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.

I hate records that make me feel old by just looking at the album artwork. A painting of a bearded, greying Joe Pernice staring straight at me, almost like I’m holding up a mirror, minus the glasses, minus the beard (when I remember to shave). It’s been a long road for the Pernice Brothers, 12 years since their debut Overcome By Happiness, and much longer road for Joe Pernice who’s been honing his craft since the early 90’s with Scud Mountain Boys. You’re clocking up almost two decades of this Joe, and it shows.

Musically, it’s business as usual for the Pernice Brothers, maybe even over-enthusiastically so (see opener “Bechamel“ where it sounds like Joe Pernice has just run up a flight of stairs) in which the regular cast of characters (including Pretenders gun for hire, James Walbourne) decamp to an attic come studio in Massachusetts and bash out an album. If Joe Pernice was a little more prolific, he’d be hitting his Elvis Costello circa Spike phase about now, but Goodbye Killer seems as good as, if not better.

Absent since 2006’s Live A Little, a brisk, 10 song, just shy over 30 minute work-out was what the Pernice Brothers needed to get the blood rushing again. Like “Bechamel”, the Morrissey-riffing urgency of “Jacqueline Susann” and the vaudeville country-twang of “We Love The Stage” where Pernice recalls the highs and lows of touring “it doesn’t matter if the crowd is thin/we sing to six the same we sing to ten” catch you on the unfamiliar-territory back foot. Pernice’s lingering sour moods temporarily replaced by comedy and some old fashioned rocking out.

“Not The Loving Kind”, “The Great Depression”, “Fucking And Flowers” are all perfect readymade song titles for Joe to suck the good times out of life and relationships and the general act of knocking boots.  If you get no satisfaction (or a “he understands my pain“ moment) in hearing how shit life and love can be, then Joe Pernice is not the man for you to lend your ear. That said, “Not The Loving Kind” moves lyrically and musically, but then again you are dealing with a man knows which buttons to push.

The riff in “Something For You” nags with familiarity the same way a Teenage Fanclub song would have the same effect, both bands dipping their feet in the same string-bending, harmony-soaked, wading pool and seeing what shapes the ripples make. It’s the Faces “Ooh La La” meets America’s “Sister Golden Hair” on the title track and in Walbourne’s fast fret-work on “Newport News” that you realise Goodbye, Killer is unlike any other Pernice Brothers record to date. It may be business as usual, but I don’t recall them ever sounding quite this good.

Way back in January this year, Baltimore’s Beach House released one of 2010′s great albums with their third release, Teen Dream. On September 13, the band will release a 6-track iTunes session which includes re-imaginings of 5 previous album tracks and an entirely new, unreleased track, “White Moon”. After the release of the session, Beach House, with an expanded live line-up, will set out on a 7-week North American tour with Vampire Weekend.

The 6-track EP includes re-workings of “Walk in the Park,” “Norway,” “Silver Soul,” and “Real Love” from Teen Dream, “Gila” from Devotion, the band’s 2008 release, and a totally new track White Moon. All songs were recorded as a live session in one room with Victoria Legrand on keys and vocals, Alex Scally on guitar, bass pedals and vocals, and Daniel Franz on drums. The session was produced and mixed by Beach House and Chris Coady.

You can listen to “White Moon”, here.

Beach House – White Moon (i-Tunes Sessions) by Bella Union

Alex Scally of Beach House had this to say about the recording of the session…

“We recorded these six songs after touring for 12 straight weeks. Whenever we are asked to record stripped-down versions of our songs, we cringe, because for us this means that all of the subtlety and attention to detail will be lost, and a rich song will be turned into a bland, generic song. So, when iTunes offered to have us record a stripped-down live session, we were very hesitant. We found out that we could record with our friend Chris Coady, and we agreed, believing we might be able to make it meaningful. During the week or two of sound-checks leading up to the recording, we worked through the songs and attempted to rewrite them with fewer and different tones. Listeners can judge whether or not we were able to make these ‘stripped-down’ versions mean something.”

For anyone who’s ever seen the Los Angeles based singer Jonneine Zapata play a live show, her presence can be daunting. As if she’s channeling the very ghost of Jim Morrison, she has a stare that will cut through an audience as she plays with an intensity that is noticeable from the beginning and that lasts right up to the final notes of the performance. This goes hand in hand with the kind of music she writes and plays, and her debut album Cast The Demons Out, an intensive, bluesy cycle of songs, each of which seem to be an attempt at casting out the aforementioned demons.

Zapata opens the record with an adjuration for love, and a later admission of “I’m good looking, you’re good looking, what are we gonna do?” over tight drums and a quiet electric guitar. The instrumentals are sparse but don’t feel incomplete, and the themes of betrayal, insecurity and sadness as well as attempts to confront and address these things line up with the tones of the minimal percussion, withdrawn guitars and pleading vocals. The easy comparison here is PJ Harvey, more so for the visceral songwriting and smoky vocals than the actual construction of the songs.

The album is consistent throughout, what you hear from the beginning is what you get all the way through to the bonus track at the end of the record: Zapata’s gorgeous singing lead by a strong-willed guitar. For a moment it almost teeters on the edge of being too slow and drab, the momentum comes to a stand-still just over half way through on the trifling “Bandit” and towards the end on the elongated “Cowboy”, but it recaptures its husky spirit on “Out In The Woods” before it’s finished. Eleven mostly repetitious songs seem to be just enough to get Zapata’s concepts across and allowing for the occasionally stagnant track.

What eventually makes Cast Out The Demons so fascinating is precisely what its title commands: the end of the record is hopeful, seeming to indicate that the emotional journey therein has been successful rather than simply self-indulgent brooding. “And the winter is a beast/rest is what we need/come again, spring/with a new family…” leads us to believe that all the fighting with these particular demons was worth it. This time around, the tone was bleak and cold, very much an album for the winter months. But spring is around the corner, and whether Zapata handles that as eloquently as she handled the gloominess before it will undoubtedly decide her future as either a good singer/songwriter or a great one.

It’s not so much lurking in the 3 minute bluster of their debut single “How Long”, but a part of its DNA, where you quickly catch onto Ramona’s game. In the first 10 seconds alone they manage to answer the eternal question of “What if Debbie Harry joined The Ramones?”. You see it in singer Karen Anne’s bleached blonde locks and her breathy purr, and you hear it all over “How Long”, the harmonies n’ hooks, and the buzzsaw guitars that graduate with honours from The Ramones “Rock n’ Roll High School”.

It’s just one song/one question answered, and without wanting to pigeon-hole this Brighton-based 4-piece on the strength of one song alone (or making incorrect presumptions about the origin of the band name!) we thought best to rattle off 15 more and drop Ramona a line. Thus becoming the first in our “Who The Hell Are…?” Q&A’s where we send out, Smash Hits-style, a random bunch of questions to a new act that has caught our eyes and ears, and then let them answer in their own words.

With “How Long” due for imminent release and a UK tour that starts on September 1 at the Flower Pot in Kentish Town, London, the band have also managed to find time to accept an invitation to play the opening of the Burberry store in New York. It’s beginning to seem like Ramona didn’t have to wait that long at all.

01. Who are you?

We are Ramona, a 4 piece band from Brighton.  Karen Anne (vocals, guitar), Charlie Snelling (guitar), James Watts (bass) and Fred West (drums). Our name is inspired by the Bob Dylan song “To Ramona” and we have been playing and recording together since last October.

02. What do you sound like?

Our main inspirations are The Clash, Lou Reed, New York Dolls, Pulp, 3 minute pop songs with lots of hooks

03. What do friends say you sound like?

Like a punk band meeting a ’60s girl group in bar and a having a jam.

04. Full-time musicians or wage slaves?

Full time musicians but only recently after years of waitressing, coat hanging and soul selling

05. Current band highlight?

Playing T in The Park in Scotland this summer. The crowd were amazing

06. Favourite decade for music?

The 1970s from the Bowery in New York to the streets of London

07. Should music be free?

It should be value for money. Unfortunately to enable musicians to keep making great music there needs to money in the industry

08. Which 3 musicians would you invite round for dinner?

Patti Smith, Paul Simonon and David Bowie

09. Preferred tour reading?

Tank Girl, anything by Alan Moore and Please Kill me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain

10. Best mood for songwriting?

When I’m in a bad mood about something, its always good therapy

11. Last record you bought?

Crazy for you by Best Coast

12. Five favourite albums?

Transformer by Lou Reed, A Different Class by Pulp, The Clash by The Clash, Horses by Patti Smith and The Velvet Underground and Nico

13. Your biggest rock and roll fantasy?

Playing at CBGB’s alongside Blondie, Talking Heads and Television

14. Goals for the next 12 months?

Play as many gigs as possible and get our first record ready for release next year

15. First time listeners, where should they start?

With our first Single “How Long” which is in September!

The Walkmen
Islington Academy, London
25th August 2010

“You’re one of us, or you’re one of them“ — Hamilton Leithauser, fist wrapped tight around the microphone as if he’s trying to strangle it, is carving up those words. The rest of the Walkmen, heads bowed (as they remain throughout most of the set) act complicit and provide the carnival-esque roar to ram Leithauser’s words home. It’s not so much a question or a suggestion but a statement. For better or for worse, for way back when the band were selling their own white label records at the Middle East in Boston in 2001, I’ve been one of “us”.

The Walkmen are one of rock and roll’s most determined underdogs. Arriving at the same time as the great New York explosion of 2000, the members of The Walkmen chose to avoid the excess and hype that encumbered the late Jonathan Fire-eater (a band that several of The Walkmen appeared in) for less troubling waters. As The Strokes, The Rapture, Yeah Yeah Yeahs et al, climbed aboard their cruise ship for fame and moderate success, the modest vessel The Walkmen built themselves managed to chart the same waters but not chart the same charts.

Scheduled as a warm-up date for their appearance at the Reading and Leeds Festival, The Walkmen appear gamely ‘up for it’. With their sixth album Lisbon ready to drop in three weeks time, there are new songs and fresh optimism in the offing. The ticking clock rhythm and Leithauser’s  “I would give you my heart/I would give you my love/but my heart’s been broken” on “Blue As Your Blood” show that the downbeat/downhearted feel that’s been plaguing The Walkmen the last few albums is still present on Lisbon. You crave to hear keyboardist Walter Martin play a jaunty riff and for the rest of the band to fall in as Leithauser grips the microphone like a bunch of flowers and proceeds to tell the assembled what a great day it’s been.

There’s still the optimism present in You & Me’s “In The New Year” and the vigour in the stupor-wakening new track “Angela Surf City” that give indication that The Walkmen may still be underdogs, but they haven’t fully become the weary “woe is me” kinda band. But oh, quelle surprise as Leithauser introduces another new song (sans irony) entitled “Woe Is Me” which from the start of Paul Maroon’s clanging guitar riff never has a chance to descend into self-pity.

It’s old friends like “Wake Up” and “We’ve Been Had” from Everybody Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone and the manic frenzy of the near-smash “The Rat” which make the transition into Lisbon material less of an unfamiliar encumbrance, and an encumbrance it surely is not. If there’s anything to be certain from this next chapter in the book of The Walkmen, is that the distinction between which side you’re on is finally starting to pay off.

Edwyn Collins and his Scot-pop accomplices are to tear it up once again via a comprehensive seven-disc anthology entitled Coals To Newcastle. Comprised of six CDs and one DVD, Coals.. contain the band’s complete discography and other studio recordings as well as a collection of their BBC sessions. The DVD contains the band’s two promotional clips for “Rip It Up” and “What Presence?!” (the latter directed by Derek Jarman), four performances on The Old Grey Whistle Test and the rare posthumous concert video Dada With (The) Juice. In total, Coals To Newcastle contains 16 previously unreleased tracks with another 23 tracks previously unavailable digitally on earlier re-issues.

Coals To Newcastle is to be released on November 8 in the UK and Europe and the following day in North America through Domino Records.

In six tumultuous years, Orange Juice, led by Edwyn Collins, blazed a trail of self-reliance with the legendary Postcard label, ran in conjunction with then-manager Alan Horne, and greatly expanded the palette of independent music at the start of the ‘80s with their brand of literate pop songwriting that both pre-saged the coming of The Smiths and kickstarted a renaissance in Scottish pop music that continues to this day.

After an embryonic start as the punk-influenced Nu-Sonics, Orange Juice came into being in 1979 as unfashionable pre-Year Zero punk influences such as The Byrds, Chic, Motown and The Velvet Underground began to make their presence known in the band’s developing sound. Over the next year, the group recorded four landmark 7” singles on Postcard (as well as putting out early releases from Aztec Camera, The Go-Betweens and Josef K). Though each single proved more successful than its predecessor, greater commercial aspirations led the band to sign to Polydor in the midst of making their first album in a prescient deal in which the band retained ownership of their material.

The original lineup abruptly fell apart shortly after the release of the debut album, You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever, and, as quickly, the band’s future was decidedly unassured. However, with the addition of Malcolm Ross, formerly of Postcard labelmates Josef K, and Zimbabwe-by-way-of-Glasgow drummer Zeke Manyika, the group proceeded to make their commercial mark with the timeless funk and soul-inflected “Rip It Up”, whose title track was to be the group’s biggest UK hit, peaking at #8 in February of 1983.

During the recording of a follow-up, the group had decided to head in a more rock direction, but creative tensions arose again and the group fell apart during the recording sessions from which the Texas Fever mini-LP was culled. With Polydor’s support of the group withdrawing, Collins, joined in the studio by Manyika, persevered to make the bittersweet swan song album, The Orange Juice, a collection that telegraphed the group’s impending demise amidst some of their finest recordings. Collins made it official in March of 1985 announcing mid-performance at a miner’s benefit at the Brixton Academy that it would be Orange Juice’s last performance.

Complete tracklisting and UK/US pre-order information can be found here:

http://www.dominorecordco.com/uk/albums/20-08-10/coals-to-newcastle-boxset/
http://www.dominorecordco.us/usa/albums/19-08-10/coals-to-newcastle-boxset/