The Thousands

First up, go check the OUTs 'cause we have tickets to ALL (some of) the things. Then: go outside it's summer. Then: an octogenarian humourist, Sydney's best bar opened, you got six weeks for these swim suits, bags inspired by Walton Ford and Kurt Vile made us a mix. Woof.

Cover image by Jemimah Gray! Be a huge legend like Jemimah, send your potential covers to alex@rightanglestudio.com.au

Before he landed a job travelling the world playing music Kurt Vile drove a forklift at a brewery. There is still a bit of that forklift driver in Vile. You can hear it both in his songs and his phone manner. Loose, easy and free of bullshit. With a nod to classic rock, acoustic folk and a touch of psych, his music - like his conversation - is warm and familiar.

In a time of autotunes and Nicki Minaj it's nice to hear an album with a few tics. The small cracks in his voice and the occasional mis-cued strum makes Kurt and his music all that more personable. Vile is a great songwriter but as a person he comes across as a regular guy. Yeah he's a new father but he's still the kind of guy who can pass out on a couch at a party with cupcake wrappers on his chest and people striking goofy poses next to him.

To say The Thousands are excited to be presenting Kurt Vile and the Violators on their debut Australian tour would be more than an understatement. With two extra shows announced in Sydney and Melbourne and a Friday night sunset spot at Meredith, this is going to be a pretty special tour. On the eve of his arrival I had a chat with him about fatherhood, his music, Springsteen and J Mascis.

What are your expectations of Meredith?

I've heard about it from touring a bunch recently. There seems to be a lot of Australians in Berlin for some reason and they have all been telling me about it. I mention that I'm playing Meredith and they immediately get homesick (ha). But any festival that has Grinderman and Mudhoney is going to be cool. You know it's not just going to be some indie fest. read more

The sonic architecture of dub - an emphasis on rhythm, booming, fuzzy bottom end, and the hypnotic, spatial sculpting of sound – has travelled far and wide since its inception in Jamaica in the late 60s. This architecture has had an undoubtable influence on Wisconsin-based Peaking Lights' haunting, spaced out sound.

The duo of Indra Dunis and Aaron Coyes has put out various EPs and singles on the crème de la crust of US-based independent labels including Night People, Not Not Fun, and Earjerk records. Having well and truly earned their stripes in these short recording formats, 936 is Peaking Lights' first official foray into LP territory.

Much like label mate Sun Araw, Peaking Lights are masters of hazy, wobbly, tape-based dance music that is highly hypnotic. Album opener ‘Synthy’ is a good example of this meditative effect, with its crunchy synths, militantly rhythmic drum machine, and wavering bass line. The dub influence is particularly strong on the repetitive muted guitar and bouncy bass of ‘All The Sun That Shines’. The whimsical, bittersweet vocals of ‘Hey Sparrow’ are a great sonic reminder that all that glitters ain't gold.

936 is reminiscent of a crisp, clear, pink dusk where the trees are starting to fade from green to yellow. A long way from the humid environs of Jamaica, Peaking Lights have introduced an Autumnal hue to the multifaceted shades of dub.

Octogenarian lady of letters Mavis McKenzie came out of zine retirement especially for Melbourne's Sticky Institute Feed The Animals fundraiser and the result, namely The Life and Times of Mavis McKenzie #42, is as charming and warmly amusing as ever.

I like to think that Mavis is an elderly relative of Ken McKenzie, the bloke who used to tell all those preposterous tales back in the eighties, and that this is her most recent scrapbook of equally outlandish newspaper cuttings and oddly believable correspondence. Even when sending letters of complaint - informing Qantas that a sniffer dog has eaten some muffins out of her suitcase, for instance - it's still a lot more good-natured than zine contemporary Nerf Jihad, and feels less piss-takey than Robin Cooper of The Timewaster Letters.

What's more, the responses are quite interesting in themselves. The reply from Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco is the only one to dare suggest Mavis is fake ("Are you serious? I don't believe for a second that you are"), while a letter to Melbourne Cemetery complaining that a stranger's body has been buried "crossways" in her family plot reveals a lengthy story of "unacceptable practices ...requiring police involvement" dating from the 1970s. Blimey. I just hope she continues to wield a pen in her arthritic hand for a few issues more.

Editorial wisdom decrees that all things need an intro, so, readers of The Thousands, meet MOP. It is a gallery in Chippendale run by people named Ron & George, who own an actual painting that is by Francis Bacon. MOP, meet readers of The Thousands. They are people who have the internet. Now you guys know each other, MOP has some shows this week that you can all hang out at.

In Gallery 1 there's Dara Gill, an artist who shows all kinds of work all over the place, is a Director at Firstdraft and is putting on this show as the culmination of a JUMP mentorship with MCA curator Glenn Barkley. His show, entitled In Action, Inaction examines anxiety and how it impacts upon our capacity to get shit done and the ways in which we do or do not manage that.

Next up, artist/performance/people who sometimes wear skeleton suits collective Brown Council occupy Gallery 2 with Group Work. Boards around the gallery will display lists in which each of the four members of the group will have written the names of people who have impacted upon or influenced them, with the catch being that the names are written over the top of one another, compacting them into lexical objects that are invested with a localised intensity of meaning that are, by their cumulative density, rendered simultaneously meaningless as textual signifiers. read more

There’s much to hate about Gus Van Sant’s cancer weepie for the Frankie set, but I’ve only got 200 words here. Better spend them unpicking why, even though I have form despising manipulatively twee films, I didn’t mind this one. Indeed, it seems arbitrary to adore the similarly pretentious teen lovers in Submarine but disdain the doomed affair of morbid Enoch (Henry ‘Son Of Dennis’ Hopper) and terminally ill Annabel (Mia Wasikowska). Might the differences just be down to aesthetics – Alex Turner or Sufjan Stevens? Bobs and duffel coats or pixie cuts and op-shop finery? Twilit Welsh beaches or autumnal Portland woods? Depressive, dorky dad Noah Taylor or wise ghost kamikaze pilot Ryo Kase?

Restless lacks the uneasy mood that pervades Van Sant’s Elephant and Paranoid Park, and has very little original to say. But I found its obviousness – Annabel’s saintly demise restores Enoch’s joie de vivre – strangely refreshing. Many alt-romances fall over themselves to impress audiences with their totes-adorbz characters and quotably allusive dialogue. But Restless casts its audience as detached, indulgent observers. Rather than catharsis, it offers a more modestly poignant treat: watching young characters believe they’re the first to feel time-worn emotions.

Casually veiling the most perfectly cut scoop-back full pieces with rumbling lions, snarling panthers, galloping beauties and smoking hunks in the beginning. Following on with macro feather prints, blossoming gardens, coral reefs, and testing the open waters of leggings and mini dresses in between. Yes, they are handsome.

Since their first collection in 2010, We Are Handsome have landed stockists in more than 26 cities and 18 countries. And with every piece Australian designed and sewn, this one's for good measure.

Popping up for just six weeks in an oasis of its own on Westfield's Lower Floor, We Are Handsome have made it home in time for summer. All of the collections will be there for ogling, trying on and convincing you to throw out your real clothes, plus a couple of limited sale pieces. So whatever your budget, you can be handsome, too (if only for a brief moment in the fitting room).

Deadly ponies should exist in reality. They would greet geeks off the street with high-kicks not handshakes, only ever wear balaclava hats, trample on stereos playing Powderfinger, steal everybody’s icecream and just basically be furry four-legged legends.

Okapi Rider is the name of label Deadly Ponies’ latest range of bags and accessories. This range is not designed by my imaginary four-legged friends, unfortch. Or not so unfortch, as you will find once you clap eyes on the stuff crafted by Kiwi Liam Bowden. The line-up takes inspiration from the weird but beautiful ink drawings of Walton Ford, the crispy fierceness of the safari, the tug-and-tackle of the animal kingdom.

Lovers of DP will recognise the brass hardware, the slouchy shoulder styles with added sling, the capacious sizes perfect for squeezing illegal mammals and six years' worth of your favourite fattest novels in. But this time round Bowden has also down-sized to some neat pouch, laptop folios and square satchel options for those to whom less means actually less crap. These people exist, I am sure.

The bagstuffs are not what you’d call cheap. Is a trip to Africa cheap? Hells no! This is pretty much the same thing, except you can’t carry Africa around on your shoulder.

Plus, there are some goat mohawks dangling in ways that would make my nasty pony gang members proud. Yihhh boi!

On Monday, I messaged my friend Flores. "Our girlfriends are going to leave us." I was sitting at the bar of the Baxter Inn. It has 300 whiskeys on its shelves. Later this week, he messaged me: "well this is how you make a bar." It's the most essentially true review of the Baxter available.

The location is video-game. Navigate down completely unremarkable fire-stairs to find a basement full of everything you need. The image attached to this article is figuratively representative: I was armed with only an iPhone and a chest full of old-fashioneds, which is a state I recommend. But the interior is one of the most immaculately executed conceptions I've been in, anywhere. Dark, bricked, accoutrements, candelabras. It is so unmistakably a bar. And the bar itself - my arms will wear a groove in that long bar.

As mentioned earlier, whiskey is the focus. I know nothing about brown liquor, aside from knowing I enjoy a rye manhattan. They pointed me to some blends, some single malts. The dedication to, and knowledge of, the drinks here has a tenderness. Let them guide you to something. Or have an espresso stout, or a Brooklyn Lager. You get to go into a special vault if you buy some of the vintage wines - here's Flores' whiskey-soaked explanation.

Later in the night, I began to understand Bob Dylan's line about the ghost of electricity howling in the bones of her face. It was the old-fashioneds biting, and it was excellent. This is indeed how you make a bar.

The wine world has a rep for being snooty, so everyone gets in a panic about making wine more "approachable" (approaching wine? Most of us have problems walking away!). And then the knee-jerk strategy tends to be - mess with the packaging (Tetrapacks! Wine in a can!) or slap on a "funky" label.

Cake Wines feature labels by local artists, (currently Beci Orpin and Kill Pixie, with talk of more down the line by Hollie Martin and Kevin Tran). Rather than being simply a contrived attempt to be approachable, they're making an effort to involve and benefit the local creative community. The resulting product is easy to like. They're brand-blingin' new: Musica was their debutante ball, and they've been popping up all over the place ever since. Some kind of holy alliance is still in the lab with Inertia, and best of all, from every bottle sold 25 cents goes to FBi Radio.

With all the alliances in order, what of the wines themselves? Sourced from the Adelaide Hills, the 2011 Sauvignon Blanc is dry, and as green and grassy as a picnic, which incidentally would be a perfect occasion to drink it. The 2009 Cabernet Merlot is full and fruity on the nose, but still remains a bit savoury to taste. But at this price, these wines were made for drinking, not swilling and spitting.

Look at these nominees! You'd fully believe that SMAC stands for So Many Amazing C*nts, but it actually stands for Sydney Music, Arts and Culture - which immediately explains what it's about.

It's the fourth year that FBi have celebrated Sydney's greatest thinkers and makers, and proof that our city is truly great. With nominees like Jonti and Oliver Tank (Next Big Thing), Gallery A.S. and Imperial Panda Festival (Best Arts Event), Claudia O'Doherty (Best On Stage), Collarbones and Royal Headache (Record Of The Year), The Gate Presents No Fixed Address (Remix The City) and one million more legends, the awards will all be a close call so your vote matters.

Our favourite part is, we're presenting the totally new award Best Eats which is a battle of deliciousness between Youeni Provides, Orto Trading, The Dip, Feather and Bone, Bar H, Izakaya Fujiyama and FourAteFive. Vote now and you might win a Fender Squire SH Mod Telecaster. Who knows, it might put you in the running for next year's Best Song, and then you can be an Amazing C*nt (soz Mum).

Kurt Vile and his delicious face will be gracing the Red Rattler with his band The Violators and support from Circle Pit. If only presenting Kurt Vile meant touching Kurt Vile.

Since the North American summer of '10, are there any synth indie artists left who haven't been described as chillwave? Tom Krell aka How to Dress Well stands well above the pack with his murky R&B influenced glo-fi. It's his first Australian tour on the back of the debut Love Remains. Listen out for the spine-tingling 'Ready for the World'. Wintercoats and Albatross on support.

Did the funk-master just out-funk himself? Where does this guy get the energy? If you're still unacquainted with Donny Benet you've had an entire year so you're either lazy or uneducated. He is the one-man-show Mister Smoooooth. He's the guy on stage sporting the handle-bar moustache, gold chains and matching sports-jacket and suit-pants combo. You'll find him busting out on his Moog, shredding a guitar solo or laying down lyrical gold on top of pre-recorded backing tracks. He's got the moves and the special touch the ladies can't resist.

If you were stranded on a desert (abandoned industrial) island, what would you bring?

a) 40 of Australia’s best skaters,
b) the largest exhibition of Banksy works to ever come to the Southern Hemisphere,
c) DJs and live entertainment,
d) stocked bars in convenient locations (ie every few metres), or
e) all of the above

Luckily the guys behind Outpost Project picked option ‘e’ and also ticked secret option f) a ferry to take you home again at the end of the night. Don’t you just love it when someone does all the hard work for you?

Richard In Your Mind, Belles Will Ring and Atom Bombs are playing at the Little Hero Christmas Party. It's not about whether to go or not (it's decided, you're going - these bands are awesome), it's about how to best represent the 'surfabilly' theme. Slicked-brylcreem-pompadour or untamed-mop? A farting-dog Mambo shirt or a sweet daddy-o? Bare arms definitely - to show those sleeves off. Speedos with creepers or flip-flops? Oh nah, maybe wear thongs instead - you wouldn't want to look stupid.

Among science fiction blog nerds, Star Trek is often credited with the invention of the flip phone and the tablet/iPad. They predicted the future by matching their current technology with human desire, and then some very smart people raided the prop department and turned their ideas into a reality.

What we know is that before you can predict the future, you must understand the present. So, as The Thousands continues to think about how we can make our content more convenient and mobile, we want to understand what mobile means to you. And, that’s what our Mobile Survey is all about.

In the survey there are only 12 multiple-choice questions that are so quick to answer you might even go back in time. We are also dangling the proverbial carrot with an iPad 2 to give away to one lucky survey taker. The draw is random and we’ll announce the winner on Twitter and Facebook next Wednesday. It’s simple, all you need to do is click here.