Music

An Interview With Short Stack

Posted on by halley in interviews | Leave a comment

short stack

Australian pop rock outfit Short Stack recently released their third studio album, “Homecoming.” We sat down for a virtual talk with the band.

First, let me tell you: I love the album. I was at the office when I first heard it and couldn’t physically restrain a little desk-chair-wiggle. In the ideal world, where would your listeners be listening to this album and what would their reaction be? Beach partying? Club dancing? Park picknicking? Road tripping? What’s the ideal scenario?

Thank you! I think it’s definitely got a house party kinda vibe. The songs are very fun and loud, the perfect soundtrack for throwing away all your inhibitions and doing something a bit crazy.

As a music reviewer, I often try to describe a band’s sound without comparison to any other musical groups. It’s hard. So I’m going to ask you to do it. How do you describe your music and its effect?

I don’t really know. We have so many influences from Black Sabbath to Biggie. We recorded this album in London with Chris Kimsey who has worked with the Rolling Stones, so that gritty, guitar driven UK sound is definitely something we had at the front of our minds.

OK, with that second question out of the way, who would you say your main musical influences are?

We grew up listening to 90s punk. So Nofx, Blink, Green Day, Rancid, that kind of thing, but now it really is everything. Especially when somebody is doing something exciting in the rock community in definitely drawn to that.

Everyone loves a good how-did-you-meet story. How did you guys come together? Can you talk a little bit about your two-year break, how you reunited and why your sound shifted from pop to rock?

We met on a train in highschool & shared the same taste in music. We went from swapping mix CDs to being like “hey let’s start a band!”. We broke up because we felt we had done everything we wanted to do with the band, and felt creatively there was nothing at that particular time we wanted to say. When a few years passed we got back together and our energy was renewed. We had so much new found passion and it was really cool we got a second chance.

Can you talk a little about your music-making process? Do the lyrics come first? The beat? Is it collaborative? Or do you all play pretty separate roles?

I usually come up with an idea and we work on it in Bradies studio. It’s very much a collaboration between the three of us. One of our favourite songs we wrote was written in the studio in London, so we do enjoy changing it up a bit.

What is the one question you wish interviewers asked you, and what is the answer to that question?

Haha I love surfing. I surf every day, so if we just chatted about that I’d be stoked. Or Batman, we’re huge comic fans, Batman is my religion haha.

Cover of the Day: Yo La Tengo – Friday I’m in Love

Posted on by Ricky in Covers | Leave a comment

ylt

Hoboken veterans Yo La Tengo are back with a new album called Stuff Like That There, an album that mixes both original and cover songs in one delicate package. Among the standouts is this delightful cover of The Cure’s Friday I’m in Love. This twee-ish take is a perfect for board game parties, organic tea gatherings and sundresses. Check it out!

The new record comes out tomorrow because shit comes out on Fridays now.

Album Review: Sun Kil Moon – Universal Themes (2015, Caldo Verde)

Posted on by Paul in Albums | Leave a comment

sunkilmoon

It’s an age old question: can you separate the artist from their art?

In many cases, we are able to sort of look the other way, ignoring an artist’s behaviour if we like the art enough.  But with a songwriter like Mark Kozelek, whose work has taken on more and more of an autobiographical, confessional tone at the same time that his public persona has become progressively more obnoxious and well, troll-like, is it really that easy to separate him from his work?

Universal Themes, Kozelek’s latest under the Sun Kil Moon moniker was just released this week, but that’s not the big story surrounding Sun Kil Moon. Instead, we’re facing yet another story about Kozelek’s bad behaviour, yet another thing that makes it hard to like the guy. But I’ll try to set all of that aside and just focus on the album, specifically the question of whether Kozelek’s music is worth putting up with his increasingly crusty public persona. The answer is yes and no. Probably mostly no.

The album is a bit of a hit and miss affair, reaching some impressive heights at it’s best moments (see “With a Sort of Grace I Walked to the Bathroom to Cry”) but it doesn’t always hit the mark. Case in point: opener “The Possum,” which almost sounds like a parody of a Mark Kozelek song with it’s rambling story of going to a Godflesh show and some spoken word stuff at the end which comes off a tad hokey. Yet later in the album, the spoken word segment on “Garden Of Lavender,” with it’s mentions of Shepherd’s Bush, the Westfield Mall, and Neil Halstead comes across as rather charming and stands up there with some of the best of Kozelek’s recent turn to slice of life style songwriting.

Ultimately, Universal Themes is a decent album, though it pales in comparison to Benji or some of his past works, and frankly, even the best album he’s ever written wouldn’t really excuse his increasingly tiresome misanthropy. It’s fitting in a way that the album cover depicts a payphone because, just like that medium of communication, Kozelek sometimes seems on the verge of making himself somewhat obsolete. Sorry, Mark, I guess I’m more like those guys you sang about  in “Cry Me a River Williamsburg Sleeve Tattoo Blues:”

“It’s 2012 but I like the ones from 1992.”

Shadows And Light: An Interview With Apocalyptica

Posted on by Paul in Concerts, interviews | Leave a comment

004

When they first formed in 1993, Finnish metallers Apocalyptica got their start playing cello arrangements of Metallica songs before eventually branching out into original compositions. They’ve just recently released their eighth studio album, Shadowmaker, featuring new vocalist Franky Perez, and while it’s highly unlikely that they’ll ever return to playing nothing but covers, one thing is fairly certain: they’re probably never going to record a version of The Lego Movie‘s “Everything Is Awesome.”

Sitting down with Perez and cellist Paavo Lötjönen a couple of hours before their show at The Phoenix, we discussed the difference in nature between the Finns and their new American bandmate, with Lötjönen stating, “We hate each other as much as before,” and that things on tour have been “relatively OK-ish.”

“Which is basically their Finnish way of saying they really like this,” added Perez. “I never get, ‘Hey man, we love you.’ They basically go, ‘You’re relatively OK-ish.’ That’s a fucking compliment.”

Lötjönen elaborated on the subject. “That was one of the things Franky got to learn when he came into the band. You know, American guy – everything’s awesome and even if things are not that good, everything is really good … For Finns, everything sounds overrated. If something is awesome, we hardly use that adjective.”

However, despite any differences in disposition, the band seems to be enjoying the infusion of new blood. After collaborating with various guest vocalists on their albums over the years, they’ve paired up with Perez for the current album and tour and he seems like a good fit – an engaging frontman, but also a good match in terms of personality. And perhaps there’s even a bit of a cultural exchange going on, with Paavo adding that “It really is super, super, super happy. And maybe he’s teaching us some positiveness.” Perez, for his part, speculates that the Finns are teaching him to stay humble. “When you go there, nothing’s grandiose, nothing’s supersized … That’s a good way to live.”

Speaking of staying humble, Apocalyptica comes from relatively humble beginnings. As Lötjönen pointed out during our conversation, the band never had any lofty goals when they started out and didn’t necessarily have any plans to branch out beyond Metallica covers.

“Basically, we started off because we had a joy of music and we wanted to play something fun. We never had a master plan. Even the first album, we didn’t have even the plan to make an album. Just a bunch of guys playing together and having fun and enjoying the music … We were expecting to sell maybe 1000 copies and it sold almost 2 million copies. It just happened. After that, we got to feeling that it might be interesting, a possibility to create music. Album by album, it’s like step by step.”

While they may come from different backgrounds, both culturally and in terms of musical upbringing, Perez and Lötjönen each feel that they were always meant to play music. “Music has always been a part of my life.” says Lötjönen. I started to play cello at age six. Before that, my parents are professional musicians. I’ve always lived inside the music, from classical to rock and pop. It’s part of me from the start. I’m swimming in the music.”

Perez agrees. “Same thing for me – I never had a choice, it was something I was born with. But I can honestly say everyone in this band is the same way; if you asked that question to each one of us, they would tell you the same thing – they didn’t have a choice. Kind of born with it. And I think I’d be miserable doing anything else. I don’t think I could do anything else, and I’ve tried. Not very good at it.”

« Previous   1 2 ... 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 ... 34 35   Next »