Webcuts Music

Dynamite Steps the new album from Greg Dulli’s The Twilight Singers is an extraordinarily cohesive album in every aspect: from production to the vocals, the masterful songwriting to the clever sequencing. Grunge guitar workouts give way to piano balladry, shoegaze meets folk and punchy rock. These are all anchored by that remarkable voice which ranges from ragged roar to velvety tenor to strained falsetto singing of love, libido, mortality and the devil. A couple of weeks before the release we spoke with Greg, a man who has seen more than his share of highs and lows in his twenty odd year career, clearly relaxed and affable, about all things dynamite and twilight, from the gutter to the (guest) stars.

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!!

The spillover from the now sold-out Splendour in the Grass festival results in a plethora of shows for our southern chums in Sydney and Melbourne and a few in Adelaide and Perth. Including Kate Nash, The Magic Numbers, Jonsi and Foals along with Alberta Cross, Ash, We Are Scientists, Band of Skulls, Goldfrapp, LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip, Laura Marling, Passion Pit, Surfer Blood, Two Door Cinema Club and more.

Splendour is ten years old and this year doubles in size of bill and capacity, with a line-up that includes The Strokes, Pixies, LCD Soundsystem, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Florence and the Machine, Grizzly Bear, Kate Nash, Hot Chip, Band of Horses, Mumford and Sons, Goldfrapp, Yeasayer, Ben Harper, We Are Scientists, Foals, Richard Ashcroft, Midlake, Philadephia Grand Jury.

We hunt down Ed Droste from Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear and get our claws into their move from a studio to live band, how they keep songs fresh, and how they came to record with Yacht rock legend Michael McDonald: “Michael McDonald is one of the coolest Yacht rockers around. We let him know we were fans and he ended up coming to a show and we really liked him and approached him with the idea and he was totally excited to do it.”

The friendly folks from indie-dance sensations Friendly Fires stroll into Static’s studio to talk the good talk about their new single “Kiss of Life”, the Mercury music prize and more — “It’s good to kind of feed off the energy of the crowd: suck them like vampires.”

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.

Second Splendour line up in full and interview with Splendour promoter Jess Ducrou about the tremendous success of the festival, the process for picking the line-up and this year’s bands, future expansion of the site and the improvements in ticketing technology.