Tag: Australia

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Music Music Blog

Too Young To Die: Parsnip’s Paris Richens On Daniel Johnston’s Passing

CREDIT: Charlotte Tobin

Charlotte Tobin

Parsnip

Whether you were in Memphis, Austin, Melbourne or anywhere else where sweet, simple things still matter, a bright light went out on a recent Wednesday morning in Waller, Texas.

Lo-fi legend Daniel Johnston was 58 when he died of a suspected heart attack, leaving a legacy of heartbreakingly melodic albums, such as Yip/Jump Music, Hi, How Are You?, and Retired Boxer. His troubled life inspired lyrics that could really put the dagger in, securing Johnston a cult-like status among his devotees. Paris Rebel Richens  — songwriter, lead singer and bassist for Gonerfest-bound Melbourne pop quartet Parsnip — is one of them.

cbc.ca

Daniel Johnston

Preparing for the group’s first American tour when she got the news, Richens was devastated to hear of the great loss.

“I was pretty crushed to be honest,” she tells the Memphis Flyer on the phone before a recent gig in Kingston, New York. “I feel like he was the one artist who I knew was unwell and wouldn’t be around for much longer, so, yeah, I knew I’d be pretty sad about losing him.”

A fellow Antipodean fan myself, I know the feeling. As a Kiwi farmboy-turned-journalist whose love of Johnston was sparked by Jeff Feuerzeig’s incredible 2005 documentary, my fandom extended to my wedding in Memphis last October, when a close Kiwi mate played “True Love Will Find You in the End” while my wife walked down the aisle.

Johnston only made it Down Under once, in 2010. As well as playing Laneway Festivals in Auckland, Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth, the celebrated songwriter held a handful of memorable side shows as well.

Richens never made it to those gigs, but recently told popular Australian music blog The Southern Sounding that Johnston’s 1984 self-released cassette album More Songs of Pain — especially the track “Poptunes” — was one of the most influential albums on her own songwriting.

Listen to the Parsnip sound and the link to Johnston is both undeniable and thoughtfully provoked. “I discovered him when I was in my late teens and going through some stuff,” Richens says. “He just has own magical world that everyone can be a part of. He had all his demons that he suffered, but he created so much joy. He was so funny as well.”

Too Young To Die: Parsnip’s Paris Richens On Daniel Johnston’s Passing

Richens has also identified the equally troubled alt-pop icon Syd Barrett as another huge influence on her songwriting. Richens says she admires lyricists who “have the freedom to be not so perfect, and a bit shambolic.”

While Richens’ appearance at Gonerfest — as both a solo artist and with Parsnip — may mark her first time at the festival or in Memphis, she has had skin in the Goner Records game for a little while now.

Richens is a member of Aussie post-punk popsters Hierophants, whose 2015 LP Parallax Error was released through Goner and Melbourne’s Aarght! Records. Goner Records also released their 7” “I Don’t Mind/The 16th.” 

This time around, Parsnip are touring in support of their debut album When the Tree Bears Fruit (Trouble in Mind).

As “PP”, Richens will be doing a solo set during Gonerfest’s Friday afternoon at Memphis Made Brewing Company. In her first-ever solo set internationally, don’t be surprised if the Victorian wordsmith pays tribute to the “king of lo-fi” in what should be a fantastic late afternoon set.

“It is very sad that he is gone,” Richens says, “but [he] is still around as well.”

Parsnip performs on Saturday, September 28 at the Hi-Tone, 9:45 pm. The show is sold out, for Golden Pass holders only (no door sales). As a solo artist, Paris Richens will perform as ‘PP’ at 4:00 pm at Memphis Made on Friday, September 27. Pre-order tickets are sold out, but limited numbers will be available at the door for $10.

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Music Music Features

Rockin’ Down Under

CREDIT: Jamie Harmon

The Oblivians traveled to Australia earlier this month for the first time since forming more than two decades ago. While the band has played in Europe and Japan, Australia seemed out of reach until a couple of years ago when the band’s booking agent starting laying the groundwork for American bands to make the trip down under. After he caught up on some much needed rest, we talked to Eric Friedl of the Oblivians to find out more about their latest trip, the bands they played with, and trying to find time to relax while on a grueling tour.

Flyer: You guys have strong fan bases in Europe and Australia, but how did the trip and tour get set up?

Eric Friedl: A lot of the guys from the Onyas had been bugging us about coming to Australia, but it just never really seemed possible. You never really know what you’re getting into when you travel that far from home, but our booking agent has been over there a few times and she seems to have set up a home base for some of her bands. We have a lot of friends in Australia, and it was kind of a Goner Fest reunion in a lot of ways. Seeing everyone who’s traveled all that way to the USA to watch us play really hammered home how far people travel to come to Goner Fest.

I know the Oblivians played Japan a couple of times, but was this everyone’s first time in Australia?

Yep. A long time ago we were looking at going to Australia, but we had better connections in Japan with Guitar Wolf at the time, so it made sense for us to go play over there. We thought we could swing by Australia on the way to Japan but those countries seem a lot closer when you’re just looking at a map.

What was the travel situation like? How did you all feel when you finally got there?

I think it takes like 16 hours to get to Sydney and the trip takes a bunch out of you. We slept most of the way, which was good since we didn’t get much sleep for the rest of the tour. I’m looking forward to some severe jet lag in the next couple of days because it takes a while for your body to realize it’s doing something completely different. We were all pretty exhausted by the end of the tour, not just from the shows but more from the jet lag.

You guys got to play with some really great Australian bands, some of which your music has influenced. Which show was your favorite?

We gave our booking agent a list of bands we wanted to play with ahead of time, so that helped. We figured if we were going to travel all the way there we might as well play with some of our favorite Australian bands. Everybody was great; we didn’t see a bad band the whole time. We got to play with Feedtime twice, which was incredible, the Ausmuteants and Low Life were also great.

The first Feedtime set we saw was just completely unbeatable, so mean and so nasty, and they were following Low Life, who are also really good. Feedtime just leveled the place. It was like the apocalypse. We knew we weren’t going to come close to following their performance, so it made it pretty easy to get up there and play.

How were the music scenes in Australia different from what you’ve experienced playing shows in Europe and the US?

It was a lot different. Sydney had a younger, more aggressive crowd, and Melbourne was mostly an older reserved crowd, but they were also older people who are into really good stuff. It was awesome to get to play the Golden Plains festival. So many festivals suck to play, but this was one was amazingly cool. The number one rule of the festival was don’t be a dickhead, which was kind of weird because most of the time that’s what festivals are for. There were about 6,000 people at Golden Plains festival just hanging out, and it was probably one of the biggest shows we’ve ever played.

Did you have time to be a tourist or were you too busy playing shows?

We got to the beach twice, but we didn’t have time to do much, no surfing or anything like that. We had radio shows, solo shows, and then two shows a day for about half the dates. All the travel time also kept us pretty busy. We got up to see Mikey Young from Eddy Current Suppression Ring; he lives a couple hours north of Melbourne. We saw some kangaroos hanging out in the park and that was pretty cool.

As a record store owner and collector, how big of a priority was trying to go shopping for vinyl?

I only got to a couple of shops but Greg [Cartwright] got to a lot more. Besides some foreign pressings, I didn’t really buy anything, but Greg can dig up records anywhere.

What other kinds of culture shock did you experience?

We did notice that there are like 10 million kinds of chicken parmesan in Australia, and everyone is very conscious of free range everything there. They serve you portions that are basically twice American size, but other than that it was pretty standard. We didn’t eat kangaroo or anything too wild.

What do the Oblivians have going on for the rest of the year? Are you going to tackle any other new places?

We are doing a run up through Chicago and Cleveland at the end of May – that’s our next little jaunt.

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Music Music Features

Gonerfest 11

“It’s a little crazy this year how many are Australians,” Bruce Saltmarsh says of this year’s GOnerfest lineup. But if anyone is to blame, it’s Saltmarsh. “I’ve worked with all of them except for one.”

Saltmarsh runs Easter Bilby, a record distribution company with a niche in Australian garage rock.

The Rebel

“It’s just increased every year since Eddy Current Suppression Ring played [in 2009].” Saltmarsh says. “That year was Eddy Current and the Ooga Boogas. Since then, when I was starting Easter Bilby, there’s been an increase in Australian groups playing. There’s also been an increase in Australian tourists as fans coming to Gonerfest, which is basically as ridiculous as the number of bands coming to the festival.”

Australian music is on a roll. Seven bands are onboard for Gonerfest 11, which runs from September 25th-28th.

“The thing to me is, I’ve been following Australian music for as long as I can remember, going back to Radio Birdman and the Saints. It’s always been great music. I think that my having started this distribution company with only Australian bands, and there’s a little New Zealand mixed in — it’s just opened the doors to a lot of stuff that wouldn’t have normally been heard outside of Australia.”

But Saltmarsh never set out to be an Australian music mogul.

“I wound up starting Easter Bilby about seven or eight years ago,” he says. “I started helping out a friend from Australia. I said, why don’t you just ship however many records to me. When you get orders, I’ll send them out in the U.S. for you. So I kind of started sideways. But that was the beginning of it. It was Aarght, a record label, the first record was probably Eddy Current Supression Ring. From that, it’s just turned into this ridiculous thing. I’m sitting in my office, and I’ve got probably 150 different releases sitting here.”

Ausmuteants

Ausmuteants hail from Geelong, Australia. Their self-titled debut is on Goner in the U.S. and Aarght in Australia. Ausmuteants play Thursday night at the Hi-Tone.

“I’m meeting them in L.A. and doing the first couple of weeks of their tour with them,” Saltmarsh says. “They’re all kids. The oldest guy is 25. They’re coming over to do a month-long tour. I’ve been laughing at myself, wondering how the hell did I get roped into doing this.”

What makes Australian music so compelling?

“It seems like it’s so isolated,” Saltmarsh says. “The isolation is a big part of it. It’s a hard thing to put into words. Australians in general have a hard time believing in themselves.” He laughts and adds, “I think it’s the opposite in Memphis.”

Gonerfest has a few non-Australian tricks up the T-shirt sleeve this year.

Londoner Wreckless Eric leads the Len Bright Combo. Eric Goulden is a Class of ’77 Londoner who bore the country-punk imprint of Nick Lowe in his early years and birthed the somewhat legendary album The Len Bright Combo Present… The Len Bright Combo… By The Len Bright Combo. That title that tells you everything you need to know about an album that set standards for how shimmering guitars should work over lumbering, rudimentary sludge. Len Bright Combo plays on Friday night at the Hi-Tone.

Len Bright Combo

Hertsfordshire, UK-native Benedict Roger Wallers is a master of disguise who has released music and performed under several personas. The Rebel finds Wallers offering a mix of classic rock references and musique concrete, with noise samples and textures that recall Stockhausen and John Cale. The Rebel plays on Saturday with Indiana protopunks Gizmos.

Keep an eye on the Flyer website for more previews of Gonerfest 11 music.

Gonerfest 11, September 25th-28th. See gonerfest.com for full lineup and tickets.

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Film Features Film/TV

Film Review: The Rover

For films and literature about dystopian societies, there’s no better setting than England (Nineteen Eighty-Four, Children of Men, Never Let Me Go, Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, V for Vendetta…). But when it comes to post-apocalyptic locations, the place to (not) be is Australia (on the strength of Mad Max and The Road Warrior and even Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome alone, not to mention the classic On the Beach and Tank Girl). Perhaps it’s the way Australia already seems like a post-apocalyptic place, with its natural wasteland scenery of the Outback, its racially and ethnically troubled society, and its mondo-poisonous animal kingdom. Plus, the events of the pre-apocalyptic film The Last Wave could take place tomorrow, and it wouldn’t be a bit surprising.

Add The Rover to the antipodean eschatological list. The film, starring Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson, takes place Down Under “ten years after the collapse.” Eric (Pearce) goes into a way station in the middle of nowhere to get something to drink. A group of outlaws (Scoot McNairy, David Field, and Tawanda Manyimo), on the run from a violent robbery, wreck their truck and steal Eric’s car. Eric, desperate to recover his car for unknown reasons, goes in hot pursuit. A man the criminals left behind for dead, Rey (Pattinson), is grievously injured but goes on the chase as well. Eric and Rey find common purpose but have disparate agendas.

The script (David Michôd and Joel Edgerton) is assembled in deliberate, stripped-down fashion. Each plot thread comes together slowly but surely. The film drives right into the story, then explains its world slowly and only partly. Brief bouts of dialog punctuate long stretches of silence. As director, Michôd’s long takes consider the land and the survivors’ place in it. Antony Partos’ spare, foreboding, primal score takes up instruments seemingly one at a time: percussion, piano, euphonium, bass, tin whistle.

Post-apocalyptic Australia, with car chases over endless, uninhabited highways, concern over the price of petrol, a plot fueled by vengeance, a violent, once-civilized loner you root for in spite of yourself: No, it’s not one of George Miller’s Mad Max films, though there’s no reason you couldn’t pretend it’s an unacknowledged prequel. That said, The Rover is more Mad Max than The Road Warrior. The harsh action is closer to the brutality of the original than the gonzo sequences from its sequel. (And, it must be noted, Eric drives a sedan, not a DIY armored supercharger.) Emotionally, too, The Rover mimics the existential angst of Mad Max.

In fact, The Rover may be the most depressing, black-mooded film seen in some time. I think I recall one moment of levity, in the first five minutes, before the shape of the movie came into focus. Michôd and company challenge you to keep pulling for Eric amid his relentless, Ahabian quest for his car. He takes no prisoners who don’t serve his purpose. You’ll pull for him because we are inculcated to cheer for the protagonist. But The Rover, when all is said and done, retroactively positions Eric less antihero and more … well, someone both more and less sympathetic than he appeared.

The script paints the mourning at the core of The Rover, and cinematographer Natasha Braier proves the point: Eric and Rey, after the fall, face to face in a dry and waterless place. “If you don’t learn to fight, your death is going to come real soon,” Eric warns Rey. Hilarious!

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Head over heels for wines from Down Under

In 1997, Dan Philips, founder of Grateful Palate Imports, tasted his first Shiraz in Melbourne, Australia.

“It was like stumbling onto some kind of undiscovered winemaking utopia,” Philips says. “It was like Ponce de Leon discovering the Fountain of Youth.”

According to Philips, he finally found what he had been looking for “as a wine-obsessed teenager growing up in San Francisco.” It is that very first taste that drives his passion for Australian wine of all kinds. He spends much of the year in Australia visiting wineries in order to find the best wines to import to the United States.

What struck him about that Shiraz was the red’s brashness, a trait that is shared by Philips and drives his staunch defense of Australia’s wine industry. For those wine drinkers who view Australia as nothing more than a giant bucket of mediocre grape juice, Philips has a response.

“I hope you have lots of money so you can afford very expensive psychoanalysis and figure out your very deep problems or can afford to have a tongue implant,” he kids. The way he sees it, detractors of Australian wine probably “think Wilco is a bad band, Michael Stipe can’t sing, a monkey could paint Mark Rothko paintings, and barbecue is not haute cuisine.”

Even here in Memphis, we don’t view barbecue as haute cuisine. We view it as simply good food. We know what we like, and barbecue never fails to deliver. Many Australian wines are the same. They give wine drinkers what they want: simplicity, loads of flavor, and the total lack of needing to be overanalyzed.

“Australian winemakers are extremely wine-literate,” Philips says. “They’ve traveled the world and seen it all. But even with all this influence, they remain proudly Australian and want to make Australian wines. They, or at least the ones I’ve met and work with, don’t try to make Bordeaux rip-offs.”

The wine critic Robert Parker, founder of The Wine Advocate, has gone so far as to call Philips’ palate “brilliant,” a statement he has backed up by lavishing several 90-plus point ratings on the wines Grateful Palate represents. It is no secret that high scores drive sales in the wine business. These high ratings from Parker’s Wine Advocate and from Wine Spectator have aided the growth of Grateful Palate Imports in Memphis and across the country. But the growth is sustained by consumers returning to the wines over and over again.

They return to the 2005 Marquis Philips Cabernet Sauvignon for the “big, thick, juicy, fresh, exuberant blackberry and cassis fruit intermixed with striking vanillin and pain grille characteristics,” as described by Parker. They also return for the value that many of the wines offer. The Pillar Box Red blend (rated 91 points by Parker) sells for approximately $12.

Philips, for one, isn’t bothered by wine drinkers who don’t care for what Australia has to offer. “Thanks for liking bad wine,” he says. “It leaves more for those of us who don’t dream about meeting Larry Craig in the men’s room to drink. Have you ever had a bottle of Chateau Hypocrite? You’d love it in magnum.”

Marquis Philips “Holly’s Blend” 2006, Southeastern Australia, $12.99

Evil Cabernet Sauvignon 2005, Southeastern Australia, $12.99

McLean’s Farm Shiraz-Cabernet 2004, South Australia, $17.99

Hare’s Chase Red Blend 2005, Barossa Valley, $17.99

Marquis Philips Shiraz 2005, Southeastern Australia, $19.99