Hobart
Live: Gavin Bryars and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra perform ‘Jesus’ Blood Never Fails Me Yet’ – Dark Mofo Festival 2021
Dark Mofo has been through an abyss, assailed at all sides by a potent cocktail of challenges stemming from its prescient cancellation last year due to COVID, missteps on the way to curating a challenging agenda this year, the virtual ban on overseas tourists and the ever present threat of lockdowns domestically (in fact one …
Album Review: Quivers unveil the epic, jangling, melancholy indie pop masterpiece of ‘Golden Doubt’ and announce Australia-wide tour.
Starting in the tiny southern capital of Hobart at the edge of the world before moving, as bands often do, to Melbourne, Quivers have caught global attention with their unique brand of melancholy indie pop: a classic antipodean style of jangling guitars and yearning vocals, burnished a little more brightly than many peers with a …
Track: All India Radio emits another bright ray of sunshine with the shimmering atmospheric track ‘El Cielo’
Martin Kennedy’s All India Radio released the magnificent album ‘Afterworld’ earlier this year and it still resonates with a shimmering and haunting aura – read my effusive review here. All India Radio has now released a new single from this epic album, ‘El Cielo’, with maestro Gareth Koch on board. Gareth Koch is a multi-talented …
News: The iconic Dark Mofo Festival – Come to the Cross – returns to Hobart from 16–22 June 2021. And there was much rejoicing.
We have been assiduously covering the glorious Dark Mofo Festival in the deepest south of the Southern Hemisphere almost since inception – a record blighted by the festival’s necessary cancellation last year due to COVID. And a bleak winter it was without this shining beacon of darkness. Dark Mofo is back this year with a …
Track: All India Radio unveils the mesmerising single ‘Deep Blue (ft Sasquin)’ and announces new album ‘Afterworld’
All India Radio‘s Martin Kennedy is the musical genius behind the magnificent Kilbey/Kennedy album ‘Jupiter 13’ reviewed by me last month. Already a strong contender for album of the year from me. While responsible for the shimmering instrumentation behind Steve Kilbey’s evocative vocals in this release, Kennedy’s main day job is in All India Radio …
Track: EWAH and the Vision of Paradise – Vultures
EWAH and the Vision of Paradise have the dubious honour of being the last band to be reviewed live on Backseat Mafia before the global lockdown, so it’s nice to return to the band when things are slowly – ever so slowly – returning to normal. ‘Vultures’ is their new single and it is a …
Live: Dark Mofo Festival – Sharon Van Etten
In the creaky, weary, glorious old Odeon Theatre in Hobart, Tasmania, Sharon van Etten made an explosive, incandescent start to the one of the most brilliant festivals in the world today. Her voice, incredible on record, is extraordinary live: ranging from operatic, soaring highs in ‘No-one’s Easy to Love’ to growling exhortations in ‘Seventeen’ where …
Album Review: Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You really Feel
Courtney Barnett is swiftly developing global adulation for her low-fi, heartfelt vignettes of life which capture with great honesty her trials and tribulations and insecurities. Like Jonathan Richman, there is a brutal honesty in her lyrics that reveal a bruised innocence, backed with an increasingly muscular instrumentation that creeps up and surprises. Themes reflect her …
Live: Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds – Brisbane Hotel, Hobart 13/05/2018
The carpets at the iconic Brisbane Hotel in, confusingly, Hobart, Australia are so sticky that if you stand still on the one spot for too long, you might get never get out alive. Luckily, when a band like Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds play, there is no risk of that. Opening with their …
News: Dark Mofo Festival 2018, Hobart – lineup announced
Dark Mofo, the world’s most extraordinary festival, returns to Hobart – the city on the edge of the world – in the middle of the deepest darkest winter from 7 through to 24 June. The Festival is a series of events, concerts, light shows and installations that deliberately encompasses the weird, the controversial, the obscure …