Are you in love at the moment? This question often warrants a complicated response because, well, love is more than a four letter word. Brisbane-based artist, Rebecca McIntosh, has invested a large part of her life asking this question in the name of public art. Love TV sees McIntosh dressed as the goddess of love, Aphrodite, conducting a series of interviews with musicians, artists, celebrities, actors, local heroes, and, of course, the public.

It is through these intimate and awkwardly fascinating conversations with guests such as funny man Noel Feilding, musician Katie Noonan, actor Rutger Hauer, and media personality John Safran, amongst others, that McIntosh has been able to crack open the heart of the people and the places that she and Aphrodite visit.

Conversations from inside her bright pink, TV-shaped mobile theatre are blasted onto public screens so that the general public can join the conversation, as well as find out whether Noel is single. He’s not, sadly. Love TV hits Brisbane’s iconic postcode 4101 this month before hitting New York for the Summer.

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We checked in with Sydney-based songwriter Fergus Brown to get the inside story on his wonderfully quirky and catchy pop song, Nerds In Love [below]: ‘It was was a fun song write. Some songs can be tortuous, but this was an imagined, tongue-in-cheek vignette of my life spent together with a certain girl I’d seen around. That’s all it was. At least, until a friend of mine blurted to this girl that I’d written a song about her. And he gave her a copy. We’re friends now. She’s a very talented, and successful, visual artist. She was flattered. Recently, I heard that another person thinks it was written about them. I’m looking forward to that awkward conversation sometime in the future’. Fergus Brown has just been announced as the support for American singer-songwriter, Martha Wainwright on all eleven shows of her Australian tour.
[audio:NerdsInLove.mp3]

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Sonic alchemy, lyrical mastery and melodies to melt even the coldest winter heart, anyone? I introduce you to my new favourite indie darlings: The All New Adventures of Us (alternatively nicknamed TANOU). With their offbeat blend of indie pop, this seven piece British outfit evoke elements of their most talented contemporaries such as Belle & Sebastian, Connor Oberst, Sigur Ros, Ben Folds, and even the fragile vocal sensibility of Elliot Smith.

The seven adventurers spend most of their days in a studio in Umea, in the North of Sweden, with friend and practical eighth member, Magnus Lindberg (who also plays in the band Cult Of Luna) constructing silly things out of string and making tummy achingly beautiful music.

With tinkling string arrangements coupled with lyrics such as ‘Home’s not a place, it’s not roads, nor walls, street signs, bed-sheets or local swimming pools … it’s the waves, the smiles, the pleasantries, those loving kicks in the shin when you forget to breathe’, you may very well need someone to kick you in the shin, because if you’re anything like me, this music will take your breath away.

[audio:http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/6/25/1975563/45%20Forever-1.mp3]

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She & Him are actress and closet singer-songwriter, Zooey Deschanel (Almost Famous, The Good Girl, The Assassination of Jesse James), and juggernaut producer, one-man band and folk troubadour, M.Ward. With help from Portland-based indie music comrades such as Rachel Blumberg from The Decemberists coming together to create 60s inspired indie-pop of the country varietal, the duo evoke the spirit of the Carter family, Chet Baker and Linda Ronstadt to create an uneven number of charming tribute pop songs far beyond their years. If you dig AM classics, this baby was born for you.

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Emanating from Newcastle, Australia, Firekites are the unlikely love child of Kings of Convenience and Arcade Fire, with eyes the colour of Texas geniuses, Midlake. Ambient indie-pop dives into a sea of lo-fi jazz infused melodies, such as Same Suburb, Different Park, which drowns poetically in the other-worldliness of one of the most surprisingly magical four pieces to emerge from the dark underbelly of the Australian music scene. The Bowery is the sonically rich debut LP by four music aficionados who have been floating around in the biz long enough to know and differentiate between what is regurgitation and what is revolutionary.

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I first set eyes on the Brisbane quartet Yves Klein Blue during a stint as a music scout for an online music initiative. It took four seconds of the gypsy-brewed Polka to pull on my hillbilly-lovin’ heartstrings, and three minutes later I was doing the two-step around the staff kitchen. Two weeks later, and Yves Klein Blue had been signed to Dew Process (home to Sarah Blasko, The Panics and The Grates.) No mean feat for a bunch of lanky Queenslanders, huh? Draw Attention To Themselves is a glorious, blasphemous, indulgent 80s infused pop/fuzz indie release that sees these leather jacket clad folk floating high above the indie vacuum of their musical contemporaries.

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Things are happening almost too quickly for Sally Seltmann, the bashful Melbourne balladeer who plays under the guise of New Buffalo and who wrote Feist’s 2007 hit single, 1,2,3,4. Congratulations on being in the top 10 for the Australian Music Prize and for winning the Myspace Public Vote award. How did you celebrate winning $50,000 worth of promotional support from this social networking juggernaut?
‘Aw, thanks! We celebrated by going to the pub and having lunch. I didn’t do much after that. [laughs] You know, I was surprised about the win, but I knew that for that sort of prize, my music was more suited to having a chance than having a chance at the ARIAs [Australian Record Industry Awards]’. Are you an ‘online social networker’ yourself? [laughs] ‘I am a fan of it for work stuff. I like how I can just go ‘oh, whose this band I’ve been thinking of’, and Google, or I mean, MySpace thingy it and read about it. I like, too that your fans can kind of look each other up and hook up with people who like the same sort of music. I don’t spend that much time on it though and I’m not really into Facebook or anything. I kind of feel like I already spend so much time emailing, I like to get out and about and have real face to face conversations with people.’ How did you get to meeting musical comrades, Feist, Beth Orton and Broken Social Scene? ‘I met Beth Orton when I played shows with her here in Australia. I’m on the same label as Feist and Broken Social Scene in North America, so I went over and played some shows, toured with Feist and Broken Social Scene. So its got a bit of a family kind of vibe. They were all really kind to me, and its nice to have that international network as well.’ Having written the track 1,2,3,4, do you ever regret having given it to Feist to perform, since she’s had so much success with it? ‘Not at all. I love writing songs and I feel really happy that she’s had heaps of success as well because I really like her. In a way, it’s kind of nice because I don’t have to deal with all the crazy hard work she’s been doing, but still get credit for being the songwriter. It’s opened up some great doors for me. I love writing and I’d like to write songs for other artists too.’

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This New York indie-rock outfit won our hearts with the Kaiser Chiefs-esque single Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt off their acclaimed debut album. One man down, and with a sound that comfortably straddles indie and pop, the duo seem to be mourning the departure of former drummer and friend, Michael Tapper. Describing themselves as rock music of the thoughtful, sometimes epic, often loud, vaguely danceable, implicitly humanist variety, the trio-turn-duo bring a darker, more intense variation of goods to the table on Brain Thrust Mastery. Without the sunshine of their debut, With Love And Squalor, We Are Scientists’ sophomore release is gritty, angry and filled with what critics have claimed is an excessive amount of self-doubt. In their defence, when did riff driven, 80’s-infused pop-rock ever come without a teaspoon or two of self-loathing?

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Princess One Point Five is the brainchild of Melbourne based singer-songwriter Sarah-Jane Wentzki, in collaboration with partner Richard Andrew. With Wentzki’s gloriously fragile and emotionally charged vocals, not dissimilar to the Blaskos or New Buffalos of the Australian songstress circle, P1.5 (as she is affectionately known) creates a unique hybrid of achingly poetic underground avant-pop, gently sprinkled with the post-modern indie aesthetic. Lolita provides a unique cinematic experience, sampling the accordion-infused influence of The Dresden Dolls with the same panache, but far less flamboyance. With haunting string arrangements, masterful lyrics and polished melodies, it is no surprise that Sarah-Jane evokes comparisons to all the female artists who bravely explore their ‘pop-chanteuse’ persona.

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The Israel-turn-Sydneysider Lior has a wonderful ability to turn the mundane of the everyday into delicious slices of saccharine sweet folk music. We caught up with on the cusp of his much anticipated sophomore studio release, Corner of an Endless Road. Considering Autumn Flow was so well received (and multi-award winning) were you anxious or intimidated about releasing a follow-up? ‘Absolutely. At the beginning I was and it was a little bit daunting because I went from doing my first album, which was really just an artistic project and I didn’t really think anyone would care, and then you’ve got to work hard to shake off the expectations and all the stuff they talk about. So I just had fun with it and went back into the headspace where I was writing songs for myself again, not for other people and not with anyone in mind. It was hard, but I got there in the end’. Were you considering your audience when writing the new album? ‘No, I think that’s dangerous. If you do that, then it starts diluting the creative process. In terms of the genre of music, I’m doing, the singer-songwriter thing. It’s kind of about honesty and sincerity. I think the only way you can do that is by writing songs for yourself, and if people connect with them, that’s great, and if not, then you’ve just got to move on’. It’s a more complex album, musically and lyrically. It’s been three years since the last studio release, so is this just the result of time? ‘It’s a mixture. In terms of the lyrical content and the emotive nature of the album, it’s a reflection of an intense two or three years where it was a bit of roller-coasting ride of highs and lows, and all the strains on personal relationships and stuff. So the record does go between light and dark. In terms of arrangement, there were things in Autumn Flow that we touched on, like the use of strings, and vocal styles that we [Lior and the producer, Franc Tetaz] never had a chance to explore due to time and money constraints. So this time we were a bit more adventurous and tried to match the musical choices with the lyrical and emotive content of the songs’.

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Sugar Army is the culmination of four dudes spending their lives in the dreamy slumber of West Australia, with their only saviour from terminal boredom being music. With the lengthy titled opener, And Now You’re Old Enough, I Think That You Should Know, earning these indie rock purists high rotation on Australian radio network Triple J and community radio, the cheeky quartet have just added a slot at the Big Day Out music festival to their list of accolades. With raw bone bass lines and insanely addictive beats, this E.P needs more than just kitschy multi-coloured teddies littered across the cover, it needs their trademark disclaimer — diabetics beware. [read about Sugar Army soundalikes, Interpol]

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The E.L.F is the outrageous new side project of the flannel-clad Gerling frontman, Darren Cross. A genre agnostic, Cross throws a tantrum on Stevie Nicks Hearts, the first EP created el solo in the dark underbelly of his Sydney home studio. The indie-infused aesthetic smashes itself against the wall, whilst 80’s synth-beats get thrown across the room like a bad break up. It’s like Beck made babies with Dannii Minogue, and the chubby new born is strange looking yet surprisingly adorable. [also read our interview with singer-songwriter Reed KD]

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