Webcuts Music

It’s been a long time time between drinks for The Charlatans and Australia. Fresh from playing their Some Friendly 20th Anniversary shows around the UK The Charlatans were down under recently with a more conventional touring schedule. It’s certainly not the fan fest that they are used to back home but a rapturous welcome still greets the band. With a set drawn mostly from their very early material honed through recent tours, and the obligatory new songs that every band pulls out, it’s a different set to what fans might expect but shows the depth of quality over their long career.

Touched by the somewhat friendly eclectic hand of The Charlatans for their tenth album in twenty years.

It’s Summer festival time in Europe, but over in Australia it’s Winter and Webcuts was there to brave the chill and celebrate Splendour in the Grass‘ tenth birthday with 32,000 others at the new Woodford location in Queensland. Over the three day weekend our reviewers witnessed a phenomenal selection of old and new favourites including — Ash, Band of Horses, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Cloud Control, The Drums, Grizzly Bear, Jonsi, LCD Soundsystem, Paul Kelly, Pixies, School of Seven Bells, Scissor Sisters, The Strokes, Tame Impala, The Vines, Yeasayer, and believe it or not, a whole lot more!!

Two of Sydney’s finest epic rock bands; one (Bridezilla) favouring a dark brand of folk and the other (Decoder Ring) post-rock electronica, strut their wares in Brisbane.

There’s no sitting on the fence about Scottish troubadour James Yorkston’s ninth album, which consists of traditional folk songs featuring the likes of “Mary Connaught and James O’Donnel” and “Little Musgrave”.

We give an in-depth rundown on 2009′s Splendour in the Grass festival including the good – The Flaming Lips, Happy Mondays, Bloc Party, Doves, Sarah Blasko, Specials, You Am I, MGMT and the frankly rather appalling – Kram, Grinspoon.

The second splendid day of Splendour in the Grass 2009. We catch Kram, Jack Ladder, Bob Evans, The Gutter Twins, White Lies, The Doves, The Flaming Lips and er, Grinspoon.

Will it be knives out for Detroit’s Randoph Chabot aka Daestro or maybe a friendly slap on the back instead?

To hell with good intentions – Future of the Left’s second album blows everything else out of the water.

Brisbane’s Grand Atlantic avoid the sophomore slump with a successful swim in the genres of alternative rock and power-pop.