Table of contents for February 2016 in Rolling Stone Australia

When You Laugh THE ONLY THING THAT would have made your interview with Adele [RS 770] better would be if you’d had a recording of her cackle that played every time she laughed in the story. I’ll never get sick of hearing it, just as I’ll never get sick of reading about her. Thanks for the great story. Bianca Gray, Downer, ACT Power of Music I’M HEARTENED BY THE world’s response to the Paris terror attacks, and the strength and solidarity many of us are showing in the face of terror. Music has the power to unite, and these perpetrators of evil can never take that from us. Rosemary Folkes St. Kilda, Vic Get Your Phil I LOVE A GOOD SURPRISE, so I was chuffed to open last month’s ROLLING…

WHEN BLOC PARTY SIGNALLED their return from hiatus in mid-2015 with a photo featuring two new members, fan reaction was savage. “THAT is not Bloc Party,” bleated one on the group’s Facebook page. The light electro-groove of comeback single, “The Love Within”, divided opinion further. “Please stop writing music,” grieved a fan. “Or change your name so we can remember Bloc Party when they were good.” Kele Okereke has heard it all before. “I learnt a long time ago not to worry about what other people think,” says [Cont. on 14] the frontman. “Every time we’ve put out a new record people would say, ‘What is this?’ I feel like we wouldn’t be doing something right if we hadn’t had this response. That’s our strength. That’s what’s made our records…

“Our goal was to create a legacy,” Weiland said of STP in 2008. SCOTT WEILAND, THE INSTANT- ly recognisable voice behind Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver known for his dynamic stage presence, died on December 3rd. He was 48. Weiland passed away in his sleep on a tour stop in Bloomington, Minnesota, where he was found dead on his tour bus at around 9 p.m. while touring with his current group the Wildabouts. The group was scheduled to perform at the Medina Entertainment Center in Medina, Minnesota that night. Weiland’s tour bus bedroom contained a small amount of cocaine, according to Bloomington, Minnesota police. Authorities also arrested Wildabouts bassist Tommy Black for suspected possession of cocaine. “We are deeply saddened to learn of the loss of our old friend…

SANTI WHITE DOESN’T GET much sleep anymore. “I have no free time,” she laughs, describing the change in her life since her son was born. “It’s a real challenge to do the whole record [99 Cents, out March 4] and roll out with a baby that’s teething. I don’t have time to fuck around.” It’s nearly four years since the release of Santigold’s last record, the critically acclaimed Master Of My Make-Believe, and evolution has definitely taken place. Where Master was dark and contemplative, led by the dystopian post-punk anthem “Disparate Youth”, 99 Cents is light, even joyous at times. “Last time I just got in there and did the work and it was so hard,” White says. “This time I was like, ‘You know what . . . I’m…

EARLY LAST YEAR, SIA FURLER was in the studio with Adele, helping write songs for what would become 25. There was a problem, in Furler’s mind at least: She worried she was being too pushy with her song ideas. “When I work with artists, I try to check my ego at the door and become their bitch,” says Furler, 39. “I e-mailed Adele, saying, ‘I’m worried it was annoying working with me.’ She wrote me back, like, ‘What are you talking about?’” Adele may have brushed off any problems in the studio, but she didn’t include the songs she wrote with Furler on 25. “Maybe the songs had too much my voice and not enough hers,” Furler says. Instead, the two tracks from the session – including the thrilling empowerment…

B.B. King “You’re Still My Woman” On Live in Japan, there’s a place where the band breaks down, and he goes into this run that is so jazzy, funky, raw – and then the band comes back in perfectly. It’s inspiring as a guitar player. Alabama Shakes “Gemini” I love the way Brittany Howard sings this song. The band is in the pocket, and for her to be that vulnerable in the groove, and so expressive with her vocals, really moves me. 2Pac “Hold Ya Head” This song goes in the same category as “What’s Going On”, or Bob Marley’s “So Much Trouble in the World” – it’s uplifting with a hint of darkness. Big K.R.I.T. “Cadillactica” K.R.I.T. reminds me of a modern-day blues artist. He’s got this Southern Delta…

The Man Who Fell to Earth, David Bowie’s art-house film from 1976, ends with the main character – an ageless alien played by Bowie – stranded on Earth and heartbroken after losing the love of his life. Bowie’s new off-Broadway musical, Lazarus – which opened on December 7th at the tiny New York Theatre Workshop – picks up the story 40 years later, with Dexter star Michael C. Hall taking over the role. Bowie was intimately involved in the production, writing four new songs (at least one of which appears on his new LP, ) for it. Bowie picked Belgian director Ivo van Hove to helm Lazarus. “I didn’t want it to become a jukebox musical,” van Hove says. “I wanted it to be one story all together, music and…

SOUNDS LIKE: The modern-day equivalent of a Parisian jazz bar in the swinging Twenties; broken hearts bouncing on broken beats through thick smoke FOR FANS OF: Massive Attack, Portishead, Radiohead, the Avalanches WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: The labels came knocking soon after 24-year-old Melbourne mates Edward Quinn (production, guitars, keys) and Miller Upchurch (vocals, percussion) put some early demos online in late 2013. Since signing to Liberation, they’ve played at Sugar Mountain Festival and CMJ in New York and are due to play at Laneway Festival this February. TQ, their just-released EP, was produced by Tom Iansek (Big Scary) and the critics have been uniformly effusive with their praise. THEYSAY:“A lot of the EP Tom didn’t have to touch much because it had that lo-fi quality, we don’t need…

‘ISTILL FEEL LIKE I’M FLOATING,” says Alessia Cara. It’s less than 24 hours since Taylor Swift invited Cara onstage in Tampa, Florida, to belt Cara’s smash single, “Here”, for 55,000 screaming fans, and the 19-year-old Canadian has barely caught her breath. “I was so high on adrenaline, I practically started crying,” she says. “Everything that’s happened in the past year hit me all at once.” “Here” was one of 2015’s most unexpected pop hits – a sullen, midtempo song about feeling like an “antisocial pessimist” at a party. Clearly, it’s struck a nerve: The song has passed 26 million views on YouTube and set high expectations for Cara’s debut LP, Know-It-All. A self-described shy kid from “a very traditional Italian family” in suburban Ontario, Cara began quietly uploading acoustic covers…

Tropical House WHAT A sun-kissed strain of EDM – what Jimmy Buffett would spin if he traded his guitar for turntables. WHO’S DOING IT German producer Felix Jaehn; Norwegian producer Kygo, who ruled festivals in 2015. KEY TRACK Jaehn’s remix of Omi’s “Cheerleader”, which topped the Hot 100 in the U.S. last year. CROSSOVER CHANCES It already has: Just check the umbrella-drink beats underneath Justin Bieber’s “What Do You Mean”. Blackgaze WHAT Indie rock at its noisiest meets metal at its most gnarled – “black” comes from black metal, “gaze” from shoegaze, with roots in the distortion-mad sound of My Bloody Valentine. WHO’S DOING IT Bay Area artmetalers Deafheaven; Vattnet Viskar; Bosse-de-Nage. KEY TRACK Deafheaven’s furiously intense 2013 opus “Dream House”. CROSSOVER CHANCES You’re not gonna hear this stuff on…

IT’S EASY TO FORGET THAT, PRIOR to her stint as Triple J’s resident dance expert on her weekly House Party slot, Kristy Lee Peters (or KLP as she prefers) had to rise through the ranks in much the same way as most of the local artists that she plays on air, as a Triple J Unearthed hopeful. After winning Unearthed in 2013 with “Down South”, KLP made the sideways step into radio, filling out the rest of her week DJing at parties and festivals and collaborating with artists such as Gold-fields and What So Not. Late last year, KLP exploded back onto the dance charts with “Recover”, a drum & bass-tinged track with vocals by Remi, cementing her as a rising star of EDM. Peters says her debut album (due…

LILY-ROSE DEPP PARENTS Johnny Depp, Vanessa Paradis STORY SO FAR Following in the footsteps of her Chanel-model mum, Depp, 16 (who came out as “sexually fluid” on Instagram this past year), was named the French brand’s new face in July. WHAT’S NEXT Depp stars alongside her dad in Kevin Smith’s Yoga Hosers as a convenience-store clerk who battles a monster army to save her Canadian town. MARGARET QUALLEY PARENTS Andie MacDowell, Paul Qualley STORY SO FAR Model Qualley followed an apprenticeship at the American Ballet Theater with a role as Justin Theroux’s daughter on HBO’s The Leftovers. WHAT’S NEXT The 21-year-old will star with Ryan Gosling in this year’s The Nice Guys, as a 1970s L.A. girl whose disappearance could be connected to a porn star’s apparent suicide. BILLIE LOURD…

Television used to have trouble getting comics right – usually by fudging the question of whether they wanted to appeal to the geeks, or to newbies who just wanted a decent TV version. But recently, networks finally cracked the secret: If the geeks ain’t happy, nobody’s happy. Even those of us who don’t know bupkis about the comics behind Daredevil or The Flash want to know we’re entering a version true to the original. It’s like the science on The Big Bang Theory: You don’t recognise the Feynman equations on the whiteboard, but the comedy depends on being able to trust it’s the real thing. Supergirl and Jessica Jones, this season’s two big superhero debuts, are miles apart in terms of mood – one is a crowd-pleaser, the other a…

American young adult literature has gone gangbusters in the past decade. But Aussies have been slower to embrace their own YA stars, leading to the creation of the #LoveOzYA hashtag encouraging booklovers to pick up the work of local authors. That movement received its biggest boost yet with November’s stellar release of Illuminae, the first instalment in an epic sci-fi trilogy by Melbourne authors Jay Kristoff, 42, and Amie Kaufman, 35. Within days of the book’s publication it was at the top of The New York Times’ bestseller list, and Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B Entertainment had acquired it for a blockbuster adaptation. “That was just a straight OMGGGGG!” says Kristoff of that double whammy of awesome news. The pair are now busy writing the second instalment. “Think Die…

AS THE CURTAIN FALLS ON 2015, it might be hard to remember any albums released during the year besides Adele’s record-breaking 25. But there was so much more to hear. Kendrick Lamar’s Molotov-cocktail-tossing hip-hop, D’Angelo’s razor-sharp R&B and Kamasi Washington’s restorative jazz all made major statements, feeling like three crucial dispatches from the #BlackLivesMatter protests under three black-and-white covers. Jason Isbell made roots-rock that shouts out Sylvia Plath, and both Rhiannon Giddens and Bob Dylan took turns running the American songbook through their unique prisms. 2015 saw some fantastic releases from Rock & Roll Hall of Famers (Keith Richards, Don Henley, Darlene Love), along with a few strong returns from the alt-rock heroes of the Nineties (Blur, Sleater-Kinney, Wilco). R&B innovators like the Weeknd and Miguel walked a reverb-saturated lane…

1 The Weeknd Can’t Feel My Face It was the “oooooh!” that changed every thing. That single ecstatic syllable, slipping out just before each chorus, transformed Abel Tesfaye (a.k.a. the Weeknd) from a cult R&B singer to a full-on pop star – just as decisively as a similar yelp of joy marked a new era in Michael Jackson’s career when “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” hit 36 years earlier. Max Martin’s satin-smooth production helped, too, vaulting “Can’t Feel My Face” straight to Number One on the pop charts with Scandinavian efficiency. But Tesfaye’s show-stopping vocal performance is what makes it an instant classic. He spends the song remaking himself as a pop giant – cleverly disguising his obsession with drugs beneath a metaphor about a dangerously hot fling, and…

BEOPLAY A6 WIRELESS SPEAKER Don’t hide it on a shelf: The stylish A6 deserves prominent placement in any living room, but the Wi-Fienabled speaker is designed to produce optimum, room-filling sound no matter where you put it. $1399 APPLE TV It’s no longer just a way to stream TV (although it does that pretty well) – with Siri control and a touch-pad remote, it turns any flatscreen into an addictive portal for games and apps. $269 GOOGLE CHROMECAST AUDIO Any music fans you know stuck in the Dark Ages? This bare-bones device turns an analog stereo or speaker into a full-fledged Wi-Fistreaming system. $49 GRAMAVOX FLOATING TURNTABLE This gravity-defying turntable from Gramavox is designed to show off the beauty of vinyl, but also sounds amazing, thanks to some savvy engineering.…

“Me and Jimmy Barnes got thrown out of a hotel in Dublin.” The last time I was mistaken for someone else Never. It happened to [bassist] Sav back in the Eighties at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, someone thought he was Joey Tempest from Europe. I must admit they did look a bit alike. Sav said, “I’m not Joey, I’m not, I’m just not him”, and this guy wouldn’t take no for an answer, he wanted Sav to sign something. So Sav went, all right, fine. He just wrote, “Fuck off, Joey Tempest”. [Laughs] The last time I was starstruck I met Bowie at Bono’s house years ago at a BBQ. That was kind of scary, ’cause Bono knew I was a huge fan and he kinda put Bowie to one…

In 2015 Holy Holy released their debut album, When the Storms Would Come, toured Australia and hit the UK and Europe twice. You’d think vocalist/guitarist Tim Carroll and guitarist Oscar Dawson might be gearing up for a bit of rest and relaxation in 2016, but this month they release their new single, “A Heroine”, and hit the road for yet another tour. Here, Dawson talks celebrity fans and future plans . . . Former Oasis singer Liam Gallagher attended your last show in London. What did he say to you? “He was like, ‘All right, mate, how are you? That was a great gig.’ The impression I got is he’s just a dude and he came to watch a band and it wasn’t anything more than that.” “A Heroine” is…

The slog of touring is a bane for many an artist wearied by the tedium of repeating the same performance for nights on end. Villagers’ Conor O’Brien has, over the years, tried to keep things fresh by altering, distorting, perhaps improving, his range of literate and introspective songs. “I’ve learned I have a very short attention span when it comes to creativity,” he says. “In my ideal world you make an album, tour for a month, then go back and make a new one. But that’s not how it works because I’ve got to make a living. So I have to figure out ways to keep it interesting.” It’s hardly exceptional for songs to evolve as their maker takes them on the road. What is unusual is Villagers’ decision to…

THE PAST YEAR HAS BEEN VERY GOOD to Brittany Howard. I In A April, she topped the U.S. charts with Alabama Shakes’ second album, Sound & Color; five months later, her side project, Thunderbitch, released a debut LP that sounds like a rowdy late-night party in the back room of a Memphis bar. Howard recently played a a rrare show with that group, appearing on a New York club stage astride a motorcycle, costumed in white face paint, dark shades and a black leather jacket. But don’t ask her to acknowledge her alter ego – she’ll talk about Thunderbitch in the third person only. “I’ve heard of them,” she says with a wicked laugh. “I know they’ve got this singer that dresses up like a ghost, and I know they…

ALKI DAVID HAS SEEN THE FU- ture, and it looks a lot like the past. David, 47, is the owner of Hologram USA, which wants to corner the market for “live” performances by 3D images of dead superstars. The company recently announced deals with the estates of Whitney Houston as well as comedians Redd Foxx and Andy Kaufman for performances and tours in 2016. Hologram USA also owns the “resurrection” rights to Patsy Cline and Buddy Holly. In David’s vision, anything is possible. Led Zeppelin could tour with John Bonham again, or a band could simultaneously rock any number of venues around the world. “But that’s just the low-hanging fruit,” David says. “Imagine Einstein being beamed into multiple schools at the same time, to give his take on his own…

SAVAGES’ LOVE AND FURY When Savages began work on their second LP, the U.K. post-punks took on a new challenge: love songs, which singer Jehnny Beth was inspired to write after being showered with good vibes from crowds around the world. Adore Life, due January 22nd, is just as visceral as Savages’ debut. “If there were beautiful lyrics, we wanted it to be contradicted by something nasty or aggressive,” bassist Ayse Hassan says. GIDEON BENSEN’S BRAVE NEW WORLD When the Preatures’ guitarist Gideon Bensen decided to record material under his own name, there was a degree of separation anxiety. “It’s almost like I’m having an affair with my new bandmates,” he admits. Bensen’s solo EP is due in February – he cites Bowie and obscure New Wave artists as influences.…

1 JUST BEING ALIVE IS A MIRACLE On August 15th, 2012, while on tour in England, Georgia alt-metal quartet Baroness were involved in a near fatal accident when the brakes on their tour bus failed. Three years on, frontman John Baizley is still dealing with the mental and physical fallout. “I busted my body up almost as badly as you can, and there’s no full recovery,” he says. “The damage done to my arm for instance was that severe we were just trying to save it and hope it works again.” 2 THE SHOW MUST GO ON In 2013 the band’s rhythm section left as a result of the disaster. Baizley and guitarist/vocalist Peter Adams set about recruiting drummer Sebastian Thomson (formerly of Trans Am) and bassist Nick Jost. For…

The First Song I Learned To Play Deep Purple “Smoke On the Water”, 1972 “I grew up in the Sixties and Seventies, and my older brothers had all the records, and I think everyone played what they thought was this riff from ‘Smoke on the Water’, though now I know I wasn’t playing it, I was playing a version of it. There were a couple of dudes around who would be hanging with my older brothers and they all would be taking drugs and smoking pot, and for whatever reason they would take their guitars over to his apartment, and we would all hang out up there. Mostly they would play their guitars and we would listen, but occasionally I’d say, ‘How are you doing that?’ I think I…

"I’ll call myself the New Cupid.” SOUNDS LIKE: The street-soul feel of New Jack Swing, updated for contemporary hip-hop listeners FOR FANS OF: The Black Hippy collective; D’Angelo; and, in the words of BJ himself, “Al Green with the vest on and the gold chains and no shirt” WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: Over the past couple of years, Bryan James Sledge’s gospel-inf luenced croon has lent an unforgettable touch to tracks by the contemporary scene’s best conscious-minded rappers. That was BJ on Schoolboy Q’s late-night reflection “Studio”; that was BJ again on Joey Bada$$’s mournful, boom-bapping “Like Me” – not to mention on tracks by Chance the Rapper, Big K.R.I.T., Dr. Dre and more. But his seeming overnight ubiquity was years in the making. Raised in the church-music world,…

HOT BP VW ///// HOT STILL NO JUSTIN BIEBER ///// HOT McCONAISSANCE THE CHRISTIAN SLATER-SANCE HOT NON-McCONAISSANCE THE ZAC EFRONAISSANCE ///// HOT LITTLE BIT COUNTRY GWEN STEFANI HOT WISH WE’D BOUGHT SHARES ATLASSIAN ///// HOT ZUMA DANGER BIRD ///// HOT DANGER BIRD UNREGULATED DRONES ///// HOT I ACTUALLY CAN’T FEEL MY FACE SPICE ///// HOT STILL HOT ‘SOUTH PARK’ HOT AIMEE OSBOURNE TIFFANY TRUMP ///// HOT PLEASE DON’T LET US DOWN BATMAN VS SUPERMAN HOT MATLOCK TOM SELLECK IN ‘BLUE BLOODS’ ///// HOT GIVE IT A REST ALREADY ‘DOUBLE DOWN’ HOT OVERRATED THE FAT JEW ///// HOT UNDERRATED BEING FAT AND JEWISH ///// HOT STEPPER DRAKE HOT IT’S FINALLY OVER MÖTLEY CRÜE ///// HOT YOU MUST BE KIDDING EASTER EGGS ON SALE IN JANUARY HOT GAME CHANGER PINK BALL /////…

Whip/Nae Nae Difficulty ORIGINS The Whip and Nae Nae were separate in the early 2000s, until teen rapper Silentó paired them in his “Watch Me” video last year, pushing his single to Number Three on the charts. HOW TO First Whip, with one arm out in front, like you’re driving a car and rocking to the beat. Then Nae Nae, which requires a full body shimmy as you raise your arm. “It’s for when you’ve nailed something,” says choreographer Jamaica Craft. BEST CELEBRITY RENDITION The dance hit peak saturation when Hillary Clinton attempted it on Ellen. Hit the Quan Difficulty ORIGINS Inspired by rapper Rich Homie Quan’s pelvic thrusts in the video “Flex” from last year, the dance got its true start in iHeart Memphis’ “Hit the Quan” video from…

When Dan Auerbach was finishing the Arcs’ debut, he called this 13-member all-female crew, who update traditional mariachi with pop, soul and funk. “They came in for an interlude but ended up playing on half the album,” he says. No wonder: “With mariachi, you have to jump in and know you’re going to fly,” adds Shae Fiol, who plays the Mexican vihuela.…

RUM, REBELS & RATBAGS Billed as “hardcore history from the transportation nation”, this ABC series, hosted by David Hunt (author of Girt) and Dom Knight, details the shady stories often omitted from the Australian history books. While currently on hiatus, the inevitable 2016 run is set to be another bounty of bizarre tales, which so far has included the link between playboy botanist Sir Joseph Banks and Star Trek, the role of tea and cannabis in the early colony, and how John Macarthur had the government over a barrel – of rum. BENJAMIN WALKER’S THEORY OF EVERYTHING Led by Walker’s signature mono-stoned delivery, Theory of Everything is a scattered collection, solely guided by the host’s mantra to “personally connect the dots”. Given its recent form – which has included a…

AS ONE OF THE TOP FREE- style skiers in the world – known for what many consider to be the greatest half-pipe run ever, with four consecutive double-corks – Gus Kenworthy had to make himself at home in the testosterone-jacked world of action sports. “I wanted so badly to fit in, and I ended up doing a lot of things I didn’t want to, like sleeping with girls,” says the 24-year-old. After he won a silver medal at the Sochi Olympics in 2014, Kenworthy wanted to kiss his boyfriend on the slopes, then reconsidered. “I didn’t want to do something that would tarnish my image...and maybe my sponsors wouldn’t want to put my face on something,” he says. Then, at last year’s X Games in January, Kenworthy felt the stress;…

1 Kendrick Lamar To Pimp a Butterfly Musically, lyrically and emotionally, Kendrick Lamar’s third album is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece – a sprawling epic that’s both the year’s most bumptious party music and its most gripping therapy session. A rap superstar at last, after years on the underground grind, Lamar wrestles with the depression and survivor’s guilt that followed his success by turning to heroes from Ralph Ellison and Richard Pryor to Smokey Robinson and Tupac. He lives large. He contains multitudes. Leading the charge to bring live instrumentation back to hip-hop, he calls forth a sound as ambitious and challenging as his rhymes: sci-fi funk on “Wesley’s Theory”, free jazz on “For Free?”, steady G-funk on “King Kunta”. Over all this, Lamar interrogates himself and a country where everything from…

Ratings are supervised by the editors of ROLLING STONE. David Bowie Sony The stars are all lining up now. Can’t say he didn’t warn us. The end of days has been nigh since Ziggy Stardust was a pup. By Scary Monsters the scary clown was hysterically flagging that “It’s No Game”. And the whole world, as we know, has truly gone to hell since those giddy costume drama days. Effectively the second album by the reborn hermit enigma of New York, (originally announced as being titled Black-star) is as much a thrilling progression as a discomforting descent into some jazz-tainted underworld a million miles from the shits and giggles of rock & roll. Unlike his shock re-entry of 2013, The Next Day, Bowie flagged this revolution a year back with…

Ty Segall Emotional Mugger Drag City Over eight years and a prolific musical output, one-man garage rock industry Ty Segall has given every shade of classic rock a try: heavy psych, pastoral folk, glam, scrappy lo-fi and any other combo you can derive from a guitar and a well-packed bong. Still, he’s never sounded quite how he does on this, his eighth solo album: downright fucking evil. If the creepy doll cover art and title aren’t enough of a tipoff, Emotional Mugger is dark: pregnant with cheap drugs, tawdry sex and ill intent. Like an unearthed soundtrack to a Charles Manson murder spree, this is buzzing psych rock that just feels off: fuzz-bomb guitars saw into your brain while song tempos often about-turn like a psychotic attack. Segall’s subject matter…

True Detective S2 Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams Created by Nic Pizzolatto As a parable of power, ambition and pretension overwhelming the heart, humour and humanity of a talented man, True Detective’s sophomore year is wildly successful. Of course, we’re not talking about the show or its characters, but rather creator Nic Pizzolatto, whose tough-guy intellectual overreach swamps this hollow follow-up to what was a striking and thrilling debut season. No doubt S1 had plenty of macho posturing and philosophising, but did it via Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson’s winning double act, as often tongue-in-cheek as it was jaw-droppingly trippy, and the show gripped with a chilling mystery told in he-said/he-said fractured flashbacks. This time around, Pizzolatto offers twice the nihilism in a quartet of self-loathers, half the intrigue in a…

Adele in New York: Rollin’ in the Streets On the same day her new album, 25, sold a breathtaking 900,000 copies in the U.S., Adele celebrated its release with a set at the tiny New York club Joe’s Pub with 200 impossibly lucky fans. Not long after she hit The Tonight Show (above), where she joined Jimmy Fallon and the Roots to perform the single “Hello” on classroom instruments. “I love New York,” says the singer. “I was about to move there, and then I got pregnant. I have a million memories.” JOCK-ROCK TALK Giants superfan Jon Bon Jovi made nice with opposing quarterback Tom Brady in New Jersey. The singer is readying his band’s next album, slated for release in 2016. STING LIKE A BEE Pink and Sting caught…

“I wasn’t reared on country music per se, not Top 40 country.” SHAKEY GRAVES, AKA ALEJANDRO Rose-Garcia, first came to the attention of Australian audiences early last year when he toured with fellow American songsters Shovels & Rope. His blending of Americana, blues and rock & roll has also hit chords elsewhere around the globe. Last September, Rose-Garcia took out the Emerging Artist of the Year gong at the annual Americana Awards in Nashville – no mean feat for a man whose debut album, Roll the Bones, was only released in 2011. He is, however, adamant he’s not an ‘Americana’ artist, at least not as other people may see it. “I would never refer to my music as Americana, it feels like Americana is everything that’s not rap,” he laughs.…

When Canadian folk-rock prankster Mac DeMarco was feeling cramped in the windowless Brooklyn loft he shared with nine people, he went on Craigslist and found a house on a dingy stretch of Jamaica Bay in Far Rockaway, Queens. There, he recorded 2015’s Another One, on which he gives out his address and tells fans to stop by – a questionable decision for an A-list indie star (and huge festival draw) with a rabid fan base. “We started getting 60, 70 people a day coming by,” he says. “It’s nice kids are into it enough to travel to a weird New York neighbourhood.” To see an exclusive video of DeMarco at home in Queens, visit http://rsaus.com/macdemarco .…

FEW SCIENTISTS ARE MORE WIDELY BELOVED BY THE PUBLIC than the amiable David Suzuki. His background is in genetics (he was a professor at the University of British Columbia until his 2001 retirement), but the 79-year-old Canadian biologist, broadcaster and environmentalist has spent the past five decades explaining the wonders of nature – and, increasingly, the threats to our survival from climate change – to a popular audience on radio, television, and through his best-selling books; the most recent of which, Letters to my Grandchildren, is a mix of memoir, philosophy text, and urgent call to action. He’s coming to Australia in March for a run of events, including an appearance at WOMADelaide, where he’ll be talking about the greatest problems of our age, such as whether or not we’d…

ELTON JOHN HAS SPENT THE past few years making mostly reflective and piano-based albums like 2010’s Leon Russell collaboration The Union and 2013’s sparse, sombre The Diving Board. But early last year, he decided to head in a radically different direction. “I was in Honolulu playing a show with my band, and I said to my guitarist Davey [Johnston], ‘Go out and buy 12-string guitars’,” he says. “‘I want to hear lots of them on this record. We’re going to make an up record.’” John asked longtime songwriting partner Bernie Taupin to come up with a batch of joyful, uplifting lyrics. “I think he felt there’s enough pain and suffering in the world without my contributing to it,” says Taupin. “I wanted to write things that were really hook-driven. It…

ONE SUNDAY NIGHT IN THE spring of 2014, David Bowie walked into 55 Bar, a 96-year-old jazz joint tucked away on a quiet side street in New York’s West Village. A friend, jazz bandleader Maria Schneider, had suggested he check out the night’s headliner, a quartet led by saxophonist Donny McCaslin. Bowie grabbed a table near the stage, took in their set, then left without speaking to the band. “A server was like, ‘Wait, was that David Bowie?’” McCaslin says. “It started dawning on people.” A few weeks later, McCaslin got an email: Bowie wanted the band to join him in the studio. “I thought, ‘This is David Bowie, and he chose me, and he’s sending me an e-mail?’” McCaslin says. “I tried not to think about it too much.…

“I try and fill my brain with as much clutter as possible.” SOUNDS LIKE: A shambolic mix of psychedelic blues and manic punk, ripping open the cushions of a vintage paisley couch and lighting the stuffi ng on fire FOR FANS OF: The Birthday Party, A Place to Bury Strangers, Kurt Vile WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: London trio Yak’s introduction to Jack White’s Third Man Records was a 10-minute stoner rock take on folk standard “Cumberland Gap”, a distant cry from Lonnie Donegan’s frenetic skiffle version that was a hit in the Fifties. According to the group’s gregarious singer-guitarist Oliver Burslem – an ex-thrift store operator who used to host jam sessions in the shop’s basement – the performance video reached White’s friend Ben Swank of Soledad Brothers and…

SOUNDS LIKE: Soulful, seductive electronica; what Catwoman might listen to before a night out on the prowl FOR FANS OF: Emma Louise, Charlotte OC, Glass Animals WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: Now in her third incarnation (she previously went by her birth name, Grace Woodroofe, then Grace), Woodroofe’s new moniker is necessary as she breaks with her more acoustic past and goes electronic on her debut EP as R.W. Grace, Love It, Need It, Miss It, Want It. Championed by the late Heath Ledger as a teenager, the then-bluesy Woodroofe toured California with Ben Harper at 17, but more recently she’s supported Alt-J and Glass Animals. Last year’s “Pluto”, produced by TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek, was a noirish slice of alt-pop with a darkly futuristic film clip and…

London producer Jamie Smith (a.k.a. Jamie xx) made one of 2015’s best LPs with In Colour, an album of downtempo dance music paced to feel like one of his DJ sets. Smith’s excellent Spotify playlist collects more than 100 records he’s DJ’d himself: low-key house and obscure disco with detours into Jamaican dancehall, hip-hop and even indie folk. It’s a great deep dive that helped him organise his listening: “I have a lot of records,” he says, “and I’m not very tidy.”…

WHEN SCOTT EAST- wood was 18, he wanted to buy a used truck. So he asked his dad for $10,000. It wasn’t an insane request – after all, the dad in question was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history. But Clint Eastwood wasn’t in a giving mood and turned his son down. “I remember thinking, ‘What a fucking dick!’ ” says Scott, who managed to scrape together $1,000 for a 13-year-old Crown Victoria. “But now that I busted my ass for so many years, I think, ‘I am fucking glad he did that.’ ” He’s also glad his dad said no to casting him in 2014’s American Sniper. Or, rather, simply ignored his audition: “I just didn’t get a callback.” Luckily, the younger Eastwood, 29, inherited a lot…

WHEN KRYSTEN Ritter looks in the mirror, she might see a model, a sass-talking romcom sidekick or the kind of irreverent funny person who would star in a sitcom featuring the phrase “Don’t Trust the B----” in the title. All of which she has been. “[But] I would not see what the culture described to me as a female superhero,” she says. “Like Wonder Woman or someone in those, like, slutty costumes? No way.” Which is exactly why the 33-year-old is the perfect choice for the starring role in Netflix’s new show Jessica Jones – it’s far darker than your typical men-in-capes melodrama. The series, based on a Marvel comic from the early 2000s, follows a superhero who, after a traumatic experience, ditches the costume and becomes a private investigator.…

JERROD CARMICHAEL ESTAB- lished himself with great, button-pushing stand-up bits about the Trayvon Martin trial and enjoying Chik-Fil-A sandwiches despite the company’s anti-gay politics (“I didn’t choose to like Chik-Fil-A – I was born this way”). He inspired Spike Lee to direct his first comedy special in years and held his own against Seth Rogen in Bad Neighbours. But last year, Carmichael pulled off an even bigger coup: proving his radical voice could work on a network sitcom. The Carmichael Show, an old-school multicamera series in the mould of Norman Lear’s All in the Family, was the surprise hit of the U.S. summer, with a six-episode run that earned high ratings and critical praise for its sharp takes on big topics like transgender issues and Black Lives Matter. (If protests…

LET’S CALL HIM “KEN”. KEN IS 25, has a master’s degree from Stanford and works for a tech startup in San Francisco, doing a little bit of everything: hardware and software design, sales and business development. Recently, he has discovered a new way to enhance his productivity and creativity, and it’s not Five Hour Energy or meditation. Ken is one of a growing number of professionals who enjoy taking “microdoses” of psychedelics – in his free time and, occasionally, at the office. “I had an epic time,” he says at the end of one such day. “I was making a lot of sales, talking to a lot of people, finding solutions to their technical problems.” A microdose is about a tenth of the normal dose – around 10 micrograms of…

1. The Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers Their sleaziest album returned like a bourbon breakfast spiced with a lost Eric Clapton cameo and deliciously leering live and alternative takes. 2. Bob Dylan The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966 The evolution of acoustic, electric and “wild mercury” Dylans, up-close and giggling in studio outtakes spanning two, six or (gulp) 18 discs. 3. Bruce Springsteen The Ties That Bind Turns out The River wasn’t so much an overflow as a mid-stream sample. The classic double of 1980 was the quadruple and then some of 2015. 4. Skyhooks Don’t You Believe What You’ve Seen Or You’ve Heard The glam-yobbos’ hits are cultural cornerstones but those first two albums in full (and expanded) made for serious Oz larrikin archaeology. 5. The Amorphous…

Chairlift Moth Sony Listening to Chairlift’s bold and breezy third record, you can’t help but think that working with the Queen of Pop might have rubbed off on them. The Brooklyn duo of frontwoman/ producer Caroline Polachek and multi-instrumentalist/producer Patrick Wimberly collaborated with Beyoncé on her self-titled album, yielding a track called “No Angel” co-written and co-produced by Polachek. But on Moth, Polachek’s declarations of love are more openhearted than Beyoncé’s. She’s smitten and unapologetic on “Moth to the Flame”, a sherbetty, convivial synth-pop jam. “Romeo” is more conceptual, a paean to the virgin huntress Atalanta fittingly set to a skittish running beat, while “Ch-ching” bounces along on clipped hip-hop beats and Bollywood cues. The comparatively stripped back “Polymorphing”, an ode to getting high on painkillers, harks back to earlier…

Savages Adore Life Matador/Remote Control The cover pic is a fist raised in a power salute. The disc inside makes good on that image. “We wanted to write the hardest, most extreme songs we could ever write,” frontwoman Jehnny Beth says in the album bio. It’s not like their impressive 2013 debut, Silence Yourself, was anything less than punishing. But the four women of Savages go one harder with opening track “The Answer”, every instrument lurching wildly in a post-punk racket and Beth commanding “If you don’t love me, don’t love anybody!” in a quivering wail that suggests Siouxsie Sioux crossed with Patti Smith. Adore Life is an album about love, but don’t expect hearts and flowers. In the world of Savages, love is intense, demanding, engulfing and dangerous. “This…

The Big Short Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt Directed by Adam McKay IT SOUNDS LIKE A HORROR show: a doomsday epic about the 2008 financial crisis and the Wall Street wolves who got rich off it. Gone were the homes, jobs and savings of average Joes. But wait. As directed and written by Adam McKay – the dude behind Anchorman and other giddy hits with Will Ferrell, his partner on the website Funny or Die – The Big Short is hunting bigger game. I’d call it a Restoration comedy for right the fuck now, a farce fuelled by rage against the machine that relentlessly kills ethics, and a hell of a hilarious time at the movies if you’re up for laughs that stick in your throat. Based…