You Am I

Hourly Daily
rooArt, 1996

So this guy wakes up when the radio flickers on, catches the bus into town and wonders how to pay the bond on a flat in the inner-west. Later on in the day he buys a six pack of cheap beer and gets nostalgic about some girl he opened a door for back in high school, swings by some record stores and walks back home over the Glebe Point Bridge (before it became a target in John Howard's blitzkrieg of symbolism and was renamed the Anzac Bridge) while the sun's setting over the Sydney skyline and the cars are streaming back into the suburbs. And then later still he winds up at The Annandale Hotel to see a band, steer well clear of fashionable indie types, get drunk, go home, get up and do it all again.

That's more or less the storyline on Hourly, Daily, You Am I's concept album of sorts and the second of their three consecutive records to reach number 1 on the Australian charts in the middle of the '90s. Actually, the above story is just a collage of things mentioned in the songs and stuff Tim Rogers was doing while he thought of them. You could probably make any story you like out of the lyrics – as long as it involved Sydney, public transport, a six pack of beer and a few heartfelt asides. It's the setting that sticks out more than the plot. The band recorded it after a stint in North America, when they returned to find that the nuances of life in Australia were more noticeable after they'd been away for a while.

Rogers described Hourly, Daily as a collection of "songs from different points of the day" and "diary entries from different people" about mundane activities after it was recorded. It's more subdued and melodic than You Am I's first two guitar-heavy albums, Sound As Ever and Hi Fi Way. My favourite track is called 'Tuesday' and has a gorgeous blossom of psychedelic strings and horns in the middle. It's not really about anything in particular, just a bus that comes late and some bread that goes stale. It sounds like the suburbs in summer, and it makes me think of the houses in Lilyfield, on the other side of the bridge.

Damien Jurado

On My Way To Absence
Secretly Canadian, 2005

I’m sitting on the Lygon street tram, heading north, or south (but definitely not east). It’s sunny enough to notice the other passengers without seeing them, and my headphones have become a security blanket draped over a portable bedroom. Slouched and half-asleep, half-peering into the graveyard as it passes by and half-listening to the new mix-tape playing through my discman, the eerie, echoing guitar of 'Sucker' announces itself. Nestled seamlessly between The Silver Jews and Hayden, Damien Jurado paints a scene of regret and revenge in some distant country town, but the darkness wore off weeks ago. I can’t help but wake with a smile, knowing that this is the singer at his best.

“There comes a time in every artist’s career when he disconnects himself from the public,” begins the press release for Damien Jurado’s latest full-length. Supposedly, this record is his first to be free from the constraints of genre, critical opinion and audience expectations. I suspect, however, that this process started long ago. Jurado is no stranger to controversy. Missing from the release is any mention of Postcards And Audio Letters, an LP created entirely from found audio cassettes and answering machines which estranged almost as many fans as his previous work had gained. Nevertheless, his amazing voice, loyal following and knack for album titles have remained intact. Rehearsals For Departure fitted Jurado’s naïve and sorrowful 1999 record of folk-pop perfectly, I Break Chairs gave clear warning as to its indie-rock intentions, and now, to mark a new-found depth of introspection and darkness, comes On My Way To Absence.

Evelyn and I bought Rehearsals For Departure in different years, in different countries, in different seasons. Now we’re sitting on the same balcony sharing a bottle of wine, stopping occasionally to hear a chorus or climax from the new album. 'Big Decision’s lilting guitar twang rings out like a bell after the strummed acoustics of its predecessors, and we both try to sing along, unsure if we’ve heard it before but instantly familiar with the sound – possibly, it is an earlier track Jurado has re-recorded for this album. We talk over the beautiful, poignant 'Lion Tamer', which in any case is already so well-loved to play out in my head anyway: “Patience drips into the sound/ You are nothing to me now.”

Andrew Ramadge is away. This review first published in Beat in 2005.

Laughing Clowns

Reign Of Terror, Throne Of Blood
Crown Prince Melon, 1981

After The Saints moved from Brisbane to Britain on the strength of their landmark album (I'm) Stranded, only to find that the punk scene had since been stitched up by a bunch of local brats called The Sex Pistols and that their label EMI was unsympathetic at best and incompetent at worst, they began to fall apart. Songwriters Chris Bailey and Ed Kuepper, who had gone to school and formed the band together, both left. That is, Bailey said that Kuepper left and Kuepper said it was Bailey. The two didn't reunite for more than twenty years, until The Saints were inducted into the ARIA hall of fame. So in 1978, after both of them left the band first (I'm a big believer in balanced reporting), Bailey kept playing with a new version of The Saints and Kuepper went back home to form the Laughing Clowns.

Laughing Clowns sounded more like freeform jazz than punk rock. Kuepper took the swing of last record he would record with The Saints, Prehistoric Sounds, and founded a bizarre post-punk band with gloomy, off-kilter tunes that had as much saxophone as guitar. The group was hurtled along on stage by brilliant and unpredictable drummer Jeffrey Wegener, who had been pestering Kuepper to form a band since he returned home. In 1979 and 1980 they recorded three EPs, two of which were collected and released as an LP called Reign Of Terror, Throne Of Blood on their own label, Crown Prince Melon Records (titled after the nickname they gave to their manager, Ken West, who would later start the Big Day Out).

Reign Of Terror, Throne Of Blood, named as a wry reference to Kuepper's reputation as a control freak, captured the band in their different speeds: long and inventive jazz-punk excursions on 'I Don't Know What I Want', the humorous pop of 'Sometimes (I Just Can't Live With Anyone)' and my favourite, a wonderfully absurd track called 'Mr Ridiculous', in three parts, with a catchy piano-saxophone play-off bridging them. After Wegener's drug use led him to become increasingly erratic, the group split, reformed, split, reformed and gave up in 1985. Wegener went to join Bailey's still-going version of The Saints. Kuepper began his solo career and went back to taking pot-shots at Bailey by founding The Aints.

Voigt/465

Slights Unspoken
Independent, 1979

There are many differences between Melbourne and Sydney and even more people who like to argue about them. In the last few years I have noticed some. The first is that the words "experimental" and "underground" have a distinct meaning in the Harbour City. Music outside the mainstream is usually played in suburban warehouses and decrepit inner-city apartment buildings that writers are afraid to name in print. Invitations are sent to mailing lists that are occasionally purged and compiled again to avoid detection. At most of these gigs watching a band comes with an anxious feeling that the police may arrive. Emmy Hennings wrote about one such confrontation last September, when kids filing out of a well-known warehouse in Surry Hills met with officers waiting downstairs.

Whether it is because of this tension or not, the music made in Sydney's underground spaces is more challenging and often more violent than anything I've heard previously. The other difference between the two cities is that, in line with popular opinion, Sydney really is quite soulless. If the eastern coast of Australia was a body, Melbourne would be the heart and Sydney the brain – and Brisbane, I guess, would be the brawn. You can hear it in the music, both mainstream and underground. There is a particular sound that has been running through avant-garde bands in Sydney since at least the late 1970s that I find alienating and anti-human. It can best be seen today in the work of Naked On The Vague and Castings, two bands that seem to have done away with emotion entirely.

I happen to work next to one of the most soulless places in the city, Darling Harbour, an enormous pre-fabricated tourist district with clinical lighting and overpriced merchandise. One of my favourite photos is of discordant Sydney post-punk band Voigt/465 playing an illegal gig on the Darling Harbour construction site in 1978. They only managed to play a few songs before the police arrived, but several photos of the occasion exist. One shows the band with their instruments set up between the pylons and against the backdrop of the Sydney skyline, playing to an audience of just one gleefully happy young child. Every time I walk through Darling Harbour now I think about that photo and it makes me smile.

The Crow

Various Artists
The Crow
Atlantic, 1994

The Crow and its soundtrack tapped into the resurgence in goth culture during the 1990s in the same way The Big Chill had encapsulated baby boomers in mid-life crisis 10 years earlier. The film was an adaptation of an underground comic of the same name and was the first big hit for Australian director Alex Proyas, who cut his teeth making music videos for INXS and Crowded House. Its cult status began to build before it was released, when lead actor Brandon Lee was fatally injured on-set by a dummy round accidentally fired in a gunshot scene during the last week of filming. Lee's depiction of a man who had been violently murdered and then magically returned to life one year later to exact revenge on his killers was given a tragic and somewhat eerie quality in the wake of his actual death.

The film itself is rather incredibly dark and violent, set in a fictional city one part Detroit and two parts Gotham with a visual style similar to the sci-fi noir classic Blade Runner. Thanks to Proyas's background shooting music videos, some parts feel like a series of film clips strung together to make a story. The soundtrack includes The Cure, Nine Inch Nails covering Joy Division's 'Dead Souls', Pantera, Rage Against The Machine, Stone Temple Pilots, Violent Femmes and Rollins Band covering 'Ghost Rider' by Suicide. For years after it was released, it was one of those records you'd find everywhere you went.

What strikes me most about The Crow soundtrack now is just how varied the songs are. At the time it seemed like such a single-minded collection, but it actually captured a wide range of musical ideas circa 1994 – hangers-on from the decade before (The Jesus And Mary Chain, Violent Femmes, The Cure), grunge (Stone Temple Pilots), metal (Pantera, Rollins Band), the kind of industrial-gothic sounds that only ever made sense at the time (Nine Inch Nails, Machines Of Loving Grace) and last but not least the brilliant political rap-rock hybrid of Rage Against The Machine, who would play no small part in inspiring the insufferably lame likes of Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park to dominate "alternative" music charts for the next ten years. I still really like it as well. I can't imagine not owning a copy.