Live review: John Legend (for The Music Network)

27 April 2011

by Poppy Reid

Monday April 25
State Theatre, Sydney, NSW 

When a soul singer changes his last name from Stephens to Legend, high expectations are entirely apposite. Yet in Sydney’s State Theatre on Monday night, the American musical powerhouse delivered a visual feast sans pop culture cliché and hubris.

Opening with an indelible version of Adele’s Rolling In The Deep, Legend executed the song more as a tribute to Adele and not with an 'I can do it better' disposition.

The next hour and a half lent itself predominantly to early tracks likeUsed To Love U, Save Room; the reason for this focus is perhaps because the Grammy Award winner came Down Under was more than five years ago, towards the end of the touring cycle for his debut album.

His three-piece band, personal DJ and the three backup singers weren’t blended into the background at all, yellow and blue lights illuminated the band from underneath giving the impression they were floating and vocalists Jessyca Wilson, Lacey Jones and Courtney Harrel were at times, very much the main attraction.

As Legend performed the title track from his latest record with The Roots, Wake Up!, the theatre sang along, showing him we had been paying attention during his five-year snub. Possibly the only part of the set where Legend slightly resembled the Chris Brown’s and Usher’s of our time was during Slow Dance where he beckoned a woman onstage to (err) slow dance with him; but instead of acting cocky and over-sexed, the grinning pair had a cute little boogie together before he sent her off with a rose. How refreshing!

He then hit up his grand piano for P.D.A (We Just Don’t Care) andSave Room; Legend was pitch perfect as he hit the high notes with the same masterful projection as he did the deep notes. Closing withGreen Light, he had us out of our seats and dancing in the isles as he came down and sang the track whilst weaving through the audience. For the big trilling finish, Legend stood atop his piano, painting himself as a true soul-crooner.

It was a short wait for encore tracks Ordinary People and Stay With You where he invited us to sing all the soft parts. “Keep singing,” he said as he complimented even the most tone-deaf audience member with his vocal aerobics.

“It’s been five years since I was last here, lets make a promise, I'll never leave it that long again,” he said. “If you'll keep having me I'll keep coming back.” The pact was made.

Havana Brown: Spinning To Win (for The Music Network)

27 April 2011

by Poppy Reid

In a male dominated dance music industry, most female DJ's are finding it hard to stand out. Melbourne's Havana Brown, however, may have cracked the proverbial code.

“There are some female DJ’s out there now, but when I started there were none,” Havana Brown says down the phone from L.A. “Especially ones that are more than willing to be in a mini skirt and high heels!”

It’s true the 26-year-old’s exotic beauty has done her no harm in regards to gaining attention, but with her latest compilation album,Crave Vol. 5 certified Gold in Australia and a string of support dates for acts like Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Britney Spears under her belt, there is a lot more to her success than that.

After Havana Brown (aka Angelique Meunier)’s UK dance group Fishbowl, disbanded in 2005, she decided to add another guise to what has now become an extremely marketable brand; but she didn’t just fall into DJing, initially having to fight to be taken seriously.

“I think people at first probably had a hard time believing that I was serious about this. There were people that would say ‘oh yeah she’ll be around for a year, there’s no way she is going to survive,’ and I would think, ‘Why won’t I survive? Because I’m wearing a skirt?’”

Having a provocative image both helped and hindered Meunier. Although she had to shop herself by offering to play nightclubs for free, once she proved she could spin with the boys, it wasn’t just her gender and good looks that made her stand out.

“I had to [DJ for free] ‘coz I’m female. They just wouldn’t take me seriously, they’d laugh at me,” she admits. “Then I said ‘look, let me just come in tomorrow and I’ll play for ten minutes and you can throw me off at any time.’

“The next night I actually did rock up and ended up playing for an hour. That’s how I got my first residency in the UK.”

Since then, Meunier has become the first female Australian DJ to land a major record deal. During her time with Universal Music she has played across the globe, from St Tropez to her current 12-month residency at Paris Las Vegas’ Chateau Nightclub and Gardens. Next week she’ll return home to open for Chris Brown on his tour of Australia.

It may seem unusual to have a DJ as a support act, but Meunier says she gets a kick out of playing party-starter for the girls; and lets face it, girls heavily outnumber the guys at pop concerts.

“I’m gonna play the songs that they want played, I’ll play The Pussycat Dolls’ Don’t Cha, because that’s what girls want to hear, they want to hear Dirrty by Christina Aguilera... My impression is that when girls are on the dance floor they want to hear stuff that they know, and party and sing along to it; plus girls love seeing a girl behind the DJ decks.”

The next endeavour for the Havana Brown enterprise is to step out from behind the decks and sing original tracks. Meunier will play the first taste of an upcoming mini-album, titled We Run The Night, during her Chris Brown support set. The mini-album will set the pace for things to come as she plans to release around six tracks at a time in order to keep her mix of R’n’B and dance music fresh.

“It’s so that I can continually change my music and be up to date,” she explains. “Being a DJ, you are surrounded by music all the time and you’re always looking for the next thing,” she says. “I’d love to be able to move with the trends like that. I’m constantly working on it.” This triple threat chameleon certainly has a big year ahead of her, but for now, all she wants to do is play.

“I think the success of ‘Havana Brown’ is down the fact that I play for the girls, and play so that the girls feel sexy.”

Unwritten Law: Just like starting over (for The Music Network)

23 April 2011

by Poppy Reid

“Not one kid is gonna walk away and go fuck, this band wasn’t the greatest rock band ever. The next band they see, no matter who the fuck is in that room, they’re not gonna fucking feel the same way as how they did tonight with us.”

Scott Russo, the raspy-voiced frontman of Unwritten Law has just stepped off Sydney’s Roundhouse stage and is practically bouncing off the walls. In between playing DJ to an intimate backstage entourage, the 38-year-old is superciliously reaping the benefits of their highly anticipated Australian tour.

Formed in 1990, the San Diego four-piece were slow burners to fame, their early blend of punk-with-funk and post-grunge edge lead them to alt-scene success along with acts like Blink 182, NOFX, Strung Outand Lagwagon. Today, they boast a back catalogue of six studio albums and two decades of drug and alcohol goaded touring. Their latest offering, Swan, is the product of this ruinous cycle of destruction and life’s cruel miens, and would never have materialised if they weren’t so deep in debt.

“We owed money to several merchandise companies, we owed money to several record companies who had given us money. It was really hard to try and conceive getting back together just to pay people back, especially without a record label,” he admits. “But we didn’t want any karmic fucking issues. A lot of bad drug dealers got involved you know, it was that bad.“

Originally titled Swan Song, the record was intended to be just that, the band - Russo, Steve Morris (guitar), Pat "PK" Kim (bass) and Dylan Howard (drums) - planned to pay their dues and settle back into their then four-year hiatus. Russo’s first dig at writing for the band resulted in the track Swan Song, “That was about the end of my career, when I wrote that song I was like 'thank you very much, thanks for coming, hugs and kisses',” he says. However, after scrapping the following six tracks and starting over, the newfound ingenuity sent the band into an re-evaluation of what Unwritten Law should be.

“We started getting stronger and stronger until it was like, fuck! …During that process the band fell in love with each other. When we played shows we knew what we were sitting on, when we came on stage we were firing differently,” Russo is now sitting feverishly on the edge of his seat. “We meant it and that’s the difference.”

Starships and Apocalypse, the first single from Swan

Unfortunately, their new label, Suburban Noise were busy gearing up to promote the album as their very last. The band was on a conference call with the label when they begged for a change in course.

“The record company already knew that we’d written Swan Song and started pushing [the album] as our last record but we were like no ‘whoa whoa, hey, put the breaks on, it’s really good and the band’s alive and we’re not gonna come out on a negative note!’”

It was at this point when the band retitled the album Swan and settled into the 14-month long recording process. All vocals for the album were recorded at the house legendary skateboarder Danny Way gifted to Russo after his family home was burnt down in 2009. Although Russo at first struggled to comprehend paying back such a gesture, he now maintains he will use his musical “gift” to repay him in the form of the band they are in together, The Click.

“Believe you me I am mortalised [sic] and I have no idea how to even begin to pay back a favour like that,” he says, clearly humbled by the act. “All I know is that the universe works in everyone’s favour, as long as you’re a good person and I know that he’s a good dude and I’m a good dude, we’re both people pushing for what counts and I think the universe will commend me and in turn I’ll be able to pay back my homeboy who fuckin' saved me.

“We’re doing music together and that’s how I’m gonna pay him back I’m gonna give him my gift and our shit's gonna do well, he’s got it coming,” he counters.

With the bulk of Unwritten Law’s Australian tour completed Russo seems content with doing things differently. “Subliminally we’re all coming together like glue and it’s a bull charging, we’re one fucking unit pushing a certain type of energy that’s uncompromiseable [sic], and that’s the difference.”

As he has discovered on his tumultuous trek through fame, living the rockstar life can only hold up for so long and in Russo’s case, it took a few earth shaking experiences to take him down a few notches and remind him of his mortality.

“I’m a different dude than I was two decades ago, me and my band have just found ourselves now.”

Swan is out now through Shock Records

Axle Whitehead: The Art of Conversation (for The Music Network)

19 April 2011

by Poppy Reid

You may know him from television soap, Home & Away where he plays rehabilitated drug user Liam Murphy, or perhaps as the loveable farm boy from 2003’s original Australian Idol series; most likely you’ll remember him from the 2006 ARIA Awards where he infamously exposed himself onstage and was subsequently sacked from his enviable position as host of Channel Ten’s Video Hits programme. For Axle Whitehead however, it’s his music that he plans to be remembered by.

His first musical offering, Losing Sleep, was well received and birthed the hit single Don’t Do Surprises in 2008; however, having grown up with a passion for jazz, it failed to meet Whitehead’s own expectations.

“That last record I wrote, it wasn’t really me. Being a jazz musician I’d always re-wrote other people’s music and never really written my own songs so it was my first chance at writing tunes,” he says in the echoing boardroom at the TMN offices. “It was just kind of three and a half minute songs that have synths and drum loops in it, whereas that wasn’t really my background.”

The background he speaks of is country Victoria where he grew up with his parents, two older brothers, and an inherited love of jazz. “I was a hardcore country boy. Then I started smoking weed at about 16 then turned into a big jazz head, and fell in love with jazz music,” says the now 31-year-old. “I was hopeless academically, photography was straight A’s and music was straight A’s but I nearly failed everything else. I didn’t have an option, it was the land or music, or taking pictures, I didn’t have anything else, I was fucked.”

The singer/guitarist has since walked a colourful path on the way to releasing his latest “happy, beachy song,” Sister Sunshine. His side-step into an (initial) 15-episode jaunt with Home & Away has now become his main source of income and with a sophomore record in his sights, Whitehead has taken the necessary time off from acting to get his music back on track. “It takes a week of drinking to try and shake all that shit off and then bam!” he laughs.

Now with 25 to 30 tunes up his sleeve, Whitehead has returned from the US just in time for the Australian release of Sister Sunshine. Although he couldn’t be happier with the Dave Bassett co-written track, the production elements were finalised without him.

“The production got a little bit full with Sister Sunshine, in the mix it got quite full and a bit poppy,” he explains. “I was back in Australia when it was getting done so it was a bit of a fuck over, it was a good lesson to make sure you’re in the studio for all that.”

One upcoming track Whitehead is sure to be holding the reins tight on is a yet-to-be-named song he wrote in Nashville about our unfortunate reliance on mobile phones.

“iPhones fucking shit me to tears man, look at my piece of shit,” he says while pulling his Motorola flip-top out of his motorcycle jacket. “I’m against iPhones. I was out to dinner one time and there was a lull in conversation and everyone went [mocks his friends using his phone], and I just went ‘get fucked, the lot of ya!’

“So there’s this one tune about how screens are fucking us and the art of conversation has been lost” - a light bulb seems to turn on in his eyes - “that could be a name for the record, The Art of Conversation”

Although he’s clearly undecided on a direction of any sort, he’s kept his hopes high for the production of album number two. Writer/engineer, John Alagia is on the top of his wishlist to record the album; he may have mixed Sister Sunshine but with a ballpark production cost of $100,000, Whitehead should probably wait and see how the track charts before he approaches his label with the proposal for Alagia to produce the entire record.

“I’ve just gotta come up with 100 grand somehow. I’ve got to convince the label I’ve got a bunch of hits,” he jokes.

It’s not unusual for an artist to feel his own work is sub par, and with a debut album and new single that he’s not entirely happy with, Whitehead takes self-critiquing to another level. This could be partly due to the virtuoso image he’s eager to shape, or perhaps it’s just as he says it is, and he’s still individualising his sound.

“I can’t go ‘that’s Axle Whitehead’s sound’, I haven’t reached it. I haven’t got there yet. At the moment it’s still me trying to work out where my sound is at.”

Sister Sunshine is out now

Bring Me The Horizon: No strangers to hardcore haters (for The Music Network)

18 April 2011

by Poppy Reid

When you’re a straight-edge vegan playing guitar in a deathcore band, you’re bound to cop a bit of flack; but sitting beside Jona Weinhofen, things are looking pretty good for the newest member ofBring Me The Horizon.

“We get a lot of shit talk in forums. I’ve had a few people write to me on Twitter,” the 28-year-old South Australian tells me at Shock Records post-Soundwave party. “They say ‘oh your bands shit, you guys look like pussies’. I’m like ‘alright, cool.’”

Tattooed from neck to navel, Weinhofen is definitely no stranger to hardcore haters, having played guitar for Australian bands The Fall Of Troy and I Killed The Prom Queen and Orange County band,Bleeding Through. However, with BMTH’s verbosely titled third album, There Is a Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It. There Is a Heaven, Let's Keep It a Secret, making its debut at #1 on the ARIA Album Chart, numbers speak louder than words.

“Every day we find out some other cool new piece of news like ‘we’ve hooked this up’ or ‘we’re gonna get this endorsement’ or ‘this person wants to put you on a billboard’. Everything’s going so well for us that it’s like why would we take notice of someone saying we look like shit?” the guitarist lets his laugh break the surface this time.

Since joining the English band in 2009 to replace guitarist Curtis Ward, Weinhofen has brought his raucous live show antics to sold-out BMTH stages around the world. His love for touring was actually one of the deciding factors for the original BMTH members.

“I guess one of the reasons that the old guitarist left was because he wasn’t feeling [the touring life], but that’s where I came in.” Weinhofen was completing his last tour with Bleeding Through when the opportunity arose after an online chat with frontman Oli Sykes.

“He popped up online and we started chatting, I just told him that I’d just quit Bleeding Through and he said ‘that’s weird you should say that 'cause we just kicked Curtis out of our band.’”

If it weren’t for the decision to take on the boy from Oz, the latest opus may not have been so genre crossing. Weinhofen’s 14 years of guitar experience teamed with his production skills in programming certainly coloured their habitual sound of deathcore with progressive digital manipulations, string sections and gospel trebles. Although the record is a far cry from their earlier work, Weinhofen says it wasn’t at all purposeful.

“It’s not something that we were setting out to do, we never sat down at the start of the record writing period and thought let’s write an album that blows everyone’s minds and leaves our mark,” he says “We wanted to please ourselves and hope that everyone else liked it…it wasn’t like lets write a #1 album in Australia or anything like that.”

There was a fair bit of bubble bursting after reports revealed the 3,600 album sales the band gained to get to #1 was the lowest in ARIA history; but Weinhofen is unperturbed in his response, “number one is still number one,” he says.

Along with many of the band’s haters, Weinhofen is also unsure as to why they have been so popular; this is perhaps the only piece of common ground he’ll find with them.

“There are so many other bands that are working just as hard and writing just as good music, and touring just as hard, but I don’t think everyone gets that lucky I guess.

“It could even be down to the fact that a lot of people hate the band which makes the people that love us wanna love us even more. They feel like they’ve gotta stick up for us.”

Weinhofen could very well have been the Australian saving grace for BMTH; since joining the band and helping put together an eclectic album that caters to a range of musical palettes, the cyber-bullying has weakened.

“We seem to be getting a lot of attention from fans from other genres and other scenes now. We’ve even had people that hate us write on forums, ‘check out the new album, I hate the band and they’re shit, but the new album is pretty good.’ That’s the best revenge I think.”

There Is a Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It. There Is a Heaven, Let's Keep It a Secret is out now through Shock Records.

Album review: Thursday, No Devolución (for The Music Network)

14 April 2011

by Poppy Reid

Thursday frontman, Geoff Rickly was quoted as saying the band’s sixth album is inspired by The Cure, The Smiths and Portishead. With an album that departs from post-hardcore and lands heavy-footed upon atmospheric rock, he couldn’t have been more honest.

The album, No Devolución (Spanish for 'no return') is darker and more depressive than the Jersey sextet’s other five offerings. Thursdaywere once poster-boys for emo with bite, but because of this, No Devolución may alienate longtime fans who don’t want to move into experimental rock territory with them.

“Just lose your eyes and go fast to the end,” sings Rickly on album opener, Fast To The End. This track and its follower, No Answers set the tone for the record. Although each track is very much individual both lyrically and instrumentally (Fast To The End could very well explain the album title and No Answers explores the impossibility of friendship with an ex); the subject matter has one common thread, its moody tone.

On Sparks Against The Sun, sprinklings of Portishead can be found where Thursday tip their hat to psychedelic rock. In the more radio friendly track, Magnets Caught In A Metal Heart Rickly sings literally of being lost in love, “his only true north is down.”

Rickly touches on a rough patch he experienced in his marriage on the solemn down-tempo track, Empty Glass and his fear of the afterlife in the melancholic guitar-stripped track, A Darker Forest.

Up until the point of A Gun In The First Act, No Devolución could have been deemed an acutely personal record with guitars and percussion taking the forefront to mask Rickly’s bleeding, open heart. However, with lyrics like “back to the way that it was before when symbols weren’t just loaded guns and black clouds weren’t just metaphors,” where Rickly comments on religious symbols as the cause of society’s ostracism, this departure from post-hardcore is as individual as each of its counterparts.

No Devolución is out April 15 through Epitaph Records.

Live review: City & Colour (for The Music Network)

07 April 2011

by Poppy reid

Enmore Theatre, Sydney, NSW
Tuesday April 6 

Emotion and zealous excitement filled Enmore theatre on Tuesday night as City & Colour took the stage for his first Australian headlining performance.

Canadian singer/songwriter, Dallas Green was, until just a few years ago, better known as the euphonious singer of post-hardcore bandAlexisonfire. But as he stood placid with his acoustic guitar before a sea of screaming girls and intentional doppelgangers, this solo tour has clearly been a long time coming.

Opening with Forgive Me, Green planted himself to the right of his touring band, a testament to his humility. “I gotta tell ya, I've been meaning to do this for a long time,” he said. “Lets sing this one together okay?”

Guitarist Scott Remila sang backing vocals on The Death Of Me as Green’s dulcet voice reverberated through the theatre, drowning out even the most tenacious wolf whistler. He then comically talked us through the call and response for his track Waiting, telling us not to bother if we thought we might fuck it up.

Older tracks like Sam Malone, Body In A Box and Save Your Scissors sent the crowd into hysterics, Green even took the time to talk one kid out of confessing her love for him. The latter track of the aforementioned was not only one of the most striking sing-along’s but also the most emotional; tiny baths filled up behind the glassy eyes of nostalgic crowd members.

It was definitely a night of firsts for this Sydney audience as Green premiered two tracks from his upcoming third album, Little Hell. Both songs, Silver & Gold and O’ Sister were received with devoted ears, some committed them to memory, others recorded them on their phones to post on YouTube. Green gets the last laugh however, as he played a completely different version of Silver & Gold than what will appear on the album.

“This is another one of those basement songs where if somebody said 'in few years, a few, few years you're going to go to Australia and it’s going to punch them right in the face',” Green said before pausing. “I would have said ‘you're lying, stop lying to me’, but here we are.” The audience hung on every delicate chord progression of final tracks Day Old Hate, I’m In Delaware, As Much As I ever Could and Sleeping Sickness.

Green and his band exited the stage before being literally stomped, cheered and begged back on for encore tracks, Comin’ Home andSometimes. If this introductory performance of the City & ColourAustralian tour is anything to go by, future audiences are in for a delightful experience.