Webcuts Music

Picture the scene… in a dark Minneapolis jazz club, three anonymous musicians take the stage. The usual rituals of tuning and testing, smiling and carrying on, and then the lead singer steps up to the microphone. It only takes a few songs to appreciate the underestimated prowess of the band; the churning bass, the precision in the drumming, and a fiesty singer whose melancholy adroitness shines through her toned-down Joplin-esque voice and ferocious, half-prostrated guitar solos. This is Holly Newsom and Zoo Animal, a band marked by a soulful yet minimal electrofolk sound and introspective, sometimes spiritual lyrics.

These are confusing times we live in. The past and the present have merged into one. Bands come back from the dead, sounding better than ever (The Primitives), artists who are clearly dead keep on making dreadful albums from beyond the grave (do we need name names?), and bands will play their best album in full and it becomes ‘an event’ (The Wedding Present). There are few albums in the history of music that deserve to be played in full (though tell that to Echo & The Bunnymen…), there’s always at least one track (or more) of filler, or one completely misjudged stinker, but nostalgia has a price and it pays handsomely, so hey, on with the show!

For the benefit of Webcuts’ Brisbane clientele, see in 2011 in style with Swedes Shout Out Louds, texans Neon Indian and a whole lot of Australian talent including The Belligerents, Bleeding Knees Club, Dead Beat Band, The Honey Month, Jonathan Boulet, John Steel Sings, Kate & Max, Little Scout, Love Connection, Mr. Maps, Parades, Seja, Seekae, Oh Ye Denver Birds, Rocketsmiths, Vasy Mollo and Velociraptor. Phew.

Christmas songs. There’s a special place in hell for the person who invented them. Wait, let’s try that again. Christmas songs. Who doesn’t love them? Even your favourite indie bands are getting into the spirit. There’s no point naming names, the guilty parties are out there, roasting chestnuts, asking their baby to please come home, [...]

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.

By now you should already be well acquainted with abrasive-pop instrumentalists Civil Civic, stars of a recent “Who The Hell Are…?” exposé. They appear as the final release for the 2010 Too Pure Singles Club with the free-ranging fan-titled “Lights On A Leash”, (not to be confused with Korn’s “Freak On A Leash”). Continuing their own ideal to make inexplicable music that has reviewers wheeling out the sturdy, “kinda like Sonic Youth” fallback (guilty…), “Lights On A Leash” is a song in two parts, or the musical output of a presumed conjoined twin, one clad in black, reaching for The Cure’s Seventeen Seconds, the other revealing its hidden prog-rock side and attempts to blow the other twin’s mind. Released on limited edition red vinyl, you oughta buy it now as I’m sure the whole Barcelona/London thing is getting expensive for these guys.

Long before he cleared the air/dished the dirt (whichever way you look at it), on his band mates in his autobiography Black Postcards, it was widely known there would never be a proper Galaxie 500 reunion. In the intervening years since their disbandment in 1991, both Dean Wareham and the unit known as Damon and Naomi have gone their separate musical ways to moderate degrees of success. With Wareham’s post G500 outfit Luna winding up in 2005, he’d now put to pasture two bands presumably allowing him time to reflect on past glories with a renewed desire to not let that youth go to waste.

Two classic, career defining Fall albums get the deluxe box set treatment.

In a country where Wire are revered, Gang Of Four aren’t afforded the same luxury. Despite being post-punk brethen and art school ideologists, Gang of Four made for better records. Fact. Hip kids trumpet their 1979 debut Entertainment! as the be-all and end-all, but Webcuts has a soft spot for the suited and booted consumer [...]

It’s an audacious pronouncement to commit to releasing 12 singles in 12 months. The Wedding Present set the benchmark in the 90′s. Ash tried the same thing recently, in a mixture of desperation and overkill in numbers too large to comprehend and tarnishing the very idea of a single. It’s not just two songs on a slab of vinyl (or cd, or one of those less satisfying digital w/artwork jobs). It’s a living, breathing statement. A trojan horse in disguise. A rallying cry to fall behind. A rallying cry… See, The Rifle Volunteer comprehend this. “I’ll Sleep When That Damned Sun Is Dead”, the first single in their year long campaign, is what we’re talking about. Here is a band that means business.