Like Woody Allen, I too would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member. I know for a fact that Bleeding Knees Club would never welcome me – they probably have a ‘no fat chix’ sign on their jam room door – which only serves to make me want in even more.

Their first long player was recorded in New York with Dev Hynes (aka Lightspeed Champion), but despite mixing it with the finest, the fruits of their labour are still more Big Pineapple than Big Apple. Super short tracks are punchy and jingle jangle in your brain. The kind of coastal beats and garage scrawls most of us are totally bored with by now take on something new in songs inspired by what I can only imagine was a very fruitful adolescence – ‘Teenage Girls’, ‘Beach Slut’ and ‘Girls Can Do Anything’.

‘Thrash pash gash rash’ – I wouldn’t normally go for dudes with such lofty ambitions. Surfboard waxing lyrical about banging girls, getting high and ‘sticking it to the man’ still somehow manage to channel an only-just-post-pubescent innocence that makes me feel excited and warm and fuzzy all at once. Validate boredom and champion the lame-o, throw a pop beat behind it and hey, it’s the new soundtrack to the Facebook timeline of your emotionally misguided youth.

Alan Palomo is Neon Indian in the way Trent Reznor is Nine Inch Nails. The son of a minor Mexican popstar, Palomo released his debut LP Psychic Chasms on Lefse Records back in 2009. Made from glistening, kool-aid synthesizers and crunchy guitar, Palomo’s first album sounded like it’d been inspired by the soundtrack to a late ’80s cyborg time travel flick (on VHS). Some blogger called this kind of music ‘chillwave’, and the internet started arguing over whether it was cool, possibly forgetting that all music ever is inspired in some way by older music.

Reason prevailed, Psychic Chasms got awesome reviews, and Palomo/Neon Indian followed up by collaborating with the Flaming Lips on a rather tautologically named EP, The Flaming Lips With Neon Indian. As it stands, this record is probably the only concept album in history built on the theme that David Bowie is dying; a niche it could dominate for some time. Most recently, Palomo has released Era Extrana, a swirling vortex of electronica that confirms he’s one of the most talented young dudes in music right now. He even wants to take acid with you, but probably not at the Perth Festival where he’s performing this weekend.

Callum Twigger: (Presses ‘Call’ on Skype. After about ten seconds the phone rings out and a bizarre message tone clicks in. Each subsequent call goes through to the message tone, which sounds like a drowning robot moaning ‘leave a message’ over a busted synthesiser. On the seventh attempt, someone picks up). Hello? Is this Alan Palomo?

Alan Palomo: Why yes, yes, this is him. Sorry, my apartment has really bad reception, so I had to step outside.

CT: You’ve a very Neon Indian message tone. The production values were off the chain.

AP: (laughs) It’s been a crazy runaround trying to tie up all the loose ends before I leave town. I’ve been preparing with the band for some of the new songs we’re gonna be playing.

CT: Who are you bringing on tour?

AP: Leanne Macomber and Jason Faries, who’ve been playing since the start. And Josh McWhiter, who plays guitar on the record, is going to be traveling with us. Ed Priesner is the newest member; he’s going to be the wall of electronics that we have to bring with us to keep the operation going.

CT: Sweet. The title of your latest record is ‘Era Extraaaahna’, pardon my atrocious accent…

AP: Hey dude, that was pretty good.

(more…)

If there’s one thing we’ve learnt from TV shows imparting wisdom on the ‘art’ of picking up hotties, it’s that the numero uno tool behind the success of any public perv is hiding your sneaky intentions behind a good ol’ pair of sunglasses. To keep those fluttering peepers shaded, luxury sunnies retailer OnePointSevenFour has opened their first Brisbane store.

The kooky name is a bit of an in-joke for eyewear aficionados – 1.74 is the highest index for an optical lens. This undying love of all things shady means that you can be sure it’s only the finest you’re spying on their shelves (hello Alexander Wang, Cutler and Gross, Linda Farrow and Marni!) or for those into blunt romantic gestures usually reserved for John Hughes movies, the Heart sunglasses by Jeremy Scott will get the job done perfectly.

If you’re wandering the Valley streets and aren’t really in the market for a new pair of glasses, it’s probably worth a visit just to take a quick gander at OnePointSevenFour’s fit-out. A mix of industrial steel, re-purposed railway tracks and driftwood equals more underground gallery, and less of the blinding white surfaces plus blaring dubstep combo you’re probably used to from shopping centre sunnies stores. Happy perving!

What happens when a cashed-up Belfast hard man has nothing to do but kick around Thailand and have sex with tourists for the foreseeable future? Well, pretty much what you’d expect. But not quite. The clever thing about Australian writer Chris Flynn‘s debut novel is the way he reverses the old trope of events conspiring to throw the protagonist’s mundane life into chaos.

The hero of A Tiger in Eden, Billy Montgomery, has just escaped the violence of Ireland in the mid ’90s. He has spent most his life blowing shit up and bursting skulls. Now he’s on the run from the law and is forced to exist in near total tranquillity. How he deals with that tranquillity is the focus of the book.

Billy spends equal time working on his tan, getting his rocks off, beating people up and then getting philosophical about it. None of it would work if Flynn hadn’t got Billy’s voice totally right. It helps that Flynn grew up in Ireland and knows exactly how to make Irish verbal tics work on the page. He paints Billy as a man whose small horizons are expanding and, in the end, Billy’s fascination with the way things work makes him an endearing character to kick around Thailand with.

Natalie Wood is Something Else. Coming from a background working for Insight, Wood created her own label for all the fashion that didn’t fit within the skate image. Citing influences from Cicciolina to Annie Hall and nature, Something Else has that air of freneticism suitable for any free spirited wild child.

The new collection, ‘Metamorphosis‘, gathers the simple, elegant and slightly offbeat lines and cut outs that Something Else has established, and combines it with the animalistic and the cute, mimicking nature with foliage, floral and animal prints. If Kafka employed a heroine in The Metamorphosis, she would have been wearing this collection. One of our favourites are the polka dots with inconspicuous beetles amongst them. The digital botanist behind all of that is their art director George Barnes.

Hayley had a chat to George about his skills, which also include the sonic variety, and got him to make us a mixtape – from wax! Treat it as the soundtrack to the collection.

Hayley Morgan: The floral prints are really unique in the way that they’ve been manipulated. What’s the process behind this?
George Barnes: The majority of the floral prints are screen printed. We played around with the designs, got them somewhere we liked them then decided on colour combinations… the colour selection is a really important part of the process. (more…)

Some local band’s car recently broke down on the way home from tour in Coffs Harbour (of all places). Broke, bored and sober, they set about demystifying an old wives tale that smoking banana skins could get them high. It didn’t work but they were onto something. If you must get high, firstly don’t die (why hasn’t some adman thought of that slogan?) and secondly steer away from shit made from toilet cleaner.  Here are some alternatives.

Ants – Get this – ant smoking is epidemic in some parts of the world such as Dubai. Formic acid is the stuff you’re after and it’s stored in a red ants poison gland. Leave some fairy bread out at your summer picnic and off you go.

Cheese – Had to Google this one, but yes, The British Cheese Board did a study and 67% of people that ate cheese before bed had dreams so psychedelic they could of been a Sun Araw film clip. Beats a cup of chai.

Lettuce – If cocaine was the secret recipe in Coca-Cola, trippy lettuce is the secret ingredient of Big Macs. A popular medicinal ingredient in the 1900s, many lettuce varieties contain lactucarium, a mild, euphoric feeling similar to opium.

Granite – Go lie on a kitchen top for a few hours. It’s pretty scary to know that granite averages 10-20 parts per million in uranium, meaning with enough exposure it’s radioactive enough to get you buzzed/give you cancer/set off alarms at airports.

Toads – Might be fun for a minute but will then kill you.

Marie Tussaud may have thought she was the ultimate wax when she decided to make life-like sculptures of Rousseau, Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin in the 1700s. But here we are in 2012, in need of some wax stimulation yet again. And you will find it in these here candles that become massage oil that become body balm.

Yes, the Kindle Kandle is a massage candle designed and made in Melbourne from a natural blend of cosmetic-grade soy wax, scented oils, shea butter and vitamin E. It can be used in three ways: As a regular candle, available in six scents including Orange & Mango, Shannonpea, Tahiti Rosette, Cane Sugar, Gardenia and Butter Bean; As a massage oil for yourself or your significant other once the wax has melted; Or as body balm once the wax cools down.

In the ’60s and ’70s, San Francisco was a city caught up in (if not at the actual epicenter of) the free love movement. We Were Here chronicles the dramatic effect AIDS had on that metropolis, transforming it from a free-spirited Gay Wild West into something more sinister. The images recounted herein sound like something out of a sci-fi horror film: strange sores and lesions covering the bodies of previously virile young men, untreatable and unexplainable; a room full of doctors sobbing; going to your local coffee shop to learn the barista who was there last week has mysteriously vanished.

Using interviews with just five long-time residents and some archival footage, David Weissman crafts a dynamic narrative. This is a city where at one time 50 per cent of the gay men were HIV positive, and more than 15,000 died over the course of 15 years – so you know it’s going to be full-on. But that shouldn’t scare you off, because it is also packed with humanity and hope.

“None of my friends are around from the beginning,” says Daniel. “I miss a lot of them a lot”. All the interviewees are fantastic, but east coast transplant Daniel Goldstein really shines – not just for the number and variety of personal tragedies he suffered, but also for his refusal to surrender to disinterest or depression, (more…)

The Crosstown Eating House is now open for breakfast. Thank-you! Like we needed another reason to go back and check them out.  Before you complain about wanting milk with your coffee (these dudes infamously serve only short blacks), rest assured, Crosstown’s now meeting your milk demands in the morning. Photo provided as proof!

The menu is, let’s just say – a bit eclectic. You’ll find some classics with a twist, like The French toast with double smoked bacon is as epic as Mt. Blanc and just as hard to conquer. Then there’s the contemporary done well – tacos are all the rage at the moment but why go for authentic Mexican when ‘avant-garde’ tastes better?

Interestingly you’ll also find a couple of foreign breakie choices. I sure haven’t had a Thai Pad Kra Pao in the morning since my backpacker days (best forgotten). It does remind me though that the cocktails are served early here too. Early enough for you to linger on into lunch. Oops, now it’s dinner time. This could become a problem.