Sun 18 Nov – Harvest 2012

Harvest Festival
Botanic Gardens, Brisbane
Sunday 18 November 2012

Arguably the hardest part of arranging a music festival is securing a headline act so superior that they simply can't be followed. For the second year in a row, Harvest has achieved this. Sigur Rós are a delight: challenging, brave, and pure. Like Portishead last year, their main stage set is a sterling example of how to end a day filled with remarkable music. It's a true spectacle, carefully structured to include peaks and troughs and the band work at eliciting a wide spectrum of…

Sun 11 Nov – Refused, Nuclear Summer

Refused
Eatons Hill Hotel, Brisbane
Sunday 11 November

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are Refused from Umeå, Sweden.“ Nine words that hardcore punk fans thought they’d never hear again.

“When every expression, no matter how radical it is, can be transformed into a commodity and be bought or sold like cheap soda, how is it then possible that you are going to be able to take ‘art’ seriously?” the band asked when they announced their split 14 years ago. “We will never play together again and we will never try to glorify or celebrate…

Wed 26 Sep – Retrotech 2012: Regurgitator play Unit & Tu Plang

Regurgitator
The Northern, Byron Bay
Wednesday, 26 September 2012

What a strange band they are, and always have been. Tonight is the first show of Regurgitator's Retrotech tour, wherein they're playing their first two albums Tu-Plang and Unit front to back - a mid-nineties run (1996 and 1997 respectively) that contains enough conflicting ideas and concepts to stretch across an entire career. Creative restlessness doesn't even come close.

Both albums dabble in half a dozen genres and both have more hits than misses. In fact the better of…

Thu 3 May – The Butterfly Effect, Numbers Radio, Greenthief

The Butterfly Effect
The Arena, Brisbane
Thursday 3 May 2012

Tonight, The Butterfly Effect dies. It’s the quartet’s final show with their founding singer, Clint Boge, before a hometown crowd. When we next see the band, they’ll be reborn: under the same name, but fronted by who-knows-who, and perhaps moving away from the path they’ve travelled for the last 12 years with significant success.

It’s a time for reassessment: who are this band, and what do they represent? When these four began writing and recording together in 1999, Australian alternative…

Sat 3 Mar – Future Music Festival 2012

A detailed live review and many photos can be found at TheVine.com.au, or by clicking here.

Tue 28 Feb – Lamb of God, In Flames, The Black Dahlia Murder

In Flames
Eatons Hill Hotel, Brisbane
Tuesday 28 February 2012

“We’ve put out ten albums by now, so it’s hard to play everything you want,” says In Flames singer Anders Fridén near the end of their set. Ain’t that the truth. The eternal frustration for prolific bands of any genre: how to find a balance between satisfying your own interests, and those of the audience. Logic suggests that most bands would rather play their newer material – assuming they’re proud of it – rather than going through…

Sat 25 Feb – Soundwave 2012

Long review + loads of photos at TheVine.com.au

Wed 1 Feb – The Wall Live

Roger Waters – ‘The Wall’ Live
Brisbane Entertainment Centre
Wednesday 1 February 2012

If rock music is, at its heart, a mad combination of theatre, escapism and expression, then The Wall Live must be the warped apex of what rock music was designed for. It has to be said that this is an absurd concept: a band playing the entirety of an album released 32 years ago, while a 12-metre-high white wall is constructed between musicians and audience. It is the product of a brilliant imagination and a breathtaking commitment to realising an…

Sun 22 Jan – Big Day Out 2012

I wrote a long review for The Vine, which includes excellent photographs by Justin Edwards. Here.

Wed 4 Jan – Crystal Castles, DZ Deathrays

Crystal Castles
The Tivoli, Brisbane
Wednesday 4 January 2012

For all the attention that Crystal Castles pay to their image, in the flesh it seems, somehow, effortless. Clearly some thought goes into their stage plot: there's an enormous banner featuring the dead-eyed graveyard child from the cover of their second album. There's eight strobe lights flanked by a dozen vertical LED strips. There's Ethan Kath, mastermind of electronica, hunched over his equipment and wearing a hoodie throughout their hour-long set, despite the sticky heat that soon envelopes the entire room. There's the…