After the Goldrush

During the Gold Rush

Before the gold rush.

This is a bad time to post my first entry in almost a month

The emptiest I’ve felt in even longer.

Or maybe not. I felt pretty used up amongst 10,000 people in the meantime, but that was only for an hour or so. Fuck MGMT.
I’m going to do a bit of therapy.
Here are some “so good” things that have happened to me in the past month or so (not in order)

• $1000 Centrelink bonus from the Prime Minister’s own tuxedo
• Got my scores for finishing 13 years of bullshit. It was really quite high though and has easily qualified me for what I had intended and was high enough for me to reassess and change my preferences.
• Got offered an $8,000 p/y scholarship to go to Melbourne University, a scholarship that was larger than I even knew I could receive.
• Went to the Meredith Music and Mud Festival and saw a lot of amazing bands and hung out with some great people. Saw the Mountain Goats and that filled my heart with a lot of joy, they’ve meant a lot to me this year (I made it, it didn’t kill me)
• Had a lovely Christmas with my lovely families. Caught up with my cousins Jess and Josh (amongst many others) but it was really special seeing them for the first time since April.
• Won $500 from the school for being the only humanities student or something.
• Had an amazing New Years Eve and got to go to the Zoo the next day, I love the zoo.
• Got to experience a bit of warm weather and do some stupid beachlike things that people convince themselves that they love.
• Didn’t feel this bad most of the time.

Now I shall insert a melodramatic picture of a 4WD I took a photo of in Bourke St.

2008: ALBUMS OF INTEREST

2008 has been a fucking mad year for music. Here are some of my picks.

This is the most recently attained 2008 release and I’ve only gotten around to listenening to it once. Vast is half of Cannibal Ox (creators of the world’s best ever hip-hop album The Cold Vein) and though I haven’t completely made up my mind on this one shit is pretty dope.

My best chill out album of the year. Droney/folky/collage-y stuff that really is quite blissful

Snowman’s latest is darker than their first LP but I choose not to say anything nice about them because THEY HAVE LEFT ME, for England of all places. But yeah, it’s good. Of course it is good.

Russian Circles fucking dominate. It’s just what they do.

You can say what you want about A Silver Mt. Zion but in my to date they have not made a lame album. The last two tracks on 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons blow me away.

Can you believe I’ve only gotten this album in the last 2 weeks? Maybe I was turned off by title track/first single (which I still don’t dig that much) or maybe it was that I haven’t LOVED a Nick Cave album that was released post 2001. But this album is actually boss. I’d say he is back to his old self but that isn’t true, it’s another reinvention and it has worked.

Rad folk album, as expected from Bonnie ‘King of an Entire Genre’ Billy. Cool cover art too, huh?

I think Audrey have bettered Visible Forms with this one. Which is probably saying something.

Some real rad tunes on this. They’ve albums that are more cohesive in nature for as a whole this one doesn’t do loads for me but it certainly has its moments. I’m seeing them next weekend <3

TV on the Radio have remained consistently rad and this pleases me greatly. Family Tree, DLZ and Lover’s Day are the real keepers.

I’ve been really into all Mark Kozelek related work in the last half of this year. April is a lovely album of slow and sad folk songs. This album has a large portion of a Neil Young influence shining through if you ask me.

Legendarily fun album right here.

Boris are an enigma . Unpredictable, ever changing and loud as all fuck. Smile is them at their best, the 19 minute ending track has melted faces all over the globe.

Fun tweepoppsychedelicohmojave band from Nuw Zuland.

This album actually had to grow on me. Which is weird because Grails are one of my most favourite bands. Take Refuge is possibly my song of the year.

An album about being an Alaskan fisherman doesn’t sound like it’d be the pop sensation of the year but this band has done well on its debut album and hearing the instantly catchy I Woke Up Today being played on a commercial for paint on Australian TV actually made me pretty happy.

This was my first favourite album of the year. It has since been knocked down a couple of pegs but that doesn’t make it any less fantastic. Lovely croony/country/folky/nolstagic-y stuff from the young man with a million year old voice.

This album is on everyone’s list this year. And so it deserves to be. Folk with amazing harmonies for those of you not yet in the know.

And finally. My best. Melbourne’s best. Australia’s best. The Drones. I was worried that this album would sound lame and polished and lose what I love about this band. Could not have been any more fucking wrong. Havilah is essentially as good as anything they’ve done.

Interpreting a headache

I’m prone to them. Sometimes as many as four migraines a week. Waking up funny in the mornings does it to me sometimes. Like this time. Sunglasses are half of the cure, medicine doesn’t do much.

I used to have a stick that I would rub on my temples, like a chap stick but it was made from metal, with a tiny ball bearing like object at the end. It dispersed a mixture of what smelled like mint and lavender, which it probably was. The first time I used it I spread it too close to my eyes, it had a very low viscosity and ran straight into my poor, blue eyes. It burnt like a mother, a cold, cold burn. I was at my grandparents. My grandmother had bought it for me, I remember feeling guilty at how much she paid for it. $22.95 or something like that, they’re wealthy too but I still felt unworthy of receiving something so small that had cost that much. I imagine I felt like a bride who just got engaged to with a ring that was paid for by her future spouses kidney, apprehension towards something impossible to reject.

Stupid things like that stick in my mind, for a long time. I must have been 14 or even younger when I got that thing. I think it helped but it made me feel nauteas sometimes.

Free free free free free free free

School=Boned

Exams=Boned

Summer=Imminent

Meredith=Imminent

Melbourne=Imminent

Stomach like a bag o’ vinegar and baking soda

I have finished school. I celebrated heartily. The objective was to be someone else…someone good. I don’t think I was good, but do not remember a lot of the night so it doesn’t make any difference hey. I’ve made my body extremely sore, my neck and left knee especially.
When I was recovering yesterday afternoon I watched two of my favourite films. The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and the Departed. The first is just gorgeous and the second I could watch a million times and still not get bored with the performances.

It was a good recovery session but it’s now 4 days later and I’m still a bit sore. But these aren’t unfamous films and you’ve probably seen one if not both. But if you haven’t check them out. For me hah.

“I wonder if it remembers me.”

The Music Tapes – For Clouds and Tornadoes

One of my favourite releases from this year. It’s really just gorgeous.
The use of singing saws, ping pong balls and clackity old piano accordions all recorded on some of the warmest strips of tape you’ll ever hear makes this album sound so foreign and at the same time so familiar. Like an uncle coming down the stairs on Christmas morning, playing the whole family a tune on a fucked-up banjo.
Which is a nice idea because if I had an uncle that came up with the amazingly heartbreaking melodies found on this album I’d wish it was Christmas morning every morning. Which at this point I firmly do not. I saw decorations in the shops the other day and cringed. I should start making nice things for my family since I am a poor, poor man.
So please listen and enjoy. Click the image to download.

A short and sweaty collision of worders

Flies! Summer! Hurrah!

Seriously, hurrah. The winter has been long and bitter. This summer represents new growth, an end of a terribly dull era, working and working.

So rejoice with me please. It’s a hot evening and I’m going to a party I’m planning to merely appear at.

This night has me more worried than is natural, so rejoice. My stomach, rejoices with twists and I sweat for freedom.

Hurrah!