Live Reviews

If day one was a relaxed acoustic based experience, then day two was the night of the rock and roll. But first off, day two saw the conference itself launch at the beautiful (and historic) Fairmont Royal York Hotel. All standard conference fodder was included: Stalls full of people wanting to tell you about their…

Canadian Music Week got off to a killer start last night with a selection of showcases across a wide variety of venues in Toronto, Canada. We decided to kick off our 4 nights of live music and conferences with one of the smaller bills on this list, heading along to the Free Times Café to…

I am exhausted. My eyes are red and my limbs ache. I have dust in places you don’t want to hear about. My black jeans are currently a lovely shade of brown. I feel like I have been out all night, yet it’s only 10pm. Soundwave, you really know how to take everything out of…

Jazz gigs are a touchy affair sometimes. You can get enamoured with the music that comes from the stage, but at the same time, once it goes too far it can all become a wank. On the audience side of things, you can either get a crowd that is responsive to a small degree, or…

As last year’s Future, Good Vibrations 2009 and Global Gathering 2008 proved for many, horse racing venues, continuous rain and hordes of people don’t mix very well. It’s practically a repeat scenario this time, Future Music 2011 welcoming the underdressed punters with dismal weather and gravy-thick mud. Upon entrance, I give myself a mental high-five…

Last night saw the Triple Rainbow Tour hit Sydney, taking over Purple Sneakers’ Last Night at the Gaelic Club. The tour brings together three bands who scored Big Day Out spots in their hometowns back in January: Sydney’s We Say Bamboulee, Melbourne’s Eagle and the Worm and Brisbane’s Ball Park Music. First up were Ball…

The last band added to the Soundwave bill, This Town Needs Guns, put on a stellar performance at The Toff in Town on Wednesday night, proving that one of “Britain’s best kept secrets” might not be a secret for much longer. Support act To The North put in a decent shift, getting the crowd moving,…

Let’s get to the important part first up: This was the first Sydney Soundwave done right. From its beginnings at Sydney Park, through Eastern Creek and now to Olympic Park, the journey of Soundwave has been a bumpy one in NSW. A myriad of complaints marred just about every event – though the quality of…

I arrived just in time to catch Melbourne’s The Night Terrors unleash a world of theremin onto an unsuspecting crowd. It was a fascinating display of musicianship, for one, though I didn’t see nearly enough of the set to judge further. If nothing else, it made me quite interested to see them perform in the…

March in Adelaide is truly a magical time. Unicorns? Perhaps not, but there are a number of amazing, back-to-back festivals. The Fringe Festival is still a warm corpse in the ground, and we are about to dance upon its grave. The “Garden” has transformed, with six stages having sprouted up overnight, across Rymill Park. The…

A smaller-than-usual crowd took over Centennial Park in Sydney yesterday for the annual Good Vibrations Festival, as a light rain did little to dampen the spirits of punters ready for some pretty fantastic music. Before we get to the music, let’s talk more generally about the event itself. Good Vibrations is about as commercial as…

Tiger Choir have escaped the untouched serenity of Tasmania’s mountains and set out on an adventure to spread their home grown brand of new wave to the rest of the country. The band casually introduced themselves and the state of Tasmania before launching into their first song with a couple of heavy drum smacks. It…

It’s that time again! Laneway has arrived in town, a week or so after Big Day Out left us all rather exhausted. In its second appearance at the Sydney College of the Arts in Rozelle, let it first off be said that the organisers nailed the venue layout. Gone were the problems plaguing the festival…

Finding it a handy way to catch the vast majority of bands who took over Sydney Olympic Park for Big Day Out in 2010, I once again decided to venture out to the festival grounds for the two consecutive days of the 2011 event. Having seen such a ridiculous amount of amazing music over this…

When it comes to “totally epic weeks of music” in Sydney, rarely do you get more “epic” than the week of Big Day Out. Not only does the festival and its sideshow dictate most of your nights out, but so do the Sydney Festival shows, the emerging Laneway sideshows and even the odd “Police”-esque stadium…

In my final “About an Hour’ excursion for the Sydney Festival, last night I had the pleasure of attending Anthony Black‘s one man show Invisible Atom, a hit of the Edinburgh Fringe, and a production of the 2b theatre company (Nova Scotia). At its heart, Invisible Atom is an exercise in storytelling. Told on a…

One of the coolest parts of the Sydney Festival this year has been seeing the transformation of Sydney Town Hall – for the LIVE video installation as well as the Trocadero Dance Palace, an ode to the famed Sydney Trocadero, a venue popular in the 1940s and 50s. In the late hours of the evening,…

When Simba’s father, Mufasa, died in The Lion King, I remember burying my head in my grandmas lap wondering what the hell was going on. Why would a movie be going out of its way to depress me? What it showed though was that the idea of loss is translatable and relatable to a child,…

It’s not often you have the oppertunity to see an artist you truly admire and respect. Philip Glass is one such artist, whose film compositions have been my favourite of the last decade or two. From The Truman Show to Fog of War, Koyaanisqatsi to Kundun, The Illusionist to The Hours, this is one man…

Sydney Festival continued rolling out the hits last night as the anticipated LIVE video installation opened up at the Lower Town Hall. We’ll have some contributors heading along to the installation over the weekend who will fill you in properly, but let me just say that it’s a fabulous feature of the festival. On entry,…

The other night I met a two amazing people at The Forum. Derek E. Miller and Alexis Krauss. They called themselves Sleigh Bells. They had sex with my ears. Then they left, they didn’t leave their number and they finished way too quickly, leaving us with “Crown on the Ground”. I believe that was the…

Day 2 shall now forever be known as the Day of the Clash, so many great bands and not nearly enough time to see them all. It’s also the day a special shipment of Strongbow had to be shipped down because the bar had managed to run out after only one day. Up first on…

So the third and final day, where the festival site begins to resemble the aftermath of a battle, with punters lying around in the shade doing their best to recover before another days worth of music. The majority of the crowd it seemed went to the Rock Stage to see Pond, but I decided that…

Interpol are no doubt the most fruitful contribution America has made to the world of modern day rock and roll. Despite the departure of suave bassist Carlos D last year, Interpol have managed to sustain the aesthetic integrity he brought to the band. Following headline positions at Falls Festival, Sunset Sounds, and Southbound, Interpol played…

Not even a day into the New Year and Western Australia is already kicking off its live music year, with the three day long music, camping and arts festival Southbound. Thankfully having been to Glastonbury in the last twelve months, I had some idea of what to expect from a camping festival, that being said…

The camping festival. The second word of which has always placed a deal of trepidation in my loins. You will usually find me at a backpackers or a hotel nearby the festival grounds, rather than among the sweaty confines of a pitched tent. But at last year’s Splendour, I eased into breaking my camping virginity…

As another New Years Eve came and went, so too did the sold out Field Day Festival party that follows it. In its 10th year, Field Day produced what was easily its most impressive lineup to date – and under a scorching hot Summer sun, it produced an equally impressive day. Having made my tracks…

Oxford Arts Factory have addressed the widespread opinion that traditional Christmas parties with the family are really no fun, and for the third year in a row, attempted to host a debaucherous and badass Christmas party for the drunken music fans of Sydney. Five buck entry was surely their idea of a thoughtful Christmas gift,…

I had been eagerly anticipating last Wednesday rolling around, like a kid waiting for Santa to come. The No Sleep Til festival, a whole day of punk, hardcore and metal. Santa wasn’t in the house, but maybe Satan was, riding his black horse alongside the tour bus of Australia and New Zealand’s own dedicated punk…

Getting me out to Homebush is no easy feat – the frustrating distance between it and the city makes it a venue that ensures your night will be over the minute the gig comes to a close and we make the painful journey home. So it’s on the very rare occasion, and only for the…