Gossip - 'Long Distance'

Some people get into music for the sound, and others get into it for the image. It's the kind of distinction that separates Missy Higgins fans from Lady GaGa ones; how much the look of the artist means to you is sometimes vital to how you embrace their sound. In the case of Gossip, most notably the towering figure of front woman, sexual activist and punk rock megastar Beth Ditto, music and image are of somewhat equal importance. Despite being a rocker of note for nigh on a decade, Ditto's only recently been thrust into the spotlight by a wave of women's magazines, seeking to show that 'big can still be beautiful'; championing her as the Renaissance Woman for the ages. Riiiiiiight. Ditto, undoubtedly happy at all the attention but not giving a shit either way, probably made history when she became the fattest women to go naked on the cover of a magazine, not once, but twice, firstly for NME (warning, boobs) and then for the launch of Love Magazine. And yes, once you get over how large Ditto is, it's time to start appreciating how friggin' mental her music is and why Gossip are currently the most talked-about band on the planet.

Comprising of two lesbians and a dude with cool glasses (names are overrated), Gossip have a name for their genre on Wikipedia (queercore) and a following which extends far beyond the GBLT set. Their blasting indie tunes, when combined with Beth's huge voice, offer up the kind of party jams that you want to keep going forever. Even when they're taking on the government (as with breakout hit 'Standing In the Way Of Control'), Gossip groove with the best of them, as boy guitarist skanks bar chords with ferocious abandon and drummer-cum-cover-star Hannah rips into disco beats like she's in The Ramones. Recently 'selling out' in order to sell out some arenas, Gossip relocated to Sony from Kill Rock Stars and in the process, made friends with another extremely large musical fellow, Rick Rubin. The multi-platinum producer of Run DMC, Slayer, Chili Peppers and more hand-picked Gossip as part of his exclusive deal with Columbia which essentially gives him full autonomy to do whatever the fuck he wants. This from the guy who has admitted he has no idea how to use a mixing desk and is a Zen-thinking yoga fanatic. In any case, the trick worked; Rubin's smoothed out the edges from the last album and given the band a sonic makeover. Music for Men literally shines out from the speakers and even after repeated spins you can't get those hooks out of your head.

'Long Distance', which features just about the greatest bass line ever from a band with technically no bass player, is my current pick, given the radio saturation of 'Heavy Cross', what with the gold glitter and the Christ imagery and the what have-you. It features the same driving drum/piano intro as that new Bloc Party track, except it's not 'gay' in the derogatory, 'that's shit' sense. I feel like I'm on the set of Priscilla, Queen Of the Desert and everybody's about to start pumping their fists screaming 'I will survive!' I love it, love it, love it. Get in on the Gossip before everybody knows about it.

Gossip - 'Long Distance'



Gossip Online

Jeff Buckley - Grace

I've decided, after some deliberation, that I should have heard 'Grace' by now. Just like I should have read Moby Dick. Just like I should have seen Ben Hur. Just like I should have been to KFC. These are all (perhaps not quite the last one, although I have copped some flak for it) quintessential life things. QLTs are not new. I just invented the acronym. The lads over at '1000 Blah you should blah before you die' have been feeding their families on them for years. Jack Nicholson made a whole movie about it, just for old people! (See: The Bucket List). Grandparents the world over (or maybe its just mine) stress the need for their grandchildren to watch, listen to and read 'the classics'. Alongside Hitchcock, Lennon and Man Ray (who would all be at my dinner table tonight should I die tomorrow, thank you very much), Jeff Buckley seems an anachronism. But, just as the new Penguin goobie we introduced to the blog (see right hand-side column) told us, Buckley is undoubtedly a 'modern classic'. In the pantheon of modern culture, alongside Easton Ellis and Tarantino, lies Jeff Buckley.

Thing is, the whole last paragraph was what I'm supposed to say as a blogger who dabbles in immediate ancient history and a devoted musicphile. The truth of the matter, however, is that Jeff Buckley remains (beyond the original 'Lover, You Should Have Come Over' and Jamie Cullum's alright version of it) a relative unknown to my music consciousness. Even after passing J's air-tight Three Week Relationship Buckley Test, I'm still lost! Gasp! I know. Doesn't that just take me down a peg in everyone - the world over's - estimation? It does, most absolutely. And so, instead of admitting my ignorance, I do what everyone does in more cultured company than their own. Lie. You've done it before. When someone is incredibly enthusiastic about some TV show/movie/song/book and you can't remember ever having seen/listened/read the thing but you go along with their re-telling of the script/lyrics/narrative, laughing at the funny parts, going somber for what you assume was sad and generally whooping it up as a culture-phony. If you miss out on a QLT, you're fucked.

Most often, the case is that you haven't gotten around to the QLT because you're lazy, not because you won't enjoy it. But there are those people who kind of just pretend to like things because they are such monumental icons within popular culture. 'Michael Who?' sounds dumb. 'Pulp What?' could be worse. The whole idea of QLTs is almost perpetuated by countdown culture as well. Trip J's latest 'Hottest 100 of all time' is not only a travesty of ethnography but further engenders QLT cover-ups. Jeff Buckley is on the list because Jeff Buckley is on all these other lists and therefore he must be good, right? There is a sort of 'cult of the classic' thus generated. It becomes so ingrained in zeitgeist that everyone feigns appreciation for fear of sounding awkward.

Good news. Jeff Buckley may have had the good fortune of some of this cult-status (especially considering his particularly cult-like suicide at a tender 27) but moreover, he is just good. Have a listen. If you like it, spread the word. If you don't, pretend you do.

Jeff Buckley - Grace

Kisschasy - 'Generation Why'

Now that I've seen 'Bruno' and can be safe in the knowledge that I will be at least six uber-gay punchlines ahead of the competition for at least a month, it's time to get down to the music that has nothing to do with swapping African kids for Ipods. Kisschasy are my guilty pleasure; like Paramore and Blink-182, they write really good pop-punk songs with an emphasis on killer melodies. Naturally, I should be well above listening to music like this. Well, says who? Some days there's absolutely nothing wrong with blasting some well-produced guitar bombs through your speakers instead of wallowing in dubstep, or whatever. Besides, if half of the acts on the ARIA Charts had pipes like Darren Cordeux, I wouldn't be switching off the radio so goddamn often.

Kisschasy have never been ones to do things by halves. They've made video clips where kids go cavorting around in Bush, Howard and Blair masks, are likely to wear skinny jeans whilst criticising the culture of 'Spray On Pants.' This is a band emo kids would love to adore, but who have greater aspirations, primarily because they're too smart for their own good. Their lyrics veer from dark and brooding to piss-taking in a matter of seconds, and Cordeux has a way with words that is undeniable. His vocals are always the centrepiece of the band, and their new single is no exception, which features a chorus so delightful I'm going to transcribe it in full.

"Feeling negative it's the best/I'm so happy that I'm depressed/Give my love to my enemies/I'm paranoid but that's OK with me"

Sounds awful, right? You'd be on the money if the song wasn't such a happy, uplifting ditty that makes me want to dance so hard that I can forget Jet ever thought of releasing another album. It's a joke within a joke, it's metafiction, or else it's just Kisschasy being damn inconsiderate of all us who genuinely like to mope about all day. I see it as a call to arms, a kind of 'The world doesn't only revolve around you, dipshit!' statement, aimed at a generation of slackers who have nothing better to do but complain. As Bruno showed me tonight, I have nothing to complain about. Heaven knows I could be having serious moral dilemmas trying to play the clarinet and trying to broker peace with Arab militants by calling Osama a 'dirty wizard'. Actually, that sounds like fun, maybe I'll do it. Listen to this song, it's the most unconventional way to brighten your day, but it will work.

Kisschasy - 'Generation Why'


Chas(e) Kisses Online

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll

Hell, it's funny what you find on some computers. So here I am, illin out on the South Coast of NSW in a beautiful hotel perched right on the edge of the ocean and, along with my girlfriend, I'm probably the youngest here by about three or four decades. And I love it all the more for the demographic juxtaposition. There's nothing like embracing your youth absolutely and old people make everything you do just seem so much younger. More vibrant. Whatnot. Anyway, apologies for the missing of a blog yesterday (happily filled in by brother J). I was on the way to do it when I was alerted by a friendly message that J had already taken the liberty of filling the obvious, gaping hole in our blog left by near-on 24 hours without a post. But alas! I is back, to offer you the finest that Mollymook anonymous has to offer.

Obviously, I have access to the net. But, in keeping with the theme of the holiday, I thought I'd keep things remote but working only with what I have. In this instance, that involves solely delving into the archives of the hotel computer. This is generally a fairly sordid affair. Public computers are either in such disarray musically that they resemble a later Madonna record or are so bereft of anything important to say so that instead, they resemble an earlier Flo Rida record. Or all Flo Rida records. That's more accurate. Anyway, nothing could be further from that disturbing truth then is the machine that rests before me now. Rather, it seems to have been on the receiving end of many hours of love and affection from someone who really knows what to listen to and how to organise it. Never before have I witnessed such a clean iTunes. Jobs would be proud. Pancreatically proud. Low blow.

Being exposed to someone's music without them willing you to love every song because they do is really a fantastic experience. Instead, you can kind of chill out. Choose the stuff that intrigues you (I've listened to almost the whole back catalog of RZA, a bit of Street Sweeper Social Scene and reintroduced myself to the popful bliss of The Black Kids all in a fantastically short period of time and without moral/emotional obligation). If I hate a song, I don't have a whiny friend/partner/family member chastising me silently, going smug at my absolute ignorance or simply scoffing at my poor taste... I'll just change the song. I know it doesn't sound like much. But being let into someone's music collection, if they take it as seriously as this receptionist/bellboy/chef/waiter/pool-guy seems to take it, can be like getting well acquainted with another person. I feel like me and the concierge have this real connection now. It's beautiful and liberating and I've never felt better about prying into someone's life. Sonic voyeurism. You ought to try it.

Meanwhile, I've forgotten to actually tell you what the song is. So, from among the throng of electronica/metal/rap/pop, I've chosen this new-ish Yeah Yeah Yeahs track; 'Heads Will Roll'. Karen O is like the world's coolest person. She works with N.A.S.A. Also, this one gives you a feel for the funky mix of the aforementioned genres that a severely well-informed concierge is jamming on. Enjoy.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll

A Tribe Called Quest - 'Electric Relaxation'

I was looking up 'tribe' on Google and found this. Too cute to ignore...

You know what? When your alter-ego is sitting in a waiting room, hanging with the junkie set and wondering when this bestial flu will disappear, music is a very good litmus test of where one stands. This is not because drug addicts, old people and flight crew have 20/20 hearing (if there is such a thing), but rather that they are all used to various forms of non-invasive background noise. Anything that upsets this delicate balance will result in absolute pandemonium, especially when the phone starts ringing and fax machine starts having an identity crisis. You'd be surprised how much Jack Johnson can actually piss off an opiate-dependent patient, what, with all the huge tone colour changes and dynamic variation in his 9 minute opuses about nothing. Thus, picking the right sounds for my current place of semi-occupation is more tricky than one would first assume; I have to be edgier than the 80+ year old who usually mans this desk, but not 'in-your-face' enough to disrupt my hoodrat clientele from their self-imposed reverie. This is a mentally taxing predicament.

A Tribe Called Quest, purveyors of hip hop cool (even iTunes agrees), led by the golden-voiced Q-Tip and totally indebted to jazz, funk and all those other cool musical movements that everybody else forgot about in the 1994 in pursuit of plaid shirts, are an unlikely choice but have worked wonders in this setting. 'Electric Relaxation', whilst promoting exactly the kind of activity these patrons typically enjoy for up to 20 hours a day, cruises along nonchalantly with a slinking bass line and doesn't even register a volume change when the vocals come in. These are the smoothest operators in hip-hop, it's no wonder that Tip is still in demand and Phife (shit I love that name) was all over the TLC album, you know, back when they were Crazy and Sexy and whatever. The combination of these two (and that DJ called Muhammad) was musical gold, and even though they had a wicked falling out comparable, maybe to the Sugababes, they've patched things up and even re-united a couple of times.

Q-Tip reminds me of the musical Don Cheadle; he's that producer/vocalist who's just friggin' everywhere. Even though it took the guy ten years to convince his retarded record label to release his latest album, he pops up on all the golden joints by Busta Rhymes, Nas, De La Soul and everyone who isn't 50 Cent. That's probably Tip being nice, you don't want to make the guy feel dumb just by walking into the studio, I mean, he's been shot 9 times, alright? To be honest, I think Phife's got the better rhymes but you can't fault Q's delivery, and given that he wrote most of the music he's kind of entitled to do whatever he wants. With the release of the awesome Renaissance last year, Q-Tip is garnering himself a whole new generation of fans. But you'd be wise to check out the Quest, primarily because the junkies dig it.

A Tribe Called Quest - 'Electric Relaxation'

Arctic Monkeys - 'Crying Lightning' (+ our all-time faves)

Somebody steal me Alex's jacket

There's this really cute/kitsch mural hanging in my grandmother's kitchen that reads "Patience is a virtue, but I want it NOW!" Such a statement was made infinitely more valid by my younger sibling's apparent yearning desire to immerse himself in more Scottish disco, which I will take with a grain of salt because he's currently vacationing in a cute little town that will probably be full of flesh-eating zombies. I also find it appalling that in his hastily drafted line-up of albums he can't wait to steal from me when I get them in the mail, he forgot to mention the mother lode, Arctic Monkeys' LP3, which we now know is going to be called Humbug. As in, 'bah'. Speaking of which, a cursory search indicates that although this blog has mentioned the Monkeys numerous times, it has never posted on them directly. Oh my, D is going to rue the day he ever drove off to Mollycrook...

Arctic Monkeys are probably the one band that my brother and I, without reservation, can agree upon listening to at pretty much any hour of the day. This is important; we're about to haul ass on a long drive to Splendour (fuck you Virgin, Qantas and other inter-state gougers), and having music we can both sing along to while we run over native animals is vital to our harmonious co-existence as siblings. I was introduced to the Monkeys in 2006, by a bunch of British backpackers I met on Phi Phi Island in Thailand. Though I hijacked the debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That's Exactly What I'm Not , from a very efficacious boy, whilst falling head over heels in love with his exotic looking girlfriend, this is not going to be an Aussie recreation of 'The Beach'. The Arctic Monkeys hit the big time when they were très young, knocked the Beatles off the 'Fastest Selling Album Of All Time' post and re-ignited an entire country's belief in their own musical product again. I say this like NME never existed. We're on a deserted beach, remember?

I've been lucky enough to interview drummer Matt Helders (same age, slightly bigger) and listen to his stories of watching rap DVDs and working for a gas company pre-fame, as well as seeing the Arctic Monkeys perform here in bigger and better venues every time they return. Everybody loves something different about this band; some fall for the accent, other for front man Alex Turner's deft lyricism, some (like me) for their propulsive drum lines that seem to come straight out of hell, and I have a girl friend who even dug them because they had terrible acne as teenagers. True story (sorry Loren). Anyway, they've released two albums to date and went into the desert to record with QOTSA front man and the ranga-who-makes-you-scared-to-make-fun-of-rangas, Josh Homme, which no doubt means they had an experience similar to meeting the devil at the cross-roads and having Eric Clapton tell you you're not actually a rockstar until you buy a ludicrously expensive car and take hard drugs (that translated as a Ferrari and weed for John Mayer.) The result sounds a bit like Queens Of the Stone Age before bass player Nick Olivieri started going fucking batshit and stripping on stage whilst on copious amounts of hallucinogens, or endorphins, or other things that end with 'ns'. Homme kicked him out of the band, The Monkeys let their immensely fat bass player go and got a childhood mate who played better than him anyway (imagine answering that 'Wanted' ad) so they're kind of on the same page. They've also lost the acne. This is bad news for their disturbed twenty-something female fanbase, but good news for the rest of us. This song is what they call a 'slow-burner', each chorus is more high intensity than the last and it relies and the hypnotic drum groove to keep things moving. Listen to it twice, before going back to our sub-climate, simian vault.

Arctic Monkeys - 'Crying Lightning'


Arctic Monkeys - 'When The Sun Goes Down' from Whatever People Say I Am...
The sad story of a prostitute wandering down the wrong side of the tracks (see: all of London) But there's nothing better then when the raucous bridge kicks in 'He's a scumbag don't you know?' - pure Brit-rock bliss. Plus, they quote The Police's 'Roxanne'! I thought I was the only person who did that anymore!


Arctic Monkeys - 'D is for Dangerous' from Favourite Worst Nightmare
Matt gets the lion's share of singing here, and all the best lines. 'D is delightful and try to keep your trousers on...' The Monkeys get angry, and kick some ass in the process. It's like Planet Of the Apes, with a metronome...


Visit the Online Winter Zoo

3 Imminent Albums I Want Now.

It's getting to that time of year again when I start hearing all the latest singles from formerly favourite artists, press chatter around their personalities roars after being quiet for the last years and I get this impossible yearning to consume all that will eventually be on offer - right now. You'd think, living in an age of globalization, freedom of information, digitization and other impressive-sounding -ation words that getting access to new material - once it was recorded and mastered - wouldn't be too difficult. Beyond the nominal possibility that you're friends with Kate Moss, we hear at One A Day have witnessed first-hand just how fast new tracks get around the globe. Thus, it is with dismay and a plain enough craving for instant gratification that I lament the strictures that global record companies put on this stuff. While Lupe might be anti-leak, I'm not. I'm impatient and hungry. And I want it NOW!

Jay-Z - The Blueprint 3
Alright yes, I'm not content with D.O.A. 'Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye' was used to far greater effect by Wale and Lady Gaga and the whole 'I'm going to start a movement' is so 90s. That being said, digging Jay's 2001 MTV Unplugged session out of the ol' archive really sparked the fire of nostalgia in me. His last, 'American Gangster' was killer. 2006's 'Kingdom Come' was dross - but it did form the soundtrack to that year's summer for me. The man is overflowing with swag. He is undoubtedly the coolest person I know in Brooklyn and The Roots/Pharrell just make me wanna dance on this one.

Jay-Z - I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me) [Unplugged]


Calvin Harris - Ready For The Weekend
Haha. I was watching Calvin bob to 'The Girls' today at the gym and couldn't help but marvel at what a dweeb he is. But, as my hirsute endeavours continue, Calvin's stubble and nerd-boy look give me reason to hope... one day, I too might get 'all the girls' - especially those mix-raced girls. He's not the most exciting character live (but he did, valiantly, bring a band down under) but I firmly believe that the hook off the forthcoming album's first single 'I'm Not Alone' is really top-notch. I've been quoted previously as having said it is 'the best dance beat ever made'. That might have been hyperbole. Anyway, there's no doubting the anticipation on this one. I've had enough Dizzee for the moment.

Calvin Harris - Acceptable In The 80's


Spoon - Got Nuffin
Austin, Texas must be one happening place. Not only do they play host to the rocking festival SXSW annually but my favourite utensil-namesake band of all time, Spoon, also call the city home. 2007's 'Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga' was a perfect pellet of indie-rock goodness, near-faultless across its 10 stellar, variously moody/celebratory tracks. If you haven't had a listen, do. Singer Britt Daniel continues to engage with his distinctive vocal style (trying on a bit of Kings of Leon wailing) on this latest offering from the upcoming EP release of the same name. It comes across as both a vulnerable and volatile track - subject to explode at any moment. The trademark guitar riffs are there but it still seems to be only a warm-up for the Austinites. Be patient and wait for the main game? Hell no.

Spoon - Got Nuffin