". The group of people in Redondo Beach that have stayed with me all these years. I wanted to return all of their loyalty, their kindness & support, so what better way to do that than to record a "live" CD at the place & in front of all the people where it all began.

There was talk of you getting out to Australia for ‘The Melbourne Blues Festival’, what’s the go? When will Australian audiences get a chance to check out Rich Harper and where?
We got pushed back to April. We will be at the East Coast Blues & Roots Music Festival instead on April 8 & 9. We then will be in Newcastle on the 10th, Sydney the 11th & then in Melbourne the 15th & 16th. All the clubs & times we will be & when will be up on our website's schedule page

Over the next couple of months you’re doing a lot of gigs with ‘The Cynthia Manley Band’, for those of us not in the know, who are they and how did you hook up?
A: Cynthia had a couple of hits back in the late 80's early 90's. Frank, my bass player, has been playing with her for quite some time when we were taking time off for recording whatever. Recently, the guitar player she had went on to do other things, she asked Frank who he would suggest & after I agreed to pay him $5, he suggested me! (ha ha... I am kidding) It's fun for me to play in different situations, that's why I play such a wide variety of blues. I like Delta Blues, but I also like Electric Blues. I like playing slide one minute, acoustic the next etc. I like to push myself & see where I am going to go. That's why I like playing & recording with Cynthia & other bands besides playing & recording with my own. It stretches the way you think & it always seems to help you out down the road. I don't ever want to stop learning & experimenting. Blues is & always will be my "only love" but there is a lot of great music out there. Why not play it all?

What’s next?

A: Right now we have some things pending in Europe, some for sure, others we are still waiting for the contracts etc. We have 5 songs written for the next CD already. It is going to be a real "group" effort this time. I have written 2 songs with Chris (the drummer), in the process of writing a couple with Frank (bass player) & then I have already written 3 myself. Plus we still have a lot of material to listen to from 2 full days of recording "live" so I'm sure we will put a couple of more "live" cuts on it. Also, Frank & Chris will be producing it because it's time to delegate authority, so to speak. Plus, who better than those 2 to produce me? They have worked with me for over 7 years. They know what I can do & what I can't. Cynthia is recording a new CD & she is talking of doing a tour in Europe & there are a couple of other people I will be recording CD's with. It is looking like it is going to be a busy year. But we'll see. I'm just going to do what I can today & I'll worry about tomorrow tomorrow.

Rich Harper's Web site: http://www.richharper.com

East Coast Blues & Roots Music Festival

http://www.bluesfest.com.au/