Live Review: Big Day Out 2011 - Auckland New Zealand

January 21st was the day for New Zealand's biggest music festival Big Day Out. Held in Auckland and in major cities across Australia, this year they tended to side with a rock/metal heavy lineup, with some quality electronic acts thrown in.

The first band I saw was American blues/garage rock band "The Greenhornes", I'd never heard a song of theres and the only knowledge I had of them was a couple of them were in Jack White Projects The Raconteurs and the Dead Weather. They certainly were a good start to the day with a tight live performance, with some nice garage rock tracks and some cool bluesy tracks thrown in.

Rating: 6.5/10

Next band I saw was the Jim Jones Revue and this was only because I was waiting round making sure i got a good spot for another band on the stage next to it. Now the biggest problem I have with the Jim Jones Revue is that I'm unsure whether I should take them seriously as the tracks just seem stupid and that its harder to judge them on whether its just a gimmick or not.

Rating: N/A/10

Following this was Birds of Tokyo a band I saw at a club show the night before, unfortunately unlike the night before the sound almost ruined the bands performance, it was very muddy sound for the most part but this might be attributed to being right up the front which happens sometimes. Big ups to them though for playing a track of both the first two albums which are my favourites.

Rating: 5.5/10

My first trip to the Boiler Room was next and this was to see CSS. I've never been a big fan of CSS but it was definately worth it to check them out as I've heard they were great live and they sure were. A great show full of fun, dancy tracks that got the crowd going from start the finish, the song "Off the Hook" a personal favourite track of mine got played so I was pleased with that. Also big ups to the singer for playing some of the set without pance.

Rating: 7/10

Almost straight after this was Die Antwoord, now this is an example of a band that don't take themselves too seriously but you know this so you just go with the flow. The performance was amazing and a big surprise for me as I'd never taken the time to listen to their album. I never thought I'd have much fun but I definately did, but part of this may be attributed to the strong vodka and orange I was having down the back, good smuggle by the way!

Rating: 7/10

Now probably the second most anticipating live performance for me was Crystal Castles, little did I know the live performance I was expecting wasn't to be. Before they came on stage the tech read a message out, it was hard to hear all of it but what I did hear was that Alice was told not to perform due to injury but decided to do it anyway. Still broken ankle and all she killed it live, coming on with crutches, taking a big swig of bourbon and then using the mic stand as a crutch for most of the set she was still able to have a great stage presence throughout. Only dissapointments from it was the lack of the track "Celestica" and the set being cut short due to Die Antwoord going way overtime, but the playing of tracks such as "Baptism" and "Alice Practice" got the crowd getting into it in a big way.

Rating: Alice Glass is a babe/10

After leaving the boiler room the rain was coming down heavily and coincided with my first trek to the main stage area, purely to get a good spot for The Stooges later on in the day. I found a great spot but was then put through a painfully boring performance by the John Butler Trio and then a slightly more redeeming performance by local favourites Shihad.

Shihad are a solid live band, you always know what you get with them a strong energetic rock show and sub par albums. they certainly got the crowd pumped up playing The General Electric album in full followed by the single from their latest album Sleepeater. My one gripe with the live show is that Jon Toogood the singer/guitarist is such a cliche when talking to the crowd, sometimes its painful hearing him talk.

Rating: 6.5/10

The rain continued to fall heavily but it didn't matter because it was time for The Stooges. Everything about the performance was great, starting the set with Raw Power then on to Search and Destroy showing quickly to anyone that doubted them that they've still got it cause they certainly still do. the biggest crowd favourite seemed to be "I Wanna Be Your Dog". Iggy's stage presence was as good as ever, dancing crazily around stage and down with the fans. The ultimate highlight for a small few must've been those that got onstage with The Stooges for a song.

Rating: 8/10

A quick trip back to the boiler room was needed because it was now time for the band that single handedly got me to Big Day Out this year, LCD Soundsystem. Knowing this could be my only chance to see them live I had to see them and they certainly made us wait just a little longer. The set was delayed by 15 minutes due to tecnical difficulties which was making some of us a little restless. But it in the end was all worth it once Dance Yrself Clean kicked in. The fanboy in me was definately obvious and they proceeded to run through some of my favourite tracks from the latest album, with those being Home, I Can Change, You Wanted a Hit and Dance Yrself Clean. The Dancing and singing along to every song continued throughout and the last 3 tracks of the set were my biggest highlights. Tribulation followed by Movement was amazing, but the one track I really wanted to see was All My Friends and the longer the set went on the more I worried about it not being played. Then the piano intro came in and the whole song was perfect, a great way to end the set.

Rating: <3/10

Now after such a high, it was time to catch some of the festivals headline act Tool. Now how do I review their performance...Well the minute or so it took me to walk from one end to the other was the extent of my listening, it sounded boring like a CD and wasn't anything interesting. The band is becoming meh to me now anyway, without a recent release it was going to happen after such highs after every release. Also the lack of showing them performing on the screen blew because it meant if you weren't in the D pit you had no chance of seeing any of them.

Rating: Blew mad dudes/10

Lastly M.I.A., which had the potential to be a great way to end the long and entertaining day, unfortunately it didn't do alot. Born Free, Meds and Feds, Paper Planes being the only highlights.

Rating:
Emotional Status: Underwhelmed

So this years Big Day Out was certainly a success for me, great bands, great songs, shitty weather. LCD killed it, The Stooges killed it, Crystal Castles killed it. Great Festival by the way!

Overall Rating: 7.5/10

Awards:

The Christopher Fitzgerald Memorial award for best no pance: Singer from CSS

The Ali G "Big Ups" award: Alice Glass for performing on one leg

The Sean Fitzpatrick award for biggest cliche: Jon Toogood

The least Hetero AKA Best dressed award:

Old guy dressed as a cowboy at CSS, I wonder what he thinks CSS means?

Earth - Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light I (2011)

Have you ever trudged across a desert and watched in sublime awe as the sun bled into the horizon? I haven’t, but I’m sure it would be pretty cool…that is, until an hour later when you start to fatigue, your ass begins to sweat, and you grow tired of seeing nothing but cactuses, sand (and maybe the occasional rattle snake) for miles and miles and miles...and miles.

That’s what Earth’s latest release “Angels of Darkness Demons of Light” feels like to me: it has some inspiring, sublime moments, but the songs begin to wear thin, and the often lackluster riffs do little to regain my attention. The music sounds a little like a mix between post-rock and drone, with a distinct western feel to it (in my mind at least). Dylan Carlson added a cello, which is a nice touch, and the bass on this album also does a great job of holding the music down while seemingly winding in and out of songs. Meanwhile, the drums can get fucked. I understand that this music is largely atmospheric, and as a drummer, figuring out what to play that fits the feel but that doesn’t bore can be challenging. Except it sounds like the drummer's solution to this problem was to just say “okay, every time the guitar like, goes down a note, I’ll hit a tom or something and follow along”. Seriously, every fill has me holding my breath wondering if the drummer is going to make it to the floor tom (he always ends on the floor tom). It’s as if the band all got really high and wanted to take sonic flight, but their fat ass drummer weighed them down. The cymbals do have a nice timbre to them, though.

Fans of Earth who have listened to their previous two albums, “The Bees Made Honey” and “Hex”, will probably find some moments on “Angels” sounding very familiar. Except, “Angels” manages to somehow sound even sparser than Earth’s previous efforts. Maybe this is a good thing though. Not all music has to hurl itself at you. Sometimes you have to put in the work and….puufff…like let the music into YOU brah.

But in all seriousness, sparse, abstract music can often provide some of the best listening experiences. Instead of having some cunt yelling at you in an affected British accent about the pangs of his heart, you can create your own narrative and explore your own thoughts. One of the things I often like to do when I listen to more abstract albums is come up with story lines that fit the arc of the music. A little like playing a movie in my head. Except, when I tried to do this with “Angles of Darkness, Demons of Light” a good 40 minutes of the movie I made consisted of a dude with a scraggly beard standing isolated in the expanse of a desert…and that’s it, just standing there, really. Occasionally blinking and maybe scratching his balls or something.

What I’m trying to say is that the music follows no arc. This might be okay if the world Earth conjured was so fascinating that you just didn’t want to leave, but that’s not the case. I think a YouTuber actually put it pretty well “this music makes me feel like a blind slug trying to cross a sidewalk on a hot summer day”. This comment got 94 likes. So I guess if you’re one of those kinky fucks that’s into that sort of thing…go for it man. If your not into that sort of thing, still give it a whirl, but don't expect your mind to be blown.

7

BLÆRG - Everything Was Altered (2011)

Drill and bass is a genre that hurts mine anus. It's a genre that has the potential to be pretty amazing, but many artists out there are content to show you how many snare rushes they can pull off in the span of 3 minutes, while the musical backing sounds like a bunch of amateurish synths that were placed there for no particular reason. Because of that, I felt very uneasy before I first played Everything Was Altered. Thankfully the album was an enthralling experience. It's not everyday someone makes an intelligent drill and bass album that doesn't piss you off. Let's enter BLÆRG.

What does the dude sound like? Well, for the most part he relies on tasteful drum samples and has more fills than your stretched arsehole. His basslines sound like a classic analog synth that was programmed by Jaco Pastorius, and the atmospheric pads sound like they were pulled directly from a zen master's meditation session. The album feels like a very futuristic jazz album - it's what kids of the year 2400 would listen to while wearing gay fuckin' clothes while doing gnarly stunts on their hoverboards. You could compare this experience to a more ambient version of Squarepusher's Hard Normal Daddy. The difference being that the production is a lot better and the album doesn't feature Squarepusher's pretentious moments where he just makes a 7 minute song which is a bunch of "Bzzzzzzzzzzt...ROWROWRPTROWBZZZZZZT". This is a very thought provoking release, and at 29 minutes, it's very comfortable. Some people might wish the album was longer, but fuck that. If this album was an hour long, or even longer, I'd not like the album as much at all.

For those of you who have played Metal Gear Solid 2, for some reason I was reminded of that while listening to this album. I dunno, the album just has some warm Asiatic vibes to it at times. I would go so far as to say that this is a drill and bass album you could sleep to, even. It's unintrusive, yet it fires up those synapses like it ain't no thang. It's very profound stuff. It may sound really stupid, but for an album that sounds so machine like, it sounds very human. I wouldn't say that it's an easy thing to achieve, but BLÆRG pulls it off effortlessly. Definitely a 2011 album you must listen to.

8.5

Hype!: Painted Face

Painted Face is a project from Telepathe's Allie Alvarado and producer Alvin Risk. Their take on synth pop recalls the Knife if they were on uppers mixed with a denser, more gentler Sleigh Bells. You can grab the single "Undreamt" here for free, and they also have an EP in the works by the same name as the single. If you're into indietronica with female vocals, you're gonna love this band.

Painted Face - Girls in Love

Ulcerate - The Destroyers of All (2011)

In 2009, Ulcerate released their second album, the ‘brilliantly’ titled Everything is Fire. What that album did for them was likely not at all what they expected. Suddenly, Ulcerate were the biggest band in the New Zealand metal scene (I sincerely hope that no one tries to tell me otherwise while bringing up 8 Foot Sativa). Now this isn’t like saying they are the biggest metal band in Sweden or Germany, but it is a pretty huge step for a band to take. What this means is that the level of expectations for this album are suddenly much higher after being considerably lower previously.

Here we are just under two years later and Ulcerate are back to follow up their groundbreaking sophomore release. The Destroyers of All is an example of Ulcerate doing what they do best and sticking to what they know. There are few bands in the death metal scene that create such a unique atmosphere, with Immolation being the most comparable band in this regard. The atmosphere on this album helps give the music a much more compact and a much more thick sound. It also works very well with their unique riffing style, which is also comparable to Immolation in it’s ability to be somewhat unpredictable and inventive without necessarily messing with different time signatures.

Despite playing a very similar style to the one found on Everything is Fire, Ulcerate do one thing much different on this album. This is a an album that is much slower in nature, oftentimes sounding almost like atmospheric sludge metal or at other times like doom metal. There are songs here that are more akin to their previous work, such as “Beneath” and the title track, but the plodding approach takes over most of the album. The drumming is once again fantastic, often furiously and inappropriately pounding away even with the slower style present. However, this slower style does bring one, albeit minor, complaint. At just over 50 minutes for 7 tracks, this album doesn’t quite change it up enough to be fully engaging for every listen. That being said, this is a very good album if you are in the right mood for it and even if you aren’t it is still a strong and consistent release. The Destroyers of All definitely doesn’t disappoint, even with the band facing higher expectations.

8

The Go! Team - Rolling Blackouts (2011)

Hey, The Go! Team are back, and guess what? They sound uh... exactly the same as before. Their third album seems to carry on the sound that the group is known for, which is a mish-mash of euphoria, sugary shit, crazy sampling and pseudo hip-hop vocals. Does this mean that the album blows?

Nah, not at all. Or at least that's my opinion. I'd say that the only people that would hate this album are people who call every single full release by an artist an 'LP', or people that are diabetics. I'm not too sure how anyone could hate on something so irresistably charming. I mean, this album is like seeing a jubilant puppy wagging its' tail and jumping around. Seriously, that's fucking cute. An album like this is sure to make even the most misanthropic of people happy as shit. It's just really fuckin' awesome.

If there's one thing I don't understand it's how people who were really thrilled with Thunder, Lightning, Strike managed to not like this album. Like, how come? It's the same shit and an expansion on the sound that the group managed to forge those many years ago... well, actually, it wasn't that long ago. The sounds on this album are all so very vibrant and hearty as fuck. When the first track T.O.R.N.A.D.O. starts you're instantly thrown into the world of Parappa the Rapper. I say that because everything is reminiscent of a juvenile past, and I mean that in the best possible way. You remember those times where you just went to school as an 8 year old to eat lunch, waiting for home time to arrive so you could go home and watch Arthur on TV while snacking on food? Those times fuckin' ruled and everything was much more simple. The Go! Team take you back there - times of innocence; the time before you first discovered hot, naked lesbians making out and furiously fingering one another. Sometimes you just want to thrive in those moments of innocence, and it's not everyday artists allow you to do exactly that. That is one reason why I really love this album.

Really, all I can say is that if you don't like this album, you have no soul. Or if you do have a soul, it's probably so horribly cold that even black metallers shit themselves in fear of it.

8

Iron and Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean (2011)

It's hard to talk about Sam Beam's new LP without mentioning the whole thing about the backing band being there. It's kinda unavoidable, since the man's music has been so minimal and simple in the past. Beam himself has even spoken out about his musical progression, saying he couldn't get any simpler than an album like Creek Drank the Cradle, so complexity was the only way to go from there. It certainly reflects how he took a full bodied lush guitar sound on Shepherd's Dog almost four years ago. With Kiss Each Other Clean, Beam takes his musical complexity a step even further.

As it opens with "Walking Far From Home", the mood is instantly more vibrant and accessible than anything he's done before with Iron and Wine. It's nearly a gospel song transcribed for the 21st century hipster. "Big Burned Home" sounds like a jam band with its thumping bass and smooth jazz sax. "Godless Brother in Love" and "Glad Man Singing" could've been released by Sufjan sometime five years ago. "Your Fake Name Is Good Enough for Me", the album's opus and finale, is perhaps the most surprising change of pace for Beam and co. Sounding like a psychedelic jam session off something from last year's All the Delighted People, it builds and builds to actually end up...no where, which was somewhat of a revelation for me. Beam normally ends his albums with great songs (think "Muddy Hymnal" and "Flightless Bird, American Mouth"), but this ending feels comparatively incomplete. That could even be said about most of the album in retrospect. Many times, where I've wanted songs to stretch out and venture somewhere new with a full band backing him, the ideas simply float around at times and become half hearted experiments.

This album feels entirely inspired and deserved, but it's lacking in the heart and personality of his earlier albums. It's an admirable attempt, one that many fans will undoubtedly enjoy. But this is hardly Iron and Wine in any way, which is sad. It might be a great blueprint for his future, but right now, it's somewhat disappointing.

7

Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - III/IV (2010)

The double album is a format that suits Ryan Adams. If there's one thing that could be said about him, it's that he's fucking prolific. Following the release of his critically acclaimed debut, Heartbreaker, Adams would release album after album like a clockwork until 2005 when he released Cold Roses (a double album), Jacksonville City Nights and 29. What's scary about those albums, is how great they all are.

One thing to note though, is Cold Roses does have its issues. Which while being a great album in my opinion does suffer from typical content problems that come with double albums. However Adams once pointed out that the problem with that criticism is, if you get five fans together and asks them to take half the songs and make the best album out of it they'll all pick different tracks. As a music fan, I would agree with this sentiment.

All of this is to say, Adams and company have managed to release another double-album only five years later, on the heels of the Sci-Fi Metal concept album, Orion. Though, the recording of this album occured just after the release and writing of the trilogy of albums mentioned above.

While Easy Tiger was being recorded, tons of other material was as well. Some of these songs (such as Sewers At the Bottom of the Wishing Well) would show up on the Elizabethtown Sessions demos, which can be found floating around the internet. The Elizabethtown Sessions also featured Two and Everyone Knows, which were on Easy Tiger themselves.

There's two things I want you get from that mini-essay up there. Thing 1: Ryan Adams writes a fucking lot of music. Thing 2: I'm an unapologetic fanboy.

When Adams was recording Easy Tiger, and by extension this album, he listened to hip hop to get rid of any "obvious influences." He's stated that Easy Tiger was unnatural to him to record and that he got bummed out while doing it, this album however seems a lot funner and to show the Cardinals and him just fucking around. There's lines like "Happy birthday / I'm your birthday cake and I'm wet" as well as the nerd anthem Star Wars, in which Adams longs for someone who loves him the way he love Star Wars (the original triology), Wizards, and Ninja wars, as well as world domination.

III and IV both represent different sides of his songwriting. On IV, we have a loud and fast track like Numbers with the shout along chorus "we're fucked!", while on III we more slow, sometimes acoustic guitar driven stuff, such as the Crystal Skull or Ultraviolet Light. Both albums offering different things adds to the strength of this release.

III is comparable to the louder moments on Easy Tiger, or Cardionology, it takes more chances then either of those releases though, which occasionally works in it's favor but I wouldn't say the songwriting is necessarily as emotive as tracks like Fix It. Happy Birthday is probably my favorite song on the album, and one of my favorite songs by him in recent years, and Stop Playing With My Heart is too catchy to ignore.

IV is in many ways, the logical progression from 2003's Rock and Roll (which Adams has written, claiming it was written just because Lost Highway demanded a happy, marketable album from him.) It also has this particularly interesting aesthetic, where the song just switches gears. This happens on Numbers for example, which is a punk-inspired rock, and after going pretty fast it switches up when Adams repeats "numbers numbers numbers," and on Star Wars he does something similar, starting out kinda poppy and loose it gets sort of 80s when he starts repeating the, again, title line about star wars.

This album references Adams love of metal, punk, 80s Brit pop, as well as indie bands from the Sonic Youth to the Strokes (fun fact: Adams recorded a cover of Is This It on a banjo on drugs. I so want to hear it.) However, while the album is diverse it does get repetitive. Unlike Cold Roses, the same instruments and tones were used for the most part, as a result it's hard to get through this in one sitting without everything blending together. The demo versions of some of these songs are almost stronger, just because it's Adams with an acoustic guitar which would give the album a level of versatility, from a sonic/aesthetic perspective not so much a songwriting perspective that is absent.

Ultimately, this isn't Ryan Adams best album. However, it has some of the best fucking songs he's ever done, and it's so much more fun then anything that's came before it. This album is a testament to the talent that is Ryan Adams - and also a testament to his longing for a girl with lasers and mirrors for eyes.

8