Fifty: the number of states in the US; the number of Gates of Wisdom in Kabbalah; or the atomic number of tin. Since last week, it is also the number of posts about the Australian Music Scene I’ve written for this blog. My sweet little victory 🙂
Celebrations (aka popping champagne corks) will be happening later on. But let’s see what (if anything) has changed since I published posts 41-50 first.
PART 41: ABORIGINAL ARTISTS CONTINUE USING THEIR VOICE TO FIGHT FOR CHANGE (AND THEY’LL NEVER STOP)
I published this post after the tragic death of George Floyd when the Black Lives Matter protests were in full force in America. At the same time, in Australia, Aboriginal Lives Matter marches were trying, once again, to bring more awareness to the First Nations’ situation in the country.
I cannot speak for Indigenous people myself, but I am constantly amazed by their resilience in standing up for their rights. One of the peaceful ways of doing that has always been through music. So my post was dedicated to music activism and some wonderful Aboriginal artists advocating for change in Australia.
Since then, rapper Briggs (that I interviewed last year here) released a new EP Always Was with very on-point messages. For instance, one of the tracks, “Go To War” talks about “how Indigenous people have to hide in mainstream Australia.”
The song is very powerful (something that Briggs got us all used to). But what I find even more worthwhile is the rapper’s breakdown of the story behind the song.
42: THE RAINBOW FLAG ARTIST ARMY IS AS STRONG AS EVER
At the beginning of this post, I said it wasn’t going to be about Troye Sivan. And it wasn’t.
But since publishing it, the pop muso has released an EP that Spotify described as “[the artist] taking us inside his mind”.
And since Troye Sivan hasn’t been sharing heaps of new music since 2018 (apart from his collabs with Charli XCX, some remixes, and an original single), I thought it would be cool to give him some attention for a change.
So here’s the EP.
43: MELBOURNE VENUES SENDING ANOTHER SOS
In case you haven’t heard, Melbourne entered lockdown no. 2 with stage 4 restrictions in August. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to be eased anytime soon. If you’re interested in what the city’s inhabitants can and cannot do, here’s a good article that explains it.
As you can imagine, most businesses are shut in the city. Entertainment of any sort is on hold, so Melbourne venues are in a deep shit again. As a result, everything that the Save Our Scene movement (SOS) gained up until August (like getting the government’s attention at all) is now needed more than before. Read about it in this post.
But I’ll let just the venue owners tell you themselves:
44: (MY OWN) SILLY CHALLENGE REMAINS SILLY AND INCOMPLETE (SADLY)
I like to complicate my life sometimes and come up with projects that are slightly difficult to complete. I wrote about my own “Silly Alliteration Challenge” here.
The idea was to present a song by an Aussie artist a day. The trick was: the song’s title must start with the same letter as the band’s name. No easy task, trust me.
And I’m still looking for songs matching letters for Q, X and Z. And I’m still shouting you a bevvy if you find me any 🙂
45: DMA’S KEEP ON GLOWING
Generally speaking, I don’t critique music much. But DMA’S new album, THE GLOW is heaps good. So I couldn’t resist pitching in my praise (which is here).
Since the band dropped the record in July, they’ve been flying high. Rave reviews, cool performances, interviews in Oz and overseas. If having one of your songs (“Criminals”) remixed by Aussie dance legends The Avalanches is any indication of success, then DMA’S couldn’t be more stoked.
Still not convinced? Then watch this performance from where Splendour In The Grass takes place (in normal circumstances).
46: MAKING IT INTERNATIONALLY
In this post, I presented a few collabs between Aussie and overseas artists.
But let’s flip the script a little because a rad thing happened recently to an Aussie collaboration that went global.
Alice Ivy released “In My Mind” in 2019 already. She invited Ecca Vandal to feature on the song which made it an even cooler track.
Fast-forward to 2020 when things literally went down the drain for most artists, anywhere in the world. But not for Alice Ivy. Because Apple made her song the music background for its “Shot and Edited on iPhone” TV spot.
How good of an international collab is THAT?
47: MELBOURNE REPRESENTED THROUGH MUSIC
I really miss the Melbourne I know: when life was still happening outdoors, in public places full of people. So I dedicated this post to some songs describing the city’s suburbs.
Melbourne’s fame has long expanded beyond Australia, so many international artists refer to the Victorian capital in their music as well. But there’s even a Canadian outfit called “Melbourne” that play alt- pop/rock.
Check them out here.
48: CLASSIC(AL) AUSSIE
The good thing about Aussie music is that genres transcend. Even classical music works well paired with the wildest of genres in Oz. I wrote about it here.
By accident, I just found out that the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is looking to put a choir to virtually perform Paul Kelly‘s iconic “Leaps And Bounds” tune. Another proof of classical music in Australia being quite progressive.
The premiere is set for 17 September. And I really cannot wait to see what the result will look like.
49: RESOURCES, RESOURCES
Not sure how that happened but I never mentioned Twitter as one of my primary resources for the blog as well. So my original post is not really complete without it.
And if you’re looking for people to follow, I recommend Mallrat. She shares stuff about her regular life apart from the music updates. And it’s mostly a good laugh, too.
For instance:
(Woolies = Woolworths is one of the Aussie supermarket chains)
50: MORE AUSSIE MUSOS’ USEFUL SIDE HUSTLES
Last week I wrote about wine, kids’ books, a weird sport called zone ball and being a doctor, amongst other things. Because Aussie musos have all sorts of interesting side hustles and hobbies.
Slowly Slowly, a Melbourne rock band, have also been pretty creative in the pandemic. They recently combined the essence of Melbourne: music and coffee in their merch. To promote their latest album, they created a special brew, in cooperation with Padre Coffee.
Before that, they invited their mates from Tassie, Luca Brasi, to record a tune together, which was also accompanied by a series of coffee-themed items.
So that’s it for updates. And here is a photo of the author of this post stoked to have published 50 posts already.
See you next Wednesday!
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Silly McWiggles. A blog about Aussie music. 