In the cockney rhyming slang lexicon there really should be an entry marked “Gemma Ray” that translates to “The Hard Way” for the sultry Essex singer’s career is one filled with false starts, battles with illness and sheer bloody mindedness. Her first foray into the music world leading the Gemma Ray Ritual produced two albums in the mid 2000s that were largely ignored (and are now out of print). Then she was knocked sideways by the cruel condition known as ME and after struggling to record her first solo release The Leader, due to that illness, saw it greeted by indifference. Her luck started changing last year after her cinematic take on blues, rock and pop Light’s Out Zoltar! and the Latin infused single “100 mph (in 2nd gear)” saw her tour all over the world including Australia. While here she made an appearance on ABC’s music quiz show Spicks and Specks — surely Gemma is the only person who could make singing from the Golden Circle cook book sexy.

Barely finished promoting and touring Zoltar! Ray has just released an album of bare, bluesy covers It’s a Shame About Ray which draw its song pool from classic rock, jazz and blues artists like Buddy Holly, Lee Hazelwood, Etta Fitzgerald and Etta James, alternative heroes such as Sonic Youth, Mudhoney and The Gun Club, and a few surprises by The Obits, Gallon Drunk and Shirley Bassey. Webcuts catches up with the brunette with the beehive while she is touring South Africa to talk knives, the new album, Rosemary’s Baby, illness affecting songwriting and the recording of new material.

I’ve got to first ask about the knife you use as a guitar slide. There was an incident in Oslo where you injured yourself with that knife wasn’t there?

Yes, I did a show in Oslo — I use a knife to make beautiful noises, in a nice transcendent way — and on the last song of the set I stabbed it into the stage but by hand slid down the handle and the knife cut my hand. I didn’t realize how bad it was and before I got to the backstage room I passed out and they had to take me to hospital and get stitched up.

The knife is just a means to an end really. I used to use a guitar slide to resonate on the strings because I use an open tuning but it wasn’t quite long enough, I’d stab at the strings and it made ugly sounds so I needed to find something longer and the knife was the first thing I found in the kitchen… It does the job.

You’ve just released an amazing covers album which was recorded in New York in three days between Christmas and New Years. When the idea for that come did about, was it somewhere between the turkey and Christmas pudding?

(laughs) Yeah it was post Christmas pudding: “I’m going to do record an album!”

It wasn’t an idea as such; it was more of a happy accident. I made friends with Matt Verta-Ray (a member of Heavy Trash with Jon Spencer) who’s got a great analogue studio in New York and he invited me to record a couple of tracks for fun. We both enjoyed it so much he invited me to come back and do more so I got a cheap flight for Christmas and spent a couple of days there and it turned into an album. I just liked the thought of something being spontaneous and in the moment without having a definite objective. Matt’s set up has a great sound, he’s got these great old amps and we did it live pretty much.

Were you surprised how fast you could cut an album and then get it released?

The label really liked it and wanted to release it. While everything I record means something to me this isn’t a big statement to the world it’s just something I enjoyed doing and hope other people enjoy it too. It was cathartic because it’s so stripped down, usually when recording my songs I go nuts and track everything up ten times, so it was an nice change. I’m on an independent label (Bronzerat) who are great because they don’t do everything by the book, they’re quite spontaneous and I think for both of us it just felt right to throw it out there and see what people thought.

You mentioned you’d been playing some of the songs in your live set. Have all the songs on It’s a Shame… been played in concert?

There were only a couple that I had been playing live, “I’ve got a Crush on You” and “Put a Bolt In the Door” were the two that I had recorded in October as an off the cuff late night session, but that’s all. I’ve been playing some of the others at home, knocking around with them for a couple of years and some are totally new. But most of them chose me in a way; they were in my head or came into my life, particularly the Shirley Bassey track (“Hey Big Spender”). I don’t really like her but my best friend passed away and she was a theatrical, glamorous girl and her family chose to have that song played at her cremation, so I had it stuck in my head. That’s why it struck me to totally take the glamour out it and record it in a slightly warped way. Some songs just came into my life, it wasn’t like “oh I love that song I have to cover it” but a couple of them are certainly hats off to bands that I like.

There’s a couple in particular that stand out for me. “Rosemary’s Baby Vs Drunken Butterfly” which juxtaposes the melody from the theme to Rosemary’s Baby with lyrics from Sonic Youth’s “Drunken Butterfly”. How did the idea to combine those two come about?

It was a happy accident really. I’m a big fan of Krzysztof Komeda the composer who has scored most of Roman Polanksi’s films and I absolutely love the theme from Rosemary’s Baby. I had been playing that tune to myself, and I had also wanted to cover a Sonic Youth song but I wasn’t doing any of them justice. One day I had the lyrics to “Drunken Butterfly” written out in front of me and I just sung that along with the guitar at home and I really liked the way they fit together, I think it sounds like a creepy stalker song, but it wasn’t a master plan.

Have you ever merged the lyrics of one song with the melody of another before?

No. It was just the fact that a piece of paper was placed in my eyesight at a certain time. That’s what I love about music there’s these random little moments that you can’t control but you have the pleasure of capturing.

I’m also curious how you discovered Gallon Drunk?

Well I was a bit young when they were at their peak (early ‘90s – Ed) but I remember going to a concert a couple of years ago and they just blew me away. They were everything that music should be for me: edgy, dangerous and passionate. It felt cathartic, like being in a Church. I very loosely got to know some members of the band through common friends but I was more of a fan really. I thought they’d done a killer album with The Rotten Mile (2007) which had “Put a Bolt In the Door” on it. I changed it to “Put a Bolt On the Door” but I think they like it.

I saw them in 2000 headlining an indie festival at the Scala in London and their mix of punk, blues and soul was a revelation.

Oh did you! God I’d love to have seen them then. If I’d seen them in 2000 it would’ve changed my life but where I come from you don’t get many underground bands.

For the older songs that you cover were they influenced by your parent’s record collection at all?

No (laughs), my parents are not musically inclined. But my dad had a Country Great’s cassette that had Buddy Holly on it that he used to play in his pick up truck when he picked me up from Brownies or school or whatever. So the Buddy Holly song I kind of did it for my Dad even though he probably wouldn’t like it because it’s a depressing version — “Why can’t you make happy music? In our day everyone made happy music”.

Have you got any feedback from any of the artists?

I must admit because it was so unplanned it was a bit of an afterthought to ask if anyone minded. I heard from Rick Froberg from The Obits, he and his band really liked it (“SUD” appeared on The Obits’ 2009 album I Blame You). Also Thurston Moore and Kim Gorden liked “Drunken Butterfly”, they said nice things via e-mail. A lot of people aren’t around unfortunately. I’d like to get in touch with Lloyd Price as he’s such a great songwriter but I haven’t attempted that yet. Although I wouldn’t assume that every artist will automatically like my version or be even be flattered by them.

Gemma Ray – Touch Me I’m Sick

I couldn’t help but be struck by your experiences with ME/CFS, something I’ve suffered from for a decade now myself. It impacts all parts of someone’s life but I was wondering how it affected your songwriting?

It made me more focused. I’ve made music since I was fifteen and it’s been a slow journey because I’ve kept my own style along the way but I was going out and getting drunk more often and seeing friends. As you’ve probably experienced, when it hit me bad I couldn’t really do that, not without losing a month to recover. So when I was at my worst it made me record the two records because the only thing I could do was sit at home and play guitar. I was pretty ill when I recorded The Leader and I had to have short sessions and stick to one or two takes, I couldn’t be such a perfectionist. It gave that album a certain character, it’s a lot scrappier and I like the charm of that.

With Lights Out Zoltar! I started to get a bit better and in the studio I’d find a guitar amp room or cupboard and take in a pillow and quilt and take a rest every few hours. So it really focused me and those rests which I wouldn’t have needed normally gave me a lot of clarity on judging the music I was recording and that really became a powerful tool. It’s a Shame About Gemma Ray is the first one where I didn’t have to have more than one rest per session as I’ve been getting better, touch wood.

That’s fantastic to hear. So are you recording any new songs?

Yeah I’m halfway through writing and recording my new album. I started that in Australia in April, when I couldn’t leave because of the Icelandic volcano. I spent a week in a studio in Australia and recorded four songs and then for doing a festival in Norway I was given a studio for two weeks in this remote island which was so idyllic I can’t even describe it. So I’m ten tracks into my new album, but I don’t have a fixed address at the moment so I’m trying to beg and borrow studio time wherever I go. That impromptu aspect is going to be a very big part of the next album.

What direction are the songs heading towards, I’d assume they’re lusher than It’s a Shame..?

Yes it’s definitely going to be a big production. It’s a big step up from what I’ve done before but there’s still similar threads. I won’t give too much away because god knows how it’ll turn out, but it will be fresh and vibrant, and upbeat… it certainly feels more upbeat.

We’ll leave you, dear reader, with an acoustic version of one of the tracks from It’s a Shame About Gemma Ray, a sparse, decidedly non-punk take on The Gun Club’s “A Ghost on a Highway”. Thanks to Gemma for her time and enthusiasm and head to Gemma’s MySpace for more Rays of light

Question assistance: Craig Smith

Photos: Louis Vorster (top), Sarah Dawson (portrait, thumbnail)

Hazards of Swimming Naked + Lion Island + Mr. Maps + Hunz
The Hi-Fi Bar, Brisbane
21st August 2010

Brisbane bands why has Webcuts forsaken thee? We try to make amends tonight seeing four in one go, but immediately the problem that plagued our last attendance at the Hi-Fi is evident again. Webcuts suggests The Hi-Fi invests in some inflatable extras or rent-a-crowd to pad out the room in future. Credit to Hunz, essentially vocalist/keyboardist Hans van Vliet joined live by Phil Evans on bass and Richie Young on drums, who perform like it’s a full house of a thousand punters. Hunz’ glitch-pop is heavy on percussion featuring electronic drum pads, acoustic drums and drum programming, along with keyboards from the Martin Gore school of moody synth lines. With the rally against consumerism of “Soon Soon” comparisons to Thom Yorke are inevitable, with both sharing a high register vocal range and the bleeps and syncopated beats are similar to those of Eraser. The set ends with “You Said Hello” which sees a more playful, funky side of Hunz and has Hans severing his ties to his keyboard to get into the groove and relish the frontman role.

Mr. Maps are record label lofly’s version of Marvel comic’s Avengers as every member either plays in another of the label’s roster or are involved in running the label and its Hangar nights. Thus this gig being concurrent to a Hangar is slightly bemusing. Indie promoters of Brisbane please synch your Google calendars! The first time we witnessed Mr. Maps’ complex instrumental rock was in the round(house) theatre to mark the launch of their Mimicry of Lines and Light EP. Eighteen months on and the band have shed a guitarist, leaving all duties to fall on the nimble fingers of lead songwriter Chris Perren, and drummers have also changed with Jacob Hicks now in the stool. After tonight he shall be christened Jac Hits for the ferocity that he displays towards his kit. Recent double A-sided single “Nice Fights” b/w “Fly, You Monumental Mistake” both encapsulate the Mr. Maps experience in four minutes: intricate guitar fills, piano and cello that switch from soothing to thunderous as required, rapidly changing time signatures, epic middle eights (or is it a middle sixteenths?), breathtaking peaks and gorgeous lulls. Mimicry’s “This Mess is a Place” finishes their tenure in a triumphant barrage of noise that provides a fitting end for their last show for the year. Hopefully the break will enable their debut album Wire Empire to receive all the love and attention it richly deserves.

The first we see of Lion Island is Matthew Vale alone on stage with only his voice and acoustic guitar to earn the attention of the crowd, but one by one his fellow band mates join him on stage and the act balloons to a generous six piece (one more, violinist Skye, is absent). This is indie-pop set to widescreen mode and seeing how Belle & Sebastian, James, Tindersticks and The Arcade Fire are permanently on this writer’s iPod as soon as we see a glint of brass Lion Island have won us over. Still Vale knows that all the instruments in the world won’t mask poor songwriting, and thus the songs are full of melody supplied by himself on piano and Bec on trumpet and diverse textures courtesy of guitarists Nick and Adrian, which underpin Matthews warm tenor that bears more than a passing resemblance to Finn Andrews from The Veils. With only an EP under their belt their set is mostly unknown to the crowd but the songs are accessible and immediate enough to entice the casual listener from the get-go. A new song “Underground”, possibly off their forthcoming debut album, displays a rockier post-punk edge. In it Matthew states how his “body’s lost to the sound”. So was mine.

The most obvious difference between Hazards of Swimming Naked and the previous three acts isn’t in their sound but in their visuals. Bathed in rich reds, blues and greens that matches their aural atmospherics I can’t help wonder how much better the previous acts would’ve have been if they’d had synchronised lighting instead of “Hi-Fi house white”. An additional bonus is the crowd swelling in numbers and confidence so that they cross the moat between upper carpeted levels and the stage. While Hazards play post-rock somewhere in the vein of Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky and godspeed, the band are ridiculously adept at it. While Rick Anzolin on drums and Cameron Diery are the rocks on which the whole shebang rest on it’s the three guitarists who demand and divide attention. Gareth Rigden takes centre stage and does the majority of lead fills and solos, Chris Lait plays slightly more chords but also adds riffs too, while Adrian Diery plays a mix of lead, slide, and just general rocking the fuck out. But demarcation of guitar parts is a fruitless exercise in the end, instead you have to let each part compliment the others and allow the wall of sound to either infuse through you or wash over you. Drawn mainly from their debut album, 2009’s Our Lines Are Down, picking set highlights is a bit like choosing a lucky dip where all the prizes are the same, but special commendation goes to the beautifully intertwining melodies of “…and a Whole Assortment of Uppers and Downers”, the economic four minute wonder with clipped guitar “Sparks Fly”, and the closing paean to Italian horror director Dario Agento, “Don’t Cry for Me, Dario Agento” who should get the band to score his Profondo Rosso remake. Brisbane: three gigs across town, one venue chosen, four excellent bands seen. Let’s do it again. Soon.

Photo credits: Chris Butler, Caleb Rudd

Hazards (L-R): Adrian Diery, Rick Anzolin, Gareth Rigden, Chris Lait, Cameron Diery

We told you about the bounty of international acts coming Australia’s way in the next few months a couple of weeks back with the likes of The Charlatans, The Manics, Concrete Blonde, Interpol, The National and The Morning Benders. Now after an announcement they would play the Meredith music festival in Victoria got those in other states chomping at the bit it’s now official — Mark E Smith and his current cohorts known as The Fall are playing headline shows in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne on the back of this year’s Your Future, Our Clutter LP, which we labeled “ …a manic display of Smith at his caterwauling finest, from the ramshackle krautrock squeal of “O.F.Y.C Showcase” to the coo-ing rambling riffs of “Hot Cake””.

True, live shows in London (“…remarkably unremarkable.”) and at Primavera in Barcelona weren’t as well received but we hope their first Australian tour in over 20 years may broaden The Fall’s current Your Future… heavy set list.

The Fall Australian 2010 Tour Dates

• Dec 07 (Tue) – Sydney – Metro
• Dec 09 (Thu) – Brisbane – The Hi-Fi
• Dec 10 (Fri) – Melbourne – Billboard

Joining them at Meredith will be San Francisco’s retro indie band of the moment Girls fresh from playing Sweden’s Way Out West in which we observed them “coaxing out the harmonies and providing Webcuts with a much needed wake-up.”  Also check out our interview with singer Christopher Owens from late last year. Although rather annoyingly both Brisbane and Melbourne clash with The Fall. Argh!

Dates with Girls Australian Tour 2010

• Dec 08 (Wed) – Sydney – Manning Bar
• Dec 09 (Thu) – Brisbane – The Zoo
• Dec 10 (Fri) – Melbourne – The Corner

Meredith Music Festival

The Fall, Girls, The Dirty Three, Girls, Custard, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Neil Finn and many more.

• Dec 10-12 (Fri-Sun) – Meredith Music Festival

Last but not least is one of Webcuts’ favourite Canadian epic indie-pop troupes The New Pornographers whose album earlier this year Together was lauded by this publication earning 8.5/10: “Together, where the verses sound like chorus’ and the strings sound like guitars”. We applaud AC Newman, Dan Bejar, Neko Case (“‘Porno’s own Stevie Nicks”), John Collins, Kurt Dahle, Blaine Thurier, Todd Fancey and Kathryn Calder for including not only Brisbane but Tasmania in their impressive six date run.

The New Pornographers Australian 2010 Tour

• Nov 09 (Tue) – Brisbane – The Zoo
• Nov 10 (Wed) – Sydney – Manning Bar
• Nov 12 (Fri) – Hobart – The Republic
• Nov 13 (Sat) – Melbourne – The Hi-Fi
• Nov 14 (Sun) – Adelaide – Fowlers Live
• Nov 16 (Tue) – Perth – The Rosemount

Tickets from Handsome Tours on sale now.

We leave you with a video from The Fall’s Your Future, Our Clutter – “Cowboy George”. Lyric interpretations on an email to the usual address.

One album sure to be on “best album’s of 2010″ lists everywhere come December is LCD Soundsystem’s electronic-rock masterpiece This Is Happening. Webcuts’ Nathan Goldman awarded the record eight and half stars out of ten astutely observing that that the album was “Stunningly mature but also a really good time, it is front man James Murphy’s best and most complex explanation of himself, told in terms of fascinating and longing.” (full review).

Listening to the album, LCD’s third and most accomplished, is a bittersweet experience as its been widely reported that the opus will be the band’s last. But as the following interview during a visit to Australia as part of Splendour in the Grass indicates it may just be the end of LCD Soundsystem part uno. Chris Berkley from Static asks the big questions while LCD’s big man with the plan James Murphy answers.

Now that you’ve gone on record and warned people that This Is Happening is the last LCD album is every show a farewell? Are there people with tears in their eyes in the front row and that kind of thing?

I’m trying to minimise the histrionics, because we won’t stop touring until September 2011 so there are very few places that we’re playing right now that we won’t come back to. I think towards the end, next summer, it may feel like that. But for me right know it’s like phase one of the tour and I’m just looking forward to phase two and trying new things.

So you’re going to have to spend next year saying to people “this is definitely the last time you’ll see us”?

It’s not necessarily the last record. I would make another record. It’s more the end of this part – three records that go together, an arc. We became a bigger band than I ever expected. Something needs to stop, for me, for us all to be happy. Everyone has lives and kids and things like that, I just want it to go back to being a smaller part of our lives as a business of being a professional rock band, with tours, albums, videos and singles and tours and all that stuff. I think we’ve done the best of that that we can. We’ve gotten much farther, than expected or hoped. And if we were making another record in the same trajectory I’d be having a very hard time right now. I’d be having a bit of a crisis. I don’t know what my reasoning to plug on would be.

The main thing for me is that I don’t really want to be a famous person and I feel that we’re in a great place right now as a band where we’ve had a lot of access – people have been very nice to us and we’ve been allowed to play where we want — but I can get on a plane and nobody knows who the hell we are, you know? Which is really the measure: Can you get on a plane and do people know who you are? And nobody knows who we are.

Well from the very start there’s been a refreshing lack of artifice from both LCD Soundsystem and DFA about what you do. From your debut single “Losing My Edge” which was a very self-deprecating song, even to the art show that’s being installed this week which is called “That’s cool but can you make it more shit?”

That’s actually what we would say to Michael the art director who is putting the show up. It’s all very weird. I’m just excited that we have another New York friend here. Not that we have anything against traveling or the people we know around the world but our New York friens are a really incredible group of people that we’re very, very close to and love very, very much. And when we get to see some of them in different parts of the world it’s incredibly wonderful.

It is a novelty because you want to share those touring experiences with them as well and have fun in other places.

Yeah it’s also to share that “Oh my god you have to eat here, you have to meet these people, this is amazing…”. You just want to keep sharing that stuff with your friends.

Having that attitude also been your motto, like the name of the show, in terms of the way you’ve run the band and run the label?

Sort of. DFA isn’t DFA records. DFS isn’t DFA productions. It’s always been a group of friends and Michael’s always been one of them. There’s just this group of people who have always stuck by each other and gone out and partied and always been more fun than kids that were older than us, or kids who were younger than us. A group you could count on to be simultaneously incredibly solid and amazing people but as also as fun as a bunch of really shallow party monsters. That’s always been a big part of me — that’s what DFA is to me, a group of people. The fact that there’s a label, band, production, remix or something that’s just an emblem of that. It’s all DFA.

Since you’ve got this group of friends and support network around the world were you worried, when you decamped to LA to make This Is Happening, that what was special about the band may not have been able to be captured somewhere other than New York?

No because I’ve never done an album starting in New York. All the singles were made in New York but for the first album I went to a farm in Western Massachusetts in the country, which is pretty far away from New York. The second record I went to the same farm but I made it all silver with tinfoil. For the third record the farm was closed, and I was like “crap!” I had to figure something else out.

I thought getting a mansion in LA would be hilarious, it would be so anathematic to what we are. But also I like that stuff, I’m not just a working man. I like big dumb rock gestures and I think they’re missing, even big rock bands are little pedestrian and a little too business minded. So we had this big ramshackle mansion and we brought everybody out. At some points we had twenty people living in the mansion rambling around. Everyone had to wear white, so it looked like a cult and we’d go swimming in the pool and work on a song. So we imported the people, they’d come out for a week and then go back to New York.

So there wasn’t much outside influence? I thought if any place to lose yourself in superficiality it might’ve been somewhere like Los Angeles.

No, the way we describe it’s like a very New York way of doing things. In a good sense it’s a good New York way, in a bad sense it’s a terrible American way in that we went and recorded in the LA of our imagination, of our mind. It was this perfect 1974 LA, we ignored what LA is actually like and just went and created and imposed our idea of LA on LA. And the funny thing is it really worked.

We’d go to parties in groups of twenty people in white and we made a dent, it was a really fun time. Our friends who live in LA were saying “you guys can’t leave!”. Even though we were only there for three months we started a regular party at this place called Temporary Spaces with our chef who is a DJ and was living with us. It was an amazing time. (pauses) EMI will never pay for me to make another record. (laughs)

That’s why you have to stop. They saw the receipts from This Is Happening.

No, but if I ever did it again I would go back to that house again and make another record. But I don’t think they’d ever do it.

Obviously you’re going to tour this record into the ground, have you thought about your next move or do you not need to worry about that for the next eighteen months?

Half the reason I want to stop is so I don’t have to make a plan. Right now I know what I’m doing for the next year and a half. I’m 40, I’m not a kid, and I don’t have children and I’d like children, so to know that until I’m almost 42 I’m tied up…

Well I vote you wear boxer shorts for the next two years. Let’s keep everything in check.

(laughs) Exactly no briefs, no hot tubs!

…but I just want to be able to be more fluid with my decision making, and that’s what I’m looking forward to after this. To be like – oh, I want to try and work with this person on an opera, and I’m going to work on that, and I have an art project want to do with the New York City subway system that I’m really dedicated to and there’s some writing — writing, writing — I want to do, and there’s a film I want to make. There are a lot of things I want to do.

And soundtrack composing? After dipping your toe in the water with Greenburg, was that exciting?

It was and it wasn’t. It was great but I’m not really interested in doing soundtracks. This was a special case, I’d admired the director’s work then I met him and got on with him amazingly well, it was like hanging out with an old friend. It was like making something for a friend and I didn’t have to deal with the industry at all, because the only industry worse than music is film, you know?

First broadcast on Static on 29/07/10. Static can be heard on Sydney’s 2SER (107.3 FM) and via the Internet (www.2ser.com) every Thursday evening (AEST).

The end of winter and onset of spring then summer in the Southern Hemisphere means one thing. Well it means warmer temperatures obviously but it also means more international tours for us antipodeans starved of name acts over the winter months (yes Splendour and its sideshows, we know you were an exception). A number of big names have been announced in the past week so let’s first put our Britpop band t-shirts back on (if we can fit into them) for two of that era’s seminal UK acts who are touring within days of each other.

The Charlatans who Webcuts last caught up with in Barcelona running through their 20 year old debut album Some Friendly, Don’t Look Back style, will be in our cities for a more rounded set to support their new album Who We Touch, their 11th, out September 17th through Shock.

• 10 Nov (Wed) – Brisbane – Hi-Fi
• 11 Nov (Thu) – Sydney – Metro
• 12 Nov (Fri) -  Melbourne – Billboard
• 13 Nov (Sat) – Adelaide – Fowlers Live
• 15 Nov (Mon) – Fremantle – Metropolis

Tickets on sale 20th August through www.custommade.com.au

The Manic Street Preachers will be trailing them closely in support of their 10th studio album Postcards From a Young Man, (Sept 24, Sony) which follows the release of last year’s Journal for Plague Lovers which featured lyrics from the still fondly remembered, but still missing, Richey Edwards.

• 13 Nov (Sat) – Brisbane – Hi-Fi
• 15 Nov (Mon) – Sydney – Metro
• 18 Nov (Thu) – Adelaide – HQ
• 20 Nov (Sat) – Melbourne – Forum
• 22 Nov (Mon) – Fremantle – Metropolis

Tickets on sale 18 August through the venues or ticketek

We last told you about the Blonde Concretes, er, Concrete Blonde, who are celebrating 20 years (and I remember it quite well, yes I’m old) since the release of Bloodletting which spawned the mega-hit “Joey” back in April. Well the bloodletting will continue in Australia in October (ha! Take that London Webcuts staff).

• 19 Oct (Tues) – Brisbane – Hi-Fi
• 21 Oct (Thu) – Sydney – Enmore Theatre
• 22 Oct (Fri) – Melbourne – Palace
• 23 Oct (Sat) – Perth – Astor

Tickets: Ticketmaster, Hi-Fi on sale now.

The big news (although further afield) was The Falls/Southbound/Sunset Sounds festivals announcement. The acts that have got Webcuts excited are The National who have never failed to disappoint us live and their High Violet record of this year was wholeheartedly welcomed by all and sundry, Interpol who have us shaking in suspense for their fourth self titled album in September (through Matador/Shock), and The Morning Benders whose third album came out of nowhere to charm our socks off. Add to that the likes of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Public Enemy (playing Fear of a Black Planet), Paul Kelly (especially after his solid Splendour performance), Cloud Control, Hot Hot Heat, Peaches (DJ) and The Soft Pack (who, truth be told, we weren’t sold on their debut album, but will be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt live) and you’ve got the makings of another sensational bunch of festivals.

The Falls

• Dec 28 2010-Jan 1 2011, Lorne, Victoria
• Dec 29 2010-Jan 1 2011, Marion Bay, Tasmania

Southbound

• Jan 1-3 2011, Sir Stewart Bovell Park, Busselton, WA

Sunset Sounds

• January 4-5 2011 – Riverstage, Brisbane

The Pixies
The Zoo, Brisbane
31 July 2010

A few nights before this Pixies warm up concert for Splendour in the Grass, I had a vivid dream. In it I was the tour manager or press officer for the band and they were being put up in a luxury hotel with a huge swimming pool which they were swanning around in and (in)famously not getting along and refusing to do the show. It ended with me giving them a “look all the great rock’n’roll bands are dysfunctional, but when you’re on stage for that hour and a half you come together, that’s when you work, that’s when you function!” speech. And then I drove them to the Zoo in a black hummer.

On the actual night there was no hummers, no hissy fits and no animosity, well none visible to the audience. Deal and Francis were almost within three meters of each other (surely breaking a clause in their contact) and while there wasn’t much banter or eye contact between the two, it wasn’t like Mr. Black gave either audience or bandmates any recognition and they did share a joke at Lovering’s expense towards the end of the set.

Never seeing them in their first wave I can’t tell you exactly how they’ve aged but the Pixies were always unlikely looking rock stars — the guys were balding back in the late ‘80s, and Frank has never been a slender gent, so the 2010 Pixies really didn’t look all that different from press photos dating back twenty years. Black Francis, surely a millionaire by now, looks like he buys his clothes from K-Mart’s bargain bins, Joey Santiago a shifty looking metal rocker, Dove Lovering a mild mannered maths teacher or accountant, while Kim Deal… well Kim Deal is still cool. But their looks have always been deceptive as they soon proved: Santiago was a consummate guitarist, playing the main riffs and lead breaks faultlessly, Lovering pounded the bejeesus out of his drum kit while Deal plucked those timeless bass riffs perfectly and her sweet backing vocals proved a nice respite to Francis’ sing-speak-scream, who with his eyes closed most of the time, played rhythm guitar with focus and intensity.

Although the Pixies had visited Brisbane only back in March this time the set list was uninhibited by the myopic focus on Doolittle. Thus we got the full spectrum of the Pixies’ canon from the punk infused scream-a-thons (“Rock Music”, “Broken Face”, the Spanish language “Isla De Encanta”), to the classic trading of bass heavy verse/guitar distorted chorused anthems (“Bone Machine”, “Gouge Away”, “Gigantic”, “Hey”),  bubblegum pop (“Here Comes Your Man, “Dig for Fire”, “Monkey Gone to Heaven”), flirtations with heavy-rock (“Allison”, “Planet of Sound”) and riff-bliss indie rock (“Velouria”, “Head On”, “Debaser”). With twenty-eight songs, four more than their Splendour set, no one in the audience who witnessed this show — a gift from the heavens if ever there was one — was complaining.