Webcuts Music

So that was 2010. What does Webcuts remember most about it? It’s hard to say, really. The landscapes shift, the memories flickr and 365 days blur into one long unending soundtrack. One thing our favourite tracks of 2010 all had in common was that they appeared like one night stands that lingered a little longer than usual, almost all of them attached to a singular memory of the song being performed, either from a distance or elbows resting on the stage in mute admiration, or maybe just there emanating from a speaker aimed direct into our inner consciousness, refusing to budge.

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

The Lights are on but the tunes aren’t home on Interpol’s disappointing fourth otherwise known as #4.

It seems Stars’ Amy Milan has a passenger along for the ride as the band recently announced that she and dad to be and co-member Evan Cranley are expecting their first baby due March 2011. Hang on… March 2011, isn’t that when Evan said they were aiming to tour Australia? Expect bottled milk instead of vodka in the rider from then on but in the meantime they’re cramming in as many US dates between now and the end of the year. Also we reveal dates for The Church’s “An Intimate Space” acoustic tour of Australia and Passenger’s “Golden Thread” wonderful video clip.

The cross overs. Every year has them; bands that get touched by the hand of hype and go from being blogged about to actually selling significant quantities of records/MP3s along with world wide tour schedules and high billed festival slots. This year one of those bands is Brooklyn’s The Drums who have certainly enjoyed a lot of column pixels and radio play on the strength of their back to basics c86 indie-pop as imagined by Phil Spector self titled debut album and its omnipresent lead single “Let’s Go Surfing”. Static’s Chris Berkley has a drink with three quarters of the band for a lesson in how to avoid being drowned by the waves of success.

The end of winter and the 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 (excepting Splendour and its sideshows of course). A number of big names have been announced in the past week including The Manic Street Preachers, The Charlatans, Concrete Blonde, The National, Interpol, The Morning Benders and Joan Jett!

“Give me a minute and I’ll blow your minds“. The crowd laughs, so does the man who just uttered those words. The mood, somewhat quiet, respectful, shiftless, is lightened, and Mark Kozelek begins another master-class in tinkling the nylon strings of his Spanish guitar like Liberace would the piano. “I’m old” he breaks the silence again, “I’m fat, I need water, I need lyrics to my songs”. From my pew to the right side of the stage I have to squint to see if it’s not Neil Young sitting there complaining about his arthritis. To Kozelek’s credit, he’s still as ageless as ever, and that gut you were grabbing at? I’m pretty sure you’ve been carrying that for a while now.

Has there ever been a band that promised so much, but delivered so little? I know with an opening statement like that I may as well tell them that their girlfriends/wives are ugly too and be done with it, but once upon a time The Walkmen had their eyes on the prize, but instead decided to move to Tijuana and play like drunk, heartbroken Americanos. To give them credit, they do this really well. But after 5 albums, the soft introspective “why you done gone and left me?” feel that carried through A Hundred Miles Off and You & Me gets a little too familiar. Lisbon, what have you for The Walkmen? What have you for us?

The (Bloc) Party is over. Now, it’s a dance party and there’s nobody here, except Kele and a few diehard Bloc Party fans looking bored.

The new Stars album The Five Ghosts is a focused and streamlined record that in some ways harks back to their synth-pop roots of their first album, albeit being much darker in tone and theme. While Stars’ diminutive front-man Torquil Campbell, and its glamorous front-woman Amy Millan, may get the most of the star light we recently had words with the quiet achiever of the band, Evan Cranley. Evan reveals to us details about the process and direction that the new album took, the decision behind the Séance EP, his jack of all trades role in the band, the novel approach to touring the new songs and how to create a fantastic remix.