Not much updating here at the moment – I’m still adding articles to the articles page and photos to the photo page, but for now you’ll find a lot more typing afoot elsewhere.
For travel tales drop by hobo diaries.
To dip into the wattle circus, my novel-as-it-unfolds, try a visit to the museum of fire.
It’s the trees. There are, of course, the birds, animals, sounds, smells, colours and light, the people, buildings, stories, thoughts and dreams, but these all, in their way, tie back to the trees.
Flying low into Melbourne they stand scruffily to one side of the runway, tall yet slouching, dry yet lively, crowns of yellow-and blue-green, greyish too. They are at once strangely alien and profoundly familiar, uncanny witnesses and protagonists in one.
Their leave-tipped crowns nod from side to side, shabbily bursting from fingers that reach not so much for the sky but for each other’s crowns. There is always this, an intimate consort, a rustling gossip and an unharried sense of comfort in their own skins.
Coarse or smooth these skins are worn or shed with ease, those shed feeding soils along with wind-stripped leaves in dull brown fans and scattered repose.
Later, as your mind slowly catches up and rediscovers your jet-flung body, you wake and wander and pinch a low-hanging leaf, feel its smooth, dry coolness, a trace of night still on its skin while yours glows warm from the sun’s long touch, a sun that prickles the back of your neck in a way that brings back memories of long hot days and salty plunges towards golden beach on gun-crack breakers.
You bend the leaf so end touches end, rub between forefinger and thumb then ‘crack’ it splits in two. Held under nose the sticky oil releases scents that tell you – as though there was the slightest doubt – you’re home.
choose your own way
i will remain
as the ghost in fading pages
and the dust between the cracks
‘Ashes’, The Paradise Motel
I can still recall the exact moment the bulk of my thankfully still nascent music collection was rendered unlistenable evermore. The night after my 18th birthday I caught the train up to Sydney to The Basement to see my first ever (legitimately attended) 18+ show. I was there to see the specialness that is Josh Haden’s Spain, supported by a new Australian band about which I had been hearing more than the occasional excitable murmur, by the name of The Paradise Motel.
Drifting out onto the tiny Basement stage, these sartorially splendid Tasmanian/Melbournian boys and girl seemed to my overly vivid imagination to have stepped straight out of a Great Gatsby cocktail party. The boys took up their places with their assorted musical toys as Merida Sussex glided up to the microphone, gazed around the hushed, smoke-misted room, and it happened.
smiling from the page
lied about my age
now I’m lost forever in this town
I wasn’t the only one in the hushed room to realise there was something a bit special happening here, quite unlike anything I had encountered in music up to that time. As the set continued, it was a near note-perfect lesson in what I have since come to seek in almost all my music-snooping meanderings – what the band themselves later described as ‘the violence and the silence’.
The set continually took us to the verge of a perfect storm, only to each time step back from the brink. Instead of the longed for release, I was being wrapped ever more tightly in a cold, coiled menace. Pacing the stage like a wounded wombat, lyric penner and primary songwriter Charles Bickford was the most on edge, guitar slung low, foppish fringe dangling, bumping into his fellow members. But he wasn’t yet being let off his leash, and though a troubled rumble was swelling in the music, it was still being held at bay. The rhythm section was still keeping it all in check at this stage, along with the haunting voice of a gently swaying Merida Sussex, the rockingest librarian that ever there was.
danger all around
pulling me down
love for me is never to be found
Merida had a knack, never missing from a single show I went on to see, of convincing everyone in the room that she was singing directly to them. Her piercing, eye-locking gaze seemed a challenge, almost, daring you to suggest the songs were coming from anywhere but a place of utter musical integrity. It has always seemed to me a voice strangely free of emotion, yet in its icy detachment it is somehow altogether more convincing in the tales it tells.
During this particular encounter, the inevitable finally occurred. Everything, of course, had to tumble down. The drums finally let out some chain and nobody let their chance slip. The bass boiled over as the guitars crashed into a metallic, junked heap, while the Hammond – that ridiculous, hulking beast they insisted on dragging from show to show – stoically took one of its absolute beatings, thumped and kicked and thrashed into submission.
Standing solitary before all this, barely a hair moving from place, Merida carried the whole thing through, the ice queen who could melt any heart.
From that moment I was hooked – not on ‘valium’s wishing bone’ as per ‘Stones’, but in this delicious noir web they so effortlessly weaved. They had moved me without whining at me, destroyed my resistance without numbing my resolve.
Caress before catharsis.
At this stage The Paradise Motel had only released a solitary EP, Left Over Life To Kill, with the scattered scraps and remix outing Some Deaths Take Forever soon to follow. I managed to catch a generous handful of shows and their first two full-length albums over the next two years, crossing their path in tiny caves in Kings Cross, corner pubs in Melbourne and RSL clubs in Wollongong. No two shows were remotely alike – compulsive deconstructionists, there was no such thing as a definitive version of a song.
What may have been the incidental scraps and scrapings of one show became the lynchpin of the next, the beating heart of one night the shed skin of another. Their line-up would ebb and flow, with the occasional appearance of a string-quartet or brass section adding some lovingly textured layers, or an extra guitarist prompting tingling, scissors-on-strings, electrified terror.
But whatever the make-up, there was always a moving, living heart beating beneath Merida’s voice – a bass pulsing like blood through your temples, knife-edge metallic guitar jangling, strummed acoustic warmth and that mad old Hammond.
On the live stage The Paradise Motel was most certainly a collective effort. But it was harder to know what was happening behind the scenes, who was pulling which strings. Matt Aulich cobbled together some memorable string arrangements and always seemed the most proficient musician. Charles came across as the mad scientist with the vision. And the boy certainly had an ear, turning his deft hand to producing an amazing album by my lovely school friends, those krazy Kiama kids Arrosa. Charles helped hone the sublime, aching, fractured artistry of these then teens into a beautiful beast, but the album sadly never saw the light after the always fragile band imploded on the brink of… who knows what?
While I hadn’t heard anything quite like it before, The Paradise Motel wasn’t entirely without reference points. The dreamy, reverb-soaked miasma was not a million miles from Underground Lovers. The nattily suited, sideshow drama nodded to a certain incarnation of Nick Cave. Dirty Three and The Triffids, Low and Mazzy Star are all there too – but not in any easily discernible style or sound or obvious conceit. It is there and not there, in the way one may lazily group Faulkner, Steinbeck and Salinger – it’s fair and fruitless at the same time.
If a band can ever be summed up in a single song, it was, for The Paradise Motel, the two-act ‘Men Who Loved Here (Grew Sadder)’. Opening with a jagged, wrenching slice of feedback and gentle if minor acoustic chords, the signs are more than a little ominous. Come the 36 second mark, viciously abrasive guitars slashing in like a rusty scalpel wielded by a deranged doctor slit the whole thing open. Merida’s reassuring view on the matter?
the agony
will set you free
There is precious little of their music floating around the webesphere, and I guess it’s really not a vision that translates well to a little yootoobish box. But perhaps the closest clip to capturing the quintessence of The Paradise Motel would be bad light.
So, it’s a tad melodramatic and no doubt a little ostentatious. But it hit that spot only a select few have tickled since. And that’s perhaps the bittersweet twist in this tale. They ruined so much music for me that I had until then happily, mindlessly enjoyed.
Perhaps The Paradise Motel struck a lasting chord with me because at the heart of things they were not simply performers but also consummate storytellers; first and foremost as chroniclers of the disappeared. I didn’t realise this straight away, so it was somewhat curious to discover over time that my initial response to the music somehow picked up on this at some level. From those very first moments I had felt this was somehow a musical instantiation of Hanging Rock – both the haunting and haunted Victorian place of myth and mystery, shrouded as it is in mists real and imagined, and the classic Peter Weir film.
Which finally brings me to the point of this nostalgic little wander down musical memory lane.
The Paradise Motel left our shores in the late 1990s to try their luck in the UK and had disintegrated within two years. But now, 10 years on, they are finally about to release their third studio album. This latest musical outing is conceptially inspired by and entirely devoted to the mother of all Australian disappearances, that of Azaria Chamberlain. The unfortunate Azaria, whose purported disappearance-via-dingo remains officially unsolved, would have been 30 this June 11 – the date The Paradise Motel will release Australian Ghost Story. This thematic realm has the band back doing what they do best, delving back into their spiritual home – that of our most haunted country.
While there have been other great Australian bands before, during, and since The Paradise Motel, and allowing that there are the occasional moments that have dated a little more than ideal for a ‘timeless’ tag, my revisiting of these earlier recordings with fresh ears still leaves me with the softest of soft spots for these marvellous if morbid miscreants.
Violins.
Oh yes, I forgot I had even written this one – was quite a nice night, and proves I haven’t been entirely lazy…
While it may appear I’ve been a little lazy of late, I’ve at least managed to put a few words together for the Alex Masso Ensemble show last week, and they’ve just popped up over at the always peek-atable Resonate magazine.
The next wolf-infused chapter of The Music Box is almost ready, but I’ll stall for the time being with a wolf-themed link to ‘La Blogotheque’, a French music weblog with rather fine tastes.
They’re using a photo I took at the Iron and Wine show earlier this year in talking about Sam Beam’s wonderful Wolves (Songs of the Shepard’s Dog), as part of an article about the Wolf in popular music.
I’m pleased to see they made mention of Bonnie Prince Billy’s stellar Wolf Among Wolves, and of course gave thought to the darkly delightful Wolves by The Accidental.
Sigur Rós
Hordern Pavillion
August 2, 2008
I faced a small dilemma in even coming tonight. So perfect was the last Sigur Rós show I saw, so rich and detailed and finely hewn, it seemed it would be tempting fate too sorely to expect such an experience again. And yet if it was too similar, relied upon the same buttons being pushed, even that would disappoint in its hint of stasis.
I needn’t have fretted so.
It was a chilly night it’s true, but I doubt the Hordern Pavilion had ever hosted such a natty collection of scarves and woolen hats. We Sigur Rós people seem, it turns out, to be scarves and woolen hat people. Either that, or the chilly, glacial scope of their music subliminally works its way down to our bones and it’s not so much a matter of predisposition as self preservation.
The audience was younger, too, than I recall. Yet this seems fitting for Sigur Rós’ regressive trajectory, their swim upstream back from life’s very precipice, wisdom gained and the end stared in the face, before they turn, quietly, walking away from the light, from nothingness and weightlessness towards that first moment of wonder, of childish glee at the colours and sensations and incomprehensibility of all that simply is.
The stage lit only incidentally, the band emerged from the wings, regally attired and positively glowing. What would they start with, how would they set the tone? Judging by the response, the opening submarine ‘ping’ of Svefn-g-englar was the perfect choice for many, the ideal entry-point for our magical mystery tour.
There is something inexplicably hypnotic about that depth-sounding ‘ping’ that carries us through helplessly, wisps us away from our firm grounding and takes us on a submarine meander beneath the ice floes. The water outside is so cold it loses its miscibility, twirling in a slow dance that leaves oily outlines against the portals; sea monkeys gazing idly back as we journey who knows where.
Kjarri Sveinsson’s organ carries us along until the first of those sweeping, bottomless cello bowings across Jónsi Birgisson’s electric guitar brings in turn the night’s first shivers, the sky above splitting wide open (ignoring for the time being the minor matter of the roof in-between). His singing, the untethered Hopelandish wail that hovers high but unforced, flies out in clear soaring lines, before the drums, reliable until now, suddenly stutter and the whole precarious puzzle tumbles into its own icy undertow, which we only now realise had been there all along, shadowing every step.
Just as it all begins to fade away, Jónsi’s voice, not so much dominating as increasingly holding a certain sway, breaks out – an impossibly long, sustained note, a siren call we can’t help but follow; if we perish, so be it. We catch our breath in consort, waiting, waiting, and still it holds. This is no smoke and mirrors, it reminds us, this is the outer limits of the possible, being pushed that little bit further than we ever knew they could.
Finally, with gasping relief, we surface at our first secret destination, the frightfully graceful picnic spread of Glósóli. Treats beyond our wildest imagination are spread as far as the eye can see, and we gorge on creamy sugared treats beneath fluttering coloured flags catching the cliff-top breeze. Jónsi’s every slicing bow guitar peals off a reverberating sliver of live electriciy, racheting the tension notch by notch.
Only two songs in, and the rest of the world is forgotten. Even the very constructedness of what we’re seeing and hearing melts away – there is such a seamless, intuitive communication in the band’s musicality that they rarely become themselves; they are already and always Sigur Rós.
The joyous innocence of Sé Lest is a striking follow-up, all music box melody and tinkering toys taking on a life of their own, our Icelandic elves playing percussively in a magic toyshop overflowing with beautifully hewn trinkets and wide-eyed whimsy.
Such is the inspired flight of imagination that when they reached the moment on the album at which the horns in Sé Lest enter, it seemed as though a marching band has appeared on stage, crisply dressed in flawless white, gold tasselled and chiming in to perfection. We pictured them marching across the stage for the short passage and then simply evaporating, leaving us wondering if such a preposterously perfect occurrence had been nothing more than a collective wish and melding of memories rendered momentarily material.
When the brass playing foursome The Horny Brasstards did return to the stage for Ný batterí, it appeared that they must, after all, exist.
There is a space or dimension that exists uneasily between the childish reverie of the voyage of discovery and those midnight phantoms that are its flipside; wonder and terror two facets of the same experience. It’s through this slippery netherworld the goodship Sigur Rós sails, charting new territories while laying their faith (and we ours) in the stars.
Originally drawn to the drama, the mysterious romanticism of these vast Icelandic soundscapes, it’s been a perilous but rewarding journey to follow Sigur Rós into newer territory. Takk managed to balance the grander, sweeping statements of ágætis byrjun and ( ) with some more optimistic, concise tracks and consequently benefited from the breath of fresh air.
Their fifth full-length album með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (“with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly”) has continued further down this vein, stripping away the layers and exposing the skeleton within.
Though breaking with their signature strengths, this immediacy and intimacy is not entirely unwelcome. The conciseness and precision serves two purposes, both on show tonight. The first is breaking up the longer, swirlier pieces, providing some calm against which the storms appear to reach even greater heights.
The second and perhaps most important for their longevity is to reveal a little more of themselves. Counter-intuitively, the more we’re faced with ceaseless doom-laden ice-castles in the sky, reverb-soaked end-of-time crescendo-driven epics, the less we believe in them. But when more austere works such as the joyous lilt of Hoppípolla are neatly juxtaposed with the more brooding works, we feel we’re witness to a truer picture, a more multi-dimensional wholeness that makes the peaks and troughs all the richer for their surprise and intensity; it more closely reflects life and we sense they truly mean it, that they aren’t simply going through the motions.
It is these moments of light that made it so deeply unsettling when Jonsi drove his bow to destruction during Ny Batteri and made set highlight Festival all the more bewitching.
There were times at which I missed the strings, those curious imps Amiina who so delightfully lent their talents to fill out the more pastoral pieces on previous tours. Without them there are moments in which we miss the delicacy, the lightness of touch and the revelry of the incidental.
But the horns played their role superbly and made for a worthwhile deviation. They are offered up with a deft touch, made to shimmer and vibrate rather than honk and puff. This helped to add a sense of subdued desolation, the fog rolling over us from the sea and enveloping our thoughts and very being.
Something I also realised tonight that doesn’t jump off the albums at first listen, but is in retrospect quietly buried there, is the integral role of the rhythm section in anchoring Sigur Rós, keeping them from drifting away into pure ambient wallpaper. Orri Páll Dýrason’s drumming is tight and disciplined, a clock-work reliability to its machinations, while Goggi Holm’s bass is restrained, yet highly fluid. It’s sensual, yet not solipsistic or romantic, slinking just beneath the radar but leading us along all the same.
They know when to catch, and when to release. Simmering away imperceptibly beneath Sæglópur, biding their time during the gentle piano opening and as Jonsi’s vocals weave in with the bright semi-hopeful chords, they let the more melodic elements dance merrily for a while, before gatecrashing with fearful power. They trigger a violent reaction in turn and before we know it searing strips of molten electricity are torn off the guitar, Jonsi’s previously measured voice now hauntingly plaintiff, drowning in a sea of pain.
Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur offered a brief respite, a few rays of sunshine breaking through, but they were soon snuffed out by Hafssól and its relentless bow-shredding menace and ache.
After this exhausting and troubling intensity one wondered what could be pulled out next, and set-closer Gobbledigook was a startling but contagiously joyous choice. The subdued stately hues that had been the provence of the simply-lit stage throughout the night were shaken off for a clap-driven kaleidoscopic rainbow, an eruption of playful chords, acoustic guitar scratchiness and major-key celebration. ‘La-La-Las’ were spilling from every corner of the stage, the song and set climaxing with a snowstorm of confetti bursting forth like the joy bursting from thousands of hearts.
It was such an uplifting, surprisingly unmisanthropic finish to the main set that we were all the more disarmed by what was to follow after a brief break, the harrowingly destructive Popplagið that stood as the first encore.
Opening gently enough, that rarest of Sigur Rós devices – a guitar riff – lulls us in and draws us along without too much caution. It’s a touching little riff, minor and almost apologetic, but it’s hummable and sneakily draws us into the dark heart that opens around us before we realise.
Coddled by an equally unthreatening bass, it’s not until we’ve wandered far too far into these verdant woods that we hear the first thunderous clap, the distant rumbling storm rearing its unsettling green head upon us. But then it eases and we laugh at ourselves – ‘jumping at shadows’ we knowingly smile.
And yet… those drums. They’re building. The Horny Brasstards have laid down their brass and taken on drums, pounding them with increasing fervour, banging away in primal synchronicity.
The Sigur Rós entity soon lets out a sigh. It’s not simply ghostly, not merely a dream – it crosses over into a ghostly dream, thrashing on and on mercilessly into a phantasmagoric nightmare. On and on they push, a raw, draining, eviscerating exorcism that seems to have no end, until, finally, it peaks, spills over, topples forward in a frothing surge. Desperately, sinking sinking, you cling onto some passing flotsam, chewed up, spat out, exhausted – exhilarated. Shivers run through your skin, then you shed it, soar above, looking back down upon the spent shell.
At this point they could have left us, battered, bruised and broken, to wander off into the night. It was the kind of transcendently majestic rock finish that stays with you in tingle form for days, so it would have been tempting to send us off with its aftershocks still washing over us.
But, perhaps a little wary of just what frame of mind that might leave us in, Sigur Rós returned for a final time to bring us back to earth, wrapping us in the quiet embrace of All Alright. This sweet, pretention free lullaby brought us down beautifully, not so much anti-climactic as rejuvenating; a gentle butterfly wing on the cheek to wish us well along the long and winding path ahead.
In which I waffle on a bit about this and that in the general hope of making some sort of sense of ‘Sonic Art’, all over in the part of the webesphere known as Resonate magazine.
