STACK Nov #133

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visit REVIEWS MUSIC
106 NOVEMBER 2015
5 Seconds Of Summer
Sounds Good Feels Good
The Aussie quartet that refuse
to be pigeonholed as a boy band
keep getting better with every
album. How do they do it, you may
ask? Some would argue by riding
off the success of other artists,
with Hey Everybody! regarded as
a 'blatant' rip-off of Duran Duran's
Hungry Like The Wolf. Even if
it was (I think not), there are 13
other uniquely 5SOS tracks here
that highlight just how far the
Sydney boys have come since
2011. Worth a spin are Vapor (for
the line “I want to feel your love
like the weather/ All over me"), and
Catch Fire if only just to see how
much of an influence those five
British lads had.
(Sony) Alesha Kolbe
Caligula's Horse
Bloom
Prog rock really tends to hit its
stride when it harnesses its
inherent technical arrogance and
is overly ambitious. The genre has
been consistently propelled by
game-changing albums over the
past decade and Australia’s own
Caligula’s Horse have just nudged
that bar a little higher. Album
highlight Dragonfly is almost
dizzying in its wild, theatrical
composition. “You never see me
coming," vocalist Jim Grey cries,
but on the contrary, many have
tipped Caligula’s Horse to burst
through to the big time soon – and
this album will have you inclined to
believe them.
(Inside Out) Emily Kelly
Drug Church
Hit Your Head
The best thing about New Yorkers
Drug Church is their staunch
swagger. Their music has tough
guy guts that could amp your ego
on your lowest days. Not unlike
your standard, sh-tty hardcore
band, this new album is swathed
in attitude, big riffs and all of the
feels, but has none of the generic
breakdowns and monotonous
vocals that hardcore seems to
have thoroughly exhausted over
the past decade. Patrick Kindlon’s
vocals are everything. Hit Your
Head is incredible. Late contender
for best of the year.
(Shock) Emily Kelly
Dallas Crane
Scoundrels
Gentlemen, where on Earth have
you been – we’ve been dying
here! We’d lost memory of what
that authentic ‘live sound’ Oz rock
does to the brain, feet and mood.
Hear Dissolution, a veil is lifted;
So It Goes offers that rare, 1976
smooth and edgy rock ballad ‘45
we’d lost behind the couch – now
finally returned to our broken
hearts. The neighbours called
the cops upon hearing my indoor
concert to Billy’s Gonna Die Young.
Folks, if classic AC/DC and Chisel
had got drunk and made out one
night, it would sound like this.
Welcome back DC, you’ve been
missed.
(Alberts) Chris Murray
Kurt Cobain
Montage Of Heck: The Home
Recordings
Somewhere between rubber-
necking a fatal car accident
and genuinely grasping for the
answer to ‘why?’ lies this 31-track
‘soundtrack’ to the recent doco
on grunge’s enigmatic Godfather.
Certainly no party starter, we’re
instead meditating on the creative
aspects to the mischievous
noodler. Between demos and
mere ideas are snippets of
Cobain’s fascination with editing
sound on his four-track; it's
an exhaustive, sad, funny and
ultimately fascinating insight into
his creative process and a flittering
peek into a rarely celebrated
sense of humour ( Beans). Wow,
an album where Cobain tracks
can make you laugh? Who’d have
thunk it! ( Universal) Chris Murray
SOPHIE Product
Who is SOPHIE? For a while there
nobody really knew. If someone
asked you could say “I don’t know,
but either an individual or group of
producers, or maybe a conceptual
project combining synthetic sounds,
online aesthetics and consumerist
dialogue into a hyper-polished
product.” You wouldn’t have been
wrong, but now we can add that
SOPHIE is the work of UK producer
Samuel Long. So far there have
been collaborations with Madonna,
Le1f, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, a number
of chart topping and genre-defying
singles, and a total blurring of
underground electronic club music
and mainstream pop culture. Now
there's Product: an album and
manifesto, featuring some of those
revolutionary singles with unreleased
material, packed with sugar, energy,
and ideas. (Inertia) SimonWinkler
STREAMYOUR FAVOURITE ALBUMS AT JBHI-FI NOW... NOW!
Laurie Anderson Heart Of A Dog
It's a long, long time since anyone took enough
acid to believe that an album might even attempt
to unlock the secrets to life, death and the
hereafter. Laurie Anderson takes that very aim in
her unpretentious stride here, quoting Wittgenstein
and Kierkegaard, her dog's Buddhist teacher and
other seemingly random sources in a collage of
interconnected thoughts to make a compelling statement – no, seriously
– about the very purpose of death. It was the passing of her beloved
rat terrier, Lolabelle, that set the parameters of the project. But clearly,
between meditations on her unspeakably bizarre childhood and a closing
selection by her late husband Lou Reed, you can tell she's been working
up to this dazzling philosophical masterwork for some time. Spoken in her
distinctive, hushed tone of poetic wonder to an ambient minimal backdrop,
it ranges over dreams and memories, the surreal post-9/11 militarisation
of America and deep into the mysteries of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
"What are days for? To wake us up; to put between the endless nights," she
whispers. "What's the name of those things you see when you close your
eyes? Phosphenes." Questions find answers in tangential connections and
parallel stories that are hilarious, profound and sometimes shocking. When
Reed's familiar voice croaks into Turning Time Around, we're right there
beside her. And there's a whole feature film goes with this? Hard to imagine
it could make the pleasure any more complete. (Nonesuch) Michael Dwyer