Webcuts Music

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!!

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.

To celebrate/commiserate the Pixies last week selling out a 500 capacity club venue in Brisbane in around a minute we give you a movie poster and theme song pastiche about the whole affair. “A Racer” (sung to the tune of “Debaser”) — “Got me a concert/I don’t want you to go/Clicking on refresh/It’s so damn slow!/Oztix is so moody/I want it to flow”

Ah, Barcelona, your beaches are beautiful, your women are smoking jewels (literally), and this festival by the beach (really an explosion of concrete by the seaside) is clearly the diamond in the rough for the travelling roadshow of bands that litter the skies with one thing in mind – a paid holiday. With a selection of acts that suited this weary hack like a good pair of tight jeans and a band tee, Primavera was a stage to stage delight. The current crop of new band like The Drums, Surfer Blood and Dum Dum Girls rose up to meet the challenge of the ’90s alternative old guard of Pixies, Pavement and Superchunk.

With last years re-release of seminal debut albums by Bauhaus and Gary Numan, the 2010 release sheet for the Beggars Archive series look just as compelling, if not moreso. For fans of The Fall, both “The Wonderful and Frightening World Of” and “This Nation’s Saving Grace” will be appearing, as well as the This Mortal Coil back catalogue, and Pixies‘ “Doolittle” apparently marked for blu-ray.

Our love for Love of Diagrams knows no bounds especially for the Melbourne noise merchants freshly minted third album.

The B-side is every music geek/fan’s favourite thing to debate over. It’s the one place where an artist is allowed to record whatever they see fit, and the one place where a fan can expect the unexpected and be surprised, or wonder how long it took to throw that piece of junk down and never [...]

Grand who? Just call them Mr. and Mrs. Frank Black and everything will be peachy, or desserty…