The Thousands

It's outrageously sunny outside, we're spinning out, like when you see some really weird photos, or cartoons, or use really good pencils for the first time.

One lonely muso is bandless and braving it, the rest of 'em have ditched their guitars to play soccer. Yep, spinning out.

Covershot by Milica Balubdzic. We want to see your good eyes! Email your covershots to us.

Ex-Snowman Joe McKee has had a rough couple of years. Down one band and looking for answers, he’s spent the better part of the last few years sorting himself out and writing some songs of his own. His first solo album since the break-up of his long time band, Burning Boy is the fruit of that labour.

It plays a perfect follow-up to Snowman’s swansong Absence, where themes of homesickness and nostalgia give way to tracks that see McKee coming home from London and re-evaluating what it is that matters. These are dreamy songs lamenting the cruel joke of hindsight in tracks like ‘Golden Guilt’, as well as barefaced references to an idealised past in the Perth suburb of Kalamunda, with its view of the darling scarp in ‘Darling Hills’.

Recorded in Perth with local producer Dave Parkin, the likes of Schvendes’ Tristan Parr and Rachael Dease make appearances for strings and canned laughter in ‘Lunar Sea’. There’s a strong element of groggy looks back to the Australian bush land, peppered with London’s misty mornings in songs of a Grizzly Bear vibe. If you’ve ever needed proof that being down can be lovely, then Burning Boy is it.

I went straight home with my copy of The Art Of Daniel Clowes : Modern Cartoonist climbed into bed and said, "Hold all my calls". Turning the giant pages slowly in silence, I occasionally let out an unintentional gasp or "sick!".

Dan Clowes makes comic books that are perfectly suited to pet obsession and bedroom consumption. He pores over his drawings with a perfectionism that rivals modern master Chris Ware. And his characters exhibit those most stinging moments of doubt, angst, neurosis, lust, passion, compassion, anger, inflexibility and hopeless romanticism - the thoughts you used to think were only indulged by your inner monologue.

'Ghost World' and the comic where that story came from (Eightball) are Clowes's most famous works, and probably his most provocative (want to know what the 90s were really like? Check out 'I Hate You Deeply'). Original Eightball art is beautifully reprinted herein, but it's only a fraction of the incredible cross section of awesome images included, from album cover and movie poster art, to OK Cola and anything else Clowes has worked on, alongside personal stuff such as childhood photos, drawings, and his annual Christmas card designs (amazing!).

Attached essays range from a new interview with Clowes, to gushing enthusiasms from comic book buffs, to a somewhat dry (though totally valid) academic analysis from Ken Parille (who co-edited an entire book of Clowes's interviews that I highly recommend).

If you are a Clowes fan you will absolutely love this book and if you are a newbie keen on a crash course, this'll do ya. In fact, I can't imagine what kind of life-hating misanthropic freak wouldn't enjoy this book, but if you can find a person that mad at the world I'm sure Clowes would love to meet them, or at least draw them.

Canadian photographer Jeff Wall is 67 years old and as close as you’ll get to a rock star in his field. In the same weird way that Bill Hicks made his stand-up comedy a heavy-metal experience, Wall’s photos have crossed boundaries by qualifying for a Sonic Youth compilation cover and a portrait of Iggy Pop for his Avenue B album.

Wall has been exploring and deconstructing notions of memory and representation by hiring actors and staging scenes for his famous pieces like The Destroyed Room and A sudden gust of wind (after Hokusai) ever since he first presented his photos in an installation in 1978. He challenged the boring notions of what constitutes a photo, while coming up with something infinitely more interesting: we think that alone merits a meeting in the flesh. So it's a great thing Wall's coming to Perth to open his exhibition and do an artist talk; during which he'll no doubt demonstrate that you don’t get to where he is by just being a dude with a camera. You get there by being a dude with a camera who changed the face of photography.

Here’s another weirdly specific German word with an umlaut to file next to künstlerroman (look it up, Dedalus). Rückenfigur, a contemplative figure with their back turned in a landscape. Usually dwarfed by his or her surroundings, the Rückenfigur is closely associated with the work of German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, who used the figures as viewer surrogates, encouraging them to place themselves in the painting and thereby enhancing the experience of the landscape’s sublimity.

Though still beautiful, Melbourne-based artist David-Ashley Kerr’s photographs use the device to inquire “into the visualisation of place, in the context of Australian cultural identity and its relationship to physical environment.” There’s a playful ambiguity in the tiny specks of humanity lost in his large-format photographs. A lifeguard caught adrift in a seemingly waterless environment, what could be a parking inspector lost in a desert landscape.

I can’t remember whether we are meant to like sublimity at the moment because I lost Jerry Saltz’s phone number. So if we are, they are. If we’re not, they’re not.

Previously, they’ve done some pretty cray things with paper, and put Ollie Henderson in basically the best two-piece trackie ever. August Street is Ainsley Hansen (ex Socialight and Uscari); it’s also a place in Birdwood, South Australia, and now the label, not the street, has gone done become an e’shop.

The current range is Navajo Dreaming and while you’ll probably cream for the Aztec happy pants and the tuxedo jacket made of totem dreams, this new online postcode is also an exercise in patience and bookmarking. Cos the upcoming Summer 2012 featuring Ollie in some sports-suit wonders and a Nike cap has got it on lock, and Spring featuring Krystal Glynn (styled by some Sydney bloggers and Navajo model Rachel Rutt) ain’t too shabby-looking either. From what we’ve peeped there’s ample velvet and a functional jumpsuit. E'xcellent.

Charles Schulz (of Peanuts) famously bought every single Esterbrook Radio #914 pen nib when they heard they were being discontinued. R Crumb won't fuck with anything but a Rapidograph technical pen. Pencils though? Voices were in unison praising the Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602. Famous users included Vladimir Nabokov, Frank Lloyd Wright, Thomas Wolfe, John Steinbeck, Stephen Sondheim, Igor Stravinsky and Chuck Jones. How many famous people use your favourite pencil? Don't make me laugh. Even the Blackwing's motto 'Half the pressure, twice he speed' is imposing and sleek in a modernist kind of way.

Then: disaster. Blackwings were discontinued in 1998. I have seen evidence of them selling for upwards of $50 on eBay. An incredibly exhaustive blog sprung up. The streets ran with graphite. People wept. Then: Resurrection. California Cedar Products bought the Blackwing trademark and started manufacturing recreations of the Palomino Blackwing 602 and the Palomino Blackwing. The former for writers, the latter for sketchers - and now available in Australia at NoteMaker. It's almost impossible to overstate the reverence people have for this pencil. Such fanatical devotion to a writing stick. But, as Ray Eames said, "What works good is better than what looks good, because what works good lasts." And sometimes what works good can even come back from the dead. It's the Jesus pencil.

It's easy to let the minor Oscars pass by - hey, bless the winners, but the Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing kinda taps a niche demographic. Sadly though, year after year, the Oscar-nominated short films end up slipping away brutally under-rated. Lucky for us, Matt at 1Up has got his mitts on 2012's Academy Award nominated short films, and he's giving them a run in June.

For the scrubs, five films were nominated in total: Pentecost sums up how most kids feel about Sunday school by juxtaposing a young boy's football preoccupation with his church service. Raju explores the hangover of colonialism as a German couple try to adopt a child in Mumbai, and The Shore draws bleak comedy out of friendship and distance in North Ireland. Time Freak tries to show what would happen if you gave a neurotic a time machine: it's well thought-through, but the acting is rather scrappy. Tuba Atlantic is arguably the best film of the pack; it's loosely about a dying Norwegian, an angel, a machine-gun, a flock of seagulls and a giant tuba. Grab some kool-aid and milk duds from Matt's candy stash and enjoy the show.

In recent memory, the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts has presented us with inflatable bouncy chambers, smoking benches, cheerleaders and live bacteria.  Eventually, even the culinary arts got a foot in the door with the Nadegata Instant Party's art project come social experiment come cafe Yellow Cake Street.

The latter reminded us, amongst other things, that it's pretty great to pair you art-viewing experience with a treat-tasting experience. The Nadegata Instant Party returned to Japan, but their departure fortuitously coincided with whiz kids Brian and Connor's dreams of opening a bar. And so PICA's watering hole - a one-time Cultural Centre haunt - was born anew.

The bar now boasts a remarkable range of art-themed cocktails, from the 'Triptych #1' to the 'Spoonbridge' and the 'Fauve.' The ancient arts of coffee preparation and cuisine are well represented, with hot Toby's Estate brew and extensive breakfast and lunch menus. The bar still serves as a visual art space, too, with work selected by PICA lining the walls in a gallery-within-a-gallery effort that would make Xzibit's corn rows stand on end. It's all too easy to neglect your taste buds when venturing out on art excursions. PICA Bar is the ideal stopover for those of us whose bellies are as big as our eyes.

It’s the question on everyone’s mind: if a jazz band and the motley amalgamation of all things rock n roll met head to head in a soccer match, who would win? Now in its third year, the Crustacean Cup attempt an answer to that most burning of questions. Featuring a round robin of teams that include teams Mictacea, Crabs FC and The Rock Lobsters, plus new addition, the WA Youth Jazz Orchestra’s The Able Seamen, expect a throwdown like you’ve never seen before.

Playing at Russell Square and featuring mid-play performances from a raft of local talent including Astral Travel, smRts, and many more, ever-dependable RTR presenter and local compère of all things, Peter Barr, will make sure you make a day of it, along with the NRG cheer squad. La Cucaracha tacos and Gift of Taste Polish donuts available, or raise it up a notch and bring a packed picnic. You can bet that one genre proves itself in better shape than the other, while enjoying a Sunday afternoon that trumps all other Sunday afternoons. Not to be missed.

The Deli patrons are reaching out of their art-gallery/living-space to pilfer the closets of Perth's dilettantes. Small-traders and lay-buyers have been invited to expose their accumulation of vintage wear, outfits-worn, and collector's apparel, while upstarter labels KAAS Leisure Wear and Lucid Youth will be setting up shop-proper. Barter, trade and currency are all welcomed into the Deli’s innards. There's still time to add your closet to the collection: if you’re interested in joining the market, have a chat with the Delikatessan over bookface.

The WAMi Festival is a dandy way to sum up what west-side musicians have spent the last twelve months working on. It's a cheat-sheet if you've missed out on local gigs, and a chance to help give West Australian outfits a national profile. The Bakery is home base for the Festival's opening jamboree starring last year's can-do'ers: Ben Witt has been fine-tuning an album with The Chemist, Cow Parade Cow played Laneway, and Felicity Groom's debut record Gossamer got featured on Triple J. They'll be joined by MmHmMm, Tomas Ford, Sugarpuss, Rainy Day Women and Cut & Paste Soundsystem.

“You know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese in Paris?” It’s one hell of a car ride in one hell of a film, long before Sammy J ever got on that ill-fated flight and Travolta discovered that he liked to dress up as women. But forget the French – Deville’s are serving up their own Royale with Cheese, putting on one Big Kahuna of a tribute to the legendary QT.  Just like the films themselves it promises to be a night of gratuitous indulgence and over the top entertainment. And if Tarantino has his way, stone cold babes packing some serious weaponry.

Being a paper mountain, it unfolds like an origami fortune teller: when Paper Mountain opens, it'll find a way to show you what you ask of it. The William Street creative studio wants you to climb inside, and see how it works for yourself. There are far too many awesome artists on display, including Mountain founders Anna Dunnill, Amber Harries, Stephen Genovese and Joanna Sulkowski - you can find all the artists here. The mountain bakers will be baking, their writers will be reading out what they've written, and the hidden passageways of the mountaineers will be open for all.

Architecture, art, Perth and Sweden are disparate enough to make their coalescence a brave and intriguing prospect. As Economy, Perth artist Jessica Watson-Galbraith and her Swedish counterpart Tor Lindstrand (Tor was a recent winner in PICA’s Hijack The Streets photography comp) engage in pursuits that mix casual contemporary culture and their architectural learnings. Making acid-house mixtapes for architects to listen to ‘while in CAD-mode’, travelling back through time to reimagine Stockholm, throwing atmospheric architecture Italo-disco parties, and now, proposing a housing project made from a thousand shades of beige. 'Supervilla' offers a creative alternative to the less than desirable environs Western Australia’s economic upswing is cultivating, a solution they describe as “post-hippie, drop city…less suburbia and more Thunderdome”.

Thank Ganesh there’s someone out there who realises there’s more to life than human experience. In a new night starting at The Velvet Lounge the dudes behind Animal Ballet are taking the cause of speciesism to the dance floor and reminding us that, beyond exploring different cultures and genres, we have way more in common with humble non-human than some of us care to admit. In a weekly event that’s all about having a very good, very real time, primal DJs Travis Doom, Petrosex and J Box will make sure you don’t forget it.

You know what sucks about nuts-on-strings earphones – everything. The way that little rock-hard, macadamia-sized plug starts to hurt your ear after no time at all. Especially if you are laying down like this.

The situation is not all nuts n knots though. When I was on the google I found this video from Urbanears to curb my well-founded headphone tentativity. The smooth voice promised my stressed-out ear cavities some pillow-soft headgear to cradle my drums and lobes. A nice fabric cord that refuses to tangle even in the most treacherous of bag interiors. The ‘closed’ headphone technology of the Plattan style also allows for absolutely no noise to filter in, and means that even the person sitting next to you won’t know you’re listening to 'Big Hard Sun' by Eddie Vedder. Hey you’re getting geared up for a big day! But if they did, say, want to listen to it with you, they could because Urbanears have a thing called the Zoundplug, which lets the person sitting next to you plug into your headphones. No more pressing temples and hairlines together for the old one-ear-each jobbie.

Get a pair at Myer or browse the wish-they-was edible colours (grape!) and buy online for $80 USD. Or, indeed, attempt to win a pair of the Plattan in grape from this very newsletter. To enter, just answer the following question.