Ready and waiting: Boy Brightlulb (Darwin), the Drake Equation (Brisbane), Ebb (Sweden), the Machine Elves of Hyperspace (Sydney), Cinematic Orchestra (UK) and Fall For Days (Sydney). Some good, some great, some passable. Find them at Cyclic Defrost.

It’s a few months after the fact now, but Lou Reed’s Berlin was a highlight of the Sydney Festival this year. My review is in the latest edition of Artlines. The mag features a beautiful Dennis Nona linocut on the cover, but it’s not online. So here’s the review.

Lou Reed’s Berlin met sickeningly bad reviews and sales on its release in 1973. It almost ruined his solo career. So you can understand why Reed wore a broad grin as a 2000-strong Sydney Festival audience gave the record’s live debut a rapturous response.

Released within days of The Who’s Quadrophenia and produced by Bob Ezrin (who produced Pink Floyd’s The Wall six years later), Berlin could have been just another 1970s rocker reaching the end of his oeuvre. With top session players, strings and a children’s choir on board, this was the ‘70s that punk supposedly reacted against.

Berlin began with a song of the same name, one of the few originals on Reed’s eponymous debut. Ezrin convinced him to extend it to a full album, and Reed, who wanted to “bring the sensitivities of the novel to rock music,” needed little encouragement. The volatile former Velvet Underground front man zoomed in on a pair of drug-addled lovers in a city he had never visited. Over 10 songs, his young protagonists travelled from the bliss of first love to the tarnished end via speed, domestic violence and ultimately suicide.

33 years later its paradoxes are only magnified: a glossy concept album about poor addicts; Reed’s drop-dead monotone set against arena rock riffs; a critical and commercial flop revived for a headline festival show. Despite, or perhaps because of that, Berlin has a tawdry magnificence, and Reed snatched the opportunity to present it the way he wanted. His band featured Antony (sans Johnsons) and Sharon Jones, singers who could sell out the venue alone; seven extra musicians playing strings and woodwind; and the Australian Youth Choir. Aside from ‘The Kids,’ strings and choir added little more than superfluous pomp, while artist Julian Schnabel’s wallpaper, hanging chair and video projections made for oblique set design. But even in his mid-‘60s, the wiry Reed remains an authoritative figure. He drew wild cheers with a fists-pumping extended ‘Men of Good Fortune.’

Sharon Jones sparred with Reed on a searing ‘Sweet Jane’ and Reed finished with ‘Rock Minuet’ from 2005’s Ecstasy. In between was Antony, who rarely sings as well as when he’s singing other people’s songs. As in 2003, when Antony sung Leonard Cohen’s ‘If It Be Your Will,’ the song, ‘Candy Says,’ seemed to force its way out of him. It was edge of the seat, ecstatic and exciting.

Really just a breaking the drought post. It’s thinned out while I’ve been up north in Alice Springs and Darwin, but I’m back, Cyclic Defrost is back from the printers, and a few of my articles are in there and online.

Various artists: These are some serious times (review)
Jamie Lloyd interview (online only)
Kharkov: Keeping it corporeal (interview – print/online)
Mist and Sea: Ice caps melt (interview – print/online)

Tonight’s show – on FBI 94.5 – was mostly a big payback to James Brown, but there was quite a bit more on show, especially from Sydney producer Jamie Lloyd.

James Brown – The Payback (Live in Kinshasha, Zaire, Sept 1974)
The Wiseguys – Start The Commotion
Rephrase – Boulevard
Kidzen – Mad Stream (Rephrase remix)
Coldcut – True Skool (feat Roots Manuva – Sway remix)
James Brown – Coldcut meet the Godfather (The Big Payback)
Double Dee & Steinski – Lesson Two: James Brown
Grant Green – Aint It Funky Now
The Last Poets – James Brown
James Brown – King Heroin
Bernard Purdie – Cold Sweat
James Brown – Hot (I Need To Be Loved Loved Loved – Re-edit)
Bootsy’s Rubber Band – The Pinocchio Theory
Fred Wesley & The Horny Horns feat Maceo Parker – Up For The Downstroke
Funkadelic – I Got a Thing, You Got a Thing
Parliament – Theme from The Black Hole
OTW – He Dance Funny
Chicken Lips – White Dwarf
Imagination – Music and Lights (dub)
Jamie Lloyd – Bad Motherfucker
Kidzen – Supersticious (Jamie Lloyd remix)

I’m really into James Wilkinson’s new record as Post, but the gig as karaoke show tonight was disappointing.

It must have been intimidating working out how to perform such an intricate and studio-bound album live. Some performers can take that challenge on their own, Jamie Liddell’s a perfect example (in fact, he is far better live, solo, than on record – I’m yet to hear what his new full band thing sounds like). Others get a band together or forgo touring. Wilkinson played solo.

But whatever the route, at some point a live performance has to offer something. With a pedigree in bands like High Pass Filter and Bucketrider he is no stranger to live performance. But pressing play on your newly released CD and then playing a succession of instruments over the top seems like a bit of a cop out. Even if they are played beautifully – for example, Wilkinson added deliciously timed farty rhythm with a huge conch shell, he intro-ed the whole thing with an (initially unaccompanied) roar into the microphone, and he played trombone and cornet. People in the audience felt it though, especially the “Right on Jimmy!” guy in front of me.

Seaworthy were wonderful as the early support. The venue’s cool too.

A couple of new reviews at the Cyclic Defrost thermostat for Def Wish Cast‘s long awaited second album and a compilation from Cairns digi-dub crew the Dub Rascals.

Me on Ollo’s new album, which drops on Groovescooter in early October.

For some reason I didn’t mention the first single of the album in my review, but it’s great and you can have a look at it here or if you’re in Sydney or London go and buy it from So Records in Newtown or Rough Trade.

Check my review at Thermostat.

I GOT SCRITTI Politti’s album a while ago. I only knew the band from seeing their name on Club Retro flyers 10 years ago, seeing it there I was never tempted to go further. And first listen to the latest, White Bread, Black Beer, didn’t tempt me to think differently. I would have put it aside, but a K-Punk review describing it as “quietly brilliant” tempted me back and I’m really glad I did. It’s weird and kinda awkward at times, like Pet Shop Boys doing Prince, but with elements of hip hop, sugary over-produced R&B and awkward, self-obsessed lyrics like the desperately bitter edge of Morrissey at his best. It’s lonely (Green’s on his own now, having split with his old post-punk cronies, as well as the ragga and hip hop MCs, according to Simon Reynolds), and sort of depressing, but also fascinating enough to keep going back to.

K-Punk and Reynolds have taken their discussion to very deep levels, hard to know sometimes with this level of discussion whether they’re finding things or making things. Still, hard to tear yourself away.

Brisbane six-piece Anal Traffic is not completely serious, well not at first. Check the name for starters, and if you need more, they double as librarians, lawyers and bankers yet still manage to knock out stoopid punk rock that sounds hedonistically silly. If you’re not down with titles like Six Beer Queer and In Past Your Wrist, rude words, graphic gay lyrics and punk rock, you may not appreciate what the band’s press release describes as ‘queer punk rock in a latex glove to the shoulder.’ But I was into their self-released debut EP from the first listen. How could I not, it’s like Turbonegro and Warren G with a solid dose of the Buzzcocks. I didn’t hold out much hope for the second listen, I might add, the overtly promiscuous nightclub sex and low-fi camp rock soundtrack seemed unlikely to bear up for the long term. But something about the anthemic Two Pumps and a Squirt sticks. “I don’t want you to love me / Just take your cock and stick it right up me.” The laughs and dancing are cool, but it’s the descriptions of bleak sex like something out of Michel Houellebecq that have kept me listening.

Find out more from Anal Traffic’s website. I am getting more hits on my blog from this review than anything else, mind you it’s also the exit point for most of those visitors. If you haven’t found what you’re looking for, hope it’s not too disappointing finding out about Anal Traffic, the band.