Lost AT E Minor

Ben Sollee

Cellist Ben Sollee is like Andrew Bird with a little more soul, or Arthur Russell with a bit more bounce. Read more

Bon Iver

When this scruffy fellow opens his gob, something high and mighty emanates. His music is great for long drives, in cold places and long nights in warm places. We speak of Bon Iver, who we interviewed recently. Read more

William Fitzsimmons

His name echoes those of colonels and soldiers who fought in the American civil war. But far from that, William Fitzsimmons is actually an obscure songwriter from Jackson, Illinois. Read more

Sam Weber

There’s some awesome new work up on New York-based illustrator, Sam Weber’s website, including this one above which is did for the Soulpepper Theatre. We asked him a little while back about what his studio workspace was like: ‘I am fairly particular about where I like to work, and what sort of stuff I like to have around me. There are things that I look at often — a book of Max Ernst collages, one on Yoshitaka Amano, and a big stack of clippings from magazines and the Internet that I will periodically leaf through to get inspired’. Read more

Famous Blue Raincoat

Many years ago, when my hair was longer and my clothes were shabbier, I played guitar in a Sydney-based rock band. We never come to anything more than a few years worth of gigs and a deeply closeted aspiration to take the radio charts by storm. We never did. A lack of talent intervened, but it was damn fun while it lasted. Anyway, at one point during this debauched period of my life, I had a friend who was the frontman for the exotically named, Blue Apples of The Moon. He had an unusually resonant baritone and a penchant for writing epic music. One day he handed me a demo cassette with a batch of his new songs on it. I took it to work with me the next day, whacked it into my Sony Walkman, and immediately swooned amongst the lulling tones and fretfully beautiful lyrics of this Leonard Cohen classic. I was gobsmacked. Totally mesmerised. And having never heard it before, I presumed that my friend — this humble frontman of a bizarrely named rock band — had just penned the greatest song of our generation. For about eight minutes and seventeen seconds, I was convinced he was genius. That was until one of my workmates pointed out that it was actually a Leonard Cohen masterpiece, one of many. It turns out that my friend’s demos were on the other side of the cassette. And they were pretty average. But hell, anything would be after this unholy precedent.

On the road with The Basics

A little while back, we ran a week long diary from Australian pop band, The Grates. It was kinda to get a window into the world. Hell, voyeurism is the new black. So we asked Melbourne-based rock band, The Basics, to do the same thing as they bring their music to the deepest reaches of Australia’s Northern Territory. These are the words of bassist and vocalist, Kris Schroeder: ‘Friday November 7. Darwin. It’s a weird old joint this one — I can probably compare it closest to Queensland’s Cairns, with the backpacker industry making up the life and character of the Central Business District. This makes it particularly good for bands, as you’ve got a ready audience staying only metres away from the music venues. Today was our first Darwin gig (at Monsoons), and it was a ripper. I’d organised with my mate Nathan to bring up the Sunshine Reggae Band from Ikuntji in the Western Desert, and they were going to be the first Indigenous band to play in the main street of Darwin, which is apparently quite a cultural breakthrough. The best bit was how well received they were, someone saying “This is great, because it’s what you should expect to see in Darwin, not just bloody cover bands all the time.” Quite chuffed. By the time we played it was packed out, and everyone was loving it. Job done’. Read more