Hipsters

The hipster. The punching bag for uncool fat bloggers or jealous and greying Gen Xers? Perhaps the endgame for affluent western youth culture in the late naughties. Do snowed-up rich kids preening for the photoblogger get your blood on the boil? Then Adbusters have an interesting and at times scathing article for you about the hipster (an no, i don't mean those low waist jeans).

Hipsterdom is the first “counterculture” to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion.

The responses are also worth a read:

Why shouldn't you applaud yourselves while being ashamed at the same time?! This is no revolution, or counter-revolution, or evolution, or devolution, it's a mobius strip of a paradox in a hampster wheel! - Anonymous

In the spirit of un-celebrating the hipster here's some of my fave club photoblogs featuring uber-cool counter-culture revolutionaries:

Australia: Streetparty, Purple Sneakers

OS/US: Last Nights Party, Driven By Boredom, The Cobrasnake

Tunes for Lazy Mornings

One of the benefits of housesitting for a music writer is you can fossick through their CDs and albums, discovering new gems that may have passed you in the slipstream. Two albums that rose to the surface this morning, in perfect lazy Saturday fashion are from Loney, Dear and Nobody & The Mystic Chords of Memory. Both charming, breezy, free wheeling pop records for today's rainy weather or, fingers crossed, next weekend's sunshine.

Since it is a lazy Saturday (and i'm still in my PJs at midday) i'm going to leave the descriptive passages to Last FM...



Multi-instrumentalist and home-recording phenom Emil Svanängen lives in Sweden and he makes records and plays shows under the somewhat inscrutable name of Loney, dear. In either his tiny Stockholm studio apartment or the basement of his parents' house, and with a dedication bordering upon manic, Emil discreetly builds Loney, dear songs using a modest home studio set-up. In this way he has recorded and then released himself on CD-R four albums in the last two or three years. He has managed to sell several thousand of these, pretty much on his own. (Last-Fm)

I'm loving his record Loney Noir which you can hear tracks from on myspace or official site.



Nobody & Mystic Chords of Memory is a collaborative effort between Nobody (Elvin Estella) and Mystic Chords of Memory (Chris Gunst and Jen Cohen). Building off of successful guest appearances on each other's past releases, the trio began collaborating on the project in the spring of 2004. After a year-plus of road trips and mail-order production efforts, the result is a perfectly crafted blend of psychedelic hip-hop and sunshine folk-rock. Nobody proves himself a producer/arranger in the classical sense, using his sample-based tool set to create the foundations for the album. (Last FM)

Listen to more from the album Tree Coloured See on Hype Machine.

I Met The Walrus

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace.

Teenage Fanclub - The Concept

A couple of weeks ago I got Bandwagonesque, the classic Teenage Fanclub album from '91. I can't stop listening to it, especially the astonishing opening track The Concept. I was taught the tune on guitar by a mad welshman in a hot rehearsal room during London's summer '07 and it just brings back all those memories. I wish i'd owned the record before then though, i'm sure i rooted up the solo having never heard it. Anyway, since its stuck in my head, get it stuck into yours:



Unfortunately its not the full album version, you get the MTV fadeout at 3'22. Starsign and What You Do To Me are also standouts on the record. If you're a Big Star, Neil Young, Dinosaur Jr or Byrds fan then its a must-own.

And if yr in Spain in September you can see Teenage Fanclub at the Ebro Vision festival on the 19th. Woo!

Life Without Labels

Very interesting article from technology blog Ars Technica today about how indie bands are living without label help and the way they are surviving in the new online music world. It also talks about Tunecore, which i had never heard of, but allows artists to place their music on the key online music stores like iTunes, Amazon MP3, eMusic, and Rhapsody. I wonder how many Australian bands make use of the service? The truth is bands have been surviving quite happily without major or even minor label support for many years before the online music revolution. But the difficulties they face with trying to promote, market and PR your music are the same as ever when you're also juggling self-managing and playing in a band as well.

The full article can be found here, and Ars Technica have also written about Tunecore and its service here.

Busy Ned

photo by elspop.

With another Europe/UK trip planned for October, there are now only a few opportunies left to catch prog-indie wonderkid Ned Collette and the band before they wing their way away from us.

I myself haven't seen him since a gig early last year at Monto Water Rats in London where he supported Besnard Lakes and which came at the end of a string of dates with Joanna Newsom. It was probably the best show I'd seen Ned do up until that point. But he now has a more stable band, a great critically acclaimed second record under his belt, and the confidence that comes from having already successfully traveled far from home to flog his wares.

Ned Collette Band play on Friday night at Roxanne Parlour in Melbourne with Deloris and Over The Atlantic (NZ). He'll be solo for a special "in the round" show on August 24 at The Retreat in Brunswick with fellow Melbourne songwriters Lisa Miller and Ross McLennan. Then up to Sydney on August 27th for the Shoot The Player website launch.

UK types can catch him from October 9th onwards. Check his myspace for dates.

Ned Collette's album Future Suture is in stores and worth every penny... he's a video for the tune "The Country With A Smile"...

Jessica Says

Its isn't difficult to fall for Jessica Says. Having cut her teeth on stage as the cello player of choice for touring acts like Jens Lekman and Micah P. Hinson, Jessica Venables has put herself centre stage, a potential world-class indie-songstress in the making. As any red-blooded skinny indie nerd will tell you she has the full package. Ms Venables' own piano driven gothic-pop tunes casually straddle the universes inhabited by artists like Joanna Newsom, New Buffalo, Kate Bush and Tori Amos. The latter two offer the closest comparison to Jessica's voice, which mixes enough girly charm with worldly matter-of-factness, delivered live with her fringe-covered doe eyes wide, head slightly tilted down, the unblinking confidence and vulnerability rubbing electricity into the air. I saw her at the Empress on Wednesday and was mesmerized.

The songs themselves, as yet unreleased, offer defiant statements: "nothings gonna shake me now" on The Sleeping One Beside Me; and more heart breaking observations like "by the morning she'll be gone again" on His Mothers Ring. With only these two songs on her myspace its hard to get a wider view of her talents, although rumor is there might be a release coming out through Unstable Ape in October. But try to catch her live and be seduced. Jessica Says plays tonight supporting Dave Bazan (Pedro The Lion) at the NSC then Saturday at the Edinburgh Castle with another amazing Melbourne singer-songwriter Nathan Hollywood and indie champs The Ancients.

New Melbourne Discoveries

Having not blogged for a while i thought i might do a quick wrap of some of the newer Melbourne artists starting to catch my attention.

First up is a guy called Grizzly Jim Lawrie who weaves catchy, melodic folk tunes around his slightly muppety, or some say Neil Young-esque voice. Its your fairly standard m-town 'man-with-guitar' stuff, but still makes for compelling listening. His standout tune Wish I Was There can be downloaded from his myspace page. Jim's been doing Wednesday nights at the newly refitted Birmingham Hotel in Collingwood and can be seen drumming for The Hondas and Flats and the Friendly Few. Grizzly Jim Lawrie plays the Empress on August 16th and the Tote on August 19th.


photo by James Greer.

Also on the folkie tip is Major Chord (above), the new project for Dan Flynn and Kate Connor. In spite of their uninspiring name, the tunes are well crafted modern folk pop, at times recalling Iron and Wine, Machine Translations or Nick Drake: Dan's gentle, confident balladeer's voice croons lovingly over his warm acoustic guitar and Biddy's violin and harmonies add a slight alt-country edge to the affair. The self titled debut album is out in stores and their tunes can be heard and downloaded at the Major Chord myspace page.

Major Chord plays Bar Open on August 14th with International Karate.

Luluc

photo courtesy of thevine.com.au

Melbourne folk duo Luluc head up my Melbourne gigs of the week. They play a free instore at Polyester city on Flinders Lane this Friday from 6:30pm. Luluc are about to release their independent debut Dear Hamlyn, songs from which are already getting FBI, JJJ and RRR rotation. Zoe (Grand Salvo) and Steve (Wagons) launch the album on August 8th at The Corner Hotel. Their tunes are up on myspace too and with excellent new management and label support from Shock, plus a New York tour planned for late August, you can expect big things from these guys over the next 12 months. More info on the group is at their official site.

Also happening this Friday 25th July is a cool show at The Evelyn Hotel in Fitzroy. The lineup of Pikelet, Aleks and The Ramps and a new project for James from Architecture in Helsinki looks very promising... plus visuals from Robbie (Grey Daturas) and aural-wallpaper from Dj Faux Pas. Lock it in.

Hottest Digital Music Sites

I'm caught in a dilemma. I'm back in Melbourne, feeling very out of the loop with the local music scene and goings-on, but with a lot of time on my hands in the Victorian countryside. I have zero motivation to post to the blog, and if i did i couldn't use my Mac since i have no way to connect it to the computer/broadband here (until i get an ethernet cable). So, I've little else to do other than be lazy, whingey and sissy-dicked. I have been trawling the net a little in boredom though, and scoping out some recommendations from friends, hence this which came to me from Danny Jumpertz at Feral Media. Wired's Listening Post Hottest Music Sites Online. According to them:

Sites were chosen based not only on what they currently do for music fans, but also on their potential to impact the future development of the music industry. Based on how things go with the first iteration, this list could be updated periodically and opened for voting.

Fave's of mine get a look in like RCRD LABEL and MUXTAPE, plus some new ones too which i'm yet to have adventures within. Anway, I now share it with you. Tada.