THE PLOW - Hieronymous Bogs (self released)
- Details
- By General Labor
- Hits: 4648
First time I laid my tired eyes on the impactful, dark, visually striking, elemental art work of Hieronymous Bogs, I knew he had come to some of the same conclusions about life and death as I had.
Like a candle flickering in the dark, his prophetic folkart, found object assemblages, and iconic religious alters are invested with a compassion and humility one seldom sees, nowadays. His multimedia sculptures and paintings are filled with visceral, primordial, intimate terror and sadness, gratitude and grace, and his music has that same kind of rawness and naked vulnerability, beat poet bravery, and Cohen like melancholy.
If you see him in his big hat, hitch-hiking on the side of the lonesome highway, with a crow on his shoulder and bluebirds nesting in his beard, pick him up, and he will humbly regale you with vividly spun, purplish tales of poignant observations and quiet awakenings.
The Severance – Blaney (YERRR/ BMG)
- Details
- By Robert Brokenmouth
- Hits: 4627
Louder than War gives this album from Ed Blaney, the onetime latter-day member of The Fall, a rating of nine-out-of-ten, but sod that, it's a seven bottler out of five if I ever heard one.
Sass, bounce, beat, humour (of the kind that warms those mysterious cockles on a winter's night), well-crafted songs somewhere between pop, rock and wiggle yer butt, all the while dragging your sorry ageing carcass onto the dancefloor. Except for a couple of quiet ones, but you'll be listening hard to those. Sucked in? Deep inside!
Right, let me get my breath back. You don't hear much of the kind of pop made in “the ‘60s” anymore, do you? Well, alright, it's not the ‘60s anymore, that's one reason. And another is ... the music industry lost its innocence long, long ago, but found it again in the '60s, or appeared to.
Fickle Sydney shivers while the New Christs burn
- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 7144
Dave Kettley and Rob Younger marshalling the New Christs at Marrickville Bowlo on Saturday night..
Sydney, you’re such a contrary beast with this live music thing. And you fucking know it.
A year ago, this same bill of the New Christs and Melbourne’s James McCann and The New Vindictives pulled close to a full room at Marrickville Bowlo. This Saturday night, the place isn’t empty by any means but the head count is much lower.
Was it the cold weather? HTFU! It’s winter. Maybe a spot of fatigue with great rock and roll shows seemingly happening weekly? For sure, we’ve been spoilt. It was also the third New Christs appearance in these parts in as many months. if you were one of the waverers that stayed home, it really was your loss.
Born Out of Time series kicks off in Sydney
- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 4388
Win a Simon Chainsaw pack on us!
- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 2493
It’s giveaway time at the I-94 Bar and we have five Simon Chainsaw packs to grace the CD players of some lucky Barflies.
Simon’s new album “Thirteen” has just been released and it’s characteristic high-energy rock ’n’ punk from the Sydney-via-Brazil frontman. So named because it’s his 13th studio album under his Simon Chainsaw moniker, it throws the odd stylistic curve ball just to keep things interesting but is mostly packed with raucuous pop-punk raunch.
Also in the Simon Chainsaw pack is the two-track CD promo for the other rock and roll project occupying Simon’s time. SC/TC is Simon and former AC/DC drummer Tony Currenti collaborating on a two-song single drawing from the inspiration of good ol’ fashioned Alberts label Oz Rock.
To win a pack, drop us a line
For anyone who can’t wait until we draw the contest, you can order the new album by emailing Simon
Plays The Devil’s Music – Lubricated Goat (Sorcerer)
- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 6148
Once upon a time, a review of the first album from Lubricated Goat could have used the line: “There’s something here to offend everyone” and left it at that. In these days of live-streamed jihadi beheadings, jaded millennials and older people with permanent confected outrage, however, you have to do better than that.
Most people will recall The Goat from their appearance on the Australian national broadcaster, nude and lip-synching a song called “In The Raw”. Yes, they flashed their wedding tackle. A media meltdown followed.
Of course the raison d’etre was to outrage. To go to a Lubricated Goat show in Sydney in the late ‘80s at Max’s Petersham Inn or The Evil Star you had to be severely disconnected from the rest of society, chasing the band’s offer of free beer for turning up naked or on smack.
The Garden - NQR (Kasumuen Records)
- Details
- By Robert Brokenmouth
- Hits: 4634
The website says that NQR is the "new band for Kristian Brenchley (from New York City’s WOMAN and Degreaser, the latter with fellow ex-pat Tim Evans), Denis Leadbeater (S-Bahn) and Maureen Gearon (Baby 8) with the indomitable Ruth McIver (C**ting Daughters) very much out front and centre on vocals."
It comes as a six-track cassette or CD.
The title track opens and it's a kick in the guts, just over two-and-a-half minutes of bitter pop stuffed into a woodchipper.
And the singer gets out:
No more conversation
Time spent
Digital
No more
Conversation
No more chaperones
Computer Girls b/w Renegade - Wolf 359 (Iceage Productions)
- Details
- By Robert Brokenmouth
- Hits: 3028
I love Wolf 359. Excellent stuff. Determinedly analogue-y and old-school riffs and tendencies (if you describe that squelching-with-intent sound some synths make as a riff), it's like a musician visiting from 1978 and eyeing us all with amused disdain.
And then, realising that this is their future too, snarling with all the repressed eloquence disgust can muster. Love the ’90s beat vibe, with the rippling, pounding synths... not quite yeah hup, but I'll stay here and throb instead.
It’s a digital single, available here.
Friends rally for floored former Waldos and Knots guitarist Joey Pinter
- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 6106
Sole surviving Heartbreaker Walter Lure accompanied by Joey Pinter on guitar. Des Jardins photo.
Expatriate New York City guitar legend Joey Pinter (ex-Waldos, Knots) needs your help after suffering side effects after four bouts of debilitating back surgery.
Complications have left the Los Angeles-based axeman being fed by tube for the moment, and his wife Angie needs assistance with mounting medical bills.
In Angie's words: "Joey had a 4 level cervical fusion revision because he was losing strength in his hand and the ability to play. Something went wrong .He has a hematoma that is preventing him from swallowing anything no water or food.
“They were going to open him up again but decided it was too risky and instead are hoping the inflammation will go down he is highly medicated and has a feeding tube, heart monitor. It's very serious and sad."
- "Bi-Coastal Blasphemy" – The Ringleaders (Hound Gawd Records)
- Chico Purito! - Hey Honcho and The Aftermaths (Hound Gawd Records)
- Are Friends Electric?
- I Brought Down The MC5 – Michael Davis (Cleopatra)
- You'd be a Stooge to miss this
- Everything is Combustible: Television, CBGB's and Five Decades of Rock and Roll: The Memoirs of an Alchemical Guitarist by Richard Lloyd (Beech Hill)
Page 149 of 281