Table of contents for June 2015 in Rolling Stone Australia

Queen of Pop MADONNA IS A TRUE INSPI- ration for anyone of any age or gender. She focuses on the fact that no matter what your age or gender, you don’t have to stop doing the things you love. The fact she can still go onstage and perform her heart out the same way she did 30 years ago is another reason why she’s a true inspiration to all women. Caitlin Hart, Green Point, NSW Talent Vs Looks WHILE KID ROCK (RS 762) may be a completely insane redneck, he has an extremely valid point about Beyoncé (and the likes) being the biggest thing on Earth without “a fucking ‘Purple Rain’ [or] at least one ‘Sweet Home Alabama’”. Music is so based on looks these days it’s hard to find…

BLUR’S NEW ALBUM, ‘THE MAGIC WHIP’, BEGINS with a sombre tour manager and ends with a creative triumph. In May 2013, the English quartet were on a world tour, enjoying playing together again having welcomed guitarist Graham Coxon back into the fold after a long absence, when a cancelled show in Japan left them with five days off in Hong Kong. On hearing the news, Coxon had visions of sleeping in and swimming, but frontman Damon Albarn had a different thought: why not cut the comeback album that everyone was pressing the one-time Britpop heavyweights to make? They could begin the very next morning. Coxon, somewhat to his own surprise, found himself agreeing. “There was no build-up, no-one was saying, ‘We start in the studio on this day in a…

Star Oscar Isaac has offered the most succinct summary of the relentlessly clever new sci-fi film Ex Machina, out May 7th: “I’m building fuckbots!” But no one will confuse this tense drama with Weird Science – Ex Machina, which marks the directorial debut of 28 Days Later writer Alex Garland, is an unnerving meditation on the ethics of artificial intelligence, the ever-growing power of Silicon Valley (Isaac plays the reclusive founder of a search-engine company), the nature of human desire and more. “People have a sense they’ve given up more than they knew to big tech companies, that they’ve given their humanity,” says Garland, noting the sudden Hollywood prevalence of A.I. plots and tech villains. “It bothers them.” There are only four main characters in the film, and two of…

OLD Neil Young “Don’t Be Denied” I remember finding this on vinyl 15 years ago and being floored by the rough sound of the truth. The Rolling Stones “Memory Motel” Mick was such a beautiful woman, and Keith the perfect husband – the way he sings backup is perhaps the greatest ever. NEW Courtney Barnett “Depreston” Courtney is one of the great new surrealists. I am so glad she is here, writing about apartments and remodelling homes from her unique rooftop vantage point. Nick Jonas “Chains” Definitive proof that computers have taken over the world. Nothing is real in this arctic-tundra frozen landscape of a ringtone-commercial song. Big Sean feat. E-40 “I Don’t Fuck With You” This sounds like something the bullies in school would listen to – cruel and…

The Song That Reminds Me of Growing Up The Temptations “My Girl”, 1965 “There were all types of music in my house growing up. Elvis, Prince, Top 40, Kiss, Slayer . . . But my dad used to sing this to me when I was in a bad mood or when I didn’t want to go to school. This was from kindergarten to pretty much senior year. [Laughs] I hated school. Was my dad a good singer? He’d like to say so [laughs]. I was usually annoyed because of the situation. It kind of made me laugh. He was trying.” The Song I Never Want to Hear Again Carly Rae Jepsen “Call Me Maybe”, 2012 “I remember throwing up to that song, that’s how much I hate it.…

ASHIRTLESS, DISHEVELLED KURT COBAIN PAUSES ON the backstage stairway leading to Nirvana’s dressing room at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, offers a visitor a sip of his après-gig tea, and says in a deadpan voice, “I’m really glad you could make it for the shittiest show on the tour.” He’s right. Tonight’s concert – a week into the band’s first U.S. tour in two years – is a real stinker. The venue’s cavernous sound turns songs like “Territorial Pissings” into riff pudding, and Cobain is bedevilled all night by guitar- and vocal-monitor problems. There are moments of prickly brilliance, but there is no “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, and when the house lights go up, so does a loud chorus of boos. According to the Cobain press myth – “pissy, complaining,…

Faith No More  Sol Invictus Reclamation!/[Pias] Talk about an album we never thought we’d see. One of the most wilfully contrary of all the alternative rock bands to find crossover success in the Nineties, it was surprising enough when Faith No More announced they were to reunite in 2009. But given that until recently the band (at least publicly) stated there’d never be a new album, Sol Invictus must be something of a shock even to them. What isn’t surprising is that their seventh album makes absolutely no concessions to expectations, instead presenting as a 10-track offering that in moments recalls the sonic touches that endeared them to legions worldwide – Roddy Bottum’s plinking keys, Jon Hudson’s astute power chords, Mike “Puffy” Bordin’s seismic snare hits. Overall, however, this is…

Another Little Piece of My Heart: My Life of Rock and Revolution in the ’60s Richard Goldstein Bloomsbury From his vantage of 22-year-old rock critic for New York’s Village Voice in the 1960s, journalist and author Goldstein offers a reflective memoir around the evolution of rock music and American history, as flower-power bloomed and withered and the music biz metastasised from movement to monolith. A fat, shy Jewish kid from the Bronx, he reinvented himself as a cape-clad chronicler of the counter-culture and overcame crippling self-doubt to document many cultural milestones in the most famous American decade, including the Civil Rights movement, hippie explosion in San Francisco and police riot in Chicago in 1968, getting inside with icons: Janis Joplin, the Doors, the Velvet Underground and more. Full of the…

Surfer Blood  1000 Palms Spunk “What should be a golden age starts to waver on its axis,” sings John Paul Pitts on “Covered Wagons”. That line could be summing up what happened to his band from Florida’s West Palm Beach in 2012. After their lo-fi 2010 debut Astro Coast found them surfing a wave of saltwater-infused indie-rock with the likes of the Drums and Best Coast, they made the leap to a major label, a major producer (Gil Norton of Pixies and Foo Fighters fame) and a major disappointment with follow-up record Pythons, which sanded off all their rough edges and found them stuck in a mopey rut. All the advance publicity for 1000 Palms is about a return to the old days – self-produced, home-recorded, released independently. Sounds good,…

My Morning Jacket The Waterfall Spunk /Capitol Just as Rumours is inextricable from Sausalito, My Morning Jacket’s seventh album is an aural postcard from California’s Stinson Beach. There, in a vacation home cum studio perched over a hillside, Jim James and his crew of sonic cowboys were busy getting lost in their own mystical universe. They were so inspired, they made two albums: The Waterfall and another full-length release, due out next year. Stinson Beach is world’s apart – both geographically and spiritually – from the Kentucky church gym that birthed 2011’s Circuital. And while that locale inspired MMJ to get back to their Southern roots, The Waterfall is their most sun-dappled Cali album yet. The Pacific Coast sound is all over the double-tracked guitars of “Thin Line” and the…

Digitech Trio Band Creator $360 The ability for software to analyse and adapt to music has been growing of late, from Shazam on your phone to virtual drummers in GarageBand. But Digitech have taken it to the next level with the Trio. Simply play a few chords or a riff once and the Trio will generate a drummer and a bass player for you to jam with. The most impressive thing is that this really works! “The Trio will generate a drummer and bass player for you to jam with.”…

IT WAS A CINDERELLA MOMENT that didn’t come off: Hiatus Kaiyote were in Los Angeles when Prince called, inviting the Melbourne neosoul outfit to visit him at his L.A. home. But the band had a gig that evening, plus a show in another state the next day, so the logistics didn’t work without putting the Purple One above a paying audience. “Regardless of who the person is you don’t want to screw over hundreds of fans,” explains Paul Bender, Hiatus Kaiyote’s bassist, as his bandmates – vocalist Nai Palm, keyboardist Simon Mavin, and drummer Perrin Moss – fill up the kitchen space of a brick palace home in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. The residence houses six musicians, including Bender and Mavin, rehearsal spaces, and the basement recording studio where the group…

1 OLD TO THE NEW Now into their 15th year as a band since forming in London in 2000, the members of Hot Chip looked back to some of their formative influences while recording their new album. “We do like the different eras of soul, R&B and hip-hop, and although the production [on the new album] is alluding to those things, we’re still trying to make our own sound and not be too referential,” explains singer and multi-instrumentalist Alexis Taylor. 2 FROM THE SOUL A chance meeting led to Taylor being able to include one of his favourite hip-hop groups on new track “Love is the Future”. “I was touring with the Atomic Bomb! Band and Money Mark from the Beastie Boys was the keyboard player, and he’s friends with…

Stella Mozgawa The Warpaint drummer got involved after Jono Ma from Jagwar Ma introduced her to Littlemore. Jim Moginie Formerly of Midnight Oil, played guitars and keys. “It was the wildest scene I ever saw in a studio,” he says. Kirin J. Callinan Played electric guitar alongside others; collaborating with Jim Moginie was a “wish come true”. Dave Hosking The Boy & Bear frontman calls it “a giant jam session with Nick Little-more operating as a conductor”. Touch Sensitive Michael Di Francesco (ex-Van She) brought along some of his favourite synths to play.…

Tower Records opened in 1960 in the back of a Sacramento drugstore. Over the next 46 years, it grew to 89 stores – then went bankrupt thanks to overexpansion, online piracy and the digital revolution. Soon after its demise, actor Colin Hanks, a Sacramento native, had an idea for his first documentary, All Things Must Pass. “I never knew [Tower’s] history,” says Hanks, 37. “I just knew it was from Sacramento and it had a great selection of records.” In the film, Tower stores are mourned by stars like Bruce Springsteen, Elton John and former employee Dave Grohl. (Full disclosure: I’m also interviewed in the film.) All Things Must Pass symbolises the record industry’s boom and ultimate bust, but it’s mostly a human story – an account of how a…

IN DECEMBER 2013, JUSTINE SACCO, A SE- nior publicist at IAC, made a terrible joke on Twitter: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” The Internet gleefully tore Sacco apart, but British author Jon Ronson had a different take. “There was a brutality to that which I didn’t think we were capable of,” he says. Sacco’s story is at the heart of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Ronson’s new book. It dives into the culture of public shaming, which goes back to the Puritans and beyond but has exploded online. Ronson’s examples of ruined lives range from ex-New Yorker writer Jonah Lehrer to Lindsey Stone, a charity worker who lost her job after a photo of her flipping the bird at Arlington National Cemetery went…

“IN BLOOM” NIRVANA Nevermind was the first album I bought; I was maybe seven when I heard this. I’d never heard full-on cool guitar music, and it suddenly opened up to me. “UP ON THE SUN” MEAT PUPPETS After getting into Nirvana, we discovered bands that influenced them, like the Meat Puppets. This song was really different, long and jammy and weird. “EVERYBODY HURTS” R.E.M. I learned this when I was beginning to play guitar, and it was so good for that – beautiful and emotive, and easy to play. I was superexcited. “SHAKE YER DIX” PEACHES She’s the coolest. Me and a friend would put this on before we went out to parties when we were 18, just being stupid and having fun and screaming. “TAKE FIVE” DAVE BRUBECK…

We Care a Lot Raw it may have been, but the band’s debut heralded a group unbound by genre. The alternative scene had a new act to champion. Introduce Yourself A re-recording of We Care a Lot’s title-track became an underground hit, but the album would be vocalist Chuck Mosley’s last. The Real Thing Mike Patton’s first LP was their breakthrough thanks to “Epic” and “Falling To Pieces”. The title-track is a monster. Angel Dust How to follow up a hit LP? Write anti-social songs like “Jizzlobber” that sound like guitars hitting concrete. Their best album. King For a Day... Fool For a Lifetime The first LP without guitarist Jim Martin is an underrated classic. “Evidence” remains a radio staple. Album of the Year “Ashes To Ashes” and “Last Cup…

THE GUTTED TEDDY BEARS WERE TOSSED everywhere, the slit carcasses and polyester innards strewn on the floor and kitchen table along with tens of thousands of dollars in fifties and hundreds – stacks of notes being tallied in an automatic money counter. On the table, there was a Glock .45, a Remington .308 sniper rifle, and scores of pharmaceutical vials containing thousands of opiate pills.› Standing at the threshold of a luxury condo in Tampa, Florida, Doug Dodd looked on in horror at the spectacle of a drug dealer’s den of inequity. Dodd was only 19, a student taking business courses at a local community college – when he wasn’t busy being a big-time narcotics trafficker – but he could see the obvious: His best friend was out of control.›…

Paul Weller  Saturns Pattern Warner The 56-year-old they call the Modfather has now been making solo records for 23 years, almost twice as long as his time with the Jam and the Style Council combined. And he makes it clear from the very start of his 12th album that he’s not going quietly into that good night any time soon. “White Sky” opens with psychedelic backmasking, progresses into a series of overlapping dirty guitar riffs and is joined by a beat that suggests John Bonham has been resuscitated. Then Weller starts singing in a distorted howl that tries to one-up Jack White. It’s almost as if he’s heard all the dad-rock jokes that have been tossed at him over the years and is responding with everything turned up to 11.…

Earl Sweatshirt I Don’t Like Shit Columbia On his first studio album, 2013’s Doris, the most mysterious member of L.A. shock-rap gremlins Odd Future proved himself by exploring real-life alienation. On his excellent second LP, Earl Sweatshirt keeps deepening his game – spooling out dense, mordant rhymes over zombifically blunted tracks as he somehow sucks you into his sunless reality. It’s amazing that music so claustrophobic can be this engrossing. As always, Sweatshirt is most compelling when he’s going toe to toe with his own demons. “I spent the day drinking and missing my grandmother,” he raps on “Huey”, perfectly summing up the music’s desolate vibe. “Mantra” opens with some maniac grandstanding (“With a cleaver and a .30 and some twisted weed/I pick one and let the crimson leak”), then…

Unknown Mortal Orchestra Multi-Love Jagjaguwar/Inertia Ruban Nielson has come a long way from the former Mint Chick flexing his considerable guitar chops over breakbeats in a basement. Or has he? To the casual observer, this visionary New Zealander hasn’t really deviated from the lo-fi parameters he set himself on 2011’s self-titled debut. Those casual observers are wrong. 2013’s II proved Nielson and his newly minted (get it?) trio could be “sultry” and “soulful”, as well as “psychy” and “jammy”, while Multi-Lovesees Nielson really tighten up his songwriting, with the added bonus of synths. Nielson’s favourite new toy is apparent from the moment the title track opens proceedings with some baroque-esque arpeggios and his cracked idiosyncratic voice. The song might be the best thing in UMO’s catalogue so far, with vivid…

Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck Directed by Brett Morgen Strangely, the most critical portrayal of Kurt Cobain to date comes courtesy of his own family and closest friends. Director Brett Morgen struck the motherlode when he approached Cobain’s daughter Frances Bean to co-executive-produce this dizzying montage of animated diary entries, candid interviews and rare home video. Getting Frances on-board seems to have given his interview subjects the OK to speak more candidly about Cobain than ever before. The honest, often damning recollections of Courtney Love and Cobain’s mother paint more of a picture of the real man than his lyrics or diary entries. Morgen presents these two sources in starkly different styles. Cobain’s writing and artwork is rendered in a lurid, animated swirl of angst, set to a wall of…

The last record I bought GG Allin & the Scumfucs. It’s called Eat My Fuc, and it’s actually a very rare version where he drew on the album sleeve, like a bunch of his really bad dick drawings. There’s only two of them in the world that he drew on. The last time I was starstruck I was in Brighton watching Cat Power play, and I went to get a drink. I came back to the row I was sitting in and Nick Cave was in the seat on the aisle. I was just like, I can’t tell Nick Cave to get up so I can get in the row, so I walked all the way around to the other side. I was literally starstruck. I couldn’t be like, “Excuse…

Charli Blows Up Charli XCX busted out an inflatable prop at O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London. “I wanted to make something dumb and stupid and ridiculous,” she says. SHARP-DRESSED MEN Billy Gibbons caught up with David Byrne at Carnegie Hall during rehearsals for a tribute to Byrne and Talking Heads. “His offbeat vision still rules his marvellous creations today,” says Gibbons. “A gifted artist!” POWER POP Madonna and Taylor Swift caught up at their surprise performance at the iHeartRadio Music Awards. Said Swift on Instagram: “#MyFangirlLife.” LAST OF THE BREED Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson soundchecked before a sold-out run of shows in New Braunfels, Texas. “It’s a mutual-admiration society with us,” says Nelson. STREAM DREAM A dapper Win Butler joined Jay Z and Beyoncé at the all-star launch…

FOR SOME GEN X’ERS, IT may be unnerving to see Adam Horovitz, a.k.a. Ad-Rock, convincingly (and hilariously) play an uncool dad – complete with infected sonogram tattoo – in Noah Baumbach’s dark new comedy, While We’re Young. But the truly painful moment comes toward the end, when Horovitz throws the line “We’re old men!” at co-star Ben Stiller. “I know – what’re you gonna do?” says Horovitz, 48, who returned to acting after a long absence simply because his friend Baumbach offered him a part. “At least we’re here, still.” Who did you base this character on? He is certainly like a lot of people I’ve come in contact with. When you get to be a grownup, people are like, “If you don’t have a kid, then you’re not a…

It turns out that the guy who once sang “Fuck this/And fuck that/Fuck it all” has a softer side. Anger Is an Energy: My Life Uncensored, the new memoir from John Lydon, is a hilarious and at times touching account of everything from growing up in a “piss-poor” London neighbourhood to helping raise his wife’s grandchildren. Lydon does as much praising as bomb-throwing – including some kind words for Mick Jagger, who helped Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious get a lawyer when he was accused of murdering Nancy Spungen. “I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Jagger for that,” Lydon, 59, tells ROLLING STONE. The singer gets candid, talking about trying heroin (once was enough) and how deeply his father’s death affected him. “All these fucks can run…

The announcement that Royal Headache would perform at this month’s Vivid Festival in Sydney confirmed that they’re still together – at least for now. “I left the band [in 2014] and they said, ‘Fair enough, but we have to finish the [new] record’,” vocalist Shogun explains of the Sydney act’s turbulent last few years. “It’s that one umbilical cord that’s kept me connected to the fucking band.” With “a few surprises” that include piano and organ arrangements, the follow-up to their 2011 debut is now complete, setting up the ordinarily unceremonious Caption group for a grandstand about photo homecoming as the headline act for the Vivid night curated by local record store Repressed Records. Quick to dismiss any sense of occasion, Shogun insists that the return to the stage was…

In the past five years, Ludacris has starred in three Fast and the Furious sequels (the latest, Furious 7, hit cinemas last month) and released exactly zero new albums. But don’t count him out of the rap game just yet: His latest LP, Ludaversal, is his strongest in years. “I’m my biggest critic,” says Luda, 37. “But this shit is out of control.” A few of these tracks feel aimed at people who think you’re irrelevant. Is this your “Forgot About Dre” moment? I didn’t go any-fucking-where. I shot a couple of movies, but I still know that I will slaughter any rapper out there. And to the people who feel like I might not be as good, I’m going to continue to slap you upside the fucking head until…

THREE DAYS BEFORE THE PREMIERE AT THE Sundance Film Festival in January, Courtney Love, the widow of Nirvana singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain , and Frances Bean Cobain, the couple’s only child , watched the final cut of Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck in a private screening room in Burbank, California. Brett Morgen, who wrote, directed and produced the documentary, was also present. It was an uneasy occasion. Frances, 22, had already seen Montage of Heck; she is an executive producer. Her mother – who set the project in motion eight years ago but had no role in its production – had not. Frances says Love “asked me to see it with her, because she had been putting it off for months and months”. In the screening room, the two sat together…

ON MAY 19TH, A DAY BEFORE THE WHO’S 50TH- ANNIVERSARY tour arrives at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, Pete Townshend will celebrate his 70th birthday. “I’m not going to make a big deal out of it,” he says, before adding, somewhat mysteriously, “I’ve made a few promises to myself that I want to keep private. I think I owe myself quite a lot now.” ¶ It’s two days before kickoff , and Townshend is calling from London, where he has settled into his comfortable pre-tour routine. Each morning, he gets picked up at his home in Richmond by his security man Mark Squires, who takes him to a rehearsal space at Pinewood Studios, a historic studio 40 minutes away. There, he is greeted by familiar faces. “When I walk in…

Brandon Flowers The Desired Effect Universal BY MARCUS TEAGUE Brandon Flowers wants it so bad. Since the Killers morphed from chintzy dance-rock band to chintzy arena-rock band, precisely around the time “When You Were Young” began their cheeky rifle through Bruce Springsteen’s catalogue, Flowers has been doing his darnedest to insert himself into the Great American Songbook™. While his band splash out on any and all perversions of pop-rock thievery (tip: largely why they’re so much fun), the perpetual man-child has tried his hand at the blue-collar prose of his heroes with nematic results. Flowers is a showman. They never speak the truth. His 2010 solo debut, Flamingo, desperately wanted for his band’s trademark firepower – a study in what Killers’ albums might sound like if no-one popped a vein.…

Django Django  Born Under Saturn Because Music/Warner Django Django haven’t ostensibly released anything new since their 2012 debut unexpectedly “went nuts”. But their contribution to the Late Night Tales series last year was telling in its scope. It zigzagged its way from Seals and Crofts to Philip Glass, the Beach Boys to Roy Davis Jr, before culminating in their take on the Monkees’ “Porpoise Song”. The band said they wanted to pay homage to the records of their childhood, while filtering in the hip-hop and dance that would influence them as adults. And this approach still guides them – whether curating a mixtape or recording Born Under Saturn, their long-awaited return. If restraint is something that defined their debut album, first track “Giant” suggests something more dense. It opens sparsely…

Best Coast California Nights Harvest/EMI Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino has always had a way of inviting you into her insular world. On 2010’s Crazy For You it was boys, beaches, bongs (allegedly) and her cat Snacks. Things got darker, but no less absorbing, on 2012’s The Only Place, which Jon Brion helped make sound like the end of summer, while 2013 mini-album Fade Away was a more expansive primer to the nocturnal world she inhabits in and out of the studio on California Nights. A self-described night owl, Cosentino says she was inspired by after-hours L.A., when there’s a “calmness in the air” that allows her to forget her troubles and “sink deep into this different kind of world”. She captures that feeling so evocatively on “California Nights”, the album’s…

Zac Brown Band  Jekyll + Hyde Varvatos/Republic/BM/Southern Ground They triangulate country bounce, classic-rock flex and jam-band wiggle like crossover wizards. Their frontman has a buttery midrange tenor, can sell the heck out of a song, and keeps his lumberjack beard nicely trimmed. With the possible exception of their relentless likability, there’s nothing unlikable about the Zac Brown Band. On their fourth LP, they bang out styles with such preposterous ease – Seventies Philly soul, old-timey gospel, Celtic folk, metal, reggae, jazz – they could double as a single-band music-placement agency. If only they reached a little further. “Beautiful Drug” works pharmacology-of-love metaphors into an arena-pop framework with a side of banjo. Guest Chris Cornell adds hard-rock cred to “Heavy Is the Head”, which nods to “Smoke on the Water” and…

Orange Is the New Black S2 Taylor Schilling, Yael Stone Created byJenji Kohan Imagine if in Season Two of The Sopranos we’d stepped away from big Tony to focus on those who had up until then been supporting characters. That’s the approach taken in the sophomore season of Orange Is the New Black, the Netflix dramedy based on Piper Kerman’s experience of doing a year in jail for an ancient drug crime. While TV Piper – surnamed Chapman, played by Taylor Schilling – served as our guide to Litchfield Penitentiary in the first year, this second season sees creator Jenji Kohan comfortable enough to make her season-long story arc only as important as the other inmates. We do start with Piper, banged up in Chicago, thinking she’s about to face…

Taylor 614CE $6,299 rrp Taylor’s new 614CE sees the guitar makers change their thinking on this popular model Taylor’s 2015 614CE’s biggest change is the solid maple back and sides creating more “oomph” and dynamic range. The sound is rich yet mellow, making this a great guitar for finger picking and live playing. Protein glues and a super-thin finish add subtle improvements to the original 614, but the switch from rosewood to maple is the main game-changer. The neck is perfectly shaped for effortless playing, and the finish, inlays and action are all exactly what you’d expect from a premium Taylor guitar. The 614CE is a world-class electric acoustic guitar. JBL EON 615 $899 rrp (each) Small venues and bands that like to BYO PA – meet your…