WOODFORD FOLK FESTIVAL, QLD: December 29 – January 1. Tickets and more information here.
BRISBANE: Saturday January 2 @ The Junk Bar. Tickets on sale now from Oztix.
MELBOURNE: Monday January 4 @ Northcote Social Club with The Orbweavers. Tickets on sale now from the venue. Presented by Triple R.
SYDNEY: Wednesday January 6 @ The Famous Spiegeltent, 5.45pm. Tickets on sale now from Sydney Festival.
SYDNEY: Thursday January 7 @ The Famous Spiegeltent, 8pm. Tickets on sale now from Sydney Festival.
Mistletone proudly presents the first Australian tour by The Weather Station, performing as a trio at Woodford Folk Festival and Sydney Festival plus headline shows in Brisbane and Melbourne.
“Plain but elegant, simple but intricate… Her songs feel very much like attempts to understand and appreciate the world in spite of its bitter ills; like the most basic forms of folk music, a term Lindeman readily embraces, they come with intent and aim.” – PITCHFORK
The Weather Station is the project of Canadian songwriter Tamara Lindeman; folk music based in classic elements of songcraft – melody, tension, meaning. The Weather Station’s third and finest album yet, Loyalty (released locally via Spunk Records) was recorded at La Frette Studios in France in the winter of 2014 with Afie Jurvanen (Bahamas) and Robbie Lackritz (Feist).
Loyalty retains the humble immediacy of Tamara Lindeman’s previous records while adding a high fidelity sheen, a clarity, a new confidence. The record crystallises Tamara’s lapidary songcraft into eleven emotionally charged vignettes and intimate portraits, redolent of fellow Canadians Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and David Wiffen, but utterly her own.
On her previous acclaimed albums All Of It Was Mine, and follow-up What Am I Going To Do With Everything I Know, (both for You’ve Changed Records) Tamara Lindeman established herself as a songwriter’s songwriter, earning accolades for her delicate, carefully worded verse, filled with double meanings, complex metaphors, and rich details of the everyday.
Praise for Loyalty in Australia includes Double J Best New Music (“Really intriguing folk music”), 4ZZZ (“Drifting and beautiful folk-rock”), Radio National’s The Inside Sleeve’s Best of 2015 So Far, 2SER Album of the Week, and 4 star reviews in Rolling Stone and The Music: “One of those old-fashioned, pure-at-heart folk records… Loyalty will be one of 2015’s well-loved releases”.
International praise has been just as lavish, with 4 star reviews in MOJO and Uncut: “There are many wise, deceptively simple insights on this wonderful album”; Popmatters 90 out of 100: “(Like) fellow Canadians Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, the fragility of tragic folk heroine Judee Sill, and even Bob Dylan, Loyalty offers a lived-in warmth of intimacy that refuses to be date stamped and exists outside the standard release cycle, claiming no specific year or period of origin”; and the Boston Globe: “The Weather Station compels the listener to lean in. That’s the only way to fully savor her intimate, acoustic tales that recall fellow Canadian artist Joni Mitchell, circa the late ’60s”.
Artwork by Michael Hurley, layout by Carl Breitkreuz
MICHAEL HURLEY TOUR DATES:
BRISBANE: THU JAN 21 – Junk Bar. SOLD OUT
MELBOURNE: SAT JAN 23 – Northcote Social Club with special guest Joel Silbersher plus DJ Downpat (A G Picks, O’Tomorrow). Presented by Triple R. SOLD OUT
SYDNEY FESTIVAL: SUN JAN 24 – St Stephen’s Church with Meg Baird, doors open 6pm. Tickets on sale now from Sydney Festival.
MELBOURNE: TUE JAN 26 – Summer Tones @ The Shadow Electric, Abbotsford Convent with Kurt Vile, Meg Baird + more. Tickets on sale now from The Shadow Electric.
Mistletone could not be more overjoyed to present the first ever Australian tour by one of the last of America’s true outsider folk troubadours, Michael Hurley. We at Mistletone (Ash & Sophie) have been long-time loving fans of Michael Hurley; he is an artist whose music means a great deal to us, and our hearts are overflowing with gratitude that he is finally coming to our shores!
Michael Hurley’s music sounds old, like it has always existed, and simultaneously singular, like something you’ve never heard anyone else play quite like that before. This timeless quality ensures that Hurley’s audience constantly renews itself. From the the beatniks in the NYC Village where he started in the early 60s, to the hippies in Vermont, to the Americana fans, indie rockers and freak folkers from the last two decades, and those who have covered and championed his songs — from Cat Power to Devendra Banhart to Calexico — Michael’s music never fails to find fresh new ears. Pressed for a description, Hurley has called it “jazz-hyped blues and country and western music”.
Michael Hurley grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. As a teenager in the 1950s he fell in love hearing the music of Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers and Bo Diddley blast from the radio, and was enthralled by the records of Blind Willie McTell, Hank Williams and Uncle Dave Macon that he sought for his own. This love for music, true and unvarnished, supplied him with a finely tuned musical compass he has not wavered from for 50 years and counting.
Hurley’s debut album, First Songs, was recorded for Folkways Records in 1965on the same reel-to-reel machine that taped Lead Belly’s Last Sessions. He was discovered by blues and jazz historian Frederick Ramsey III, and subsequently championed by boyhood friend Jesse Colin Young, who released his 2nd & 3rd albums on The Youngbloods’ Warner Bros. imprint, Raccoon. In the late 1970s, Hurley made three albums for Rounder, all of which have since been reissued on CD. His 1976 LP Have Moicy!, a collaboration with the Holy Modal Rounders and Jeffrey Frederick & The Clamtones, was named “the greatest folk album of the rock era” by The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau.
In more recent years stalwart independent labels like Gnomonsong, Mississippi and Tompkins Square have been carrying the torch. A new album on the Mississippi label is due this spring and Michael Hurley has released dozens of albums — all glorious listens. Besides being a truly unique musician, Hurley is also a cartoonist and watercolor artist of note — the instantly recognisable results of which grace his album covers.
Michael Hurley likes to call himself Elwood Snock, Doc Snock, Snockman, The Snock, or Snock. He has self-published magazines such as The Underground Monthly, The Outcry, and The Morning Tea, and created several comic books featuring Jocko and Boone, Greenbriar Kornbread, and Mama Molasses, among other characters.Two oft-featured cartoon werewolves, Jocko and Boone, have been something of a theme across Hurley’s musical career, even appearing in their own comics. Both are based on dogs that Hurley owned.
Michael Hurley now resides on the northwest coast of the USA, and appearances outside that region have been scarce the last decade; so we are doubly grateful that he is making the Long Journey to Australia’s shores at long last.
Michael Hurley. Photo: Tim Bugbee
WHAT SOME FOLKS HAVE SAID ABOUT MICHAEL HURLEY:
“Undoubtedly one of American’s greatest folk singers, Hurley has little in common with the majority of today’s folk performers. While they seem bent on demonstrating that all people are alike, such a suffocating presumption has no place in this man’s work. Michael Hurley is nothing like his potential audience. What better reason to hear what he has to say?”
– Chuck Cuminale
“…I don’t know what else to say about what he writes and sings, other than that it is gosh-darned great. What kind of music is it? Hell, what kind of weeds does God grow? Let’s just shut up and listen and go to where Michael Hurley is. After all, we can always turn around and come back. He can’t.”
– Nick Tosches
“Michael Hurley is the last unreconstructed folkie-shaman in America. His songs are primordial tales of the hunt for good cheer and satisfying sex, etched like cave paintings on city walls and farmland silos. Like many characters in his songs, his voice seems to have been run over by the dump truck of life, but it marries human mystery to forthright music like no other.”
– Milo Miles
“Whether weaving a yarn about a mysterious hog or comparing the human heart to a mechanic’s toolbox, Mr. Hurley create(s) elaborate vistas in a musical version of outsider art”
– Ann Powers / New York Times
“Hurley remains one of the elusive masters of American folk”
– Chris Morris / Billboard
“Trusting in his own peculiarities, Hurley makes the world spin just a little bit slower, and a little bit bumpier. Somehow it feels much more natural that way.”
– Jim Macnie
“Somehow, thinking of Hurley, I find myself thinking also of Samuel Beckett. Now I don’t see Hurley having much truck with the modernist strain of 20th Century art, and, as a high school dropout, he would probably be nauseated by the gasbag spewings of the ivory tower intellectual. A true and deliberate neo-primitive, his inspiration springs from nature, the rural blues and the lure of remote hills and woodlands, landscapes that loom in the backgrounds of his comics like vast parabolic gumdrops.”
– Vernon Tonges
Watch Michael Hurley perform “The Slurf Song” on Live Wire Radio Oregon, filmed at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Northeast Portland:
“After three decades of near-misses and dark alleys, Phillipps has finally embraced his role as king of the underdogs. On Silver Bullets, he fights back the only way he knows how: with beauty.” – Pitchfork
Mistletone is mighty chuffed to present the return of legendary New Zealand band The Chills. Following on from The BBC Sessions on Fire Records, The Chills have just released their first full length album in nearly two decades, Silver Bullets.
This brilliant new Chills album hails the return of one of New Zealand’s most respected exports; bursting with chiming Dunedin-pop anthems, melodic rock and Martin Phillipps ’ playful punk-rock tendencies, the thrilling new album brings them to the next chapter. Recorded at Albany Street Studios in Dunedin (NZ) the album instantly reaffirms Phillipps’ aptitude for writing intelligent and timeless pop songs delivered with conviction.
Whether tackling issues on the economy, fighting with ‘Silver Bullets’ or the observant nature of Southern Lights on ‘Aurora Corona’, The Chills complex pop resonates in a cacophony of dark-edged songs. Their underlying melancholy remains and is offset by their signature catchy melodies bringing a haunting depth to their idiosyncratic sound. Silver Bullets also features a new re-recording of ‘Molten Gold’.
Formed in 1980, NZ’s indie luminaries The Chills’ revolving line-up has had Martin Phillipps at its core for over 30 years. Joining influential labels Creation and Homestead , they then moved to Warner imprint Slash and onto the world of majors. At the height of their success, John Peel invited them in for a number of BBC sessions which were released for the first time late last year.
Significant chart success at home and a following worldwide would see 1990’s Submarine Bells (Slash Records) gain critical acclaim. When Soft Bomb dropped in 1992, as they toured the US, things imploded resulting in the group disbanding and it wasn’t until 1996 that their next album Sunburnt appeared with a new line up on the Flying Nun label.
Still burning brightly, and with an extraordinary career, The Chills have gone through reformations with breaks on and off. In the late 90s and early 00s they returned to the live scene reaching wider audiences. With eight brand new tunes, they released mini-album Stand By in 2004. In 2013 The Chills joined Fire and Far South with a live LP Somewhere Beautiful, unearthing rare recordings from a private NYE party. Subsequent EPs Molten Gold and Stand By (Tour 2014) and the acclaimed The BBC Sessions LP then followed.
The highly anticipated Silver Bullets is released 30th October on Fire Records with local release by Rocket Distribution.
The Chills are: Martin Phillipps (Guitar/Vox), James Dickson (Bass/Backing Vocals), Todd Knudson (Drums/Backing Vocals), Erica Stichbury (Violin/Backing Vocals) and Oli Wilson (Keyboards/Backing Vocals).
Poster artwork by Hayden Menzies (METZ); layout by Carl Breitkreuz.
METZ TOUR DATES:
Saturday 30 January: Laneway Singapore @ The Meadow, Gardens By The Bay, Singapore Monday, 1st February: Laneway Auckland @ Silo Park, Auckland Friday, 5th February: Laneway Adelaide @ Harts Mill, Adelaide Saturday, 6th February: Laneway Brisbane @ Brisbane Showgrounds, Bowen Hills Sunday, 7th February: Laneway Sydney @ Sydney College Of The Arts, Rozelle SYDNEY: WED FEB 10 @ Oxford Art Factory with special guestsMY DISCOplus Low Life. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix.
MELBOURNE: FRI FEB 12 @ The Corner with special guestsMY DISCOplus Deaf Wish. Tickets on sale now from Ticketscout. Saturday, 13th February: Laneway Melbourne @ Footscray Community Arts Centre, Melbourne Sunday, 14th February: Laneway Fremantle @ Esplanade Reserve and West End, Fremantle
Mistletone, Triple R and FBi proudly present Toronto three-piece METZ, the world’s single most brutal band releasing music right now. METZ bring their three-pronged jolt of energy to Sydney & Melbourne for two Laneway sideshows which are guaranteed ecstatic intensity, with very special guests MY DISCO and local supports Low Life in Sydney, and Sub Pop labelmates Deaf Wish in Melbourne. Tickets on sale now!
Following two acclaimed albums on Sub Pop (2012’s METZ and 2015’s II) and an incredible amount of touring, METZ will release their first new material since the release of II, a 7″ single “Eraser” / “Pure Auto” on esteemed Canadian label Three One G, to coincide with their Australian tour for Laneway Festival in January.
To begin:
“I look at it like this,” METZ frontman Alex Edkins says. “You start a band, just as something to do, because music’s what makes you tick, the thing you dream about and think about and that’s it. You never think that you’ll be able to do it all the time. But then, for some inexplicable reason, people actually listen and latch on and the band begins to take on new meaning. All of a sudden there are expectations and pressure, real or imagined, to change who you are. It was important to us, when making this record, not to give in to that pressure.”
What happens when a seemingly irresistible force meets an immovable object is a serviceable metaphor for the music METZ creates, both live and on record. Now behold II, the concussive new full-length from what is arguably North America’s finest touring rock band. Written and recorded in 2014, after two years of constant touring behind their rightly adored self-titled debut, II is METZ at their most true to form—as pure an expression of what they doas can currently be committed to tape. The guitars are titanic, the drums ill-tempered, the vocals chilling, and the volume worrisome. Though they incorporated new instruments, (baritone guitar, tape loops, piano, synth, found sounds) and stretched out the arrangements, they still managed to “stay true to what made us tick in the first place: that immediacy,” Edkins calls it. “If it punches you in the gut.”
And does it ever. From the exhilarating grind of “Spit You Out” to the blunt-force thrills of “Landfill,” herein reside 10 songs as uncompromising in their ferocity and abrasiveness as any collection this record label has had the pleasure of releasing to date. To accomplish such a sound, the band forced itself to stay home and write for the better part of six months. Tracking was done in three different studios, in Toronto and elsewhere in Ontario, including the same barn where much of METZ had been painstakingly assembled. While said predecessor was often “clean and clinical,” II is what Edkins describes as a “much heavier, darker, and sloppier” affair, with many of its roughest edges and ugliest tones kept intact. Its lyrical matter, Edkins notes, stems from a year of loss and doubt, of contemplating our relationships with death and the planet. “I consider myself a pretty massive pessimist, but a pessimist who knows how lucky he is,” he says. “A lot of things in everyday life drive me crazy: how we relate to each other; how politics, media, technology, money and medication influence our lives. This band, in a lot of ways, is an outlet.”
What we’re left with is the sound of an already monstrous band improving in both subtle and terrifying ways.“We take our noise and our feedback very seriously,” Edkins says. “The more we do this, the more we realize there’s no such thing as right or wrong in music. It comes down to feel. And if it feels good, it works. This time we sorta said, ‘This is who we are. We are not going to clean up our sound, we are not going to hire a big producer, we are not going to try to write a radio song. We are going to be honest and leave the warts for all to see. We are really happy with how it turned out.”
Saturday 30 January: Laneway Singapore @ The Meadow, Gardens By The Bay, Singapore Monday, 1st February: Laneway Auckland @ Silo Park, Auckland Friday, 5th February: Laneway Adelaide @ Harts Mill, Adelaide Saturday, 6th February: Laneway Brisbane @ Brisbane Showgrounds, Bowen Hills Sunday, 7th February: Laneway Sydney @ Sydney College Of The Arts, Rozelle Tuesday, 9th February: SYDNEY: Factory Theatre with special guests Step-Panther. Tickets on sale now fromthe venue. Thursday, 11th February: MELBOURNE: The Corner with special guestsTotally Mild + Crepes. Tickets on sale now fromthe venue. Saturday, 13th February: Laneway Melbourne @ Footscray Community Arts Centre, Melbourne Sunday, 14th February: Laneway Fremantle @ Esplanade Reserve and West End, Fremantle
Mistletone, Triple R and FBi proudly present the first ever Australian tour by hazy Brooklyn guitar band DIIV. come to our shores for Laneway Festival plus side shows in Sydney & Melbourne (dates above, plus Laneway Festival on sale now from here), armed with a hotly anticipated new album and a dreamlike alchemy of sound, built from swirling guitars, transportive textures and transcendental pop songs.
DIIV recently shared their heady new single “Dopamine” from Is The Is Are, their highly anticipated sophomore album for esteemed NYC label Captured Tracks. “Dopamine” is an ecstatic expansion on DIIV’s dream pop / shoegaze stylings, and a mouth-watering taster for fans hooked on the headrush that DIIV’s trademark smoky, spiralling pop delivers straight to the adrenal glands.
DIIV is the nom-de-plume of Z. Cole Smith, musical provocateur and front-man of an atmospheric and autumnally-charged Brooklyn four-piece. Signed to the uber-reliable Captured Tracks imprint, DIIV created instant vibrations in the blog-world with their impressionistic debut Sometime; finding its way onto the esteemed pages of Pitchfork and Altered Zones a mere matter of weeks after the group’s formation.
Enlisting the aid of NYC indie-scene-luminary, Devin Ruben Perez, former Smith Westerns drummer Colby Hewitt, and Mr. Smith’s childhood friend Andrew Bailey, DIIV craft a sound that is at once familial and frost-bitten. Indebted to classic kraut, dreamy Creation-records psychedelia, and the primitive-crunch of late-80’s Seattle, the band walk a divisive yet perfectly fused patch of classic-underground influence.
One part THC and two parts MDMA; the first offering from DIIV chemically fuses the reminiscent with the half-remembered building a musical world out of old-air and new breeze. These are songs that remind us of love in all its earthly perfections and perversions.
A lot of DIIV’s magnetism was birthed in the process Mr. Smith went through to discover these initial compositions. After returning from a US tour with Beach Fossils, Cole made a bold creative choice, settling into the window-facing corner of a painter’s studio in Bushwick, sans running water, holing up to craft his music.
In this AC-less wooden room, throughout the thick of the summer, Cole surrounded himself with cassettes and LPs, the likes of Lucinda Williams, Arthur Russell, Faust, Nirvana, and Jandek; writings of N. Scott Momaday, James Welsh, Hart Crane, Marianne Moore, and James Baldwin; and dreams of aliens, affection, spirits, and the distant natural world (as he imagined it from his window facing the Morgan L train).
The resulting music is as cavernous as it is enveloping, asking you to get lost in its tangles in an era that demands your attention be focused into 140 characters.
Mistletone have announced that Baltimore’s Beach House will bring their swoonsome live show to Melbourne for an intimate Laneway Festival sideshow at 170 Russell on Wednesday, February 10 with special guests to be announced.
Note: Sydney Beach House fans are asked to stay tuned for the announcement of a special Beach House show in the near future.
In the space of just two months, Beach House have released not one, but two stellar albums; the hugely acclaimed Depression Cherry, plus a special new album, Thank Your Lucky Stars, which was released just last week — to everyone’s surprise — and is now available on vinyl, CD and digital formats on Mistletone Records via Inertia Music.
As the band explained in a statement last week regarding Thank Your Lucky Stars, their sixth full length album: “It was written after Depression Cherry from July 2014 – November 2014 and recorded during the same session as Depression Cherry. The songs came together very quickly and were driven by the lyrics and the narrative. In this way, the record feels very new for us, and a great departure from our last few records. Thematically, this record often feels political. It’s hard to put it into words, but something about the record made us want to release it without the normal “campaign.” We wanted it to simply enter the world and exist.”
Beach House debuted “One Thing”, a track from Thank Your Lucky Stars, on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last week, prompting Stereogum to remark “With squalling electric guitar, they sound more like an honest-to-god rock band than they have in years”; click here to watch.
Pitchfork yesterday conferred Best New Track status on “Elegy To The Void” from Thank Your Lucky Stars, noting: “Beach House have always been an out-of-time band, but “Elegy to the Void” places them in a great tradition. People have been making art about The Void forever… (and) what Beach House fan hasn’t sought refuge in their catalog during a personal crisis? “Elegy to the Void” turns from an ode-to-emptiness into a crucial instructive: thank your lucky stars for everything.”
Mistletone is beyond delighted to present the incomparable Jenny Hval, bringing her hypnotising performance to Sydney Festivaland MONA FOMA 2016 plus a performance at NGV’s Friday Nights program during the Andy Warhol / Ai Weiwei exhibition; and throwing into question everything we know about gender and sexuality, health and capitalism, physicality, the body and the soul.
JENNY HVAL TOUR DATES:
HOBART: Friday January 15 @MONA: main stage, 3pm. Tickets & more info here.
SYDNEY FESTIVAL: Tuesday January 19 + Wednesday January 20 @ The Famous Spiegeltent, 8pm; tickets on sale now here.
MELBOURNE: Friday January 22 @ NGV: Friday Nights, Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei exhibition. Tickets and info NGV.
Jenny Hval is a Norwegian singer, writer, artist, songwriter and provocateur. With a background in writing and performance, her music is poetic, sensual, challenging, dark and beautiful; as well as melodic and spacious. A one-time Australian resident, Jenny Hval studied Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne, as well as Literature at the University of Oslo. In addition to her dazzling musical career, she has published two books – the novel Perlebryggeriet (The Pearl Brewery) in 2009 and the collage text Inn i ansiktet (Sings with her eyes) in 2012. Alongside this, she has produced collaborative performances and sound installations, as well as contributing to magazines, anthologies and newspapers.
“Like Björk or Joanna Newsom, Jenny Hval’s music packs an emotionally dense and textured punch, but Hval is also unafraid to be funny or to hold the listener at a distance. Like Laurie Anderson’s Big Science, Apocalypse, Girl functions as a snapshot of a distinct moment within late capitalism” – VICE
Think big, girl, like a king, think kingsize. Jenny Hval’s new record Apocalypse, girl (out now on Sacred Bones Records) opens with a quote from the Danish poet Mette Moestrup, and continues towards the abyss. Apocalypse, girl is a hallucinatory narrative that exists somewhere between fiction and reality, a post-op fever dream, a colourful timelapse of death and rebirth, close-ups of impossible bodies — all told through the language of transgressive pop music.
When Norwegian noise legend Lasse Marhaug interviewed Jenny Hval for his fanzine in early 2014, they started talking about movies, and the conversation was so interesting that she asked him to produce her next record. It turned out that talking about film was a great jumping off point for album production. Hval’s songs slowly expanded from solo computer loops and vocal edits to contributions from bandmates Håvard Volden and Kyrre Laastad, before finally exploding into collaborations with Øystein Moen (Jaga Jazzist/Puma), Thor Harris (Swans), improv cellist Okkyung Lee and harpist Rhodri Davis. All of these musicians have two things in common: they are fierce players with a great ear for intimacy, and they hear music in the closing of a suitcase as much as in a beautiful melody.
And so Apocalypse, girl is a very intimate, very visual beast. It dreams of an old science fiction movie where gospel choir girls are punks and run the world with auto-erotic impulses. It’s a gentle hum from a doomsday cult, a soft desire for collective devotion, an ode to the close-up and magnified, unruly desires.
Jenny Hval has developed her own take on intimate sound since the release of her debut album in 2006. Her work, which includes 2013’s critically celebrated Innocence Is Kinky (Rune Grammofon), has gradually incorporated books, sound installations and collaborations with poets and visual artists. For Hval, language is central, always torn between the vulnerable, the explosive and total humiliation.
Viscera, Jenny’s first album released under her own name in 2011, was set in the body. The songs are stories of flesh and travelling, both sensual and provocative. She wanted to make free music, without a conceptual framework, but realised after recording the album that all the songs deal with travelling in one way or another. Some songs have a modernist protagonist – an unknown and yet present I – whereas other songs take place in the body, visceral travelling. Inside becomes outside, the body is turned inside out. The music for Viscera was composed and arranged by improvising. It follows the lyrics wherever they go: spoken word, surrealist folk tales, or just plain provocative imagery. Modernist fantasy? Fantastic anatomy? WIRE magazine described the record as “a stunning achievement both conceptually and musically.”
Back in 2006, Jenny Hval released her debut proper, To Sing You Apple Trees, under the moniker Rockettothesky. The album received rave reviews and became a surprise hit with its mix of pop, poetry and rampant sexuality. She was nominated for a Norwegian Grammy in the Best New Act category and she played most of the big Norwegian festivals in 2007, as well as shows and small festivals in UK and Europe.
With her second album Medea (2008, also as Rockettothesky), a different and more experimental tone was set. Hval invoked the greek tragic heroine Medea – the monstrous mother, powerful sorceress, and foreign woman – through spoken word and improvised sound textures. She also started playing live with free improv musicians Håvard Volden (guitar) and Kyrre Laastad (drums & percussion).
Since the release of Medea, Jenny Hval has completed several other projects: composing and performing the commissioned piece “Meshes of Voice” with singer and composer Susanna Wallumrød (Susanna and the Magical Orchestra) for Ladyfest 2009, composing and performing at the Ultima Festival for Contemporary Music, published the slightly controversial novel “Perlebryggeriet” (“The Pearl Brewery”, 2009) and started a free folk/improv duo with Håvard Volden (Nude on Sand).
In 2013, Jenny made a breakthrough on Innocence Is Kinky (Rune Grammofon), recorded with producer John Parish (PJ Harvey). As Pitchfork described the album: “Opening with Hval watching internet porn and closing with her discovering a new way to inhabit her body, Innocence Is Kinky examines thorny issues of gender identity and commodified sexuality. She gives her songs titles like “Death of the Author” and “Amphibious, Androgynous”. Mythological figures wander in and out of these songs: Mephisto does his best Ophelia, Oedipus blindly wanders the streets of Oslo, and Pinnochio takes communion. By far the most significant figure among these songs is also the most human: Renée Falconetti, the silent-film star whose close-up in 1928’s The Passion of Joan of Arc is one of the most indelible images in the history of cinema. “The camera is a mirror, but mine, not yours,” Hval sings as an organ thrums in the background and a low bass note pulses on the downbeat.”
Multidisciplinary and transgressive are words often employed to describe her art, but Jenny Hval’s polyphonic artistry is in fact seamlessly interwoven between musical, literary, visual and performative modes of expression. She has infused, carved and modulated an artistic voice that is altogether present, accessible and obscurely complex at the same time.
Beach House devotees everywhere are swooning with the surprise announcement that the band will release a brand new album Thank Your Lucky Stars — their sixth album, and the second album for 2015, following the rapturously received Depression Cherry. Thank Your Lucky Starswill be available digitally and on vinyl next Friday, October 16 on Mistletone Records, via Inertia Music (CD version to follow).You can now pre-order Thank Your Lucky Stars on Loser edition green vinyl from Mistletone mail order. Pre-orders will ship before next Friday, October 16. We also have a tiny number of Loser edition LP bundles available — you can purchase Thank Your Lucky Stars on Green vinyl, along with Depression Cherry on Clear vinyl, for $80 including postage, but be very very quick if you want one of those precious bundles! Order here.
A note from Beach House:
Thank Your Lucky Stars is our 6th full length record. It was written after Depression Cherry from July 2014 – November 2014 and recorded during the same session as Depression Cherry. The songs came together very quickly and were driven by the lyrics and the narrative. In this way, the record feels very new for us, and a great departure from our last few records. Thematically, this record often feels political. It’s hard to put it into words, but something about the record made us want to release it without the normal “campaign.” We wanted it to simply enter the world and exist.
Thank you very much,
Beach House
Thank Your Lucky Stars:
01 Majorette
02 She’s So Lovely
03 All Your Yeahs
04 One Thing
05 Common Girl
06 The Traveller
07 Elegy to the Void
08 Rough Song
09 Somewhere Tonight
Beach House will be touring Australia, New Zealand and Singapore for Laneway Festival 2016. Fans can choose three songs they’d like Beach House to play at each Laneway show via the “Setlist Creator”, an interactive feature on their website, BeachHouseBaltimore.com. The band’s setlist changes nightly, with some songs played a few times per tour. While there are no guarantees Beach House will play each of these fan selections at the Laneway shows, the “Setlist Creator” will help influence their set lists along the tour (more info here).
Mistletone is thrilled to present SUCCESS by Liam Finn, a new work created especially for this one-off show at ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne), as part of Melbourne Music Week.
Friday November 20, 7:00-8:00pm: SUCCESS by Liam Finn at ACMI (Federation Square, Melbourne). Tickets on sale now.
SUCCESS features original compositions and improvised pieces performed by Melbourne born musician and songwriter Liam Finn, alongside a filmic collaboration with New York directors Anthony and Alex. This engrossing show will consist of a series of vignettes and performance pieces in which Liam Finn tackles the concept of success; its subjectivity and the battle of insecurity and arrogance that ensues in its pursuit.
Alex and Anthony describe SUCCESS as “An experimental meditation on the human and technological ideology of success.” Liam Finn will be performing new songs, maniacally jumping between instruments, and triggering cassette tape loops to keep up with the unpredictable visuals. A show which will range from serene minimalism to heights of wild chaos.
The solo tour is a rare chance to see New York-based Liam Finn in intimate solo mode. It is Liam’s first show back in his one-time hometown Melbourne since 2011, and a return to his one-man band show last seen around the time of I’ll Be Lightning, his solo debut released shortly after disbanding Betchadupa in 2007. Since then he’s released two brilliant solo albums, FOMO (2011) and most recently, last year’s The Nihilist which featured the infectious single “Helena Bonham Carter”, and was a top ten chart hit in New Zealand.
Liam toured The Nihilist with his band the “Dream Team”, featuring his brother Elroy Finn, long time collaborator Elize-Jane Barnes, Cecilia Herbert and Jimmy Metherell, along with frequent live members Connan Mockasin, Kirin J Callinan and Matthew Eccles. Over the past 8 years Liam has toured the world performing with the likes of Wilco, Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam, Deerhoof and The Black Keys, performing at such famous venues as La Paradiso, Largo, Bowery Ballroom, La Scala and on the steps of the Sydney Opera House.
Click below to watch the official music video for “Snug As Fuck” from Liam Finn’s album The Nihilist, written & directed by Anthony Caronna & Alexander Smith, Liam’s film collaborators for SUCCESS:
Mistletone is thrilled to present The Orbweavers and Berlin-based Australian artist Lucy Dyson‘s show Deep Leads at ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne), as part of Melbourne Music Week.
Thursday November 19, 7:00-8:00pm: The Orbweavers + Lucy Dyson present Deep Leads at ACMI (Federation Square, Melbourne). Tickets on sale now.
Using historic archival footage of Melbourne from the ACMI collections and her own vivid, technicolour collage based imagery, Lucy Dyson will create a visual world to accompany a suite of songs by The Orbweavers, for a single night performance at ACMI. Drawing on stories from the city’s natural and industrial history, the collaboration explores themes of mining, botany, poisons, architecture, working life and folklore through song and vision.
Lucy Dyson is a Berlin-based Australian artist, animator and award-winning music-video director. She has produced and directed music videos for artists including: Gotye, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Gemma Ray, Still Corners, Kate Miller-Heidke, The Drones, Giant Sand, Ray LaMontange, Sarah Blasko, Paul Kelly, Teeth & Tongue, Augie March, Saskwatch and more. Lucy’s work has screened at the Melbourne and Sydney International Film Festivals, The Berlin Music Video Awards, The National Film & Sound Archive, The Australian Center for the Moving Image, the National Gallery of Victoria, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum Connecticut, and various arts and film festivals in Australia and overseas.
The Orbweavers – evocative songs of creeks & quarries, textile mills, and industrial landmarks. Their music has captured attention with dark and dulcet melodies, chiming guitar, violin and trumpet meld to hypnotic effect, recalling reverberant ghosts of places past. Garnering Triple R Melbourne Album of the Week, national and international praise, The Orbweavers have performed at ABC TV studios, ABC Radio National, Melbourne Music Week, National Gallery of Victoria, Brisbane Powerhouse, Golden Plains, Port Fairy Folk Festival, and supported international artists Beach House, Cass McCombs and Julia Holter.
Watch the official music video for “Poison Garden” by The Orbweavers, directed by Lucy Dyson, below:
