Category Archives: Australian music

Australian arts sector says budget cuts during pandemic recovery ‘highly disappointing’

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Federal budget papers reveal $190m or 19% reduction in 2022-23 compared to previous year, Fund the Arts coalition says

The arts sector is facing a significant drop in federal government funding as pandemic support measures come to an abrupt end despite some industries struggling to recover.

The arts minister, Paul Fletcher, said the inclusion in the budget of an additional $20m in Covid-19 relief under the Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (Rise) scheme in 2022-23, first announced last week, was an “unprecedented injection” of art stimulus funding.

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Riveting, terrifying, completely singular: how Chrissy Amphlett changed the game

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Growing up the daughter of a rock’n’roller, Lo Carmen was meeting stars at gigs from the age of 13. One left a life-changing impression

  • This is an edited extract from Lovers Dreamers Fighters by Lo Carmen

I was 13 when I became enamoured with Chrissy Amphlett.

It was 1983 and I had just started working for our old family friend Vince Lovegrove in the school holidays. In the late 60s Vince had been a frilly-shirted bubble-gum pop singer with the Valentines, alongside AC/DC’s Bon Scott; in the 70s, he’d transitioned to hip music scene journalist, to TV producer, to compère; and now he was managing cutting-edge rock group the Divinyls, whose song Boys in Town I was already obsessed with.

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Gang of Youths: Angel in Realtime review – overcrowded anthems with a few special moments

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The big, bold songs will get the airplay and crowds singing, but it is the stripped-back ones where the Aussie rockers truly shine on their third album

If Angel in Realtime is ostensibly an ode to David Le’aupepe’s late father, it reveals itself as a portrait of the son, passing back and forth between grief and searching and understanding, in his father’s wake.

In the opening track, You in Everything, Le’aupepe asks of himself: “How do I face the world or raise a fucking kid/Or see beauty in the earth and all its majesty replete/When I’ve spent the better part of my 20s doing self-indulgent bullshit on repeat?” A dozen tracks later, as he contemplates “the sum of a life” in Goal of the Century, he hasn’t found an answer but the path to it looks a little brighter: “Head down I’m writing this shit out/On my phone/A way that I can talk to you/And reach you.”

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‘Unapologetically truthful and unapologetically Blak’: Australia bows down to Barkaa

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After overcoming personal tragedy, the rapper has clawed her way back – with a politically potent debut EP dedicated to First Nations women

Baarka didn’t come to mess around. Born Chloe Quayle, the 26-year-old rapper was a former teenage ice addict who did three stints in jail – during her last, five years ago, she gave birth to her third child.

Now the Malyangapa Barkindji woman has clawed her way back from what she describes as “the pits of hell” and is on the verge of releasing her debut EP, Blak Matriarchy, through Briggs’ Bad Apples Music. She has been celebrated by GQ as “the new matriarch of Australian rap”; and has her face plastered on billboards across New York, Los Angeles and London as part of YouTube’s Black Voices Music Class of 2022. (“I nearly fainted when I saw [pictures of it],” Barkaa says when we meet over Zoom. “The amount of pride that came from my family and my community ... It was a huge honour.”)

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Daniel Johns and the fame trap: get famous enough to buy back the freedom you once had | Brigid Delaney

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The anxiety that results from extreme fame can become a prison, but it can be escaped

Fame. You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy, particularly not if your enemy was very young.

Fame of the extreme kind – when you are a household name and your image is worshipped on bedroom walls and all manner of fantasies are projected on you – can be experienced as a form of trauma.

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Courtney Barnett on being forced to stop: ‘I felt myself opening up in a different way’

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A breakup, a pandemic and a homecoming left the singer with time to sit and think. Her new album radiates the calmness and kindness she sought

At the beginning of 2020, while her home country burned and the rest of the world was waking up to a global pandemic, Courtney Barnett was in Los Angeles. She’d just completed an American tour; her plan was to find herself an apartment and stick around a little longer to work on songs.

Then – after “it all got really wild” – she came home to Melbourne. For maybe the first time in six years – since her 2016 hit Avant Gardener turned her into the newest “New Dylan” – Barnett finally had time to sit and think.

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‘A lot of noise, a lot of joy’: Sydney sea shanty club singers raise the roof in raucous reunion

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Redfern bar shakes like the hull of a ship as devoted community comes back together after year apart

Over the past year, various members of the Redfern Shanty Club found different ways to cope. Robert Boddington, with his thespian’s voice and easy stage patter, gathered a few friends and tried to sing in public places, “just turning up in the dead of night and quietly singing away”. Robin Howard says he got “the shakes”. Emma Norton, a train driver with a soaring Celtic voice, says: “I sang to myself a lot, I guess.”

On Monday night, as restrictions in Sydney were almost completely lifted – with relaxed caps on capacity in bars, and no limits on singing – this devoted and joyous community finally returned to their favourite weekly ritual.

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Good riddance 2020: vote now for the ultimate New Year’s Eve songs to end a very bad year

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The year that lasted centuries is finally coming to a close – and we need some music to bid good riddance to the horrors of 2020.

Last week Guardian Australia asked our readers what song they’d add to the ultimate New Year’s Eve playlist: one that represents the year we’ve had, the year we’re hoping for, or just the way we’ll feel (and the words we’ll be screaming) at midnight.

Below are all the songs that were nominated, and now we need you to vote so we can build the perfect soundtrack for your night. Voting closes on Wednesday 16 December – and we’ll launch the playlist of the top 20 songs on Friday

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