First of all, I’m going to say this list isn’t so much about being as hipster as possible and digging deeper and deeper into the trench underneath the defouled sargasso sea of alternative taste, rather putting the sunlight on acts that despite their prodigious talent, remain restricted to airplay in the honky-tonks and bars that dot the outback.
Probably contradicted myself there, but my pursuits are noble, I assure you. Not that you’re a bastard for being a hipster. After all, de gustibus non est disputandum.
This here list could go forever and ever, unfiltered and certainly unrefined all over the surrounding countryside, expanding exponentially like a sexier and more mellifluous version of the wheat and chessboard problem, so it’s been a little hard to put the brakes on and screech to a stop at under ten. Which is Proustian enough.
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[ N U M B E R \\ T E N ]
CLIENT LIAISON
When the allegedly cheesy and insincere beats of the eighties became obsolete and were shepherded forlornly down the same path to the glue factory as Andrew Dice Clay, (at roughly the same time too) many people rejoiced. I however, cried. And I cried loudly.
Synth-pop just wasn’t meant to stay hip and cool forever like jazz. It has however had a bit of an Indian summer recently with groups like Chvrches popping up and winning everyone’s hearts with infectious grooves and keyboard sorcery. Despite what some quarters say about their abilities on stage in the odeon. But I digress, they’re mother-fucking glorious and deserve knighthoods, the lot of them.
Client Liaison falls gently from a beautiful deciduous tree into the same category, albeit they’re even more retro. Yes, they even have guitar solos. The foundation to a healthy b̶r̶e̶a̶k̶f̶a̶s̶t̶ musical endeavour. It’s okay to be self-indulgent and wanky, so long as it fits. Okay, retro with a healthy injection of late nineties house creating a sexy little hybrid which is as endearing as it is pastiche.
Despite both looking like they belong behind a desk on the 56th floor of the MLC Centre both telling people what to do and also simultaneously being told what to do while working in middle management, I find the slightly naff power broker look with the corporate greed (totally consistent with the zeitgeist of the eighties) a e s t h e t I c kinda appealing.
It’s nice to hear a group that is so emu-fightingly Australian, what with their lyrical allusions to air conditioners and Bob Hawke sculling a beer in a music video. Post punk revival? Nay. Now we have synth-pop revival and it’s snazzy.
[ N U M B E R \\ N I N E ]
PEAKING LIGHTS
It’s kind of like if The Grateful Dead and Richard D. James fucked while a nymphette was singing in the background, and the condom broke because Jerry Garcia was busy smoking reefer in sex-ed class, and this was what crying and shitting nine months later. Sex music. Pure and simple.
It’s that kind of downtempo stuff that stabs you right in the senses and implores you to gyrate the air. Slowly of course. Being as small time as they are, it took a late night on the turps, watching rage on a Friday night, to discover them through their song ‘Everyone and Us’ which has a trippy video and its effects were amplified when viewed at 4am slightly pissed/baked/sleep-deprived.
Rage is an absolute gold mine for the weird and the wacky. These are the kinds of lush trance inducing, mind-altering tunes you can put on in the background to give your mezzanine or bedroom a chill atmosphere to help you study logarithmic functions or what have you. But really, the vocal harmonies may be a little identical song to song, album to album but it’s complimented and works well with the lo-fi, nomadic beats in the background.
[ N U M B E R \\ E I G H T ]
MEAT PUPPETS
Who knew that country and punk could blend together in such a harmonious cri de coeur against the tyranny of traditional genre stereotypes, and give off a psychedelic fractal pattern of noise shaped like a flaming, monstrous dahlia with a smiley face emitting a pulsating aurora that swirls and pirouettes through the night sky and dazzles onlookers down below as they peer through their binoculars jaws agape? Cris and Kurt Kirkwood, that’s who!
A lot of people don’t like country. But a lot of people like punk. So it’s a band that people either haven’t heard of (except for that one time Nirvana did an acoustic cover with the two Kirkwood brothers of three of their songs, most notably Lake of Fire) or if they have heard of them, they are confounded by such an ambitious mélange. Straight 'outta the Sonoran Desert, this band was a huge, if not the defining influence on the direction music took in the early 90’s while getting very little of the press some of their co-minstrels managed to garner.
Although they did have one of those could have been, should have been, would have been (…dead if I didn’t get the message going to my head ♫♪) moments when John Frusciante sauntered in for a jam just after leaving the Chili’s citing a dizzying rise to fame.
But, like when Les Claypool auditioned for Metallica, it was a vision exuding vapours of extreme pulchritude that sadly just wasn’t meant to be.
Depending on how adventurous you are, Meat Puppets II is the best place to start the adventure with this lot. Oddly enough, it’s very highly rated by your underground publications which then seem to pay very little attention to other albums they’ve put out. Like I said, it’s like a bastardised appropriation of country music that has been pumped full of diabolical energy. As you can see on ‘Magic Toy Missing’, the frenetic meets the bucolic and bounces along gracefully, sketching pretty little whorls in the air.
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TESTAMENT
Ah yes, Exodus’s twin brother. The two younger, lollipop-sucking, train-spotting brothers of the Big Four thrash bands. The kind of music you can loudly ululate to and bounce off the couch doing a quintuple somersault and planting your feet or head straight through the LCD of your dad’s new TV he bought with his tax return. Blazing through the speakers with the same panache as their older brothers and in some cases, more fluently with the talents of jazz influenced shredder Alex Skolnick whose rosewood melting sweeps and scalar runs could make a jet pilot dizzy, this is a band that like Megadeth has used its virtuosity to push the boundaries of what’s possible within your standard metal set up of guitars and drums.
Also taking after Megadeth, this band has also unfortunately been the subject of a game of musical- chairs with band members that has been going on since 1983 although right now, the guitarists and the vocalists are from what you’d consider the classic lineup. Which makes things a weeny bit more acceptable.
In their second album ‘The New Order’ you can see them show off their diversity. Their previous album was an all-out blitzkrieg shotgun blast to the throat assault and this one tones it down a little and tries on several different hats as it ranges from a vituperative thunderbolt up the strap, to a peaceful acoustic reverie this is a kind of diversity that has drawn critics given it takes away from the relentless thrashing that has the metronome ticking like raindrops upon a corrugated iron roof. But it’s also won fans. Like me. It’s good to change the formula I feel instead of following the AC/DC school of thought and doing the same thing for forty years with no real progress. Not to take anything away from them of course.
[ N U M B E R \\ S I X ]
JELLYFISH
Do I dare say these guys compare to Queen and could have carried the torch from them after their premature demise? Yes I fucking do! But sadly they couldn’t keep it together for very long, and disintegrated into individual grains of sand in the wind prematurely.
Their second album ‘Spilt Milk’ is exactly what power-pop should be. Vocal harmonies soaring with an aquiline comportment and a spiralling flux of experimentation and ambition. Although Jellyfish would be considered pop in name only. Kind of like the Kate Miller-Heidke brand of outsider pop which never really became as popular as the name ‘pop’ would suggest, but has similar characteristics to the mainstream under a colourful and vividly decorated niqab of unique musicianship.
It’s a real shame too, because there was a real power vacuum left in the musical scene after the rapid conflagration that consumed everything from synth-driven pop (that is recently seeing a resurgence like I mentioned earlier), and glam-metal that I feel they could have filled in and become one of the biggest bands in the world. Really!
Even with the endemic bizzaro nature. As Metallica or the Peppers would have told you in 1991, all it takes is one music video to be plugged relentlessly on MTV to be sent hurtling through the stratosphere. Who knows, we’d have an alternate universe and be seeing power pop as the defining movement of the early 90’s.
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PHISH
The modern day instalment on the jam-rock scene, following on where The Grateful Dead left off and perhaps soaring beyond. Yes I referenced them again. Fuck off. What some would consider muzak you’d listen to over the intercom as you ride the elevator between platforms at Wolli Creek station, I consider superlatively delicious improvisation as most of their material is made up on the spot and subsequently recorded and released to their notoriously adoring fans (not too dissimilar to juggalos) who lap it up like catnip smeared fish heads in a barrel.
It appears at times that the lyrics are made up on the spot too. Especially the song about Fee the weasel and Floyd the chimp trapped in a love triangle that ultimately results in one of them drowning beneath the waves like Ophelia in Hamlet, if she also got eaten by sharks when she fell in the water. It’s this kind of idiosyncratic storytelling that compliments some pretty airy-fairy, pie-in-the-sky ambience that sometimes reminds you of the cantina from Star Wars. But it compliments it well if you have the patience to let the music take you away. And patience is a virtue that will be well utilized here because their well-known songs are often in excess of ten minutes, tangoing between different movements and suites and sometimes just stroking it and showing off how good they are.
[ N U M B E R \\ F O U R]
NEU!
The grand-mummy of krautrock, along with the granddaddy, and that is another band that goes by the name of Can, are both similar and a little hard to taxonomise easily. Then you also have Faust and Kraftwerk to round out the quadrivium of German sound innovation that took place in the period surrounding the moon landing.
While being a bit oblique and difficult to access for your typical abecedarian, there’s no questioning their influence on the music scene, including their use of remixing songs which was a bit of a tragic thing to pass down through the generations for the most part but oh well, they don’t always turn out bad. Unless you’re one of those people that bought hit singles and got five remixes of the same song on the same disc including the 12-inch remix, the Gregorian chant version, the extended-mix and yadda yadda.
Again, I urge patience and calm when listening to this band as the song in the link goes for ten minutes, so it’s something you want to gander at while you hang out the washing or chop up the dragonfruit and satsuma for your fruit salad.
[ N U M B E R \\ T H R E E ]
THE DEAD MILKMEN
It’s quite hard to blend humour and music together, and still maintain an exterior of serious musicianship. It’s hard to be considered both a comedian, and a musician, and only a few people have managed to pull it off without people forgetting that they are more than just funny men behind a piano.
They can be seen as being quite similar in the ‘taking the piss’ stakes to TISM when it comes to launching a grinning enfilade of satire and at times, dark comedy. Similar to TISM that is, albeit without the foreboding anonymity and masks. It’s especially unusual (when they began in the 80’s at least) to pour both punk rock and comedy together into the cauldron and not create a smouldering puddle of kitschy shit that blinds everyone with the effluvium emanating from it. Thankfully this was not the case and The Dead Milkmen are a pretty unique group that have actually recently come back from an extended hiatus to make two more albums that actually aren’t too shabby and don’t reek of a last chance saloon cash grab. Because they’re too indie.
But as with most comebacks, they do lack their youthful exuberance as the sands of time have gradually eroded them.
There is a very slight country influence to this band as well, although nowhere near as much as The Meat Puppets and the songs are based on basic chords. Basic chords that rapidly change. Especially in this here example song ‘Tiny Town’ which is an accurate tableau of their quirky techniques.
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HIATUS KAIYOTE
Who in fuck knew white people could do soul and R&B so well?! Or future soul for the 2010’s as the band have described themselves as belonging to.
Generalisations and stereotypes aside, it’s a bit of a surprise Hiatus Kaiyote are still as indie as they are, considering they are such a smooth pseudo-jazz act that would be perfectly placed on the speakers of all the H&M and Urban Outfitters outlets around the world. The standard mood of the album traverses up and down having aural mood swings as if going through withdrawals from Fluoxetine or riding the cotton pony for the transient period of 1:09:26.
Ranging from frantic wailing and wild key changes that nod to Dream Theater and Rush to totally slowed down and mellow piano lines accompanied by soft crooning from front-woman Nai Palm who also plays the guitar. As far as I know, that name is not a nod to a Vietnamese heritage.
Breathing Underwater has been the breakout track from the album and deserves to be as well, being the meandering complex imbroglio of a creek that it is exploring several different themes while coming back to a central leitmotif. This means it’s very cerebral and progressive for a soul piece. It’s exciting to think of what’s coming next as the track ‘Nakamarra’ from their EP was nominated for a Grammy. Not that that’s saying much or anything at all about their abilities, but it means that they’re on the path to being adored and looked upon as highly as they surely deserve to be.
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COCTEAU TWINS
What a beautiful bunch this lot are. Despite often warbling in tongues that cannot be classed under any language spoken by humanity, even Basque, singer Lizzy Fraser creates a soothingly nebulous haze that slowly descends upon your head and makes you feel at one with what’s coming out of your speakers with her glittering voice which doubles up as a musical instrument during passages in certain songs, such as the title track on Heaven or Las Vegas.
It’s not quite scat-singing, but it follows the same principle using the power of glossolalia as a tool,
bringing hope to stammerers around the world. The true meaning of magnavox right here.
As previous readers will know, I’m the biggest Kate Bush fangirl in the universe and Kate and Lizzy are very similar in their methods of vocal delivery. You can see the two of them hand in hand and prancing down a yellow-brick road in glorious technicolour. It’s the kind of vocal delivery that blows up your skirt and gives you goosebumps like a cheeky, shrill polar vortex, and warms you up like a simoom at the same time. Which is a testament to the hypnotic properties of the sound based elixirs these guys purvey like alchemist jongleurs.
Article By.
P. Ogisi
