Muscles’ Guns Babes Lemonade

Ben Lee really, really loves Pop Music

Australian singer-songwriter — and occasional Lost At E Minor contributor — Ben Lee has a new album, The Rebirth of Venus, and will be co-headlining the Big O university shows across Australia from late February to early March. On top of that, he got hitched in India recently. No wonder he’s glowing. We checked in with him to ask about his latest single, I Love Pop Music, and whether he recalled the moment of epiphany when he wrote its timeless sing-along chorus: ‘I had a less politically loaded version of the song that was a sincere tribute to pop music. It was only when I juxtaposed that with all the statistics and facts that the chorus really seemed to take on a feeling of being special. Bubblegum tastes best after a salty snack’.

Teenagers in Tokyo

Sydney pop starlets, Teenagers in Tokyo, have just released a new remix of their track End it Now dolled up and throttled into shape by local DJ group, Bagraiders. It’s as fun as a triple shot espresso with a dash of laphroaig.

French band, Cocoon

We’re big fans of French duo Cocoon, so we spoke to frontman Marc Daumail to prove it. Ahead of their upcoming tour of Australia in November, we asked him how vibrant the French music scene is right now: ‘It’s such a relief to be considered like a real band singing in English in a country like France, which is very conservative about its music traditions. We know Moriarty and The Do. They are nice. We all worked a lot to make this scene exist’. Which folk acts have most excited you recently? ‘My albums of the year are not very folky: Grizzly Bear, Lee Fields, The XX. But The Tallest Man On Earth just made one of the best folk albums of all time’. Read Cocoon’s Secret Playlist.

Ayahuasca

There’s a fascinating sub-culture springing up all over the world full of earnest psychic adventurers, working with this powerful medicine called Ayahuasca from the Amazon. It’s a plant that’s brewed into a syrupy liquid that takes its users on an eight hour journey into the depths of their insecurities, shadows and secret glory. Read more

Lion of Panjshir

The Los Angeles musician, Ariana Delawari — aka Lion of Panjshir — is half Afghan and half Sicilian and makes wonderfully enlightened weirdo folk rock. I hope she takes that as a compliment! Her music is delicate and powerful and she is a pure artist. Everything she does has that magic light in it. She made her new album partially in Afghanistan, and many of the lyrics deal with the continued oppression of people’s liberties by the Taliban.

Stevie Nicks’ Wild Heart (demo version)

This is Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks backstage in the early 1980s sharing the demo of her new song with her backup singers and make up artist. The final argument for why demos should not be messed with.