If you haven't noticed, we have a new song up: "Carrion". "Carrion" was actually the first new tune we added to our set after recording "The Great Depression", and it's been a live staple ever since. Though he is no longer a member of the band, Gabriel Piras is the bass player for this one, and a couple of other tracks we have coming up. As with "No Shame", you can download "Carrion" from our website at plasticpalacealice.com, which is being hosted by bandcamp.

Hello out there in myspace land. To complete the PPA experience once again, we need an experienced bass player who is willing and able to rehearse, gig, record and tour on a semi-regular basis. Please, have a listen to our songs, message us, or pass this message on to anyone who might be interested. We'd love to hear from you.

Big fat juicy ones,

PPA

HOLY CRAPADACKS!

I just spent an excruciating 2 hours figuring out how to make damn fucking picture link to damn fucking download page just so you, dear listener, can go ahead and steal our music. One miserable fucking song at a time.

That's right, due to "seismic shifts in music industry practices and the way consumers interact with their blah blah blah blah" it has become apparent that to we have to give our music away for free now. Nix.

Well I say fine. Take it.

We didn't want it anyway. Here at PPA headquarters we're two-thousand-and-late enough as it is to argue with you savvy young app-starts. Hell, you were adopting before you were old enough to be adopted. You're all a hoard of fucking iFreaks.

...Enjoy the track.

xx


Note: 2 of 6 PPA members own an iphone (soon to be 3). 4 of 6 are on facebook. and I'm about to join the time-vampire that is twitter.... @itusedtobeabouthtemusic if anyone wants to stalk me.

The observant among you may have noticed that we uploaded a new song recently: "No Shame", which we recorded a little while ago. The even-more-observant of you may also have noticed that we haven't been particularly active in the myspace arena for a while, with our last blog post being almost a year ago.

"The Great Depression"

Album of the Week - Beat Magazine

 

The glamathon that is Empire Falls is a little misleading – Plastic Palace Alice's long-awaited debut is more the misunderstood cabaret artiste than the glam stompin' superstar. Tom Waits with a soupcon of Ziggy and a touch of the histrionics of a young Marc Almond, as befits a band famously named after a character in a song by legendary troubadour Scott Walker.

Rob McDowell and his cohorts have employed the services of Melbourne producer Jonathan Burnside (Sleepy Jacksons, Melvins) for this eclectic longplayer. Add to that the freedom of a Vic Arts grant and you have a band unencumbered by commercial pressures. And it shows. Even when the Plastics stumble (and they do…), they're playing their own game.

Marquee single Empire Falls opens up proceedings – OK, it's a Bowie steal, but what a steal! It starts like a speeded-up version of Space Odyssey and could have been culled straight from Hunky Dory.

Enigmatic duet The Molly Club channels Bolan to conjure up a louche lounge bar, while six minute moody, elliptical epic Karaoking/Antiphon is surely the most pretentious song title of the year… but (and this is crucial) THAT'S OK. Make us work…don't patronise. Wear your erudition like a badge of honour. Reclaim the streets for the flaneurs, the intellectuals, the marginalised elites.

Plastics aficionados will know The Girl Who Cried Wolf, which is culled from the Empire Falls EP. A slow burner, it has echoes of Scottish pervster Momus' tale of forbidden love Bishonen. But it's on Red Comedian that the Plastics' love of Tom Waits shines through most clearly. The tale of a an intense love affair sounds like a cabaret artist a little unsteady on his feet after a couple of bottles.

McDowell's elliptical lyrics are to the fore on Murakami – presumably an ode to the uberhip Japanese writer, but you wouldn't know it. A mad-woman-in-the-attic piano refrain leads into opaque lines such as "Is your temper tempo rising?/Is your horse surviving?" and "Some fruit must not be picked/Some bridge has just been lit/Some cities will never be entered." Err…time for the men in white coats? It's alright dear, you're safe now…

Ziggy makes a reappearance on 1934, the tongue-in-cheek tale of a Brief Encounter pre-war affair. A piano and string ballad examines the insecurity of the 21st century generation not knowing their place ("Should we stay or should we go?/Pretend we're actors in a show?").

The parodic filler ballad Well is less riveting, while Meet Me On The Other Side references, of all things, the riff from Duran Duran's Planet Earth…I kid you not.

The lowkey Blow and Spotlights emphasise the band's love of cabaret, evoking the elegance and sophistication of a Parisian nightclub: "Smoking in a mostly elegant parade" and "Cabernet and cigarettes – the simple life of clockwork reds".

The LP ends on a slightly bathetic note with the would-be epic The Straight Song, a prog rock-influenced tale of a jilted lover.

If there's one over-arching strand throughout the LP it's performance and identity – witness The Straight Song's "I dressed in your suit/And obliged your masquerade", Spotlights' "If I'd known it was a proper masquerade/I'd have made a mask of my own face to save me, dear" and 1934's "Put me in a dress-up suit and make me up to look like every bygone age".

The '70s influence is a red herring. The Plastics are indeed a band out of time, the Edwardian '20s and '30s is their preferred era (the album's title gives the game away). Novelist Angela Carter is clearly a spiritual godmother with her tales of misplaced identities, particularly Wise Children. It's about identities in flux as a new century dawns and the impossibility of fixing a persona in the ephemeral world of performance.

While one can't help escape the nagging feeling Plastic Palace Alice are still searching for an identity through this LP's intriguing byways and tangential musings, we need more artists like this. With ambition. With chutzpah. Who aren't afraid to singe their wings flying too close to the sun. "Fallen from the furthest corner of the former empire" indeed...

ALEXANDER MAXWELL

 

"The Great Depression"

Wireless Bollinger Review

It's a fair bet that most who read this site, Australians and non-Australians alike, will be aware of Plastic Palace Alice. Not only were they one of WB's 2007 'Bands to Watch', they have been a constant presence on the live music scene, from a slot on The Cops' national tour to a run at The Famous Spiegeltent for the Melbourne International Arts Festival. Add to this a bunch of radio and press attention, primarily through their first single 'Empire Falls' and you have the Melbourne embodiment of a buzz band. Anyone who has seen the sextet live will attest to their standing as a significant tour de force, muscular and intimate but basically extraordinarily musical and professionally assured. But now, with a full-length album to mull over in our more private moments, the true measure of Plastic Palace Alice's worth must be evaluated. Thankfully, following their live displays of musicianship and nuanced arrangements, the album delivers. Unlike many, Plastic Palace Alice are a buzz band with none of the gimmicks – simply making their name through hard work and a firm conviction of intent.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the band is this conviction of intent, translating into Plastic Palace Alice's distinct aesthetic criteria. Every song is a fully-formed slice of understanding, working on its own principle, finely-crafted and perfectly executed. The diversity of the 12 tracks is truly mind-boggling. General points of reference are the brusque burlesque of Tom Waits, Bowie's idiosyncratic vocal stylings, and the orchestral theatricality of the Arcade Fire, The Band or Harvest-era Neil Young. Add to this a song blending analogue synths, swampy tremolo guitar and a post-punk backbeat ('Karaoking/Antiphon'), a tender, almost English pastoral, string-laden ballad ('1934'), Latin rumba-like touches ('The Straight Song'), jazz-standard cabaret ('Spotlights') and you get some idea of the territory the band traverses. But throughout, they remain focussed; no arrangements veer off course and despite generic diversity The Great Depression remains a consistent record.

This consistency could be put down to a number of things. Often the overarching presence of a lead singer can do this, but the vocal duties are shared by songwriter/guitarist Rob McDowell and percussionist Emily Taylor. To my mind, this is the one area where Plastic Palace Alice falls short in their vision. Both are fine enough singers and have the ability to carry the abstract lyricism, but they blur their affectations and accents in places. As a result, McDowell comes across more as a master of melody, structure, and orchestration, rather than a singer-songwriter type channelling a world-view. Fortunately, the musical assuredness sticks and I think it is due to the understanding of musical history that McDowell, or perhaps the entire band, possesses.

In spite of the album's remarkable achievements, something nags. The spacious, often epic arrangements and vast choice of instrumentation implicate something emotionally grand, but though immensely enjoyable, The Great Depression is not a visceral album. This is not to say it has a hollow core. On the contrary the pervading mood of the album is one perfectly suiting the age in which we live; full of foreboding, misguided or restrained hope and at times unbridled passion. But are we listening or 'meta-listening' to the album?

Does this niggle? A little, maybe. While the album is not at all retro, it is nostalgic; yearning for something from the past, something unnamed but always hinted at in all of its aspects from the lyrics to the arrangements and the production. At the height of Modernism, Theodor Adorno defined opposing types of musical appreciation, comprising the emotional and the 'rhythmically obedient' (or technical). These modes of appreciation are mutually exclusive, and the listener appreciates in one of the two modes. Bands like Plastic Palace Alice move toward transcending this dichotomy, and may be the first bands truly of the post-Modern age. In this world, a song titled 'Karaoking/Antiphon' featuring strange synthesisers, bleeding guitars and the lyrics "put aside your wholesome needs, wear fake aroma for karaoking" is not an ironic or self-consciously clever project, it's just a song – and a pretty damn good one at that. 85/100

Beat Magazine interview with Simone Ubaldi (Rob)

Plastic Palace Alice are promising – and promising, and promising – to be one of this country's truly great bands. The six member baroque pop outfit came together just over two years ago, and had barely taken a breath before they began to record their first album. Now, some months, some media attention and some serious label interest later, they have finally released it. Welcome to The Great Depression.

Led by Sydney-bred singer-songwriter Rob McDowell, Plastic Palace Alice set out to make wilful and original art rock, regardless of prevailing music trends. With a line-up that features a classical composer (Lise Metz) and a jazz student (Huw Murdoch), the band was founded on some very big ideas – ideas that seemed bigger than the back room of the East Brunswick Club.

"I think we recorded too early," Rob says reflectively, "We had only just started the band and, in retrospect, it was probably a bit premature, but we really had this grand vision. Whatever we did in the rehearsal room was not going to compare to what we could do on record because we had all these production ideas which we could never do live."

When Plastic Palace Alice first appeared around Melbourne, they were a two piece. Rob and wife Lise played the songwriter's finished songs, which were inspired by the vivid lyrical traditions of Leonard Cohen and John Lennon. Bass player Gabe engineered at one of their shows and joined the band soon after, bringing Emily in as a backing vocalist. Jeremy saw an ad for a drummer, and Huw came on board as the second guitarist when their recording ambitions finally out-stripped their ability to reproduce the songs live. The music grew organically, according to Rob, and became a genuine product of the whole group's influence.

"I wanted to have my stamp on everything and it was really difficult, initially. But I guess you get to the stage where you trust what other people are going to bring to it, and then when you write a song, it's not even yours anyway. You don't even care about it anymore, 'cause it's out. It's like venting, and once it's been vented it's unimportant; people can do what they want with it."

Trusting and enthused by their fledgling project, the band members threw in a considerable pile of their own cash to start recording their music. They found around $12,000 to invest in the album, to begin realising their densely orchestrated dreams. Production began in March 2006, and for a short while they had a whale of a time, but soon enough the whole project ground to a halt.

"It was horrible," Rob smiles, "It was such a long process because we ran out of money. For a good six months nothing was happening and we were waiting for grant announcements to see if we could get funding to finish the album."

The money did come through, with many thanks to your friendly neighbourhood tax-payer, and by March 2007 the record was finally finished - the Plastic Palace Opus; a very big recording from a band no-one had ever heard of. The band made The Great Depression because they wanted to explore the possibilities of production and not because they had a record deal in place, but without distribution it was difficult for many people to hear this wonderful thing they had done. So they did what many other local bands do; they burnt a few copies of their very first "single" and sent it off to Triple J. Thankfully – and luckily, to be honest – they picked the right song.

The gorgeous storm of Empire Falls became a sleeper hit on our national youth broadcaster, and more than one music writer had favourable things to say about this epic sounding indie band. Following the good press came a few good opportunities.

"We tied the album up ourselves so at least we could own it in some way. And then we started getting a bit of airplay, and we had a number of labels call up and ask about it," explains Rob. "It was just an elimination process from that point. We were unsatisfied with some of them, they were unsatisfied with us at other times. Inertia was the one who were still standing in the end, who we were most happy with."

Unfortunately for the band, the first buzz of their stellar single (released twice last year) had well and truly faded by the time Inertia released their album. Fortunately, the long recording process made them patient.

"It's a very, very conservative label climate. A lot of labels take a long time to make decisions. If you're not riding the zeitgeist they don't really trust you. So we kept having all these meetings, you know. Eventually someone said they'd put it out and six months later, here we are," Rob shrugs. "I'm excited now. I haven't been excited for the last year, which is how long the record has been finished. I guess I'm excited it's finally coming out."

The band now faces another hurdle. Having made a big impression with Empire Falls, they have now released an album that sounds, by Rob's own admission, very different from the single. They have written Dylan-esque pop, post punk rackets and gothic folk songs, all crowding together on the wildly erratic disc of The Great Depression.

"I think that's a good thing, because it shows that we have range, but it's unfortunate that that one song has misrepresented the band a bit in that way. But then, if we'd chosen any other song, it would have been the same story," Rob muses, "The way we produced a lot of the songs on the album – and hopefully it's succeeded, although some might not have succeeded as obviously as others – we tried to do a very specific things with each song.

"So the song Well on the album, a little country ballad, we tried to make that sound really sweet and syrupy and Dusty Springfield-like. And a song like Empire Falls is meant to sound like an anthem, you know, but it was a kind of arbitrary, the decision to put it out. It did seem kind of catchy.

"But it's got our name out there, which is great," he smiles, "We'll see what happens next."

Hey folks,

It's just got bloody cold here in Melbourne. Which is apt timing for us to bust out the woolies and embark on the 'Summer's A Stranger' tour, rolling into a town near you in the next few weeks. Cowabunga.


That is unless you live in WA, Tassie or NT, in which case we're not playing within a thousand kms of a town near you. Sorry. We'd love to play in Perth sometime soon, that will happen I'm sure. But this time round you're going to have to come to Adelaide. We'll buy you a drink if you do.


All ye humble residents of Adelaide, Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne will hopefully be buying us the drinks. Or at very least showing up to check out our show. We've had a little break from shows so you'll be seeing us in nervous/excited energy mode. Anything can and will happen.


If you bring a spare twenny you'll be able to pick up a copy of our album. And, just in case you needed any more convincing, we've hooked up a bunch of rad bands to open for us:

Adelaide - Special Patrol and Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire!

Canberra - You Hang Up, No You Hang Up and The Trivs

Sydney - Bird Automatic and Dawn Collective

Brisbane - Malcolm Middleton (he invited us)

Melbourne - Oh Mercy and The Greasers


See ya there

xx

Hey everyone,

Our album is due for release in less than 2 weeks (on March 29th)!! It’s been a long wait, and we’re very excited. So excited, in fact, that we’re hosting a special launch party on the evening of its release (it’s a Saturday, which is more than convenient). In order to score an invite, just join our mailing list in the next few days (you can do this on our main page). We’ll be sending out details very soon through the mailing list, but be assured it’ll be a great night of fab tunes (DJs only, no bands) and lots of red cordial.

Also, you may have noticed our new single on the player - it’s a radio edit of ’The Girl Who Cried Wolf’, mixed by our good mate Ben Tolliday.

Album launch tour dates soon!

Love,

PPA

 

So it probably appears we're sitting on our arses, resting on our non-existent laurels, and generally being tardy about getting out this album we keep telling you about. I assure you, we're not. Just to prove it, there's a lovely new video for our new radio-only single on our page.

A date for the release will be announced in the next week or so, and we're just about to kick off a string of support dates with Stars and The Brunettes. If you have tickets to any of these shows, come early and say hi. If you don't, come to the Sydney Rd Festival on this coming Sunday (24/2) to see us on the Albert St stage at around 2pm. We're also going to announce the album launch shows very soon, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, here's a list of music that has been getting a blasting in my house at the moment:

Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna. It's amazing, just get it. 'The Past is a Grotesque Animal' is my new favourite song ever.

Echo and the Bunnymen - Ocean Rain. I know it's old, but it's grand.

Devastations - Yes, U. I've only recently gotten into them after seeing them live a couple of times. They're amazing. It's like a funked up Nick Cave, singing about sex instead of God (i.e. much more exciting).

Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha. He seems to be getting more conservatively 'indie' as he gets older. Not that that's a bad thing, cause he always makes it interesting.

My Morning Jacket - Okonokos. Sounds like we all missed a fucking great gig.

Bruce Springsteen - Magic. Contains 11 of the most perfect pop songs you're likely to hear, plus 1 almost perfect one.

Anyone else got recommendations?

xx Rob

 

...goes to "Empire Falls". We're happy.



Come help us celebrate at the Evelyn tomorrow night.

Answer question 1 and/or 2. (Yes, question 1 is a PPA Marketing Dep't survey).

1. Does anyone buy CDs anymore?

2. What's been your fav album of 2007?