The best thing about working in a music company is watching artists careers grow. There have been many instances when I’ve felt privileged to witness an artists work slowly connect to more and more people whether it’s by reaching new heights on the ARIA Chart, being played more on the radio, seeing a four page spread in a magazine that many issues before was a small mention in the ‘ones to watch’ section. But the best way to witness this growth is when an artist plays the biggest show of their career. You get to see them experiencing it.
I felt that last night when I saw Birds of Tokyo playing their biggest headlining show of their career at the Brisbane Exhibition & Convention Centre in front of 3000 plus fans. Having played a sold out show in Adelaide two nights before, the Brisbane crowd was bigger again and as the band travel to Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, the shows only get bigger.
It’s a huge stage at BECC and Birds made it their own from the start. With an impressive lighting rig and a 10 metre long led screen across the back of the stage, the boys came prepared.
If The Ship Sinks kicks off proceedings and they plough through a good mix of old and new songs almost one for one. Wild Eyed Boy was welcomed with roar and it’s apparent there are many fans here who have been with the band from the start.
Circles shows Adam Sparks’ delicate guitar work while as the song builds Ian Kenny dances with anticipation, almost like he can’t wait to deliver the next verse. He’s a unique front man with his hands emotively waving around and applauding after every song and thanking the crowd for singing along.
Wayside from the Day One album has the audience singing right back to the band with fingers pointing with every “you caught me by the wayside”. A purple haze comes across the stage for Saddest Thing I Know and immediately you think of that great film clip they made to accompany the release. It’s when the band launches into Wild At Heart that the crowd go to a new level. Again with their fingers pointing and shouting every word back, I felt exhausted after it came to an end. If this song isn’t a massive Australian rock anthem by the end of this year we need to reassess the meaning behind rock n roll.
Triple J fave In The Veins of Death Valley kept the crowd in full voice before the band launched into The Bakers Son with Anthonny Jackson’s rumbling bass, Adam Weston’s pulsing drums and Kenny’s amazing falsetto vocals.
images courtesy of Ella Bailey
The powerful builder, Murmurs shows the LED screen turn into a giant out of tune TV channel which is great effect. Then came Plans the song that has gained the band more fans to their flock. Kenny is visibly taken aback by the audience participation, yet again applauding and thanking them for singing along. Silhouettic is the perfect end to the set and shows really where the band came of age. After much whistling, screaming, stomping and clapping the band return for The Gap and Broken Bones. The perfect end to a triumphant performance.
I was witnessing a point when a band realised they had taken a new leap forward in their career. It must have been pretty special for them and they can rest assured the crowd were with them all the way. The secret to Birds success is that they are on your level. There’s no pretension or greater-than-thou feeling. Kenny as a front man feeds off the audience and he pays them back by making them feel that they are part of this whole thing.
That’s why this band will be one of Australia’s greatest.
What a great Aussie band! Hungry Kids of Hungary are straight out of Brissie and straight into a fantastic debut album, what is bound to be the summer album of the year, Escapades.
After working it on their lonesome for a good year now and garnering huge triple j play with four separate singles, they have been rewarded with a love from Stop Start Music, EMI, and a cracker of an LP.
Give Escapades a whirl right now – you can skip from track-to-track with the buttons on each side of the video.
You may have heard Scattered Diamonds, Wristwatch and Coming Around before, but thankfully the rest of the album lives up to their singles, genre jumping between afro-beat indie a-la Vampire Weekend, sweeping alternative soundscapes a-la Arcade Fire and quirky alt-pop a-la, well, themselves!
Enjoy, and go out and support them tomorrow by buying the album for those sunny walks to work in the morning. Or in these final hours you can still preorder it from iTunes.
Time to pick up your coloured pens & pencils and put your colouring-in skills to the test – Opposite of Adults style!
Whoever makes the most creative splash on the cover of Chiddy Bang’s new mini-album The Preview will walk away with a mystery prize!
Download the PDF template here, colour in to your heart’s content, then post or email us a scan of your delectable artwork before November 5. Full competition details on the template. Note – this competition is only open to Australian residents.
Meanwhile, big congrats to Noah and Chiddy AKA Chiddy Bang for their breakout track Opposite of Adults! The guys were presented with platinum records last night and they couldn’t have been happier.
They continue on their tour of Australia as part of the Parklife Festival!
The ARIA Awards held their nominations event and Artisan Awards presentation at Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music earlier today, and there remains little to be said but a huge congratulations to the artists that stole the show – Angus and Julia Stone and Birds of Tokyo. With artists in a record 31 categories this year Angus and Julia and Birds of Tokyo were the two most nominated acts in Australia, each taking out six nominations – most importantly scooping up noms for Album of the Year, Single of the Year, and Best Group. Angus and Julia Stone went on even further to claim two of the four Artisan Awards presented today!
The ARIA Awards are undergoing a pretty serious makeover this year, so don’t be surprised to see a whole series of changes to the event. The nominations today kicked off ARIAs season, which will forge through until the final event on November 7 at the Sydney Opera House. In the meanwhile, here’s what’s going on:
ARIA Hall of Fame Awards – Hordern Pavilion – Wednesday October 27
Broadcast by SBS Television’s RocKwiz on Saturday, October 30 at 9.20pm.
Genre Award Presentations – November 1 – November 5, leading up to…
ARIA Awards – Sydney Opera House – Sunday November 7
Broadcast live on Network Ten from 8.30pm.
MTV Red Carpet will air live on MTV from 6.30pm.
Mid-way through Cypress Hill’s storming set at the Melbourne Palace Theatre last night (Thurs 23), they had three questions to ask of the gathered crowd.
1. Are you having a good night?
2. Are you high right now?
3. Are you going f*cking craaaaaaazzzzzzyyy?
I can’t speak for everyone but my answers to these questions were as follows:
1. Yes thank you.
2. Not on your nelly.
3. Not clinically, but in this context yes (ignoring my jet lag).
So as TheInSound’s sometime UK correspondent I was delighted to have the opportunity to hit up a local gig while over in Melbourne on holiday. And what better way to do so than with a seminal powerhouse of international hip-hop.
The guys started off the evening with an album signing in JB Hi-Fi on Bourke Street before heading over to the venue a few hours later. A knowledgeable and appreciative crowd greeted them, packing the Palace to the rafters.
What followed was nothing less than a masterclass featuring tracks from latest album Rise Up along with classics like Insane In The Membrane and Dr Greenthumb. Full of energy all the way through, it was a relentless assault on all things hip-hop.
If you’ve been tuning in to the nation’s beloved youth broadcaster triple j this week, you’ll have heard them churning out the coveted J Award Noms for Best Australian Album of the Year.
Leading the charge are our own boys of Birds of Tokyo with their currently gold (onward & upward!) self-titled third album.
Congrats to all the nominees and their brilliant albums: Washington’s I Believe You Liar, Bliss N Eso’s Running On Air, Tame Impala’s Innerspeaker, Sia’sWe Are Born, and Cloud Control’s Bliss Release.
If you didn’t grab the chance to see the epic songs from the latest album performed live earlier this year, you’re in luck as Birds are off on another national tour, well… tonight. They’ll be supported by US guests Silversun Pickups and Aussie bands The Chemist and Emperors (Perth only). Perth and Adelaide sold out way back, but due to extra demand there’s a last min release of 100 extra tix for Melbourne on October 1. Dates below – see you at the show!
Thankfully, the latest on-screen delight has arrived. The video is an online exclusive as Echoplex isn’t an official single – but it’s a sun-drenched, blissed-out hit nonetheless.
Featuring several lovely VICE Mag styled ladies frolicking underwater and exploring their sisterhood, we present you with Echoplex…
Illumination has been unleashed & is available through our sister store The In Song, iTunes, JB Hi-Fi, Sanity, and ye olde local record shoppe.
The JET boys are home and touring with Powderfinger on their Sunset Farewell Tour and loving it! While they were back in Sydney this weekend we surprised the guys with a celebration of achieving 1 million album and single sales in Australia. Here are some pics from the night:
Congratulations Nic, Chris, Mark and Cam… you deserve it!
JET’s full discography of timeless Aussie rock – Get Born, Shine On and Shaka Rock are available from The In Song.
When was the last time you went to a good old-fashioned in-store book-signing? (queuing to throw eggs at Tony Blair in Dublin last week doesn’t count)
Scratch that… when was the last time you popped into your local JB Hi-Fi to discover one of the world’s most seminal and critically acclaimed hip hop outfits hanging out in store?
Next Thursday evening, before their Melbourne Palace Theatre show, Cypress Hill will be at the Bourke St JB store signing copies of Rise Up, their most recent effort featuring Tom Morello, Daron Malakian (System of A Down), Pitbull, Everlast, and Marc Anthony (yes you read that right and Armada Latina is a bloody great song!)
They’ll be hanging out to sign albums for come-one-come-all, but not for tooooo long – the boys have to set up for the show! Meanwhile… tickets still selling at Ticketmaster.
“By the fans, for the fans” is a motto that sits well with the new Radiohead ethos these days, and this project certainly wears that motto well.
A large group of Radiohead fans descended on their Prague show last August with the specific intent of filming the concert from a number of different crowd-based angles and producing their own film of the event. Using hand held cameras of all descriptions, the entire concert was captured and edited together and a rather neat fan based film was made. But here’s where it gets cool… Radiohead, upon hearing about what was going on, then decided to hand over the master audio of the show for the fans to lay over the top and soundtrack their film. Quality.
So here it is, downloadable for completely free, no money, nix, nada, nothing, ZERO!! And in a variety of different formats too… http://radiohead-prague.nataly.fr
The camera work may be a little shaky, but the audio is impeccable. If you need any further convincing, check out Exit Music (For A Film) from their universally acclaimed opus OK Computer.
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