Teen Jesus and The Jean Teasers

Photography by Ruby Boland

Words By Alex Callan

Having already impressed festival crowds nationwide over the summer, the band now have their eyes set on the group’s most monumental move yet: releasing a full-length release. Known for their gritty grunge pop paired with unapologetic lyricism, Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers are four friends from Canberra who met in high school and have burst into the Australian music scene with infectious energy.

“I’m actually so excited,” says the group’s guitar player Scarlett McKahey, “It’s really strange to have something proper that we are actually releasing because until now we have only really done singles here and there. Especially after Covid, it just doesn’t really feel like something that can happen so I’m really excited.

“It’s definitely the thing we have worked on the most, probably in our whole lives. We’ve really put our all into it which is really nerve-wracking, but I also feel like we are at this point now where we don’t really care what people think of it because we really like it.”

With their single from last year ‘AHHHH!’ already sitting at over a million and a half streams and ‘Girl Sports’ looking in good stead to do the same, it seems Teen Jesus are quickly becoming one of the hottest bands in the country. Although, considering they are gearing up to release their debut EP Pretty Good For A Girl Band, that’s a strange analysis, given there’s still no telling the scope that Teen Jesus will attain. What we do know is they’re already getting noticed by the likes of The Foo Fighters and have signed to James Tidswell’s label Domestic La La. They’ve played festivals including BIGSOUND, Groovin’ The Moo, Laneway, Falls, Lost Paradise and Spilt Milk - just to name a few. They’re set to take their new EP on the road for their Pretty Good For A Girl Band Tour that will see them performing around the country in August, before landing in Melbourne for a show at The Corner Hotel on September 2.

Expanding further on their forthcoming EP and its change in style, Scarlett said, “I don’t think we’ll go too far from our roots and what we like to write about, which is kind of teenage, like cringe stuff, ya know, like cute stuff. But now we are also kind of sick of being treated a certain way all the time. We’re kind of getting into our angry stage of ‘Stop calling us a chick band,’ but then also that whole, ‘aww, love you’ side. “There’s a good balance in the songs because there are five songs on the EP and every one has a different tone to it.” With the EP’s title a protest against the macho bullshit attached to the male-dominated music industry and ‘Girl Sports’ a response to a male dentist who once told the group’s bass player Jaida to stick to “girl sports” after knocking her teeth out skating, it seems pretty clear that Pretty Good For A Girlband is much more than a collection of songs, it’s a statement.

“The biggest thing that we want people to take away from it is that we just want to be taken seriously, I think this EP really does that,” states Scarlett.

“Like I said before, we have really put our all into it and then even the title being Pretty Good For A Girl Band, we just don’t want to be known as that. I mean, we’re a band, not a girl band.

“We’re not trying to cancel anyone or get mad at anyone, we just want to make people think a little bit or even to just think ‘Oh, Teen Jesus are good’ and not ‘good for’.” When discussing the labels that the band get lumped with (with one recent review even commending Violent Soho for taking a “group of girls” who “lacked experience” on tour with them), we discussed the notion of ‘boy bands’ and how they differ from the stigmas attached to ‘girl bands’.

“I actually love the term ‘boy band’, but then you think about it and it’s like, well is Dear Seattle a boy band? Yes, they are. I’m just going to start referring to all-male bands as boy bands because if you can’t beat them, join them.”

Pretty Good For A Girl Band is out now through Domestic La La. They’ll be playing at The Corner Hotel on September 2, tickets on sale now.

Photography by Pim Myten

When the first wave of lockdowns birthed online radio stations and an endless array of collaborations and compilations, it quickly became clear that electronic music was never going to stay quiet, but the largest avenue to emerge was the rise of online music event streaming, and a virtual reality nightlife.

While Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of Meta came with much debate, many figures in the industry now believe these new mediums are our future, with the pandemic merely acting as a catalyst. The world has reached a new era, where communities will congregate in digital form via virtual worlds. Despite dance floors returning, the movement is burgeoning forward. “The event starts with patrons lining up outside the venue usually 30 minutes before the event, kind of like waiting outside in the line for the doors to open,” ,” LONER founder James Lorenz (online name: Zeal) describes. “Once the doors are open, the first set begins and patrons pile inside. What happens inside is the usual club shenanigans. Some are dancing, some are socialising and drinking, some are messing about in the toilet, the merch shop of the alley out front, or even hanging out by the bar as though they were getting a drink in real life.”

LONER is a VRChat nightclub that flourished during the pandemic and saw its community actually grow when dancefloors returned. The collective showcases alternative electronic music across Japan, USA and Australia, and felt pivoting to VR was a logical decision to build their platform.

Zeal and Lincoln Donelan (Velatix) decided as lockdowns loomed in early 2020 to shift their event focus to the VR space. Their parties, hosted on the free-to-play PC game VRChat, allow patrons to cosplay as anime avatars, interacting with live DJ sets and light shows, as they hit the dancefloor, navigating various venue hotspots and chatting with fellow attendees in real-time. The online world, inspired by some of the group’s favourite basement nightclubs like Sub Club and The Mercat, features a digital experience devoted to capturing the nostalgic feeling of being in real clubs, some now defunct, at a fraction of the cost required in the physical form.

With live midi controlled lasers, specialised audio, and a wide range of post-processing tweaks to mirror a sweaty, crowded basement club, the events helped mimic the feeling of packed dancefloors, with people yelling at each other over the music, while the fluorescent glow of convenience store lights blind weary clubbers who duck outside for a break. All of these

Melbourne is home to one of the world’s most thriving nightlives. So, when the city was locked in by the world’s longest lockdowns, the industry found new ways to ensure that music could continue to shine and be shared.

Words by Sam Howard and Azren Paul

factors were taken into account when creating proximity to real-life clubbing experiences via their virtual world.

While virtual reality DJ sets date back to the times of Habbo Hotel in the early 2000s, the spread of the virus and extended lockdown measures encouraged VR clubs across the world. The initiative #unitedwestream emerged just days after lockdown in Berlin, attracting over 1800 artists who performed to more than 40 million viewers, raising €1.5 million in crowdfunded donations. One of the world’s largest electronic music festivals, Tomorrowland, saw its very first digital festival and with no limits to audience capacity, more than one million electronic music lovers tuned in.

Even Burning Man moved to the virtual world via the Multiverse metaverse app, which mirrored the Black Rock City location as the organisers refused to go a year without the historical desert rave. Punters got the opportunity to experience some of their favourite artists and wander across the dusty landscape, creating their own avatars and hoverboarding from stage to stage.

Many promoters have found virtual events are far more inclusive, allowing them to show acts that are otherwise unreachable due to the costs of air travel or ticket prices. For other collectives, it’s the collaboration of events across borders that continue to bear interest, and the return of dance floors only creates more opportunity to bring people together, in both physical and digital form.

Iain Mac, of Stockholm Syndrome Australia, became a leader in promoting the potential of streamed and virtual-reality events during lockdown.

“The world was expressing something unprecedented and as a result, we had to adjust the way we live,” Mac says. “I’m a firm believer that streaming and self-governed online communities are absolutely the way things are going, so it’s best to embrace it as soon as possible. The rise of social media and online gaming is changing the way we connect, with the next generation primed for this.

“Kids get home from school and jump straight online, building relationships digitally, forming online communities. Meetings and connections can come in both forms. “The world was expressing something unprecedented and as a result, we had to adjust the way we live.

“It’s in the virtual spaces where we’re able to book tours, collaborate, release and connect with other musicians and likeminded communities. This is just the next addition.”

Photography by Kylie Coutts

With a voice that seems to echo on air and songs that provide joy steeped in anguish, Sarah Blasko has been a mainstay of the Australian music scene since the release of her debut album The Overture and the Underscore in 2004.

Words by Jordan Mccarthy

In 2009, she released As Day Follows Night, the highlight of Blasko’s long and illustrious career to this point. 12 years later, she’s still reflecting on its momentous impact.

“It was a very vulnerable record. I was heartbroken when I wrote it, and I was also learning how to write on my own,” she says. “When I think back, I’m very proud of myself that I kind of took that step. It was hard work, and it was a really full-on time.”

The album saw Blasko finish the award season with a (very fragile) triple j Australian Album of the Year Award and the ARIA for Best Female Artist.

With hits including ‘We Won’t Run’ and ‘Bird on a Wire’, As Day Follows Night is still seen as a benchmark of song writing and production in Australian music. The heartbreak album being unlike anything Blasko had done to that point in her career and something she will always be proud of.

Blasko attacked her heartache head on and decided to step outside her comfort zone to produce the record, heading to Sweden to work with producer Bjorn Yttling. Blasko had to work every day in a strange studio with people she didn’t know and who spoke a completely different language.

Ytlling’s process was a complete change to the way Blasko’s first two albums came together, and was at times a rocky experience for her.

“The producer that I worked with was very direct and he worked very quickly,” she says. “I kind of hated working with him, yet I loved working with him at the same time. The principles that he taught me were huge. He had just had a child at the time, and he was like, ‘right, we start at 11am’ and I think we were finished by six every day. “The first two albums that I’d made, were literally 12-hour days, nonstop week after week for six to eight weeks. I thought that kind of labour was normal, but he taught me to go in and rehearse so you know what you’re doing, but then you still capture the imperfections. You do it quickly, and you keep it fresh.” Ytlling’s process for As Day Follows Night is one Blasko still applies when making music today and it’s the reason it remains one of her favourite albums.

“It finished so quickly, and we did it so quickly it just felt so effortless,” she says. “So, when I listened to the album, it was joyful to listen to because it was such a quick, easy process. “It was a huge shift for me. I felt like, well, that’s how I want to make records from now on. The labour is not always the best thing for music, and it can kind of stifle it and crush it. So, from then on, I’ve taken that same idea and applied it. The times that I haven’t applied it, I think I’ve ended up not being happy with the result.” 12 years on Blasko now finds herself in a very different place. She gave birth to her first child with partner Dave Miller in 2015, and the initial heartbreak that inspired As Day Follows Night is long in the past.

When performing on stage, Blasko knows she needs to identify with feelings of heartache and loss for it to feel genuine, so she must simultaneously embrace it while refining elements to keep it fresh and relatable to who she is today.

“Any of the heartbreaks or the struggles that you feel now, you need to put that into the performance of it, for it to feel authentic, because otherwise you’re just playing something that’s old,” she says.

“There’s been a couple of arrangements that I’ve changed around a little bit, not in a big way or in a melodic way, but just to bring the songs to where I am now. I think that’s important, because people can tell when something just feels like it’s being played the same way over and over.” Though, she certainly hasn’t forgotten the pain that inspired the album all those years ago.

“I still remember what that heartache felt like, I know who that person was, and I feel so much love for who I was and who they were. I was younger then, so I guess I see it in a way that I feel for this younger version of myself.”

Ultimately it was this heartache that led to the most successful period of Blasko’s career. The award nominations came in swiftly following the release of As Day Follows Night with major wins.

Blasko had the pleasure of playing at the ARIA awards the year she won Best Female Artist, and picked up the J Award.

Looking back, it’s not necessarily the accolades that Blasko remembers so fondly. “I mostly look back at the recording experience,” she says. “I really remember playing it live with my band, but I’d be lying If I said I didn’t think that it was great to win these awards. It’s all the fun things around it that you remember. “I remember my manager smashing my J Award, which was really funny. We were having a few drinks, celebrating and we thought it looked like it wouldn’t be able to break…. it did.”

A deluxe 10th anniversary reissue of As Day Follows Night is out now via Dew Process / Universal Music Australia.

Photography by Giles Clement

Words by Tammy Walters

Known for her work in The Dambuilders, Black Beetle, Antony and the Johnsons, and as the titular force for Joan As Police Woman, Joan has been dubbed “one of the 21st century’s best musicians”.

Joan was adopted at a young age and raised in Connecticut, where she tended to stand out from both her family and her peers. Whether it was the bright costumes, the mohawks or the dyed dreadlocks, her early infatuation with violin was never going to last for long. She picked up the guitar, took over vocal duties, and found her unusual moniker - Joan As Police Woman - from a 70s TV series starring Angie Dickinson. From there, the seasoned multiinstrumentalist has been associated with the biggest names in the industry. Her three year relationship with Jeff Buckley until his untimely drowning sparked a transformation in her musical career that’s since seen her star studded collaborators include Elton John, Lou Reed, Rufus Wainwright, John Cale, Sheryl Crow and the Scissor Sisters. In short, Joan is a coactive force.

During lockdown, she continued to grow that contact list for her latest album, The Solution Is Restless, boasting the impeccable talents of Dave Okumu and the now late, Tony Allen.

“I met Tony Allen through Damon and this record, The Solution Is Restless, which I released in November, I started with one night of improv with Tony and Dave,” she says.

“I took the tracks and wrote songs from them; I created song forms, did tonnes of editing and created the songs from those during the lockdown.

“I spent a year making this record during the lockdown using those tracks as fodder for writing those songs.

“Dave Okumu is a long time friend. I met him in London when we were doing a project around Gil Scott-Heron, this was one of Tony’s last recordings and I feel incredibly grateful to have worked with him.”

She further recruited Blur and Gorillaz mastermind, Damon Albarn, for track ‘Get My Bearings’, while also returning her talent to the Gorillaz’ latest sonic cog-turner ‘Song Machine’.

“I’ve known him for several years,” she continues. “We went on a trip together to Ethiopia with Africa Express so we got to know each other then and just collaborated on the recent Gorillaz record.

“I feel like we share a very similar way of liking to work on music which is very easy going – just hang out in a room, make yourself comfortable and the music will happen, which is the best way for me and clearly also for him.

“It’s always been really easy collaborating with him and I feel we share a similar feel about melody and rhythm. It’s super easy. I adore his voice and I just adore his process; I don’t know what else to say other than easy,” she laughs.

Recreating the work live for her upcoming Australian tour in late May / early June, Wasser will be bringing an incredibly talented pool of musicians including Parker Kindred (drums), Benjamin Lazar Davis (bass), and Eric Lane (keys).

“We’re doing the songs with our arrangements and it’s going great, we’ve been on tour for a few weeks now and it’s going fabulously,” she says.

“It’s what I feel like I’m supposed to be doing so it’s great to return. I am bringing one show and it is plenty of music I promise. It’s going to be great, I can’t wait to get back.”

Joan was previously in Australia in 2019, playing a solo show at Melbourne Recital Hall as part of Melbourne International Arts Festival, promoting her discography collection, Joanthology.

Whilst Joanthology put the spotlight on her 15-year-spanning music museum, the singer-songwriter is nowhere near her termination zone, with Joanthology Part II a real possibility.

“I don’t think of it really as what I want to achieve,” she explains, “for me, music is infinite and there is so much more music I look forward to making and that’s a continuous thing.

“There are so many ways to do it,” she says, repeating it again and again…”there are so many ways to do it that I don’t know about yet.

“That’s one of the most exciting things about staying open and curious and interested; there are so many ways to make music and communicate through it. So I’m always looking forward to learning about more ways to do that, because it’s the only thing that really makes sense to me.”

The Solution Is Restless is out now via PIAS Recordings. Catch Joan As Police Woman on Thursday 2 June 2022 at Melbourne’s Palais Theatre. In partnership with PIAS.