First published in The Collective magazine, April 2016. Lightning Ridge, a New South Wales mining town known for forty-degree weather and the world’s highest percentage of black opals, feels a galaxy away from the dancefloors of Sydney or the nightclubs of Berlin. But for Tyrone Lindqvist, the lead singer of RÜFÜS, the Australian trio whose […]
First published in The Collective magazine, issue 30, February 2016. Rachel Platten believes that when the universe speaks to you, it’s a mistake not to listen. When the US singer-songwriter, whose 2015 hit “Fight Song” has become the unofficial anthem for anyone on the wrong end of a cosmic battle, was studying abroad during university, […]
First published in The Collective, February 2016. Boy & Bear talk ditching hierarchies and piping down every now and then to listen. The route to modern rock ’n’ roll stardom is known for its paint-by-numbers uniformity. Yet these days, the ability to banter with your fans on YouTube and withstand a gruelling touring schedule without collapsing can shape your trajectory as much as your talent […]
First published in Daily Life, June 2015 Jessica Hopper knows that few things sting as much as the pain of self-erasure. In her 2005 essay “You’re Reliving All Over Me: Dinosaur Junior Reunites,” the trailblazing music journalist recounts an adolescent encounter that’s become a soul-destroying rite of passage for brilliant teenage girls. “I’d hung out […]
First published in Daily Life, June 2015 Diversity isn’t about ticking boxes in the manner of a joyless bank clerk; it’s about recognising that there’s a life-affirming magic in being seen. It’s not a stretch to hope that coming across FKA Twigs, powerful and resplendent, in a bird of paradise gown at the March 2015 launch of […]
First published in Renegade Collective March 2015 Stardom isn’t without its occupational hazards. For Georgia Nott, one half of brother-sister indie pop duo Broods, these are less about staying afloat in an industry known for spitting out its next big things than they are about keeping your composure when you’re ambushed by your own emotions. […]
Sitting at Universal Music’s Sydney headquarters, a concrete-and-glass space dotted with egg-shaped couches and flickering flat screens, it’s impossible not to worry that this charming earnestness is destined to become a casualty of the high corridors of hit making. But in the last 18 months, 20-year-old Georgia’s crystalline voice, which ducks and weaves between multi-instrumentalist […]
First published in Museum magazine Issue 1 September 2014 In a hip-hop landscape packed with commercial appropriations of ghetto life, Chicago’s trigger-fingered drill scene – which emerged somewhere near 2010 and exploded into the mainstream shortly after – still strikes a deathly chord. Drill rattled through my bones before it reached my ears, hijacking the well-tuned frequency […]
If Keef, who makes the kind of hedonistic party music that could soundtrack the apocalypse and is regularly arrested for weapons charges, represents the tension between authenticity and bankability that’s as old as hip-hop itself, then Herb, whose acclaimed recent mixtape Welcome to Fazoland ⎯ named for a dead friend ⎯ tempers bleak portraits […]
‘Whole Wide World’ is a track that is equal parts sonic sidestep and emotional evolution. The song also hints at the sprawling soundscapes and sweeping imagery at the heart of their forthcoming second record. Frontier will see the Sydney five-piece channel their trademark electricity into an accomplished studio effort. ‘Whole Wide World’ is a treatise […]
