Back in June our friend Matthew Scheurich was shot with a bow and arrow while living in the Papua New Guinean jungle. The attack made international news headlines. He’s now back living in Auckland, New Zealand, recovering from his traumatic experience.
(Photo: Amee Robinson)
The press release for the new Ruby Suns album, Fight Softly, mentions a few different recording locales–Seattle, a farmtown in Hungary called Szeged, and the band’s home base of Auckland, New Zealand.
Released on Monday, November 23, MUZAI Records presented two bands on one split CD. First is Auckland hardcore punk outfit God Bows To Math, with four tracks of spitting aggression and spiralling feedback. Then it’s TFF, the Dunedin teenagers who craft long, noisy jams using high pitched guitar screeches and crooked saxophone playing. I had a chat with both bands about putting the split together and about their future plans to tour the country together.
Moron Says What?! has just released their debut EP, but they’re having a bit of trouble understanding the whole music business thing. We had a few laughs together over some cupcakes and found out a bit more about the band’s future plans, fans and the Pop Up EP.
For a band whose music is the type that makes you want to shake, sing along and laugh out loud, Moron Says What?! is incredibly shy. Lead singer/drummer Alessandra even admits she’s gone through periods where she really hates the band’s music. She says, “I have phases where I’m like, ‘This music sucks, it’s so not what I’m into’, and then other times where I’m like, ‘We’ve created a song that I can listen to because I really like it’.” Their song ‘Wikipedia’ is proof of the band’s shyness towards its own music. Loved by the public, the band doesn’t like it so much and tries to shelve it at every possible opportunity.
So with ‘Wikipedia’ in the past, Moron Says What?! has just released their debut EP with four songs of equal awesomeness. Two of the songs (’Sleep’ and ‘Gringo’) have been floating around in lo-fi form for a while now, but one song in particular instantly stands out. ‘Nathalie, Touch Me There Again’, written about the girls’ mutual high school friend, is one of the most interesting and fun pop songs of recent times and speaks for a new generation of emerging musicians inspired by mainstream pop artists like Katy Perry, The Jonas Brothers and Rihanna. While the band creates its music in a more conventional band format, all playing synths, guitars, bass and drums, the lyrics bend more towards the lighter side of pop music. Alessandra, who writes all the lyrics, says she wrote the song “because she (Nathalie) was mad at us because we didn’t have a song about her. We’ve kind of known her since primary school… All the lyrics in that song are 100% true, like when I wrote that song she had just gotten a haircut and I noticed but didn’t say anything and then later in the day she said ‘You guys suck, you didn’t even notice that I got a haircut.” Alessandra admits, “It’s a love song.”
Fran Donnelly recommends the 'perfect arms aloft synth-pop' of Manchester's The Whip.
Photos from a recent FOE gig - a friend of our friends Hold Your Horse Is - she’s gonna be big!!! Read the gig review after the jump.
Shots of North Carolina’s folk-rocking Avett Brothers’ stop in Glasgow - 22.08.11
Read the review of the gig here.
Take a look at the acts and art on offer at this year’s Latitude Festival in Suffolk. Included are the likes of Fight Like Apes, Lykke Li, Sea of Bees and Seasick Steve. Photos from our own...
Good time with Bad Guys. Photos from the May 29th gig at the Old Blue Last. Read the review by the Bad Guy himself, Stuart London after the jump.
Artrocker.com exclusive: for fans of White Lies and Crocodiles we’ve got some fresh pictures from their UK show at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire earlier this month, courtesy of Alessandro...
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