Mistletone

Artwork: Michael Hurley; design: Alex Fregon

MICHAEL HURLEY TOUR DATES:

• GYMPIE: Saturday March 17 @ Wolvi Hall with Darren Hanlon. Tickets on sale now.
• BRISBANE: Sunday March 18 @ Junk Bar. * SOLD OUT!
• LENNOX HEADS: Tuesday March 20 @ Lennox Sessions with Darren Hanlon. Email lennoxsessions@gmail.com for tickets or phone Mark: 0418 210 802
• GLENREAGH: Wednesday March 21 @ Boo Radley Shed with Darren Hanlon. Tickets on sale now.
• SYDNEY: Thursday March 22 @ Petersham Bowling Club with Leah Flanagan. Tickets on sale now.
• STANWELL PARK: Friday March 23 @ CWA Hall with Jordan Ireland and Purple Orchestra plus special surprise guest. Tickets on sale now.
• CANBERRA: Saturday March 24 @ Smiths Alternative. Tickets on sale now.
• LAUNCESTON: Wednesday March 28 @ Saint John with Darren Hanlon. Tickets on sale now.
• HOBART: Thursday March 29 @ Republic Bar with Darren Hanlon. Tickets on sale now.
• CASTLEMAINE: Friday March 30 @ Theatre Royal with Chastity Belt (USA) + Darren Hanlon. Tickets on sale now.
• MELBOURNE: Tuesday April 3 @ Northcote Social Club with Susie Scurry. Tickets on sale now.
• TALLAROOK: Easter Weekend at Boogie Festival.

Mistletone and Flippin Yeah present one of America’s last true outsider folk troubadours, Michael Hurley.

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 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 early records were released on Folkways, Warner Brothers/Raccoon and Rounder; in 1975, he released the impossibly excellent Have Moicy! which Robert Christgau called the Greatest Folk Album of the Rock Era. While in 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. Besides being a truly unique musician, Hurley is also a cartoonist and watercolor artist of note — the instantly recognizable results of which grace his album covers.

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

HTRK photo by Jeremy Yang

HTRK TOUR DATES:

• SYDNEY: Thursday November 16 @ Cake Wines Cellar Door with special guest Julianna Barwick (USA). Tickets on sale now.
• MELBOURNE: Sunday November 19 @ Melbourne Town Hall, headlining Melbourne Music Week. Tickets on sale now.

HTRK have announced two Australian shows in which they will be performing a mix of old and new material.

JULIANNA BARWICK TOUR DATES:

• SYDNEY: Thursday November 16 @ Cake Wines Cellar Door with HTRK.  Tickets on sale now.
• MELBOURNE: Friday November 17 @ St Paul’s Cathedral (MMW Hub). With Kath Bloom (US) + Divide and Dissolve + Wilson Tanner + Kirkis (ft. Melbourne Mass Gospel Choir) + Two Steps on the Water + James Tom & Jack Doepel (Krakatau) and the T.C Lewis Pipe Organ. Tickets on sale now.

Mistletone proudly presents Julianna Barwick, returning to Australia to headline Melbourne Music Week’s opening night at St Paul’s Cathedral, curated by Smooch Records. Julianna will also play an intimate Sydney show with renowned Australian band HTRK.

Julianna Barwick’s revelatory third full-length, Will, was a surprising left turn for the California-based experimental artist. If 2013’s Alex Somers-produced Nepenthe conjured images of gentle, thick fog rolling over desolate mountains, the self-produced Will was a late afternoon thunderstorm, a cathartic collision of sharp and soft textures that sounds looming and restorative all at once.

Barwick’s busiest period in her career to date has seen her playing piano for Yoko Ono, performing at Carnegie Hall at the annual Tibet House concert with the Flaming Lips and Philip Glass, the Rosabi EP and beer created in conjunction with brewing company Dogfish Head, and a re-imagining of Bach’s “Adagio” from Concerto In D Minor.

Barwick’s life over the past several years has largely been lived in transit, and as such the genesis of Will was not beholden to location; Barwick worked on the album in a variety of locales, from a desolate house in upstate New York to the Moog Factory in Asheville, North Carolina, to Lisbon, Portugal, the first European city to embrace Julianna’s music in 2007.

“I love touring, but it can be a wild ride,” Barwick reflects on this cycle of constant motion. “You’re constantly adjusting, assimilating, and finding yourself in life-changing situations.” Those experiences played into and helped shape Will‘s charged, unstable atmosphere: “I knew I’d be playing these songs live, so I wanted some movement,” she explains. “Something that had rhythm and low-end.”

That sense of forward propulsion is largely owed to Will‘s synth-heavy textures, an ingredient she was inspired to add to her vocal loop-heavy formula after demoing a new prototype analog sequencer for Moog during last year’s FORM Festival in Arcosanti, Arizona.

The electric current that runs through Will takes on various shapes of intoxicating instability: the orbiting chain of tones that wafts through “Nebula”, the frizzy sine waves lying under the firmament of “Same”, the haunting vocal echoes on opener “St. Apolonia” that were recorded late at night at a Lisbon train underpass, and the martial arpeggios that accompany Will‘s processional closer “See, Know”.

“While making this record, there were moments of isolation and dark currents,” Barwick admits. “I like exploring that, and I love when I come across songs that sound scary or ominous. I’ve always been curious about what goes into making a song that way.” The beguiling, beautifully complicated Will is the result of that curiosity, as well as the latest proof yet of Barwick’s irresistibly engaging talent as a composer and vocalist.

Mistletone is bowled over to announce Moses Sumney as part of the Laneway Festival 2018 lineup.

MOSES SUMNEY TOUR DATES:

Auckland: Monday 29 January @ Laneway Festival, Albert Park Precinct
Adelaide: Friday 2 February @ Laneway Festival, Hart’s Mill, Port Adelaide (16+)
Melbourne: Saturday 3 February @ Laneway Festival, Footscray Community Arts Centre and the River’s Edge
Sydney: Sunday 4 February @ Laneway Festival, Sydney College of the Arts and Callan Park, Rozelle
Brisbane: Saturday 10 February @ Laneway Festival, Brisbane Showgrounds, Bowen Hills (16+)
Fremantle: Sunday 11 February @ Laneway Festival, Esplanade Reserve and West End

Since emerging onto the scene in 2014, Moses Sumney has ridden a wave of word-of-mouth praise, hushed recordings, and dynamic live performances. It’s an organic, patient ascent all too rare in today’s musical climate. In a voice both mellifluous and haunting, Sumney makes future music that transmogrifies classic tropes, like moon-colony choir reinterpretations of old jazz gems. His vocals narrate a personal journey through universal loneliness atop otherworldly compositional backdrops.

Following the self-release of his debut cassette EP, Mid-City Island, and 2015’s 7″, Seeds/Pleas, Moses Sumney has performed around the world alongside forebears like David Byrne, Karen O, Sufjan Stevens, Solange, James Blake and more. With his 2016 Lamentations EP, the California and Ghana-raised troubadour widened the spectrum of his heretofore “bedroom” music, incorporating songs that feature more elaborate production and evocative songwriting. Now his inspired ascent continues.

His proper debut album, Aromanticism is a concept album about lovelessness as a sonic dreamscape. It seeks to interrogate the social constructions around romance. The debut will include the devastating, billowing synths of “Doomed,” which in a way serves as the album’s thesis statement, as well as new versions of standouts “Lonely World” and “Plastic.” It’s a deliberate, jaw-dropping statement that can leave you both enlightened and empty.

Watch Moses Sumney perform “Doomed” live at St Stephen’s Church, Sydney:

Tropical Fuck Storm (l-r: Fiona Kitschin, Gareth Liddiard, Erica Dunn and Lauren Hammel) photographed at Nagambie Victoria, on 5 August 2017 by Bleddyn Butcher

Tropical Fuck Storm (TFS for short) is a newborn band formed by Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin (The Drones). Liddiard and Kitschin are joined by maniacs Lauren Hammel (High Tension) on drums and Erica Dunn (Harmony, Palm Springs) on guitars, keys and other gadgets. Not since John Lydon changed it up from the Sex Pistols to PiL has a curveball felt so bracingly exhilarating.

Pre-order the limited edition debut TFS 7″ single ‘Chameleon Paint’ b/w ‘Mansion Family’ here.

Pre-orders will ship on or before September 22.

Pre-order all four 7″s and received limited edition coloured vinyl, while stocks last! the first 7″ is on white vinyl (white vinyl for those ordering 4 packs only. Single orders will receive standard black vinyl.)

The debut TFS 7″ single, “Chameleon Paint” b/w “Mansion Family”, will be released on September 22 as a label collab between TFS Records and Mistletone Records. This limited edition 7” is the first of a series; each 7” featuring an original Liddiard A-side and a B-side cover of “songs we love and wish we had written”. The “Mansion Family” B-side is lifted from Melbourne band The Nation Blue, who released the original less than a year ago. Each 7” will feature phantasmagoric cover art by Montréal artist Joe Becker.

The band has already announced a North American tour in September/October with compadres Band of Horses and King Gizzard, with Australian dates to follow.

“Chameleon Paint” and “Mansion Family” were both recorded in Liddiard and Kitschin’s home studio, Liddiard having practised the dark arts of recording on previous Drones outings and recent/forthcoming releases by Gold Class, Batpiss and Palm Springs. (Liddiard prefers the term “knob twiddler” to “producer”; “I just like fucked up, do it yourself recordings,” he explains.)

“Chameleon Paint” captures the sense of foreboding that we’re all feeling at this time in history in exquisite detail. “You phone it in / All shame and sin”, Liddiard snarls, as a female Greek chorus howls in collective outrage. Liddiard explains that the song was inspired by the “stacks on” phenomenon of online shaming and trolling, the all-too-familiar cycles of internet outrage and sanctimoniousness.

“It feels like a turning point in history”, Liddiard comments, “as technology speeds up. The internet distorts reality and dehumanises relationships, and makes everyone crazy. It’s a bullshit, out of focus place where everyone is the worst version of themselves. Facebook and Instagram keep you glued to the screen, melt your brain and turn you into an idiot so they can sell shit to you. That’s the climate in my head; that’s why I write all this doom and gloom.”

“Mansion Family”, written by The Nation Blue’s Tom Lyngcoln, shudders with a kindred malaise. “I can feel a cold change is coming,” Liddiard intones, and as the tension mounts, the new day dawning foreshadowed in the lyrics feels like cause for dread.

The Orbweavers photograph by Daniel Aulsebrook 

Beloved Melbourne band The Orbweavers return with Deep Leads, the eagerly awaited new album by following 2011’s Loom, out September 15 on Mistletone Records via Inertia on vinyl, CD and digital. Pre-orders for Deep Leads are now open; every vinyl or CD pre-order will receive a beautiful limited edition postcard size print (below) and a tea towel, while stocks last. Pre-orders will ship before September 15; more details here.

THE ORBWEAVERS ALBUM LAUNCH:

• Sunday October 22 @ Northcote Social Club. Matinee show with special guests Biddy Connor + Dave Williams. Doors open 1:30pm. Tickets on sale now; book now to avoid disappointment!

Limited edition postcard print & album artwork by Marita Dyson, below:

“Deep Leads is about buried and hidden things. Mining the land, the body and mind. Old rivers of feeling. Poison/panacea. Extraction/preservation. Escapism/courage. Deep sleep. Cycles of decay and return.

“Geologically, deep leads are buried ancient river beds which sometimes contain alluvial gold. In Victoria, they usually lie beneath basalt lava flows which hold younger waterways on the surface above. Deep lead gold mining required cutting deep, dangerous shafts through hardened volcanic rock. The shafts were at risk of cave ins and flooding from aquifers, and often did not contain the gold hoped for.

“To use this geology as a metaphor, Deep Leads is the underlying layer to our previous album Loom. Where Loom explored the basalt bed and surrounds of the younger Merri Creek waterway, Deep Leads heads underground and within, exploring industrial, agricultural and personal histories (Blue Lake, The Dry, A Very Long Time), heavy and precious metals (Radium Girls, Mine), internal realms of escape and quest (Poison Garden, Cyclamen, Nitrates). We recorded and produced Deep Leads at home in the Merri Creek water catchment area. There are many accretions of history along this waterway, and it always seems to find a way in to our work and life. The street we live in is a storm water course to the Merri. The album was mixed by the banks of the Merri in East Brunswick by James Cecil at Super Melody World, and mastered just uphill to the west, on Brunswick high ground, by Adam Dempsey at Deluxe Mastering Melbourne.”– THE ORBWEAVERS

Listen to “Cyclamen”, the first single from Deep Leads, below:

Cyclamen Artist Statement

Subjects: plants, soil types, seasons, cycles, sleep, photosynthesis, classical mythology, quest

An evening invocation for protection through winter, and deep sleep. Cyclamen are associated with the Ancient Greek goddess Hecate, who is often depicted holding torches. Hecate in turn, is associated with knowledge of poisonous and medicinal plants, a mediator between mortal and divine realms, a goddess of the crossroads.

“We love bossa nova, and the cyclamen flower”, explain Marita Dyson and Stuart Flanagan (The Orbweavers). “Last winter we had a row of coloured cyclamen across the backsteps. They glowed like little torches against the grey weather of decay and transition. We listened to a lot of Stan Getz, Joao and Astrud Gilberto that winter, and looked out at the scarlet, purple, crimson and white cyclamen torches as night approached.”

“Cyclamen” springs from Deep Leads, the eagerly awaited new album by The Orbweavers following 2011’s Loom.

“Deep Leads is about buried and hidden things. Mining the land, the body and mind. Old rivers of feeling. Poison/panacea. Extraction/preservation. Escapism/courage. Deep sleep. Cycles of decay and return.

“Geologically, deep leads are buried ancient river beds which sometimes contain alluvial gold. In Victoria, they usually lie beneath basalt lava flows which hold younger waterways on the surface above. Deep lead gold mining required cutting deep, dangerous shafts through hardened volcanic rock. The shafts were at risk of cave ins and flooding from aquifers, and often did not contain the gold hoped for.

“To use this geology as a metaphor, Deep Leads is the underlying layer to our previous album Loom. Where Loom explored the basalt bed and surrounds of the younger Merri Creek waterway, Deep Leads heads underground and within, exploring industrial, agricultural and personal histories (Blue Lake, The Dry, A Very Long Time), heavy and precious metals (Radium Girls, Mine), internal realms of escape and quest (Poison Garden, Cyclamen, Nitrates). We recorded and produced Deep Leads at home in the Merri Creek water catchment area. There are many accretions of history along this waterway, and it always seems to find a way in to our work and life. The street we live in is a storm water course to the Merri. The album was mixed by the banks of the Merri in East Brunswick by James Cecil at Super Melody World, and mastered just uphill to the west, on Brunswick high ground, by Adam Dempsey at Deluxe Mastering Melbourne.”

Cyclamen Lyrics

I will stay these winter days,
With cyclamen as torches,
Beacons against the grey weathering in my head.
Clay feet,
Sink close,
Sleep deeply.

Evening falls,
Unfamiliar ways;
With cyclamen as torches,
Lead me back to where it was I first heard your name.
Clay feet Proceed,
Fearlessly.

Scarlet, purple, crimson and white,
Give me a vision to take through the night,
Where you return is where we are heading,
Earth is a bed,
And sleep is remembering.

Scarlet, purple, crimson and white,
Dormant receiver storing the light,
Who is a thief and who’s a collector?
I invoke you:
Be my protector.
Remembering.

Deep Leads – Liner Notes

All songs written and performed by Marita Dyson & Stuart Flanagan
Produced by Marita Dyson & Stuart Flanagan
Mixed by James Cecil at Super Melody World, next to the Merri Creek
Mastered by Adam Dempsey at Deluxe Mastering Melbourne
Art & Design by Marita Dyson & Stuart Flanagan
Original Illustrations by Marita Dyson
C & P 2017 Mistletone Records

Thank you

Sophie, Ash and Wayne. Thank you James, Adam, Paddy, Dan A., Stuart, Jen and Dan N., Bek, Sean, Grant, Lucy, Glen. Thank you Flanagans & Dysons. Thank you friends. Thank you listeners. Thank you Fern.

ARIEL PINK TOUR DATES:

• Tue Nov 21: Melbourne @ Melbourne Recital Hall (co-presented with Melbourne Music Week). Presale commences 9am Tuesday 15 August and general on sale at 9am Friday 18 August; tickets & info here.
• Fri Nov 24: Brisbane @ The Zoo. Tickets on sale now.
• Sat Nov 25: Perth @ Rosemount Hotel. Co-presented with Cool Perth Nights. Tickets on sale now.
• Mon Nov 27: Sydney @ Oxford Arts Factory. Tickets on sale now.

Mistletone is massively proud to announce the return of LA’s prodigal son Ariel Pink, returning to Australia with his band to perform songs from his forthcoming album, Dedicated to Bobby Jameson (out September 15 on Mexican Summer via Rocket) and the singular body of work Pink has created over the first two decades of his career.

Listen to “Feels Like Heaven,” a lovelorn insta-classic playing tribute to the promise of romance:

Ariel Pink’s new album Dedicated to Bobby Jameson makes a direct and heartfelt reference to a real-life Los Angeles musician, long presumed dead, who resurfaced online in 2007 after 35 reclusive years to pen his autobiography and tragic life story in a series of blogs and YouTube tirades. “His book and life resonated with me to such a degree that I felt a need to dedicate my latest record to him,” Pink states.

Dedicated to Bobby Jameson begins at the end and ends at the beginning. “We follow the protagonist through a battery of tests and milestones, the first of which sees him reborn into life out of death,” Pink explains, referencing the opening track, “Time to Meet Your God.” “From there, he seesaws his way between the innocent love and the rock-solid edifice of childhood-worn trauma that together constitute his lifelong initiation into the realm of artifice and theatrical disposability.”

Ariel Pink’s previous solo release, pom pom, received a Best New Music designation from Pitchfork; The New York Times described it as “a delightful, typically schizophrenic collection: wickedly dark and funny one moment, sweet and sentimental the next, and at other times as gleefully unhinged as Pink has ever been.” SPIN noted that it’s a record “full of unforgettably kaleidoscopic melodies.” Pink has prolifically written, recorded and released his singular brand of pop music for well over two decades. Dedicated to Bobby Jameson sees Ariel Pink returning to the setting of his first recordings: his bedroom.

Raised in Beverly Hills, Ariel Pink started out as a visual artist before becoming a recording artist in the late ‘90s while attending Cal Arts. Though critically misunderstood at the time, Pink’s early, lo-fi recordings wielded an enormous influence with insiders and outsiders, including Animal Collective who signed him to their Paw Tracks imprint in 2003. In the late 2000s, Pink’s fortunes with critics began to reverse, and his resulting single, “Round and Round” (off Before Today), was named the #1 Record of 2010 by Pitchfork.

Watch the Grant Singer-directed video for “Another Weekend”:

Artwork by Carl Breitkreuz

PISSED JEANS TOUR DATES:

• SYDNEY: Wednesday December 6 @ Oxford Art Factory with Batpiss + Low Life. Tickets on sale now.
• MELBOURNE: Thursday December 7 @ The Corner with Batpiss + Blank Statements. Presented by Triple R. Tickets on sale now.
• MEREDITH: Friday December 8 @ Meredith Music Festival. Ticket ballot open now.
• BRISBANE: Saturday December 9 @ The Foundry with Batpiss + Kitchen’s Floor. Tickets on sale Friday.

Mistletone + Noisey present the first EVER! Australian tour by Allentown sludgemasters, Pissed Jeans.

Aunty Meredith waxes lyrical…

“Pissed Jeans are a band we always get asked for. Been holding on so long. Straight up hi-energy rock from Allentown, Pennsylvania. They have been asked to tour Australia so many times and it hasn’t happened until now. They are five albums in and haven’t made it here yet. We are so stoked to be able to present them.

They are cult. They are amazing live. A great singer. Electric. Inclusive. Funny (how good is their photo?). People love ‘em.

Latest Sub-Pop album, ‘Why Love Now’, co-produced by Lydia Lunch, is perhaps their most polished and hi-fidelity recording to date. But don’t be mistaken … one listen to tracks like ‘Ignorecam’, ‘Love Without Emotion’ and ‘The Bar Is Low’ and you’ll understand that they’ve hardly got designs on some kind of surprise crossover move any time soon.

Influences to the fore include early 80’s hardcore (Black Flag, Flipper) and 90s noise rock (The Jesus Lizard) but dynamic frontman, Matt Korvette, claims he had a moment of realisation many years ago when he came across a YouTube clip of The Birthday Party on a German TV show.

“I saw that video and I’m like, I’m just gonna steal everything in this … and I’m gonna do it bad enough that it’ll become my own thing, you know … and people won’t just say ‘oh, you stole that’ because I’ll just do such a poor rendering of it.”  Just one of many contradictions at play within this band: success as failure … failure as success … with thrilling results!”

Pissed Jeans have been making a racket for 13 years, and on their fifth album, Why Love Now (out now on Sub Pop via Inertia), the male-fronted quartet is taking aim at the mundane discomforts of modern life—from fetish webcams to office-supply deliveries.

“Rock bands can retreat to the safety of what rock bands usually sing about. So 60 years from now, when no one has a telephone, bands will be writing songs like, ‘I’m waiting for her to call me on my telephone.’ Kids are going to be like, ‘Grandpa, tell me, what was that?’ I’d rather not shy away from talking about the internet or interactions in 2016,” says Pissed Jeans frontman Matt Korvette.

Pissed Jeans’ gutter-scraped amalgamation of sludge, punk, noise, and bracing wit make the band—Korvette, Brad Fry (guitar), Randy Huth (bass) and Sean McGuinness (drums)—a release valve for a world where absurdity seems in a constant battle trying to outdo itself. Why Love Now picks at the bursting seams that are barely holding 21st-century life together. Take the grinding rave-up “The Bar Is Low,” which, according to Korvette, is “about how every guy seems to be revealing themselves as a shithead.

“It seems like every guy is getting outed,” Korvette continues, “across every board of entertainment and politics and music. There’s no guy that isn’t a total creep. You’re like, ‘No, he’s just a dude that hits on drunk girls and has sex with them when they’re asleep.’ Cool, he’s just an average shithead.”

The lyrics on Why Love Now are particularly pointed about gender relations and the minefield they present in 2016. “‘It’s Your Knees’ is about the endless, unrequested, commenting on if you’d fuck a girl. You know what I mean? ‘My great aunt won a cooking contest.’ ‘Oh, that’s pretty hot. I’d hit that,’” says Korvette. “It’s bizarre how guys will willingly share this stuff as if it’s always in their brains, and now it gets to come out because you’re on the internet. There’s a boldness to it now that was not maybe there before. So the premise is like, ‘Yeah, she’s hot, but her knees are weird looking. Not for me, man.’”

On “Love Without Emotion” Korvette channels Nick Cave’s more guttural side while bemoaning his detachment over cavernous guitars. The crushing “Ignorecam” twists the idea of fetish cam shows—”where the woman just ignores you and watches TV or eats macaroni and cheese or talks on the phone”—into a showcase for Korvette’s rancid yelp and his bandmates’ pummeling rock. “I love that idea of guys paying to be ignored,” says Korvette. “It seems so weird.”

As they did on their last album, 2013’s Honeys, Pissed Jeans offer a couple of “fuck that shit type songs” about the working world, with the blistering “Worldwide Marine Asset Financial Analyst” turning unwieldy job titles into sneering punk choruses and “Have You Ever Been Furniture” waving a flag for those whose job descriptions might as well be summed up by “professionally underappreciated.” And the startling “I’m A Man,” which comes at the album’s midpoint, finds author Lindsay Hunter (Ugly Girls) taking center stage, delivering a self-penned monologue of W.B. Mason-inspired erotica—office small talk about pens and coffee given just enough of a twist to expose its filthy underside, with Hunter adopting a grimacing menace that makes its depiction of curdled masculinity even more harrowing.

“Lindsay Hunter is what I would aspire for Pissed Jeans to be—just a real, ugly realness that’s shocking,” says Korvette. “Not in a, ‘I had sex with a corpse on top of a pile…’ nonsense way—actually real, shocking stuff. And she has young kids, like Pissed Jeans do. I feel a bond with her in that regard. We’re in the same camp.”

No Wave legend Lydia Lunch shacked up in Philadelphia to produce “Why Love Now” alongside local metal legend Arthur Rizk (Eternal Champion, Goat Semen). “I knew she wasn’t a traditional producer,” Korvette says of Lunch. “We wanted to mix it up a little bit. I like how she’s so cool and really intimidating. I didn’t know how it was going to work out. She ended up being so fucking awesome and crazy. She was super into it, constantly threatening to bend us over the bathtub. I’m not really sure what that entails, but I know she probably wasn’t joking.

“Arthur Rizk was the technical guru. It was a perfect combination of a technical wizard and a psychic mentor who guided the ship.”

The combination of Lunch’s spiritual guidance and Rizk’s technical prowess supercharged Pissed Jeans, and the bracing Why Love Now documents them at their grimy, grinning best. While its references may be very early-21st-century, its willingness to state its case cements it as an album in line with punk’s tradition of turning norms on their heads and shaking them loose.

“A crucial thing, I think, for being a Pissed Jeans fan is just stemming from what I would take away from punk, which is, ‘Question things and think about things,’” says Korvette. “Don’t just go to the office and get the same coffee. Don’t just wear a leather jacket and get a 40 oz. Just question yourself a little bit if you can.”

Artwork by Carl Breitkreuz

!!! TOUR DATES:

• MELBOURNE: Thursday December 7 @ The Curtin. Tickets on sale now from Music Glue. Presented by RRR.
• MEREDITH: Friday December 8 @ Meredith Music Festival. Ticket ballot open now.
• SYDNEY: Thursday December 14 @ Oxford Art Factory. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix. Presented by 2SER.
• + more to come!

!!! are one of Earth’s great live bands; something you have to experience in the flesh to truly comprehend.  To quote Aunty Meredith in her !!! wisdom:

“Designed for celebration. Built for energy generation. Engineered for euphoric elevation. Tested in all atmospheric conditions. Certified to issue failsafe moodproof bigband surefunk dancepunk. In poolboy shorts. Any beat that moves you is fuel for their six cylinders: twitchy R&B, queasy dub-disco, discotheque disco, romantic house, any quality propulsive groove. They turn any space into a dance club.”

Listen to “The Long Walk,” a brand new !!! track from a limited edition hand-stamped white label 12″ EP called Shake The Shut Up, available on their upcoming Australian tour: “a deliciously dirty disco-house groove elevated to celestial heights by gospel-tinged backing vocals” (Stereogum):

While  !!!’s  live  shows  are  something  to  behold,  they  underscore  the  sheer musicianship and songwriting that goes into recording their albums. It is a lot of hard work made to  look  easy.  “Most  of  the  songs  on Shake the Shudder  are  based  off  of  jams”, says frontman Nic Offer, “and  since  we  record  every  jam,  most  of  the  tracks  here  feature moments we  actually  recorded  from those  jams. Most  artists have  to dig  through  the  crates  to find  that one  sample  nobody has used  but  we  can  sample  ourselves,  having  been playing  this style of music for awhile now. As a band we try to play it the way the JBs would, as producers we try to mix it the way a DJ would.”

Shake the Shudder are words to live by and ones that !!! fully embrace. There are always fears to  be  faced  and  new  paths  to  forge,  and  those  uncertainties  never  hold  them  back.  They  just propel  them  to  jump  in  head  first.  For  years,  !!!  have  run  the  dance  band  gambit  and  become New  York  City  legends.  From  their  start  in  Sacramento,  to  Brooklyn  house  party  staples  and Union  Pool  residencies,  and  now  delighting  festival  stages  from  Primavera  to  FYF,  they’ve cemented their place as part of New York’s live dance scene — while others have drifted into the history  books.

Shake The Shudder is a product of !!!’s DIY punk roots presenting a harder edge lyrically and sonically,  while  incorporating  trans-Atlantic  electronic  music  influences.  Regularly  enlisting  the aid of talented female vocalists to elevate to their sound, this new album is no exception with the inclusion  of  up  and  coming  talents  Lea  Lea  and  Meah  Pace  showcasing energetic  breakout performances that only hints at what they do live. And Nic Offer is no easy frontman to keep up with on stage.

The  new  record  opens  with “The  One  2”,  diving  right  into  this  experimentation, “we’ve  always admired this style of dance music from afar and were curious if we could add our twist to it, our twist being a plotline and some attitude.” Immediately segueing into the soon-to-be live favorite “Dancing  Is  The  Best  Revenge” (below),  which  premiered  on  Last  Call  With  Carson  Daly,  the  record starts off with a bang and doesn’t let up till the closing groove “R Rated Pictures.”

Artwork by Alex Fregon

Mistletone is rapt to present Nite Jewel returning to Australia this October.

NITE JEWEL TOUR DATES:

• MELBOURNE: Fri Oct 20 @ NGV Friday Nights. Tickets on sale now from NGV.
• SYDNEY: Sat Oct 21 @ Cake Wines Cellar Door with special guests Buzz Kull + DJ Cole MGN (USA). Tickets on sale now from Eventbrite.
• BRISBANE: Sun Oct 22 @ The Junk Bar. Tickets on sale now from Oztix.

Los Angeles electro-R&B luminary Ramona Gonzalez — aka Nite Jewel — returns to Australia as a duo, hot on the heels of her critically acclaimed new album Real High. Nite Jewel has been prolific as ever, also sharing a B-sides collection Real Low, last year’s album Liquid Cool, a limited edition 12” for Italians Do It Better, and two collaborative EPs (one with Bay Area rapper/producer Droop-E as AMTHST).

Nite Jewel has also had memorable collaborations with Dam-Funk, Omar-S, Julia Holter, Sean Nicholas Savage, Samantha Urbani, Zoë Kravitz and many others — transforming foggy, fading memories into crystal clear lucid dreams. Her latest collab with Dam-Funk (as Nite Funk) was named Best New Music on Pitchfork.

With Real High, Ramona Gonzalez updates her feminine inner dialogue to reflect the increasing challenges of hyper-modern society, in particular with respect to selfhood. Recorded over the course of four years in Los Angeles with the help of Grammy-winning producer Cole M.G.N. (Ariel Pink, Beck, The Samps), these songs of transformational love and relentless nostalgia range from expansive, futuristic balladry (“Real High,” “Part Of Me”) to gauzy dance-floor hits (“2 Good 2 Be True,” “The Answer”); the most focused and bold Nite Jewel effort yet. The timeless production, unique voice, and pristine song-craft of Real High create an irresistible combination that is only better on the live stage.

• “Real High is the album fans have been waiting for… Her whole attitude reeks simultaneously of someone not giving a fuck while also brainstorming meticulously, and her music has never sounded richer on so many levels. The album borrows heavily from the old-school R&B feel of pastime pop greats like Janet Jackson and Aaliyah while mostly marrying this visage to contemporary dancehall rhythms” – DROWNED IN SOUND

“HOW IT WAS” video: