A Letter to the Editor of Lot's Wife (Monash's student publication, for which I wrote an Arcade Fire review):

Good point. What sort of wanker would write that?

(if you authored this letter, contact me for your free prize pack of lots of promo cds!)

My Disco (with Hi God People, The Stabs, Mum Smokes) - East Brunswick Club - Saturday April 14

Little experimental flourishes in the 60s-pop foundation of Mum Smokes took them from simply pleasant to something with potential, but unfortunately this wasn't realised tonight as the band seemed a little closed off. Second support The Stabs rivaled My Disco in the intensity stakes, similarly working on piercing guitar shreds counterpoised by more thoughtful yet nonetheless maniacal drum work and bass. Unlike the main act, however, their sonic assault is a less formal one, the pay off being when elements collapse into each other before coming to tight halts. The fraying Black Widow was a highlight, so too when strings broke on both guitar and bass in the final moments. Hi God People morphed into Minotaur monks with prayer bowls for tonight's performance, which gradually built into some rumbling guitar psych-out. The 'band' deliberately frustrates any lasting investment - their sets all build up, no revelation – leaving everyone in a Catch 22 wondering whether this it's completely earnest or deliberately fruity. One snatch I did hear from the vocal swamp: "what's it all mean?" Fuck knows.

My Disco's live sets have reached such a level of devastating precision that they've become simply menacing. Tonight was no exception. As usual, everything was poised on a knife-edge that they never tip over, with each member working distinct from one another yet creating a perfect cohesion - as exemplified by A Marker. Whilst their live set delivers tracks with a force recordings can never match, very rarely do they deviate from original song structure - who could blame them when they are so complex? Tonight, however, Ben Andrews' guitar registered some subtle changes on tracks like Calling Cure and the band's new songs, yet to be heard on album, hit hardest of all. In these tracks My Disco's unique aesthetic seems perfected - lyrics and extraneous noise is shed, with siren-like guitars and clipped silences taking their place. One wonders if they've reached exhaustion point here, if their form can possibly tighten any harder. Regardless, their set was outstanding, charged with the sort of sharpened energy My Disco are masters of.

This was slated for somewhere else, but seeing as it didn't make it in I've thrown it upon the scrapheap of ideas that is this blog:

Softlightes (with Muscles, Sly Hats) - Ding Dong - Wednesday March 28

The crowd was a tad thin for first support Sly Hats; this time around Geoff O'Connor of Crayon Fields flanked by a singing cellist and lithe percussion (including chimes, sleigh bells and even some prayer bowl!). Their whimsical yet no less emotive little ditties, shimmering yet plaintive, seemed a little too quiet for the larger space, however they proved a welcome start.

Main support Muscles, the one-man electronic whirlwind, unfortunately seemed a little flatter than usual tonight. Arguably, his brilliance lies in his vocal style – lines drawled out with words tripping over each other like he's first learning to talk, punctuated by elated woo's and ahh's. For whatever reason he simply couldn't find this tonight, his voice losing it after second song The Lake. Even the force of his otherwise charmingly amateur techno, of bastardised beats and chopsticks-esque piano, seemed blunted. Like his last song went: Hey Muscles I Love You but you were a bit tired tonight.

In the coming months, Softlightes reputation will grow after their just-released album Say No! To Being Cool, Say Yes! To Being Happy circulates, and punters will be spewing they missed this gig. For a band only one album in they are unbelievably tight, a small song repertoire belying their musical sophistication. Every element was so well-placed in their set that hearing them play through all the songs from the record was like listening to it again, only scores better as it beamed even brighter in the flesh. In a set full of calm electronics, soft drums, willowy guitar and frontman Ron Fountenberry's charming boyish vocals, the band nailed their sweet and heart-warming indie-pop approach on tracks like The Ballad of Theo & June and The Microwave Song, the latter showcasing their ability to craft featherweight yet swelling music and lyrics.

Fountenberry delivered the "gentle words" he mentioned in Girlkillsbear (a Postal Service-ish track of soft-serve synths and guitar) in all their coy and complex elegance. He has been criticised for haphazard lyric writing, but tonight all this nitpicking seems futile when faced with such beaming and sensitive songs. For an encore, Softlightes offered to play Heart Made of Sound - a whimsical piano and guitar number about finding out what a tree sounds like – for a second time. Such a move, which would otherwise come off as lazy or desperate, seemed a perfectly fitting end to their set. Afterwards, Fountenberry asked the crowd a favour and I'm only too happy to oblige: "tell your friends", he said, "Softlightes don't suck". Not one bit.

I recently saw SoftLightes play at the Ding Dong lounge and I really enjoyed their set. Not having heard them before, I found myself bopping along to the band who were really tight, and being quietly charmed by Ron Fountenberry's lightly surrealist, 'hugs and trees' sort of lyrics. This was my first time hearing them, and after seeing them I decided to buy the album to try recapture something of that night.

To be honest I really knew I liked three songs – GirlKillsBear, The Microwave Song and Heart Made of Sound – and quite easily I could have just downloaded these three tracks for a couple of bucks from iTunes or, even more economically, listened to them all on the band's Myspace page. However I didn't – I have a pathological drive to buy albums. I'll buy one off the merit of a single song, or even a hazy recommendation from a friend or reputable-ish source (eg. Menomena was courtesy of Pitchfork). Some might say this is a waste of money, I disagree. In fact I cherish my inability to not buy albums.

This is because the difference between buying an album and picking and choosing via mp3s, singles, radio and/or Myspace equates to a greater schism in how one views the practice of listening to music as a whole, even music itself. Before I explain, I'd like to qualify that I'm definitly not shitting on people who choose the latter modes of accessing music, the mere fact you're into it however it gets to you is good enough and I cannot possibly hate on anyone who enjoys music, in any style and any format. Having said that, I'd like to proceed to contradict this inclusive sentiment.

The listener that prefers to pick and choose relates to music very much as yet another object in the endless array of commodities available to us. In this mode, music is viewed primarily in terms of "what can this do for me? How can I be entertained, made to dance, feel good, etc?" I remember reading an article somewhere that clearly articulated this point – in it the writer was arguing in favour of mp3 culture, as it ostensibly served the interests of the savvy and time-poor music listener. Something along the lines of "why should we fork out our hard-earned $30 for an album that only has one or two songs we like on it anyway, when we can download these for f-all?" Assuming that all the music-buying public felt exactly the same way, the writer then went on to proclaim the death of LP discs in favour of bands releasing only digital singles in response such demand.

From this one can gather a overwhelmingly consumerist approach to music – in fact at one point I remember the price of a track being mathematically calculated ($30 / 12 = …) – in which value for money is the overriding concern. Rather than willingly subject themselves to an artist's entire vision as contained within a single album, they are quite happy to pick at the surface, scratching only for a good beat, catchy hook, etc. Arguably this sort of thing has been gathering ever since the advent of recordable media – in fact, in its evolution a tendency towards fragmentation and 'you decide' can be traced. Vinyl records allowed users to manually skip over or choose a particular song; tapes also allowed this but much more clumsily (perhaps partly why I'm drawn to them); cds took it a step further with digital skipping and forwarding; mp3s completely divorce the song from a physical anchor and allow endless and effortless schizophrenic selection.

The listener who is willing to listen to, enjoy, an album in its entirety is far more involved in experience of music. Rather than moving the music themselves, they are subjecting themselves to manipulation by it. Allowing an entire album - often conceived by bands to act as a conceptual or musical narrative whole - to pass itself along their ears the cd buyer is taken by the music. Rather than simply being a matter of convenience, or a stopgap between home and uni on the train, they permit music to dictate their arrangements, in fact often passing up other experiences for it.

I'm well aware that a cd buyer is, in the final analysis, still heavily embroiled in the evil empire that is the music business, seemingly a lot more so than mp3 listeners are. The album-buyer is in thrall, and at the mercy of, the market which provides the very material for listening. They rely totally on larger corporate structures and supply chains to find what they need. In fact, they often contribute more to the pockets of corporations than the artists they're obsessing over. Whereas the mp3 listener (I hesitate to say buyer, because, well… you all know file-sharing's illegal right?) is sticking it to The Man, bypassing corporations and going straight to the source (in media studies this is gayly called 'disintermediation'). Plus they're finding the music they want, man, the most obscure and interesting shit.

This would seem to signal a contradiction – I'm arguing that cds are a more meaningful and worthwhile form of listening yet they're inextricable from the music business, traditionally seen as corruptor of music's purity and authenticity. I'm stuck in a 'top-down' relationship, dictated to by structures. Whereas mp3 listeners are going 'bottom-up' – accessing culture on their terms. Well, fuck it, I'd rather be in the clutches of the music business (which is coextensive with albums) than relate to music superficially, fleetingly and selfishly. Because whilst I may be profiting record companies more than I'd like to, I'm still perpetuating the development of artists and albums, and the structures that foster them, even if they sometimes constrain them as well. Mp3 listeners are possibly doing more harm than good, even if they are still paying for a few singles from iTunes their dismantling the prospect of musicians consolidating their development and having the opportunity of having more than simply three or four killer singles heard.

Because that's one of the best things about listening to cds – the discovery of tracks that would otherwise escape your attention. Because if I only had downloaded the three SoftLightes tracks I mentioned at the beginning, I may never have heard The Ballad of Theo & June or Heart Made of Sound (Reprise). Similarly, if I hadn't gone on a whim and bought Animal Collective Feels because of the cool cover, I may never have heard Purple Bottle or any other song from their back-catalogue which I have since delved into.

So fuck approaching music as another 'dead object' (Thom Yorke's word for a commodity) existing only for my immediate gratification. In short, fuck mp3s. Hail being enraptured for 50 minutes, being overtaken by sound, even just finding another good song. In short, long live the album!

Goodness I'm really getting desperate lately. Haha I just thought, maybe I should have finished off with an even more tacky pun: something like "these demons truly have gotten crusty". Like Neil. Remember Neil?

Crusty Demons XII – Dirty Dozen (DVD – MRA Entertainment, 2006)

The first Crusty Demons of Dirt was great little freestyle motocross video; it cruised through some pristine locations, following the bikers that set about jumping off every incline imaginable, included a few skits (a guy pretending to fall out of a cliff-house on his bike, a minibike race, a bit of fire), a fair amount of head-mounted camera to approximate the giddying ground-rush these guys felt riding, and mostly simple tricks over gaping natural gaps. Not having seen any of the ensuing Crusty Demons since the first, I thought the jarring contrast between it and this twelfth instalment should easily point me towards just how far they've come. 

I'm not sure what happened in the ten inbetween, but Dirty Dozen imbues a definite feeling that somewhere along the line the Crusties lost their way, and what begun as a modest dirt bike video show-casing beautiful places and technical and solid riding has now devolved into a crowd-pleasing (literally) spectacle of cheap thrills and show-off tricks. So with this in mind, let's dissect the twelfth spawn of Crusty Demons, and hopefully uncover the cause of its illness. 

It's the presentation and design that offers the first hint to the affliction: the casing is all dolled-up in a gimmicky holographic sleeve, replete with massive title lettering and tacky wavy fonts. Straight away you begin to sense it's less about the riding and more about what looks good (or what ostensibly looks good). However it's the comic-book frames title-credits that give it all away and show up Crusty Demons XII for what it is – an epic spectacle of simple physical aesthetics and pleasure, a two-dimensional caricature of dirtbike riding. 

A good deal of the footage isn't even of freestyle motocross, but rather the various kinds of debauchery and juvenile behaviour that go on behind the scenes. The group have quite clearly absorbed the tendencies towards self-harm and pranking that contemporary youth media such as Jackass and The Dudesons have popularised.  

Thus, we're given: pointless public stunts (falling over a suitcase in an airport); plenty of pyromania – from the childish (spray-can flame-throwers) to the dangerous (blowing up cars); party footage (the obligatory 'lesbian kiss' included); heads through doors, feet through car-windows; gun toting; and so on ad nauseam. The first Crusty Demons contained a few skits, but mostly focused on the actual riding; on Dirty Dozen it's as if motocross is a diversion from acting like teenage boys.  

This particular demographic would also seem to be the target market, if the regular shots of buxom, scantily-dressed women insinuating strip-club moves in the Crusty arena (see if you can spot the one stuck in a cage above the action) are anything to go by. It goes without saying that the twelfth Crusty Demons isn't the one to buck the dodgy gender politics of the series – the only other woman to get a look in (apart from a few in the crowd bearing their breasts) is a nameless female rider, who is given literally ten seconds at the end of the credit-roll. 

When the boys quit blowing up things and hurting themselves and we are actually given motorcycle footage, it's delivered thick and fast in the 'x-treem' schizoid montage style, never allowing the camera's gaze to settle on one trick or shot for more than two seconds. Most of the trick material is drawn from the various arena tours or X Games competitions the Crusties have been frequenting for a few years now – 'The Contenders' section being entirely devoted to this even.  

This group of riders (and the companies behind them) seem to have successfully turned freestyle motocross into a confined stadium sport, 'freestyle supercross' as it were. Anything shown outdoors is only when massive photo-ops are constructed – jumping an aeroplane or flying over a man-made half-pipe for instance. Gone are the freestyle sessions through the dunes (that, shock and horror, actually had entire shots that lasted up to thirty seconds!); the only section that comes close is 'California Backyards', which is still more of a romp through some very unnatural bumps in the landscape than a cruise through nature. 

This focus on the stadium, competitions and contrived trick opportunities would appear anthema to the philosophy of freestyle motocross - the focus on natural settings and lack of boundaries being central to its makeup - yet none of this seems to worry the riders who are busy whooping the crowd into a frenzy with their impressive manoeuvres. 

The tricks, of course, really are astounding, yet only in a kind of 'quick fix' sense – whilst still amazingly skilful and gutsy, most of them come down to being cheap crowd-pleasers. The trick in point would have to be the back-flip: mastered by Mike Metzger only a few years ago, this trick has now become a staple and the audience is treated to copious variations. Not only is almost every other normal trick now performed whilst making a full revolution, we're also given the double back-flip and flipping dune buggies and snowmobiles.  

That's another point: no longer are they the demons of dirt. Sure, they're still dirty, but dirtbikes aren't the only machine in the group's repertoire. They've diversified into buggies, utilities, bmx, rideable toilets (don't ask) and even snowmobiles, doing things with the latter the park rangers that normally potter around on these would never have imagined.  

I'm not sure whether you're starting to see a pattern emerge out of all this, but I'll clear it up just to be sure: doesn't it seem like they're getting a little desperate? Having tired the audience of straightforward dirtbiking, the Crusty Demons now have to run around blowing up things, riding any other propelled vehicle they can get their hands on and possibly back-flip; back-flipping left, right and centre; and even lazily repeating feature material in the 'bonus' section. It's quite possible that the Crusty Demons have reached exhaustion point, and have no other tricks up their sleeves to please the throngs with. Unless they jump the Grand Canyon or shamelessly go into straight pornography, maybe thirteen really will be their unlucky number.

I didn't really think this blog would devolve into a forum for my inane opinions, but in lieu of having any reviews to put up that I wouldn't get in trouble for, I thought I'd crap on about how I feel about listening to music lately. It's something I'm sure a lot of people are experiencing.

For the past six months or so, I've been so concerned with catching up on everything that's happening and finding out about every new indie band and buying so many bloody cds and I've found that I'm just not enjoying bands as much as I did before. Sure, I'm into music in general, and I know all about what's going on with new stuff (well, mostly - you can never be on top of it all) but I can't honestly remember the last time I was really into a band or particular album. It's fairly obvious why - you spend so much time keeping up with things and you buy so many records that you only have time to listen through things once or twice at most and then your attention shifts to next week's new release. I'm finding that this is a shit way of being in contact with music. I remember the first post I made said how I had started reviewing music in order to come into a closer proximity to the culture I love and loathe, but I'm finding, if anything, that I'm moving further away. My involvement is now like a detached, distanced, cold stare at a massive range of artists and I haven't devoted nearly enough attention to any of them.

I remember back in Year 12 only buying maybe one cd a fortnight, but how much I was into the things I got. Or always going back to favourites in my collection - Sodastream, Wilco's 'A Ghost is Born', Animal Collective - and absolutely loving them. I'd play them again and again and constantly find new things within the mix to hold my attention and take me into the songs. Whereas now, I buy something like Working for a Nuclear Free City or the new Air and I've listened to them like twice. Usually I'll make some kind of rough assesment after one listen and then discard the album for whatever else is on its way.

It's quite possible that not being deeply into anything lately is simply a function of the (con)temporary (haha) malaise gripping indie music at the moment. It seems like music being made at the moment is so depressingly in the moment, artists are so aware of the breakneck metamorphic character of music's development/devolvement that no one is willing to sit with anything for much more than one record. Either that or people seem unable to make anything outside of dominant trends (indie dance, etc.). But this is a fairly pessimistic view to have, and I actually believe that music is being made that will not weather in mere months, and it's quite likely that some of this music is sitting in the pile of new cds on my desk that I've barely listened to.

I suppose that my point is a fairly simple and mundane one, however it's significant. Do you want to be in the know, able to say "oh yeah, I've got X already it's okay", owning every scerick of new music; or do you want to love and care wildly about a small amount of work and be moved and elated by it? Is there a balance? Or is it possible that keeping up to date doesn't necessarily equate to a superficial involvement? Who knows, all I know is that I just want to feel the same as I did when I was first into Arab Strap.

I know this is tacky using this as a 'things you should check out' place, but...

Anyone who is into good music should try finding the mini album by Michael Cashmore entitled 'The Snow Abides' - it features Antony on vocals and is fucking amazing.

The Whitest Boy Alive, 'Dreams', should have been on my 2006 favourites list - it is such a nice album, like an exercise in restraint and simplicity but not at all twee.

Yesterday's Beat has a gig review of Sodastream, have a look.