Table of contents for November 2017 in Rolling Stone Australia

Choose Life I WAS TOUCHED BY DAVE Grohl’s words about Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington in last month’s cover story. The wounds of Kurt’s suicide are still clearly visible, and I can’t imagine the emotions Chris’s passing in particular caused for Grohl. Clarence Harvey Avalon, NSW Security Concerns INTERESTING STORY ON THE future of concert security [RS 791]. While happy that our security is clearly a big concern, I do long for the days when you could go to a gig without having to worry about where the exits are and what you’d do if some kind of tragedy should unfold. But then such is the world we live in. I guess the most important thing is to not let that stop you going to a show. When that happens…

U2 Songs of Experience DECEMBER 1ST The past three years have tested U2 in different ways, from the fierce backlash they received for gifting 2014’s Songs of Innocence to every iTunes user to Bono’s devastating bicycle accident, which left him with several fractured bones and a shattered left arm. But those setbacks didn’t compare to another crisis Bono faced last year. “He had a brush with mortality,” says the Edge, choosing his words carefully (the band won’t go into detail on the matter). “He definitely had a serious moment, which caused him to reflect on a lot of things.” The episode caused the band to rethink Songs of Experience, a companion to Songs of Innocence that they had already been working on for more than two years. The resulting…

IN 2014, ANNIE CLARK’S CAREER could not have been going better. After years of carving out her place as a cult hero, the singer-guitarist – who records as St. Vincent – found a surprising level of success with her fourth LP, St. Vincent, which reached Number 12 on the U.S. album charts. Clark toured the world, fronted Nirvana at their live reunion at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony and turned in one of the more memorable Saturday Night Live performances in recent years, playing inside a giant box and doing strange choreography between fuzz-guitar outbursts. But if you ask Clark, that period wasn’t a lot of fun. “I was going out of my mind,” she says. “I was on the road constantly and just trying to…

What’s the best advice you ever got? It came from my father. He was a pilot officer in the Royal Air Force. When I started to be what could be construed as famous-ish, he said, “Never forget you get up and go to the toilet in the morning, Michael.” Which means, just keep it in perspective and have a good sense of humour and remember that you are a human being, and keep it in line. If he had added, “And don’t take too many drugs”, that might have been helpful too. What’s the most indulgent purchase you ever made? I bought a thousand-acre farm in Australia in the early 1980s. It was this whimsical decision to start a whole new life. The property had about eight houses on it…

The Song That Reminds Me of Growing Up The Replacements Can’t Hardly Wait, 1987 “My mum listened to that song a lot, so I heard it a lot growing up. I remember being in the kitchen at my mum’s house, this little kitchen, and she had this tiny black and white TV that sat on top of the refrigerator, and that song playing on the radio and the Berlin Wall coming down on the TV. I remember it very vividly.” The Song You Wouldn’t Expect To Find On My iTunes Portishead Glory Box, 1994 “Every girl that I dated at that time was obsessed with this record. The sound of it got me from the start – it’s a very rich sounding record. Super intelligent, moody pop music. At that…

SOUNDS LIKE: Glitter-covered rock trimmed with modular synths, vintage guitar pedals and shoot-to-kill populist lyrics aimed at Brexit-era fascists FOR FANS OF: Conor Oberst, Vampire Weekend, Tame Impala WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: Nearly three years ago, Declan McKenna’s missive decrying the World Cup leadership’s hypocrisy and greed emerged on Bandcamp and SoundCloud. A few months later, the U.K.-based McKenna won the Glastonbury Festival’s Emerging Talent Competition, and the song began an eventual climb to Number One on Sirius XM Radio’s Alt Nation. Penned when he was just 15, “Brazil” not only proved his poise as a musician, but his potent lyrical point of view. Now 18, McKenna has built an activist-centric body of work exploring religion, gender identity and other thorny political topics. “Music is a great platform for…

“I’M JUST OVER IT. I’M SO BORED WITH MY STORY AND I’M SO BORED WITH MYSELF.” ‘RIGHT, TELL ME WHEN YOUR recorder is on so I know when to start censoring myself,” says Lindy Morrison, with a toothy smile and a glint in her eye. Spoiler alert: there will be no censoring. The outspoken drummer with the Go-Betweens hasn’t been idle since the band’s acrimonious 1989 break-up. For her longtime charity work within the music industry and her advocacy for musicians’ rights she’s been awarded an Order Of Australia Medal and the Ted Albert Award. In July, she and violinist/oboe player Amanda Brown performed the 16 Lovers Lane album in Brisbane with guest singers including Steve Kilbey, Katie Noonan, Sahara Beck and Kirin J. Callinan. They’ll do it again as…

“I wasn’t one of those songwriters who made up fake boyfriends so I could write a love song.” WHATEVER HAPPENS FROM here, there’s one vision Alex Lahey will cherish forever. It was backstage at Kings Park, Perth, on her last night opening for Blondie and Cyndi Lauper in April. “I was hovering around catering,” she remembers over poached eggs in her favourite Melbourne cafe. “Debbie Harry’s dressing room was adjacent and the door slightly ajar so I could see her inside. “There’s nobody else around and she’s just standing there, totally in her own world, and there’s a mannequin’s head in front of her and she’s combing her wig. She’s, like, 72, and she’s just combing this blonde wig. “I thought, ‘If that’s the one thing that I have that…

Beck Colors Capitol ★★★★ Since Midnite Vultures followed Mutations followed Odelay, the radical mood swing from string-soaked acoustic introspection to beat bustin’ party central has been a key premise of Beck’s discography. Accordingly, after the ravishing autumnal down of 2014’s Morning Phase, Colors is a whole new summer high. “I’m So Free” might be his most irresistible mash of experimental sonics, rubber-lipped rap and classic grunge guitar chorus hook ever. That’s the third killer track on the trot on an album that almost hyperventilates in pursuit of the ultimate endorphin kick. Mad genius pop producer Greg Kurstin (Sia, the Shins, Tegan and Sara) brings an extra sugar rush to the table, retro-tastic in the flagrant Beatles pastiche of “Dear Life”, punching a hole in the mirror ball of “Dreams” then floating…

St. Vincent Masseduction Caroline ★★★★ Annie Clark’s last album in 2014 was both critically lauded and her most commercially successful. And yet the 35-year-old who makes music as St. Vincent was barely holding things together physically, spiritually and emotionally. While Clark is pretty much the opposite of a confessional songwriter, Masseduction is uncharacteristically open and a rare thing – a together album about falling apart. “I spent a year suspended in air,” she sings over the herky-jerky, almost hysterical feel of “Pills”, before detailing all the meds she had to take to keep functioning. “New York”, on the other hand, is a bewitching piano-based ballad about a city not being what it was now that a significant other has gone. Yet it’s not sentimental. How could it be with the…

Van Morrison Roll With the Punches Caroline ★★★ ½ Rather than wait out a decade and then call Joe Henry or Jeff Tweedy to produce the rootsy comeback, Van Morrison does it himself now. Roll With the Punches – five originals and some favourite blues and soul – is an unfussy, old-without-sounding-tired collection that could have been phoned in and still sounded OK, but works at a better than average level. If that sounds equivocal it’s not, because of the songs, including works by Bo Didley, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Doc Pomus. Didley’s “I Can Tell” – which could have been done by Them, Morrison’s route out of Northern Ireland in the mid-Sixties – and Tharpe’s “How Far From God” both pack some solid swing, and Morrison’s “Too Much Trouble”…

“I’ve got rejection letters from Sony, who I’m now signed with.” 1. ‘The Million’ Demo CD, 2003 BEFORE HE WAS JOSH PYKE, HE WAS THE MILLION “I wanted a collective name [for my solo work], so I thought of the Million. My band An Empty Flight was disintegrating, and I went and recorded 10 or 11 songs I’d been writing that never fit the band. When I finished I was like, this is really good! So I sent it out to loads and loads of people and got rejected by absolutely everyone! I’ve got rejection letters from Sony, who I’m now signed with. I mocked this up myself and cut all the CD slicks and glued them together. There’s a couple of songs on here that got released a…

After nine years, three albums, two early singles and one EP, the Melbourne trio’s current national tour will be the last for a while as the band step away. “We aren’t really sure [what hiatus means] to tell you the truth,” says frontman Blake Scott. “We wanted to make sure people had the opportunity to see us but we didn’t want to say we’re breaking up because we just don’t know.” The “endless grind” of lives with full-time jobs (Scott and drummer Steven Carter are carpenters, bass player Stewart Rayner works in a fashion warehouse) as well as full-time musical careers, coupled with the fact the band hadn’t written anything for a while, led to some soul searching. Deciding to have the break “released a lot of that tension” and…

“I don’t listen to anything before I go onstage. I play old baseball games.” ‘At the time, Stevie was living on the top floor of a six-storey beachfront building in Venice, California,” recalls Neal Preston. “It was the first time I’d photographed her offstage, and I wanted the pictures to be more than just another set of pretty-girl photos. They had to be special, and they had to have personality. When we arrived, Stevie greeted us at the door and was very gracious. It seemed like she was looking forward to the shoot (trust me, not everyone does…). After a bit of small talk – the “hi, how you doing?” stuff – we started shooting. Within minutes I realised that she had a killer sense of humour and was as…

“I feel like I’ve had a good show if I’ve really connected with the music,” says Mondlane. SOUNDS LIKE: Dancing your way through a record store, cherrypicking albums from different genres and putting them all in your basket FOR FANS OF: Fishbone, Saul Williams, Run the Jewels WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: POW! Negro’s debut EP, Jasmine & Licorice, is as vibrant musically as its multi-coloured artwork suggests: a freewheeling melange of genres ranging from hip-hop to funk to electro to punk and myriad other points in between. Born in late 2015 when vocalist Nelson Mondlane (pictured) was offered a solo gig at Fremantle venue Mojos and drummer Rhys Hussey convinced him to form a band instead, they take their name from a cartoon character creation of Mondlane’s. “We were…

EVENING, AUGUST 22ND, 2017, A convention centre in Phoenix. It’s Donald Trump’s true coming-out party as an insane person. It looks like the same old Trump up there on the stage: same boxy blue suit, same obligatory flag pin and tangerine comb-over, same too-long reddish power tie swinging below his belt line like a locker-room abomination. Earlier this year there were efforts to make Trump stop wearing his suit jackets open – designer Joseph Abboud said buttoning up was a “very visible way of showing he knows how serious the job is” – but Donald Trump doesn’t take advice, not even the gently benign kind. ¶ That makeover was undone just as quickly as it was done, leaving the Donald with the same old tie-on-bulging-duodenum look from the campaign. He…

1 A stew of styles It’s a testament to Son Little’s eclectic, genre-splicing fusion of Philadelphia soul, hard rock and East Coast 1960s folk that Rolling Stone finds him recovering from playing Brooklyn’s Afro-punk festival whilst also preparing to perform at a bluegrass event in Massachusetts – all in support of his sophisticated, mature second album, New Magic. “It’s not a stretch for me to have a harder sound, but I also grew up listening to Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie,” says the singer. 2 Take it as gospel The Californian-born artist, real name Aaron Livingston, grew up the son of a preacher. “I regularly heard a certain type of harmony being sung around me, and I came to understand music as something that lots of people do…

‘HOLD ON A MINUTE, THE little doggy’s about to run away,” Robert Plant says as he puts the phone down at his home in England, on the Welsh border. After a vacation in Morocco, Plant sounds antsy as he prepares to release his new album, Carry Fire. He recorded it with a group of musicians under the name the Sensational Space Shifters, many of whom he first worked with in 2002, and returned to in 2014 after projects with Alison Krauss and the Band of Joy and, of course, a one-off Led Zeppelin reunion in 2007. Featuring a diverse crew of world musicians, the band blends Middle Eastern, American and Celtic roots music. “It’s a little wild, a little bit crazy in concept,” says Plant, 69, who plans to tour…

Grateful Dead Set to debut off-Broadway in October, Red Roses, Green Gold is described as a “comedic tale” of a family looking to con its way to fortune in 1920s Maryland. The Dead’s music is sung by characters with names like the Candy Man and Bertha. Dead & Company keyboardist Jeff Chimenti serves as musical director. Alanis Morissette “Let It Go” singer Idina Menzel is in talks to take the lead in Jagged Little Pill, named after Morissette’s 1995 album. It debuts next spring in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a likely New York run to follow; producers describe it as a story of a “modern, multigenerational family”. Jimmy Buffett Escape to Margaritaville, about a singer-bartender who falls for a tourist, is expected to open on Broadway in March, featuring Buffett classics…

Warren Zevon In late 2015, Granduciel moved from Philly to L.A., where he rediscovered the music of local legend Warren Zevon. On long drives to the studio, Granduciel constantly played 1978’s “Accidentally Like a Martyr”, a diary of post-relationship loneliness. He cites Zevon’s simple but profound lines, like “The hurt gets worse and the heart gets harder”, as “something that I’ll try to achieve forever”. Granduciel had that song in mind while writing “You Don’t Have to Go”, also about heartbreak. “I just had to sing and not be too worried about it being too revealing. It felt naked.” Bruce Springsteen Granduciel calls Springsteen a big influence, from his lyrics to his work ethic. Last year, Granduciel went through a Ghost of Tom Joad phase, falling in love with narratives…

Expect Academy voters to lose their hearts to Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name, an emotionally naked tale of first love set in Italy in the summer of 1983, when even the air is perfumed with erotic possibility. An attraction grows between Elio (Timothée Chalamet, far left), 17, and his father’s intern, Oliver (Armie Hammer). What they discover in each other opens their eyes to the world and makes this love story a new classic and one of the year’s very best films. (Dec. 26)…

The Cage the Elephant frontman is in the midst of a tour during which the band will open for the Rolling Stones in France. La Femme “Antitaxi” Some French friends turned me on to this. It has some Kraftwerk elements to it. Somehow it feels classic, but very much in the future. Serge Gainsbourg “Lemon Incest” This song is superweird. The drum and synth sounds are very 1980s, and he’s singing it with his daughter. It’s really messed up. Os Mutantes “Ave Lucifer” This is somewhere between the Velvet Underground, the Beatles and moody Stones, but they sing in Portuguese, so it’s got a Latin flair. Jorge Ben “Ponta de Lança Africano” We listen to this on the tour bus to wake up. They play guitar like a drum, so…

SOUNDS LIKE: Folk music conventions blown up, then vividly reassembled, with jazz and world beat glimmering through the cracks. FOR FANS OF: Courtney Barnett, Sylvan Esso, Sufjan Stevens WHY YOU SHOULD PAY AT-TENTION: TITK’s fourth album, Moonshine Freeze, is the project’s first for Rough Trade. Here, experimental folk songs unlock truths occupying the space between dream states and waking life. “Things get said, things get don’t,” singer and primary songwriter Kate Stables declares in the slowly unfurling “Solid Grease”. “Sometimes a meaning is so much easier to transmit or absorb if you don’t use normal sentence structure,” the U.K.-bred, Paris-based Stables says. “It’s almost like a magic spell or something.” Contributors to Moonshine Freeze include John Parish (PJ Harvey, Perfume Genius) and Aaron Dessner of the National. Each song teases…

SOUNDS LIKE: A raw look at the darker regions of modern-day Appalachia, where bluegrass is in the soul, but cocaine is in the blood FOR FANS OF: Sturgill Simpson, Dave Rawlings, Jason Isbell – if he swapped the 400 Unit for Old Crow Medicine Show WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTEN-TION: Growing up in East Kentucky, Childers spent his youth and young adulthood learning the blue collar trades. But music – shaped from a childhood spent listening to both Drive-By Truckers and Southern gospel – held the strongest gravitational pull. Childers built a solid fan base in his home state for his songs that melded a forlorn, Appalachian howl with more modern folk diarists, driven by the stories that surrounded him. It was enough to lure Sturgill Simpson into producing his…

SOUNDS LIKE: A vibrant fandango in rural Latin America, doused with hip-hop swagger FOR FANS OF: Ana Tijoux, Ibeyi, nature and globetrotting WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: Fémina – whose plush poetic rhymes and ravishing harmonies glide over funk, boleros and chacarera rhythms ripe with rustic flair – grabbed Iggy Pop by the musical jugular, landing them on his radio show 6 Music twice this year. Sisters Sofia and Clara Trucco, along with childhood bestie Clara Miglioli, moved to Buenos Aires from the bucolic Andes of Patagonia. They unleashed their rap-folk enigma, which quickly became a name amongst the city’s colourful hip-hop milieu. The Argentine trio are currently working on their third album, due out later this year, which is being engineered by cumbia accordionist/producer Will Holland (Quantic, Ondatrópica) and…

IN THE LONG, TEDIOUS HOURS BETWEEN SOUNDCHECK and showtime, Brian Wilson likes to park himself at the side of the stage, hidden behind the curtains, in an oversize black chair. The chair has travelled with him from Tokyo to Tel Aviv and back home to the Pantages Theater in Hollywood tonight. Dressed in a lavender button-down, sweatpants and white Nikes, Wilson sits impassively atop his faux-leather throne, munching sushi rolls as the preshow noise and bustle swirl around him. ¶ When a concert promoter or VIP guest wanders over to say hi, PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK SELIGER Wilson often shuts his eyes and pretends he’s asleep. After 56 years as a Beach Boy, he admits the buildup to a concert can still be “a total mindfuck”, filled with worry and self-doubt.…

“Feels like I just woke up. Like all this time I’ve been asleep. Even though it’s not who I am, I’m not afraid of who I used to be.”—MILEY CYRUS, “Younger Now” Shania Twain Now Mercury Nashville ★★★ ½ Miley Cyrus Younger Now RCA ★★★ ½ BY ROB SHEFFIELD There’s always been something contentious about the borders of country music, borders that Shania Twain and Miley Cyrus have spent their very different careers exploring. In the Nineties “is this country or is it disco?” culture wars, Twain scandalised Nashville with her glam-rock flash and mirror-ball glitz, just a few years after Cyrus’ dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, came out of nowhere with the ass-wiggling dance-craze blockbuster “Achy Breaky Heart”. Cyrus, of course, grew up playing Hannah Montana, before turning into…

Robert Plant Carry Fire Warner ★★★★ We carry a flame for lost love. We carry fire to vouchsafe humanity, with all its accumulated wisdom and empathy, through dark days. Robert Plant has a bet each way here, shifting between intense romantic longing (“Season’s Song”, “Dance With You Tonight”) and calling out inhumanity in the savage “New World…” He referenced the image once before, on the stunning musical watershed of Mighty ReArranger in 2005. But these days are far darker and his mission more urgent at the crossroads of east and west, and at “the dimming of my life” he references wistfully in the dusty swirl of “The May Queen”. That title carries a cheeky glimmer of his past, of course. But his last few albums with the Strange Sensation/Sensational Space…

Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile Lotta Sea Lice Remote Control ★★ ½ Her: a master of the mundane, building global recognition on recalled tales of gardening-induced faints and sulky fist-shakes at the depressingly exorbitant state of the Melbourne housing market. Him: less fussed, by everything, nowhere to be but strumming on some stoop in Philadelphia, stoog between fingers. World’s apart, quite literally, and while this merger between two of the best modern indie-rock conversationalists might be a marketing wet dream, Lotta Sea Lice lands closer to compromise than collaboration. In lieu of uncovering commonality across the album’s nine tracks, the pair end up sticking to a to-and-fro chat, covering general catch-up topics – from sleep routines (“Let It Go”) to social faux pas (“Blue Cheese”) to creative approaches (“Over Everything”). Side-by-side…

Rostam Half-Light Nonesuch ★★★★ After putting in work on Frank Ocean’s Blonde (“Seigfried,” “Ivy”), Solange Knowles’ A Seat at the Table (“F.U.B.U.”) and various collaborative projects, ex-Vampire Weekend MVP Rostam Batmanglij has finally gotten around to releasing a proper solo LP of his own. And, admirably, he’s refused to choose between his former group’s Ivy League-aesthete indie rock and modern vernacular electro-pop, opting instead to cherry-pick the best of both worlds. The resulting 15 tracks are, fittingly, all over the place. “Bike Dream” is sexy voice-boxed art pop; “Thatch Snow” is chamber music with a multitracked choir; “Wood” is a widescreen Bollywood daydream, complete with layered hand drums and orchestral strings; “Hold You” is a hungry robo-soul slow-jam with ex-Dirty Projectors vocalist-bassist Angel Deradoorian as an earthy diva. Batmanglij has…

Gregg Allman Southern Blood Rounder ★★★ ½ The final album by Gregg Allman, who died in May, is a moving farewell statement à la twilight masterworks by Leonard Cohen and David Bowie. “I know I’m not a young man, and it’s time to settle down,” Allman sings on the roadhouse blues “Love Like Kerosene”, his full-moon growl strikingly undiminished. Yet while Southern Blood is rich with intimations of mortality, it’s easygoing too, with a laid-back generosity that recalls Allman’s kindest Seventies work – see his warm take on Lowell George’s Southern-rock salvo “Willin’”. All-man steeped the album in his own history, recording with producer Don Was in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where All-man and his brother Duane recorded in the late Sixties. And while the LP is almost entirely covers, they…

ATH-DSR7BT Headphones Audio-Technica RRP $599 UPPING THE WIRELESS AUDIO game, Audio-Technica’s Pure Digital Drive system does away with the need for D/A conversion that typically degrades sound quality. As Bluetooth technology improves, the sound quality and range of wireless headphones has improved significantly. You don’t have to keep your phone in your breast pocket to keep it in range with these babies, as they have a maximum reach of up to 10 metres. They will also remember the last eight devices that they were paired with, which makes quick connection a breeze (easier than Tinder). But now for the sound. The 45mm True Motion drivers deliver a sound that is compatible with High Definition audio (when connected to a computer or HD media player by USB) so you know…

The last time I did something for the first time I went to one of those flotation [tank] things, the sensory deprivation float tanks. And I was like, I’ll unlock my creativity and get to the bottom of things, but I just remember lying there and going through the whole Christmas special of The Office [in my head]. I went through scene by scene, and I was laughing to myself and repeating some of the lines, and then the lights turned on and the hour was over. I didn’t work out anything. All I worked out was I should watch less of The Office. The last time I was worried I’m always worried. I can’t stop worrying. The way I view the world is, we’ve just got this survival instinct…