Music

It’s 1976, and along with the rest of Australia I had fallen hopelessly, irrevocably (in my case anyway) in love with Swedish superstars ABBA. I loved how they looked, how they talked (with that delightful clipped accent), and most of all, of course, I loved their crisp, bright pop melodies, Continue Reading

Thank god for ABC’s JJJ radio, a government-funded music network that is primarily targeted at a younger demographic that plays some mainstream music but mostly spins records from bands than the commercial FM radio stations would never consider adding to their playlist. It is because of JJJ’s willingness to play Continue Reading

I want to live in a snow globe! Well not really – you’d be forever brushing shredded polystyrene off your clothes for one thing – but Matt Wertz’s makes his magical tale of living in a hermetically sealed Christmas wonderland sound so beguiling, I am close to considering it. Just Continue Reading

I love new music. It’s not out of some desperate desire to remain hip and relevant in my 40s because let’s face it that never works as a deliberate strategy and you end up only as an object of pity by pitiless Gen Ys. No, I love new music because Continue Reading

This is an album of astonishing vocal and melodic beauty. Florence Welch, who dazzled us with her ability to wrap her voice about the most exquisite of emotional textures on Lungs, returns with an album that ranges from the intensely intimate and heartfelt to the epic and anthemic. At times, Continue Reading

A new album from Kate Bush, her second this year (which is amazing given the six years since Aerial) and I am in love all over again. Of course, I have loved Kate Bush with a peculiar passion ever since my first drama lesson with Mrs Derritt in Year 7 Continue Reading

SCISSOR SISTERS. Or more precisely my three favourite songs off their last time, Nightworks, which has been out awhile now, but is still the perfect soundtrack to pounding the footpath early in the morning as I exercise in the hope of shrinking down to the size of my twenty year Continue Reading

I am standing on a crowded train platform in inner west Sydney, sweat slowly trickling down my back, and yet thanks to this perfect Christmas album, I feel like I am walking the snow covered streets of Christmasville (I am sure there is such a place) with chestnuts roasting nearby Continue Reading