Available in black with electric blue print, and white with hotttt pink, coming soon to a merch stand near you!

SPRING TONES PLAYING TIMES: SATURDAY 26 SEPTEMBER@ ROXANNE PARLOUR (MELBOURNE)

Front Stage

6:45pm To 7:15pm Woollen Kits

Panel of Judges DJs 

7:35pm To 8:05 Super Wild Horses

Panel of Judges DJs 

8:25pm To 9:05pm Ducktails

Panel of Judges DJs

9:25pm To 10:05pm Aleks & The Ramps 

DJ Ka-Splosion 

10:25pm To 11:05pm Bachelorette

DJ Ka-Splosion 

11:35pm To 12:10am The UV Race

DJ Ka-Splosion

12:30am To 1:10am The Dacios
1.10am DJ TheUniverse
2am The Twerps DJs

 

Back Stage

7:15pm To 7:45:00pm Rat Vs Possum

8.05pm To 8:45pm Songs 

9.05pm To 9:45pm Tiny Vipers 

10.05pm To 10:45pm Love Of Diagrams

11.05pm To 11:55pm Vivian Girls

12:15am To 1am St Helens

 

Snowflake Room

8pm DJs Pastry F & Tea

8:30-9.10pm The French

DJs Pastry F & Tea

9:30-10.10pm Children Of The Wave

DJs Pastry F & Tea
10:30-11.10pm Mark Barrage

DJ Deformative

11:30-12.10pm Aoi
DJ Deformative
12.30am Hawnay Troof

DJ Deformative

 

That’s 18 awesome bands plus DJs The Twerps, DJ TheUniverse (Gus from Architecture in Helsinki), DJ Ka-Splosion (Ash from Witch Hats), Panel of Judges DJs, Deformative and DJs Pastry F & Tea (Alex from ii and Alexis from The Motifs) to keep the good times coming between bands and into the wee hours.

Spring Tones tickets are on sale now from Polyester, Missing Link, Corner Hotel box office (57 Swan St Richmond, phone  9427 9198) or right here from the Mistletone website.

Doors open 6.30pm so come early!

Dear friends, Spring has sprung! welcome to Mistletone’s Spring Notes.

VIVIAN GIRLS TOUR. We are super excited to welcome Brooklyn’s Vivian Girls to Australia for their first tour here in just a few weeks time. Having come through the hype machine and out the other side with a brand spanking new album Everything Goes Wrong (out soon locally thru In-Fidelity/Inertia), Vivian Girls have an armoury of killer new songs of the catchy, garagey/girl group surf-punk-pop variety. Vivian Girls bring their beautiful noise to our shores in Sept/Oct — grab your tickets now!

VIVIAN GIRLS AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES…………

SYDNEY: Fri 25 Sep @ Spectrum w/ Hawnay Troof (USA), Circle Pit and Dead Farmers. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix outlets or phone 1300 GET TIX.
MELBOURNE: Sat 26 Sep headlining Spring Tones @ Roxanne Parlour. Tickets on sale now from Polyester, Missing Link, Corner Hotel box office (57 Swan St Richmond, phone  9427 9198) or Mistletone website.
HOBART: Sun 27 Sep @ Brisbane Hotel w/ Native Cats, Moe Grizzly and Manchester Mourning. Licensed all ages show, starts 5pm. Tickets on sale now from Brisbane Hotel, Ruffcut Records and The Dwarf website.
MELBOURNE: Wed 30 Sep @ Northcote Social Club w/ Panel of Judges and Miniature Submarines. Tickets on sale now from NSC box office, phone 9486 1677.
ADELAIDE: Thu 1 Oct @ Metro Hotel w/ Hit The Jackpot and Rich Parents. Tickets on sale now from Oztix outlets or phone 1300 762 545.
BRISBANE: Fri 2 Oct @ Step Inn w/ Nova Scotia, The Legend with the Deadnotes, and Feathers. Tickets on sale now from Oztix outlets or phone 1300 762 545.
NEWCASTLE: Sat 3 Oct @ Sound Summit. More info here.

3RRR, MESS + NOISE and MISTLETONE present SPRING TONES (Melbourne)

The new & improved Roxanne Parlour will be home to Mistletone’s next party Spring Tones on Grand Final night, Saturday 26 September.

As well as guests of honour Vivian Girls, there will be Bachelorette‘s space-oddity electro-pop, the guitar-drenched dream-pop of Love Of Diagrams, the raw pop collages of New Jerseyian Ducktails, the razor sharp swagger of St Helens, the sparse and haunting acoustic guitar laments of Seattle’s Tiny Vipers, the schizoid choreography of Aleks & The Ramps and Hawnay Troof‘s sweaty club jams, not to mention Sydney’s Songs, plus The UV Race, The Dacios, Mark Barrage, Super Wild Horses, Rat Vs Possum, The French (Nathan Gray, Julie Burleigh & Bianca Hester), Children Of The Wave, Woollen Kits and Aoi (see band profiles here), and bangin’ DJ sets by theUniverse, Deformative, Ka-Splosion and Panel of Judges DJs.

Doors open 6.30pm with action on three stages and crazily discounted Mistletone merch.

Spring Tones tickets are $35 plus booking fee, and are on sale now from Polyester (city & Fitzroy), Missing Link, Corner Hotel box office (57 Swan St Richmond, phone  9427 9198) or from the Mistletone website.

BACHELORETTE headlines the Sundae Workers Series at new-ish Melbourne venue the Workers Club (the Pub Formerly Known as the Rob Roy) on Sunday, 27 September from 4-10pm. Bachelorette, aka Annabel Alpers from across the Tasman Sea, will grace the Sundae Series with one of her giddy, mesmerising, digital-vs-analogue, woman-vs-machine solo shows. In the middle slot are the wayfaring ladies of royalchord, Melbourne natives Tammy Haider and Eliza Hiscox, who return from two years living and touring abroad to launch their gorgeous new album The Good Fight (out on Mistletone in November), a folktronic masterpiece of summer pop and funereal folk. Opening proceedings will be Melbourne’s favorite broke-jazz, spook-pop lady-two-piece Flying Scribble, previewing their eagerly awaited debut album We’re A Chameleon, produced by Melbourne’s resident studio genius Cornel Wilczek (Qua). Extra tasty party goodness will be provided courtesy of Special Award DJs. Tickets $10 at the door.

NEW MISTLETONE RELEASES:

The Good Fight by royalchord (out October 10). The Good Fight is a departure from royalchord’s dusty alt.country sounds of yore, combining electronics with Eliza and Tammy’s neurotic and melancholic sensibility on 12 beautifully evocative and catchy songs. royalchord are returning home for a little while after touring extensively in the US (where the album was on the Supply And Demand label) to launch their most personal record yet, which they call “dance music for the down and out”. royalchord launch The Good Fight in Melbourne on Sunday 19 November @ The Toff in Town, and in Sydney on Thursday 26 November @ Hopetoun Hotel.

Crisis Tales by Curse ov Dialect (out October 24). Curse ov Dialect’s new album is a dizzying, multi-dimensional carnival of conscious hip hop. Inspired by surrealistic grappling with questions of identity and evolution, Curse ov Dialect have collectively created Crisis Tales: a psychedelic, kaleidoscopic scrawl of mercurial rage and spasmodic humour, flowing freely into the void of consumer culture. Curse ov Dialect launch Crisis Tales in Melbourne on Friday November 20 @ East Brunswick Club, and in Sydney on Friday November 27 @ Spectrum.

WHY? AUSTRALIAN SHOWS. Mistletone proudly presents WHY? on their first Australian tour. WHY? is a group of handsome Cincinnati-born men led by singer Yoni Wolf,  formerly of seminal pop-inflected psychedelic folk-hop outfit cLOUDDEAD. Evolving into WHY?, Yoni honed his trademark delivery – a sickly sweet, half-rapped, singsong style – shined up his wry, picturesque poetry and developed a clip-and-collage aesthetic using keyboards, toys, guitars, samplers and anything worth banging on. WHY?’s brand new album Eskimo Snow (out September 25 on Anticon/Stomp) is a companion piece to last year’s celebrated Alopecia LP:  a sung, sobering take on mortality that unfurls in lush waves of Americana and pop-infused psych-folk.

KES BAND recently launched their brilliant new instrumental album Kes Band II at the Arts Centre in Melbourne. Described as “wordlessly stunning” (Sunday Age, 4 stars), “ethereal” (mX, 4 stars), “epic and miniature” (Mess + Noise) — and the list goes on — Kes Band II will be launched in Sydney on Saturday December 5 at Spectrum. Mark your diaries!

BEACHES join My Disco and Your Animal for a Beck’s Rumpus Room show at The Forum on Saturday October 17 as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival (tickets on sale here).

San Francisco psych-pop singer-songwriter, showman, producer and all-round good guy KELLEY STOLTZ is returning to Australia for a summer sojourn and some shows with his trusty Oz pickup band featuring Mark from The Stabs and Mikey from Eddy Current Suppression Ring.  More details soon!

To join the Mistletone mailing list, send us an email with the subject heading Vegan Friendly Spam.

peace & love,
sophie & ash

Another Spring Tones poster by Alex Fregon

Artwork by Rick Milovanovic.

3RRR, Mess + Noise and Mistletone proudly present SPRING TONES at Roxanne Parlour  (Level 3 / 2 Coverlid Pl, Melbourne) on Saturday, 26 September.The Spring Tones lineup features Vivian Girls (USA), Bachelorette (NZ), Tiny Vipers (USA), Ducktails (USA), Hawnay Troof (USA), Love Of Diagrams, St Helens, Aleks & The Ramps, Songs (Syd), The Dacios, The UV Race, Mark Barrage, Super Wild Horses, Rat Vs Possum, The French, Children Of The Wave, Woollen Kits and Aoi (see band profiles below!), plus DJs theUniverse, Deformative, DJ Ka-Splosion and Panel of Judges DJs.Punters who attended Winter Tones at Roxanne last year will be pleased to know that we’ve taken some steps to ensure no-one will be kept out in the cold. The new and improved features of Spring Tones include hard tickets and stairwell access to keep queues to a minimum, plus a balcony to keep smokers close to the action. Spring Tones tickets are $35 + booking fee and are on sale now from Polyester (city & Fitzroy), Missing Link, Corner Hotel box office (57 Swan St Richmond, phone  9427 9198) or right here from the Mistletone website.Doors open 6.30pm. SPRING TONES ARTIST PROFILES…

Straight outta Brooklyn, Vivian Girls are bringing a bevy of garagey girl group goodness to headline Spring Tones as part of their first ever Australian tour. The trio — Cassie Ramone (guitar/vocals), Kickball Katy (bass/drums/vocals) and Ali Koehler (drums/bass/vocals) — burst on to the scene last year with a critics-favourite debut album and an ace sound combining 1960s girl-group vocals, fuzzy garage rock, punk and post-punk with blasts of shoegaze and skuzzy DIY charm. On their short road to “out of nowhere” status, the ‘Girls have blurred the lines of genres and come up with something aggressive yet beautiful; simple, gutsy music with a lot of class and melody. Their much anticipated new album Everything Goes Wrong is out soon on In-Fidelity through Inertia.

VIVIAN GIRLS AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES:

SYDNEY: Fri 25 Sep @ Spectrum w/ Hawnay Troof (USA), Circle Pit and Dead Farmers. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix outlets or phone 1300 GET TIX.MELBOURNE: Sat 26 Sep headlining Spring Tones @ Roxanne Parlour (Level 3, 2 Coverlid Pl, city) w/ Bachelorette (NZ), Ducktails (USA), Tiny Vipers (USA), Hawnay Troof (USA), Love Of Diagrams, St Helens, Aleks & The Ramps, Songs (Syd), The Dacios, UV Race, Mark Barrage, Super Wild Horses, Rat Vs Possum, Snawklor , Children Of The Wave, Woollen Kits And Aoi. Spring Tones tickets on sale now from Polyester, Missing Link, Corner Hotel box office (57 Swan St Richmond, phone  9427 9198) or Mistletone website.HOBART: Sun 27 Sep @ Brisbane Hotel w/ Native Cats, Moe Grizzly and Manchester Mourning. Licensed all ages show, starts 5pm. Tickets on sale now from Brisbane Hotel, Ruffcut Records and The Dwarf website.MELBOURNE: Wed 30 Sep @ Northcote Social Club w/ Panel of Judges and Miniature Submarines. Tickets on sale now from NSC box office, phone 9486 1677.ADELAIDE: Thu 1 Oct @ Metro Hotel w/ Hit The Jackpot and Rich Parents. Tickets on sale now from Oztix outlets or phone 1300 762 545. BRISBANE: Fri 2 Oct @ Step Inn w/ Nova Scotia, The Legend with the Deadnotes, and Feathers. Tickets on sale now from Oztix outlets or phone 1300 762 545.NEWCASTLE: Sat 3 Oct @ Sound Summit. More info here.

Annabel Alpers, the songwriter from New Zealand who’s behind the studio concoctions of Bachelorette, is fascinated by the way things work: cities, androids, relationships, life and death, “the neural pathways in my brain.” Her fascination with systems and mechanisms dovetails with her music, which loops and layers her voice and instruments into lofty pop edifices, pulsating and chiming in radiant major chords. The songs on her new Bachelorette album, “My Electric Family” (out now on Mistletone in Australia, and Drag City in the US), aren’t as entirely self-made as her previous work; they incorporate other musicians on guitars and drums, only enriching her reveries. Annabel will return to Melbourne for one of her mesmerising solo performan
ces at Spring Tones.

Love Of Diagrams have just unveiled Nowhere Forever, their awesome new album. Recorded at Bear Creek Studios in Seattle with producer Ryan Hadlock (Gossip, Blonde Redhead, Steve Malkmus among many others), Nowhere Forever is the guitar-drenched dream-pop record Love of Diagrams have always wanted to make. It’s a new exploration of maximalism – a heavy, guitar drenched layered sound featuring Love of Diagrams’ most sophisticated songwriting and most beautiful pop melodies to date. The dual vocals and harmonies of Antonia Sellbach and Luke Horton, and the hypnotic beats of Monika Fikerle on drums, have never sounded finer.

A cursory glance at the pre-history of the people involved in St Helens reveals one-degree-of separation from Spider Vomit, Bird Blobs, Minimum Chips, Alpha Males and Kes Band. Satelliting the core band are occasional contributors from Love Of Diagrams and Panel Of Judges. The gravity that pulls their energies into something tangible, into the distinct entity that is St Helens, is the songwriting skills of Jarrod Quarrell. Jarrod previously fronted The New Season and (when there’s a full moon) still prowls the night as Lost Animal, performing in minimalist solo electronic mode. Jarrod’s world weary but ultimately victorious songs, his bitter-sweet, intertwining vocals with Hannah Brooks, the band’s razor sharp guitar interplay, and the broken glass danger of their live performances have made St Helens a must on the Melbourne scene.

From unintentional beginnings back in 2005, Aleks & The Ramps slowly morphed into a “real” band with performances featuring choreographed dance moves, ill-fitting basketball uniforms, injuries and equipment breakages due to wild stage behaviour accompanying their schizophrenic pop tunes. Their second album Midnight Believer is a fine demonstration of the Ramps’ peculiar and wondrous kind of haphazard indie rock, or experimental pop which is perhaps the result of short-attention-span-songwriting. Or something. Sometimes (if you play your cards right) they do sick dance routines. 

Tiny Vipers, aka Jesy Fortino, a musician living in Seattle, is bringing her sparse and haunting songs to Australia for the first time. Tiny Vipers has just released Life on Earth, her second album on Sub Pop/Stomp. Tiny Vipers’ complex yet minimal sound  of her bouyantly deep voice, accompanied by sparse yet deft acoustic guitar, offers mysterious windows into a fragile human soul with a beautiful and hollow vision of experiences beyond. Fortino simultaneously conveys the sadness of trauma and a tremendous natural beauty of untamed wilderness of the human heart and soul. Transcending the mere folk tag, Tiny Vipers leaves behind her contemporaries. Often compared to Joanna Newsom or Cat Power, the music has been deconstructed into an aether that floats beside the poignant lyrics. Drawing from disparate inspirational sources, from the avant-garde or from country musician Townes Van Zandt, Tiny Vipers’ playing is no imitation. Fortino stands on her own, giving a musical life to those themes that inhabit her lyricisms: love found and lost, places come and gone.

Ducktails is Matthew Mondanile, a New Jerseyian whose pop is drenched in a warm drone. There is a pretty amazingly realized aesthetic running through his stuff, with all its plastic nostalgias — like Ninja Turtles pizza, fake palm trees, sugary cereal — and the lo-fi tape fuzz that also permeates his other projects, Predator Vision, Real Estate, and Dreams In Mirror Field. It’s home recording with one of the comfiest feels you’ll find, reminiscent of Ariel Pink but with an exploratory nudge. Matthew prefers cassettes as scuffed-up homes for this stuff, but he’s just released a vinyl full-length on LA DIY label Not Not Fun. This might be the culmination of a point in time in music history, of the so-called “lo-fi tropical psych-drone” sound.

Hawnay Troof‘s story is one of great complexity. Leftfield prodigy Vice Cooler, a gifted small town reject, has redefined underground music with a strong work ethic, charm, and a smooth grace. The spark for HT was ignited while Cooler was attending high school in Alabama. From making humble tunes in his bedroom to inciting thousands internationally into a craze, Cooler quickly turned into one of the most respected southern “outsider” artists. Hawnay Troof created some of the strangest (and often difficult) electronic music of the first decade of the 21st Century, yet the songs resonate via turntables in Europe’s most prestigious dance clubs, raves, and basements. Managing to steal show after show with his unifying performances, he has made even the most reserved art galleries break into dance.

Songs are Steve Uren, Max Doyle, Ela Stiles and Jeff Burch: a fabulous, Sydney based four piece, 3/4 of whom originally hail from New Zealand. One of our fave Australian bands of this and any era, Songs are about to release their wildly anticipated debut album on Popfrenzy Records.  “Inspired by bands like the Clean and the Go-Betweens, Songs make
music that sounds like dancing around your kitchen.” – Dazed and Confused.  “Songs are four people who know a lot of stuff and who make music that sounds like they know a lot of stuff.” –  Vice Australia.

 The Dacios are a high-octane, lysergic, nitrous sucking rock n’ roll beast. Like a reprobate Phoenix exploding from the ashes of legendary Tasmanian band Little Ugly Girls, The Dacios initially tore onto local stages in 2005. Permanently stimulated by a synapse twisting brew of rock n’ roll sour mash, they are esteemed for their white-heat live performances. Linda J’s lyrical concoctions are a virulent antivenom which she expectorates in heaving torrents against the darkening forces of urban banality. Her unflinching psychic insights wrench the cancerous lesions of modern life into the glare and splay love’s ordeals on a dissection table like so many toads, their entrails pullulating with rheumy ooze. Monkeys Blood by The Dacios is available now via Tom Lyngcoln’s cochlear speakeasy, Solar/Sonar.

Proto punks The UV Race (featuring members of Straightjacket Nation, Dick Diver and various Latrobe Valley ne’er-do-wells) have been playing for a year and a half now. As the story goes, a bunch of them got together and decided they’d start a band that sounded like the Electric Eels, or at least a band that subscribed to their aesthetic. The UV Race specialise in “throwback punkaroo songs that are primitive and exuberantly discordant and juvenile, wheelbarrows full of enthusiasm hauling loads of muck and mire around these tunes, vocals get mumbled and howled like a dog, there’s some talk of blues, bleating keyboard shepherding underthunk-drumbeats and jabbed/strummed guitar…it’s Australia(2008)-via-Clevo(1978)“ – Terminal Boredom. The UV Race’s debut 7 inch (captured on tape by Eddy Current guitarist Mikey Young) is nearly sold out and they have a vinyl album is coming out in a couple of months and they also feature on an Aarght! Records compilation, The Real Worlds Lousy With Ideas vol 7. 

 

A Mistletone party would not be complete without a performance by Mark Barrage. It’s been a wee while since Mark Barrage released his brilliant Mistletone debut Delays, which was bestowed with four stars by the Music Australia Guide and declared it “raw, bedroom-produced brilliance.” Mark Barrage is the moniker adopted by Melbourne-based sound maker Mark Gomes, formerly known as Barrage. His sound is that of obfuscated, broken electronica – blunted samples and bent, buzzing synths playing against one another between the walls of his out-pop compositions.

Amy Franz and Hayley McKee formed Super Wild Horses in 2008 in a car whilst shouting bratty rhymes at each other.  Beer was involved. Earlier this year, Aarght! Records released their eponymous 45 rpm EP, featuring 6 excellent bursts of skeletal pop evoking Phil Spector & The Ronettes on a budget in a No Wave tin shed.  Super Wild Horses’ songs are stripped to the very backbone and clad in distorted call and response Fall-esque yelps, cavernous big beats, and primal twangs. Their raucous performances gleefully prove that all it takes to be a kick-arse band is to get up there and do it. If there is a game plan it’s to have fun – loud, primitive fun.

Rat Vs Possum is made up of four friends that like floor toms, vocal harmonies, pop music, experimental music, drum samplers, casio keyboards, jangly guitars, loop pedals, glitter, healthy food promoting, hugging, dancing, collaborating and celebrating. Their live shows have been said to create “a joyous, harmonious atmosphere amongst the audience that you kind of feel that instead of playing their whacked-out, tom-heavy psychedelic anthems, these four misfits are actually the good witches of Brunswick casting blissful spells on us all, intent on converting the world to their doctrine of love for heroic apes, glitter, and communal fruit.” – Deformative 

The French is a completely new project featuring Nathan Gray, Julie Burleigh (occasional sitarist in the Hi God People and recorder player in Beaches) and Bianca Hester (Paeces). More details as they come to hand!

Children Of The Wave came together in Melbourne in 2006, the union of a folk/pop songwriter (Major Chord) and music writer and member of wrong rock/ noise outfit Front of Van. Carapace slowly evolved from studio experimentation, from half starte
d musical sentences, from uncomfortable silences and curious sonic experiments and have developed a unique sound with elements of pastoral pop, field recordings and musique concrete imbedded in textural loops, harmonies, and conventional instruments such as organs, melodica and clarinet. blissful debut album Carapace (out now on Sensory Projects) is filled with experiments in pop, ethnic-melds, near-country, acoustics, found sounds, field recordings, and cinematic abstractions of the most textural, yet strangely melodic inclination.

Woollen Kits play a kind of washed-out punk rock that slides a line between Bratmobile, Jonathan Richman and Scratch Acid and have released three home-recorded and handmade EPs on their own Periodic Collective label over the past two years, including a split with Wonderful Fellowship. In 2009 they became a three piece, and continue to play short and catchy pop tunes, shorter and catchier than ever.

From the beyond comes Aoi, dropping jewels of hand-stitched experimental hip hop. Tracing an arc of dusty chopped samples and lo-fi synth splatters into a texta mess of headnod drum patterns, Aoi has been producing primitive abstract instrumentals and playing live around Melbourne since late 2007.

Mistletone proudly presents Vivian Girls, direct from New York City on their first Australian tour.

MISTLETONE PRESENTS VIVIAN GIRLS AUSTRALIAN TOUR 2009

SYDNEY: Fri 25 Sep @ Spectrum w/ Hawnay Troof (USA), Circle Pit and Dead Farmers. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix outlets or phone 1300 GET TIX.

MELBOURNE: Sat 26 Sep headlining Spring Tones @ Roxanne Parlour (Level 3, 2 Coverlid Pl, city) w/ Bachelorette (NZ), Ducktails (USA), Tiny Vipers (USA), Hawnay Troof (USA), Love Of Diagrams, St Helens, Aleks & The Ramps, Songs (Syd), The Dacios, UV Race, Mark Barrage, Super Wild Horses, Rat Vs Possum, Snawklor , Children Of The Wave, Woollen Kits And Aoi. Spring Tones tickets on sale now from Polyester, Missing Link, Corner Hotel box office (57 Swan St Richmond, phone  9427 9198) or Mistletone website.

HOBART: Sun 27 Sep @ Brisbane Hotel w/ Native Cats, Moe Grizzly and Manchester Mourning. Licensed all ages show, starts 5pm. Tickets on sale now from Brisbane Hotel, Ruffcut Records and The Dwarf website.

MELBOURNE: Wed 30 Sep @ Northcote Social Club w/ Panel of Judges and Miniature Submarines. Tickets on sale now from NSC box office, phone 9486 1677.

ADELAIDE: Thu 1 Oct @ Metro Hotel w/ Hit The Jackpot and Rich Parents. Tickets on sale now from Oztix outlets or phone 1300 762 545.

BRISBANE: Fri 2 Oct @ Step Inn w/ Nova Scotia, The Legend with the Deadnotes, and Feathers. Tickets on sale now from Oztix outlets or phone 1300 762 545.

NEWCASTLE: Sat 3 Oct @ Sound Summit. More info here.

Brooklyn trio Vivian Girls burst on to the scene last year with a critics-favourite debut album and an ace sound combining 1960s girl-group vocals, fuzzy garage rock, punk and post-punk with blasts of shoegaze and skuzzy DIY charm. On their short road to “out of nowhere” status, the ‘Girls have mastered blurring the lines of genres and come up with something aggressive yet beautiful; simple, gutsy music with a lot of class and melody.

But it’s not so out-of-nowhere as it seems. Cassie Ramone and Kickball Katy were longtime friends from high school, so when former member Frankie Rose and Cassie decided to start a band, Katy seemed the obvious choice to complete the lineup. Spurred on by sharing common (and uncommon) influences, the girls started writing material and playing live in their adopted hometown of Brooklyn. The trio first came to prominence in 2007 supporting indie heavyweights Jay Reatard, Japanther and Crystal Stilts. Their debut limited edition vinyl LP sold out within a matter of weeks, inspiring much-loved label In The Red to sign the band for the US, and Melbourne’s In-Fidelity to snap them up for Australia. Since then, Vivian Girls have had an extremely eventful couple of years as a band, from turning heads at SXSW and other major festivals in the US and Europe, to having their own question on Jeopardy.

The band cites The Gun Club and Neil Young as influences for their eagerly anticipated new full-length album, Everything Goes Wrong (due September 8 on In-Fidelity through Inertia).

Vivian Girls are: Cassie Ramone (guitar / vocals), Kickball Katy (bass / drums / vocals) and Ali Koehler (drums / bass / vocals).

“Three rad chicks rocking out with the canon on their side.” – PITCHFORK #16 BEST ALBUM OF 2008

“One of the year’s biggest buzzes emanating from the indie hotbed of Brooklyn, and in the case of this all-girl power trio it was richly deserved hype.”  – ROUGH TRADE #9 BEST ALBUM OF 2008

“They just make you want to sing, freak-out, and play beach-blanket bingo in a basement.” – PREFIX MAGAZINE 9/10

A Fine Line interview:

Mistletone took over the entire Edinburgh Castle for a crisp winter’s day and night full of unfailingly impressive local luminaries and guest headliners, the incredibly charming Je Suis Animal from Norway (who declared themselves enamoured of Melbourne’s indie music scene).

Thanks to the lovely people at the Edinburgh Castle, all the punters, everyone who brought a mix CD or cassette, the DJs who made the beer garden heaps of fun, and especially all the bands.

Mess + Noise were there to document the day in pictures, check out their photo gallery here.

Inpress review:

From The Vine:

Photos, review – Castletones, Melbourne 2009

Posted in MUSIC by thawking on Jul 01, 11:00AM
Castle Tones
Edinburgh Castle, Melbourne
Saturday 27th June

It’s over a year since most excellent local label Mistletone held the first of its “Tones” parties. Autumn Tones was a modest affair at the Tote, but since then there’s been the logistically challenged but musically triumphant Winter Tones, the understated Spring Tones and the Espy-spanning extravaganza of Summer Tones. The evolution of these events has mirrored the growth of the label, which in barely three years – yes, it’s hard to believe – has grown into one of Melbourne’s most respected imprints.

It’s difficult to identify a Mistletone “sound” in the same way you can with some labels – if anything, the label is characterised by its diversity. If you had to specify one overarching genre it’d be left-of-centre, hypercolour pop music – Dan Deacon, Lucky Dragons, Evangelicals et al – but their roster also includes everything from the crashing psychedelia of Beaches to the world-weary acoustica of Ross McLennan.

The line-up for this event reflects that diversity, with appearances from a variety of the label’s own artists plus like-minded souls drawn from across the Australian indie scene (and, in the case of the headliners, from Norway). Kes Band are taking the stage in the bar – which makes for a remarkably spacious area considering how many people are inside (the show is sold out) – when we score a decisive but hard-fought victory in its battle against Connex and arrive at the venue. Like any music that involves mention of elves, Kes’s oddball psych-folk is always going to polarize opinions. Given that the bar is more packed for his set than anyone else who plays this evening, the verdict tonight is very much in his favour, and his trio’s set tonight is surprisingly raucous, the music less wistful and more muscular than it is on record.

Next door, the dining room has been converted into a second stage and works surprisingly well, with Lynchian red curtains providing the stage with a suitably luxurious backdrop and an air of even greater intimacy than in the bar. It’s a setting that suits Jessica Says. Jessica Venables’ debut album attracted plenty of interest when it was released earlier this year, and she’s a charismatic and engaging performer. Her songs are harder to warm to – anyone who can take as calculating a view of a relationship as to be able to write lyrics like “He thought he read me but he only skimmed / Still I got one or two songs out of him” is one to handle with caution, you’d think – but she’s clearly a talent.

More easy to appreciate is Laura Jean. She’s taking this appearance as an opportunity to try out a bunch of new songs, and they bode well for whatever else she’s got in the pipeline. Her voice is as alluring as ever, and once the mixing that makes her electric guitar way louder than that voice is remedied, her gentle folk tunes are a fine soundtrack to a couple of quiet drinks and a chance to catch up with friends, even if the largely downbeat mood sends more than one punter perilously close to the land of nod.

The first really exciting moment of the night is provided by Miniature Submarines, a new project featuring Love Of Diagrams’ Monica Fikerle. They sound kinda post-grunge, in that they take cues from the raw, unadorned guitar thrash of 1990s Seattle and build on them to develop a sound of their own – full of thick distortion and fuzz, but also with surprisingly delicate melodic interludes. In short, they tick all the right boxes, and they sound great – or, at least, they will do once they’ve rehearsed some more. Their set tonight walks the perilous line between the endearingly shambolic and the just plain shambolic, threatening to tip the wrong way when guitarist/vocalist Mark Nelson forgets the intro to the same song twice over. When they do get it together, they’re really impressive, and given that they’re a fairly new project they promise a great deal once the creases are ironed out.

Either way, they put some of their more well-known contemporaries on this bill in the shade, and keep us firmly planted in the dining room for the duration of their set. By the time we wander back into the bar, Ned Collette & Wirewalker are well into their set, and although the crowd watching seem to be enjoying every minute, Collette’s solo work lacks the epic, evocative grandeur of his finest moments with City City City. It’s singer/songwriter-y, really, and even the extended freak-out that closes the set can’t summon sufficient interest to keep me watching, not when Scott & Charlene’s Wedding are about to take the stage next door.

The dining room is emptying rapidly as Spider Vomit’s Craig Dermody and his indie all-star cohorts (St Helens’ Jarrod Quarrell, Panel Of Judges’ Dion Nania and Love Of Diagrams’ Luke Horton) set up, with most attendees heading next door to await the arrival of headliners Je Suis Animal. This is a shame, because this solo project is rapidly revealing Dermody to be a songwriter of no little talent. I’ve been playing his song ‘Footscray Station’ obsessively of late – it’s available in suitably raw live format on his MySpace – and it’s one of the best songs I’ve heard in ages.

Dermody’s music isn’t complicated or revolutionary in any respect – he’s a rudimentary guitarist at best, and his songs are constructed around simple open chord progressions. But the beauty of his music is in its directness, whether discussing the shitness of his job as a removalist or spitting out hilarious Ramones-esque lines like “I don’t wanna eat my fruit and veg / I just wanna sit around and smoke cigarettes”. It’s music that’s reminiscent of early punk, or early grunge, or any other music that’s arisen out of suburban boredom and alienation. Anyone who’s ever been bored or pissed off with their life and their job will doubtless relate to Dermody’s tunes, and most likely wonder why they never managed to express their frustration quite so eloquently.

After that, Je Suis Animal are a bit of a comedown – as with Kes, this sort of twee pop music really divides opinion, and it’s not really my bag. That said, the Norwegian/English group are clearly good at what they do, evoking the likes of Stereolab as they romp through a relentlessly upbeat set. And anyway, the variety on show tonight pretty much ensures that there’s gonna be something for everyone… and really, that’s the point. Another fine evening that confirms the rude health of Melbourne’s music scene, and one of its best labels.

Tom Hawking
(Pics: Leila Morrissey)

Poster design by Alex Fregon.

MISTLETONE PRESENTS THE BATS

MELBOURNE: FRIDAY 7 AUGUST @ Northcote Social Club w/- Crayon Fields + The Twerps. Tickets $25 +BF on sale now via the box office or phone 9486 1677.  SOLD OUT!
Doors 8.30pm
The Twerps 9.00-9.40
Crayon Fields 10.10-10.50
The Bats 11.20-

SYDNEY: SATURDAY 8 AUGUST @ Hopetoun Hotel w/- Crayon Fields + Songs (trio).
Tickets $25 +BF on sale now via Moshtix. * SELLING FAST!
Doors 7.30pm
Songs trio 8.30 – 9.10
Crayon Fields 9.30 – 10.10
The Bats 10:30 –

The Bats are set to release their wonderful new album The Guilty Office on Mistletone Records, and are coming to our shores for the first time in six years with the same brilliant line-up since the band’s conception in 1983:  Robert Scott, Kaye Woodward, Paul Kean and Malcolm Grant.

Let’s recap – it’s been well over 20 years so some might not know the background to The Bats ….

Often loosely referred to as an indie pop band, The Bats have amassed plenty of fans from their home base in Dunedin, New Zealand and offshore, notably in US where they  toured frequently from 1986 to 1993 with Radiohead and others, and won gushing reviews from every corner of the music press. From 1994 they were busy in New Zealand working on raising families, side projects of Minisnap (Kaye Woodward’s songs), The Clean and solo albums from Robert Scott. In 2000 they put together a Bats greatest almost hits CD, 1000’s of Tiny Luminous Spheres, followed by their 2005 studio album The Bats At The National Grid which was rapturously received by the critics and led to a US tour in 2006.

For The Guilty Office – their seventh studio album and their Mistletone debut – The Bats continue to refine and develop their own idiosyncratic path, whilst also adding fresh sparkle and new ideas. The strings and additional instruments come to the fore, such as on the first single Castle Lights, and Robert Scott’s songwriting has become particularly strong on tracks such as Countersign and Crimson Enemy. It could have been the pentagonal room they recorded in at  Christchurch music doyen John Kelcher’s studio, or the proximity to Christchurch’s beautiful Heathcote River, but either way, the band have come up with an album that shines among their best.

>>> Fun Bats fact: the music for the title sequence of the ABC-TV political-comedy series ‘The Hollowmen’ is The Bats’ North By North.